The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

  Had Holly been a French chef, a pastry chef, maybe a Francophile? If Hazel had lost her father, would Holly have scraped crème-filled crepes into the trash on her sleepless nights instead of eggs?

  As we settled on the floor beside the art pile, facing each other, I pulled my shark-tooth necklace out from my shirt collar. The inch-long tooth was strung onto a long, white satin ribbon, which, I noticed, had grown dingy over the years.

  I slid it over my head and handed it to her. “It’s from the shark that bit me. I made the necklace when I was twelve.”

  She rubbed her finger over the smooth white tooth, then pressed the point into the soft pad of her thumb.

  “You didn’t put any sparklies on it,” she said.

  “No, but you can do whatever you want with yours.”

  “It’s so crazy the tooth was in your leg,” she said. “I guess there’s a shark out there swimming around with a big hole in its teeth.”

  “Probably looking for a dentist.”

  After my shark incident—I rarely called it an attack—our own little Jaws-like panic had broken out on the island. Reporters had camped out at the hospital and later in the hotel lobby, hoping Perri would allow them to speak with me. Finding her impervious to their pleas, they’d solicited quotes from nurses, a doctor, one of the hotel housekeepers, several local fishermen, and one of my friends, who reported that I was a well-liked orphan who made all A’s.

  Within a week of my coming home from the hospital, shark-fishing tournaments sprung up at both marinas on Palermo. Weekly issues of the Palermo Times featured photos of dead sharks strung up by their tails or straddled by the men who’d caught them. A television reporter from Fox 4 News called my room while I was still bedridden with stitches and asked if I felt better about going back into the Gulf given that the tournaments were pulling in a dozen sharks every weekend.

  “I don’t mind going back in the water,” I told him, “but not because they’re killing sharks. I never wanted anybody to do that.” My throat tightened as if I might cry.

  Hearing a tremble in my voice, and perhaps not hearing what he expected me to say, the reporter wished me well and ended the interview.

  “The shark that bit me was just being a shark,” I told Perri, shoving tears off my cheeks. “If it’d wanted to have me for breakfast it would have!”

  I began clipping out the pictures of the sharks caught in the tournaments and hiding them in my pajama drawer. When a blacktip turned up, I became inconsolable. “This is the one. I know it. Look at its eye,” I sobbed to Perri.

  I wrote it an obituary, which I taped on my mirror: After a life of swimming in the Gulf, this blacktip bit Maeve Donnelly and paid the price. He had a strong body and a curious black eye. Rest in peace.

  “I keep my shark tooth in my jewelry box,” Hazel announced, retrieving it from her dresser. As she opened the box, a tiny ballerina popped up and the ting, ting, tinging melody from the Nutcracker Suite danced out. The shark tooth lay on the felt lining amid a ragged collection of shells and rocks and bits of coral.

  I plopped a bird’s nest of ribbons beside her.

  “First, we should do the pledge,” she said.

  “You might have to help me remember how it goes.”

  Hazel gave the fin salute and I followed suit as we repeated the lines, Hazel doing so from pure memory, and me a beat behind her.

  As we tapped our fins together, Hazel fought back a smile by sucking in her cheeks. Shark Club was serious business.

  I cut a short piece of wire and gave it to her to wrap around her tooth, but after several minutes of unsuccessful trying, she handed it to me with an exasperated exhalation.

  “Small teeth are always harder to wrap,” I said.

  “I guess we need to find a bigger tooth,” she said.

  As I wrangled the wire around it, finding it far more of a challenge than I remembered, I asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Hazel pondered for a full minute, her eyes roaming the ceiling. “A paleontologist like Nigel Marven,” she said. “Or a chef.”

  “A chef? Like a chicken nugget chef?”

  “Cakes,” she said.

  “Was that your mom’s job?”

  She nodded and pulled a purple ribbon from the cluster. As I began shaping a loop atop the wire, she said, “Before she . . . you know, died, we were gonna go to Disney World. Just me and her. Now Grandma is taking me. Dad, too. You should come.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “Since you’re Dad’s girlfriend.”

