Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “I’ve learned from them.”

  “What have you learned?”

  “See where the water is glistening from the sun?”

  I looked out at the Gulf of Mexico and saw a perfect pathway on the surface of the water. I nodded.

  “It’s there at night, too, from the moon. There are always steps we can take, no matter how down we feel or how bad things become, steps that will lead us to survival. After you left for the store, I called a doctor over in Fort Myers today. I made myself an appointment. I’m going to find help,” she said. “Making that call was my first glistening step. Getting out of the house to watch this sunset was my second.”

  “I’m proud of you,” I said. “And I believe in you. I believe you’ll find the help you need. And I think I’ll store what you just said about that glistening pathway in my own jar of wisdom so if ever I need to, I can pull it out and apply it.”

  She smiled, and so did I.

  XXXVI

  THE NEXT MORNING, IT felt good to be sipping my coffee with Coke can-sized rollers still in my hair. Rushing off to work every morning back home never allowed me time to primp and pamper myself, and besides, no one cares what a newspaperwoman looks like.

  I walked outside Bougainvillea and sat down on the front steps where nearby birds were singing and ruffling their feathers ready to mate. Their chirps were like nourishment to my soul, and I regretted having been so mentally focused at work that I never had time but to swear at the pigeons that pooped on me back in Chicago.

  Allowing Josh to dig his claws into my heart all these years wasn’t good, either, and I could hardly wait to pry him loose and get on with my life. There had been men whistling at me back home and maybe after this trip I’d start paying them attention. They were many.

  “You rolled your hair last night,” Marlena said when she joined me with her coffee on the steps.

  “I want to look good tonight,” I said. “Josh plays over at the Olive Shell, and I’m going there for closure.”

  “Why do you care how you look if you’re going for closure?”

  “So I feel better when I walk away.”

  There was silence but for the birds singing, and then, “Do you still love him?”

  “After all this time? Of course not,” I said, ashamed that I had loved someone for so long without seeing him.

  “I still love someone I haven’t seen in decades,” she said. “But I only love him a little bit. I’ve mostly moved on.”

  “Who? You’ve never told me. I never wanted to pry, but I’ve wondered.”

  “I’ll tell you one of these days,” she said. “But not now.”

  If she wanted to revisit that time and the man she once loved, she would have shared her story, and I would have given her center stage, listening attentively, knowing she wasn’t preaching or telling me what to do about Josh, but relating maybe, by telling me a story from her own life, a moment she felt like reliving. But she wasn’t ready or didn’t feel the need. I didn’t know which.

  Shortly after breakfast I changed into my new hip-riding baby-doll bikini and walked to the beach, quickly learning from the humidity that rolling my hair the night before had been illogical thinking.

  I spent a couple of hours sitting by the shore, allowing the sun to lighten the dark circles under my eyes and add color to my skin. I walked a little, watching for shells, and then down where the water could touch my toes. And when I returned to the blanket, I fell asleep, I think, or at least I entered a relaxed state. When I woke, I reminded myself why I came and what I had yet to accomplish on this trip. Closure.

  Marlena helped me wash and roll my hair again, and then I sat for one hour under her dryer trying to relax my nerves. I had brought along a book, Feminine Mystique, and tried reading it. Shortly after my trip, I was scheduled to interview author Betty Friedan about what her book had done. Overnight, it had lassoed women into action, questioning why society had them giving up their dreams and quitting jobs they didn’t want, but jobs men allowed them to take, and once they got married, giving up all ambition outside of the home. Reading it now before seeing Josh, I figured, might keep me from giving in to his handsome charm. I knew it was important for me to read as much of it as I could before seeing him. But reading was difficult under the dryer. I had to hold my head upright, which meant I had to hold the book smack up to my face. I tried watching television, but couldn’t hear a thing. The monster dryer was loud as a freight train.

  “Do you happen to have any electric rollers?” I shouted to Marlena.

  “No, they don’t give the poof you get from wet rolled and dried. Tonight is too important, babe.”

  It had been some time since I last paid any attention to putting makeup on and styling my hair, and I had forgotten that I could look anything other than exhausted, overworked, and stressed. Marlena insisted on nothing but big curvy curls, so she criss-crossed my hair in front, pulled it behind my ears, and pinned it at my nape into flatteringly saucy, open curls and so on.

  “Remember, I’m going for closure and not to get closer,” I reminded her.

  “Of course,” she said. “But you’re going to walk away feeling like a million-dollar star. That’s all I’m trying to do here. Now what are you planning to wear?”

  “I don’t know. I hate my wardrobe. It’s conservative and professional and boxy like a man’s.”

  “Go look through mine. A movie star always has something to wear.”

  And she did. Her closet was sufficient for Marilyn Monroe. I chose a daring dress with cutouts and vinyl, one that displayed the stilt-like legs I’d forgotten I had.

  A couple of hours later I sat down at a small round table in the back corner of the Olive Shell, alone but confident, like a journalist surrounded in her mind by the questions she wanted to ask and the information she was collecting. I sat there with purpose. Purpose does keep one company. The lights were dim, and the waiter said the band had been on a ten-minute break and was just about to start back up again.

