Salt Water (9 page)

Afterwards I waited for her to say something, if only my name. But she didn’t. I wanted to tell her I loved her. But instead I said I was sorry. She didn’t even say it was all right. What she said finally was, “You’ll do it now, won’t you?” I said I would.

A volleyball game started on the beach. Zina joined Mr. Strangfeld’s team. The only sign that we had been together was a quick, pleading look she gave me. Mrs. Mertz caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up signal, as if to strengthen my resolve to master my feelings. Hillyer nodded to me knowingly, like one spy to another. He was still looking for clues.

Whatever Zina had felt for me I had destroyed. I walked into the ocean and pulled my trunks away from my body so that the salt water would circulate and wash away the mistake.

At five o’clock heavy clouds blew in from the north. Some people were still swimming. Father waved them out, and when lightning and rain came we all took cover on the porch. I wanted this party to be done and the summer to be done.

BY SEVEN THE
rain had stopped and the party was ending. The Chelsea Hotel had taken off with its passengers. Mr. Strangfeld had returned the Kanes and the Rugers to their houses. Hillyer and the Cuddihys were staying the night. Mr. Walton pulled on a pair of slacks for the trip to town. Melissa and Ari went with us. The air was cool now, the wind still brisk. Father managed the sails, and I took the tiller. Mr. Walton asked if anyone knew a sea chanty. Father suggested “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” At the marina, as Ari helped Melissa onto the dock, she gave me the saddest look. Or maybe it was the fading light.

Father had been avoiding me. Now, sailing back to the
Point, he talked, but offhandedly. How had my summer been? How did I think it had gone for Mother? Should we invite the Mertzes back next year? Was I looking forward to school? Did I know who my teachers would be? Is Hillyer really such a devil with the ladies? This was unlike him. Father didn’t go in for small talk, or even plain talk; everything he said had a twist. He could see I was uneasy. I was making perfunctory responses and watching him closely. He was watching me even more closely. This too was unlike him. Father took things in glancingly. As it was, he looked in the moonlight like an eager ghost.

I decided to get my part of the bargain over with. I asked him Zina’s question.

We had swung out into the ocean and now were sailing southeast toward the Rocks on the bayside. The wind was whipping along, and the water was noisy. He asked me to repeat what I had said.

“That’s some question, Michael. It might have been more appropriate from another member of the family, wouldn’t you say? I thought we agreed that a gentleman never tells.”

He had turned playful, but he meant to leave the impression that the answer to my question was yes.

“Michael, you have your own ideas on the subject. You should know mine. I’m not Don Giovanni, women are not food and drink to me. But they do do something important.
They mark the passing years. They are like writing for a writer, winning elections for a politician. They make time memorable, they keep it from dissolving into nothing. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand the words. But you’re talking about sex, not love.”

“There’s no real distinction. A ‘heightened’ experience tends to be love, a lesser one sex.”

“On a scale of one to ten.”

“We’re talking about feelings, Michael, not weight lifting. Something happened last spring at a lawn party in town. It was a perfect Sunday afternoon, warm in the sun, cool in the shade. Everyone had a glass in their hand. A man came up to the woman next to me and said, ‘I
know
you.’ ‘I was your second wife,’ she said.”

“Were they drunk?”

“The point I’m making is that sometimes profound experiences end in indifference.”

“Are you talking about Mrs. Mertz or what?”

“I’m talking about life, Michael. I’m talking about myself and you and everyone.”

“About Zina and me?”

“In a way.”

“Everybody’s been telling me how people get over things. Maybe you can get over this. I slept with Zina in this boat
this afternoon. There’s a stain on the bunk to prove it. Go look!”

Father lashed the mainsheet to a cleat on the gunnel so the boat would hold by itself. He stood up. At first I thought he was actually going to look. Then I thought he wanted to hurt me. He seemed immense. I yanked the tiller. The boom swung across the deck, slowly at first and then fast. He tried to duck, but it hit him in the head, and he went over backwards and disappeared. The Angela swerved sharply toward the Rocks. I lost control and almost capsized. By dropping the tiller and catching the butt of the boom I turned the Angela into the wind and steadied her. I had to get back to where he went over. I did a figure eight, tacking southeast and northwest. On the last tack I slammed into the Rocks and tore a hole in the Angela’s port side. Water flooded in, and she sank to the gunnels. Whitecaps in the moonlight looked like Father and then didn’t. Being wood, the boat didn’t go under but lumbered in the tide away from the Rocks. I stepped, more than dove, into the water. The Rocks were as slippery as fish. To make it harder I was climbing Three Rock Edge. I lost my hold, hit my forehead, scraped my legs, and was back in the water. By swimming north I managed to clamber up. The Angela looked like a broken toy, tipping sluggishly and moving half sunk out to sea.

