Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

That was it: that was it. She let her sons go ahead, and she was not worrying. He too had freedom, a strange freedom in this adultery, this strange and half-lonely honeymoon. The dissolution of everything. Because he had forgotten Casey this trip, he had been emancipated from her — Casey, who since he arrived in this foreign place had not, for the first time in years, guided his every impulse. For a time he had left her behind; the weight of carrying her had been released.

But for the years before that, what had he been doing? He felt a sudden panic. Wasted. He had wasted them.

He had lost them, and only realized the loss now, like a bolt, shocking. Like a nightmare: time shifted and the years of your life were gone. The light shimmered sideways over the water.

He had forgotten his wife, mostly. He loved her, but all this time he’d practically forgotten she was there. Susan had been left to her own devices, alone and in the cold while he dreamed his soft dreams of regret. That was what had happened to the two of them, nothing mysterious. He had drifted away to his memories of his daughter as she had been, the cycles of blame, remorse, longing. He had been somewhere else all the time, in spirit if not body — not with his actual daughter, for the time he spent with her in the course of a day or a week was normal, regular time, not a nightmare or dream, but the daughter he once had, or the daughter who might have been. He was like an enchanted man. That was who he had been, all these years, a man under a spell, a man absent without knowing his own absence. He had been gone, but he had not noticed. He had not noticed himself or Susan, had noticed neither of them. All he had known was remorse. He spent his life knowing it.

And so Susan had disappeared too. Of course. Even her job was a form of her disappearance. The job, her allegiance to it, the affair — it was all the stuff of her life, while he was not.

Susan had vanished for a simple reason: she had nothing better to do.

It was his fault. And here on the long, blind road he had been blaming her.

• • • • •

He used Hans’s snorkeling equipment, his blue mask and fins. Putting them on he thought fleetingly that he was borrowing everything from Hans.

But Hans did not register its absence.

The corals were not so bright here as they were further out, toward the barrier reef — dying, he suspected, some of them dead already. He had read at the hotel that this year, suddenly, corals were quickly bleaching in Belize. But fish still moved among them, their bright bodies flashing among the worn gray humps like the Mohawks of teenage punks drinking in a graveyard. He saw small fish, mostly, but it felt good to follow them for a while and watch them disappear.

Gretel decided they should go up when the sun began to sink and the water was darkening around them. It grew harder to see. After they surfaced he held her kayak steady for her while she clambered in, treading water with his free hand, and then she leaned over and held his.

The cornboys, blue-lipped, were already waiting, eating half-unwrapped chocolate bars and jiggling their legs, feet braced against the footrests. Without a wetsuit the coldness of the water had sunk in; Gretel’s golden skin was goosebumped. The end of day cast violet shadows on her, on all of them. Quickly the surface seemed almost black.

•

When they put in at the hotel beach again people were eating dinner at the outdoor tables, beneath the bistro’s palm-thatch awning. Citronella candles were burning on the tables and Hal could smell their bitter lemon edge as he walked up the beach.

“Bring T. and join us for dinner, won’t you?” urged Gretel, and he said he would, as soon as he showered and changed.

But T. was not in the room, and there was no message light blinking on the telephone. He took his shower quickly, anxious, and was bent over his open suitcase with a towel around his waist when Marlo knocked at the door.

“Mr. Tomás had to go with the police,” said Marlo. “He wanted me to tell you.”

“Go with them?” asked Hal. “What do you mean?”

The towel fell as he lurched forward. He grabbed it and held it up tightly.

“They took him to detention,” said Marlo solemnly.

“Detention? They arrested him?”

“First to Dangriga, then Belize City.”

“I mean — why? Is it serious?”

“Because of the death. You know?”

“But it was an accident!”

Guests passed behind Marlo, a family with long-haired young girls. Self-conscious, Hal stepped back and waved him in.

“The brother, you know? He did not want to press charges. But then there was a neighbor who asked them to come. This lady — she does not like Americans. The soldiers, the other day, I think one of them was rude to her daughter, you know? So then they came. There will be an investigation.”

“Jesus!”

Central American jails did not boast a good reputation for client services. He would have to leave right away for the city.

“I’ll go up there. I’ll pay his bail, or whatever. I’ll get him a lawyer. Can you get me a car to the capital? Or a plane?”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight. Right now. I mean he’s in jail, right?”

“They are taking him there.”

“Then I need to go right now. I have to get him out.”

“The flights from the airport in Placencia? They go in the daytime.”

“Can’t I charter one or something? It’s what, to Belize City — a half-hour flight?”

“I will see. I can see.”

He dressed in a hurry after Marlo left, stuffed his clothes messily into the suitcase with a sense of growing urgency. Anything could happen. The guy was non compos mentis , and they had arrested him. It often happened to the mentally ill, even in the U.S. — since Reagan anyway. They were let out onto the streets, wandered there, and were promptly arrested for the crime of existing. Then jail, insult added to injury. He would not let prison violence happen to T. Just when the guy was acting human for the first time in his life and abandoning his Mercedes-Benz fixation, they went and arrested him.

A man turned away from the path of Mamm on and that was what he got — thrown into the hoosegow.

In the lobby Marlo was talking to someone in Spanish, a bald guy in a satiny red windbreaker. The guy was shaking his head — a bad sign, surely.

“Is it going to happen?” asked Hal, and thankfully Marlo nodded, consulting his watch.

“He will drive you to the airfield,” he said. “Five minutes.”

He had to say goodbye to Gretel before then. Who knew if he would ever be back. He headed to the restaurant and stood in the doorway looking, but could not see her at the tables. No cornboys either. Their white-blond hair was a beacon. He would have to go to the room. It disturbed him, but it could not be avoided. Up the sandy cement of the stairs — was it 323? 325? He knocked at the first one. He had three minutes left. He hoped Hans was not there. He had no time for avionics experts.

A cornboy opened the door, video game in hand.

“Your mother in?”

The door opened further and the cornboy faded. Gretel had her hair twisted up in a towel but was fully dressed. Thankfully.

“Listen, I have to go,” he said. “They arrested T. The local authorities. They took him to Belize City. I have to go get him out. I’m flying.”

“My God,” said Gretel. “Arrested? Him?”

“Because of the tour guide dying. The heart attack. Remember? But now they want to investigate it, apparently. I have to fly to the city, try to meet them. Post his bail or bribe someone. We can’t have him in there.”

“Yes!” said Gretel, nodding hastily. “Of course. You should go.”