by Pamela Moses
The beach was fairly empty, still too early in the season for large crowds. A gray-haired couple in Docksides and matching red hooded windbreakers walked with a yellow Labrador near the surf. Two children in madras shorts raked the sand with plastic shovels, standing on hopping feet now and then to observe their work. We spread our towels side by side on a flat area free of stones and seaweed and plopped onto our stomachs. To my aggravation, Sanjeev insisted on placing his towel beside mine, so close that the edges overlapped. From some sense of obligation, he seemed to feel it necessary to feign attraction. For this same reason, I imagined, he had attempted several conversations with me during our car ride, leaning close now and then as if to make himself better heard. But I was not fooled and began methodically applying sun lotion to my face and arms, careful to stay centered on my own towel.
Ruth lay on the other side of me. The floral bikini fit her more becomingly than I remembered, and she seemed to feel less self-conscious in it now. She and Brian sprawled on their bellies, facing each other. The fingers of her left hand and his right nearly touched as they brushed the sand with their toes and spoke in low tones of things I could not hear, Ruth’s voice softening now and then to a whispery purr that would have made other BREMUSA members gag.
As the sun climbed in the sky, the light breeze that had cooled our necks and backs and faces lessened and then quit. We fanned ourselves with our hats and magazines. Eventually Ruth and Brian announced that, despite the chilly temperatures of the Atlantic this time of year, they were going to brave the ocean. Giggling, they ran to the water’s edge, pushing each other, squealing like children as they plunged into the waves. I could hear Ruth’s laughter above the surf, throaty, free of strain for the first time in a long while. I should have been happy for her, but for some reason, this only added to my annoyance. I lit a cigarette, then opened a book I had packed—Nineteenth-Century Women Writers, a text I planned to reference for my final comparative literature term essay. As I turned the pages, Sanjeev began to whistle, off-tune snatches of Beatles songs from the radio station we had listened to in the car. He lifted a pure white clamshell from the sand and ran his forefinger along its smooth edge. He was not used to being ignored, I guessed, especially by members of the opposite sex. But this was no concern of mine. He could squirm until he went mad, for all I cared. Yet after several minutes, he inched closer, grinning and giving my arm a poke with his elbow. His skin was warm, already darkening, and he smelled of the Bain de Soleil lotion we had all shared.
“Please don’t tell me you’re studying! Are you going to waste this entire beautiful day with your nose buried in a book?” A hint of his British accent emerged as he spoke, a trait I imagined made other girls woozy. He kicked off his black beach sandals, squinting directly into my sunglasses, trying to gaze through them. But over me his charms were powerless. I responded with nothing but the tiniest nod.
“How about a quick dip in the water? You can’t tell me you’re not hot, especially in all that.” He gestured toward my outfit, the T-shirt and denim shorts I had not removed. I felt his gaze drift below my face to my shoulders, backside, legs.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re not one of those girls who doesn’t like to get wet, are you?” Sanjeev laughed and winked, flicking a small spray of sand onto my wrist.
“Please,” I snorted, crushing the remains of my cigarette into the sand.
But Sanjeev shrugged his shoulders, his lips curled as if he weren’t sure he believed me. And soon thin trickles of perspiration began to drip from my hairline, along my brow, into my eyes, blurring my vision so that it became impossible to read. So out of vexation and despite my better judgment, I stood up, sweeping sand from my clothes, and agreed to walk down to the water. Without glancing at Sanjeev, I pulled off my shorts and top and tossed them onto my towel. I resisted the impulse to fold my arms over my midriff, a silly habit from girlhood. Anyway, why should I care what Sanjeev thought? He could sneer; he could laugh until his guts split. His opinion had no effect on me. But when I removed my shades and threw them into my beach bag, I saw that Sanjeev’s expression remained unchanged. “Shall we?” He smiled, motioning that he would follow me, and for the first time that day, I wondered if, perhaps, I had criticized him too quickly.
As we made our way over the hot sand, Ruth and Brian came dashing from the water, shivering and shrieking, their lips purple as plums. “It’s freezing!” they shouted. And when the first wave lapped at my toes, the cold stopped my breath, stinging to the bone. After mere seconds, my feet and legs went numb. But this seemed to make it easier to wade out until we were waist-deep.
