by Robin Roseau
Then I pointed to the fish that were watching us and held both hands with palms up. I wanted to know what they were.
She pulled something from a pocket of her BCD — it looked like a little flip chart. She flipped through the plastic pages then turned it towards me, tapping one of the fish.
Barracuda.
My eyes opened widely, and I looked at the fish with trepidation, but she held her slate back up and tapped the words. “Calm down.”
I pointed to the fish, and she wrote on her slate, “Harmless.”
Barracuda were harmless. I shook my head, but she tapped the word several times, then tapped, “Calm Down” again.
I supposed if we saw some sharks, she was going to tell me they were harmless, too.
Then she wrote on her slate, “Trust me.”
I held my hand out, asking for the slate. She unclipped it from its tether and passed it to me. “Sharp teeth,” I wrote.
She took the slate back and wrote, “Mine are bigger.”
At that, I had to laugh, blowing bubbles in the water. But I decided to trust her. She knew what she was doing, right?
Karen had us check our air pressure and give her the “OK” sign before she led us slowly towards the reef.
It was a short swim. I kept track of Monique to my right and Portia to my left. They, in turn, were clearly keeping an eye both on me and the waters around us.
We approached the reef, and I found myself filled with wonder. There were schools of small, colorful fish everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I didn’t know what any of them were, but it was just seconds before I was looking forward to our classes on fish identification.
During our briefing, Karen had talked about swimming around the coral. In short, “control your buoyancy and don’t touch a thing”. She spent far more time than that talking about it, of course. I thought about that, and I knew I wanted classes about that, too.
Suddenly I realized there was so much to learn; I’d had no idea.
Karen brought us to a stop at the edge of the reef. She checked with each of us and used her slate to remind us not to touch the coral. Then she led us on a slow circle along the edge of the reef. Every few minutes I checked my air. The water wasn’t deep, only about thirty-five feet, and I knew in such shallow water, my air would last a long time. I also checked with Portia and Monique; Karen had taught us that good divers watch out for their dive buddies.
I couldn’t have told you what we saw, not specifically. There were countless fish, most of them small, most of them very colorful. Tucked here and there were black sea urchins, their spines sharp and dangerous. There was coral of all types, some of it looking like rocks, some like palm leaves, waving in the light current, and countless shapes in between.
We saw stingrays buried in the sand. Karen found the first one, and all we could see were its eyes. But as we drew closer, it shook itself free of the sand and slowly swam off. We followed it for a short distance.
Everything was quite magical.
According to the dive computer I was using, we were down for forty-five minutes before Karen led us a very short distance away from the reef. Then she let a little air out of her BCD and sank to the sandy ocean floor, gesturing for us to do the same. I soon found myself lightly on my knees, facing her, with Monique and Portia right beside me.
Then she had Monique and me do some of the exercises we’d done before. We practiced several things, giving us the OK sign after we had each performed properly. Finally we got one final OK sign before she drew on her slate. She pointed to me and turned the slate around.
We were working on underwater navigation. She wanted me to swim a course using my compass and counting my kicks as a means of measuring distance. The first course was a rectangle; 30 kicks on a heading of 300 degrees; turn left and swim 40 kicks at 210 degrees. After that, she wanted 30 kicks on the reverse course from 300, but she didn’t tell me what that was; I knew I was supposed to figure it out. Finally, one last turn, 40 kicks on the reverse of 210 degrees.
I gave her the OK sign.
Then she pointed at Monique, then held her fingers towards her own eyes, then pointed at me. Monique was to watch over me. Finally, Karen gestured to me with a little wave off gesture, and I gave her the OK again.
I added a little air to my BCD until I was properly buoyant then carefully aligned my compass. Turning slowly, I found 300 degrees. It was away from the reef. I triple-checked I was holding the compass properly and then began to slowly swim away. When I glanced over, I saw Monique was with me, hanging out just a little above me and to the left. I wasn’t surprised to see Portia in a similar position on my right.
At thirty kicks, I came to a stop. I turned to the left in approximately the right direction, adjusted the compass as I’d been taught, verified my heading, and began swimming.
At forty kicks I did the same thing. I didn’t bother figuring out the reverse of 300 degrees, although it would be easy enough: 300 minus 180. But the compass made it easy. Instead of having 300 furthest away from me, I had it closest to me with 120 furthest away.
One more turn, forty kicks, and I came to a stop another ten kicks from where Karen was waiting for me. Had she moved? Had I done something wrong? She was watching me then swam over to us. We let a little air from our BCDs again, sinking back to the sand. Then Karen wrote on her slate and turned it to me. “Why didn’t you end where you began?”
I didn’t know. She handed me the slate. “Did I do something wrong?”
She shook her finger, “No.”
I thought about it while the wolves watched me. Finally I turned to Monique and pointed to her, then handed her the slate. She wrote a word down then turned the slate to see us.
Current.
Of course. I bumped my forehead with the ball of my hand to indicate I should have thought of that. When I did so, I bumped the mask, so I had to clear the water from it, then offered, “OK.”
