A Perfect Stranger

by Roxana Robinson

  Claire shook her head. “He says nothing.” She shrugged again, slightly, her smooth shoulders polished by the light. “What is there for him to say?”

  Amy did not speak. She thought of the small figure of Denise, dodging confidently through the forest of adult legs, asleep trustingly on Claire’s bed. She thought of the forty-three-year-old Michelle, sliding down between the sheets with the teenage boy. She thought of Daniel, with his hard flat stomach and purposeful looks; she thought of Claire moving amicably out of her marriage to Jean-Louis, remaining his friend. She loved this story, she loved the freedom and forcefulness—the absolute certainty—of Claire’s attitude.

  It seemed that none of the rules Amy had been taught applied here. Convention played no part: loyalty, pragmatism, tolerance, but not convention. There were no rules—was that it? Certainly it was clear that you could make your own. It was clear that it was up to you to decide who your granddaughter was.

  Family: What makes it? Who’s to say? It’s whatever you decide. Her mind moved back to the memory of the small body in the cool shadows of the carriage, to the deep shared silence of the moment as she gazed down into the calm eyes of her grandchild. Peace welled up at the thought.

  She’s mine, Amy thought. With the words, certainty swept across her, like the slow wash of a wave. She’s mine. Tim and Walter could do as they wished, but she wanted this child in her life. She would make friends again with Hilary—who had been brave, she now thought, to carry through with this alone—she would put up with Elaine. None of that mattered. That small solid form, bundled in pale pink—the magical unfolding fingers, those calm blue eyes—was hers. Tim’s small daughter had claimed her; they had claimed each other. She was taking Emily’s side; you could choose.

  Emily: she said the name to herself. “Emilie,” she said out loud.

  Claire leaned back against the sink. Her eyebrows raised, attentive, she waited for Amy’s story.

  At the Beach

  My wife put Jennifer into the car seat in back, and then she climbed into the front seat next to me. Her hair was in a long braid, and she wore a flowered sort of beach dress over her bathing suit. She shut the door without speaking.

  “All set?” I asked. It was a general question, but Diana didn’t answer or look at me, so I looked at Jennifer in the rearview mirror as though I were talking only to her. “You all set back there, young lady?”

  “Yes, I am, Daddy,” Jennifer promised.

  I had known Diana wouldn’t answer: she hadn’t spoken to me in nearly two days, since Thursday night. Or looked at me, really. I couldn’t remember a fight that had gone on this long.

  We were in the car for only a few minutes; we were only a mile or so from the beach, down small sandy back lanes. It was already hot, and the sky was very blue, and cloudless: a perfect beach day. When we reached the parking lot it was full, of course—this was eastern Long Island, August. Row after row of cars were parked in the sandy lot, surrounded by dune grass. I wondered if I’d have to park illegally, along one of the side roads, and risk a ticket, but as I turned down the last row I saw the taillights of a little red car turn bright, and I stopped just in time.

  “Luck-ee,” I said. No one answered me, and I began to whistle, pretending that I didn’t notice this lack of response, as the little red car slid out in front of me. When it had pulled away, I pulled neatly into its slot and turned off the engine.

  “Here we are, kiddos,” I said. I looked into the mirror again to find Jennifer watching alertly. She had wide blue eyes, and pale skin that looked so fresh it was impossible to believe it could be four years old. It looked just born, smooth and sweet. I smiled at her and winked. “Hi, kiddo,” I said.

  “I’m not Kiddo, Daddy,” she said reprovingly.

  “Oh, well, pardon.” I said the word in a French accent. “Who are you, then?”

  Jennifer hesitated for a moment. “I’m—Bathshena,” she declared, closing her eyes regally.

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, I’m very glad to meet you, Bathshena.” I bowed my head to her politely.

  Diana ignored us, climbing out of the car and leaning into the back to help Jennifer with the car seat. “Let’s get you out of this,” she said to Jennifer, as though they were alone in the car.

  There was a path through the dunes, and as we walked along it the tall green beach grasses moved in the sea wind against our bare legs, light and slithery and yielding, but sharp, each narrow blade a cutting edge. I carried the hamper and the umbrella; Diana held the beach bag and Jennifer’s hand.

