Nantucket Nights (7 page)

Kayla looked around Great Point to the harbor side. The rip current was raised in the water like a scar.

“I don’t see her,” Kayla said.

Val sat up on the blanket. “What do you
mean
you don’t see her?”

“Do you see her?” Kayla asked. Panic grabbed Kayla—a child running out in the road, a piece of hard candy lodged in a throat—imminent danger.

Val joined her at the water’s edge. “Holy shit,” she said. “Antoinette!”

“Antoinette!” Kayla called. “Antoinette, please!”

No answer.

Kayla tore off her clothes and dived in. Val followed. Kayla wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she went underwater and opened her eyes. The water was greenish black, too dark to see a thing, and immediately she was terrified of this dark, silent world. Her eyes stung. She flailed her arms through the water hoping to hit something warm and familiar, a body, Antoinette’s body.

She surfaced but saw no sign of Val. “Val!” she screamed.

Val raised her head. “I’m over here!”

“Antoinette!” Kayla called. She went under again and batted her arms and legs in all directions. She could see nothing but water—so much dark water. Her children were home safe in their beds, dry, warm, her husband, too, and she was submerged in the Atlantic Ocean searching for Antoinette. Kayla broke the surface and tried to put her feet down, but the water was too deep. A wave crested over her; she came up coughing. The current pushed her out; water had gotten up her nose, and her whole face stung. A voice whispered in Kayla’s ears—a
shushing
that washed over her with each wave. The Ativan and the champagne wanted to slow her down, rock her to sleep. She could just close her eyes and let the waves carry her away. But she lifted her arms and started swimming back to shore, and as she did, she saw a figure crouched on the beach, and she allowed herself a moment of sweet relief until she saw that the figure was Val, hugging her knees, crying.

Kayla let the waves wash her up next to Val.

“Oh, Jesus God. Oh, sweet Jesus,” Val said. She looked at Kayla. “We have to get some help.”

This sounded right—
get help
—but Kayla couldn’t make her mind work properly. How would they get help?

“I’ll stay here,” Val said. “You go. Call the police from the Wauwinet gatehouse. Go right now.”

“I’m too drunk to drive,” Kayla said. Another Night Swimmers rule was that no one left the beach until sunrise, when they’d had enough time to sleep off the champagne. “And I took a sedative. I can’t go.”

“You have to go!” Val said. “I’m just as messed up as you, and it’s your car. You have to go, Kayla, right this second!”

Kayla moved heavily, like she was still underwater. She pulled on her clothes and floated over to her car. It smelled like lobster. She eased the car over the ruts in the sand and headed back toward the Wauwinet. She started convulsing with the cold; water ran down her back. Oh, God, she thought, please, please, please God.
Why
had Kayla said what she said? Her head swelled until it felt like it was the size of a watermelon. The dunes to her right grew larger. How would she make it to the phone? Kayla yanked on the steering wheel to get the Trooper to stay in the tracks. What if she got stuck? Everything blurred; the car bounced as Kayla tackled the dunes.
Antoinette is going to be fine,
Kayla thought.
This is just a joke. She’s angry at me for saying something so stupid.

When Kayla reached the Wauwinet gatehouse, she grabbed a handful of change from the console of her car and ran to the pay phone. She stared at the receiver of the phone, and the buttons. Did 911 require money? Certainly not. But Kayla slid a quarter and a dime into the slot anyway and dialed her house. She needed to talk to Raoul.

After two rings, Theo answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Put Daddy on,” Kayla said. Her voice sounded calm, maybe tinged with low-grade anxiety, as if to say, /
have a flat tire,
or
I’m stuck in the sand.

“Mom?” Theo said.

‘Theo, put Daddy on, please. It’s important.”

Theo hung up the phone.

Kayla thought,
Call 911!
But she put more change into the slot and dialed her house again. The phone rang until the answering machine picked up. Kayla called back a third time. After three rings, she heard the hoarse croak of Raoul and she burst into tears. Time was of the essence—she knew that—but it took Kayla several seconds to regain her voice enough to tell him that Antoinette went swimming and didn’t come back to shore.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The Wauwinet.”

“Where’s Val?”

“Back at the Point”

“You’ve called the police?” he asked.

“Not yet”

“Well, call the fucking police, Kayla. Call 911,right now. I’ll call the fire department. Jesus, Kayla.”

