by Anita Shreve
The table ponders the future, which does indeed look grim. Mrs. Edwards sets her jaw (one imagines a sharp dressing-down later in the privacy of the marital bedroom). “You’ll scare the children, Mark,” she says. “And you’re ruining a perfectly lovely dinner.”
Mr. Edwards studies his wife from the length of the walnut table. “Why would our children not want to know what the future holds?” he asks ingenuously. “Besides, I’m not saying anything Ben and Jeff don’t already know. Jeff, I imagine, could tell us all a thing or two.”
One imagines Jeff could tell them a thing or two or three, though he seems disinclined to do so.
“Sox playing tonight?” Ben asks.
“Oh, ho, we’re in Sox territory here!” Art says with mock fright, grabbing playfully at his wife’s wrist. “Who’s pitching?”
Mr. Edwards and Sydney stand to collect the dishes, as they do each night. Mr. Edwards says, Wait a minute, and returns from the kitchen with a large black garbage bag. He holds it open and makes the rounds, the diners sliding the remains of the meal—shells, bodies, green tomalley, red roe—into the plastic sack, trying not to splash any of the lobster liquor onto their clothing. Sydney collects the deep tin plates, on which the red crustaceans have been enameled (another Emporia find) and backs through the swinging door to the kitchen. Each time she emerges again into the dining room, fewer people are sitting at the table. First Julie leaves. Then Ben and Jeff. Finally only Mrs. Edwards and her guests remain.
Mr. Edwards and Sydney have perfected a routine in the kitchen. Mr. Edwards soaks the silverware in a wide-mouth ceramic vase kept on the counter for the purpose. He rinses each plate and sets it in the sink. Sydney wonders if he’s still pondering the paper bag he would vote for in order to unseat an incumbent president. Sydney’s task, at which she is very good, is to stack the dishwasher as efficiently as possible so that only one load is necessary.
She sets the glasses in an upper plastic-coated wire trough, flips down the rack, and puts the ramekins on top. When she is finished, not another item could be squeezed into the appliance. She turns the dials and shuts the dishwasher with her hip. She listens for the quiet hum of the water draining. In the two years since Daniel died, she has had to learn all over again the satisfying pleasure of household tasks completed: a grocery list checked off, two errands accomplished in a single afternoon, dishwasher-loading as performance art.
“I’ll do the tablecloth,” she says, looking for further occupation.
“I’ll warm the pies.”
Sydney can see spots of lobster juice on Mr. Edwards’s pale green polo shirt, other discolorations from previous washes. She senses a reluctance on his part to greet his guests on the porch, where pie and coffee will be served. Perhaps he isn’t wild about Art.
Sydney scrubs the bright-blue-and-red oilcloth while it is still on the table. Then she rinses and scrubs it again. When she took the cloth, used only for lobster dinners, out of the drawer earlier in the evening, an unpleasant smell of old dinners rose to her nostrils. Rotted fish. Congealed butter.
Sydney is on her second rinse when Ben enters the room. He takes the dry dish towel dangling from her left hand and polishes the tablecloth in her wake.
“Thank you,” she says as their fingers meet on the first round of stretch-and-fold, the heavy oilcloth dangling below them.
“No, thank you,” Ben insists. He takes the cloth from her and expertly stretches it again and makes a perfect second fold. He folds and folds until it is the size of a flag given to a widow.
“Want to go night surfing?” he asks.
Sydney is confused. Does he mean surf casting? Surfing on boards?
“Sure,” she says.
“Wear your suit under your clothes. My mother hates it when we do this.”
Sydney heads upstairs to her room, a small chamber papered in pale azure with miniature cream roses, the woodwork and the narrow beds painted white. In the daytime, through the sole window, Sydney can see the ocean. If she sits on one of the beds to read, which she often does in the late afternoon (allowing the Edwardses to think that she is napping), she has an ocean-liner view. On the middle ledge of the window is a tall cobalt-blue bottle with a gull’s feather in its opening. To one side is an enameled red chair, and near it two shallow closets. Sydney is puzzled by the two closets side by side and has come up with no satisfactory explanation. One for suits; one for casual wear? One for dresses; one for nightgowns? One for her; one for him?
