Salt Water (2 page)

FATHER CAME BACK
from town that afternoon, and next morning we walked to the bay—Bone Point is about a mile across—to see how the Angela had weathered the storm. She’s a twenty-four-foot day sailer, with a four-and-a-half-foot keel, a main and a jib sail, and a cuddy cabin that two people can sit in hunched over, or lie down in if, as Father said, they’re very friendly. She was riding low. The tarp had loosened and let in rain. We bailed her out and aired the sails and while we were at it took her around the Point to the ocean.

The water was like a green bath with a shivering surface. The wind was cool, the sky pale blue, a few cloud puffs
sped along. The sandbar had left no trace. We dropped an-chor to twelve feet where we figured it had been.

“Full fathom two,” Father said. “Who’s that?” He pointed to shore.

Zina and Sonya were swimming out toward us.

“Zina Mertz.”

“How can you tell?”

“That’s her dog.”

“We should meet them half way,” Father said. “Look, the dog’s turning back.”

“Zina is a very good swimmer.”

“How do you know?”

“I swam with her yesterday. And she’s a very fine person.”

That amused Father, and he gave me his big smile, which was as close as he ever came to making fun of me.

It took her forever to reach us. She was even more beautiful in the green water, with the broken, reflected sunlight flashing over her face. Father held out his hand to help her up, but she hauled herself aboard.

He asked her how she liked the guesthouse. She said she hoped he didn’t mind that she had set up a darkroom. He said Grandfather Michael once had a darkroom there. “He was a passionate photographer, with absolutely no talent. Every picture was a bull’s-eye. We have cartons of them.

Are you a professional?”

Zina said she was, she had a group show coming up in New York in the winter, and now she was taking time off to think. “I want to do a minimum of looking for a while. This is the perfect place.” She pointed to the sea. “Water and sky.” She pointed to the shore. “Water, sky, and sand. Multiply that by day and night, and there are still only six things to look at. I’m cleaning out my head.”

“Sounds like the French Foreign Legion,” Father said.

I could see right away that he liked her. When he didn’t like someone he smiled and said nothing. It was clear that she liked him too. Father was very handsome. He had fair skin, black hair, and green eyes. I used to watch when he was introduced to people. They couldn’t take their eyes off him. I was very pleased he liked her. I hated it when two people I liked didn’t like each other.

He told us a story about Grandfather Michael I hadn’t heard before. During World War II Mother’s family had to leave the Point to let the army practice beach landings. One moonless night in the summer of 1943 Grandfather made his own landing. He wanted to see how his house was doing. He came around the Point in a small sailboat, which capsized in the surf. The mast hit him on the head, and he might have drowned if a beach patrol hadn’t been tracking him. They brought him to and dried him off, and the commanding
officer grilled him all night, sure he was a German spy. This despite the fact that Grandfather spoke perfect American English and answered questions about Laurel and Hardy, Cole Porter, and the Boston Red Sox. The officer was almost convinced, when Grandfather offered as ultimate proof the fact that a particular burner on the stove in his house was faulty. Grandfather forgot that he had put the stove in the basement. As a result, the officer sent Grandfather under guard to an intelligence center in Virginia, where he was kept incommunicado and interrogated for two days. He was finally released with a mild apology and a strong reprimand.

Father managed the mainsail and tiller, and we sailed along parallel to the shore. Zina and I shifted from side to side as we came about. Each time, she pinched my arm, which thrilled me.

“My father was born in Germany,” she said. “He was brought up there, but he’s an American. He came here with his parents after the war. His father, my grandfather, was a famous scientist. Did you ever hear of Victor Mertz? There’s a town in Alabama named Mertz.”

I knew what Father was going to say. “Michael was born in Germany. I was doing business there in the late forties. We came back when my father-in-law died. I believe Michael can apply for German citizenship.”

“Fat chance,” I said.

“Misha is completely American,” Zina said.

“Why do you call him Misha then?”

“It’s my favorite name, and he is now one of my favorite people. As for you, you’re even more American.”

“Somehow,” Father said, “that doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“We can’t help being what we are, and what I meant about Misha is he’s easier to understand than European boys. Do you mind that, Misha?”

“I mind the boy part.”

“European
males
.”

“How about the rest of you,” Father said, “besides the German part?”

“The rest is Russian,” she said and explained that her mother’s parents left Russia after the revolution and joined the Russian colony in Paris. “My mother was born there. Strictly speaking, she’s a princess.”

“How about you?” Father said.

