ONE

Umbrellas and Seals

Again?” Rob Crosley mumbled as he made his way down the steps to the beach. This was the fourth day in a row that the interlopers had returned to the exact same spot, lined up under their beach umbrellas. Rob never saw them coming or going. They were there when he arrived, and they were there when he left. They were not technically interlopers—there were no private beaches on the bay, but the stretch of sand fronting Rob’s property was a quarter mile away from the access road and parking spaces that allowed public access to the beach.  Occasionally, some determined bunch would set out in search of a secluded spot further down the beach, away from the clot of vacationers who, by virtue of their indifference to crowds, or the fact that they just had too much crap, chose to stay close to the parking lot. This group of three, though not at all noisy, had a regimented approach to their beach-going adventure that added to the irritation Rob already felt at having his privacy invaded. Each of them sat under identical blue umbrellas, evenly spaced, a few feet from the water. Their chairs matched as well, though they were red, the same color as the two coolers that sat on either side of the middle chair, doubling as side tables. Were there no red umbrellas available?

Rob tried to think why he should feel irritated by these people on such an otherwise ideal afternoon. The breeze on the bay was from the south. A windsurfer darted away from the shore while boats motored out from the harbor, rushing to keep up with the tide. The air was so clear that the shoreline wrapping to Provincetown looked like a pen and ink drawing. Even the Plymouth coastline was visible across the bay. Rob decided it wasn’t so much that his privacy was being invaded, but more a sense that he was being taken advantage of. “We understand you own the house at the top of the dune there, but we’re going to sit here anyway,” they might be saying. Or perhaps the irritation was caused by the possibility that these people were becoming attached to this spot, and might come back every day for the rest of the summer, and future summers, as well.

There were forty-two steps down to the beach. Rob counted them most of the time, as if to make sure none were missing. They were in good shape despite the seasonal poundings of the elements. There was a healthy crop of poison ivy beneath the steps, which Rob wanted to spray—he was severely allergic—but Helen Shantz, his annoying neighbor who also used the steps, would have none of it. “God knows what else it would kill,” Helen Shantz said, waving to the other vegetation.

“What if the poison ivy kills me?” Rob said to her.

She rolled her eyes.

He was not kidding.

Rob arrived on the beach, with Sidney close behind, more or less. Sidney was Rob’s fifteen-year-old Australian Shepherd. Sidney was no longer able to race down the steps the way he once did, which saddened Rob. On the other hand, he wasn’t able to bound through the poison ivy anymore either. Sidney took the steps one at a time now, in a measured fashion, as if he was counting them, too.

Rob decided to walk past the group, traversing the narrow strip of sand between their feet and the water, and see if they made eye contact. As he got closer, he was struck by how still they were. They weren’t talking, and though they brought books, they weren’t reading them. The first two were attractive females, in good shape, maybe in their thirties. The other was a man, probably similar in age, maybe a bit younger. They were not particularly tanned, but the fact that they stayed under their umbrellas gave Rob no clue how long they had been on vacation. The women were fidgeting with their paperbacks, looking more like they were sitting in an airport terminal than at the beach. The man was studying the water, a pair of binoculars in his lap, poised to witness something. They could have been on a reconnaissance mission. Rob passed in front of them, affecting some form of expression that conveyed both suspicion and congeniality. Sidney ignored them, his nose to the sand, sniffing what the tide had pushed in. Rob nodded and said, “Hello.”

Neither of the women looked up, burying their faces in their books instead. The man pushed the binoculars up to his eyes and continued his surveillance. Rob mumbled to himself, turned away, and headed past them. They behaved as if it was their beach and Rob was the intruder.

After setting up his own chair, and dropping his book on the seat, he walked to the water where Sidney had started rolling in the wet sand. Why couldn’t they have said hello? If they had been in the city and passed each other on the sidewalk, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they kept to themselves. But on the beach, on vacation, when no one else was around, and they were supposed to be relaxed and unthreatened, why wouldn’t they say something? Then again, this bunch had hiked down the beach to get away from the crowds. Maybe they didn’t like other people. Maybe they had nothing to say to anyone. Maybe they behaved that way to drive Rob as far away as possible. Or maybe they were just assholes.

