Body Surfing

  Claire and Will linger an unconscionable amount of time after dinner is over, a puzzle given that the couple seem to want only to be together. To do what? Sydney wonders. Talk? Unwind? Have sex? Watch SportsCenter?? The fact that they have so little to say to others fascinates Sydney, their offerings distinctly minimalist.

  “Lunch counter gone this year.”

  “Noticed that.”

  “You kayak?”

  “No, you?”

  Ben and Jeff and Sydney sit on the porch with the Edwardses, both of whom need their bed. Mrs. Edwards tosses subtle hints into the ocean air.

  “Mark, you’ll have to get up early for the paper. They go fast on Sundays.”

  Sydney’s contributions to the conversation are nonexistent, her mind preoccupied with Julie. Only Jeff seems visibly to share her worry, occasionally glancing at his watch and once leaning over to her. “Did Julie say where she was going?” he asks.

  “No,” Sydney says, “she didn’t.”

  At twenty minutes to eleven, Claire puts a hand on Will’s knee, a sign everyone chooses to interpret as a wife’s signal to her husband that it’s time to leave. All present stand in unison, Mr. Edwards already unleashing a salvo of hearty good-byes. So glad you could come. Mutual boating trips are promised but without the requisite dates and times, all but guaranteeing the imagined journeys will not actually take place.

  “They weren’t my idea,” Mrs. Edwards says in the kitchen, snapping off her clip earrings and setting them hard on the granite counter.

  “He seemed a nice enough fellow,” Mr. Edwards says, fetching a glass of water to take upstairs.

  “Nice enough where? On the golf course?”

  “He had quite a lot to say about old maps.”

  Mrs. Edwards unfastens her banana clip. Sydney notes that not a single hair falls to her neck.

  Mr. and Mrs. Edwards climb the stairs, Mr. Edwards hanging on to the banister as he does so. It is understood that the remainder of the dishes—the after-dinner glasses, the coffee cups with the dark rings—will be left until the morning, when the first one up will empty the dishwasher and dispatch the detritus of the party. Sydney wanders to the kitchen window and looks out.

  “You’re worried about Julie,” Jeff says behind her.

  Sydney turns, smoothing her hair behind her ears. “I am. What time is it now?”

  “Ten of eleven.” He answers quickly, a man who has recently consulted his watch.

  “I so wish I’d asked her where she was going.”

  “You want to take a ride with me?” Jeff asks, tension in his eyes, on his brow.

  “Sure,” Sydney says with some relief. “It’s better than waiting here.”

  “I’ll just tell Ben we’re going. He can call us if she comes in.”

  A fair-weather mist, so fine as to be barely detectable, surrounds Sydney’s face. In the distance, there are fireworks. There are always fireworks, Sydney has noticed, each township possessive about its displays. Sometimes at night, observing from an upper-story bedroom, Sydney can see small explosions, like bursts of artillery fire, all along the horizon.

  The Land Rover bumps along the beach road to the village. The streetlights provide only small cones of visibility. Houses loom in the darkness, one or two still with lighted windows. Sydney turns away from the houses and looks at Jeff behind the wheel of the Land Rover.

  “Where are we going?” Sydney asks.

  “I know some places,” Jeff says, his answer hinting at years of clandestine sex and drinking as a teenager. It must have been, Sydney decides, a glorious adolescence.

  Jeff parks at the end of a lane similar to the one on which the tennis court was located. He leads Sydney to a small beach she did not know existed. She has a sense of trespassing. Away from the sea breezes, the mosquitoes are ferocious. Jeff calls his sister’s name softly, as if not wishing to disturb any lovers who might also be on the beach. He does not receive a reply. The beach is only fifty feet across, and once Sydney’s eyes adjust, she can see that there is nothing on it but clumps of dried seaweed.

  The car travels slowly down another quiet street. Sydney can hear a fan from an open window. Jeff, both hands on the wheel, is bent slightly forward. Sydney has her arms crossed over her chest.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much happening here,” she says. “What are we looking for?”

