Alice McDermott - After This

With a cry, Michael leaped down the dune above his brother, charged, fell, rolled, collided with Jacob’s back and Jacob’s carefully arranged soldiers, kicking up sand. He leaped up again and with his machine gun drawn mowed down sister-who was already crying, her fists to her eyes-brother, green army men, mother, father, and then whatever other advancing hordes came at him from the sea.

John Keane was off the blanket in an instant, crying, “Michael!” Jacob was stretched out on the sand, his legs straight before him, crying, plaintively, “Michael!” Annie was heading toward her mother, wailing, her fists-one of them still clutching Steve Stevens-to her eyes. There was sand across her nose and in her hair. John Keane took Michael by the arm and shook him. The boy looked up at his father as if he were an utter stranger, materialized out of the salt air. Mary untied her scarf and, pulling her daughter’s fists from her eyes, gently brushed it over her face. Jacob, resignedly, perhaps, was lifting his flattened men, smoothing an area of sand to his left, setting them upright again.

“What is wrong with you?” their father was saying. “Why can’t you behave?”

Michael-it was not fear on his face, only a kind of disbelief, as if this tall, red-faced, shouting man had materialized out of the wind-looked up to say, “Just playing. I was just playing.” But his father shook his arm with the litany of his transgressions: “Hurt your brother, hurt your sister, ruined the day.” He finally tossed aside the boy’s arm as if it were something to be thrown away. “Why don’t you use your head?” he asked him. “Why can’t you behave?” And felt the pain of his own anger, in his chest, in his shoulder. He moved his hand to his neck, moved his shoulder. It was the arm he’d used to throw the football. He looked to his wife. Annie was now collapsed on the blanket beside her, pressed into her side because she could not sit on her lap, the bright scarf, now spotted with her tears, wrapped in her fingers. Mary Keane was fumbling in the pocket of her car coat for a tissue. She found one, held it to the girl’s nose. Leaned a little to say something into her ear. The girl nodded. Mary reached for the stuffed bear that still leaned against her hip, lifted it, and placed it in her daughter’s arms.

As suddenly as the peace of the morning had turned to bedlam, peace returned. John Keane looked around, his hand on his neck, his love for these children three heavy stones against his thumping heart. Jacob was once more bent over his men. Michael, his machine gun hung over his back, was sitting Indian-style just a few feet away, pulling apart a stalk of sea grass, watching the ocean, not crying, his father was relieved to see, but, he suspected, not chastened either. He rubbed his neck. Swung his arm out, shaking it a little. It was the arm he had given to Catherine, his niece, his brother Frank’s only child, at the door of the church on the day she was married. “Maybe we should eat,” he said. And then, raising his voice only enough to be heard over the wind, “Boys. Come over and eat.”

But the wind had indeed changed and as the five of them gathered on the blanket they could feel it prick their faces and their arms. Mary Keane, with Annie still leaning heavily against her and the baby like an iron beach ball in her lap, leaned toward the quilted hamper, unzipped it, and then paused, a single wax-paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand. “Our food will be full of sand,” she said, “with this wind.” And her husband said, “Well, they are sandwiches,” and winked at Michael, who seemed suddenly to recognize his father again.

“Maybe,” Mary said, “we’d better eat in the car.”

Slowly everything was gathered and they made their way out to the beach once more and then over the path that returned them to the parking lot. They placed the blankets and the pillow and the toys into the trunk, depositing as they did a residue of sand that would be there throughout the winter. Standing above the knot the three of them had formed before the open back door of the car-a debate about who would go first and who would get the middle-their mother said, her hand on her belly, “Just get in,” and they did, sliding across the soft fabric of the backseat. Annie was in the middle because Michael moved so quickly and Jacob had put a definite pair of fingers to her shoulder to make her follow him.

Mary Keane eased herself into the front seat. The size of her belly made her legs feel short, as though they could barely reach the floor under the dashboard. Her husband closed the door on her, gently, with both hands, as if he were covering her with a blanket. He crossed in front of the car, his hair on end and the pale scalp at the back of his head exposed. He now looked every bit his age, she thought. As he grew older, it seemed to her that she was not losing sight of his younger self but coming to recognize instead another man altogether, one she was just beginning to find familiar. He opened the door, slid the quilted hamper onto the seat between them, and then got in behind the wheel. He pulled the door closed and the wind became just the slightest rush of air against the rolled-up windows. There was suddenly a pleasant warmth. Their voices, suddenly, seemed rich and sure now that they could speak quietly, now that their words were no longer scattered by the buffeting wind.

Mary, one knee bent up onto the seat-her legs seemed only inches long, her feet in their small loafers appeared no larger than her daughter’s-handed sandwiches into the backseat while her husband poured lemonade from a glass jar into small paper cups.

“Careful now,” he said each time he slowly moved the cup over the back of his seat, bending his arm like a crane, awkwardly, because it was the same arm he had used to throw the football and it still seemed to echo with the strain. “Ladies first,” he said and felt his daughter take the cup from him with both hands. “Careful now.” There was coffee in the plaid thermos and, when he had screwed the lid onto the glass jar and placed it back into the quilted hamper, he poured some for his wife and some for himself. She had packed two china teacups, wrapped in paper towels. She would not drink from anything else. He exchanged a cup for one of the sandwiches. The whole thing was a balancing act: cup and sandwich, napkin and wax paper-careful now-the three children in the back (the fourth would have to be up here, in the front seat between them, the hamper on his wife’s lap, or at her feet), his wife and her belly perched beside him, the wind shut out and their voices suddenly gentle and clear. A sweetened cup of coffee, a ham-and-cheese-the bread a little dry but the meat thick and tender. The wind shut out. It was a balancing act, to hold off quarrel and worry, the coming years, the coming months, even tomorrow morning for just whatever time it took to finish a sandwich, to drink the coffee while it was still hot. Careful now.

All around them, the parking lot was deserted, only a scrim of sand moving across the bleached asphalt. Mary Keane stretched her legs and touched her side. “This baby is doing somersaults,” she said and Jacob laughed softly, imagining it. Beside him, his sister put the crust of her sandwich to the line of brown thread that was the bear’s mouth. Beside her, Michael looked through the rolled-up window, across the long and empty parking lot to the dark green pines that seemed to be raising their arms to the wind, shaking spindly fists. His own hands were full, sandwich and paper cup, but the small ivory knob on the silver handle was a temptation. Just a few turns and he could fill the car with the sound of the rushing wind. The hair was mussed across the back of his father’s head, the familiar gleam of his white scalp peering through. His father leaned forward to put the china teacup on the dashboard and then, leaning back, placed his hand over his shoulder, kneading the material of his shirt, raising the shoulder toward his neck, like a pitcher on the mound. “Are you all right?” their mother asked, all their voices grown soft and gentle now that they were out of the wind.