Wish (7 page)

“Do you see anything?” I asked Tommy.

He shook his head.

“Just the blood,” he said, his voice tight with anticipation.

“What did you mean,
the Sisters
?”

“The researchers call them the Sisterhood. About three or four females who hunt out here. They’re deadly.”

“I can’t see the seal,” I said.

“It’s gone,” Tommy said.

A second later we saw a fin. It passed so quickly it might have been a trick of our eyes. The fin went away from us and didn’t slice the water for more than a heartbeat. Its tail flicked a little water behind it, then it disappeared.

“That was a shark, Tommy,” I whispered. “A great white. You’ve seen a great white. You saw a kill.”

He nodded. He reached over and took my hand. It took me a moment to realize he was having trouble breathing.

Late afternoon. Land breeze, the boat grinding closer to shore, gulls overhead. Seals running like black stitches through the surf. Tommy asleep with his head on my mom’s lap, his feet on mine. A quiet moment. Empty Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate rolling in windshield-wiper half circles on the table. The challenged kids come in, go out, come in again. Mrs. Halpern sitting across the boat from
us, a circle of knitting growing in her hands. A purse, she told my mother. A purse that would be washed ten times, shrunken, then felted and decorated. Tight, like boiled wool. Nothing, she promised, could fit through the weave. A gift for a grandchild, a girl, who lived in Palo Alto and went to Stanford and studied chemistry. Each stitch, she told my mother, is a thought.

Mr. Cotter drove us back to our hotel. He looked sleepy and windburned, but he tried to keep his voice high and animated for Tommy. Tommy sat up front. They talked about the Farallones and about the deep drop-off the islands created. Perfect shark ambush territory, Tommy said. Two strokes and the seals hovered over thirty feet or more of water. Dark rocks below. Plenty of cover for the great whites. A collision of two lives, but also a mutual benefit if you took the long view.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Mr. Cotter asked when we got closer to the hotel. He looked in the rearview mirror to meet my mother’s eyes.

“We thought we’d have a lazy morning, then do some sightseeing,” she said, her voice quiet and calm. “We have Monday, too. We fly out Monday night.”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help out,” Mr. Cotter said. “My team has a croquet match about a hundred miles south of here. I’ll be gone all day. And Monday I’m booked.”

“You’ve been very kind already,” my mother said. “We didn’t expect you to guide us, too.”

“Well, at least we saw a shark,” Mr. Cotter said, turning and smiling at Tommy. “Captain O’Shay said it looked like a juvenile. Maybe ten or eleven feet.”

“You can measure from the fin to the tip of the tail,” Tommy said. “Make a guess, anyway.”

“He might have just been cleaning up,” Mr. Cotter said. “Maybe a bigger girl took the seal to begin with.”

“I couldn’t believe the color of the blood,” Mom said.

We had been over that. She said it to fill space.

We pulled up in front of the hotel a few minutes later. Mr. Cotter climbed out and came around to say goodbye. He hugged my mother, hugged me, then gave Tommy a handshake.

“I’m glad I met you,” Mr. Cotter said to Tommy. “I’m sorry the weather didn’t cooperate and allow us to put you in the cage.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Cotter. Thank you for taking me to see the islands.”

“I’ve got your address,” Mr. Cotter said. “If I make it back for a Dartmouth reunion, I’ll look you up. Maybe we can take a hike.”

Tommy nodded. Mr. Cotter suddenly had a kind, sad look in his eyes. He reached out and put his hand softly against
Tommy’s cheek and ear. I realized, watching him, that he was a man with sons, a man whose heart would crack if anything happened to his boys. And here was Tommy.

“Okay,” Mr. Cotter said, dropping his hand. “Good luck to you all.”

