After applying a Band-Aid to my cut, I decided to make breakfast. Our kitchen was separated from the living room by an L-shaped countertop burdened with a peculiar shade of coral. Artsy types might've called it some version of pink, but our entire house had agreed on coral. I leaned across it to issue an invitation.
"Wanna make pancakes with me when you're done, Stanley?"
"Shh," Stanley said from against the wall. He gave me one of those looks. Some looks infer you've done something you shouldn't have done; other looks infer you didn't do something you shoulda done. I had not done something. It took me a minute, but after sizing up the situation and the silence, I wiped off the counter with my good hand, put the milk away, and took the garbage to the street.
Across the driveway of crushed shells, then back up the stairs, I found Stanley waiting for me on the screened porch. With folded arms. A white rocker stood between us.
"Jay, we are all here as part of a church group. Mornings first thing, we have our quiet times."
I had not heard the term quiet time since twenty years ago, in first grade, when we'd take our multicolored mats out from under our desks to enjoy a post-lunch nap.
"You mean like reading verses?"
"That's a major part of it," he said, staring me down.
"And this must be done at 9:00 in the morning when the beach is sunny and the fish are biting?"
"It's a spiritual discipline."
I gave the rocker a jump start with my toe. "Have you seen my new friend Ransom? He's a surfer ..."
Stanley stopped the rocker with his foot. "Walked down the street to have breakfast with his wife. But you can tell him we like to see the men have a daily course of spiritual food as well."
I was torn between responses, harsh or witty, witty or harsh, but could not summon either. I toed the rocker again. Stanley's stare was even more rigid than his Saturday-morning schedule. It put me off. Rather than stoke my curiosity, it drove me away, and I wanted nothing to do with his quiet times or anything else resembling his self-righteous karaoke.
So what I did was, I employed my fishing lesson and decided to wait him out.
He grabbed the rocker, held it firm. Suddenly he glanced down at my bandage. "What'd you do to your hand?"
"Me and an old guy named Asbury rubbed a shark on the head. He bit me."
"Asbury bit you?"
"No, Stanley, the shark."
Sunlight angled through the pines of Seaspray Drive, warming my feet, my neck, my salt-thickened hair. Gulls soared overhead, catching the wind and banking toward the sea. I wished human interaction could be that smooth.
With a purple beach towel flung over my shoulder and blue shades over my eyes, I strolled toward the beach by myself, pondering Stanley.
Oh, Stanley.
Someday one of his kids will hit three home runs in a Little League game, get voted most valuable player by ESPN, and Stanley will say fine for you but I don't wanna hear about it until you go sit against the wall and have a quiet time.
I crossed the wooden walkway between the dunes, trudged past a limp volleyball net, and spread my towel on hard sand, a prime location for scoping and hoping.
The rays were intense. And I'd forgotten my sunblock.
Little movement on the Carolina coast, only small clusters of kite flyers and squealing children dotting the shore. And a handsome shore it was, a serene Atlantic coaxing the day as scrawny waves rose and tumbled, rolling over in tight cylinders of blue and green, tiny shells eloping in the backwash.
I was wiping grains from my lenses when five women approached. They looked familiar, maybe from the seafood restaurant. They carried book bags, beach towels, and a rainbow assortment of folding chairs.
One said, "You must be Jay," and I met a blonde Nancy. Her one-piece was light blue. Her manner was right nice. Her four friends waved hello.
"Your first retreat with the singles?" she inquired, unfolding her chair.
I swiped a fly from my knee. "Yes, and you?"
"My third. Seems to be more people every year. You a lifelong Presbyterian?" she asked, wedging her chair in the sand.
"Hardly. My family was a strange hybrid, somewhere between not interested and workaholic. I went to church during junior high, then not again till college ... and that was only because I took a devout Lutheran to homecoming." I disliked answering these types of questions, but at least I told the truth.
"That's interesting," she replied, adjusting the angle of her chair. She did this with one hand while holding a plastic cup in the other. Some of her drink sloshed out.
She seemed friendly enough, so I decided to ask her the question I was saving for my roommates. "Can you explain Stanley and his ... entourage?"