“What do you think?” Sanjeev called over the pounding of the surf.
I turned to answer him, but as I did, the rush of a retreating wave caught at my ankles, dragging me down until my knees scraped sand and sharp pebbles. Before I could regain my footing, a second icy wave cascaded over me, submerging me in the chill so that, for some moments, I lost all sense of direction. Above the roaring in my ears, I could hear Sanjeev’s voice. Then I felt his fingers grasping my wrist, pulling me to the surface. Even once I was standing again, he refused to loosen his grip. So I began to pry myself free, to tell him I needed no help; but I coughed on a mouthful of water I had swallowed, and when I stopped, something about the way he looked at me, with worried, penetrating eyes, made me relax my wrist in his hand.
As we flopped back onto our towels, Brian was returning from the snack bar down the beach with two bulging plastic bags. He laughed at our chattering teeth. “This should heat you up,” he said, settling into a cross-legged position on the edge of his towel, pulling from the bags hot dogs with onions in cardboard sleeves, foil-wrapped cheeseburgers, fries, hot pretzels in sheer paper. Ruth took only a diet ginger ale and a hamburger, which she removed from its bun and sampled with small bites. But at the smell of the food, my stomach began to churn with sudden hunger, and I reached for a soda, a hot dog, tore off half a pretzel, slathering it with mustard from plastic pouches. I swallowed the food in great bites, feeling the warmth of it slipping down. When Brian offered chocolate-dipped cookies as big as saucers, I quickly accepted one, but as I held it in my open hands, I realized that of our group, I had polished off the most food. I picked off an edge of the cookie, not wanting to finish too long before the others.
Rattling the ice in his soda cup, Sanjeev laughed and indicated my empty hot dog wrapper, the crumpled packets of mustard. “I like a girl with an appetite,” he said. He glanced at the remains of hamburger and bun on Ruth’s plate, then, turning back to me, he nodded as if agreeing with his own words. I didn’t answer but couldn’t help smiling into my lap. I allowed myself a larger chunk of cookie. By the time we finished our lunch, the sun had dried us, leaving our hair stiff, our bodies filmy with patches of salt. Like four cats, we stretched facedown on our towels once more. Ruth and Brian lay with foreheads almost touching. Sanjeev rested his chin on his fist and gazed out at the ocean, his brown eyes reflecting almost gold in the light. I saw that he had taken the white clamshell from beside his belongings and placed it on the sand in front of me.
“For me?”
“To keep forever and ever,” he laughed.
Somehow my towel or his must have shifted, for each time one of us moved, our knees would lightly brush. I marked my page in Nineteenth-Century Women Writers, shut it, and replaced it in my bag. Every now and then, I could hear from Ruth or Brian a murmured intimacy and couldn’t help wondering if Sanjeev had ever been in love.
Since our arrival, the only newcomers to the beach had been a few middle-aged fishermen in rubber waders and two young families holding babies, bundles of pink-white half-hidden by floppy sunhats, so when a mud-splattered Subaru wheeled into the narrow, sandy parking lot abutting the beach, we all turned to look. Music blared from its radio, temporarily breaking the relative silence. Peering over my arm, I could see, through the windshield, long tresses of hair. Four girls—college-aged, I guessed, as they
hopped out—who, like us, had decided to take advantage of the day. After crossing the wooden-planked walkway that led from the pavement to the beach and stepping onto the sand, they removed their shoes, slinging them over their shoulders with the coolers and blankets they already carried. As they headed toward us, I was conscious of Sanjeev’s nearness, conscious that, surely, we appeared to be a couple, conscious of the pride rising in my chest. As they drew closer, I could more distinctly make out their features, the slender curves of their waists, their slim hips twitching side to side in their cotton shorts. One girl walked slightly ahead of the others, every so often tossing her head to flick a strand of blond hair from her face. And a familiar heaviness settled at the pit of my stomach. The blond girl coiled a lock of hair around her fingers with the deliberateness of someone who is used to commanding attention. When she was just steps from us, her eyes swept in a cursory glance over Ruth and Brian and me, then, almost seeming not to notice us, she slid her lower lip behind her front teeth and lifted her hand to Sanjeev, waggling her fingers in a wave as she passed. Sanjeev’s hands remained curled beneath his chin, but I saw him give a nod of acknowledgment before the girl turned away.
