Vacation (25 page)

Maybe we should do this tomorrow, someone yelled through the storm.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, everyone said.

What? Are you insane? the untrainer said. The wind whipped his hair. I won’t be here tomorrow. Don’t you dare move. You stay where you are, he said. Everybody, stay where you are. Let’s go.

Tomorrow, of course, the untrainer would be on a plane to New York.

It’s silly to think Gray died of a broken heart when he died of a broken brain. Gray had plenty of broken parts on him by that time, but he also had parts that would have kept working, given the chance. He had parts that would have worked for a thousand years and others that would have worked for a hundred, and others for another year or two or perhaps a bit more. Some of him may still be working somewhere in one way or another. If you count the girl—she
is
his, after all—she is still working, fifty weeks a year at a small thermagraphic printing shop in an upscale neighborhood in Philadelphia. Wave bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Myers’s wife didn’t make it to Corn Island in time to see her husband. She caught her connection in Houston, landed in Managua. She walked through the airports swiftly on strong legs. She boarded the flight to Corn and then sat on the runway for three hours past the time of scheduled departure. Storm, they said. Hurricane on the coast. They waited three hours, served two rounds of drinks and some snacks in small foiled bags. She did not help herself to any snacks but she did sip tepid water from a plastic cup and tap her fingernails against the tray table. She only spoke once—when the delay was first announced over the loudspeaker. Damn it to hell, she said, and put her forehead on her fist. They waited until the hurricane moved off and then they went to Corn Island.

At first it wasn’t so bad despite the rain and the waves, but the farther they went the worse it got. The large foam container with the dolphin in it began to slip on the deck and hit the chains, which were the only obstacles keeping it from going overboard. People fell over as the boat tipped from side to side and dunked into holes and slammed into waves. The bodyguards tied the women and the ministers to the boat with thick heavy ropes. The waves splashed in and sprayed. The film crew was gone, hidden in the engine room, and the waiters, who had been hired apparently to hand out hors d’oeuvres, were screaming through the storm, throwing cans of soda at people, throwing pieces of cooked fish and raw oysters in an effort to do their jobs. Everyone wore a life jacket except Myers. The untrainer stayed beside the dolphin, waving people away. He slid along with the container, slid through the circle of spectators and back.

Myers’s wife stepped off the plane with the same steady stride she’d had all her life.
She did not take a taxi, though it was nearing dark. She did not stop strangers and describe her husband or hold up her hand to estimate his height. She walked the length of the island, picked her way over the devastation of the hurricane, over the giant fronds and trunks and pieces of roofing. She went by way of the beach. She passed a person here and there with a wheelbarrow or a cart piled high with torn leafage. She walked all the way around the island.

It was in front of some huts that she found his briefcase. She nearly tripped over it in the sand, the rectangular prison of her husband’s soul. She picked it up and looked inside. His. Empty. She felt a white spot in her mind begin to spread.

There was a large gathering a little further up the beach. She took the briefcase and walked over to them. The people seemed to be celebrating in the wreckage, passing large plates of rice down the table, their faces lit by candles. She paused, turned to them, felt she might ask them about her husband, that they might have an idea. Somehow she knew this and her breath felt caught. She pulled herself together and spoke up.

Um, does anybody here speak English?

They surveyed her. A few of us have what is called an education, yeah, why?

Did any of you happen to see the owner of this briefcase? She held it up like a handshake.

Well, not unless we’re looking at her.

All right, she said and lowered the briefcase. She was red-eyed, wind-bent. Standing in the sand, she unwished the last three years, those misspent squares of time. Myers’s wife. She would be alone.

She kept walking. She went all night. In the morning she arrived back at the popsicle-stand airport. She stood around until a plane came and then she left, went back to New York. Goodbye, wife.

CLAIRE

I was sitting, waiting in the chair like he’d told me to. I’d been waiting about an hour, I think. He brought me a packet of crackers at one point. Then he came over and said he had something to show me. Today’s paper, he said. He had a newspaper in his hand and held it out. The front page of the Lifestyles section. A dolphin released yesterday in the middle of a hurricane. There was a little map and a photo of the hero on the shore and in the photo, I couldn’t believe it. First I couldn’t believe it and then I couldn’t believe it again. There was my father on the front page, and beside him a dog in the sand. He looked just like me. I wasn’t afraid or full of longing—Oh, at last I’ll find out who I am, and all that. Wow, I was thinking. Look at me. He’s going to bust in here and light this place up. And I’ll have a ringside seat to the show.

In the photo in the newspaper, there in the background, if you looked closely it seemed as if that man with the strangely shaped head was there. You couldn’t tell about his head from the photo but it was him. He looked like the man who raised me. He had some sort of wrapping around his arm now. In the foreground was my father, suited for swimming, standing on sand. The two of them together.

There are many ways to see the world.

The thing about the head is that at first it seems normal. You have to keep looking to be sure. Once you’re certain, then the question is: how did it get that way? You have to keep staring to imagine all the possible birth defects, personal genetic encounters, public catastrophes that could have done this. You hope he didn’t feel it.

It was hours before anyone noticed he was gone. First there was the heroic ride back to shore through the hurricane. Then the entire shipful of people running from the ship, down the dock, across the sand, in search of shelter—people sprinting, yelling, palm trees uprooting, shingles flying. Then, hours later, after the storm, the gathering for the celebratory dinner, people knocking on his cabin door, sitting down to eat. Then the gringa walking up and going away, drifting into the dark with her little suitcase. Then someone saying, Wait, where is he, the gringo? going back, knocking on his cabin door again, Hello? Hello? Then someone else saying, He didn’t by any chance have a briefcase, did he? Then the slow realization that no one had seen him since the godforsaken filmmakers took their brave walk.

