Cape May

by Chip Cheek

“We moved in with my uncle Carswall not long after Daddy died. He’s Daddy’s eldest brother. He and Mama married, and then they had my sister, Emily.”

  “How scandalous,” Alma said, and Henry laughed.

  “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Right,” he said. “I mean, I’m not naïve. In fact, I can tell you they were married less than a year after Daddy died, and Emily came along only four months after that.”

  “Aha.”

  “But if you knew them. Uncle Carswall’s a deacon at the church. And Mama’s not exactly…” He wanted to say something like she was not given to passion, that she was an unsentimental woman, that he had never seen her hold Carswall’s hand, much less kiss him, that she might conceivably have married him purely for practical reasons, but as with most thoughts concerning his mother, it was too big and complicated to articulate succinctly. “I guess they weren’t always the way they are now,” he said instead. “My aunt Nicky—that’s Mama’s sister—she once called it an ‘Old Testament arrangement.’” To his delight, this made Alma laugh. “But to me, it’s just my family. It never seemed strange.”

  Alma wanted to know more, about his mother and stepfather, his sister, his life in Signal Creek, and her interest in him was intoxicating. The words poured out of him. He told her about the ponds he liked to fish in, about the red color of the High Falls Road, about the old abandoned house where he and Hoke would camp sometimes. He told her about Hoke, who’d been a star pitcher in the farm league, and how, if she ever met him, if she was like other girls, she would fall instantly in love with him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never liked watching boys play sports.” He told her he’d wanted to play baseball himself, but that he lived too far out to make the practices and work the farm both. He told her Carswall was stern but fair, a good father overall, except that he loved Emily more. Emily was fifteen and a princess. He didn’t describe in any detail his home life, though she asked about it—the old house, the paint peeling from the boards, the sagging front porch, the yard that Smokey had trampled to dust—because she wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t poor, that they were a family of means and he had never wanted for anything except broader horizons. He admitted he’d tried and failed to win a scholarship to Emory, but that he was going to try again in the fall. He didn’t want to work on the farm. He said he might go work for the railroad instead, like his father, while he waited for college. He didn’t say that Effie was opposed to this idea.

  “Do you think you’ll stay in Georgia?” she asked. She’d lit another cigarette and given him one too.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” he said. “Not in Signal Creek, anyway.” He asked her what Los Angeles was like. “That’s something I can’t even imagine,” he said. “What it must be like to grow up in a place like that, a place you only see in the movies.”

  She seemed amused. “I don’t know what Max has told you. I didn’t grow up like he did.” She’d grown up in Manhattan Beach, she said, which was just south of L.A. “It was just Mom and me. Or really just me; Mom was always working.”

  “She was an actress?”

  “She was, once. We lived up near Hollywood when I was born, with my father, but they split up when I was still in diapers, and we never heard from him again. He was some kind of technician, a lighting guy or a camera guy, I don’t know. I never knew him. She moved us down to Manhattan because it was cheap. She was a bank teller—the kind who takes your check through a pneumatic tube and sends you back a lollipop. We lived in a shitty bungalow. Our neighbors were oil workers. But it was near the beach, and that’s where I spent all my time, if I wasn’t in school.”

  “See, I can’t imagine that,” Henry said. “That sounds like paradise.”

  She laughed. “It’s not. There’s refineries up and down the shore. It’s not the part they show in the movies. But I did love the water.”

  There had been no one to look after her when she was a child, she said. Her mom’s family was from upstate New York, and she was estranged from them. So Alma roamed the beach alone and mixed herself up with the crowd there—surfers, sunbathers, bums, roughnecks from the refineries. “People are mostly nice,” she said. “Some people aren’t. I took care of myself, though. I made friends. I had a boyfriend for a long time, this surfer, Sal, before he enlisted. No one messed with me then.” She went to the public school but was terrible about cutting classes. She dropped out entirely when her mom got sick. She’d been in the tenth grade. She did odd jobs, sometimes a couple at a time. She worked at an ice-cream stand on the Manhattan Beach Pier. She lied about her age and was a cigarette girl at a nightclub, because she’d heard if you were charming enough the men would give you everything they had. And it was true. She took care of the rent and groceries.

  “You’re from another world,” Henry said. He had to pee, but he didn’t want to get up and break the spell. She had slumped down in the chair again, ankle up on her knee, and was idly massaging between her toes. She had long, elegant toes. “Really,” he said. “My life is so boring compared to yours.”

  “It isn’t to me,” she said.

  Halting, uncertain if he was prying, he asked what had happened to her mom—“Max said it was a heart attack?”—and she nodded and answered simply, like it was just a fact in the world. “She had an infection that weakened her heart. Any kind of exertion, I mean like showering, getting dressed, it would wipe her out. It was a nightmare, honestly. She couldn’t leave her bed by the end. She had to quit her job. We had insurance, but it wasn’t enough for what she needed.”

