Down the Shore (7 page)

Back at the house, Clare disappeared into the bathroom while I unpacked my bag. My mother heard us come in and ran up from the shop, motioning wildly for me to follow her back down. I laughed when I saw the couch, which took up most of the room.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she whispered.

I shrugged. “I tried to call you.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to put it? Do you have any idea what this thing costs?”

“Leave it there. Give people a place to sit.”

“There's no place to
stand
,” she hissed, watching the stairs as Clare's boat shoes appeared on the landing, and began their descent. “What are you doing back? I thought you were driving to Virginia.”

“Maryland,” I said. “We decided to stay here.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything's fine.”

“Clare, sweetie,” my mother said. “I don't know what to say.”

“You don't like it?”

“No, it's beautiful. You're sure your parents can't use it? I'm sure they'll want it back.”

“I don't think so,” Clare said. “They're getting rid of stuff. We can take it out to the curb if you don't want it.”

“No, no, no,” she said. “Don't do that. I'll figure something out. And I want you to know that you're welcome to stay here for as long as you need to, Clare. And that's not about the couch.”

W
hen I was younger, my mother and I lived on Long Beach Island, a barrier island seventeen miles long and three blocks wide that runs along New Jersey's southern coast. LBI gets thinner every year; the Atlantic will swallow all of it eventually. Today it's covered in water parks and yacht clubs and expensive second homes. In a thousand years, it won't exist.

I was in sixth grade when we moved to Princeton, and there were days when I would wake up and imagine that I could still hear the surf through my open window. And then I'd smell the air and realize there was no salt in it, that we were inland now, that the sound outside was from a passing truck. When people asked why we were moving, my mother cited the rising cost of living and the plunging standards at the schools. She said there was more money to be made in Princeton, but mostly she wanted me to grow up somewhere else. Living on the island means weathering the winters, when no one comes, when the traffic lights on the boulevard flash yellow, as if even the traffic authority has moved on. The dead stretches harden you and breed contempt for the crowds who show up only when it's hot and sunny. And thanks to my Saturday classes, I only made it down to LBI in summer, when school was out. I was a tourist now; I had to call my best friend, Casey, and make sure he was around so Clare and I would have a place to crash. It was not a call I liked to make. My father was a Long Beach Island tourist once.

“What's your plan?” my mother asked. Clare had gone upstairs to pack a bag, and I was sprawled out on his parent's unclaimed couch with my second cup of coffee.

“Meet up with Casey, maybe take Clare surfing if it's good.”

“You watch out for him down there,” my mother said.

I scoffed and flipped my coffee cup into the trash.

Clare fell asleep before we hit the highway. He slept through Allentown, and the entrance to 539 West, a two-lane road that cuts through the Pine Barrens to the shore. When I cracked a window to smoke, Clare opened his eyes and offered to drive. I shook my head, killed the radio, and focused on the road.

Casey worked mornings at a sandwich shop called Subs Up, and I timed our arrival for the end of his shift. When we were younger, our mothers had waitressed together, vacationed together, split the cost of babysitters for occasional nights out in Atlantic City. Casey was two years older, and after “toughening me up” as a kid—a personal project of his that never really took—he had looked out for me in elementary and middle school, where everyone knew that picking on me meant dealing with him. He was the one person I didn't lose touch with after we moved away. Clare woke up as I pulled into the gravel lot behind the clapboard building where Casey worked.

“We're here,” I said, and Clare stumbled out into the sunshine, squinting at his new surroundings.

Casey was alone inside the shop, drying his hands on a filthy dishrag. He faked a one-two punch, and then leaned across the counter to embrace me, palming the back of my head like he always did.

“This is Clare,” I said.

“Nice to see you,” Clare said, offering a conventional handshake. Casey's hand was higher up, his forearm at a 45-degree angle. He held it there until Clare brought his hand up to meet it.

“You eat?” Casey asked.

“Can I get a sausage, egg, and cheese on sesame?”

Casey nodded and thrust his chin at Clare.

“That sounds good,” Clare said.

