Nell (40 page)

In only a matter of hours we will be gone from Nantucket, Nell thought. We will be gone, and then this summer will be gone from our lives except in memory. Fall will come, then winter. I will grow older. I will once more sleep alone through long cold winter nights. Oh God, she thought, why can’t Andy want me as I want him? Why can’t he see that life is short and happiness is rare and each day can be a treasure … or a waste? We could be so happy together. Why can’t he see that, want that, why can’t he trust the lesson of this summer we’ve shared enough to commit himself to more seasons? I will miss him so, his body, his voice, his presence. I want to
live with him
. He wants to
see
me.

Oh, I am like a child whining after a toy, Nell thought. I am like an animal hungering for food just out of its reach. I am a fool.

Out in the ocean, Clary waved at Nell. Nell waved back. Now
think
, Nell said to herself: what if Clary had confided that she was upset because a man she had known for three months had not wanted to marry her? Nell would have advised Clary to have more
patience. Three months, she would have said to Clary, three months is no time at all!

He has said he loves you, Nell, she told herself. Be happy with that, stop pushing for more. If it’s good, it will last.

Although, said another voice from inside Nell, look at Clary: She loved a man for sixteen months, the man loves her, and yet he does not want to marry her.…

Nell suddenly rose to her feet. She was restless with emotion, with a scramble of confusing thoughts. She could settle nothing sitting here, she thought. She could do nothing. She could only go on with life. Nothing would be resolved no matter how hard she thought, and if she continued to sit on her towel thinking in circles like this, she’d end up crying and embarrassing herself in public, alarming the children.

She decided to take a walk down the beach. She asked Hannah if she wanted to join her, but her daughter was too intent on building her sand castle. Clary and Jeremy were indefatigable, still out in the water. Nell waved at them and began to stroll down the beach. The movement felt good. She walked for a long way, so that when she turned and began to walk back, her children were only specks in the distance, small dots in the space of water and sand.

Surfside, Nell thought: Surfside, Cisco, Dionis, ’Sconset, Jetties. This island of sibilant beaches is charmed. It is beautiful and magic. No wonder she was so miserable to be leaving here, Nell thought; she had been so happy. She didn’t think she had ever been this happy for so long a time in all her life. That is something, she thought, that is quite a lot: three months of love and happiness.

She walked, looking at the ocean and beach, and smiled, thinking of this summer, this happiness. She had had days and days on Nantucket when life laid pleasure at her feet like the sea casting up shells onto the shore, with a careless, prodigal gesture. She had had sun, warmth, the singing sea, love, her children’s laughter, friends, Andy’s kisses, again and again and again. The days had not been eternal, but they had seemed that way, and for a while she had lived as if summer were the only season. For a while she had lived, here on Nantucket, with her life as harmonious and glittering as music and she had been as happy as music in the midst of being played. She had had that much.

And, she thought, nearing her family, though it was all ending now, she had the memory of this time. And her children had learned to ride the waves.

She was about a good city block away from her blanket when she saw the lifeguard in his orange trunks grab his surfboard and race to the water. At the same time, people began to rise from the sand and walk to the water’s edge; those in the water started coming out, then turned to stand and stare. Nell searched the shoreline for her children, but she was too far away to make them out in all the motion and glare. She began to run.

As she ran, she scanned the water over and over again, back and forth, searching: she thought she could see the red of Hannah’s suit and the shine of Clary’s blond hair—but where was Jeremy? It
can’t
be Jeremy, she thought, but she ran faster, knowing that people were looking at her, not caring, until she reached the water’s edge and Clary came up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders so that, just like that, in one brutal flash, Nell’s fear became a certainty.

“Jeremy,”
Nell breathed.

Clary had the wide-eyed look and monotonal voice of a panicked person trying to stay calm. “I think the undertow carried him out,” Clary said. “The lifeguard’s gone after him. It happened so fast, Nell.”

“Where is he?” Nell asked.

“We can’t see him,” Clary said. “He’s too far away.”

Nell pushed Clary out of the way so that she could see the water. Another lifeguard was on his way out, paddling the surfboard over the waves. Nell could see nothing—how could they know where her child was, one small child in all that expanse of water? Then, far out, she saw a brown sheen, a lump, the top of Jeremy’s head, bobbing up for a fraction of a second, before the water washed over it.

