Solange is silent as they cross the causeway, the bands of traffic curving and rushing high over the diamond water. “I’ve never seen this before,” she murmurs. “Only from the airplane.”
They drive into town and park in the city lot, then walk to Lincoln Road. It looks different to Avis, so late in the day — wilder, somehow. She edges toward Solange, turning from the spill of shop lights and electrical music. Girls in skimpy, ruffled shirts look stiff-legged and robotic. Beside Solange — seeing with her fresh eyes — Avis feels as if an unacknowledged horror in things rises more forcefully to the surface. But Solange swings her arms as they walk, looking around: she says, “I wish the lady of the house could have seen this—she wouldn’t think she was quite so fine as she did.”
They make their way up the street: as far as the fans’ whirl of shadows on the sidewalk; Avis stops and gestures to the heavy tables, wrought-iron chair legs and bases. “There. That’s where we meet.” There’s a desolation about the place now, though it’s crowded with customers, legs crossed, hands resting on iced drinks. Avis senses a weight, as if all of it is gradually sinking into the earth with all those empty hours of waiting.
Solange takes in the tables and diners: the scene is washed in late, limpid sunlight. Avis wonders what the diners see when they look at them — a pale, middle-aged patient and her young attendant? She feels a flash of trigeminal pain across one cheekbone and inhales sharply. Solange plucks at her sleeve. “Come away. Let’s see some more.”
They weave through the crowds, Avis hurrying to keep up with Solange — a slip of aquamarine skirt. Avis holds a shopping bag that bounces against her legs and bumps into passersby. She feels sweat at her temples and under her arms. The sky is hazy blue with clouds like fine scratches; bisecting the walkway are rows of date palms, full as pom-poms, with powerful, corrugated trunks. Solange hovers at the busy edge of Ocean Drive, waiting within a small crowd for the light. Avis doesn’t think she’s even aware that she’s behind her, but then Solange turns and reaches between two girls to take hold of Avis’s hand. She keeps her strong fingers on her as they cross the street and make their way toward the beach.
Avis doesn’t come here. She hasn’t been this close to the water since she’d agreed to Felice’s terms, years ago. Avis had gone home and told Brian about Felice’s demand. For the first time in months it seemed they were too drained to fight each other. Brian shook his head, saying, “That’s ridiculous. Just let her go? No. No way. There’s got to be something else we can do.” And Avis said, “Please tell me what it is and I’ll do it.” Anything. Anything. She felt the fight slipping away from them, talking about it was running through sand, trying to stand in breakers, the sand swiping away from under their feet. Gradually they stopped speaking with police and school officials and neighborhood watch groups, and Avis never went to the beach again.
She is surprised now by the residual warmth she can feel in the sand; she slips off her clogs, stepping through it, bits of shell and stone and cigarette butts. The late-afternoon-near-evening light is tinged with mauve and it wavers across Solange’s face in pale bands. “The water smells different here,” Solange says.
There are still small groups of college kids on towels, but most of the tourists and families are packing up, lugging folding chairs, a pleasant weariness rising from their burned shoulders. Solange sweeps off a patch of sand with the flat of her hand, as if dusting a piece of furniture, and sits, knees bent and gathered to her chest. Avis hovers uncertainly beside her, finally sitting, the bag with its boxed cake between them. Solange stares hard into the widening band at the far edge of the water. It is hard to tell in the lowering light but Avis suspects that her eyes are rimmed with tears. Avis shifts her gaze to the sand — a cream-colored shell, a stone, the delicately ridged exoskeleton of a horseshoe crab. “It’s been so long since I’ve visited the water,” Solange says. “I grew up beside it, but after so many years I thought I might even forget it.” She rakes her fingers through the sand. “It’s good to feel like this now.”
“Like what?” Avis shades her eyes.
“Like nothing.” She smiles. “When I came here, I came with nothing. Just that bird in a cage. The one you love so much.” Another smile.
“And your husband,” Avis prompts. “You came with him.”
She glances at Avis. “Yes. And him.” She begins unpacking the items in her bag then. She touches each one to her forehead, then hands it to Avis. “Think about what you would like to say to your daughter now.”
Avis takes the small jar with its clear fluid, but she can’t think of anything to say. Mostly there’s blankness, as Solange puts it — like nothing. Still, she touches the things — the scissors, the satin sash, the prayer book — and hands each back to Solange.
“Good,” she says. “Fine. And now what you need to do — you take the cake and break it up, scatter it on the water for the birds and fishes.” She points over the shadowy waves. “You talk to your daughter as you scatter it.”
“The cake — you mean, just break it up?” She feels a kind of flinch.
Solange’s face is impassive. “However you can do it.”
Avis stands and reaches into the bag, into the white box, carefully lifting the cake with her fingers. She holds it in both hands and walks down the incline to the water. The sand looks beige against the dark foam of the surf and Avis hesitates a moment before wading in. The water is warm and easy and the bottom smooth. She is able to make her way through the small breakers with little trouble. She doesn’t look back at shore; she walks until the water approaches her hips, her work pants balloon around her, the houndstooth check darkening. The thought comes, how she might have viewed all this in the past: sentimental, maudlin. Happy Birthday. Bitter little words. Avis holds the cake then digs in with her fingers. It crumples instantly and she has a memory, not of Felice, but of spreading handfuls of her mother’s ashes into Cayuga Lake, so cold that March it was still frozen in spots, and she had balanced on the steeply banked shore, almost doubled over from the cold, flinging the ashes with stiff, red fingers. Now she tosses the crumbs everywhere, her breath chugging as if she were sobbing; the sound bounces over the water. She knows that this ritual is not for getting her child back. There’s a sparkle of efflorescence on the water’s surface, just a few feet away; she wades in deeper, toward the bubbles, then feels an uncanny shimmer against her exposed calves: a school of fish is swarming her, feeding on the crumbs. She watches them, minute flickerings beneath the surface. A bit of cake bobs on the water, rising and falling. She sinks to her chin, then lifts her feet and lets her head dunk under so the echo of the water fills her ears, the thrombotic pulse. She opens her eyes to an indigo blur and considers the pleasure of opening her throat and lungs — the scorch in her lungs and the release of it.
Avis tilts her head back, pushing off the sandy bottom. She breaks the surface to see a ragged shadow plummet — a seagull snapping up the cake, lobbing back into the sky.