The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

  Hazel hugged me while Daniel watched, his face a mask of reserve and uncertainty. We exchanged stilted hellos, after which Hazel led me to the table for what I imagined would be the most subdued birthday celebration ever.

  A pizza delivery guy appeared, stepping apprehensively onto the terrace, no doubt wondering if he’d arrived at the correct address. Daniel met him, retrieving several bills fom his wallet, then took two giant pizza boxes from him.

  “Your dad didn’t cook?” I said to Hazel. “I can’t believe it.”

  “He made the cake,” she said. “But it’s a surprise what kind it is.”

  “Dinner is served,” Daniel said, setting the boxes on the table.

  Hazel flipped open one of the lids and inspected the pizza. All cheese. Not a vegetable in sight. Daniel’s name may have been on the invitation, but this party was for Hazel. I caught his eye and smiled. He managed a smile back before snapping open his napkin and grabbing a slice.

  As we ate, we talked about Hazel’s school starting next week. Hazel gave me the highlights of her back-to-school shopping. An eraser shaped like a mobile phone, an Angelina Ballerina lunchbox, and rainbow shoelaces.

  The sunlight waned and the soft outside lights turned on along with the festive string bulbs. We’d nearly finished off one of the pizzas when Daniel retrieved a covered cake pedestal and lifted off the top to reveal a rather plain, three-layered cake iced white. It didn’t rouse much elation from Hazel until he cut into it.

  “Chocolate!” she exclaimed.

  “Wait,” I said. “What about candles?”

  “Oh right,” Daniel said, reaching in his pocket. “But they’ll never stay lit in this wind.”

  “Let’s try,” I said.

  Hazel and Daniel arbitrarily stuck five candles into the top of the cake, and we huddled around it, trying to block the wind, laughing. Daniel was right, the tiny flames blew out almost as soon as he lit the wicks. When we got one flame to stay put, Hazel and I sang a speedy “Happy Birthday,” racing each other to the end.

  “Make a wish,” Hazel shouted. “Hurry.”

  A wish. He looked at me, and I had to look away, the awkwardness I’d felt when I’d first arrived returning.

  Daniel put big slices onto our plates. After we’d devoured them, Hazel leaned back in her chair, purposely sticking out her belly, and threatened to eat another piece.

  “Give it a few minutes,” Daniel said.

  Voices erupted from the beach, and Hazel wandered to the rail and peered over. “There are lots of people down there,” she said.

  As the tumult grew, Daniel and I joined her. A crowd was gathered around a loggerhead turtle nest. The babies were hatching.

  We hurried down to the beach, where the throng was forming a horseshoe around the nest, leaving a wide path to the water. A Fish and Wildlife officer was already there, waving people back, cautioning them not to use flashlights or camera flashes, and kindly bending down to smooth away the mounds and indentations in the baby turtles’ runway, anything that would sabotage the hatchlings’ break for the water. Only one in a thousand would make it to adulthood.

  The wind blew even harder beside the water, and Hazel put on Daniel’s hoodie, cinching it around her face. The three of us squeezed through the crowd until we found a spot along the runway. I stood behind Hazel with my hands on her shoulders.

  The crowd squealed as four hatchlings crawled from the nest, pushing their flippers against the sand like small, willful oars.

  “Maeve, baby turtles. Look!” Hazel yelled. The whole scene felt strangely miraculous.

  I cast a glance at Daniel. Where does love like ours go? It had lingered for so long, like the soul that stays behind after the death of a physical body, refusing to depart. Maybe some part of me and Daniel would always remain, orbiting the edges. I only knew my life didn’t feel entwined with his anymore, that this time there was more freedom in the loss than pain.

  Two more hatchlings emerged and joined the others. Each time one reached the surf the onlookers cheered. When the last turtle had disappeared into the waves, folks hung around inspecting the nest. Hazel ran to the shoreline and stared at the water, as if trying to glimpse some last trace of them.

  “She needs you,” Daniel said.

