July, July by Tim )'Brien

Author:Tim )'Brien [)'Brien, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

On their fifth day up north, after breakfast, Harmon drowned in the waters off Loon Point. Ellie witnessed it from a reclining beach chair. Harmon raised his arms up high, the morning sunlight gathering all around him, his hands closing into fists. He looked once at the sky. He went down and came up and then vanished. There was no drama to it. Ellie waited ten minutes, thinking she'd lost him among the waves.

It was nearly two hours before Harmon was brought to shore in a boat. His eyelids were half open, his pupils like thin wafers of quartz. His arms and legs seemed oddly shrunken, out of proportion to the heavy chest and stomach, and on his face there was an impatient, almost harried expression, as if he were working on the teeth of an unhappy six-year-old. He had lost his distinguished good looks. While the paramedics leaned over him, Ellie wondered how she'd ever come to care for such a man, someone so wet and dead, whose swimming trunks had slipped below the knees and whose buttocks looked wrinkled and fishy white in the bright morning sunlight. Her own transgressions, of course. Her own gross stupidity. She understood that. But despite herself, Ellie couldn't push away a peculiar sense of anger. She felt betrayed. As the medics secured Harmon to a stretcher, she tried to imagine how she might explain things to Mark, sorting through amendments to the truth, testing the possibilities, but in the end nothing persuasive came to her. She felt caught. A snagged sensation. It all seemed so radical, so unfair and unnecessary, and as the medics lifted Harmon into a shiny white ambulance, Ellie wished he were properly alive so she could scold him.

Later on, she almost cried. Someone handed her a Kleenex. There were boats on the lake, many waterfowl, and the morning was warm and pleasant.

After the ambulance took Harmon away, a young policeman folded Ellie's beach towel and led her by the elbow up to the cabin. The man's grip was without sentiment, almost casual, and Ellie felt steadied by his presence. He seemed at ease with tragedy. When they reached the porch, the policeman handed her the beach towel. "There'll be things to take care of," he said. "I'll wait right here, give you a lift into town."

Oddly, then, he winked at her. Or maybe not. Ellie couldn't be sure.

"No hurry," the policeman said. "Take your time."

Ellie showered and changed into a skirt and blouse. It was not yet noon. As she used Harmon's hair dryer, Ellie contemplated calling Mark and blurting out the truth. A full confession. Names and dates and places. The notion tempted her, but Ellie sighed and shook her head. She dialed her home number, narrowed her throat, and informed the answering machine that her flight had been canceled, that she would be delayed a day or two. The call helped only a little. She pulled on a pair of sandals, devoted a moment to her lipstick and mirror.

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