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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
When the dive master surfaced, and Ellen reached over the gunwale to help him aboard, she saw that what he’d brought up from the bottom was her new husband, and that her new husband was dead. Less than an hour before, she and Richard had followed a school of angels down to a ledge of elk horn coral. Then he’d gone deeper, and the rush of bubbles from his tank had made the dark between them a kind of celebration. In that moment, with him diving down and her kicking toward the surface, she’d been surrounded by luminescent fish, of which he knew the names and she did not. Reef-diving with him, married to him, she was happy. That morning she’d cried and told him she was crying for happiness. Lying beside him, she had noticed how his face had gone slack after orgasm, so that his mouth hung askew, and a drop of saliva followed the crease of a line down his chin. It was the beaten look of him that had made her cry and the gratitude she felt that she was still young and firm in the places he was fleshy, smooth in the places he was roughly textured, and that she could love him, the first full day of their married life, even knowing he was too old. She’d felt his eyes follow her around the room. "Your skin is like velvet," he said. And he told her she was young magic, taking years off his life. But his look was aging her. A kind of overexposure. After their lovemaking, she’d gotten up quickly and gone for a swim so that her skin could breathe again. Later, as he was helping her into the tank, she looked over the gunwale into the depths. This was not like the pool at the Y, where she could see the bottom. This was what hell looked like. Breathing seemed impossible. "I don’t know, Richard." "You’ll be fine, baby. We’re going in together." Then he turned her around, unzipped her suit a little ways, and bent to kiss the swell of her breast above her bikini, where her heart was beating too fast. The dive master gave her a slow smile over Richard’s head, and she didn’t look away. "The water will be like a bath," the dive master said. Richard moved toward the bow for his gear, and as noiselessly as possible she reached into her bag for the vial of Valium. Just one more pill. Richard had told her his wife, then he’d corrected himself—ex-wife—had nearly drowned this way. Ellen could almost understand the impulse to let go into the gleaming blue, to be swallowed whole. But no. She didn’t want to die. Just another tablet to ease the terror. But Richard turned before she could shake one into her dry mouth. "You need to be awake for this," he said, taking the bottle from her. The way he kept looking at her made her uneasy. For an instant, she wasn’t sure what "this" was. Of course he meant the reef, the fish. He looked older to her here than in New York. And yet he’d been able to make love to her here, and for the last month, in New York, it had been impossible. Last night he’d drunk as much as he always did, maybe more, and this morning, he’d been able to fuck her. But still there was the sag to his shoulders and the light gleaming off his too-white skin that made him look older today. Or maybe it was just that the dive master was so much younger. Richard and Ellen went over the side together, and he stayed near her for a time, pointing to formations of coral and odd, unrecognizable creatures that had attached themselves to the living reef. He kicked away then, and when he disappeared beneath her and she watched the rush of bubbles, the dive downward had seemed another kind of freedom to her, one that was fearless and unafraid of the dark. She would like to have followed him, plunging deeper, and if he hadn’t taken her Valium away, maybe she would have. When she could no longer see him, she did what was expected of her, studied the veins of gnarled coral, old yet alive. They reminded her of the sight of his ropey arms earlier, when the sun had crested at the horizon so that the slant of light through the curtain had turned the veins in his arms an iridescent gray-blue. She kicked up to wait for him to surface. As the dive master helped her into the boat, she noticed that his face was tanned and, like Richard’s, chiseled. But Richard’s face had gone sallow in its folds. He no longer lived an island life, unless you counted Manhattan and the bar on West 13th as the dark reflection of this bright island. The time he’d talked about reef diving in class as a metaphor for the narrative poem, she’d heard in her head the words of a Jimmy Buffet song and pictured the two of them here, high on margaritas, his rough hands smoothing sun block into her naked skin. She’d seen the wife at a poetry reading, a nervous sort of woman, she’d thought at the time, always glancing at him from the corners of her eyes. Ellen’s gaze was head-on and utterly surprised when, three weeks into the semester, he’d asked if she wanted to stop at that bar on West 13th after class for a drink and a discussion of her work. That first night, they talked about diving, and he said he would teach her someday. "We’ll start here, in the pool at the Y," he said. "Then once you’re comfortable, I’ll take you to an island I know off the coast of Mexico." And he’d described the time he’d spent on this island in the Yucatan, living in the hotel where they’d stayed last night, drinking in the bar where they’d both gotten drunk—he on shots of tequila, she on margaritas. She could not then have imagined, as she sat in the dark bar on West 13th and listened to his stories about barking Mexican dogs—"hell on a hangover when you’re trying to write"—that she’d actually jump into the Caribbean with sixty pounds of oxygen on her back. But she’d done just that, even without the extra Valium. Because she loved him. Because he loved her. The dive master helped her climb out of her gear and continued to talk to her in an odd way—was it seductive?