The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  Gwen swam up beside her and rapped on her own tank until the girl made eye contact. She pointed to herself, then pulled her arms in close to her sides, as though she were wearing a straitjacket. Miraculously, Courtney seemed to understand. She pulled her arms in tight and swam a little, powered only by a flutter kick.

  If only life were like this, Gwen thought. Underwater, with a regulator in her mouth, she had no problem making herself understood.

  Together they swam toward the reef. The water was deeper here, the white bottom more distant; Courtney’s pink bikini had lost its color, washed out, like everything else, to a moody shade of green. Fan grass waved lazily with the current. A school of bright cichlids engulfed them. Courtney turned toward Gwen, her head cocked; the regulator made it impossible to laugh or gasp or smile. Instead Courtney clapped her hands together, a languid, wavy applause.

  At the edge of the reef Gwen touched Courtney’s shoulder, and pointed down. The ocean floor gave way here, sloping sharply downward; from where they hovered, the drop was probably a thousand feet. There were no words to express the shock, the sudden vertigo—and then, the profound feeling of safety. Floating above the chasm, buoyant and perfectly balanced, was as close as you could come to flying. Gwen had experienced it dozens of times, but still the feeling overwhelmed her. She was gliding like a spirit who’d escaped its container. She had no body. It was the freest feeling she had ever known.

  ON DECK Alistair had laid a buffet of cut melon and pineapple. Gwen peeled off her fins and unbuckled her BC, then rinsed them in the tubs of fresh water the boy had set out.

  “That was awesome,” Courtney told Gwen. “You’re an awesome diver. I had a great time.” She turned to her friend Amanda, wrapped in a green Pleasures towel, teeth chattering. “We swam right into a bunch of striped fish. It freaked me out at first. I never would have done that by myself.” She turned back to Gwen. “Sorry I flaked out at the beginning. I don’t know what happened.”

  “It happens to everyone,” said Gwen.

  “Maybe, but—I’m on the swim team? At Duke? It’s not like I’m afraid of the water.”

  “Shut up,” said Amanda.

  “Oh, chill out. You know what I mean. Did you go down at all?”

  “A little,” said Amanda. “But I got water in my mask. It was really scary. I made him bring me up.”

  “That sucks,” said Courtney. “They should definitely refund your money. It’s not like you saw anything.”

  Gwen could have pointed out the sign at the helm—NO REFUNDS—but didn’t. The girls seemed to have forgotten she was there. On dry land, the natural order had been restored.

  THE SUN was blazing as the Toussainte roared up to the pier.

  “Thank you, everybody,” said Captain Rico as he helped the divers, wet and sunburned, off the boat. Amanda handed him a slip of paper as she passed. He smiled but said nothing, just tucked the paper into his pocket.

  Her room number, Gwen thought. Of course: it was probably a regular occurrence. How many pretty, scared divers did Rico comfort in a week, a month, a year? No wonder the man was always smiling.

  She hefted her tank to her shoulder and headed for the pier. “Wait,” said Rico, touching her shoulder. “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Um, no,” she mumbled.

  “Please. Sit down a minute.” He called to Alistair, who was tying the boat to the pier: “Tomorrow I come at eight o’clock sharp. Me fais pas attendre. This time you will be ready. Yes?”

  “Yes,” the boy called.

  Rico turned to Gwen. “I want to thank you for your help today. I saw you with that girl. You were very patient with her.”

  Gwen flushed. “She was just nervous. She did fine.”

  “The other one was barely able to swim. She had no business doing scuba.” Again he rubbed the stubble on his head. It seemed to be a habitual gesture. “The resorts, they are totally irresponsible. But they are very powerful on the island. They do what they want. It’s surprising nobody has been killed yet. Anyway.” He smiled disarmingly. “You saved my skin today. Often there is one diver who needs extra help. Normally there are not two.”

  “I didn’t mind,” Gwen said, smiling in spite of herself.

  “The Blue Wall is an extraordinary dive. It isn’t fair that you spent all your time looking after that poor girl. That’s my job, not yours. So I owe something to you.” He paused. “Have you ever been diving at night?”