  That was when she met Max for the first time, she explained—her half brother, her mother’s other child, from another life. She used to imagine what it would be like to grow up a Hewitt in New York City, with enough money to buy the world and never have to work again. She’d even felt angry at her mother, because if she hadn’t left, they’d have been rich. She laughed. “Of course, I wouldn’t exist, either.” The immediate reason for the divorce had been an affair—“Mom had a minor part in Street Scene, and she was screwing one of the stagehands”—but apparently Charles Hewitt was a bastard and their lives would have been miserable together anyway. His lawyers were better than hers, and he got custody of Max, who was still a baby. She moved to L.A. to get into the pictures. But she wrote Max letters every holiday and on his birthday, and he sent back polite replies and thank-yous. When she got sick, he flew out to meet her.

  “I thought he was such a square,” she said. “He had on these dumb plaid shorts and a polo shirt, because he thought that’s what people wore in California. I probably wasn’t nice to him. But he was nice to us. I think it moved him the way we lived, the shitty bungalow and all the sand on the floor. That’s Max. His apartment in the Village is a dump. He stayed with us a few days and slept on the couch. He gave us a lot of money. After—I don’t know, it was a few months later—I phoned him to let him know. I guess I was crying. I told him I didn’t have anyone left, and he said, ‘You have me.’ He wired me money for a plane ticket to New York.”

  “And here you are,” Henry said.

  “Here I am,” she said.

  The fire had died down, and he could barely make her face out in the dark. “That wasn’t long ago,” he said.

  “About six months,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About your mom.”

  She thanked him, and they were quiet for a time.

  He couldn’t hold it any longer. He told her he had to go to the john, and supposed that would be the end of the night. But instead, she sat up and asked if he wanted another one.

  “Sure,” he said. “If you’re having one.”

  She lit a candle and took up their glasses, and he got up from the sofa, feeling naked without the afghan. He made his way quickly down the hallway, eager to get back to the den. In the bathroom there was the faintest edge of light from the window, and he could just see his dark form in the mirro
r over the toilet, and what appeared to be presences behind him. He’d always been afraid of mirrors in the dark, but he could never help peeking.

  Why did he feel so thrilled? What did he think was going to happen? Nothing was going to happen.

  Back in the den Alma had put another log on the fire and it was burning bright, and she was lying sideways in the armchair again, facing it, bobbing her feet. She asked if everything had come out all right, and he said he might have peed into the tub, he wasn’t sure. She laughed. He sat back in his place with his drink and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

  “It’s nice to have another night owl to sit up with,” she said.

  “You can always count on me,” he said. “I’m like a kid. I don’t ever want to go to bed.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  He told her how glad he was that he and Effie had met them, how much fun they’d had these past few days. “Honestly, we were starting to feel kind of lonely before you all came along. We were going to cut the trip short, in fact.”

  “Really,” she said.

  “We just needed to get used to each other, I think. We’d never spent so much time together all at once. Before this it was just dates, and be back by ten. And suddenly we’re sharing a bed, and…”

  She turned in the chair and placed her feet up on the table too, a couple of inches away from his. “It must be awkward.”

  “It was, at first, but—you know.” He’d wandered into uncomfortable territory. She seemed to understand, and smiled at him, and looked back to the fire.

  “I feel like a third wheel,” she said after a moment. “A fifth wheel, I guess.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, though he felt he understood her exactly. He felt, though he couldn’t have said how or why, that he was in the same position.

  “If Clara could will me not to exist anymore, she would,” she said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “She’s trying to rekindle this old wild flame with Maximilian, but she’s going to be disappointed. He doesn’t like her the way she likes him. Or maybe I don’t know. He doesn’t like to talk to me much anymore. Sometimes I feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome. Sometimes I think I should just strike out on my own.”

  He asked what she planned to do. She didn’t know. She could go back to L.A., but everyone she knew there was a bum, and there was no money. At least here she could meet people, as long as she had Max—although most of the people he knew were bums too, artists of different kinds, hangers-on. She could get a job. She’d tried to be a Kelly girl once but failed the typing test. She’d been a hostess at a cocktail bar for a few weeks, but she’d been fired for slapping one of the patrons. She laughed at that. “Maybe I’ll just move somewhere tropical and live off mangoes.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Occasionally the tops of her toes brushed the bottom of his foot, and although he was listening, and looking at the fire, every nerve was concentrated on that spot.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. “You’re young and…” He wanted to say beautiful. “You seem like someone who can take care of herself.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re nice.”

  They watched the fire die down again and listened to the wind outside. The side of her foot lightly rested against his. He held still so as not to draw attention to it, so she wouldn’t take it away. Nothing was happening. But if Effie were to get up and find them there, he thought, it wouldn’t have looked good.

  He finished his drink. He wanted to be the first to say it. “I’d better hit the hay,” he said. She said all right. He stood up and picked up his sweatshirt. “It was good talking to you,” he said, and she said, “To you too,” tipping her glass up in mock formality, and he hesitated a moment, looking down at her—a single beat that, he feared, must have revealed himself completely—before he said good night and went upstairs.

  Seven

  Effie awoke with a sore throat. She sat up in bed with her hand to her head, and Henry rubbed circles on her back. “I can’t tell if I’m hot,” she said. “Am I hot?”