Rob stuck his foot in the water and tugged at his bathing suit which had become wedged between his buttocks. He wondered whether he was an asshole. Maybe at times, he decided, but not generally. He could be thoughtful if he wanted to be. If he was a real asshole he would have sprayed the poison ivy under the steps and told Helen Shantz to get lost. But he didn’t, because she was his neighbor, and he didn’t want to have an uncomfortable relationship with someone he ran into on a regular basis.

When Rob’s son, Danny, was eight years old, he heard a man yell “Jesus!” as he went into the water. Danny asked his father why the man was angry with Jesus, and Rob explained that he was reacting to the cold water. “He could have said “Wow!” or “Holy cow!” too,” Rob said, glad the man hadn’t said, “Holy shit!” From that day on, Danny yelled “Jesus!” whenever he went into the water. Eventually, the days on which the water was legitimately cold, meaning the bones in your legs felt like they were turning to ice, became known as “Jesus! Days.” Today was not a Jesus! Day, Rob decided, once he got far enough into the water for the more sensitive parts of his body to become submerged—the tide was going out, and he had to travel thirty yards before his nuts were under water. Sidney waded in, too, but went no further than where he could stand. He was not a swimmer, and he no longer had any nuts. He cocked his head to one side and watched Rob disappear under the water. Rob was not much of a swimmer either but he liked being in the water, if only to get wet, and he liked sitting in the sun to dry off afterwards.

When Rob came out of the water, he tugged at the front of his bathing suit to keep the material from clinging to his crotch. Maybe the thing to do was to wear some kind of water-proof undergarment to keep the suit from wandering. Or he could take the thing off altogether. Would anyone mind? The umbrella people certainly wouldn’t notice. And if they did, and were offended, they could move. Rob toweled off, covered himself in sun block, thinking about the sun-burn he would get if he was nude, then sat down and opened his book.  After a few minutes Helen Shantz wandered by.

“Oh my, what a gorgeous day,” she said. Helen Shantz was wearing a large sun hat and a robe. She was a short, skinny woman, but always seemed to be draped in oversized apparel. She carried a small beach chair.

“Hello, Helen,” Rob said. She never called Rob by his name. She never called him anything, in fact. She just started talking, usually to complain about something.

“How is your family?” she asked.

“All well, thanks.”

“Are they here?”

Rob raised his eyebrows and had the notion to look behind him just to be sure, but he figured she was asking whether they were on the Cape.  “Yes. Katie and Danny are here,” he said. He liked using names with her in the hope that maybe, one day, she might remember them. Sidney had returned from the water. Sidney didn’t much care for Helen Schantz either.

“Oh that’s wonderful. And there’s your dog! So well-behaved! You know, I noticed you left your porch light on last night. I don’t mean to be a pest but it really does shine into my bedroom window.”

Rob cringed. “Christ, I’m sorry, Helen. Danny must not have turned it off when he came in last night. I went to bed early myself.” The first time Rob met Helen Shantz she lectured him about outdoor lighting and in what circumstances it was a violation of town ordinances.

“Yes, well…” Helen said.

Rob seized the opportunity to change the subject, and perhaps swing Helen Shantz into his corner. “Do you know who those people are over there?” he asked.

“I don’t,” she said, continuing to look at Rob. “But then I’m not wearing my glasses. I’m really blind without them. Is there anything I need to know?”

Rob considered whether he should fabricate some story of reckless behavior that might spur Helen Schantz to action. He had no doubt that she would walk right over and confront them with whatever charges Rob brought.

“They’ve been here for three days,” Rob said in an ominous way, lending some doubt.

“They sleep on the beach?”

“I think they go home at night.”

