Beach Trip (43 page)

One night during her eighth month, she was lying in the bathtub reading
Ethan Frome.
Tom was standing at the bathroom mirror flossing his teeth. She had the book resting on her immense belly when suddenly, without warning, the baby kicked and the book went flying across the room.

“Oh, my God,” Tom said, swinging around from the mirror, his expression a mixture of repulsion and awe. “Did you see that?”

Sara grimaced in pain as one small foot made its way slowly across the surface of her stretched skin. When the baby had finally rolled over, she sighed and pointed at the book. “Hand it to me, will you?” she asked wearily.

“It must have flown three feet,” Tom said, shaking his head in amazement. He picked the book up and gave it back to her. “The kid’s bound to be a punt kicker.”

“Or a literary critic.”

He squatted down beside the tub and ran his hand lightly over her belly.

“Don’t touch my stomach like that. You’ll just piss him off.” She was rapidly losing her sense of wonderment at the whole process. Nine months was just too damn long, which was probably why women began to look
forward to
labor during the end of their term. Mother Nature knew what she was doing.

“How do you know it’s a he?”

“Because the doctor said so.”

“Doctors can be wrong. Sonograms can be wrong.” Tom put both elbows along the edge of the tub and rested his chin on his hands. “I’m trying to picture who he’ll look like,” he said, looking down into the bathwater like he was gazing into a crystal ball. “I’m trying to see him as a baby, as a boy, as a young man.”

Sara put her foot up and turned on the hot water with her toes. She had begun to realize just what a crapshoot genetics were. You never knew who you were going to get. You could be the best parents in the world and still wind up with a bundle of trouble. Ted Bundy’s mother read him bedtime stories. Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother made sure he didn’t go outside without his mittens.

What was wrong with her?
She sank down deeper into the steaming
water. It was probably just pre-birth jitters. It was probably something every woman went through, something she would have learned if she’d managed to get past “Pelvic Pressure & Mucus Plugs!” Their son wouldn’t be a serial killer. He would be small and sweet, and he would love his parents as unconditionally as they loved him.

Their son, she convinced herself, would be perfect.

And he was. Despite the fact that he had a cone head (he’d gotten stuck in the birth canal) and was covered with some kind of white chalky substance, despite the fact that he moved his frail little limbs like some kind of strange insect, he was perfect. He was theirs and he was perfect. The delivery room nurses laid him on Sara’s chest, and she and Tom cuddled him and wept like babies.

She’d taken a six-week maternity leave and when the time came to go back to work, Sara was filled with anticipation and remorse. Anticipation because she enjoyed her job and missed it, and remorse because Adam was so small and helpless. The first time he slept the night, she awoke to a feeling of dread, sure he had died in the night. She rushed to the crib, only to find him sleeping peacefully. Her first day back at work she went along the halls greeting everyone, spoke to several clients on the phone, took a power lunch with the partners, then went into the bathroom and cried. Her guilt over leaving him was made easier by the fact that Tom’s teaching schedule allowed him to be home with the baby most days. It was only Tuesdays and Thursdays when they needed to hire a nanny, and they quickly found an elderly widow, a retired schoolteacher who agreed, with Mary Poppins–like charm, to stay only until Adam began walking.

Tom absolutely adored his son. He was a wonderful father, as Sara had known he would be, and she returned home many evenings to find the two of them lying on a blanket on the floor, cooing and laughing at each other. He carried the baby in a sling against his chest while he did housework or graded papers, and he made Adam’s baby food himself, mixing it in the Cuisinart and freezing the mix in ice trays for later use. On sunny afternoons they took walks to the square or lay on a blanket beside the river, watching the water run. It was a wonderful time, a time when the world seemed hopeful and bright with promise.

But there were other times when Sara, coming into the nursery at night and looking down at her sleeping child, would be overcome by a sudden overwhelming desire to crawl into the crib and cover him with her body.
He seemed so small and helpless and the world so dangerous. She worried over everything now. Abused and abandoned children, war, and the polluted environment all touched her in a way they had not done before, as if her awareness of the suffering in the world was made visible by her love for Adam.

She avoided Elizabeth Hatcher whenever she could. The poor woman hovered around the baby, constantly wanting to hold him, to feed him, to put him down for his nap.

“You two go out and let me babysit,” she said desperately to Tom and Sara but they, of course, never even considered it.

In moments of quiet clarity, she thought about moving.

It would be easier, moving away and leaving all the drama of the Hatchers behind. And their townhome was three stories, which was not really good for a toddler, although Adam was not toddling yet; he was still crawling around like a fat grub. A one-level house would be better, maybe a fixer-upper in Sandy Springs with a large flat yard and access to good schools.

But Sara loved her old townhome with its brick walls and heart-pine floors and air of lives long past. And Sandy Springs was expensive. She needed to save the money in their bank account to buy into a partnership, on the slim chance that one would ever be offered.

And then one morning in September as she was getting ready for work, she heard a sound like a bowling ball rolling slowly down the stairs. She stopped applying her mascara to listen. In the split second before the rolling stopped, she realized it was the baby, falling down the stairs.

