The Last Animal, page 23
Soon Adam tapped her shoulder and beckoned her forward. The bottom began to yawn away with surprising speed. It was ridged like the roof of a mouth. Bigger fish flickered through a fog of rocking sand. Delilah saw a stingray rippling over the sea floor, nearly camouflaged. Fan-like plants waved majestically to her. She had reached the oceanic version of a valley, and the water cleared: less sandy, more open, perhaps forty feet deep. Adam was leading her toward a high plateau, capped with a coral reef.
Then her back began to tingle. It was an odd sensation, as though someone was watching her. Slowly she rotated to look out into the deeper water, remembering what Marge had said about sharks being able to see the electrical impulses that were generated by muscles in motion.
Something was there. Delilah perceived a shadow, far away but massive, hovering near the surface. She squinted, her heart starting up an undisciplined clatter. The creature was not a shark; it looked instead like a shark that had been stepped on. Something bumped her elbow and she almost screamed, but it was only Adam, drifting near. She clung to him. Perhaps the thing would eat him first. He gestured at the animal, as though she had not noticed it—as though she were not paralyzed by the very sight of it. It was as wide as a ship, as thin as a surfboard, and very much alive. She wondered if a boat had run it over. Its wings lifted and fell, like an airplane in a low current, keeping it in place.
Adam, beside her, did not seem frightened. In fact, he nudged her and made his hands into a camera shape. She almost hit him. The creature dipped slightly, and she saw that it was a ray, but a humongous one. It had to be twenty feet across, at least. The wings were chunky, like slabs of plaster, rather than silky and billowing. There was a gash in its front that could have been a mouth. Its back was splashed with black and white. It beat its mammoth wings and dipped toward the bottom. Delilah cried out into her mouthpiece as the ray swept toward her.
But then it rose, like a kite in strong wind. She saw its belly, white and vast. It had halved the distance to her, but it was vertical now and clearly did not plan to come closer. There were pock-marks and shadows on its gut, a great wealth of muscle. It flapped its wings again. The pulse of water carried her hair off her shoulders. Delilah wondered if it could possibly be intending to leave the sea—to jump, as whales did in documentaries? It did not slow its pace; in fact it seemed to be accelerating as it swept toward the sparkling underside of the waves.
Before her eyes, the ray ripped the surface of the sea apart and vanished. Shards of sunlight ricocheted around the sandy floor. Delilah yanked her torso out of the water, kicking wildly to stay afloat, and tore her mask off. The creature was airborne now, printed as big as a pterodactyl against the sky. The sun shimmered on its back. She saw the whippy tail and the deep, painful-looking fissures where its wings separated from its body. It leveled out, making itself horizontal. She would not have been surprised to see it flap its wings again and lift into the air. Instead it was falling.
Adam surfaced next to her and jerked his mask up to his hairline. He was beaming all over his face. She felt his hand grab hers under the water. The ray was about to belly flop. Delilah thought it would smash like a snowball dropped on a flat of ice. She thought it would raise a tidal wave and drown them both.
“Adam,” she breathed. He clapped his hands over her ears. The creature landed like thunder.
Afterwards she napped. This time, she did not dream of Lew. Instead, it was the manatee that loomed up in front of her as she swam. Warm water. A salty tang in the throat. Delilah tried to wake; she was not happy there, floating in the briny blue, with that creature hovering so near, nudging her with its snout. The waves jiggled her to and fro. The sun was blinding. The manatee scraped her shoulder with its whiskers. Delilah was not exactly frightened; instead, to her surprise, she found herself merely annoyed. There was something she had to do, and if the manatee would only leave her alone, she would be able to remember what it was. Something about a pack of matches. Something about a letter. She kicked her feet. She attempted to launch into the breaststroke. But the manatee moved to block her, glaring into her eyes.