  And, when it did, I sipped my martini and recognized features of the boy whose cheeks once puffed awkwardly out while practicing that day under the coconut tree a long time ago. A journalist is trained to see details. So I noticed his sun-drenched face. Oh, and the cleft in his chin.

  A journalist also sees the story behind the appearance. His years of fish and song had aged him well. He was handsome in a rugged way, softened by that cleft in his chin. I ordered another martini and then placed my hand over my chest. My heart was dancing within me.

  “Stay objective. Don’t be moved by anything you see up there,” I scolded myself under my breath, then sipped my drink. “You’re a journalist, not a romance writer.”

  The band asked if anyone in the audience had any requests. I could stay in my chair no longer. I had to do something. I came to get closer, I reminded myself. No, Ding Dong, I corrected myself. You came to get closure. But it was turning out to be harder than I imagined.

  I walked around tables that were in my way, rummaging through my mind as I went, trying to think of a song I might request by the time I got up there. A woman should always think up a song first and then walk up to the stage. I stood at the foot of the stage with the band waiting and the audience staring, yet I could think of not a single song. It was as if all the music of the world had died from my mind and never existed in the first place. A song? Music? What’s that?

  There was a deadly silence. My stubborn heart didn’t care. I could feel it twirling and leaping inside. And finally my mind started returning to me, conjuring up the names of musical artists. Elvis. Ritchie Valens—he died in a plane crash in 1959. It had been a sad obituary. I wanted to kick myself. But instead I looked Josh directly in his eyes and whispered, “Hi. I just came to say ‘hi.’ Remember me?”

  “Of course I do, Lydia,” he said. And a moment later, “Have you got a request?”

  “‘Raining in My Heart’?”

  “We can do that.”

  Josh nodded at the
band and I returned to my seat where I ordered one more martini for the night. After six more songs, the band started putting their instruments away, and Josh joined me at the table. We talked. He was sorry to hear of my father’s death. I told him all about my first job writing obituaries. We talked about the weather in Chicago. I asked him what it was like surviving Hurricane Donna. Neither of us mentioned why our letters had ended. I started breezing over things that had happened in the news and things making headlines now. It was a topic I was comfortable with, even after three martinis, I discovered. I hoped I didn’t sound like a rambling headline:

  PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES FOCUSING ON ANTI-COMMUNISM. SECRET INVASIONS. THE BAY OF PIGS AND AMERICA BECOMING CUBA’S ARCHENEMY. EVIDENCE OF SOVIET MISSLE SITES IN CUBA. AMERICA AND THE SOVIET UNION ON BRINK OF WAR. ESCALATION IN VIETNAM. ANTI-GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATIONS BY BUDDHIST MONKS PROVOKE VIOLENT REPRISALS AND IN PROTEST, NUMEROUS MONKS COMMIT SUICIDE BY SETTING THEMSELVES AFIRE.

  He talked about the news along with me, but I ended the conversation when I remembered why I had come, to scrape my heart clean of Josh so I might return to my life in the city with no remnants of him within me.

  “You’re doing exactly what you wanted to do with your life,” Josh said when I stopped bringing up current affairs. “It’s impressive, Lydia. You’re like a real, living, breathing, talking newspaper.”

  “Thank you,” I said, covering my mouth with my hands. Then I laughed. “I’m not usually. I mean …” I shook my head. I felt foolish. I didn’t want him thinking that news was my life, my passion, all that I focused on over the last several years. But it was. “I am entrenched in all of this stuff at work,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s hard to turn it off in a short weekend away.”

  “What a world to be living in,” he said.

  “I know I’ve rambled on about mine. Tell me about yours,” I said.

  “No complaints.”

  “You live in a quiet world. Quiet and beautiful, don’t you?”

  He smirked and looked away. It was then that I saw him as the boy I once loved and the man I wanted to get to know.

  “Josh,” I said. “I could use a good dose of your world. Share it with me, will you? Show me a piece of your world tonight.”

  His eyes searched mine.

  “That is, if you don’t have any other plans,” I added.

  “What do you have in mind, Lydia?”

  “How about fishing. I’d love to go fishing.”

  As we left the Olive Shell together, I feared that maybe my plan for closure wasn’t going the way I intended it to, and I wondered, as he took hold of my hand in the parking lot, if maybe there might be a chapter in Feminine Mystique outlining what a mixed-up woman like myself should do next in regard to a man. Or what she ought to do when that rare and wonderful sort of man comes around. Maybe there is an alternative set of rules to follow when a man like Josh shows up, or maybe a chapter I hadn’t read yet.

  He wasn’t like the typical man out there. He was impressed by my career aspirations. He always had been, way back on the boat that day when I told him I planned to become a journalist. And still, tonight, he asked with interest about my work and, then, he complimented how far I had gone.

  As the boat made its way across the black vastness of water, we talked enough to fill the pages of a newspaper for an entire week, but not about news; we talked about life and nature and things I hadn’t talked about with anyone, ever. And when the boat stopped out in the black depths, somewhere near Boca Grande, there was a comfortable silence as we listened for tarpon.

