Thought I Knew You(53)

During the second half of the trip, which in total turned into three hours due to traffic—Who goes to the beach on a Monday?—I turned on the DVD player because I ran out of songs to turn into the “Going to the Beach” song. When we pulled into the driveway of the Arnolds’ ranch a block from the ocean, I was so tired, all I wanted to do was nap. But since the kids had both slept during the third hour, they clamored for the beach right now.



I got everyone in bathing suits and lathered up with sunscreen, and we walked the block down to the public beach. Hot sand sank beneath our feet as we walked. Two other families were there, and I dropped our blankets, umbrella, and chairs between the two setups. I smiled and nodded a brief hello. Pulling the blanket tight, I anchored it with our bag and the cooler, then surveyed the area. The water lapped gently, and my cautious mothering side noted the lack of any real waves, only small swells advancing and receding.

The salt air was invigorating, and I inhaled deeply, feeling the heavy humidity in my lungs. The girls took their buckets and shovels to the water’s edge, and I dragged my chair down after them. As I watched them dig in the sand, talking to each other in their own private language, I was surprised to realize I was crying. Tears fell freely down my cheeks. Free from anger and hate, I would periodically have moments where I simply missed Greg. I wasn’t missing having a husband, or my kids having a father, but I missed the person he was, or at least the person I had known. I still believed I fundamentally knew him. I thought that when he buried Hannah in the sand last year and spent a half hour pretending she was lost and calling for her, even going as far as jumping in the ocean to look for her, causing her to giggle incessantly, that he wasn’t pretending, that he was being himself. And I still loved that part of him. I knew that despite his sometimes serious and sullen moods, of the two of us, he was the sillier one. And our kids would have become better people if he was still in their lives.



The girls never looked up from their digging, and I reined in my emotions before they could turn and see their mother crying on the beach. I closed my eyes briefly, tipping my face to the sun feeling the warmth on my eyes, drying the tears. They had caught me crying a few times, and I thought it a good thing overall that they saw me grieving for their father, but it worried them. And Hannah always tried to make it better, her innate mothering bubbling to the surface, brows creased with concern beyond her years.

Back at the house, I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which we ate while still wearing our bathing suits. The smell of sand and sunscreen had already permeated everything, and it was only the first day. I could feel the tension falling away, sliding off my shoulders like seaweed in the ocean. The knots in my back unfurled, and the anxiety I always seemed to carry with me, a twisted, sick feeling in my gut, melted away, leaving in its place only a small reminder of uneasiness, like a child’s sand footprint.

Everyone got a bath, and we watched a movie on the small living room television. They insisted on sleeping in the same bed. It’s A-cation, Mommy. Do we have to have house rules on A-cation? I relented, and they slept in a double bed in the room adjoined to my room. I watched them sleep, the rise and fall of the blankets in perfect unison, as though they had synched on purpose. Hannah sucked her thumb, and Leah’s hands outstretched wildly, her temper evident even in dreams, with her Uglydoll lying next to her. They slept with their backs to each other, but touching. Hiney to hiney, Hannah would say. I fell asleep on the floor and woke in the morning with the sun.





The days blended together, as they tended to do on vacation. I planned no activities, save for going to the beach. I did want to try to find the boardwalk once, if there was one, but every night I told myself, Tomorrow, we’ll go. I was simply enjoying the seclusion of our hideaway. I felt protected from the world, and all the evil in it. I tried every few days to get the girls back to the house for midday naps. As the sun and sand took their toll, the girls’ energies drained, and their dispositions would deteriorate. During those naps, I would take a baby monitor and a book out to the pool in the backyard and read.



The Arnolds’ aboveground pool was small, but it did the trick. I would float and, for an hour or so, get lost in another world. I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because the story seemed like something I would never accidentally relate to, and it was absorbing.

One day, when I checked my watch, I realized I had been floating and reading for over two hours. I dried off and ran inside to wake up the girls. If they slept any longer, they definitely wouldn’t sleep at night. When I opened the door to their room, Hannah sat straight up in bed, blinking, startled from sleep. Leah’s side was empty.