To Sea

  The sea’s air rushed against the motel walls. The doorframe glowed with the morning sun. Bits of microwaved waffles and strawberry preservatives mixed with melted butter stuck in the corners of Jon’s lips. His plate was but a smear of pinky puddles coagulating back into solid butter. His glasses thrown bottom up aside his coffee and plate—his eyes tracing the fuzz of gray columns, shadows of people and boldfaced headlines on the newspaper.

  Elea watched the TV from her seat at the table.

  “You can’t see without your eyes on,” Elea said. “You are blind without them.” She reached over the table fighting his glasses back onto his face. “There,” she said. “Now you can see just fine.”

  Jon pushed the paper to the table. Then he threw his glasses on top of the news. “I can see just fine.” He feverishly scanned over the articles. Then he looked up at Elea. Her eyes sunk into black holes. Her tight red lips faded into her white cheeks. “I don’t need these to see anymore.” The sun behind the door rose up through the window, shining a halo glow around Elea. He smiled at the blindness of his wife’s face. He thought how he liked the way she looked right now. “She is returning to the sun,” he thought. He looked out the window. He could see the light green leaves of the oaks and the dark green needles of the pines blending with the bright yellow rays of the sun held in the white and blue sky. “All of us are returning,” he thought. “All of us.”

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “It just seems so natural,” he said. “My natural vision. It makes sense. I see life. I see life returning to nature. Naturally.” He reached out to touch Elea across the table. But he only waved at the air above the crumbs of waffles and the pinkish butter.

  “Knock it off and put these back on.” Elea got up from her seat. She placed his glasses over his nose. “You are going nuts, Jon. You are going absolutely nuts.” She walked off to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. “Hurry up and clean up and get dressed, Jon,” she called from the other room. “We need to leave in ten minutes or we’ll be late.”

  Jon pulled his glasses to the top of his head. He studied the bathroom door. The wooden grains disappeared into a solid brown mass fading into the cream color of the walls. He dropped the glass back in front of his eyes and the door sprung into the rigidity of lines. He frowned. Then he gathered stray crumbs onto his paper plate and he tipped the garbage into the can as he moved to the window. The sun slowly crept up over the tree tops. He could just make out the reflective glow on the water through the trees in the distance. “Not close enough,” he mumbled. “This motel. It is not close enough. Not like my house. Not like my Brand house. I cannot move to the mountains—upstate—away from all this. I cannot. And I will not.” He could hear the roar of the ocean—the fizz of water crawling up over the sand. “If we go, I’ll go but for a short while, and justly, a short while, when I return to the sea, Barry will not be far behind. For the seas will open up with fish and he will come back. He is a Brand. He will surely come back.”

  “Stop looking for the sea out there.” Elea stood in the haze of the motel room. She pulled at her skirt on her thighs, wiggling the fabric down her legs.

  “I’m not,” he said, pretending to throw more trash into the can. “I was just throwing away my plate.”

  “I saw you looking out the window. Don’t lie.” She pulled on the downward curl of her lips and she walked out the front door. “Let’s get a move on. We’re going to be late.”

  Jon stood at the window for awhile longer. He watched the sun—now well above the trees—glare off the sides of his lenses. He heard Elea’s heels clicking down the cement steps. Then he heard them pattering across the asphalt parking lot before he could hear the light roar of the four-cylinders turning over. Jon gulped down of remnants of coffee in his cup and he walked to the car.

  Elea nodded as he entered. “Took you long enough.” She shifted the clutch and the car jumped back and out of the lot.

  Jon cranked his window down, smiling as the air rushed into his face.

  “Roll that up,” she said. “It’ll mess my hair.”

  Jon looked over at Elea out of the corner of his glasses. Her hair drew dark outlines around her blurred face.

  “Roll it up, Jon, or I’ll pull over.”

  He closed his eyes. The wind smacked ripples into his whiskers.

  “Come on, Jon,” she said. “This ain’t some joke.” Elea reached over Jon for the crank on the door, but she could not reach it. “Roll it up, already.” She sunk her hand into his burly face and the car fell off of the asphalt onto the sandy shoulder to a stop. “I’ll just do it myself,” she said, unbuckling her belt. She leaned over, pressing on Jon’s legs, and she rolled the window up. “There,” she said. “Was that so hard?” And she shifted the car back into gear—back onto the road.

