Chapter 16 Janes 1, 2, 3, and 4
IT IS NEARING THE END of July and there has been no break in the heat.
The women remember a time when heat like this was related to desire, a ripening of hunger, of want.
The kind of heat that made you crave wet, juicy foods.
Peaches whose juices dribbled down your forearms; cool, crisp watermelon; cherries that turned your mouth a sultry purple.
Desire for feeling, too, to wear tank tops without a bra so that the fabric skimmed your nipples.
For the cool water of the ocean sluiced between your legs, the shimmer of sweat collecting between the jut of your hip bones, the reassuring weight of a damp towel over your shoulders, like an embrace.
There is a sisterhood among them, these women in the marsh.
Each time he brings another one, they understand what she has seen.
His hatred of them, which he had once masked to look like love, or desire, or sometimes something they interpreted as fear.
The way the pill he gave them made the edges of their vision go blurry and a strange halo of light appear around his head, so that he looked like an angel or a saint cast in stained glass.
How they only saw him grit his teeth with the effort of it at the end, glance at the blocky sports watch on his wrist as though to count the seconds they had left, as their lungs burned and their limbs became so heavy and their thoughts were reduced to single words that filled their whole bodies: NO or OH or PLEASE.
And then the blind, mute pain, the state beyond language, and after that there was only darkness left.
Fireworks have exploded over them, trails of sparks streaking through the sky.
Then there was a memorial service for a young man who drowned in a boating accident, and his family carried candles and white carnations in the sea.
For a moment the white heads of the flowers bobbed on the surface of the water.
The next morning many of them washed up, a mess of wrecked petals or woody green stems stripped bare.
The women shivered with jealousy. All of those footprints in the sand, those hands cupped protectively around flames.
The motel manager will grumble to anyone who will listen that he has to replace light bulbs all the time—crack addicts make off with them, scrounging for anything they can sell.
Sometimes you get a room with no lights at all and no one will come fix them, no matter how many times you call.
Men beat women out in the parking lot, and everyone pretends it’s not their business, even as the screams get louder and louder and they can hear the fleshy crack-crack-crack of the blows—who can risk the cops showing up, shining flashlights into cars and knocking on doors?
The women see, too late, the symbolism behind the name, why he drove them here on that last night: He told them that the sun had set on Atlantic City.
There is something bad in the air and in the water now, something rotten and wrong.
A moral disease. The city needs a warning, a biblical punishment.
It needs to change, to repent, before the sun can rise again.
He wants to bring them all to their knees.
God has clearly brought a few misfortunes to the town: The storm that tore away a stretch of boardwalk and filled the streets with water.
The way so many of the casinos have shut down.
But bad luck and floods are not enough. That’s where he comes in.
There is a fourth woman with them now, a young woman with blue toenail polish and long, dark hair. Their bodies hummed like tuning forks as he carried her through the tall grass, arranged her like the rest with gloved hands. The rhinestone in her nose sparkles in the sun.
The marsh is supposed to be protective, a buffer between the land and the sea.
It’s where things transition, where water and land slide together into one.
Blue claw crabs scuttle through the murky water, sometimes finding their way back to the ocean.
Birds raise their young here, where there are fewer predators and plenty for them to eat.
Egrets pick their way through the mud with elegant care.
But for the women, it’s purgatory. Nothing in the marsh is either/or, water or land, lost or found.
Their bodies are starting to become something else as their tissue softens and the blood pools in their limbs, something not bound by muscle and skin.
They’re not women anymore, and yet they aren’t free and light like spirits.
Free to float away, to rise above the marsh like ghosts.
They sense the shift in the wind during the final stretches of July.
They know that this new month will bring warmer water, longer nights, cooler breezes.
Then, the ocean will brew storms, hurricanes that surge their way up the coast. Wind that tears at the grass, tides that could scatter them, wash away what’s left.
They think this means they’re running out of time.
Time to tell their stories, time to be heard.
They plead again for someone to see before it’s too late.