The Wave by D J Roosh

His wife smiles as she looks over at him, slipping her hand over top of his. They sit in rented beach chairs not far from where their three small children are playing in the sand. Digging up ‘rivers’ for the sea to flow into and filter out of. Sand castles that are hastily built and quickly moved on from. Splashes in the cool surf washing far enough inland to get their ankles wet.

He looks back with a manufactured smile painted on his face. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes, but his wife is so enamored with the moment and lost in her dream of all of the memories this will create she missed it. He doesn’t pull his hand away but a subtle repulsion circulates through the arm, as if leaving his hand in place on the beach chair with his wife’s hand over it might cause irreparable harm. A phantom current flowing from her hand up the length of his arm.

A bland rush of air breezes by and he is surprised, as he had been since they arrived at the beach house days before on this trip, his first to the Atlantic Ocean. The sea air isn’t salty like he had read in books or imagined in his head. A subtle rot-like stench decants from the air into everything, the lemonade he drinks, the cold meat sandwiches he eats, the beach towels they can’t seem to get the smell out of. The ocean is cold, none of them braving it to go further in than up to their waist. The coolness of the ocean surf splashing at his children’s ankles wouldn’t retreat for another several weeks, a server at a local restaurant had told them the night before. But they hadn’t known that when they booked the rental, which in hindsight was too good of a deal to be well timed with appropriate temperatures for a spring vacation.

Blue skies meet the ocean at a horizon that seems impossibly far away. He had noticed offshore drilling rigs on their first day, but the same local restaurant server had assured him it was too far out to impact any of the beaches on the edge of  the seaside tourist town depending on those beaches. His inner cynic laughed, of course someone dependent on tourism money would keep the party line. The cold waters, at least, kept his children from being exposed too much to anything malevolent mixing with the ocean that far out to sea.

He hadn’t wanted to come here. Even with an affordable rental, the trip was already more expensive than he was comfortable with. They had apparently booked flights at a peak time for fares, his pricing alerts telling him the same destination could be had for less than half their fare, per person, a few weeks later. Spending a week sitting on a beach doing nothing didn’t appeal to him, he could do that for free in the comfort of his own home and sleeping in his own bed. Yet here he was, thousands of dollars gone, subjected to a lumpy bed with only one flat pillow, stuck on a beach with water too cold to swim in.

The oldest child had brought binoculars for bird watching. They were quickly forgotten once the prospect of digging up small arthropods in the beach sand presented itself. He picked up the binoculars, hoping for some novelty to break up the growing bleakness of sitting in a beach chair all day, watching his children play and nothing else.

His wife comments to him about reading one of the books she had purchased for him, specifically for this kind of quiet opportunity. A small pile of paperbacks sits untouched on the small portable table they had found in the rental home’s garage. He used to like reading, she reminds him. This supposed revelation causes him to pause, look at the books about time management and goal setting and raising strong children, and put the binoculars back to his face.

The oil rig doesn’t seem to be where he last saw it. The disappearance is probably due to tides that are obscuring the horizon, he thinks while turning his attention further along the horizon. The binoculars are placed back into the small, bright blue case given with the binoculars as a birthday gift.

It hadn’t always been this way. Before their first child they had gone to Yellowstone and spent days hiking. She hadn’t wanted to camp, but he was able to convince her to set up a tent in a secluded spot near a power outlet in the KOA campground. She relaxed considerably as the night came on and their isolation felt more certain. They made love in the tent. More than once.

After that they had driven to other national parks and monuments where she would walk in awe as he led her to obscure vistas off of the pathed trails. They booked all inclusive resort vacations where they would drunkenly laugh while complaining about the bland food together and terrible karaoke. They had flown overseas to get lost in large cities where they didn’t speak the language and she treated him like her protector as they navigated their way back to someplace familiar.

He catches himself chuckling softly to himself, hoping his wife hasn’t noticed. She smiles back at him again, assuming he is just displaying a satisfaction with their day that didn’t exist. Something like indigestion or disgust-induced nausea bubbles up inside him.

This woman thinks she knows him. The thought almost makes him laugh again. She hasn’t paid any attention to him since they started having kids. Unless she wanted another kid or an expensive vacation he may as well rent a room near the office. He can’t even think of the names of the shows she watches despite her constant updates about the various dramatic plot twists and surprise deaths all of the time or any of the names of her friends from work that he doesn’t give a shit about. It seems to be very important to her for him to know these superfluous details of her life when her only concern about him is the size and potential growth of his paycheck. Paying attention to her little life comes hard when she doesn’t seem to care about his, either, or at least that is what he tells himself to justify his neglect.

