by Anne Raeff
They refused to let him and Oliver take the bags. “We practiced carrying them so we wouldn’t be a burden,” Simone explained. Leo and Oliver walked through the airport and to the car empty-handed, stopping every few feet to wait while Simone and Juliet adjusted their bags, avoiding the stares of the other passengers who, they were sure, were wondering why grown men were letting two small children carry such heavy bags all by themselves.
Each morning, by the time Leo and Oliver joined them at seven, the girls were already showered and dressed, lying on the living room floor reading or playing chess on the portable chessboard Isaac had bought them for the journey. They ate everything that was put before them, always said please and thank you, went to bed dutifully when they were told, and though they seemed to enjoy the outings Leo and Oliver had planned for them, they were perfectly content to spend the day reading, drawing, and writing in the leather-bound journals that Isaac had given them to document their trip. In fact, they wrote and drew so much that Leo had to buy them new journals after one week.
A week into their stay, Simone awoke just before dawn and snuck out through the back sliding doors onto the beach. Leo couldn’t sleep when the girls were there, so he was up, sitting in the dark on the couch in the living room. He watched her tiptoe across the kitchen floor, strain to pull the door open, hesitate, and then walk out into the night. Leo didn’t follow her. Instead he went out onto the deck to keep an eye on her, make sure she didn’t walk too close to the water, which she didn’t. The moon was full, so he could see her clearly. At one point she broke into a run, and he was afraid he would lose sight of her, but just when he thought he could no longer make out her figure, she stopped and turned around, and then she was running toward him, and he waved, though she could not see him, did not know he was watching her.
The following morning, she walked out into the predawn darkness again, and again Leo watched her. This time she did not run. She walked slowly, hands deep in her pockets. Once, she bent down to pick up something, a shell, Leo thought. She continued on and then abruptly she stopped.
From the deck Leo saw a man stumbling toward Simone, charging at her, it seemed, though later Simone told Leo that it seemed to her as if Lucas had fallen from the sky or emerged from the sand.
Leo jumped over the railing and down onto the beach. He ran toward Simone, but Simone was already running toward him, and he caught her, taking her up in his arms, but she wrestled free. “We have to do something. There’s someone on the beach. He’s hurt,” she said.
After the ambulance had taken the boy away, Leo and Simone had to give their statements. “Don’t be shy,” the policeman said, and Simone said she wasn’t shy at all and she proceeded to describe everything calmly and in great detail. The four of them drove to the hospital then, but when they arrived, they were told that children under twelve were not allowed in the hospital unless they were patients, so Simone and Juliet were going to have to wait in the car with Oliver while Leo went in for news.
“We could say that I’m twelve,” Simone said. “I found him.”
“That wouldn’t be right,” Leo said, and Simone accepted his decision, though later he wished she had put up more of a fight and that she had been there with him, waiting. She was good at being still. She would have told him not to go up to the nurse’s station every five minutes to ask whether there was any news.
Finally the doctor appeared. “He was badly beaten, but he’s going to be just fine. His face is completely unscathed. Usually they go for the face, the nose, the jaw,” the doctor said, and it sounded to Leo as if the doctor was disappointed. “He shouldn’t have been at that beach,” the doctor added.
That beach, he had said, not the beach. Leo knew what he meant, understood, now, the disdain in the doctor’s tone. Leo knew that beach, but how would the doctor know about it? Had he been there, not during the day—when it was just an ordinary public beach where families picnicked and children filled pails with sand and collected shells—but at night, when everything changed? Only once, soon after they moved into their house, had Leo and Oliver walked to that beach at night. It was a clear night, warm and still. The tide was low. After about a mile, the houses stopped, and that was when they saw them, the men—some standing alone, waiting, others together in the sand. Beyond the sound of the waves, they could hear moaning. After that they always walked in the other direction, even during the day.
“He can’t be older than fifteen,” Leo said. He had not meant to speak these words out loud, but there they were, waiting for a response, but the doctor just shook his head.
“You can go in and see him now.” He paused. “If you like.”
Leo sat with the boy, watching him sleep. He wondered whether he should go out to the car to tell Oliver and the girls that the boy was okay, but he didn’t want the boy to be alone when he woke up.
After about half an hour Lucas opened his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Leo. My daughter found you.”
“I’m Lucas,” the boy said.
“Your parents, they must be so worried.”
“They don’t care,” Lucas said. “They hate me.”
“The nurses will want to know who your parents are. They’ll ask you questions.”
“I won’t answer,” Lucas said.
“Is there someone else they could call?” Leo asked, because he knew all too well that parents were not always what they were supposed to be.
“No one,” Lucas said.
“You’re too young to be on your own. How old are you?”
“Fifteen. Fifteen and two months,” Lucas added, as if those two months made a difference. “I’m thirsty.”
“Here,” Leo said, pouring water from the pitcher into a cup and handing it to him.
