All I want is immersion into the dark and cold sea—and a little white pill.
I maneuver the plastic bag out of my backpack, and a little kid, the one who’s been with the girl-with-the-curves, careens toward me. “Hey!” she shouts. “Look.” She’s pointing east along the empty stretch of dunes and grasses. “My sister. Claire!”
The little sister is out of breath and panting. Her skin is peppered with sand. Her blond curls are matted to her head.
“Calm down,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“Izzy, short for Elizabeth. Look. There she is. She can’t hear me. I’ve been calling for her.” The waves are rougher than a little while ago, white-capped and higher, wilder, especially near the dunes and the rock barrier, which stretches out from the shore for a couple hundred yards, the rocks becoming larger and more menacing the farther out.
“Where is she?”
“There,” she insists, crying all of a sudden. “Claire!”
I have to blink. I don’t see anything.
“Claire!” her sister implores, yanking my arm. The sun beats down. I squint. The horizon is long, blue-white bursts of light and sea spray. Finally, I see her, or her head and arms. She’s dangerously close to the rocks, where a sign clearly states No Swimming.
Claire is right there, and then with a crash of a wave, she isn’t. I search the sea. She should resurface. She should swim parallel toward the shore. She should be there, in the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, and she isn’t.
The lifeguard is at least five hundred yards down toward the main part of the beach. His back is turned to us. He is blowing his whistle at other kids swimming too far out from shore.
Claire’s head bobs up.
“Claire!” Izzy screams, as if she can hear her.
Izzy grabs my T-shirt in anticipation. Yet before we can be assured that she is okay, that what we see is true and right and she is fine, another wave strikes, and Claire’s head disappears. All I can think is this: I have to help. But what about the stuff in my backpack? What if someone finds it?
Izzy hits my arm, bringing me back to the here and now, to what I’m seeing unfold right before my eyes, what I don’t want to see—someone drowning in the riptide.
“She’s out there!”
“Izzy, run and tell the lifeguard we need him.”
I jump up. Fix on Claire’s last position. This isn’t happening. Not to me. I shout to Izzy, “Go.”
Izzy wavers, wide-eyed and teary. “Where are you going?”
“In to help her.”
“You can’t help her.”
“I know. I mean, I’m a good swimmer. I can help. You go. Get the lifeguard.”
She goes as fast as she can across the sand.
I’m a strong swimmer. I can reach her—I can do this, can’t I? The whitecaps crunch against the shore. The sea, which all summer seemed safely contained within our town’s beach, now seems vast and uncontained. In the distance, a sailboat skims the water, small and inconsequential, like a plastic boat. Sea gulls guide the tide in with ear-splitting squawks. I steady my legs with my hands on my thighs as if I’m taking a penalty kick, and breathing hard, refusing the past, I fling the backpack off my shoulder and run.
Claire
Saturday, 12:19 P.M.
Swim. Damn it, Claire. Swim.
I’m pumping my arms and legs but it’s as if someone, the sea, has wrapped its arms around my neck and is yanking me down. I’m screaming this in my head: Swim. Dammit, Claire. Swim!
I’m cold to the core. My arms and legs lose strength even as I push to stroke, to strain my head above the crest of the wave, to reach air. My arms and legs dangle limp, useless.
I force myself to open my eyes and swim, swim toward the faint light. My hair, strung with seaweed and bits of shells and stone, weighs me down. I fling my arms out wide, struggling against the current. I’m less than a human being. I’m a crab dragged across the sea floor.
Swim! Claire. Swim.
I wish I could pray, though maybe that wish is prayer enough. Maybe the thought is enough—because all of a sudden, fingers grip my shoulders and lift my head above water. My arms flail. I want to stay above water. My eyes open wide. I gulp at the air. I kick the water—and him. He doubles forward, yet holds on, keeping both of us, somehow, above water. I recognize him—he’s the guy from the Snack Shack. I don’t know why he’s here, but I’m glad that he is. He’s screaming something at me that I can’t hear. The pounding of the sea deafens me. I’m doing all I can to tread water, to keep my head up, to breathe.
