Tony was still asleep upstairs. I’d slept downstairs on what once may have been considered a couch until it was, finally, intolerable. I needed to get outside. I didn’t want the complaining cry of the mortally wounded screen door to wake him. Probably not much chance of that since we’d replaced most of the blood in our bodies with alcohol the night before.
Outside, cool, damp, salt air blew into my face. My hair smelled like an ash tray. I stepped from the concrete pad down to the gravel path and considered going back inside for my shoes. No. The discomfort would be my atonement. I deserved it, didn’t I? The beach was about forty yards down the path. I’d endure it.
Opaque dew clung to the spiky grasses suspended on slim tendrils resembling sea anemones, glistening in the juddering breeze. Even though it was May, gooseflesh rippled up the back of my arms.
If there was going to be sun it would have been up by now. The scene was gauzy and gray. I could feel, as much as see, a deep shadow from the towering hedge that marked the border between the beach and the big house. It appeared to sway in a large connected shape, dark and supple, bending slightly, beckoning. The sound of waves breaking on shore and the anticipation of the first sight of the vast sea brought back memories of summers with my family. The idealized ones; those that comfort and sooth. The world as I wished it had been.
My head floated up and around my body. I picked my way awkwardly over small stones that inflicted stabs of pain. A burning sensation rose and caught in the back of my throat. I put my head down and concentrated on the gravel track. “Oh, man.” I said aloud. The sound of my voice repulsed me. I spat on the ground.
At the jagged rent in the hedgerow, the surf’s invitation hinted brutality as it collided with the sand. I started as something fluttered and flapped in the bushes, igniting a bloom of cold sweat on my forehead. I half-stepped, half-slid through the raspy gauntlet. Finally, my bare feet hit the sand. It was a reprieve from too much of everything; absurdly cool, firm but yielding, incongruous with a lifetime of encountering burning sand on sweltering summer days.
I stumbled and slid sideways down a second small incline approaching tendrils of sluicing foam. I stood up straight, scanning the beach. A great relief of briny air filled my lungs. No other person in sight. Mist, spray and sky drifted up out of the leaden expanse in graduated curtains. Where the liquid horizon became sky was impossible to discern. The dampness insinuated itself into my tee-shirt and pants, plastering them to my logy limbs.
I walked to the surf line, the tide’s pull beckoning me. Then I heard a sound that for all of the times I communed with the ocean, I’d had never recognized before. I cocked my head inching closer, the icy seawater overspreading my feet. Wave lines rolled in and rose up with an almost imperceptible hitch at the apex—the fox before it pounces on its prey—crashing down with all of gravity’s force onto pebbles and shells arrayed on a sacrificial altar of sand and seaweed. As the waves retreated back into the gloomy expanse, a lapping wet hiss rose up from the beach’s surface. It sounded like the sea sucking the sins from the earth. I listened for several minutes, resolved to commit the sound to memory. As salvation. As strength. I would take the sound back to the city with me. After several minutes, perhaps more, I turned and clamored back up the bank toward the hedge, slightly out of breath. The shaggy crease where I had entered seemed unfamiliar, sinister, extinguishing my momentary calm. I pushed through the spiny arms, the ocean now at my back, its churning insulated by the dense evergreens. The first thing I saw was a pale square of light in the upstairs window of the big house overshadowing Tony’s caretaker shack.
It was Sunday morning. I thought of Jan back in Brooklyn. What had she done last night? Where was she this morning? Who was she with? The floating head sensation overtook me again and spun me to my knees. I threw up in the damp grass. At least I had gotten off of the beach. I was happy that I hadn’t thrown up on the beach. I spat and was rewarded with that shameful coppery taste that reminded me of all of the things that I had done, or not done, or was afraid to do.
I stood up, legs shaky. When I looked up, I saw a figure in the window, backlit, hovering in the amniotic glow. It must be the young woman who lived there with her parents. Tony said she’d just graduated from the university and was working in one of the local beach bars. My shame and embarrassment ratcheted up with the thought that she had seen me crawling around on all fours, puking in her yard.
I made my way back to Tony’s on the gravel path wanting to redeem myself in the eyes of the window woman. If I could travel the rest of the expanse without obvious pain or awkward gait it would be a purification ritual. Like firewalking. Should I ever meet her, this vignette might prove to be a conversation starter.
When I got to the cottage I felt steadier. I slipped through the screen door. It gave no voice to its anguish. Tony was not the kind of person who stayed in bed once he was awake, so I assumed he was still asleep. I climbed a couple of the narrow steps until I could see up into the loft where he slept. He was on his side, unmoving, facing the wall. Was he alive? I waited until I saw his shirt rise from his breathing. He’s too crazy to die, I thought.
The weekend was done. Sunday never counted as the weekend for me. Now what? Back to Brooklyn? I’d quit my lousy bartending job. Actually, I’d gotten fired. Jan was done with me. I was nothing, she said, going nowhere. I couldn’t bear resuming the charade of the aspiring actor who never gets work. How had this happened?
And then I recalled the ocean’s sound. The sucking sound. My talisman. I could go back to the beach and listen to it again … but it wouldn’t be the same. So much is like that. A novel experience imbued with awe and discovery, and then … it’s never the same after the first time. I’d have to find something else.