The Infinite Tides

by Christian Kiefer

  And when he closed his eyes he could see her in the darkness, her face suspended amongst those tiny diamond stars he held ever within his heart, even with the freeway sounds all around him, could feel her next to him in the car somehow and she was waiting for him to speak. He opened his eyes. Before him the signs of the megastores moved past the windows in the flat white heat of the midsummer sun. “OK,” he said. He cleared his throat. She waited. He could feel her waiting for him. “It seems like a long time ago,” he said to her at last, “but once upon a time I went to space.”

  Twenty

  What more is there to tell?

  It took them four trips from the car to the beach to unload the various toys, coolers, food, drinks, towels, umbrellas, and chairs. When they were done Keith sat in a beach chair and pulled off his shoes and socks and emptied them of sand and then stuffed the socks into the shoes and set them next to the chair. The two children were already down at the edge of the surf screeching with excitement and Luda called their names repeatedly as Keith and Peter straightened the beach blanket between the chairs and shade umbrellas. Keith’s phone was vibrating again but he did not answer it and did not look to see who was calling him or why and when it stopped he turned it off entirely.

  The amount of gear they had amassed seemed enough for an extended family of ten or twelve, an overspilling collection of reds and blues and yellows and greens smearing over plastic and metal and cloth.

  “Hungry or later?” Peter said to him.

  “Later, I think,” Keith said.

  Peter handed him some black-and-white swim trunks and Keith took them. “I don’t know that I’ll go in,” he said.

  “In case you want to, now you can.”

  “OK.”

  Peter wrapped a towel around his waist and exchanged his pants for a similar pair of swimming trunks and then returned the towel to its position across his shoulders. “I am going in,” he said.

  Luda had appeared with the children. “Wait for sunscreen,” she said. She hunted through a giant yellow bag and then retrieved a white bottle and squirted the thick viscous fluid into her palm and began the process of applying it to the exposed skin of the children.

  The beach was long and crescent shaped and on either side of them the land pressed out into twin and distant points peppered with luxury hotels and the blocky shapes of giant stores. But the beach itself was situated in the center of the crescent and the murmur of the ocean’s quiet rolling all but obliterated any other sound so that the location held the illusion of being isolated. Even the parking lot where they had left the car was separated from the beach itself by a strip of dunes where tufts of grass waved in the breeze. A few small families on either side of them, each with its own separate mountain of multicolored beach gear. In the distance, a single man threw a Frisbee to a black dog. The sand clean and tan and hot in the noonday sun.

  “How’d you find this place?” Keith said.

  “You look around for a place and this will find you,” Peter said. Then: “Also, it is in Triple-A guidebook.”

  Keith smiled but said nothing in response. He was still seated in the beach chair, his feet bare now and pressed to the warmth of the sand. He leaned forward and rolled his pant legs up past his calves.

  The children were festooned with a variety of inflatable safety devices, all bright orange, and then Luda moved to Peter and rubbed the sunscreen over his body, his heavy torso and the curve of his belly and then his legs and then returning to his face, rubbing his cheeks and forehead and ears and leaving enough on his nose that it had become a triangular white monument. The children jumped up and down impatiently at his side.

  “I will take Marko and Nadia,” Peter said. “You come when you want to.”

  “OK,” Keith said.

  He watched as Peter said something to the children in Ukrainian and the sound of their glee was an impossibly high-pitched scream and then the three of them turned and jogged down to the surf, Peter dodging as they chased him then letting them catch up and once again spinning away.

  “You will burn,” Luda said.

  He looked over at her. She stood with the sunlight directly overhead as if illuminated by some great and magnificent spotlight. He reached his hand out toward her and expected her to hand him the sunscreen but she took his hand in her own and held his arm out toward her for a moment and then turned the sunscreen bottle over and dabbed it across his forearm.

  “It is good thing you do for Peter,” she said to him. She set the bottle on his chair and continued to hold his hand and rubbed the sunscreen into the exposed part of his arm.

  “I’m glad I could help,” he said.

  She did not answer him, releasing his hand and retrieving the sunscreen bottle and moving to the other side of his chair. She reached for his hand and once again daubed the white fluid on his arm and rubbed it into his skin.

  “He is selfish man,” she said. Her hands strong and smooth and warm. She was looking only at her work and he said nothing to distract her. “It is true,” she continued. “I know this about him even from start. Lean forward.” She dropped his arm and he leaned forward in his chair and a moment later her hands were at the back of his neck, rubbing between his hair and the collar of his shirt, around his neck, across his chest. “But I love him anyway.”

