Without a Word (17 page)

For the next three days, I woke up with the first light, before six, put on my bathing suit with a pair of shorts over it, ate quickly at the coffee shop and headed out. I saw a lot of heads shake. I heard a lot of people exclaim that I must be down from New York. I ate a few more bad breakfasts and a couple of really good meals at Anita's. I even lost some of my northern pallor. But there was no sign of Sally Spector.

On Sunday morning, I finally found Hank. The door to his shop was ajar and Hank himself was outside sitting on an old wooden straight-backed chair, sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup.

“Too early to get some flippers?”

“Not around here it isn't. You signed up for the boat?”

“No, just swimming here,” pointing across at the ocean.

“Good a place as any,” he said. He was shorter than me, wider than me, much more muscular than me, older, too, probably at least sixty. His hair was a yellowy gray, but he had a full head of it and I wasn't sure if it was wet from an early morning shower or maybe an early morning swim because all he was wearing was a bathing suit and an old T-shirt, both wet.

He looked down at my feet. “Seven and a half, I'd say. That means you'd get an eight.”

“I'll need a mask and a snorkel, too.”

“Got those. No problem.”

As in the little corner delis in New York, I couldn't believe the amount of stuff crammed into what was no more than a shed, the wooden door barely closing properly, the two small windows, one of which I'd peered through the day before, painted shut decades earlier.

I took out my credit card while Hank was putting my things into a paper bag, “Hank's” stamped on each item. Good advertising, I guessed. When he looked up, he began to shake his head.

“For your convenience, we take cash only.”

I pulled out the cash. Then pulled out the picture of Sally and told him my story. Hank took it in his bent fingers, the tip of one pinkie missing, and held it flat to try to catch the light from the open door. I stepped out of his way.

“So what happened in between?” he asked, putting the picture down on the counter.

“In between?”

“In between when you took her picture and now?”

“You mean why did I wait all these years?”

“Ah-huh.”

“Well, I didn't. We've been writing and calling, but, you know, not all that often. Then I called on her birthday and the number was disconnected.”

“You from New York?”

My heart made a little hop. “Yes,” I said. “Do you…”

“It's just the way you talk so fast,” he said. “Hard for me to keep up with what you're saying.”

“Oh. Sorry. It's a—”

“I know. It's why I live down here.”

I picked up the photograph. “She's older now, of course. But—”

“Never seen her,” he said. He picked up the bag, folded the top down and stapled the receipt onto it, an odd touch, odd that he even had a stapler in the shop. He handed me the bag. “I hope you have a good swim,” he said. “You change your mind about the boat, you know where to find me. Seven days a week, at least when I'm in the mood.”

I thanked him and turned to leave.

“You know to spit, don't you? Into the mask. It keeps it from fogging up. Don't feel I've done right by you big-city folks if I don't tell you a thing like that.”

I crossed the road and walked along the ocean side, having to wait for traffic sometimes when there was a tree near the road, the trees that made the beach into separate little coves.

As the days had passed, Hank had become my best hope. The more frustrated I'd become, the more I'd pinned on Hank. Now all I had was another dead end and no other ideas, no trace of Sally, no hint of Sally, no nothing.

Getting lost was one thing. Staying lost was quite another. Staying lost meant cutting all your ties, and that's exactly what Sally had done. She'd left her husband, her child and her home. She'd dropped her education. She'd left her friends without a word to anyone. Hell, if there still
was
a Sally, if she'd left on her own, cutting ties was precisely what she'd wanted, as far as I could tell. It was the point of it all. So why did I think she'd be here, of all places?

My flight home was the following morning, and I was ready. No one in the area knew Sally. No one had remembered ever seeing her. It was time to go home.

But when I came around a huge palm tree to the small spit of land across from the Madison, the ocean beyond
seemed not to be water but light, the way it was in my dreams, and there he was. He stood at the very edge of the sand where the water would barely wet his white feet. He stood watching the ocean, like a lonely wife waiting for her sailor's ship to appear on the horizon. He never turned when I walked onto the little beach, put the bag from Hank's down on the sand, squatting down next to it. Even when I slipped the camera from my pocket and took his picture, he never moved. He stood still, his attention riveted on the water, the waves just ripples rising up to the sand, nothing like the waves the ocean made at home.

I knew he knew I was there. I'd seen one ear turn briefly in my direction before facing back toward the sea. Squinting toward the bright ocean, I sat on the sand and kept the vigil with him.

