A burst of white stars shot across the harbor and they all lifted their faces to the sky. A moment later, when Loo looked back, her father had buried his twisted foot in the cold, dark sand.
“Never thought you’d settle down like this.”
“Things change,” said Hawley.
“Sure do,” Jove said. “I even joined the YMCA.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hawley said.
“Scout’s honor. I’ll prove it.” Jove saluted and started to unbutton his shirt. And then he was running toward the ocean. He went full-tilt and then he hooted and hollered as he jumped into the waves and dove under. After a minute he rose to the surface, his toes up, floating.
“Who is this guy?” Loo asked her father.
“He’s a taker,” said Hawley. “He takes things.”
“And you used to work with him?”
“A long time ago.”
“Come on in,” Jove yelled at them. “Water’s fine!”
“He’s an idiot,” said Loo.
Hawley stood up. He pulled his T-shirt over his head. Even in the shadows she could see his scars. The skin was different there. Puckered and ghostly. And now she knew the story behind one of those ghosts. She imagined Jove’s hands searching her father’s back, finding the bullet, digging it out—with what? His fingers? A knife? A spoon? None of the instruments she thought of seemed possible.
They walked to the shoreline. A wave came and splashed them both to their knees.
“It’s cold,” said Loo.
“A little,” said Hawley.
“You have to keep moving,” said Jove.
“You know, there’s sharks out there,” Loo called.
Jove stopped paddling.
“She’s kidding,” said Hawley. And then he walked into the water. He walked all the way up to his waist, not stopping but not rushing, either, and then he sank under the black surface of the ocean and disappeared.
“I can’t believe it!” said Jove, after Hawley surfaced next to him. He splashed his friend in the face. “Since when do you swim?”
“I took classes with Loo when she was little.”
“He was the only adult,” said Loo.
Jove hooted. “I would have paid to see that.”
Another flare went up from the staging area across the harbor. Blue bursts, then a set of screaming meemies popped and spun out across the sky, curling in bright spirals, illuminating the rippling water and the faces of the men. Loo went back and sat on the blanket. She rubbed her feet together. There were sand fleas and her legs were getting bitten.
She remembered Hawley tucking her hair into a tight rubber cap, the smell of chlorine on their skin from the heated pool. Before class, they’d sit with just their legs in the water. They’d kick up a storm, Hawley’s ruined foot flashing through the waves next to her own. They’d learned how to blow bubbles together. He’d talked her into walking the long length of the diving board. And she’d been there the very first time he’d dog-paddled across the pool without a float. She remembered that all the kids had cheered for him. And she remembered that when her father looked back from the other side, gripping the concrete ledge, breathing hard, there was no joy in his face.
She still had the watch on her wrist, but it was too dark to read the numbers. The fireworks were supposed to end at ten o’clock. A grand finale and then the folding of lawn chairs and a traffic jam as everyone went home. She waited for the next burst to hit. It seemed to take forever. She watched the men swimming and thought of the scrapbook hidden in her closet. All those details and numbers. She had believed the facts would change things. But her father was still her father.
She could hear the crowd hooting and blasting their air horns in anticipation across the harbor. A flare went up. And then another. And then another and another and another. She saw the smoke trails intertwining, and then the burst of rockets and pinwheels and dragons and hydras that ignited and extinguished in a barrage of cannons. Jove shouted and clapped. It seemed like the explosions would never end. Loo fought every impulse to cover her ears. To dive under the blanket. She leaned into the surge of maddening noise, and watched the light expanding and reflecting off her father’s wet skin, until his body was dappled in red and orange, and his whole back looked as though it had caught fire.
Seven, Eight, Nine
WHEN LOO WAS FIRST PUT in Hawley’s hands at the hospital, he felt nothing at all. Just a fear of dropping the baby or hurting her somehow or tipping her head wrong. It was such a soft head, the neck loose, the black, downy hair brushing against his callused fingers. Her skin was red and blotchy and her limbs out of proportion. He touched her arm and he could feel the bones underneath her pudgy flesh. Bones so new they felt like plastic—pliable and easily broken. Hawley had the urge to bend the baby’s arm to see how far it would go. As soon as he could, he gave her back to Lily. Then he took out the camera and flashed the flash. He held the Polaroid between his fingers and together they watched it develop, the chemicals mixing into the shape of his wife and daughter.
“Look at that,” said Lily. “It’s your family.”
After Alaska they had moved to Wisconsin—away from both coasts—and settled near the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, in a small cabin with a trail leading through a grove of balsam firs to the shore of a private lake. Every inch of their home was covered with things for the baby—blankets and toys and cribs and formula and diapers and a special bathtub and tiny socks and tiny clothes, mobiles of sheep that hung from the ceiling, side sleepers and Snuglis and carriages and multicolored blocks and board books and the smell of cream meant for rashes and talcum powder and warm, piss-soaked Pampers that were deposited into a Diaper Genie that lived in the bathroom next to the toilet.
At first Lily was too tired, too focused on the baby, too busy sleeping and feeding and flowing with hormones to notice Hawley’s indifference toward their daughter, but as the months passed and the baby grew larger and learned to roll over on her own, and then cut her first tooth, and then swallowed her first bite of rice cereal, Lily began to sigh whenever he made an excuse to leave the house—sighed when he went for a walk, sighed when a diaper needed to be changed and he slipped out of the room, sighed when he feigned sleep at the baby’s 2 A.M. feeding. These sighs grew in length and volume and pitch, until the day of their daughter’s baptism, when Lily spooned pea puree into the baby’s mouth, and then bathed her and wrapped her in a white gown and bonnet, and then squeezed herself into an old sundress, and brushed her hair, and put on lipstick, and stood by the door, expectant and waiting, and Hawley said he was going fishing.