Casey turned his back on us to crack the eggs, and Clare stood at the window, watching traffic. He reached for his wallet when Casey finished our sandwiches, but Casey shook his head and slid the bag across the counter. The door opened behind us. It was José Manuel, the Mexican kid who worked the afternoon shift.

“Qué tal, amigo?” Casey said. “Todo bien?”

“Sí, bien, bien,” the kid said, giving Casey a quick fist bump before he jumped the counter and snatched an apron off the wall.

“I'm clocking out,” Casey said. “Meet me at Eleventh and Atlantic.”

We were three blocks from Subs Up when I heard the whine of Casey's black Volkswagen GTI behind us. He swung out in front, making time before the speed traps, which I used to know by heart. I pulled up next to him at the entrance to the surfing beach, and the three of us walked over the dunes. A set of waist-high waves rolled in just as the sea came into view, each one closing out to form a wall of whitewater as a messy southeast wind blew everything to shit.

“Is it worth waiting for low tide?” I asked.

“It's your vacation, big guy,” Casey said. “It's been blown out all week. We should probably just scurf on the bay.”

“With whose boat?”

“Rob's. You remember Rob.”

I remembered Rob. Rob dated my mother before I was born.

“He never uses that jet boat anymore. Gave me the keys. Ever scurf before?” Casey asked Clare.

Clare shook his head.

“You've surfed, right?” Casey asked him.

“Sure,” Clare said. “I've tried it a few times.”

“It's surfing with a tow rope, behind a boat,” I explained, as Clare and I followed Casey to the marina on the bay. “No straps, though. You pop up on the board when the boat gets up to speed, like you're dropping in. It's what you do down here when it's flat.”

Clare was watching Casey weave through traffic in front of us.

“You're losing him,” he said.

“I know where we're going, Clare.”

Casey was talking to the dockmaster when we pulled up to the marina. He waved and then pulled his shirt over his head and turned his back on us for the second time that morning, revealing the tattoo that spanned his upper back from shoulder to shoulder. It was an image of the Lower Trenton Bridge over the Delaware River, which has a neon message spelled out across the suspension cables: “Trenton Makes, the World Takes.” Casey wore only the “Trenton Makes” half, with the neon lettering in some mix of red and white that looked lit up, even in direct sunlight. His skin was stretched tight across his muscular frame, and the ink looked like something viewed through heat waves as he walked down the dock, rolling his shoulders with his stride. When we were younger, our PE teacher had compared him to her car-chasing Pomeranian because they were both compact and fearless.

“You got sunglasses?” Casey asked Clare, lowering himself into the pink and teal pleather interior of a shiny white jet boat. “Gets bright out there.”

“In the car,” Clare said.

I tossed him the keys.

“How's things?” I asked Casey, as I jumped into the boat behind him.

“They're good,” he said. “Been busy as hell. Big night at the Sailfish last night. Two fights over the same chick. Bouncer took some guy down with a Maglite.”

Casey filled in occasionally as a shift manager at the Sailfish Bar in Beach Haven. He had been supporting himself since he was sixteen, when his mother married a man he couldn't stand. They split up two years later, but Casey was comfortable on his own by then. He'd had the Subs Up gig for as long as he'd had working papers, but by then it was mostly for tax purposes—a few hours a week to show the government some income. Casey sold cocaine to people who cut it and resold it to street dealers who delivered it to bachelor parties, taxi drivers, outcall strippers, and anyone looking to take their vacation up a notch. The coke came to Casey through a Mexican connection, the cousin of some line cook at the Sailfish who no one but Casey and the cook had ever met.

“What's this guy's deal?” Casey asked, nodding in the direction Clare had gone.

“I told you about him. He's living with us. His folks skipped town.”

“This is him?”

“Yeah. Clare.”

“I thought Clare was a chick. His dad's fucked, right? It was on the news last night.”

“Sure,” I said, as Clare walked up.

“Sorry,” Clare said. “I'm ready.”

“No worries,” Casey said. “We're waiting on one more. She's almost here. If she brings her cousin, just call the cops and report a homicide. He put a hole the size of a softball in my long board yesterday.”

I heard a car skid into the lot behind us. I knew who this would be.

“The clown car's here,” Casey said as our friend Mike jumped down into the boat followed by his cousin Melissa, Casey's girlfriend. “Hey, Mike, just use my board for target practice next time.”

