“It won’t hurt to wait a bit. But I’ll bring him up if you want me to.”
“It’s dangerous down there,” Mrs. Wakefield said vaguely. “The tide, rocks — really dangerous.”
“I’ll fetch him.”
“Yes.”
Miss Lewis’s retreating footsteps beat in her ears like the pulse of the earth.
Below the cliff, the father and the son. Their voices rose straight as the steam, but already dissolved before they reached her, already turned into something else in the cycle of change.
“See, Billy? It’s fine, isn’t it? Dip your feet in, feel it. Isn’t it nice? Take my hand. There, now. You must try, Billy, try very hard. You’re getting to be a big boy.”
He was a big boy, but he hung back, burying his face against his father’s ribs.
“We’ll surprise your mother, won’t we? She’ll be flabbergasted when she finds out you can paddle and float around and perhaps even swim eventually. Wouldn’t you like to surprise her, Billy?”
Yes, yes, but there must be other ways besides the cold and terrifying water. To hide and be found, to have a bowel movement at the right time, to clean his plate, to build a tower of blocks — other ways, soft as hair, warm as cocoa.
“You must try, Billy.”
Yes, yes. He moved his head up and down against his father’s ribs, willing to try, willing to surprise, yes. But the waves were animals with cold wet mouths.
John and Billy, turned to gold in the sun, advancing into a molten blue mirror that absorbed their golden skin inch by inch.
Wait, Mrs. Wakefield thought, wait for me. We will all take a walk in the sea, my garden. We must stay together, the three of us. Wait for me.
Into the garden, the mirror, the cold wet mouth.
“That’s my big boy. Now isn’t it fun? It’s like having a bath.”
Yes, but the tub was enormous as eternity, the water icy as death, and Miss Lewis was not there with her steamy hair and soft, soapy hands. Miss Lewis, Miss Lewis!
“You can splash all you want to. See? You splash me first, Billy. Go ahead, splash me, Billy.”
I cannot.
He pushed away, butting his father with his head, goatlike. He tried to run but the water was heavy, it dragged at his legs and pulled them down, it tossed him into a ball and chased the ball shoreward.
In the safe sand he uncurled like a giant worm, slow and silent, while Mrs. Wakefield’s scream ricocheted against the cliff wall.
Miss Lewis picked him up, pressing his dripping head against her starched chambray bosom, soothing him not with words but with low crooning sounds that she had learned a thousand years ago and had never quite forgotten.
Staggering under his weight she carried him up to the drier sand already hot with sun. He liked to be carried, to swing in time to Miss Lewis’ body and feel her warm quick breathing against his neck. He cried when she put him down, and lifted his arms to her like a baby. But in a moment he forgot what he was crying about. The tears dried on his cheeks leaving freckles of salt.
With Miss Lewis beside him he felt safe again, and pleasantly excited at her funny noises and at the sight of his mother scrambling down the face of the cliff calling his name. It was better than hiding and being found.
He felt quite safe again, yes, but he wasn’t ready yet to look at his father coming out of the jaws of the sea.
“He’s all right,” Miss Lewis said. “He’s a big brave boy. And he fooled us, didn’t you, Billy? We didn’t have any idea you were down here, swimming. My goodness!”
He had surprised them, after all. Miss Lewis trembled with surprise, and his mother was paper-white; and even his father, who had arranged the surprise, seemed quite taken in by it.
Everything dripped; his own hair, his father’s swimming trunks, his mother’s eyes. So much dripping, he urinated in the soft sand.
“Let’s go put on some dry clothes,” Miss Lewis said. “Come along.”
He lifted his arms to be carried, but she said, half-laughing: “You’re too heavy, Billy-my-boy. You weigh a ton.”
“I’ll carry him up,” Mr. Wakefield said.
Billy shook his head, grabbing at Miss Lewis’ skirt so that she almost fell. She helped him to his feet and they went off together, hand in hand, with Miss Lewis talking a blue streak.
Mr. Wakefield looked after them, defeated, shivering, feeling on his back and shoulders not the heat of the sun but the cold eyes of conscience.
“He let go so suddenly,” he said at last. “He made a push and knocked my breath out before I had any idea what he was going to do.”
“You shouldn’t have brought him down here at all.”
“He isn’t hurt.”
“He might have been. I’m not blaming you, I’m not. I was watching. I know how it happened. John...” Billy and Miss Lewis were at the stone steps now, and she was showing him how to hold on to the guard rail. From a distance they both looked very tiny and vulnerable, breakable dolls. “John, don’t ever bring him down here again, promise.”
“I thought he’d enjoy it. I thought... well, he seemed so much better, almost — almost normal. I thought you’d be — pleasantly surprised if I...” His voice dissolved at the base of his throat, and crystallized further down, thin and brittle as glass. “Miss Lewis said he showed a definite improvement. I wanted to... well, to enlarge his experience. I... expected too much of him, I guess. I’m sorry.”
“You must promise.”
“Yes. Yes, I promise.”
He felt sometimes that he lived within walls of promises and couldn’t breathe; a prison of promises. Promise me that you will never send him away to a school or anything. Promise that we will keep him with us always, away from other people, just with us so he’ll never know he’s different. Promise to make it up to him that he was ever born. Promise patience, faith, restraint, love, charity, strength, pity. Promise promises.
He turned to look at her and he saw that she was suffering more than he was. It was out of her womb that Billy had come, her son, her freak. Freak freak. He stabbed the word viciously into his heart, and pulled it out, and stabbed it in again until it was softened by his own blood.
It was no one’s fault, not his or hers or some obscure great-great-grandfather’s. It was an act of God. No blame could be apportioned, no justice expected.
“John.” Her hand was warm on his arm. “John, sometimes you look as if you hate me.”
“Hate you? I could never hate you, darling.”
It was true. He would always love her, it was the only promise in the wall that couldn’t be pried loose, or fall out from decay.
A gull cried, childlike, the sun was sharp as a devil’s eye. From its ledge the black flash of a cormorant swooped out to sea.
10
They found the starfish clinging to the underside of a rock in the shallow water. Mrs. Wakefield saw it first, just the tip of one of its arms uncovered by the ebb of a wave, but she said:
“You’d better investigate that rock, Jessie. I don’t seem to be able to find a thing.”
And so Jessie discovered the starfish for herself, and it was, from the first, her very own. It wasn’t as sweet and delicate as the baby one but it was far more sumptuous. Its five arms were fat and strong, violet-blue studded with silver beads. It was as big as Mr. Roma had promised it would be — as big as her head — and it clutched the palms of her hands powerfully, and curled one of its arms in dignified outrage.
“Look-it,” she cried in ecstasy. “He thinks I’m a rock, look-it!” And indeed, she felt like a rock, a fortress; a protector of all starfish; their friend, Jessie Banner.
“He can’t really think at all,” Mrs. Wakefield said.