Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [49]
The day is still hot but beginning to cloud over at the edges, a white sheet of haze thickening into invisibility. Couples and small families walk the beach with red shoulders and faces, some fractious and bickering, others soothed into stillness by the sight of the sea and the squawking of wheeling seagulls. Down on the waterline a man drinks soda from a frosted bottle, the glass glittering in the sunlight as he tilts to get the last mouthful, and clumps of women and children bend, their eyes fixed and far away, to pick shells and smooth stones up out of the sand.
I was left sitting on a rock, alone and furious after a shouting match with my mom. I wanted an ice cream, she said I couldn’t have one, and when you’re seven you won’t accept any truth as good enough reason for that denial. When the disagreement started, the ice cream hadn’t even been that much on my mind, but as it went on I began to taste the coolness in my mouth, the crunch of a sugar cone, and I dug my heels right in and began to cry, though even I knew that I was too old for that particular kind of blackmail.
My mother explained that it would be dinnertime soon, and that I would spoil my meal. I know now she was trying to protect both of us from the fact that we simply didn’t have the money. My father would have told the truth and slapped me one to drive the point home, but he wasn’t around because he never came when we went to the sea. Partly because he hated it, partly because he hated us. Mainly so he could sink himself into a weekend of dark futility without real people around to bother him.
It was three o’clock, and hours from dinner, and I raved and she walked away. As I sat there, watching my mother’s back as she walked farther and farther down the shore, an old man came and sat near me on the rocks. He wore khaki shorts and a faded denim shirt, and the skin on his arms and legs was pale and spotted with freckles and liver spots. He had gray hair, cut short and neat, and his face was the texture of handmade paper that had been screwed up and then flattened out again. He sat and looked at me.
I stared back sullenly. I wasn’t afraid of him. I thought I knew how bad things could get, that the world had little else to show me. If I was learning how to dodge my father, then a wrinkly like this old guy would be no trouble at all. In fact, I wanted him to start on me, to say something I could wallop right back at him. Already at that age the reservoir was filling up. Sometimes it yearned for a channel to course through, a town to flood.
The old man turned away and looked out to sea, and for a while I thought that was it. My mother was at the far end of the little bay by then, sitting against the rock wall which climbed away from the water. The argument would not end easily, I knew. My mother did her best with me, always, but we shared a piece of metal in our hearts which made backing down nearly impossible. I realized gloomily that the day was spoiled and that in the evening we were going home. Away from Florida, and the sea, and back to Virginia.
“Calmed down any yet?”
There comes a time when people will start cutting through the childish bullshit you feed them and call your bluff, a time when you’re forced to realize that you’re not unique and you’re not fooling everyone. I was not at that age yet. When the old man spoke, I looked at him curiously. It was, I think, the first time anyone ever spoke to me as if I was nearly an adult.
“Your mama looks tired,” he said then, and I hurriedly looked away and back out at the sea. “Is she?”
“She’s always tired,” I said, without meaning to. My mother’s tiredness was something I hated and held against her, in the same way I blamed her for the bruises that came and went round her eyes. Had I loved my father even a little bit I would probably