The Weight of Water (21 page)

Because I had taken on so many projects and had so little time in which to accomplish them, I was quite beside myself on the
last day of all, and most eager to finish the floorcloth for the room that we had made up for him, so that while I might have
been watching all day from the window for the first sight of Evan in the schooner and then on the dory, I was instead on my
knees. Thus it was that I did not even know of my brother’s arrival on Smutty Nose until I heard my husband halloo from the
beach.

Actually, it was quite an evil day, with a gale from the northeast sweeping across the island so that one had to bend nearly
double to make any progress. Nevertheless, I ran from the cottage down to the beach. I saw a knot of people, and in this knot,
a glint of silvery-blond hair.

“Evan!” I cried, running to greet him. I went directly to my brother, seeing his face clearly in what was otherwise a blur
of persons and of landscape, and with my arms caught him round the neck. I bent his head down toward me and pressed his face
to my own. Evan raised an arm and shouted loudly, “Halloo to America!” and everyone about us laughed. I saw that John was
standing just behind Evan, and that John was smiling broadly, as I believe he truly loved me and was glad of my good fortune.

And so it was that in the midst of these giddy salutations, my arms still clutched to my brother, I slowly turned my head
and my eyes rested upon an unfamiliar face. It was the face of a woman, quite a beautiful woman, clear of complexion and green-eyed.
Her hair was thick and not the silvery blond of my brother, but a color that seemed warmed by the sun, and I remember thinking
how odd it was that she had not worn it pinned up upon her head, particularly as it was blowing in a wild manner all about
her person, so that she, from time to time, had to clutch at it in order to see anything at all. Her face was lovely, and
her skin shone, even in the dull light of the cloud. Gradually my brother loosened himself from my embrace and introduced
me.

“This is Anethe,” he said. “This is my wife, Anethe.”

I
SIT IN
the foundation of the house an unreasonably long time, using up the precious minutes I have left in which to finish the assignment.
When I stand up, my legs are stiff, and I am still shivering badly. I cannot take off my wet sweatshirt, since I have no other
clothes with me, and I don’t think there are any in the Zodiac. I gather my cameras together and begin to shoot, in the flat
light, the detail shots I have described to Rich. I move methodically about the island, hunching into the wind when I am not
actually shooting. I take pictures of the graves of the Spanish sailors, the ground on which the Mid-Ocean Hotel once stood,
the door of the Haley house. I use six rolls of Velvia 2 20. I shoot with a tripod and a macro lens. I don’t know exactly
how much time elapses, but I am anticipating Rich’s impatience when I round the island and return to the beach. So I am surprised
when he isn’t there.

I sit down on the sand and try to shield my legs with my arms. When that proves unsatisfactory, I roll over onto my stomach.
The sand, I discover, has held the sun’s warmth, and it feels good against my bare legs, even through the cotton of my shorts
and sweatshirt. I take off my glasses and set them aside. Like a small sea creature, I try to burrow deeper into the sand,
shielding my face with the sides of my hands. I find that by doing this, and by breathing evenly, I can almost control the
shivering.

I do not hear Rich as he approaches. The first indication I have that he is near me is a thin trickle of sand, as from a sand
timer, from my ankle to my knee and along the back of my thigh. First one leg, and then another.

When I do not turn over or respond, I feel the slight pressure of fingers on my back. He kneels in the sand beside me.

“Are you all right?”

“No.”

“You’re soaked.”

I don’t answer.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I have sand on my forehead. I turn my head slightly, away from him. I can see the oily wet on the small dark rocks of the
beach, a crab at eye level scurrying along the crusty surface and then disappearing into a hole. There is a constant susurrus
of the wind, fainter on the ground, but ceaseless still. I think that if I had to live on the island, I would go mad from
the wind.

Rich begins to rub my back to warm me, to stop the shivering. “Let me get you into the dinghy. And onto the boat. You need
a hot shower.”

“I can’t move.”

“I’ll help.”

“I don’t want to move.”