After that, Karen had Monique do the same exercise. Then we took turns doing a triangle path instead of a rectangle.
I thought it was all a great deal of fun.
When we were done with the exercises for us, we got another OK sign, then she led us back towards the coral.
* * * *
“Oh my god!” I said as soon as we were on the boat. “That was amazing!”
“Did you see fishies?” one of the pups said. I turned to her.
“You’re… Rebecca?”
“I’m Rebecca,” said the other pup. “That’s Celeste.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes, Celeste,” I said. “We saw lots and lots of fishies. What did you do?”
“We swam!” she said. “Nora made us wear life jackets though.” She turned and gave Nora a dirty look.
“We all wore life jackets,” I said. “Even Karen wore a life jacket.”
She cocked her head. “No you didn’t. You can’t swim under water if you wear a life jacket.”
“Sure you can. Our life jackets blow up with air. If we let the air out, then we can sink.” My gear was still sitting out, so I said, “Here, let me show you.” I knelt down next to my gear, tipped it right side up, then showed her how I could put air in it. “See?”
“Ohhh,” she said.
“Did you see any fish?” I asked.
“We saw lots of fish!” Rebecca said. She’d been avidly watching the demonstration, too. “Blue fish and green fish and yellow fish. One fish was this big!” She held her hands as far as she could stretch. Then she turned to Karen. “I want to Scooby Doo!”
“Scuba dive,” Karen corrected. She knelt down in front of the girl. “I’m sorry, pumpkin, but you need to be older.”
“I want to Scooby Doo right now!”
“Do not take that tone with me,” Karen told her, and the girl immediately dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rebecca, but there’s a lot of reading and classwork before you can dive. You need to learn a lot of things in school before you’re ready.”
“Like what?”
“Reading and math,” Karen said.
“I can read now.”
“I know you can read, but you can’t read well enough.” She pulled the girl closer and whispered in her ear quietly enough the boat captain wouldn’t hear what was being said.
When Karen released her, the girl said, “Yes, Karen. May we go swimming again? I want to see more fishies.”
“We’re going to go to another place as soon as your mommies are back,” Karen said. “If Nora and your mommies say it’s okay, you can swim for a while there. You’ll see lots of fish. It won’t be today, but later this week, if you’ve been good girls, we’ll all go swimming together, and I’ll teach you the names of some of the fish.”
“Can we catch some fish?” Celeste asked. “Mommy didn’t bring a fishing rod though.”
“Well you know,” said Nora, stepping in. “Let’s go talk to the boat captain and see how the fishing is here.” Abbey was diving with the wolves, but her husband, Grey, was tending to the boat. Nora grabbed a hand of each of the girls and went in search of the captain. Karen watched after them, smiling.
Then she turned to us. “You’re going to overheat.” And so we each stripped partway out of our wet suits, letting it bunched around our waists. Emanuel and Rory were on duty, watching over things, but I saw him glancing at Portia and Karen from time to time. I had to admit; they were worth sneaking glances. Like Elisabeth, they had fabulous bodies, and I sighed.
“What?” Portia asked, sitting down next to me.
“You guys are just so amazing,” I said. “I like the view.”
She laughed. “I heard Eric was nearly enough to turn you straight.”
I laughed with her and bumped her with a shoulder. “He’s good, but he’s not that good.”
“All right,” Karen said. “Let’s debrief.”
“I have questions.” I turned to Portia. “Why didn’t you do the navigation exercises?”
“I’ve already done my advanced open water,” she said. “But I’ll be doing the specialty courses with you. I bought an underwater camera of my own.” She smiled. “The things I’ve been buying since joining-” she looked around then lowered her voice. “-the pack.” Portia shook her head. “I used to collect exotic weapons. Now I collect sporting goods equipment.”
Karen laughed. “Me too,” she said. “Keeping up with Michaela is a full time job. All right. Did you have more questions?”
“Barracuda and string rays,” I said. “You seemed to treat them like no big deal.”
“There are a lot of dangers in the water,” she explained. “The biggest danger is doing something stupid. Panic underwater is not good. The second danger is sticking your hands somewhere without looking. You don’t know what might be lurking. Very few undersea animals will bother a diver as long as you offer them some respect.”
“Steve Irwin died to a stingray.”
“Steve Irwin was a great man and did a lot for education and conservation,” Karen said. “But he also took risks with the animals he was filming. Did you ever see any of his episodes where he didn’t touch the animals?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “No.”
“Did I let you touch any of the animals?” she asked.
I laughed. “No.”
“And there are reasons for that. Barracuda can be aggressive if you’re spear fishing or feeding them. Some animals are attracted to shiny jewelry. No one is wearing any exposed jewelry. We don’t spear fish. I don’t believe in feeding the animals. And we don’t harass them.”
“What about sharks?”
“Shark attacks on divers are exceedingly rare. Worldwide, there are fewer than ten shark attacks annually and perhaps three or four of those are on divers. So yes, it happens, but it isn’t common. Did you have more questions?”
“I have no end,” I said with a smile. “But we should debrief.”