  “Do you like that I’m his girlfriend?” I was pretty sure she did, or else I never would’ve asked. Hearing her say no would have flattened me.

  “I like it,” she said in a quiet voice almost like we might be overheard, and I saw her cast the smallest glance at the photos on the clothesline.

  After an obstinate silence, she said, “Are you gonna come with us?”

  Daniel had mentioned the Disney trip to me, but her invitation had caught me off guard. “Maybe,” I said. “Let’s see what your dad says.” Then I told her about the time Robin and I went to Disney World when we were little kids and how I was so scared of Tigger I hid behind Perri.

  “Who’s afraid of Tigger?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  When I finished the loop, Hazel informed me she’d decided to skip the sparkly adornments.

  “In that case, you can thread the ribbon through the loop.”

  When she was done, she grasped the ends of the purple ribbon and held them behind her neck.

  “Tie it for me?” she asked.

  I took the ends and held the necklace at various positions over her chest until she settled on the spot over her breastbone, then I tied a sailor’s knot.

  “Take a look,” I said.

  She smiled into the mirror over her dresser, then turned around. “Now what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Anything you want.”

  Twenty

  Perri and I boarded a sailing catamaran at the Palermo Marina along with twelve pink-nosed, pink-shouldered tourists headed to Shell Point Key for what the brochure called a “sun-sational seashell tour.” By the time we showed up, on the late side of the boarding window, the first mate had engaged the tourists in a deafening game of shouting “Susie sells seashells by the sea shore” as fast as possible.

  “Good Lord,” Perri muttered from behind her big Tommy Bahama sunglasses. “I wish they would just go buy their shells from Susie and leave us in peace.”

  It was Saturday, July 22, one of the busier days at the hotel, but at my instigation, Perri had agreed to come on the “sun-sational” tour anyway. She kept a small pirate’s treasure chest beside the checkout desk in the lobby filled with shells for the under-twelve guests. The kids would stand there digging through the jumble for the perfect parting treasure to take home until a parent finally dragged them off. Robin kept the chest stocked with shells from the Shell Factory in Fort Myers, but long ago Perri and I filled the coffers by going out on these shell tours. When I’d asked if she wanted to revive the custom, she’d hugged me. I’m sure we both knew the outing wasn’t about filling the pirate chest as much as the two of us reconnecting. I’d avoided being alone with her for weeks, worrying if she disapproved of Daniel and me. But then, why would she? She wanted me to be happy. I’d decided I was being ridiculous.

  It wasn’t all avoidance on my part, though. I’d been exceptionally busy, too, spending long hours at the Conservancy compiling the Bimini research, working on my lemon shark lecture, and escalating the shark-tagging expeditions. I was sure the shark numbers had decreased, and I worried they would get worse if the black market finning wasn’t shut down. Despite repeated calls, Russell had heard little from the Sheriff’s Marine Bureau. The investigation seemed to have stalled and local news markets had long since moved on. If it had been dolp
hins or whales, the whole world would be up in arms. But it was sharks.

  The catamaran chugged past dock pilings lined with loons drying their wings, opening and closing them like a flasher’s overcoat. Out in the open, the sails went up, striped red and yellow, snapping in the bright wind, and the boat picked up speed. Two dolphins immediately emerged in the wake. The other passengers squealed and photographed and applauded as if a herd of unicorns had shown up. As envious as I was of the love heaped on dolphins, I didn’t begrudge them an ounce of it. They were the rock stars of the sea, and I never tired of seeing them either. They accompanied us for miles, vaulting out of the water, enjoying the human attention, not unlike Nicholas’s stingrays who slid up against human hands in the touch tank as if wanting to be petted.

