Chain Lightning (21 page)

Slowly, Mandy began to bend toward the water once more.

“Mandy,“ Sutter whispered, appalled, wanting to hold her, to cherish her, to restrain her, to do anything but stand helplessly on the beach watching her. “Don’t, love. Don’t.“

Sutter was speaking far too softly for Mandy to hear him above the rain. Not that it made any difference. He knew she would have ignored him just as he had once ignored all the well-meant advice never to go back into the primitive country whose government had chained and men beaten him, teaching him the meaning of helplessness and fear. But he had gone back because he couldn’t give in to fear and still respect himself.

It was the same choice Mandy faced, and his heart turned over for what she was going through.

Slowly Sutter withdrew to the cover of the she-oaks once more. From there he watched Mandy try to push back her dripping hair from her face but her hands were shaking too hard. She flipped her head, slinging her hair away from her face. Ten minutes and three tries later, she was able to bring her face into contact once again with the water’s warm surface. And once again, she jerked back.

Sutter waited and prayed. When Mandy began bending slowly forward once more, it took all his self-discipline not to walk into the lagoon and drag her back to land. He lost track of time while he stood and watched, hands clenched, guts knotted, his face grim, sharing her ordeal in the only way that he could. When she finally held her face in the water for three seconds before she jerked upright again, Sutter wondered if she felt half the elation he did.

Without warning Mandy stood up and pushed back her mask with the easy motion of someone who had used diving gear countless times. Sutter remembered that it had been the same when she had flipped back her wet hair – the gesture spoke of long familiarity with water. But that didn’t make sense. Someone who was as terrified of water as Mandy was wouldn’t be a swimmer, much less a diver.

Mandy stepped out of the lagoon and removed her mask with a single quick movement of her hand. Again, the ease and economy of the motion betrayed expertise with diving gear. Most novices grappled with the awkward mask-and-snorkel combination, tangling their fingers and their hair, grimacing and struggling to master the stubborn equipment without ripping out every hair on their head.

Where did Mandy learn to use the equipment?

And then Sutter realized that wasn’t the important question.

What taught her to fear the water she once must have loved?

There was no answer in the falling rain, none in the warm lagoon, none in the drenched she-oaks screening Sutter from the beach. Yet Sutter knew he must have an answer. He needed it with an urgency that transcended the driving sexual heat Mandy called from his body.

Determination in every hard line of his body, Sutter left the she-oaks and went to find Mandy. Behind him, delicate foliage shivered quietly, caressed by the warm rain.

“G’day, luv. Dry off while I get you a beer,“ Ray said, tossing a towel toward Mandy.

“Thanks.“

Mandy caught the towel one-handed and blotted up the worst of the rain. The small bar area was steamy, filled to overflowing with divers who, being unable to dive, were doing the next best thing – talking about diving. When she looked up from drying herself Tommy caught her eye, hooked his foot under Ray’s empty chair and dragged it closer to the ragged circle surrounding his table.

“Here you go, luv,“ Tommy said.

“What about Ray?“

“Ray who?“

After a brief hesitation Mandy smiled and took the chair. She was too wrung out from her hours in the Fish Pond to refuse the chance to sit on something dry. Ray didn’t object to the loss of his chair. He simply snagged a stool from behind the bar, grabbed a beer so cold that the can sweated icy drops, and put the stool next to Mandy.

“Wrap your throat around this,“ he said, handing her the beer.

With a sigh she took a swallow of the mellow, lively beer and smoothed the cold can over her forehead and cheeks. The diving mask she had slung over her wrist banged against the table when she took another drink. Ray removed the mask and set it on the bar.

“Go on, Tommy,“ Ray said, opening his own beer, “tell us about the hammerhead as big as a house trailer that followed you last summer.“

Tommy finished the shark story, which had been interrupted by Mandy’s entrance. She listened, smiling in appreciation and gentle disbelief, and drank the incredibly refreshing beer. Very quickly the contents of the can disappeared. Ray held up his hand. The girl who was tending bar leaned over the counter and slapped another Fosters into Ray’s palm. He opened the can and substituted it for the empty one in Mandy’s hand. She gave him a startled look, received a beguiling smile and decided that one more delicious Australian beer wouldn’t hurt.

Sipping at the heady, frothy brew, Mandy listened while each diver in turn around the table volunteered a story about the biggest chunk of marine life he had ever encountered. For one man it had been a manta ray as big as the bar. For another it had been a sixteen-foot shark. By the time it was Mandy’s turn, her second beer was fizzing softly through her blood and a third was in her hand. She spoke without stopping to think, wanting only to share a special moment in diving with the people who would most appreciate it – other divers.

“I once swam with the gray whales in Scammon Lagoon, on the west coast of Baja California,“ Mandy said softly, remembering the eerie, enchanted experience. “The visibility was thirty, maybe forty feet. Whales would just kind of condense out of the sea at the edge of your vision, blue on blue, huge shadows moving with the kind of massive grace that made you think of God.“

“Grays? Aren’t they the ones that migrate from Alaska to Mexico and back each year?“ Tommy asked.

