Body Surfing (7 page)

When Julie and Sydney reach the court, they stop, by unspoken agreement, just short of revealing themselves. Sydney is intrigued and wonders at Julie's motives. Not wanting to be seen wanting? She wonders something else: Are her own motives the same?

In the distance, she can make out Victoria in tennis pinks and what looks to be a pair of new running shoes. Jeff, beside her, about to serve, has large sweat stains under his armpits, rivulets of perspiration trickling down the sides of his face. He brings his racquet down in a ferocious display of pure power. The ball hits just inside the line and seemingly out of the reach of Ben, who nevertheless makes a nifty return. Having had a smattering of tennis lessons during her strenuously WASP period, Sydney can follow the game. Beside her, Julie has her fingers pressed to her mouth.

"What?" Sydney asks, smiling.

"Dad."

Julie's father has on an abbreviated pair of tennis shorts he might have bought forty years ago--pale gray from many washings and so worn as to be comically revealing. His white legs are shocking; he looks a different race than his partner and his opponents. He sometimes flails at the ball, but he has a surprisingly accurate serve, a fact that appears to please him, even though he answers pure luck to Ben's nice serve. To Ben's serves, Jeff responds with speed, his backhand almost faster than the eye can register, trying to erase the carefully placed shots.

"Julie," Jeff says, noticing his sister. He has his hands on his hips, and he is panting hard.

"Hey, guys," Julie says, stepping forward.

"Want to play?" Ben asks.

Julie lifts a shoulder to her cheek.

"Just taking a walk," Sydney explains, moving away from the shadow of the trees as well. "Who's winning?"

"We are," Jeff answers quickly, revealing a certain investment in the game.

"Great," Sydney says, although she feels confused. She cannot think of any reason she would root for Ben over Jeff, though it would give her great satisfaction to see Mr. Edwards come home with a victory.

"We'll watch for a minute," Sydney says. "Don't mind us."

But the players do appear to mind Julie and Sydney, or at least to pay them mind. Sydney registers a self-consciousness that wasn't there before: in Victoria's exaggerated moue of disappointment when she misses a shot; in a dramatic lifting backhand from Ben; even in a spectacular net smash by Jeff from which he walks away with unnatural indifference. For a moment, Sydney longs to be on the court with them, paired with Jeff, lost in the competition, the easy laughs, the sweat.

"Do you play?" Sydney asks Julie.

"I've had lessons."

"Would you like to play later?"

But each of them knows that to play later would be to invite a sense of afterthought. The only game that matters is the one happening now, and they are not a part of it.

"Had enough?" Sydney asks after a time.

"I guess so."

"Want to go out to the rocks?"

"Maybe."

They turn away from the court. Sydney notices two boys, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, walking in their direction. Deep in conversation, they carry golf bags on their shoulders. The taller of the two glances up. "Julie," he says with some surprise.

"Joe," Julie answers, dipping her head as she does so. She crosses her arms over her chest.

"I didn't know you were here," Joe says, hoisting his bag further up his shoulder. Dressed in a white golf shirt and a pair of khakis, the boy has thick brown hair that invites fingers, maternal or otherwise. "You know Nick, right?"

"I think so," Julie says. "This is Sydney," the girl adds, remembering her manners.

"Hello," Sydney says, nodding to the boys.

There is an awkward pause, during which no one speaks.

"Well," Joe says finally. "Maybe we'll see you around?"

"Maybe," Julie repeats, clearly at a loss for words.

Through the trees, Sydney hears a shout from Jeff.

"So. . .," Joe says, apparently reluctant to move on.

"Good luck with the golf?!" Sydney offers with some finality.

With a small wave, the boys pass by. Sydney doesn't have to turn around to know that Joe, the one with the lovely brown hair, has stopped to look at Julie from behind. After a minute, she lets Julie get a step ahead of her. Sydney studies the girl through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old boy.

Luscious is a word that comes to mind.

