Collective sigh

Exercise #13




We hung out at the beach that summer. Lily, Arn Cad and me. It seemed then that never before had so many languid moist cloudless days been strung together for anyone’s enjoyment. We were kings. Lily was our queen. The sand was as clean and fresh as brown sugar. We were the first beings to set foot in this cove. The water was cool and green and clear like a forest at dusk. Mostly the boys took turns throwing Lily into the waves and each of us, like a collective sigh, fell in love with her.
It took all four of us to love her wholly. We each had our own piece of love, like a slice of Arn’s Aunt Jilly’s rhubarb pie. My wedge was tremulous and aching and painful to the touch. I loved in anguish at night in the bed I’d lain in since I was a boy. I sweated sorrow until my sheets were like gauze stretched across festering wounds. I wept in dreams of sand dunes blown smooth by late August winds that smelled of snow and early winter.
Lily loved each of us. This is what kept it going. A suspense story that we couldn’t put down until the end was revealed. Who would she choose? Quiet thoughtful stringy-legged Arn, our sinewy dingo of the sands. Always the first, in the mornings, into the surf, sprinting across the still-cool purple foot-sized troughs of sand, springing off the top of his toes from the last edge of wet sand, flinging himself carelessly, a pale tangle of arms and legs, into the ocean.
Me. I trembled sometimes, on my towel, watching her come up from a dive, her light brown hair slicked back like a seal. Pale skin, wide, round little-girl eyes. A thin careful creature of the sea.
I didn’t realize I was growing up that summer. Lengthening and broadening – my smooth skin a light golden hue that made me seem to glow. When Lily looked up at me, it was as though she was seeing someone else. I loved but I couldn’t catch up with myself fast enough, then, to keep her.

Cad was out leader. He had been since as long as any of us could remember. He believed in the good in all people and he had freckles and shiny blond bangs to match his earnest faith in humanity. We put our trust in him because with Cad there was no question of misstep.

Lily loved him first.

We had come up from the water – the tide was coming in – the waves curling on top of each other softly, the ocean shining like dark metal in the slanting late-afternoon light. The sand smelled of the sun it had soaked up all day and was now releasing. We lay on our towels shifting and pushing at the granules till they formed hollows and mounds that held our bodies as we dried. Cad reached out and pulled Lily to him. No words – Cad didn’t like words – first he was pulling on her long tanned arm and then his hand was firm under the base of her hair. I heard the sound of their lips, at first dry, then wet, working like muscles, pulling each other in until Lily made a small noise in the back of her throat.
Arn and I watched them, peeking through the private hot caves of our elbows, lying on our stomachs, arms folded at the tops of our towels, our faces pressed against our forearms. We didn’t look at each other. We didn’t have to. It was as if we had both known, somehow, that we would be lying here like this.
Lily’s back was to me. I watched the place where her bathing suit ended before the curve of her thigh began, a half-moon of pale buttocks that had pushed free of the prim yellow sea-shell print. Her skin here, covered by light blond hair.
Cad’s fingers were still at her neck. That was Cad. Patient. Sure. He didn’t need to be greedy. That was what made Cad our leader. All came to Cal in good time.
Arn and I had our seats. For the first time in my life, I felt I could be patient too.
They pulled apart and rolled onto their backs. Lily reached over and took Cad’s hand. Cad’s eyes were closed, Lily’s open, she was looking at the sky.
“My turn,” Arn said into his forearm and Lily laughed. I rolled over, too, looked at her face quickly then at the sky, as if there was something up there I needed to find.
Even in that glimpse I could see: She was smiling, glowing. She was ridiculously happy. She was in love with Cad. Obviously. We all were.
The hardest thing about being Cad was he didn’t have himself to look up to. He shouldered all of our hopes and dreams.