Karen spent a few minutes talking about the exercises we did. Then she told us what we’d be doing for our next dive. We were just wrapping up when Rory called out, “We’ve got divers surfacing.”
Ten minutes later, everyone was on board. Abbey offered pieces of fruit to wash away the taste of saltwater, but only Michaela and I were interested. Grey pulled up the anchor, and soon we were on our way to our next location.
* * * *
That morning set the tone for the rest of the week. We did a great deal of diving as well as some snorkeling with the kids. I ended each day absolutely exhausted, but I had a blast.
Michaela’s photo equipment was impressive. I spent time on land growing accustomed to it, then took it into the pool with me for an hour. When we went diving, I got some amazing photos.
Our best dive was a deep dive to a wreck lying in 90 feet of water. The water visibility was perhaps thirty feet or so, and there was a stiff current at the surface, but I didn’t notice much at depth. Getting to the wreck involved Grey doing what they called a plunge dive to the bottom. There were anchor ropes tied to the railing of the wreck. He found one of the ropes and attached a float to it, and then Abbey hooked the rope and tied off to it. After that, we descended hand-over-hand down the rope, going down in groups of four.
When diving in shallow water, you can see the surface — and anything on the surface — the entire time you’re diving. As the water gets deeper, you get to a point where you can see the surface, and then you can begin to see the bottom. But on that dive, there was a time where all I could see was the rope and the people around me. The surface, the boat, and the bottom were all lost in the gloom, and it was like we were floating in a sea of nothing. That was a little disconcerting, but I simply followed the rope down.
And then as I passed sixty feet deep, the wreck began to appear. It was like a foggy night with a ship appearing in the gloom. It was quite surreal.
And the noises changed as we went deeper, but I couldn’t explain them.
On the surface, Grey explained the wreck. It was intentionally placed here as an artificial reef. It was teeming with fish, and the photos I took were amongst my favorites of the entire trip.
From that standpoint, it was an amazing trip. And I got to know Nora, Michaela, Portia, Monique, and even Karen better than I had.
I got to know a little more about Elisabeth, too.
I learned I didn’t like going on vacations with her. She paid me very little attention, offering just moments here and there. I shared my bed with both Portia and Monique more than Elisabeth.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Okay that was a lie. I liked Portia and Monique, and I didn’t mind sharing with them. But I was disappointed by Elisabeth’s lack of interest in me. I thought it was telling.
The thought made me sad.
Shortcomings
By the time we returned to Madison, I was exhausted. The wolves could go, and go, and go. I was utterly, completely worn out, and a long day of travel at the end didn’t help.
My mood wasn’t helped when Elisabeth didn’t even bring me home. Instead, I got a ride with Portia and Monique. They helped me with my things, escorting me straight to my door. On arrival, they searched my apartment for intruders before letting me in. Then Portia told Monique, “Wait for me in the hallway.” Monique and I exchanged hugs before she headed for the door.
Once the front door closed behind the girl, Portia turned to me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m just worn out.”
“You were quiet.”
I shrugged. “I’m fine.”
She cocked her head.
“It was a nice trip, but I’m exhausted. I’m only human, Portia. I bet I held you all back, anyway.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. We did everything we would have done without you. Thank you for the photography lessons.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for watching over me, and for hauling all my heavy gear.”
We exchanged smiles, but she cocked her head. “I still think you’re hiding something from me, bu
t I won’t pressure you. I want to make sure you understand you can talk to me if you want.”
“Everything is fine,” I assured her. “But thank you.”
“Well then,” she said, “if there’s nothing else you need, then I’ll see you Wednesday at dinner.”
“Wednesday it is,” I agreed.
We hugged for a moment, and then they were gone. And I wasn’t any less lonely than I’d been during much of the trip.
* * * *
I didn’t hear from Elisabeth for a couple of days. She finally called me Tuesday evening.
“Hello,” I said a little coolly.
“Hey. Did I catch you at a good time?”
“Sure,” I said. “I was just reading a little and was going to go to bed in a while.”
“I won’t keep you long,” she said. “Are you coming to dinner tomorrow?”
“As it’s a command performance, of course I am,” I said.
Elisabeth was quiet for a moment. “Is that the only reason you’re coming?”
“No.”
“Because if it’s a strain for you to come to dinner, I can talk to Michaela for you.”
“You don’t want me to come?” I asked, getting my back up. “Getting tired of me being around?”
“What?” She made that snorting noise. “No. It sounded like the only reason you came was because Michaela ordered you to.”
I paused. I wasn’t sure which of us was picking the fight. “That wasn’t what I meant,” I said. “I only meant that yes, I’ll be there, and perhaps suggested it was a silly question.”
“It was a prelude to what I wanted to ask,” she countered. “If you bring a change of clothes, we can go for a run after dinner.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d like that.”
“Great.” She paused. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” I replied. “Did you get a chance to unwind? The trip seemed to stress you out.”
“No more than usual,” she explained. “We stay on things to avoid surprises.”
“I see. I thought the kids were well behaved.”
“Yeah. They’re growing up.” She paused. “I should let you get back to your book.”