  “I know you do.”

  “He thinks sometimes he is only one to make sacrifice but I leave everything too. He forgets there are others. This thing we do is for children, I think, so they grow up here and not in Ukraine where it is too much difficult to make life.”

  She passed the lotion bottle to him over his shoulder and he reached up and took it from her.

  “You should do face and legs too,” she said. “This I cannot do.”

  He nodded and squeezed the bottle into his hand and began to spread the fluid across his face.

  She turned from him and peered out toward the ocean and after a moment she said, “Look at Petruso.”

  He looked up to where Peter and the two children ran back and forth in the surf, laughing.

  “What do you see there?” she said.

  “A very happy man.”

  “Yes, because he maybe gets better job.”

  “And because he’s here with you and the kids.”

  “Not so much that,” she said. “More for job.”

  “That can be an important thing.”

  She sat next to him in the folding chair and then reached back and opened the cooler. “Beer?” she said.

  He nodded and she handed him one and then opened one for herself and they sat without speaking for a long moment, both drinking, lost in whatever thoughts they each had in the twinned separateness of their lives.

  “I know it is important,” she said at last. “He is a man. I know that work at Target is not for him. It is not what he is meant to do here. I know this.”

  “It’s a shit job for anyone.”

  “Yes, I know it’s shitty job.”

  He looked at her and smiled.

  “Shitty job,” she said again. She looked at him but she was not smiling. “But how does job only make him happy. Everything else is same. What if he does not get this job? What happens then?”

  “I don’t know. He keeps looking for another job.”

  “He does not even look for this job. You make this happen. If he is unhappy then why does he not keep looking for new job? Anyway, he was not so happy at Golosiiv. He says he was so happy at Golosiiv but he is not scientist so he is complaining always there. He remembers different than I remember.”

  Keith sat and watched the surf. Peter had jumped backwards into the water and the children were following him out in silence. He waved to them and Luda waved back. “Be careful!” she yelled. He waved again and turned his attention back to the children.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Keith said.

  “I know there’s no answer to question.”

  There was a pause. The children were up to their waists in the water
and Peter dove underneath for a moment and reappeared slightly farther out. The children set to splashing themselves in the surf, their tiny bodies bobbing up and down in rhythm to the waves.

  “He’s lucky to have you,” he said.

  “I know that,” she said quickly.

  He smiled and this time she smiled back at him and he actually laughed and she too broke into a kind of giggle. “I guess we know where you stand,” he said.

  She blushed. “Well,” she said, shrugging, “what do I say?”

  He chuckled again. Then: “He knows that.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not think he does.”

  He paused and then said, “I think he’s figuring it out.”

  She sipped her beer and he did the same. After a moment she said, “I wonder what happens if he does not get job. He goes crazy and drunk and passes out somewhere because he loves another girl maybe.”

  Keith was silent.

  “I know he has crush on Starbucks girl,” she said. “I am not stupid wife.”

  Again, he said nothing.

  “I let it pass. I love him,” she said, “but he can be idiot sometimes.”

  “Shit,” he said, “can’t we all?”

  “Not like men. I apologize for saying, but men are idiots.”

  He smiled. “Well, that’s probably true.”

  “Make mountain out of molehill always.”

  “Yeah, there’s some of that.”

  “Too much,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And your wife, she leaves you for someone else?”

  He did not answer.

  “I apologize,” Luda said. “I should not ask these personal questions.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it was specifically for someone else or just for other stuff. She had an affair while we were married.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I did not know this.”

  “Well, you do now,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone and that’s how it is.”

  “You love her still maybe?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t even remember that feeling at all now.”

  “You love her when you were married?”

  “I must have.”

  “It does not make sense to love someone and then stop,” she said. “What does it mean that human beings can do this?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It should,” she said. “And your daughter too. Too much to lose at one time.”

  “Feels that way.”

  “You pray for daughter maybe?”

  “Not really.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head.

  “I pray for you both then.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “You think of her?”

  “All the time.”

  “Good thoughts?”

  “Sure,” he said. “And some regrets.” Quiet. The beach shushing them. Peter and the children in the surf. “The last conversation I had with her was an argument.”

  “What kind of argument?”

  “She was brilliant at math but she wasn’t doing anything with it. It was disappointing.”

