“Why not? We’ve got the whole town to ourselves.”
“You’re sort of a weirdo sometimes, Lily.”
“We can go for a swim. My dad used to say that nothing helped change your mood like swimming in the ocean. Like it could rinse everything bad away. I don’t think I’ve gone for a swim since I’ve been back.”
“I can’t swim.”
“Now you’re screwing with me. You live right on the beach.”
“No, really. Can you picture Des teaching me? I actually don’t think she can either. I mean, she grew up in Newark. Where was she going to learn?”
“Well, if it’s calm you should at least wade in. Get your feet wet. It’ll be symbolic.” I guided the truck up to the curb and cut the engine. “Let’s go.”
Clara sat for a moment, but as I crossed the boardwalk toward the bulkhead I heard her door open and slam shut again. The clouds had shifted, and the sand was washed with red, purple, green from the changing, blinking lights of the casinos behind us.
“This is sort of creepy,” Clara called behind me. I pretended not to hear, but I knew what she meant. It was a little unsettling but also very beautiful—or maybe the eeriness was what made it beautiful. It reminded me of Mil’s portraits. How the most absorbing aspect was their suggestion of something sinister, something unsettling, underneath the fabric of our days. There was a challenge underneath it all. You wanted both to look and to look away, break contact. Ahead, I could see the mound of a ruined sandcastle, a forgotten plastic shovel. A sudden sadness gripped me in the ribs, a physical ache for my childhood that nearly made me double over.
When I was out of my shoes, the sand felt soft and cool beneath my feet. The greenish glow of a pair of cat eyes beamed my wayfrom the dunes and disappeared. The waves lapped at the sand in little ruffles of foam, and the ocean was silvered with moon. A few blocks away the Pier, the once-high-end shopping mall, jutted out over the sea like an accusatory finger, its billboards lit with spotlights that glinted off the water. I crunched over the litter of shell fragments that had been pushed into a pile by the tide.
The thrill of the cold water on my feet rushed up my legs. I waded out farther, until I was up to my knees, Clara behind me, tiptoeing into the waves. When the water was at my waist I kicked my feet out and let my body sink under the surface. The tingle of the cold was intimate and intense, cold on my scalp, cold on the back of my neck, cold over my hips, across my stomach. Water in my ears, dulling everything but the steady wash of the waves, I held my breath until I felt it burn in my chest.
When I came up, I heard Clara’s voice, garbled a little by the water in my ears. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Don’t worry. It feels good, that’s all. You should try it.”
She crossed her arms close to her chest. “I’m going back.”
“Don’t be such a baby.” I cupped my hand, splashed water in her direction.
“Cut it out!”
“Come on, it’s as calm as can be. Just go under.”
“I don’t want to. This water is freezing.”
“That’s the point. It’s refreshing. What are you so worried about?”
“Drowning. Dying. Getting eaten by sharks.”
I smiled, though the last thing I wanted was Clara to think I was laughing at her.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.” How could I tell her, without offending her—that it was nice to see her talk and act like a kid. Clara inched her way toward me, grimacing. Then I understood. A wave splashed her hands, and it must have stung the burns.
“You need to go see someone about those.”
“I’m fine. It’s just cold.” She pinched her nose and slipped under the surface. I plunged below, too. It was a relief, to shut out the rest of the world, to silence it, to rinse everything I had done from my hair, my eyelashes, every inch of my skin.
We surfaced around the same time. Clara pushed the wet hair from her face. Underneath it she was smiling.
“Nice, right?”
“Not terrible.” The water was like ink. Each time I brought my hands above the surface, a part of me expected them to be stained. I thought of Winslow Homer’s paintings, his seascapes tense with awe and threat. I remembered one of his paintings that I had seen at the Clark.Undertow. Based on a rescue Homer witnessed in Atlantic City, the picture showed a man hauling drowning women from the water, the men looking mighty and muscular and the women looking helpless, spent, pale. A beautiful picture, but a story I was tired of.
Behind Clara, back on the beach, I thought I saw something. A shadow outlined in neon. I tried to tell myself it was just a trick of the light, but already the moment had taken on a different feeling. The calm of the water became menacing. Our isolation became a vulnerability. I spun in a circle, making sure no one had snuck up behind us.
“What?”
