Florence Adler Swims Forever(63)
Stuart looked relieved to see him and doubled back to talk to him through the open window. “Good to see you, Mr. Adler.”
“No bathing suit?”
“Day off,” he said. “Since I was paying you a visit, I thought I’d put on real clothes.”
Joseph liked the boy’s sense of humor, always had. “Did you hear from the coach?” Joseph asked.
“I did,” he said, reaching into his pocket for an envelope. “That’s why I was coming to see you. Burgess enclosed a check for the entire deposit.”
Stuart handed Joseph the airmail envelope, and he took it, studying the return address, the French stamps, the Calais postmark.
“He said he was very sorry to hear the news.”
“That’s kind of him.”
“He’s known for being tough to deal with, so I was a little surprised he parted with the money so easily.”
“What are you doing this morning?” Joseph asked.
“Coming to see you.”
“Do you want to take a drive? I can have you back in Atlantic City by midafternoon.”
A look of surprise came over Stuart’s face. “Sure,” he said.
Joseph patted the exterior of the car’s door. “Get in, then.”
Stuart hurried around the front of the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “Where are we headed?” he asked, when the door was closed behind him.
“Highlands.”
Stuart nodded his head, as if he understood perfectly. When a few long seconds had passed, he asked, “Why Highlands?”
“You’ll see.”
Joseph crossed the Thorofare and eventually the marsh, then traced the coast. “Have you ever been to Highlands?” he asked Stuart when they were on Highway 4 North, the car beginning to pick up speed.
“Once, to Highlands Beach, for a lifeguard competition.”
Joseph wondered if Florence had tagged along. Last summer, when she’d returned home from school, she’d scarcely ever been at the apartment. It had been difficult to keep up with her whereabouts—she’d spent so much time training for the Absecon Island swim. “Did Florence go?” he asked.
Stuart shook his head no. “It was three summers ago.”
Joseph didn’t have anything to say to that, could hardly remember what any of them had been doing three years ago.
The two men fell quiet, listening to the steady rush of air that whipped around their heads and beat against their eardrums. Out their windows, New Jersey’s coastal plains passed by. Joseph hadn’t laid eyes on the ocean until, at seventeen, he had boarded the SS Frankfurt in Bremen. Now he couldn’t imagine living somewhere where he couldn’t see the sea.
“Did you know Trudy Ederle was from Atlantic Highlands?” said Stuart. “Or at least she spent her summers there.”
Joseph did remember that. Half the news stories had claimed she was a resident of Manhattan, where her father owned a butcher shop, but the other half had claimed she hailed from Highlands, where her parents had a summer cottage. Highlands Beach was where she and her sisters had learned to swim. Joseph was sure that, if he wanted to discover the Ederles’ cottage—maybe even knock on the front door, all it would take would be a quiet inquiry at a local establishment or two. “She probably doesn’t get back much these days.”
“Probably not,” Stuart agreed, letting the car go quiet again before he asked, “So, assuming we’re not dropping in on the Ederles, what’s in Highlands?” He gestured at the binoculars that Joseph had tucked into the seat. “Bird-watching?”
Joseph glanced at the binoculars, then at Stuart. Would it be kinder to let him in on the plan now or later? He wasn’t quite so quick-thinking or clearheaded as Esther, wasn’t ever certain that he knew what was in anyone else’s best interest. No, he’d tell him later, Joseph finally decided. He was enjoying the ride—and Stuart’s company—too much to sap all the pleasure from the day.
Joseph had been to Highlands several times before but the craggy landscape always took him aback, so different was it from the rest of the Jersey shore. A yellow ribbon of sand stretched from Cape May to Atlantic City and all the way to Sea Bright, but when it reached the Atlantic Highlands, a headland rose more than two hundred feet above sea level. A long and narrow sandbar stretched into New York Harbor, protecting Highlands from the worst of the northeast’s winds, and it was that sandbar, the Navesink Highlands in the background, that Joseph had first laid eyes on when he had come to America. He had stood on the deck of the Frankfurt, among hundreds of other hopeful immigrants—Austrians, Poles, Russians. A murmur went through the crowd. “New Jersey,” someone said to the person next to him. “New Jersey?” the next person asked. Everyone knew about New York but nobody knew about New Jersey. “America,” someone translated. A tiny American flag waved at them from the Twin Lights but only the young, whose eyes were still good, could see it. Joseph let out a whoop and jumped in the air, causing some of the older women who stood nearby to eye him with suspicion. It would be another half hour before the Statue of Liberty and the docks of Ellis Island came into view, before the tugboats came to meet the ship and lead it into the harbor but, as far as Joseph was concerned, he had already arrived.
Joseph turned the car onto Light House Road. After a few minutes, the road started to rise up toward the light station and he downshifted. The car chugged up the steep incline, and at the tree line, the base of the Twin Lights came into view. Stuart let out a low whistle.