The View from the Top

by Hillary Frank

  Jeez, snap out of it, Mary-Tyler told herself. There was no need to suck this innocent girl into one of her screwed-up death fantasies.

  Mary-Tyler shut her eyes. She tried to picture the shape her body was making in the sand and wondered if there would be a way to make a cast of herself like this sometime—maybe in plaster?—like with the ruins at Pompeii. There, that was it. “You know what this reminds me of?” she asked Anabelle.

  “What?”

  “Have you ever seen pictures of the people who died by Mount Vesuvius?”

  “You mean those people who turned to stone or something?”

  “Yeah, kinda,” Mary-Tyler said. “They were buried in ash from a volcano and over time the ash hollowed out in the shapes of their bodies. And then, like sixteen, seventeen centuries?—a hell of a long time later—this guy came up with an idea to fill in the empty spaces with plaster. So now you can see them in the positions that they were buried in.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. That’s pretty creepy.”

  “But it’s also really beautiful. They’re, like, the perfect sculptures.”

  “Are you into sculpture?” Anabelle asked with a side-long glance. She sounded disgusted, as if Mary-Tyler had just told her she liked to eat cockroaches.

  “Yeah. It’s what I spend most of my time doing back home. Why? You seem disappointed.”

  “It’s just, well, my ex? He’s an artist. Paints, writes poetry. And sculpts.”

  Great, Mary-Tyler thought. You had to go and pick exactly the topic she didn’t want to talk about.

  “This is kinda embarrassing. I’m not even sure why I’m telling you.” Anabelle shrugged and her shoulder poked through the sand. “Anyway ... I went to his house today. To, like, try to get back together.”

  “But he didn’t want to?”

  “You could say that. I found him building this clay bust of me. The mouth was stuffed, all gagged up with papers. Turns out they were hate poems he’d written for me.”

  “Asshole,” Mary-Tyler said, guiltily satisfied. Anabelle hadn’t found something special with this guy; she only thought she had.

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s my own fault. I should’ve never dumped him. Now I don’t have him or the badass guy.”

  “Maybe it’s not a choice between the two of them. Maybe there’s a third choice. Or a fourth or a fifth. Or maybe it’s not about having a guy right now. Maybe it’s just about having friends.”

  “Maybe. But in the middle of all this mess—I’m not sure how, exactly—I managed to lose my closest girl friend, too. I’ve got nobody.”

  “Hey!” Mary-Tyler said, sticking her neck out at Anabelle. “You have me!”

  Anabelle turned toward Mary-Tyler, unconvinced. “We just met.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “I don’t know. But you’re leaving in a few days, you said.”

  “So I guess we’ll have to make the most of it.”

  Anabelle squinted. “Why do you want to be my friend so bad?”

  “Because I’m sick of not having any friends here either, and you seem nice.” Mary-Tyler remembered how Anabelle had snapped at her before. “Well, maybe nice isn’t the right word. Interesting.”

  “I’ll take interesting,” Anabelle said, cracking a smile.

  “Most people would call me nice or good. I’m pretty tired of being thought of that way.”

  “Well, to me you’re interesting.”

  “What’s so interesting about me?”

  “When I met you, you were just a head in the sand. You’re still a head in the sand.”

  “That’s true.” Anabelle giggled. “You have no idea what I look like down there. I could have the body of a fish.”

  “You mean, like a mermaid?”

  “No, an actual fish.”

  “That would be rad. I mean, cool. Or groovy. Wicked.

  Whatever the hell you locals say around here.” Mary-Tyler pictured Anabelle’s head on top of a mass of shimmery scales with fins and gills. ”I guess there are no secrets with what I look like. You saw me get in. In all of my jiggling glory.” As Mary-Tyler said it, she knew it was a weirdly aggressive thing to say. She hated when girls complained about their weight, and didn’t like for other people to know she had body issues. Please don’t tell me I’m not fat, she thought, bracing herself for Anabelle’s response. It’ll just make me feel worse.

