I shake my head. “Not tonight. Just enjoying the view, I guess.”
“The view? Nothing to see out here.”
He’s right. All that lies in front of us is a curtain of pitch black with a few flashing lights off in the far distance.
“It’s good, though,” he says. “I like it. The rhythm is calming. I used to get really scared of the ocean when I was a kid. You remember that?”
I do, but barely. Way back when my parents were together and my mom worked at the beach-chair rental stand, Hattie and I would spend our mornings coloring and reading books while we sat under the fan in the rental hut. Agnes would come every afternoon with Freddie and take us off my mom’s hands.
It started out with her renting a few chairs, but soon she noticed the two girls cooped up under the counter. It didn’t take much convincing for my mother to let us play with Freddie on the beach during her shifts. Those few hours turned into afternoons at their rental, and soon enough it was a yearly thing. But at the beach Freddie was a wreck, especially when the water was murky. It didn’t seem so weird, though. When I was a kid I was terrified ofhighways. I would call them “the road” and howl anytime we got near one.
“My gram,” he says, “she’d make me close my eyes as we tiptoed into the water, and she’d say, ‘Take it one step at a time.’”
I close my eyes now. I guess he’s kind of right. Just the sound of the gulf. It’s like I’ve broken the world down into little bite-size pieces. And maybe that’s how I can survive without Grace. That’s how I’ll survive Hattie, and the baby, and Tyler. One day. One hour. One minute at a time.
I open my eyes again, forcing myself back into this moment here with Freddie.
“I can’t believe you live here,” I say. “And that you’re... well,you.”
“It’s wild.”
“One summer y’all just didn’t come back.” I was nine, and hanging out with boys was suddenly a big deal to everyone except me. But the summer Freddie didn’t show up... that left a hole in my world. One that made me angry. I’d been left. Again.
“My gramps,” he says. “His head started getting foggy.”
“Alzheimer’s?” I ask. Walter, our old next-door neighbor before Mrs. Pearlman, had Alzheimer’s for the longest time before anyone knew it. He was always a serious man, but every once in a while he would start talking like his trailer was a submarine and that his kids were Russians. One day my dad caught him using the big Oriental planter pot he kept in his yard for cigarette butts as a toilet. It wasn’t long before his kids moved him out and into a home.
“Yeah. Yeah, he would do things like take me to swim meets at my soccer field or call my grams my mom’s name.”
My brain pauses on the wordsswim meets, but I shake it off.
“But then it got worse. He got mean. We had to start hiding his keys and his wallet.” He takes a swig of whiskey and laughs. “He bought an aboveground pool from an infomercial one night and had it installed in our front yard when my grams was at work.”
I laugh, and then catch myself. “I’m sorry.”
“S’okay. It was pretty hilarious.” And then he adds, “He died of an aneurism the summer before ninth grade. In his sleep.”
His hand sits on the armrest of his chair, and I place mine on top of his for a moment.
He flips his palm over so that we’re holding hands.
I’m the one trying to comfort him, but this small bit of human contact feels like aloe on a sunburn. Maybe I miss Grace that much. I’m reminded of all the things Freddie doesn’t know about me. I’m so used to everyone in my life knowing that I’m gay that it almost feels like I’m lying to Freddie by omission.
“I think my gram was relieved,” he says. “Can’t blame her.”
We sit there for a minute, until I finally break the silence. “I don’t mean to be an asshole by changing the subject, but you were on a swim team?”
He grins. “Yeah. Bet that’s a surprise.”
“I just—you hated the water.”
“Gram always harped on me about turning my greatest weakness into my biggest strength, so she joined a club and got me signed up for the swim team. I even swam on my school’s team freshman, sophomore, and junior years.”
I’m awestruck and jealous at the same time. “Wow. You must be pretty good.”
He shrugs, and turns his head away.
“Eulogy doesn’t have a team, though,” I tell him.