  They traveled listening to the soundtrack of the road. The rubbing of rubber over the pavement—the loud ka-lumps into potholes and the disjointed shifts in the road—all which seemed to resonate throughout the car, building a distance between the two. Jon sat pushed against the window. His glasses clicking against the glass with every misstep of the car’s tires over the uneven road. He looked out of the corner of his eye so that he could see in his natural vision. He watched the roadside morph from trees to grass to trees to road and then to the shine of metal cars clustered on a blacktop lot. Then all his world stopped and Elea got out of the car.

  “Okay Jon,” she said. “You let me do all the talking. Don’t you go on and open your big mouth about the sea and all. Keep it simple. Yes’s and no’s only. Nothing else. Nothing about the sea. You got that? No mention of the sea. And agree with whatever I say. Okay?”

  Jon exited the car. He looked up at Elea through the lenses on his face. She looked beautiful. Professional. “Sure thing, Captain.” He pulled his glasses up on his head, watching her blur into the early summer sky. Gulls flew high overhead, while crows flew low, landing on the tops of trees and on telephone wires. The sun encompassed the land and all those under it. Life right there seemed bright—filled with the melody of the sea. The rush of waves could be heard in the shallow distance. The sea always seemed to be just over the next hill or just beyond the next band of trees when you got this far out east. You could always hear it. Even when you could not hear it, you thought you did. The crows began to caw and the gulls began to cry and a rush of wind blew in over the land. The gulls landed on the lamps spread across the blacktop lot. The crows all jumped from the trees and the lines, blackening the bright sky. Jon shivered as he watched the sun reappear after the crows flew off over the treeline. His eyelids pierced tight. Then he turned into the school—into the haze of the artificial florescence shining down on the students, ‘til the bell rang and the teens slipped behind doors. Jon and Elea stood in the middle of the hallway where papers passed by like tumbleweeds under the humming tubes of light.

  “This way, Jon,” Elea said.

  Jon pushed his glasses onto his head. The hall blurred into a solid yellowish hue. The crème colored concrete walls shined a matte fluorescent glow radiating off the high-gloss yellow and white checkered linoleum floor, bouncing back off the walls in a loop of awkward artificiality until Jon dropped his glasses back in front of his eyes and the hallway jumped back into place.

  “Stop fooling around. Her office is this way. I remember from the conferences last year.” Jon stood motionless, letting the stillness of the high school descend upon him. “Hurry,” she called. “Or we’ll be late. You wouldn’t want to be late. It’s the whole reason why we are here. Because Barry is either late or doesn’t show. Hurry,” she called again. “We mustn’t be late.”

  Elea took her steps into a double-time pace. Her heels clicking loudly. Her image reflecting loosely off of the high buffed floor.

  Jon walked behind her—slowly. He watched her long legs
wiggle on the linoleum squares. He pushed his glasses back on top of his head and he watched Elea drift into her reflected image on the floor floating up into the fluorescent lights overhead. He blinked and he dropped his glasses back over his eyes, hurrying to her side.

  “You think he’ll graduate?” Jon twisted on the stems of his glasses.

  “Of course he will.” He is practically a genius. How couldn’t he?” Elea looked at Jon as if telling him not to contemplate her question. Not even to answer it. Just nod and smile. Which, of course, he did.

  Jon looked through a small window on a door. He watched the teacher in her seat. Her students sat in their desks, all with their heads dangling over papers in their neat rows of five. Their arms all scribbling away. Jon pulled on his beard. He could remember sitting in those desks, back when he was Barry’s age. Jon had dropped out, taking to the seas at sixteen. His father, his mentor, his teacher, taught him all the knowledge man needed to know. His old man taught him the way of the sea. The bare essentials of humanity learned on the waves. Where life is a sixteen foot island of planks atop a bottomless sea of death. Where camaraderie is the only necessary means of survival. “After high school, he’ll go to the seas. He is a Brand,” he thought, looking into the classroom. “He is made for the sea. And then he will learn. He is made from the sea. He is a Brand.” Jon smiled and he walked right into Elea, who had stopped in front of a closed, windowless door. She pushed him off of her. Then she pulled on her skirt, evening out the hemline on the bottom.

  “Now, remember what I said back at the motel.” She pasted red lipstick across her lips fast, rubbing them together to smooth out the paint. “Let me lead,” she said unblinkingly. “I’ll do all the talking.”

  Jon nodded.

  “And you do all the nodding and ‘yesing’.”

