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The Art of Floating
The Art of Floating Read online
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 2014 by Kristin Bair O’Keeffe.
“Readers Guide” copyright © 2014 by Kristin Bair O’Keeffe.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13949-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bair O’Keeffe, Kristin, 1966–
The art of floating / Kristin Bair O’Keeffe. — Berkley trade paperback edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-425-27148-3 (pbk.)
1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Disappeared persons’ spouses—Fiction. 3. Women authors—Fiction. 4. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.A564A85 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013047001
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2014
Cover photo of house © Jill Battaglia / Trevillion Images.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell.
Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Chapter 162
Chapter 163
Chapter 164
Chapter 165
Chapter 166
Chapter 167
Chapter 168
Chapter 169
Chapter 170
Chapter 171
Works Cited
Readers Guide
For those who are lost
and those who are found
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bowing and raising my glass to . . .
My Shanghai writing partner, Mishi Saran, who was the first person to read this novel from beginning to end.
Sandy Huffman for believing and cheering me on.
Julie Samra, Christi Sperry, Marissa Hsu, Erin Delaney, Steve Thomas, Julie Long, Jennifer Karin, Meredith Mileti, and many other friends, family, and writing students in both China and the US whose humor, friendship, sensitivity, wisdom, and patience have touched this book in important ways.
My rockin’ agent, Barbara Poelle.
Leis Pederson, my stellar editor at Berkley Books.
The universe for that moment in a café when this story burst into my brain and heart.
My tenth-grade English teacher for seeding my obsession with Homer’s The Odyssey.
Jamaica Blue on Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai, where I spent hours and years drinking lattes and writing draft after draft of this book.
The Shanghai International Literary Festival, where good writing is nurtured, savored, toasted, and shared.
A couple of special souls who I hope find their way from lost to found.
My awesome-blossom daughter, Tulliver, who grew as this novel grew.
And my husband, Andrew, for his support, as well as his humor about the highs and lows of being married to a writer.
A small rock holds back a great wave.
—HOMER, THE ODYSSEY
CHAPTER 1
Sia Dane discovered the man on the beach exactly one year, one month, and six days after her husband disappeared.
One moment she was out there alone, moving toward the old clam shack with Gumper lollygagging behind, nosing about in a seaweed jumble for shells to carry home, and the next, there was the man . . . standing at the water’s edge . . . drenched as if he had just walked out of the sea.
He was wearing a black suit and a white dress shirt. He was tall, narrow, and square-shouldered, and he stood straight, like a reed, with his arms tucked against his sides. In the breeze, he swayed slightly back and forth, mimicking the movement of the marsh grass.
Sia stopped. At first she couldn’t figure if he was real or if he was, perhaps, just a mirage conjured by her broken heart.
She closed her eyes.
“Mirage,” she whispered.
She opened her eyes. He was still there.
“Real.”
She looked at her watch. 5:13 A.M.
“Gumper,” she called, and slapped her leg. But her great black behemoth was joyfully buried up to his ears in seaweed and didn’t pay her any mind.
• • •
A few hundred yards down the beach, the Dogcatcher scuttled flat-bellied like a crab along the water’s edge until she was close enough to make out Sia, Gumper, and the man in the black suit. She squinched her eyes against the bright sun and lay still with her chin buried in the sand. She didn’t move. Didn’t scratch. Just watched.
• • •
For a long moment the beach was quiet and still, as it was every morning at this time. But then through the sucking stench of seaweed, fat-nosed Gumper looked up from his treasure, caught the man’s scent, and launched himself forward on his huge hairy paws, barking madly as he closed the space between them. Gumper loved people. All people. Those who loved him back and those who didn’t. But even with Gumper loading at him full speed, all bark and blur and fur, the man barely moved. He simply shifted his head slightly in Sia’s direction, the way a distracted dog might offer a single ear to his owner when called.
Like Sia’s husband, Gumper was a pacifist. A loving lump of dog so magnanimous he didn’t even snap at the chipmunks that sneaked into his bowl for free kibbles. But he was loud and gargantuan, so much so that when he barreled wildly at people he didn’t know, they usually screamed or ran. Sometimes both. And though Sia often failed, she always tried to minimize each victim’s terror.
“He’s friendly,” she’d holler through cupped hands over the thunder of crashing waves. “Just stand still.”
But she didn’t offer any assistance to the man who’d appeared so suddenly at the water’s edge. Instead she let Gumper run until he plowed into him, kicking sand in all directions, nearly but not quite toppling him. Then she watched her hulking beast dance madly, nudge the man’s bottom three times with his colossal snout, and finally sit down close, leaning his full weight into the man’s leg.
It was at this moment that the man looked at Sia for the first time, or at least looked in her direction. His eyes were focused but blank, and it felt as if he were looking through her or past her or maybe very far beyond her to a place she couldn’t see.
