Jim Fulson walks away from Anna. He walks fast, and doesn’t look back. A golden retriever that has been dogging their steps runs circles around him, thinking he wants to play. Jim Fulson picks up a piece of seaweed, throws it to the dog to chase, continues putting distance between himself and Anna.
Anna sits down. The sand is damp. She can feel it soaking into her jeans. Picking up a fragment of a mussel shell, she begins digging in the sand, trying to write her name, but the curve of the shell makes it impossible to do so legibly. Just chicken scratches. The tide is coming in, and the foamy water stretches a little farther up the beach with every wave. A finger of water touches Anna’s bare right foot. It tingles. She watches the waves come closer and closer, waits until one covers her toes. Bone-chilling. Anna inches herself toward the water line. The next wave splashes her ankles, soaking the hems of her jeans. Anna closes her eyes, pretends it is heat, not cold, causing her skin to burn so. She takes off her red Stanford sweatshirt, throws it out of reach of the encroaching waves, rolls up her jeans to her knees, and moves even closer to the ocean. This time it takes just a few minutes before a surge large enough to drench Anna’s legs breaks.
Anna stands, and brushes the wet sand from her jeans. Everyone else’s attention is on the dolphins, still taking pictures. Jim Fulson is a tiny dot down the length of the beach.
Anna wades into the surf. The first breaker reaches only to her knees, but with such force that she staggers backward and falls. Before she can get back up again, a larger one crashes over her. She is now soaked through. This is not a friendly ocean. Anna is shivering as she pulls herself out of the water, but she has not yet had enough. She has some unfinished business here. Waves continue to slam against her, now to her waist, but she stands still for a few minutes, until the frigid water is slightly more bearable. Then she staggers in deeper. There’s a sudden drop of the ocean floor and Anna is now chest deep, but the waves seem to grow more accommodating, molding themselves around her body. She has a revelation: If she simply plunges headlong into the surf, the cold will no longer be a problem, she will be at one with the sea. She prepares herself. Cries are coming from the shore, but Anna doesn’t look back. Taking a deep breath, she plunges into the next wave, which arches well over her head, at least eight feet high. She emerges in the foaming turmoil following the break, but is unprepared for the next, even taller, wall of water that is curling above her, about to collapse. She is knocked over so hard that she bumps her shoulders, hard, against the ocean floor. Her head spins. She manages to find her feet but she must have drifted farther out because she’s up to her neck and is hit almost immediately by another wave, and another. Anna is flailing, no longer in control of her limbs, being turned head over feet, tumbled in the rough surf, her head slamming against the hard floor again and again and then she surfaces and gasps for breath, but is quickly pulled under. Seawater forces its way into her mouth and up her nose and she chokes only to take in more. She feels His presence for the first time since her parents died, she understands that not since then has she truly believed, she is ashamed. She goes under, she is losing count, but it doesn’t matter, she sees that she has until now only been going through the motions; she has not been truly honoring Him. She has been using Him for her own devices. She can see clearly. And a plan begins to form. She does have a mission, she will go to Nebraska, but for a different purpose than she’d thought. Her mission now is to stop Fred Wilson. To delay, not hurry, the Tribulation. To put off the suffering. To buy herself, and the world, more time. Ms. Thadeous is right. Let the earth continue to revolve around the sun, let people live out their lives, disaster and grief will inevitably hit them. Life is pain. No need to make it worse, even for the desire of seeing Him sooner. Somehow Anna’s head is briefly above water and as she gulps air she glimpses a crowd gathering on shore. Two figures have plunged into the ocean and are heading her way. She tries to swim toward them, but is hindered by the waves, they are pulling her out farther, farther, just as Anna realizes that feeling the ground under her feet is what she wants more than anything. She goes under again and thinks this is it, this is really it. She feels human hands upon her. A man and a woman, one on each side of Anna, both panting heavily. Each takes an arm and pulls her toward shore. They are not gentle. Their faces, what Anna can see of them as waves continue to break over the heads of all three, are grim. As they fight up the steep grade, an especially powerful wave crashes into them, and the man goes down. The woman gives a cry and releases Anna’s arm. Plunging in near where the man last stood the woman frantically sweeps the area with her arms, searching, and when the man reappears five feet away, clearly dazed, she swims over to him and lifts him from under his arms until he can stand on his own. With powerful strokes the woman is again at Anna’s side and grabs her by her shirt. “You little fool,” she says.
