Rocks, The (40 page)

G
erald came
to
the surface gasping, wheezing, unable to get his breath. The water felt icy, making it even harder to breathe. He kicked instinctually—sharp pain shot through his legs again. His knees were on fire, but the cold water began to numb them. His hands flailed, attempting to paddle—he touched flesh.

He twisted his head and saw Lulu facedown in the water close by. He pulled at her, managed with tremendous effort to turn her faceup, but submerging himself again. He kicked, screaming in pain, though this came out as a few bubbles. His chest spasmed trying to inhale, and he knew he would only suck in water. He kicked and somehow surfaced. He could only blow bubbles in the water around his mouth. One hand found Lulu again, the other feebly paddled; he went under again. Surfaced . . .

So he brought them both to the rock face, where he could move no more, but hung onto a button of limestone while holding Lulu’s head, her face anyway, out of the water, against his chest. He looked up but saw only the rock rising to the sky. “Help . . .
Ayuda
,” he exhaled aloud, several times.

Gerald looked down at Lulu. She was breathing. Strands of pure white hair were plastered untidily across her tan face—she looked disturbingly half drowned. He would have smoothed the hair away if he’d had a third hand. Then a small wave washed over her head. With a great effort Gerald lifted and held her more tightly against him. Her face emerged from the water with her hair perfectly drawn back from the hairline, as if she herself had tilted her head back underwater and rose face upward through the surface. Now she appeared groomed, and lightly asleep, as if she would open her eyes at any moment and look directly up at him from the cradle of his arm against his chest.

Now, at last, he could tell her.

As he opened his mouth to suck in breath to speak, another wave, a larger wave, washed over them, broke against the rock and pulled them away from the shore. Gerald lost his grip on Lulu. She floated away from him.

“Wait . . .” he bubbled into the water. His hand found some piece of her clothing. He pulled at her. But he was underwater. She hadn’t heard it yet. He was going to say:

I did come back, you know. With the sheep into the cave. You got out the same way Odysseus did . . . out of the very same cave . . . Then I lured them away—you never saw the film I gave Milly, did you? That would have shown you. I got them away from you and I took care of them—

Did she hear? Where was she?

Suddenly he knew that she’d fallen from the rocks. She’d cut her chin. He’d got his arm around her. He held her head up out of the water and looked into her face. She was only asleep. Her hair was shot through with gray; it would be white before long. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was all right now. He’d saved her.

Gerald cradled her head against his chest and struck out strongly for
Nereid
.

I could not have written this book without the love, nonjudgmental support, and belief in me and my work that I’ve received from my brother, David. I can’t imagine what or where I’d be without him. At best, living in a highway culvert, screaming at passing cars for interrupting my exquisite daydreams. I’m also inexpressibly grateful for the love and support I’ve received from Liz Sharp, Cynthia Hartshorn, Matthew deGarmo. Ports through all storms.

Many people gave this book generous editorial help. At Antioch University in Los Angeles, Steve Heller was my first, last, and most sanguine mentor. Also at Antioch, Dan Bellm, Gayle Brandeis, Jenny Factor, Seth Fischer, Christine Hale, Tara Ison, Jim Krusoe, Alistair McCartney, Bernadette Murphy, Susan Taylor Chekak, and Howie Davidson and Audrey Mandelbaum. I want to thank Antioch friends Mary Guterson, Vanessa Franking, Wendy Dutwin, Wendy Fontaine, Eric Howald, Ashley Perez, Rachael Warecki, Marcia Meier, Arturo Sande, Daniel José Older, Elizabeth Earley, Susan Nunn, Christina Lynch, Christine Buckley, Lee Stoops, Andromeda Romano-Lax, who are all somehow part of this book.

Joan Juliet Buck, Tony Cohan, Damien Enright, Kim Dana Kupperman, David Nichols, Peter Selgin, and Liz Sharp all read the book in various drafts and offered constructive help, and hope. Kim Dana Kupperman also gave an early draft its first copyedit, and got me a job.

I’m grateful to Michael White, of the MFA program at Fairfield University, Connecticut, and Mark Spencer and Diane Payne of same at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

I’m grateful to my writing students, all of them, everywhere. It always seems they are allowing me to work out my own stuff on their time.

In Los Angeles, and elsewhere, Annie Nichols for so much over many years.

Many people, in many places, were kind to me in ways that directly and indirectly helped me during the writing of this book, and afterward: Jon Billman, Dick Bloom, Selma Bornstein, Olivia Brown, Susan Burks, Jo-Ann Chorney, Peter Collier and Jeanne Davis, Bridget Conway, Tom Corwin and Marlene Saritzky, Larry Cronin and Marla Reckart, Ruth Ann Duncan-Thomas, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Leonora Epstein, Meg Files, Josephine Franzheim, Roberta Franzheim, Rick Gilmore and Donald Craig of Rick’s A/C & Radiator, Waco, Texas, Doug Grant and Kathryn van Dyke, Kate Griffin (especially!), Amy Hagemeier, Kim Hayashi, Sheyene Heller, Kelly Horan, Martha Kennedy at AJ’s, Tucson, Arizona, Elaine Lembo, Herb McCormick, Flo and Georgie Neve, Stephanie Pearmain, Richard Podolsky, Karena Rice, Jenny Rider, Bennett Scheuer, Aurelie Sheehan, Sue Slutes, Isabelle Stone, Jut Wynn.

I’m extremely grateful to Jennifer Haigh, whose novels inspired me as I wrote this one. And to Richard Russo, whom I often observed scribbling in composition books at several cafés in Camden, Maine. He made it appear quotidian and possible. And both have been generous to me since I’ve completed this book.

Kate Griffin and Georgie Neve found me my extraordinary agent, Patrick Walsh, who (while on holiday in Africa) scribbled also: hundreds of suggestions throughout a bulky manuscript that considerably improved the novel before he promptly sold it. Thanks also to Clare Conville, Carrie Plitt, Alexandra McNicholl, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Henna Silvennoinen, David Llewelyn, Dorcas Rogers, and all at Conville & Walsh. Also in London, David and Anita Burdett, Isabel Costello, John and Sarah Standing, and, not least, Gillian Stern.

You can never sufficiently thank your editors for their leap of faith, and all the people in a publishing house who prepare and send a book out into the world. My visionary editor Sarah McGrath and her team at Riverhead Books would be any writer’s dream assembly of book hatchers: assistants Danya Kukafka and Sarah Stein; publicity savants Jynne Dilling Martin, Claire McGinnis, Margaret Delaney, and Alexandra Primiani; art director Helen Yentus; marketing team Lydia Hirt, Kate Stark, Mary Stone; copy chief Linda Rosenberg and copy editor Martha Schwartz; managing editor Lisa D’Agostino; and Geoff Kloske, the publisher supporting all of this good work. In London, I want to thank editor Susan Watt, Jon Watt, and copy editor Lizzie Dipple, of Heron Books/Quercus Books.

The Rocks
is entirely a work of fiction, its characters not based on the living or the dead. But while writing it I remembered with great affection Nora, Luis, and Claudine Cumberlege. Also a number of men and women I knew only slightly in Mallorca when I was young, people who would not have noticed or remembered the boy who watched and long afterward reimagined them.

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