No one can meet Tommy and remain unaffected. No one can help loving him. I saw it in Mr. Cotter’s eyes. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Tommy is a light, a candle, whatever you want to call him. Sometimes he sheds light; sometimes he reflects it back at whoever looks at him. I don’t even question it any longer. It just is. When I’ve read about saints in catechism classes, I’ve always thought they were probably people like Tommy. Not supernatural, not more godly than anyone else, but simple, quiet people whose humility was the most exceptional thing about them. Tommy never holds himself above others and never looks down on anyone. He meets people square. He believes in them, because he knows even in the dullest of us, or the most lame, a person resides there.

Mom’s cell phone rang as I slid the key card into the hotel room door.

“Well, hi,” she said when she fished her phone out of her purse, her voice turning instantly girlish, her eyes opening
wide and glancing at me as if she had done something miraculous in receiving a phone call from a guy. “Jerrod, how nice to hear from you!”

Tommy groaned softly and shook his head. I slid the card out and handed it to her. She stayed in the hall. Tommy and I went inside. Even through the wall we heard her turn into Mom Barbie, her voice filled with curlicues.

“Hello, Jerrod,” Tommy imitated her, his voice going up in a funny falsetto. “How do you do?”

“Good grief,” I said. “You’re almost as ridiculous as she is.”

Tommy fell on the bed laughing. He picked up the TV remote and shot the set alive. He turned up the volume. He seemed tired and sleepy.

I told Tommy to change his clothes and then went to the bathroom and looked at my face. The wind had burned me as it had Mr. Cotter. I turned back and forth, trying to see how red I was. I had raccoon eyes from where my sunglasses had covered me. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and washed my hands, then I studied my face a little. I looked like certain kinds of terrier dogs, sharp and pointed, and way too serious. Before I finished, Mom knocked on the bathroom door and pushed through. She smiled. I knew what was coming.

“I’d like to meet Jerrod for a drink,” she said. “That is, if you don’t mind sitting with Tommy.”

“And what if I do mind?” I asked, squeezing some moisturizer onto my hand. I rubbed it around my eyes and up on my forehead. It felt good on my skin.

“Do you really care or are you just giving me a hard time?” Mom asked, coming to stand beside me and inspecting herself in the mirror. She grabbed the moisturizer and smeared her face with it, too.

“Gee, I don’t know, Mom, we’re on a family trip and you want to go out on a date.”

“For a drink, Bee,” she said. “He’s going to be nearby this evening and he just wants to meet for a drink. Sorry for trying to have a life.”

“This is Tommy’s trip,” I said. “Four measly days.”

“And we took him out and we saw a shark,” Mom said, her eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “And last night we stayed together. Tonight I’d like to go out and meet a gentleman who said he wanted to buy me a drink. Is that a crime? I’ll leave you money. You can go and get a pizza or whatever you like.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Knock yourself out, Mom.”

“It’s easy to be critical,” Mom said, pushing her hand hard against her cheek to keep the flesh going up, not down, “but you try raising two children on your own.”

“And that means you need to go out on a date?”

“It means,” she said, emphasizing the
means
, “that on occasion I want adult company, yes.”

“Adult male.”

“It would be nice to have a man in my life, Bee. Sorry if that disappoints you.”

“It’s so predictable.”

She looked at me.

“I won’t be late,” she said.

“Of course you won’t.”

“I’ll always be your mother,” she said, her voice crowding me somehow. “I’m afraid you’re doomed.”

“Lucky me. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, that none of us is perfect.” She rubbed the last of the moisturizer away. “And that we’re locked together, like it or not.”

“That’s got nothing to do with you going out on a date.”

She shrugged. I shrugged back.

“She going?” Tommy asked from the bed.

I nodded.

He nodded.

“What do you want to eat?” he asked.

“I don’t care. Want to get room service?”

“You think that’s okay?”

“It’s your trip, you little skunk boy.”

“I’ve always wanted room service.”

“Your wish is my command, master.”

Tommy smiled. He was half asleep. We watched television.
The sun went down and I got up and closed the drapes. He pulled the bedspread over his chest but left his legs out. His chin almost rested on his chest. Mom came back and forth, dressing. The last time she went through the room she smelled of perfume.

