Diving the Wrecks
Magdalena Zschokke
Copyright © 2012 magdalena Zschokke
All characters in this book are strictly fictional and any similarity to living or dead persons accidental: If you find yourself represented in this book, contact me as I will be proud to have created a realistic three-dimensional person on paper.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
The Publisher makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any commercial damages.
2012-10-18
Dedication
If I cling to circumstances I could feel
not responsible. Only she who says
she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
Adrienne Rich, from: Twenty-One Love Poems
To Connie, with my love.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my readers Karen Keeble, Milena Moser, Janet Oestreich, Klaus Zschokke and to my editor D.E. Whitcomb for all the incalculable help in making this a better book.Or, possibly, a book at all.
All the errors, geographic and narrative, are strictly mine.
And thanks to Bradley Dunbaugh, a great photographer, for the use of the cover picture.
1
From the top of the Ferris wheel, she could see all the way to Hawaii—at least that’s how it felt. Actually there was nothing but water and a golden path of sunlight from the beach to the horizon. The ocean lay metal-blue and undulating, the long swells slow and steady. There were no whitecaps, and the smooth expanse was dotted with patches of dark, glossy kelp near the rocks. A sea lion popped its head up and looked steadily in her direction with its round, soulful eyes.
“I know you,” it said. Her heart swelled with a happiness that was too big to contain, and she let out a large breath. The sunlight was hot in her hair, and she could feel warmth all the way into her bones. The world was beautiful, and she was at peace.
The wheel started moving again, and she glided gently down, closer to the earth. The screams from the roller coaster riders rose and fell, and waves of warm, greasy air wafted past—now popcorn, now hot dogs, now cotton candy. Suddenly she felt ravenous and decided she would buy a fried artichoke heart as soon as the Ferris wheel ride was over. She leaned over the safety bar of her basket and looked toward the beach.
She watched a gang of teenagers posing and strutting for each other down by the waterline. Two of the males picked up a bikini-clad female by the arms and legs, and started swinging her back and forth. The blood-curdling, high-pitched screams from multiple girls formed a sound cloud around the teens, and then the captured girl sailed in a graceful arc into the water. Like a murder of agitated crows, her companions pattered back and forth, agitated, cackling, squealing, and protesting, half-hoping to be tossed, half-worried that they would be.
A short distance up the beach, two little boys were intent on burying their friend in the sand, and a toddler in nappies was unsteadily heading for the wet sand where the water broke gently and pushed a white line of foam in front of it.
All at once the basket she was in bucked roughly, and, when she grabbed for the bar to steady herself, it was gone. She looked down between her legs and stared at a dark endless hole below her. She could not see any ground but she knew what was coming. She was falling, crashing toward a hardwood floor with plugs that looked like buttons, and her breath left her in a scream.
She found herself sitting up in bed in the dark and stuffy master bedroom she had shared with Manfred for many years. Rolling over, she could make out the white double moons of his buttocks as he bent to pull on his underwear. The terror of the wood floor had evaporated, and she realized that the rocking of her Ferris wheel cage had been him getting out of bed. She exhaled and lay back down. She wanted so badly to get back to the Ferris wheel in warm California … away from here.
“Emma, time to get up. I have an early meeting!”
She grunted something unintelligible, even to herself, and dropped her bare feet on the wood floor. Though there was a rag rug under her feet, the cold shot up through her all the way to her diaphragm. She gasped, slipped her feet into her old felt slippers, and grabbed her dressing gown from the back of a chair.
While Manfred shaved, she put on the coffee in the kitchen and went to wake the boys. She turned on the ceiling light in their room and walked through to open the drapes. Ron lay on his back with his eyes open, staring at the underside of the upper bunk without acknowledging her arrival. Karl was completely invisible under the duvet and groaned disconsolately when she pulled the covers away from him. She returned to the kitchen, put out mugs and bowls, and sat down at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of hot water, remembering what a lovely time she’d been having only moments ago.
How she wished she could’ve stayed in her dream. For years she lay awake in the middle of the night, listening to Manfred snore, envying him his sleep. For as long as she could remember, she had shot out of nightmares and then stayed awake. The first years of her marriage she had tried to make herself fall back to sleep by cuddling up to Manfred, but there had been too many mornings when he awoke grumpy, blaming her for robbing him of his needed rest.
When Karl had been born, she had stayed up with him, nursed him, changed him, and slept only in snatches while she held him in the crook of her arm. Ron had been a colicky baby, requiring much walking and soothing, but it gave her interrupted nights a reason and left little time for the nightmares.
After they moved to this apartment, they acquired a television, which sat in the living room. She had gotten into the habit of watching late-night shows that often were reruns of old movies or infomercials, but her favorites were travel shows. It was one of the travel programs that had taken her to California and the boardwalk in Santa Cruz with its Ferris wheel overlooking the beach. The segment had aired more than once. Each time she had watched it sitting close to the television with the volume down low, inhaling every sound and color from the images on the screen. She’d conjured up the smell of cotton candy, hot dogs, and fried foods from her childhood memories of county fairs, and the smell of the ocean was still with her from a long-ago holiday at the North Sea. After her third viewing, she could not just see and hear the scenes—she could smell California.
Her late-night TV watching helped ease her resentment over her sleeping husband and also filled some time. However, perhaps more importantly, it changed her dreams. Now, in addition to her usual nightmares, she sometimes dreamed of exotic places. These new dreams became as real to her as her daily life, and, after having spent the night in an exotic dream, the following day would be soft and underlaid with hope.
Despite her Ferris