  “No,” Gwen said.

  “It’s a beautiful thing. You see different fishes, langoustines, all the nocturne animals. It’s like the second shift coming to work.” He looked up at the sky, vivid blue, a faint, chalky moon hanging in the distance. “See? The moon will be full tonight, perfect conditions. Will you come with me?”

  Gwen hesitated.

  “This question is an easy one. You say, Yes, Rico, I would love to come.”

  “Yes, Rico,” said Gwen, her heart hammering. “I would love to come.”

  SHE RETURNED to the pier at just before sunset, empty handed. No need to bring dive gear, Rico had told her; Alistair’s would fit her fine.

  They motored away from the pier. A stiff wind lifted her hair. Calypso music tinkled in the distance—the same musicians, probably, as the night before, in their dark trousers and white shirts. She glanced back at the shore, the resort ablaze with lights. Pleasure’s own second shift—the crowded hot tubs, the swim-up blackjack—had just begun.

  They traveled half a mile before Rico cut the engine. A strange current passed through her, an exhilarating terror. Alone at sea, at night, with a total stranger. It dawned on her that nobody in the world knew where she was.

  They dropped anchor just before sunset. Rico raised the dive flag as Gwen got into her gear. Alistair’s BC fit her snugly, but would loosen up underwater. Silently Rico lifted the air tank to her back. His silence surprised and pleased her. She had always disliked conversation before diving. Her brother Billy, sensing this, had always left her in peace.

  “I’ll carry the floodlight. Just stay close to me.” Rico showed Gwen a smaller flashlight. “This is your marker light.” He attached it to the plastic D ring on her BC, just below her breast.

  They stepped off together. Gwen blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. She could discern the darting outlines of triggerfish diving downward, settling into the coral. Rico pointed to a sleeping parrot fish wrapped in its jellied blanket. In the distance a sleek shape lurked: a reef shark skirting the coral, hunting its prey.

  They drifted on, passing other travelers. A jaunty seahorse floated overhead. An octopus parachuted through. Gwen watched in amazement the tiny crabs emerging from their holes. The second shift coming to work.

  Up ahead Rico waited. He had trained his light on a flat rock. What is he doing? Gwen wondered. A moment later a black shape swooped in out of nowhere, and her heart leaped. The manta ray was big as a barn door and quick as a bat. The floodlight had attracted plankton; now the rays were coming in to feed.

  Suddenly Rico stopped short. He shone the light upward. A school of fish—an immense cone of grouper—swam toward the surface. Gwen held her breath: a spawning rise. She stayed perfectly still, feeling Rico’s nearness, her own breathing, all the life surrounding them, the two of them suspended in this grainy and fertile bath.

  Rico touched her shoulder. The water was speckled with dinoflagellates, tiny particles of iridescent green. Sparks flew.

  WHO WAS he? Where had he come from? On deck, wrapped head to toe in an immense beach towel, drinking wine from a plastic tumbler, Gwen asked these questions.

  Rico came from the south side of the island, across the Calliope Mountains, a hundred kilometers away from the posh resorts of the north side. He was raised in a small village called Le Verdier, where his grandmother Toussainte Victoire farmed a small plot of land with her deaf son, Nestor. Her older sons had been killed fighting for the British. The men of St. Raphael, in no other sense British, were British enough to be killed in the war. R
ico’s mother was Toussainte’s youngest, the child of her middle age. She had run away at sixteen to the city of Pointe Mathilde. “It was a rich city at that moment, and full of foreigners,” Rico explained. “They came for the beau kseet.”

  “Beau kseet?” Gwen repeated.

  “It is used to make aluminum. For years the British took our beau kseet and gave us nothing for it—one shilling per ton.”

  “You aren’t crazy about the British,” said Gwen.

  “How can that be,” said Rico, “when I am British myself?” His father was a Londoner; he’d stayed several months at the Victoria Hotel, where Rico’s mother worked as a chambermaid. When she discovered her pregnancy, he had already gone back to England, leaving no phone number, no address. Rico’s mother returned to the village to give birth.

