“Of course you’ve seen the ocean,” her mother said. “I used to take you there all the time when you were a baby.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Alice Moss, of course you do. You used to be afraid of the gulls.”
The mention of the gulls triggered a memory. Alice pictured her mother feeding them corn chips, laughing, as hordes of the dirty birds swarmed around them. She also remembered the prickly feel of her sunburned skin and the way the sand clumped to the side of her juice box. Still, to her mother she said: “I don’t remember any of that. That must have been some other baby you had.”
Her mother laughed, showing her crooked teeth, stained where they overlapped. “Well, now you can go to the beach all by yourself whenever you want. Show off that body of yours.” Edith darted out a hand toward her daughter’s breasts, probably thinking about twisting one of them, but Alice jumped back out of her reach.
“Gross, Mom,” she said, and left the kitchen. Her mom’s happiness since the settlement money had come in had been kind of nauseating. The boiler explosion had nearly killed her, but when the check arrived, she’d danced around their apartment like she was a teenager, then gone out and bought a carton of her favorite cigarettes, plus a big bottle of Absolut vodka. Alice had panicked that her mom would spend all the money right away, doing something stupid like taking her girlfriends on a cruise, or getting a brand-new sports car, but after the fancy vodka and the cigarettes, she only bought a bunch of new clothes, then told Alice how they were moving out of Biddeford to a real nice town called Kennewick. Alice pretended to be dismayed, but she was okay with it, especially when she found out that the house they were renting had her own bedroom and bathroom in it. That made up for leaving her friends behind and having to start over at a new high school. And the house was pretty nice, with big windows and wooden floors instead of stained wall-to-wall carpeting that smelled like cigarettes.
They moved at the end of May, and Alice had the whole summer to herself. Back in Biddeford there was nowhere to go but Earl’s Famous Roast Beef and the roller skating rink, but here she could walk to Kennewick Beach, a long, sandy stretch packed with tourists all summer. And even though she had privately conceded that she’d seen the ocean before, it still felt like the first time. When the sun was out, the clear, cold water would sparkle, almost looking like pictures she’d seen of tropical places. The first time she walked down to the water by herself was Memorial Day. The beach was crawling with people, mostly families, but lots of teenagers as well, muscular boys and skinny girls in bikinis. Underneath her high-waisted jean shorts and Ocean Pacific T-shirt, Alice was wearing a dark red one-piece that was a little too snug. She’d bought it the previous summer to swim at her friend Lauren’s aboveground pool, but her mom had rarely washed it, and it had faded at the seams from all the chlorine in the pool water.
That first day at the beach, she walked along the water’s edge, carrying her sandals, liking the way the wet sand felt, sucking at her toes. But she never swam. Later that week Alice bought herself two new bathing suits with her own money at a gift store on Route 1A. One was a black bikini she wasn’t sure she would ever wear and one was a green one-piece, kind of boring, but with high slits up the sides. She also bought a straw bag, a towel, and a bottle of Coppertone sun oil. She began to go to the beach daily, developing a strict routine. She quickly learned that she hated getting too much sun. It made her itch, and she didn’t tan; her white skin just burned, or broke out in hideous heat rashes. She swapped out the sun oil for sunblock—the highest number she could find—and each morning of the summer, after showering, she would thickly spread the sunblock over her entire body. It made her feel impervious. Then she would pack her bag with a tuna fish sandwich, a thermos of Country Time lemonade, and one of her mom’s romance novels, and set out for a day at the beach. There, she would spread her large towel out, making sure to put small rocks on all the corners so that it would stay flat. She would sit and read the romance novel, occasionally taking a break to watch other beachgoers play Frisbee or dart in and out of the water. No one ever approached her, but occasionally she caught boys or even sometimes older men taking surreptitious glances in her direction. It didn’t matter if she was only in her bathing suit, or if it was a cooler day and she was still wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but it did seem to happen more when she was in her black bikini.
Before lunch every day on the beach she would take one swim, forcing herself to walk straight into the bone-chilling water without hesitation. She learned that if you stayed in the water, swimming back and forth, for at least two minutes, your skin would turn numb and it would no longer feel cold. The salt in the ocean made the water so much more buoyant than the water in Lauren’s pool, and if she put her arms back over her head she could float on the surface and look up at the sky.
She swam only once during each beach trip because of how long it took her to dry off, making sure that not a single grain of sand got onto her towel. Then she would eat her sandwich, drink her lemonade, and go back to her book.
Her mother came to the beach with Alice only once during the summer. It was a Saturday in late July. Edith had gotten up early, taken a shower, and put on makeup, all because she was expecting her friend Jackie from Biddeford to come visit for the day. But Jackie called and canceled. “You’d think I’d asked her to drive halfway across the state,” Edith said after the call. “It’s two fucking towns over. What are you doing today, Al?”
“Beach.”
“Of course, the beach. I should go along with you just to find out if you really go. How is it you go to the beach every day and your skin is like chalk?”
“I wear sunblock.”
“When I was your age I went to the beach all the time and I was practically black. Well, maybe I will come with you, unless you’d rather I didn’t.”
“You should come. I’ll make another sandwich.”
It took Edith forever to get ready. Half of her stuff was still in boxes and she puttered back and forth looking for just the right bathing suit, one that turned out to be a leopard-skin one-piece that exposed a lot of her chest, her skin leathery and darkly freckled. The bathing suit also exposed her left arm, puckered and scarred from the accident at the paper mill.
“I think I’m ready, Al. Can I bring a bottle of wine to the beach or is that a no-no?”
“I can put some in a thermos for you,” Alice said, already swinging open the refrigerator where her mother kept her bottles of Mateus rosé.
It was almost noon by the time they had settled on the sand, each on their own towel. It was a perfect day, the only visible clouds thin ragged wisps on the horizon line. The air smelled of the ocean, but also suntan lotion, and the occasional trace of someone’s cigarette smoke clinging to the light breeze. Alice started reading; she was halfway through Lace again, by Shirley Conran. Her mother cracked her own book, but wasn’t looking at it. She was twitchy and unsettled, and she began to drink from her thermos of wine. “Wanna walk?” she asked after a while.
“Sure,” Alice said.
They walked the length of the beach and back, Edith keeping the shawl over her shoulders. “Look out, Al, it’s a gull,” she kept saying, prodding Alice’s shoulder.
“I’m not scared of gulls anymore,” Alice said.
“So you do remember the gulls.”
“No. You told me I was scared of them. I don’t remember those trips, if we ever went on them.”
When they got back to their beach towels, Alice was hot, the back of her neck damp with sweat. “Do you want to swim?” she asked her mother.