“How much longer?” Lauren whines.
“You tell me.” Dad points at the wall clock, then kisses Mom’s neck, but she swats him away.
No one asks me, though I look at my watch and answer anyway. “Three hours, two minutes, and forty seconds.” I like to be specific. I like the way some numbers are multiples of each other, and others reach into infinity.
The clock over the fireplace chimes. The antique dealer said it was from Eastern Europe, most likely Polish or Czech. Mom’s people are Eastern European. Mom and her sister Jamie were Romanian Jews once, but now they’re nothing. They were sent away, orphaned by the war; they even left their accents behind. The clock makes a deep distant sound like it’s chiming on a mantel far away then bounces off a star in the middle of the ocean before finding our house in Portland, Oregon. The ocean is like the sky, only upside down, and meteors and comets are speedboats flying across it.
It’s time for Sea Hunt! Repeats of course, but who cares? Time will crawl unless we keep busy. I dash to the family room and plop down in front of the TV.
Soon the whole family joins me.
Stupid ads drone on and on. When Edie Adams slinks across the set in a long tight dress, singing about cigars, Dad peeks over his Sports Illustrated and whistles.
“She’s married to Ernie Kovacs,” Mom says, sitting on the arm of his chair. “Bet they’d be fun at a cocktail party, don’t you think, Paul?”
Dad shrugs.
Mom loves cocktail parties. Mom loves cocktails.
Finally the TV screen fills with a watery scene and a voice introduces Sea Hunt’s star Lloyd Bridges as ex–Navy frogman Mike Nelson.
Mom whistles this time.
It’s a stormy day and Mike’s out on his boat with two clients. One, a young guy with Poindexter glasses who doesn’t know how to scuba dive, but his busty girlfriend does. She’s a student of Mike’s and today is graduation, but he suggests she wait a day or two before the final dive. He warns that the water is unusually choppy and muddied, but the girl starts college on Monday. “It’s now or never,” she insists.
Mike frowns. “Stay close,” he says before slipping overboard.
Dad tsks. “Anyone else smell trouble?”
Mom and Lauren raise their hands.
Everything’s fine until they can’t see through the boggy blur of water. Mike spins around cautiously then gestures for her to stay close. A sudden movement behind him catches the girl’s eye . . . and just the smooth gray cheek of a shark is visible before it disappears into the soupy water. Her eyes swell to saucers, and, unable to remember the hand signal for trouble, she points over Mike’s shoulder, then toward the surface. When Mike looks again, he sees nothing. He shakes his head and gives her a thumbs-up.
“That’s right, ignore her. Typical man,” Mom mutters. “Haven’t we seen this one before? Aren’t they all reruns these days?”
“Turn around! Turn around!” I yell.
While the girl finally breaks for the surface, the sleek, gray, pin-eyed animal picks up speed, aiming itself at Mike like a torpedo, its giant jagged mouth ripping a hole through the blurry curtain of water between them.
I throw my hand over my mouth.
On the surface, Poindexter pulls his girlfriend aboard just in time to see the shark’s fin skim by.
Underwater, Mike raises his spear gun and fires into the shark’s mighty mouth. The animal jerks away, and quickly swims off, a trail of blood scenting the water around him.
“Whew,” Mom says in an exaggerated voice, “that was close.”
“It’s all over now,” Dad responds. “He’s history once his friends get a snootful of blood. Right, Lily?”
Mom reaches for the TV Guide. “Another happy ending. What else is on?”
“Lily?” Dad repeats, but I’m still underwater, my air hose torn. Bubbles fill our family room.
Lauren throws a pillow at me and, startled, I yelp. “Dummy,” she says.
“That’s enough,” Dad snaps.
Lauren’s not supposed to make fun of me. It’s a family rule.
* * *
I watch each TV show to the end of the credits, and when Sea Hunt is over, Dad calls us to the kitchen. “Okay, troops,” he says, “meet here at twenty-three hundred, sharp. Take a nap if you need to, but be dressed for the big night.”
Mom pours herself a glass of wine. “That’s eleven p.m., girls. You’ve got . . .”
Lauren tears outside with her jump rope. It’s summer and still light.
“She’s like a grasshopper,” Dad says. “Do you think it’s healthy for her to jump so much?”
“It makes her happy,” Mom says. “That’s good enough for me.”
There’s a “shark curtain” in my bedroom closet. Every time I pull the string to the bulb overhead, I see only white and I have to wait for my eyes to refocus to see more. Bad things can happen while you wait. Until Mike Nelson finally saw the shark curtain, he didn’t know he was in trouble.
Each room, as I head down the hall to mine, draws me in. I try not to look. Doors open, lights off, curtains closed to keep out the summer heat, darkness fills each room to brimming. Beyond it are more shark curtains, more blurry darkness.
At the threshold to my room, Mrs. Wiggins, our St. Bernard, lies on her left side snoring. “Sea Hunt,” I explain as I bend down to pet her. Her tumor is hot under my hand and the old dog tenses before she relaxes and wags her tail. Maybe the cancer isn’t as bad as Mom thinks it is.
Maybe Mrs. Wiggins just doesn’t like to be touched sometimes. I don’t.
When I flip on the overhead light, my fingers brush the framed picture of Jesus that Gramma Frieda gave me. His chest is open and His heart is wrapped in roses and thorns, but it doesn’t bleed. He looks down at the art books Mom put on my bed: Leonardo’s Gifts and Pastoral Landscapes of the Romantic Age.
Groovy. Mom never lets me look at her art books.
On the cover of Pastoral Landscapes, a golden sky turns black as it disappears into a blurry stand of trees, a place too thick and dark to make out what’s happening inside it.
In the living room, Mom and Dad laugh and talk. My best friend Judy calls them Romeo and Juliet.
A rock hits my bedroom window screen. “Watch!” Lauren calls from the driveway. “Hot peppers, Lily! Watch!” I count thirty superfast twirls before she makes a mistake.
On the sidewalk behind her, Missy Crenshaw rides her new Schwinn bicycle, smiling and waving like a Rose Festival princess. It’s a warm August night and still light at 9:17 p.m. Across the street, a phone rings and young, blond Mrs. Savage throws down her garden hose and steps inside. Somewhere a baby cries; a dog barks; a golden-oldie radio station plays “Mr. Sandman.” Rusty and Sherman, each in coonskin caps, sit on the curb across the street, quietly loading their cap guns.
I watch Judy the longest. Slouched and sad, she sits in her front yard reading a magazine, but she never turns a page. “If things don’t get better,” she told me once, “I’m running away.” So I watch her intently, looking for anything that would say she’s finally ready to pack her bag and sneak off in the middle of the night. She’s saved her allowance for six months, her babysitting money too.
Where would I go if I was running away?
Mom’s books are big and heavy and full of beautiful glossy pictures.