by ANN HYMES
“How about tomorrow afternoon?” came the young voice again. “I recommend the afternoon trips this early in the season; they’re warmer.”
“I can’t tomorrow,” Theresa blurted out. “How about the next afternoon?”
“That’s fine,” was the response. “Please be here thirty minutes before the hour. There’s a snack bar onboard. And don’t forget your camera; there’ve been some amazing sightings. The mothers are returning with their calves, and several of our favorites have been spotted.”
Theresa wondered how one could have a favorite whale, much less be able to identify an animal so huge as it moved through the ocean. Whales were mammals, she knew, and delivered live babies, but how did they nurse and nurture their young in deep, dark water? How did a mother feel like a mother under water?
The requirements of motherhood was not a topic Theresa could ponder for long. She had no experience with it. It was a concept, an idea without form. Her own beginnings of carrying a child had not even reached the point of stirring in her belly, and she was left with just the expectation of it, the empty wondering. After the doctor told them she could not carry a child full term, she and Kevin no longer spoke of it.
She paid for her ticket and turned to look out across the bay. It was a seamless expanse of blue as far as she could see, the ripples so subtle they looked solid enough to walk across. She wanted to step out and begin that walk, the aimless wandering toward the distant horizon. How did water know where boundaries were? One ocean blended into the next, sea into bay, inlets capturing turns and bends. The tidy divisions man made on land had no relation to the greater, wet areas of his world. Man’s efforts to control and make rules seemed puny and comical. Man is an arrogant beast, thought Theresa, not even mindful of his insignificance.
The sky offered not a cloud to soften the heat of the afternoon, and Theresa felt damp sand still clinging to her scalp, occasionally falling onto her blouse as it dried. One more roll on the beach and she would have soaked her clothes entirely, leaving her cold, wet, and sandy—instead of just the last. She yearned for a swim, to rinse her body and clear her mind, and wondered whether she could stand the early spring temperature of the water.
She had not gone in beyond her knees at Whimsy Towers and not even worn a proper bathing suit. Several times she had just stepped out of her shorts and waded in her underpants, rationalizing that they looked like a bikini bathing suit bottom anyway. And no one was around to see her slip off her T-shirt as she sunned her bare back lying on a beach towel.
Theresa was not much interested in modesty and couldn’t understand why showing one’s body was so taboo. Kevin had been startled to see her vacuuming without a stick of clothes, but he soon realized some advantages to the practice. Earlier in their marriage, they had often made love on the dining room floor or against the kitchen counter, sometimes without even bothering to turn off the roaring noise of the machine. Once, during a dinner party with some rather dull guests, they had both glanced at the carpet in front of the sideboard at the same time and burst into laughter. Just an hour before, Kevin had dropped his trousers and lowered his naked housecleaner onto the soft, tightly-woven silk carpet, an antique prayer rug. She smiled at remembering how he could be seduced into non-bedroom lovemaking. And she wondered whether she loved him most when she could break his rules.
Theresa got back in her car and drove a short distance along the road close to the water. She was looking for a place to swim. The first opening she saw was a small space between two commercial buildings at the edge of downtown. Several young mothers with fussy toddlers were carrying pails and baskets and mountains of baby gear; they did not look as though they were enjoying their outing.
Theresa considered for a moment whether she really regretted not being tied to child-rearing for twenty or so years. Children certainly provided instant and specific definition to one’s life, precluding the necessity of figuring out some other path. But the loss of time and freedom for the joys of parenthood was a choice not within her control to make. Even a prayer rug and lots of practice could not make it happen.
The traffic thinned, and views of the ocean became more frequent and broad. The wind picked up, and the air was cooler, without the fishy smell that came from the docks in the middle of town. The whale-watching boats were still far out of sight in the ocean, but small fishing vessels and sailboats were close enough to shore to count the number of people on board. Some boats seemed to be at anchor, their fishing poles positioned off the stern; and others trawled slowly, with men in yellow boots ready to haul in the catch. Sails flapped aimlessly on the small sailboats until they got far enough offshore to catch the wind as it billowed northward, and then they lurched forward as if responding to a starting gun in a race.
