The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

  “I bet Van is crazy about her.”

  “It’s mutual. She’d love to see you, you know.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Beyond the window, fishing boats popped up along the horizon, each one trying to outrun the setting sun. Pink light was sticking to the bottom of clouds and the tips of waves.

  Suddenly Daniel rose to his feet, and I did the same. It seemed he’d said what he’d come to say.

  But he hadn’t. He went on standing there, gazing at me, shifting his eyes toward the window and back. It felt odd and uneasy, being in the same room with him, seeing his chef’s jacket with its two neat rows of buttons.

  “Since I work here now, we might see a lot of each other, and the way we left things . . .”

  “I know.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down this road. The us road.

  “I tried getting in touch with you several times after . . .” He broke off. “I finally asked Robin to help me, but you probably know that.”

  No, I didn’t know that.

  “I just couldn’t, back then,” I said.

  He walked to my dresser and stood in front of the little painting—Maeve, the Shark. I stared at him, hoping he would let it go now, and from inside the silence came a flood of memories more personal than birthdays. I was suddenly awash in old feelings. That sharp, sweet, first love.

  At twelve, recovering from the shark bite, I was forbidden by my doctor to go into the ocean for six weeks, what seemed like a lifetime. Daniel, knowing this must have felt like a death sentence to me, brought me a jar of saltwater. He set it beside my bed, and soon we were joking around like always. As for the kiss and the declarations of love we’d exchanged in the water before the bite, I think we were both a little embarrassed. We were kids. We pretended it never happened.

  I went on loving him quietly and to myself, certain he’d forgotten, or worse, that he’d dismissed it as a moment of childishness. Throughout high school, though, he sometimes made me wonder. Like when he designed ways for just the two of us to pick up the Friday night pizzas or when he sat beside me on the sofa so that our legs touched while we watched movies. Once, when Robin left the room, he slowly pulled his fingers through my long ponytail, not letting go when I turned to look at him, but slowly twirling his hand, dropping it only when Robin returned. I’d raked my fingers through my hair countless times after that, unable to reproduce the feeling I’d gotten in the pit of my stomach. Despite all this, I watched him take a very nice girl to prom, and he watched me go with a boy from the baseball team. On the outside, we were buddies, friends, pals. On the inside we were filled with hidden compartments of confusion, awkwardness, longing, and fear.

  The first time we spent the night together I was eighteen and about to start my freshman year at the University of Miami. He was home for the summer, headed back to UM as a sophomore. One night, when he’d come by to see Robin, we’d gotten into the hotel elevator together, and astonishingly, he’d brought it up. “What you said that day in the water when we were kids, that you’d always love me, is it still true?” For a moment, I thought he was teasing me but he’d looked so hopelessly unguarded and serious, so defenseless.

  “It’s always been true,” I told him, and he was on my side of the elevator before I could go on. The way he kissed me—I’d not wanted it to end.

  We swiped the key to the E. M. Forster Room. If I had been nervous about my first time, I would’ve been comforted by the words from Forster that Perri had stenciled on the wall—“The poets are right: love is eternal”—but I wasn’t nervous. As Daniel kissed my scar, the quote arranged itself permanently in my head. We left the room exactly as we’d found it, except for borrowing A Room with a View, which I took to read.

  We went to enormous lengths to hide our relationship from Robin. Daniel had insisted on it, thinking Robin would be overly protective of me, that it would change things between the two of them, but it became a secret impossible to keep. Before the Thanksgiving break, when it seemed clear and irrevocable to me that Daniel and I would stick, I sat Robin down and told him the whole story, everything, starting when we were kids. I left out the part about the Forster Room. There were some things I would not divulge even to Robin.

  “I love him. I want you to be okay with it,” I told him.

  A look of short-lived confusion swept across his face. He said, “I think I knew this.”

  I chalked it up to our twin-ness.

  Now, in my room, Daniel studied something on the dresser with great intensity, what I imagined to be the painting, but then I saw him lift the brown-and-white osprey feather from the green bud vase. A feather that had changed my life.

  Holding the quill, he turned it over in his hand, inspecting it like he would the quality of a tomato. He couldn’t be sure this was the same feather, and I hardly knew what I’d tell him if he asked, but he knew—didn’t he?—that I’d saved it. No, displayed it. When I was twelve, it was more articulate than any diary. It held the memory of my first kiss and my first love, of the shark’s bite and the beginning of my inexplicable enthrallment with the creatures. I kept the feather because how could I not keep it, because so much of what mattered in my life, so much of what made me who I was had converged around it.

  Did it also suggest that I had never let him go? As he returned the feather to the vase, I watched his reflection in the mirror, but he gave nothing away.

  “I should get back to the kitchen,” he said.

  When I opened the door, Daniel stopped on the threshold.

  “Hazel said you promised to take her to look for shark teeth. If you’d rather not, I’d understand.”

  I’d made the promise to Hazel without really meaning to, but I wasn’t backing out. Somewhere in the hotel, hidden in storage, my wedding dress was yellowing like old, discarded newspaper.