  “Here’s the beach, Jen, here we are at the beach,” Diana said. Her voice was bright but it was pitched low, so that only Jennifer would be able to hear it, though I could, just barely. I was walking behind them; there wasn’t room for the three of us abreast on the path. Diana kept talking to Jennifer as we made our way along the hot sand.

  Usually, when we fight, Diana gets mad and she stops speaking to me. Then I stop speaking to her, and there is a stubborn silence between us, fixed and solid, a wall. But I don’t stay angry as long as Diana does. After a few hours my anger begins to drain away, water sinking into sand. The heat goes out of me, the fight loses its point, I can’t remember why I was so angry, and then I want the wall down. I want to be in the same world with Diana again. I make an overture: I touch her skin, her smooth shoulder or her cheek. I say something, and then she turns to look at me, and then the walls we have built between us collapse, sliding down into nothing.

  But this time it wouldn’t happen. I wasn’t going to make the first advance. I’m always the one to do it, and why should the burden always be on my shoulders, as though I’m the only one who cares about this marriage, as though it’s only my responsibility to make it work? This time I had determined not to do it. It’s Diana’s marriage too, and this time it was her turn. I was determined to wait for her to make the first move.

  That morning I’d been standing in the kitchen, my cup of coffee in my hand, looking out the window. Diana was in Jennifer’s room, getting her dressed, and I could hear them laughing about something. They started with low voluptuous giggles, taking turns, their voices sliding into each other, egging each other on, and then becoming long drifts of helpless laughter. The sound was so loose and luxuriant, so swelling and overflowing and delicious that I found myself smiling, starting to laugh, just from the sound of them together. I knew exactly what they looked like: Jennifer rolling on the bed, Diana leaning over her, maybe tickling her small frantic body, the two of them raucous, hilarious, tender, and all those smooth female limbs twisting and intertwined. I wanted to go in and stand there with them, and I thought if I did that Diana would look up at me, her eyes warm and lit up, and the fight would be over, and we’d be together again.

  I was looking out the window, starting to smile as I listened. I began to turn around. But then I remembered the night before, and the irritating way Diana had stood at the kitchen counter, drinking from a mug and reading a magazine with her back to me, turning the pages and stirring her tea as though she didn’t even know I was in the room. I remembered how stubborn she was being, and how she could only see things from her point of view, and I hardened myself to the laughter. One of us would have to give in on this, and Diana, as always, thought it should be me. I thought of this arrogant assumption and my outrage rose up again and I told myself I would not make the first move, and I stood waiting by the window until Diana brought Jennifer out, dressed.

  At the beach we always walked east to get away from the crowds, but of course in August there are hardly any beaches on Long Island without crowds. We walked for a while, until the houses had thinned out, anyway. Where we finally settled down it wasn’t empty. There were fifteen or twenty groups of people scattered around on the sand, with folding chairs and big umbrellas and picnic coolers. But we weren’t right next to anyone, as the beach was very wide there.

  It was beautiful. Pure white fine sand, a long straight line of it for miles: the beaches of sout
hern Long Island are as good as any in the world. You could stand at the high edge of that beach and see the long slow reach to the horizon in either direction, nothing interrupting that brave clean stretch into the far point of distance.

  The pitch of the shore sloped down sharply at the water’s edge, and the surf was high that day. The waves were big, and they started cresting fifty, eighty, a hundred feet out, and then they came riding high and angry all the way in, curling themselves down in a rolling explosion that thundered along the beach, and the smaller waves rushed mindlessly up along the broad dark patch of sand. Small stones, seaweed, shells washed helplessly back and forth in the shifting shallows. The sound of it all was powerful: the long gathering wait, and then the crash, the rumble, and the small flooding rush. Then a wait, and another crash.

  We settled ourselves high up on the beach, away from those pounding waves. We were in a relatively empty patch. The closest people were ten or fifteen feet away; another family, with a small son. The mother was a thin dark-haired young woman in a black bikini. She lay flat on her back, her eyes closed against the sun. The son was nearby, playing in the sand with a plastic tank. The father sat beneath the umbrella, reading a magazine. He was dark-skinned and furry-chested, wearing a white tennis hat with a wavy brim. He stared at us from behind his sunglasses as we set up camp.

