Summer By The Sea

“She died on Valentine’s Day,” Rosa told Alex. “A week after my ninth birthday. All kinds of people came, and the neighbors brought food, but mostly it just spoiled in the refrigerator and then we threw it out because nobody was hungry. Some of the women got right to work on my father. They wanted him to marry again immediately.” She shuddered.

“Mrs. Carmichael thinks he looks like Syvester Stallone. I heard her talking to somebody about it on the phone.”

Rosa made a face. “He just looks like Pop.”

The chill water sluiced in, breaking over Rosa’s feet and Alex’s checkered Vans sneakers.

“Tide’s coming in. We’d better go back,” he said.

“All right.” She stood up and offered her hand.

“I can make it,” he said.

As they headed back along the public beach, she glanced at the sky. It wasn’t that late yet. “Do you think we should hurry?”

“No, but my mother doesn’t like me to be late for dinner. At least when we’re at the shore, we don’t have to dress for dinner like we do in the city.”

“You mean you eat naked?” Rosa fell down laughing, landing in the sun-warmed sand.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” he said, trying to act serious. But he fell down next to her, clearly not in a hurry anymore. They watched Windsurfers skimming along, and families having picnics and feeding the seagulls. Alex found a piece of driftwood and dug a deep moat while Rosa formed the mound into a castle. It wasn’t a very good one, so they weren’t sorry when a wave sneaked up and swamped it. Rosa jumped up in time to avoid getting wet, but Alex got soaked to the skin.

“Yikes, that’s cold,” he said, but he was grinning. When he stood up, he had something in his hand. He bent and washed it in the surf. “A nautilus shell. I’ve never found one before.”

It was a nice big one, a rare find, not too damaged by the battering waves. Alex couldn’t know it, but it was Mamma’s favorite kind of shell. The nautilus is a symbol of harmony and peace, she used to say.

“You can have it if you want,” he said, holding the shell out to her.

“No. You found it.” Rosa kept her hands at her sides even though she wanted it desperately.

“I’m not good at keeping things.” He wound up as if to throw it back into the surf.

“Don’t! If you’re not going to keep it, I will,” Rosa said, grabbing it from him.

“I wasn’t really going to throw it away,” he said. “I just wanted you to have it.”

When they got back to Alex’s yard and Rosa saw what awaited them, she closed her hand around the seashell. “I hope this thing brings me good luck. I’m going to be needing it,” she said.

Mrs. Montgomery and Pop stood waiting for them, both their faces taut with worry and anger. Before either of them spoke, Rosa could already hear them. Where have you been? Do you know how worried we’ve been?

“Where on earth have you been?” demanded Mrs. Montgomery. Rosa was speechless at the sight of her. She had flame-red hair and wore a straight white summer dress and white sandals. Her long, thin fingers held a long, thin cigarette. Mrs. Montgomery herself looked like a cigarette. A giant human cigarette.

“What are you thinking, eh? I told you to stay out of trouble,” said Pop.

“And you’re soaking wet,” Mrs. Montgomery declared as though being wet was the crime of the century. From her shiny white handbag, she took out a bunch of what appeared to be first-aid gear. “Honestly, Alexander, I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Come over here and let me take your temperature.”

He dragged his feet, but submitted to her with the resignation of long habit. Mrs. Montgomery didn’t check for fever like a regular mother, by feeling with her hands. She stuck a cone-shaped thing in his ear and then took it out and read the number.

“All right for you,” Pop said, marching Rosa toward the truck. “We’re gonna get you home, talk some sense into you.”

As their parents separated them, Rosa and Alex caught each other’s eye. Neither of them could keep from grinning. They both knew this wasn’t the end of their adventure.

Eight

Summer 1984

During the second summer Rosa and Alex spent together, she saw him suffer a full-blown asthma attack, and it made her weep with terror. She had never seen anything like it before. She had stopped thinking of him as being sick at all, because the medications and breathing apparatus kept his condition under control.

But not always. On a bright August day, they convinced his mother to allow them to fly kites on the beach, something that—incredibly—Alex had never done before. Rosa showed up with a kite her brother Sal had sent from Hong Kong, where the destroyer he was serving on had made port. She and Alex spent an entire morning putting the kite together, then headed for the beach.

At the long shoreline, isolated from the public beaches by a dense salt marsh, the wind was perfect for kite-flying. It blew strong and steady, a warm current up from the south. Rosa held the kite for Alex to launch. He got so excited and ran so fast along the beach that at first she had no clue there was anything wrong.

“Go, Alex, go!” she called, waiting to feel the wind fill the kite so she could launch it. “Faster!”

But he didn’t go faster. He stumbled as though tripping over a log, yet there was nothing but sand beneath his feet.

“Hurry up,” she urged.

He collapsed like a bird shot from the sky. His glasses flew off and landed in the sand.

“Alex!” she said, dropping the kite. She plunged to her knees beside him and touched his shoulder.

His face was turning blue and gray, like a ghost’s. The rattle and wheeze of his struggling lungs terrified her, and she burst into tears. “Oh, Alex, I don’t know what to do,” she said, feeling helpless and horrible all at once. She looked around wildly, but there was nothing in sight except a pair of blue herons wading in the shallows. “Tell me what to do.”

He shook his head and groped in the pocket of his khaki shorts. He took out his inhaler and inhaled three quick puffs. His eyes looked bright and desperate, but his coloring didn’t improve and his wheezing grew worse. He couldn’t seem to get his lungs working right.

Then he took something from another pocket. A black-and-yellow tube. He ripped open the plastic packaging and then, with his teeth, removed the gray cap from the end. Finally, in one smooth movement, he stabbed the black tip of the tube at his thigh and held it there for several seconds. He wheezed hard four times—in a panic, Rosa counted them—but then his breathing seemed to start working better.

He slowly removed the tube and inspected the black tip. Rosa was horrified to see a rather large needle sticking out of it. The whole business had taken only a few seconds. In the strange aftermath, Alex lay weak upon the sand, and Rosa was still crying.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice soft and raspy. “I’m all right. Cross my heart and hope—”

“Are you going to be able to make it back home?”

“I need a minute.”

Rosa started to scramble to her feet, but stopped when his cold hand touched hers. “No, wait,” he said. “The kite—”

“You’re not flying the kite.”

“I know. But…how about you fly it for me? I need to rest.” His voice was thin and pleading. “Come on, Rosa. She’s going to take me straight to the hospital. That’s the rule.”

“Then I should go right now and get help.”

“A few minutes won’t make any difference one way or another. I’ll be able to walk back if I can rest a little. The shot lasts twenty minutes, and I’m over the wheezing anyway. Fly the kite. Please.”

“I can do that. But only for a minute.” She looked down at their hands—hers dark, his pale—and felt a wave of emotion moving through her. Then she gave him his glasses. Spying a mermaid’s purse in the sand, she gave him that, too. “For luck,” she explained, closing his hand around the small shell.

It felt particularly important to get it right. Like if she didn’t, if she messed up, she would be letting him down along with the kite. It was a beautiful, one-of-a-kind kite, yellow with red streamers, and Pop had given her a brand-new spool of string to use. She refused to let Alex launch the kite, because he needed to rest. Instead, she planted it in the sand to catch the wind, and ran with the string shortened until the kite spiked up. Then she put on a full burst of speed and paid out the string.