As Good as It Got (13 page)

Seven women strode toward their boats, pushed them into the water and clambered in, some with grace, some without. Martha put on her water shoes, balancing on one leg, then the other, watching her kayak, blue with a black seat, the front of it already lapped by waves that had been several inches away when she came down to the beach. The boat looked small, graceful and delicate, everything she wasn’t.

When they practiced getting in and out last time, she’d felt like a buffalo among swans. What if she took a few strokes then sank slowly, inevitably—the
Titanic
going down on its maiden voyage?

The pain of realizing she wouldn’t be able to laugh about that image with Eldon propelled her down the beach to push the blue kayak into the sea, just until it floated. This was a mistake. This was not going to work.

Cheri strode up, brunette, size two, with defined muscles and a perky smile. “All set?”

“Sure.” Martha hiked up her pant legs, stepped into shallow frigid water, heaving breaths to avoid a rush of tears.

Then one leg and her weight into the boat, which wobbled dangerously. In a fit of panic, she yanked her other foot on board and her butt hit the seat with a
whump
that grounded the kayak flat against the sand.

Beached whale.

“Okay, well done. Here’s your paddle. We’ll wait for a wave and get you going. Ready? Here comes.”

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The wave slid in; Cheri shoved with her impressive muscles, and the kayak lurched forward, caught the deeper water another wave made possible, then glided smoothly ahead.

Glided. Smoothly. Martha glanced at the sea, paddle clenched in her fists, and noted incredulously, then thankfully, that it wasn’t rising rapidly over her boat.

She dipped her paddle in. Took a stroke. Another. The kayak moved straight, slipping effortlessly through the water, more effortlessly than Martha could move herself on land. Exactly as it was supposed to. Another stroke. Another.

Practice turning. Practice going backward.

It worked. It all worked. If such a miracle was possible, maybe Eldon would get well.

Cheri called out and they followed her, two by two, past
Stronglady
, the Kinsonu speedboat, then gliding along close to the coast, waves swirling and gurgling around and between the rocky formations. Gulls soared overhead, cormo-rants skimmed the ocean surface. A light breeze refreshed her face. Martha wasn’t sure how, but she felt suddenly light and free. As if leaving the land had made it possible for her to leave her body and her pain behind. She didn’t want to stay here near the safe hard coast, she wanted to turn and go straight out into the live, liquid sea.

Fifteen minutes later she got her wish. Apparently satisfied with her fledgling kayakers, Cheri led them a third of the way across the bay toward a ledge, uncovered at low tide, covered at high, now half visible.

Martha stroked and stroked, exhilaration building, working her muscles, enjoying the speed and the space. Eldon would be cured of pneumonia. His renewed health would 110 Isabel

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wake him. His brush with death would make him realize how short life was. He’d leave his wife and come back to her, and they’d live together for the rest of their lives as they were destined to do from the moment they met.

The kayakers gathered around the reef, which had come into view underwater as they approached, like a huge ghostly sea creature. They drifted listlessly, watching the swaying seaweed and grasses, limp and lifeless out of the tide, but here a dancing delicate forest. Mussel shells glinted blue and white, barnacles crusted rocks spotted with pink circular growths, orange and purple starfish clustered among them.

A crab slipped sideways through the weeds.

The women had gone silent, paddles moved only occasionally to maneuver. Martha couldn’t take her eyes off the view under the surface. This was the world of her dream—set in Maine instead of in coral-filled tropics—but the same type of place where she and Eldon had—

“Hey.”

Martha’s boat jerked from a minor impact. She’d floated gently into the side of Ann’s kayak, and Ann was glaring at her as if she’d committed a crime against humanity.

“Sorry.” She didn’t bother to add a smile to her apology.

“Watch where you’re going.”

“Okay.” Martha shrugged, again the buffalo among swans, and turned her kayak away from the group, away from Ann, and let it drift to where she could lay a convincing, if false, claim to solitude.

No one called her back, so it was easy to take a stroke, and another, and again, only half listening now for Cheri’s signal to rejoin the herd. She stopped paddling and gazed over the As Good As It Got

111

side, even though there was nothing to see at this depth, until a slight sound made her look up.