  She disappeared soon after, and it was Toussainte Victoire who’d raised Rico in her tiny house. She had been born a slave. The British had outlawed this practice, but the plantation owners paid no attention. Toussainte’s father, a cane cutter, was paid nothing and was not allowed to leave. “To me that is a slave,” Rico said.

  An act of God had won his ancestors their freedom. One Sunday morning, after belching steam for many years, Montagne-Marie blew wide open, burying the plantation in molten rock and engulfing the church of Marie des Anges, where the plantation owner and his family had gone to pray. That morning Rico’s great-grandparents had gone fishing; they watched the explosion from a kilometer offshore, from the mahogany-trunk canoe his great-grandfather had made. As they watched, his wife had gone into labor. Shrouded in smoke from the volcan, Toussainte Victoire was born.

  The plantation destroyed, Toussainte’s father moved his family six kilometers inland. He grew breadfruit and yams for a man called Thibault, who let them keep enough to feed themselves.

  After her parents died Toussainte continued to farm the land. Her plot was bordered by fig and mango trees, which she had planted herself. Fruit trees were rare in the village; they would not grow in its poor soil, thin and ashy from Montagne-Marie. Only Toussainte Victoire could make them flourish. The village women wondered why. The land she farmed was no different from their own, the soil so meager that even breadfruit was difficult to grow. Toussainte, born as the volcan erupted; a fierce, tiny woman with reddish hair—“like you,” Rico said. Her son’s deafness had saved him from the war; if he had been born normal, his mother would now be alone. All this was considered evidence of sorcery. The villagers kept their distance. All except for Toussainte’s sister-in-law, Mignonne Dollet, who every few days appeared at her front door, demanding her share of Toussainte’s fruit. If she had been a stranger (Rico was insistent on this point), his grandmother would have given her an armload, but her whole life she’d had nothing but grief from Mignonne Dollet, who’d convinced her brother Toussainte was beneath him. Too ugly. Too black.

  When she refused to hand over the fruit, Mignonne was furieuse. And the next day Thibault drove up in his wagon. He had been told about the fruit.

  To his surprise Toussainte had a basketful waiting, and handed it over graciously. But later that day, enjoying a ripe mango on his porch, Thibault had collapsed to the floor clutching his chest. The half-eaten mango had rolled to the ground where it was soon covered with ants. Thibault’s wife refused to touch it. “Let them have it, the dirty thing,” she said. “At least we will be rid of our ants.”

  Gwen frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “A cardiac,” said Rico. “He suffered a fatal cardiac.”

  She regarded him with amusement. “The fruit gave him a heart attack?”

  “Yes, the fruit. What else could it be?”

  Gwen laughed. “My brother is a cardiologist. He could give you ten reasons.”

  “If he were a cardiologist in the Caribbean,” said Rico, “he would know of such things.”

  The wind kicked up. Gwen adjusted the beach towel, shivering a little. “What happened to your grandmother? Is she still living?”

  “Oh yes. She is always living.” Rico looked at Gwen. “You look cold. Come here.”

  He said it simply, naturally, as though they had known each other for years.

  Gwen rose. Her body felt loose and warm. Rico parted his legs and she sat between them, as a child might. She leaned back against his chest. His skin surprised hers with its warmth. She hadn’t been so close to another human being in ten years. And probably never would be again.

  “What’s that?” said Rico. “Just now. Something made you shiver.”

  He wrapped an arm around her rib cage and reached around to hand her the cup of wine. They sat this way for a moment, or several years, who could tell? Gwen drained the cup.

  “It’s getting late,” he said finally. “I should get you back to land. Come.” He squeezed her shoulder and got to his feet.

  Don’t go, she thought.

  Touch me, she thought.

  It was as if he had heard her. He lowered his mouth to her neck. A liquid thrill ran through her, from his lips downward. It spread over her chest and dropped clean through her stomach, pooling sweetly between her legs. She wished for cover, the safety of darkness. This full-mooned night she could not hide herself.

  Thrill and fear wrestled inside her. They tore at each other like two dogs fighting.

