The Weight of Water Read Free

sea. Her body was
     found, a week later, at Cape Neddick, in Maine.
    This morning, after we have tied up, Adaline stands in the cockpit, her hands at her waist, her eyes searching the shoreline
     of Smuttynose, as if something profound might reveal itself to her. When she speaks, she has a residue of an Irish accent,
     and her voice lends her an aura of authority I do not necessarily feel in myself. Her words rise and fall and dip some more,
     and then come back to where you can hear them — like soft church music, I often think, or like the melodious beat of water
     on the hull.
    Adaline moves like a dancer, swaying for balance. In the mornings, when she comes up the ladder and emerges from the companionway,
     she seems to glide into the cockpit. She wears long skirts in thin cottons, with blouses that fall loosely around her hips.
     She wears a gold cross at her throat, jewelry that is somewhat startling in a woman of her age and stature. The cross draws
     the eye to the hollow above her clavicle, a hollow that is smooth and tanned. It is as though she once wore the cross as a
     girl and simply forgot to take it off.
    Adaline, Rich tells me, works for Bank of Boston, in an international division. She never talks about her job. I imagine her
     in suits, standing at gates in airports. She has scars on her wrists, slightly crooked vertical threads in smooth flesh, as
     though she once tried to trace her veins with a razor or a knife. She has an arresting mouth, with full curved lips of even
     dimensions, and barely any bow at all.
    Sometimes I imagine I can see Maren Hontvedt at the end of her life. In the room in which she is sitting, the wallpaper is
     discolored but intact. She wears an eyelet cap to cover her hair. I note the languid drape of the shawl folding into her lap,
     the quiescent posture of her body. The floor is bare, wooden, and on the dresser is a basin of water. The light from the window
     falls upon her face and eyes. They are gray eyes, not yet faded, and they retain an expression that others who knew her might
     recognize.
    I think that she is dying and will be gone soon. There are thoughts and memories that she hoards and savors, holding them
     as one might a yellowed photograph of a child. The skin hangs from her face in folds, her skin a crushed velvet the color
     of dried hydrangeas. She was not beautiful as a young woman, but her face was handsome, and she was strong. The structure
     of her face is still as it was, and one can see the bones as one might be able to discern the outline of a chair covered by
     a loose cloth.
    I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge, how will she behave?
    After we moor the boat, Rich offers to take me over to Smuttynose in the Zodiac. Billie begs to go along. I shoot from the
     dinghy in a crouch, leaning against the side of the boat for balance. I use the Hasselblad and a telephoto with a polarizing
     lens. From time to time, I shout to Rich to cut the engine so that the vibrations will be lessened, or I gesture with my hand
     in such a way that he knows to push the throttle forward.
    There are two houses on the island. One is a small, wooden-frame house called the Haley house. It is not habitable, but is
     of historic note and has a great aesthetic purity. The other is a shack with rudimentary supplies for shipwrecked sailors.
    Rich beaches the Zodiac expertly inside the crumbled breakwater of Smuttynose. The beach is tiny, narrow, blackened by dark
     stones and charred bits of wood. The air is sharp, and I understand why years ago sea air was prescribed as a tonic for the
     body. Billie removes her life jacket and sits cross-legged on the sand in a lavender T-shirt that doesn’t quite cover her
     belly. Rich is tanned already, an even red-gold on his legs and arms and face. There is a line at his throat. We have left
     Thomas and Adaline on the Morgan.
    In the winter months on the Isles of Shoals, the windows were never opened, nor were the