A huge wave washed over him,
tumbling him down. He popped up above the water in its aftermath, laughing for
sheer joy. He hadn’t experienced sheer joy in some time. His being began to
breathe.
Sunlight danced over him. He
knew, no matter what precautions he took, he’d likely be burned by the end of
the day. The fair-skinned boy wouldn’t take cover under a beach umbrella. He
preferred to play in the water, jumping in the waves.
He hadn’t been a boy in years.
Still a young man, tenuously hanging onto the “young” portion of the phrase, he
didn’t care what people thought of a lone wolf playing in the waves.
His wife, Lily, and her
friend, Rose, sat on beach chairs under the umbrella and talked about life,
their children, whatever else it was women discussed when they hadn’t seen one
another in some time. Lily had craved feminine companionship, and he had
nothing to contribute to the conversation, so he braved an ocean they thought
too cold and too rough. Away from the cares and worries of the workday, he
could believe he was a lad again.
The ladies had stood at the
edge of the shore letting end waves lap their feet and ankles, spraying wet
sand onto their legs and swim suits, their feet sinking deeper each time into
the sand. An occasional bolder wave would catch them off guard and unbalance them. Once, Rose fell, and the undertow pulled her out a few feet, where
gravelly sand and broken shells formed a barrier between the shoreline and the
softer sand under water. Another wave battered her before she regained her
footing, and she nearly lost the oversized sunglasses that both protected her
eyes from the sun and kept others from fully reading her expression.
That was when the ladies had
retreated to the safety of the beach chairs. Liam had been farther out in the
water when Rose toppled over, and he couldn’t reach her in time to help. A wave
hit him in the back of the head as he tried to reach Rose, and he was sucked
under and pulled back out. Unhurt, he emerged above the surface again, but the
girls were gone.
Liam returned his attention to
the ocean, letting the ladies tend to themselves. Off in the distance, a
tourist cruise ship floated across the horizon. Closer to the shore, children
and teens with boogie boards tried to anticipate the breaking waves to ride in
to the beach. Liam tried to avoid the sections where the boogie boarders were,
and felt much like a child himself as he jumped and dodged.
He tried to keep himself
between two life guard towers so he wouldn’t drift too far down shore from
where the women had set up the three chairs. He chuckled to himself about the
chairs. He wasn’t one to sit on the beach when there was a perfectly good ocean
to splash in. Perhaps the fact that he’d been a teenager before he’d ever set
foot in an ocean caused him to have little appreciation for hot sand.
His childhood memories did not
include building sand castles and filling their moats with buckets of water. He
hadn’t spent hours being buried or burying friends in the sand, leaving only
the head free.
His only attempt at lying on
the beach for a suntan had resulted in sun poisoning with its contingent of
large and small blisters rupturing, sending trickles of water down his back. He
had spent sleepless nights in pain, feeling as if his skin would rip. When his
skin had finally molted, the new skin was patterned with freckles.
Although his wife and her
friend sat under a large beach umbrella, he couldn’t imagine they were
comfortable. Between the sand, and the sun beating on the umbrella, they essentially
baked as they enmeshed themselves in girl talk.
Once, when he turned back
toward the beach, he saw Lily and Rose standing at the water’s edge, bending to
scoop water onto their arms. It made him think of something his mother had one
cold him about macaroni: after it was finished cooking, she had to rinse it
with cold water to get rid of the extra starch and stop the cooking process. He
thought it was representative of what the ladies were doing. Their smiles
indicated their previous solemn conversation had ended.
Liam dutifully approached
them.
“Coming in?” he asked.
“It’s still rough, although
it’s not as cold as it was before,” Rose said. Lily looked like she wanted to
move farther in.
“Once you’re in it, it doesn’t
feel cold at all. It’s quite refreshing,” Liam replied.
They smiled as if to say,
“Foolish boy,” but Lily’s smile carried a tinge of regret.
Standing a little farther into
the water, Liam felt the pull of the undertow, and had to work to maintain his
balance. As Rose resumed her conversation with Lily, Liam felt as if he’d been
dismissed. He dove into a wave and let the undertow carry him back out to where
he’d been before. When he looked back, the ladies had once again retreated to
their chairs.
Left alone in a thin crowd of
wave seekers, Liam watched the low-flying planes trailing advertisement banners
move above the area. He didn’t care what they advertised; they were part of the
experience of the shore in this part of the world. He’d been to the
The waves came in farther and
higher now as the tide began to come in. The beach rose steeply from the water
line to the part where the sunbathers sat. Now, waves that had slowly crept up
the incline before were breaking over the top, sending rivulets under feet and
between chairs. Few of the water-lovers were out much beyond the gravel line.
