7

He was seven years old when he was drowned. Just seven. His bones were so young, so fragile. His body was so innocent, so unmarked. I imagine he liked to chase geese and be held tightly by his mother.

I rented a house by the beach because I hadn’t taken a vacation for four years, and I felt like it was the right thing to do. I went alone because there was no one to go with me. I thought the beach would look like a postcard, and I guess it did a little, but I wasn’t prepared for how real it was. You know, when you get an idea in your head and you think it’s one way but it’s really not, and it really gets to you, really just gets under your skin and in your brain and just messes with you. The first thing that got to me was the sand. It looked like yellow cake, pound cake or something, but it didn’t feel like it at all. And the sea was like a soda pop, you know, all bubbly and frothy and foaming. I could smell the foam spurting up from the edges of the water. It had a sickly, heavy smell, like a hospital, and reminded me of bodily fluid of some sort – pus coming up from a wound, or semen. Needless to say, the whole thing disgusted me. I wanted my money back and get back on a plane and spend my vacation at work, or somewhere better, not some place that made me want to empty my guts out.

Well the guy said I couldn’t get my money back because I had booked so far in advance. The funny thing is, when I booked the trip, he sent me this whole pamphlet on the place and I taped it up at work and looked at it every time something pissed me off and wanted to be there the whole time. I even told this guy I work with that I was thinking of moving there and starting a business. He asked me what kind of business, and I told him it didn’t matter just as long as it wasn’t this kind of hell. He laughed at that.

Well, I decided that I would go sit on the beach even though it made me sick, because the bed in the house made me even sicker, and the chairs creaked so much I thought I would go deaf. I think it had sand in it. I brought out a towel to sit on and put sunscreen all over my body - I’m practically reflective you see. The sun there was nasty color, and the light hurt my eyes more than the light anywhere else I’d ever been. But I braved it and sat a little way away from the ocean.

After awhile, the sound of the ocean began to bother me. It roared and roared and roared and reminded me of the cars in the city that I wanted to get away from. I was alone. After a little while, a family came trooping slowly across the sand in front of me. There was a saggy, slow moving woman who carried two babies on her hips, while her husband walked ahead in front of her. A little boy with red swimming trunks trudged behind them, dragging a stick along the surf. They set themselves down about five feet away from me, entirely too close for my own comfort. The beach stretched for miles, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. I made a point of picking up my towel and moving it about ten feet away from them. They didn’t seem to notice.

I began to watch them. The woman was ugly in a sad sort of a way. The right and left sides of her face looked as if they were two puzzle pieces not meant to be put together at all, but crammed and shoved into each other until they were made to fit. Her figure was similarly unfortunate, and possessed the shapeless nature of a woman born for breeding and little else. I guessed that her husband had married her for her eyes - they were luminous, and glowed greenly, almost fluorescently illuminating her entire body with their strange light.

The husband was a slight, nimble, mincing fellow, with delicate bones that reminded one of fine scalloped china. The babies were both tiny little things. They must have been twins. I couldn’t tell much about their faces because as soon as one fell silent, the other one would begin to groan or wail, and it was so distracting to me that I could not concentrate on what they looked like.

The husband and wife were strangely silent, while the babies cried and wandered around the confines of their large striped beach blanket, their little legs crablike and jerky. After awhile the boy walked away from the blanket towards the water. Then, the parents began to make the strangest sounds at his back, guttural groans and mutterings, and then I realized that they were deaf.

The boy didn’t seem to notice. I think he was ignoring them. He made it all the way to the water, some ten feet away from the blanket before his father got up and ran quickly towards the boy, grabbing him by the shoulder to face him and then gesticulating at him roughly before grabbing his wrist and dragging him back to the blanket. The boy then began to cry loudly, drowning out even the lusty lungs of the babies. The parents ignored him, now beginning to motion to each other, first slowly and deliberately, then faster and wilder. I think they were having an argument.

I guess the boy must have known that he was now far secondary to their main attentions, so he sat down dejectedly and rubbed his face with his fists. This disgusted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the pollutions that were on his hands, and how he was rubbing his watery snot all over himself, like lotion, and how it would eventually become dry and crusty and then I imagined that I had that crust all over my face and it was polluting me too, and then I became so sick to my stomach that I thought I would wretch right then and there, all over that horrid yellow sand. Thankfully I was momentarily distracted by a sea bird that landed close to me, and was examining me quizzically.

When I looked back at the family, the boy had stopped rubbing his face and was now sitting sulkily at the very edge of the blanket. The parents were still motioning at each other. I grew tired of watching them and instead began to examine my fingernails. I sat and sat and sat, waiting I suppose for them to leave so that I would be alone again. I wanted to be alone on the beach more than anything. I had the urge to collect a large number of rocks that lay in a pile by a dune, and throw them at the family one by one, so that they would have to leave. But then I thought of all the trouble it would cause, and how I would probably be arrested and would have to spend the night in jail because it was the weekend and I probably wouldn’t be able to reach anyone to post bond for me, and that whoever would eventually post my bond wouldn’t do it out of affection for me or genuine concern, but out of a legal obligation, and maybe it would be better to stay in jail anyways. It would be better than sitting on this sand at any rate.

While these thoughts were going through my head, the family had quieted considerably, both the babies seemed to be sleeping, and the father was reading a book and looking like a venerable French poodle, wise but still dainty. The mother was lying down and appeared to be sleeping. The little boy was still on the blanket, although as close to its edge as possible. It was then that I noticed the expression on his face. It was the kind of expression that was a portent of something larger, thought I didn’t recognize it at the time. He looked as if he was about to lie. Usually you see this expression on adults who are about to tell you that they are busy tonight, or have completed a task when they have not. I had never seen it so clear on someone’s face before. Perhaps it was because he thought no one was looking at him. He began to edge slowly away from the blanket, careful to keep his movements gentle. He kept looking backwards. Eventually he reached the sea. Then he began to dance in the surf, arms raised towards the sky, feet splashing through the foam. Finally he walked completely into the water until he was almost submerged. He began to tread water, bobbing up and down. But he was not bobbing up and down of his own accord. He began to scream. The water was carrying him further and further away from the shore. He screamed one last time, and then his head went down and didn’t come back up again.

My heart began to beat fast. I looked for him, kept staring at the same piece of water for minutes and minutes, but there was no sign of him. And so I just stayed where I was. I did not know what else to do. His parents had not noticed yet that he was gone, but remained in their respective positions. Eventually, one of the babies woke up and began to cry. The mother sat straight up right away. I think she knew then, before she even saw that he was missing.