Sydney likes her room and thinks it perfect for the time being. It reminds her of old photographs of hospital rooms with women in starched wimples and aprons tending to patients on beds with sheets tightly drawn.
She shakes the sand from her black tank suit into the wastebasket. She puts it on and covers it with the shirt and shorts she wore at dinner. She sticks her feet into her flip-flops and descends the stairs, announcing her arrival with her sandals. Everyone has gathered on the porch, most with plates in hand. Forks are in motion. Jeff and Ben are leaning against the railing, having refused dessert.
“We thought we’d take Sydney for a walk,” Ben says.
Mrs. Edwards turns and looks at Sydney, perhaps sensing something illicit in Ben’s announcement, however innocently delivered. She opens her mouth and closes it again. Maybe she was going to ask Sydney if she had finished the dishes.
“Take a flashlight,” Mr. Edwards says.
Ben holds aloft a Maglite heavy enough to kill a man.
Ben switches on the light for the walk along the boardwalk and the descent of the stairs, but then he switches it off.
“Best to let your eyes adjust,” he says. “Leave your shoes here.”
Sydney steps out of the flip-flops and sets them on the bottom step. As if by prior arrangement, she walks between the two brothers. The something illicit begins to molt, unleashing in Sydney a sensation close to giddiness. It seems that any minute now, one of the brothers will take off running, challenging the other to a race.
They head down the beach, the sand cool underfoot. The voices on the porch recede at once, muffled by the white noise of the surf. Sydney watches her legs, out of sync with the brothers’ longer strides. There’s a half-moon in the sky, some lights from the cottages along the beach.
“You’ll be able to see the surf once your eyes adjust,” Jeff says.
“You guys do this often?” she asks.
“It’s kind of a first-night ritual,” Ben answers.
“Even if it’s raining?” Sydney asks. “Even if it’s cold?”
“The trick is to keep your feet planted when you stand,” Jeff says. “That way, you can feel the direction of the undertow.”
“You’ll be amazed at how well you’ll be able to see,” Ben adds.
Sydney has no choice but to take his word for it. Already, she has stepped on something sharp she might have avoided in the daylight. Perhaps he is right, though, for she can see a ruffle of white along the shoreline.
“We’ll leave our clothes here,” Ben says, stopping suddenly. “The tide’s coming in.”
“How do you find your clothes afterwards?” Sydney asks.
Beside her, she can just make out the shape of a man drawing his shirt over his head. She steps out of her shorts and begins to unbutton her blouse. Only by height can she tell the brothers apart, Ben having an inch, two inches, on Jeff.
“Are you afraid?” Jeff asks.
“No,” Sydney says, her answer pure bravado. And then she wonders if perhaps she has disappointed the brothers, fear being half the fun.
The water, when it hits Sydney’s feet, is a vise around her ankles. She lets out an involuntary yelp.
“If you get into trouble,” Ben says, “just stand up and holler. One of us will hear you.”
He touches her lightly on the shoulder. She turns and tries to see his face, but she can’t. Not really.
“But you won’t get into trouble,” he reassures her, letting his hand fall to his side.
Sydn
ey watches as he runs forward to meet the ocean, high-stepping over the surf. “First one in. . .,” he calls and instantly both brothers are gone, swallowed up by the waves. No wonder Mrs. Edwards doesn’t like this, Sydney thinks.
Sydney feels shells and small pebbles being sucked beneath her feet. She lets her calves go numb and then her thighs. She hears a hoot, one brother calling to another. She sees the white curling edges of a wave coming and dives into it, letting its force wash over her. When she stands, the ocean seems to empty out at her knees. She shakes her head, wiping the salt from her eyes.
“You catch one yet?” someone calls.
“No,” Sydney answers.
“Go for it.”