Mandy nodded.

“Tell us about it, luv,“ Ray said as other divers added their encouragement. “None of us blokes have ever been close to a whale.“

She took another swallow of beer, then continued talking, encouraged by the enthusiasm of the men and relaxed by the two beers she had drunk.

“One female was especially curious,“ Mandy said. “She condensed out of the blue and came toward me, and just kept getting bigger, swimming straight for me, and I thought she would never end. She was so big I couldn’t see all of her at once in the murky water. She had to have been more than thirty-five feet long, which meant that at least thirty-five tons of curiosity and intelligence and power were cruising to a stop less than a foot away from me. I hung there like a fly on a blue wall, my heart hammering. It was exhilaration, not fear. Grays are as gentle as they are huge.“

Slowly Mandy rubbed the cold beer can over her cheek as she continued to talk. “She looked at me out of one black eye, then turned her whole body to put her other eye on me. Each time she moved it was like I was caught in a wave, water rushing everywhere, displaced by that huge body. I was so close I could make out the smallest detail of the barnacles that clustered on her skin. I held out my hand very slowly to see what she would do.“ Mandy laughed with delight, remembering. “She turned and presented her nose for a good rubbing!“

“Fair dinkum!“ Ray said, shaking his head in wonder, laughing.

“It’s true,“ Mandy said, smiling around another sip of beer. “I found out later she was one of the whales that followed scientists and tourists everywhere in the lagoon. She’d surface by boats and let people touch her or even scrub her with soft brushes. Guess the barnacles made her skin itch, and she had figured out real fast that the tiny and otherwise useless humans littering the lagoon made excellent ladies’ maids.“

Another shout of laughter went up, followed by a spate of questions about diving off the west coast of the Northern Hemisphere, a place as alien and exotic to the Australians as the Great Barrier Reef was to Mandy.

“Well, I know you’re proud of the taste of your Morton Bay bugs,“ Mandy said “but have you ever eaten fresh California abalone? It’s like eating the most delicately flavored crab crossed with a truly succulent Maine lobster. And like anything tasty, abalone aren’t very easy to get to. Today you have to go down so far that the water is black and the chill eats into your wet suit long before your air is gone, and you have to carry a crowbar to pry the animals loose from the rocks. But it’s worth it. If you don’t believe me, ask a sea otter.“

“You’ve seen them?“ Tommy asked eagerly. “I’d give my right arm to dive with otters.“

“They’d take you up on it,“ Mandy said dryly. “They’re every bit as mischievous as they look, and they can outswim silver salmon from a standing start. Otters love to play, to hunt, to eat, and they are among the most tender mothers I’ve ever seen in the animal world.“

The men murmured and leaned closer eagerly, encouraging Mandy to continue.

“When the babies aren’t old enough to hunt with the adults,“ Mandy said, “the mothers take the cubs to the surface of the kelp forest, wrap them carefully in the fronds and then dive deep into the forest in search of dinner, confident that their cubs will stay safely cradled.“ Mandy paused for a moment, remembering, and then added softly, “The months I spent diving with the otters were extraordinary. Otters are so vividly alive. Sometimes, in my dreams, I’m back with the otters, playing hide-and-seek through amber kelp forests eight stories tall….“

Ray and Tommy exchanged sidelong glances, each silently urging the other to ask the question that burned between them. But it wasn’t the Australians who spoke first. It was Sutter.

“Why did you give up diving?“

The reality of the present returned to Mandy like a blow. Color and laughter went out of her between one breath and the next. Slowly she set her beer can on the table and pushed back her chair. Without looking at anyone she turned and went to the door.

“Mandy,“ Sutter said as she passed.

His voice was hard, urgent, as was his hand on her arm. She opened the door without looking at him and stood watching the silver veils of rain.

“There was an accident,“ Mandy said finally, her voice lifeless. “People died.“

Sutter waited, but she said no more. So he asked another question, one whose answer he suspected he already knew. “Was your husband one of them?“

“Yes. And I was another, Sutter. I died, too.“

Mandy slipped from his grasp and stepped out into the rain, shutting the door behind her. She walked quickly to the tent, only to realize while she was drying herself that she couldn’t bear to be within the sultry confines of the canvas. With a low sound of distress she rushed back out into the rain, still carrying the towel.

The first surge of her restlessness took her to the tiny airstrip. She crossed it and went into the she-oaks beyond, passing a tiny lighthouse before turning toward the beach, where huge combers boiled up onto crushed coral that was as white as the sea foam being torn from the waves. Standing beneath the rain-tossed casuarina trees, she watched the ocean and thought about the extraordinary seascape that lay so close at hand, yet had never been farther away. Desperately she wished she had come to the Great Barrier Reef before she had learned to fear the sea.

But she hadn’t, and it was too late now to do anything but clench her teeth and hate the coward she had become.

“What are you thinking about?“

Sutter’s voice wasn’t unexpected to Mandy. She had known he would follow her. That knowledge had driven her from the confines of the tent.

