by Watt Key
“How can you be married for twelve years and then want a divorce?” I said to her.
“People change, Julie,” she replied.
I sensed she was referring to Dad’s obsession with the Malzon tanks, but he’d always been excited about one thing or another. Even before the tanks. I’d never known a person to get so excited about waking up in the morning. Every day to him was an obsession in itself.
I stayed angry with Mom that whole school year. I wanted to go home and be with Dad. But last summer, when I finally did return to Gulf Shores, I didn’t find the father I’d left behind. He’d lost a lot of weight, and his solid, good-natured grin had been replaced with a nervous, twitchy smile. Our old house and his office were a mess. He was constantly forgetting things and drifting off in thought. And I felt like he was hiding things from me, things he didn’t want Mom to know about.
With my help he managed to build up his paid trips again, but he didn’t seem to enjoy himself as much anymore. And sometimes, on the way back in from one of our charters, I noticed him driving the Barbie Doll very slowly, staring at the bottom plotter. I secretly suspected he hadn’t given up his search for the tanks.
I was right.
6
The suction of my mask was starting to bother me. I pulled it off and put it below my chin and rubbed at my face. Other than the rolling of the waves, everything was quiet. There wasn’t a bird overhead or a fish jumping. Everything alive was below the water, somewhere beneath my dangling feet. And it was only a matter of time before those living things began to investigate this strange impostor dangling from their roof. Some of them I didn’t want to meet, especially sharks.
I pushed the thought of predators from my mind and began to reason out my situation. I was certain the Jordans had stayed down longer than me. If they used their pony tanks they might have had another fifteen minutes of bottom time before they started their ascent and made deco stops. Once they left the seafloor they would have started drifting, so I didn’t need to account for their hang time. When they surfaced, if they had not done so already, they would be about fifteen minutes up-current of me.
Regardless, they were going to be mad, and probably want their money back. Money Dad didn’t have after buying fuel for our trip out.
Was it simply bad luck? How could things have gone so wrong? The Malzon tanks were supposed to fix everything.
* * *
It hadn’t even been a week since Dad called to announce his big discovery. I had been resting on our living room sofa in Atlanta, studying for final exams. Mom was sitting beside me with her netbook in her lap, a legal pad on the cushion beside her, and a pen dangling from her mouth. If I’d known he was going to call, I would have picked up in my room where she couldn’t hear. I didn’t like being in the middle of things with them.
When the phone rang I grabbed the handset off the end table. Both of us already knew who it was without looking at the caller ID. Dad was the only person who rang the house phone anymore. I’d given him my cell phone number at least five times, but he’d likely lost it, if he’d even written it down. He’s very particular and methodical when it involves things like the boat and his dive equipment, but scatterbrained when it comes to keeping the rest of his life organized.
“Hey, Dad,” I said quietly.
I detected Mom shift uncomfortably beside me.
“I found them, Julie!” he exclaimed.
“Found what?”
“The tanks! The Malzon tanks!”
“When?”
“Today! I just got in. You think I’d wait to call you?”
Mom reached out for the handset. “Give me the phone, Julie,” she said.
“Dad, Mom wants to talk to you,” I said.
Dad hesitated. “Did she hear all that?” he asked.
“Hold on,” I said.
Mom took the handset from me and put it to her ear. “Gib, she’s going to be there in less than a week, okay? Can you hold off on the drama until then?”
Mom looked at the wall and rolled her eyes as she listened.
“Gib,” she said. “Gib, that’s enough … Listen to me. That’s all great. I’m happy for you. Meanwhile, Julie’s got exams and I’m overloaded with work.”
Mom listened again. I heard Dad’s muffled defense through the handset.
“Gib,” she interrupted, “she’ll be there in a few days. Okay? We’re driving down this weekend.”
Mom held the phone out to me again and I took it back from her.
“I’ll be there on Saturday, Dad. We can talk about it then.”
Dad sighed. “Yeah, okay. I got excited, you know. I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d be excited, too.”
I desperately wished he could know what I felt over the telephone line.
“I am,” I said. “It’s just not a good time. Okay?”
Dad was silent.
“I’ll see you on Saturday,” I said.
“Okay, sweetheart. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me too, Dad. I love you. And I can’t wait to see you.”
I hung up the phone and turned to Mom. “You didn’t have to be so snippy with him,” I said.
Mom set her pen down and studied me. “Julie, do you really want to do this? Spend your entire summer down there?”
I couldn’t believe she was asking me that. “It’s the only time I get to see him, Mom.”
“But you could go to basketball camp. You could spend time with your friends here.”
“I have friends in Alabama, too.”
Mom picked up her pen again and studied the legal pad. “Well, you live in Atlanta now,” she said. “You’d be wise to invest more in your friends who live nearby.”
I didn’t understand. I was doing fine in Atlanta. I made straight A’s in school. I was the point guard on the sixth-grade girls’ basketball team and captain of the math team. I had plenty of friends. And she knew how much I missed home and loved being on the water with Dad.