Helen briefly looked over at the group one more time, and then searched the sky. “Such a gorgeous day, I can’t see how anyone could possibly complain about anything.” With that she headed several yards away and unfolded her chair. Sidney followed her for a few steps while emitting a low growl.

Rob growled under his breath, too, watching Helen Shantz, under her enormous sun hat, settle into her chair. “What about the porch light, Helen? That wasn’t a complaint?” He probably said this a little too loudly. Helen looked up. Rob shifted his attention back to his book and pretended he hadn’t said anything. Sidney abandoned his pursuit, satisfied he had chased the woman away, and lay down under the umbrella.

A short time later Rob looked up from his book and noticed that Sidney was intently watching something behind them. Rob turned to find the two women, freed from their umbrellas, each standing on one leg, slowly rotating their torsos with their arms extended in front of them, in some kind of rhythmic exercise. The man was still under his umbrella, oblivious to the oriental shenanigans going on behind him. Perhaps he had already seen it.

Rob had a hard time not staring. The women had beautiful legs and great skin. He had recently decided that a woman’s most attractive quality was her skin; clean, unblemished, free of wrinkles and hair. These women had skin that seemed to glow in the sunlight. Rob’s skin did not glow. It was brown and leathery and had started to sag in places, particularly around his midsection. There were more discolorations, too, now that he was spending more time at the beach. He meant to go and see a dermatologist.

“I think that’s Tai Chi, Sidney,” Rob said. Sidney looked back at Rob. Was he panting from the heat? “Easy, old boy.”

At some point Rob decided he should probably stop ogling the women, though he was beginning to worry they were getting too much sun. Like pie crusts browning in the oven, he had the urge to cover them with aluminum foil. He turned around, in time to see a small dark object pop out of the water.

“Oh, shit,” Rob said. Sidney was watching, too. The object disappeared, but after a couple of seconds it resurfaced, further along, it’s snout pivoting around like a periscope. “They’re here, Sidney.”

The night before, Rob had watched a national news segment about the Cape’s seal problem. He seldom watched the national news on any channel, and after watching for twenty minutes, he was glad he didn’t. The first fifteen minutes of the newscast focused mostly on death and destruction. After that came short pieces about less depressing oddities, interspersed among drug commercials aimed at the aged and dying. Had he become part of this demographic?

Close on the heels of an ad about an older couple who had discovered the wonders of Cialis, came the story about the Cape Cod seals. Rob was concerned that the news anchor was not conveying the appropriate level of concern in his demeanor. Seals had too long been the darling of films and the media. This needed to change.

The opening shot was from a plane flying over the Monomy Islands, a stretch of sandy outposts south of Chatham. The sand, however, was not visible, having been blanketed by thousands of seals. “Look at all those fuckers,” Rob said. The correspondent rattled off statistics—nearly twenty thousand seals on the Cape and Islands, growing at a rate of twenty percent annually, each one eating forty pounds of fish per day.

“They’re eating more fish than all of us can catch,” a local fishermen said. “It’s time to lift the ban and cull the herd.”

The correspondent looked distressed. “You want to kill seals?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the fisherman.

“Don’t they have as much right to the fish as we do?”

The fisherman became more animated. “Every one of the ocean beaches on the Cape is now shark infested. They’re hunting seals, but every now and then they’ll get confused and take a chunk out of a swimmer. The seals eat our fish and the sharks eat our children. We’re under attack here.”

“Not just the ocean beaches anymore,” Rob said as he watched the seal disappear under the water. Soon the sharks would arc around Provincetown and start hunting for seals in the bay, if they hadn’t already. 

Seals also attracted little kids, two of which now came sprinting down the beach, pointing toward where they had last seen the seal. “Where did he go? Come back, seal!”

Rob thought about how one would go about killing seals. He pictured a speed boat zipping along the shore of the Monomy Islands. A man could position himself in the bow and strafe the beach with a machine gun. This was bound to upset some people, though. Anything involving high-powered weapons was generally frowned upon. Perhaps the females could be trapped and neutered?  

