On fire island, p.22
On Fire Island, page 22
“Sure,” he said, patting her on the knee for encouragement.
“It’s a long story,” she warned.
“I don’t know if you know this, but my first novel was seven hundred pages.”
“I know, I read it.”
“So there you go—consider this your revenge.”
She laughed, leaning back against the higher stair like Ben, avoiding eye contact. I’m sure Ben was thankful for the shift. She took in the sky before beginning.
“So yes, Veronica stole my boyfriend—my first boyfriend mind you, Logan Chase, and while he may not seem like anything special now, he was the hottest guy on the beach back then. It was a big deal, because you may be shocked to know that I was not the hottest girl on the beach—that was my sister.”
Ben interjected with the requisite, “I doubt that,” to which Bea patted him on the arm appreciatively and continued.
“I was so angry that I went up to school early and refused to come home for Thanksgiving. I was depressed and exhausted all the time, and just wanted to sleep for the break. My parents were upset. It was a big deal not to come home, but they figured I would be back for Christmas soon enough and they would deal with the fallout between me and Veronica then. About a week later, my best friend from the city, Dana Blum, showed up at my door. She was one of the few home friends I had confided in about the shit that went down with Veronica, and she was worried about me when I hadn’t come home.
“I’ll never forget it. I was wearing vintage railroad-striped Guess overalls and Dana wanted to try them on. I felt like I hadn’t taken them off in a week. When I did, she freaked out. I was about five months pregnant with a belly the size of a small basketball. I hadn’t even noticed it or realized that I hadn’t gotten my period since the summer.”
I was surprised that Beatrix could be like one of those girls who goes to the bathroom with a stomachache and comes out with a baby. From my experience in the short time I was pregnant, I didn’t get it—but it happens.
“Dana made me call my mom, whom I made promise not to tell my dad, which I am pretty sure she took to her grave.”
“Wow.” Ben finally spoke.
He was an awful secret keeper, which was most likely the source of his “Wow.” He couldn’t keep a single thing from me—let alone hold on to something like that for life.
Bea continued, “I know. I feel guilty about it now. Making her hold something back as big as that from her husband must have been awful. She arrived in Gambier the next day. I’d never even been to the gynecologist until my mother took me then.”
“No wonder you’re still mad at Veronica.”
“That’s not even all of it. I carried the baby to term, hiding my pregnancy the whole time from everyone but my mom and Dana. It wasn’t so hard; I’m on the heavy side, and the trend at the time was oversize flannels and leggings. I got a research job for one of my professors over winter break, so I had an excuse to stay put.
“The baby was born about two weeks before graduation. My mom flew down in advance—‘Bea is depressed again,’ she told my dad. I gave birth at a birthing center in Mount Vernon on May 3 to a beautiful baby girl. Six pounds, three ounces with a thick patch of black hair and a dimpled smile just like mine and my dad’s. I held her for a few minutes before they swiped her away from me. And that was it. I graduated two weeks later with a big fat Kotex pad stuck between my legs.”
She looked over at Ben and laughed. “Sorry. TMI.”
He looked stunned, and not on account of the Kotex.
“That’s awful, Bea, I’m sorry.”
“I know that I made all those choices myself, but I still daydream about what would have happened if Veronica hadn’t slept with him. I swear I would have kept that baby and married Logan Chase. I’m not saying we would have lived happily ever after, like I had pictured us doing at the time, but I would have my daughter.”
“And you never had kids,” he said, sadly pointing out the obvious.
“Nope. And my sister has two, who I don’t even know. I just met them at my mother’s funeral for, like, two seconds.”
I couldn’t imagine being estranged from Nora like that. Not that my mother would ever allow it.
“Have you ever thought about finding your daughter?” Ben asked.
“More like have I ever not thought about finding her? As luck would have it, the adoption agency burned down years ago, which didn’t much matter because it was a closed adoption.”
“DNA tracing?”
“I did 23andMe—no close match. And you know, if she wanted to find me, she would have done it too—so there’s that.”
“Well, maybe. I mean, closed adoptions are pretty rare, even back then. There’s a chance she doesn’t even know that she’s adopted. I’m sorry, Bea.”
“It’s OK.” She reached over and took Ben’s hand. “I wish I could find her, but what else can I do? I’m happy in my life, I love my job, and my students feel like my children, plus I’m dating a really great guy right now, a professor too—American history.”
“I’m glad you’re happy, and don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“I think I’m done hiding it. Especially now that my mom’s gone and my dad can’t get angry with her for keeping my secret.”
She stood and stretched her legs.
“Maybe it’s time I tell the world, maybe that’s the only way I’ll find her.”
She patted Ben lovingly on the shoulder.
“I should get back, help Dad get settled in.”
“I’m gonna miss him,” Ben admitted.
“There’s still a few more days of summer.”
“I may stay here for a couple of months this fall and write.”
“That’s great!” she said, flashing her dimpled smile. “What’s the new book called?”
