Water & submersion

Tides, drowning, and the pull beneath the surface recur as the sea that keeps rising under Gately. Submersion begins gently — Hal holding smoke "way down deep," Lyle's petitioner who "hits him and sinks without bubbles," memories that "sank without bubbles" then "came burpling greasily up." It deepens into dream and threat: Gately's dream "under a sort of sea," the mattress "like the crest of a breaking wave," the father "a ship in high seas," and Gately at St. Elizabeth's "coming up for air and then being pushed below the surface." The motif closes in a full tide-ledger — "the tide was way out," eyes that "looked out at open sea," Fackelmann "coming up for air" set against Joelle "like a diver preparing for a long descent," ending on the final beach. Water is the medium of both drowning and immersion, the thing that can bury a memory and the thing you go under on purpose.