“There he is!” Nell yelled, and started into the water.

“Nell, you can’t swim that far!” Clary said, grabbing Nell by the shoulders and restraining her at the sand’s edge. “You wouldn’t be any help out there. Stay here. They’ll get him.”

“Mommy!” Hannah cried, wading up to her mother from the waves. “Jeremy’s out there!”

Nell looked down at her daughter. She put her hands on Hannah’s wet head, wet shoulders, goose-pimpled arms.

“You stay here with me,” Nell said. “Don’t go away. Stay out of the water now.”

“Will they get Jeremy? Is he going to drown?” Hannah asked. She was shivering and crying.

“I don’t know,” Nell said. “I don’t know.” Her body had gone cold.

“They’ll get him,” Clary said to Hannah. “He’ll be okay, honey.”

Oh God, Nell thought, this can’t be happening.
Dear God
, she prayed,
save Jeremy. Let them save Jeremy, please, God
.

The lifeguards, who had streaked out into the ocean with amazing speed, were now slowly padding in circles, searching. They appeared so calm, so aimlessly drifting. Goddamn them, Nell thought, what were they doing?

“FIND JEREMY!” Nell yelled at them, her fists clenched, and as if in response to her demand, one of the men reached into the ocean and dragged a body up onto his board. Together the two guards brought the boards and the boy in to shore.

They came in a few feet from where Nell stood and rolled Jeremy off the board onto the sand. She had thought that Jeremy would be choking, crying, scared, and so the sight of her son when they brought him in came like a kick in the stomach. She couldn’t breathe. She reached out for her son, but Clary held her back.

Jeremy’s entire body was grayish-blue and limp. His eyes were closed, and he was not breathing. He looked cold, lifeless, unreal. When they rolled him onto his back, his head lolled loosely to one side. The blond lifeguard knelt behind Jeremy and pushed his shoulders up, then, dissatisfied, flipped the boy over and pushed hard on his back. Finally, a gush of water and vomit came from her little boy’s mouth, spread over the sand, and sank.

“Jeremy,” Nell said. She wanted to take her son in her arms, to warm him, cradle him, talk to him; only then would she know he was all right, but Clary still held her back by the shoulders.

“Leave them alone,” Clary said. “Let the lifeguards do their work, Nell. They know what to do.”

A crowd had gathered around them and everyone was shouting. People were racing up the hill to the phones to call an ambulance, and the gulls still dipped and called overhead and the sun still shone down keenly with that seaside brightness that made the
moments seem eternal.

“He’s not breathing,” a guard said to the other, and flipped Jeremy over and began to apply CPR. For a few minutes he breathed into the boy’s mouth, then pushed on his chest.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Fuck.” Then he bent over Jeremy again.

Nell felt the hairs on her arms rise, the skin of all her body go icy cold. Hannah stood in front of her, sobbing helplessly. Nell gripped her daughter’s arms.

“No fucking heartbeat!” The guard’s voice rose angrily. Or was he afraid? He slapped Jeremy’s face, pinched his arms, then rubbed his knuckles fiercely across the boy’s sternum. In response, Jeremy’s face constricted.

“Good,” the guard said. “We’ve got a chance.” He bent back over her boy.

“Please,” Nell said. “God, please. Oh please, God, please, please, please.” She was not aware that she spoke out loud. All her will was intent on Jeremy. All of her life and its meaning was forced now into one true, absolute need—that Jeremy live.

Ambulance attendants arrived carrying a stretcher. They headed up the long path of sand to the ambulance, the lifeguard walking beside them, still breathing into Jeremy’s mouth. They went at a crawl, and there was a slope from the beach up to the parking lot that seemed to stretch upward with nightmarish cruelty. The hot sand sucked at their feet. It seemed they would never reach the ambulance.

Someone came up to Nell and said, “We’ll drive your daughter and your friend to the hospital.”

Nell nodded. At the top of the hill, an attendant took her arm.

“You can ride with us. In the cab.”

“Can’t I be with my son?” she asked.

“He’ll need too many people around him. You’d only be in the way,” the man said gently. “You’ll be able to see him, there’s a window,” he added, then handed Nell up into the cab.