  “Yes,” Jon nodded.

  “I’m serious. We need Barry to graduate. And we don’t need you messing things up for him. All right?”

  “But we don’t need him to graduate. He’s old enough to make his own decisions. We need Barry to find himself. Find the sea. His true calling.”

  “Knock it off with that,” she said. “Leave all that sea nonsense outside this door. We do need him to graduate. For his own good. He can thank us later.”

  “No Brand has graduated yet,” he said. “And we have all done just fine.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, turning on Elea.

  “Seriously, Jon. Knock it off. Drop the whole sea thing for just ten minutes. That’s all I ask of you. Ten minutes. Until I smooth things over with Ms. Fitter. And then everything will be fine. You even listening to me?”

  Jon nodded. He smiled and then he opened the door for Elea. “After you.”

  Elea plastered a faux smile on her face and she walked into Ms. Fitter’s office.

  “Good morning, Elea. And Jon.” Ms. Fitter reached out, shaking their hands. She smiled, eyeing two chairs in front of her desk for the Brands to sit themselves into. The Principal unbuttoned her blazer. Then she sat behind a lightly stained oak desk messed with papers, fake apples and other teacherly paraphernalia. “Thank you ever so much for meeting today,” Ms. Fitter said.

  “Oh, it is no problem at all,” Elea said. “Anything for our little Barry.” She flashed her teeth and she giggled a sigh.

  Jon nodded.

  Ms. Fitter moved up to the edge of her chair. She leaned her elbows on top of a pile of papers, looking down to Elea. Then she looked over to Jon, whose eyes wandered about the room every which way except for into Ms. Fitter’s own eyes. “You see, Ms. Brand, Barry has been missing quite a few classes over this last quarter.” She opened a manila folder and she scanned over papers before looking back up at the Brands. “I know it isn’t like Mr. V.P. at all. He’s always been quite the shining star here at East Marion High. That is why I have cut him some slack. But now I’m beginning to think he has taken advantage of me.”

  “Oh, I so know what you mean, Carla,” Elea said. “Can I call you Carla?”

  Ms. Fitter nodded.

  “Barry has been doing the same thing to me at home,” Elea said. “Not listening or nothing.”

  “It seems to me this all started around the time of the fire.” Carla Fitter opened a draw in her desk and she presented a pamphlet to Elea. “Here at East Marion High, we have an excellent staff of councilors who can recommend psychiatrists to discuss medications and treatment, you know?”

  “Oh, yes. This sounds very good for Barry. You know, we want the very best for our son. And he has been off lately.”

  “He don’t need no pills,” Jon broke in.

  “Well, pills are not always the answer. But we don’t want to rule out what is best for your son.” Carla sat back in her chair. She looked over at Elea, who was nudging Jon.

  “What did we discuss before?” Elea’s lips pressed tight. Her eyes honed in on Jon, then causally back to Ms. Carla Fitter. “We just want what is best for our son. We will discuss options with the doctors, of course.”

  “I don’t want him to take no pills, damnit,” Jon started. “He don’t need them.”

  “We can discuss this later…,” Elea began until Jon cut her off.

  “He just needs the medicine of the open air. The sea in his face. The sun beating down on his back.” Jon got up from his seat. He reached into Elea’s purse, taking out the car keys. “Man ain’t made to be cooped up inside all day. Man is made for the outdoors. And Brands are made for the sea. The open waters. The Atlantic.” The sun shined in through the window, glowing onto Jon’s face. “Ain’t nothing wrong with my son. He is called by the sea. He is drawn to it. That’s all. Ain’t nothing wrong with him. It’s this world. This manmade world. Everything is wrong with this damned world. And you,” Jon pointed down at Elea. “And you, too,” Jon pointed to Ms. Fitter. “Your school is no place for a Brand. He can get all his knowledge from the sea. The ocean.” Jon flipped his chair over, crashing the wood against the oak desk. “You learn from the real—nature. Not from the lies in books flawed by man.” Jon kicked the chair against the desk before bursting out of the office.

  “You can only learn when there are no walls,” he screamed, running down the hall crowded with Barry’s peers. “I must make the sea right,” he continued. “I must make the sea right again. For Him. For Him. For Barry. My penance. Things must be made right. Back to normalcy.” He pushed his way through the confused crowd—sprawling out into the parking lot—into the blue sedan—onto the highway—west.

 

  CHAPTER 23