He is seated on the edge of a short, wide dock. He’s wearing dark blue swimming trunks and a yellow life vest, his feet tucked into water skis and his hands grasping a bar attached to a tow rope which in turn is attached to Eddie’s new boat. Late afternoon sunlight glitters off the lake in sheets and planes, and the still air ripples in the heat, distorting the tall, dense, gray-green live oaks and cypress trees along the grassy shore. From where Bob is seated, the shoreline loops and spreads gradually into an approximate O three miles wide and long. They are on the grounds of the Lakes Region Yacht and Country Club, he, Elaine, Ruthie and Emma having been admitted at the gate earlier as guests of Edward Dubois, and after meeting Eddie, Sarah and Jessica at the clubhouse bar, where the grownups drank mint juleps on the terrace under a Cinzano umbrella, they strolled across the clipped, pale green lawns from the clubhouse and marina to one of the half-dozen small, secluded coves on the club grounds where there are picnic tables, fireplaces, boat landings and short, shallow beaches. It’s a Sunday, Eddie’s thirty-third birthday.
Last week, when Bob and his family were invited by Sarah to come to the club and help celebrate the day, Bob instructed Elaine to find out what they should give Eddie for a birthday present. “The sonofabitch’s already got everything he needs,” he muttered. Elaine asked her sister-in-law what Eddie needed. Sarah suggested they get him something to go with her gift to him.
“What is your gift?” Elaine asked. They were talking on the telephone, Elaine standing in her kitchen, Sarah lying in coconut oil next to her pool. Bob sat on the couch in front of the TV watching the New York Yankees, in a late season game, thrash the Red Sox, who once again had betrayed him in August after having seduced him, almost against his will, in May.
“Fucking Reggie,” he grumbled, taking a quick pull on his beer.
“I hate the way he struts. Look at the bastard, like a goddamn rooster.”
Sarah spoke slowly, almost coyly, though Elaine couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t simply come right out and tell her what she’d bought for her husband’s birthday. “You’ll
never
guess what it is,” she said. “I’m almost
ashamed
of myself, and I
know
I’ll be sorry later.”
“Well, what should we get him to go with it?” Elaine asked, her voice cooling. “Whatever
it
is.”
Sarah giggled. “Seat cushions.”
“What?”
“Seat cushions.”
“Seat cushions? Like, for sitting on? For a couch?”
“No, no, silly. For a boat!”
“A boat? You bought him a boat? Another one?”
Bob groaned, “Jee-sus H. Christ! Another fucking boat!” and Elaine shushed him with the flat of her hand, and he went back to staring at the TV screen, hating Reggie Jackson with renewed fury.
“Oh, it’s real cute, he’s gonna love it,” Sarah said. “Wait’ll you see it. He’s been talking about this one in particular for months, and he’s dropped a few hints, but I know he doesn’t think I’ll go out and do it, actually go out on my own and buy him a twelve-thousand-dollar boat.”
“Twelve thousand dollars!” Elaine gasped.
Bob looked up from the TV screen and stared at his wife as if he suddenly felt sick and wanted sympathy.
“Where’d you get that kind of money, Sarah? Won’t he be mad when he finds out? I mean, I can’t imagine …”
“Oh, Eddie’s been putting money into an account in my name for a long time, in several accounts, actually, and I never touch it, even though he tells me I should go ahead and spend it when I want to and not let it sit there where anybody who wants to can see it. It’s some kind of tax thing. I never understand that sort of thing. Anyhow, he’d rather have me buy things with the money than leave it in the bank like that. Jewelry and stuff. I don’t know
how
he’ll feel about me
spending money on a boat, though. But as long as it’s in my name, I think it’s all right. I checked with his accountant, and he said it was okay, though I hope he didn’t tell Eddie—I really want to surprise him. He’s been so worried the last few weeks. Actually, since the robbery, though I don’t think that’s what’s got him down.”
Cushions, then.
