Corner of the Dead

Chapter 5

[ 95 ] C H A P T E R 5 I T E L L T H E D O C T O R about our last vacation. The way caravans of families surround us. I use my hands and draw a wide circle indicating the beach. Everyone knows, somehow, the acceptable distance for parking their four-wheel drive vehicles so as not to infringe on the next family’s compound. It would be easy to mistake someone’s husband for one’s own. Our coolers, chairs and fancy umbrellas with German gears are all alike. We turn the sand plastic-colored. Not noticing is vacation. Richard not noticing has always troubled me. Because of Perú I can never not notice. During the year I don’t hear seagulls so when I am on vacation I want to hear them. At first I enjoy their mating calls but as the week goes on the sound becomes a cry that blocks out most everything , even the sound of the waves. Before noon I have eaten lunch. There’s a hungry sort of boredom to the beach. Weeks before I told Richard I wanted to go to Barcelona. Ben said, and Phoebe agreed, anywhere but a desolate beach. I was perfectly clear, Phoebe needed to be near people and Ben and I have never liked the sun. But now Ben inflates the raft while Richard sits on a chair [ 96 ] positioned in alignment with the sun to tan most perfectly. His lit cigar points to the horizon. When they were little I took them to the park. I keep on talking about this, even though it seems to me the doctor wants me to focus on Perú, to stay there until I have exorcised Perú, but I keep going. I should have let them play the way the other mothers did. How’s that? she asks. They ignored their children. That way they were free to chatter with one another. I liked to have Ben and Phoebe look at any one thing and then, with their eyes shut, I asked them to tell me what they remembered. Phoebe said, a yellow flower. Ben disagreed, five thousand pin pricks attached to a slender thread. Phoebe said, no, it’s a green leaf. Ben opened his eyes and insisted, interconnected veins with water rushing toward a center. I said to him, your eyes are bright enough to illuminate the entire world. That can’t be true, the entire world is too large, Ben says. What I see are four swings lined in a row and the trees with their dresses of leaves. I pointed to the shadows made by the oak tree. Look at the way the light filters through the leaves. It’s the angle of the sun that determines where the shadows fall. The sun at the equator is always the same. This means the shadows don’t change. If you remember from day to day, you can return and find your favorite shadow just where you left it. Phoebe and Ben rolled their eyes and laughed. I looked away, then back again. And this time when I saw them, they were older. Ben said, I see beneath the children’s dirt-streaked faces. [ 97 ] What else? They’re missing something. He looked at the ground and made a circle in the sand with the toe of his shoe. Mother, they need an answer. To what? That’s the problem. They don’t know the question, not yet. He bent down and picked up a clear pebble, smooth like sea glass, and rolled it in his palm. They want to know what life is. The doctor lets me cry. I could keep going but she interrupts . What are you planning to prepare for dinner? Is she trying to determine if I’m negligent? Maybe she thinks I made these things up about Ben and Phoebe. Really, I want to say, this is the way I remember it. I say, steak. Because I want to go home. ...