—about living on the island, about her living on the island—"You were made for this life. I see so many tourists, pale-faced, wide-bottomed, New York women. It’s too late for most of them, but not for you." This last was spoken on his knees, as he pulled the rubber suit over her ankles, with a look that suggested he might be part of the island’s offerings. "New York breeds a kind of fungus," he said, massaging her foot, "like mushrooms in shit. The island sun can cure that." If it doesn’t kill you, she thought. Richard had told her how he’d nearly drunk himself to death on this island twenty years before. "I love mushrooms," she said, pulling her foot away. She rose, avoiding his eyes, staring instead at his muscle-thickened arms. She tried not to compare them to her husband’s. Richard’s tank would be nearly empty by now. He would be up soon. Where had he put her Valium? "Where’s the groom?" the dive master asked. "Down. He dove deeper." "Not too smart." The dive master looked at his watch. "Richard’s an accomplished diver," she said. The dive master heaved on his tank. "I’m going down." "He knows what he’s doing." "Yeah." He tumbled over the side. She watched his bubbles until they disappeared, like Richard’s had. Not a fiesta this time, and she wondered about that, about Richard’s burst of bubbles and what it might have meant. Damn it. Where the hell had he put her Valium? She searched her bag and his. Minutes later, she saw a form pulsing up though the dark water. She saw bubbles. Then the dive master surfaced, pulling the tube from his mouth. As she reached to help him, she saw Richard’s head, bent and folded like a bird’s in the crook of the dive master’s elbow. "Help me get him in." She heard the dive master’s voice but couldn’t move. Heaving noises. The body hung on the edge, one arm dangling into the boat. Splashes of sea water on her skin, and Richard’s body tumbling in. The dive master flung himself over the gunwale, clambering over the body to his knees in the bottom of the boat, and she fell backwards, hard against the tiller. The pain in her back waking her into this nightmare, this hell. Two men, close like lovers, one limp and gray in the face, the other red-faced, breathing hard. On hands and knees she moved toward them, calling Richard’s name, though she knew it was useless. So this was what it looked like. Death by drowning. Ellen threw up on the body. "Listen, I hate to leave you alone right now, but I gotta go back for the tank." Then he was gone. Back to hell. But hell was here, bathing her husband’s suited-up body in sea water, using her tee shirt as a rag to soak up the vomit. For some reason, the image of Richard’s ex-wife came to her, and she thought she would have to let her know. She began to cry at the thought of that dark little bird of a woman, who’d thought she’d lost everything a year ago, whose loss was now confirmed. She laid her face against Richard’s chest and ran her hands over the cold rubber, imagining the ex-wife’s narrow, grieving eyes. This isn’t my fault, Ellen told herself, but somehow her tears were for that first wife and for her own failure to return him to her intact, only younger. Then she felt the bulge by his hip. Unzipping the utility pocket, she pulled out the Valium bottle and saw it was empty. She heard the crack and suck of the water as the dive master broke through, then pushed the tank into the boat. Neither of them spoke as he removed his own tank. Then he knelt beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder. "I’m sorry," he said. "Does it work?" "What?" "His tank." The dive master tapped the valves and brought the mouth piece toward his lips. "Yes." He moved to the tiller. "We better get him back." That evening, in the bright hotel bar, drinking straight tequila for Richard, she waited for it to be time to take his body to the airport. It didn’t surprise her when the dive master sat down beside her. Neither of them spoke, and she finished her drink and ordered another. "He removed his tank himself, didn’t he?" "Can’t see any other way it got off his back." She turned toward him. "Come back," the dive master said. She saw revisions in his dark eyes. She didn’t answer the dive master as she rose from the bar and made her way unsteadily to the front desk to pay her bill. She avoided the desk clerk’s warm island gaze, offering sympathy. As she signed the slip, her eye was caught by a charge. A phone call placed that morning to Milford, Connecticut, where his wife had moved after the divorce. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Amy Weintraub is a writer and editor who lives in Tucson. She has won a number of awards for her short fiction, her film documentaries and her novel-in-progress. Her fiction has appeared in various journals, including Wind, Web del Sol, and Crone's Nest. She has an article in the current Yoga Journal, and work forthcoming in Yoga International and Poets and Writers. |
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