Fiction - 2nd Place

She thinks about it when she sees little kids playing by the shoreline, digging in the sand, sometimes unattended.  She sees them walking into the waves to catch some water for their sandcastles.  She imagines them pulled under and carried out without a glance from the lifeguard or the vigilance of a mother.  Always, it takes her to that August day three years ago and the sight of a lifeless little body dropped onto the mud, already too late for saving. 

The tears climb up her throat, and Beth hides her face in the beach towel that hangs from the umbrella spokes.  She feels Nick’s arms around her, folding her in like a receiving blanket.  He is whispering, “I’m here, Honey.  I’m here.”

Maybe it’s too soon for a visit to this beach.  Or any beach.  For the three years since she witnessed the drowning of the boy, Beth has been absent from her beloved ocean.  Always a beach girl, always a wave jumper, this absence, this self-imposed exile, has been painful.  But not as painful as the attempt to return to the site where her heart had stopped in her throat, where she froze on a sun-filled afternoon and wished time away.

She leans her head back against Nick’s chest.  “I know.” 

“Do you want to leave?”

She wants to say yes, but she shakes her head no.  She hears Dr. Michael’s words, Confront it, Beth.  Everyone has to get back on the horse after the fall.  Like when her father taught her to ride a two-wheeler and the bike slid into her neighbor’s mailbox, skinning her knees, scratching her head to toe with thin red marks.  She had told her dad to give the bike away, vowing never to try that again.  Yet, the next week, she rode that same pink bicycle to the school field when her best friend Jenny invited her to go for a snowball.

“I’m okay,” she assures Nick.  She settles into the beach chair and closes her eyes.  She senses that Nick has settled into the other chair, hears him turning pages of his Sports Illustrated.  She wonders if he is thinking about surfboards and if his muscles yearn to be in the ocean. 

 The thought pulls her again to that August day.  She remembers a surfer, water sliding down his hair, his body shading the sun from the face of the child while the lifeguard went through the actions, all the while knowing that it was already too late to save the boy but going through the actions for the sake of the crowd, filling some time until the ambulance could arrive to complete the process of declaring the tiny victim dead.  She doesn’t remember the child’s face – maybe the shade from the surfer shielded its details, or maybe she didn’t want to see the little face.  She does remember a surfboard being tossed wave to wave, no surfer, no one claiming the board, no one attempting to keep it from its escape out into the ocean.  She recalls watching the board and the waves, listening to the low conversations that floated through the crowd as they observed the lifeguard perform his practiced routine. 

She opens her eyes to the sky and reminds herself that there is no child today – that was a different summer day.   But the sound of the waves will not leave her alone.  They tap on her mind like a toddler tugging on his mother’s sleeve.

A sudden command grabs her:  She must stop the child.  And, although her mind knows there is no logic to this, the thought springs her from the chair.  But the beach before her is empty now.  She wonders if the children she saw earlier were really there.  She questions her mind, considers the effects of the medications she’s been given, and wonders where real dreams end and daydreams begin.

Nick looks up from his magazine.  “Beth?  Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she lies.  “A horsefly bit me.”  She holds out her arm, points to the nonexistent injury, and Nick kisses the spot three times, like a parent heals a booboo. 

She cannot erase the image of the little boy at the shoreline digging in the sand.  She remembers that he walked into the ocean to catch water into his bucket.  She remembers the outline of a surfer paddling toward a building wave, the sunlight behind him turning him into a black cut-out.  And then, it felt like time had stopped and the world was moving in slow motion – like film makers do when some horrific event takes place in the story line.  But that time, it was real and, just like in the movies, Beth couldn’t stop it from happening, couldn’t get her legs to lift her from the breach chair, couldn’t get her voice to call out.  She watched the wave break high close to shore.  She blinked from one frame of the little boy with his plastic bucket to the next frame of no one there.  Then the movie picked up speed, lifeguard jumping from perch to ocean, beachgoers running to the shoreline and blocking her sight of this live action theatrical event of a child drowning.

“Let’s walk,” she hears herself say.  And, of course, Nick complies. 

She looks for seashells; he watches her.  She doesn’t have to look up to know that.  She feels his concern and wishes that she weren’t such a burden to him. 

The cold chill of the water tickles the side of her foot.  The soft mud tugs at her toes.  She remembers running along the water’s edge with her cousins, scaring the seagulls into flight.  Her legs remember jumping into surf-made puddles.  Her ears hear the wave upon wave of children’s giggles.

She looks up from the sand.  The laughter is not memory; it is real.  She sees a family – parents under the umbrella unwrapping sandwiches from a picnic basket and three little ones digging at the sand with their feet, giggling, seeing who can dig the farthest the fastest. 

Nick squeezes her hand.  “Still okay?” he asks.  His eyes worry. 

“Sure.”  Beth makes herself watch the children at play, makes herself believe that not all children drown in the ocean.

Then, the smallest of the children runs toward the water, his brother and sister still kicking at the sand, his mother and father dividing the sandwiches onto plates.   Her mind snaps to that question: Where do real dreams end and daydreams begin?

She can’t breathe.  She feels her knees lock.  Perspiration floods her skin. 

Then, the father’s voice calls, “Benjamin!  Not alone, remember?” and the boy runs back to his siblings.

Beth feels the rush of air in her lungs, but the breath does not relax her mind.  Words scream through her brain: The little boy who drowned, his name was Danny. 

She throws her arms around Nick and cries the tears that had not been released three years ago.  “I remember,” she tells him.  “I remember everything.”  Her memory sees the little face of the boy in a photograph, baseball cap too large for his head.  She sees Nick’s face in the background.  She remembers her finger pressing the button on the camera, capturing what would be the final photograph of her son.  That August day, it was Nick paddling toward the breaker; it was her son Danny building the sandcastle.  She remembers her wave to Nick as he stood up on his surfboard.  But when she turned to tell Danny to look at Daddy, the shoreline was empty; her child was gone.

Nick massages her back.  “It’s going to be okay, Honey.  It’s going to be okay, now.”  She feels the wet drops of his tears on her shoulder and knows the comfort of shared grief.