Ambrose looked up at her and smiled as she approached him. They had played checkers every day for a week, saying little, concentrating on the game. Several of the checker pieces were missing.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“Well, I’m not making accusations, but Lydia Helms Truman was seen hovering nearby the checkers table yesterday, and this morning she was in the infirmary.”
Iris studied the board. “I suppose it could be worse. We could have been playing chess.”
Ambrose burst out laughing and she flushed with pleasure. They kept smiling until their eyes lingered upon each other too long. Ambrose said, “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to play with fewer pieces.”
The red checkers were warm to the touch. She pushed one out into a square and waited. She’d often played checkers with her beloved father on the porch during her transition from tomboy to young woman. Ambrose himself had an ordinary, familiar way about him, so much that he could have grown up next door, and she felt comforted by his presence, as though the bucolic childhood she’d left behind so hurriedly had been handed back to her.
He stared at the board, still contemplating his move, as her eyes skirted the edge of the beach.
The boy, Wendell, was fishing in the surf with the chef. He turned and caught her eye, and their gazes locked for a moment. She had noticed him passing by when she and Ambrose played checkers. The expression on his face was not entirely approving. The boy went back to fishing.
The patients were allowed to swim once a week under close supervision. Wednesdays were reserved for the women, and Thursdays for the men. Iris stood at the ocean’s edge and let her cotton robe fall to the sand, revealing her two-piece suit—a bathing gown and pantaloons.
“Iris Dunleavy.” The Irish brogue was harsh and unloving. She turned, surprised to see the matron there, as she was sensitive to sunlight and rarely went outdoors. The matron squinted at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Iris blinked. “Doing? I’m swimming. Aren’t I allowed to swim?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Apparently you were silent during much of your session with Dr. Cowell. Too good to speak to him, are you, Mrs. Plantation Wife? Do you know what happens to defiant people here? They get the water treatment. Then they’re not so defiant anymore.”
Iris started to say something conciliatory, but the matron turned on her heel and stomped away. Iris hesitated, then turned and stepped into the frothing water. She had been to the beach, once, when she was seven years old. Despite the plenitude of ponds and rivers right around their hometown, her father had taken the family on a long trip all the way to the ocean for her baptism, a ritual repeated in his family for generations. Her father said a prayer as he lowered her head into the sea. She opened her eyes underwater and fish rushed by, in every color, it seemed, and in all directions; the sun was blurry overhead and her father’s prayer had flattened out on the surface and could not reach her. He pulled her out of the water and held her up so that she was as tall as he was. The next wave knocked them both down, and they came up laughing.
She liked the God she met that day. A playful, saltwater God. And this meeting, she knew, was the way her father planned it for her. Every father wants a daughter to meet the right God, and the right man. Perhaps her father had failed with both.
She waded in farther and let the water reach her chin, then took a deep lungful of air and sank down until her knees touched the sandy bottom. She opened her eyes. The very same fish she saw as a little girl swam by her, and time hadn’t erased a single color. They were all accounted for, silver, red, blue, and green. Bubbles escaped her mouth. Fernlike plants swayed back and forth. Time had vanished. It was bobbing on the surface where her father’s voice used to be. Other women had waded in, and their bathing gowns had floated up around them, giving them the appearance of jellyfish. Nothing could bother her here—no matrons, no doctors, no bells—and that thought appealed to her so much that she stayed down even as her lungs began to ache. Finally, when she could no longer hold her breath, she let it out in a spray of bubbles, swam up, and caught the sea between waves.
She thought of Ambrose later that night, as she lay in bed and listened to the night sounds. The younger man intrigued her. What was broken in him felt liberating. She had suffered under two controlling men—a husband and now a doctor—and the fact that he spent all of his effort trying to control his own demons was inviting. Her father would like him. She closed her eyes and just as she imagined Ambrose’s hand moving toward her father’s to shake in greeting, she heard her name. She raised herself up in bed to find the boy, Wendell, staring at her through the bars of the window. With his hair disheveled and moonlight shining down in his big eyes, he reminded her of a raccoon. Behind him the beach was quiet save for a lulling breeze.
“What is it, Wendell?”
“I have to speak with you; it’s important.”
She got up and put on a robe. She approached the window and rested her face against the cool bars.
“You need to stay away from that man,” Wendell said.
“What man?”
“The one who plays checkers with you. He’s dangerous. You never know when he’s going to have a fit.”
She felt suddenly angry at the boy’s impertinence. Showing up like this, uninvited, imposing his own opinion. Just like his father. But his eyes were so sweet. He meant well. “I appreciate your concern, Wendell. But I’m a grown woman, and I can take care of myself. Why don’t you go to bed now? You must be tired.”
“But—”
“Good night, Wendell.”