And then there she was. I saw the tip of her snorkel, her blonde hair, her face, the mask covering her eyes and nose, but no matter. It was Sally. Her hair was lighter than Madison's, her skin darker, a result of where and how she lived. She was as slim as a young girl and beautiful enough to take anyone's breath away, beautiful enough to hitchhike down here, even with a dog, to have Hank and everyone else want to protect her from this fast-talking city woman, God knows what on her mind, and for her history teacher to marry her when she'd gotten pregnant with someone else's child, even when it meant giving up his career.

When she got in close enough to stand, she motioned to the dog to join her, and from complete and utter stillness, he burst forward, leaping into the water, sending it high like sparks spitting out of a new fire, and headed straight for her.

They swam together for about fifteen minutes before heading back to the beach. Then she stood, the water still up to her knees, the dog's feet not yet finding purchase, and she
pulled off the mask, shaking water from her hair, bending to take off the flippers. I managed three shots while her face was turned away before slipping the camera back into my pocket. I stood as she stepped out of the water, the dog shaking right next to her.

She seemed to notice me for the first time, and though the sun was behind her, she lifted a hand to shield her eyes as if the light was too bright for her.

I said her name and took a step toward her.

Sally's hand stayed where it was, an eave over her eyes.

“Leon sent me,” I said.

She turned to face the ocean and sat, her back to me. I expected to see her shoulders shaking, her head drop into her hands. I expected fear, remorse perhaps. But when I walked up to where she was sitting, the sand sticking to her tanned wet skin, I didn't get either. I sat near her, Roy now at the water's edge fishing with his white paws the way Dashiell did.

“I've been waiting for this for five years,” she said, “for someone to figure it out. How did you find me?”

“How isn't the issue,” I said. “Why is the question.”

Sally sighed. “Have you been looking all this time?”

“No,” I said. “Just about a week.”

She turned to look at me, her face as still and blank as it was in the two pictures I'd seen. “Why now? Why after all these years?”

“Because Madison's in trouble,” I told her. And sitting there on the sand, I told some of what I knew, about Madison's tics, about the Botox, about Dr. Bechman's murder. She stopped me there.

“She did that?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Well, what did she say? Did she say she did it? Did she deny it?”

“Madison doesn't speak, Sally. She stopped talking shortly after you left.”

“Not at all?”

I shook my head. And then we sat for a while without speaking either.

“There's nothing physical? It's not part of the tic disease?” Sally asked after a while.

“No, a decision, they think.”

“Does she write notes? Does she nod, shake her head? Does she try to…?”

I shook my head again.

“She's a great kid,” I said, barely loud enough for her to hear me, even sitting just a foot apart. “But…”

Sally waved a hand back and forth to stop me. “You can't think that I'm going to go back.” She turned away, toward Roy, toward the ocean, shaking her head. “If you met them, if you met my husband and my daughter, you know that I can't be anyone's wife, anyone's mother. You know I never was. Not ever. I don't—”

“Tell me how you got here, will you? Tell me what happened that night, the night you left home.”

“Home,” she said. “If only.” She stood and walked toward the water's edge, the way Jim had when the conversation had gotten more painful. I followed her, and we stood with our feet in the water, Roy off to the right hauling a frond he'd found around the sand.

“You felt at home in school,” I offered.

She shook her head. “Not really. It was reading I was after, losing myself in books.”

And now here, I thought, looking out at the ocean.

“But even that was hard, with Madison always wanting your attention,” I said. Sally didn't respond, but Roy came back to stand near her, looking up at her face. “The night you left, had you planned it, had you planned to leave?”

She shook her head. “I was feeling as if I was suffocating, a way I almost always felt then. I thought I'd die if I didn't get outside and get some air.” She looked me right in the eye. “If I didn't get away from them.”

“Both of them?”

She nodded. “Both of them. Leon is the sweetest man alive. What he did for me, what he tried to do, what he's doing now…”

“I met Jim,” I told her.

“You are thorough.” Her foot stirred the water. “So there's that, too. He's raising her and she's not even his.”

She's his now, I thought, saying nothing. Whatever his faults, he was committed to Madison, to his daughter, you had to give him that.

“So you took Roy, so that you could go out for a walk?”

Sally nodded. “Yes, because he'd ask if I'd just gone out.”

“Where you were going?”

“Why I was going. Like my mother. I was on a tight leash.”

