The Shell Collector (17 page)

“No fair that you get to look normal,” I tell her.

“You look like you sleep with fishes,” Holly says.

“Let’s hope not. You ready?”

She nods, and the two of us crawl under the car cover. Rain hisses across the glass door and windows, and it thunders against the roof. “I’ve got the doorknob,” Holly says. “Hard to turn it through the fabric. It keeps slipping.”

“I’ll close it behind us when we get out,” I tell her. “But we have to make sure the cover doesn’t get caught.”

What I don’t tell her is that this is going to be an unmitigated disaster. No way we come out of this anything other than soaked and tangled in knots, but probably laughing hysterically. A gust of wind passes, and Holly yells “Now!” I hear the door open, the first of the rain spitting against the cover, popping it like a thunderstorm hitting a camping tent, and then we are outside, shuffling our feet, the wind whipping the car cover all around us.

The cover clings to our ankles, presses against our bodies. I nearly topple from the force of a gust, and it takes some fumbling and both of us working together to get the door pulled shut against the storm.

Holly is already laughing. It isn’t quite pitch black under the cover now that we’re outside—just a dismal, deep shade of gray. “This way,” she says, full of confidence. We stay huddled together, hands fumbling through the fabric to stay in communion with the wooden rail, the cold of the wind and rain penetrating through our shroud, but so far, no moisture getting through to us. I take up a fold of fabric in front of me to keep from tripping, leaving our boots exposed to the driving rain and the wet deck.

“Steps!” Holly cries. “Twelve of them!”

Halfway down the flight of steps, buffeted by the storm, this begins to feel like a very bad idea. Our legs could get tangled; we could have a nasty fall; and suddenly I see myself driving Ness’s daughter to the hospital with a broken arm, her crying hysterically in the passenger seat, me in the emergency room in hip waders and a robe trying to explain to Ness what in the hell I was thinking.

We reach the bottom of the flight of stairs, but there are two more to go. And long lengths of boardwalk between.

“Maybe we should ditch the cover and just make a run for it,” I suggest, my voice muffled.

“Not a drop shall touch us!” Holly cries. She has one arm around my waist, and I have an arm draped over her shoulder. We shuffle as one, like we’re running a three-legged race where our feet don’t go in the same sack, our entire bodies do.

The fabric no longer whips around as angrily as before, thank goodness. The rain is soaking it and weighing it down. It trails behind us like a leaden wedding dress. We lean into the wind and stagger down the second flight of stairs, Holly seeming to know where she is going, then we tackle the last flight.

“Almost there,” she tells me. And I feel like a climber who can see the crown of some inhospitable peak just a few steps away. One great push. So close—

We bang into the glass like birds. My forehead cracks against a window, and it sounds like Holly strikes her knee. The rain is no longer pelting us. We are pressed against the side of the guest house. I can’t believe we made it this far. And suddenly, this is an adventure the way simple challenges with made-up rules are life-or-death scenarios for kids with their active imaginations. Suddenly, this is important. And fun.

Holly whoops when she finds the doorknob. It’s a struggle to get it turned, but then the door flies inward, and we tumble along after it. The car cover finally claims us, tangling our feet, and I brace for impact, one arm around Holly and twisting her so she lands on top of me.

There’s an
oomph
and a grunt from both of us. The wind is knocked out of me, and we have to fight to dig our way out from the wet fabric. Rain courses down the folds in rivulets, getting all over the floor and soaking us as we scramble for the open door.

We slam it shut. Holly is panting and giggling. I fight with Ness’s robe to stay decent. The guest house is now a base camp, a temporary shelter against the storm, a small island at sea.

“I think we’re stuck here,” I tell Holly.

She pushes her hair off her face. We both got doused crawling out from under the car cover. She wipes her face and looks at her wet palms. “So close,” she says.

“I don’t think it qualifies as rain if it’s indoors,” I tell her. “Just tossing that out there.”

“I second the motion,” Holly says. And then: “Victory!” She dances around the room in her galoshes, leaving wet bootprints everywhere, while I gather the drenched cover and dump it in the bathtub.

After I change into dry clothes, and after Holly has explored the guest house—
her
house—I show her the book that was the subject of all our troubles.

