In the back of me. I think it is in the back of me. This thing. This thing that happened last summer. My mother still talks about it. “Why did she tackle such a giant wave? Why did she surf so close to that other surfer? Was she drunk? Was she dreaming with her eyes open?” I wondered too. Did she experience a sensation of twirling before she went under the wave? A kind of vertigo? Was she giddy in those moments before her boyfriend’s surfboard knocked her unconscious, the board landing only a few feet from her, floating like some primitive raft bereft of a sole survivor?
I remember seeing her face—a photo from a high school yearbook—on the local news channels, here in Santa Cruz. Sophomore in college . . . loved all kinds of water sports, a TV reporter commented through my miniature Zenith. I fumbled with the vertical sync, thinking about her parents who were friends of my folks, staying a couple of blocks from our bungalow at the shore. The reporter described how the paramedics worked frantically, worked against time, fitting a J-collar on the girl and hurrying the stretcher into the ambulance. A few onlookers, he added, dripping in wet towels and shivering, helplessly looked on.
For weeks, people did not come out of their houses at night. I remember how some placed lighted candles in darkened windows. A kind of deference to her. A kind of silence. There must have been this fear. The fear, I think, of an ogre emerging from the depths of the ocean, turning one of our most cherished devices, like a surfboard, against us. That ogre returning to its lair, escaping into the surf.
Back at the bungalow, my brother asks me to grab him another beer.
I’ve just turned twenty-three. Last month, I graduated college with a degree in Anthropology. My brother, Bobby, who is three years older, is in his second year of law school. He is four inches taller (I’m 5’7” and slightly overweight for my height) and his hair is a few shades lighter than mine (a medium brown, comb resistant). His gets blonder as the summer goes on, and it stays blonde in winter because he lightens it. He likes to sport that beach boy look all year long.
I had reluctantly agreed to spend this summer at our parents’ bungalow in Santa Cruz, not being particularly ambitious about gaining employment right away, having no immediate plans to expedite my future. I want to enjoy this first summer after college. I want to wake up late in the morning and lie in the sand all afternoon. I want to watch the surf until night. I know I am not a particularly strong surfer; however, I can tread water with a modicum of success.
And it would be nice, I think, to live temporarily without schedule, without answering to anyone. I want to acquire this ability to live carelessly, with plastic utensils and without shoelaces, to comb the beach for hours, picking up sand in my fist and throwing it for no other purpose than to see just how far I can. It is an absence of duty that has suited my
brother well, summer after summer. A hazy state of mind that leads you to follow a paper sun, to pretend you’re shipwrecked until rescued by a fishing crew once headed for the Artic but now sailing south of Puget Sound. A crew thrown far off course, whose supply of freshwater has been depleted, whose noses, once frozen and stung from salt, could only have led them here—to a warm, more promising sea.
For the short time I’ve been down here, I’ve noticed a peculiar clarity in the nighttime sky. Why this transparency, why this clarity only at night, I do not understand. I certainly never noticed it in the skies over Pasadena.
Our parents are presently vacationing upstate outside Napa Valley, visiting relatives and friends, and will be joining us in a few weeks. For now, our refrigerator is barren of all the healthy, leafy vegetables grown in my mother’s garden back home. It suits me just fine. It suits me fine to live on junk food, a daily regiment of it: French fries and left over chicken wings for breakfast, cheeseburgers and breaded onion rings for lunch, dinner consisting of Italian hot dogs and Slurpees which pool in my throat like stagnant streams. And don’t forget the pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni—maybe red pepper for an extra kick. No, it suits me just fine. This is how I want to spend my summer.
So for the time being, my brother and I have this house to ourselves—all to ourselves.
Bobby crumples the last can of beer and tosses it over the kitchen table into the garbage. He never misses. He does not seem to notice the cigarette ashes he is flickering on his striped baggy shorts, an expensive pair my mother bought him for his birthday (along with two new sets of water skis and a rugged Suzuki chopper with generous torque from my father).
Instead, his eyes follow another surfer sauntering past our window, this one with a particularly scant red bikini, revealing a perfect contour of breast and thigh. His eyes remain motionless long after she has left his line of vision.
By the way, bring up the subject of girls to Bobby. He’s got girls chasing him everywhere, coming out of the woodwork, calling him all hours of the night. Girls who are short, girls who are tall, girls with straight hair, frizzy hair, blond, brunette, auburn . . . Girls who have to be home by twelve—but mostly, girls who don't.
