“For what?”
“We’ll know when the time comes.”
“I see.” Ellen put the stamps in her purse. “Well, maybe you’re right. Thanks, Minnie.” She turned and walked toward the door.
“There’ll be no mistaking it,” Minnie said to Ellen’s back.
Ellen walked to Main Street and turned right, past a boutique and an antique shop. She stopped at Amity Hardware and went inside. There was no immediate response to the tinkle of the bell that the door struck as she opened it. She waited for a few seconds, then called, “Albert?”
She walked to the back of the store, to an open door that led to the basement. She heard two men talking below.
“I’ll be right up,” called the voice of Albert Morris. “Here’s a whole box of them,” Morris said to the other man. “Look through and see if you find what you want.”
Morris came to the bottom of the stairs and started up—slowly and deliberately, one step at a time, holding on to the banister. He was in his early sixties, and he had had a heart attack two years earlier.
“Cleats,” he said when he reached the top of the stairs.
“What?” said Ellen.
“Cleats. Fella wants cleats for a boat. Size he’s looking for, he must be the captain of a battleship. Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“The rubber nozzle in my kitchen sink is all cracked. You know, the kind with the switch for spraying. I want to get a new one.”
“No problem. They’re up this way.” Morris led Ellen to a cabinet in the middle of the store. “This what you had in mind?” He held up a rubber nozzle.
“Perfect.”
“Eighty cents. Charge or cash?”
“I’ll pay you for it. I don’t want you to have to write up a slip just for eighty cents.”
“Written ’em a lot smaller ’n that,” said Morris. “I could tell you stories that’d set your ears to ringing.”
They walked across the narrow store to the cash register, and as he rang up the sale on the register, Morris said, “Lots of people upset about this shark thing.”
“I know. You can’t blame them.”
“They think the beaches oughta be opened up again.”
“Well, I …”
“You ask me, I think they’re full of—pardon the expression—bull. I think Martin’s doing right.”
“I’m glad to know that, Albert.”
“Maybe this new fella can help us out.”
“Who’s that?”
“This fish expert from up Massachusetts.”
“Oh yes. I heard he was in town.”
“He’s right here.”
Ellen looked around and saw no one. “What do you mean?”
“Down cellar. He’s the one wants the cleats.”
Just then, Ellen heard footsteps on the stairs. She turned and saw Hooper coming the through the door, and she suddenly felt a surge of girlish nervousness, as if she were seeing a beau she hadn’t seen in years. The man was a stranger, yet there was something familiar about him.
“I found them,” said Hooper, holding up two large stainless-steel cleats. He walked over to the counter, smiled politely at Ellen, and said to Morris, “These’ll do fine.” He put the cleats on the counter and handed Morris a twenty-dollar bill.
Ellen looked at Hooper, trying to define her reminiscence. She hoped Albert Morris would introduce them, but he seemed to have no intention of doing so. “Excuse me,” she said to Hooper, “but I have to ask you something.”
Hooper looked at her and smiled again—a pleasant, friendly smile that softened the sharpness of his features and made his light blue eyes shine. “Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”
“You aren’t by any chance related to David Hooper, are you?”
“He’s my older brother. Do you know David?”
“Yes,” said Ellen. “Or rather, I used to. I went out with him a long time ago. I’m Ellen Brody. I used to be Ellen Shepherd. Back then, I mean.”
“Oh sure. I remember you.”
“You don’t.”
“I do. No kidding. I’ll prove it to you. Let me see.… You wore your hair shorter then, sort of a pageboy. You always wore a charm bracelet. I remember that because it had a big charm that looked like the Eiffel Tower. And you always used to sing that song—what was it called?—‘Sh-Boom,’ or something like that. Right?”
Ellen laughed. “My heavens, you have quite a memory. I’d forgotten that song.”
“It’s screwy the things that impress kids. You went out with David for what—two years?”
“Two summers,” Ellen said. “They were fun. I hadn’t thought about them much in the past few years.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Vaguely. I’m not sure. I remember David had a younger brother. You must have been about nine or ten then.”
“About that; David’s ten years older than I am. Another thing I remember: Everybody called me Matt. I thought it sounded grown up. But you called me Matthew. You said it sounded more dignified. I was probably in love with you.”
“Oh?” Ellen reddened, and Albert Morris laughed.
“At one time or another,” said Hooper, “I fell in love with all the girls David went out with.”
“Oh.”
Morris handed Hooper his change, and Hooper said to Ellen, “I’m going down to the dock. Can I drop you anywhere?”
“Thank you. I have a car.” She thanked Morris, and, with Hooper behind her, walked out of the store. “So now you’re a scientist,” she said when they were outside.
“Kind of by accident. I started out as an English major. But then I took a course in marine biology to satisfy my science requirement, and—bingo!—I was hooked.”
“On what? The ocean?”
“No. I mean, yes and no. I was always crazy about the ocean. When I was twelve or thirteen, my idea of a big time was to take a sleeping bag down to the beach and spend the night lying in the sand listening to the waves, wondering where they had come from and what fantastic things they had passed on the way. What I got hooked on in college was fish, or, to be really specific, sharks.”
