Beachcombing at Miramar (3 page)

As the evening draws to a close, I am filled with sadness—for I sense the hopelessness of their plight and I know there is
nothing I can do. I see how they are trapped in their loneliness, and how each blames the other for the isolation they can’t
escape. Since they have never learned how to be by themselves, they have never learned how to be together. It seems to me
as though they skirmish because they have nothing better to do; the combat itself is a form of relief, a way of letting them
know they are still alive.

But this evening I don’t have to cope with the couple across the road. The interval before the sun sinks below the horizon
belongs to me and me alone. I rise from my deck chair and head for the kitchen. I shell some peas, stuff them into my pocket,
and wander barefoot—nibbling as I go—to the sacred place where the surf meets the land.

I arrive as the rim of the sun touches the edge of the sea. The light glints off the water and strikes a polished object beside
my little toe. I squat and pick it up; it’s an oval piece of pale blue beach glass worn smooth by the waves. I stare into
its clear surface, as if there’s a scene hidden somewhere within its reflective planes—and then I remember seeing a long time
ago another piece of beach glass like the one in my hand.

It was at a dinner party given by friends—the husband, a carpenter; the wife, a schoolteacher—to celebrate their tenth anniversary.
During dessert, the husband reached into his pocket and took out a small white box, which he held in his calloused hand. Silently,
he offered the gift to his wife, his eyes wide with anticipation. The room grew quiet as the guests witnessed the carpenter’s
simple gesture, more eloquent than words.

I knew that the box contained a triangular piece of glass set in a brooch, for the husband had showed it to me beforehand.
He told me that he and his wife had found it on their wedding trip while strolling together along a beach beside the Irish
Sea. They had handed it back and forth, admiring its rare beauty, sure that it was an artifact from the Roman Conquest and
that it had washed ashore at that moment in that place just for them.

The carpenter had pocketed the glass, taken it home, and kept it in his dresser drawer, planning to give it to his wife on
their tenth anniversary. He had never mentioned it to her, but he had never forgotten, and now the day had come, the time
had arrived, and he was sitting at their dinner table with friends, holding a white box in the palm of his hand.

His wife glanced at the extended hand, but she didn’t take the gift; instead, she pointed at the leather brace around his
swollen wrist, which he had sprained while making new cabinets for their kitchen. Turning to her guests, she said, “Isn’t
it amazing how he always manages to hurt himself when he is working around our house?” She tried to pass it off as a lighthearted
remark, a gentle tease, but her lips were thin and there was an undercurrent of derision in her voice.

The carpenter had a wonderful face, a lively face, but his head drooped and his eyes turned sad. He looked at his wife as
if she had shot an arrow through his heart. He twisted slowly in his chair and put the white box on a windowsill behind him,
out of reach, and asked her to apologize. He smiled when he asked her, but it was clear to me, clear to everyone in the room,
that he was wounded by her ridicule.

“Why must I apologize?” she said. “Must I apologize to get the present? Is that the price?”

She was cool, she was logical, she was civilized, and she left her husband with no choice. He was still smiling when he turned,
picked up the box, and offered it to her once more. This time she accepted it, opened it, made a fuss over it, passed it around
for her guests to see.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. But she gave no sign that she remembered where it came from or what it was.

When I think back on that terrible moment, what haunts me most is the face of the carpenter, the glazed smile that masked
his anguish and despair. It was as if he was forced to admit to himself for the first time the gap between them, a gap that
he could never bridge no matter how hard he tried. I know all too well his sense of futility, for I have been there myself
in my own life, and I know how hopelessness seeps into the bones day by dreary day, like some dread disease we know is there
but are too scared to recognize. And then one evening we offer a gift, which is the gift of ourselves, and the gift is spurned.
But the truth, the inescapable truth, is revealed, and for a while it dazzles us and makes us blind.

I look again at the beach glass in my hand, wondering whether to keep it or throw it away. I decide to pocket it, to save
mine as my friend, the carpenter, saved his, because it’s too precious a gift to give back to the sea.