“Whew, Sanjeev, you lady killer! Did you see that?” Brian propped himself on his elbow and inhaled with a slow whistle, laughing at Ruth’s mocking smack to his shoulder.
Sanjeev shrugged, but he could not hide the blushing splotches darkening his cheeks. And though he rolled onto his side and began inquiring about my friends in Manhattan, my summer plans, I was sure he was fighting, fighting not to turn and stare after the long-legged blonde. So I gave curt, one-word answers to his questions, then rummaged through my straw bag—annoyed at the mess of old receipts and empty cigarette boxes I’d neglected for months—and plucked out my book, opening it once more with a loud snap.
For some time, while Brian and Ruth strolled along the shore, Sanjeev attempted conversation after conversation. But I was immovable. He could chatter until his eyes crossed, until his throat ached; his sugary talk had no effect on me. “Is something the matter? Have I offended you in some way?” he finally wanted to know. But I was deaf to his words and only swatted noisily at the pages of my book.
By the time Brian and Ruth returned from their walk, the sun had weakened, obscured by streaky clouds. We tossed away the wrappings from our lunch, slapped sand from our limbs and shorts and shoes. Something seemed to have changed during Brian and Ruth’s walk. They moved more in unison now, shaking out each other’s towels, checking to be sure the other had gathered every belonging. They were too busy to notice Sanjeev’s and my silence, the way we stepped around each other, refusing to make eye contact, the downturned corners of Sanjeev’s lips, as if he were the one who had been wronged.
During the ride back to campus, I pretended to sleep, clutching my bag in my lap, my head pressed against the side window. Ruth and Brian chatted incessantly, Ruth’s voice an excited burble that made my jaw stiffen. Occasionally Sanjeev added an opinion, a joking comment, but I heard the effort in his voice, the strain each time he laughed. Good! Ha! I thought, for he was nothing to me now, nothing more than fodder for gossip, another ironic anecdote for the members of BREMUSA.
Ruth missed the next BREMUSA meeting and the next and the next. “I’m absolutely swamped with work,” she complained to me. But time and again I caught her lolling with Brian on the grass of the Main Green, perched beside him on the stone wall outside our dorm, swinging her hand in his, as if they had all the time in the world to squander. I knew from Setsu that Brian would be moving back to Canada just after his graduation to attend medical school in Ontario, closer to his home. “There’s nothing serious between Ruth and Brian,” she said. “But he’s a good distraction, don’t you think? Considering all she’s been through?”
“A good distraction would be finding something to believe in, something to work for. Something to make her strong.”
“I don’t know. Maybe her idea of strength is different from yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe for you finding some cause . . .” Setsu stopped, biting lightly on her lower lip. “We all have our ways of tricking ourselves, don’t we? Of denying ourselves in the name of other things?”
“What exactly are you implying, Setsu?” She had a nerve trying to make this about me! She must have heard about Sanjeev. God, Ruth and her blabbing mouth! And of course Setsu disapproved of BREMUSA. We were everything that terrified her. But I wanted to hear her say it, wanted her to have spine enough to tell me to my face!
But she shrugged like a coward, refusing to add another word. And I would not waste my breath on contradictions.
My stops at Ruth’s room for chitchat grew less frequent, my invitations to join the other BREMUSA members and me for meals more sporadic. Ruth made continual, feeble attempts to maintain our connection. “What are you doing tonight?” “It’s been so long since we talked.” But if I opened a real discussion, about BREMUSA’s goals for the remaining few days of the year, or a recent news article about women’s health concerns, she listened for no more than a minute before apologizing and excusing herself to run off to some commitment.