Waves gather at the horizon and race toward us.
“Swim. Parallel to shore!” His words rush at me.
I try to shout back. My lips are cracked. My throat hoarse.
“Swim, Claire,” he demands. “Swim.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, fling my arms forward—and see my mother. She is on shore. She is calling for me. Somehow, she’s standing there. She’s also calling, “Claire. Swim.”
My strength surges. I can do this. I will do this. I swim as he said to swim, and it works.
But he doesn’t follow. He’s struggling. He hasn’t taken his own advice to swim parallel to shore. He’s being pulled under. He’s trying to scream but can’t. I snare his shoulder. With my other arm, I’m a butterfly skimming across the sea. I’m keeping our heads above water until another wave hits. Swim. I’m screaming underwater and no one hears. The current snatches us back. We are ripped through the waters, even closer to the rock barrier. More waves crash over our heads. The sea thrusts us apart.
After a few long seconds, his hand reaches again for mine. Our bodies are shape without form. Swirls of black and gray and muck fill the space between us. The roar and jeer of the sea seize us.
Max
Saturday, 12:20 P.M.
I am accidently alive.
I drag myself out of the sea. Saltwater streams off my arms and legs. My vision is fogged. I had Claire in my sight, and then I didn’t. I had her fingertips clasping my own, then I didn’t. I had nothing. Swirling water dragged me down. It was as if I was thrown back to shore. On the beach, I hang my head between my knees. I drop to the sand—next to arms, legs, Claire.
Her eyes are closed, her lips blue. Her hair is wound around her face, wreaths of seaweed brown. She coughs instead of speaking. Brackish gray-black seawater trickles from the side of her lips. She spits up more and lays her face in the sand as if wanting to taste the beach. I touch her back. Her skin is cool. My hand burns. I don’t know what to do with my fingers now so I pat her back between her shoulder blades. She raises slightly, gathering in a breath. I breathe, too, and her eyes flutter open. These amazing eyes, almost bigger than the rest of her face, almond-shaped, maybe “exotic” is the best word, but it’s not a word I usually use. I can’t stop staring at her or patting her back. I got a beat going—one long pat, then two short ones. Across her mouth, across her lips, are nibbles of sand. My hand imprints on her back. Long pat. Two short ones.
Her hair strings around her hips like a mermaid’s. She’s shivering. I want to put my whole arm around her. I want to brush away the sand—from her lips—and more—but those lips are vulnerable and since this is working, this stroking her back, I keep doing it. Long pat. Two short ones. And she leans into me. Her long legs etched with seaweed and sand and scratches wrap around mine. I breathe in her scent of saltwater and small fish and lose my breath as if drowning again. I concentrate: one long pat. Two short.
“Did you save me?” she asks.
“No.”
“I think you did. Is everything okay? You know you’re hitting me hard. I’m breathing. Can’t you tell I’m breathing?”
Through her mermaid lips, she blows air toward me. Sand speckles her teeth and tongue. I want to catch her breath in mine but I keep on stroking in the cavern between her shoulder blades. The roar of the sea pulses in our ears, the pull of the tide slides underneath our backs, and the rhythm reminds me: we are alive.
; All of a sudden, she shakes her head, unwinds her legs from me as if caught in a trap. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Izzy? My little sister? Did you see her?”
She doesn’t let me answer.
“Izzy!” Claire attempts to stand, though her legs are even wobblier than mine and she must use my shoulders for balance.
The ocean is edged with people, jumping, diving, snaking along the shoreline. The sailboat, a rattle and flap of sails, is still skirting the edge of the horizon. I scan the ocean, hoping Izzy—did her hair look as alive as her sister’s does?—I am hoping that she’s not out there alone.
“Elizabeth,” Claire says, forcing out her sister’s full name. Tears stream down, cutting rivulets in the sand on her face, washing clean her lips and baring them to the sun.
