The
handsome redhead always sat down by the water. Her hair was coppery and
cut in steep bangs, and she had the straightest teeth and the most amazing
body he had ever seen in an older woman. She was lean but not skinny, and
yet for all her leanness there was enough vestigial meat on her thighs and
upper arms to suggest a once modestly athletic body. The bust of a cheerleader,
not a jogger, the legs and hips of a dancer, not a soccer player, a back
that looked great in a strapless prom dress but only so-so doing laps. And
twin archipelagos of freckles running down from both eyes as if all roads
still led back to the sun and the hormones of her first adolescence.
The first three days
of his vacation he couldn't take his eyes off her, watching her run through
the same ritual. At the end of the day when the lifeguards would drag their
lifeguard stand up the beach and tie up their boat, she would appear out
of nowhere, open a metal chair and set it on the sand by the water's edge,
then run in, swim to the breakers and beyond, and then swim back and return
regally, striding even, to her chair. The seawater would river down her
neck and disappear into her cleavage and her freckled breasts rose like
matching sunrises out of her yellow one-piece swimsuit. She had a way of
grinning vacantly into the wind or over the sand and finally toward him
at some distance from his family, where he had been sitting for a week reading
trade magazines that had piled up all year and that he could lay into, far
from television and the cable guide and the sports channel. The day she
looked at him he began to fantasize running his tongue over such perfect
teeth and his fingers over those freckles.
His two kids loved
the water but were still young enough to need minding. Over the years his
wife had done the watching out of habit from a chair by the water. But on
the fourth day of this vacation when the redhead spontaneously smiled at
him — clearly at him — he carried his chair down
to the water and pretended to watch his kids skidding around on boogie boards.
His wife was surprised, said, Want me to spell you? but Oh, no,
he replied, and he soldiered down, saying Today I want to sit by the
ocean.
By the fifth or sixth
day his chair faced southwest, cattycorner to his children and the redhead.
His first real close-up of her firm freckled arms stretched along the brightest
chrome armrests he had ever seen and of her perfectly shaped legs mightily
disturbed him. Older women were not supposed to be this attractive. She
showed up one day with children, her grandchildren certainly, wheat-blonde,
well-fed, and sun-hardened, and the hint of fertility deepened the disturbance.
Before they left the beach the redhead turned them around by their golden
shoulders and had them wave toward an imposing stone building on the beach
block with a stone turret set against the public seawall. They waved and
he heard her say, He can see you from there because he's watching
and sent them running off, walking briskly behind them and grinning at him
(That's twice!) as she went by. She had smiled at him from less than
ten feet (Crowsfeet, but those are not dentures) and it was more
than he could bear.
The next day he came
down alone in the morning. The beach was empty. He walked north and occasionally
glanced left at the big stone house with the seaward turret, turning over
who and what she was, whose kids they were, those good firm legs, white
(but subtly freckled) arms, and that savagely sexual grin. He had almost
overnight lost all interest in what the tourist board and four websites
had depicted, one silent and snowy winter's evening many months earlier,
as the essential American vacation — the nostalgic and warm family
atmosphere, the slice of coastal Americana, the piers, gazebos, fishing
boats and Cape Fear sitting at the bottom of Carolina Beach like the period
to an exclamation point. Something in him sank at the sense of the other
something in him dying to rejoice.
So he sat in the shiny
flat sand by the water where she usually sat staring out to sea with the
book that she never opened on her lap. What does a beautiful older woman
think about when she's alone? He had never made love to an older woman
and had never really been unfaithful though he flirted like crazy —
but what is sales if not trying to get in a stranger's pants? And she was
older, but that was her allure. It bothered him to be fantasizing
over an older woman but he could think of little else but her skin
and hair and proudly and gloriously Aryan body.
He came back to the
beach later that morning with his family, and around two she showed up,
her chair under her arm as she swayed, then (seeing him) shimmied, to her
spot by the water. As she walked by their eyes locked (she didn't bother
looking for him, she apparently knew he was there), she grinned,
and he grinned back. A moment passed, then he walked chair and book and
towel down to the brilliant bisque shoreline, sat, and turned directly toward
her. Her book was closed on her lap, her arms draped over those shiny armrests,
and her eyes closed. Not long after she looked up and turned easily his
way, grinned and said Top of the afternoon. Speechless, he smiled
back.