“But I thought it was part of the deal,” I said.
Mom looked at me again. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it’s part of the deal. But it doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”
It was you who wanted to move, I thought. It was you who came up with the deal in the first place.
“I think he misses me, Mom,” I said.
Mom sighed. “Of course he misses you, Julie. And it’s not that I don’t want you to see him. I only worry that you could be doing so much more with your summer than running a dive shop with your father.”
“He needs my help.”
Mom frowned. “He’s a grown man. He should be able to take care of himself.”
Mom spent a lot of time talking about how Dad needed to get his life together, but she didn’t seem to be doing so well herself. She’s a good attorney, maybe too good. Ever since she joined the Reese and Attenborough law firm her caseload has been never-ending. Even the few moments we have together she’s usually preoccupied. When she takes me to school in the mornings she’s on her cell phone most of the drive. She doesn’t get home until after seven o’clock, and even then she parks herself on the living room sofa and continues working. She even works most weekends, taking a little time off to make my basketball games. I can’t remember her ever missing one of my games, but I do remember that most of the time she’s sitting alone in the stands with her cell phone in her lap, tapping out texts and emails. The few times she’s taken off for us to go to the mountains I can tell she’s still thinking about work. Always thinking about work. Like it’s the only thing in the world that really matters.
“I’m doing this for your future,” she told me once.
If our future was all about having money, Mom had certainly solved that problem. Within a year of moving to Atlanta, we’d bought a house in Buckhead, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. Mom traded in her old Subaru for a new top-of-the-line Range Rover. We seemed to have everything money can buy.
But things were still terribly wrong.
&n
bsp; On the outside Mom appears healthy. She runs five miles every morning, saying it clears her mind. She’s thin and pretty with a great smile. But I rarely see her smile anymore. And every morning when I hear the rattle of her pill bottle, her anxiety medication, I wonder how healthy she is on the inside.
I didn’t want any of what we had in Atlanta.
I just wanted us all together again.
7
I looked at my watch. I’d been back-kicking against the current for almost ten minutes and my legs were starting to tire again. I stopped and let the current resume taking me wherever it was I was going. It wasn’t long before I thought I heard someone shout.
I spun and faced up-current and kicked myself above the waves. I didn’t see anyone. I settled again and listened. Then I was certain that I heard something.
“Dad!”
I recognized Shane’s voice. I started back-kicking again, certain that he wasn’t far up-current of me. After a few minutes I peered above the waves and saw him drifting and staring away from me.
“Shane!” I called out.
He turned and looked at me. I saw he also had his mask hanging around his neck and his eyes were wide with fright.
“What happened?” he yelled at me.
I closed the distance between us and grabbed on to his BCD. He was trembling.
“The anchor pulled,” I said. “Have you seen your dad?”
“No! I haven’t seen him since we left the bottom! How did the anchor pull?”
I noticed his BCD wasn’t full of air, so I grabbed his manual inflator and began blowing into it.
“I don’t think his pony tank was working,” Shane continued. “How did the anchor pull?”
You saw the anchor, too, I thought. And both of you ignored it.
I blew as much air into his BCD as it would take, then checked the straps on it to make sure they were tight.
“Have you dropped your weight belt?” I asked him.
Shane studied me like he didn’t understand. I reached down to his waist and felt for the buckle to his belt. I didn’t feel it, then remembered the Jordans had pocket weights. I brushed my hands over the sides of his BCD until I felt the bulge of the lead modules. I tore open the Velcro flaps and began pulling the weights out and dropping them.
Shane kicked and tried to get away from me. “What are you doing?”
I grabbed his arm and jerked him close again. “You need to get rid of them. Get as buoyant as you can.”
He stopped resisting and let me pull the remaining modules.
“Where’s the boat?” he said.
I shoved away from him and kicked and looked up-current above the waves. I didn’t see anything and tried again, looking to my left. Then I saw Mr. Jordan floating not fifty yards from us.
“I see your dad!” I shouted. I turned on my back and started kicking toward him. “He’s not far!”
Shane followed me as we approached his father through the rolling swells. As I drew closer I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering why Mr. Jordan wasn’t saying anything. When I reached him I got my answer. Watery blood ran down from the base of his mask.
“Mr. Jordan,” I said.
He turned his head, looked at me, and hacked out a raspy, gurgling cough.
I grabbed his mask and pulled it away from his face and blood spilled out of it into the water. His eyes blinked and stared back at me in a stunned way. I lowered the mask around his neck and began to pull his weights.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Dropping your weight.”
He coughed again and brushed my hand away. “Don’t touch me,” he said.
I started to argue, then I got a jolt of horror when I saw his fish stringer dragging with two snappers still attached at the end. About that time Shane arrived behind me.
“Dad!” he shouted.
“He’s bent,” I said.
“We’re s-s-screwed,” Shane stammered. “We’re so screwed. Where is the boat?”
Suddenly I couldn’t take any more of his yelling while I was trying to think. I spun around and punched him in the face with all my fear and anger. Shane coughed and sputtered and stared at me in disbelief.