  I pushed the shaft of our umbrella as deep into the sand as I could, and when it felt solid, I opened it up. The big striped wings lifted creakily above me like a mechanical bird, and a patch of dry shade hovered over the burning ridges of sand. I took out our towels from the beach bag.

  “Here’s your towel, Miss Bathshena,” I said to Jennifer.

  Jennifer pursed her mouth, restraining her smile. “Thank you very much, Daddy,” she said. She took it from me with a little flounce, her eyebrows lifted, her eyelids lowered. Little girls flirt, even very little girls. And of course I flirted right back with her, how could I not? She was delicious, delectable, my sweet little morsel of a daughter.

  Diana was not looking at us, but she was watching, I knew, out of the corner of her eye. She spread out her own towel on the other side of the umbrella from me.

  “Do you want to be over here with Mummy, Jen?” she asked. I thought this was mean-spirited of her, enticing my daughter away from me. “Come over here and let me put sunscreen on you.”

  Clutching her towel in one hand, like a miniature starlet, trailing it behind her, Jennifer trundled obediently over. She stood meekly while Diana, frowning in the sun, squeezed a white coil of lotion into her palm and rubbed it into Jennifer’s soft back, making the angel wings rise and fall with her strokes.

  I settled down on my towel. I was sitting up, my arms around my knees, looking around. I set a small smile on my face, general and nonspecific, so that if anyone were to look over at us we would look like a comfortable domestic group, peaceable and united. I saw that we were in an area of all families, and I thought about how my inner sense of direction had shifted. Six or seven years ago, still single, I’d have found myself on a beach full of nubile young women, nearly naked, lying stretched out on the sand in pairs, waiting to be approached. Now things have changed; I don’t even know where those beaches are. I don’t really care where they are, either, but thinking about that, about my wholehearted and virtuous fidelity to Diana, about my commitment to our marriage, roused my outrage at her again. How could she take this for granted, how dared she? I remembered those beaches, I could find them again.

  Here, where we were, there were lots of children around Jennifer’s age, staggering around on the sand with buckets and shovels. Down on the long slope of the beach by the water, there were parents sitting with their children, digging at the liquid sand, building fanciful, brief-lived castles.

  Diana came over to the beach bag, which was next to me. She leaned down to reach it, and suddenly I felt her body beside me, shading me from the sun. I could feel the cool relief of her presence; I could smell the suntan lotion she used. Right beside me were her long thighs, the warm color of honey, with that smooth shallow groove running down the sides. I knew exactly how they felt to the touch. I looked at them; I remembered them under my fingers.

  “Hi,” I said to her softly, looking up at her, as though we were lovers.

  Just an impulse. But Diana’s face was set, it was granite. She didn’t answer or even look at me. I could feel determined indifference radiating from her, burning and deadly, like the sun. It shocked me. Up until then I’d been thinking only of myself in this. I’d been thinking that peace was available as soon as I wanted it; whenever my exasperation cooled, it would simply be a matter of my making a move. But now, seeing how set her mouth was, how cool and fixed and neutral her gaze, I felt things starting to slide away from me. It felt like that draining backwash of the surf, that rush which you’re powerless to resist, and I wondered if this was the way things were going to be for us. Maybe it was too late for me to make a move. Suddenly it seemed really bad, and I wondered if we’d gone too far. If I’d gone too far, during the fight, if I’d said things that could not now be forgiven. I knew I’d been unkind.