Bob stopped one morning at Wiggins Boat Yard and Marina in Winter Haven, where Sarah had bought Eddie’s boat, and bought four large, square, unsinkable cushions, rust-colored, to match the boat, a Regal Empress 190XL, a twenty-foot-long, arrow-shaped speedboat with a 150-horsepower Johnson motor and a top speed of over forty-five miles per hour. Bob lugged the set of cushions in a large, gift-wrapped box from the car out to the terrace behind the clubhouse and then across the rolling lawns to the picnic grounds by the shore, where Sarah had arranged to have sandwiches, beer for the adults and lemonade for the kids, birthday cake and ice cream sent down from the clubhouse, and where Eddie, who had received his gift earlier that morning and had been playing with it ever since, had tied his new boat. When Bob saw the vehicle sitting low and sleek in the water, saw its abundance of chrome and curved glass and glistening deck, saw the snug interior fitted out like a sports car, he set the box of cushions on the ground by the picnic table and stood awkwardly in front of it, as if to hide it from sight, and wished he had bought something like a Swiss army knife instead.
Later, after eating the sandwiches and drinking several Heinekens, and after Eddie had blown out the candles on his cake (eleven of them, one for each three years, Sarah explained), Elaine presented the box to him, with her apologies. “It’s not much, Eddie,” she said, lifting it with difficulty to the front of her huge belly and passing it over the table to him.
Bob looked out at the lake and let his gaze fall on the new boat tied to the dock, where it moved on the rippling water like a thoroughbred racehorse trembling in a shifting breeze.
Eddie tore open the box like a child, then beamed happily at the
sight of the cushions inside. “Hey! Thanks, Elaine! Bob! Thanks a lot. This’s great. Look, honey,
cushions
! They match the boat,” he said, genuinely pleased. He’d figured on renting cushions today at the marina, he said, or hauling over the small yellow cushions from his old boat, which would have been okay, he explained, but not perfect. “And everything should be perfect on a maiden voyage, right, Bob?”
“Right. Perfect.”
Now, as if to atone for his feeble gift, Bob agrees to water-ski behind Eddie’s new boat, while his wife and sister-in-law watch from the shore and his daughters and niece, hugged by life vests and seated on the new cushions, watch from the boat. He’s never skied on water before; in fact, he’s never skied on any kind of surface, despite having been raised where people drive from cities hundreds of miles away just so they can spend a few hours careening down mountains on slats strapped to their feet.
With the motor burbling and spitting behind the boat, Eddie looks back at Bob and asks if he’s ready. Sitting next to her father in the cockpit, Jessica, looking sadly like a plucked chicken in her purple tank suit, seems profoundly bored. Emma stares at the gauges on the glittering dashboard in front of her, while Ruthie examines the tow rope where it’s clipped to the swivel at the stern, follows its coiled, half-submerged length to the dock, fifteen feet away, where it’s attached to a short bar that her father, grim-faced, extends chest-high in front of him and clings to with both hands.
“Be careful, Daddy,” Ruthie says.
Eddie laughs and revs the motor. Emma delightedly follows the needle on the tachometer with her index finger, and Jessica peers off to her right, as if at a photographer specializing in preadolescent girls. She skied first, expertly circling the lake twice, then on the second pass letting go of the rope twenty or thirty feet from the landing dock and sinking slowly into the water, rising again and languidly floating the skis to shore ahead of her. She had looked good to Bob out there, swooping from one side of the wake to the other, riding over the waves and sending a high, white fantail behind her. It looked easy.
Eddie agreed. “But not as easy as it looks,” he warned. “Don’t get pissed if you fuck it up at first.” He offered some basic instruction, assured Bob that he’d start off slowly and told him to be sure to let go of the tow rope when he went down; he’d come back and pick him up right away.
“What do you mean, ‘when’?
‘If’
I go down is what,” Bob corrected him.
“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said, grinning.
The skis feel comfortable to him, like rubber slippers. He nods to Eddie that he’s ready and lifts the rope from the water, flicking it like reins on a horse.
Eddie guns the motor, the stern squats and the bow lifts, and the boat leaps forward, instantly straightening the rope, yanking Bob from the dock into the water. He sinks like a stone, then suddenly rises, standing, the skis rushing over the skin of the lake, and he’s doing it, he’s water-skiing! Eddie, glancing back, grins and raises his fist and cheers. Ruthie claps her hands with joy, and Emma follows, and even Jessica seems pleased.
