The Underneath by Melanie Finn

Author:Melanie Finn [Finn, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788541237
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

32

Crystal Lake State Park, with its limpid water and long, sandy beach swarming with other children, had proven to be their favorite place to swim. Like dogs, Freya and Tom wanted most to be with others of their kind, making the same easy, momentary friendships.

While Kay set up a blanket on the grass, Freya and Tom ran immediately to the water. Tom, in particular, had marveled at the freshness, how he could open his eyes under the surface without burning his retinas. A London child, he’d only experienced chlorine or, once in Hastings, salt. “Mum, Mum!” he’d come running to tell her on their first outing here. “It doesn’t have any taste. It’s just water!”

She watched them swim out to the buoys marking the edge of the swimming zone. Freya, with her long arms like sculling oars, made sure, deft strokes. Tom, the product of multiple swim classes, had a workman-like skill, his feet out-boarding behind him. They were good swimmers, she noted; some of the local kids couldn’t even doggy-paddle. Out beyond the buoys, the lake spilled placidly south, water-skiers and wake-boarders, kayaks and canoes.

Around her, other families dabbled infants on the lake edge or fired up the park’s cement grills. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, cigarettes, sun-tan lotion, beer—the olfactory potpourri of mid-July.

Somewhere further along the beach, under the sugar maples, a man laughed, a loud, manly guffaw. Kay saw him, large, round-bellied, bare-chested, waving a pair of barbecue tongs about. He belched, and his son, a square-shaped boy of ten, laughed in the same blunt way, then mimicked the burp. Father and son cackled in joy.

Kay sat on her blanket, pulling her hat down to shade her eyes: out there, rounding the buoy and turning back toward the beach, Freya and Tom swam with their sleek wet heads. She could hear the burpers still laughing. Another man, tall and lean, entered her view and, for a moment she thought it was Ben Comeau. Instinctively, she touched her hand to her hair.

As he walked toward her, she could see more clearly now his lankiness, his hair dark because it was wet, he was only 17 or 18. The boy turned to a friend, laughing, and they pivoted toward a group of girls further down the beach. Kay watched them for a while, their new bodies and new voices, they laughed and flirted. Just beyond them: Tom and Freya now on the sand, intent on a sand castle. She closed her eyes against the sun’s bright glare and she had the impression of Michael: he was there with her, beside her. They were lovers in a hotel room, clean cotton sheets, and her body was lean and brown. He marveled at her.

Then the light changed; the sun now surfed the tops of the surrounding hills. There was the slightest shifting down in temperature. Kay startled with the revelation that she’d fallen asleep. She sat up. Though the mass of children had begun to thin out, there were still a dozen or so splashing in the shallows on a flotilla of cheap plastic rafts.

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