When she woke, in the fuddled state between clarity and dreaming, it suddenly seemed quite extraordinary that she should have encountered both a manatee and a manta ray—two such rare and wild animals—during her brief time in Playa del Carmen. These were the sort of beasts usually relegated to shows that specialized in vanishing species; they were not to be found each time a know-nothing tourist paddled out from the pier of a glitzy hotel. Days ago, on her welcome-to-the-resort tour, the guide had actually warned her about this. Marge had been present as well, scribbling in her notebook. As the guide had led them past the marina, he had pointed out the canoes and snorkeling gear, then explained that the ocean was very clear, very nice, but he did not want them to be disappointed by what they might encounter out there. Clownfish, yes. Anemones, yes. But not blue whales, he had said, with a light laugh. Sometimes the tourists, especially Americans, expected to see giant squid or great white sharks. They came to the hotel wanting miracles. But such things were just not possible.
Delilah, of course, had been pleased to hear this. Now she turned her pillow to the cooler side. Her senses came into focus slowly, returning piece by piece from the synesthetic jumble of sleep, where smells were tumbled into colors, into sounds.
In the evening she called her children. Marge had gone out to swim laps in the pool. Delilah settled herself by the window in a wicker armchair. She had a glass of lemonade at her elbow, and the warm air poured over her chest and throat. She tried Chris first, but of course she only got his voice-mail, one of his endless incomprehensible messages, his baritone speaking in muffled, intermittent bursts over a stumbling beat and eerie tune. She supposed this was the “electronic music” he had begun to create lately, to her dismay. Next she dialed Jenny, who answered on the fifth ring, sounding breathless and elated.
“Ma,” she said. “I was wondering if you were still alive. How are things?”
“Good, really good,” Delilah said, feeling a little tearful, as she always did when it had been a long time since she spoke with her children. “You wouldn’t believe this weather.”
“Is old Marge giving you any trouble?”
“No, she’s been fine,” Delilah said, glancing at Marge’s pristine bedspread. In fact, Marge had fallen in with a crew of lunatic birdwatchers, Americans who had come to Mexico for the sake of the pelicans and herons. They had spent the day traipsing about with binoculars and a collection of reference books; Marge had come home with thrilling tales of seafowl glimpsed at sixty yards.
On the other end of the line there was a burst of static. Delilah was used to this. Her daughter was too restless to sit quietly during conversations, but had to walk, shift position, and periodically drop the phone on the floor.
“Well,” Jenny said, “you tell her that this is your first vacation ever, and if she ruins it, I’ll kill her.” There was another eruption of static. “Have you got a tan? Are you drinking every night? Have you met any guys?”
“I went kayaking,” Delilah said, sipping her lemonade. “That was yesterday, and I saw a manatee. Today I went snorkeling and saw a manta ray. I’m sure it was a manta ray. I looked it up.”
Jenny roared with laughter. “Oh, perfect, Ma, beautiful. Of course you did. But seriously, have you been near the water at all? You really ought to try it, you know. Just once, anyway. It’s very warm in that part of the world.”
The sun had barely risen when Adam knocked on the door of the bungalow. Delilah came coolly to meet him, pleased that she was already showered and dressed. He explained politely that he would like to take her out again, but that it would be a longer trip this time, because he wanted her to try parasailing. This, evidently, was an activity that involved being suspended in the air and dragged after a boat; he wanted her to experience it before they parted. Delilah began to explain, equally politely, that her system had already been overloaded by what she had experienced during her stay in Playa del Carmen. She needed a bit of time to recover. She was reluctant, too, to leave Marge alone for another day. Marge had asked her to accompany the bird-watching party that afternoon, and she felt that it would be politic to accept.
But then she changed her mind. She remembered Marge’s incredulous expression when she had heard about the manatee; she remembered Jenny’s light, unbelieving laughter. Setting her jaw, Delilah gathered up her purse, hat, and flip-flops, and closed the door firmly behind her.
An hour later, in a roaring tide of wind, she clutched her sunhat to her head as the speedboat shuddered beneath her. Adam stood with his elbows on the railing. On the boat with them was a duo Delilah found hilarious: a rich businessman and his topless trophy wife. The deck was shabby, with slabs of flooring that had come up and been nailed inexpertly back down. A few chairs, bolted to the floor, swiveled as the boat moved. The prow was manned by two Mexican boys who looked like members of some glittering mafia—gold chains, black sunglasses, and amber tans.