She screamed and ran out into the hallway. Leaning over the banister she could see Adam lying on his back on the first-floor landing, his face red, his mouth open in a soundless wail. Tom ran out of the kitchen. It was a Tuesday and he was dressed for work. He was shouting, “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” and rushed down the stairs to the baby, but Sara could only stand there leaning over the railing, immobile with fear and grief.

Adam recovered his breath and began to howl. Tom picked him up and cradled him against his chest. “Where were you?” he shouted at Sara. “Why weren’t you watching him?”

“I thought you were watching him!” She flew down the stairs. “My baby!” she cried. “My poor baby!”

They took him to the hospital but all the scans were negative. Babies are
resilient, the doctors assured them, but Sara would not be comforted. There was a nagging sense of guilt that would not let her go, even years later, after his diagnosis, after the doctors had assured her that secondary autism can only be caused by an injury much greater than the one Adam had suffered rolling down the stairs, and that primary autism is present from birth.

No matter what they said, she couldn’t let go of the guilt, the feeling that his affliction was somehow a punishment of her, something she was paying the price for at long last.

fter losing Lola at the marina, the trip to the Isle of Pines was uneventful. They followed the coastline, staying close to the barrier islands for Annie’s sake, and fifteen minutes into the ride, she had relaxed like the rest of them. As long as she could see even a distant rim of land, she seemed fine. They sat up on the canopied flybridge, clustered around a table drinking pitchers of sweet tea while Captain Mike stood at the helm, steering the boat through the treacherous Frying Pan Shoals at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and out into open water. Hundreds of wrecks lay buried under these shoals, the debris of five hundred years of European and American naval traffic, but he seemed to know what he was doing. He stood with his legs spread slightly to take the shift and roll of the boat, his baseball hat turned backward, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon. He was built like a rugby player, solid and well muscled, and watching the way he handled the wheel, Mel felt a little tremor in the pit of her stomach.

“You can tell he loves this,” she shouted at Lola, indicating Captain Mike’s sturdy back.

“Yes.” Lola pushed her wind-tossed hair behind one ear and nodded. “He’s an old soul,” she said in her singsong voice. “In another life he sailed with Stede Bonnet all along this coast. He knows every shoal and inlet between here and the Berry Islands.”

Mel didn’t know what to say to that so she said nothing. Looking at Captain Mike now, at the confident way he stood at the wheel, his sunstreaked hair fluttering against his deeply tanned neck, it wasn’t too hard to imagine him as a buccaneer. Mel turned to Sara but she and Annie were deep in some private conversation, their heads close together, their voices low. They were fitted into the curve of the bench seat that circled the table like a horseshoe, and they seemed oblivious to anything else, to the sun sparkling off the whitecapped ocean, to the barrier islands with their wide beaches and dark rim of maritime forest. The
Miss Behavin’
churned past a charter boat anchored near an artificial reef, its cargo of scuba-diving tourists readying themselves for an afternoon dive. Two dolphins raced along the starboard side, slicing through the water like a pair of rodeo riders, before veering off toward open sea.

A few minutes later, April appeared on deck, carrying a tray of frozen margaritas. She set the tray down on the table in front of them.

“You read my mind,” Mel said, reaching for a drink. Lola lifted one of the margaritas and offered it to April.

She took the glass, smiling, and said, “I thought I’d serve lunch once we get to the island.”

Lola waved her hand lazily as if lunch was the last thing on her mind.

The girl moved off, her hips swaying gently to the subtle rocking of the boat. She was wearing a pair of short-shorts and a tiny T-shirt that showed her flat stomach. Her feet were bare. She stood next to Captain Mike with her hip resting against him, one arm looped casually over his shoulder. From time to time, she gave him her drink to sip. Mel couldn’t hear what they were saying but they were obviously amused by something, chuckling and leaning their heads close together.

She was surprised to find herself suddenly jealous, which was odd, considering that she didn’t even like Captain Mike. Not really anyway. She put it down to a week of drinking and inactivity bordering on boredom. Or maybe it was just loneliness.

As if reading her thoughts, Captain Mike turned his head and glanced behind him. He lifted one arm and pointed out the Isle of Pines, a long, low-lying barrier island that was visible now off the port bow. “Ten minutes,” he shouted.

Annie stopped talking to Sara and stared at the distant island. “That place looks familiar.”

“Maybe you knew it in another life,” Mel said. She smirked and rolled her eyes at Sara, who smiled faintly but didn’t say anything.

Lola didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by Mel’s skepticism. She stuck her finger in her glass and stirred the frozen mound. “We were sisters,” she said, staring fondly at the pale green concoction.

Mel knew better than to ask the question but couldn’t stop herself “Who?” she asked. “Who were sisters?”

Lola twirled her finger in circles, indicating the four of them. “We were,” she said. “Not
sister
sisters. The other kind. You know, nuns. In a seventeenth-century convent in Paris.” She held her glass up and tapped the edges until the frozen mound collapsed into the middle.

Mel pursed her lips and gave her a patient stare. “Where do you get this crap, Lola?”

She pulled her feet up on the bench, folding her legs beneath her. “I did this thing called past-life hypnotic regression. Y’all should try it.”

“I have enough trouble dealing with this life,” Mel said, “much less dealing with one that happened hundreds of years ago.”