His family was having
a hard time. His younger daughter was beginning to burn, the older was complaining
of menstrual cramps, and his wife had finished a book that cost her a week's
beach time and was so pissed off with the ending that she had to get home
and start another book, so she walked down and suggested that they leave
soon, and he said Fine, whenever, and he immediately packed up and,
with a glance toward the redhead, who glanced back, he followed. They had
crossed the boardwalk and arrived at the car when his wife said, You
know, you can stay here if you want to, Colin, just be back for dinner,
and for a critical and mortal instant he dismissed the idea. Are you
ok with the girls? he asked. She looked at him cockeyed. You think
I can't manage without you? Which pretty much decided him. He helped
her load the car, kissed all three and walked off with his chair under his
arm.
Back at the guardrail
he squinted, then frowned. She was not where he had left her. Still, since
he hadn't seen her leave he was hoping — but too far away to know for
sure — that she had gone in the water and closed her chair. Thirty
feet on he could see that she was not in the water, and standing on the
spot where his family's blanket had been spread ten minutes earlier it was
clear that she was nowhere on the beach. He made up his mind to head down
to the shoreline and sit and watch the tide roll out, or in. It was better
than the alternative.
Not ten minutes later
there she was, a towel over one arm and under the other her chair, which
she opened and dropped so close to him that the armrests nearly touched.
Hi there, she said, doesn't the water look splendid today? I had
to leave to get my towel right after you departed, but I'm delighted you
came back. What he said next — but I noticed you took your chair
along with you — he did not realize would make sense only to someone
who was a thought ahead of him and caught the inflection. But it didn't
seem to matter to her. She smiled. He smiled lamely back.
Her name was Alexandra,
and no she wasn't from around there but from a city further south that produced
good tobacco, preachers, and dining room furniture. No, she wasn't a widow
but had been married to the same man for years, and his name was believe
it or not Alexander! and they had, but you knew it already because you
have seen them both, the two most beautiful grandbabies in the universe.
Alexander had come from Gainesville, Florida, which was famous for two things,
fireworks stands and something else I forgot about by now, and Alexander
was her life's love but Alexander was sick with something that forbade his
being in the sunlight, and so she cast her eyes heavenward and behind her,
which Colin took to be in the direction of the photosensitive or -phobic
Alexander. Well, Colin asked, is Alexander bed-ridden? She
said No, but he gets easy skin cancers out in the sunlight, it's been
since he took some steroids years back, it's them Gainesville genes.
Every year they traveled here because it's where they had met. He looked
and said Right here? but she shook her head. No, not this beach,
but up there and she waved north and said Where there's a pipe now
running down to the ocean and it smells like open diaper pails and human
garbage, that's where we met.
Decades ago when there
was no stench or human garbage, Alexandra had met her Alexander. A girl
whose name she could no longer remember had pointed him out to her one day
because Alexander stood a head taller than the rest of his college friends
who had all gathered on the beach to drink and party like immortals. He
was one tall drink of champagne, she said. Like you, she added,
sizeable, and for emphasis she placed her fingers over his to measure
their hands. So there we are, we're not fifty feet apart, looking flirty
back and forth, when he and I both hear somebody or something call Alex
and we both look and both say "What?" And that's how it went, she said.
We never did find out who was being paged or who was doing the paging,
and so she believed that Fate that had called their names. Which I do
believe in, Fate, she said, though I don't believe that it's an idea
current among the young anymore, is it?
