Body Surfing (10 page)

The only light is from the hallway. In one murky corner of Julie's room is a short shelf of stuffed animals, all without color in the dark. On an old-fashioned dressing table covered with a lace cloth are bits of jewelry, a bottle of contact lens solution, a hairbrush, a CD case, and several hair ties. On the floor are two pieces of cloth Sydney knows to be the aqua bikini. The sight of the discarded bathing suit, worn with such pride earlier in the day, causes a clench in Sydney's chest.

Through an open window, Sydney can hear the ocean. Two houses down from the Edwardses is a renovated cottage. The woman who owns it demanded that the builders install triple-paned glass so that she wouldn't have to listen to the surf.

Why come to the shore if not for the crashing of the waves?

Beside her, Julie stirs.

"Julie?" Sydney calls.

But the girl only murmurs and then sinks again into sleep.

After she has roused Julie several times, it becomes apparent to Sydney that she will need a cup of coffee if she is to maintain her vigil. When she is satisfied that Julie can be woken a fifth time, she leaves the room and descends the stairs. Ben is nowhere to be seen, but, surprisingly, Jeff is still sitting in the living room.

"How is she?" he asks when Sydney has reached the bottom step. He looks pale and tired.

"Asleep, but I'm waking her every half hour just in case."

No need to say why. Jeff, too, reads the papers.

"Where's Ben?"

"He's dozing. He said to wake him when we need a break."

"Actually, I think I'd like some coffee," Sydney says.

"You sit. I'll make it."

Sydney settles herself on the bottom step and watches Jeff fill the pot with water and pour it into the coffee machine. When he has finished the task, he leans against the counter, hands in pockets. In the background is the unmistakable swish and gurgle of coffee being brewed.

"She tell you anything?" he asks.

"She went to a party. She either doesn't know or isn't saying the name of the person who took her. It's hard to tell what she knows and doesn't know."

"Not Nick or Joe?"

"Apparently not."

"You'll keep an eye on her?" Jeff asks. "I have to leave tomorrow. Maybe I should have a talk with my mother."

This strikes Sydney as a bad idea. "I think Julie is the one you should be talking to," she suggests.

"She's so innocent," he says, shaking his head slowly.

"Yes, she is."

Very few eighteen-year-olds, Sydney believes, can be considered innocent, but Julie comes as close to that description as anyone Sydney can remember meeting or reading about. Sydney briefly wonders at the correlation between intelligence and guilt.

The coffee machine makes its unique hiss and rumble, signaling the end of the brewing process. Jeff fills a mug and hands it to Sydney.

"Thank you."

"I'll come up in half an hour and spell you. Let you get some sleep. If we need him, I'll wake Ben." He pauses. "Listen," he says, "I was wrong before."

The surface of Sydney's skin is instantly hot. She is certain Jeff is about to mention the incident on the rocks.

"I shouldn't have asked you to keep an eye on her," he says. "Julie's not your responsibility."

Sydney is a beat late in responding. "Well, yes, she is."

"You're certainly not her keeper."

He means, Sydney thinks, You are not family.

"And I don't know if my mother or father said this to you," he adds, "but you should feel free to invite anyone here you'd like. A friend."

The word trails off and lingers in the room. Sydney wants to explain to Jeff what happens to women who are once divorced and once widowed. The friends Sydney had with the aviator belonged more or less to the aviator, and when the marriage dissolved, they tended to stay with him, like spoils that had been divided. The friends Sydney had with Daniel contact her from time to time, but their calls and visits are invariably sad and quiet, and she believes none of them is eager to repeat the experience. Sydney has friends from school--Becky, who lives in New York City now, and Emily in Boston--but she cannot imagine either of them driving to New Hampshire to share her small room with the narrow beds, eating dinners with the Edwardses.

"Maybe I'll do that," Sydney says.