“Does she know your cell phone or address in case she’s found and brought to the main office?” I know this is protocol from a summer of panicked mothers and fathers rushing up to the Snack Shack as if we’d have their lost kids in the back. She turns to me hammering out her cell phone and address as if I know where her sister is and am not telling her. From all this, I learn that she is not a mermaid at all but just a girl from South Lakeshore, living less than a mile from my house. And she launches off toward the boardwalk at full speed, calling her sister’s name like a siren, leaving me to snatch my backpack and stumble after her.
Barkley
Saturday, 12:25 P.M.
Grip her shoulders, her slender back firm against my chest. Reassure her.
She had hurried up to me on the beach. I had been training my mind’s camera on Claire. But the little one wanted my help, begged for it, said she had been sent to find a lifeguard for Claire, but could not, and could I help her? And as I focused in on Claire, a sure shot, we witnessed her rise from the sea. Does the water burn her, too? Though it was like she was reborn. Claire on the sand, her face down, her legs wide and strong, the sun beating her hair and skin dry, was a new Claire to the world and wholly mine.
Except, Max Cooper ruined the scene.
Now I tighten my hold on the little sister. She is facing me. My lens is on her too.
“Don’t you think she’s wondering where I am?” She attempts to twist away from me. Holding her in place is like netting a fish, a slippery, frantic fish. She should use more sunscreen and renewable containers, I tell her, hooking my fingers under her delicate shoulders.
“Better to stand in one place and have her find you. That’s what my mother always said when I got lost.”
“Did you get lost a lot?” Her question is high-pitched, shaky and fearful—not the sound of Claire. She is wearing a bathing suit with pink stars like markers or signs.
I was lost all the time until the voice found me, but I do not say this to the little one. I do not want to frighten her with the idea that we are lost. And I am done being lost. Nor do I want her to think that I will leave her alone on the beach. I can put her in my car. I can lock her in there for her safekeeping.
“I have to go now. Please, let me go.”
Claire must find her with me. She will now that she is searching for me, for the man also reborn, named Brent. She will look into my heart, she will know I am pure. She must look at me the way she is looking at Max, who in a clear close-up is handling her powerfully naked back in a manner that nobody but me should ever, ever handle. The little sister squirms. She is not Claire. Not Claire. Not reborn in the sun and sand. Not Claire at all.
Claire
Saturday, 12:36 P.M.
“Rip currents are very dangerous, got it?” the lifeguard lectures from his high white chair. Max and I look at each other. As I ran for Izzy, he screamed to me that we should head toward the lifeguard, that he had sent her this way. He should have stayed out of the whole thing and left my sister on the blanket, where I told her to wait for me.
“I’m searching for my little sister,” I say again, after explaining that I nearly drowned and that my little sister was lost, as if this sequence of events made any sense. Drown: submerge, inundate, sink—the most powerful is simply “drown.” Running through synonyms doesn’t make sense, either.
“Ricky, just help us look for her sister, okay?” says Max. “We can come back for the lecture on riptides next time.”
“Some people call them riptides, got it? But ‘rip current’ is the correct term. First thing is, you should never swim out that far. Got it?” He climbs down off the chair.
I like to swim out far. I like to see how alone I can be in the sea’s expanse. And I hate to be lectured.
Face-to-face we are almost the same height. His skin is taut and tanned. He’s in his late twenties. His arms are tentacle-like, looping around the air between us. He looks me up and down and lands his sight directly on my chest.
“Are you going to help me find my little sister? I can’t waste any more time. I have to find her.” I force his eyes to meet mine.
“We’ll find her. But you know who we got here?” he says, pointing at Max but letting his eye drop again.
I shake my head and think: he’s the one who saved me, not you.
“Let’s go,” says Max to me.
“Max Cooper. His father is Glenn Cooper, the local state senator that’s always mouthing off about climate change and beach erosion. I’d probably be on the news if I had saved his son from drowning. And who are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m nobody’s daughter.”
His eyes bulge at me and then at Max. I find Max’s fingertips and tap out my own code. He has to stay with me until we find Izzy. He tenses.