  Suddenly it felt as if someone had thrown ice cubes against Mary-Tyler’s big toes. She looked up to see that the water had exposed them with their chipping black polish, like little sand creatures burrowing for food. She watched the waves lapping their way up the slope. How many more would it take for her whole body to feel encased in ice? Maybe just one big one.

  Anabelle finally spoke. “Tell me more about those ash people,” she said. “About how they’re the perfect sculptures.”

  “Oh, right.” Mary-Tyler was caught off guard, not only because Anabelle hadn’t said anything about that weight comment but because she’d actually been paying attention. At school, kids basically saw Mary-Tyler as a receptacle for gut-spilling. They never asked her questions. Maybe this actually was the start of an honest-to-God friendship. “They’re perfect sculptures,” she explained to Anabelle, “because they’re so natural. There’s no stupid forced pose or facial expression. They’re just reacting.” Mary-Tyler tried not to wince as another freezing-cold wave encapsulated her foot. “I’ve always wondered what pose I’d be in if I were caught in a volcano.”

  “Or caught in the sand at the beach?” Anabelle gestured at their hidden bodies with her head.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what was making me think of it! Because if we could figure out a way of getting out of here without disrupting the sand, we’d have perfect molds of our bodies at this moment.”

  “Would that be rad or what?” Anabelle laughed. It was a deep laugh, reaching way down past her vocal cords and into her chest. Way too deep for the small girl that suddenly came bursting out of her sand grave and jumped around in the foamy surf.

  The girls decided to get dinner over at the seafood shack on the boardwalk. Anabelle was the only one with money since she’d been wearing actual clothes with pockets, so she bought them a bag of lobster bodies—the cheapest thing on the menu. They sat across from each other at one of the patio picnic tables, watching as people packed up their beach gear over on the sand.

  Mary-Tyler had no clue what to do with a lobster that was missing its claws and tail, but she tried to play it cool and pretend like she was a lobster aficionado. It didn’t really matter, though. Anabelle wasn’t paying one shred of attention to Mary-Tyler; her head seemed to be somewhere else entirely as she tore into her first lobster body. After cracking the thing in half, she started scooping out tiny bits of meat with her fingers. She looked like a predatory bird dismantling its prey. And she didn’t even seem grossed out by the green stuff that was dripping onto her plate.

  Mary-Tyler eyed her lobster bib and shell crackers, tools she’d become accustomed to using when eating lobster. She didn’t like the idea of breaking this creature’s chest open with her bare hands—it felt a little like surgery. And not just surgery, but malpractice. But to use the crackers felt a little like eating with a fork at a Chinese restaurant.

  Okay, she thought. Just do it and get it over with. She cupped the smooth bright orange body in her palms and lined her fingers up against the slit down the middle, just like Anabelle had, and gave it one big snap. Warm lobster juice ran down her wrists. She dropped the open body on her plate and stared at its insides, completely oblivious as to where to find sustenance in this thing.

  Anabelle was picking off the legs methodically one at a time, giving them a single twist at their bottom joint. Mary-Tyler couldn’t imagine doing that to her lobster; it looked too violent, like an ancient torture method or something. Yes, she knew the thing was dead. But still.

  Anabelle finally broke out of her lobster-dismantling trance. “I’ve b
een doing something really bad,” she said without looking up.

  The statement startled Mary-Tyler. Anabelle had said it with such gravity that it made her wonder if Anabelle also fantasized about dying. “What do you mean?” she asked, realizing she was hoping Anabelle was suicidal, which was a really weird thing to hope about someone. Especially someone you liked.

  Anabelle slowly sucked the meat out of one of her legs. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “C’mon. No, you have to. You must’ve wanted to tell me if you brought it up.”

  “Sometimes when I think too much...” There was a clicking sound in Anabelle’s throat and then a loud sigh. “I hurt myself,” she whispered.

  “Wait, what do you mean?” Mary-Tyler asked quietly.

  “It’s different at different times. But, like, today I was punching a brick wall.”

  Mary-Tyler looked at Anabelle’s hands. Her knuckles were covered in tiny scrapes.