“Cowardice,“ Mandy said flatly. “Mine.“

“You listen to me!“ Sutter said savagely, cutting Mandy off and spinning her toward him so quickly that she lost her grip on the towel. “I know what a coward is, lady. A coward is a woman like my mother, who couldn’t take a less-than-perfect life so she took Valium instead, until finally she took enough and died, leaving a bitter, confused son behind. A coward is a woman like my ex-wife, who couldn’t face her own emptiness, so she filled every instant of every day with parties and sycophants.“

Sutter’s hands gentled suddenly, stroking Mandy’s arms. “You’re not a coward, Mandy. I know that as surely as I know you’re alive. I stood and watched you this afternoon. You were fighting, not running. You were trying, not denying that anything was wrong. Again and again you fought to bring your face down to the lagoon and – “

“Lost,“ Mandy hissed across Sutter’s words. “Over and over and over again. Because I’m a coward.“

“No! You won, Mandy! I saw it! It tore me apart to watch, but I saw every instant of it. You forced your face into the water three times. That’s victory, not failure, Mandy. Victory!“

“Three times in as many hours, for maybe five seconds total,“ Mandy said bitterly. “That’s not victory, that’s a bloody rout!“

“But – “

“But nothing,“ she interrupted, her voice tight, her eyes almost wild. “Three-quarters of the world is water, and I’m cut off from it because of my own cowardice! For you, diving is a hobby. For me it was everything. All that I had wanted since childhood, all that I’d studied and worked for, a career that I loved,
all that is gone because I’m a coward.“

“Mandy,“ Sutter whispered helplessly, stroking her cheeks where tears and rain mingled. “What happened, golden eyes?“

Mandy shuddered suddenly but couldn’t prevent the words from spilling out of her, the past welling up like a dark current, drowning her but for Sutter’s strong, warm hands holding her afloat in the present.

“Andrew was an oceanographer,“ Mandy said. “I was first his student and then his wife. Marriage wasn’t all that I’d hoped it would be, but then, what is? I was a virgin. Andrew was used to experienced women who were quick off the mark.“ Mandy laughed abruptly. “In bed we were a bad match. We should have made up for it professionally, because our strengths in oceanography were complementary. But Andrew wanted children, not a co-researcher, and he wanted the children the same way he wanted sex – instantly. He had turned forty, you see, and I was his second wife. There were no children from the first marriage. He told me he didn’t want to grow old and die knowing that nothing of himself lived on.“

Slowly Mandy shook her head, not realizing that she did it. “As soon as I could wrap up my research on sea otter habitats, I went off the pill. It took a long time to conceive. Too long. Andrew got more and more depressed, more angry, more difficult. When I finally got pregnant I was thrilled. It was our anniversary and Andrew’s forty-third birthday. I took the ferry out to Catalina, where Andrew was camping and diving. He didn’t expect me that early. I was going to surprise him.“

Mandy felt Sutter’s hands tightening on her arms again and smiled crookedly. “Yeah, you guessed it. He was having sex with some neoprene bunny when I walked into the tent. When he finished explaining how it was all my fault because I was such a lump in bed, we went to the airport. Did I mention that he was a pilot and owned a small plane?“

“No,“ Sutter said softly.

“Well, he was. I’d never liked flying. It was something I tolerated because it was the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. And that’s what I wanted that night. Efficiency. We took off. It was dark. It felt like it had always been dark. Somewhere over the ocean, something went wrong. Heart attack. Stroke. No one knows because his body was never found.“

The pupils in Sutter’s eyes expanded suddenly. “Mandy?“ he whispered, his voice raw.

“Oh, yes,“ she said, shuddering. “I was with him. All the way. The plane went in and floated but not long enough. I dragged at Andrew and dragged at him and kicked out the window but he was too big and the ocean was too cold and it was pouring in the window and we went down and down and down and my lungs ached and burned and burst and I breathed icy water and I…I drowned,“ she said, her voice broken.

Sutter’s arms closed around Mandy in a crushing hug as he tried to convince her and himself that she was alive. The thought of what she had been through was agonizing. The realization that he had forced her to relive her terror during the flight to the island was a knife of regret turning in his guts.

And then he remembered her incoherent words after he had pulled her from the Fish Pond’s shallow waters:
The baby, the baby.

“Oh, God, Mandy,“ Sutter said, his voice raw. “No….“

But she was still talking, still telling him things that were too painful to bear. Yet they had happened. They must be borne.

“I woke up at dawn in the bottom of a tiny boat that bounced all over the sea. I was dead but it still hurt. It still hurt! It was…hell. I was sure of it.“ Mandy took a deep, tearing breath. “Somehow the fisherman got me to the hospital before cold finished what the sea had begun. But.“ her voice faltered and then went on, a sound as ragged as her breathing “it was too late for the baby. I could have lived with failing Andrew, but not my child. The child I was going to teach to dive and to laugh and to love…my child died before it even had a chance to live.