Ripe for the picking.

On the rocks, Sydney leads the way, though she is less sure of foot than Julie, who is more afraid than incapable.

"We'll sit on that one," Sydney says, pointing to a flat rock far enough out from shore for them to feel that they've accomplished something, but not so far as to feel the spray of the ocean.

Julie hesitates, and Sydney takes her hand. Together, they negotiate the jagged surfaces of the granite boulders, their feet sometimes slipping on bits of seaweed.

"There," Sydney says when they are settled.

The sky is aqua with fast-moving fair-weather clouds. A spray, majestic and rhythmic, beats against the least sheltered of the boulders. To the left is an abandoned lighthouse, the red roof of its keeper's cottage picturesque in the bold light. Sydney cannot imagine the isolation of such a life, the need to perform a single task over and over, its responsibilities grave. The desolation would drive her mad.

Offshore, a lobsterman, late to his traps, trawls near a set of rocks that will become more visible as the tide recedes. The smell of the sea and the clean air is potent, and Sydney inhales a lungful. Not far from them, a Sunday painter has set up shop with an easel. The tableau gives her an idea for Julie that she files away for Monday.

"Why are you so afraid of the water?" Sydney asks.

"I once almost drowned."

Sydney knows this fact but wants more. "How did that happen?"

Julie seems hesitant.

"I don't want to dredge up bad memories," Sydney says.

"No, that's okay." Julie takes a breath for courage. "My dad was fishing on the beach one day after a bad storm. The waves were huge." Julie, who has a habit of speaking with her hands, uses them to indicate the height of the waves. "My cousin, Samantha, had a boogie board, but she put it down because she was scared of the waves. I thought she had just left it for a minute and that I could grab it and use it."

"How old were you?"

"Seven. Samantha was nine, I think. I floated for a minute and then I could feel myself being pulled out to sea." Beside Sydney, Julie stiffens with the memory. "I tried to swim in, but I couldn't. I yelled for Dad. He looked over and saw me and dropped his fishing pole and dove in after me. When he got to the boogie board, he told me to hold on tight. But then he realized he couldn't get us back in--the riptide was too powerful for him--so he started yelling to Samantha, who was jumping up and down on the sand and screaming, to go get the lifeguard."

Sydney puts her arm around the girl. "You must have been really frightened," she says.

"I was. After a while, the lifeguard came with his surfboard and put me on top of it and told Dad to hang on to a rope he had off the back. He paddled us in."

"I'm sorry that happened to you."

Julie is silent.

"They say that in a riptide, you should swim parallel to shore so that you can break out of the rip."

"It doesn't matter," Julie says. "I'm never going in again anyway."

"When we get back to the house," Sydney says, "we'll put on our suits and go in up to our ankles. Just our ankles."

Julie, who has her arms wrapped around her knees, shakes her head. "I don't know," she says.

"That's all we'll do," Sydney insists, knowing that she is being pushy. But she has a plan. "Just our ankles. Unless you want to go out to your knees. I'll let you go to your knees, but no more than that."

"I don't think so. No offense."

"No offense," Sydney says.

The breeze dies down, leaving the water docile. Sydney's tank suit is still damp from having been left on the floor of her closet. Last night, she couldn't get it off fast enough. Now she wishes she had thought to wash it. It seems to Sydney to reek of stealth. Of cunning.

Sydney has seen Julie in her aqua bikini several times on the deck. The suit, though skimpy, appeared appropriate there, full attire, Julie's bare skin glistening with a sunblock with a low SPF. Now at the water's edge, the bathing suit seems but pitiful armor against the Atlantic Ocean.

"Just the ankles," Sydney says.

Julie instinctively reaches for Sydney's hand. Sydney can feel the tug and pull of the girl's weight as Julie, even in the shallow water, adjusts to the undertow. She looks clumsy in her fear, though Sydney suspects she is a natural athlete--something in the ratio of the size of her feet to the length of her legs, in the strength of her shoulders.