“But you were going to school,” I said. “I thought he—”

“He encouraged that. Don't get me wrong. He was…” Sally shook her head. “It's just that he…” She looked at me again, and I could see the pain in her eyes. “He loved me too much,” she whispered, and I could feel the trap, a kid so young with a kid of her own who needed her attention, a husband who was the same way, pulling on her to give them something she just didn't have.

“I'd be reading and I'd look up and both of them would be watching me.”

“So that night…”

“I took Roy as an excuse.” The dog cocked his head when he heard his name. “I only planned to get some air, a few minutes to myself.”

“And?”

“Leon used to walk him in the meat market. The side streets are pretty deserted, so he was able to take the leash off, let Roy run. He'd find things in the street, an old work glove, a sock, a plastic soda bottle, human detritus that would be a treasure for a dog, and he'd toss his prize and run after it.”

“Leon told you this?”

She shook her head. “He took pictures. I knew it from the pictures.”

“He didn't talk much?”

“No, he's not a big talker. I would have thought he would be, because of his teaching, but he was a pretty quiet guy.”

More so now, I thought.

“But you had the story, in pictures.” The way Madison communicated, when she did at all.

“So that's the way I turned when I got out of the house. It's the way Roy turned, where he wanted to go. He went around the corner and down to Washington Street and then north. I guess that's the way he went with Leon a lot of the time. I didn't give it any thought. I was so glad to be out. I just followed him. And then this trucker stopped.” She turned to look at me as if for the first time realizing how bizarre what she'd done was. I saw her hands were shaking, her lower lip, too. “He asked if I needed a lift. He said he was going to North Carolina, he could use a little company. I said no. I thought it was funny at first, then scary. And then we walked up Little West Twelfth Street and Roy found a sock. I let him off leash and he was running with it, growling at it, dumping it back on the ground, crouching as if it were a sheep, then grabbing it again, and I kept thinking
about the ride I'd been offered and it just pulled at me. It just kept after me, the way Madison used to.

“I tried to go back home. I really did. I got as far as Horatio Street and then I stopped and I walked back to the market, to where the trucks were. Another one stopped on Gansevoort Street, the hookers giving me the eye, like was I taking their jobs away from them. I was going to walk away but then the driver opened the passenger door and asked if I needed help. I told him I did. It was strange, hearing myself say that. It was as if someone else had answered for me. But the moment it was out, I knew it was true, perhaps the truest thing I'd ever said.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He leaned across the seat and reached for my hand.” Sally sighed and looked at the ocean for a moment. “Roy jumped in first,” she said, her face still toward the water. “And then I got in. The driver leaned across me and pulled the door closed. ‘Where to?' he said. And I said, ‘Where are you going?' And that's how it started.”

“Did you come here right away?”

“I didn't know this was where I was headed. I was headed away, not toward, if you know what I mean.” Checking to see if I did, if I was on the same page.

“I do,” I told her. And I did.

“He went as far as Georgia. He gave me bus fare to get here. Paul. That was his name. He never told me his last name.”

“Did you tell him yours?”

“My first name only. But I remember thinking Russell, Sally Russell. So someplace inside, I must have known I was coming back here. We'd signed the register ‘Mr. and Mrs. J. Russell.'” She looked out at the water, then down at the sand. “I doubt we fooled anyone. I was fifteen. Now that I'm in the business, I know it doesn't matter.” She shrugged. “No one cares.”

“But why did you come here, after what happened?”

“This is the only place on earth I've ever been happy.”

“Are you happy now?” I asked her.

She looked down at Roy, then out at the water.

“I am,” she said, “as happy as I think is possible for me.”

“Do you live here?” Nodding back toward the Madison.

“I run the place. I have a cabin in the back with a small kitchen and a modest salary. I don't need much.”

The sun was overhead now, the air still and hot. I suddenly wanted to swim, to swim with Sally. I walked back to where I'd left the bag from Hank's, tore it open and pulled out the snorkel and the flippers, nodding this time toward the ocean. Sally smiled, the first and last one I'd see.

I pulled off my shorts and put on the flippers. When I took out the mask, she said, “Don't forget to spit in it.”

“Thanks,” I told her. And I did.

Water could wash away forensic evidence, dirt, even stress. It could reshape rocks, smooth glass, and sometimes, perhaps for Sally, it could wash away memories or at least the pain that came with them. Perhaps it would wash away the pain I was feeling, pain for a little girl back in New York, because though I'd found Sally, she wouldn't be coming back with me. With my heart feeling broken, I followed Sally into the ocean, hoping that would glue it back together, hoping for some of the magic Sally had found here, not once but twice.