  “Sometimes when there’s nothing else to hit, I hit myself. I know, it’s awful. But I get some sort of perverse pleasure out of doing it. Or, I don’t know, it makes me feel worse. And somehow I actually like making myself feel worse. Sounds ...” She looked up, as if searching for the right word. “Fucked up, doesn’t it?”

  “No, no, I get it,” Mary-Tyler said. “I’m that way, too.” Her heart pounded furiously with the knowledge that she was about to reveal a secret—about her disturbing thoughts, about the incident this morning in the pool.

  “Really?”

  “Totally. It’s like you get to a certain degree of sadness and you just want to wallow in it. I’ve been doing the same kind of thing this whole vacation.” Wait a second, Mary-Tyler thought, catching herself. You can’t tell her about the pool. She’d know where you live.

  “That’s really nice of you to say, but I doubt it.” Anabelle shook her head and her curls bounced vigorously. “For me it got so bad, I had to do something to myself physically to stop.” She pointed toward the beach with a lobster leg. “And that’s how I wound up there. I needed to put myself in the ground to keep from literally beating myself up. You can’t tell me that’s not bizarre.”

  Mary-Tyler brushed off some of the sand that was still stuck to her elbow. “Well, I got in, too, right?” she said, and left it at that.

  Anabelle’s face relaxed. “Yeah. I guess you did.” She glanced at Mary-Tyler’s lobster body. “Hey,” she said, “you having trouble with that?”

  “No,” Mary-Tyler said quickly. “I was just taking a break—listening to you.”

  “Here, give it,” Anabelle said, taking Mary-Tyler’s plate.

  “I can do it fast. You’re a tail-eater, it’s okay.”

  “Tail eater? That doesn’t sound like a nice thing to be.”

  “No, don’t feel bad,” Anabelle said. “It’s just the truth. The parts that’re chopped off of these things? Those go to the tourists. Us locals eat what’s left. I think I’ve had a tail maybe twice in my life.”

  Mary-Tyler tried to imagine her parents picking apart a lobster like this. They always threw away the bodies when they ate whole lobsters. “Well, thanks for doing my dirty work for me,” she said.

  “No problem. I actually enjoy it. It’s kinda like digging for treasure. The stuff is lodged in the cartilage in little shapes.” Anabelle started piling bits of meat on the side of Mary-Tyler’s plate. “Like your ash people.”

  Mary-Tyler grabbed a piece of lobster and put it in her mouth, rolling it around her tongue. It was really sweet and tender. Almost like tail meat. She couldn’t wait to freak out her parents by eating straight from the chest the next time they got lobsters.

  She pictured them right now munching in silence at their long dining-room table and realized she didn’t want the day to end when she and Anabelle were through with their lobster bodies. “Hey, you doing anything after this?” she asked.

  “No,” Anabelle said. “I was just gonna go home. Maybe play piano for a few hours, keep my hands busy. Stop myself from turning into a psycho.”

  Mary-Tyler laughed. “How about I stop you from turning into a psycho.”

  “Okay,” Anabelle said, pulling another body out of the bag. “What’ll we do?”

  “I’m in the mood for something fun. Something I’ve never done before,” Mary-Tyler said. “Like, I’ve always wanted to go on that salt ‘n’ pepper shaker thingy. You know, at Twirly World.”

  “You mean WhirrrlyWorld?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. Those kind of rides make me nauseous.”

  “Okay, let’s stay away from there, then.”

  A seagull separated from his flock and paced back and forth alongside their table, waiting for them to drop bits of their food. Anabelle swung her legs at him and he backed up, but kept staring with beady mustard-yellow eyes. “You know, there is someplace I’ve been thinking about going,” she said. “But it’s sort of... I don’t know, a naughty thing to do.”

  “Ooh,” Mary-Tyler said. “What’s the place?”

  “Actually,” Anabelle said, “maybe we shouldn’t go there. You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

  “I’m gonna think you’re crazier if you don’t tell me already!”

  “Okay.” Anabelle shoved Mary-Tyler’s lobster-filled plate back at her. “It’s the nude beach?” she said, almost like a question.

  “There’s a nude beach here?!” Mary-Tyler said. “How can we not go?”

