The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

  “I know. There was so much to figure out, and we didn’t want to say anything too soon because of Hazel . . . in case things didn’t work out.”

  “I’m glad they did,” he said, obviously pleased.

  He walked to the kitchen sink and filled a glass with water while I got to my feet.

  “Can you hang on? I need to talk to you.” He took a sip from the glass and clinked it onto the counter before turning back to me. I dropped back onto the cushion, and he stood there as if mustering his courage.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Perri can’t know about this, okay? You have to promise you won’t say anything to her.”

  “Oh God, Robin. Are you in some sort of trouble?”

  “No. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  In the past, whenever our conversations had started out with Don’t tell Perri, he was predictably in a minor mess—unpaid parking tickets, a hangover, an angry boss, a modest gambling debt.

  “Sorry,” I said, and I truly was. He hadn’t deserved my knee-jerk assumption; he’d had his act together the last few years. I gave him a repentant look.

  He came and sat next to me on the sofa, retreating for a few moments into silence. Our reflections stared back at us from the glass sliders, and it crossed my mind how grown up we looked sitting here. Thirty-year-old twins. So alike. So different.

  “I’m quitting my job at the hotel,” he said.

  “What? Seriously?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, for a few months, and then when I found out my novel had been accepted, it felt like a sign. I knew if I couldn’t seize the moment after that, I’d probably never leave.”

  “So you’re going to write full time?”

  “That’s the plan. I didn’t set out to manage a hotel, you know.”

  “I know, but . . .” I was going to say something practical about how he planned to support himself. I stopped myself, but I’d already pricked a nerve.

  “But what? Why does there always have to be a ‘but’? Why can’t you just say, hey, that’s great, Robin, go for it. You don’t know what it’s like to do something every day you don’t want to do. It’s soul sucking. We can’t all jet around the world with our jobs, Maeve. Some of us are stuck here.”

  He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into his temples, leaving white splotches on his skin. “You can’t imagine what I deal with,” he went on. “Guest complaints every day—I should write a book about that. I had to apologize to a man yesterday because the sun was too bright in his Gulf-front room. This is Florida, for Chrissake.”

  “Sorry,” I said for the second time in five minutes.

  “No, wait, I’m sorry,” he said, tempering his tone. “I guess I feel sort of desperate about this. I don’t mean to take it out on you. Look, I appreciate that Perri gave me this job, but I can’t keep doing it. There’s never any time left to write. You don’t have to worry—I’m not asking for money. I have the book advance coming. It’s not a whopping sum—I mean I’m lucky they’re printing the thing at all, but it will support me for a while.”

  “When are you planning on resigning?” I asked.

  “I thought I’d stay through the rest of the summer. I just don’t know how to tell Perri. She’s counting on me to take over the hotel one day. But I guess you knew that.”

  I did know. Perri had been so surprised at how good Robin was at managing the property, she’d probably gone overboard in her desire to turn it over to him, as well as in her belief he actually wanted it.

  He said, “She’s told me more than once how much it means to her that the hotel and her vision for it will stay in the family. I feel like I’m abandoning her.”

  His anguish over disappointing Perri touched me. “If anybody will understand, it’s Perri. Talk to her. Besides, she’s going to need time to find someone to take your place.”

  He nodded, and I felt suddenly proud of him for moving forward with his life in such a momentous way. Declaring his independence and his dedication to writing.

  “Well, the timing is good,” I said. “When I leave in August, you’ll have the whole apartment to yourself to write without me coming and going. You can turn your sitting area into an office.”

  Robin stared at me as if I’d missed the point.

  “Maeve, I’m moving out,” he said. “I’m going to find a place somewhere on the island. It’s time.”

  “But you can live here rent free. You’d barely have any expenses. You could make your advance money go a lot further.”

  “As long as I stay here, I’m stuck,” he said. He stretched out his arms and looked around. “This is where we came after . . . everything happened. The memories are still here.”

  It was the closest he ever came to speaking about Mom and Dad. Talking about them without talking about them.

  “There are other memories, too,” he was saying. “Sometimes I walk through the lobby or across the courtyard and I think about Rachel and it’s like yesterday that I met her. I should’ve moved out already.”

  His face tightened, and I actually thought for a second he might cry, for Mom and Dad, and for Rachel, who, it seemed, he’d really loved. But he dabbed on his brilliant smile. “I think getting out of here will free me to write differently, too. Better. With more flow. That probably makes no sense, it’s just something I feel.”

  “It makes sense,” I said.

  He stood, circling the coffee table. “Let’s face it,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of fun and made a lot of mistakes. Everybody knows you’re the golden girl and I’m the screwup. But I feel like this is my moment to do what I really want to do. And I’m going to try hard, Maeve.”

  I felt like he was speaking from that gigantic vacancy within him, the one that came after losing Mom and Dad. We both had that empty place, but we’d tried to fill it in such different ways. For me, it was with sharks and oceans, with Daniel and the dream of a family. For Robin it was writing. I don’t know why I hadn’t quite understood before now that writing was his way of keeping his connection to Dad alive—Dad, the poet, the English professor. After Robin’s writing was rejected over and over and he walked away from it, he turned to other ways of filling the void—parties and drinking and a sort of aimlessness. Perhaps it was pain over Rachel that returned him to his novel three years ago, or maybe it was the same inner hollowness as always, but here he was, trying to embrace his writing even more fully.

