Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [18]
“Don’t be smarmy. It’s beneath you.”
“But it’s true,” he says.
She glances over at Dickie’s shins, long and bare and sandy. A waiter appears with two glasses of iced tea with lemon pinwheels on their rims. “I hope you’re not falling in love with me,” she says, sitting up. She takes her glass and sips.
“Don’t think so,” Dickie says honestly. Too honestly, Vivian thinks. “What’s your story, Viv?”
“How do you mean?”
“Rumor is that your mother went off with another man. A French industrialist or something.”
“A contradiction in terms,” Vivian says. “But yes. She did. When I was eight.”
“Poor Viv.”
“I hardly knew her, so don’t feel sorry for me.”
“Never feel sorry for you, Viv. You’re probably the last person I’d feel sorry for. I’d probably feel sorry for myself before you.” Dickie puts his glass in the hole he’s dug in the sand so the dog can drink from it.
“When are you getting married?” she asks.
“At Christmas.”
“I’ll send you a present,” she says. She thinks a minute. “A nice glass lamp.”
“Viv . . .”
“I’m quite serious,” she says. “I know where I can get some terrific glass lamps.”
“Want some lunch?” he asks.
“What’s on the menu?”
“Haddock, I think,” he says. “And strawberry shortcake.”
Vivian shakes her head.
“I’m sure we could get some sandwiches,” Dickie says.
“Cucumber sandwiches?” she asks. She pictures a cold cucumber sandwich.
“Your arms are getting pink,” he says.
She slouches back down into her canvas chair, and for a moment her head swims. “Yes, I do need something to eat,” she says.
Dickie stands and brushes off his trousers. He takes her hand, and she lets him help her up. She rests her forehead on his chest. “What are we doing, Dickie Peets?”
“I don’t know, Viv,” he says. “I just don’t know.”
Alphonse
Alphonse sits on the sand in his short pants and watches the dark-haired woman and the man lying on a blanket on the beach, though he has to turn his eyes away when the woman lowers the straps of her brown bathing suit over her shoulders. He digs his feet into the sand and buries them. He’s sweating so much that his skin is slick.
He watches the woman fix her straps and stand up and begin to walk to the water, slowly at first and then faster, so that when she gets to the water’s edge she is almost running. She stops and puts one foot in the water and takes it out immediately. The man calls out Honora, and the woman puts her arms out wide for balance and high-steps above the waves and then dives into the ocean. The cold is such a shock that she immediately stands up and hollers simply because she has to. The man runs to the water’s edge and dives in and swims toward the woman underwater. Alphonse wishes he knew how to swim and he tries to imagine what it feels like to hold your breath and plunge into the water. Do you close your eyes or do you look for fish?
The woman stands a moment, but a wave hits her and her knees buckle. She rubs her eyes and then begins to laugh. She laughs like his mother does sometimes when she’s on the verge of crying. Hysterically, the notes of the laugh rising into the air and then floating away. A wave carries the woman into shore, bumping her along the sand, and then begins to pull her out again. Alphonse pretends that the woman is drowning and that he will have to rescue her.
The woman digs her fingers and knees into the sand and holds on even though the ocean tries to pull her out. She crawls to the waterline. She turns and sits on the sand with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. Her dark wavy hair is straight now from the water and lies flat to her head like a cap. The boy watches the man point his body toward the woman and throw himself onto a cresting wave. He slices through the water like a shark.
Honora
After their swim, Sexton washes the salt from the first-floor windows while Honora scrubs the kitchen cupboards. She gives him a broom with a cloth tied over it, and he sweeps the