Salt Water
Authors: Charles Simmons
A Novel
CHARLES SIMMONS
Powdered Eggs
An Old-Fashioned Darling
Wrinkles
The Belles Lettres Papers
To Peggy and Pauline,
my twins
“W
ELL, THAT’S AGREED THEN
,”
HE SAID, SETTLING HIMSELF INTO AN ARMCHAIR AND LIGHTING A CIGAR
. “E
ACH OF US IS TO TELL THE STORY OF HIS FIRST LOVE
. I
T’S YOUR TURN FIRST
, S
ERGEY
N
IKOLAICH
.”
Ivan Turgenev, “First Love,” 1860
The Sandbar
IN THE SUMMER
of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned.
For one week in late June a sandbar formed half a mile out in the ocean. We couldn’t see it, but we knew it was there because waves were breaking on it. Each day at low tide we expected it to show through. A bar had never formed that far out, and we wondered if it would stick. If it did, the water near shore would be protected and calmer, and we could move our boat, the Angela, in front of the house instead of keeping it in Johns Bay, on the other side of Bone Point. The swimming of course would change, it would be like bay swimming, and the surf casting would be ruined.
Father and I used to fish off the shore for king, weak, blues, and bass. The bass gave the best fight and were the best eating. We pulled in a lot of sand sharks too, small, useless things we threw back. Sometimes we went for real sharks, with a big hook, too heavy to cast. We’d fix on a mackerel steak, and I’d swim out with the hook and drop it to the bottom. I did this even when I was small, except then I’d float out on my inner tube, drop the hook, and Father would pull me in with a rope. Mother didn’t like this, even though we did it only when the water was calm. Once we got a hundred-pound hammerhead shark, the strangest fish I ever saw. It had a head like a sledgehammer, with eyes on the ends. People said it was a man-eater, but Father said it wasn’t.
We caught stingrays too. If Father hooked one and I was up in the house, he’d shout and I’d run down with the gaff. Stingrays are broad, flat fish. When you get them near shore, in the shallow water, they can suck onto the bottom and you can’t pull them in. You have to go out in high boots and work the gaff through them so that water gets in and breaks the suction. We caught rays five feet across. They have spiky tails that flail around and can give you a whack. Before you can push the gaff through the body you have to step on the tail and cut it off. They eat stingrays in some places, but we didn’t.
I never went out with the gaff. Father wouldn’t let me. He went out and I held the rod. Once, after Father had cut off the tail and worked the gaff through the body, the ray took off, gaff and all, and pulled me over. The reel was locked. I held onto the rod and was carried out to where Father was. He grabbed the rod from me, and by the time we got the ray in it was mostly dead. We cut it loose, and it floated out.
“Suppose I weren’t here,” Father said, “how long would you have held on, forever?”
“Yes,” I said, and he squeezed my shoulder. I was seven that summer.
Bone Point was a special place. During World War I the government took it over for military purposes and again during World War II. After that it became a permanent federal reserve. In 1946 there were only a few houses. The agreement with the government was if you already had a house you could keep it for forty-five years, until 1991, but no new houses could be built. Mother and Father took over our house in 1948, the year I was born and the year Mother’s father died. He had built the house in the early thirties, and Mother had spent her childhood summers there too.
Like me she was an only child. She claimed the house had been too big for them, just as she thought it was too big for us. Mother was a complainer. The house wasn’t too big. I liked all that room and light. The first floor was full of
windows and glass doors, and the porch went around the four sides. Her father had liked the light too, Mother said. She often said I reminded her of him, which pleased me because she had been so fond of him, but I felt I was more like Father. There weren’t many things Father said or thought I didn’t agree with.
The furniture was all from Grandfather’s time, and every thing was large. For instance, there was a wicker couch in the living room that Father could lie on one end of, reading, with me at the other end, and we’d only overlap from the knees down. My bedroom was big enough for my doublesize bed with plenty of space left over. Blackheart, my dog, always slept with me, and we never got in one another’s way. Every September we’d have to adjust when we moved back to town, where my bed was ordinary size.
