Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

fight.
    And
there was his anxious face floating on the other side of the windshield as
again, after she'd come to think he had abandoned her, he was diving for her,
tugging at the door so violently the entire car rocked, and how tall he was,
how warmly bronze his tanned skin, taller than nearly any man Kelly had ever
seen, his wide white smile filled with teeth, those frizzy-wiry hairs on his
arms and his arms were solid, muscular, his right wrist as he'd mentioned
perceptibly thicker than his left from squash, decades of a fierce commitment
to squash, and she touched the expensive white-gold digital watch on the wrist
noting its tightness, the band pinching the flesh. Bemused it seemed by his
state-of-the-art Rolex he said something about subsequent generations having a
new concept of time seeing numerals flash and wink and fly by in contrast to the
past where you looked at the face of a clock and saw the circular route of the
hours as a measurable space to be traveled if only forward.
    And his strong fingers crushing hers. Kelly is it?—Kelly?
    That
day that morning she'd been jogging on the beach amid the dunes, wind in her
hair and the sun blazing white and in the frothy surf were sandpipers with
prominently spotted breasts and long thin beaks and those delicate legs
teetering pecking in the wet sand and she'd smiled at them, their curious
scurrying movements, the oblivion of their concentration, feeling her heart
swell I want to live, I want to live forever!
    She
was bargaining yes all right she would trade her right leg, even both her legs
if they thought it necessary, the emergency rescue team, yes amputate, all
right please go ahead, please just do it she would sign the release later, she
promised not to sue.
    Artie
Kelleher was the one!—for that was his character, "litigious" as the
family teased him, but Kelly would explain the circumstances, Kelly would take
the blame.
    She
was swallowing the black water in quick small mouthfuls reasoning that if she
swallowed it quickly enough she would be simply drinking it, she would be all
right.
    What
was that?—for her?—staring in blinking astonishment and elation at what Grandma
had sewed her, a dress in white pucker-cotton printed with tiny strawberries,
she would wear it with her new black patent-leather shoes and the white cotton
anklet socks trimmed in pink.
    You
love the life you've lived because it is yours. Because that is the way you
have come.
    She
saw them watching her closely, she had to hide her
tears, not wanting them to be upset. Not wanting them to know.
    Grandma, Mommy, Daddy—I love you.
    Yet
strange to her, not altogether pleasant, that they were so young. She had not
remembered them so young.
    It
was risky it was the adventure of her young life very likely yes probably a
mistake but she'd leaned forward on her bare straining toes taking the kiss as
if it were her due, for she was the one, she and none other, supplanting all
the others, the young women who would have taken that kiss, from him, from that
man whose name she had forgotten, in just that way.
    She
wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.
    She'd
never loved any man, she was a good girl but she would love that man if that
would save her.
    The
black water was splashing into her mouth, into her nostrils, there was no
avoiding it, filling her lungs, and her heart was beating in quick erratic
lurches laboring to supply oxygen to her fainting brain where she saw so
vividly jagged needles rising like stalagmites—what did it mean? Laughing
ruefully to think how many kisses she'd had tasting of beer? wine ? whiskey ? cigarettes ? marijuana ?
    You
love the life you've lived, there is no other.
    You
love the life you've lived, you're an American girl. You believe you have
chosen it.
     
    And
yet: he was diving into the black water, diving to
the car, his fingers outspread on the cracked windshield and his hair lifting
in tendrils, Kelly?—Kelly? —she saw him mute