The Glass Ocean(2)

            • • •

            Carlotta, it’s time—

            • • •

            No blame to be placed for their serial disappearances, first she, then he; she, as I am about to be, off over the edge of the earth; he—willfully—off over the edge of a boat into the cold—the slithering—the grey blue—the unblinking—the sea—

            • • •

            Don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell, that’s what they say. But I dwell nonetheless, casting my shadow onto this new and bright, unsullied and heretofore shadowless world.

            • • •

            Scraping of bootheel. Slamming of door. She’s given up on me for now. Out of patience. Crossing my line of vision, out there beneath the palms. Calmly regarding the horizon, that sharp, seamless glitter of blue. Balancing, for a moment, from my perspective, the sea on her back; then stooping to touch—to touch—

            I don’t know what. A coconut. A cockleshell. The sand.

            • • •

            Let her go. It will pass, this feeling, as of sinking into cold black and wet, the bubbles rising swiftly around me, silver and white, and the buzzing—

            • • •

            There. All right again now. It’s only for a moment that I’ll be alone.

            • • •

            That’s how it was when he went, into the cold North Sea. A sea far darker, and colder, than the one outside this window.

            Tell Clotilde, he said.

            Unwitting last words. Or not? She’d been gone a long time already, when he finally went, too.

            It’s hard to know what he meant by it. This is ambiguous.

            Down then. Into the murky unknown.

            We were in the smallboat together, he and I, and Harry Owen; just before dawn we’d sought our purchase on that slithering sea, with the cliffs still shadowed in the distance—Black Cap, Mad Molly, Devil’s Brow, their faces indistinct—Whitby itself somnolent, the whitewashed houses with their red-tiled roofs clinging like barnacles to their cranny in the cliff, limpets in the crevasse, holding tightly, tightly, such memories. Shadows aplenty there, in the old world. And all asleep among them. Outside the protective embrace of the breakwater, which in all weathers flashed its lights, one red, one green, our smallboat bucked and turned on the waves, while, from the harbor, fishing boats essayed, with their accompanying chorus of gulls, all in ignorance of us, our business none of theirs on that playfully cavorting sea: sea like a cat, batting us languidly with a tireless, disinterested paw. My father had the diving suit on, the entire ridiculous getup, the lead-soled shoes, the horizontal steel tank mounted on his back. Going down he was, to gather specimens for his glass ocean. These to be sketched, remade in glass.

            It was Harry Owen’s job, up top in the boat, to work the pump. He it was who would play out the length of hose, press the air down beneath; an esoteric job for an esoteric man. My job was simpler: I helped my father adjust the helmet.

            Tell Clotilde, he said, before taking the mouthpiece between his teeth. Then I battened the seals, and he sank, with a last, businesslike nod, into the wine-dark sea.

            What was I to tell her? How was I to tell her? He didn’t say, I didn’t ask.

            No matter. No matter. My mind was elsewhere mostly. I inherited that from her.

            I may have been irritated with him, just for a moment.

            Then he was over the side. I saw the silver crown of the helmet descend into the greeny-black void. All gone then. Not even a ripple remained to mark the place. The ocean unzipped and swallowed him up. The air hose played out vertically. Stopped. Harry Owen said, He’s struck bottom. The hose played out some more. Harry Owen said, He’s walking.