She was very precise about her chair angle. "He invited those friends," she said, her voice slow and pure Southern. "They all take the same correspondence courses from some ultraconservative seminary. Nice guys, but they do seem full of rules. Rules for walking, rules for talking."
"You're kidding, right?" I asked, offering to hold her drink as she spread a red towel over her chair. The towel was stitched with smiling white bulldogs.
"A bit exaggerated. Take a sip if you want. You staying with them?"
"Yep. Me, Steve, and Ransom."
"Is he that surfer who's actually married?"
"That's him."
"Are they having problems?" she asked, reclaiming her cup.
"No, just single for the weekend. Although rumor has it they secretly lusted for each other at the restaurant last night."
She smiled, set her drink in the sand, and reached into her bag. "Where you from?"
"Texas. And you?"
"Athens, Georgia," she said with perfect nonchalance. She opened a book on dating and relating, but I deftly managed to keep the conversation alive.
"Are you staying in the same house with Allie and Darcy?"
"Yeah, but they left to go shopping." And she flipped to chapter one.
"Know when they'll be back?"
She did not look up. "Haven't a clue."
"What's that stuff you're drinking?"
"Sprite with lemonade."
The other four females arranged their chairs in a line, parallel to the waves. They removed their shorts, took their seats, passed sunblock down the line. Nancy rubbed the white stuff on her legs, then handed me the bottle. I wanted to ask her to rub some on my back, but she and her friends were all wearing conservative one-pieces, and this being only my first weekend with Presbyterians, I decided to do it myself.
After handing the bottle back, I watched them in all their glory, a glistening quintet aligning chairs perfectly with the sun. They were studiously reading when eight more women approached, plopped down their chairs and books, and now the line was thirteen females and me, a setting that compared quite favorably to having quiet times with Stanley.
Surveying the lineup, I saw several classics, but mostly books on dating and relating.
I knew I'd never be able to remember all their names, so I forewent introducing myself and began to number them, starting at the far end: number one, two, three, all the way down to Nancy, next to me, as number thirteen.
Nancy and the Numericals were a fascinating crew. Numbers Three and Six had great tans and matching paperbacks; Number Ten had freckles and Hemingway; Number Eight obviously pumped iron. And, stretching my neck a bit farther, I concluded that Number Two-with her raven hair, pierced eyebrow, and Tolstoy-was definitely the most dangerous.
No one seemed interested in talking or flirting, so I rolled over on my stomach.
Behind me, the breaking of waves was subdued but constant, a slow hiss of energy building toward the collapse of sea against land. From my prone position, I could see the walkway, its weathered boards angling over a dune and burying the bottom step in white sand. Beside the steps sat a trash barrel. A seagull hopped around the barrel, picking at scraps and rummaging for a meal. Suddenly it took two quick steps and went airborne, squawking as it pass
ed over, its lunch delayed.
Back above the walkway, a reverent head rose above the dunes. Up came his perfect hair, then his torso, then he stood at the crest, surveying the beach as his four buddies piled up behind him. Stanley had donned plaid Bermuda shorts and a religious T-shirt, one size too small.
Surely he would go to the opposite end of our line, next to a girl. But I'd discovered there was no sure thing with this group, so the safest action, for me, was a nap.
I quickly folded my tank top into a pillow, buried my head in it, then wrapped my arms around my head, retreating like a fiddler crab to its sandy cave, far removed from perfect hair and plaid Bermuda shorts.
To the side and above me came the sound of a towel flapping, then another and another. Puffs of sand fell on my back; I heard male voices. "He must be asleep" and "That's the guy who-"
"Shh," whispered a third voice.
I wasn't sure how long I'd dozed, but my back was hot, my head was still buried, and I felt groggy from last night's aborted sleep. I smelled the wet sand. From my right came only the sound of pages flipping, so I figured the girls were deep into their books.
Intense debate burst forth from my left, male voices hanging strange words in the breeze, words I did not remember from Galatians: Preeminence. Edification. Dispensational. Big words. Coffee-table words. In stark contrast to the most common words of my profession: buy, sell, hold, and oops.