Jeff holds her eyes a second longer than necessary--or perhaps it is Sydney who holds his eyes a second longer than necessary; or possibly this second is entirely necessary to communicate the fact that though Sydney is not family, she is not to think of herself as separate--but there is no mention of the touch of fingers on the rocks. It occurs to Sydney that not having been with a man in over two years, she may have forgotten the relevant signs.

In the morning, Julie seems no more knowledgeable about the geography of the evening before than when she was drunk. After a long sleep, she makes an appearance in the kitchen, but only for Advil. Julie's headache is so ferocious, Sydney begins to think she has one herself.

Excuses are made. "Julie isn't feeling well. She came down and then went back up." This Sydney says to Mr. Edwards, minding a lie to a man who probably would not lie to her. Indeed, she wants to confide in Julie's father, ask his advice, but this is not the plan Jeff and Ben and she decided upon at six a.m. over oatmeal, a plan that is not Sydney's to dismantle.

It was an odd threesome, each of them exhausted, each of them wondering if perhaps they had made more of the incident than was warranted; or if the reverse was true: they hadn't taken it seriously enough by not alerting either of the parents. Sydney felt like a junior officer who had been on deck all night. The oatmeal tasted like paste, but then again, she thought, it often tasted like paste. There seemed to be among the three of them an unspoken agreement that if Julie had survived the night, she was in the clear. Someone later in the day would have to take Julie aside and have the curfew discussion, the cell-phone talk, and the speech about surrendering names and places. The perils of drink might be discussed, a prohibition issued. Perhaps someone should mention what can happen to girls who drink too much in the presence of boys, how boys can take advantage of girls in ways that can be emotionally and physically dangerous. Perhaps that someone will be Sydney.

After Mr. Edwards leaves the house in search of the Sunday papers, Victoria, pink and healthy, appears in the kitchen. Sydney wonders what brilliant tonic the woman takes to produce a glow that seems to have erased the night before, even to call into question one's perception of it.

Victoria is wearing a yellow sundress, and for a moment Sydney imagines she has rallied in order to attend church. Instead, Victoria rummages through the fridge and the cabinets and puts together an appetizing breakfast of fruit-filled French toast made with brioche left over from the morning before. She sets the table as for an event, with the ivory china and etched glass. She pours syrup into an antique pitcher and uses a linen napkin. Sydney has the sense that Victoria is trying to re-create the feel of a bed-and-breakfast meal.

Sydney takes her coffee to the round kitchen table. "That looks good," she says.

"Want some?"

"No, I just ate."

Victoria's eyebrows have been plucked nearly straight across. She wears topaz earrings that match her eyes. Her hair is wet from the shower, drying into soft waves as she eats. She is a naturally wealthy woman, someone upon whom nature has bestowed a great many gifts: the clear skin, the luxurious hair, the perfect teeth (though one imagines she has had some help with those), the slender body, the utterly charming smile.

"I'd wait for Jeff," Victoria says, making a small apology, "but he's beat. He says he was up half the night talking to Ben. I'm so glad, because even though they both live in Boston--well, technically Cambridge and Boston--they hardly ever see each other. This place is gorgeous," she adds with what appears to be true reverence for the Atlantic, demonstrating its best today through the open doors. "I've been coming here for years, but I always think it."

"You've been lucky with the weather this weekend," Sydney says. But Sydney is not thinking about the weather. Instead, she is mulling over the astonishing fact that Jeff did not tell his girlfriend about the search for Julie, the vigil during the night. Sydney wonders why he felt the omission necessary.

"You'll be here for how long?" Victoria asks. "I'm not sure anybody's said."

"Till the end of the month. Possibly I'll stay after Labor Day. I'm supposed to be preparing Julie for her SATs in October, so I suppose I might have to visit her at home when she goes back to school."

Sydney is making this up as she goes along. In fact, no one has yet discussed how long Sydney is to stay, whether or not she is to travel to Needham.

"The family never stays after Labor Day," Victoria says knowingly. "Never."

Sydney lets the advisory sink in.