She said that she
loved to come north from where she lived most of the time now, somewhere
she failed to specify, that she felt like a native of the state of North
Carolina, which was where they were married, and they had now been married
for nearly thirty years — No, I'm a liar, it is thirty-four you
wanna know the truth, not that I'm vain about my age but I just can't count
straight — she said she loved the beach and tides and the wild
look of things here, not like other places. It doesn't look like people
ever really could live on these beaches, she said, but we all are
just in transit. She wanted, in truth, to die here because if one place
is as good as the next some are even better. That won't be for a lot
of years, the dying, I mean, but he knew it sounded like a line. She
laughed through it. I'm fifty and a whisper, but they don't make chassis
like this anymore, do they, Mr. Financial Planner? and raked his arm
lightly with her nails. She kept the hand on his arm just long enough to
make him glance behind him to where his blanket was usually spread. I
know you seen a lot of chassis, and she laughed as if she had spent
a century of nights sucking saloon smoke, but that didn't seem possible
to him.
It was getting on
to six, and when he brought up the time she said Oh it's been so good
to get to know you, and then as he fumbled with his chair she said but
this is about the time of day when I am most in love with the ocean,
then she rose and stretched. Some day you must come swim with me.
With his chair folded under his arm he stood awkwardly pointing to the empty
lifeguard stand. You need be careful this time of day, he said. Well,
she said, turning to face the water, if you're worried, why don't you
just watch my back for me? So she strode down. I can't swim,
he said. Didn't ask you to save me, just watch me and when the water
was knee high she turned and yelled, It's perfect! You must come on in
right now! He watched her swim to the breakers, thinking She is really
coming on to me. Five minutes later she came running out. Now then,
she said, hand me that towel, won't you? Rubbing her hair she curtseyed,
said I thank you for your vigilance, and hit him in the face with
the towel.
He had an idea. The
next morning he would encourage his wife to go to the beach early, by herself,
pack the car and spend an hour alone — to get some reading in. In the
meantime he would breakfast the kids and get them ready for the long afternoon
by the water. In the evenings she and the girls could leave the beach early,
head home and shower and he would follow them back on foot an hour later.
The idea, he said, was to get the days to balance, for both of them to get
some independent beach time. She shrugged.
And it worked. Alexandra
never went early, so on the day after their first conversation she showed
up just as he was packing his family into their car and turning to double-time
it back to where she clearly was waiting for him. The blood blazed in her
face as she shifted her torso and tilted her head like a woman preparing
to be kissed. He ran his fingers over her arm and pulled his chair so close
to hers the armrests squeaked. This is nice, this closeness she said.
You're what's nice, he said. She was looking directly at him and
had cocked one eyebrow. Take those glasses off, let me see those lying
eyes, she said, resting her chin on his arm, and while you're at
it do me up with this, and she handed him sun block. I burn in moonlight.
She dropped the straps from her shoulders and edged closer and he began
rubbing the spot farthest from prying mainland eyes. He rubbed quickly,
and after a second she laughed, Quickin' it up won't change the fact
that we're in the open, sugar, so why not enjoy what you cannot hide?
So he slowed down, kneaded the flesh in big slow circles, and came back
again and again to the archipelago of freckles that began at her hairline
and splashed over her shoulders. She kept sighing, That's right, that's
it, you have it.
When he finished he
slid his hand under the back of her suit and turned her gently to face him.
Alright now, what do we do about Alexander? She sat back. Alexander
is in that building behind us, she said over her shoulder, in a room
with a view, and if he wants to, he's seeing it all. The sun made her
squint and squinting made her only better looking. That's just how things
are, she continued. Then he moved her hand onto his and ran her fingertips
lightly up and down his forearm, then dragged his right hand from the armrest
into her lap and began to guide him in slowly rubbing the insides of her
thighs. Tell me if you want me to stop, he said. She folded her legs
over his hand and squeezed, saying You do and I'll call Alexander.
He smelled her breath and felt her sighing into his open mouth and biting
his upper lip, then sensed her left hand moving under the armrest. Now,
now, don't flinch, she whispered, and as she kissed him he pulled her
close and leaned into her kiss.
In the distance he
could hear the old world grinding away. A hammer striking wood. A bus accelerating.
A propeller plane fighting the wind. The surf mounting and pummeling the
shore. And his wife starting dinner and wondering where he was.
He sat up suddenly.
He didn't want to face her. You OK, lover? She kept running her hand
up and down his thigh. He nodded Yeah, fine, but still looked off.