  Earlier, when I’d stopped by Perri’s room, I found her sitting cross-legged on the rug bent over a slew of papers—a register of names and addresses, room diagram, calendar, budget spreadsheet, checklists. She was all furrowed brow and studious concentration, her slant-eyed reading glasses resting at the end of her nose as if they might suddenly take off and fly. She barely glanced up, giving her hand a little twirl in the air. Be with you in a sec. Robin was situated in the same chair I’d crashed in weeks ago after meeting Hazel for the first time on the beach. He had a binder open on his lap and a pen gripped between his teeth.

  I said, “Plotting a government takeover, are we?”

  “Worse,” Robin said. “The Book Bash.”

  Perri handed me an emerald green card with elaborate silver script.

  Join Us for the 25th Annual Book Bash.

  Hotel of the Muses, Palermo Island

  August 5, 7:00 P.M.

  Dress as your favorite author or literary character

  Oh God, the annual costume thing again. It was the biggest night of Perri’s year. Last year she’d shown up as a hobbit.

  “Who are you coming as this time?” I asked her.

  “Nice try. Like I’m going to tell.”

  Her legendary costumes were deeply held secrets right up until the moment she walked into the Bash.

  “In case you’re interested,” Robin said, “I’m wearing a white suit, red-and-white striped vest, black bow tie, and saddle shoes.”

  “So you’re what, Gatsby?” I asked.

  “Like the party will need another Hemingway,” he said. “Half a dozen men will show up dressed as Hemingway.” A wicked, mocking light appeared in his eyes. “And what about you?”

  I gave him a vicious thanks-a-lot face.

  Perri pounced. “You could be Daisy to Robin’s Gatsby. I know where we can get a great flapper dress.”

  “I think you know who I’ll be going as,” I said.

  She sighed. “Maeve, for heaven’s sake, you can’t be George Sand every year.”

  “I don’t know why not. The top hat is still in my closet. I paid a fortune for it.”

  She uncoiled herself and sprang nimbly to her feet as though she were still twenty years old. “Well, do you like the invitation?” she asked, twisting the red beads around her neck.

  “I like,” I told her, and offered it back.

  “Keep it. Mark your calendar.” She looked at her watch. “I need to go over the menu with Daniel.”

  “Did you forget you’re supposed to go shelling with me this morning?”

  “Of course not,” she said, and disappeared into her bedroom, unfastening the red beads as she went.

  Robin got up and gave me a peck on the cheek. “We’re good, right?”

  He was still worrying about my reaction to his book. After banishing his manuscript under my bed for a while, I’d begun reading it again. In the pages, longing and regret were Margaret’s companions, not mine. At least not anymore.

  “I held onto my anger with Daniel for a long time. I don’t want to do it with you,” I told him.

  “Boy, you’re getting off easy,” Perri said from the doorway. “I’d freeze you out a lot longer if it were me.”

  Robin laughed. “That’s the benefit of being twins. We shared a womb; I’ve known her since before birth.”

  “Don’t play the twin card—I still can’t believe you did what you did,” I said.

  “There it is,” Perri said.

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t angry. I’m still pissed. I’m just not going to hang onto it for years.”

  “Let’s go to Spoonbills this weekend,” he said. “Me, you, and Daniel. Like we used to. We haven’t talked about anything except my book since you got home. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “I’d like that.” As he started to leave, I caught his arm. “Maybe you should bring someone. Someone who wears turquoise shoes?”

  The woman’s shoes I’d seen in our living room the day I returned were long gone, but I hadn’t forgotten about them.

  Brushing past me, he whispered. “Like I said, we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  As the catamaran banked on Shell Point Key, Perri rolled her pants to her knees. The island was two miles of deserted wildness. Disembarking, we stepped into ankle-deep water, where the guide passed out mesh bags for collecting our finds.

  While the others remained near the boat, moving like a single organism across the dry flats, their eyes peeled to the sandy bottom, Perri and I struck out down the beach to a deserted neck of sand with decaying brown pen shells cracking beneath our river shoes. We raked up handfuls of shells, mostly cockles and scallops and Florida fighting conchs, not bothering to examine them for blemishes.

