Evan Hunter - Far From the Sea

It was always very breezy in the rumble seat of Uncle Martin’s Ford.

“Cool enough for you back there?” Uncle Martin shouted.

The trees flashed overhead, sunlight glanced.

In the front seat were Uncle Martin and his pale wife Anna, with Grandma squeezed between them and telling Uncle Martin to slow down, did he think he was going to a fire? In the car ahead was Uncle Max with his latest dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty, and on the back seat were David’s father and David’s mother (who always complained about getting carsick) and also a friend of the family who everyone said was Grandma’s boyfriend, which was okay since Grandpa had died years ago. The man’s name was Louis Klein, and he ran a dry-goods store on Thirty-fourth Street, where David had never been in his life. Mr. Klein was always criticizing everything. “Tessa,” he would say to Grandma, “is this really and truly supposed to be borscht?” Grandma would smile. “Tessa,” he would say, “these kreplachs are like stones, actual stones .” Grandma would smile. Grandma had very big bosoms. Whenever she hugged David to her, he thought he would smother. “I’ll bet she has the biggest minnies in the entire world,” skinny cousin Shirley said one day, her face flushed and excited. It took a moment for David to realize she was talking about Grandma’s bosoms.

The beach was on Long Island someplace.

That was all David knew. Long Island someplace.

It always took them what seemed like hours to get there. There were picnic tables under the trees near the beach, and the whole family helped carry out all the food the women had prepared, and then spread a tablecloth on one of the big picnic tables, and then went to Uncle Max’s Studebaker and hung big towels inside all the windows all around, and changed into their bathing suits. David and the girls changed into their bathing suits together. Cousin Rebecca was even fatter without any clothes on.

They all went into the sea.

Uncle Max warned him to watch out for horseshoe crabs.

Grandma told her sons to take off their rings, but they never did.

David’s father held his hand, and they waded out to where it was a little deeper, and he swam in the circle of his father’s strong arms till his father got tired; then his father blew up a red inner tube for him and let him float and swim free under the wide blue sky.

It was so much fun at the seashore.

There was a coffee machine in the waiting room, but no coffee.

“They lock everything up after the four o’clock visit,” a woman explained to him. She was very thin, with pale hair and pale eyes. She was in her sixties, David guessed, and wearing a dark brown pants suit and wedgies. “You’ll learn,” she said. “We’ve been coming here for two months straight now.”

The woman sitting beside her was in her late forties, David guessed. Very fat, with hair bleached platinum, false eyelashes, scarlet slash of lipstick on her mouth, big gold rings on three of her fingers. He thought suddenly of fat Rebecca on his left in Uncle Martin’s rumble seat, squirming while the trees flashed broken sunlight overhead.

“Who’s your patient?” she asked.

“Mr. Weber. Morris Weber.”

“What’s wrong with him?” the thin, pale woman asked.

“He had a colostomy,” David said. “He’s not healing.”

“Well, give him time,” the fat woman said.

“My husband’s had open-heart surgery twice,” the other woman said.

“My father,” the fat woman said.

“This is his second time. He won’t eat anything. Been here three weeks this time, suddenly stopped eating. He threw himself out of bed this afternoon. Yanked out his IV, threw himself right on the floor. They’re restraining him now. They’ve got this strap across his shoulders so he can’t throw himself out of bed again.”

“We’ll have to come feed him,” her daughter said.

“Why? Will he eat if it’s us?”

“Do you live here in Miami?” the daughter asked David.

“No. New York.”

“So you came down here to see him.”

“Yes.”

“Who’s that woman who’s here all the time? Is she your mother?”

David hesitated. “A friend,” he said.

“She’s very loyal.”

“Yes.”

A man sitting under the television set suddenly said, “I’m here on vacation, supposed to be on vacation. My wife fell the other day, near the pool, slipped on the tile. She’s in coma. I don’t know what to do. Should I take her back to Toronto or leave her here, stay here with her?”

He was a tall, gaunt-looking man with sorrowful brown eyes and a soft, gentle voice. He was wearing a colorful Hawaiian-print, short-sleeved sports shirt and dark blue slacks. David could smell his aftershave clear across the room.

“What does the doctor say?” the fat woman asked.

“He doesn’t know how long she’ll be in coma.”

“They never know,” her mother said.

“How would you get her back home?” the daughter asked.

“I’d have to charter a plane, I guess.”

“They have these planes with oxygen equipment and everything, you know.”

“Yes, but they cost a fortune. Six thousand dollars, they told me.”

“Would it be safe to move her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I’d move her then. You can’t stay here forever , you know. She might be in coma for a long time.”

“I just don’t know.”

“I’d move her.”

“I just don’t know.”

“My mother’s been here for two weeks now,” a skinny woman across the room said. She was sitting on one of the green leatherette couches, smoking a cigarette. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and there was a flushed, excited look on her narrow face, as though she had just come from running somewhere and was out of breath. “Came in for a hernia operation. That’s a simple thing, am I right? Doctors. She’s still in Intensive Care. I hate doctors. Now she’s hallucinating. She told me they’re beating her. Is it possible they’re beating her? She wants me to call the police. She says if I don’t take her home, she’ll throw herself out the window.”

“Well, how can you take her home?” the pale woman said.

“I can’t! How can I take her home?”

“So tell her.”

“I told her, do you think she listens?”

“They’ll hallucinate,” the fat daughter said, and nodded.

“It’s all the drugs they give them,” the gaunt man said.

“Doctors and lawyers,” the excited woman said. “I hate them both.”

David said nothing.

The clock on the wall read three minutes to seven.

“You can go in now,” the pink lady said.

“What were those X rays this afternoon?” his father asked.

“They’re trying to find the cause of infection,” David said.

“What infection?”

“You’ve got an infection. That’s why you’re running a fever.”

“I’m running a fever because they’re driving me crazy here.”

“Well, the sooner you get rid of the fever, the sooner you’ll get out of here.”

“I’ll never get out of here,” his father said.

“Of course you will,” David said.

“Never. I keep getting worse every day.”

“Everything’s fine except for the fever.”

“Sure, everything’s fine. I’ve got a hole in my belly and tubes sticking out all over me, everything’s just fine and dandy.”

“You’ll get better, Pop, don’t worry. You’ll be out of here in no time at all.”

“And then what? Then another operation.”

“Not till you’re ready for it.”

“I’ll never be ready for it.”

“Well...”

“Back in again for another operation.”