Toby Olson - Seaview

This time he lifted his brows slightly, causing small furrows to appear on his forehead. He sucked his nostrils in a little and raised the left eyebrow slightly higher than the right: things that she did, she realized, in moments before she broke into laughter. His left hand came up, and she saw that he was touching the tip of his thumb against the tip of his middle finger, moving them slightly together and apart. She knew she did this thing also on some occasions, but she was startled to find that they had not always been in private. He disengaged himself from her and got up and stood very straight in front of her. Then he let his shoulders slump and become rounded, his back slightly bowed, and he put one foot in front of the other, resting his weight on the straight stiff leg.

“It is the way you stand waiting,” he whispered, and then he turned to the side to give her her posture in profile. “It is some possible way to stand, and I will continue it for you,” he said. “Look over now at the way that little girl is standing. It is not so different either.” Then he sat down beside her, and he leaned over close to her and looked in her face. “Do you see it, now?” he said. The sides of her mouth came up in a smile, and she nodded. She did see it, and she felt a welling up, but not of tears this time. There had been no tears since the miniature golf game, and she knew that tears had ended there with the thoughts of the fortunes of the little bird.

There was a welling up from the core itself. Something had broken, had opened like a stone object containing a geode. A kind of impacted air had left the core, and she could feel it pushing a few of her alveoli open again. The air left her in a silent rush, and when she breathed inward it was with some force now, because there was a place for the incoming breath to reside, and she felt in a way strong again, though she knew at the same time that the strength, though not illusory, was temporary in her body, even if it be permanent in her mind. It was strength, simply and almost embarrassingly in its melodrama, in the real knowledge of immortality and what that was about, that he had just brought to her — that she would continue on in him in that way and in the little girl and in the dog and in the stones and in the trees. She could now be both more and less than she was. Less, in that what had left her had been ego, but only that, and it was exhilarating to discover that it was only a kind of air, defined only as place and otherwise insubstantial. Its going disoriented her a little, and she had to put her hand under the seat of the bench to stay where she was. The more she would be now was obvious and unspeakable, and she knew it was not something that would be fruitful to discuss with Allen. Her remaining course was to let it just be in her and be her. Looking up from Bob White’s eyes to his familiar brow and on over to the close-gathered family at the other bench, she saw how the bench itself, though processed, had its cuts and lines, its places of weathering, and how it was momentary center to the family, the occasion for lunch out under the sun this midweek outing.

The father spoke to the son. The mother handled something that the daughter had brought to her from the ground. It was all very tight and exclusionary, but Melinda knew that were she to catch any one of them alone, and had enough time to watch, things of herself would occur in action or become manifest in repose. And knowing this with such certainty that brought her comfort, she quit both the fantasy and the knowledge and came back firmly to the place she was sitting. She released the bench. She touched Bob White on the knee.

“What do you say, time to get back to Allen?”

“I do suppose it’s about that time,” he said. And he got up again and helped her to her feet. She was very light, and her eyes were energetic and crystal clear, but her legs were weak and she felt pain in her stomach when she rose and had to slump and lean against him. And then they walked, with arms holding arms and bodies brushing and touching, across the low meadow toward the wine cathedral.

The father and mother of the family at the redwood table saw them going. They did not speak to each other about it.

The mother’s hand moved back and forth over the ripples in the grain of the tabletop. Both of them saw that the man was quite a bit older than the woman, that he was possibly a Mexican or something else foreign, and that she was white though dark-skinned. They thought they were lovers and ordinarily would have had bad feelings about this. But there was something in the way the man and woman walked and touched against each other that they could not find it in themselves to feel anger or disapproval. They both liked looking at the backs of their bodies as they strolled away.

IT WAS NOT SO MUCH THE SHOT ITSELF, A DIFFICULT fade around a stand of trees, that gave him pleasure as the realization which came to him when he considered it and then got ready to hit. It was a strange pleasure, not unmixed with a little growing pain. He had been thinking of Melinda all through the round. There had been no gambling possible. He was feeling a little guilty about leaving her with Bob White, and though he tried to chalk it up to conventional husband’s golf-playing guilt, he knew how pathetic his attempt was and that that was not it at all. It had more to do with privateness, the intensity of this exclusionary involvement. It may have been the sight of the goofy wishing well in the middle of the fairway that he kept catching out of the corner of his eye as he considered his shot. Whatever it was, a sense of the silliness of playing golf came to him. Why don’t I just drive this fucker off into the trees on the other side and be done with it, he thought as he sighted around the bend. Maybe I could chip it into that wishing well and forget it. But the pleasure came in knowing that he probably could get it in the well, could probably knock it just where he wanted it to go in the trees, and that he had a very good possibility of getting it to the green too. He could fail at all three, of course, and of course that was of essential importance. What enriched the pleasure was the thought that he could manage to say fuck it to his other involvements too. He could just walk away and be done with that matrix as well.

This realization of choice had not occurred to him before, and he saw as he thought of it how obsessive and locked in he must have been not to have thought of it. He learned a little something about himself, and once past the learning he felt very loose and what he might have called free. The shot itself seemed almost perfunctory, though it really wasn’t. It was the result of the thoughts that passed through him before he hit it that gave him room for the kind of intensity he needed to hit it correctly.

He used his three-wood, altered his stance slightly, and sent it around the trees, low and very tight and swift. It carried the trap and the flagstick, hit against the slight upslope of the back of the green, bit in, trickled up, and stopped about ten yards from the hole. The two men with him applauded and yelled loudly. He bowed to them and tipped his cap. Somewhere deep in him he realized the pathetic nature of the thing. He wanted very badly to get back to Melinda, and the want felt very good to him. When he got to the green, he sank his rather long, downhill putt for an eagle.

THEY GOT TO THE CAPE AROUND NOON AND HEADED DOWN the highway that ran along its center. They could see neither the bay nor the ocean from the road, but they could smell the salt in the air and taste it, and they didn’t feel landlocked. Melinda sat in the corner of the backseat and looked out of the window at the familiarity of trees and shrubs. Bob White sat at the door in front, looking at the Cape map, making provisional markings on it with a pencil. He touched the point of the pencil to his tongue often before making his marks. He was wearing glasses, and neither Allen nor Melinda remembered seeing him wear them before. When they got down the Cape to Seaview, Melinda said, “Here we are.” She said it almost inaudibly, but both of the men heard her and did not speak.