The Outer Cape

by Patrick Dacey

  * * *

  At dawn, the next day, he drives to the beach, to the far end where he used to go when he was younger. The tree where the older boys had thrown his clothes had been torn down and only the stump remains, hollowed out and rotted. Maybe the shoreline had moved an inch or two up the beach. He lets his hand pass along the sea grass, plucks a strand from the dune, and holds it between his teeth as he chases after the seagulls gathered around an extinguished fire pit. Then he lies on the sand; the thrashing of the waves and wind soothes him to sleep.

  He wakes to a low, rhythmic chanting. He can’t make out the words. But there, at the shore, a dozen or so women, all of them very old, their hair tucked under swimming caps and their wobbly thighs and backsides stuffed into one-piece bathing suits. One of them shouts, “All right, ladies!” and they flop into the water. Though, once in the water, they are graceful, swimming in unison like a flight of birds out to where the orange curve of the sun colors the water a soldering white.

  The women brave the breakers and they shout and sing out and dive down to the sea bottom, their toes wiggling up above, then rise and laugh and yell. Great swaths of pink and gold hang above them in the sky.

  One of the women stands up, wet and jittering, removes her cap, and shakes the droplets of water from her hair and body like a shaggy dog. She sees Nathan, already shivering in the cold morning air.

  “Are you planning on swimming?” she asks.

  “I hadn’t considered it, but it looks like you’re all having a lot of fun.”

  “We certainly are. We’re called the Ice Breakers. My name’s Marion. The rule is you have to be over sixty years old to join. I can tell you’re a long ways from that.”

  “I can still swim with you even if I can’t join the group, right?”

  “Of course,” she says. “But, it’s cold as hell in there.”

  Nathan dives in with only his boxers on. He holds his breath and goes underwater, pushing up with his palms to go deeper. The water is dark in front of him. Here, in this soundless, infinite chamber, he is free.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the first of October, Kirsten calls with genuine concern over Andrew’s well-being.

  “My well-being is just fine,” Andrew says.

  “And your mother?”

  “Hanging in there, I guess.”

  “Well…”

  Andrew feels that hated word, and the pause that follows, like a thumb pressing hard between his eyes. The things he misses, the things he doesn’t, maybe it will be these casual conversations when they eventually, finally, taper off.

  “I just thought,” Kirsten says, “since it’s getting colder, you would want to pick up some of your things.”

  But that is real pain, real loss, that she doesn’t want to see him, wants more for the pieces left behind of him to finally be removed.

  “You know, your suede jacket and boots, and scarf.”

  The one she had given him on his birthday two years ago, which he has never worn.

  “Andrew?”

  “Yes. Okay. I can be there this afternoon.”

  Andrew’s house feels to him like an embassy in a foreign land, vaguely familiar, but not ever again as home. Kirsten dutifully greets him at the door. Her lawyer, standing next to her, greets him as well, along with a squat, ball-shaped woman with a large folder of papers under her arm.

  “What is this? An intervention?” Andrew says.

  “Your wife—or ex-wife—is it ex, yet?”

  “No,” Kirsten says and smiles. “Soon, though.”

  “Either way, she has begun—had begun, is my understanding—while the two of you were cohabitating—to look into adoption—

  “Which is a long, and somewhat traumatic, though pleasurable, experience, a mix, really, if everyone involved keeps each other informed, and you, Andrew, correct? Andrew Kelly? Yes, you, being the breadwinner, such an antiquated term, but, the one to support said child, really, along with said mother of child, Kirsten, beautiful Kirsten, what a heart, we had to inform you that we have found a child, a baby, actually, without a healthy living situation, actually, terribly unhealthy, she was found in garbage, not a can or dumpster, mind you, but a big pile of garbage, fish heads, soggy dumplings, overcooked noodles, oh, my, I can’t even imagine, they hosed her down at the orphanage, ran many tests, she is of perfect health, and sweet as honey, here.”

  The lady hands Andrew a photograph of the Chinese baby. The Chinese baby has a gruesome harelip, and gentle, peaceful, black eyes. He looks past the photograph, then it hits him—life has moved on. Sure, they had talked about adoption well before the breakup, finding surrogates, or even joining Testing All Parents Inc., an idea Andrew sort of loved, because you got to be a parent for a couple of hours at a neutral location and then you said good-bye until next week. Even if the kids were in a bad mood or didn’t feel like eating their hamburgers, he could get them to laugh by making farting noises like his grandfather used to when he was a kid, and once he was back home, he felt like he’d done something meaningful. Kirsten had noted all of this in her diary, and had the diary authenticated by a notary, and the diary was there, on the kitchen table where he used to eat his Honey Nut Cheerios every morning.

  “And to what capacity are you, Mr. Kelly, responsible for paying child support for this—for—is there a name?” the lawyer asks.

  “Fiona,” Kirsten says with pride.

  “How wonderful,” the ball-shaped woman says.