There is nothing but cold and surf, shifting sand beneath her feet. She is hit suddenly from the side and understands that already she is disoriented. She searches for the line of lights from the cottages in the distance. A wave hits her from behind and pushes her down into the water. She scrapes her shoulder hard. She hears another hoot from one brother to the other.
Simple tasks seem monumental, distances extreme, like learning to walk after a long illness. When the water level is just below her waist, she listens for a coming swell. She lets one pass and then another. She plants her feet and watches as a wave advances, showing its white teeth. With years of body memory, Sydney leaps onto the crest, her timing perfect.
A roar in her ears, the utter black of the water. She has no power, none at all, and couldn’t release herself from the wave even if she wanted to. The surge seems a living thing that has no purpose but to carry her along at tremendous speed. She has never felt so frightened, so exhilarated.
She flails, arches her back, and takes a breath. She is beached, the sand giving way beneath her. She tries to stand.
“My god,” she says, wiping the water from her eyes.
“You okay?” Ben asks, apparently beached as well.
“That was unbelievable.”
And then Ben is gone, eager for another ride. Sydney searches for Jeff but cannot see him. It occurs to her that drowning here would be easier than anyone has let on. A certain death with no hope of rescue.
Sydney learns the night topography of the ocean as a hunter might the night woods. She rides a second wave and a third and then too many to count. Occasionally, she calls out and receives a reassuring response.
“I’m staggering,” Sydney cries after a time. Her legs barely keep her upright. She wants to sink to her knees and let the waves wash over her. Crawl out onto dry land and sleep there.
“One more,” someone yells.
Sydney faces the ocean. A sense of mild competition, perhaps of pride, pushes her forward. She will not be the first to quit. She shivers in a sudden east wind (now the east wind) and hugs her arms. She propels herself forward. She swings her legs and body from side to side, trying to make headway. Again, she waits for what she thinks will be a good wave. In the distance, she can see it coming, the white lace. She points her arms and stands poised. When it is just upon her, she sails onto its crest.
Again, the blackness all around her, the sense of speed. She feels a shape, flesh, beneath her. The flesh slithers the length of her body, touching her, feeling her. She tries to force herself out of the surge, but she can’t. She would scream if she could.
She fights to get up onto her knees. There is water in her mouth and nose. She rises, then stumbles. She has to crawl out of the water.
Was it a fish? she wonders, her heart pumping hard. A shark?
She replays the touch in her mind. She remembers the slither along her right breast, her stomach, her pubic bone, her thigh. The touch fleeting, and yet deliberate. She is certain now that it was a hand. She plays the memory again. The touch would have been difficult to accomplish and was thus intentional.
She stands on the beach, unwilling to call out. Her arms are gooseflesh, the feathers recently plucked. She doesn’t know where her clothes are, how far the swells have pushed the three of them along the beach. There are lighted windows to her left and right as far as she can see. She could walk up to the seawall and hug it to the Edwardses’ cottage. But then she would have to step onto the porch without her clothes, her suit and hair wet, her feet sandy.
It might have been a fish, she thinks.
“Hey,” a voice calls. “Sydney?”
“I’m here,” she answers, and then clears her throat. “I’m here,” she calls again.
She waits until she sees a shape walking toward her.
She could ask: Was it you?
The touch, she is certain now, a stolen one. Not meant to be identified.
She waits for the shape to announce itself. Ben is staggering, too.
“Wow,” he says. “That was fantastic.”
“Where’s Jeff?” Sydney asks.
Ben calls for his brother, waits an interval, and calls again. Jeff returns the call, but faintly, his ship beached quite a bit farther along the shore than Sydney’s.
“You’re cold,” Ben says, reaching out an arm.
“No, I’m fine,” Sydney says, slipping out from under him.
Ben, then, Sydney guesses. Jeff is simply too far away.
Chapter 3
The next morning, the fog imprisons. Vigorous wisps rush through posts in the railing, sentries surrounding the house. The mist drips off the screen in rivulets, the air itself turning liquid. An asthmatic could be forgiven for thinking he might drown. In less than ten minutes the shoreline disappears. The entire Atlantic Ocean disappears. Sydney can hear the surf but not see it. A visitor coming to the house would have to take the view on faith.