  “I’ll take her,” I said. “A promise is a promise.”

  Eight

  A few days later, I sat on the ledge of the fountain in the outdoor Courtyard Café and waited for Hazel the Conqueror. I was fairly certain the discomfort of spending time with Daniel’s child was going to do me in. The sculpture at the fountain’s center was composed of the upper half of a horse and the lower half of a dolphin—the hor-phin, as Daniel, Robin, and I used to call it. It spewed a canopy of water into the air, and I leaned my head back and tried to absorb the sedative sound of the spray.

  When Daniel had called to arrange the shark tooth expedition, he’d joked that I’d cleared a background check. Oh, we’re making jokes now, I’d thought.

  “Hazel is really excited,” he’d said.

  “Great,” I told him, determined to stick to my promise. “I’ll meet her at the hor-phin at low tide.”

  In hindsight, sticking to my promise felt a lot like chumming the water. I was angry at myself for getting into such a complicated predicament. When Perri learned of the outing, she’d pointed out that I’d succeeded in facing reality, but perhaps this was too big a dose of it. “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” I told her.

  The Courtyard Café was akin to a rainforest. The coral umbrellas over black wrought-iron tables were flanked by a profusion of potted Arecas, date palms, bougainvillea, and lemon trees, creating a playground for the lizards that zipped around in alarming numbers. By now, the lunch crowd had abandoned the tables for lounge chairs at the pool, where most of them pummeled the tiny keyboards on their BlackBerrys, read business reports, made to-do lists, firmly believing that if they could just get caught up, then they could relax.

  Mist from the fountain had dampened the back of my shirt, but I didn’t move. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, watching the double glass doors that lead into Botticelli’s.

  When Daniel stepped into the courtyard, he paused to slide on his sunglasses, while Hazel squinted into the brightness, then skipped ahead of him. She wore a pair of wh
ite knee-length shorts over a hot pink bathing suit. A khaki field bag with a dinosaur on the front was strapped across her body. She stopped before me at the fountain and gave me a closed-lipped grin. Her bathing suit was covered in little black polka dots.

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  She rested one hand on her field bag. “We have a playdate.”

  “Yep.”

  Daniel walked over, his surf shop T-shirt partially tucked into his jeans.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, Dad,” Hazel answered, giggling, aware his greeting was for me.

  “You monkey,” he said.

  Hazel leaned over the fountain, peering in like a cat staring into a fishbowl, then walked around it, lifting her hand out behind her, reminding me of the leotard-clad women who lead horses around circus rings.

  Daniel motioned me to a nearby table. “She had a rough night last night.”

  I watched as she plunged her hands into the water. “Cold!” she yelled.

  “Oh? Is she okay?” I asked. Whatever the events of the night before, her upset seemed untraceable now. She wiped her hands on her shorts, a silver coin pinched between her fingers. She mumbled something—a wish?—and threw the coin back in.

  “She misses Holly most at night,” Daniel said.

  He’d said her name to me only one time before.

  “When Hazel is upset, she gets quiet,” he said. “When I got home last night, Mom had been sitting with her for hours. She wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t eat. She even refused to watch TV, and she loves TV.” He gazed at her as he spoke, his voice soft and tinged with sadness. “I got her to eat a hot dog and tried telling her a story. That usually works, but around midnight, we ended up scrambling a carton of eggs just for fun, putting food coloring in them. I slid plate after plate of them in the trash. Blue eggs, pink eggs, green eggs. A total waste, but it made her laugh, and after that, we fell asleep on the sofa watching Prehistoric Park.”

  “Does she get like that a lot?”

  “Every once in a while. It’s gotten better.”

  Daniel cooking pink eggs in order to bring Hazel around filled me with an irrational pang. I remembered Robin during those excruciating weeks after our parents died, the nightmares that haunted him, the terror that he would lose me, too, waking sometimes to find him asleep on the floor beside my bed. My grief had been less complicated, but it was no less profound. When it overtook me, I would rush to Perri and cling to her, not wanting her out of my sight.

  He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. They looked tired. The skin underneath was tinted purple. “I told Hazel we’ve been friends a long time. That’s all. I thought it was best if she didn’t know the whole thing.”

  “Agreed.”

  “If you need to cut this short, call me,” he said, handing me a piece of paper with his number on it.

  I stuffed it in the pocket of my cover-up. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  He called her over, bent down on one knee, and lightly held her wrists. “Be a good listener for Maeve, okay?” She began to twist at the waist. “She’s going to drop you off in the kitchen in an hour.” He glanced at me like a good parent might, seeking confirmation that I understood when to deliver her back. My first inclination was to salute. Our history was full of footnotes like that. I nodded instead.

  “Can I call her Maeve, or do I have to call her Miss Maeve?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you ask?” he said.

  Hazel looked at me and waited for an answer.

  “Maeve is fine with me.”

  Daniel waved to us when he got to the door. I couldn’t help but wonder if he found the sight of me and Hazel together unbelievable.

  Once he’d disappeared, Hazel looked at me like I possessed a starting pistol.