  “A party,” Jeff says tightly.

  Sydney’s mild fear seems to have morphed into something like full-blown panic in Jeff, the way a virus will jump to a new host and mutate into a stronger and more lethal strain.

  Sydney peers into the lighted windows of the cottages, hoping for a glimpse of Julie, and is intrigued to see how people live their lives on vacation on the coast of New Hampshire. The lack of blue flickering TV screens is heartening, as are the surprising number of round tables with playing cards on them.

  “Are you sure she didn’t mention any plans?” Jeff says.

  “Earlier, we met two boys. Joe and Nick. They were headed to play golf and stopped to say hello to Julie. One of the boys, Joe, seemed interested in her and even mentioned getting together sometime.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Jeff asks.

  Sydney feels the slight sting of having been scolded. “Do the names mean anything to you?” she asks.

  Jeff narrows his eyes. “No. Did you catch a last name?”

  Sydney shakes her head. “She could be at a friend’s house. A girlfriend.”

  “Are you aware of any friends Julie has?”

  “No.”

  Another car approaches them, and both Sydney and Jeff stare at the passengers.

  “She’s such a sweet girl,” Sydney says.

  “That’s what’s worrying me.”

  “I’m not sure she’s been out at night by herself the whole time I’ve been here,” Sydney points out.

  “We haven’t had to deal with this much. I don’t know if she’s even had the curfew discussion yet. Or the cell-phone discussion.”

  Sydney wonders, but does not ask, about the never-have-unprotected-sex discussion.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” she says instead.

  They drive to a spot near a lighthouse that Jeff knows about. They do not speak much, in the way of people who are preoccupied. They drive along an uneven road that leads to acres of scrub brush. They stop at a parking lot in the middle of the long crescent beach on which the Edwardses’ house is located. They walk a few hundred yards along the sand in opposite directions. They meet back at the car.

  “This is stupid,” Jeff says. He checks his cell phone again to make sure he didn’t receive a call.

  “Julie and I went somewhere this afternoon that she might have returned to,” Sydney says, thinking.

  “Where?”

  “The rocks at the end of the beach.”

  “You’re kidding,” he says, putting the cell phone in his pocket.

  Sydney is silent.

  “Jesus, Sydney.” The gravel lot is dark, and she can’t make out his face.

  “But no one would go there at night,” Sydney adds quickly.

  Yet each of them knows that Julie might be pleased to suggest to a boy a destination of her own making. And each of them understands as well that, having been invited, few would decline to follow her.

  “Watch your footing,” Jeff advises. He holds the flashlight straight down so that Sydney can see where his feet are and put hers in his footsteps. Though she cannot see the surf, she can hear it.

  Jeff yells, Julie! again and again, but each time, the name is blown back at him. The rocks are slippery underfoot. Sydney resists the impulse to lower herself to a crouch.

  Sydney thinks about the way Julie tugged at her hand earlier in the day. “I don’t believe she’s here,” she says to Jeff.

  She loses her footing on a slippery bit of seaweed. Jeff reaches out a quick hand, and Sydney grabs it.

  “Watch it,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

>   “This is nuts. We should head back.”

  But for a number of seconds, perhaps even seven or eight, Jeff continues to hold Sydney’s hand. Neither of them turns to the other. Neither of them moves.

  His fingers barely clasp hers.

  The touch is not a promise, and it is certainly not a pass. It is—indeed, if it is anything at all—the merest suggestion of a possibility.

  Jeff’s fingers are distinctly palpable. Insistently there.

  A computerized tune erupts from Jeff’s pocket. He lets go of Sydney’s hand and opens his cell phone. The voice on the other end is so loud that even she can hear it.

  “You’d better get back here,” Ben is saying.

  Chapter 5

  Julie sits on one of the two white sofas, her hand poised on its arm, her body pointed in the direction of the bathroom, which, it would appear, she has already visited, to judge from the spill of what can only be vomit on her tank top. But it is not that detail that briefly causes Sydney to shut her eyes with a mixture of heartache and dread. She wonders if anyone else has noticed the small tear at the place where the pale blue strap meets the neckline. Three, four, five tiny stitches have been ripped apart.

