The Salt of the Air

Two people who once loved each other are brought back together and reminded of the past.

 

Copyright © 2009 by Kherry McKay

 

 

The Salt of the Air

 

 

 

 

All Bernard wanted to do was get back. He thought of returning all the time.

 

He could picture the ocean waves coming in from the point, breaker after breaker. The sun going slowly down, tossing its last rays on the white roller coaster in the old amusement park. The surfers building fires, looking for friends to drink beer with. . . .

 

Bernard hadn’t seen the place since he had graduated from high school. That was in 1981, a different era. The Beach Boys were thought by that time to be corny, but how could you not listen to them on a sunny day?

 

The girls perfected tones of dark brown with their baby oil and patience. The sound of splashing water, of surf. Wetsuits and old guys endlessly searching sand dunes with newfangled metal detectors.

 

The Greyhound pulled into the Lake Tahoe depot. It was two in the morning. Bernard got out to have a smoke. It would be nice to get a drink in a seedy nearby bar, but the bus driver, if he got caught, wouldn’t let him back on the bus.

 

A trip across the country. All the way to Santa Cruz. . .

 

. . . to a woman named Sandy; lovely Sandy. Junior high dances. Football games. Taking the senior day hay ride up to Menlo Park. Driving all night to Disneyland so they could be tired all day and ride the rides.

 

Sandy, who was a cheerleader but didn’t think of herself as pretty or popular. Sandy, whose younger brother died when she was a senior in high school. Bernard and most of his classmates had gone to the funeral. He sat three rows behind her family. He watched her cry so hard she became a flung rag doll on the seat.

 

These were the years of puca shells and disco music. It was an innocent age that thought itself sophisticated. John Travolta’s legs seemed longer than a dancing giraffe’s. In the posters, Travolta pointed to a reflector-ball, but the kids of the day knew he was pointing somewhere else. To the elevation of fun; to the end of worry. Maybe simply to the future.

 

Bernard got back on the bus and looked at the picture he’d printed out from the computer. Sandy had written him over a marvelous invention called Facebook. She’d spotted his picture there.

Dear Bernie,

It’s so nice to see you. I want you to come out to Santa Cruz for a few days. It’ll be just you and me. My kid is off at school. I’ve been divorced for five years now. Will you come? We could put steaks on the grill. And walk on the beach. Will you think about it? I don’t want to leave, to change what I’m up to, without seeing your strong face.

I still have the surfboard you gave my brother. After he died, I kept it. Let’s put on Endless Summer and forget how hard life can be sometimes. Your friend, Sandy

 

He’d stared long and hard at the note. He looked at her picture. Sure, she was in her forties, but she had taken care of herself. She had that wonderful tan he missed in the girls in the East. Her smile remained playful. It always reminded him of a kitten’s, like she was thinking of how to play: how to get a ball of yarn and run with it.

 

“Hold on to sixteen as long as you can,” John Cougar sang back in his day.

 

He slept; the morning came. The bus rolled over the tan California hills. The grass was brown. Solitary oaks scattered in the hills like ancient sentinels.

 

He was passing over the Santa Cruz mountains when he realized how ridiculous the whole thing was. He didn’t have two dimes to rub together. She’d probably laugh at him.

 

He thought back to the years when he knew her.

 

He remembered kissing her. It was his first kiss: It was warm and wet. It seemed to last forever. The breeze sighed in the treetops. Life moved so slowly then. He looked down and saw her beautiful feet. They were making patterns in the sand.

 

“Your toes!” he said.

 

“What about my toes?”

 

“They’re curling.”

 

“They are not!” she cried. Her hair was tied up in a long pony tail.

 

“I swear they were!”

 

“O.K., Bernie, you may be a good kisser, but you don’t kiss well enough to curl anybody's toes!”

 

They looked up at the evening sky. A jet left its whispy signature high in the atmosphere. The sun glowed throw it, causing it to become a thread of gold.

 

He looked at Sandy. What would the future hold? She was sixteen.

 

Later, they had walked for a while. They found a driftwood log. A breeze came up, so they snuggled inside a little crèche the log made with the sand.

 

“Bernard?”

 

“Yeah, Sandy?”

 

“I don’t want this summer to end without telling you something.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

She was quiet for a while. She was lying back on him, between his legs, the back of her head at his Adam’s apple.

 

It was the most perfect moment of Bernard’s life.

 

She turned so she could see his face. “I just wanted to say, you’re my best friend. I always thought a girl had to be my best friend, but you’re my best friend.”

 

He smiled.  “You’re my best friend too, Sandy.”

 

They sat there for a long time watching the waves push through the darkness to their beach. They smelled the salt of the air. The seagulls mewed.

 

It was the most perfect moment of Bernard’s life.

 

And now he was returning to the person whom he’d spent it with.

 

(To be continued. . .)