As he whizzes away from shore, Bob lets go of the tow bar with one hand and waves triumphantly. He draws the rope to him, tests its tautness, then lets it back out, feels the water pounding against his feet, the wind in his face, and discovers that he can shift his weight on the skis and move himself to the left or right of the boat. On and on they go, straight out toward the middle of the lake, faster and still faster, and Bob feels wonderful. He decides to imitate his niece and cross the wake, and a second later the water is smacking loudly against the bottoms of the skis, but he holds on, keeps his legs bent slightly at the knees, his back straight, his arms outstretched, and he’s over, way out on the starboard side, almost parallel to the boat, as if he were racing with it. He knows he is grinning foolishly, but he doesn’t care. He’s happier at this moment than he has been in months, happier than he can remember having been for years, mindless and moving fast and barely in control, concentrating mightily on all the quickly shifting elements—water, boat, towline, skis, feet, legs, back and
arms—creating and sustaining a balanced tension between them that surrounds him like an ether and brings him wholly to life.
Soon they have circled the lake and are making a pass by the dock. Bob can see Sarah, tall in her white jogging suit, standing on the dock, behind her Elaine, large and lumpy in pink maternity shorts and smock, seated at the picnic table. Eddie cuts back a bit and slows slightly, but Bob waves for him to go on, take another turn, so Eddie hits the throttle, and as they pass the dock, Bob leans to his right and skids over the waves to the left of the boat, swinging closer and closer to the dock. The skis bump over the water as if over rutted ice, pounding loudly against it, and Eddie, looking quickly over his shoulder, sees the danger and turns the boat slightly shoreward and increases speed to straighten the line and get Bob back behind the boat and away from the dock. But it’s too late. Bob’s headed straight for the dock now. Sarah sees what’s happening, knows what’s about to happen, and her hand goes to her mouth and she starts backing quickly off the dock toward the safety of the land. Elaine gets awkwardly but rapidly to her feet and rushes forward.
“Let go!” Eddie shouts. “Leggo the fuckin’ rope!”
Bob sees the collision that he cannot avoid. He sees his body, wet and nearly naked, smashed against the wooden dock, and suddenly his knees buckle, the skis dive nose-first into the water, and then his feet are free, he’s underwater, still holding to the rope, being ripped through the water and to the surface again, while Eddie screams back, “Leggo! Leggo! Leggo, you dumb asshole!”
The boat is roaring away from the dock now, hauling Bob behind it, banging his body against the rock-hard water. Eddie, with one hand on the wheel, has stood up and is gesturing wildly at Bob to let go of the rope. Bob can’t hear anything but the roar of the water and the boat, can’t feel anything except the pounding against his body, as if he were being kicked by a dozen boots at once. He rolls his body on its side, trying to escape the pounding. His hands seem frozen to the tow bar, and he can’t let go, he can’t pry his own fingers loose, until, at last, Eddie cuts the motor, and the boat slows and stops, the
rope coils and sinks, and Bob releases the bar, rolls over onto his back and, arms loose, legs dangling, head lolling back, waves washing over his body, he floats like a dead fish, a large white carp.
Eddie turns the boat and slowly approaches him. “You stupid sonofabitch!” he screams. “Why the fuck didn’t you let go the rope? You coulda got killed!”
Bob grabs the gunwale and says nothing, just holds on.
“You all right?” Eddie asks. The children are gray-faced, and Ruthie has jammed her thumb into her mouth.
“Why … why the fuck … didn’t you kill … the motor?”
“I couldn’t, you asshole! You were s’posed to let go the rope, I kept waiting for you to let go, that’s why!”
“You … bastard. You … coulda killed me.”
“Me!” Eddie screams, his eyes bugging out. “Me? Me? I coulda killed you?”
“I forgot … I forgot to let go. I couldn’t think. It was the first time. You coulda killed me,” Bob says again. “Help me get into the boat,” he says grimly, raising a hand from the water. “You’re a real bastard, Eddie. No shit.”
Eddie turns away and tells Jessica to pull in the towline. She stands and draws the rope quickly in, dumping it in a snarl behind the seat. Reaching down, Eddie grabs a rust-colored seat cushion and tosses it into the water. “Here,” he says. “Ride that to shore, you stupid sonofabitch.
I
coulda killed you,” he sneers. “I shoulda just kept on going, till you finally figured out to let go the fucking rope. But I probably woulda run out of gas first, you stupid asshole. You can ride your goddamned cushion home.” He hits the throttle, and the boat churns the water, turns, and heads roaring toward shore.
Bob watches it get smaller, sees his daughters looking back in fearful confusion, and when the waves subside, he paddles to the bobbing cushion and grabs onto it. Then, shoving it out in front of him, he kicks his legs and starts moving slowly in the direction of the dock and picnic grounds and his family.