Don’t cry, Mary Louise. Accidents happen. A ring around the moon last night, and today no rain, no snow.
The Lifeguard
“When was the last time your eyes were checked?”
“They’ve never been checked. They’ve always been blue.”
*
When David Warner was five or six years old there was an ant war one day, on the sidewalk outside his house. His mother boiled a pan of water and poured it on the ants. But it wasn’t enough water — there were so many ants. So she boiled another pan of water, and that was enough to kill them — kill them and wash them away, so you couldn’t really tell they had been killed. David stayed on the sidewalk, looking at the ripples of black washed to the edge of the sidewalk. “Why do you keep staring?” his mother scolded. “I got rid of them.” Her attention had been drawn to the ant war by David, who had squatted on the sidewalk for a long time. And then the next summer there was another ant war — he was six or seven then, or maybe he was five — and she killed them again, with two separate pots of boiling water. A cloud of steam and whoosh. That was what David told them at the induction center. It was spring, and he was thinking of the ant wars, and although he had rehearsed another story, the story about the ants just came out. “What of it?” the psychiatrist said when David finally got to see him. “I might do that. Just turn on the men and do the same thing.” “Kill them, do you mean?” “Yes, of course, kill them, that’s what I’m saying.” “What do you suggest I write in this space about the ant wars?” the psychiatrist asked. “I have to explain this, you know. Why don’t you tell me what you think it would be good to put down.” Fearing a trap, David said nothing — went into a crouch, part of the original plan. “I’m giving you a break. Why don’t you give me one?” the psychiatrist asked. David, knowing it was a trap, crouched and rocked back and forth.
*
He has been feeling lately that something good is going to happen. There is a visual distortion that accompanies the feeling; he sees, imagines he sees, sunsets when there could not possibly be sunsets. He sees them at midnight, when the moon shines over the water, then burns sun-bright, and the birds sing. Even the seagulls are quiet at midnight, so he is not just imagining that one thing is another. He is just plain inventing. Why is he doing that?
He goes to the beach every night, and about every third night he sees a sunset, hears music or singing …
He has just celebrated his thirty-first birthday by drinking a bottle of Ringnes beer and going down to the beach to bury the bottle in the sand, waiting for the sunset. It would be too much to expect that the sunset would herald something, that it would all make sense, that all the sunsets would have been foreshadowings of this great, bright dawn of his thirty-first birthday. There is no sunset. Seagulls squawk. They are looking for garbage. Naturally.
*
Andrew and Penelope and Randy. The neighborhood children pronounce it “Ranny.” An annoyance — especially because it does not annoy his son. “Kill them!” he wants to say to Randy. “Make them call you by your right name!” Killing — just what the psychiatrist would expect of him. To pick up a newspaper one day and read about a little boy who was urged to kill another little boy by his deranged father, who babbled incoherently, who cried when the police came to take him away. The psychiatrist would consult that sheet of paper — was that loony ’65 or ’64?—and aha! of course! Lookit, honey! This man made an absolute fool of himself in my office, very sick stuff …
David has always been curious. What did the psychiatrist come up with?
He is losing touch, and it is appropriate that he does most of his walking in the sand, which he sinks into. He went into town, saw the doctor and had his eyes examined, explaining the sunsets as “bright flashes.” The doctor asked when he last had his eyes checked, and David made a little witticism. The doctor said that there did not seem to be anything wrong with his eyes. “I know not seems,” David muttered. The doctor laughed, suspecting another witticism. These schoolteachers are all mad.
*
Andrew and Penelope and Randy. Andrew and Penelope are twins, eight years old. Before they were born, the doctor took an X ray and told them they would have triplets. He kept thinking that the doctor had done something with the other one, that he was selling it. He even told his wife that, and she went wild. The doctor assured them that he had interpreted the X ray wrong, and when that did not silence them he let them look at the X ray. “What’s that shadow? What’s that?” “I thought that might be a third.” “It might be! Isn’t that a leg?” “There were only two,” the doctor said, and walked out of the room. The bill was exorbitant. And when she was pregnant with Randy he refused to treat her, sent her to his partner. He does not really believe there was a third child any more. It seems silly to him that they were so upset. No doubt the sunsets will someday seem silly too.
*
She complains that in the city there is dust; at the beach there is sand. Anyone would expect that. Why does it drive her crazy? The sand creeps in, gets swept out, gets dusted away, comes again. She can feel her heart beating as she opens the door and sweeps the sand out the door, into the rest of the sand. Sand to sand. Ashes to ashes. She is thinking about dying again. Why? Why the hell is she thinking about that? She is thirty years old.
In the bed at night, she feels a grain or two of sand between her fingers. She gets up and takes a shower. There is a circle of sand around the drain. Why doesn’t the water wash it away? Everybody knows that water washes sand away.
*
Penelope gets the measles. Her eyes and her cheeks get puffy and pale. He consults a medical book and finds that nothing is said about the face bloating. He calls the doctor again. The doctor says that it is nothing; he examined Penelope the day before. She is just a little girl with the measles. David thinks that the man is indifferent — the way he speaks of her as just another itchy kid. They should see a specialist. He calls the doctor back — Penelope is in awe of all the confusion she has created — and asks for the name of a specialist. The doctor hangs up on him! He finds his wife in the kitchen, tells her about what the doctor did.
“You just can’t get along with doctors,” she says. The adjective would be wistfully. “She says wistfully.” What is she wistful for? On the table is an open book. There is a photograph: “Seated man in a bra and stockings, N.Y.C. 1967.”
“I want to leave the beach,” she says.
“But I rented this place for the whole summer.”
“I am attracted to the lifeguard.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I walk up and down the beach. I parade in front of him. I’ve bought two new bathing suits. Something is going to happen.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
No answer. The young man in bra and stockings has an enigmatic expression. Perhaps someone just said something that astounded him, then took his picture. Perhaps he was just walking around in his bra and stockings, and then he got tired and sat down, and then someone said something astounding and snapped his picture.
Where did she get that sick book? Is she serious about the lifeguard? You’d never leave me for a lifeguard, he wants to say to her, because I am a loving husband and father. Witness the fact that I’ve spent nine hundred dollars to rent this place at the beach to delight my wife and children, and that at this very moment I am trying to find a specialist for my ill child.