  He placed his cheek against her forehead, the way his mama used to do. She did feel warm. “Maybe some coffee will make you feel better?” he said, and she nodded.

  “My poor peach!” Clara cried when they’d made their way downstairs. She and Max were sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through different sections of the newspaper. “You don’t want coffee,” she said, getting up. “You want tea with honey. I’ll make it for you.” She and Max had been up for a while. The power was still out. The remnants of breakfast lay on the table, a few pieces of toast. Max said he could whip them up some omelets, but Effie wasn’t hungry—she felt a bit nauseated, actually. Henry took a piece of toast. The newspaper was a Cape May Gazette, from June.

  Alma had gone down to the beach to look at the waves, Max said. They were probably spectacular today. Beyond the bay windows the trees swayed in the wind, and leaves fell like ticker tape.

  They decided they would go to the beach too. The sea air would be restorative, Clara said. Effie said they’d have to run to the cottage to change—their clothes were still wet—but Max said not to bother, and fetched her one of Alma’s dresses, as well as a clean T-shirt and shorts for Henry. “We’re about the same size, wouldn’t you say, Hank?”

  They changed upstairs. The dress was the green one Alma had been wearing that first day out on the boat. On Effie it strained at the seams, it pinched her sides and barely contained her breasts. “I look awful in this,” she said, examining herself in the mirror.

  “You look fine,” Henry said.

  “Fine,” she said, “great,” and he pulled her to him and kissed her forehead.

  They met Max and Clara down in the foyer and started for the beach. Clara carried a bag full of towels. After the chill of the night, Henry was surprised how warm the day was. An Indian summer. The air smelled richly of the damp earth and leaves. Leaves and small branches were scattered all over the street and sidewalk, and the street was rutted with pale blue mirrors.

  They stepped up to the promenade, and ahead of them the ocean seethed, the waves forming perfect pipes before they pounded the beach. After a minute Clara spotted Alma’s figure in the distance toward town, lying in the glassy blue sand below the tideline. “Crazy girl,” she said. “She’s going to get swept out to sea.” They took their shoes off and stepped down from the promenade and made their way toward her. Effie held the side of her dress in her fist so it wouldn’t blow up.

  The waves were astonishing. Henry had never seen anything like it. He imagined they were reaching out to him, trying to get at him.

  Beside him, Effie looked pale. He asked how she was holding up, and she said she was fine. She slipped her free hand into his.

  Alma didn’t get up when she saw them coming, only leaned back on her elbows and bent a knee, as if to relax—or to pose, Henry thought. She wore her white bathing suit and sunglasses. The waves crashed and spread acres of foam, and the leading edge of it came within inches of her feet. Her hair hung wet about her shoulders.

  “You didn’t go in there, did you?” Max asked when they’d reached her.

  “Of course I did,” she said.

  “You must be freezing, darling,” Clara said.

  “Is that my dress?” Alma said.

  Effie crossed her arms over it as if to shield it from view. “I’m sorry.”

  “Their clothes were still wet,” Max said.

  “I don’t mind,” Alma said. “It looks good on you.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Effie said.

  Max went a few yards back from the tideline, to spread his towel where the sand was drier, and Effie and Clara followed him. Henry lingered near Alma, watching the waves.

  “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” she said.

  Henry whistled and nodded. “It is that.”

  “It’s like the waves back home.”

  He had the feeling that
they were in league with each other now, that they shared the same language. From the start he’d thought she was untouchable, but now he knew better. It made the world seem more accessible to him. “Before this trip,” he said, “I’d never seen the ocean before.”

  “You’re joking,” she said. She pulled her sunglasses down and looked at him over the frames. “Never in your life?”

  “Never.” His eyes drifted for a moment over her body, to where the fabric of her bathing suit was crimped at her groin.

  “Have you been in yet?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s been too cold.”

  She sat up, dusted off her hands, and got to her feet.

  “You want to go in now?” he asked, alarmed.

  She laughed. “We’ll just get our feet wet,” she said. Wet sand stuck to her bottom and to the backs of her thighs, and she batted it off and reached a finger into the elastic of her bathing suit to pull the wedge out. “Come on,” she said, and with the same hand took hold of his forearm and walked him toward the waves. Max hollered something behind them, but Henry couldn’t make it out over the roar. The touch of Alma’s hand thrilled him. She led him just a few yards before she stopped, and the sea was still a ways off. But then another wave crested, curled over, and crashed, and though it had seemed safely distant it was suddenly upon them, a rush of startling cold water that swept over their feet and ankles and halfway up their shins. Henry hopped back, but Alma clutched his arm again and held fast. “Stand still,” she said. “For the next one, stand still. Let it bury you in the sand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just wait.”

  He felt her warm hand on his skin. He hoped it didn’t look suspect from Effie’s point of view, behind him—but what were they doing? Nothing. The sea receded again for a few moments, and then Alma pointed out another swell—he could see it darkly forming—which paled and crested and crashed, and once again they were submerged almost to the knees in the cold onrush of water. Henry stood still. The current pushed, stilled for a second, then tugged in the opposite direction, back out to sea, and when the water receded, sure enough, his feet were half buried in the sand. He looked at Alma and laughed.