The air suddenly feels charged around him. The wind briskly whips the umbrella stabbed into the sand between him and his wife. The small waves washing ashore begin to get foamy white caps as a stronger breeze turns over their once smooth, rolling march onto the sand. His wife hasn’t seemed to notice and the children remain happily digging more holes in hopes of finding buried treasure. Maybe his boredom had distracted him from the weather, but it seems they should be returning to the rental. He mentions it to his wife, eyes looking away behind dark sunglasses. She lets out an incredulous laugh, rolling her eyes. The children are happy, which, she reminds him, is something he should cherish. “Should” comes out with too much emphasis, hangs a little too long. It goes down with a sour taste, poisoning the air between them.

One of the kids rushes up to tug on his free hand, attempting to draw him further onto the beach to look at their latest adventure in the sand. He can feel the heat from his wife’s smile burn the side of his face, so he relents and gets led to a large hole dug into the beach down to the waterline. The other children are almost dancing around them, their excitement wiggling their bodies in joy as they hop around the other child and their father looking into the shallow abyss. The youngest child bounces into the back of his leg in an attempt at a hug and the third child puts on an impromptu ballet, leaping around the small group over the hole.

His wife hollers something that gets drowned out by the surf. Her face shows that she has put on her mother voice, thin lips moving around exaggerated words repeatedly so the message gets sent. ‘Don’t dig too deep,’ and ‘include your sister’ and to him ‘smile!’

The sky roils above them, dark clouds moving too fast, a boil of grays and blacks accented by white edges where sunlight attempts to push through. The crashing surf catches his ear. His head snaps from his wife to the ocean, where the white caps are now rolling over top of each other. The children have already returned to their work on another hole near the beach chairs, but he is still by the first hole. The hole below him appears to fill with something dark and viscous in his peripheral vision, but a direct look says otherwise. A wave plunges onto the shallow, surging up the beach to his feet. The tide, he thinks before his attention is pulled further out to sea. The tumultuous ocean, a calm rolling patchwork of small waves minutes before, tosses itself chaotically.

He turns back towards the beach chairs, sunglasses pushed to the top of his head, arms outstretched presenting the darkening sky and growing surf to his wife, as if he is presenting a closing argument. She turns her eyes towards the children playing and shakes her head. Frustrated impotence reddens his face.

The horizon is difficult to gauge now, but a bulge in the distance makes him uncomfortable. A deeply rooted fear, the word ‘instinctual’ enters his mind, grips him and pushes his focus out to the bulge. Voices clash with the surf around him, but it is all lost in a buzzing in his head. The fringes of his vision go dark as the bulge begins to stand up slowly, an angry silhouette gathering itself as it approaches the beach.

His head snaps back up the beach with churlish anger in his voice. The children look at him like he is a wild animal, an unpredictable temperament suggesting caution. A fist sits on his wife’s hip now with her head stuck out, a silent warning that he is out of line. A bitter laugh escapes him, the status quo of dismissal upheld.

A bright blue sky makes him squint when he returns to face the ocean. A calm horizon sits beneath the blue sky, the oil rig a lonesome dot sitting upon it. The steady beach breeze stiff but tolerable. A cool but perfect day at the beach.

His clammy hand reaches up and pulls down his face over closed eyelids. The sun still pushes its way through into the bright red veil of his closed eyes. It had been there. The sharp wind. The rising tumult of the surf. Something threatening and terrifying growing out on the sea.

The sky seems to bubble down on top of him. Sand whips at his face. The wall of water is gathered again and marching slowly across the ocean. They shouldn’t have been there. Here. He had protested, nearly in tears, to cancel this vacation. An unmentioned poor quarterly review. Rumors of layoffs soon after. But he relented. He didn’t want her to know. The vacation was a convenient distraction.

His mind wanders despite the looming danger. What good is he to this family without his paycheck? To three children he has brought into this world. To his wife, who thought she was marrying an upwardly mobile breadwinner. Who has an expectation of a certain lifestyle that is nonnegotiable? Spite foamed in his mind. His purpose in life backed into the corner of a suburban existence filled with mortgage payments, college funds, retirement savings, school fees, instrument rental, annual sports equipment refreshes, increasingly expensive Christmas gifts, extended family obligations that robbed him of his identity.

For just one second, he questions if he is actually dreaming, if his worst fears are playing with his absent mind. A blast of sand whips his face, but when he goes to wipe it away his hand comes back without grit. The sky is still blue, the oil rig on the horizon mocking him.

He releases a frustrated gasp. Up the beach a child pushes fluorescent green sunglasses under a sunhat. The three of them line up in front of their mother, each waiting their turn to reapply sunscreen. She looks down the beach and smiles at him, a half truth upon her face. She gives him a perplexed look with a suggestion of disapproval. A towel flaps lazily off the back of a beach chair and children’s arms flail happily in the air like streamers in a light breeze.

Sounds crash again in his mind and suddenly the wall of water is approaching again. It is so large it’s hard to judge its speed. The surf appears to abruptly retreat from the beach, revealing imagined tidal landscapes exposed to the air lying flat. He pictures a small silver fish flashing as it spasms on the dry land. He reminds himself it isn’t real, but some primal fear is playing with his mind. The wave is above him. Its crest begins to bow.