One evening, as I sorted papers for that night’s BREMUSA gathering, I heard Ruth on the phone with Brian, making plans to meet for a screening of Gone With the Wind in Salomon Hall. Then came the sound of her humming as she opened and closed dresser drawers, the brief whir of her blow-dryer, the unzipping of her cosmetics bag. The day before I had reminded her that this evening’s meeting would be a crucial one: Lucille Portman, author of Equity of the Sexes, had agreed to come speak to us. “Oh, great! Thanks for letting me know,” she had said, but it was now obvious she had no intention of going. Later she emerged from her room, releasing a small cloud of cheap perfume—the imitation Chanel she had been wearing for weeks, obviously believing it passed for quality, her hair full from brushing, her keys to our dorm jingling in her hand.
“Did you forget about tonight, Ruth, or is it just not of interest to you?” I knew I had startled her with the flames of anger in my voice, but I didn’t care.
“Oh, sorry. I’m sure it will be wonderful, but Brian and I—”
“You know, Ruth, I started BREMUSA for you. For girls like you. Girls without confidence. Girls who’d been wronged—”
A small shudder moved through Ruth’s body. “Who asked you, Francesca? I never asked you!” She pressed her balled fist gripping the keys to her chest and dashed to the door.
• • •
I might have told Ruth I had a few regrets over the things I’d said, that I had not been entirely fair. But the right opportunity never seemed to arise. Some days later I returned to my room to find that Ruth had dropped off a handful of belongings that I had lent her or forgotten in her room over the course of the year. She had stacked them neatly on my bed: a hooded Brown University sweatshirt, a slightly faded denim skirt, my battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a plaid headband, and a photograph taken of all four suitemates on the first day of our freshman year. In the picture, we are smiling and standing before Brown’s Van Wickle Gates, the university’s scrolling, wrought-iron crest visible behind us. The day had been mild for late summer in New England. We are wearing thin sleeveless shirts and sandals. And as I studied the snapshot, I realized this was the picture Ruth must have shown Sanjeev—not merely of my neck and face but every bit of me visible from head to toe. The suite seemed suddenly, strangely quiet, the others all having disappeared to various destinations. Even my own breathing was noiseless as for some motionless minutes I stared at the photo, my mind beginning to wander with doubts that were probably useless. So I tucked the snapshot carefully between the first two pages of The Catcher in the Rye and slid the book to the back of my desk drawer.
• • •
Days before final exams and the end of the school year, the members of BREMUSA reached a consensus about our culminating statement for the term. In the news there had been much talk of late
about the age at which girls were beginning to diet. Interviews with children as young as eight and nine had recently been aired on a regional public television station. Many of them had already begun to turn down certain foods, explaining that they wanted to look skinny in their gymnastics leotards and ballet tights. So we devised a plan to bombard the campus with our message. We had convinced our local station to send us a cassette tape of the documentary. One of our supporters, Skylar, a guitarist, owned a sound system with speakers and amplifiers. During the Friday of exam week, while students dashed madly from classes to mailboxes to rushed lunches, we would position the speakers in Skylar’s window overlooking Wriston Quad. At top volume, we would play the taped interviews. We would make a banner to be unfurled from her windowsill. We Fear for Our Youth, it would say. You Should Too.
Friday morning, we had agreed, we would assemble in Skylar’s room. I had volunteered to transport the banner, which I had been storing beneath my bed, tightly rolled and encased in a plastic tarpaulin. I headed to Skylar’s just before ten, the wrapped banner balanced on my shoulder. The sky was overcast with yellow-gray clouds, and a light drizzle had begun to fall, dotting the windowpanes of the buildings along the quad and the winding paved path to the dorm. I adjusted the leather hat I was wearing, nudging the brim forward to protect my eyes from the wet. Just as I did so, I saw a familiar figure striding toward me. Sanjeev was holding a folded newspaper over his head, squinting at the now thickening rain, and appeared not to recognize me until we were almost face-to-face. When I waved he seemed startled, his neck jerking inadvertently as he checked to make sure my gesture was not intended for someone else. Then after a moment of hesitation, he lifted his hand in response. “How have you been?” he asked, and seemed to be gathering his thoughts, fumbling for a way to engage in conversation.