  Ben, hands in pockets, is pacing. “Someone dropped her off, and she came in like this.”

  “Who dropped her off?” Jeff wants to know.

  “She won’t say. She can’t say.”

  Sydney sits down beside Julie, but something in the motion upsets Julie’s fragile physical equilibrium. The girl puts a hand to her mouth and concentrates.

  “Julie,” Sydney says softly, bending toward the girl.

  Julie shakes her head once quickly, and Sydney withdraws.

  “She can’t drink,” Ben says. “She just can’t.”

  “Has this ever happened before?” Jeff asks.

  “I don’t know, but look at her.”

  “We’re sure this is alcohol?”

  Ben rolls his eyes. Sydney can smell the drink. She nods in Jeff’s direction.

  He puts a hand to his head. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

  “We don’t even know who the son of a bitch is,” Ben points out.

  Sydney does not mention, and may not ever mention, the tiny stitches that have come apart.

  “Julie,” she says, “let me take you up.”

  For a moment, Julie ponders this idea. Sydney helps her to her feet. But that simple motion trips the wire, and Julie sprints for the hallway bathroom, the one with the remarkable acoustics.

  In the living room, Sydney and the brothers listen and say nothing. Ben stands in front of a window, looking out to an ocean he cannot see. His brow is tense with concentration, as if he could, by vigorous thinking, conjure up a name. Jeff, perched at the edge of a chair, is bent forward, hands clasped behind his neck. His head snaps up.

  “Ben, the name Joe or Nick mean anything to you? Boys Julie’s age?”

  Ben turns. His eyes dart from side to side as he thinks first of one boy and then of another to whom he may have given sailing lessons, young men he may have seen on the golf course. “There was a guy—Jared something, Jared. . .but he’d be in his midtwenties now.”

  Julie emerges from the bathroom. Sydney stands and touches her on her bare arm. Her skin is cold and moist. Sydney hopes Julie has rid herself of most of the alcohol. She is still unsteady on her feet, and Sydney has to link arms. Julie breathes through her mouth. Her hair is matted against her scalp.

  “I’m taking her up,” Sydney tells the brothers.

  Julie and Sydney negotiate first the stairs and then the landing. Sydney has the distinct sense that Julie doesn’t know where she is, that if Sydney were to let go of her arm, Julie would simply crumple to the floor.

  The girl is worse off than Sydney thought. Perhaps putting Julie to bed is not the best idea. Sydney has read the stories in the newspapers of frat boys dying in their sleep, having overdosed on shots and beer. Letting a friend “sleep it off” now akin to negligent homicide.

  Julie, boneless, flops onto the bed. She lands in an awkward position, and Sydney straightens her limbs. There’s no need to remove any of her clothing.

  “Julie,” Sydney says, not so gently now.

  Julie opens her eyes.

  “Where did you go?”

  Her eyes swim. “A parry,” she says with great effort.

  “Whose party? Who took you there?”

  But Sydney has asked one question too many. Julie shakes her head.

  “Do you know where the party was?” Sydney asks.

  Julie makes a motion that is almost a shrug.

  “Did you walk to the party?”

  Sydney can see the girl searching her memory, as if Sydney had asked her what she wore for Halloween when she was ten.

  “Whose car did you go in?”

  Julie shakes her head again.

  “Nick? Joe?” Sydney asks, but Julie closes her eyes.

  Sydney slides the thin coverlet out from under the girl’s nearly dead weight and lays it over her. She smooths her brow. Julie’s skin is cold and clammy. Though Sydney herself has been drunk enough on occasion to be unable to keep the room from spinning, she has never been in this position before—neither as the caretaker nor as the person passed out.