You don't seem fine, are you sure you are? If not then I'm not going
to be, and I wanna me to be even more than I want you to be. He turned
to look at the water. It had been throwing up seaweed all day, and because
the tide had come in and was lapping their feet he could feel the dead jellyfish
and the lengths of sea garbage. You gonna be OK for me, so we can play
some more?
He tried to withdraw
his hand. She squeezed harder. No, you don't get that back yet, and
rested her head on his shoulder, until you tell me you're ok. He
touched her lips with his free hand and shifted his body. My hand's asleep,
he said. She relaxed and he pulled his hand out, flexed it, and lightly
cupped her upper thighs, but she pulled his hand away. You can stop all
that down there right now, she said suddenly, it isn't doing very
much for me at the moment. He said Sorry and folded his hands
in his lap. It won't do for me unless it does something for you, and
I can always tell, and she slid her other hand clear down his bathing
suit, squeezed and said it for sure ain't doing you very much. He was helpless.
Do you know what I mean? He nodded. The thing is I want to know
when we do this for real. This made her smile. She re-crossed her legs
over his hand, leaned closer and slowly ran her nails over his belly.
How about tomorrow? She had tilted her head half-sideways and stared
hard at him. Life is too short, lover. The water was climbing their
ankles.
Dinner was hell. He
left the beach dazed, the flesh sticking to his waistband and the world
smelling different from the neck up. The revulsion was overwhelming. His
younger daughter climbed into his arms and clung to him and said You
need a shower, Daddy, and he was sure she could smell Alexandra.
After dinner they
went for S'mores. On the way his wife ran a finger lightly over his right
hand cupping over the shift knob and said, how was the beach, did you
miss me? It was a bad moment — the position of her hand on his,
the feel of the small black plastic shift knob underneath it. Chilly,
he said, not even bothering with the second question. Back home she went
upstairs to lie down and console the older one, whose cramps were peaking,
but he didn't wake her hours later when he crawled into bed and smelled
the sea air blowing off the beach from Alexandra to where he, sniper-alert,
was having a bad night's sleep.
He had trouble getting
up, and when he did his wife was already gone. She returned two hours later.
You know that woman you're always seeing there, she said, that
redhead you're always staring at? He was packing the fourth turkey sandwich.
She showed up on the boardwalk with those two beautiful Nazi kids and
an older man who looked like serious money. He continued packing, thinking
Dracula Emerges to Walk Grandchildren, and asked for a description.
Your height, aristocratic good-looks, well preserved, good hair with
lotsa of black — the balding Colin mentally winced — and
one of those Lifestyles-of-the-Rich-and-Famous blue blazers. So, he's like,
healthy? he asked and she said, We should only look half that good.
He closed the cooler. How old you think he is — she is? He didn't
answer.
On the afternoon shift
they would drive, he would walk, to the beach, but that day he drove with
them and started a war over which daughter had the front seat tomorrow and
forever after. Had the younger one lost her turn forever or just for that
day? He finally lost his temper and told them both to knock it off, and
when they persisted and he told them violently to shut up his wife pointedly
slowed the car down. You know I hate it when you tell them to shut up,
she said. Yeah, he said, you're right — suppose you shut
up instead? Nobody spoke for the rest of the ride. As they unloaded
he kept sneaking looks over his shoulder to the big stone turreted building
where Alexander was hiding from the afternoon sunlight.
Around one the tide
turned and people moved their blankets back. He stayed by their blanket
until one-thirty or so, then, fidgety, took a long slow walk to calm down.
An hour later he walked back, trying not to glance at the boardwalk as he
approached. It was way past two. His wife and both kids were on the blanket,
the girls about to run back into the ocean. He barely acknowledged his wife
but picked up his book and chair and walked off. Meet you down by the
water, he said over his shoulder, but of course it had nothing to do
with them.
And all in the same
instant they all arrived — his girls flashing by with their orange
boogie boards and Alexandra brushing a spidery nail over his shoulder, touching
his wrist and covertly raking his forearm. Hey there, guess who I saw
this morning all by herself on the boards? She dropped her chair at
a discrete distance. I heard, he said to the ocean. And you, how
did you sleep? she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. Maybe
this is all a mistake. It took something out of him to say it. She frowned
a stagy frown. I don't think it'll make a bit of difference, then
flickered her eyelashes and said, Steady now, here come your lovely offspring,
and she looked stiffly off in the other direction.