I tried not to listen, but the debate raged on, the stretch limousines of spiritual lingo now spewing from Stanley's larynx. His buddies attempted to contribute from their own stockpile of verbosity, but Stanley talked right over them. There was no escaping the wordy onslaught. I was Custer, with sunblock, lying on a sunny beach beside thirteen glistening women.
I considered my options: I could rise from the sand and say, "I'm going to help Steve with the sea-green paint," but Stanley would surely ask why we were painting. I could go back and eat breakfast with Ransom, but he'd just want to be alone with his wife. I could wade out in the ocean and battle the undertow, but Stanley would just follow me out there in his plaid Bermuda shorts, spewing the religious diatribe, and everyone knows that having to fight the undertow, the sunburn, and the religious diatribe in the same instant will ruin summer vacation in a heartbeat.
So with my head still buried and the spiritual debate growing ever deeper, I slowly raised a finger to stuff a corner of the tank top in my left ear.
"Pass the sunblock," said Nancy for the second time.
I turned over, scanned the beach, and saw short, redheaded Lydia and big Joe Caruzzi dragging Ransom's surfboard out to sea. Behind us, a volleyball game had broken out. From the language, I guessed the match was pagan versus Presbyterian. I almost dubbed it Budweiser versus Stanley, but Stanley and his four buddies rose to their feet, frowned at the interaction with beer drinkers, and walked proudly down the shore, dragging their jumbo words past the kite flyers, the squealing children, and a ruddy-cheeked man much too large for his choice of swimwear.
"It's time," said a female voice from the middle of the line.
Thirteen readers turned, all together, onto their stomachs, never looking up, still immersed in a diversity of windswept pages. But Number Eleven and Number Twelve must've forgotten I was only one towel away at the end of the line, napping, for surely they would not have knowingly discussed personal issues within earshot of a male.
"It's too far back to the house," said Number Eleven to Number Twelve. "Can't I just go in the ocean? You know the guys go out there all the time."
"Just go," said Number Twelve, flipping a page.
"What if the water's cold?" asked Eleven.
"Just go," said Twelve.
"What if a fish bites me while I'm-"
"Don't be silly, just go."
"Okay, but you'll come with me, won't you?"
"No," said Twelve. "Oh ... all right, I gotta go, too." She marked her page with a broken sea oat and set the book in her chair.
It probably would've been my duty to warn Joe and Lydia of the impending taint of the lovely Atlantic, but they were sloshing through the breakers and dragging the surfboard to the beach when Eleven and Twelve, full bladders both, changed their minds and sprinted back toward a beach house.
"Scared 'em off, Jay?" asked Lydia, wrapping a towel around herself.
"Nah, but it's amazing what you overhear while lying on a beach towel."
Since our introduction at church, Lydia had been at the center of all things hospitable. This day was no different. "I brought sandwiches!" she announced, walking to her cooler and lifting the lid. There must have been thirty sandwiches in that cooler. She even fed the Numericals.
Turkey on wheat, heavy mustard, was my free lunch. The rummaging seagull returned, and I fed it the crust. I had just swallowed the last bite when Darcy and Allie, in a lime two-piece and peach two-piece respectively, strolled over the walkway. Down the wooden steps and between the dunes, they were a bright and welcome duet.
They carried three new floats-without the air-and Darcy asked if I wanted to blow one up.
"Here, marshmallow head," said Allie, tossing me a folded square of light-blue plastic.
A bit feminine, that light blue. "The orange one, please, Miss Kyle." And she agreed to swap. In midswap, her hand brushed mine, and a tingle went up my arm.
"Still couldn't find any flip-flops?" I asked, noticing their bare feet.
"Nothing to color coordinate with," said Darcy.
"She means they didn't have lime," said Allie, searching for a nozzle among the folds. "Myrtle's flip-flops are even gaudier than your orange float, Jay."
Halfway through blowing up the gaudy plastic floats, the three of us were ready to sprawl ourselves on the shore and beg for oxygen. I've never sniffed glue, but sitting there in my sandy olive shorts, I figured it couldn't be worse than blowing up floats.