  “Shhh. Over there,” Josh said some time later and pointed to the water in front of the boat. “You hear it? You hear that tarpon breathing?”

  I listened. “No,” I answered, only paying attention to his breath close beside me.

  I put my arm around him and he then turned and put his hands around my waist and pulled me close for the first time this night, and now I could feel him breathing. He slowly pulled the white gloves I had borrowed from Marlena off my fingers. “Forget the tarpon,” he said, grinning. “How do I go about securing a woman like you?”

  I know I should have been able to retrieve somewhere in my mind a quote, a chapter from Feminine Mystique, anything that might help me turn from him or slap him across the face, but instead, I simply laughed. “Show me your fishing pole and bait,” I said, well aware that the author of that book would probably cancel the interview I had set with her had she heard that coming from my mouth.

  “I thought you didn’t like bait,” he continued.

  And he was right. He didn’t need anything to lure me closer. I was already there within his reach. And I liked it. There was no battle, no acrobats, and the only silver soon to be thrashing about was the chain on his neck. He had secured a silver queen!

  As the boat approached Sanibel about an hour before the sun would rise, I knew our time was coming to an end. It was Saturday night, and come Sunday, I’d be flying back to Chicago.

  “I’ve got piles of work waiting for me on my desk. Monday is going to be a bad day,” I said. “And I’ve got a big interview with the author of this book called Feminine Mystique. Have you heard of it?”

  “Nope.” He turned quiet and serious.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “What are you thinking?”

  He stared straight ahead, not turning to look at me and said, “You know damn well that tarpons are released after the capture, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But why are you bringing that up now?”

  “Do you regret fishing?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I answered. “I haven’t had a night like this in a long time.” He was quiet as he tied the boat to the dock. “I needed a night where I wasn’t thinking about headlines and deadlines and things I had to do come morning, a night so quiet I could hear a fish breathing.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to live in a noisy world like yours.”

  “Josh,” I said, disturbed. “Why do you say that? It’s not all bad.”

  He shook his head and looked at his watch. “We’re back later than I planned. I’ve got a lot of minutia to take care of this morning,” he said, not bothering to offer me a hand as I hopped off the boat behind him.

  “You no longer offer ladies a hand getting off a boat?” I asked.

  “Sorry. Didn’t want to offend you.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “Because I make my own money and pay my own bills you assume I don’t want physical help getting off a boat?”

  “You’re looking way too into it,” he said. “That’s not the case.”

  “Then what is the case?” I asked following him up to his truck.

  “I think we’re both tired,” he said. “You should try to get sleep. I’ve got to get going. Like I said, we’re getting back later than I had wanted, and I’ve got a lot of things going on.” He opened the passenger door of his truck for me.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’d rather walk.”

  “Fine by me. That’s your choice.” He walked around to the other side and got in. “Look,” he said. “I know the sun will be out in about five minutes, but I don’t feel good letting you walk back.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “It’s what I want right now. I’ll be fine.”

  “Whatever suits you,” he said, then kissed me on the cheek.

  He climbed into his truck and drove away. As I walked in the direction of Bougainvillea, I tried figuring out what had gone wrong. Maybe it was because I was returning to Chicago and work on Monday. The thought of it, mixed with the martinis from the night before, churned in my stomach as I rerouted myself to the beach instead. I sat in the sand, watching the sunrise while feeling unsettled.

  What is it about the reliable sunrise? A morning watching it paint the sky into a masterpiece brings my desires back to one thing: wanting beauty in my life. I jumped up from the sand and let my head hang as far back as it would go on my neck, like a flower bent from its stem. I co
uld feel the tension from my chin to my chest as I took a deep breath. “I know exactly what I must do,” I muttered under my breath as I lifted my head upright again and smiled out at the water.

  “Marlena,” I called out as I ran through her door. “I’ve got some news for you.”

  “It better be good because I was worried out of my wits about you. I know I’m not old enough to be your mother, or am I? Oh, let’s not do the calculations. Where were you all night, young lady?”

  “I am so sorry,” I said. “I should have called.”

  “Yes, you should have. But did you get the closure you came for?”

  “No,” I said. “The other one.”

  “Closer? Oh, Lydia, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Maybe you can help.”

  “How?”

  “I’m thinking of staying. But I don’t know. I’ve got my career back there, which I could also have here. And if I return there, feeling the way I feel about him now, how am I ever going to date anyone else? The last thing I want to do is one day finding myself married to one person while I love another. I don’t want to do what Ava did.”

  “Have you told Josh how you feel?”

  “He has no idea.”

  She stared at me like I was a ding-a-ling. “Then go!” she said. “Go tell him. What are you waiting for? Learn from her, dear. Learn from Ava before it’s too late. Tell that guy you love him!”

  I started for the door, and then stopped. “I thought you said stories aren’t passed on from one generation to the next with the intent of telling the younger ones what to do.”

  “True, but if the younger ones are at all wise, they’ll pick up on a lesson or two here or there.”

  XXXVII

  THE MORNING HAD TURNED humid and sticky by the time I drove up to the marina and parked my car at a sloppy angle. Max was hosing down his dock when I walked up and said hello.