"Jeff works so hard, he needs his rest," Victoria says in an apparent non sequitur. Or perhaps it is not. Possibly Victoria thinks about Jeff all the time, even when she seems not to be. "I'll let him sleep until eleven, and then I'll wake him. I think we're going to Portsmouth for lunch." Victoria glances sideways at Sydney, not sure if she ought to have mentioned an excursion to someone who might not have been invited. "Anna's jogging," Victoria says in what is or is not another non sequitur.

Sydney thinks about the prospect of Anna Edwards jogging.

"Your job must be very satisfying," Sydney says, cupping her hands around her mug. She is, in Victoria's presence, acutely aware that she has not showered or brushed her teeth, a fact that, curiously, did not bother her at breakfast with Ben and Jeff. She watches as Victoria cuts her French toast with her fork, scraping it against the ivory plate. A spill of warm berries emerges from the brioche, and Sydney wishes she had accepted Victoria's offer.

"Well," Victoria says, "it's like anything else. There are frustrations and successes. I'm better at it than I used to be."

"What do you do exactly?"

"I coordinate fund-raisers."

Yes, Sydney can see this--Victoria organizing black-tie events at the .406 Club at Fenway, all in aid of children with leukemia. She is, Sydney decides, despite her suspect beauty, entirely worthy of Jeff. Victoria lets him sleep, she is not extravagant, she does good works, she can cook.

"I never know who will be here," Victoria says, spearing a strawberry. Sydney wonders if she should take this as a small affront.

"What's in Portsmouth on a Sunday?" Sydney asks.

Victoria blinks but makes a near-perfect recovery. "A wonderful clam bar," she says. "I think you'll love it."

Sydney wants only to sleep. She doesn't want to interact with Jeff or Ben or Mrs. Edwards or even Julie. She senses a certain degree of seepage--of overinvolvement on her part, of the family getting under her skin--that makes her uncomfortable. She wishes herself away, alone.

She sleeps until four o'clock. She lies in bed for a few moments longer, listening to the farewells in the front hallway. Ben and Jeff and Victoria are leaving for Boston. There are instructions about what to bring when they come in two weeks, mention of upcoming social events (presumably adjustments in wardrobes may be necessary), promises to hurry back. Sydney hears the screen door slap shut after them.

Immediately, the house deflates, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards retreating without a word to different rooms. Wendy and Art will find a cool reception when they return from wherever they have gone--Appledore? Portsmouth?--and perhaps not even a meal waiting for them. Exhaustion coupled with a sense of having discharged all social obligations may make for a prickly evening with the hosts. Do these hosts, Sydney wonders, have any idea yet about what may or may not have happened to their only daughter the evening before?

Sydney descends the stairs warily, not wishing to encounter anyone more evolved than Tullus. Too much has happened in too short a time: Julie's drunken episode; searching for the girl with Jeff; having to negotiate her way around both Ben and Victoria. Hungry, Sydney needs a piece of cheese, a handful of nuts, but making a meal seems unnecessarily formal, an insistence upon ritual when clearly ritual should be dispensed with.

The light through the kitchen window is sharp and orange and beckons her outside. She thinks about how to get from the kitchen, at the back of the house, to the beach, at the front, without running into anyone from the Edwards family. She chooses the bold move, walking barefoot straight through the house, ready with a greeting on the fly if needed. But Sydney is in luck. No one is in the hallway or the living room or even on the porch on this fine evening. She imagines Anna Edwards flat on her back in bed, a cold washcloth on her forehead. She pictures Mark Edwards on his knees in his rose garden, pulling out the weeds that have dared to attempt a coup while he was otherwise engaged. She imagines Julie, curled into a fetal position on her bed, alternately dozing and then waking, bewildered when she does, trying to make sense of the images, few of them welcome, that float across her vision.

Having executed a decorous escape, Sydney walks briskly away from the house. The light on the ocean has turned the water aqua, and Sydney feels an urge she often has to capture it. She knows from past experience that a photograph will not do. It may later trigger a recollection, but the reality of the moment--the feel of the breeze on the skin under her ears, the blue dust on the horizon--will last only seconds and then disappear.