A dark head poking out of the water, large, black, glistening eyes staring at her.

She stared back, and let the kayak drift closer. The seal took in her approach, whiskers visible now on its nose, fur shiny wet. The breeze stopped. The water gently rippled.

Eldon loved animals; the encounter would have delighted him. Why wasn’t he here? Why couldn’t she show him this?

How could he choose to stay shut in a hospital when there was all this world to explore together?

“What’s down there, seal?” she asked in a whisper, enchanted, and found herself half expecting an answer.

Once upon a time . . .

Eldon,
he replied.
Come down and see. He’s calling for you.

“Eldon?” Her heart was knocking to get out of her chest.

Take off your life jacket and come. He needs you.

If Eldon needed her, she’d go to him. Of course . . .

She took off her life jacket, slowly. The seal tipped up its nose and slid back under. Martha peered again over the edge, hoping for a glimpse of its sleek body—like hers, clumsy and slow on land, graceful and fleet in the sea.

Mesmerized by the sun-illuminated columns plunging until lost from sight, she leaned over farther. Water as freedom, water as pneumonia in Eldon’s lungs. She imagined herself slipping under as the seal demanded, welcoming liquid in her own lungs, joining Eldon in the fight for breath.

Then the quick sharp sensation of falling, the shock of the icy, icy wet, and the sudden unexpected terror of the yawn-ing void underneath. She couldn’t swim, had never learned.

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Her life jacket was back in the boat. Why the hell had she taken it off? She didn’t belong in water, God knew what was under her. Whales? Sharks?

The boat. She flailed toward it, imitating swimming motions. Her head went under. She jerked up, coughing, gasping, under again, back up. Ann’s kayak, swiftly coming up beside her, Ann’s beautiful face set and tense.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

What the fuck does it look like?
Martha lunged for Ann’s boat. Her head plunged under again. Cold water. Icy water.

Frozen water meant for some frozen planet. She emerged, coughing again, moaned without meaning to. Every drop of warmth was being sucked out of her. People died of hypothermia quickly in water like this. Or of cold shock, which was even more dangerous. The boat was safety. Air was safety. She needed out.

Ann spoke, shouted, words Martha couldn’t understand.

She flailed, tried to kick; her face went under again; more sea in her lungs. She coughed it out, fighting it out. Eldon couldn’t. He was going to die.

Another splash and Ann was in next to her, yanking her up so her head stayed above water. “Don’t you
dare
drown yourself, you bitch. Get the hell out of this water.
Now
.”

Her furious voice cut through the spinning panic in Martha’s head. She stopped moving and allowed herself to be dragged, weeping silently, cold, numb, heavy, through water, then through kayaks piloted by the silent shapes of women, until her feet touched the craggy edges of the reef. She crawled on, shivering violently, aware now of anxious and curious faces, of Cheri and another woman paddling off to save the abandoned kayaks.

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“Jesus.
Jesus
. That water is
freezing
.” Ann dragged herself up on the ledge next to Martha, crossed her arms and rubbed frantically at her shoulders. “Why couldn’t you try to drown yourself in a fucking hot tub?”

Rage rose instantly, buffalo ready to trample the swan, except Martha’s teeth had started chattering uncontrollably and she could barely hold still enough to keep Ann in focus.

“I f-f-f-fell.”

“Then f-f-f-fall in a hot tub. Better yet, do it when I’m not around. I’m not going to rescue you twice.”

“I d-didn’t ask you to d-do it once.”

“Oh, I was supposed to leave you there? Or pile rocks on your back to help you out? Is that it?” Her face screwed up in fury. “You sickos ever stop to think about the people left behind to clean up?”

Martha stared, wanting to pick Ann up and hurl her back into the ice pond.

“Forget it. Forget it.” Chest heaving, Ann lifted a Stop hand toward Martha, which pissed Martha off even more because the only person who needed to stop right now was Ann. “But don’t
ever
do that to me again, you selfish coward.”

“To
you
?” Martha’s buffalo trampled the swan. It lay flat on the earth in a broken tangle of red-stained feathers. She shivered and laughed and shivered again. “Funny, I thought the
sun
was the c-center of the universe.”

