The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve Page A

thinking that it is,
     possibly, the most beautiful night of the summer.
    I have a photograph of the five of us in the cockpit of the Morgan the evening Rich makes the mussels and Thomas breaks the
     glass. I take the picture while the light is still orange; and, as a result, all of us look unreasonably tanned and healthy.
     In the photograph, Billie is sitting on Rich’s lap and has just reached over to touch a gold wrist cuff that Adaline has put
     on a few minutes earlier. Rich is smiling straight at the camera, an open-mouthed smile that shows a lot of teeth, which look
     salmon-colored in the light. Beside him, Adaline has shaken out her hair so that the camera has caught her with her chin slightly
     raised. She has on a black sundress with thin straps and a long skirt; her cross gives off a glint of sunlight. The low sun
     is shining almost painfully into everyone’s eyes, which is why Thomas is squinting and has a hand raised to his brow. The
     only part of his face that is clearly identifiable is his mouth and jawline. As for me, I have engaged the timer so that I
     have time to insert myself into the picture. I am sitting beside Thomas, but am slightly tilted, as though I am straining
     to be part of the composition. I have smiled, but my eyes are, at that instant, closed in a blink. Thomas has attempted to
     put his free arm around me, but the camera has caught him with it raised and crooked in the air.
    “How exactly did you get the scar?” Adaline is asking.
    “We really need to feed Billie,” I say, talking as much to myself as to anyone. It has been an exhausting day, and I haven’t
     thought about Billie’s dinner at all. I know that Rich has bought lobsters for the rest of us, but Billie will not eat a lobster.
    “Mommy, can I have a Coke?”
    “In a car accident,” Thomas says. “When I was a kid. The driver was drunk.” Rich looks up quickly at Thomas, but Thomas turns
     his head away.
    “Not now, Sweetie. It’s almost time for supper.”
    “We have some tunafish,” says Rich. “I’ll make her a sandwich.”
    “You’ve done enough,” I say. “The least I can do is make a sandwich.” I start to get up.
    “I don’t want tunafish,” Billie says. “I want a lobster.”
    “Billie, I don’t think…” I start to say, but Rich stops me with a small shake of his head.
    “Why don’t you give the lobster a try?” he asks Billie. “And if you don’t like it, we can make the sandwich then.”
    She closes her mouth and nods. I can see that she is slightly worried now that she has won her small contest. I doubt she
     really wants a lobster.
    “Where are you from?” Adaline asks me. As she crosses her legs, a slit in the skirt of her black dress falls open, revealing
     a long, suntanned calf. Thomas looks down at Adaline’s leg, and then away. I am wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Thomas has
     a fresh shirt on, a blue shirt with a thin yellow stripe, and he has shaved.
    “Indiana, originally,” I say. “My parents are dead. I was born late, when my mother was forty-eight.”
    “Mommy, what do seagulls eat?”
    “Fish, I think,” I say to Billie. “They dive in the ocean for fish. If you watch them closely, I’ll bet you can see them.”
     Selfconsciously, I look toward Smuttynose, at the gulls that loop in the air over the ragged shoreline.
    “And you do this?” Adaline asks, gesturing with her hands to include the boat, the island, the harbor.
    “When I can,” I say.
    “But, Mom, where do they sleep?”
    “That’s a good question,” I say, turning to Thomas for help.
    “Damned if I know,” Thomas says.
    “They must sleep on rocks,” Adaline offers. “They put their heads under their wings, I think.”
    “Have you ever seen a seagull sleep?” Billie asks her.
    Adaline purses her lips. “I must have done,” she says. “But I can’t think where.”
    “On the back of a garbage barge in the middle of Boston Harbor,” Rich calls out from the galley.
    “The rats