The older one stalked
up, announced that they wanted ice cream, and stared at Alexandra. Daddy,
she whispered, how come that old woman knows your name? He faked
surprise. Who does? He crushed a ten in her palm and told her to
ask her mother back on the blanket what she wanted, and the two girls stalked
off, the little one staring back at her father. He watched them walk off,
and the revulsion rose in him. He picked up his chair, said Gotta go,
and headed back to his blanket.
His wife asked him
what was going on down there with that redhead, and all he could say was
that the kids seemed to think the redhead had been talking to him, Or
something like that, he added lamely. Was she? she asked. Well,
she did ask me about my book, he said. What about it? He said,
Well, she did want to know if I was liking it. His wife cocked her
head and squinted. So she's read it? She had been running her tongue
around the raised edges of an ice cream sandwich and had scooped out all
the vanilla. Maybe I will, too, she said. What's it about?
He had no idea. He
had been carrying it around for a week and was still on page 1. It's
a novel, he said angrily, fighting and failing to remember the cover
blurb, what the hell are novels ever about? She gave him the middle
finger, stood and told the girls to pack up, they were done for the day.
It's still early, he said. She glared. You can stay, she said,
and she piled up the towels, just be home by six and threw a vicious
look at the ocean. As he kissed the girls goodbye the older one kept saying,
I heard her call you by your name.
At the guardrail he
looked and at first did not spot his chair. He thought that he was looking
in the wrong place until he saw it much closer to the receding ocean, beside
Alexandra's. She had moved it down and was sitting with her eyes closed
and her head back. On impulse he ran a knuckle up the curve of her neck
to her lower lip. She caught it, nipped it, ran her tongue from the knuckle
to the base of the finger, said But where have you had that hand?
and he smiled for the first time that day. Do you realize, he said,
how much I love being with you? She was concentrating on the lifeguards.
They had tied up their boat and were dragging the stand up the beach. It's
time, she said, to come swim with me and she stood up. Lots
of mess out there today, he said. Yes, she said, but its natural
mess, not human. Then she grabbed his hand. And you and me are going
in together.
They were completely
alone except for the gulls. Then Now, she said. He stripped off his
tee-shirt, saying Go on, I'll follow. She looked him up and down,
then said Just be sure you do, lover and vanished into a wave. She
can swim, he thought. Who needs a lifeguard? At the breakers
she surfaced and waved him in. He followed, stepping through detritus, peeling
a seaweed from his arm, then diving in, and when he came up she was locking
her arms around his neck and bending to kiss him. He pulled her over backward
and they sank to the bottom, and when they came up they were embracing but
in deeper water. She had locked her arms tightly around his neck. The straps
of her bathing were now down and her breasts rested on his chest. Don't
be shy, she said, kicking her way out of her bathing suit. I'm not,
he said, I'm just careful. She reached in, fished out her suit and
tied it to one foot. This girl is way past being careful, she said.
I don't mean that, he said, it's I can't swim. She didn't
seem to hear him. Now you.
And she dove in. He
felt her hands at his hips and water between his thighs and she was up,
waving his suit in her hand, running her legs around his waist and settling
herself so easily that he entered her without really knowing it. When he
asked Where am I? she said In me, and in deep trouble too, lover,
I just lost your suit. She had taken them farther out than he had ever
been and he was making love with a beautiful and strange and ancient woman,
and as he came he realized that he was having trouble standing up. She hung
on. Let's go in, he said. She pulled him farther out. Not so soon,
we have to get your suit! And he saw it, a black pigtail twisted inside-out
and heading slowly out to sea. So were they, in water over his head. I
have to go back, he said, extending his toes and barely touching bottom.
Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard but she was not out of breath.
