by Gwen Florio
‘Come on.’
‘Where?’ She turned. Alden stood at the undulating line where damp sand met dry, pulling his T-shirt over his head. He unfastened his belt, unzipped his fly, and began peeling off his pants.
‘What are you doing?’ She turned away, then back, incapable of not looking.
He stood, one leg in, one leg out of his jeans, boxers blue against bare thigh. ‘I’m going in. What about you?’
‘Are you crazy? I don’t have a suit.’
‘So?’ He kicked the jeans away. They landed in a heap on the T-shirt. ‘What you’re wearing is fine. And no one’s paying attention anyway. You could go in naked and no one would care.’
‘Which I’m not going to do … hey!’ Water sheeted across her as he ran past, kicking high. ‘Knock it off!’
But he’d already dived beneath the foamy curl of a breaking wave, beyond hearing. Nora looked up and down the beach, and calculated the odds of being seen by anyone who might recognize them as approximately nil.
The boardwalk and the main part of town was a few blocks farther up the beach, the shell seekers more numerous there. She and Alden had this stretch mostly to themselves.
‘What the hell.’ Nora peeled off her tank top and her shorts and flung them behind her on to the sand, glad she’d worn a dark sports bra and underwear, hoping that from a distance it looked like a suit, then – as a wave crested and she gulped air and plunged into the wall of green water – ceasing to care.
She came up, blinking the water from her eyes, to find Alden beside her. ‘Quick. Here comes another.’ He grabbed her arm and they dove together, emerging and diving through wave after wave, not unlike the porpoises they’d just watched, until they were beyond the breakers, treading water for a few minutes as they caught their breath.
‘It’s so different,’ she said.
He tilted his head. ‘The water? I think it’s the same. Or do you mean that?’ He looked back toward the beach, at the high rises and sprawling vacation homes, built to impress, that had replaced the humble cedar-shake cottages of their youth.
‘That, for sure,’ she said. ‘And the water, too. Not different from the way it was before. Just from what I’ve been used to these last few years.’ She’d grown to love the waters of the West, its narrow rivers winding in oxbows across prairies, its rushing mountain streams, their waters so clear and icy cold. She’d forgotten the ocean’s sheer muscularity, the way it grabbed at her and pulled her along in a gentle tug that she knew could turn without warning into a deadly rip tide beyond her capability to fight it.
Alden tilted his head back and let the sun fall on his face. ‘This is great,’ he said. ‘So good to get away from everything for a while.’
Their feet, lazily kicking to keep them afloat, brushed against one another. She dog-paddled a few feet away.
‘How much longer do you have to deal with this? When are they going to finish their investigation? I read something in the Sun yesterday about Robert Evans …’ She trailed off, giving him an opening.
Every sentence he’d spoken about the shooting so far had been soaked in remorse. But the story in the Sun had painted Robert Evans in such negative terms. If Alden had merely been feigning regret, this was a chance to come clean.
She blinked salt water from her eyes, watching his face for the slightest change in expression. Saw only a pained grimace.
‘I read that, too. You know, I’ve probably spent most of my waking hours going over those few minutes. How I could have handled it differently. What I could have said or done that would have ended up with him still alive.’
The lingering knot of suspicion within her loosened a little more. She swam closer again.
‘As to the investigation’ – his shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, sending water surging around him – ‘who knows? But even when they finish, and I’m exonerated, I don’t know that it will matter. I’m always going to be that white cop who killed the black kid, even if it was justified. I’m getting death threats online. I don’t mind for my own sake. It’s all part of being a cop. We get online abuse no matter what we do. But Kyra and the girls are getting it, too. Even when they clear me, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stay here. Which might be for the best, anyway.’
The sun shone strong on his face, highlighting the etchings of age. As it also must have her own, Nora thought, wistfully recalling their young, taut flesh, their youthful bodies. Sometimes she thought every encounter of her adult life involved the hope – never realized – of recapturing the aching thrill of those heady months of exploration before they’d finally dared to take that final step. His foot stroked hers again, this time feeling more purposeful than accidental and her breath caught. What had he been saying?