  “I guess we can go,” I told her, and she set off, speed walking past the café tables, her arms swinging back and forth, her hands balled into fists. Her feet came off the ground when a lizard ran in front of her with a French fry in its mouth. Once we reached the beach, she took off running, me chasing after her.

  Crouching where the sand was soft and dry, she pulled a plastic shovel out of her field bag.

  “Hold this,” she said, handing it to me, then riffled through the bag, producing a purple headband, red wide-lense safety goggles, and several Ziploc bags labeled TEETH in big chunky letters. She’d thought of everything.

  She pushed the headband onto her forehead. Her face was framed with pale wisps of hair, much lighter and finer than Daniel’s. “You have to wear these on digs,” she said, putting on the safety goggles. Sitting on her cheeks, they covered half her face. “But I only have one.” She waited to hear if this was okay. I assured her I’d be careful.

  “We don’t need these yet,” she said, stuffing the Ziplocs back in her bag and pulling out two paper circles. She handed one to me. “I used a cup to trace these. They’re shark badges,” she said with such sincerity it did away with every bit of resistance I’d felt about getting involved with Daniel’s child.

  Hazel had drawn a shark on each circle. Black body, triangle for a fin, dot for an eye. The shark’s belly rested on three multicolored squiggles. The shark was either swimming in colorful ocean water or jumping over a rainbow. With Hazel it could have been either way.

  “I love them,” I told her, and realized that I actually did.

  She produced two paper clips and told me I could wear the badge if I wanted.

  “Of course I do,” I said, and fastened it to my shirt, then helped Hazel with hers.

  When she hopped up, my God—she was a sight. The enormous goggles, her yellow hair floating like spun thread, the dinosaur field bag, and the shark badge clipped to her hot pink bathing suit. A mini–Margaret Mead convinced there were things in the world worth finding and that they were hers to find. If she were mine, I thought, I would move heaven and earth to ensure she stayed just like this. Where had she gotten her unselfconsciousness? Daniel was never quite like this. Did it come from Holly? Maybe it was uniquely Hazel. I didn’t know, but her earnestness broke me open.

  “I guess we’re a club now,” I said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “The Shark Club.”

  I led her down near the water where the sand was wet and where teeth were more likely to wash up. We sat down beside a little armada of sea foam. “Keep your eyes open for small black triangles,” I said.

  “Or big ones. You never know.”

  “You’re right,” I conceded.

  Please. One shark tooth is all we need.

  As she chopped with her shovel, sand flew, hitting her glasses, and she tapped satisfactorily on the plastic lenses. I dug up a handful of mushy silt filled with crushed shells and who knows what—particles of mollusks, mangrove pods, driftwood, whelk egg cases, sand dollars. I sieved through it, practically grain by grain.

  Hazel announced ten or fifteen times that she had a tooth, only to discover it wasn’t one. We tried different spots, picking and preening our way down the shoreline like hungry ibises. My shoulders began to sting from the sun.

  “Are you wearing sunscreen?” I asked, feeling protective of her shoulders.

  “Dad doesn’t allow me on the beach without it.”

  Of course, he doesn’t.

  Behind us, pelicans dive-bombed the water and gulped their catches. The waves carried on their drowsy music, while Hazel dug determinedly, leaving a string of potholes in her wake.

  Suddenly she stopped and looked out at the water. “Do you think my bottle is still out there?”

  “I bet so,” I said.

  It was either stuck on Shell Point Key or caught in the Loop Current headed south to the Keys. I was curious about what she’d put inside the bottle, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to risk her shutting down. I had no bag of tricks. No eggs
and no food coloring.

  “I didn’t know you and my dad are friends,” she said.

  “He was my best friend when we were younger. My brother’s, too.” I told her I’d known him since we were seven, and this beach had been our playground. “Have you met my brother, Robin?” I asked.

  “Oh, Uncle Robin. He’s your brother? We have a special handshake.”

  Uncle Robin. I tried to let that sink in.

  “Were you friends with my mom, too?”

  I looked at her hands, busy digging and sifting. “I never met your mom.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Nope.”

  “My parents weren’t married either,” she said. “Who do you live with?”

  “Your Uncle Robin is my roommate. We live here in the hotel where your dad works.”

  She laughed. “That’s weird.”

  “It is kind of weird, isn’t it?”

  “Dad and I live with my grandma, but he wants to get a house for me and him,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. He said I could get a cat.”

  “I like your grandma,” I said.

  “She’s a dancer.”

  “I know,” I told her. “She used to teach me ballet.”

  Hazel peeled off her goggles. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty. How old are you?”

  “Six.”

  She got up on her knees and piled sand into a tower, then dug out a moat. I hoped she wasn’t too disappointed that so far we’d failed in our mission. There had been discoveries, but they’d all been mine, all unexpected, and nothing to do with shark teeth. I was stunned by my fondness for her. She was more herself than anyone I’d ever met, so bright and curious and funny, and I could’ve talked to her for well over our allotted hour.

  “Did my dad cook back then?” she asked.

  “You mean when he was a kid?”

  Hazel nodded.