Ellen laughed. “What an awful thing to fall in love with. It’s like having a passion for rats.”
“That’s what most people think,” said Hooper. “But they’re wrong. Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful—God, how beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses—except for hunger—they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and every one is different from every other one. Scientists spend their lives trying to find answers about sharks, and as soon as they come up with a nice, pat generalization, something shoots it down. People have been trying to find an effective shark repellent for over two thousand years. They’ve never found one that really works.” He stopped, looked at Ellen, and smiled. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to lecture. As you can see, I’m an addict.”
“And as you can see,” said Ellen, “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I imagine you went to Yale.”
“Of course. Where else? For four generations, the only male in our family who didn’t go to Yale was an uncle of mine who got thrown out of Andover and ended up at Miami of Ohio. After Yale, I went to graduate school at the University of Florida. And after that, I spent a couple of years chasing sharks around the world.”
“That must have been interesting.”
“For me it was paradise. It was like giving an alcoholic the keys to a distillery. I tagged sharks in the Red Sea and dove with them off Australia. The more I learned about them, the more I knew I didn’t know.”
“You dove with them?”
Hooper nodded. “In a cage mostly, but sometimes not. I know what you must think. A lot of people think I’ve got a death wish—my mother in particular. But if you know what you’re doing, you can
reduce the danger to almost nil.”
“You must be the world’s greatest living shark expert.”
“Hardly,” Hooper said with a laugh. “But I’m trying. The one trip I missed out on, the one I would have given anything to go on, was Peter Gimbel’s trip. It was made into a movie. I dream about that trip. They were in the water with two great whites, the same kind of shark that’s here now.”
“I’m just as glad you didn’t go on that trip,” said Ellen. “You probably would have tried to see what the view was like from inside one of the sharks. But tell me about David. How is he?”
“He’s okay, all things considered. He’s a broker in San Francisco.”
“What do you mean, ‘all things considered’?”
“Well, he’s on his second wife. His first wife was—maybe you know this—Patty Fremont.”
“Sure. I used to play tennis with her. She sort of inherited David from me. That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“That lasted three years, until she latched onto someone with a family business and a house in Antibes. So David went and found himself a girl whose father is the majority stockholder in an oil company. She’s nice enough, but she’s got the IQ of an artichoke. If David had any sense, he would have known when he had it good and he would have held on to you.”
Ellen blushed and said softly, “You’re nice to say it.”
“I’m serious. That’s what I’d have done if I’d been him.”
“What did you do? What lucky girl finally got you?”
“None, so far. I guess there are girls around who just don’t know how lucky they could be.” Hooper laughed. “Tell me about yourself. No, don’t. Let me guess. Three children. Right?”
“Right. I didn’t realize it showed that much.”
“No no. I don’t mean that. It doesn’t show at all. Not at all. Your husband is—let’s see—a lawyer. You have an apartment in town and a house on the beach in Amity. You couldn’t be happier. And that’s exactly what I’d wish for you.”
Ellen shook her head, smiling. “Not quite. I don’t mean the happiness part, the rest. My husband is the police chief in Amity.”
Hooper let the surprise show in his eyes for only an instant. Then he smacked himself on the forehead and said, “What a dummy I am! Of course. Brody. I never made the connection. That’s great. I met your husband last night. He seems like quite a guy.”
Ellen thought she detected a flicker of irony in Hooper’s voice, but then she told herself, Don’t be stupid—you’re making things up. “How long will you be here?” she said.
“I don’t know. That depends on what happens with this fish. As soon as he leaves, I’ll leave.”
“Do you live in Woods Hole?”
“No, but not far away. In Hyannisport. I have a little house on the water. I have a thing about being near the water. If I get more than ten miles inland, I begin to feel claustrophobic.”
“You live all alone?”
“All alone. It’s just me and about a hundred million dollars’ worth of stereo equipment and a million books. Hey, do you still dance?”
“Dance?”
“Yeah. I just remembered. One of the things David used to say was that you were the best dancer he ever went out with. You won a contest, didn’t you?”
The past—like a bird long locked in a cage and suddenly released—was flying at her, swirling around her head, showering her with longing. “A samba contest,” she said. “At the Beach Club. I’d forgotten. No, I don’t dance anymore. Martin doesn’t dance, and even if he did, I don’t think anyone plays that kind of music anymore.”
“That’s too bad. David said you were terrific.”
“That was a wonderful night,” Ellen said, letting her mind float back, picking out the tiny memories. “It was a Lester Lanin band. The Beach Club was covered with crepe paper and balloons. David wore his favorite jacket—red silk.”
“I have it now,” said Hooper. “I inherited that from him.”