I am thinking that this is true. I do not ever want to move again. I do not want to go back to the boat, to look at the faces
of Thomas and Adaline, to wonder what they have been doing, or not doing, what has been said between them. What lines of poetry
might have been quoted. Or not quoted. I know that Bil-lie is on the boat, and that because of her I will have to go back,
will shortly want to go back. I will have to participate in the sail to Portsmouth or to Annisquam or find a way to survive
another night in the harbor. I understand that I will have to be a participant on this cruise — a cruise for which I am responsible.
I know that I will have to repack the cameras, finish the log, go home and develop the film, and hope that I have something
to send into the magazine. I know that I will have to return to our house in Cambridge, that Thomas and I will go on in our
marriage, as we have, in our way, and that I will continue to love him.

At this moment, it doesn’t seem possible that I am capable of any of it.

I want only to dig into the sand, to feel the sand around me for warmth, to be left alone.

“You’re crying,” Rich says.

“No, I’m not.”

I sit up and wipe my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. The entire front of my body is coated with a thin layer of sand.
There is sand in my hair, on my upper lip. I wrap my arms around my legs as tightly as I can. Without my glasses I cannot
see the sloop or anyone on it. Even the Zodiac, only twenty feet away, is an orange blur. A shape I take to be a gull swoops
down upon the beach and lurches along the pebbles. There is comfort in not being able to see the shapes of things, the details.

I bury my face in my knees. I lick my upper lip with my tongue and bring the sand into my mouth. Rich puts his hand at the
back of my neck, the way you do with a child when the child is being sick to her stomach. His hand is warm.

It seems to me that we remain in that position, neither of us speaking or moving, for an unreasonably long time.

Finally I sit back and look at my brother-in-law. I can see him clearly, but not much beyond. He seems puzzled, as though
he is not entirely sure what is going to happen next.

“Do you remember the wedding?” I ask.

He removes his hand from my neck with what I sense as a complicated mixture of regret and relief. “Of course I remember the
wedding.”

“You were only twenty-two.”

“You were only twenty-four.”

“You wouldn’t wear a suit, and you had a pony tail. You wouldn’t kiss me after the wedding, and I thought it was because you
were cross that you’d been asked to wear a suit.”

“You had on a black dress. I remember thinking it was a great thing to wear to your own wedding. You had no jewelry. He didn’t
give you a ring.”

“He didn’t believe in that sort of thing,” I say.

“Still.”

“You and I went swimming that morning.”

“With Dad. Thomas stayed home and worked. On his wedding day.”

“It’s his way… .”

“I know, I know.”

“I thought at the time that Thomas was making an extraordinary commitment in marrying me. That it was almost brutally hard
for him to do.”

“My parents were thrilled.”

“Thrilled?”

“That he’d got you. You were so solid.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean you were rooted, grounded. They were tremendously relieved he had found you.”

“I wasn’t going to cause him any trouble.”

“You weren’t going to let him cause trouble to himself.”

“No one can prevent that.”

“You’ve tried.”

“Thomas isn’t doing well,” I say.

“You’re not doing well.”

“We’re not doing well.”

I shake my head and stretch my legs out in front of me. “Rich, I swear I think marriage is the most mysterious covenant in
the universe. I’m convinced that no two are alike. More than that, I’m convinced that no marriage is like it was just the
day before. Time is the significant dimension — even more significant than love. You can’t ask a person what his marriage
is like because it will be a different marriage tomorrow. We go in waves.”

“You and Thomas.”

“We have periods when I think our coming together was a kind of accident, that we’re wedded because of a string of facts.
And then, maybe the next day, or even that night, Thomas and I will be so close I won’t be able to remember the words to a
fight we had two hours earlier. The fact of the fight, the concept of an accident, will be gone — it won’t even seem plausible.
You called him Tom.”

“Earlier. I did. I don’t know why.”

I look up toward the sloop I cannot see. My horizon of beach and rocks and water is a dull watercolor blur.

“What do you think is going on out there?” I ask.

Rich turns away from me. “Jean, don’t do this to yourself.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“It’s painful to watch.”

I stand up abruptly and walk away from the water. I walk fast, meaning to shake Rich, to shake them all. I want refuge — from
the cold, from the island, most of all from the sight of the sloop in the harbor. I walk toward the Hontvedt house. From where
I have so recently come.

But Rich is right behind me. He follows me over the rocks, through the thick brush. When I stop, he stands beside me.

“This is where the women were murdered,” I say quickly. Jean.

“It’s so small. They lived here in the winter. I don’t know how they did it. I look at this island, and I try to imagine it.
The confinement, the claustrophobia. I keep trying to imagine the murders.”