  I loved him for saying that.

  “They’re out there somewhere,” Hazel announced as she sauntered back to us.

  Daniel leaned in close to me. “Why don’t you take a few minutes with her? I have some cleaning up to do back on the terrace.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You’re leaving soon and I think she would like it. Just bring her back to the kitchen.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Be safe where you’re going, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Before leaving Daniel informed Hazel she could “hang” with me for a little bit, and she immediately came up with an idea.

  “You wanna look for shark teeth?” she asked.

  “What, by moonlight? Okay.” I pointed at the sky. “But look up there. If that cloud covers the moon, we’re in trouble.”

  “We better hurry,” she said.

  She took off for the top of the beach where there was a bit more light. I chased behind her. We sat on the bottom step of the hotel access stairs.

  “This counts as Shark Club,” she said, scooping up a palm full of sand and parsing through it with her index finger.

  “Oh, it definitely does,” I said. For a few moments we worked in silence. “So. You know I’m going to Africa. To Mozambique. Remember?”

  She pulled the big hoodie down over her knees. “Yeah,” she said, so quietly I barely heard.

  “But when I get back, we can have Shark Club again, if you want to.”

  “Can we?”

  “Of course. We can have our next meeting on whale sharks. I’ll have lots of whale shark stories to tell you when I get back.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then, “You’re not Dad’s girlfriend anymore.”

  “Not anymore. We’re friends, though.”

  “You won’t be my mom.”

  “No. But I’ll always love you.”

  She looked at me and nodded. “There are no teeth in this sand,” she said.

  “Come on, your legs are covered in chill bumps.”

  I took her hands and tugged, and Hazel made an exaggerated leap into the air. “Aunt Maeve,” she sang.

  Thirty-four

  On the way to the research center on Tofo Beach, I stuck my head out of the truck window, letting the wind smack me awake. After thirty straight hours of travel—Fort Myers, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Maputo, Inhambane—I was dog-tired, relieved to be off the plane, and drinking in all the fresh air my lungs could hold.

  I had said my farewells to Perri and Marco at airport security. Perri’s parting words were the same as every other time I’d left on one of these shark research terms: Come home in one piece. I’d given her and Marco a hug, then watched the newlyweds stroll away, holding hands.

  The night before, when I’d told Robin good-bye, I’d handed him back his manuscript. “I finished it,” I’d said.

  “And? You’re okay it?”

  “I’m fine with it,” I told him. With time I’d come to see the story he’d written wasn’t the same as my own. Yes, his character Margaret had plucked an osprey feather from the water before sharing her first kiss with a boy who would eventually become her fiancé. Yes, she would be bitten by a shark. And yes, she would be jilted and left brokenhearted. But the similarities more or less ended there. Margaret ends up inheriting a boutique hotel in Vermont, where she feels trapped in a life she never wanted. In the end, she returns to the island of her youth and reunites with Derek. By giving them a happy ending, perhaps Robin was trying to get the ending he wanted for himself.

  “Just
one question—you were writing about yourself and Rachel, weren’t you?”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “You think you can still have that ending with Mindy?”

  “Hope so. We’ll see.”

  Robin had found a place of his own, a small apartment not too far from the hotel, and Daniel had agreed to help him move. When I returned to the hotel next December, his room would be empty. It would be the first time in our lives we lived apart. But as Robin had said, it was time.

  With the balmy African breeze hitting my face and the sun assaulting my eyes, I squinted at women on the roadside in traditional fabrics and headdresses, selling tomatoes and cabbages and exotic-looking fruit—a luminous blur of color. We sped past men on bicycles wearing American baseball caps, boys kicking soccer balls, small stores surrounded by stretches of tawny earth, and the occasional baobab or flame tree.

  The driver, a young Mozambican named Carlo, an employee at the research center, downshifted the skinny gearshift and asked if I was okay.

  “Are you sick? Do you want me to pull over?”

  “No, I just needed some air,” I told him, drawing back inside just as he hit a pothole that sent my head bumping against the truck roof.