Delilah’s eyes watered in the wind. She glanced occasionally at the black harnesses on the deck beside her—a flat of wood, like the seat of a swing, attached to a complex web of rigging. Her thoughts drifted back to Marge, who was no doubt standing comfortably on dry land, peering at the ocean from a safe distance, through binoculars. The boat nosed to the left, and Delilah staggered against Adam. The topless lady, a dishwater blond with no chin, imitated the crewmen’s speech in a murmur—“Está bien; I can do that, bueno” Her husband ignored her altogether, gazing out at the expanse of sea as though appraising its possibilities.
“I feel like I’m on a movie set,” Delilah hissed to Adam. “I think I’m too old to have topless women on my boat.”
“Why do you think they’re so happy?” Adam indicated the two crewmen, who were now sharing a cigarette in silence, too cool to speak even to each other.
“I’m not going up in the air, you know. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Sure,” he said. “You can watch me and wave.”
The boat ground to a halt. The blond stumbled against the railing, and her hand rose instinctively to protect her flying cleavage. The two crewmen strode to the aft deck, their faces blank behind their sunglasses. Delilah gasped as one of them gripped her shoulders and began buckling her into a harness. She found herself unceremoniously hoisted up on the bulwark, still clutching her hat. The crewman grabbed her waist and nuzzled her buttocks onto the plank of wood.
“Wait a minute,” Delilah cried, as the boat rumbled into life. “Just hang on!”
A wave swept under the hull, and her stomach lurched. Adam was crammed in beside her on the swing. Delilah grabbed the rope desperately as the speedboat, along with the whole blue curtain of the ocean, fell away beneath her. The glide was so smooth she did not seem to be moving at all; the boat got smaller, and the world rocked away from her on its axis, but she stayed where she was on the plank of wood with Adam at her side.
The gauzy parachute filled with sunlight. One flip-flop swung off her toes and then fell, landing with a delicate splash. They were still climbing. The boat was a pale triangle. The golden coastline of Mexico was now dwarfed by the red expanse of the continent behind it. The sea swept unbroken to the edge of the horizon. A windsurfer fell in slow motion, tipped by the breeze, and his sail flapped open across the water like a butterfly wing.
Far below, the speedboat cut to the left, and the rope arced lazily after it. The swing sank slightly until the slack caught, and then the wind increased wildly around them. Adam took Delilah’s hand.
The boat was heading into deeper water. From this height, the sea was a gauzy skin over vast blue depths; Delilah could see where the rocky ground began its underwater decline, the coastal plateau giving way to an inky void. Fish flashed like jewels, and she realized they must be large fish indeed to be visible at this height. She shivered. The water broke, foamy and clouded, against islands of coral and reef. The wind was cool, flower-scented.
“Look there,” Adam said, pointing.
Delilah followed his finger to a round rock, perfectly oval, like a coin. She squinted in confusion—it appeared to be moving above the blue slabs beneath it. It was certainly moving. She could see now what she’d mistaken for darting fish: the vast flippers and reaching head of a sea turtle. At this distance it looked like a pet in a bathtub, but she was not fooled. The thing was bigger than she was.
The speedboat whined at the end of its trailing leash. The turtle was far enough from the boat that Delilah wondered if it would be visible to the people on board. Probably not. Once again, it appeared that she would be the sole witness to something extraordinary. A distant bell rang at the back of her mind. It seemed odd to her that no one else, in all of Mexico—in the whole world—could verify what she and Adam had experienced over the past few days. Nobody else had petted the manatee. Nobody else had swum with the manta ray. Delilah bit her lip, frowning. But she had no time, just now, to contemplate the matter. There was too much to take in. The turtle broke the surface. Its head came out of the water, ancient and dark. She caught a glimpse of charcoal eyes. Waves lapped around the moving island of its shell.
Then the boat cut its motor beneath them. The rope went limp, and they began to drift rapidly downward.
“This is normal,” Adam said quickly. “They dip you—just your feet. They’ll start the engine up again as soon as we touch the water.”