And too bad for Steve having to paint, because Darcy had on an electric lime bikini, and surely a five-foot, eleven-inch blonde in a lime green bikini is a sight to behold, much preferable to white semiglossed mosquitoes stuck dead to a bedroom wall.
"Water's warmer than I thought," said Darcy. She had eased in to her waist.
"Told ya," said Allie, dunking herself.
Our flotilla launched in unison, and we drifted beyond the waves, lazy and aloof atop our orange, red, and blue plastic. The ocean was a waterbed, an aquatic massage passing slowly beneath, lifting us from head to toe in rolling repetition.
"Can you explain what Steve was doing with a gallon of paint?" asked Darcy. "We passed him on our way to the beach, and he was acting weird."
"You saw him with paint?" I countered, as if surprised.
"Yeah, why the paint?" demanded Allie, paddling around to face me.
I watched orange reflections tint my torso. "He had a little accident in our room. Nothing major."
"You're covering for him," said Her Limeness, contrasting with shiny red plastic.
"Yep, sounds like a cover-up to me," said Allie.
Scanning the shoreline, I watched a lemon yellow kite flutter and dive. Two kids looked up and pointed, waving plastic shovels as they gawked. The volleyball net did a weak imitation of a sail, and across the long line of beach chairs, the Numericals reclined at a fresh angle, each head hidden by a book.
"All I see are toes and books," said Darcy, backstroking. "What's the deal with all those books on dating? Maybe no one ever taught 'em how to flirt." She had a certain presence about her, a mix of Southern pride and rich-girl confidence. Much too independent for large group activities.
"Wonder where we'd end up if we just closed our eyes and drifted for an hour," said Allie, talking to the heavens. Her suggestion had a strange, ambiguous appeal, falling somewhere between adventuresome and perilous.
I dismissed perilous and agreed to do it. "Only one way to find out, Captain Kyle."
"Not me," said Darcy, her lengthy legs straddling her float. "I heard there were sharks out in the deep water."
"Chicken," said Allie, flicking water at her friend.
Darcy flinched. "I am not chicken."
"Are too."
"Am not."
Allie pleaded with her. "You risk your life driving like a maniac in your four-wheeled monstrosity but won't even go drifting for fear of sharks. How sad."
"Wise women choose their danger carefully," said Darcy.
"Doubt any sharks would come this close to shore," I offered as salt water stung the cut on the back of my thumb.
"I'm staying in shallow water, Jay," said Darcy. "No argument." And she kicked her float toward shore.
Whether she really feared a shark or was just allowing me an opportunity, I had to give Darcy high marks for her tact. And I had to be curious as to why they hadn't bought a fourth float.
Hooking my foot through a loop on the side of Allie's light-blue vessel, I heard her giggle, like she was in on some big secret. We agreed not to talk but to just close our eyes and drift.
And drift we did. A slow, rolling, Memorial Day weekend drift.
"No peeking," she said.
"Yeah, no peeking."
Time seemed to bob along behind us, loitering in the current. My first peek revealed our position-a long angle from where we'd started but only a bit farther out. My second peek revealed her right hand hanging limp across her forehead, her left autographing the sea.
Before moving to Carolina, I'd never even seen the Atlantic. Now I was floating in it beside a missionary girl, and somehow this made me smile.
Closing my eyes again, I licked a salty drop from my lip and felt the rolling massage beneath us, timid waves warm and buttery, pressing and caressing in the ceaseless cycle of tides.
Two miles north of our friends, we sat exhausted on a deserted beach, Allie saying the deserted beach was like Jesus, a refuge from death. I wasn't sure what she meant, but death had definitely raised its periscope.
Just two hours earlier, after my fourth peek, the image of her had stayed burned on the inside of my eyelids: peach-colored bikini against a glowing tan, and brunette hair spilling over a light blue float. The rays did not seem to tan her as much as exude from her. I thought that if there were any more sharks cruising down there, maybe they'd think her a mermaid and leave us be.
Flabbergasted: A Novel Page 6