“I’m still thirsty,” Lucas said when the cup was empty.
“It’s the painkillers,” Leo said. “After my heart surgery I was thirsty for days.”
“What was wrong with your heart?” Lucas asked.
“I had a faulty valve, but they put in a new one. I didn’t even know there was something wrong until I joined the army. They told me it was just a matter of time before the valve would give out and I would die. If they hadn’t come up with this new procedure, I would be dead by now. I was lucky. You were lucky too. The next time you might not be.”
“You can never know how you’re going to die. You could get hit by a car tomorrow.”
“But it’s not likely. You mustn’t go back to the beach.”
“I’m still thirsty.”
Leo gave him more water. When he finished drinking, Lucas closed his eyes. “I’m tired now.”
“Sleep, then,” Leo said. “Sleep,” he said again.
The next day, Leo and Oliver took the girls to the aquarium in San Diego, even though Simone said they shouldn’t go, that it wasn’t right to be looking at fish when Lucas was in the hospital.
“But he’s going to be fine,” Leo assured her, and Simone accepted going to the aquarium as she had accepted not entering the hospital. She marveled at the sharks and jellyfish, the huge, ugly bottom-feeders, and she bought postcards and a book about whales for Juliet with her own money even though Leo offered to pay for them.
That night, Simone and Juliet sat at the kitchen table writing out the postcards. “You’re going to send them all to Isaac?” Leo asked, and both girls nodded without looking up from their task.
The next day the girls sat on the beach all morning drawing pictures for Lucas. All of Simone’s drawings were of the ocean. She completed half a dozen studies of waves, both before and as they hit the shore, and then she did a series called The Vastness of the Sky and Ocean.
“The ocean will make him feel strong, like anything is possible,” Simone said.
Juliet’s pictures were all of gulls—seagulls standing alone and seagulls standing together, seagulls in
the sky, seagulls swooping down toward the water.
That afternoon Leo took the pictures to the hospital, and Lucas looked at each one carefully, running his fingers across their waxy surfaces, breathing in the smell of crayon.
“Should I hang them up?” Leo asked. Simone had made him promise that he would ask.
“That would be nice,” Lucas said.
“What did he say?” Simone asked as soon as Leo returned from the hospital.
“He’s feeling better,” Leo said. “They had him up walking for a short while today.”
“I mean about the pictures,” Simone said.
“Oh, he liked them. I hung them all over the room.”
“Which one did he like best?” Juliet asked.
“He liked all of them,” Leo said.
“But people always have favorites,” Juliet said.
“Not necessarily,” Simone said. “If they’re all good, sometimes it’s hard to choose. What will happen to him now?”
“He still won’t tell anyone his last name or where he’s from, so when he’s released in a couple days, he’ll be put in foster care.”
“He won’t be happy there,” Simone said.
“There are some very nice foster parents,” Leo said.
“But we found him. He will come back here. I know it,” Simone said.
And he did. Leo found him several days later in the early morning, sitting on the beach in front of their house, smoking.
He was hungry when he arrived, and when he was finished eating the breakfast Simone and Oliver prepared for him, Leo and Oliver went out onto the deck, closed the sliding door, and talked for a long time while Simone and Lucas washed the dishes. When they finished washing the dishes, they sat down again at the table. Lucas put his head down and fell asleep right there, and Simone sat across from him until Leo and Oliver came back inside. They woke Lucas up and told him that he could stay until they figured out what to do.
“I won’t be any trouble, sir,” Lucas said.
“He can have my room,” Simone offered. “I can sleep in Juliet’s room.”
Simone led Lucas to her room, to fresh sheets and a window looking out over the ocean. He wanted the curtains open even though it was midday and the sun was at its strongest. It would be like sleeping in the summer in Finland, she told him, like the white nights, and he laughed in the way that people laugh at jokes they don’t understand, so she explained about the white nights and how in Finland in the summer they cover the windows with black paper so they can sleep, and Lucas said he would love to live where it was always light outside.
“But the flip side of it is that in the winter it’s always dark.”
“Then I would live somewhere else in the winter. I would migrate like the birds,” he said, and later, after he disappeared, that is how Simone thought of him, as a migrating bird.
Lucas slept for twenty-four hours, and when he woke up, Simone brought him coffee and toast and strawberries sprinkled with sugar, which he ate slowly, savoring every bite as if it were a gourmet meal. Every so often he closed his eyes and murmured, “Delicious, thank you,” and each time, Simone replied that it wasn’t anything special, just breakfast.
When he finished eating, Lucas and Simone went for a walk on the beach. Simone showed him where she had found him. “Are you sure this was it?” Lucas asked, and Simone said that she was sure.
“How could I forget such a thing?” she said.
They sat down on the spot and looked out at the ocean. Lucas lit a cigarette and offered her a drag.