  “Desculpa,” he said in Portuguese. “Sorry.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the truck turned onto a dirt lane beside a small wooden sign: INDIAN OCEAN CENTER FOR RESEARCH. A lanky dog with butterscotch fur greeted the truck, barking and wagging his tail.

  “That’s Bear,” Carlo said.

  We drove up to a group of thatched-roof bungalows arranged in a crescent in the sand, only steps from the beach. He nodded at one of the huts. “You’re in casita nine. Right there.”

  Like the other casitas, it was constructed entirely of reeds—the walls, floors, and small front porch. The grass roof was held in place by an overlay of mesh wire, but it protruded underneath in thick tufts. It looked like the little house was shaking out its hair.

  Bear moseyed over to greet me, trailed by an African man in a pink swim shirt and terrain sandals.

  “And that is Dr. Abel Mutola, our director,” said Carlo, as he plucked my bags from the back of the truck.

  I petted the dog’s head. “Hi, Bear,” I cooed, which promptly put him on his back in the hope I’d scratch his well-fed belly.

  Dr. Mutola welcomed me with a wide smile. “We’re glad to have you here. We can do the tour first thing in the morning—the cafeteria, the labs, and whatnot. You must want to get some rest.”

  “Actually, I’d love to get in the water now, if that’s okay. It’s great for jet lag.”

  “Now?” he said. “All right, of course. A team went out a few minutes ago. I’ll radio Gloria and let her know you’ll be joining them.”

  “Come on,” Carlo said. “You get suited up and I’ll take you out to them.”

  The research boats were moored in a wide inlet behind the casitas. Flying full speed into open water, I was seized by a buoyancy and freedom I hadn’t felt since Bimini, not since grad school, when we’d careered into the Atlantic on field observation excursions, my body vibrating with the kind of elation that comes when I’ve abandoned myself to what I love. Spray misted my face and stuck to my lips. The Indian Ocean. The blueness was profuse. Rolling, blinding azure everywhere.

  “You’re seeing it for the first time?” Carlo shouted into the wind. “The Indian Ocean?”

  I nodded, dumbfounded by the beauty, searching for the perfect words to convey my awe and finding none. “It’s so blue!” I said.

  He laughed.

  Within minutes another research vessel came into view—small with a front center console and a dark green stripe with OCEAN RESEARCH painted in white. Carlo pulled alongside as a middle-aged woman with short red hair gave me a wave.

  “Dr. Donnelly, I’m Gloria Walker,” she called in a thick Australian accent. “Welcome aboard.” Her whole body moved when she talked, not so much from the boat rocking on the sloshy surface, but from the energy packed in her small frame.

  As I stepped into her boat, she held out a short yellow harpoon rod. “How are you at tagging?”

  “Pretty good, but I’ve never tagged anything as big as a whale shark.”

  “You’ll get the hang.”

  While we strapped on our dive packs and gear, she filled me in on the whale sharks, showing me several images on her laptop that she’d collected for the database. “Could be some newbies out there today,” she said. “Oddly, two thirds of the sharks I’ve catalogued so far are males. Some have tracking devices already.” She planted an enthusiastic pat on my arm. “Okay? All ready? Two members of the team are already down there.”

  We sat on the edge of the boat and flipped backward into the water. After two seconds of disorienting madness, I kicked my fins and trailed Gloria, descending steadily with the harpoon rod. The blue was just as intense below, only darker, thicker. Reef fish fluttered past like multicolored confetti. A school of devil rays flapped by, spinning off tiny whirlpools. Then suddenly the other two divers materialized like apparitions on the rock-strewn bottom.

  I gained a foothold beside a stone and watched the others for signals. Time has always disappeared for me on the ocean bottom, as if mundane hours and minutes didn’t exist. We could have been there fifteen minutes or an hour when it came—an enormous, dark mass approaching in the distance. A whale shark.

