Last Tide by Andy Zuliani

Author:Andy Zuliani [Zuliani, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781774390351
Publisher: NeWest Press
Published: 2021-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE:

DEATH AND SURFING

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN LENA AND RALEIGH SAW IT, THEY didn’t know what it was called; it was then nothing more than an structural feature, an elaboration of domestic space. But, even unnamed, it still was what it was: a widow’s walk. She was to learn this eventually, and then the name, suffused with decades of accumulated sorrow and loss, of women, hovering in the air, scanning the horizon, waiting for the sails of the ship to bring home man or body or a folded flag—then, the name would fit. In time, she would do the belated research. Why was it, after all, that pre-war homes built close to the shore needed these parapets, these elevated balconies, lookouts built before their need? It was of course a fact of home building, a style, a fad, but what could one make of the flowering of these walkways from the stems of tall houses—houses destined for abandonment, for ruin, to become nearly empty, and then empty all at once? The term was both a verb, and a noun: a widow’s walk. It described an action and a setting, a feeling and its infrastructure. What could one make of these structures outfitted so perfectly for their scenes of love and death? This was more than an ocean view. It was an arrangement of longing and loss into which Lena would eventually fall. She had cursed them with architecture.

In her arms, the coolness of the still-damp neoprene, as if he were already a corpse. The sound of the pickup’s engine turning over, and the dust that came from the road. The trees covering him up at the base of the hill, and never seeing him again.

Could she have seen it happen, from up on her balcony? She doubted it. It was only a fantasy of extended vision. The deck pointed at the appropriate line of surf, but from that elevation, he would have been invisible. But she did look out, when the day was coming to an end and he was not yet back, but saw nothing but the white lines of the break, already going grey in the fading light. And then she called, even though she knew that his phone would be ringing to itself in the glove compartment of their truck. And then she waited, in the dark, until the deep unformulated unease turned to fear. And then she began to walk.

From the sides of the path, a chorus of frogs and katydids sung her along. She had done this before, on other occasions when he was off somewhere in the Chevrolet but she still had errands to run; but she had never done it in the dark, and by the time she was in the trees the darkness was total. She made her way slowly, by the groove of the double-track under her feet, down the steep course from cliffside to sea level, over the narrow bridge, and into the halogen street lights of the main road.

A passing car gave her a ride to the beach.

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