He looked up at the blue of
the sky whose only clouds were the thin contrails of passing jets. The sun was
farther west, and the lifeguards were beginning to pack up their gear.
He decided the women would
likely want to leave sometime soon. Liam turned to let the waves wash him
shoreward, and saw Rose and Lily standing and chatting in ankle deep waves. He
continued to wash in. When he reached the gravel line he stood – or tried to. A
large wave crashed into him, sending him sprawling. The resulting undertow
dragged him along the sand, back into the water. He laughed and stood, going
out a little farther to rinse off the sand, then returned. The ladies were
splashing themselves with the sandy water washing up in the shallows. He
couldn’t imagine how that did anything but coat them with sand.
He stood with them for a few
moments, waiting for an opening in the conversation. Rose’s grandson had
evidently been getting up to some antics last time she saw him, as
three-year-olds do, and her youngest son, Jim, was still a worry.
“You know, Jim needs to start getting more responsible,” she
said. “Glenn is a constant worry with his health, and I need to know someone
will take care of Glenn and me in our old age. Let’s face it, we’re getting
old.”
Old age! Liam was the same age
as Lily and Rose, and he certainly didn’t feel or think of himself as old. He
didn’t intend to worry about someone taking care of him. He’d take care of
himself and live his life until old age snuck up and sabotaged him. Until that
time, he would act and do and live his life as independently as he ever had.
Life was what you made it, and he didn’t intend to make it a long, slow process
of dying. It pained him to see Lily nodding her head in agreement with Rose.
Did she feel old? Was she
looking for a caretaker in their son? Liam didn’t believe that was Dylan’s
purpose in life. He had his own hopes and dreams. He didn’t need his parents to
become an albatross.
“Have you had enough of
swimming?” Lily asked.
“That will never happen, but I
am hungry,” he replied.
The ladies nodded and Rose
mentioned a place she knew on the island that had marvelous food. They trudged
up the incline to where their chairs waited under a multicolor umbrella along
the flat, level expanse of sand embedded with shell shards.
Rose and Lily only had their
hands and legs to dry. As Liam ruffled his towel over his hair and face, he
felt the sting of sunburn on his cheeks. He dried off, draped the towel over
his shoulders and folded the chair he hadn’t used. Once the girls had folded
towels and chairs, put towels, hats and cell phones in beach bags and closed
the umbrella, the threesome marched up the beach to the road.
A bench at the entrance to the
beach allowed them to sit and dry the remnants of sand and surf from their feet
before they put on flip flops and headed to the beach house.
Rose’s house was lovely, more
so since the post-hurricane renovations. Each year she invited them for a
weekend. Often others who had also gone to school with them would come. This
year the others couldn’t make it, and Liam felt more of a fifth wheel. Even
though the others were also women, usually one or other tempered the
conversations so they didn’t all sound like doom and gloom prognosticators of
imminent old age. Perhaps next year, if the others didn’t come, Liam would
suggest Lily go on her own for a ladies’ weekend with Rose.
Once they had all showered and
changed, they went to the restaurant. Liam enjoyed the beachy feel of the
place. Since it was walking distance from the house, they didn’t need to drive.
That meant they were all able to order drinks.
Rose realized Liam had not
been part of the conversation all afternoon, and tried to turn it to subjects
in which he might participate. Rose was a good hostess, despite the fact that
she constantly denigrated her abilities as being disorganized.
Liam didn’t really mind being
left out of the conversation most of the time. The girls were fast friends who
seldom got to see each other, and he didn’t want to interrupt their catching
up. Over crab cakes and baked potatoes,
Rose asked Liam about what he’d been doing since she saw him last.
“I finally published that book
last year, and I’m waiting for my artist friend to finish the cover for one
from a different series.”
“Are you writing anything
now?”
“I’m between things. I’ve been
trying my hand at short stories based on prompts I found on a website. It’s
kind of fun. If a prompt doesn’t speak to me, I let that one go and wait for
the next week’s prompt.”
“Do you enter them in a
contest or anything?”
“No, I usually don’t find
inspiration before the deadlines. If something looks like my kind of prompt but
I don’t have an idea at the moment, I write the prompt in a notebook I just
started keeping. Maybe at some other time I’ll have an idea for it.”
