Chapter 46
There were six identical thatched-roof huts scattered in a clearing, the beach sweeping up behind them.
At a cramped oficina, a woman gave us the key.
Though it was only one small living area intersecting two cramped bedrooms, Ida and Henry rushed around excitedly, crawling under the dense mosquito netting wrapping their bed, clambering over the musty mismatched furniture, briefly holding hands as they stood staring up at the domed ceiling.
When they began to bicker, tired from the long drive, Tom came to the doorway, frowning.
I thought he was about to scold them, but he surprised me, saying, “Why don’t we put on our bathing suits and see the ocean? ”
Their shouts of joy were instantaneous. After the dank casita, the vast near emptiness of the beach was a revelation.
I had been so long away from the East Coast of my girlhood that I’d forgotten how it feels to stand before the ocean, the salty coat of its humid air.
It moved me to be sharing it now with my children, who had only ever swum in lakes, navigating weeds, stroking over glassy stillness.
Henry ran screaming into the surf and then frantically back when the waves gathered and broke.
Ida had assumed her ninja stance, legs bent, arms raised as if in preparation for battle, grinningly trying to hold her balance as the tugging ebb of each wave eroded the sand beneath her feet.
Tom was the first to go in, battling his way past where the waves broke and then bobbing beyond them, waving to Henry and Ida.
“Do a somersault,” they hollered.
He disappeared beneath the water. When he resurfaced, he folded up his legs so that only his toes poked out, a few feet from his chin. “Henry, Ida! Look at me! I’m a midget!” Like an ensuing drum roll, a wave crashed his head, and they roared with laughter.
“Take us out with you,” they begged. “Take us into the deep!”
One at a time, he carried them on his hip beyond the waves, their little hands clutching desperately at his neck, their heads slick as seals, Tom releasing them for moments to paddle frantically.
Ida had let Henry go first, watching closely as he was carried through the tumult into the enormity of the sea.
When it was her turn, her face remained still as a statue.
Shall we go back? I imagined Tom saying, his head bent close to her, Ida determinedly shaking her frozen face.
When he took his arms away, for seconds, she continued to cling to him.
When she let go, her face reanimated, charged with joy.
“I’m swimming in the ocean!” she cried, gasping, her chin lifted high above the water.
Afterward, they were famished. They huddled shivering on the sand, asking for dinner; when would it be ready?
I had nothing for them to eat. We decided to go into town, Tom dashing into our hut for some money, our discarded clothes.
Aimlessly we walked along the beach, the sun almost setting.
The walk took nearly twenty minutes. Henry kept running ahead to sit at the edge of the break, letting the waves tumble him backward, his hair and ears and bathing suit filling with sand.
The town was little more than an intersection of two gouged dirt roads.
There didn’t seem to be any proper restaurants, only a corner tiendita with a few sad-looking roast chickens and, in a glass case, some sort of sandwich meat of a brand called Fud, and some rubbery white cheese.
We bought a bag of sliced white bread and some of the cheese, an assortment of other things Henry and Ida wanted, for once refusing them nothing: frosted cream-filled cakes sealed in plastic bags, chips, apple-flavored sodas; for Ida, pickles in a jar covered in a thick layer of dust. In a ramshackle park, we ate.
We played on the rusted seesaw, still in our damp clothes and bathing suits, happy.
Only on the way back did the kids begin to protest. It was pitch dark.
They were tired, they moaned; they couldn’t walk all that way again!
Why hadn’t we taken the car? Why couldn’t we get a taxi like in San Miguel?
A taxi, I laughed to myself, thinking: Now they will get stronger, tougher, less like the spoiled white kids they’ve been. Now there is only us, and the crabs scuttling over the sand, the moon, the ocean with its black depths.
That night, after we had settled them beneath the mosquito netting, already half asleep, Tom and I went silently into our room.
We kissed, standing at the foot of our bed.
We took our clothes off without words. No thought, no preamble.
I settled myself onto my back, the sheets damp with sea air, lifting my hands over my head.
Tom held them firmly, his fingers interlaced through mine, our eyes opening and closing languidly.
There was no need to rouse myself, Tom not careful or half apologetic.
Nothing performative between us. We were only natural with each other, unhurried in all we did.
In the final minutes, he lay on his back in the spot where I’d lain, and I climbed on top of him but faced away toward the black immensity of the ocean while he gripped my hips, every sense concentrating into the point at which we joined.
We’d never made love that way before; after nine years, it was something new.
We came that way, with my back to him. Afterward, we didn’t reach to put our underwear on like we almost always did—as if to protect ourselves, regain some small bit of separateness—but lay side by side in the dampness with our feet touching, and slept.