It Goes On

By Danielle Mires

 

She walked down to the beach as the sun was setting, just as the more sensible women were finishing up their walks and returning home before darkness enveloped the coast. Her stride was purposeful, with an almost military precision. A rope of long, black hair hung down her back, swaying like a pendulum as she moved, hair so black that it seemed to absorb every bit of light and energy around her. She had a hard, compact body, and wasn't worried about the rough crowd that sometimes frequented the waterfront. Her sister knew that she liked to walk after dark, just from her house to the beach then back again, and would admonish her for such foolishness. But for a month now, ever since the accident, she had repeated this ritual with religious devotion.

She would walk until she reached the outcropping of rocks near the lifeguard tower, and there she would sit and watch the ocean and the sky, both illuminated for a few final moments in a fiery splendor. Sometimes the sky would explode in a fury of red and orange, sometimes it laughed in pink and purple, and on other days the clouds obscured the dying light and the sunset was reduced to a fade, a slow bleed. But she wasn't there to watch the sun, she was there to watch the water.

The water represented another world to her, a foreign place where she didn't feel welcome. Her father used to tell her tall tales of pirates and giant squid and mermaids and other Poseidon-like sea dwellers. She read "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" when she was 12 and since then refused to go further than knee deep in the water, preferring to stay close to shore and watch her father swim with her sister and mother. And then when she was 13 her father disappeared. She wanted to believe that he had been kidnapped or abducted, and was afraid to admit that she knew better.

In the wake of his disappearance she distracted herself with schoolwork, her sister contented herself with boys, and her mother numbed herself with drink. They never went to the beach again. Night after night the girl would slip down to the living room, which faced the driveway, and wait for her father to return. She grew tired of cleaning up after her mother, she tired of scolding her sister, having to check her homework or sign parental notices from school. Her teachers would remark that she looked too old for her age, that she should make more friends, that she should be more playful. It wasn’t right, they would say, that a girl so young should have the dark eyes and cool demeanor of a woman three times her age. But they didn't see her at home, they didn't see her making dinner every night, struggling to pay the bills that kept coming, calling her grandparents and begging for a little more money, cleaning the bathroom after her mother passed out in the den.

So it was something of a surprise when, years later, she became engaged to a water-loving man named Jesse. Jesse could have been half-man, half-fish. Early mornings you could find him floating out on his surfboard watching the sun rise and the waves swell, and after work he would often be back at the beach, either talking about the surf or immersing himself in it. He was much taller than she, and much older. He would come home in the evenings, find her buried in casework, and coo sweet-nothings into her ear. 'Baby-girl' and 'sweet-pea' were his favourite nicknames. She would roll her eyes at such cliched endearments, but he could see her hidden smile and would tickle her chin or tousle her hair. At night she would cling to him with a desperation that he found both touching and somewhat troubling; sometimes in the middle of the night he would awaken to find her watching him, wide eyed, her palms sweaty and her heart pounding.

It was a month ago that the accident happened. She was sitting on that familiar outcropping of rocks, reading a magazine, glancing up once in a while to see Jesse bobbing in the water or paddling for a wave. She would admire his sinewy grace, his skill, his ease in and love of the water. She could squint and see him playing with a piece of seaweed, waiting for the next swell. A storm was brewing somewhere down south, and Jesse had been excited about the prospect of unusually large surf. She watched him bob and fidget, until his body went stiff and suddenly he looked alert, staring away from her, off to the horizon, as if reading some secret sign known only to mystics and surfers.

The first wave swelled, rose, and crashed. A second wave swelled under him, and he let it pass just like the first. Then, suddenly, with his characteristic grace, he turned towards shore and began to paddle furiously. She looked down at her magazine, but glanced back in time to see the wave pick him up as it rose higher and higher, and he seemed to stand absurdly, comically, wrongly on the edge, balanced precariously as the giant grew larger and larger, until without a sound or a squeak he toppled over the side. "Over the falls" she thought, remembering a trivial piece of surfer-lingo. His board flew up into the air, as if it wanted to fly, but was yanked back by the leash, and plunged angrily into the ocean. This is how he was killed, the doctors said, by the board crashing down on his skull. These things happen, she was told, it wasn't his fault, these things happen. As if she would feel better knowing that other men had died this way, and more were yet to die: it was unavoidable, and somehow, forgivable. She screamed. It took many tranquilizers before she stopped screaming. It would take many years for the nightmares to fade, the way paint gradually looses its color in the sun.

So she would walk to the beach every day, retracing their familiar route. Her compact body and long dark hair marched to shore, alone. She marched in monastic silence, neither making eye contact nor acknowledging anyone who crossed her path. And she would sit on those rocks, day after day, watching the water. Some days the ocean would gurgle and pop like a baby, sometimes it would growl like a hungry cat. There were quiet days, when the wind was still and the ocean glassy, days where she would sit so still and stare so hard, days when she could hear the siren song of that brave old world. But she never set foot on the beach, preferring to hunker down on the rocks and let the rhythmic pounding subdue her, lull her, quiet her. But today the Pacific was a hungry lion, roaring and rumbling, its belly empty, the waves daunting. That old fear seeped into her narcotic calm, and she worriedly scanned the waves. There were three men and a woman out in the water, while a mother and her baby girl watching from shore.

She became transfixed by the baby girl. The child dug enthusiastically in the sand, then threw handfuls of it up into the air, showering herself in a silvery storm. The mother mumbled and rolled on her plump belly. Every few minutes the child would look out to the water, point, and in a determined voice state, "Daddy." Her mother wouldn't look up from her paperback, but would respond with, "Mmm-hmm." She watched this child dig and dig, squeal and roll, as children should.

Her reverie was broken when the child stopped still and screamed, in a voice too loud and too frightened for her age, "DADDY!" The mother's head snapped up and the three of them looked to see one of the men tumble into the waves, lost into a crashing void, his board flying off without him.

She jumped to her feet in disbelief, dimly aware that the child was screaming and the mother was grasping for her, trying to quiet her. There were an agonizing few moments as the wave settled contently and the empty surfboard bobbed and ducked. The baby cried, the mother clasped it in her arms, and up on the rocks the woman stood rigid.

Then a hand reached up and grabbed the board, and behind that hand there was a man. He sputtered and laughed, waving languidly to his family on shore. The baby squealed, the mother settled back on her round stomach, but up on the rocks the woman shed angry tears. Tears that had taken a month to come, tears that didn't want to stop, tears that were making up for so many disappointments and so much lost time. For when she saw that man - the father, the husband - when she saw him turn and paddle back out for more, she suddenly realized that they were never, ever coming back.