They were very far
out now, in water well over their heads, and without warning she let go
and he sank. When he surfaced she was ten feet away. Hey, he said,
laughing, I'm having some trouble. The bottom was well beneath his
toes, and he kicked to stay afloat, barely making out her swimming shoreward
and diving and surfacing determinedly. The last time he saw her she was
standing in water waist-high, naked and ladybug red and unpeeling skeins
of seaweed from her shoulders. The water ran in white runnels over her breasts,
the way he remembered his first sight of her from a week earlier. He yelled
Alexandra once, terrified, but seeing his trunks floating out to
sea about an arm's length ahead of him reminded him of the fight his girls
had over picking them out for him and the fear turned to self-pity. He struck
and slapped and fought the water from his eyes and mouth. The waves overwhelmed
him. The last thought that crossed his mind was not a thought but a price
tag — that of his pathetic trunks, from K-Mart, @ $7.99.
The wife arrived over
an hour later — Alexandra, staring absently seaward from a boardwalk
bench, saw her get out of the family wagon, testily slam the door and stride
to the beach. It was empty, now, the horizon a ruddy, dull belt holding
the sky up, the tide well out and Colin's chair all by itself at the shoreline
along with his towel and his book. She watched the woman pick up the towel
and fold it into the chair (along with the book, which slid out as she carried
it up the beach) and head back to the car. She was shaking her head as if
talking to herself, and the two girls were leaning out the front and rear
passenger windows, their mouths moving, and the older one's hands making
calming gestures to the younger, whose hands were clapped to her ears. They
were the picture, Alexandra thought, of untroubled youth about to
find early trouble of the most permanent kind. Nothing worse,
she thought, than a little girl's losing a father.
The wife neared the
car and flipped out a cell phone. Since she had had no plan, could have
had none realistically, the woman would probably call the police, in which
case Alexandra knew she would have to answer some questions anyway. The
two children were out of the car, now, and the little one was being comforted
by the older one who seemed vastly confused by the sight of her mother without
their father.
No, nothing excepting
maybe learning, Alexandra mused as she rose from her bench, the learning
later on about him, and all that which and what and who, and not even from
your mother but from—but Lord, does it matter who? But by this
time she was standing before them smiling her steady smile, which time and
experience she had trained to evolve slowly into a wholly convincing sympathetic
grin. You OK, honey? The wife asked her bluntly if Alexandra had
seen her husband. His name is Colin, she said to the part of Alexandra's
mind that met the world and solved it. Well, Alexandra said, she
had seen him earlier that afternoon, Which woulda been about just before
but not just after I come out of the ocean from my quick late constitutional
swim. Is there a problem? The wife wrung her hands. Are you having
a problem? she repeated, wringing hers, a conscious visual echo. Anybody
watching would have thought the two were sharing . The daughters were now
arguing over who was the more worried. Both were crying.
Then the police arrived
and when the squad car pulled up the little one began to scream.
It was several days
before she came to the beach again. What a world this is, she had
said to the tall young policeman with the long handsome face. Here this
young woman with two kids who can't even call herself an official widow.
. . And she squeezed out enough tears to suggest to a gullible young police
office untried depths — of empathy, of human pity, of shared maternal
grief. But it wasn't all suggestion. Meeting the widow and those orphans
— the sweet younger and the older fresh one — was always the grisly
part. Especially that sweet little doll baby who so favored Colin it was
like him before her all over, so forlorn and forsaken and saying something—well,
she forgot just what he had been saying.
Of course,
she thought, her own feelings requiring a poultice too, now they won't
have to lose him, or have him dump them like the garbage his kind are always
dumping someone for. And him in those cheap trunks he was so fond of,
that he wanted her to swim after! He would have thrown me away like garbage,
and I ain't garbage. She squinted around the thought. They'll just
have to deal. And the wife? She flashed on a tall light skinned woman
with thick red hair counting out scuppernongs and talking to herself as
she stared out a window. She will have another man before the leaves
fall.
The sun came out suddenly,
and in the shiny armrests of her beach chair she saw her amazing face and
upper body and her breasts just breaching the tops of her suit. It was like
a sign. But I really do look like I will live forever, she said,
which was how she always felt when it happened. She stood and called good
night to the lifeguards and strode slowly over the sun-blighted seaweed
into the chilled August sea.
©
2006 J.T. Barbarese