“I don’t smoke,” she said.
“But don’t you want to try?” he asked.
She didn’t want to, but she took a puff because she didn’t want Lucas to think she was a Goody Two-shoes. She took a deep drag, pulled the smoke in, held it in her mouth, letting it out without coughing, though not coughing took tremendous concentration. She handed the cigarette back to Lucas.
“You’re a natural,” he said. “Usually people cough their guts out their first time. Are you sure you’ve never tried smoking before?”
“Never,” Simone said.
“Want some more?” Lucas asked, holding the cigarette out to her.
“Okay,” she said, and she took another drag.
Together they finished the cigarette, the only cigarette that Simone would ever smoke in her life.
“So Leo’s your father?” Lucas asked, stamping the butt into the sand.
“Yes, but he’s not our father anymore. Isaac is.”
“Who’s Isaac?”
“Our father, my parents’ friend. They met in Berlin after the war. My mother’s German, but we don’t know her anymore.”
“So she skipped town?”
“She left us with Isaac, our father. We love Isaac.”
“But he’s not your real father.”
“He is,” Simone said.
“So why doesn’t Leo want you?”
“It’s not that he doesn’t want us. He knows that Isaac is better for us.”
“That’s bullshit,” Lucas said. “So you don’t miss Leo?”
“I hardly remember when he was our father. I was just four when he left,” Simone said.
“But you can still want something to be different than it is. Don’t you wish your parents hadn’t left?”
“But then I wouldn’t have Isaac, and they would not be happy. They had to leave us in order to be happy.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what Isaac says,” Simone said.
“Do you think Leo’s happy now?”
“I hope he is,” Simone said. “He has Oliver.”
Lucas laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Lucas said, springing up and running. “Race you back to the house,” he called over his shoulder, and Simone ran after him, ran as hard as she could, but just when she was catching up with him, she eased up, letting him reach the door first.
“I won,” Lucas said.
“I wish you could come live with us, with Isaac,” Simone said. “You could be our brother.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time,” Lucas said.
Three days after Lucas showed up at Leo and Oliver’s house, it was time for Simone and Juliet to go home. Their flight left early, so they had to be up at what Leo kept calling “the crack of dawn.” Lucas had promised her the night before that he would go with them to the airport, but when Simone went to awaken him, he mumbled something about not having slept all night, turned over to face the wall, and fell back asleep. “Poor Lucas,” she said. She wasn’t mad. He had bigger things to think about.
In the car on the way to the airport Simone had to focus all her attention on not crying. It was harder than smoking and not coughing, much harder, but she kept her eyes on the black asphalt of the road and repeated, “‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forest of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’” over and over in her head until they were there and she had to get out and they got their flight bags out of the trunk and Leo took their hands and they walked into the terminal.
“Take care of Lucas” was the last thing Simone said to Leo as he kissed her goodbye and told her to be good.
“We will,” Leo said.
But she knew Lucas would be gone before they had a chance to take care of him.
“We were thinking you and Juliet should come again for Thanksgiving,” Leo said.
“That would be lovely,” Simone said, even though she didn’t believe they would visit again, not because she didn’t want to, but because they were no longer a family.
At the end of the trip the stewardess who accompanied them to where Isaac was waiting gave them both enamel Pan Am pins, telling Isaac as she affixed them to the gi
rls’ blouses that they were lovely and polite children. “Goodbye, girls,” she called out as they walked away with Isaac, but they did not hear her, because Juliet was chattering away about her pin and how she had seen the Rocky Mountains from the plane and they were covered in snow even though it was summer and when would he take them to see real mountains close up?
Simone wanted to tell her to shut up, that mountains weren’t important, but she didn’t want to get into an argument when they had just gotten home and were all together again. Instead, she unfastened the Pan Am pin and pushed it deep into the crack of the car seat.
When the weather turned cool in the fall, Juliet transferred her Pan Am pin from her Windbreaker to her CPO jacket. In the winter she pinned it to the lapel of her ski jacket, and when spring came, she switched it back to the Windbreaker. She had flown in an airplane without her father, and when she grew up, she told herself, she would travel to every continent, even Antarctica, and she would see more mountains that were covered in snow in the summer.
The first week that Lucas lived with Leo and Oliver, they did not ask him questions. He was hungry all the time, so they prepared big meals, and he ate. He was polite and thanked them often for their hospitality. After every meal Lucas did the dishes, even though they had a dishwasher. He was always sleeping when they left for work in the morning. When they came home in the evening, they asked him how he had spent his day. “On the beach,” he always said.
He had arrived empty-handed, so Oliver gave him a few pairs of pants and shirts to wear, and on the Saturday after they took the girls to the airport, they took him to buy clothes. “Pick out whatever you want. Don’t worry about the price,” they told him, but he looked at all the price tags and chose the least expensive items. “You need more than three shirts,” they said.