Whisper to Me(81)

I pulled on my swimsuit and then faded jeans and a T-shirt with my old Converses and went outside. My phone went into my back pocket. I was going to walk to the beach, do some drawing, maybe swim in the ocean. If the voice wanted to say anything about it, well, what was it going to do? I grabbed my sketch pad and my pencil.

Thin mist hung over the town. I followed our street to where the asphalt began to break up, sand pushing through the cracks. The road just became the shore at a certain point. Then I stepped from the sidewalk down onto the scrub and dunes of the beach.

I walked the beach until I found something I wanted to draw—an old Coke can, it looked like it might have been seventies even; the font was weird, and it had washed up, faded out, on the sand. Trash. I loved to draw trash—that was my thing, remember? Neglected things. Ugly things.

I took my pencil and pressed it to the paper and—

Nothing. I couldn’t draw it. I couldn’t draw the ugly old squashed Coke can. It held no interest at all for me, its folds, its little holes, its faded lettering. It was just a dead, broken object, and the pencil wouldn’t move.

It was like … like it was something I used to like to do, but now it was just gone. Like a switch had been turned off. It wasn’t even the voice saying no, it was just me. Losing interest.

I shrugged and put the sketch pad and pencil in my back pocket. Then I went to the spot where Dad taught me to swim, south of Pier One. I slid off my jeans and took off my T-shirt. The late morning air was cold on my legs and arms.

For a second I thought, Really?

But then I smiled to myself. Yes, really.

I ran straight at the ocean, my legs crashing through the low waves, the salt water freezing, and then I dived down; my face and hands scraped the bottom and I surged up, grabbed the water in my hands and pulled myself out, stroke after stroke. I swam the crawl, only occasionally lifting my head to breathe.

Silky water embraced me, held me up, the feeling like a promise. A promise of buoyancy, of not letting me fall. A promise you never get from the air. If you lose your balance in the air, you always fall.

The taste of the ocean was in my mouth: salt, sand, small creatures. Water was all around me, containing me, shaping itself to my contours.

What I mean to say is:

It was amazing.

I swam all the way up to the first pier, then turned and swam back to the little pile my clothes made on the sand. My movements were stiff at first, forced, but got smoother as I swam, the feeling coming back to me. I felt free and I thought about nothing except the waves and timing my breathing and my strokes.

As I neared my clothes, I saw your truck. You were driving onto the sand where the road merged with the beach. The way you took me, that time. You drove a little way down the long, wide stretch of beach, toward the shore, and then you turned in the direction of Pier One.

I swung my legs down, planted my feet in the hard wet sand; it compacted around my toes. I stood and waved with both arms.

The white pickup slowed, then turned and drove toward me. You parked up by my jeans and T-shirt.

I walked slowly out of the water as you stood by the pickup, your arm on the open door. You raised a hand as I got close.

“Venus exiting the sea,” you said with a smile. You were wearing Ray-Bans.

“You’re letting him see your body,” said the voice, because you were too far away to mute it. “You’re letting him see your disgusting—”

“Yeah?” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Kidding,” you said, thinking I was speaking to you, raising your hands in mock defense as I neared you. “I’m not looking.”

The voice disappeared. I was too close to you now; I was in your force field.

“What do you mean, you’re not looking?” I asked.

You raised your sunglasses. Your eyes were closed. “See?”

I laughed. “Okay, keep them closed. I’m going to get dressed.”

“You didn’t bring a towel.”

I looked around. “Oh.”

“I have one in the truck. Hang on.” You turned, put up a hand to shield your eyes, and felt around in the cab of the truck. Then you were facing me again, eyes closed, holding out a towel.

I hesitated.

“It’s clean. I always have one. So I can swim after work.”

“Thanks.” I reached out and took it. “You swim?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” You paused. “You looked good out there.” You flushed. “I mean, your stroke. ****. I keep doing that. Your stroke looked good.”

He thinks I look good? So maybe he does like me.

But how am I supposed to know?

“Dad taught me,” I said, trying to ignore the thoughts racing in my head. This was true. When I was a kid, I was always in the ocean with my dad. I mean always. Every evening, every weekend. I loved it, sharing his passion with him, learning from him. My mom called me her water baby—she would come too, swim with us, though she was never as fast, would get left behind, joke-cursing us.

So many of my memories of my dad have the texture of water. And they evaporated, too, like water. Dried out, leaving the ocean behind, and him washed up in front of his bugs, and me left stranded in my room, alone.

“Oh yeah,” you said. “He was a SEAL, right? That’s hard-core.”