“I have no idea,” Ben responded, but this time his eyes lit up. It gave me hope that something was brewing.
thirty-eight
Chasing Dolphins
The next morning Ben got up early and pulled his paddleboard out of the back shed where he had left it untouched for the entire summer. In the past, when I heard him rise in the morning to board, I would ask about the conditions. He wouldn’t know what flag it was till he got up to the beach and looked toward the lifeguard stand, but he always consulted a weather app before leaving the house. If the wind was somewhere around five miles an hour, I would roll over and go back to sleep. If it were closer to twenty, I would throw on shorts and come along in order to keep a watchful eye on him from the shore. Not that I could have saved him, but I could always scream for help, or at least die trying.
Ben didn’t necessarily appreciate my vigilance. In fact, I’m pretty sure he resented it. I brought a fear along with me that was palpable, and no doubt jangled his nerves. It wasn’t good to have jangled nerves on a board in the middle of the ocean with twenty-mile-an-hour winds and God knows what swimming beneath you, just so your five-foot-nothing weak swimmer of a wife could grieve your death with less guilt.
As he pulled on his wetsuit, I thought of my first and last attempt to paddleboard on the Atlantic. I was so excited when Ben had presented me with our anniversary-of-meeting gift, an occasion we rarely marked with more than a good bottle of wine. With the proudest look-how-good-I-did-with-this-gift face, he dramatically unveiled his and hers paddleboards so that we could continue and improve what we had just begun getting the hang of in Lanai.
“It’s a perfect day to try,” Ben had preached. “Green flags and winds near five miles an hour.”
I was filled with nervous energy as I carried my board up over the beach stairs. I pictured myself standing at the water’s edge, facing the horizon, board lassoed to my ankle. Once there, I would find my spot, time it perfectly, and without hesitation jump on and paddle over the shore break, just as I had done in Lanai.
“Our mission today is chasing dolphins,” Ben had exclaimed, bouncing from foot to foot like a kid. I had shivered with excitement at the thought of it. I’d heard Fire Island boarders talk about the rare charge of witnessing a pod of dolphins circling them in the middle of the ocean. We had once seen a whale in Lanai. It was far in the distance, but close enough that we could hear it slapping its fins as it breached. It was magnificent—even Ben seemed tiny in comparison.
I took a deep breath in and pushed away the nerves that were forming in my belly as we got close to the intimidating shoreline. My heart raced while my mind fought to keep my anxiety at bay (where I wished I had been instead—the bay would have been much more my speed).
You can’t do this, Julia. No way! my realistic side chimed in. You’re not one of those surfer girls.
By the time I stood my board up in the sand at the shore, my hands were trembling in fear. “I can’t do it,” I admitted out loud. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you can. You got this!” Ben assured me. His pep talk did nothing but annoy me. It felt like his encouragement stemmed more from his eagerness to get on with the adventure than concern for me.
“These don’t seem like five-mile-an-hour winds,” I stated, to bolster my case.
I knew from other boarders and surfers that circumstances switch quickly on the water. You had to always be ready for a north wind to come off the bay out of nowhere, pushing you farther out to sea, and making it hard to come back.
Kind of like cancer, I thought now, looking back.
“It’s so different from Lanai,” I’d pointed out.
I hadn’t thought of the difference between the conditions before. The place we learned to board at in Lanai was in a cove, making it more akin to a lake than an ocean.
Ben wasn’t having it.
“It’s the same, in theory. Just find the sweet spot. Don’t hesitate. Jump on your board—nose to the wave.”
Not to sound dramatic, but when you stand facing your own mortality at the ocean’s edge, getting into the water at just the right time, with the waves pounding the shore, proves quite terrifying.
“Follow me, babe—you got this!” Ben yelled, entering the surf with ease.
I tried, I really did, but barely stepped forward. When he realized I hadn’t followed, he waded back, clearly not happy. It felt like some test of endurance that I had no desire to take, and couldn’t believe he was expecting me to pass.
We ended up having our biggest fight ever, with him repeatedly trying to coax me through the dramatic timing of navigating the heavy waves at shore break, and me ending up sitting on my board in the sand, crying. It was a bad day and, after that, I never attempted paddle boarding again, not even on the bay.
But today was different. It was Ben who seemed hesitant about entering the ocean, while my anxiety and fear of death were no longer a factor. He successfully made his move, and I jumped right on and sat at the end of his board. My legs hung off the sides, each pushing through the water like the rudder of a sailboat. It was exhilarating.
The sun was just right; the wind was perfect and, without fear weighing me down, I slipped between Ben’s powerful chest and his outstretched arm as he paddled farther and farther from the coast. I had never felt more alive.
As we glided out into the open ocean past the second break, my heart sang.
My God, I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna survive!
And even though I was already dead, my thoughts never strayed from that vibe. Ben stopped paddling after the third break of waves and we stared out as far as our eyes could see, which felt quite far. It was a unique perspective of ourselves, so small compared to such a vast sea.
Sound is different on the ocean. It was quiet except for the repetition of the small waves lapping on the edge of the board and the crashing of the huge ones on the shore in the distance. The light bounced off the water, changing what we could see and what we couldn’t by the second.
“Wow!” I said, out loud.
“Wow!” he agreed.