Although after a week we couldn’t actually see the bar, its presence got plainer every day. Complete waves were breaking on it.
“Want to swim out?” Father said.
It was as if he had read my mind.
“The tide is out,” he said. “We can rest on the bar when we get there. On the way back the tide will be coming in and carry us along. What do you say?”
We were both good swimmers. Father used the crawl for general purposes. I did the backstroke, which is slower but
not so tiring, and I liked looking up at the sky when I swam. Is there anything better than your body in the water and your mind in the sky? Whenever we swam together, because he was faster, Father would pull ahead, flip over, dive, stay down, come up, and fool around till I caught up. He was a regular porpoise.
I didn’t think he should be doing it this time. We were heading half a mile straight out to sea, and he was using up his energy. Then two hundred yards out I knew we had miscalculated. We were moving too fast. It wasn’t ebb tide, as Father had thought. The tide was still going out and speeding us to the bar. Every day the tide is an hour later. Today we had started out at noon, and I remembered that the previous day low tide had been at noon. Now low tide wouldn’t be for an hour. I told Father.
“It’s okay. We can wait on the bar before we swim back.”
He didn’t seem worried, but he didn’t fool around anymore either.
When we reached the bar we found the water was deeper than we had expected. Father could stand with his mouth above water, but I couldn’t. He tried holding my hand so the tide wouldn’t take me farther out, but this pulled him off his feet. I had to swim just to hold my place.
“We can’t rest,” he said. “We’ll have to go back. You mustn’t panic. Do you understand?”
“I won’t.”
“Do you want me to help you?”
“I’ll panic if you have to help me.”
It was hard getting in. What kept us going was knowing that the tide against us was weakening. The question was, would the tide wear out before we did?
On the beach, figures stood watching us. As we got closer to shore and I knew we would make it I flipped over on my stomach and waved to Mother. I got a mouthful of water. Blackheart was there, along with the two people who were renting the guesthouse and their dog. It took us twenty-five minutes to get in, where it had only taken ten to get out.
Father and I lay exhausted on the beach for a long time. The two dogs sniffed us to see if we were alive. Mother held my hand. She was furious with Father. The two renters, who had just moved into the guesthouse, stayed with us. Mrs. Mertz was Mother’s age. Her daughter, Zina, even upside down, was beautiful. Her eyes and hair were brown, her skin was a lighter brown, and her lips were purple. They seemed to be carved. She kept hugging and stroking her dog, as if it had been in danger instead of us. Then she touched my cheek, out of curiosity, I thought. I fell in love with Zina upside down.
After dinner that evening, Father motioned me to follow
him outside. We walked to the water’s edge, not saying much. He wanted to look at the water, I thought, or get away from Mother, who wasn’t speaking to him. The day had been bright and clear. Now the air was thick and damp, and a chill wind came off the ocean, turning it choppy.
“I thought for a moment out there you were going to leave me,” I said.
“I wouldn’t do that. Why did you think that?”
“It was just a thought.”
“Would you have left me?” Father said.
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said and put his arm around my shoulder. Whenever he did that I felt he loved me.
We walked back to the house. Mother was building a fire.
“Return to the scene of the crime?” she said. She was getting over it. We played Monopoly before going to bed. The wind shifted, and a nor’easter came up during the night. It lasted three days, and afterward the sandbar was gone.
The Photography Lesson
THE FIRST DAY
after a nor’easter is sunny and cool. You can’t lie on the beach, because it’s still wet. If you want you can swim, but you have to know what you’re doing. Father used to say that after a storm the sea is short tempered. The waves are strong and full of sand. Sand is all through the water and doesn’t settle out for a couple of days. A lot of sand gets washed out from the shore, so the incline into the water is steep. An undertow can sweep you off your feet, and the gritty waves slap you down hard. Near the shore the water is unpleasant, farther out it’s dangerous. Currents move against one another. Whirlpools form and pull at you.
I sat on the porch in the morning sun and thought about the renters. Father had gone into town to his office. I should warn them about the ocean. Father surely would if he were here. But I went on sitting. I couldn’t understand why I just didn’t get up and go over to the guesthouse and do it. There it was behind the dune, a hundred feet away. They must be up—it was ten o’clock. I suppose it was because of Zina. I was bashful about seeing her right-side up.