  “Have you talked to Nicholas?” she asked, as I knew she would.

  “He’s in London. He e-mailed once to say his divorce papers were being filed.”

  “I was surprised about you and Daniel—I have to say. I thought you and Nicholas were—”

  “Well, when you hear ‘I’m in love with you’ along with ‘my wife wants a reconciliation,’ it doesn’t have the impact you hope for.”

  “I could tell by looking at him he was in love with you,” she said.

  “I told him things with us couldn’t go anywhere, that he had to sort out his marriage situation first. But I haven’t told him about Daniel. I feel terrible about it. I tried e-mailing, but it felt so cowardly to do it electronically. I keep thinking I should do it in person.”

  “Well, of course you should do it in person.” She used that matter-of-fact, reassuring tone she always did when she was trying to take care of me, but I knew she wasn’t pandering—she meant it.

  I said, “To be totally honest, I guess I was afraid he’d go back to London and they’d get back together. I know he said he loved me, but he loved her once, too. And she’s the one who asked for the divorce, not Nicholas. I just didn’t want to get hurt.”

  “And then there’s Daniel,” she added. “He figured into it.”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose I would’ve had to come to terms with my feelings for Daniel even if this situation between Libby and Nicholas hadn’t happened. Daniel would eventually have figured into it. He always has.”

  I thought she would let it be after that.

  As we moved along the corridor of sand, I found a little patch of sunray Venuses and then a plump lightning whelk. Along with the shells, we picked up a plastic hot dog bag, an empty bottle of Corona with a rotten lime slice inside, the top of a Styrofoam cooler, knotted fishing line, and a flip-flop.

  “You don’t think you could get hurt with Daniel?” Perri asked. “Is it me, or is history repeating itself? Just because you’ve forgiven Daniel doesn’t mean you should necessarily pick up where you left off.” She stopped walking and looked at me, her bag bulging with shells and washed-up rubbish. “Oh honey, I want you to be sure, that’s all.”

  I didn’t respond at first. I stared at the light squeezing through the dense mangrove leaves, thinking what a struggle everything was, my heart laboring.
It dismayed me to see that Perri had doubts. I didn’t want to hear them. I said, “What happened to not hiding from him and facing the past?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re a grown woman. I’m being intrusive.”

  “It’s just that . . . it’s Daniel.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  We circled the island, filled our bags, our pockets, even the plastic hot dog bag. Perri found a cat’s paw, the biggest one I’d ever seen. I gave it too much attention, not wanting to think of what she’d stirred up in me. Her words dragged me back to the day of Daniel’s confession, to the clink of my engagement ring as I’d dropped it in the bowl on my way out. All that anger and hurt and mistrust. I’d felt them recede to some faraway place, and I wouldn’t let Perri dredge them up. I’d forgiven him. I trusted him. We were together. It was what I’d always wanted.

  In the distance a whistle blared, the captain’s ten-minute boarding signal. Perri and I had just started back to the catamaran when I spotted a bottle lodged in the sand. I picked it up. It was an olive oil bottle. Giacomo’s. Extra Virgin. A teaspoon of dark gold liquid pooled in the bottom beneath a rolled up piece of paper.

  For a strange, transfixing moment, I couldn’t move or even breathe. Almost anything flung from the south beach would end up here, but even as I held the bottle, knowing it was the same one I’d helped Hazel toss into the waves, my mind wanted to reject it because that meant I, of all people, had come across it.

  Perri looked at my face. “What? What is it?”

  “It’s Hazel’s,” I said, surprised at the sprouting of grief that came over me, how it pushed up against the inside of my chest.

  I wiped my hands across my shorts and with effort twisted off the cap. Tilting the bottle, I reached my finger inside, digging for the paper, feeling a shard of guilt at breaching her privacy. Whatever was in there wasn’t for me, it was for her mother, but I wriggled it out anyway. Perri didn’t say a word.

  I smoothed the paper open. At the top, she’d drawn two small figures in crayon.