“Read me a page,” she says.

And so we arrange ourselves on the big bed in the middle of the downstairs loft, a pile of cushions behind us, and I start to read the adventures of Long John Silver, a sea cook turned treasure hunter, and of pirates and sea chests and treasure maps. And I don’t stop reading aloud, even as Holly drifts off to sleep. I just lower my voice and keep reading, and the storm outside does not abate, but Holly mumbles something, snuggles closer, and I have to set the book aside for a moment. It strikes me that my daughter would be nine right now if I’d carried her to term, if my body hadn’t betrayed us both. She would be nine, and I would read to her like this.

I cover my mouth as the tears come hard and fast. The noise of the rain masks my sobs. Holly throws an arm across me and rests her head against my shoulder, and I fear she’ll wake up and ask me what’s the matter, and I’ll have to make something up. Something a bright girl like her will know is a lie.

But she mumbles these words instead, a soft admission: “I don’t really hate the rain,” she tells me.

And then she falls back asleep, there in my arms, and I wish for her to have happy dreams.

I drift in and out. Dreams mix with the wild scene outside—pirate ships plying the coast; men in slickers with treasure maps digging greedily at the wet sand; thunder transmuting into cannon-fire as my imagination melds the real and the unreal.

At one point, a man appears at the window in a yellow raincoat and yellow rain cap. He looks nothing like a pirate. He looks like Ness. It is much later that I realize it
was
him, that he came back home to find the note from his ex, the house empty, and checked on us here before deciding to leave us sleeping.

Even though I’m wide awake now, I let Holly doze with her head on my arm. I’m struck again by how quickly she took to me, and I hope it’s a healthy thing. It could be that she’s perfectly well adjusted, that she’s bright and courageous and comfortable in her own skin. Or it could be that she is desperately seeking something that’s missing from her life. I’m no expert in child psychology, so I have no way of knowing which is more likely.

And maybe I’m looking too far for the culprit. Maybe the one desperate to connect is me. I push this question aside, not caring to examine it. When Holly stirs, I wiggle my arm free and get up to use the bathroom. She’s outside the door when I get out, rubbing her eyes and yawning. We trade places without a word between us.

“I think your father is home,” I say when she emerges. “And we napped through lunch. Should we go up to the house?”

She nods, looks out at the rain, then back to me. “Maybe we should just run for it,” she says.

“Let’s do it.”

We squeal and laugh all the way to the house, getting soaked. We arrive at the living room to find folded towels set out for us and one on the floor just inside the door. Ness appears while we’re drying our hair. “I’m going to my room to change,” Holly announces. “Let me know when lunch is ready.” She drops her towel in a heap and marches toward the north breezeway.

“How about a hello?” Ness asks his daughter. “Maybe a hug?”

Holly makes an exaggerated turn, like a jetliner banking through the clouds, and steers toward her dad. She gives him a perfunctory hug, rolling her eyes at me, and then pads off for her room.

“I am so sorry,” Ness says. “Something came up, and I had no idea Holly would be—”

“It’s okay,” I tell him.

“—hate you had to babysit—”

“It was fine. We had a good time. The rain probably messed up whatever you were going to show me anyway.”

“Well, not really. It’s supposed to storm all day tomorrow as well, but it won’t affect us. In fact, we have a series of flights to take tonight.”

He glances at his watch. I’ve noticed that he does this constantly. It’s a trait I’ve seen in a lot in the people I’ve interviewed over the years. For some, it’s because they live by appointments: you’re lucky to get fifteen minutes of their time. For others, it’s ambition: they’re in a race to get all they want accomplished. Ness is a playboy without a schedule, so he fits neither of these easy molds. Perhaps he’s a third type: the schoolboy wondering when class will get out and he’ll have his freedom again. Maybe he only does this around people like me, obligations he’d rather not have.

“Where are we going?” I ask. Funny, I expected to travel someplace exotic when I first got here, and now I don’t want to leave.

“It’s a surprise,” Ness says. “Besides, if I told you the name of the place or where it was, you still wouldn’t have a clue about our final destination.”

“Will we be diving?”

Ness cocks his head. “In a way. Now stop asking questions—”

“I’m a reporter,” I remind him. “You stop picking up shells.”