  Some whale sharks reached over forty feet and weighed twenty-plus tons—the size of city buses, and even though this one was less than half of that, its size still shocked me. It approached with its gargantuan mouth open, its eye rotated forward as it moved slowly over the tops of our heads. There was an absence of claspers on its body—a female.

  Gloria clicked her camera in rapid succession, aiming the lens at the pattern of spots behind the shark’s gills, the unique fingerprint we would use to identify it, and signaled me to make the tag. I swam as near to the giant as I dared. My breath stuttered in my ears. Now or never. I kicked hard, darting forward and jabbing the tag through her tough skin. She quickened slightly, then cruised on farther into the ocean.

  Gloria pumped her fist, and one of the other divers gave me a thumbs-up. I gestured back to him, turning my thumb and fingers into the universal okay sign. The exchange had the keenest sense of familiarity about it—how many times had Nicholas and I communicated that same way? I studied the diver’s jaw, his hair. Swimming closer, I searched for his eyes behind the mask. Nicholas.

  He looked back at me, his mouth stretched over his regulator. Going up, he signaled, and I ascended behind him, my heart thudding, forcing myself to take measured breaths.

  When I reached the boat, he had already slipped out of his tank straps. Beads of water still dripped off the tip of his nose. He waited for me to remove my mask. “I’ve been here for two days,” he said, eyes gleaming. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  I unzipped the neck of my wet suit and laughed. There were a dozen appropriate things I could have said. Polite, ordinary words that had nothing to do with how I felt. They crowded into my mind, then fell away. Life seemed so slippery and brief all of a sudden, small and bright like a reef fish you must catch with your hands, and at the same time, large and fated—a whale shark moving toward me.

  Now or never.

  That night in casita nine, filaments of light squeezed through the grass roof. Wide awake, with my body on Eastern Standard Time, I slipped from bed, quietly without waking Nicholas, dressed, and walked barefoot onto the beach.

  The moon glowed full at the top of the sky, creating a cone of polished light on the water. I waded in, the waves slapping against my thighs. The scar on my leg shone like a long, white shard.

  I rarely thought of the blacktip that bit me without feeling the old remnants of mystery and urgency. The shark had let me go, it had simply let me go, and I’d been given a c
hance to be alive. I didn’t want to waste that. I still wanted to try and save a tiny part of the world, to save sharks, just as that one shark had, in the end, saved me.

  I tilted back my head and took in the dazzling expanse. I felt returned to myself, but it seemed a different me who stood here now. Before turning thirty, I’d been tormented by the ache for what I didn’t have: Daniel; a child; that lost, unlived life. But standing here now, my life felt round and full and enough. The sharks, Nicholas, even being Aunt Maeve—they were enough. More than enough.

  I turned and waded through the waves, back to the world above the water, guided by the moon that shone like a bright and blemished pearl.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to the following: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for her encouragement and big heart and for championing my first novel. My agent, Margaret Riley King, for her superb guidance, expertise, and wealth of support. My editor, Laura Tisdel, whose brilliant editing and insights have made the book stronger and whose endless support has made all the difference. Everyone at Viking who has supported the book and worked on its behalf, especially Andrea Schulz and Brian Tart. Amy Sun for reading the manuscript.

  Thank you to the following invaluable sources in Florida for taking time to answer my questions: Sergeant Dave Bruening, Marine Bureau Supervisor, Collier County Sheriff’s Office for background relating to marine law. Patrick O’Donnell, Fisheries Biologist at Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, Florida, who kindly met with me and welcomed me onto research trips in the Ten Thousand Islands. Theresa and Stuart Unsworth at Sunshine Booksellers and Chef Dennis Friedhoff at Island Café, both on Marco Island, Florida. And thank you to Charles Farmer for the tour of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

  Special thanks to the places I visited that helped me with the research for this book: Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, which is home to the pioneering shark research of the late Eugenie Clark, the Shark Lady, and which served as inspiration for the fictional Southwest Florida Aquarium. Rookery Bay Reserve in Naples. The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. And beautiful Marco Island.