  And here I was, the golden girl, still wanting to take care of him, wanting his plan to work, and knowing, as usual, I would be there if it didn’t.

  Eighteen

  The next morning, a chime sounded on my office computer and like a good, digitally trained, Pavlovian puppy, I stopped what I was doing and checked my in-box.

  Maeve,

  I’ve been surfing with my brother in Croyde and Saunton for the last two days. I miss you. What’s the saying—salt water can cure anything? The divorce papers will be filed. I return to London in the morning to work out the final details. I’m sorry for the way things were left between us. I don’t know how you feel now about me going to Mozambique. I hope we can go back to where we left off, but if not, we’ve been colleagues before. I hope we can be so again.

  Nicholas

  I clicked back to the document I’d been working on, but it was impossible to concentrate now. I spun my chair toward the bookshelf and stared at the entombed baby hammerhead floating in its jar. I should reply to Nicholas, but I didn’t know what to say, especially about him coming to Mozambique. And what should I tell him about Daniel?

  Turning back to the computer, I typed “Dear Nicholas.” Whole minutes passed.

  That was as far as I got. I didn’t want to hurt him.

  I tried piecing words together on some rehearsal stage in my head: I bet you’re relieved to get the divorce papers signed, if t
hat’s what you really want. But how did I say, I’ve moved on—Daniel and I are giving it another try? Did you mean what you said about us being colleagues again?

  A knock landed on my door.

  “As of today, key lime pie is the official state pie of Florida,” Daniel said as he strode in. “By an act of the state legislature. I just heard it on the radio.”

  “I’m sure you’re thrilled.”

  “The vote was close,” he said, suppressing a smile. “The upper half of the state lobbied for pecan pie, the lower half for key lime. I’m happy to say we won. It seemed like you’d want to know about it right away.”

  I laughed. “So what are you really doing here?”

  “I just dropped Hazel at dance class. I thought I’d stop by.”

  He pulled up a chair to my desk and sat, his eyes narrowed and worried looking.

  “Something on your mind?” I asked, and when he remained quiet, I called his name. “Daniel?”

  “It’s just . . . I don’t know how to do this with Hazel. I leave for work early in the afternoon and don’t get home until after she’s asleep. We have half a day together, but she’ll start school in August and then I won’t see her at all. Being a single father and a chef is not exactly conducive to a quality family life.”

  “You have Van.”

  “I know, and Mom has been great, but taking care of Hazel almost full time is hard on her. I guess I worry about that, too. She adores Hazel, but we’ve completely disrupted her life.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to figure things out.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” I reached across the desk.

  Beneath Daniel’s words I sensed the slight hand of finesse, a bit of maneuvering on his part. Was he playing on my sympathies, nudging me to spend more time with Hazel? Was he reminding me of the ticking clock of motherhood? Drawing me deeper into his life? Surprisingly, I didn’t really care. Being alone with Hazel appealed to me as much as being alone with him.

  “Unless I find another profession I don’t know how I’m going to be there for her, and I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t really want to do anything else.”

  How had Holly done it alone all those years?

  “Maybe we need to put our heads together,” I said. “I’m sure we can come up with a solution. Maybe talk to Perri about another sous-chef?”

  “And you,” he said. “I worry about having time with you. Eventually, knocking on your door late at night won’t be enough. It’s hardly enough now.”

  He stood. I walked around the desk and wrapped my arms around him, smelling soap on his neck. Often, when Daniel tapped on my door at night he was drenched in the scents of wine reductions and shrimp and cilantro butter.

  “Why don’t I go over to Van’s tonight and see Hazel while you’re at work?” I said. “We’ll have an unscheduled meeting of the Shark Club.”

  He let out a breath and held me to him. “You would do that?”

  “If you think she’d like it.”

  “I think she likes you more than she likes me.”

  His eyes flickered over the top of my desk. “What’s that?” he asked, reaching over to pick up the letter that detailed my research term in Mozambique. He studied the letterhead: The Indian Ocean Center for Research and beneath it the image of a manta ray. “You’re still going?” he said.

  “That’s the plan.” It didn’t seem the time to tell him that unless I could finagle out of it, Nicholas might still be going, too. Even though Daniel didn’t know exactly what had happened between Nicholas and me, he knew we’d picnicked on the beach. He could connect the dots.

  “As you know, there are lots of sharks in Florida to study. Some kid was just bitten by one up in Port St. Lucie.”

  “I know, but Mozambique is a really great opportunity for me.”

  “Mozambique is in Africa,” he said, dropping the letter onto the desk.

  Had he just assumed I would change my mind?

  I folded the letter and tucked it into the desk’s top drawer, suddenly back in that little aqua house we’d shared in Miami while we were in school and planning our wedding—that day I’d told him I was going to Fiji for my dissertation. It had set in motion the beginning of the end of us. I remembered how he’d lashed out: I put our relationship first. Would it be so hard for you to do that?

