Shadow Traffic

Mission Beach

125 Mission Beach It begins in the ocean with wave following wave, breaking over his head and sometimes over yours. You’re on vacation again with your twelve-year-old son, Andy, on crowded Mission Beach in San Diego and he’s jumping up and down in the water, laughing and squealing. You love the waves too, especially bodysurfing with them. It’s a passion the two of you share (although his version of bodysurfing isn’t really bodysurfing at all, something you never point out to him, of course). Andy’s in the black wetsuit that you bought for him in the sporting goods store in Philadelphia , and seems oblivious to the chilly seventy-degree air. When he temporarily disappears under a wave and then emerges from it he looks like a slender little seal. In contrast, you are wearing the thickest, and one of the ugliest, T-shirts you own. The sky is a tug-of-war between sun and clouds. It gives relief one moment and removes it the next. You’re shivering and want to leave but you stay because Andy wants to. Although he’s improved his swimming a lot in the last year, he only weighs seventy-seven pounds, and with the strong undertow and waves you have to be extra vigilant and keep your eye on him virtually every second. Yet he also badly wants you to bodysurf (as do you), so you de- shadow traffic 126 velop a technique of turning around the moment your ride ends and zeroing in on him. Meanwhile, the faraway lifeguard sits in an elevated tower of sorts like a cliff atop a distant island. There are other temptations besides the waves. There are a lot of women in bikinis or less in the water, many of whom appear to be playing a game to see whether they’re revealing more of their breasts or more of their bottoms. There’s a very well built brunette near you in whom the competition appears to be a tie. Since Anna left, you haven’t made love with a woman, though God knows you’ve wanted to, which makes the mermaids of San Diego that much more difficult to disregard. Just before a new, mountainous wave arrives you do look at the brunette before telling Andy that you’re taking the wave. He’s rapt with attention . He makes fun of you a lot in playful ways (calls you “Face Wad,” for example), something you tolerate and actually encourage because you don’t want him to be in unapproachable awe of you, as you sometimes were of your father. But in the ocean you’re his water hero. You taught him how to swim and float and dive and never take foolish chances. You hit the wave well and have a long, exquisite ride. Just before it comes, you think the brunette is looking at you and moreover realize she’s the same person you’ve been exchanging looks with in your hotel. When your ride ends you look for her for a second but don’t see her. Then you look for Andy and for a few horrifying moments don’t see him either. Finally his little head pops up, and after relief suffuses you, you feel a stinging self-contempt that never completely leaves you no matter how you intermittently try to rationalize it for the rest of the day, though you do manage to keep it hidden from your highly perceptive son. Because of your lapse in judgment in the water you stay in much longer than you intended, which greatly pleases Andy. Mission Beach 127 Eventually you stop bodysurfing, and when Andy complains about that you take his hand and invent a wave-jumping game that the two of you play. You also look away from that woman or any other that swims or boogie boards across your path. Meanwhile your shivering is increasing. To help deal with that, you think of your father, already over sixty at the time, going out in a pouring rain and with a pretty bad cold to buy you some boxing gloves when you were seven or eight because that was your passion at the moment, and when you’re that young a moment is all of time. Then you think of your mother, who sat with you while you cried because you were sick and were...