“Hey, Ricky, we almost drowned on your beach,” says Max, kicking the sand, clenching his fists, forcing my hand away.
“Almost. Next time, you’ll know better, got it?” He flashes me a smile of white, even teeth. “Now let me put out an alert for your little sister. We’ll have everyone we can out looking for her. We’ll find her, you got it? Describe her to me.”
As he waves his arms, coming forth with a smartphone, I start to say that her name is Elizabeth but I call her Izzy— A shout breaks over the rafts of blankets. Down through the empty fire lane toward the high white chairs races a blond head in a bathing suit with pink stars. She falls headlong into me. I kneel and scoop her up.
The lifeguard climbs back up to his white chair and stands there, arms crossed around his hairless chest, white teeth blazing from tan skin, and scans the ocean as if hoping someone will need saving right there and then. Beside me, Max digs through his backpack, searching for something, too. I hug Izzy toward me, knowing I have in my arms all that matters.
“Where were you?” I ask. “Why didn’t you listen to me and stay on the blanket?”
“Max said he’d go in—and make sure you were alright—and he said for me to go to the lifeguard—and I could see you and I ran but I couldn’t find one—and this guy, you’d remember him, he said he’d help, but then we could see you and Max just flop out of the water—and then he wouldn’t let me go—and then he did. He showed me where you were and let me go. Claire, you wouldn’t get lost, would you? Not without me.”
“What guy?” asks Max.
Izzy points past the lifeguard chair at the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd fanned across the beach and boardwalk. I can’t tell who she is pointing to and it doesn’t matter. She’s back with me.
“Am I lost?” I kiss the top of Izzy’s head. She clings to me. I whisper in her ear, “I’m here. Right here, Izzy. Just don’t tell Daddy about this, okay? Promise me. Or I’ll never bring you to the beach until you are a hundred and six years old.”
Izzy buries her head in my stomach. “Just don’t ever do what you did again. I need you around until I’m a hundred and six.”
I should have paid attention to the warning sign near the rocks. I should have seen that the waves were getting rougher and higher. But I’ve been in this ocean all my life and nothing’s happened. I should have known that even on the most ordinary days, even on the days when you wake up and think th
at all you have to do is brush your teeth—and you can go without a care—the world will surprise you. The waves will hit harder; the current will drag you under.
“Are you listening, Claire?” says Izzy, as if she is suddenly the older one. “You were almost lost. I want to tell that ocean: no more losing my sister, mister.”
“That’s right. Are you listening?” says Max beside us. “No drowning Izzy’s sister!” I notice he has dimples on each cheek when he laughs.
“No drowning, Max!” I join in. I stretch up on my toes and shout over people’s heads, at the waves, at the deceitful sea. Max reaches over and swats at the sand on the side of my face. I laugh. I lick my lips and find more sand and salt there. And my lips sting, ache. And all of this doesn’t make sense. I really like Brent, so why am I wishing Max would brush the sand off my lips with his own?
Instead he says, “I’m late for my shift. I work at the Snack Shack.”
“I think I know that,” I say.
Izzy nuzzles between us. “Can I have an ice cream cone?”
The sand from my face rubs between Max’s fingers and is returned to the shore.
“Maybe. Before we go home,” I say to Izzy, distracted by Max. Not that he’s paying attention to me. He’s squinting at a squad of girls in string bikinis parading over beach blankets as they march to the sea.
“I got to go,” he says, sounding miserable that he has to leave the sight of bikinis in their neon colors attacking the gray sea.
“You’re late for your shift,” I repeat back to him. His eyes won’t meet mine. “Will your boss understand?”
He shrugs. “Who cares?”
The state senator’s son races off. I am not going to waste my time on him when I can truly connect to someone as serious and intense as Brent. Though I have to think that Max has decent speed—and he’s careful to leap around other people’s property. He pauses to kick a soccer ball back to a group of pint-size boys. He concentrates when aiming the black-and-white ball as if he’s planning to kick it far from the kids. He doesn’t. He uses the side of his foot to send it right to the smallest boy.
Before My Eyes Page 11