  “Quite Irish, indeed,” the lawyer says. “Capacity or no capacity, we have a full record of your past and future earnings, stock holdings, capital investments, and the like…”

  Kirsten was asking for three thousand a month, the lawyer explains, plus ten thousand toward the initial processing fees, which includes standard rates for government-handled paperwork, round-trip airfare, two weeks of accommodations in Malibu for the mother and daughter to get accustomed to each other, food, medicine, a Mandarin language instructor, a Mandarin dialect coach, and the monthly transport of a Chinese mother’s milk for up to one year. She will also require a nanny, for, as a single mother, she must not feel overwhelmed in order to satisfy the criteria by which children are placed.

  The seriousness with which Kirsten, her lawyer, and the ball-shaped woman from the adoption agency speak about each clause and addendum, raising objections to strike from the contract any needed health insurance past the child’s eighteenth birthday, as though doing Andrew a favor, agreeing with each other on specifics like organic baby food and an addition to the house called the Learning Wing, lit by natural light through painted glass windows and full of brain games and talking stuffed animals, makes it clear he cannot deny the ultimate request.

  For a moment, Andrew wishes he had brought his lawyer, but perhaps the fight is not worth it, perhaps that is still part of his old self and to give in to Kirsten’s demands, no matter how ridiculous, is the price he must pay for letting go.

  When the whirlwind of talk has died down, Andrew finds himself with a pen in his hand. After he finishes signing the paperwork, Kirsten hugs him and puts her cheek to his shoulder.

  “Would you like some cookies?” she asks. “They’re not very good.”

  He takes a bite of one of the three cookies she has handed him in a folded napkin, tastes the baking powder and vanilla that hadn’t been mixed enough, holds the bite in his cheek as he walks to his car, then spits it out into the street. The remaining cookies he eats as a penance during the car ride home. He sighs as he hits traffic coming through Plymouth. He had planned to meet his father at the construction site for the Tidewater but now feels deflated and tired, looking forward to a deep sleep. He powers down the windows and within seconds feels a sharp nick to his ear. He cups his ear and pulls over into the breakdown lane. He looks in the rearview mirror. His earlobe has swelled to the size of a potato, the hornet still happily buzzing about the dash. Andrew picks up the folder of documents his wife’s lawyer had given him and smashes the hornet dead.


  He drives to the Urgent Care in Harwich. The waiting room is full of coughing children with snot dripping from their noses, and old, aching women. The receptionist has him write his name and the time and his affliction.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Andrew says.

  “I can’t rightly assume anything,” the receptionist says.

  He sits down next to a boy with a mark on his arm taking on the form of a growing tree, from tiny whiplashes that had to have come from a massive jellyfish. The boy’s eyes are red from crying.

  “I’d rather have that than this,” Andrew says, pointing to his deformed ear.

  The boy smiles and sniffles, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

  What Andrew sees in the boy’s eyes, though, is something he knows well, the freshly formed realization that nowhere is safe.

  Nearly an hour later, Andrew has his ear drained and the lobe patched over. He can’t find his insurance card, and has to call Kirsten and tell her what has happened.

  “How do you always end up in such ridiculous predicaments?” she says.

  The receptionist hands him a bill for a hundred and forty dollars.

  When he finally returns home, it is past midnight and the house is dark. He retreats to his room. He wants his mother’s help. He wants her to rub the ear in magic ointment and blow on it to cool the burning. What he really wants is to again be the boy who knows this kind of magic, whose scrapes and scratches heal easily. He tries to concentrate on one of the books his father had recommended he pick up, which he had laughed off then but found himself, not more than a week later, laying down sixteen bucks for: Dr. Stew Buckwald’s Upload My Human Side. But he cannot concentrate. His ear is pounding so badly. He needs a drink.

  He grabs a beer and an ice pack, then goes to the living room and turns on the ancient Zenith, the same one he used to sit in front of every Saturday morning, playing video games. His mother only gets basic cable and at this hour the only thing on are infomercials. He asks himself what kinds of people buy cheap knives and self-help audiobooks and vibrating belly bands. People like you, he thinks. People who get stung in the ear by hornets. He’s the one watching, the one compelled to pick up the phone, to get a pizza cutter for free if he calls now. Now! He dials the number on the screen, somewhat surprised at how gullible, how easily convinced he is by the ad for the Ninja Knife Set. He holds the phone to his good ear, listens as it rings a half-dozen times before a woman with an Eastern European accent finally picks up.

  “Good morning,” she says. “Your interest in Ninja Knife?”

  “Yes,” Andrew whispers.

  “I need credit card,” the woman says.

  “What’s your name?” Andrew asks suddenly, not knowing why he wants this information.

  “My name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna,” the woman says. “This important to you?”

  “Not really. I was just curious.”

  “Your name I do need for purchase.”

  “Andrew Kelly.”

  Anna laughs.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “Joke from someone here.”

  “What’s the joke?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Kiley.”

  “Please,” Andrew pleads, as though this joke is something of great importance, that without it, he cannot stand the day ahead.

  “Ovi, he work with me, he say before you call, ‘What is difference between American woman and Romanian woman?’ I say I don’t know. Then you call and we talk about Ninja Knife and then he take call from someone else wanting Ninja Knife, but now he finish and say to me, ‘American woman thin to look beautiful, Romanian woman thin because there is no food.’ I think it maybe sound better in my language.”