Water was home to many of these people, Theresa realized. They knew its moods; they loved it; and some probably spent more time on it than on land. She thought of a heavy wool, cable-knit sweater she had bought in Virginia. The salesperson explained to her that the intricate designs of the various sweaters he sold represented different Irish fishing families, distinctive symbols of their clans and heritage. The small Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, where these famous sweaters originated, were a long way from Cape Cod; but she had read that the Portuguese fishermen of the Cape also had unique cable-stitched sweaters, called torcidos. When men were lost at sea, their bodies could be identified by these family sweaters when they finally washed ashore. It was a rather grisly prospect and sad to think that some fishermen could not even swim, but stories in the abstract suddenly felt real. Theresa looked out on the scene before her and imagined the fishermen in their warm sweaters as winter winds howled and their boats rocked at the whim of the ocean and its storms.
Her mother had never been found. No sweater had brought an end to her father’s and grandmother’s anxious hope for her safety or confirmation that hope was lost. They had had to accept loss by default. As time passed, there was no other choice. There was no body to bury, no closure—only stubborn imagining of the horror of her death, alone with the raging sea she could not outwit or outrun. It had snapped her boat and carried her away.
“I miss you, Mom,” Theresa said aloud, realizing how odd the word felt on her lips. The imagining of a mother had been in her mind and heart all her life, but coming to the Cape had somehow brought the meaning closer, and she felt the connection to a love and belonging that reached deep inside her. “Dad did a good job,” she continued. “You’d have been proud.” Tears began to form, and she alternated hands on the steering wheel with wiping her eyes. “He never wanted to be with anyone else. He loved us both so completely, right up to the end.”
Theresa slowed the car and let her thoughts drift back to childhood memories of her father and his devotion to raising her. There had been no bitterness or heavy sense of duty, just the acceptance of the path life provided and the joy of following it. “Blossom where you’re planted,” he’d say to her when she grumbled about classes or situations she didn’t want to be in. He had little patience with self-pity. There was no room for regret and no benefit in wallowing. He taught his daughter to stretch and grow and give, without dragging the past along like a dead albatross. “Value the past for what it has taught you,” he’d caution, “but don’t stifle the present with it or sour the future. Do your best this day.”
It was his mantra: do your best. He never condemned her, and she never felt she’d not measured up to his expectations, even with the frustration of algebra and the disaster of violin lessons. Like a careful gardener who watches his plants grow but does not pull them up to check their roots, he cultivated the good in the seed he had sown.
Theresa thought how her father expressed so many of the qualities often associated with motherhood: tenderness, patience, nurturing, compassion. He was not at all embarrassed to show his feelings of caring and to actively guide his child with gentleness as well as firmness. She wondered whether
she and Kevin as parents could have done as well together as her father had done alone. Working out the balance of parenting between two people required sharing responsibilities; her father had had to juggle them all.
Before she and Kevin learned that sexual compatibility did not necessarily produce the outcome of babies, they had assumed that children would come. They had wanted to start a family after he finished law school, and the plan was perfectly laid out, with sensible steps sensibly spaced. The order of it all was a little too precise and predictable for Theresa, however.
On April 1st of the last year in law school, she had leaned over her bowl of fettuccini at dinner and, looking straight into her husband’s tired blue eyes, said, “Kevin, I’ve got some news.” He looked up at her, not quite giving his full attention.
“I’m pregnant,” she said simply.
The forkful of noodles that was midway to his mouth dropped to the plate, and his arm fell with a thump that tipped the slippery mass onto the table, a rented table of the furniture and life that wasn’t their own. “What?” he blurted out incredulously, jumping up and looking to see whether his lap was spattered with pasta.