  Last night, Diana, in her nightgown, had closed herself into the bathroom before she came to bed. After she’d brushed her teeth and turned off the water, there was silence. She didn’t come out, and after a while I became aware of this, and I put down my book to listen: I could hear her weeping. It was very faint, a quiet whispering sound, a staccato series of coughing sighs. A long breathing pause, and then the little coughing sighs again. I’d had to hold my breath to be sure what I was hearing. Later, when she came out of the bathroom, her eyes were changed, hooded and hurt, as they are after crying. She didn’t look at me. I lay in bed with my book held up again, looking straight ahead as though I hadn’t heard and didn’t see. It was her turn to make a move, I was thinking. She got into bed with her back to me, and we went to sleep without speaking. At the time I’d thought angrily, Fine, let her know how it feels, let her decide to end it. But now I thought, What if this time I’ve lost the right I’d always had to end the fight? Our fights had never lasted this long before. How bad do things get before they’re too bad to fix?

  I began to wonder if Diana had made some decision of her own, some hostile conclusion that would slowly force me out of our life, into exile, banning me from her forever. I’d always believed that she was in my life for good, but what if I was wrong? What if this fight was the beginning of a terrible unraveling, what if this bright day was something we’d remember forever as a foreshadowing, darkened afterward by pain?

  I said nothing more, and she moved away, back to Jennifer. I saw her give Jen a big smile: her face still worked, apparently, only not toward me. That smile grieved me, and I began to be frightened of what might happen. I had a cavelike feeling in my chest, a hollowness that I didn’t know how to deal with, so I lay down on my back and closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

  Of course you can’t go to sleep like that, with the hot August sun beating right down into each of your eyes separately as though it is two mad searchlights. Even with your eyes shut the light drills in at you, turns your eyelids hot and red inside. Still, right then there was nothing I wanted to see, so I kept my eyes shut. I heard Diana talking to Jennifer for quite a long while, and Jen answering. They were kneeling, busy, building a castle together, right there where we were, high on the beach, with that useless grainy collapsing dry sand. I would have gotten up and taken Jen down toward the waves, and built one with the soft liquid sand along the waterline. We would have built a much better castle down there, but I knew it would have been seen as an antagonistic gesture, my taking Jennifer there, away from Diana, and of course I knew Diana wouldn’t come with us. I lay in the sun without moving, my eyes shut, listening to the heavy crash of the surf, and the cries of the children, and the ill-bred squalls of the gulls.

  I don’t know when I first heard the call. Maybe I actually did sleep for a bit, because when I became aware of it I realized
I had been hearing it for a while. I didn’t know how long. Urgency abounds along the seaside: children scream with sudden intensity, parents shout alarmingly for them to do something, or not do it: it’s the turbulence in the air, the surf, the big distances, the shrieking gulls, so many people, running and splashing. Turbulence is all around you, and you respond with shrillness and urgency.

  So when I heard the calls, “Annie! Annie!” at first I didn’t pay attention. But something in the tone was disturbing, and I sat up, leaning back on my elbows, to watch.

  A woman was running along the beach, at the lip of the sand, where it started to slope sharply down to the water. She had dark bushy hair, and sunglasses. She was in her late thirties, with a thick waist. She wore a red bathing suit with a broad blue diagonal stripe across the front. She was running not fast but somehow desperately, and her hands were clenched into fists. On one wrist a gold bangle glinted in the sun. Her feet pounded heavily into the sand. As she ran she kept looking around and around, as though she would run faster, but she didn’t know what direction she should take. “Annie! Annie! Annie!”

  By now she was abreast of us, and in her voice, it was clear, there was terror. I sat up, roused by that dreadful unbidden stab, and looked around, from side to side. Everyone nearby was doing the same. People were sitting up, getting onto their knees, frowning anxiously, shading their faces with their hands, looking from side to side. But none of us could help—none of us knew Annie.

  Behind the woman now came three other women, the same sort of age. One was blond, two dark-haired, and they were all in one-piece bathing suits. They too were shouting “Annie,” but it seemed somehow clear that they were friends, not the mother. They seemed more purposeful, and less paralyzed by fear. The friends kept on going, passing the mother, who had stopped. The mother simply stood there on the sand, turning, desperately, in a circle, looking behind her and behind her, and calling out again and again, “Annie! Annie!” in a wild, anguished voice. She didn’t look at the surf, thundering in, over and over, below her, but we did. We couldn’t help it. We looked, horrified, at the waves, rising slowly up, towering, then crashing down into foam and violence, fearing to see the thing we looked for.