“You don’t understand,” Anna counters, but the woman continues to pull her forward. Her grip on Anna’s arm will leave a bruise.
They join the man in the shallows, all three of them breathing heavily as they stagger onto dry sand. They are immediately surrounded. Towels envelop them, are used to vigorously rub them down.
“What was that about?” asks an older man. A small child, perhaps four years old, is holding his hand, staring. “A suicide attempt,” someone says, softly. Others are gaping. Everyone is too close. Anna wants to protest, but she can barely breathe. Then she gets a push from behind; it’s the woman who retrieved her from the water. She has a towel around her shoulders and one over her head. Before Anna can register any more the woman slaps her hard across her right cheek. “That,” she says, “is for nearly drowning my husband.” She raises her hand again, but someone grabs it. Jim Fulson. His face is unreadable.
“I’ve called 911,” someone says.
The woman turns to Anna. “I hope you get a lot of therapy for that little exploit,” she says. She is still breathing heavily, and is shivering. “Next time, act out your little suicide dramas in the privacy of your own home.”
Anna is finally able to speak. “Exploit?” she gasps. “Suicide? Is that what you think?” She wants to laugh, but is still so winded that she can barely make a noise. She looks at Jim Fulson, forces out a denial. “It wasn’t that at all.”
“Where are your parents? I want to speak to them before the paramedics get here,” the woman says,
Anna is finally able to give a real laugh. “Yes, by all means talk to my parents,” she says, and turns to Jim Fulson, “don’t you think that’s a great idea?
“Anna,” says Jim Fulson, he is studying her face for something. Whatever he sees reassures him, because he is now smiling. His face shows relief, he even begins laughing himself.
The woman looks from Anna to Jim Fulson. “What’s going on here?” she asks. “Who are you?”
Jim Fulson tries to stop laughing, but can’t. Anna can’t either. “A friend,” he finally says.
“A friend,” the woman repeats. “A grown man with a minor friend. Interesting. Do your parents know about this, young woman?”
This sets Anna, who had started calming down, off again, but she sobers up after looking at the faces surrounding her. A pinprick of fear shoots through her. She whispers to Jim, “Let’s get out of here.”
Jim hesitates. “Listen,” he says to the people around them, “this isn’t what you think.”
A siren sounds far away, is coming closer. Anna says, more urgently, “Come on.” She doesn’t want to be here when the authorities arrive.
Jim Fulson still seems indecisive. Then he gives a great shout, grabs Anna’s hand, and pulls her away from the group, toward the parking lot.
“Come on,” he says, and starts running.
Anna stumbles, but catches herself and tries to match his long strides. It’s difficult in the sand; she is clumsy, but the few people who are halfheartedly coming after them are stumbling more and this sets her laughing again. “You should
see the looks on their faces,” she says.
Jim Fulson gives an answering laugh.
They somehow make it to the truck. Jim Fulson clicks it unlocked, opens the driver’s-side door, and when Anna starts for the passenger’s side, he grabs her and forces her into the cab. “No time!” he yells. Anna bumps her hip against the steering wheel. Another bruise. Then she’s in and he’s in and he’s started the engine and they are off. As they exit the parking lot, a police car and ambulance scream past, lights blazing.
Once out of the parking lot, Jim Fulson steps on the gas. They reach the stop light at Highway 1 just as it turns yellow, but he screeches through, heading into downtown Half Moon Bay. Once across the street, he slows down. “What next?” he asks, he is still breathing hard.
“I’m starved!” says Anna. She is, for the first time in recent memory. The dousing in the chilled water seems to have awakened her appetite. “Can we get something to eat before heading home? There’s never any food in the Goldschmidts’ house.”