I climb higher up the beach to a dune and lie against it. The sun is down but the sand is warm, and I burrow into it up to
my knees. The evening star hangs like a lantern in the western sky, so low on the horizon, it looks as if it’s stuck atop
the mast of a passing ship. A full moon rises against Aquarius, the water bearer, and casts a river of light across the ocean.

I think of the ancients sitting on the beach like me, studying the heavens night after night, painting pictures in the sky:
Sagittarius, the archer; Andromeda, the chained lady; Pegasus, the winged horse; Capricornus, the horned goat, and Orion,
the mighty hunter with a red star for a shoulder and three bright ones for a belt. What were they dreaming, these early artists,
when they sketched their mythic figures on the blackboard of the sky?

The celestial bodies are foreign to me, but I have become more adept at deciphering their signs since I arrived at Miramar.
I look for Gemini, my own particular place in the zodiac. The inseparable twins, Castor and Pollux, are out there somewhere
on this starry, starry night, and I know that if I wait long enough they will wheel into view. I am drawn to them whenever
I find them drifting in unison over my head, flickering symbols of perfect companionship and eternal love.

Is it possible, I wonder, for two people to share the same small piece of sky? Is it possible for me to find a woman who sees
the world through my eyes, as I see it through hers? The art of the ancient mythographers tells me this isn’t my dream alone,
that the desire for union goes far back in human history, dwells deep in the human soul.

Yes, I am alone, and at this moment of my life, that is where I choose to be. Although it may not be the ideal state, I’m
consoled by the knowledge that I’m nowhere near as lonely as the mismated husbands and wives I see everywhere. Two individuals
who are together but not together, who don’t respond to the world about them in the same way, are by far the loneliest people
of all. The sun rises and the sun sets; for one it’s an incalculable mystery, for the other a time of day.

I burrow deeper into the sand and scan the heavens once more. After a while I close my eyes. When I awake, the air is chill
and the morning star is climbing over the dunes.

M
y phone rings at six in the morning, waking me from a sound sleep. I roll over, pick up the receiver, and before I can say
hello, Leo starts to talk. A former colleague, he has been a reliable friend and steady source of work throughout my freelance
life. Even so, I want to protest—to tell him that just because it’s nine o’clock on his coast doesn’t mean it’s nine on mine.
But I know the futility of that. Leo doesn’t recognize time zones or any other conventions, social or natural, that come between
him and what he wants.

He begins, as he always does, by praising me. He tells me he has an assignment, something special, which only I can write,
he says, “because you’re the best.” It’s a speech for the chief executive of a major corporation to deliver before an august
body of businessmen in Geneva, Switzerland. I know what’s coming and I try to stop him before he goes too far, but he’s an
express train roaring down the track. He dangles a substantial fee, one that might have proven irresistible at some other
moment in my life, and then he adds, “This speech will be easy, extremely easy, especially for you. The guy knows exactly
what he wants to say. All he needs are the words.”

“Leo—” I begin, but that’s as far as I get.

“I know, I know,” he says. “You’ve taken a solemn vow never to write another speech as long as you live. But this one is different.
This one is easy, and you have to admit the money is good—very good. Besides, I need you. I need you for this assignment and
I won’t let you turn me down.”

“Leo—” I say, not trying to hide my exasperation, but he interrupts me again.

“Look,” he says, “don’t say anything. Don’t say anything now. Think it over. Take twenty-four hours. I’ll call you tomorrow,
same time, and then we can make arrangements to put you on a plane and bring you back to the real world.”

The receiver clicks.

I pull on some clothes and head for the beach. The morning mist is in, filling the air with a fine drizzle that coats my skin
and soaks my hair. I can hear the raucous call of a gull somewhere beyond the breakers and the cutting blare of the foghorn,
like clockwork, every ten seconds, pulling me toward the head of the harbor. I go the back way, along the beach, over the
breakwater, and when I reach the restaurant on the pier, I settle into a booth by a window and watch the sky, growing lighter
by the minute as the sun burns the fog away.