The overexposed Tai Chi women finished their calisthenics and returned to the umbrellas. They were talking to the man now. He was stirring and seemed liable to get out of his chair. Were they leaving? If not, what? Would they play whiffle ball? Toss a Frisbee? Frolic? The man forced a laugh and Rob imagined one of the women had made some joke about the consequences of standing on one foot in the hot sand too long. The man put down his binoculars and picked up what looked to be a camera.

With that, the three of them emerged from under the umbrellas, in all their pastiness, and headed for the water.

“Probably not a good idea to go into the water when you’ve just seen a seal,” Rob said to himself, wanting to say it louder. Sidney apparently agreed. He started to follow them toward the water, one ear straight up, the other flopping around uncontrollably—that ear had never been right—and started barking. Sidney was not a barker.

“Sidney, shut up!” Rob said. The three of them were wading into the water. The tide was still low but had started coming in. They were chatty now, talking as they trudged to a point where the water was deep enough to swim. Rob could hear every word. The calm, cool surface of the bay was an excellent conduit for sound waves. It was every eavesdropper’s dream. Rob had once heard a young couple discussing the effects of cold water on their genitals. Mostly, people discussed what they had eaten at their last meal or were planning to eat at the next, or how they had just urinated in their bathing suit.

Here is some of what Rob and Sidney, who had stopped barking and lay down to nap, heard them say:

“You have the camera?”

“I do.”

“The water’s colder today.”

“It’s fine.”

“Something just pinched my toe.”

“Make sure it isn’t bleeding.”

“Today’s the day.”

They moved out of range, swimming south, until all that was left was the sound of the gulls and the swollen rush of the tide pushing back toward shore. The water sparkled as the sun stretched toward the horizon. Rob wondered what the one swimmer had meant when she said, “Today’s the day.” The day for what? Were they going to perform some kind of aquatic stunt and capture it on camera? He reached over and patted Sidney. The dog slept so deeply now it was not always clear that he was still alive. Rob checked for signs of respiration. Sidney’s flanks were still, but soon they rose and fell. “Good boy.” Rob reclined the back of his chair, taking another look in the direction of the swimmers, figuring they were going to take a picture of the seal, and fell into his own deathlike sleep.

*            *            *

Rob was awakened by Sidney’s low growl. Helen Schantz had packed up and was on her way to the stairs. She had a hand on the brim of her hat—the wind had kicked up—and she looked as if she was tipping her cap goodbye.

Despite the turn in the weather, the three umbrellas were still there, flapping in the wind, but no one was under them. The wind had whipped up three foot waves, helping the tide roll toward shore. There was no sign of any swimmers. The wind had shifted out of the north, and the temperature was dropping. Clouds moved in. People at the public beach were packing up and heading for their cars.  

The three umbrellas began to struggle against the wind, and Rob wondered if he should take them down before they cartwheeled down the beach. Though there was no one left for them to impale, Rob decided that because he was not an asshole, he would get up and collapse the umbrellas. As he did so, he noticed the swimmers’ towels neatly folded over the backs of the three chairs. He touched one of them, and found it was completely dry. He looked at the water. They might have folded their towels after drying off, but they would still be damp, wouldn’t they? No one was in the water. He looked down the beach in both directions, hoping to see a trio of walkers, but there were none. The wind gusted now. Sidney sniffed at the coolers.

“Let’s go, Sidney,” Rob said. “Time for scotch and crackers.”

As he headed up the stairs he looked back at the beach, wondering what he would do if the umbrellas were still there later that evening. Should he call the police? It occurred to him that Helen Schantz would have seen the three swimmers return, if they had returned. She might have seen them heading off on a walk. As much as he didn’t want to, he decided to stop at her house and ask. Somehow he felt responsible for the people on the beach that was his but wasn’t, the beach that was now narrowing by the onrushing tide.