Jim looks indecisive. “What if the police come looking for us?”
“They don’t know our names,” Anna says. “I don’t think anyone saw your license plates. I think we’re okay.”
“What about your wet clothes?” Jim Fulson asks. “You can’t stay in those things.”
“It’s not really a problem,” Anna said.
“Okay,” says Jim Fulson. He drives across Main Street, then into the full parking lot of a church having a rummage sale. He turns the ignition off, then faces Anna and says, “Okay, so it wasn’t a suicide attempt. What was it, then?”
Anna has a flash of despair. The emptiness of the abyss beckons once more. Then she remembers. And then reveals to Jim Fulson what she would have found impossible to say to Ms. Thadeous, or Lars.
“I saw God,” Anna says, shyly. She watches Jim Fulson for his reaction. It matters to her. “I’d lost Him when . . . but the beauty, the power, of seeing God in nature, seeing Him in the waves, in my parents . . . was wonderful.”
“Oh yes?” says Jim Fulson. He pushes open his door, walks around the truck and opens Anna’s door for her. “How exactly does He work, Anna? Do you really believe, after all that’s happened recently, that you actually have a handle on this?”
Anna barely hears him. She is still radiant from the experience.
“I’ve been a fool, wasting all this time,” she says. “I have a new mission.”
“Oh no,” says Jim Fulson. “Here we go again.” He helps Anna out of the truck, and locks the door. They start walking.
They reach Main Street, join the weekend tourist crowd. The small boutiques that sell eclectic women’s clothing and Tibetan furniture and designer kites are full of window shoppers, people fingering the silken robes, the worry beads, the old stone Buddha heads. People look but never buy, so the stores are constantly changing, from month to month the shops mutate into others that resemble them almost exactly and offer similarly doomed wares.
Jim Fulson puts his name in at the pizza place Anna’s parents loved. The line snakes halfway down the block. When a police car cruises by Anna shrinks into the crowd, but it passes without pausing.
The fog is starting to waft overhead as the sun sinks lower in the west. Anna shivers in her damp clothes. Jim Fulson notices and takes off his windbreaker and puts it around her shoulders. “Why I’m acting like a gentleman I don’t know,” he says. “I seem to have gotten myself mixed up in a situation.” But he doesn’t look upset anymore. He even seems amused by it. “I have to admit,” he says, “it’s been an interesting half year.”
“You mean Ms. Thadeous,” Anna says.
“Yes and no,” he says. “It’s just that I feel more alive now than I did on high school graduation day. Which is saying a lot. And it’s not only Clara.”
He does look alive now, and strangely young. “You are gentle and humble in spirit,” Anna tells him.
“What?” he asks, clearly disconcerted.
Anna doesn’t answer.
They finally get a table. When their pizza arrives, they are so hungry that they devour it within minutes. Jim Fulson orders another. “We have time,” he says.
They both jump when his cell phone rings, so intent have they been on eating. He looks at the screen, and can’t seem to select answer fast enough. “Clara,” he says. Anna looks elsewhere, pretends not to listen.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re here, safe.” He rolls his eyes at Anna. “Yes, all that really happened. Everything’s okay, though. But how did you find out?”
He listens, and then, “We’re finishing dinner at It’s Italia. We’ll probably be here another twenty minutes. Then we’ll come home . . .” A silence. A long one. The waitress comes and goes from the table several times, clearing the dirty dishes, pouring more water, before Jim Fulson speaks again. “Oh. Oh fuck.” More silence. “Oh shit, okay. Okay, we’ll see you soon.”
He hangs up. He stares at his phone. He doesn’t look at Anna when he speaks.
“We have a problem,” he says. “Your little . . . escapade . . . got the attention of a lot of people, including the state’s child protective services. Someone took photos with a cell phone, sent them in. You were recognized. They’re looking for us.”
“So we’ll just explain what happened. The Goldschmidts will understand. As my temporary guardians, they’ll be fine with it.”