"It's freezing," Julie says.

"You'll get used to it."

In the water, which today has taken on a slightly greenish tinge, there are bits of seaweed that sometimes brush against the legs. Also in the water, Sydney knows, are striped bass, schools of bluefish, baby seals, and even benign sharks--a fact she thinks she will neglect to mention to the girl beside her.

Two young boys skim-board along the shoreline. They leap onto flat boards at the water's edge and ride them, sometimes for surprisingly long stretches. Sydney knows, from personal experience and the memory of a long, painful bruise, that it's not as easy as it looks.

"Want to go to the knees?" Sydney asks.

She expects Julie to demur, but the girl, in a moment of bravery, lets go of Sydney's hand and ventures farther out on her own. In a few steps, the knees are reached. When a wave comes, the water touches the tops of her thighs. Sydney watches Julie go rigid, and then relax as it recedes.

"How do you feel?" she asks when she is at Julie's side.

"GOOD!" Julie shouts, as if Sydney were a hundred feet away. "I'M OKAY."

"GREAT!"

"SHOULD WE GO OUT FURTHER?" Julie asks.

"NO. THIS IS FINE."

Julie and Sydney stand in the water, looking out to sea. Julie dips once into a wave and shoots up like a rocket, the water sloughing off her like booster debris. An ultralight passes overhead. Sydney cannot see the pilot, even though the machine is low to the ground. There was a time, not so long ago, when she'd have said to herself, What a kick, but those days are gone now. She has a momentary thought of her aviator. The sight of any flying machine, large or small, brings on thoughts of Andrew. (The day she met him at the Boston Marathon, which on a whim she had decided to enter. She stopped just at the point where he had veered off the track. He was bent at the waist, panting for breath. Sydney offered him her water bottle, and he staged a physical comeback right before her eyes, as if his sudden life's goal was to impress her.) Sydney suspects it will be this way all her life. She wonders what could possibly trigger reciprocal memories on Andrew's part. A psychology textbook? Hair that is no color anyone can describe?

Sydney's legs are so numb she's lost communication with her feet. "So, what do you think?" she asks Julie, whose attention is on a young woman in a wet suit surfing fifty feet away from them.

"She's good," Julie says.

"No, I mean about heading back."

"Oh," Julie says. "Sure." She watches the woman catch a wave. She puts her hands to her mouth like a megaphone. "GOOD ONE!" she shouts.

When Julie and Sydney turn to head for shore, which appears in the interval to have come to greet them, Sydney sees Jeff, still in tennis whites, standing at the water's edge. In his hand is an empty bottle of Poland Spring, which he waves in greeting.

Sydney remembers with dismay her sagging tank suit with its sprung legs, more visible now in the bright sunshine than it was the night before. Julie leaps out of the water to tell her brother her good news--a lifelong fear conquered. Well, almost conquered. Sydney watches as Jeff hugs his sister, allowing her to soak his shirtfront.

"Who won?" Sydney asks when she emerges from the water.

"They did," Jeff says. "Ben is something else."

"I hope it was fun."

Jeff's hair is darker now, pasted to his head with sweat. "Vicki's changing into her suit. We thought we'd go for a swim. How's the water?"

"Ice," Sydney says, wiping her hair from her forehead.

"Sounds good."

"I'll get some towels," Julie offers, running ahead. Sydney decides, watching her, A child in a woman's body.

"That's a great thing you just did," Jeff says. "No one's been able to get her to go near the water in years."

Sydney thinks to herself: You can't have been trying very hard.

"Were you there?" Sydney asks. "The day of the riptide?"

"It was awful." Jeff flips the empty plastic bottle between the second and third fingers of his right hand. "Did Julie tell you what she said to my father?"

"No."

"When my father reached her, Julie was holding on to the boogie board. She looked right at him and said--amazingly calmly, given the situation--We're going to die, aren't we?"