Sydney feels sorry for the family that lives just a quarter mile down the road on the beach. She has seen the tent erected, the sign in the driveway announcing The Christopher/Rapp Wedding. She imagines an outdoor wedding planned and wonders if the guests will be able to see the bride at the makeshift altar. Expensive coiffures will be undone in seconds.
The brothers go for a run together. Sydney avoids them in the hallway. She has generally been expert in her timing, managing to arrive in the kitchen after the Edwardses have breakfasted but before the guests have come down. When Sydney enters the kitchen, there are crumbs next to the toaster, an uncovered butter dish on the counter, plates with the residue of sliced pears in the sink. A coffee cup, the rings already drawn, sits at the edge of the island, suggesting Ben stood to drink his breakfast. How does Sydney know that it is Ben, of all of them, who might stand to drink his breakfast?
The small gravel driveway just beyond the back door is thick with cars: Mrs. Edwards’s maroon Volvo; Mr. Edwards’s Subaru Outback; Sydney’s gray Civic; Ben’s black Land Rover. Sydney wonders what the girlfriend drives and spends quite a lot of time thinking about it. Possibly a Passat, but more likely a Lexus. Sydney hopes for the Lexus. She imagines the girlfriend to be cool and blond, but actually she cannot picture Jeff with a girlfriend. It is not that she thinks he does not deserve one or that he is not attractive enough. It is simply that she cannot picture it.
Sydney walks out to the porch with her tea and commandeers the teak chaise with the white cushion. She can hear the faint annoyed tone of a lost-key crisis from inside the house.
I know I had it in my pocket. Did you do a wash?
(Years ago in Troy, and her father has lost a key, or her mother has. To the apartment? To the car? To what else would her parents have had keys? A simmering tension igniting on that sweltering Memorial Day, as if in celebration. Sydney—maybe eleven—sitting out on the front cement steps, a stoop identical to all the others on the street, hearing through the open windows her father’s low accusations, her mother’s near hysteria, the fight not about a key but about failed expectations. Did Sydney really hear the word Jew hurled from the room? When her father met her mother at a concert at Russell Sage, he was living in Troy and working for an alternative paper. Sydney’s mother thought her father a writer. He thought her an artist. Her father, unusually laconic—now driven to shouting; di
d he really say her mother’s purses were cheap and tawdry?—lived in his mother’s apartment house, an acceptable arrangement for a couple with a baby on the way and artistic fantasies to fulfill. Sydney’s mother’s family in Connecticut refused to come to the wedding of their pregnant daughter to a Jew in Troy, the dead-end city at least as unacceptable as the religion. One couldn’t help being a Jew, the thinking went, but one could certainly be expected to do better than Troy.
When the alternative paper failed, her father took a job with the Troy Record, a tabloid filled with ads, local sports, and obits. Her mother made silk purses and bristled if anyone said the word crafts within her hearing. Each was fatally disappointed in the other, feeling swindled, feeling duped. Perhaps her father less so, for he seemed congenitally used to failure. His own father, a tailor two blocks over, had had to sell his shop to a butcher when the neighborhood had gone Italian. Sydney’s grandmother, in a shrewd move, had saved enough money to buy the row house. She lived on the top floor and rented out the two below her.
Sydney’s father coming out onto the stoop, mindful that his daughter is sitting alone, waiting to go on the family picnic. The Olds, parked in front of the house, locked.
“Ice cream?” her father asks.)
With biblical drama, the fog lifts. The water scintillates, a sequined surface. Even the dune grass is shiny, giving off more light than green. The air seems freshly laundered. Sydney thinks of good drying weather. It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen a wash on the line in years.
“What a day,” Ben says through a small opening in the screen door, having already returned from his run. He takes a swig of orange juice straight from the carton, an oddly boorish gesture that renders the juice unfit for anyone else to drink. Sydney doesn’t say a word. “There might not be another like it all summer,” Ben adds, looking pointedly in her direction.