  The only light is from the hallway. In one murky corner of Julie’s room is a short shelf of stuffed animals, all without color in the dark. On an old-fashioned dressing table covered with a lace cloth are bits of jewelry, a bottle of contact lens solution, a hairbrush, a CD case, and several hair ties. On the floor are two pieces of cloth Sydney knows to be the aqua bikini. The sight of the discarded bathing suit, worn with such pride earlier in the day, causes a clench in Sydney’s chest.

  Through an open window, Sydney can hear the ocean. Two houses down from the Edwardses is a renovated cottage. The woman who owns it demanded that the builders install triple-paned glass so that she wouldn’t have to listen to the surf.

  Why come to the shore if not for the crashing of the waves?

  Beside her, Julie stirs.

  “Julie?” Sydney calls.

  But the girl only murmurs and then sinks again into sleep.

  After she has roused Julie several times, it becomes apparent to Sydney that she will need a cup of coffee if she is to maintain her vigil. When she is satisfied that Julie can be woken a fifth time, she leaves the room and descends the stairs. Ben is nowhere to be seen, but, surprisingly, Jeff is still sitting in the living room.

  “How is she?” he asks when Sydney has reached the bottom step. He looks pale and tired.

  “Asleep, but I’m waking her every half hour just in case.”

  No need to say why. Jeff, too, reads the papers.

  “Where’s Ben?”

  “He’s dozing. He said to wake him when we need a break.”

  “Actually, I think I’d like some coffee,” Sydney says.

  “You sit. I’ll make it.”

  Sydney settles herself on the bottom step and watches Jeff fill the pot with water and pour it into the coffee machine. When he has finished the task, he leans against the counter, hands in pockets. In the background is the unmistakable swish and gurgle of coffee being brewed.

  “She tell you anything?” he asks.

  “She went to a party. She either doesn’t know or isn’t saying the name of the person who took her. It’s hard to tell what she knows and doesn’t know.”

  “Not Nick or Joe?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on her?” Jeff asks. “I have to leave tomorrow. Maybe I should have a talk with my mother.”

  This strikes Sydney as a bad idea. “I think Julie is the one you should be talking to,” she suggests.

  “She’s so innocent,” he says, shaking his head slowly.

  “Yes, she is.”

  Very few eighteen-year-olds, Sydney believes, can be considered innocent, but Julie comes as close to that description as anyone Sydney can remember meeting or reading about
. Sydney briefly wonders at the correlation between intelligence and guilt.

  The coffee machine makes its unique hiss and rumble, signaling the end of the brewing process. Jeff fills a mug and hands it to Sydney.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll come up in half an hour and spell you. Let you get some sleep. If we need him, I’ll wake Ben.” He pauses. “Listen,” he says, “I was wrong before.”

  The surface of Sydney’s skin is instantly hot. She is certain Jeff is about to mention the incident on the rocks.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to keep an eye on her,” he says. “Julie’s not your responsibility.”

  Sydney is a beat late in responding. “Well, yes, she is.”

  “You’re certainly not her keeper.”

  He means, Sydney thinks, You are not family.

  “And I don’t know if my mother or father said this to you,” he adds, “but you should feel free to invite anyone here you’d like. A friend.”

  The word trails off and lingers in the room. Sydney wants to explain to Jeff what happens to women who are once divorced and once widowed. The friends Sydney had with the aviator belonged more or less to the aviator, and when the marriage dissolved, they tended to stay with him, like spoils that had been divided. The friends Sydney had with Daniel contact her from time to time, but their calls and visits are invariably sad and quiet, and she believes none of them is eager to repeat the experience. Sydney has friends from school—Becky, who lives in New York City now, and Emily in Boston—but she cannot imagine either of them driving to New Hampshire to share her small room with the narrow beds, eating dinners with the Edwardses.

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Sydney says.

  Jeff holds her eyes a second longer than necessary—or perhaps it is Sydney who holds his eyes a second longer than necessary; or possibly this second is entirely necessary to communicate the fact that though Sydney is not family, she is not to think of herself as separate—but there is no mention of the touch of fingers on the rocks. It occurs to Sydney that not having been with a man in over two years, she may have forgotten the relevant signs.