The house was too far from the world to offer cellular service, but there was WiFi, a preposterously long password (018HGF234WRH357XIO) to keep out whom—the deer, the owls, the stupid flightless turkeys? She tapped the glass, spelling it out, random as Ouija or the rosary, then the thing took and the emails arrived, piling the one atop the other. Forty-one! She felt so necessary, so missed, so loved.
In her personal account she learned that things were on sale, that the book club she’d been meaning to join was scheduling a fall get-together, that the New Yorker had written about a Bosnian filmmaker. In her work account, there were questions, there were concerns, and people were seeking Amanda’s participation, her opinion, her guidance. Everyone had received her out-of-office reply, sunny and authoritative, but she broke the promise to be in touch upon her return. No, don’t do X. Yes, email Y. Ask so-and-so about such-and-such. Just a reminder to follow up with that person about this matter.
Her arm grew tingly from the exertion of holding aloft the too-small phone. She flipped onto her stomach, the sheets warm from her body, so the transitive warmth against her vulva was that of her own body, and flopping around in the bed was an act of masturbation. She felt clean, ready to feel dirty, but she worked her way through the emails, distracting herself until at last Clay came to her, smelling of furtive cigarettes and the lemon wedges in his vodka.
The heat from the shower had softened her spine the way room temperature does a stick of butter. The occasional vinyasa class had made her more attentive to her bones. She let them give. She relaxed away from her usual resolve not to do the filthiest things they could conjure between the two of them. She let him knead his fingers into her hair and hold her head firmly but gently against the pillow, her throat a passage, a void to be filled. She let herself moan more loudly than she might have at home, because there was that long hall between them and the children’s rooms. She bucked her hips back and up to meet his mouth, and later—it felt an eternity but was only twenty minutes—she took his wilting penis into her mouth, marveling at the taste of her own body.
“Christ.” Clay was wheezing.
“You have to quit smoking.” She worried about a cardiac event. They were not so young. Every mother had contemplated the loss of a child; Amanda had no emotions left around the theoretical death of her husband. She’d love again, she told herself. He was a good man.
“I do.” Clay did not mean it. There was already so little pleasure in modern life.
Amanda stood, stretched, happily sticky, wanting a cigarette herself; the dizzying effect would put her at some remove from what they had just done, which you needed after sex, even with a familiar. That wasn’t really me! She opened the door, and the night was shocking with noise. Crickets or whatever bug that was, various maybe sinister footfalls in the dried leaves of the woods beyond the lawn, the stealthy breeze moving everything, maybe the vegetal growth actually made a sound, even, the barest scritch, scritch of the advancing grass, the heartbeat throb of the oak leaves flowing with chlorophyll.
Amanda had a feeling like being watched, but there was no one out there watching her, was there? An involuntary shiver at the very idea, then a retreat into the adult illusion of safety.
The two of them crept, naked as Neanderthals, across the deck, the only light a slice of it falling through the glass door. Clay heaved the cover off the hot tub, and they sank into its froth, the steam obscuring his glasses, a satisfied sensual grin. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. His pale flesh in stark relief. She could see him as he was, but she loved him.
6
NO ONE HAD BOUGHT CEREAL. ARCHIE WANTED A SPECIFIC taste less than the feel of processed grain gone soft enough in milk. He yawned.
“Sorry, champ. I’ll make you an omelet.” His dad had this stupid game of being the best at making breakfast. Though he was a good cook—he always put butter on the toast and then put it back into the toaster oven so it melted into the bread until the thing was sloppy like someone had already chewed it—there was something sad in the way he needed attention for it.
Amanda was spreading sunscreen on Rose’s back. The television was on, but no one was actually watching it. She wiped her hands on her own bare legs and put the bottle into the tote bag. “Rose, you’re bringing three books? For one afternoon at the beach?”
“We’ll be gone all day. What if I run out of something to read?”
“The bag is already very heavy—”
Rose didn’t want to whine, it just sort of happened.
“You can put them in this bag.” Clay thought the girl’s bookishness reflected well on them. “Archie, can you bring this bag?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.” Archie lingered in there before the mirror. He was wearing his lacrosse shirt, the one he’d cut the sleeves off because he wanted people to see his muscles, and he studied them, happy with what he saw.
“Hurry up,” Clay called to his son, the irritation that necessitated this relaxation.
“I’ve got lunch in there. And water. And the blanket and towels.” Amanda was pointing at bags, sure they’d forget something even so, best-laid plans.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” A little Christ under the breath, which was more a reflex than he realized. Archie took the bag his father had left by the sofa. It weighed nothing! He was so strong.
The family trooped outside, loaded their things, and buckled their bodies. The GPS churned, unable to locate itself, or them, or the rest of the world. Without much thinking about it, Clay found the road to the highway and the satellite recovered its hold on them and they drove under its protective gaze. The highway turned into a bridge that seemed to lead to nothing, that led to the end of America itself. They wound into the empty parking lot (it was early) and paid five dollars to a khaki-uniformed teen who seemed himself made of sand—golden curls, freckles, browned skin, teeth like little shells.
There was a tunnel from the lot to the shore that carried them past a park, flagpoles towering as redwoods, flags of many nations cracking in the ocean air.
“What’s this?” Archie, derisive even when he didn’t mean to be.
They stood in flip-flopped feet in a little canyon of concrete, and Amanda read the inscription. “It’s for the victims of Flight 800.” TWA, bound for Paris. Everyone had perished. You heard that rendered as souls, sometimes, which made it sound more grand or old-fashioned or sanctified. Amanda remembered—conspiracy theorists said it had been an American missile, but logic said it was mechanical failure. We pretend otherwise, but these things happen.
“Let’s go!” Rose tugged on the tote bag slung across her father’s shoulder.
It was hot but the wind was relentless, bringing in a chill from the void of the ocean. There was something Arctic in it, and who was to say that wasn’t literally the case. The world was vast but also small and governed by logic. Amanda struggled to spread the blanket, something she’d found on the internet, block-printed by illiterate Indian villagers. She placed a bag at each corner to weigh the thing down. The children shed their layers and bounded off like gazelles. Rose investigated the detritus washed up on the sand, shells and plastic cups and iridescent balloons that had celebrated proms and sweet sixteens miles away. Archie knelt in the sand some distance from their encampment, pretending not to stare at the lifeguards, hale girls, sun-lightened locks and red swimsuits.