“Me too,” she said and dove into the water. She came up and swam toward shore.

“She knows how to make an exit,” Father said.

We tacked behind her at a discreet distance until she reached the beach.

After lunch I was sitting on the porch with Blackheart when Zina appeared on the dune and waved us over. She
took us around to the deck and showed me a dozen of her grass pictures. They were black-and-white and, except for the foot pictures, seemed more like drawings than photo-graphs. The one I liked best was of a single clump with seven blades. Those that bent toward and away from the camera were almost vertical lines. Those bending sideways had the fullest curves. No blade crossed any other. I told her I liked this one best.

“Why?”

“It’s the simplest. But they’re all good.”

“Why?”

“They’re tense and peaceful.”

“I love you,” she said. She pulled my head forward and kissed my nose. “Now here are your pictures.” On cardboard she had pasted the snapshots—each was an inch by an inch and a half—one above the other in four groups. The images didn’t mesh, but there she was, opened up and flattened out, two side views, one front view, one back.

“You’ve reinvented cubism,” she said. “I’m very impressed.”

When I didn’t say anything, she said, “I really am impressed, Misha.”

“I just preferred taking pictures of you than of grass.”

“Nonetheless you are a darling boy—darling male.”

Sonya appeared, and Blackheart tried to mount her.

“Stop!” I yelled.

“Oh, let him! A lady likes to be asked.”

I was not only embarrassed generally, I was embarrassed for Blackheart, who was half as tall as the setter. He yipped and whined and leaped to reach her. She didn’t even look around to see what was happening.

“Talk about a flying fuck,” Mrs. Mertz said through the screen door.

“Mother, come out! This is Misha. You met him on the beach, the drowned rat, and that’s his dog. I don’t give him much chance, do you?”

“They don’t seem suited,” Mrs. Mertz said and came onto the deck with a drink in her hand. The three of us sat down. Mrs. Mertz caught Blackheart’s attention, and he gave the setter up. I could see from the way the setter folded her paws beneath her and took her place among us that she considered herself somebody. Like the setter, Mrs. Mertz had reddish-brown hair and her arms and legs were long and fashionable. Also like the setter she tucked her bare feet under her. She told Zina to bring me something to drink. Without asking what I wanted, Zina brought me another vodka, which she gave me with a giggle. Mrs. Mertz was paler and thinner than Zina. As I sipped the vodka, I subtracted Mrs. Mertz from Zina to see if I could picture what the father was like. Strong and dark, I thought. I told
Mrs. Mertz my formula and asked if I was right.

“Absolutely. You
are
clever.”

“What does Mr. Mertz do?” I said.

“God only knows. I haven’t heard from him for months. Have you, Zina?”

“One letter.”

“Well, what
is
he doing?”

“The usual thing.”

“Well, there you are, Misha. Zina’s father is doing the usual thing.”

I didn’t finish the vodka and after an hour left with my pasted-up pictures.

SUNDAY MORNING FATHER
, Mother, Zina, and I sailed from Johns Bay to town and the Church of the Fishers of Men. It had an arrangement with a nearby marina to park the boats of parishioners during services. Mrs. Mertz said she would stay on the Point and worship the sun god. Zina really didn’t belong in her gauzy flowered dress and floppy brimmed hat. She seemed to be playing the part of going to church on Sunday. In fact when we were pulling into the marina she said, “Misha, pinch me if I giggle.”

Mr. Walton liked to use aquatic themes in his sermons. This one was called “The Personal Deluge” and was about “those times that come to all of us when seemingly endless
trouble rains upon us. Then it is that we must cleave to our loved ones, hold fast to our faith in deliverance, and wait, if need be, through forty days and forty nights for the flood of affliction to subside.”

Mr. Walton was famous for his wife, Elaine, the most beautiful woman in town. Father said that if Mr. Walton used her for bait he would be a truly great fisher of men. He also said that since we could go to church only in good weather that the matter of attendance was in God’s hands and we should not feel guilty on gusty Sundays. Zina said, I think seriously, that during the service she had thought of a way to photograph God.

As we did that Sunday, we sometimes sailed around the Point and anchored in front of the house. Since we had no dock on the oceanside, we’d strip down to our underwear and wade ashore, holding our clothes above our heads. I was always a little embarrassed to see Mother in bra and panties, even though there was more to her underwear than to her bathing suit. This was always fun, and it was good to see Mother in a happy mood.