‘How could leaving possibly be for the best? That farm – it’s been in your family ever since … since …’
‘Since your family got here. First Families, both of us.’ They’d joked about it as teens, the utter un-coolness of their parents’ pride in being descended from Chateau’s first settlers. There was a society, with meticulous genealogical records. Annual events, in which the women laced themselves into tight bodices and voluminous hoop skirts and the men donned knee-length frock coats but disdained the authenticity of powdered wigs, and everybody drank enough rum punch to get past the embarrassment of it all.
‘Don’t remind me. I think one of the reasons I stayed out West was so I’d never have to go to a Founders’ Ball. Do you go?’
‘Every year. Kyra insists. She’s a double First Family, you know. Both sides.’
Alden sucked in a breath, sank under the water and came up again, shaking his head as though trying to rid himself of something. ‘That’s another thing I won’t miss if I have to leave.’
‘Another thing? What else?’ The sun was fast drying Nora’s hair, but her fingers were beginning to prune, the water leaching warmth from her body.
Alden grimaced. ‘Oh, come on. You know how it is. Twenty years married, things get … strained. I mean, hell. I know you know. We all know how things went down with you.’
Gratitude briefly warmed Nora at the way he brought it up casually and moved on fast, not a hint of judgment. ‘Difference is, we’ve still got kids at home. We’re stuck until they head off to college. This just makes it harder. Kyra – look, I don’t want to badmouth her. She’s a great mother. But it was obvious pretty early on that I’d made a mistake. Only problem is, she was pregnant, and …’
He went on, but Nora heard little past his admission that he’d made a mistake.
Damn straight he had. And for a few minutes, as the sun danced on the wavelets around them, she entertained a useless series of what-ifs: What if Alden had realized his mistake earlier? Or she hadn’t been so quick to throw him over when she’d found out about his fling with Kyra? If she’d never run away West to college, met Joe, married the wrong man, leaving the right one behind?
Alden rolled on to one side and began a lazy sidestroke. Nora did the same, her back to him as she kept pace, trying to talk sense into herself. Because hadn’t she heard variations on this before? Colleagues at the university where she’d worked, men at office parties, the former emboldened by familiarity, the latter by alcohol, letting her know in ways subtle or overt that she could feel free to ignore the wedding ring, that they were unhappy and therefore entitled. The presumption of it! Depending on her own level of alcoholic consumption, she’d amused herself by stepping in close, breasts pressing against their chests, her lips to an earlobe, whispering, ‘Must be my lucky day. Because I’ve been looking for a new husband.’
Biting her lips against a smile as the man in question backed away, stammering excuses – but not an apology; no, never – because nothing shriveled lust faster than a suggestion of commitment.
‘What you did’ – Alden’s voice floated across the water to her – ‘it took guts. Deciding just to up and leave.’
Had it? It wasn’t as though she’d decided anything. She’d acted on
raging impulse when she’d caught her husband in flagrante at their own farewell party on the eve of their departure for a cross-country trip in the Airstream. Her rash move had, in a roundabout way, led to Joe’s death, the thought of which sent Nora rolling on to her stomach, and digging her arms into the water in a fast crawl that took her out of earshot of the sort of talk that, for the first time in her life, she found enticing.
Shedding her tank top and shorts had felt exuberant, freeing, a throwback to their high school days before they’d bumped up against the limitations of adulthood.
Forcing them back on over damp, salt-sticky skin and underwear felt like reacquiring those burdens, all the disappointments of marriage, the trauma of her kidnapping and, now, the town’s suspicions. Her shoes were worse still. The sand she’d been unable to completely clean from her feet chafed and rubbed on the short walk back to the truck, and once inside, after some desultory small talk, she pretended to doze again, gritting her teeth as she imagined facing Penelope, trying to explain her prolonged absence, the sunburn that stung her cheeks and shoulders, her hair disheveled beyond any ability to comb through it with her fingers. Not to mention the fact of arriving in Alden’s truck.
