on the beach, near the water; she stepped toward it once, and stopped paces from where it touched the sand. Then she stepped back and smoked a cigarette and finished her drink, looking beyond the reef at the blue water and the half-disk of red sun at its horizon. Rusty watched the sun until it was gone, and green balls rose from the spot where it sank; they seemed shot into the sky like fireworks, and she thought of the mate scattered in the sea.
That fourteenth of July had waked Rusty on nights in the final months of last year’s New England summer, and in the autumn, when she could smell the changes in the cooler air coming through the windows: a near absence of living plants and trees, the air beginning to have the aroma of itself alone, as it did in winter, when still she woke, not every night or even every week, and lay in the room with the windows closed and frosted, her face pleasantly cold, and listened to the basement furnace, its thermostat lowered for the night, pushing heated air through the grates in the house. In that first spring she woke in the dark and breathed air tinged with the growth of buds and leaves and grass beyond her windows. Now it was the anniversary of the day itself, and she and Cal and Gina and Ryan had decided, again in winter, again eating dinner on a Sunday night, not to let it pass as though it were any other day,any set of two numerals on the calendar, but to gather, either at home or wherever she and Cal chose to be in the middle of July.
She left the bed, and by that simple motion of pushing away sheet and summer blanket and swinging her feet to the floor, her breath and heart and muscles eased, and softly she left the bedroom and Cal’s slow breathing it held, went down the hall and into the kitchen, everything visible though not distinct in this last of darkness and beginning of light her eyes had adjusted to while in bed she listened to birds and saw the fins of sharks.
She still did, standing at the sink in her white gown and looking through the window screen at dark pines, and she heard the mate’s scream just after he tied the knot lashing together the two orange life preservers and she had looked up from buckling her life jacket, looked at his scream and saw a face she had never seen before and now would always see: his eyes and mouth widened in final horror and the absolute loss of hope that caused it; then he was gone, as though propelled downward, and his orange life jacket he had waited to put on, had held by one strap in his teeth as he wrapped the line down through the water and up over the sides of the life preservers, floated on the calm blue surface. She saw, too, in her memory that moved into the space of lawn and gray air between her and the pines, the young blond captain bobbing in his jacket in the churning water beneath the helicopter blades. He helped Gina first onto the ladder; Rusty, holding the swinging ropes, watched Gina’s legs climbing fast, above the water, glistening brown in the sun; then the captain lifted Rusty and pushed her legs to the rungthey were reaching for, and then Ryan and then Cal, and Cal’s wet hair blew down and out from his head. Rusty was aboard then, on her hands and knees on the vibrating deck of the helicopter, calling louder, it seemed, than the engine, calling to Cal to hurry, hurry, climb; then she saw the shark’s fin and in front of it the rising back and head, its blank and staring eyes, then its mouth as the captain reached for the ladder, but only his left arm rose as she screamed his name so loudly that she did not hear the engine but heard the bite as she saw it and blood spurting into the air, onto the roiled water while the captain’s right shoulder still moved upward as though it or the captain still believed it was attached to an arm.
Cal heard her scream. He looked down over his shoulder, then sprang backward into the water, and then she could not scream, or hear the engine, or feel the deck’s quick throb
That fourteenth of July had waked Rusty on nights in the final months of last year’s New England summer, and in the autumn, when she could smell the changes in the cooler air coming through the windows: a near absence of living plants and trees, the air beginning to have the aroma of itself alone, as it did in winter, when still she woke, not every night or even every week, and lay in the room with the windows closed and frosted, her face pleasantly cold, and listened to the basement furnace, its thermostat lowered for the night, pushing heated air through the grates in the house. In that first spring she woke in the dark and breathed air tinged with the growth of buds and leaves and grass beyond her windows. Now it was the anniversary of the day itself, and she and Cal and Gina and Ryan had decided, again in winter, again eating dinner on a Sunday night, not to let it pass as though it were any other day,any set of two numerals on the calendar, but to gather, either at home or wherever she and Cal chose to be in the middle of July.
She left the bed, and by that simple motion of pushing away sheet and summer blanket and swinging her feet to the floor, her breath and heart and muscles eased, and softly she left the bedroom and Cal’s slow breathing it held, went down the hall and into the kitchen, everything visible though not distinct in this last of darkness and beginning of light her eyes had adjusted to while in bed she listened to birds and saw the fins of sharks.
She still did, standing at the sink in her white gown and looking through the window screen at dark pines, and she heard the mate’s scream just after he tied the knot lashing together the two orange life preservers and she had looked up from buckling her life jacket, looked at his scream and saw a face she had never seen before and now would always see: his eyes and mouth widened in final horror and the absolute loss of hope that caused it; then he was gone, as though propelled downward, and his orange life jacket he had waited to put on, had held by one strap in his teeth as he wrapped the line down through the water and up over the sides of the life preservers, floated on the calm blue surface. She saw, too, in her memory that moved into the space of lawn and gray air between her and the pines, the young blond captain bobbing in his jacket in the churning water beneath the helicopter blades. He helped Gina first onto the ladder; Rusty, holding the swinging ropes, watched Gina’s legs climbing fast, above the water, glistening brown in the sun; then the captain lifted Rusty and pushed her legs to the rungthey were reaching for, and then Ryan and then Cal, and Cal’s wet hair blew down and out from his head. Rusty was aboard then, on her hands and knees on the vibrating deck of the helicopter, calling louder, it seemed, than the engine, calling to Cal to hurry, hurry, climb; then she saw the shark’s fin and in front of it the rising back and head, its blank and staring eyes, then its mouth as the captain reached for the ladder, but only his left arm rose as she screamed his name so loudly that she did not hear the engine but heard the bite as she saw it and blood spurting into the air, onto the roiled water while the captain’s right shoulder still moved upward as though it or the captain still believed it was attached to an arm.
Cal heard her scream. He looked down over his shoulder, then sprang backward into the water, and then she could not scream, or hear the engine, or feel the deck’s quick throb
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