Dexter nearly groaned aloud. Being in possession of a healthy automobile he insisted on driving himself meant that he often was called into service nowadays. He’d driven a neighbor’s boy with toothache to a dentist; taken Heels to an all-night pharmacy when his mother needed blood pressure pills. Once a request had been made he found it difficult to refuse; he needed to feint at an earlier point. “Why, certainly, I’d be happy to if we meet again,” he said, preparing to open his door.
“My sister isn’t well. I’ve promised to take her to the beach.”
“Best wait until spring, if she’s sickly.”
“Not ill. Crippled. There’s a boy who carries her downstairs.”
Cripple. Boy. Stairs. Dexter felt the elements of this dreary tale falling around him like stones. Miss Feeney wore a plain wool coat, frayed at the cuffs. It was a weakness in him, this awareness of others’ misfortunes.
“When were you hoping to do this?” he asked heavily.
“Sunday. Any Sunday. I’ve that day off.” Her mother had been spending Sundays out, leaving Anna on her own with Lydia.
Dexter’s mind was already working: if they helped the cripple in lieu of church, he could avoid the new deacon (now hitting him up for pew repairs) and still be done in time for lunch. And helping a cripple might be just the thing to remind his spoiled children of their own good luck.
“How about this Sunday?” he said. “Before winter sets in.”
“Perfect!” she said. “We haven’t a telephone, but if you’ll tell me what time, I can have the boy ready to carry her down.”
“Miss Feeney,” he said chidingly, and waited.
She looked up at him, but his silhouette blocked the streetlamp, leaving his face in shadow.
“Do I look like I need a boy to carry her down?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
“You’re interested,” Lieutenant Axel said, gazing up at Anna as she stood before his desk. He’d not risen when the marine had shown her into his office.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Extremely interested.”
“And what gave you the impression that diving would be interesting?”
She hesitated, not entirely sure. “I’ve watched divers on the barge,” she said. “From Pier C. At lunchtime. And after my shift.” She followed each utterance with a pause, awaiting some indication that he had understood.
“You’ve watched the divers at lunchtime,” he finally said.
As this was not a question, and as her words, reverberated through Lieutenant Axel, had a way of sounding ridiculous, Anna remained quiet. In that silence, she became aware that she was looking down at the lieutenant. Perhaps he felt this, too, for he rose suddenly to his feet: a petite barrel-chested man in naval uniform, his face both weather-beaten and strangely boyish, with no suggestion of a beard. “If you don’t mind my asking, Miss Kerrigan, whose idea was this?”
“Mine,” she said. “Entirely mine.”
“Entirely yours. But entirely your idea didn’t get the commandant to telephone me yesterday and ask me to see you.”
“My supervisor, Mr. Voss—”
“Ah. Your supervisor. Mr. . . . Voss.” He drew out the name as though its syllables were the last bits of meat he was sucking from a bone. Then he grinned. “I imagine he’s just as eager to please you as you are to please him.”
The mockery blindsided Anna, but the crude power of the insult expressed itself more slowly, like a burn. It made the lieutenant seem unhinged. She noticed an unnatural hush quivering around them in the small building, and wondered if he was performing for a hidden audience.
Coldly, she said, “Is there a test you give people to see if they can dive?”
“No test. Just the dress. Let’s try it on for size.”
“On me?”
“No, on that Eskimo over there.”
Mr. Voss had tried to dissuade her from coming. “They don’t want you,” he’d said after telephoning the commandant. “I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant.” Anna had assumed, stupidly, that he didn’t want to lose her.
She followed the lieutenant down a hallway pocked with doors suggestively canted, and then outside. Building 569 was wedged against a perimeter wall to the west of the building ways, part of the Yard she hadn’t seen, even on the bike. The Edison plant was directly overhead, its five stacks disgorging wet-looking smoke.
Lieutenant Axel led the way to a bench at the top of the West Street Pier, where a diving suit lay folded. Its bulk and stiffness made it appear sentient, like a person doubled over. Anna quickened at the sight of it.
“Mr. Greer and Mr. Katz will be your tenders,” Lieutenant Axel said, indicating two men who idled nearby with marked nonchalance, having likely dashed from their eavesdropping posts just moments ahead of the lieutenant. “Gentlemen, Miss Kerrigan is interested in diving. Please get her dressed.”
The directive sounded perfectly straightforward, yet something about the terms—tenders, dress—made Anna wonder whether they were genuine or coined purely to confuse her. She was relieved when Lieutenant Axel went back indoors.
“We’ll put the dress right over what you’re wearing now, dear,” said the man called Greer. He was slight and weak-chinned, with thinning hair and a wedding band. “Just take off your shoes.”
The other man, Katz, had a swaggering aspect. “Is this a one?” he asked as they held up the diving suit in front of Anna, now in her stocking feet. “What do you know, Greer? She wears the same size as you.”
Greer rolled his eyes. The rubberized canvas gave off a grainy smell tinged with an earthen sourness that made Anna think of her grandparents’ farm in Minnesota. She stepped through the wide black rubber collar and pushed her feet along the stiff legs into socklike shapes at the bottoms. She had to hold on to the men in order to do this, an awkward business that Katz and Greer seemed to take as a matter of course. They hoisted the rubber collar over her torso and shoulders, and she shimmied her arms through the sleeves, which ended in attached three-fingered gloves. They buckled narrow leather straps around her wrists.
“Straps should be tighter,” Katz remarked. “Her wrists are so small the gloves might still blow off. Although you seem to manage, Greer, with those ladylike hands of yours.”
“Mr. Katz is proud of his stature,” Greer told Anna conspiratorially. “Makes him feel better about being 4-F.”
Anna was horrified, but Katz faltered only briefly. “Greer likes to mention that. He envies my chin.”
“Even with the chin, he can’t find a girl who’ll marry him,” Greer retorted.
“If you saw how henpecked Greer is, you’d know why I’m taking my time.”
Anna tried to look cheerful amid this volley of insults, but the men hardly seemed to notice. They were behind her, pulling tight the laces that ran along the back of each canvas leg. “Why are you 4-F, by the way?” Greer asked Katz.
“Busted eardrum. Teacher boxed my ears in the second grade.”
“Talked too much then, too, eh?”
“That’s awful,” Anna said, but sensed immediately that she shouldn’t have spoken. For the first time, Katz looked ashamed. “It’s an advantage for diving,” he said after a moment. “No pressure on that side.”