“How could that be?” he gasped.
“The usual way.” She smiled at her confused husband.
“But Theresa, we planned … We agreed … I don’t have a job or even …” She could see he was not finding anything good about this surprise. The order of things was disrupted, and he couldn’t handle any more stress or a change in their outline for the future.
“Aren’t you happy?” she asked, watching him sit down but not touching the mess on the table between them.
“Of course I’m happy. It’s just that …” He was only six weeks from the end of school, and passing the bar loomed large on his immediate agenda. He fell silent with his thoughts.
“Kevin … honey … I’m just kidding. April Fool!” She put her hand on his arm as it rested on the edge of the table. “April Fool.”
“‘April Fool’?” he roared suddenly, like a lion startled awake by a poke in the ribs. “April Fool, indeed! Come here, you rascal!” He grabbed her hand before she could pull it off his arm, and he reached across the spillage to catch her other wrist. Rising and pulling her up out of her chair, he tightened his grip on her and taunted her with a mischievous, “April Fool, April Fool to you!”
His arms locked around her, and she felt his body pressing hard into hers. The taste of garlic passed between them as they kissed, and any interest in pasta was left behind.
“Kevin, we can’t,” she whispered, her breath quickening. “I’m not prepared.”
He didn’t stop or even hesitate, as they shifted and loosened their clothes. He lifted her almost off the ground, her feet barely touching the floor. Reaching both his hands under her, he pulled her firmly up onto him, and she wrapped her legs around his body. The logic of planning and the demands of school melted in the heat of the moment, and Theresa soared in the explosion of closeness with the man she loved. Their careful timetable for family was a distant idea; let the gods decide. Neither could control the urge to tempt fate.
Kevin laughed as they finally caught their breath and began to relax. “Guess this is an April Fool’s Day to remember! And happy birthday! I may have given you a long-term gift!” He lowered her to her feet, kissing her forehead.
“You’re more of a gambler than I gave you credit for,” Theresa replied, straightening her clothes and running her hand through his rumpled hair. She loved the feel of his thick, curly hair and wondered for a moment whether they’d just conceived a child that might have those same curls. But no child came from that day’s reckless lovemaking, and as the years rolled along and the timing seemed right, still no child came. A medical diagnosis finally dashed their hopes.
• • •
Theresa rehearsed the two episodes of intimacy from the past two hours—one in imagination and one from a law school memory in their tiny kitchen. She tried to sort out the details of remembering and assign feelings to both a daydream and a fact of history. She knew that fantasy was the devil of desire, but sometimes the past blurred with wishful thinking. The two incidents began to combine in her thoughts, the rolling, the lifting, the passion, the release. Could she leave routine for uncertainty? She knew she loved Kevin the most when he least expected it, when the lawyer was off-guard.
Time and common sense would sort this out, she figured, gripping the wheel with both hands. She hoped that impulse would be tempered by reason and that her instincts would not fly off course for fleeting moments of escape. Could she have a child with another man?
Theresa sighed and watched seagulls hover over one of the fishing boats as it approached the harbor. Some squawked mean-sounding alarms of territorial warning, and others followed patiently, almost meekly. They circled and glided, diving occasionally to the water’s surface for a quick try at a fish or floating tidbit. The birds established their own pecking order, and the march to the hunt was led by the bold. Theresa wondered whether seagulls dealt with disappointment, whether the stronger helped the weak, and whether birds who could not bear young were left behind.
She suddenly wanted to get back to Chatham. Was Whimsy Towers home? Sand cascaded from her hair. The leather car seat felt gritty, as if an hourglass had split open and scattered its measured time. She drove on, blind to the passing dunes and sea grasses, and deaf to the call of the ocean. The siren voice she heard was that of motherhood. She yearned for a child.
Red Rover swallowed up the road as its driver headed south with singular determination. The day’s planned outing had been delayed, and Theresa no longer wanted to stop and pass time without purpose. She could have a swim at home. The privacy of her own beach would be a welcome prospect after the real and imagined encounters of the afternoon.