Delilah nodded. She was falling, the wind lifting her dress around her knees. The turtle swelled like a sponge in a sink. It exhaled a glittering mist with a hoarse old man’s cough. Her shadow pooled over its back, dappling the swirls of blue and yellow. As she sank toward it, the turtle swam beneath her, as eager as a dog kicking out toward a thrown stick. The eyes were full of sleepy underwater thinking. The shell was plated like glass, as luminous as mother-of-pearl. The sea swept up toward Delilah’s feet, and she twisted around to see the turtle’s sinewy neck and the sagging skin of its shoulders. It coughed a booming spray and dived. Two waves collided, closing over it, and suddenly it was a rock again, a monstrous oval stone with a dream of legs and arms. It passed directly beneath her as her feet touched the sea.
Afterward, she would find herself unable to say just what possessed her in that moment. The instinct came over her with all the force of an edict from heaven. She had the impression of a signal, of something she had been waiting for—waiting, perhaps, over months and years. Without pause, Delilah undid the buckles on her harness and fell out of the swing.
The ocean received her like an open mouth. Her ears were full of the smack of her own descent, and her hands stung where she had tried to catch herself on the water’s surface. She opened her eyes, burning against the salt, and saw the blue-green shell of the turtle looming under her like the back of a car. She struck out with both feet and kicked its hide, stunned by the solidity of it; she budged it no more than a puppy running full-tilt into the legs of its owner. The turtle moved with astonishing speed. Its flippers were visible on either side, churning water.
Delilah reached toward its luminous back. Her dress fanned out around her, and coils of her own hair drifted before her eyes. Beneath her scrabbling fingers, the shell felt like cold cobblestone, the crusted hull of a sailboat. Her hands slipped. She clawed frantically to keep her hold, but the turtle rolled beneath her. The wash of its flippers lifted her up. She could not breathe.
She let go. The turtle plunged away from her. Her lungs were bursting, and Marge’s face appeared in her mind, clucking her tongue in resigned shame. Delilah kicked with aching legs until the open air broke against her face.
“Over there!” someone screamed. Adam was paddling toward her, one arm slung over the wood plank. The silken parachute had fainted into the ocean. Delilah peered into the blue depths, shaking now, appalled by what she had done. The turtle had vanished, a blur against deeper blue. Adam’s sunglasses were askew, his shirt soaked. His expression was unfathomable as held out a hand for her. The speedboat was grinding toward them, none too quickly. One of the crewmen leaned lazily over the prow, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head. Delilah clutched at the slippery wood and felt Adam grab her around the waist, steadying her. She was chilled to the bone. Her arthritis was on fire. She buried her face in Adam’s shoulder and did not look up, even when strong hands gripped her torso and hoisted her into the air.
He said he would come for her that evening and take her out to dinner—but he never turned up. Delilah mooned around the bungalow until nightfall, as heartsick and hopeful as a teenager. In the morning she feigned a stomachache to justify a few more hours’ anxious waiting. Marge went shopping with her new bird-watching buddies, returning gleefully with a dozen wispy, identical scarves and a life-size wooden parrot. Delilah spent the day flipping through channels on the snowy television screen, unable to follow the plot of any of the familiar American shows, dubbed now into Spanish. She went to bed under a black cloud.
By the following morning, to her own chagrin, she was forced to admit that she had been rejected. Adam appeared to have vanished into thin air. It stung more than it should have, their acquaintance being so brief. Over the years, Delilah had learned that men could be maddeningly inscrutable. Throughout her unsatisfactory forays into the dating scene, she had discovered that much. Some men were married but claimed to be single; some were divorced but claimed to still love their ex-wives. Some hung around interminably after being tactfully rejected, and some—like Adam—disappeared without warning. This time, however, she was plagued by echoes, a welter of old feelings. In Adam’s company, she had, however momentarily, been able to forget what had brought her to Mexico in the first place. She had not thought about Lew’s letters, about what it meant that she had burned them all finally, ceremoniously, removing them forever from the world. For a few bright, shining days, she had shaken off the sensation of loss that had characterized most of her adult life.