“I want you to come out here,” Kayla wailed. “Leave the kids. They’ll sleep.”

“Call 911,” he said. “Do that one thing and then drive back out and wait with Val. Don’t go in the water, Kayla, do you hear me?”

He hung up and Kayla called 911. The dispatcher was a reedy-voiced woman—Charlotte, her name was. She had a daughter in Luke’s grade. Kayla told her there was a woman missing in the water off Great Point.

“This is Kayla Montero. I’m calling from the pay phone at the Wauwinet. This woman is a friend of mine. Can you send someone out right away?”

“We’ll send the Open Water Rescue Squad,” Charlotte said.

“And they’ll be able to find her? Even in the dark?”

“They’ll do their best,” Charlotte said.

Driving back out to Great Point, Kayla remembered Antoinette’s daughter, Lindsey. What if she showed up in the morning to find Antoinette missing?
I’m sorry, but Antoinette’s missing. She danced into the water last night, and now she’s.
..
gone.
Lindsey would blame herself. Because maybe Antoinette had disappeared on purpose to avoid this child of hers. Motherhood was firmly ensconced in Kayla, anchored like her soul in her body, but she could imagine what a terrific fear it might be for Antoinette to be faced with motherhood when she had rejected it so long ago. And Antoinette was just about to confess something. Maybe the confession was that she was planning to disappear for a few days, to ditch the daughter. This sounded cruel, not to mention unlikely, but Kayla liked it better than the thought that Kayla’s accusation had made Antoinette retreat to the water and that, once swimming, Antoinette was swept out to sea. Because then it would be Kayla’s fault.

By the time Kayla got back to the lighthouse, the approaching lights of a boat were visible. Val paced the beach wearing her white shirt and a beach towel tied around her waist. She had Antoinette’s Chuck Taylors on each of her hands and she banged the soles together like a child playing with blocks.

“She’s gone,” Val said. Her eyes were round and empty. “She just danced away.”

The remains of their picnic lay about. Kayla picked up the Methuselah and ran with it to the water’s edge, where she heaved it into the ocean.

“What are you doing?” Val said.

Kayla picked up the three champagne glasses and tossed them into the water as well; they shattered against the wet sand.

“It’s called destroying the evidence,” Kayla said. “You’re a lawyer, Val, you should know that.”

“We have nothing to hide,” Val said. “It’s not like we committed a crime here, Kayla.”

“We’re drunk!” Kayla screamed. “Antoinette was drunk!”

Kayla tossed the food and trash into the middle of the blanket and shoved it in the back of the Trooper. She loaded in the empty cooler. The lights of the boat got closer; she could hear the motor. She saw two more pairs of headlights driving up the beach.
Please let that be Raoul,
she thought.

“You’re crazy,” Val said. She ran to the water’s edge. “If they find that bottle, they’re going to think we’re guilty of something.”

Guilty of something.
Kayla watched Val wade into the water and retrieve the Methuselah. Kayla hadn’t thrown it very far, and unlike Antoinette, the bottle had washed back to shore, whole and unharmed.

Soon, Great Point was swarming with men. How incongruous, Kayla thought, that their women-only ritual was being invaded by these foreign creatures. A true sign that something was wrong. And what did it say about her that she was relieved, happy even, to see all these men—the men in the coast guard who piloted the search boat, two men on WaveRunners, the men of the police and fire departments who arrived in their Suburbans with their lights flashing, and finally Raoul, who trundled up the beach in his red Chevy? He ran to her like a hero from the movies. Raoul was the luckiest man Kayla had ever met. Just his presence would help.

Paul Henry, a policeman Kayla had known for years, climbed out of one of the Suburbans. Paul was short and wiry, quietly intense. He dressed like a math teacher, or like Mr. Rogers, in cardigan sweaters and canvas sneakers, and he had a crew cut. Kayla asked him once if he’d ever been in the military. Navy, he said—but the crew cut he’d had since he was six years old, and he’d never seen any reason to change it.

“Kayla, Valerie,” Paul said. “Tell me what happened.”

“We were swimming,” Kayla said. “I mean, Val and I were sitting here on the beach and Antoinette danced into the water.”

“She what?”

“She danced into the water. She put her arms out like she was holding a ball, and then she pirouetted into the water. Look, here are her footprints.” Kayla showed him the deep gouges that Antoinette’s toes had left in the sand. “Once she started swimming, we lost track of her.”