“The boat’s not here!” I said. “So we’re going to do what we can. Go cut his fish stringer off while I try to stop his nose from bleeding.”
Shane continued to stare at me.
“Now!” I shouted. “Sharks can smell those fish.”
Shane finally nodded that he understood and swam behind his dad to cut the stringer.
“I’ve got to stop your nose from bleeding, Mr. Jordan,” I said.
He didn’t answer me.
“Okay?” I said.
“Don’t touch my weights,” he said.
“I won’t. I need to tend to your nose.”
Mr. Jordan coughed again and nodded. I pulled my knife from my ankle and sliced off a piece of the pocket flap of my BCD. I cut the material into two more pieces and balled them up and stuffed them into his nose.
“What happened, Dad?” Shane said.
“Pony tank didn’t work,” he mumbled. “I had to bail.”
“My dad should be here soon,” I said. “He’s probably somewhere close.”
Mr. Jordan coughed again and a bit of blood appeared at the edge of his mouth. I started to wipe it off, then thought it was better to leave it on his face than trail more scent in the water.
“I’ve got to get to a hospital,” he mumbled.
“I know,” I said.
Shane pulled himself close and studied his dad’s face. Mr. Jordan cocked his eyes at him.
“I can’t feel my arms and legs, son,” he said.
I looked down at Mr. Jordan’s hands and saw he’d dropped his speargun at some point.
“I stopped your nose from bleeding,” I said.
“I think … I think I got bigger problems than that,” he said.
“We need to keep the blood out of the water,” I said.
“Sharks smell that from far away, don’t they?” Shane said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How far away can they smell it?” Shane asked.
Miles, I thought to myself.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s be on the safe side.”
I got between Shane and Mr. Jordan and held onto their BCDs. I knew it was important for us to stay together. None of us wanted to be alone, and it would be easier for a boat to see us as a group.
8
I held on to the Jordans and tried to relax and conserve my strength. I thought about the last couple of days I’d spent with Mom. On Thursday I’d finished my finals and felt good about all of them. The following day I spent at home packing for the next three months. It probably takes me longer than most people to pack. I like to organize. Dad says I’m like Mom in this way. I get antsy when things are out of place.
Friday evening I thought Mom would take me to dinner. Maybe somewhere nice like Ruth’s Chris Steak House. But she didn’t get home until almost eight o’clock. I was in the living room watching television when she came through the front door. I heard her dump her computer bag and a box of files on the kitchen counter. I got up and went to see if I could help her with anything.
I found her standing by the sink, filling a glass with water.
“Hey,” I said.
She turned to me. Her hair was disheveled and her face was creased with worry lines. She leaned against the counter and sipped the water and studied me.
“Hey, sweetie,” she finally said.
“Long day?”
Mom nodded. “There’s been an unexpected development in my court case.”
“Can you still drive me to Gulf Shores tomorrow?”
“I don’t see that I have much of a choice about it,” she said.
Mom set down her glass of water. Then she noticed my packed bags sitting by the front door. She looked at me and seemed to remember that I was about to be gone for the summer. She stepped over to me and
turned me gently by the shoulder and began pulling the rubber band from my ponytail.
“How about we order some Chinese and then do a movie and some popcorn?” she said.
“Sounds good,” I said.
She ordered takeout for us, and after eating we both got into our pajamas and climbed into Mom’s bed. I picked out a comedy and we watched it on her bedroom television. It was the first time in a long time that I remembered us laughing that much together. It was better than Ruth’s Chris.
* * *
On the way down to Gulf Shores Saturday morning Mom kept her cell phone out of sight. Somehow that day, she managed to keep her mind clear of whatever was going on at work. We drove along in silence, and for the first time in a long time, I felt I could ask her questions and she could give me answers without being distracted. But all the questions I had involved Dad, and I didn’t want to upset her.
“Have you called Karen yet?” she asked me.
“Not yet,” I said. “But I will.”
Karen was my best friend at Gulf Shores Elementary. After I first moved away she and I talked several times a week. Then only once or twice a month. And last summer she was at camp part of the time and the rest of the time I wasn’t able to see her near as much as I thought I would. I knew she had new friends now, and every time I thought about her, I got a little sick feeling that maybe we’d never be as close as we used to be.
“It’s kind of hard keeping friends in two places,” I said.
“I know,” she replied. “It’s hard. It’s all hard.”
I didn’t respond. When she said things like that it made me angry. Because it seemed to me that she could fix it all if she wanted. That it didn’t have to be this hard. That it never had to be this hard.
Mom reached over and stroked my hair. “I want you to have a good summer with your father,” she said. “He deserves that. It’s only that I’ll miss you. And I want you to be safe.”
I nodded and didn’t say anything.
* * *
Our old home was a modest one-level frame house in a small suburb off the canal road. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and parked behind Dad’s old pickup truck, Brownie, I knew something was different. The grass was cut and Brownie had been washed. Dad hated yardwork, and I’d never known him to care about washing his truck. Even Mom was surprised.