Wish (5 page)

“Bee wants to go to Dartmouth,” Tommy said at one
point. “She goes over to the campus and walks around and pretends she’s a student there.”

I bumped Tommy’s shoulder and turned red.

“Is that so, Bee?” Mr. Cotter asked. “It’s a great school.”

“It’s my top choice,” I said.

“She wants to go to the Ivy League,” Tommy said, crumbs from his blueberry muffin flecking his chest. “And she will. Whatever Bee sets her mind to, she does.”

“That’s an admirable trait,” Mr. Cotter said, looking at me as if for the first time. “Be sure you get in touch with me when you get ready to apply. I pull a little bit of weight out there.”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”

Mr. Cotter and I exchanged a look, then we went back to eating bagels. I sipped coffee. It tasted smooth and rich.

Afterward, Mr. Cotter talked about volunteering for the Blue Moon Foundation, which he had been doing for three or four years, he couldn’t remember exactly. Tommy said, “Thank you, Mr. Cotter,” and Mr. Cotter reached out a hand and put it on Tommy’s shoulder and I knew Mr. Cotter understood that Tommy had a difficult ride with CF, and that the purpose of the trip couldn’t be separated from the reality of Tommy’s shortened life. Mr. Cotter didn’t have to say much, and neither did Tommy. Mr. Cotter patted Tommy’s shoulder twice, then went back to his coffee.

Finally Mom showed up, a big tote bag at her side, her hair pulled back in a nutty-looking ponytail, her body trailing too much perfume. She grabbed a muffin, apologized for making us wait, and laughed when Mr. Cotter said the tides wait for no man but they will for a woman. Then we climbed into the Cadillac and drove toward the pier.

That’s how the ocean found us.

TOMMY SHARK FACT #3:
When most people think of a great white, they usually think in terms of length. That’s a mistake, according to Tommy. A great white’s girth is its most extraordinary feature. A nineteen-foot great white could take a six-foot-tall human and swallow him like a sideways Ritz cracker. Great whites are wide, and round, and come through the water like a moving tunnel. Peter Benchley, the author of
Jaws
, wrote: “Sharks have no interest in hurting you; they just want to eat you.”

Captain O’Shay told us to come aboard the
Gray Jay
.

He was a big man with a big boat. He wore a Giants hat and a Giants hoodie and his boat had a Giants insignia painted on the hull. Something had happened to his face a
long time ago, because his left profile appeared dented, as if someone had started to remold his features and then lost interest. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and his cheek whiskers appeared white when you looked at him in a certain light. His voice carried to an unusual degree, as if he had spent his life shouting over the wind and could no longer remember what it was to speak quietly.

“It’s a little snotty out on the water,” he said by way of welcome, “but we should be okay. Three attacks on elephant seals yesterday. Welcome aboard. Welcome. Mind your step.”

“Hello, Dave,” Mr. Cotter said, handing the captain the cooler. “You’re looking well.”

“Henry, you old salt,” Captain O’Shay called back.

Obviously, they knew each other.

Before we had climbed completely aboard, a short yellow school bus pulled in at the top of the pier. I felt my stomach sink. The bus made a beeping sound as it backed into a parking slot. I didn’t turn to look at Tommy, but I knew he had spotted it. I stepped on board behind my mom. She held her hand out to Captain O’Shay. He smiled and shook it. A pair of gulls laughed right then. The birds lifted into the air and slid sideways on the wind.

“So, you must be Tommy,” Captain O’Shay said to my brother in his loud, kettle voice. “Well, we should have a
good day. As I said, three attacks yesterday. This time of year, you can usually depend on at least one a day, but you never know. Sometimes you get five. That’s the record, anyway.”

“Off Indian Head?” Tommy asked.

The captain looked carefully at him. I had seen it happen before. People dismissed Tommy as a cute little CF kid, but then Tommy said something that changed their perception. I saw Captain O’Shay reappraise him.

“You know the islands?” he asked Tommy.

“Just from studying them. Shark Alley, Mirounga Bay, North Landing. Just some of the places.”

Captain O’Shay looked at Mr. Cotter, then back to Tommy.

Before the captain could say anything else, the bus began to unload.

Challenged kids.

You could tell right away. A large lady holding a clipboard climbed down first, then leaned inside and said something to the group. It took her a long time to say what she needed to say. When she pulled back out, it was almost as if the suction of her body leaving the door yanked the kids free from the bus. They stepped down haltingly, forming in loose pairs, and then started pointing at the boat. Their voices came pretty hard over the salt air, and the
modulations were all wrong, too high, too wild. A couple of the kids started charging down the gangway to the boat and the large lady swooped after them.

I couldn’t breathe, watching them.

And I didn’t dare look at Tommy.

Because Tommy was not a kid who was challenged in that particular way. And I would never, ever say anything against those kids, but it wasn’t fair for Tommy to be lumped in with them. I imagined right away how it all went: how Mr. Cotter, or maybe another well-meaning grown-up at the foundation, had contacted Captain O’Shay and booked the boat for a group rate. Maybe they had dickered over the price, appealing to O’Shay’s sense of philanthropy, and I could guess the reasoning. They were all kids and they all had impairments. Tommy was simply one more kid, and the grown-ups didn’t mean anything bad by it, but that’s what it was. I glanced at Mr. Cotter and saw his face clouding over, because now, I knew, he understood Tommy better. Tommy probably knew more about sharks than anyone on the boat, but he was relegated to being a plain tourist, a kid, and he didn’t deserve that.