  “She was disappointing to you.”

  “Yeah, she was disappointing to me. She was spending her time cheerleading and hanging out with her boyfriend. I don’t know. It didn’t make sense to me. Still doesn’t.”

  “Did it make sense to her?”

  “Apparently,” he said. “But she’s gifted. Was, I mean.”

  “Gift for astronaut work?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Mathematics. She was gifted at math. I mean probably genius-level gifted.”

  “Yes, but why this gift?”

  “I don’t know. She got some of what I have, I guess.”

  “No,” Luda said. “I don’t mean this question.” She paused and then said, “This good thing with numbers. You say it is like gift but then you do not think it is like gift.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No,” she stopped again. “My English is not good. Not clear.” Again a pause. Then she said, “Gift is when you give something or you get something. This is not gift she has.”

  He was silent for a moment and then he said, “Why not?”

  “Because she has no choice. This is just how she is.”

  He looked over at her. He knew he would have told anyone else to drop the topic entirely—even Eriksson—but for some reason he was willing to listen to Luda’s commentary. He did not know why this was so, but it was. “I don’t know if there’s a difference,” he said. “You have a talent and you use it. That’s how it works.”

  “That is how it works for you,” Luda said. “Maybe not for your daughter.”

  “That’s how it works for everyone,” he said. “Anyway, she worked hard at other stuff. Cheerleading and she had good grades. All A’s. But I just wanted her to really be great. She had that in her.”

  “She sounds great already.”

  “She was,” he said. “Shit, I don’t even know what I’m talking about. None of that matters now.”

  “If it matters to you then it matters. You’re the father.”

  “It was never enough for me. That’s the goddamned truth. It was just never enough. I wanted her to be better. All the time.” Something had collapsed inside of him and his eyes were welling with tears. “What a goddamn idiot I was,” he said.

  Luda did not respond, sitting quietly, sipping at her beer. The ocean rolled in and streamed out again. Rolled in. Streamed out. After a moment she said, “You have other good memories, though. Not just argument and disappointment.”

  He breathed deeply and slowly. When he regained himself he said, “Yeah,” and his voice broke and he was silent once again. He could feel her hand, his daughter’s tiny hand, curling into his own. God how much he wanted those days back. And every day to come after.

  The sea rolled in far below them.

  “This is good,” she said.

  He was quiet. They both were. He tried to quiet the tears but they came nonetheless, running down his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” he muttered, smearing the tears across his face. “Shit.”

  “Everything changes. This is life.”

  “I guess.” He sipped at his beer again.

  “Girls love their fathers always,” she said. “My father work for Russian government and everyone hate him for this. But I love him. Maybe he is good man. Maybe he is bad man. I don’t know. I love him always.”

  There was a slight breeze off the sea that came in gentle puffs and ruffled at the shade umbrellas. “I wish I could have made her happy,” he said at last. “Before it was too late.”

  “She decides what is happy for her, not for you.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Stop with maybe. You and Peter are same. Both never happy here and now. Only looking for the next thing to do. You don’t even know where you are and what you have.”

  The children were taking turns climbing on their father’s shoulders in the low surf, Peter’s body jumping up out of the water and the children flying backwards, laughing, into the waves.

  “What do you want from your life?” Luda said.

  Keith sat and watched them in the ocean. All three of them laughing, their voices rising out of the static hiss of the water as it rolled in gentle waves against the sand. “I used to be able to answer that,” he said.

  “You forget. Everyone forget sometimes. Peter forgets for years. But then you remember.”

  He was silent, his beer cold and wet in his hand. “I wanted to go back to work. Now I don’t even know.”

  “You go back to work then,” she said.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You talk to me of complicated?” She did not smile and there was an edge to her voice. �
��I leave my whole country to come here. What is complicated for your work? This makes mountain of molehill again.”

  Far out at the horizon the colors matched so that there was a continuous field of blue from earth to sky.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  Her hand fluttered in his direction as if brushing him off and so he said nothing more.

  After a time Peter called up to them from the surf: “You two come!” He waved to them and Luda waved back.

  “You know what I want, Astronaut Keith Corcoran?” she said at last. “Right now what I want?”

  He turned to look at her and she smiled at him and their eyes met. “This,” she said and she continued to look at him but her hand extended out toward the sea, her husband and the two children out there in the surf at the edge of an ocean that stretched out forever to a horizon that was no horizon.