A hundred yards off the coast, beyond Robert and his rescue boat, a group of porpoises moved south. Occasionally, one of the beautiful creatures would throw itself into the air, landing back in the great, green lake with a flick of its tail, but more often, they skimmed the water’s surface, showing off no more than a nose here and a fin there. Stuart could have watched them all day but they never stayed that long.
“Do you see that?” a small voice said from the sand below. Stuart looked down from his chair to find Gussie staring up at him.
“Hey you,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
Stuart scanned the beach. If Gussie was here, Anna had to be close by. Maybe she intended to cancel the lesson and had brought Gussie along for company. He hoped like hell Isaac hadn’t brought her. It had been a week since Stuart had seen him, and he liked it that way. “Who are you here with?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Can I come up?”
She actually couldn’t come up. It was one of the rules. No one but an Atlantic City Beach Patrol employee was allowed in the stand.
Stuart looked up and down the beach, one eye out for the chief. He was probably at home playing Parcheesi, too.
“Come on up but be quick.”
Gussie was an agile child but she still had a hard time heaving herself onto the platform. After a few failed attempts, Stuart reached down, grabbed her hands, and hoisted her up.
“Here,” he said, handing her his sweater and an ACBP cap. “Put these on.” He was kidding himself to think that Chief Bryant would spy a sixty-pound child in his stand but discount her because she was wearing the proper uniform.
“Does your grandmother know you’re here?”
“No.”
“She’s going to panic when she realizes you’re missing. You can’t stay long.”
Stuart wondered if he should call Robert back. The beach was quiet enough that he could walk Gussie home. Maybe it’d give him a chance to see Anna, to make alternate plans.
“Oh, there they are again!” Gussie shouted, the ACBP cap falling down over her eyes. She pushed it back up on her head and looked at Stuart. “Dolphins.”
“They’re not dolphins. They’re porpoises.”
“How can you tell?”
“The fins. Dolphins have curved fins, and porpoises’ fins look like little triangles.”
“I like dolphins,” said Gussie. “They have their own special language.”
Stuart gave his best dolphin impression.
“What were you saying?”
“I said, ‘Your grandmother is going to skin your hide.’ ”
“It’s like how we have ARP talk.”
“True.” It was hard for Stuart to comprehend how this child could be Isaac’s. She was so thoughtful and earnest.
Stuart and Gussie watched the last of the porpoises swim beyond Million Dollar Pier and out of sight. The wind was picking up and the rescue boat was getting smaller with each passing minute. If the waves got much bigger, Robert would have to turn around.
“Stuart,” Gussie said, tucking a piece of hair that had escaped the cap behind her ear, “if Florence hadn’t died, would you have married her?”
The question felt like a kick between the shoulder blades. Stuart pictured the brunt force of her remark knocking him off the stand and into the hard-packed sand three feet below.
“That’s a big question for so small a girl.”
“I’ll be eight soon.”
“I guess that’s true.” How could he explain his relationship with Florence in terms a little girl—even one as precocious as Gussie—might understand? That there had been days when his wanting had felt like an open wound that needed to be tended to immediately, and other days it had felt like a bone he could bury in the backyard, something to come back to when Florence was ready, if she would ever be ready.
“Did you love her?” Gussie asked.
“I did but it wasn’t that simple.”
“Why not?”
It was a good question. Why hadn’t it been that simple?
“Well, for one thing, I’m not Jewish.”
“Does that matter?”
Stuart turned to look at her. “It shouldn’t but it does.”
“What are you?”
“Nothing. Maybe Protestant? I don’t really know anymore.”
“So Jews can’t marry Protestants?”
“I think Jews prefer to marry Jews.”
Gussie squeezed her lips together and her chin began to quiver. Worried she might cry, Stuart scurried to fix what he’d said. “I don’t know that that was it, though. I was also her coach.”
Another poor excuse. He wasn’t nearly as noble as all that. If Florence had given Stuart even a small sign, during one of those early morning practices, he would have been tempted to make love to her, right there in the bilge of the boat. But she had never given him the slightest indication she was interested.
“Are coaches not allowed to get married?”
Stuart laughed. “No, they are.” When Florence returned from France, he had imagined that he might tell her how he felt and see if she felt the same way. If the revelation changed the dynamic of their friendship, then that would have been something he had to live with.
“I made you something,” Gussie said, reaching into the pocket of her sundress.
She withdrew a small rock and handed it to him.
Stuart turned it over. On one side she had painted two miniature sea horses.
“How lovely, Gus. Thank you.”
“I wanted to ask”—her voice suddenly a whisper—“if you might marry me?”
By six o’clock that evening, when Robert and Stuart lowered their lifeguard stand into the sand, secured their boat, and headed toward the beach tent, the sky had not yet opened up but the storm clouds had settled squarely over the Boardwalk. As they approached the tent, Stuart convinced himself that Anna likely wouldn’t be there. Who could blame her? Any minute, it was going to pour.
Stuart put away his rescue can and the pair of oars he and Robert had taken that morning.
“Can I help with anything?”
He whipped around to find Anna standing a