It also pained me to see that Tommy understood one more thing. Once and for all he realized that people regarded him as they regarded the kids getting off the bus. Different. Less, somehow. Needful.

The large lady’s name was Mrs. Halpern.

She had a smaller, younger woman with her, Ms. Sprague, as a second-in-command. Mrs. Halpern was in charge, but Ms. Sprague did the legwork. They reminded me of two dogs herding the kids down the gangway. Mrs. Halpern was a big, slow-moving guard dog; Ms. Sprague was a border collie, quick to move, quick to react.

Mrs. Halpern introduced the kids, but I didn’t really listen. Maybe that sounds unfair, or mean-spirited, but I didn’t care. They took a while to navigate the gangplank, to slip into life jackets, to adjust themselves to the boat’s rocking. I had nothing against them. One, a girl, turned to me and said something about sharks, and about the ocean, and I nodded. Another pointed at some gulls.

And when a boy of about ten got his arm tangled in the life vest, Tommy stepped nearer and helped him.

I felt all my anger drain away. I watched Tommy move forward, his step as weak as some of the challenged kids, and I saw him meet the boy’s eyes. The boy clearly had motor-skill difficulties, but he smiled as Tommy helped him straighten the jacket and pull it tight. And Tommy, his small, unhealthy body unsteady on the rolling boat, did not exhibit a moment’s hesitation at touching a stranger. He moved with gentle deliberateness, his attention transferred to his fingers as he straightened the jacket. He patted the boy’s shoulder.

“I’m Tommy,” Tommy introduced himself. “You’re Mark?”

“Mark,” the boy said, though his voice garbled the name a little.

“Okay,” Tommy said. “Let’s have a good day.”

That simple.

TOMMY SHARK FACT #4:
Pliny the Elder, in AD 78, wrote that fossilized sharks’ teeth rained from the sky during lunar eclipses. Other writers of the time speculated that the teeth were actually serpent tongues turned to stone by St. Peter. The teeth became known as
glossopetrae
—“tongue stones”—which possessed magical powers. People wore them as amulets and tailors sewed special pockets in garments so that the
glossopetrae
could be kept close to the body. Not until the mid-seventeenth century did a Danish scientist named Steno dissect a great white’s head from an animal captured off the coast of Italy. Eventually the shark’s teeth figured into its Latin name,
Carcharodon carcharias
, or “ragged tooth.”

We passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, which was beautiful, but dangerous, according to Mr. Cotter. He said people looked out from San Francisco and saw a clear day and made the mistake of assuming the whole ocean was a
pond. Once they hit the Golden Gate Bridge, things changed rapidly, and suddenly the ocean became an ocean. Add fog and a ton of tricky currents, and the waters had a history of treachery.

“The Coast Guard stays busy around here,” he said. “An old colleague of mine tells a story about a catamaran that called mayday from the Farallones. The radio transmission said a wave had just come through the cabin, and that was the last anyone ever heard from them. Six people on board.”

Mr. Cotter must have seen me turn white. We stood at the starboard railing, watching the bridge pass overhead. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I meant it as an interesting story, that’s all. No need to worry. Captain O’Shay has made this trip a thousand times. But I’m afraid we’re in for a little rough weather. The Farallones are notorious for choppy seas.”

“How long will it take us?”

“Oh, four hours or so. Depends on the conditions. You can’t really predict from here what it’s going to be like out there. You know, it used to be an egging station. Gulls’ eggs. A fellow named Robinson came out here in 1849 in search of eggs. Seems California didn’t have many chickens, though I never heard why that was. Anyway, he and his brother brought back a boatload of murre eggs and sold them for a buck a dozen. I guess the eggs worked for baking, but they had red yolks, so people didn’t much care
for that. The brothers made three thousand dollars, which was an awful lot of money at that time. A couple of rival companies set up shop here when they heard about the Robinsons’ success, and some enterprising gent designed egg shirts that the pickers could wear. The shirts held up to eighteen dozen eggs. A funny business. I think it ended in a shoot-out between the companies.”

“Are there a lot of birds on the Farallones?”

“Oh, my,” Mr. Cotter said. “More than you can dream. On the mainland, the eggers used to be known by the scars on their scalps from dive-bombing gulls. The birds are everywhere. You know, the Farallones were once known as the Devil’s Teeth? Sailors named the islands that because they have a frightening outline against the sea. It’s a foreboding place.”

“Leave it to Tommy to pick a place like that for his wish.”

“How’s he doing, anyway?” Mr. Cotter asked, his eyes on the water.

“On the trip?”

“No, in general. With his health.”

“It’s not good,” I said, watching a gull hover above our wake. “He can’t put on any weight and he’s prone to too many illnesses. He never complains, but you can see he has good days and bad days. He’s spent years in the different doctors’ offices. Sometimes he just seems tired of it all.”