  “It’s true, though,” Andrew says.

  “You think so?”

  “Sure.”

  “I tell him that. Then it is not really joke. We have plenty of food, actually, but no money to pay for it. Maybe there is different joke we can make about that. So … you want Ninja Knife, yes?”

  “Does it come with the pizza cutter?”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “No one told me anything. I saw it on television.”

  “Then they tell you on television. I type information about pizza cutter and you get pizza cutter. Now I need credit card number, Mr. Kiley, sir.”

  “Kelly. Hold on.”

  Andrew grabs his wallet and takes out the credit card. Stuck to the credit card is his insurance card. Between them is a gluey piece of gum. He pulls the cards apart and reads the numbers off his credit card to Anna, then waits as she puts them into the computer.

  “How long until I get the knives?” he asks.

  “Four to seven days of business,” Anna says. “Is this okay? You won’t be cutting too much before then, I hope.”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “I think maybe you are lonely and not wanting Ninja Knife as much as wanting to talk to someone.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “I know. I can tell. I work here three years and most people don’t want knife, they want talk, and so I talk to them, but because I talk to them I miss sale of knife for other people who call and maybe really want knife and my boss get mad, but he think my eyes are nice eyes. He say, ‘I cannot let go of your eyes,’ as if he can hold them. So I’m lucky to have job.”

  “I miss being with someone.”

  “I think I understand what you look for. But I cannot talk sexual on phone. Our conversation is taped and my boss he will know I talk sexual and maybe my eyes won’t save me.”

  “I wasn’t looking for sex talk.”

  “I think you are not so different from many people. You don’t want to be alone.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You buy Ninja Knife, receive free pizza cutter, begin cooking, take mind off loneliness.”

  “I see,” Andrew says, disappointed that they have come back around to the knives.

  He gives her his address and repeats his full name, which she repeats back to him, and on hearing his name, he believes it possibly to be someone else. He had wanted to be on the radio when he was young. He taped his own show and played the tape for his mother, who pretended to laugh at the funny parts, which Andrew cued her to by opening his eyes wide and pointing and saying, “Listen.”

  “Okay,” Anna says. “I have your information and you purchase Ninja Knife Set and receive free pizza cutter. This will arrive in four to seven days of business. Do you have any question for me?”

  “Are the knives as sharp as they say on TV?”

  Andrew hears her whisper something away from the phone. Then he hears a man laughing in the background, most likely the Ovi guy.

  “Now we have new joke,” Anna tells Andrew. “Of course they’re sharp! They’re the sharpest knives in the world.”

  He waits.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Kiley.”

  “Yes,” Andrew says. “I’m okay.”

  “Please wait patient for your knives,” Anna says. “Thank you and good night.”

  “Good night, Anna.”

  Andrew hangs up the phone and shuts off the television. He sips his beer, then puts the still cold bottle to his earlobe. In the dim lamplight, he grips his other hand tightly around the handle of an invisible knife.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Even in this November chill, wet suits are not allowed in the Wequaquet Polar League for Women over Sixty. And even though Nathan is not technically a member, and will never be a woman over sixty, he has been swimming with the group every Sunday for the past month and a half. His being the only man, and a patriot, makes him a welcome rarity, and often the women invite him to join the group at the Dunkin’ Donuts up the road when they have finished their swim, an invitation he has accepted each time—sitting in one of the chairs circled around a square table, chatting about how Wequaquet used to be—except today, because today, when he dives into the ocean and swims out to the first
break and treads water along with the group, listening as they exhale and chirp and shout, cracking open the silence of the sea at morning, he lets go, lets himself drop beneath the water’s surface, then farther, because the cold is not enough to energize him, nor is the thought of drowning; it is the brief passage from consciousness to unconsciousness, that narrow tunnel he is trying to get to, where he knows he is most himself, most alive. He comes up for air. He hears the women call to him. Their swims are brief, and they don’t waste time getting back to their cars. He waves them off, then goes underwater again. Not until the fifth time does he feel his head start to lighten and his heart beat steady. He readies for one more dive below, knowing it is possible he might not come back, but the same, he thinks, is possible if he does not try to satisfy this need.

  The space there is absolute emptiness, or fullness, a feeling of being present, of time infinite, of sand between his toes, the crack of gunfire in the desert at night, a paper cut, a head butt, the ringing of a bell above a storeroom door, coming, going, flying, sinking, dying, driving, and touching Erin Mark’s soft inverted nipple in the sixth grade on the moss-dressed rocks beneath the Wequaquet River Bridge.

  When he finally rises—the memory of his father pressing his hands together above his head and calling out, “Shark,” to him and his brother—Nathan is revived, though disenchanted, like an addict, both relieved and panicked, he has made it through to another day.

  Swimming to the shallow water, he stands and walks along the shore, his fingers crossed behind his head, elbows spread wide. Turning slightly, he sees a figure up ahead, a beach chair tipped over, her arm raised, then gone in the water, fighting against the waves.