I saw nothing on the surface but the whitecaps. I waited
until there was no chance. I took off my deck shoes and started back toward the beach. Three Rock Edge was right in front of me, and, like the first time, I sat down and inched across. It wasn’t that I was frightened, I had to make sure I got home to call the Coast Guard. Waves sent up spray from the oceanside. I suppose I was crying. Tears and salt water taste the same.

I ran all the way to the house. As I opened the screen door, there were Mother, Zina, Mrs. Mertz, the Cuddihys, and Hillyer. I saw in their faces what they saw in mine. Something bad had happened.

Mr. Cuddihy called the Coast Guard and put me on. Everyone gathered around to hear the details. Mother wiped my bloody forehead with a wet towel. When I told how the boom had swung across the deck I looked up at Zina. The others were just listening. But I could see into Zina’s eyes, and she into mine, and she knew.

When I told the Coast Guard all I could I looked for her. No one had seen her go. I was sure she had gone to the Rocks to look for Father.

“She’ll kill herself,” Mr. Cuddihy said.

He and Hillyer and I hurried down to the beach. She was not in sight.

“How do you know she went to the Rocks?” Mr. Cuddihy said.

“I know,” I said.

“I know too,” Hillyer said, and the three of us ran as fast as we could. I should have been out of breath, but I didn’t even feel my body.

At the Rocks I told the others to wait. Mr. Cuddihy protested, but Hillyer said they’d only complicate things. Once on the Rocks I could see her, half way out, picking her way with her arms extended for balance. The stone was very slippery from the earlier rain. I tested my footing at every step. When I reached her I took her hand. She turned around with no resistance, and I guided her back. Walking along the beach, none of us spoke. There was nothing to say.

Mrs. Mertz took Zina to the guesthouse. Mrs. Cuddihy put a bandage on my head and cleaned the blood off my legs. Mother was on the phone with the Coast Guard. They said they would keep the line open from the search boat for as long as she wanted. We all stayed up, and at dawn Hillyer, Mr. Cuddihy, and I walked the bay and ocean beaches till noon.

Everyone agreed we should go back to town. I heard Mr. Cuddihy say to Hillyer that Mother shouldn’t be around in case the body washed up. That afternoon Mr. Strangfeld took the Mertzes to the train and then us to our car.

THE LOCAL WEEKLY
came out on Thursday. Father was the main story. It didn’t say that he was dead, only that the Coast Guard had given up the search, which amounted to the same thing. Father’s biography was a kind of obituary. Forty-four, born in 1919, in Neptune, New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers. Nothing I didn’t know, except Neptune was a strange coincidence.

Father wasn’t found, so we didn’t have a regular funeral. A month later Mr. Walton phoned to say he would be speaking about Father the following Sunday, perhaps we’d like to come and invite our friends. Mrs. Cuddihy was staying with Mother and did the inviting. Word got around, and the
Church of the Fishers of Men filled up.

Mr. Walton really liked Father, and his comments were warm and sincere. He said how charming, loved, admired, respected, et cetera, Father was, and he wanted to tell a little story that also showed how generous he was. It seems that a few years back Mrs. Walton, the beautiful Elaine, was planning to go to business school and start a second career, and Father invited her to his office twice a week so she could see how business was really conducted. At the mention of Mrs. Walton, Mother tightened up beside me, and after the service when she came up to offer condolences Mother went thin-lipped. I knew then why Mrs. Walton hadn’t accompanied her husband to the Labor Day parties.

Mrs. Yemm got the same treatment. But Mrs. Mertz was okay. Mother stayed dry eyed until Zina approached. Then something loosened in her. They put their arms around one another and both broke down. Mother had no idea about Father and Zina, and she liked Zina and recognized certain things about herself in her.

I hadn’t seen Zina since the night Father drowned. Now she touched my hand and said, “I’m sorry.” So these were almost the last words we said to one another. But I really loved Zina, and you can’t regret having loved someone.

Hillyer was there with some boys from school. He waved to me over the heads of people. He would have made a bet ter
son for Father. They could have matched wits and worked things out that way.

As I stood beside Mother and listened to expressions of sympathy, I sensed how unprotected we two were now. Father was the one who knew about the world, Mother and I didn’t. Among all those friends, in that Christian church, we were alone.

As we walked home, she said she thought she hadn’t been right for Father. He needed someone who was more fun. I said I thought she had been exactly right.

The Mertzes moved back to New York City. The others, as far as I know, are all alive except Mr. Cuddihy, Mr. Strangfeld, and Blackheart. Mother and I never used the house again, so we invited Mr. Strangfeld to live in it, which he did until he died, a few years ago. The government took over Bone Point on schedule and gave us some money for the house. The United States Weather Bureau uses it now. The other places were pulled down.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that I’m more like Mother than I ever was like Father. Mother, Melissa, and I were on the side of love where you could be hurt. Father, Mrs. Mertz, and Hillyer were on the other side. Zina probably thought she was on that side, but she wasn’t.

I’m now older than Father was when he drowned. I don’t know why I still feel like a child.

Text copyright © 1998 by Charles Simmons.

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from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-2356-1

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