The waitress knows my order without asking, for she has, by her own word, served me “a thousand times.” She brings me a large
glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, waffles, and a cup of hot water with a wedge of lemon. As I raise the cup to my lips,
I realize that my hand is trembling, as if my entire being were under assault. I can see Leo clearly, lean and electric, pacing
around his huge mahogany desk, and I can hear his insistent voice echoing in my brain, urging me to return to the real world.

I feel my anger rising. It’s infuriating—this blind presumption of his that he knows what’s real and I don’t. I feel his presence—he
is sitting across the table from me and I hear myself saying to his face what I failed to say on the phone.

The real world, the real world, where is it, Leo, and what does it look like? Is it up in the mountain or down in the valley
or across the sea? Is it urban or rural, a place of commerce or a place of art? Does it exist in the executive suite or on
the factory floor? Will I find it under the rain-forest canopy or in a grocery store? Please tell me where I can find the
real world, Leo, its longitude, its latitude, for I long to go there, settle there, make it my home.

And what of this would-be speechmaker who knows exactly what he wants to say but lacks the words? What about him, Leo? Does
he dwell in the real world or is he deluding himself ? If his world is real, how is it that he’s so speechless? He’s a speechless
man eager to make a speech, but before he mounts the dais, puts on his glasses, and clears his throat, he must hire a ghost
to supply his words.

And who is that ghost, Leo? That ghost is me. I am the ghost who turns out words at a unit price—like so many parts rolling
off an assembly line. I string those words together, and when I’m finished, the would-be speechmaker has my words, my thoughts,
my sentiments, and so, whether he admits it or not, he has reduced himself to a ghost, too.

In the real world, Leo, I would be giving the speech and he would be sitting in the audience, listening. Or he would have
written his own speech and I would be sitting in the audience, listening. Or, if he had no words of his own, he would remain
in his office, running his company, and I would remain in my beach house, sorting shells.

But that’s not what happens, Leo. What happens is that speechwriter and speechmaker cross over into each other’s domain, they
invade each other’s souls, and once they commit that trespass, they cease being themselves. They become apparitions, phantoms,
mere shades of who they are.

Where is the reality of that, Leo?

The words pour like the waters of a swollen river racing downstream after a thaw. I lean back in my seat, considerably relieved,
even though I have delivered an imaginary monologue to someone who isn’t there.

Will Leo understand? Will he ever understand? I have to ask myself that question, but as soon as I ask it, I know the question
is wrong. No, Leo will not understand. I could go on forever trying to explain how I feel, but he will not understand. I realize
that now, and in the knowing, I find the tension melting away. The one question, the only question that matters, is whether
I must go on asking the question.

It’s not my mission in life, I tell myself, to make Leo understand.

I pay my bill and wander into the sunlight, following a path between a steep rise of land and the sea. I pause beside a rocky
ledge and glance over the waves. The tide is coming in and the swells are huge. I imagine them rising from canyon depths somewhere
beyond the horizon and rolling endlessly, as they have been rolling for aeons, until they spend their pent-up energy crashing
against the shore.

The beach is isolated, but I’m not alone. A purple shore crab is here, skittering sideways, disappearing into a crevice, and
the outcroppings are covered with limpets and barnacles. In the intertidal zone, imbedded in the mud, I see a congregation
of sea anemones clustered together, forming a soggy mat. I touch one tentatively, tenderly, and it contracts its oval disk,
flooding itself with water as it does. I kneel and dig around it with my hands, intending to lift it out, but it’s firmly
rooted, and it keeps withdrawing, pulling away from my touch, growing smaller and sinking deeper in the sand.

I am calm now, much calmer than before. I am under the influence of the sea and the abundant life that emerges from the sea,
species evolving from species, each questing for its natural home.

I think of my early ancestors following the moist edge of the glacier, learning to build fires, learning to sew, learning
to cultivate the land. How is it that some became hunters, some gatherers, some fishers, some planters of seeds? Was this
simple adaptation? Did some become farmers because the soil was there, or were they farmers from birth, searching for fertile
soil to till? Did man shape the land, or did the land from which he sprang shape him? I suspect the latter is so, although
I can offer no proof beyond what I sense in these reflective moments when I wander beside the sea.