Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

Renny comes up, carrying chairs and towels, and says, “Yes, darling, we are.”

“I prefer the sun,” she answers, casually looking over at the mothers of Thomas’s friends, who are passing around a plastic container of BLT sandwiches. “But if you two insist.”

“We do,” Renny says brightly, unfolding a chair on either side of me. He doesn’t wear a hat or sunglasses. He flicks at one of the seats with the towel and then spreads it out for her, holding her hand as she sits.

“So who is this young person you’re looking after today?” Liv asks me, taking my hand, too. “Renny wouldn’t say anything more.”

“He’s in the water,” I say, pointing to the group of them some fifteen yards from shore. Having already tested it, I know the water deepens very gradually, though past the line of buoys it drops off quickly, as if off a shelf. “Perhaps you can tell which one he is.”

“I’m not sure how.”

“Isn’t he your daughter’s son,” Renny says, “the one right there?”

“What? Where?” Liv says with a sort of pleased alarm, craning forward, her hand over her eyes. “Your daughter is back in town, Doc? You didn’t mention it to me. She must be staying with you at the house.”

“She lives over in Ebbington.”

“Ebbington? Oh goodness, but why?”

“She’s probably making a living and supporting herself, that’s why,” Renny scolds her. “Not everybody in the world, Liv, has to live in this over-blessed, over-prosperous duchy of a town.”

“I one hundred percent agree with you, dear, but for Doc Hata’s girl, who I must say I didn’t even know existed until last week? I won’t say for her to go live in your house because it’s against all my interests, but really, Doc, you ought to set her up in an apartment in the village. My office holds the few good listings, you know. Especially if she has a boy who goes to school. There’s nothing much going on in the Ebbington school system except gym and metal shop and prenatal classes.”

Renny groans and says, “You can be the most terrible snob.”

“I’m thinking of the welfare of the boy, Renny. Anyway, you’re the one insisting on my marrying you.”

I turn to Renny and he nods, half-grinning, half-grimacing, a difficult state of being which I know more and more finds its own measure of dignity, and joy. “I wanted to mention it on the phone, but then Liv wanted to see you in person to tell you, and I guess so did I.”

Liv says, “Renny and I realized that you were really the only person in town, Doc, who could extend his mature and wise blessing over us. You’re our private elder, you know, neither of us having parents still alive. Really, that’s only if you think it’s a good idea, for us two to get married.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I say, dumb and glad that I am affirming both notions of Liv’s, especially because they immediately occur to me as somehow off, not at all wrong or terrible but perhaps improbable; and I feel, too, suddenly overwhelmed with the wide flows of information that have come to me today, the flash flood after the rains, and perhaps naturally I imagine good Anne Hickey again, though more clearly now, in her white turtleneck and leaf-colored sweater, greeting me on a wondrous autumn afternoon in front of the beveled glass door of my shop, her hair and eyes aglow in the lovely, burnishing light. The sight isn’t so romantic or sentimental, it’s merely a picture, caught in my memory, the nearest thing I have to something remotely real.

“You don’t seem convinced, my friend,” Renny murmurs sheepishly to me, his fingers raking the soft sand.

“No, Renny, I’m very happy for you both. I’m very happy and I think you ought to get married as soon as possible.”

“I’m not pregnant, Doc,” Liv croons.

“I know that but I would hope you two don’t let pass any more time. Why I should be the one to heed I don’t know. But it seems you two have a special love for each other, and despite some of your difficulties in the past and whatever ones that may arise again, I believe you ought to use this time for best advantage.”

“Who knew you were such a carpe diem sort of guy, Doc?” Liv asks.

“But I am not,” I tell her, practically arguing with her. “I am not at all. I’m simply excited for you both.” And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I think that’s not right, either; in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in the lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary.

Renny says, “I suppose Liv and I are relenting, which I hope is as good a reason as any.”

“It is, Renny, it perfectly is,” I listen to myself say. “Please understand me. There are those who would gladly give up all they have gained in the world to have relented just once when it mattered.”

He gazes at me curiously, and though he hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about (nor, in truth, do I, at least in a pointed way), he knows enough of me to note the brief fervor in my voice, and this quiets him for a moment. Liv is stretching out her long, thin legs and rubbing lotion on them from the ankles up, and if she doesn’t seem to be listening there’s no mistake she hasn’t missed a word. But she’s atypically reserving comment as well, and I think I must be sounding something unusual indeed, to quell Ms. Crawford and Mr. Banerjee, affable gabbers both. I want to engage them further, I want to tell them the first thing that comes to mind, whatever history of my days, when a commotion erupts next to us.

“Tess!” one of the mothers cries sharply. “Where’s your little brother? Where is he!”

“I don’t know! I’ve been looking for him….”

“What do you mean! I asked you to stick by him every second! I told you to keep a hold on him.”

“I know! I know!”

Her mother frantically scans the water but the kids are splashing wildly, so much so that it’s impossible to tell who or how many there are. Then she see a lone yellow float that attaches to the arms.

“Bobby! Oh my God, Bobby!”

Renny immediately leaps up from his beach chair and goes to the woman, asking what has happened, and then he runs into the water, his knees high and dragging, shouting out the boy’s name. The woman starts yelling for the lifeguards, most of whom are stationed where the people are crowded in the sun. The playing in front of us has stopped for the moment, the kids frozen as though there were something lethal in the water. I see right away that Thomas is nowhere apparent, being neither among the group of them nor farther out near the buoys nor anywhere along the shore. I check again and again. Renny is searching in the water, ducking his head under and then coming up. I take off my hat, my sandals, my eyes offering only slow-motion vision, and I take the deepest breath I can and dive in among the bodies standing about.

The water is clear and silent and surprisingly refreshing. I see the green-tinted legs and feet and resting hands up at the surface, the child limbs rooted on the bottom like an otherworldly forest. I go past them and deeper and I’m terrified of what I might see, a limp figure floating in the mid-level, the mouth agape, eyes unfixed and cold. But my chest is burning and though I want to stay under I have to rise. And it’s now that confusion and unrest ripple over the water. Young lifeguards are swarming about, and I cry to them that there’s another child in trouble — another who is mine — and they order me to go ashore and leave the water clear. But who can? The mother and her friends are knee-deep in the water, Renny is somewhere I can’t see, and even Liv has waded in to her waist, her silken wrap ruined, her hands waving spastically in a way that frightens me; I think I have never seen her like this, anything but perfectly poised and comported. And I hear what must be Renny, the tenor bell of his voice, letting out a small cry of pain. I’m the closest to him, and I watch as he begins to slip beneath the surface, where the water is not even over his head: He is having, I murmur to myself, a heart attack. But at the same time the lifeguards are diving and rising near the line of buoys, searching for Thomas and the other boy, not aware of Renny’s distress. I can’t tell if he sees me. He’s grimacing, and his hand comes up weakly as if to say, I’m here, I’m here.