“It’s Jell-O,” he said. He held up the finger. “Red Jell-O,” he said, tasting it again. “Maybe strawberry?”
Patsy started to laugh. “Oh, you monkey!” she cried, catching Annali up in her arms.
“You gave us such a freakin’ scare! Jesus!”
Pru sank into a chair. She had been so afraid that she’d been unable to move. She hadn’t known what to do after yelling for Patsy. It left her shaken, and confused.
“It’s the wrong viscosity for blood,” Jacob said, pleasantly, after Patsy had taken Annali inside to get cleaned up. He poked at the pool again, to illustrate. “Blood from the gut is dark and grainy, like coffee grounds. You can see this is totally smooth.”
“Jacob,” she managed to say, “thank you.”
“See? A guy like me can really come in handy. I also make a good cocktail, if you’re ready for one.”
“Lord, yes,” said Pru. “Nothing strawberry, please.”
“HERE WE GO, ANNALI!” CRIED JACOB. THEY WERE standing at the edge of the water, but she was refusing to get so much as a toe wet. He was doing sort of a loopy Dick Van Dyke routine, gesturing with his arms toward the ocean, saying, “Into the water, now! Into the water! Here we go!” While he splashed, knees high, into the surf, Annali turned and walked in the opposite direction. Pru and Patsy burst out laughing.
Late afternoon at the beach hadn’t changed in all these years, either. There were never many people on the strip of beach in front of the house, closed off from either side by two rock formations, and even fewer at this time of day. The beach ran to the left and to the right of the house, undisturbed, undeveloped, as it always had been. The houses were the same, too, two- or three-bedroom clapboard sea shanty-type houses. The hotels hadn’t invaded this far down the beach yet. Pru wondered how long that could last. She tried to come up with anything else in life as unchanging as that beach. Her mother’s house, perhaps—the tiny, dark one-story home where she and Patsy had always shared a bedroom. The only changes made over the course of thirty years had been a new refrigerator, the addition of high-speed cable, which her mother had had installed once she discovered online Scrabble, and the absence of her father, his basement workroom crowded with unopened boxes.
And now it was Annali at the water’s edge with Jacob, while Pru and Patsy sat on the striped lounge chairs under a big cobalt blue umbrella, like a couple of queens. They flipped through their magazines and watched Jacob try to coax Annali into the water. Whenever a wave rolled in, Annali ran away from it, shrieking with laughter. Jacob had a nice way with her, Pru had to admit. She let out a contented sigh, and Patsy turned to smile at her.
“Glad you finally joined us,” Patsy said. “Another minute of your crazy city energy, and I was going to have to hit you with a stuffed marlin.”
Pru put her hand up against the glare. Jacob, lean and sinewy in his swimming trunks, water dripping from his head, was lifting Annali up and carrying her toward the water. She shrieked and clung to him. Slowly, talking to her all the while, he walked out into the water. When a wave came, he held her up above it. She loved it, laughing and screaming, scared and thrilled at the same time.
She needs a daddy, Pru thought, and instantly felt horribly guilty. The Whistler women had agreed, silently, never to mention this among them. Even though they’d never spoken about it, she knew her mother and sister had worked hard to make up for the lack of a father figure, especially after Leonard had died.
Now, seeing them together, she remembered what it was about a daddy that Annali was missing. A daddy who could lift you up in his arms, a daddy with all that warm, salty skin to hold on to, a daddy never too tired or too busy or too worried or too angry to carry you as long as you wanted, wave after wave after wave after wave. A mommy wouldn’t let you be afraid in the middle of the night. But daddies could actually do something about it. Even a daddy like Leonard, who, Pru was sure, had never raised his fists against anyone in his life. Daddies, everyone knew, could hold you safely up above the whole world, with their strong arms.
AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, IN ONE OF THE SEAFOOD RESTAURANTS in town, Jacob cracked open his lobster and said, “The first time I saw a cadaver, I couldn’t wait to touch it.”
He had little ways like that of surprising you, Pru was learning. He could be so earnest. Despite his obvious advantages, he so clearly wanted to be liked, he might have even been a little in doubt of whether or not anyone should like him. She turned to him. “So why aren’t you doing autopsies, or something like that?”
“That’s a little more distance than I really want from my patients.” He dragged a piece of lobster flesh through the butter and popped it in his mouth. “I wouldn’t want to see the same person day in and day out, but only the deceased?” He shook his head. “Plus, you get to see everything in Emergency. Everything. Then they go home, and you play video games with the ambulance drivers until the next lot comes in.”
“Like what do you get to see?”
He ran a finger under the neck of his lobster bib, loosening it. “Last week? I saw a post-op transsexual whose surgery hadn’t gone so well.”
“Hadn’t gone well how?”
He withdrew a pen, then drew a rough sketch on a napkin, making circles and arrows, showing Pru exactly what should have been where, and what really was there. She grimaced.
“It’s all a