“It’s not as simple as that.” Jim says. He has his hands over his face. His shoulders are slumped. “They’re talking about child endangerment. Police got to my parents, to Clara, asked why a twenty-something male had a young girl at the beach, and allowed her to nearly drown herself.”
“Well? It’s all easily explained, like I said. And it’s not like I’m eleven. I’m almost eighteen!”
“You might not get this, but that almost makes it worse,” says Jim Fulson. “A twenty-four-year-old with a seventeen-year-old raises eyebrows.”
Anna whacks Jim Fulson’s arm. “Stop worrying,” she says. She hears the bitterness in her voice. “You’ll survive this. You and Ms. Thadeous will live happily ever after.”
“Ah, Anna,” he says. “That’s where you’re wrong.” He stares at his hands. “I could be facing charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The police told Clara that technically they could get me on charges of kidnapping. I took you, a minor, away without knowledge or permission of your guardians. While you were under my care you nearly drowned. Then we ran away. That was a very stupid thing to have done.”
“So, let’s go straighten it out,” Anna says. “I’m okay. I’ll explain everything. The Goldschmidts aren’t going to say anything bad about you.”
Jim Fulson is silent for a moment before giving a small shake to his head. “Clara already talked to her old roommate, now a law professor at Berkeley. It won’t be that easy. Remember, I’m just some pervert who lives in his parents’ rec room. A jobless, penniless former mental patient.”
He leans forward until his forehead is pressed against the tabletop.
“God almighty,” he says. “Can’t I catch a break?”
Anna puts a tentative hand on his arm, but he shakes her off.
“Look, I know you’re a mixed-up kid,” he says. “But this happens to be my only life. Things were improving, I thought. But then I fuck up as usual.”
Anna is puzzled. “I don’t get why it’s so serious. This isn’t anything we can’t explain.”
“That’s because you don’t know about my record,” Jim says. He speaks slowly, pausing between words.
“Your . . . record?” Anna asks. “Your hospital record?”
“Yes and no,” he says.
“What’s the ‘no’ part?”
Jim Fulson doesn’t answer at first. Then he says, “I have a police record.”
Anna is dumbfounded. “You?”
Jim Fulson l
ifts his head from the table and nods. “The first time, it was just really stupid. I got drunk with a bunch of fraternity buddies and we decided to lift a statue from an estate in Malibu and put it in front of our frat house. Only turns out the statue was worth a couple million dollars. So given that we were all above eighteen and of sound minds, we were arrested. We pleaded guilty and were sentenced.”
“Did you have to go to jail?”
“No. We were given community service. But the charges weren’t dismissed, so it went on my permanent record. They said the statue was too valuable, the owner too irate, for them to dismiss the charges, even for a bunch of privileged white boys.”
Anna doesn’t know what to say. “What does that have to do with what happened today?” she asks.
Jim Fulson rubs his head. The waitress has delivered the check, so he pulls some bills out of his pocket and throws them on the table. “It’s really the second offense that was the serious one,” he says. “It was when I was deeply depressed the second time. In LA. I’d already had one stint in the mental hospital. I had no intention of going again. So I locked myself in the bathroom with the intention of . . . doing things right this time.”
Anna is quiet. She understands despair. She understands the urge.
“My girlfriend came home. When I wouldn’t open the door, she used a bobby pin to get in. There I was, naked as a jaybird, holding the biggest sharpest knife from the kitchen. I was crazy. I’m not excusing what I did, but I was crazy. I lunged at her, I only wanted to scare her, honest to God, to get her out of the bathroom, but she thought otherwise and ran screaming out into the lobby of the apartment house, someone called the cops, and I was arrested for the second time. I pled guilty again, and given that I was already committed to the hospital, they commuted my sentence. But they warned me that another incident, specifically one that was violent or put anyone else in danger, was going to be taken seriously.”
He sighs heavily. “Clara’s lawyer friend says my record is going to be a problem. A real problem.”
Coming of Age at the End of Days Page 15