  He slid the strap of her swimsuit over her shoulder.

  What are you doing? she asked, or maybe she only thought it.

  Your bathing suit is wet, he said, or didn’t. That is why you are cold.

  Gwen saw the logic in this.

  He slipped the suit from her shoulders, down to her waist. The cool breeze thrilled her skin. She looked down at herself, the white skin of her belly, her small spreading breasts.

  She turned to face him.

  chapter 5

  Halfway through a wet April, Massachusetts went to war.

  The morning had been cool and foggy. A damp rain soaked the town green. Down the road, in Lexington, eight militiamen had fallen beneath a cloud of musket smoke. Then the murderous column of British regulars had arrived in Concord, looking for weapons. The local militia had stockpiled cannon and muskets, which the regulars had been ordered to destroy.

  In Concord the colonists were ready. Had been readying for months, in fact, gathering supplies—a dozen cords of wood, six hundred bales of straw; a hundred and forty portable toilets, discreetly placed in strategic locations around Minuteman National Park. Troops had been mobilized and bivouacked—at the Best Western on Route 2A, the Comfort Inn in Woburn. By hand and machine, uniforms had been sewn.

  Properly outfitted, the soldiers massed around North Bridge. The minutemen were stationed on the far side, over the Concord River; three companies of his majesty’s troops held the low ground. The regulars had uncovered, and burned, small stockpiles of weapons. The British had come to set fire to the town! The order was given, the muskets loaded. As it did every wet April, the American Revolution began.

  Paulette stood in her assigned spot, shivering despite the two wool petticoats she wore beneath her cloak. She hadn’t missed a Battle Road in years; it was her third time as a costumed interpreter, and still as the first shot rang out, a thrill ran through her. Long ago, back when schoolchildren still memorized poetry, young Paulette Drew had learned the words to Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” They returned to her like a prayer:

  Here once the embattled farmers stood/

  And fired the shot heard round the world.

  She waited for her cue to speak. Some of the other interpreters gave the same address year after year, but Paulette was not complacent. Every year she made an effort to add something new. It wasn’t easy to do. The battle at North Bridge had lasted only a few minutes. Just one colonist and one British soldier had been killed. Only later, when colonists from the bridge met up with another group of minutemen at Meriam’s Corner, did the real fighting begin.

  A bit nervously, she deliverered her remarks. Later, after she’d finished, she was approached by a man
in leather breeches. You’re Paulette. I’ve been working next door for Barbara Marsh. She says you need help with your kitchen floor.

  Now, ten months later, she remembered everything about that moment: the blond man handsome in his uniform, his serious gaze, the surprising gravity of his voice. She recalled it as she sat drinking weak coffee in the town library, waiting for the rest of the committee to arrive. Waiting, if she were to be honest, for Gil Pyle, who must surely be back from Florida. She kept her eyes on the door, waiting. Then, just as the meeting started, she felt a hand on her shoulder

  “Hi there,” Pyle whispered. “Do you have a minute afterward? I need to talk to you.”

  The meeting seemed to go on forever. Minutes were read. Selectmen got up to speak. Paulette watched Gil Pyle from across the room, her view partially obscured by another of the reenactors, an aged gent named Harry Good. Perhaps it was fortunate that she couldn’t see Pyle’s face, that she was spared the embarrassment of meeting his eyes. From this vantage point she saw only his left shoulder, his plaid shirt rolled up to the elbow, his forearm tanned from the Florida sun.

  Finally the meeting ended. Pyle made his way across the room.

  Paulette rehearsed a greeting in her head. How lovely to see you. How was your trip? He would offer his hand to shake, and she would take it in both of hers. It seemed appropriate. They hadn’t seen each other in five and a half months.

  Head ducked, he approached her. His face was deeply tanned, white around the eyes from wearing sunglasses. The beard was gone, but he seemed to be growing a new one. She imagined touching the stubble at his chin.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m kind of in a hurry, but I wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten. I have a couple of jobs lined up. I should be able to pay you back in three weeks. Four at the most.”

  She blinked, taken aback. Money? He wanted to talk about money?