“Listen—”

“There aren’t even any trees here. Did you know that until recently children who were raised on the island never saw a tree
or a car until they were teenagers?”

“Jean, stop.”

“I love Thomas.”

“I know you do.”

“But it’s been hard.”

“He makes you worry.”

I look at Rich, surprised at this insight. “Yes, he does. He makes me worry. Why did you shave your hair?”

He smiles and rubs his head.

“Do you love Adaline?” I ask.

Rich looks out toward the boat. I think that he, too, is wondering.

“It’s a sexual thing?” I ask.

He tilts his head, considering. “She’s very attractive,” he says. “But it’s a bit more than that. She’s… Intriguing.”

“And we’re not intriguing,” I say. “We’re just good.”

“We’re not that good,” he says, and he smiles. He has perfect teeth.

I put my hand on his arm.

He is stunned. I can feel that, the small jolt through the body. But he does not pull away.

“Jean,” he says.

I lean forward and put my mouth on the skin of his arm. Did I misread the trickle of sand on the backs of my legs?

When I look up, I can see that Rich is bewildered. I realize this is the first time I have ever seen him lose his composure.

“Why?” he asks.

I study him. I shake my head.
Deliberately,
I could say. Or,
To do it before Thomas does it to me.
Or,
Before I have absolute proof he has done it to me.
Or, simply,
Because I want this, and it’s wrong.

Without touching me with his hands, he bends to kiss me. The kiss is frightening — both foreign and familiar.

I lift my sweatshirt up over my head. Oddly, I am no longer cold, and I have long since stopped shivering.

I can hear his breathing, controlled breathing, as if he had been running.

I feel the top of his head, that smooth map.

He kisses my neck. Around us, gulls and crabs swoop and scurry in confusion, alarmed by this disturbance in the natural order
of the universe. I taste his shoulder. I put my teeth there lightly.

He holds me at my waist, and I can feel his hands trembling.

“I can’t do this,” he says into the side of my head. “I want to.” He traces a circle on my back. “I want to,” he repeats,
“but I can t.

And as suddenly as it opened, a door shuts. For good. I lean my head against his chest and sigh.

“I don’t know what came over me,” I say.

He holds me tightly. “Shhhh,” he says.

We stand in that posture, the clouds moving fast overhead. There is, I think, an intimacy between us, an intimacy I will not
know again. A perfect, terrible intimacy — without guilt, without worry, without a future.

Calvin L. Hayes, a member of the coroner’s jury who participated in the inquest held over the bodies of Anethe Christensen
and Karen Christensen, took the stand for the prosecution and explained in some detail what he had observed: “We arrived on
the island between eight and half-past eight P.M. We landed and proceeded to the house formerly occupied by John C. Hontvet.
Upon entering the house there is first a small entry from which opens a kitchen. When we entered the kitchen we found the
furniture strewn all over the floor, the clock lying on the lounge face down; clock was not going. I did not look at the face
of the clock; it fell evidently from a small bracket just over the lounge in the corner. The body of Anethe Christensen lay
in the middle of the kitchen floor, the head towards the door through which we entered. Around the throat was tied a scarf
or shawl, some colored woolen garment, and over the body some article of clothing was thrown loosely. The head was, as you
might say, all battered to pieces, covered with wounds, and in the vicinity of the right ear two or three cuts broke through
the skull so that the brains could be seen running through them. There was a bed-room opening from the kitchen; in that was
a bed and trunk, the trunk opened, the contents scattered over the floor. The body of Anethe was placed upon a board upon
a table, and an examination made by the physicians who were present. We then proceeded to the other part of the house. The
arrangement of the other end of the house was similar to the end into which we first went. We went into an entry, from there
into a room that corresponded to the kitchen, out of which another bed-room opened. In that bedroom, face down, we found the
body of Karen Christensen. The windowsill of the first bed-room I spoke of was broken off, window in the south-west end of
house. The body of Karen Christensen had a white handkerchief knotted tightly around the neck, tied at the back of the neck,
so tightly that the tongue was protruding from the mouth. Upon the inside of the sill of the window on the south-west end
of the house, was a mark as though made with the pole of an axe, and on the outside of the window-sill, the part that was
broken off, there was another mark as though made with some round instrument, as the handle of an axe. The head of Karen Christensen
was covered with wounds, but not so bad as the first one. Only one I think broke the skull. I found an axe there.”