Sia waited, and then slowly, as if the weight of the water in his suit or the weight of something invisible were unbearably heavy, the man lifted his arm and set his hand on Gumper’s ten-gallon head. As she moved a few more steps toward them, an astounding tsunami of sadness rolled from the man, rippling the sand between them and nearly tipping her backward. Sia, whose limitless empathy roared whenever a wounded soul got close, blinked, adjusted her footing, and said “Oh” out loud, as she opened her mouth, gulped, and swallowed the sadness as awkwardly and skillfully as a heron swallowing a silvery minnow.
• • •
When the sand settled, and the danger of Sia being knocked into the ocean had passed, she noted that aside from the suit and the impressive reedlike posture, the man looked like the barnacled belly of a whale. His face was splotchy, rough, and puffy, and water dripped from the tip of his nose and the lobes of his ears. His wet suit clung to him, and bits of seaweed were stuck to his crotch, a sleeve, and the cuffs of his pants. One especially long frond was draped over his shoulder and swayed behind him like a tail in the breeze.
“Who the hell are you?” Sia said under her breath. She felt strange and uncomfortable, as if she were witnessing an intensely private moment. The man looked so weak and exhausted that if Gumper hadn’t planted himself next to him and sat willing to take his weight like a cane or a fence post, she suspected he might have toppled right over.
“Hello?” she said.
The man didn’t respond. He didn’t speak or smile. He didn’t cock his head, extend his hand, or offer any other gesture common when one individual is introduced to another for the first time. He didn’t even blink. He just stood there . . . like a shiny statue in a park after a downpour.
“Hellll-loo?” Sia said again, and she took a few steps toward him.
At the tug of her voice, Gumper grunted loudly. Then he opened his mouth, craned it toward the sky, and bellowed, scattering the flock of hungry, hopeful seagulls that had settled nearby.
• • •
The Dogcatcher lay motionless. She was good at lying still when she was watching. She was good at watching without being seen. She liked that about herself. She liked the dog, too. The silly black giant. “Gumper,” she said to herself without making a sound. “Gumper, Gumper, Gumper.” Though people didn’t interest her much, she kind of liked Gumper-Lady, too, and though he was no longer around, she used to like Gumper-Man.
But she didn’t know this man in the black suit. He was a stranger. An absurd stranger who had no idea how to dress for a beach.
• • •
Sia gnawed the raw spot on the inside of her bottom lip, then glanced backward for someone with whom she could share the strange moment. But it was early, and as usual, she and Gumper were alone. The arm-pumping beach-walking widows and the metal-detecting old men wouldn’t get started until at least six o’clock.
Sia turned back. The man’s hair, which hung well past his shoulders, was matted to his head and thin rivers of water streamed down his cheeks and forehead, gathered in the shallow divot at the base of his neck, just below his Adam’s apple, then disappeared behind the open collar of his shirt. He had this look of . . . of . . . of nothing on his face. Questions rallied for attention in Sia’s head: Was this g
uy sick? Was he on drugs? Was he in a trance?
I should be scared, she thought. It’s 2012, not 1950. A strange guy on the beach acting like a nut should scare the piss out of me. But when she looked at Gumper, who was stuck to the man as passionately as Argus would have stuck himself to Odysseus had he not been lost at sea, she knew there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. She took a deep breath. One last try.
“Hey there,” she said, “you okay?”
Silence.
And as Sia considered the man’s unusual resistance to the normal call-and-response of everyday conversation, she studied the swollen lids of his eyes and the smell of the sea that drifted from him . . . the deep sea . . . that fresh, salty, mostly pleasing mix of brine and shell and scale that you pick up on the wind when the fishing boats dock . . . a scent so strong she could smell it ten feet away.
“What the hell is going on?” she said. She turned to the ocean. A trio of gulls landed on the water with a splat and a few introductory squawks. “Well?” she said to them.
Good question, but the bobbing birds didn’t answer.
Farther out, a sailboat skittered across the waves. Though it was too far away for her to read the letters painted on the hull, Sia knew it was the Nancy Jane. A giant red smiley face on white sails. Not easily mistaken.
Jackson had loved that boat. The jolly jolly joke of it.
With the sun in her eyes, the sky looked like a silvery tarp, and she knew if she stared long enough, the whole thing—sky, sailboat, smiley face, gulls—would disappear and there would be nothing left but light.
Warm, watery light.
The world absorbed.
If only she could be part of it. Absorbed into the heart of things. Like Jackson.
She could feel him this way. Right then. His edges melting into hers. And the ache for him thumped up from her toes into her middle.
Thump. Thump-thump.
“Jack?” she said. “Where are you?”
One year, one month, six days.
Thumpety-thump-thump.
Then Gumper grumbled as he always did when she began to drift, and she remembered the man.
“Fuck,” she said.
• • •
At 5:19, Sia’s cell phone rang, and because it was 5:19, she knew without looking that it was Jilly, whose ever-present obsessive-compulsive need to make all things happen on Jilly time was often a little annoying but really annoying this early in the morning.
“Hey,” Sia said into the phone.