His mind turns to run, but his body is still. His mouth opens to scream but his family is frozen. The disappointed glare still turned his way. Motionless childrens’ mouths open, laughing. The wave’s shadow on top of him. Its presence is oppressive. Its unreality doesn’t assuage his fear. He can feel a long buried weeping trying to claw its way out.

Resentment asserts itself, pushing his fear out. He wasn’t supposed to be here. All of the pressure shouldn’t be on him. To maintain their lifestyle. To pay for an expensive home they could barely afford. A new car every three years. Music lessons the children didn’t even want. A gym membership that goes unused. A miserable job to endure because the money is good and keeps his family in name brand clothing.

The wave is nearly on top of him now. Its movement is slow with a dreamlike quality like aged, cracking 8mm film. He stands against it, arms raised into a T. He takes a deep breath. A cynical prayer plays out in his mind, wishing the relief barreling down on him real, accepting his burdens and setting him free. The pressure to provide for his family lifts off him like one brick of the pile crushing him. Keeping up appearances for imagined and irrelevant status dislodges from the pile, falling to the side. More bricks slide off the pile, the relief giving him the glow of finality he didn’t know he wanted but now knows he needed. The friendships he maintained because of convenience. The expectation of constant and unwavering positivity required to exist in the world that he built up around him as he grew older. The distance between his younger self and the youthful dreams of what the future held. Of the disappointment his current life would have been to that idealized self.

He closes his eyes, attempting to clear his mind from the phantom wave hunting him from the sea. But the wave crashes over the top of him. Its weight hits him, pressing him flat before the current jerks him back upwards. He feels himself tumble around, struck by the other contents within the wave. He defies the salty water and opens his eyes, welcoming a sharp sting that isn’t there. A slowly moving vision of the other four members of his family dancing in a hallucination of refracted light. His family sits on a towel spread out in front of the beach chairs. The wave carries him towards them, above them, and he can see smiles on the childrens’ faces. His wife’s hand is lovingly brushing wet hair over one of their ears. Her bright white teeth sparkle through the cloudy tumult. He is held in time, as if the force of nature in his mind is forcing him to reflect on the reality in front of him.

A dull ache fills him. He realizes that the burdens he so desperately wants to escape are like lines in a coloring book. The happy times with his children color in the spaces. Difficult moments with his wife give shape to the happier times where they can laugh at their past follies. His personal tribulations added warmth to the colors on the page.

Regret is now in control, the resentment screaming weakly in the background. If he had spoken up more. If he had been honest about his money worries. If he had cared about his kids more. If he had wanted anything out of life other than avoiding accountability. But he has only cared about himself. About avoiding the discomfort of conflict. About avoiding his wife’s judgment. About painting the picture of his life so nothing is his fault. About not disappointing anyone, yet still disappointing everyone.

Seconds pass but he feels held in eternity. He closes his eyes and begs for forgiveness. His heart bursts as all of the pressure from years of not living his own life finally escapes its bounds. He wants to sob, but his feelings are drowned, overwhelmed by the wave in his mind.

***

Two hands on his shoulders shake him, a murmured voice he knows is directed to him. His eyes open, first to a fuzzy blue sky then to a blurry face. He is lying next to one of his childrens’ abandoned holes, murky sea water in its bottom. A drowning gasp fills his lungs. Sand crunches in his ear as his head lolls from side to side.

His wife pulls him into a gentle embrace and lets him gently back onto the sand. Six tear-filled eyes whimper behind her. The beach chairs are in the background, undisturbed with the dancing towel shimmying off the back of one. Crinkly silver wrappers are scattered at their feet.

The bleating of sirens grows louder, followed by opening doors, quickly spoken instructions, and clanging from equipment being jostled then pushed in his direction.

He looks at his wife with unbroken eye contact. His hands feel for hers and slowly pull them into his chest. One hand releases and rises weakly towards her tear covered face, but falls limply to the sand. She tries to force an encouraging smile.

“I will do better,” he says in a dry croak. She laughs again and buries her face in his cheek then kisses him on the lips. Her love is like a heat that he had been missing, thawing the frost of resentment on his long chilled heart. It had been there all along, it just needed to be found and dug up, like buried treasure.

She gets shooed away by paramedics, who immediately begin asking if he can talk, flashing lights in his eyes, shoving a plastic cuff onto his arm, and a cold metal clip on his index finger.

The abrasiveness of the sand scrapes away the skin on his back as he is slid onto a plastic stretcher. The shifting and scraping and tugging and loud voices don’t bother him anymore. He understands now. He knows what he has to do. Should have done. Doesn’t matter anymore. He is at peace.

Despite the chaos around him, his eyes close again, his breathing slows to a weak rasp. He opens his eyes one more time, to watch the wave turn back out to sea, rushing over the horizon as quickly as it had hit the beach. It disappears as the small dark point that is an oil rig takes its place on the horizon.

D J Roosh

Image – Angry waves in black and white from Pixabay.com