I was surprised when Father decided to sail around the Point that Sunday. Had he forgotten about Zina? He carried her ashore. Her hat came off and got wet, and so did the hem of her dress. Father looked like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold. We were laughing so much—
Mother most of all—we could hardly walk through the water.

Mother had mixed feelings about summers at Bone Point. It was one of the important places of her childhood. On the other hand, she didn’t like “being abandoned,” as she described Father’s business trips to town. And even when he was at the Point he seemed to spend more time alone or with me than with Mother. That was one of the reasons she liked giving parties. We usually had one in July—this one today— one in August, and wound up the season with the Labor Day party in September.

After lunch Father and I sailed south along the shore past the base of the Point to a little beach village on the mainland with a famous cheese store. While Father shopped, Blackheart and I kept the Angela pointed into the wind, the sails flapping and snapping. It sounded like complaining, and when Father waded out with the cheese he said the Angela didn’t like doing errands, she was a lady.

“Zina said her dog is a lady.”

“Setters are jumpy and dumb. A lady cannot be jumpy and dumb. A lady is serene and always knows what others are thinking.”

“Is Mother a lady?”

“Pretty much.”

“Is Mrs. Mertz a lady?”

“I interviewed her, not to see if she was a lady, but to see if she was respectable.”

“Is she?”

“Respectable enough. We’ll see at the party if she’s a lady.”

“Do you think she’s attractive?”

“Quite attractive.”

“But Zina is beautiful.”

“Quite beautiful,” Father said with his big smile.

Sailing back, I was very happy. There I was, in the Angela with Father and Blackheart. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue. If I looked far enough I could see the night beyond it. And, besides that, at five o’clock Zina and her mother would be at the party. The Cuddihys were sailing down from the mainland. Mother had gone to school with Mrs. Cuddihy and was always in a good mood when she was around. Mr. Cuddihy was a builder. I think Father and he did business together. We sailed the Angela around to the bay and walked across the Point to the house. The porch had a sunny side and a shady side, a lee side and a windward side, a dry side and a wet side. It was a perfect place to read, nap, or have a party.

The Cuddihys arrived on time. Mrs. Cuddihy and Mother kissed and embraced. Father and Mr. Cuddihy shook hands and made themselves drinks. Father never drank before a
party, and Mr. Cuddihy never didn’t. He was a big man. His face was always red. He had big hands and feet, and everybody liked him, including me, except when he said things like, “Michael, Michael, when are you going to catch up with your dad? You haven’t got all that much time. Come here and say hello to Melissa.”

The Cuddihys made out that their daughter, Melissa, and I were going together. Actually we only saw one another when our parents met. Melissa was a nice girl and not bad looking, and she liked poetry, which I did too. What kept me from enjoying her more was that she was two inches taller than I was. That Sunday she brought me the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

My parents and the Cuddihys were laughing and drinking, and Melissa was reading me a Millay sonnet, which I could tell she knew by heart:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning…

Someone suddenly turned, and the rest of us looked. Zina and her mother were climbing the dune in front of the guesthouse, appearing head first, then shoulders, and so on. “Venus rising,” Father said. I wondered which one he meant.
Mrs. Mertz was dressed in a black blouse and white slacks, Zina in yellow slacks and an orange blouse.

As they came toward us, the strangest notion occurred to me, that Mrs. Mertz was more beautiful than Zina. Mrs. Mertz walked, not like a princess, but like a queen, straight, looking directly at us, smiling a little. And then, probably intending to, she threw it all away by dragging on a cigarette. Zina was a few steps behind, looking down. The two of them made such an impression that it took us a few minutes to absorb them.

There were now eight of us on the porch in two groups, like a ballet. Father and Mr. Cuddihy enjoying themselves with Zina and Mrs. Mertz; Mother, standing with Mrs. Cuddihy, Melissa, and me. Mother couldn’t concentrate on what was being said. I knew what was on her mind. Whenever Father was having a good time with a pretty woman like Mrs. Mertz Mother was impelled to do something about it. She had worked up a stock of moves. She would join Father and inject herself into the conversation; she would send him on an errand; she would call him away to introduce him to some one. Father knew what she was up to because there’d always be that big smile. But he’d go along. I once asked him if Mother was the jealous type. “More the careful type,” he said.

