I said that I would be back. And now I am back. I hope you enjoyed Lord of Indiscipline’s absence as much as I did. At the risk of beginning this new chapter on a trite note, I have to say: Time flies when you are having fun—in this case, the fun of not having to write. I suppose time always flies; the only question is whether we are aware of it doing so. Time is to us what water is to fish. Which is to say, with David Foster Wallace, that time fits snugly into that category of “the most obvious, important realities” being “the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
Coming down from the clouds of sabbatical, I quickly realized that pretty much every reality was a resident of that category. No matter how interesting the point I wanted to make, nothing I wrote brought it into relief, sharp or otherwise. The only effective antidote was to get out of my own way and see if a story could make some of the points come to life. I think it did. So without further ado, I present the return of Lord of Indiscipline: “The Salt.”
The Salt
That same image, we ourselves see in all…oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. (Herman Melville)
Man’s way is temporality. Time, in fact, exists only in reference to the transitoriness of man. (Josef Pieper)
The waves wash over their feet as they walk along the shoreline toward the lighthouse. Anna and Emilia set their hands loosely in his, tighten their grips, swing themselves free of the water. When they come back down, the water splashes up to their faces and they lick their lips to taste the salt. Barking sounds from behind them and Emil turns his head to see a dog, a big dog, dashing through the surf towards them, its owner, a woman, in leisurely pursuit. Emilia shrinks against him at the dog’s approach, just as she always does. Anna stands stock still. The woman calls to the dog and it bounds away, up the beach, towards the driftwood banks.
Sorry about that, she says to Emil when she is close enough to be heard over the pound of the surf. It’s okay, he says. It’s okay. Surprised to see anyone else out here, she says. Pretty chilly for a day at the beach, isn’t it. Anna answers for him. Today is Emilia’s birthday. And how old is Emilia, asks the woman. Emil squeezes Emilia’s hand, prompting her to reply, but Anna is too quick. Three, she says. Emilia is three. And I’m five. My birthday is in two weeks. Two months, Emil corrects her. How nice, the woman smiles. Do you always come to the beach on your birthday. Emilia nods, her eyes still on the dog, who is loping back towards them. We always go to the beach on birthdays. Anna is incorrigible. I come to the beach on my birthday, too. How nice, the woman says again. Do you want to see our rocks. Anna holds out her left hand, shows the woman the pebble that rests in her hand, smooth and starkly white against the chill and red of her skin. Where’s yours, Emilia. At her sister’s prompting, Emilia unfolds her right hand to show a black pebble. She has black and I have white. And we need to find a red one and a blue one. How nice, the woman says for the third time. Well, I should let you all get to it. Enjoy your walk. And happy birthday. She steps away from them and whistles to her dog, who leaves off its investigations of the driftwood and lopes up the beach to join her.
Emil takes the girls’ hands back in his. That is a big dog, Emilia says. Yes, it is. Do dogs hurt us. Some dogs, maybe. Do dogs eat us. I don’t think so. You’re too small to eat anyway. He squeezes her hand again, an assurance of his humor. Am I too small to eat, Anna asks. No, he answers. You are just the right size to eat. You can be the birthday lunch for your sister. We will serve you with fruit salad and potato chips. An all-American meal for an all-American girl. Come on, Emilia, he cries. Time for lunch.
Anna shrieks and laughs and darts off ahead of them, in and out of the water. Emilia is after her and, by the time she catches up, both girls have forgotten about the food chain and are off together, hand in hand in the sand, toward the lighthouse.
Emil stuffs his freed hands into the pockets of his jeans and looks into the ocean as he follows their meandering path. We always go to the beach on birthdays.
When Anna turns one, they are in Gulfport, Mississippi. They go to the beach. They are in Huntington Beach, California, when Anna turns two. They go to the beach again. Two months and nine days before Anna turns three is an early April day, damp with the promise of spring. Anna watches her mother and father drive away to get the new baby. The next day, she is playing in the front yard when the car returns and Emil is running towards her and he is smiling. Guess what today is, he asks. What. Today, Emil tells her, is a birthday. Your sister’s birthday. And what do we do on birthdays. Anna knows. Go to the beach.
On the eve of Anna’s fourth birthday, they are landlocked in Indianapolis, six hundred miles from the Atlantic. Emil rushes home from work that night and piles them into the car, turns the volume all the way up on “Surfer Girl” to drown out Savannah’s protests and, eventually, the girls’ tears of over-tiredness. Just as the sun is setting, he pulls the car into a park on the shore of Lake Michigan: the sinking sun sparks a farewell celebration to Anna’s third year of life with a display of pink and orange and purple clouds. The next morning, Anna is four and they go to the beach. The tradition stays alive.
This beach, on this birthday, is colder than the rest. Maine is not Mississippi. Emil picks up the pace and the girls, never missing a trick, are off as if he is on the chase. And now he is. The surf gives away to sand and it flies out from beneath his feet. They give in before his breath gives out and they all reach the shadow of the lighthouse together.