  Were we going to do this all over again?

  For a moment, he cupped my face in his hands and smiled at me. “You can’t blame me for wanting you to stay close to home.”

  Anger flared in me. No, I don’t blame you for that. It’s the assumption you made. The idea that I would drop everything because of you. I felt a sudden twinge of fear. The beginning of the end. But that was then, I told myself. This is now. We’re not the same people.

  I said, “I get it, and believe me, when I think of leaving you . . . I can’t even make sense of it. I spent so long thinking of what it would be like to be near you again that to think of leaving . . . It’s hard for me, too.”

  “I’m not asking you not to go, but I just got you back. What if I was taking off to China next month?”

  “I would miss you terribly. And I would probably say something to you like, But I just got you back.”

  “See?”

  I grabbed his hands. I knew I would miss him. Hazel, too, and for the first time I questioned going.

  After he left, I returned to the e-mail I’d been trying to compose.

  Dear Nicholas,

  I’m glad you got some surfing in. “The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears or the sea.” Isak Dinesen said that or more accurately, as Perri would insist on saying, Karen Blixen said it. (I looked this up by the way.)

  A lot has happened here. I hate trying to explain it in an e-mail. After you get home, we should talk.

  Maeve

  I hit the send button.

  Nineteen

  Later that same day, I arrived at Van’s, lugging Perri’s tackle box stuffed with art supplies. My plan was to show Hazel how to make a necklace with the shark tooth she’d found. “She’s in her room,” Van said, giving me a quick hug. “The old guest room.”

  I climbed the stairs and tiptoed along the hall, wanting to surprise her. Pausing at the door to Daniel’s room, I clipped on my shark badge, then lingered a moment, nudging open his door for a glimpse, grimacing as it emitted a loud, whining plea to be oiled. The bed was made. A hamper sat empty in the corner. A few unpacked boxes had been pushed under the window. There was a small television on the chest of drawers, a book on the bedside table—The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and a photograph of him and Hazel. That was all.

  Hazel’s door was ajar, and peeking inside I saw her sitting on the floor gazing into a Victorian dollhouse and clutching a small plastic giraffe. She studied the rooms with intensity, her lips pursed out like a tiny radish. She was still wearing her black ballet leotard and pink tights.

  Her room looked freshly painted, a cheerful cerulean blue. Butterfly-print curtains were drawn back at the window revealing the bay that lapped up behind the house, copper dark in the evening light.

  “Knock, knock,” I said.

  She leaped up, surprise breaking over her face. “Maeve!” she cried, and ran to me, grabbing me around the waist. Her shark badge was pinned to her leotard, and I wondered if she’d worn it to class.

  “Are you busy? I thought we could have a Shark Club meeting,” I said.

  “I’m just working on my dollhouse. Dad gave it to me for Christmas.” It was overrun with wild animals: a cheetah in a claw-foot bathtub; a zebra, a camel, a bear, and a hippo at the dining table; a buffalo in the bedroom lying on a little brass bed; monkeys on the roof; lions in the kitchen; an elephant in the nursery. A stiff family of five humans in 1890s dress were lined up in the living room along with a gorilla. A kind of Victorian zoo bacchanalia.

 
“What’s all this?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Dad said a cheetah can run seventy miles an hour.”

  “Do they take baths in a tub, too?”

  She giggled.

  I handed her the tackle box and told her my shark-tooth necklace idea. As she pulled everything out of the box, creating a mound of multicolored ribbons, buttons, pipe cleaners, mini pliers, felt squares, hot-glue gun, sequins, and wire, I wandered around her room, curious about the photos that were clothespinned to a line that ran the full length of the back wall. Up close, I noticed that all of them were of Hazel and her mother. I’d never laid eyes on Holly until now. She had that porcelain, corn-silk look about her, her skin and hair lighter than Hazel’s, her beauty unquestionable. I could see what Daniel had been drawn to, and the thought made me wince.

  There she was pregnant. Rocking an infant Hazel. Standing with Daniel at the christening. Posing by the Christmas tree, by a birthday cake. Nuzzling Hazel in a hammock. In one picture, looking particularly radiant, she sat beneath the white-and-green awning of the Café de Flore in Paris holding Hazel on her lap, a chic apple-red scarf wound about her neck in the sort of elaborate knot you might see in Vogue. Hazel gripped the hem of the scarf in her small fist. That should’ve been me. It was a ludicrous thought, petty and illogical and shameful, but it came nonetheless. I should have been the one holding Daniel’s little girl on my lap.

  “That’s Mom,” Hazel said, coming up behind me.

  “She took you to Paris? How old were you?”

  “Four. I had a sailboat that I carried everywhere.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I put it in the fountains. They have a million fountains.” Her eyes swept along the row of photos. “Mom sang to me in French.”

  “Do you know any French words?”

  “I know boeuf bourguignon, poulet, and gâteau.”

  “That’s really good.”

  “Mom called it gâteau when she baked cakes.”