Renters were fairly new for us. The first time we rented was the summer before, to the Yemms. Father, who knew Mr. Yemm through business, told me he was renting the guesthouse so Mother would have company when he was in town. The trouble was Mrs. Yemm was too much company. She was always around. Also she was all over Father, which I don’t think he liked, and I know Mother hated.
The Yemms had two kids, Bobby, a year older than I, and Delphine, a year younger. Bobby taught me chess. By the middle of the summer I was beating him every other game and near the end of summer all the time. He was a good sport for a while, but finally he knocked the board over, and that was our last game. I took Delphine to the sophomore prom that winter. She said she thought her mother was sweet on Father and asked me how Father felt about her mother. I said I didn’t know. “I don’t think they did anything,” Delphine said. At the prom we both expected
she would be back this summer, but when the time came Father told the Yemms that relatives wanted the guesthouse. Then he rented it to Mrs. Mertz and Zina. He told me about them before they arrived, and I asked him if the daughter was pretty. “You’ll be pleased,” he said with his big smile.
I was still sitting on the porch when Zina and her dog appeared on top of the dune. She wore a bright terry cloth robe and was very beautiful, with her short, full, shiny brown hair, the kind Father said a lot of butter and eggs went into, and with her large brown eyes, serious even when she smiled, her high cheekbones, and perfectly white teeth. Also she had that look that said if she liked you you were special.
“Are you going into the water?” I said.
“Do you want to?”
“You have to be careful, unless you’re a very good swimmer. I was going to come over to warn you.”
“Are you all recovered? I thought of swimming out to save you.”
“You’d have to be an awfully good swimmer.”
“Were you scared?”
“Not after I saw we could make it.”
“Was your father scared?”
“Father is never scared. He may have been scared for me. Why did you touch my cheek like that?”
“You looked so young. I thought how sad it would be if you had drowned. What’s your name?”
“Michael. I’m named for my grandfather. He died when I was born.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Peter.”
“Then you’re Michael Petrovich.” She put her finger under my chin and turned my profile. “But I’ll call you Misha. My name is Zinaida Alexandrovna because my father’s name is Alexander. You can call me Zina, though. I’m a casual person. This is Sonya.” Her setter looked up. “She doesn’t have another name, because we don’t know who her father was. Nonetheless, she’s a lady. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.” I was fifteen.
“I’m an adult, and you’re a minor, but you’re a thoughtful minor, and I’ll treat you accordingly.”
“How much of an adult are you?”
“I’m twenty-one,” she said.
Later I learned she was twenty.
“So are we going in?” she said.
“Let’s do it!” I punched the sky.
Sonya stood on her hind legs and pawed the air. Blackheart appeared from nowhere, barking. Zina held back her arms, the wind blew her robe off, and the four of us ran into the water. Out beyond the tough little waves she flipped
forwards and backwards, dove down and shot up. She was a porpoise like Father. The water rolled off her as if she were waxed.
The dogs charged the waves. Blackheart jumped at them, bit the crests, was tumbled, righted himself, and charged again. Sonya wanted to get out to us and tried to leap over the water, but the chunky waves broke one after another and upended her. They both kept at it till we came in. Their coats were full of sand, which no amount of shaking got rid of. I was shaking too, but from a chill. Zina took my hand and hurried me up the beach. In front of the guesthouse she put her robe around me, rubbed me down, and hugged me. Then with her hands on my shoulders she kissed the tip of my nose. We were exactly the same height.
“Go behind the house!” she said. “There’s no wind, and I’ll bring you some medicine.”
“What medicine?”
“You’ll see.”
Blackheart was ambling away toward home.
“Call your dog back! Now both of you, behind the house!”
The guesthouse was a frame structure Grandfather Michael had built as a combination studio and guesthouse. It was about forty feet square with cedar shingle sides and roof, two skylights, perfectly placed windows, and now a
deck and shower stall out back. I remember thinking that when I got married I would bring my wife here until we could afford a place of our own.
