Kathryn Davis - Duplex

It was late and the tide was as low as it gets. The girls didn’t think they’d ever had to walk so far before arriving at the water. They walked and walked and walked and meanwhile the moon was practically on top of them, like they could touch it. Like they could stick a finger in one of the craters — you’ve all seen the moon do that.

My dad says that’s just an optical illusion, someone said.

If your dad’s such a genius why did he ever have you? said someone else.

The curly-haired girl moved a little closer. I wouldn’t dream of touching the moon with my two arms, she said. She was quoting the poet again but no one cared. They were too busy listening to Janice. Even the curly-haired girl couldn’t leave. That was the thing about Janice — she made you want to know where she was taking you, even if you didn’t want to go.

After what seemed like forever the girls got to the water, Janice continued. There had been a sea breeze all day long. Now there was nothing except a feeling like something holding its breath. The girls waded in, enjoying the warm water on their feet and the burst of the first waves against their ankles, still warm but cooler, the shallow water mixing with water from the heart of the ocean, which was cold. The ocean is coldhearted, you don’t have to be a genius to know that. It makes boats sink. It makes you watch where you put your feet. If you choose to swim at the end of the day after the lifeguards have left the beach you take your life in your hands. You know that, don’t you? Janice gave everyone a piercing stare meant to drive her point home.

As usual the girls were dressed in identical black bathing suits with skirts and identical white rubber bathing caps that strapped under the chin. They looked like old ladies. They didn’t enter the water like old ladies, though, splashing water up over the tender parts of themselves to lessen the shock. The girls plunged right in and kept on going. They ignored the jellyfish and the seaweed. They didn’t look back. At their leader’s command they dove under the first big breaker that came their way and rose up on the other side at the exact same time as meanwhile the whole idea of what a wave is fell apart behind them. For a moment they paused so everyone except the girl who was so nearsighted she couldn’t see anything without her glasses had a chance to make eye contact with one another. Then they kept on swimming.

The girls had been preparing for this for a long time. At the shore they practiced in the ocean; at home they practiced in the bathtub. At first they just held their breath, but after a while they got so they could breathe underwater. The girls didn’t really need the hoses anymore; they just brought them along for backup. People were eighty percent water, they figured. What made everyone think the moment our ancestors came out of the water and started to breathe air represented a step up the evolutionary ladder? Why did people always think things got better by moving forward? Why did people think that way? It was so limited! As if the surface was somehow better than everything else. As if air was king.

The girls rose on the next wave and felt themselves flung forward as the wave broke behind them. The farther they got from shore the bigger the waves were becoming, rocking under them with more and more energy. It was like they were being pushed on a swing, higher and higher, getting swept up the side of a hill to stay for a split second at the top before being swept down into the valley below and then up again, the top even higher this time, the slope even steeper and the valley lower, until they found themselves at the top of a mountain of water the size of an alp. The moon was right there above them, drawing the ocean up to it. The girls practically banged their heads against its surface. Because of the moonlight everything looked like it was coated in silver, but you could see how dark the water was underneath the coating, so dark green it was almost black, and the moon itself was whiter than anything, whiter and smoother than an egg.

I’ve had that dream, someone said. I dream about those kinds of waves a lot.

It’s an ancestral memory, Janice explained primly, as if she was mentioning something better left unsaid.

The girls didn’t realize until they’d arrived at the top of that final wave that one of their group was missing. You’d probably guess it was the girl with the bad eyesight, but you’d be wrong. The girl with the bad eyesight was right there treading water with the rest of them, waiting for the signal from the leader to dive under. No, it was another girl, one of the best swimmers. Unfortunately for her, or maybe fortunately — who can say? — she didn’t always concentrate on what she was doing. She was careless, and when people are careless things go wrong.

Somewhere along the line, Janice said, the careless girl let herself get caught in a breaker that carried her back to the beach. The breaker curved over her head and thumped her from behind — that’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re thinking about something else, like for instance a boy. Then it churned her around and around before leaving her on her stomach in the sand together with a lot of broken clamshells and those little crabs the size of your thumbnail. Even though nobody was there to see her, the girl stopped to make sure her bathing suit was still in place before getting to her feet. Normally she didn’t care about the way she looked, but this was different. The world was about to end and her friends had left her behind. They were going to survive and she was doomed. Plus she had to go home to her parents.

Except it didn’t end, someone said. How can we be here if the world already ended?

I’m getting hot, said someone else. When do we get to go to the beach?

A lot of people died, Janice said. You’ve studied it in school. The world didn’t actually come to an end, but it might as well have. It was like scientists predicted. Whole countries weren’t there anymore. You’ve all seen the globe. It looked completely different.

Suddenly she yawned and stretched and stood up. Well, come on, she said. What are you waiting for?

The beach was just a block and a half away but it always took longer to get there than it should. The little girls had to be herded along and there were lots of things to carry. Things got dropped and someone had to go back to pick them up. By the time they arrived at their usual spot — a good spot just to the left of the lifeguard stand with no one between them and the water — the sun was directly overhead. Janice screwed the umbrella into the sand while the older girls spread their towels as far from the umbrella and as close to the lifeguard as they could get. The beach was crowded. Everyone was talking at the top of their lungs about private matters like heartbreak and terminal illness. It was the only way to be heard over the sound of everyone else, not to mention the surf.

Hurry up! Hurry up! cried the little girls.

It’s not like the ocean is going anywhere, Janice pointed out.

A seaplane flew past very low over the water, trailing a banner that said “Take a Moonlight Cruise on the Evening Star.”

Come Friday, Janice said, that’s going to be me and my honey on that boat. She set up her beach chair in the pool of shade made by the umbrella and sank into it, letting out a sigh.

It was a very young coast. The little girls went off to play with their buckets and shovels in the shallows while the older girls began working on their tans. One minute there was no wind at all, the next minute it came gusting off the bay. Some sheets of newspaper drifted past, followed by a baby wearing nothing. The lifeguards whistled in a swimmer who’d ventured too far out.

People are such idiots, Janice said. She reached into her beach bag and withdrew her cigarettes and her sunglasses. You know they’re still down there, she said, lowering her voice. The Aquanauts are still down there. They live in the deepest part of the ocean where it’s so dark you can’t see what they look like. They don’t look the way they did before the Descent. They used to care how they looked. They used to shave their legs, for instance, things like that.