‘Let me out here,’ she said as the truck approached the turnoff to Quail House.
He complied with a sad smile, letting her know he understood.
‘It was nice today,’ he said. ‘Like old times,’ and for a moment she thought he might try to kiss her again.
But he didn’t, leaving her to wonder for the length of the long, cedar-shaded lane whether she wished he had.
TWENTY-FOUR
1967
Grace had been right about one thing.
People in Chateau, especially her parents’ contemporaries, took one look at Walter Call in his seersucker suit – pale-blue stripes this time – his red bow tie, his sheer socks, his thin-soled shoes, and drew back as though they’d come across a copperhead slithering from beneath a carelessly kicked-aside log.
Would they mind giving him just a few minutes of their time to talk about the present situation in Chateau? Why, yes, they would. They would mind very much. Not that their employers, the foremen at the canning plant or the manager at the Wagon Wheel or the white women in their big houses would ever read the Afro and see their crab-pickers or dishwashers or maids quoted there. But it would get around that they’d talked to a reporter, and that would be all it would take, for dismissal not just from their present job, but from any future job they might want to have in Chateau. Nuh-uh, nossir, I do not wish to speak with you. Not on the record or off. Not today, not ever.
Which is where Grace came in, stepping out from behind Walter, speaking in tones of shy wonder, ‘Miss Marie? Is that you?’ She’d abandoned her city outfit of kick-pleated pencil skirts and softly draped V-neck blouses and returned to her oldest shirtdresses, deliberately choosing one that – despite being meticulously clean and starched – was just a little faded, fraying about the collar, earning a snort from Walter when they met to begin the day’s work.
Let him, she thought. People visibly relaxed before she even opened her mouth for the obligatory five minutes of how’s-your-mother and what’s-your-daughter-doing-she-was-in-my-class-you-know and yes-life-in-Baltimore-is-surely-different before they’d turn their attention back to Walter, wilting in the sun.
‘Yes, he’s with me. I work at the Afro now. You know, it’s hard for someone born and raised in Baltimore to understand what things are like down here. I thought maybe you could help him out. Give him a feel for the way it is.’ And that, accompanied by assurances that no names would ever be used, would sometimes bear fruit. More often, the attempt would be in vain, but at least the frostiness would thaw somewhat, the shoulders relax, the pursed lips stretch into a welcoming smile.
On the day of the first action, she stood with Walter across the street from the Wagon Wheel, watching and narrating.
Bobby, as well as her boss, had let it be known that no way could she be part of it, no matter how she longed to join that group of college students, the young men in white shirts and ties, the girls in demure pastel dresses, walking up the steps into the diner. She could see them through the windows as they took their seats in two booths and picked up menus. In other booths, white people leaned toward one another, the urgency of their conversations apparent even from across the street.
‘OK, that’s Old Miss Reston – she’s the owner – standing there at the cash register. That girl next to her, that’s her daughter Janet. Guess she’s working there now. Look, Miss Reston’s called all the waitresses over.’
In the booths, the young people laid down their menus and looked around expectantly.
‘Miss Reston is out from behind the cash register. Maybe she’s going to talk to them. No, wait. She’s going back into the kitchen.’ The double doors swung closed behind her.
‘What’s going to happen now? You think the police will come?’ Walter fanned himself with a copy of the Chateau Crier, whose headline that morning proclaimed Outside Agitators Arrive in Chateau.
‘Maybe.’
Grace hugged herself, imagining the bite of cold metal handcuffs into her brother’s wrists. She held her breath as white patrons rose to their feet, remembering images from lunch-counter sit-ins in the South, the ketchup bottles emptied on to the heads of black students sitting stoic and silent as white people leaned in close to spit in their food, shower them with jeers and curses.
Inside the diner, Miss Reston emerged from the kitchen and moved among the booths, stopping briefly at each table with white patrons. They rose and followed her and her daughter, scurrying close behind with the waitresses, out the door. A string of black people in grease-splattered aprons, the cooks and dishwashers, emerged from around the back of the building.