He stopped, noticing the
absence in her eyes. She wanted to chat with him for a moment or two, but she
wasn’t a writer, and didn’t know how to maintain interest in something so
foreign to her sensibilities. He understood. He could go on for hours about
writing or about his characters, and it usually bored most people to tears.
Lily often reminded him not to go on and on about it before they went anywhere.
He’d kept it brief, he hoped.
He’d participated. Now it was someone else’s turn.
The conversation turned to
Rose’s husband and inevitably, to his health. The last time Liam had seen
Glenn, he seemed all right. Glenn spent a fair amount of his time discussing
his health issues. Liam would attempt to
turn the conversation to something else, but inevitably it returned to Glenn’s health.
That was often because Liam had touched on an interest Glenn could no longer
participate in because his vision was “off” as he put it. Sometimes the
discussion involved food, which would also return the conversation to health
issues. Glenn was diabetic.
Liam never noticed until he
was with the “flower girls” – Lily, Rose and their other childhood friend,
Heather – that he enjoyed exceptionally good health. He hoped that wasn’t a
portent to a sudden death at an early age. He never entertained such thoughts
unless he was among the flowers.
After dinner the ladies
lingered over coffee. Liam lingered over a glass of wine. Usually the
designated driver, he often had to forego the drinks. Tonight he was in a
position to enjoy.
He was actually enjoying his
third glass of wine, the ladies’ conversation swirling around his head like a
fine piece of music: one he knew well, but didn’t have to pay close attention
to. It crossed his mind briefly that he might embarrass himself by staggering
on the way home. He didn’t think he was that far gone, though.
The waiter fluttered around
them, offering the check, asking if there was anything else they wanted, as if
he were in a great hurry to see them gone. There was no reason. No crowd waited for seats, and there were a few
hours until closing. Besides, they were still finishing their drinks.
Liam studied the check and
pulled a credit card out of his wallet. He left the card sticking partly out of
the check wallet at the edge of the table. The waiter swooped in to take care
of it, and was back moments later with the receipt for Liam to sign. Liam
scrolled his signature, and contrary to what the waiter deserved for trying to
hurry them on their way, left a generous tip, closed the folder and ignored it
at the edge of the table as he enjoyed his remaining wine.
Rose noticed the exchange
between the waiter and Liam.
“How much do I owe you?” she
asked.
“Don’t be absurd. You’re
putting us up for the weekend. This is the least I can do.
She had the grace not to
argue. This was the dance they did every year.
When they had finished, they
strolled down the main street, a cool breeze making the evening pleasant. A
fair number of people congregated at the ice cream stands and candy shops. A
surprising number of people, both teens and adults, rode bicycles in the
semi-darkness.
Liam would have enjoyed a
stroll on the beach at the water’s edge, but he knew what sort of response that
suggestion would get. He contented himself with the walk back to Rose’s house.
They played a board game when
they arrived at the house. There was an unwritten rule whenever they visited
that computers and televisions were off limits. Weekends at the shore were
disconnect weekends. Even mobile phones were only to be checked once or twice
in a day.
The game, Trivial Pursuit,
brought groans as well as gales of laughter. The three acknowledged one
another’s areas of expertise and their own weaknesses. It took well over an
hour before Lily won the game.
They went to bed after that,
having made sketchy plans about what they would do the next day before they
left for home.
“That was very nice of you to
pay for dinner,” Lily said as they undressed.
“What else would I do?”
“Did you have a good time
today?”
“I did,” Liam said. “I was
surprised the two of you didn’t get into the water. You usually do.”
“I would like to have gone in,
but Rose kept saying it was too cold and too rough. Of course, I imagine she
has lots of opportunities to swim in the ocean, so it’s not a big deal for
her.”
“All that old talk,” Liam
said, shaking his head. “Since when are any of us old?”
“I suppose because Glenn has
so many health issues, she feels more in touch with reality. He’s a bit older
than we are. And they married younger,” Lily said. “I hope you don’t mind that
she and I chatted so much.”
They climbed into bed and he
kissed her.
“Not at all. We don’t see her
that often. The two of you need to catch up.”
“It’s a shame Heather couldn’t
come this time.”
“Mm,” he said, sleep weighting
his eyes and turning his mind to mush.
In the morning they’d dawdle
over breakfast, and take a walk out by the lighthouse before packing the car
for the drive home. There would be the usual round of pictures to document this
year’s get-together, promises made to have an outing before next summer that
would never come to fruition, and Liam and Lily would be off, warm in the
afterglow of a pleasant change from the weekend as usual.