When Theresa reached the house, Gypsy was anxious to be let out, and they walked together across the lawn and down to the beach. As she stepped onto the warm sand, Theresa kicked off her sandals and dropped her sweatshirt. Continuing toward the water, she slipped out of her shorts as she walked, leaving them where they dropped. Next came her T-shirt and then the camisole, each falling to the sand in the short trek to the ocean. Before she reached the water’s edge, she stepped out of her panties.
The cool water covered her red toenails and gradually reached her knees, slowly engulfing her with the shock of turning cold. She was exposed and vulnerable, her bare skin feeling the contest of the hot sun against the icy ocean. She dove deeply and then shook her head hard as she surfaced. Sand floated and swirled; her weightless body curled and turned. She wanted both to get out and to go deeper. She wanted to feel warm and safe and yet welcomed the raw chill of being naked and at one with the water. Theresa drifted slowly away from Whimsy Towers toward her neighbor’s empty house. The trail of her abandoned clothes disappeared from sight as she relaxed and let the caressing waves envelop and carry her.
She didn’t hear the truck that pulled up next to her house. She was numb and content, watching clouds drift into formations as she kicked and followed their changing shapes. What she did see was her dog racing up the beach, without barking, to meet the visitor in a truck with a shiny hood ornament.
Theresa could see the man stoop to rub Gypsy’s neck, and she knew it was Rick. She was relieved it was not the uninvited guest in the boathouse, but she was still far from land and her clothes. He continued to pet and talk to her dog, not looking her way.
After the one-sided conversation she could not hear, she saw Rick stand up and head toward the porch. She could hear him calling, “Theresa! Hello! Anybody here?” He paused to look at the lilac bushes and then knocked on the door, repeating his call louder. She watched him gingerly open the door and go in, wishing she were there to offer him coffee.
When he finally came out, Theresa realized she had no plan. She wanted to call out to him, but she didn’t dare call attention to herself.
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Rick stood with his hands on hips, looking around. He and Gypsy walked briskly across the lawn, dog legs doing double pace to meet Rick’s long stride. As the grass crested above the beach, he stopped, and Theresa could see him looking at the water, searching for her. She knew she just looked like a head with curly brown hair bobbing in the calm water, but she hesitated to acknowledge him. He stood watching for a moment and then waved. She did not respond but began swimming slowly in his direction. He walked toward the water, smiling and waving both his arms. The urge to wade out and meet him was overruled by the obvious dilemma at hand, but he continued towards her. Overhead, a brilliant blue sky with puffs of carefree clouds stretched in all directions.
She saw him look down at her crumpled sweatshirt on the beach. Then he stepped over her T-shirt. Next came the discarded shorts in the sand. He stopped abruptly when the dry sand turned wet from waves and he saw her silky underpants at the edge of the water. She had only a moment to wonder whether he had figured out the situation, for he turned abruptly and headed back to his truck. He didn’t stop to pet Gypsy or look back.
Chapter Nine
RICK’S WORK BOOTS had left deep imprints in the sand, and Theresa retraced his steps as she emerged from the water, cold, refreshed, excited. He was leaving fingerprints on her life. That night she slept without a nightgown. After the freedom of swimming with no bathing suit, she’d worn only a thin cover-up for the rest of the day, and then slipped naked between the soft sheets. The nights were wonderful at Whimsy Towers—crisp, breezy, and fragrant with a mixture of pine and salt air. A faint hint of blossoms teased its way into the wind, and birds were silent only when the darkness demanded quiet.
She’d gone to bed realizing that another odd incident with Rick was keeping her from calling him about the yard work. She was certain he had been the man standing on the beach, and she wondered why he’d come back to the house. He did not call, and she waited in order to examine her own motives. Did she want him as a gardener or a lover? She had never had either.