‘Diner’s closed,’ Mrs Reston announced to the onlookers. She reached back inside the door, flipped the lights off, and turned the Open sign to Closed.
‘They can sit there until they rot for all I care,’ she said.
Walter took a step in her direction, his notebook in one hand, reaching for the pen behind his ear with the other.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Grace said.
‘But.’ He pointed with the pen to the white reporters clustering around the owner.
‘What did you tell me when I wanted to go in there with them?’ she reminded him. ‘You can’t be part of the story.’
‘I’m not part of the story. I’m trying to get the story.’ He spoke to her as one would to a small and not terribly bright child.
‘You walk out there in the midst of all those white people, she’s liable to get in your face, or more likely shut you down entirely. Either way, you’ll become part of the story. Miss Reston’s number is in the book. You go back to the house and give her a call. Tell her you work for a newspaper in Baltimore. She’ll think it’s the News-Post. She doesn’t even know the Afro exists.’
Walter turned and gave her a long look, absent the disdain of his morning survey.
‘Hmph,’ was all he said.
It took all Grace had to withhold her triumphant smile until he’d turned away.
TWENTY-FIVE
Nora ducked into Electra after her trip to the beach with Alden. She averted her eyes from the damning graffiti, showered in the trailer’s tiny bathroom, and then left for lunch in town, wanting to avoid as long as possible Penelope’s honed ability to detect her daughter’s emotions via some infinitesimal rearrangement of molecules.
Michael Murphy watched from the stoop, a worthy stand-in for Penelope, somehow managing to project the guilt Nora feared her mother might impose, even though there’d been nothing improper about her morning.
‘Shoo.’ She flapped her hands at him, but Murph merely lowered his head, adding layers of sadness to his attitude.
Nora headed for the familiarity of the Wagon Wheel, where her family had gone for breakfast every Sunday after church throughout her childhood. The faux railroad dining car stood in
the center of town, its shiny aluminum exterior rivaling that of Electra’s.
Change assailed her when she stepped inside. Chateau’s schools and businesses had been nominally integrated during her childhood, but she remembered the diner’s unspoken boundaries. Black people worked there as cooks and dishwashers, out of sight in the kitchen, whites as counter staff and waitresses in the dining room’s air-conditioned comfort. Now a black waitress in a white uniform bustled past her, wiping down tables recently occupied and arranging fresh place settings.
At two in the afternoon, the diner’s lunch rush was long over, townspeople heading back to their jobs, only a few vacationers lingering over coffee by the time Nora arrived.
‘Hey, Nora.’ Janet Reston, who’d taken over the diner when her parents retired, sat on a stool behind the counter, working the crossword in the local paper. Her hair, dyed a red so deep it had a purple tinge, was pulled atop her head, although damp strands still clung loosely to her forehead and neck. ‘Good to see you back in town. How’s your mom doing?’
‘A little better every day,’ Nora said, wondering even as she spoke if it were true. Beyond the boot on her leg, Penelope seemed unchanging. ‘Still going old school on the crossword? Not using that thing?’
Nora pointed to the iPad that had replaced the two-foot-high cash register that sat beside it as a monument to an earlier age; impossibly heavy, covered with intricate brass scrollwork, more buttons than seemed necessary for the simple transactions it recorded, its clanging cash drawer forever silenced.
Janet waggled a pen at her. ‘I like not being able to erase my answers. I tried it online. All those prompts and you could erase whatever you put down. Felt like cheating. This way, I’ve got to get it right on the first try.’
‘More power to you, Janet.’ The brief exchange of pleasantries, one she could have had ten years ago, or twenty, soothed with its familiar rhythms.
She slid into a booth near the back, against a window, giving her a view of both the street and the rest of the room. The waitress appeared with a glass of water packed with ice cubes that nudged over the rim, the sides already sweating. She wore a green nametag: Virginia. Her glance swept Nora and stopped. She set the glass down so hard some of the water splashed across the table, stared a moment longer at Nora and at the mess she’d made, and hurried away without speaking.
