Stuart looked at his wrist but must have realized he wasn’t wearing a watch. “I’ve got to get back. Meet me at the Kentucky Avenue stand tomorrow morning at six?” he said to Florence. “I’ll tail you in the boat for a couple of hours.”
Florence didn’t say anything, just lifted her chin, which Gussie interpreted as a yes.
“It was nice to meet you,” Anna said to Stuart as he prepared to depart.
“You too.”
Gussie went to say her own good-bye but Stuart had already begun to jog back toward the Boardwalk.
“He seems nice,” Anna said to Florence once he was well out of earshot. “And also completely in love with you.”
“Stuart?” said Florence, as if she’d never entertained the possibility. “God, no. Now, where did I put my cap?”
Gussie, who’d had it the whole time, handed it to her begrudgingly.
“Do you mind watching Gussie until my parents get back?” Florence said to Anna as she stretched the rubber taut and yanked the cap over her hair.
Gussie couldn’t help feeling annoyed. It had been her idea to go to the beach, and now she was stuck with Anna, who was unlikely to pretend to be a mermaid or much of anything else if she couldn’t even be bothered to change into a proper bathing suit.
“You’re swimming tomorrow morning. With Stuart.” Gussie pleaded with Florence, in a last-ditch effort to redeem the afternoon. But her aunt wasn’t hearing her. She just tucked the last wisps of her hair underneath the bathing cap, blew her a kiss, and headed off in the direction of the ocean.
Gussie watched as Florence waded into the water, past her knees and then her hips. She dove into the crest of a wave, and by the time Gussie could see her again, she was swimming. Florence reminded Gussie of the dolphins they sometimes spotted offshore, so graceful they barely looked like they were moving. She watched her for several more minutes, as she grew smaller and smaller. Eventually, all Gussie could make out against the horizon was Florence’s red bathing cap, and then nothing at all.
* * *
Gussie was back in the water, eyes trained on the sky, when she heard three short whistles. She got her feet under her in time to watch one of the lifeguards in the stand nearest them run toward Garden Pier. There, two other lifeguards heaved a rescue boat into the waves.
“Gussie,” Anna called. “Get out. Now.”
It took a moment for Gussie to shake the water out of her ears. Had she heard her correctly? The beach seemed unnaturally quiet, as if she were watching a film with no sound.
She looked up the beach and watched as her grandparents ambled toward them.
“Where’s Florence?” Esther asked in a loud enough voice to be heard over the sound of the breaking waves.
Anna responded. “She went for a swim.”
“When?”
“Maybe an hour ago.”
Gussie watched as her grandmother took in Anna and Gussie, then the small cluster of people who had gathered farther down the beach, then the boat hastening toward the horizon. Without warning, Esther took off down the beach at a run, Joseph following close behind. Gussie had never seen either of her grandparents run anywhere before, and she was surprised at how proficient they looked doing it.
She waded ashore, and Anna wrapped her in a towel, then led her in the direction of Garden Pier, too. By the time they reached Esther and Joseph, the rescue boat was so far from shore, it was difficult to make out what was happening. Gussie shielded her eyes with her hand, trying to see more clearly. It looked as if the vessel had stopped, and one or both of the lifeguards had jumped overboard.
“Is it her?” Esther whispered to Joseph in a voice loud enough for Gussie to hear.
“Who?” Gussie asked, but no one, including Anna, responded.
After several long minutes, the rescue boat began to grow larger again. Gussie could make out only one lifeguard rowing toward the shore. Where had the other one gone? It wasn’t until the boat grew much closer that she saw the second lifeguard, bent over something in the bottom of the boat.
The boat plowed onto the wet sand, about a dozen yards from where the small crowd had gathered. Its oars clattered against the oarlocks and landed in the sand, and the men worked quickly to lift what could only have been a person from the bottom of the boat.
That’s when Gussie saw it—the flash of color—and she looked at Anna to see if she’d seen it, too. Anna’s hand moved to her mouth. The lifeguards lifted the body, pale and motionless, out of the boat and onto the sand but all Gussie could bear to look at was the red cap on her aunt’s head. She covered her ears with her hands as the air filled with the sound of her grandmother’s wails.
Esther
The Virginia Avenue Hospital Tent regularly treated sunburns, jellyfish stings, and heatstroke but, if there had been patients who suffered from those ailments when the guards arrived at the tent with Florence, they were now long gone. Everyone on the small staff—beach surgeon, doctors, nurses—worked over a single cot in the far corner of the tent.
Esther could make no sense of the girl on the cot.
That the girl was her daughter.
That her daughter was not moving.
When Esther had arrived at the tent, she had been inclined to fight her way into the center of the commotion but Joseph nudged her toward a pair of canvas chairs. “Let’s give them room to work,” he said quietly, his face ashen.
She felt for the edge of a chair, could barely find it, then listened as the beach surgeon yelled instructions at the staff. How long had it been since Florence had been pulled from the water? Five minutes? Ten? Esther looked at her watch. It was half-past four. When had she heard the whistle blast? She hadn’t thought to check the time.
“Keep going,” Esther heard the beach surgeon say before he shouted at the assembled lifeguards. “Boys, form a line. We need you to cycle in and out.”
“What are they doing?” Esther asked Joseph as she watched the first guard take over for the doctor who had previously been thumping on Florence’s back.
“Giving compressions.”
“Yes, but why the guards?”
“To relieve the staff,” said her husband, whose eyes never left the cot. “They’re getting tired.”
Esther clutched her sides and put her head between her knees. How could they be tired? They’d scarcely been at this for any time at all.
After several more minutes had passed, she sat up and forced herself to watch, through tears that blurred her vision, as one guard after another beat on her daughter’s back. Esther stared at the doctors and nurses and lifeguards for so long that they ceased to be individual people, morphing instead into an amalgam that pulsed to the beat of each round of compressions.
She nearly missed the beach surgeon tapping the guard on the shoulder, telling him to stop. “Help me turn her over,” the beach surgeon said to one of the doctors who stood on the other side of the cot. His voice sounded garbled. The men looked at each other, with a kind of startled disappointment, and rolled Florence over, slowly, until she was faceup. They arranged her arms by her side. “Time of death,” said the beach surgeon, looking at his watch and then at Esther, “five twenty-three.”