“I just might,” he says. And before I can press him on this, he’s telling me what to pack. “One change of clothes, toothbrush, toiletries, no makeup, no perfume, no mask or fins, no wetsuit, no bathing suit.”

“That’s a list of what
not
to pack,” I say.

“Comfortable clothes. Shorts. T-shirt. Nothing too warm.”

I’m confused. Nothing warm, but no bathing suit?

Again, he glances at his watch. “We’ll leave in half an hour.”

“What about Holly?” I ask.

“Monique will watch her until her mother picks her up. Speaking of which, I got an earful from Vicky about who was in my bed this morning when she got here.” He lifts an eyebrow in a
Care to explain that?
sorta way.

“I wasn’t in your bed,” I say. “I was … I got drenched running up here after I found your note. I went in search of a towel, found your bathroom first—”

“And my robe.”

“And your robe, yes. My clothes are in the dryer. I was looking at pictures of Holly on your desk when your ex came in.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I’m sorry, what?” I try to transition from being defensive to having a chat about his ex-wife. “She was … nice, I guess. Of course, she seemed to think we were sleeping with each other. Hard to blame her, considering. Pretty embarrassing for me.”

“Wow,” Ness says. “That must be awful, having people think something about you that isn’t true. I can’t imagine.”

I start to ask him to elaborate, when I see him staring past my shoulder. I turn to find Holly standing at the end of the breezeway.

“You guys aren’t in love with each other,” she says.

“I’m a reporter,” I tell Holly. “I told you, I’m here to do a story on your father.”

Her lip quivers. I can see the joy from earlier in the day drain from her face. Without a word, she turns and runs down the hall, and I hear Ness curse under his breath. I start to follow Holly to her room, but Ness tells me I’m better off leaving her alone.

“She was bound to find out,” he says. “Don’t make it worse for her.”

I have no idea what this means. And I don’t see Holly again as I gather my things down at the guest house—using an oversized rain jacket and umbrella this time. I bring my solitary bag up to the house, and Ness leads me to the front door.

There’s a helicopter outside. The pilot tells Ness that we should go before the next squall hits. And maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s not getting to shell that day, maybe it’s the lingering soreness from seeing Holly so upset at us, but the week has taken a turn. The joy is no longer on Ness’s face. And I remember what Victoria said about that smile being his shell, that he is not a happy man, and perhaps this is my first glimpse of the true Ness Wilde. Either way, the week threatens to become one of those bright, half-buried horse conchs that you reach for only to discover that the rest of the shell is missing, that there was nothing priceless about that find after all.

I’m glad I amended Ness’s packing list and brought a book. My phone doesn’t work for much of the helicopter ride, and then we land at a small airport and transfer to a private jet. Once we break above the rain clouds, I can tell by the setting sun to our right that we are flying south. Ness is pensive and quiet. I attribute this to conflicts with his ex or his daughter, but it also occurs to me that he left in a hurry that morning to tend to an emergency. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.

Rebelling against my reporter DNA, I decide to let it go and to lose myself in the book I brought along.
Treasure Island
was losing me, felt more like a romp a young boy might like, so I picked out
Moby Dick
instead, which I vaguely remember
not-reading
in college and instead using online notes to squeak out a B or a C on some paper. Little did I know all those years of bullshitting my way through coursework would nicely prepare me for a career in journalism. As it turns out, it pays pretty well to make up entire stories on slivers of fact.

I read for a few hours, and then the copilot comes back to serve us a meal. After the trays are taken away, I rejoin Ishmael on his whaling adventures, but I’m only half present in the book. My mind flits. The article I’ve written about Ness bends and sways like a tree in a shifting breeze. Somehow, two years of work now feels … unimportant. Trivial. I remind myself that vacation does this to priorities, and the past few days have been like a vacation. When I get back to New York—among the symphony of sirens and car alarms and shrieking subway rails—I will remember what’s important. That’s when the story will coalesce and take shape. It’ll be easier to update my piece about Ness when he’s not sitting across from me, staring at his laptop, scrolling but not typing, reading something with a frown. It’ll be easier when I’m not thinking about Holly, and the way she looked at me, both in joy that morning, and in anger the last time I’m likely to ever see her.