Zina came onto the deck with a tumbler a quarter filled with clear liquid.
“Drink it down!”
It burned, as I knew it would.
“It’s vodka,” she said. “
Vodka
means
little water
.
Misha
means
little Michael
.”
She picked Blackheart up under one arm and took him into the shower stall to wash out the sand. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t struggle. Sonya sat by, waiting her turn. When Blackheart was done he scampered away. All Zina had to do was point, and Sonya walked under the shower and let Zina comb out the sand with her fingers. She dismissed the dog and got into the shower herself, leaving the door half open.
“Cold, oh cold!” she shouted. “Misha, this is not for you. My robe! My robe!”
I took it off and held it by the shower door. She backed out and slipped into it so quickly I didn’t know whether she had her bathing suit on or not, until I saw it on the shower floor.
To my surprise—it was the vodka—I rubbed her down and gave her a hug, the way she had me. I was surprised because I really was a shy person, which I mention because she said to me with an amused look, “You’re not shy, are
you? All right, now you will help me with my profession.”
Her camera was on the picnic table under a sun hat. She explained that she was making studies of the beach grass be-hind the guesthouse. I could help her by staying out of the way, particularly off the sand around the clumps of grass. She wanted it exactly as God made it, she said.
“God didn’t make it. Father and I planted that grass to keep the sand from shifting.”
“Nonetheless there must be no footprints.”
She took pictures every which way. Straight down, alongside, circling around. She was quick and sure of herself.
“This is an exercise,” she said.
I sat on the deck rail and watched her. As she bent, knelt, lay on her side or stomach, I studied her studying the grass. She kept pulling her robe together, tucking it between her legs, tightening the belt, pushing up the sleeves. She was so graceful and efficient she could have been dancing.
“These are exercises in composition,” she said. “If you can make a picture of grass you can make a picture of anything.”
“Do you sell your pictures?”
“Sometimes.”
“Will you sell these?”
“If I like them, and somebody else likes them. Let me see that foot!”
She took my foot in her hand like a dog’s paw. “You have good feet. I’ll show you how I want you to place your foot. There by the grass. It’s really a very nice, innocent foot, uncorrupted by shoes.”
She put me next to a clump of grass and took pictures from many angles. When she finished the roll she put in another.
“I will give you a lesson.” She handed me the camera. “Look through the viewfinder! Look at me! Look at the clouds! Look at the sand! No, you’re looking at me. The format is two by three. Do you know what that means? Two high and three wide, like a movie. Imagine you’re watching a movie. Stop looking at me! That’s it. Turn the camera! That’s a vertical format, three high and two wide, the portrait format. Are you following me?”
I nodded, still looking at her through the viewfinder.
“Put the camera down! These grass groups have five, ten, fifteen blades each. They describe the paths of fireworks in the sky. Do you see that? Even though the blades are curved, together they fill a square. But your camera format is rectangular. I want you to compose these square-filling things inside the camera’s rectangle. You can use one bunch or more than one. You can use some of the blades in one bunch or all of them. You can use a bunch and its shadow or the shadow alone. Say something so I know you’re following me!”
I was listening, but also I was looking at her so intently that I had nothing to say.
“I understand you.”
She studied me for a second. “All right, you have to work fast, without thinking. You mustn’t think. That’s the worst thing. The eye doesn’t think, it looks. But you can’t just go click, click. The camera must be connected to something inside you, the way the eye is. All right, the camera is focused from here to here.” She held her hands two feet apart. “Keep the camera that far from the grass. You wind the film like this. You take the picture by pushing this. Hold the camera still. You’re taking still pictures.” She handed me the camera. “Okay, make it see!”
I turned and took pictures of her, up and down, all sides, north, east, south, west, each picture a piece of her. She didn’t move, except near the end of the roll she pushed a bent leg out from her robe in the classic bathing beauty pose.
I handed her the camera.
“Misha, you weren’t photographing me, you were caressing me. Now go home! I’ll show you the pictures tomorrow.”
She was smiling. She liked me.