The problem for Mother now was that Mrs. Cuddihy was bringing her up to date on their college classmates, and the news was endless. The best Mother could do was stand so
that she could watch Father. I watched too. Zina was giving Mr. Cuddihy her full attention, and Mrs. Mertz was telling Father a story. He was either amused or making out he was. Melissa was trying to break me away from our mothers. To avoid this I left the group and took up a position between Mrs. Mertz and Zina. Mrs. Mertz retold the beginning of her story for my benefit. It seems her husband was once cutting grass with a big stand-behind mower. The blade picked up a piece of copper wire and shot it into Mr. Mertz’s stomach. Mrs. Mertz drove him to the hospital, where an emergency operation was performed by an émigré, Moscow-trained surgeon. A week after he left the hospital Mr. Mertz went to the Russian surgeon’s office for an examination. Mr. Mertz said in passing, “I may not be able to cut the grass, but I can still cut the mustard.”

“What is ‘cut mustard’?” the surgeon said.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, you can’t fuck. You open stomach.”

“I did it on my side,” Mr. Mertz said.

“Oh, on your side,” the surgeon said and shrugged.

“So, since then,” Mrs. Mertz said, “I’ve felt if you do it on your side it doesn’t count.”

The men were amused, although Mr. Cuddihy looked as if he wasn’t sure the story should be told in front of me. No doubt Zina had heard it before.

With a conspiratorial look Zina left and joined the other group. By the time I could follow her she and Melissa were off by themselves. Melissa was in shorts and sandals. She wasn’t so much heavy as big. Her knees had indentations. She was doing the talking.

“You are obviously the graphic type. Michael and I are verbal types. We like images all right, but when it comes to expressing ourselves we do it in words. Now here’s a test for the verbal type. Butterflies flutter by. If you think that’s pure magic you’re the verbal type. If it’s just words you’re not. There’s a difference, though, between Michael and me.” She put her hand on my arm. “You can deny it if you like, Michael, but the fact is I
think
, then
say
; Michael
says
, then
thinks
.”

At the moment I was doing the opposite. I was saying nothing, but I certainly was thinking. What was she doing? I had never heard this kind of nervous chattering out of her. She was talking as if we were an item. I had never touched one part of her person. I had never even taken her out. Where was this coming from?

Then suddenly Mr. Cuddihy was beside us. “Honey, is that wine you’re drinking?”

“Mother said I could.”

“Just one. How about you?” he said to Zina. “Can I get you something?”

“I’ll come with you,” Zina said.

I was furious with Melissa. “What was all that about, me talking first, you thinking first?”

“You do.”

“You don’t
know
me well enough to know that. You don’t know me at
all
.” I was losing my breath.

“Why are you getting angry? I was only trying to pay you a compliment.”

“What compliment?”

“That you’re spontaneous.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

She looked ready to cry.

“All right, Melissa. I’m not angry. It’s just that I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t want me talking about you to Zina. That’s it isn’t it?”

“That
isn’t
it.”

“You like her.”

“Melissa, everyone likes Zina. Your father likes Zina. Look, he’s all over her.”

Melissa spun around and walked off the porch toward the beach. Mother was watching us and knew something was up. She nodded for me to follow Melissa. I didn’t want to, but I did. I caught up with her, and we strolled along the beach. I took her hand. I didn’t want to, but I did. By the time
we returned to the house she was okay.

Everyone had moved to the ocean porch to see the sunset. As the top of the sun went below the horizon Mr. Cuddihy said, “Going … going …
gone
,” and everyone cheered.

We ate inside. The people who had been drinking liquor switched to wine. After the food Mr. Cuddihy played tunes on the piano. We gathered around and sang along. Zina went onto the porch and called Sonya. She loped over, was nuzzled by Zina, and settled down outside. Blackheart barked, and we bribed him with a dish of shrimp. Melissa turned out to have a pretty voice. So did Mrs. Mertz. After some songs—”Just One of Those Things,” “Night and Day,” “Stormy Weather “—she recited the lyrics in French as Mr. Cuddihy touched the appropriate chords.

“Your mother’s terrific,” I whispered to Zina.

“That girl’s in love with you,” she whispered back.

“I’m not in love with her.”

“You have a responsibility to someone who loves you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but if I told her I loved
her
would she have a sense of responsibility to me?

“She gave you a book of poems. You give her something back.”

“All right.”

“Something that means something to you.”

“All right.”

But I didn’t. I went to my room for the copy of Yeats’s poems that Melissa had given me on another occasion, and I inscribed it “For Zina, page 114,” which had a line Yeats said he found in an old play:

In dreams begins responsibility.

I gave her the book in the dark as she stood on the sand with her mother, thanking us at the end of the party.