She reached the cove Saturday morning, ready, she believed, for whatever might happen. She wore an emerald-green bikini and a dark green, sinfully expensive jacket — she who had worn the same serviceable blue for years, and she noticed, with delight, unmistakable signs of interest as she picked her way among the heavily bronzed males lounging on the hot sand. Perhaps she’d make the same gratifying impression on George, flying home that afternoon from Sacramento!
Shortly after noon Liz, burdened down with bathing paraphernalia and an air of importance, and Carol James, looking like all the other girls Mary knew, came across the sand to the end of the beach where she sat, waiting. Their meeting was casual, and Liz Ferguson’s introduction used first names only. The three of them lounged in the sun, digging their toes into the sand, watching unusually heavy waves batter the rocks out near the reef, and talking idly while Mary studied this stranger who had torn her life into jagged pieces, appropriating George without knowing he was secondhand goods. She had not known how much the thought of George making love to this — this child would hurt, but she managed to look relaxed and pleasant.
The girl looked like a teenager. Mary hadn’t realized she’d look this young — like all the girls on all the campuses across the land. She was boyishly slim, light and graceful in a modest blue suit which she’d obviously chosen for swimming, not for show. Her hair was a well-brushed light brown — again like all the girls on the beach, long and straight and shining, framing an intelligent, happy face.
Mary could find nothing there that wasn’t lovely and honest — and she had an artist’s eye. If there was anything ugly or cheap there, she’d have seen it. She understood, helplessly, how George could love this radiant girl; how he could want, want desperately, her soft, untouched youth; but she didn’t understand how he could lie to her, or seduce her with empty promises, as he must have done. His love for Carol James was imperfect, too, and Mary found an unexpected, new pain in this knowledge.
It was a hot day. After almost an hour of desultory conversation — mostly about the charms of southern California — Carol wanted to swim. It was high tide and the waves were strong, but she assured the other two that she was a good swimmer. Mary didn’t want to get her new permanent wet yet, and Liz wanted to talk to Mary. The younger woman piled her hair on top of her head, secured it firmly with a large barrette, and ran into the water, swimming quickly toward the open ocean with strong strokes. Mary had no desire to talk to Liz — or to anyone else, but Liz was doing her a kindness, and Mary Burns Hitchman had always been a proper, polite woman. She lay back on her beach towel, closed her eyes against the hot midday sun, and mumbled answers to her friend’s persistent questioning.
Of course it helped to look younger and handsomer; the new hairdo had done worlds for her morale. Not that her morale couldn’t do with a few more boosts!
No, she didn’t want Liz to leave them alone — the last thing she wanted was a private talk with the girl. She knew all she needed to know already, and no, she didn’t plan on telling her who she was. She couldn’t.
Carol James wasn’t at all what she’d expected — so young and serious. Mary had imagined somebody more seductive, a little grasping, somebody she could hate and blame and fight. Not somebody she could hurt.
She’d have it out with George when she got home. Beyond that, she couldn’t guess what would happen. Almost, she didn’t care! This young lovely child deserved something better than a middle-aged man turning pompous with success. That’s what she would tell George!... And she was able to laugh when Liz did.
Gradually the two women, absorbed by the sun and their immediate thoughts to the exclusion of the rest of the world, realized that something untoward was happening out by the reef — one of the periodic swimming accidents which occur even on the best-guarded beaches. Swimmers insist on swimming too near the rocks where the waves pound relentlessly. Poor swimmers put unwarranted faith in themselves and their fancy goggles and fins and frog suits, and go out much too far. There can be a strong, pulling tide — as there was on that Saturday — and an undertow. Sometimes there are riptides beyond the cove’s shelter. The guards are alert and quick, and usually the sudden excitement ends happily, but on this afternoon it didn’t.
Mary and Liz, standing at the edge of the water, bemused by the sudden turn of events and frightened, watched while the guards rowed back to shore with the body of a young woman, a woman Mary knew, with a stunned, superstitious certainty, would be Carol James. They listened, shocked and silent, to a chorus of voices around them repeating, in conflicting dissonance, what the various bystanders thought had happened.
“She drowned. I saw her. A wave hit her smack in the face. She must have swallowed a lot of water. She just went under and drowned. Just like that.”
“No, she hit her head on a rock. That’s why she went under. I noticed her earlier. She was a good swimmer.”
“Maybe she was caught under the reef, and couldn’t breathe.”
“She must have had a cramp. She just doubled up and sank. I saw her go under, but I was too far away. There was no way I could get to her in time.”
“Nobody was near enough.”
“Yes, there was! I saw a frogman swimming near her just before the guard shouted.”
“That was a shark. I saw it too, swimming under the surface, very near the place where she went under.”
Several people had seen the shark, or the frogman — had seen something; but they were drowned out by the ones who had seen nothing.
“She was alone when the guards reached her. She’d been alone all along, swimming out farther than anybody else. She had seemed to know what she was doing.”
“That couldn’t have been another swimmer out there — he couldn’t just vanish, could he? It must have been a seagull riding on a kelp bed.”
“There was a similar drowning last summer, in almost exactly the same spot, remember?”
“I wouldn’t swim near there for anything!”
Nobody knew who she was until Liz Ferguson walked, reluctantly, over to the beached boat and spoke Carol’s name softly, her voice uncertain because she was crying. Mary didn’t belong there, knew herself to be an ironic intrusion. She spoke soft commiserations, then went quietly away, allowing Liz to look after her friend alone.
But she was loath to go home. It was as though she no longer had a home. She was dazed by the sudden tragedy coming so swiftly on the wake of other violent and conflicting emotions, coming as inevitably, it seemed to her, as the waves which battered the shore cliffs. She wondered with an unreasonable, hopeless dread what the next wave would be like.
She circled La Jolla, driving her car up and down the curving hills blindly, out of tune with the summer’s brilliance. Varicolored tropical plants under tall palms, sharp greens and the rival blues of sky and ocean taunted her bleak, solitary mood. She didn’t belong in this sunlit world any more. She didn’t belong anywhere. With a frisson of horror, she found herself driving, once again, past the stairs which went down to the cove. Numb, unthinking, she turned her car and took the long way back to San Diego, dawdling in the slow lanes, delaying the inevitable.