Chapter Twenty-One

The boat wasn’t there yet but they were going to throw the dolphin in. Word came from the back or the front. It’s too dangerous, said the captain. It’s a hurricane. Throw the fish in. We’re turning around or we’ll die.

Turn the boat around. Head back, everyone said, shouting down the untrainer. For God’s sake, get us back alive!

The vet and one of the sea divers began to argue about how to throw the dolphin in. They had a sort of pulley idea involving a contraption with ropes.

You people are out of your minds. I never saw such stupidity, such incompetence in all my life, said the untrainer. What have I done, letting you idiots on this ship. I’m surprised you haven’t sunk it. I should have hired the tooth fairy. I should have hired Tinkerbell.

Okay, big shot, then what are we supposed to do? They were tangled up in the pulley and both were tied to the boat.

The untrainer directed the soldiers and the bodyguards to pick up the stretcher and carry it over to the side of the boat. The dolphin jumped into the ocean and swam away.

Oh! they said. He’s in the water. Is he okay? Will he make it?

And far off, amazingly, they saw him, the dolphin. He jumped high in the air, made giant arcs over the water, two arcs, then two more, and then he was gone. Everyone saw it, everyone cheered—except Myers, who was already gone.

(One small man plinks off the earth, vanishes silently into water.)

His feet had to have a steady moment before liftoff, but “liftoff” is a rather fancy phrasing for how it happened. It was more like stepping overboard. But we do not say he stepped overboard or walked as though there were a plank involved—there certainly was not. Also the irony of the final steadying: Why steady himself? Why bother? But it does make sense if you think about it. You don’t want to fall over accidentally, hit your head, and roll back into the boat, or have your foot get caught on the chain and be left swinging and be saved, or be saved but hurt, more than you already are, and have the dolphin go off without you, or have it be a question: did he trip and fall overboard or did he jump of his own accord? If the thing would happen, it required this moment of steadying, this last decision. I will do this, I will go.

And about the chain, there was that to be gotten over, no small trick, a swinging chain, a tossing boat, a broken arm, broken ribs, a hurricane on the horizon. He had to grasp the chain with his good hand and get one leg over it and then the other. The chain—whoever thought a thing like that could keep anyone in? A flimsy piece of metal, what was it even doing there?

(Time to go.)

(Myers first.)

When a dolphin slides into water, it is different, of course. A single movement, a semicircle, a flash of muscle, and then it’s done.

Question: did anyone see him go over?

SEXY WOMAN IN BIKINI

I had a rope around my waist and I knew very well that the plan had not included any storm or rope, and I had no sense of humor about it. I don’t believe anyone did. I did not see one person laugh and I saw plenty of faces, I assure you. I did see the gringo come around the side with the photographers behind him. I don’t know who that gringo was or how he’d gotten on the boat. But I do remember him because there was something wrong with his head and his arm was in a sling. He was a mess. I remember thinking he should have a life jacket on and should be tied down like the rest of us and not leading the photographers around, who should have been tied down too. I didn’t look at him much. I was watching the photographers with their cameras and bags. They were walking in a bizarre manner to stay upright. They looked like a parade of freaks. The rain was coming at us sideways. The boat was tilting around like a top. Even the photographers, I barely looked at them because I had one project and that was: hang on. So the extra gringo, I did see him. I saw him leading the photographers, then I didn’t see him. He was just gone.

I didn’t wonder where he went at the time. I thought nothing about him at all. But later, when it was over, and the dolphin was saved and who cares, and we were saved, and a big meal was going on, food being passed down the table, and we had to use candles because the electric went off in the storm, somebody thought of him—maybe because a gringa walked by, a woman. It was strange because where did she come from? She walked by in the dark in a dress, carrying a little suitcase like a briefcase. She came over and asked some questions in English. Then she walked away and a few minutes later somebody said, Hey, was she talking about that gringo with the head? What happened to him? Nobody knew. The owner looked for him and the untrainer looked for him. I was the one who said it. I don’t know how but I knew. I said, He went overboard.

I am sure I was right.

The dolphin, the gray of distant stars, a perfect form in the air. Like a pipe dream loosened from the mind and set free to make its own way. The animal was gone so fast one felt its silver body ghosting behind it.

If a man throws himself into water (or is thrown into it, although that’s not what we’re talking about) in the middle of an active storm, he won’t last long. He has a heart-wrenching shock as soon as he hits the water, and if he isn’t saved right away a few heady waves push him under, especially if he can only use one arm. He opens his mouth in shock and his lungs fill. Within a couple of minutes, he’s sinking, but by then he isn’t really human anymore. Yes, the humanity is gone that quickly. He is flailing a little but now it is a function of impulse and instinct. He is no longer suffering. He had only a minute or so of that when his head still rose above the water but even then the suffering was physical, did not resemble a thought construction such as: Quick, throw me a rope.
I have made a mistake. Save my life.

Rain stained away the color from the scene but some drops caught the light and some of those drops caught Myers as he leapt and they lit him up like foil. He was the fastest heart-beating object on the scene at that moment. You might think he was the most urgent too, but he wasn’t. All life is urgent.

The jump itself wasn’t the wriggling of a fish caught in a net. For all his fussing around before, now he was calm and controlled. If you could slow time, he would look like a person poised in air, floating.