  “Well, it’s kinda far. Over at the bluffs.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “It doesn’t weird you out?”

  “I’m around nude people all the time back home. Sculpture classes.”

  “All right,” Anabelle said, bobbing her head nervously.

  “That’s what we’ll do then. The nude beach.”

  Mary-Tyler twisted a leg off of her lobster carcass. “I can’t believe you’ve lived here all your life and you’ve never been to the nude beach!”

  “My boyfriend used to go,” Anabelle said defensively.

  “He never wanted me to go with him. I guess he didn’t want me around when he was checking out girls.”

  Mary-Tyler was sure now: this guy had not been Anabelle’s soul mate. Maybe Anabelle hadn’t figured that out for herself yet. But she seemed like a smart girl; it was just a matter of time.

  The sun had dropped a bit since they’d left the beach, and its rays bathed the bluffs in a soft orange glow.

  “Okay, ready?” Anabelle asked as they entered the small parking lot.

  Mary-Tyler carefully rewrapped her towel around her waist, then gave an overly excited “Hell, yeah!” to not come off as prudish.

  There were no nudists in the lot—only a few clothed people loading beach chairs and colorful bags into their trunks. Off to the side, at the edge of the bluffs, were two boys carrying binoculars, maybe twelve years old. Mary-Tyler wondered if the kids would be able to see them in their binoculars once they were down on the beach. But it didn’t matter, right? It’s not like she and Anabelle were gonna get naked or anything; they were just going to look.

  They walked cautiously toward the stairs that led to the bottom of the bluffs. On the railing was a sign on a plank of wood:NO NUDITY IN LOT/STAIRS,

  WAIT TILL ON BEACH!!!

  “Darn, I thought I’d go down the steps naked,” Anabelle said.

  “Yeah,” Mary-Tyler said. “Slide down the banister and get splinter ass!”

  About every fifteen steps there was a landing and a ninety-degree turn. On their descent, they passed a young couple with a picnic basket and three balding guys with hairy backs. Mary-Tyler couldn’t help but imagine all of them without their clothes on.

  When they got to the bottom, they came across their first nudists. An elderly couple shaking sand out of their blanket. They wore only glasses, watches, and sandals. “Evening,” the man said as he leaned over to pick up his newspaper. Even with dusk approaching, there was enough light to see his body clearly: wrinkly rear, sil
very public hair, penis limply poking through the hair.

  “Uh, hi,” Anabelle said awkwardly.

  “Okay,” Mary-Tyler whispered when they’d passed the couple. “This is a little weirder than nude people in sculpting class! Did you see that woman’s boobs? They were sagging so far, she could, like, pick her belly button with her nipples!”

  “Shhhh!” Anabelle whispered, giggling. “That guy was a Polar Bear! I really didn’t need to see him without his trunks.”

  “Polar bear?” Mary-Tyler said. “He looked human to me.”

  “No, the Polar Bear Club,” Anabelle said. “It’s a bunch of crazy old dudes who go swimming in the winter.” Her face reddened. “Plus me.”

  “Wow, that’s rad,” Mary-Tyler said. “I don’t think I’d have the balls to do that.”

  “Well, nobody knows I have the, uh, balls to do that,” Anabelle confided shyly. “You’re the only one I’ve told. I mean, I’ve only gone once, so it’s not a huge deal, but if my friends had known, they would’ve turned it into one.”

  Wow, another secret. Mary-Tyler wanted desperately to return the show of confidence, to tell Anabelle that she wasn’t as stable as she might seem. But how do you say to someone you just met, I think about killing myself almost every second of the day? It was way too heavy.

  They continued down the ribbon of sand that wound around the bluffs, sticking close to the shore. The blankets were spread farther apart here than at the regular beach—but the nudies had all the same things as the clothed people: umbrellas, coolers, radios. And nobody was making any attempt to hide their bodies, no matter what shape they were in. A couple guys with beer guts lay around talking to women with belly-button piercings and tattoos as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Anabelle stood on her toes and held a hand up to Mary-Tyler’s ear. “We should’ve brought sunglasses,” she said. “So we could look without looking like we’re looking.”