Paul Henry pinched his lips together like he’d just eaten a bad clam. “Never, never swim up here without a spotter. At night, no less. It’s irresponsible. Because this is what can happen. This is the danger. Do you see that rip, Kayla?” Paul Henry pointed. “You know better than this. You’ve lived here, what, twenty years? You wouldn’t let your kids do it, and you shouldn’t be doing it yourself.”

“Paul,” Val piped up. “Scolding us now isn’t helping Antoinette.”

Kayla and Val walked with Paul Henry to the water line. The waves lapped over Kayla’s feet, and over the tops of Paul Henry’s canvas sneakers.

Val pointed to an imaginary spot in the dark sea. “I saw her out there.” “And she swam straight out?” Paul asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Val said.

“I’m not sure,” Kayla said. “Now I can’t remember where I saw her.”

“It was here,” Val said.

“What was she wearing?” Paul Henry asked. “Did she have anything on—a sweatshirt or anything— that might weigh her down?”

“She was nude,” Val said.

“Why in the world were you ladies out here in the middle of the night swimming nude?” Paul Henry said. “What was going on out here?”

“We come every year,” Kayla said. “For Night Swimmers.”

“Night Swimmers?”

“It’s a tradition,” Kayla said. “We’re always careful.”

“Well, not careful enough,” Paul Henry said. “Not tonight.” He radioed the coast guard boat. The boat had a roaming searchlight, there was more talk of the rip current, and they were all silent when someone on the coast guard boat cut through the radio static and said, “With a rip tide like this, a person could be washed out to sea in a matter of minutes.”

Jack Montalbano, the fire chief, approached them. He was a big, hearty Portuguese with a crushing handshake. His wife had died of ovarian cancer the year before, and Kayla hadn’t spoken to him since she’d dropped a roasted chicken off at his house after the funeral.

“Hi, Jack,” she said.

“We’ll find her,” he said, putting his arm around Kayla. “Don’t you worry. The boys will pull her out on the WaveRunners. They always do.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Kayla said. “We know you’re doing the best you can.”

Jack shook hands with Raoul. “Heard you’re working on the Ting house,” Jack said. “Heard that job is so big you have your own phone number for the site.”

Raoul shrugged. “Lots of job sites have their own phone numbers. You know how it is.”

Jack rubbed his hand over his black hair. He was in street clothes: a denim shirt, khaki pants. Jack’s wife, Janey, had been a secretary at the elementary school. She knew every kid’s name by heart, and she had always called when one of Kayla’s kids was sick or in trouble. “No, I don’t. I’m sure as hell not making any money off the wash-ashores the way some folks are. And these Tings, they’re Chinese, right?” Both Jack and Janey had been born and raised on the island; they were warm and kind people, although Jack was known to be close-minded about anyone who wasn’t a native Nantucketer.
Round-the-pointers, wash-ashores
—this was what he called the summer people and even folks like Kayla and Raoul, who’d lived here for twenty years.

“Does their ethnicity matter?” Raoul said.

“Jack, I want you to find my friend,” Kayla said.

“Rumor on the scanner has it that you ladies were out here fooling around.”

Rumors were everywhere on Nantucket, Kayla thought. Even the police scanner. “Depends what you mean by fooling around.”

“I mean drinking,” Jack said. “Drinking and swimming in waters that would be a challenge for a good swimmer, sober. It’s two o’clock in the morning, Kayla.”

“We’ve been coming out here for twenty years,” Kayla said. “We’re not a bunch of drunk teenagers you can just
chastise,
Jack.” But her voice sounded whiny and overly defensive, like that of a drunk teenager.

He let a “Chrissake” out under his breath and then stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his khakis. “It might be best if you all stepped out of the way,” he said. “Maybe you could wait in your car?”

Kayla and Val sat on the front bumper of the Trooper with Raoul between them. Kayla watched Paul Henry pick the empty Methuselah out of the sand. He read the label as he walked over to them.

“You ladies drank all this?”

Kayla huffed. “We’re over twenty-one, Paul.”

“I asked you a question,” Paul said. “I’m your friend, Kayla, but I’m also a policeman and I’m trying to help. Was your friend drinking champagne?”

Kayla threw her hands up. “The rumors are confirmed. We were drinking! Blatantly breaking the open container law!”