Nell turned to look back at her son. They had put a black rubber mask over his face.

“What are they doing?” she pleaded, nearly hysterical.

“That’s an ambu bag,” the driver said. “It’s oxygen. It’s better than a person
breathing for him.” Then he turned on the siren and began to drive.

Nell watched through the little window as people in the back bent over her son. They looked as if they were fighting back there in the careening ambulance, for they were shouting and moving with such haste that Nell had to dig her fingernails into her hands to keep from screaming. Someone rubbed Jeremy’s arms and hands and legs. Someone put hot packs under his armpits and at his groin. Someone covered him with a blanket.

Nell watched, cold with fear. She knew she was helpless, at the mercy of those people who were gathered around her son, at the mercy of fate. She could only pray, and so she prayed, silently, as they drove to the hospital.

At last the driver slammed them all to a halt and raced out to open the doors at the back. Nell jumped out and raced to the group of people around her son. Inside the emergency room, Jeremy was put on a rolling cart and wheeled into a room where a doctor waited.

“Start an intravenous,” the man said to a nurse, and then it seemed to Nell that everyone in the room went mad, that they were all mauling her son. She saw someone savagely jab his arm with a needle and someone else rip his swimming trunks away, exposing his small genitals. Nell sobbed.

“Hook him up to the cardiac monitor,” the doctor said, and then came the moment when the screen of the monitor came on and even Nell could understand from the wavering green line that her son’s heartbeat was weak and irregular.

“Please!” she cried out. “Save him!”

“Get her out of here,” the doctor snapped.

A nurse came up to Nell and put her hand on her arm and gently pushed her back.

“No,
please
,” Nell said, sobbing. “Please. Please. Don’t let him die.”

The nurse put her hands on Nell’s arms just as Clary had done and gripped her firmly. “They can work on him better if we’re out of the way,” she said.

“Please don’t let him die,” Nell said.

The others ignored her; they continued to work on Jeremy’s body. The cardiac monitor beeped and the green line jumped along more evenly.

“There,” the nurse said. “There. We’ve got a heartbeat. We’ve got a heartbeat. Now let’s get out of here and let them work.”

She half pushed, half pulled Nell from the room and placed her in a chair in the hall, then sat down next to her. “He’s got a good chance,” she said. “He’s young, he looks healthy, we’ve got a good doctor, the best doctor, he’s got a good chance.”

“Just a chance?” Nell asked. “Isn’t he going to live?”

“I don’t know,” the nurse said. “I don’t know. But we’ve got a good heartbeat.”

“He’s so young,” Nell cried.

“That’s good,” the nurse said, her voice soothing. “That’s good. That helps. Little kids survive better than old folks. Their heartbeat and temperature go down fast, and that maintains life better. Remember that kid who was under water for half an hour last year? Half an hour, and he lived. It was on TV. They’ll warm your son up—what’s his name?”

“Jeremy,” Nell said.

“They’ll warm Jeremy up. Things will start functioning. They’re giving him an electrolyte solution because of the sodium in his system from the ocean, they’re doing what they can. He’s young. That’s a big help.”

“Could you please go see?” Nell asked. “Could you please go check to see how he is?”

“Sure,” the nurse said, and left Nell’s side. She came back and said, “They’re working on him. They’ve got a heartbeat. He’s not dead.”

“But is he alive?” Nell asked.

“He’s critical,” the nurse said. “I’m telling you the truth. He’s still critical. But we’ve got a heartbeat.”

Clary and Hannah came up to Nell, accompanied by a strange woman. They were all in their swimsuits and looked out of place in the technological formality of the hospital.

“How is he?” Clary asked.

“We don’t know,” Nell replied, “Oh God, Clary.”

“I don’t want Jeremy to die,” Hannah wailed.

Nell looked at her daughter, whose face had collapsed in grief. “Oh, Hannah honey,” she said. “I don’t want him to die either.” She reached out and pulled her daughter to her, pulled her onto her lap. Hannah wrapped her arms around her mother and cried into her chest. Nell bent her head and sobbed into her daughter’s wet hair.

“Well, shit,” Clary said. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“They’re doing all they can,” the nurse said. “Drowning’s not easy.”