When he talks to them, I imagine him holding a cigarette in a pose of trendy disinterest, smiling or shrugging his shoulders. It is an effort on his part, I suppose, to feign that he may be inclined, but is not too, too interested. But I know he is always interested. Very interested.
I watch the girls become giddy next to him. They love him. And the ones who wish to know him will walk up to him, often with one arm wrapped around the elbow of another girl who has gotten to know him already. The experienced will whisper in the ear of the inexperienced. One will shake her head and the other will say, “I told you he was cute.” Then they pretend that they too can be distracted. As for me, I’m usually left sitting it out, expecting to catch errant beach balls or give directions to tourists.
Bobby’s chest is always held high in summer, lacquered with a bronze suntan that needs reapplication. And for the better part of the afternoon, until my eyes ache from squinting or burn from loose sand, I watch him tease girls by pulling their bra straps or challenging them to an undertow. When they arrive back on sand, they wipe their eyes and become giddy all over again.
Now I imagine these same girls will compare notes in the privacy of locker rooms or beach houses, will even draw straws to see who will later take him home. I know he will invite them over to our bungalow, which he claims he owns. Some will come alone; some will come with friends; but they all come to party. They will bring beer and laugh and dance all night in the small living room, which, to me, grows claustrophobic as a child’s sand tunnel. And if it gets too loud—too much of ruckus—I’ll sleep with my head under the pillow or will turn on the radio to drown out the noise.
Inevitably, he will invite one upstairs to his room. It’s too early to go home, he’ll say as I listen through the slit in my door. “Stay awhile, you don’t want to go home yet. We’ll watch the sun rise—or better yet, swim before it rises.” And at first hint of sunlight, as I turn in bed reaching for an alarm clock not there, I imagine that girl will turn also, turn next to Bobby, who’s hazy-eyed and hung over, only wanting to sleep late. Their heads must hum with the sound of air rushing through seashells. It’s really air rushing through tympanic labyrinths.
I can imagine a slight shuffling in the room but everything will remain nameless and essentially unchanged. Bobby, I believe, will remain asleep. Or will pretend. I don’t think she’ll wake him as she quietly gathers up her swimsuit off the floor and leaves quickly. Sitting at the edge of my bed, I’ll shake my head free of the boisterous voices that rang through the walls only hours ago. I know the trace of sand under her fingernails will be the last memory she has of Bobby.
I toss a sheet over my head. The door downstairs is pulled shut.
My brother once told me that he never dates a girl for more than two months. He dates so many girls that for him one face is interchangeable with another. Not me. I never forget a face.
Early afternoon. I disregard the earlier storm warnings. My wet suit is as snug as the skin of a baby seal. I am standing on a giant wave, perhaps 12 feet. The wave is carrying me in its blue and white-capped fury, the promise of an incredible thrill.
At this height, I feel powerful as I surge into the air. I am Neptune kissing the sky. I feel I am surfing in the waters of the Hawaiian god, Ka-ne. Hawaiian legends say that if one is dead and Ka-ne’s water is thrown upon that person, that someone becomes alive again. As the wave lifts me higher, I imagine I can see all twenty-nine miles of Santa Cruz’s beaches, perhaps over its rooftops. I coast downwards, making the mistake of looking into the water.
Now if I fall, I imagine this blue, almost transparent sea will open up and swallow me whole. I will become a tiny fish swept and chased in Neptune’s domain. Lamenting about my past life on land, I might remain undigested in a jellyfish or octopus. I would plead for mercy.
With sea and salt spraying my face, I begin to lose my balance. I feel lopsided. I should have waxed this board for better foot grip. No longer can I deny that water is a solid I can simply glide over. I should have taken a short board. It carves the waves with such ease.
I steady myself, squatting slightly. I ride the wave in. No wipeout. I am victorious.
Today, I want to visit that girl lying in a coma, and present her with this surfboard. I will boast how I, her substitute, beat Neptune at his own game. I will tell her that I too have a head full of sea stars and sea horses. I want to place this long board, similar to the one that knocked her unconscious—the one I took from my brother—under her poster of surfers and orange sunset. An endless summer.
And somewhere in one of her drawers I imagine a photo of my brother, a surfer she once dated for two months, a face that became as insignificant to her as perhaps outdated swimwear. Was it my brother’s surfboard that knocked her unconscious, made her as dreamy as I am? He would never admit to it. I’ll never know.
I see myself flicking beads of salt water onto her face—my hands are not yet dry from the surf. I can picture her, the deadened eyes transforming into starry ones, as she sits up and tells me about the biggest wave she wants to conquer. Starting where she left off.
