teachers and principals. I see a lot of them coming in with their daughters and I see a lot of daughters that will grow into that kind of woman.”
“Frost was writing about a guy,” I said.
“Yes, I know. I see.” The waitress brought our oysters. “It’s not just women, is it.”
“No, ma’am. Old Harv is just as bad, just as far into the sayings of his father and just as blind to what’s beyond them as Pam is.”
“Doesn’t he need therapy too?”
The oysters were outstanding. Very fresh, very young. “Yeah, I imagine. But I think she might be brighter, and have more guts. I don’t think he’s got the guts for therapy. Maybe not the brains either. But I’ve only seen him under stress. Maybe he’s better than he looks,” I said. “He loves her. Loves the crap out of her.”
“Maybe that’s just another saying of his father’s that he can’t go behind.”
“Maybe everything’s a saying. Maybe there isn’t anything but saying. You have to believe in something. Loving the crap out of someone isn’t the worst one.”
“Ah, you sweet talker you,” Susan said. “How elegantly you put it. Do you love the crap out of anyone?”
“You got it, sweetheart,” I said.
“Is that your Bogart impression again?”
“Yeah, I work on it in the car mirror driving back and forth between here and Boston and New Bedford.”
The oysters departed and the lobster came. While we worked on it I told Susan everything we had set up for next day. Few people can match Susan Silverman for lobster eating. She leaves no claw uncracked, no crevice unpried. And all the while she doesn’t get any on her and she doesn’t look savage.
I tend to hurt myself when I attack a baked stuffed lobster. So I normally get thermidor, or salad, or stew or whatever they offered that had been shelled for me.
When I got through talking Susan said, “It’s hard to keep it all in your head, isn’t it. So many things depend on so many other things. So much is unresolved and will remain so unless everything goes in sequence.”
“Yeah, it’s nervous-making.”
“You don’t seem nervous.”
“It’s what I do,” I said. “I’m good at it. It’ll probably work.”
“And if it doesn’t.”
“Then it’s a mess and I’ll have to think of something else. But I’ve done what I can. I try not to worry about things I can’t control.”
“And you assume if it breaks you can fix it, don’t you?”
“I guess so. Something like that. I’ve always been able to do most of what I needed to do.”
We each had a very good wild blueberry tart for dessert and retired to the bar for Irish coffee. On the ride back to the motel, Susan put her head back against the seat without the kerchief and let her hair blow about.
“Want to go look at the ocean,” I said. “Yes,” she said.
I drove down Sea Street to the beach and parked in the lot. It was late and there was no one there. Susan left her shoes in the car and we walked along the sand in the bright darkness with the ocean rolling in gently to our left. I took her hand and we walked in silence. Off somewhere to the right, inland, someone was playing an old Tommy Dorsey album and a vocal group was singing “Once in a while.” The sound in the late stillness drifted out across the water. Quaint and sort of old-fashioned now, and familiar.
“Want to swim,” I said.
We dropped our clothes in a heap on the beach and went into the ebony water and swam beside each other parallel to the shore perhaps a quarter of a mile. Susan was a strong swimmer and I didn’t have to slow down for her. I dropped back slightly so I could watch the white movement of her arms and shoulders as they sliced almost soundlessly through the water. We could still hear the stereo. A boy singer was doing “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” with a male vocal group for backing. Ahead of me Susan stopped and stood breast deep in the water. I stopped beside her and put my arms around her slick body. She was breathing deeply, though not badly out of breath, and I could feel her heart beating strongly against my chest. She kissed me and the salt taste of ocean mixed with the sweet taste of her lipstick. She pulled her head back and looked up at me with her hair plastered tight against her scalp. And the beads of sea water glistening on her face. Her teeth seemed very shiny to me, up close like that when she smiled.
“In the water?” she said.
“Never tried it in the water,” I said. My voice was hoarse again.
“I’ll drown,” she said and turned and dove toward the shore. I plunged after her and caught her at the tidal margin and we lay in the wet sand and made love while Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers sang “There Are Such Things” and the waves washed about our legs. By the time we had finished the late-night listener had put on an Artie Shaw album and we were listening to “Dancing in the Dark.” We were motionless for a bit, letting the waves flow over us. The tide seemed to be coming in. A wave larger than the ones before it broke over us, and for a moment we were underwater. We came up, both of us blowing water from our mouths, and looked at each other and began to laugh. “Deborah Kerr,” I said.
“Burt Lancaster,” she said.
“From here to eternity,” I said.
“That far, at least,” she said. And we snuggled in the wet sand with the sea breaking over us until our teeth began to chatter.