After Mom left, Tommy ordered a turkey club with curly fries and a diet soda. I ordered a Philly cheesesteak with sweet potato fries. We watched an old episode of
Friends
while we waited for the food to arrive. The waiter who brought the food up was gray and creaky on his feet and had a gut the size of a backpack gummed onto his waist. His name tag said
Wayne
. He set the food down on the bench at the foot of the bed, then he hung around a little until it occurred to me that I was supposed to tip him. Luckily, I had seen Mom stash the envelope Mr. Cotter had given her for incidentals. I fished out five dollars and handed them to Wayne.

“Thank you, miss,” he said.

“Thank you, Wayne,” I said as if I had a choice.

I showed him out. Tommy tried to get up to get his food but he had a little trouble swinging himself out, so I carried it over to him. I spread a towel over his legs and put his plates on his lap. He needed to wear his vest soon, I knew. I grabbed my own food and sat next to him. We didn’t talk much as we watched the cast of
Friends
act
stupid. And when they did something that was supposed to be touching and the sound track made an
awwwwww
sound, I looked at Tommy and crossed my eyes. I snagged some of his curly fries.

“You feeling okay?” I asked him when we were about halfway through our sandwiches.

“Just tired,” he said.

“Try to eat. You had a long day.”

“I’m not that hungry,” he said.

I grabbed the remote control and turned the volume down. I put the back of my hand to his forehead, testing him for fever. His eyes looked glassy.

“We need to put you in the vest,” I said. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

He shrugged.

“Come on,” I said. “Spill it.”

He started to cry a little. He never does that.

“You didn’t like today very much,” I said. “Is that it?”

He wiped the back of his hand against his eyes. I got up and lifted the plates from his lap. He looked beat suddenly, and more defeated than I had ever seen him.

“You can tell me,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“It’s nothing,” he said around his tears. “It’s just …”

“You’re disappointed.”

“I just thought it would be different. I thought I was going to dive in the cage. That’s what they said. That
was the whole point of coming out here. But it didn’t happen.”

“You saw a shark,” I said. “And blood.”

“Anyone could do that.”

“I’m sorry. I get what you’re saying.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know. But I understand what you mean. It was nearly what you wanted, but it wasn’t, and now you have to pretend that it was, right?”

He nodded.

“Remember the dress Mom bought me for the ninth-grade dance?” I asked. “I’d seen one that was exactly what I wanted, but then Mom went out and bought me something sort of like it and I had to pretend that it was perfect. Only it wasn’t. And I went to the dance and I didn’t feel pretty, and I hated the dress, hated everything about that night. So I don’t blame you.”

I put his vest on him and we sat for a long time watching television. By eight o’clock Tommy had fallen asleep with his arms out, the chest vibrations still jiggling his cheeks.

I waited up until midnight. Mom didn’t come back.

“Y
ou think she stayed over with him?” Tommy asked.

It was early morning. Tommy lay in bed, the remote in his hand. A single stream of weak light pushed through the crack in the curtains. I didn’t say anything. Instead I rolled over and pretended to sleep. I listened to him flicking around the TV stations. He wasn’t allowed to watch so much television at home and we didn’t have cable anyway. He was being a little TV piglet.

He went to the cartoon station and stayed there awhile. The next time I looked up he had found some ridiculous
show about guys going out in boats to catch Alaskan king crabs. The show consisted of big waves crashing over a small boat and the guys yelling back and forth to see if they were okay. Then Tommy went back to the cartoons.

“Why does she do that, Bee?” Tommy asked a little later.

“Ask her,” I said, my face turned down into the pillow. “That’s her stuff.”

“Is she a sex fiend?” he asked.

I had to laugh.

“No, you little twerp,” I said, lifting my head from the pillow, “your mother is not a sex fiend.”