The Whore's Child

what’s wrong with our hostess, but she bawled the night away. The wife and I are right over her bedroom.”
    â€œThe poor woman,” Snow said.
    â€œWell, yeah. Sure, but Christ Almighty.”
    â€œWould you like to come in? My wife just—”
    â€œYeah, I saw her go,” Robbins interrupted. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. That’s some sunburn you got.”
    â€œI’m feeling better now,” Snow said, though in truth he was still feverish, and when he touched the tender skin along his forearm, his fingerprint shone white as a scar.
    â€œI’m glad,” Major Robbins smiled skeptically. “Anyway, I came up to tell you I saw that book of yours. Down in the library? It looked interesting.”
    â€œI’m told it’s passé,” Snow said.
    The major dismissed this with a wave. “I always thought it would be really satisfying to write a book. Leave something behind for people to remember you by. Like history, almost.”
    The two men shook hands then, and Snow closed the door and listened to the major lumber down the two flights of stairs, a kinder man than he’d imagined. Instead of lying back down on the bed and risking a feverish sleep, he went over to the window and looked down in time to see the Robbins foursome dart through the trellised arch and head down toward the harbor, carrying their canvas duffel bags. They were dressed in shorts and white cotton sweaters and deck shoes, spry, all of them, for their age.
    It was still difficult for Snow to credit the events of the afternoon. He couldn’t decide whether what had transpired was sudden, or if for years it had been approaching in increments so slow as to be undetectable as motion to the human eye. How long the world had remained tilted! How slowly his rationality had returned, and how little comfort trailed in its wake. The figure on the beach had intuited his blind confusion before he himself could understand it. “You wait right here,” it had instructed him—unnecessarily, since he lacked both the strength and the equilibrium to do otherwise. He’d watched the figure spring into a breaking, thigh-high wave, and when the water receded—taking with it much of the dried clay—he’d stared, uncomprehending, at the miracle. Even after the next, larger wave completed the transformation and the young woman emerged glistening from the sea, he still couldn’t make it work.
    She had a name—already forgotten—as well as a boy-friend, and once clothed, they’d taken him by the elbow and guided him up the beach. They pointed to each woman they passed who conceivably could’ve been his wife, careful to ask if he was sure, because he remained confused and disoriented. “I don’t think so,” he answered after examining one woman with heavy, sagging breasts, another with round, fleshy hips, a third with the wrong color hair. In truth, he was terrified of not recognizing the woman he’d been married to for thirty years, telling them no, and then being wrong. The sun made him feel faint and distant from his own body, and after each new woman proved to be someone else, he’d lost interest in the search, certain that June herself was gone.
    In the end it was June who saw them coming, saw her husband looking as if he would surely collapse were it not for the young couple supporting him on either side. She’d risen tentatively, then hurried toward them.
    He had seen her without truly recognizing her, occupied as his wandering mind was with the problem of how to explain his delusion, of how to make anyone understand that he’d met Death in the figure of this young woman and been granted what he now felt to be a temporary reprieve. Nor had he thought of a way to apologize to his wife, any more than he had on that terrible day when he and David Loudener had found her, lost and forlorn, staring into that vacant storefront window.
    No, June had come swimming into his ken too soon, making him aware of the two young people who were propping him up. And so, with a world of difficult, perhaps impossible things to say, he’d uttered something so cruel that it was easy. “Cover yourself, June,” he’d instructed her. “For God’s sake.”
    And so now, Paul Snow, professor emeritus, author of three biographies and a collection of essays, stood at the third-floor window of the Captain Clement