It was the first time that Ben had been completely alone, without even Sally, since I’d died. He seemed to realize it. A weird expression came over his face, and I couldn’t determine what he was thinking. I hoped he was enjoying it. I had rarely seen him enjoy anything that used to make him happy. Last week he bit into a Mallomars cookie (his favorite) and broke down in tears. He had to spit it out, couldn’t even swallow it.
He stood in the center of the board and yelled out my name as if screaming to the heavens, in a barreling, heart-wrenching voice, “Julia!”
He slowly lowered himself down onto his knees and then straddled his feet on either side of the board. Tears poured down his cheeks.
I spun around and whispered in his ear, “I’m here, I’m here,” then looped my legs over his. Face-to-face, I whispered, “I love you Benjamin Morse and always will. Losing the baby was no one’s fault, especially not yours.”
It seemed impossible to me that he didn’t feel my presence. I felt so entwined with his.
We sat on the paddleboard in the same pretzel-like fashion for a long while, staring at the vast ocean. His feet were cold and waterlogged, mine warm and perfectly smooth—another perk, I thought. It was definitely time to head back and get ready for the big game, but it seemed as though he had no intention of doing so.
“I’m sorry we didn’t see a dolphin, Jules,” he said out loud.
“It’s OK, baby. It wasn’t in the cards for me.”
Just when we had given up, a dorsal fin appeared in the distance, maybe twenty feet away. As it swam closer, I could see that it was on the back of a creature that looked at least as long as our board. I couldn’t tell if it was a dolphin or a shark, and wondered if Ben, who had reported seeing both before, could tell the difference. I held my breath as the fin came closer. When you go up against nature, you never really know what it’s going to throw at you, and this seemed like one of those instances.
Ben took the paddle and tapped it on the board. “Come ’ere buddy,” he said, leaving me to presume it was a dolphin. Though in his state, I couldn’t be sure.
The creature glided through the sea and leaped through the air less than ten feet away, as if to say hello. It was a dolphin! As the sun danced on the water, it kept disappearing from sight and reappearing a few minutes later, somewhere completely different. We looked around for the rest of its pod, but it seemed to be on its own.
“It’s an Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin,” he told me, “a big one!”
“Huge!” I said, surprised at the size of the friendly creature.
I’ve heard that dolphins have saved humans from drowning, that they can feel and understand human distress and struggle. The dolphin reappeared, swam underneath our board, and brushed its back against the bottoms of our feet, as if expressing empathy.
Ben’s mouth dropped open in awe. And then, that twinkle—the beautiful, youthful, magical twinkle that I had missed so dearly—returned to his eyes. Mine welled with tears—which surprised me in my current state, until I realized they were tears of joy.
The playful dolphin swam around and up to our board for quite some time before jumping high in the air again and swimming away, its fin finally disappearing in the distance.
I saw a familiar look cross over Ben’s face. His aha look, I used to call it.
“Oh my God—I got it, Jules, I got it!”
He stood with a new strength and paddled us back to the shore.
Sally was waiting for us on the sand. As soon as she saw us approach, she began zooming in and out of the water until we were safely on land. Ben pulled down the top of his wetsuit and let it hang from his waist, tucked the board under his arm, and headed toward the house. A couple was sitting on the top step of our block, deep in conversation.
It was Renee and Tuck.
thirty-nine
For Your Consideration
I’ve spent so much time making sport of dissing Tuck that I’ve neglected to mention his good points. He does have his good points. Like, for example, he loves to read and is very neat—not like neato neat, but actually tidy. Truth is, if none of this had happened and Renee and Tuck had been sitting on the beach, let’s say forty-odd years from now, and Tuck had finally decided to swim and been taken away by the undertow or had choked to death on the olive in his martini, people would have said he was a good man, a loyal man. They would have noted his long and faithful marriage to his wife, Renee, his strengths as a father, and by then, I’d imagine, a grandfather, and how, when his mother was alive, he visited her every Tuesday night at the home with her favorite pea soup and rugelach.
Renee would have thought back to their many family vacations, her favorites being Maui and Norway, and the time they took a bike trip through Tuscany. She would have reflected on their early days with Matty, the two of them armed with the notes they had meticulously taken at a new-parenting class at the 92nd Street Y—one of them nervously barked out the diapering and bathing and feeding instructions while the other attempted them. She would have remembered the time they stayed up all night when Matty had croup or rushed him to the emergency room when he had fallen from the top of the pyramid at the playground near the Met—seven stitches. And she surely would have waxed nostalgic about Tuck’s sweet marriage proposal, when he had taken her to Paris and got down on one knee on the Pont des Arts, after attaching a lock of their own to the famous bridge. The proposal might not have been the most original, but the thought of Tuck meticulously painting their initials and a heart on the aforementioned lock with her jar of Essie Geranium Red nail lacquer made her heart melt.
And she wouldn’t have had regrets, because spending her life with Tuck, dull reliable Tuck, had been just what she had thought she needed. A fulfilled life.
Unfortunately for Tuck, who wanted his old, fulfilled life back, Renee now knew better.