“They played all those wonderful songs. ‘Mountain Greenery’ was one. He could two-step so well. I could barely keep up with him. The only thing he wouldn’t do was waltz. He said waltzes made him dizzy. Everybody was so tan. I don’t think there was any rain all summer long. I remember I chose a yellow dress for that night because it went with my tan. There were two contests, a charleston that Susie Kendall and Chip Fogarty won. And the samba contest. They played ‘Brazil’ in the finals, and we danced as if our lives depended on it. Bending sideways and backward like crazy people. I thought I was going to collapse when it was over. You know what we won for first prize? A canned chicken. I kept it in my room until it got so old it began to swell and Daddy made me throw it away.” Ellen smiled. “Those were fun times. I try not to think about them too much.”
“Why?”
“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It’s depressing if you spend too much time reliving the old joys. You think you’ll never have anything as good again.”
“It’s easy for me to keep my mind off the past.”
“Really? Why?”
“It just wasn’t too great, that’s all. David was the first-born. I was pretty much of an afterthought. I think my purpose in life was to keep the parents’ marriage together. And I failed. That’s pretty crummy when you fail at the first thing you’re supposed to accomplish. David was twenty when the parents got divorced. I wasn’t even eleven. And the divorce wasn’t exactly amiable. The few years before it weren’t too amiable, either. It’s the old story—nothing special—but it wasn’t a lot of fun. I probably make too much of it. Anyway, I look forward to a lot of things. I don’t look back a lot.”
“I suppose that’s healthier.”
“I don’t know. Maybe if I had a terrific past, I’d spend all my time living in it. But … enough of that. I should get down to the dock. You’re sure I can’t drop you anywhere.”
“Positive, thank you. My car’s just across the street.”
“Okay. Well …” Hooper held out his hand. “It’s been really great to see you again, and I hope I’ll see you before I go.”
“I’d like that,” said Ellen, shaking his hand.
“I don’t suppose I could get you out on a tennis court late some afternoon.”
Ellen laughed. “Oh my. I haven’t held a tennis racket in my hand since I can’t remember when. But thanks for asking.”
“Okay. Well, see you.” Hooper turned and trotted the few yards down the block to his car, a green Ford Pinto.
Ellen stood and watched as Hooper started the car, maneuvered out of the parking space, and pulled out into the street. As he drove past her, she raised her hand to her shoulder and waved, tentatively, shyly. Hooper stuck his left hand out of the car window and waved. Then he turned the corner and was gone.
A terrible, painful sadness clutched at Ellen. More than ever before, she felt that her life—the best part of it, at least, the part that was fresh and fun—was behind her. Recognizing the sensation made her feel guilty, for she read it as proof that she was an unsatisfactory mother, an unsatisfied wife. She hated her life, and hated herself for hating it. She thought of a line from a song Billy played on the stereo: “I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.” Would she make a deal like that? She wondered. But what good was there in wondering? Yesterdays were gone, spinning ever farther away down a shaft that had no bottom. None of the richness, none of the delight, could ever be retrieved.
A vision of Hooper’s smiling face flashed across her mind. Forget it, she told herself. That’s stupid. Worse. It’s self-defeating.
She walked across the street and climbed into her car. As she pulled out into the traffic, she saw Larry Vaughan standing on the corner. God, she thought, he looks as sad as I feel.
7
The weekend was as quiet as the weekends in the late fall. With the beaches closed, and with the police patrolling them
during the daylight hours, Amity was practically deserted. Hooper cruised up and down the shore in Ben Gardner’s boat, but the only signs of life he saw in the water were a few schools of baitfish and one small school of blue-fish. By Sunday night, after spending the day off East Hampton—the beaches there were crowded, and he thought there might be a chance the shark would appear where people were swimming—he told Brody he was ready to conclude that the fish had gone back to the deep.
“What makes you think so?” Brody had asked.
“There’s not a sign of him,” said Hooper. “And there are other fish around. If there was a big white in the neighborhood, everything else would vanish. That’s one of the things divers say about whites. When they’re around, there’s an awful stillness in the water.”
“I’m not convinced,” said Brody. “At least not enough to open the beaches. Not yet.” He knew that after an uneventful weekend there would be pressure—from Vaughan, from other real estate agents, from merchants—to open the beaches. He almost wished Hooper had seen the fish. That would have been a certainty. Now there was nothing but negative evidence, and to his policeman’s mind that was not enough.
On Monday afternoon, Brody was sitting in his office when Bixby announced a phone call from Ellen.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I wanted to check something with you. What would you think about giving a dinner party?”
“What for?”
“Just to have a dinner party. We haven’t had one in years. I can’t even remember when our last one was.”
“No,” said Brody. “Neither can I.” But it was a lie. He remembered all too well their last dinner party: three years ago, when Ellen was in the midst of her crusade to re-establish her ties with the summer community. She had asked three summer couples. They were nice enough people, Brody recalled, but the conversations had been stiff, forced, and uncomfortable. Brody and his guests had searched each other for any common interest or experience, and they had failed. So after a while, the guests had fallen back on talking among themselves, self-consciously polite about including Ellen whenever she said something like, “Oh, I remember him!” She had been nervous and flighty, and after the guests had left, after she had done the dishes and said twice to Brody, “Wasn’t that a nice evening!” she had shut herself in the bathroom and wept.