Unburying Hope (15 page)

“You’re doing it!” Eddie crowed.
 
“This is great!
 
We can go to Lake St. Clair this
weekend.”

She breathed in slowly, methodically listening
to the burst of available air and then again she heard the shutoff.
 
The warm water smoothed the wetsuit
against her skin.
 
It was like
waking up in a sweat, her skin steamy but sheets stopping the wetness.
 
“Is the lake warm?”

“Nope.
 
It’s cold.”

“Then why do you want to do this?”
 
Her skin got clammy at the thought of
icy water pushing against the wetsuit.

“You’ll like it, it warms up a bit,” he said,
turning the shower water off.
 
“It’s
like Mars or something.
 
You float
around and see whole other universes.
 
When you get the hang of it, we’ll maybe go to Hawaii and do it in warm
water.
 
You’ll love that best,
because fish and turtles swim up to look you in the eye.”

Her heart warmed.
 
He wanted to travel with her!
 
She’d never left the state and he wanted to take her to the
tropics.
 
She determined to get
through her fear, to get to the other side of it so that she could be floating
weightless next to him some day in warm salty waters, waving to a hard shelled turtle
that swam by.

Chapter
Eighteen

In the cold air, suited up again two days
later, she put her mask on and walked backwards to the shoreline to stand next
to him as he pulled his neoprene hood over his head, exposing his grenade dent
when his hair was tucked away.
 
His
tan was fading and the near-winter sun painted him more water-colored than
usual.

He patted her on the arm.
 
“You follow me.”

“How cold is it?”

“Very.”
 
He walked a few feet into the water, turned around and dove in.

Celeste breathed in on the mouthpiece and
stepped backwards a few feet into the lake, feeling the bracing water sneak
into her wetsuit.
 
She looked
through the mask to see Eddie’s head above water, motioning her to come in
farther.
 

The strangeness of the cold between the
neoprene and her skin, the rhythmic release of the air soothed her and she dove
in, submerging herself in the murky water.
  
She floated to the top and breathed on the tank even
though her head was above water.
 

He swam over to her.
 
“Damn, you’re a beast, Celeste,” he reached out a hand in
the air to high five her.
 
“Look at
you, you’re not living small any more!”

Each breath anchored her, staving off the panic
that should have already engulfed her.

“We’re going down.
 
Follow me.”
 
He
pointed out farther in the lake.
 
“There’s a big drop about forty yards out, we’ll swim down it and look
around.
 
Visibility might be
bad.
 
You won’t see the munitions I
used to see when I dove in my Officers Course, but you’ll see something that
will blow your mind, I bet.”

She nodded and followed him, submerging
again.
 
He went slowly, signaling
to her and she tried to stay close but going deeper was a challenge.
 
Her arms were pulling, her legs were
kicking but something in her was holding back and he got enough ahead of her
that she couldn’t clearly see his whole body.
 
She propelled herself forward, fighting the clamminess of
her childhood memory, telling herself that this time she was knowingly moving
herself forward, deeper, she was doing it to be with Eddie in this alien
landscape that was comfort and home to him.
 

He swam exuberantly back to her, smiling
through his mouthpiece, eyes wide with delight and he pointed downward.
 
He looked like he was a bird
effortlessly flying in the thermals, he swam a few feet up then kicked and dove
full body downwards as if he’d taken off from a high dive.

She followed him, watching only his flippers,
using them as a point of reference and she breathed in every time he did two
kicks and out when he did two more.

Suddenly, she felt something close in on her
and she realized they’d bottomed out near the shoreline lake floor.
 
She looked up, unable to see any sky
through the murky water.

Near her was a strange object, an A frame
shape, white.
 
Her throat was tight,
her breaths weren’t bringing in the oxygen she’d grown accustomed to.
 
She slowed her breath, slower, slower,
to get oxygen.
 
The shape was
foreign; it pointed straight upward and was 15-20 feet high.
 
Eddie swam around it while she gagged
on her mouthpiece, now there wasn’t enough oxygen being let in even if she
sucked in a few extra seconds.

Suddenly, she realized that the shape was a
sailboat hull.
 
Half a sailboat,
crashed at the bottom of the lake, standing straight up.
 
Because it was fiberglass, it was half
of a whole, except for the jagged edges dug into the ground.

She gasped.
 
It had been eight or nine halting breaths.
 
She reached Eddie and ran her hand
across her throat in the ‘out of air’ signal he had forced her to learn.
 

He pulled out his mouthpiece, pushed hers
aside and let her breathe his air.

Yes.
 
He had enough oxygen, it flowed freely.
 
She took a few deep breaths and he pulled her mouthpiece in to
his own mouth.
 
She’d staved off
the panic until now but it was creeping into her through the sticky water
trapped against her skin by the unbreathing neoprene.
 

She let go of the mouthpiece and shot upwards,
gasping, pushing herself, reaching for the arms that had magically and
dramatically yanked her out of danger in her childhood but no arms came from
above and her chest ached, her body stressed as she rose too fast, fear
propelling her.

She felt Eddie’s arms around her waist and
felt his strong kicks pushing her faster until finally she broke surface and
took in breaths so deep that her lungs hurt.