After they catch their breath, each holds out both her hands. Anna has her white one and she has found a gray-blue one to go with it. Emilia, the chill in her cheeks making way for the gleam of pride, slowly uncurls her little fingers to reveal the black pebble and its rust-red companion. You got them, he exclaims. I didn’t think you would find a red one this year. But birthday girls have all the luck, do they not. Which one is for me. Anna nudges her sister forward. Emilia gets to pick. She’s the birthday girl. Emil squats down and faces his daughter. Which one is for me, he asks again. Emilia hesitates, looks closely at each pebble in turn, and then hands him the black pebble. This one, she says. This one is for you. And this one is for me. She puts the rust-red one into her jacket pocket. And this one is for me, Anna says, holding up the white one, and this one is for mama. Now we all have one. Okay, he says. Now we all have one to keep. Did you each get one to throw into the ocean. They nod in unison. Good. Let’s climb the lighthouse and let’s see if the birthday girl can count all the way up. The lighthouse has ninety-steps. Emilia makes a spirited effort but her numeration falters at thirty-teen, so Emil and Anna finish for her. From the observation deck, they sing happy birthday and then it is time to head home.
Gulls wheel overhead as they make their way back from the lighthouse. One particularly bold representative swoops down and struts alongside them. Emil watches the girls watch the bird. Do birds hurt us, Emilia asks. No, Emil says, you’re okay. Do birds eat us, Anna asks. No, birds don’t eat people. What do birds eat. This time of year, mostly fish and bugs. In summertime, when people come to the beach, they probably get some sandwiches and cookies. If they’re good, mind. Do we eat birds, Emilia asks. I think so. Depends on if you think chickens are birds, he says. Mama has chickens. And does mama say chickens are birds, or what. Still keeping a close eye on the gull, Emilia answers emphatically. Chickens are chickies.
The gull hops closer to them and the girls shout at it to go away. Unfazed, it hops still closer. Get out of here, Emil says. Go get him, girls. They need no further encouragement. They start after the bird and when it finally takes wing, they wheel after it, following its trajectory through the sky from their place in the sand. Go ahead, Emil calls to them. You know where to go. I can see you. The gull joins with some of its fellows and they all land together, close to the waterline, and the girls dash towards them. When the birds take flight again, some fly out over the ocean and others come inland, over the driftwood banks, over the dunes, into the parking lot. Why do some go out and some come in. What makes the same birds choose different paths. Words from a board at some beach, doubtless read on a birthday, spring to mind. Emil read that the weaker and the younger birds tend to follow the inland routes, the stronger and the older keep to the shoreline. Yet for that information to equal an answer, he feels, the birds must somehow know, inside, that they are the younger or they are the older, just as the girls playing and pretending the power of flight ahead of him feel that they are younger and he, walking along the edge of time’s waxing and waning, feels that he is “the older and more hardy,” and thus does each of them think and choose and act. Anna and Emilia whirl their way across the beach, arms flung wide as if to span the world, and more words from the board cross his mind: their movements are graceful and easy, and they float as it were in the air.
When Emilia turns one, they cross to Maryland’s Eastern Shore to try soft-shell crab. They try it no fewer than five times at five different stops. They can’t decide which is the best of them so Anna says she will break the tie for them if there is ice cream for Emilia’s cake. But it is April and ice-cream season evidently comes later in the spring than Emilia did, so they drive and drive and drive and after an hour Emil sees a Harris Teeter. He goes inside, buys the ice cream and a half gallon of milk and a Kodak and brings it all out to the sidewalk as the sun begins to set. They eat the cake and the ice cream right there on the sidewalk in front of the store, passing the ice cream and the milk to each other, taking spoonfuls and sips right from the cartons. Emilia’s car-seat is her high-chair and they all sit around her, beaming into the backlight for Emil to capture the scene with the Kodak even as he knows that this moment will never, not in a million years, fade from his memory.
Emilia falls asleep within five minutes of the car turning back on, so Emil fades the music all the way to the back and to the right and plays Anna’s favorite songs. The car glides calmly homeward, the only sounds the songs playing softly from Anna’s corner of the car. As Emil turns down their street, Savannah joins in a song for Judith.
Come back, come back
I’m all you’ve ever known.
And from the backseat, Anna sings with her.
Open the door and come on in,
I’m so glad to see you, my friend.
The singing wakes up Emilia. Miracle of miracles, the abrupt awakening does not upset her in the least; wonder of wonders, she adds her voice to theirs. The words are different but the senses the same and another indelible memory is born.
And when I see you happy, it sets my heart free.
I’d like to be as good a friend to you as you are to me.
By the time they get back to the car, it is past time to be thinking about dinner and high time to be eating it and the girls’ moods reflect that fact. He swings them, one after the other, up from the sand and into the car. As they work themselves through the involved process of buckling, he stands and stares out again at the ocean, watches the waves follow one after the other onto the beach. We always go to the beach on birthdays. Yes, we do. Emilia is three and I’m five. Five birthdays and five beaches, he counts to himself, and three more birthdays and three more beaches and tying them all together is us, me and you and her and her. Two months (not two weeks) will be another birthday and the beach, maybe this beach or maybe a different beach, another birthday, another cake, another singing of happy birthday. And when I see you happy, it sets my heart free.
All is quiet inside the car now. He opens his door and climbs into his seat. Ready to go, he asks. Ready for some dinner. Ready, they answer. In the mirror he sees them, their faces turned towards their windows, their eyes on the ocean, another birthday has come to an end, another year of life is winding down, yet they reckon it simply, happily, as water. Impulsively, Emil unbuckles and turns himself around in his seat, reaches back to the two girls and pulls them to himself in an awkward, fervid embrace. He holds them to his chest, their faces pressed against his cheeks, and tastes on his lips the salt of life.
Credit: Winslow Homer, The Coming Storm (1901), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.