Her faceplate jerked open, and Bascombe peered in from above her on the ladder. His face was every bit as grim as she’d expected. “Squat and let water run off the dress,” he told her. “That’ll lighten it.”
Anna gulped cold fresh air through the open faceplate. “I need to . . . go back down,” she panted.
“Don’t tell me that. Squat.”
Anna squatted and felt water being forced off the dress. But the hat and collar were still too heavy.
“Take a step,” Bascombe said, withdrawing to give her room. She managed to get her left shoe onto the next rung, but when she tried to hoist the remainder of her body up the next five inches, her knee buckled and she nearly fell in backward. Bascombe seized her forearms and pinned them, hard, to the ladder rails. Together they absorbed what had almost happened: falling into the water with her faceplate open would have meant plunging straight to the bottom.
“You want Marle and me to pull you up?” Bascombe said. “Fine, we’ll pull you up. And those mugs will say, Good riddance. Send her back home to Mama. Fuck that.” He jabbed his gaze through the faceplate into her eyes. His own were very blue, hard as quartz. Anna felt as if she’d never really seen them before. “Find the strength, Kerrigan,” he told her. “Find. The. Strength.”
She saw that he was desperate. “It won’t count against you,” she breathed, “if I can’t.”
He made a disdainful noise. “It won’t touch me,” he said. “Newmann blew up, Savino nailed a hole through the leg of his dress, Fantano’s wood is floating down the river. Morrissey’s on his way up, but I doubt he’s built the box. At this rate, Marle and I are the only ones who’ll pass.”
“I made the box,” Anna panted.
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “All right, then,” he said. “Get up this goddamn ladder and take the credit. Lift your shoe! Good. Now the other. Up. Up.” He was still securing her wrists to the ladder, leaning down from the rungs above her like a bat. “I’ll see you topside,” he said, and sealed her faceplate.
His hectoring worked upon Anna like smelling salts. Or maybe it was having rested. Or breathed fresh air. Whatever the reason, she climbed the ladder. One step, then another. She was stronger than she knew.
Back on the barge, Marle steered her toward the diving bench, and she sank onto it. When Marle opened her faceplate, she saw Lieutenant Axel holding two completed boxes. Everyone paused to listen, Anna and Morrissey still in their helmets.
“We’ve had our share of tribulations this morning,” the lieutenant told the group coyly. “But I’m pleased to say we’ve two boys here who are honest-to-God divers.”
“One is Kerrigan, sir,” Marle shouted over the wind.
Even in her exhaustion, Anna knew she would not forget the look of appalled bewilderment that blighted the lieutenant’s childish face. Shaking his head, he peered at the diving benches.
“No,” he said. “No, no.” And then, “Which one?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
In bruising terms, Lieutenant Axel expelled from the program the three men who had failed their dives in Wallabout Bay. But as there was nowhere for them immediately to go (the barge being surrounded by water), and as their services—as both tenders and flywheel turners on the air compressors—were still required, they remained on board, the lieutenant eyeing them warily as the day progressed. He’d fewer divers than he needed. Of his two irreconcilable wishes—to amass a robust diving program and sack every diver in it—the latter had gained an edge.
When everyone else had dived successfully, the lieutenant grudgingly offered Newmann, Savino, and Fantano a chance to redeem themselves. This time all three managed to assemble their boxes and haul themselves back onto the barge. Celebration crested among the group as they steamed back to the West End Pier. It gathered force as they unloaded diving chests and air compressors and heavy wet diving dresses and carried them back into Building 569.
“We did a good job weeding out the bad apples early,” Lieutenant Axel told the group in subdued approval. “What we’ve left now are the strongest men, the ablest men, for diving. Some of you will fall away yet,” he said, a catch of excitement in his voice. “Accidents, injuries, mishaps—those are inevitable. But for now, congratulations, men.”
His eyes seemed to graze Anna each time he used the word “men,” as if he were conjuring her disappearance. In the lieutenant’s eyes, she was the inconvenient residue of a failed experiment—Anna knew this. Building 569 hadn’t even a ladies’ room. In order for her to use the toilet, Katz or Greer had to clear the men’s room and stand awkward guard outside it. She dreaded the arrival of her monthly. Back in her old shop, the marrieds had groused about marine guards glimpsing their Kotex during inspections of pocketbooks at the Sands Street gate. She’d have liked to see them react to this arrangement!
Her makeshift locker room was a broom closet. As she changed back into her street clothes, she overheard the male divers clowning in their locker room down the hall. A plan was afoot to meet at the Eagle’s Nest. It was Saturday night; tomorrow would be a day off. Anna stayed hidden as they passed her closet in boisterous packs on their way out.
When the building was quiet, she peeked from the closet and saw Marle walking alone toward the exit. Like her, he must have been waiting for the others to go. Anna had an impulse to join him. She was about to step from her closet when she heard Bascombe call from outside: “Say, Marle, you still in there?”
“Still here,” Marle called back, slowing his steps.
“The boys are walking over now. I’ll wait for you.”
Marle hesitated, glancing at his wristwatch. Anna had an uncanny sensation of being inside his mind—feeling hesitant, shy of the awkwardness of joining but eager to be included. Bowing out now, with Bascombe waiting, would look churlish; he might not be invited again. “All right,” Marle said, and moved toward the door with purpose.
Anna heard the crunch of their boots on the brick pier as their voices faded into the faint din of construction noise and boat traffic. Silence reverberated around her, prelude to the streetcar, the covered dish, the empty apartment. The prospect repelled her. All day she’d handled other divers and been handled by them in a way reminiscent of childhood: jostling with other kids, the feel of their breath, their sticky hands, the bready smell of their scalps. Having been nourished by so much proximity, she couldn’t bear to return to her solitude.
She hurried to the inspection building to look for Rose, intending to ask her to supper. If Rose demurred—as she likely would, with little Melvin at home—she might at least invite Anna with her. But she’d missed the shift change, and when she reached the second floor, she found Rose and the other marrieds gone, strangers on their stools.
The supervisor’s door was ajar. Anna knocked, uncertain whether it would be Mr. Voss or the night snapper.
“Come in.”
“Mr. Voss!” she cried.