“Shut the hell up, you don’t know shit.” Ann’s furious face crumpled, and Martha wasn’t sure she’d ever been with someone about to cry and felt only loathing. Except maybe watching Bianca’s cosmetically appropriate grief on TV.

“God I need a drink.”

“Oh, good idea. Alcohol makes you lose b-body heat.”

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What was she saying? Who cared? Let Ann drink a case of whatever she wanted and die of hypothermia. With all that hate inside her, what good would she ever do the world?

“I don’t give a rat’s ass.” She raised a shaking hand to cover her forehead and eyes. “I can’t face this shit again.”

“Again
? What the—”

With a sick plunge in her belly, Martha realized. She closed her eyes, wanting to cry again, but this wasn’t her moment for tears. Ann’s love had taken his own life.

All Martha had been thinking about was her own pain, about Eldon, about that watery connection. She’d gone in wanting that.

The buffalo retreated so the swan could get up, brush herself off and clean her wings.

“I . . . fell.” She said it in a gentle voice this time and made it the truth. “I was looking over the s-side and I tipped out.”

“After taking off your life jacket.”

“I was hot.”

Ann looked at her fiercely, her lovely face contorted and blotchy with the effort of keeping back tears and memories.

“You bloody well better have been.”

A woman arrived silently with Ann’s red kayak and delivered it, hand over hand, until it was under Ann’s control.

Cheri pulled up holding Martha’s steady.

“You okay to paddle back?” Cheri tried to smile, but Martha could tell she was frightened.

“Sure.” She nodded, feeling foolish and useless. The kayak was pushed in front of her. She stared at it helplessly, blue body, black seat, discarded pink life vest.

“Wait.” Ann had stopped, one trembling leg lifted to step into her own boat. “She can’t. I’ll help.”

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115

“I can manage.”

“I said I’ll
help
.”

Martha hauled herself up, feeling twice her usual weight and as if she had access to only half her brain. The blue kayak bobbed in front of her on the tiny waves, sunlight glinting off its smooth sides, dry as a bone inside. Ann held the boat steady and she forced herself to step in. For an awful moment she thought she was going to teeter out and bring herself and Ann back over for another swim, but a surge of determined power kept her momentum directed into the seat with another humiliating
whump
that sent water splashing onto the ledge.

“Thank you.” She put on the life jacket and accepted her paddle from Ann, who nodded curtly and climbed effortlessly into her own boat.

Martha hesitated, considering an olive branch, dove to Ann’s swan. But then she heard the phrase “stupid cow” muttered from perfect pink lips.

No dove.

She made the trip back one buffalo stroke at a time, occasional teardrops slipping silently from under her lids, trying to reconnect with the positive thoughts the sea had brought on her way out: The seal would bring good luck. She’d fallen in, not tried to go. Her failure to drown meant there was still good reason to be alive. When Eldon faced death, he’d retreat from it as violently and completely as she had.

Her mood didn’t respond. Toward the shore, she saw Betsy waiting, and forced new tears to dry, made herself appear calm. Betsy would mean well, but Martha couldn’t share Eldon right now. She’d shared Eldon all her life, with his wife and with his children and with the voting public of 116 Isabel

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Vermont. She wanted him to stay intact inside her, where she could give him undiluted strength to fight through what could otherwise be the last few days of his life.

Betsy was there as her kayak landed, wading in, sympathy in her eyes, a cell phone in one hand. “A boy named Ricky called five minutes ago. I have my cell here, you can talk to him.”

Martha stared at the cell, feeling too stupid to understand what it was or what she was supposed to do.

“He says he needs you.”

Ricky needed her. She understood that. Betsy dialed.

Martha climbed out of the boat and took the phone in her wet hand, pressed it to her ear. “Ricky?”

“Oh, yeah, hi, Martha.” He was using his most casual I-don’t-care voice, which meant he was upset. “How is camp? I got the number from that paper you left on your television.”

“It’s fun, Ricky. Maine is beautiful.” She had to concentrate to speak without her teeth chattering, her words weighted down by the dull grinding in her chest. A blanket was wrapped around her. She didn’t look to see who’d done it or offer thanks. “You would like it here.”