Back in the apartment, silent in the warm
shower, Eddie rubbed her arms, soothing her.

“It was the regulator on your tank.
 
There’s something wrong with it, it
released too much air early on.
 
I’ll
go on eBay and I’ll get my money back.
 
I’ll get you one that works, I promise.
 
That’s my fault, I should have tested it better.”

“I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“You have to, Celeste.
 
Please, I want you to.”

“You don’t know what that was like for
me.
 
I can’t ever do that again.”

“I’ve had that happen.
 
My own tank didn’t work once in the
Indian Ocean and I had to buddy breath.
 
We both were way the hell out in the water, but we did our training and
made it back.”

“Did you dive in the war?”
 

“No.”
 
His answer was curt but he held her forearm gently, placing it against
his chest.

“Why not?”

“I got injured,” he said, pointing to his
skull.

“Why did that stop you?”

“Crazy doctors said I can’t be deep
underwater, pressure on the concave part of my skull might cause a stroke.”

“What?
 
Then why do you want to dive?
 
Why would your life dream be to put yourself underwater where you could
die?”

“It’s the one thing I don’t want the war to
take away from me.”

“It’s not safe, though,” Celeste said, looking
into his eyes.

“I want to swim underwater more than I want to
be safe.
 
Safety isn’t a tradeoff
I’m willing to make.
 
We can do it
again, we won’t go deep.”
 

“Why would I ever do that again?
 
It was cold, I could barely see.
 
And that creepy hull, what happened to
that boat?”

“Yeah, that sailboat must have gone down in a
storm, must have broken in half when it was slammed to the bottom.”

“You think anyone died on it?”

“Doubtful.”

“How do you know?”

“The other half was about forty feet away, dug
in sideways.
 
It was close enough
to shore that sailors could swim to land.
 
Someone just doesn’t want to pay to dredge it out.
 
In Hawaii, they sometimes sink wrecks
to make artificial reefs.”

“See, water is dangerous.”
 
She pulled her arms to cover her
breasts and leaned against his chest.

“But it’s important to me.”
 
He turned the showerhead so that the
warm water poured down her neck and her back, soothing her.
 
“It’s the only place I feel like
myself, underwater.”
 
He pulled her
wet hair off her face.
 
“I want us
to be together that way.”

She grimaced.

“Look, we’ll go to Hawaii.
 
It’s different when you’re warm, we’ll
see eagle rays, turtles, schooling fish,” he said.

She looked up at him, his face serious, his
eyes worried, water pooled at the bottom of the dent in his skull, dripping to
the side of his eyebrow down his cheek by his ear.

It was touching to see him want her.
 
She leaned closer, kissing his lips,
her arms circled his neck and she pulled him under the warm water for a deep,
full body kiss.

Chapter
Nineteen

Celeste awoke frozen in the darkness.
 
She felt fabric under her hands, her
sheets crumpled next to her.
 
She
realized she was in her bed.

But Eddie was not lying down.

He was standing on the edge of the bed, facing
out towards the doorway.
 

She sat up very slowly, so as not to surprise
him.

He was holding himself absolutely motionless,
half crouched, arms forward, anticipating something unseen.

Her ears perked, she listened for his
breathing which was steady, methodical.
 
Was he asleep?
 
She was
frightened by the strangeness of the moment, afraid of touching him or speaking
to waken him from his primal stance.

“Eddie,” she said quietly.

He didn’t move.

“Eddie,” she said again, her voice soft and
comforting.
 

He turned his head an inch or so, not taking
his gaze off the bedroom doorway.

She was afraid to put her hand on his leg but
his breathing was changing, she couldn’t tell whether he was going to be a danger
coming out of a nightmare or a was in a waking memory.
  
The tension around his body was
palpable.
 
Some kind of war play
was being re-enacted, it felt like he’d found a position of mixed suspension of
consciousness and an alertness that came from the fear of some foreign place.

If she moved around the bed, or moved in front
of him, would he accidentally attack her, not knowing where he was?

She took a deep breath and crept back into the
corner of the bed and said again, this time more gently, “Honey, Eddie.
 
It’s Celeste, you’re home now.
 
Lie down and go back to sleep.”
 
Maybe he’d go out on a night walk, as
he’d done a few times in the last few weeks.
 
Clear his head by moving.
 

She waited in the darkness, sensing a change
in him, like the tigers at the zoo who had just stared at you as though they’d
eat you before you could scream but then looked at you sideways when you spoke
to them, soothing them, as though they were trying to understand you.

He stepped off the bed, with jerky motions,
stood staring into the darkness towards her.

“Eddie, come back to bed, the pillow is still
warm, the sheets are nice and warm.”
 
She calibrated her voice, not too loud to awaken him, but just enough to
bring him back to the physicality of the bedroom.

He moved slowly, his hands looking for the
sheets and she reached out, opened up the bed sheets, patted the bed.
 
He followed the sound of her hands on
the cotton fabric, slipping under the covers, the tension leaving his muscles.
 

He was covered with sweat, she felt, her hands
wet when she reached gingerly for his shoulder.

“It’s okay, you’re here with me,” she said.