“Whoa, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Mike said. “Did your four-hour work day make you cranky? I can't help it if your stupid board likes rocks.”

“I invite you on my boat, and this is what I have to deal with.”

“This ain't your boat. You gonna introduce me to your friends, or what?”

“This is Clare,” I said. “Clare, this is Mike.”

“I'm sorry,” Mike said, offering me his hand. “Have we met?”

For two humiliating seconds, I actually believed he had forgotten who I was, but this was a dance he did with anyone who had grown up here and moved away.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said.

Mike ripped off his sunglasses.

“Tom? Tom Alison? Jesus Christ, Melissa! It's our old friend Tom!”

“Can you please stop talking for ten seconds,” Melissa said. “I can't take it anymore. Hi, Clare. Nice to meet you.”

“Hey,” Mike said, shaking Clare's hand.

Inked down the length of his right arm was a Japanese girl on a bicycle being chased through mountains by a dragon. The monster shuddered with the force of his grip. Mike had gone away for just under two years after the police showed up at a construction site where he was working and found a trailer containing not invoice-stuffed file cabinets and orange cones, but a hydroponic growing system and forty-five marijuana plants in full bloom. Mike's partner in the grow was supporting his ex-wife and a set of twins, so Mike took the hit and spent eighteen months at Southern State Correctional, which he referred to as his time in the country. He made a living playing poker, online and in Atlantic City, now that he was out. He said it was like chess that paid.

Melissa kissed me on the cheek. She had been with Casey since their freshman year, and managed a chain of surf shops on the island while she pursued an urban planning degree at Rutgers. She was the only person whose judgment Casey didn't question, and she was digging through her bag when Casey tossed her some lip balm that, from the look on her face, was the thing she had been seeking.

“Let's go, already,” Mike said, clapping his hands in Casey's ear.

Casey shook his head in mock disgust, and turned the key in the ignition. The engines coughed and spit out water and exhaust. Casey eased the boat out of the harbor, accelerating as we cut between the channel markers, and letting it run out on the bay. Melissa had been sitting on the back bench with her knees against her chest, but she stood up as the boat leveled off, and put her arms around Casey's waist from behind, pressing herself against his back, propping her chin on his shoulder. She had at least three inches on him in her bare feet. He turned his head and kissed her cheek. She let go and fell into a captain's chair as Casey swung the boat to starboard and threw it into neutral.

“Who's first?” he asked, untangling a towrope from the floor compartment.

“I'll go,” I said.

I jumped off the back deck, straight through the balmy shallow water of the bay, and into a layer of silt studded with broken shells. I let the air out of my lungs and fell slowly backward until I heard my board break the surface as Mike slid it off the boat.

Scurfing works like this: You lie flat on a surfboard with one hand on the handle of a towrope and the other hand flat on the deck of the board. As the boat picks up speed, you push down, pop up to your feet, and ride. I watched the boat get smaller as Casey pulled away from me and Mike paid out the slack in the rope. Melissa was talking to Clare, and I was grateful for that, because Mike and Casey were suspicious of anyone they hadn't known all their lives. I wanted to fall back in with them, but there was Clare—the poster child for the life that I had left them for. The nose of my board popped out of the bay as Casey eased onto the throttle.

I loved scurfing when I was a kid, flying across the flat water between the island and the mainland on a board that's meant for something else. If your boat was big enough, you could ride the wake without a rope. Casey used to say we'd know we'd made it when we had a boat like that. That was the hook—you could always get a bigger boat. They called it foot-a-year disease down the shore.

I got to my feet as easily as people get back onto bikes. There was some chop on the water, but even with the wind and the spray and the glare, I could make out who was who on the boat in front of me. They each occupied a captain's chair—Mike facing backward to keep an eye on me, Casey at the wheel, Clare and Melissa gazing out to port and starboard. My calves were twitching with the strain of staying upright, but I held on to drown out the sadness that was starting to come up in me. Finally, I let the rope go, and let the board sink underneath me. I paddled back toward the island as Casey swung around to pick me up.

Mike dove over me as I hauled myself aboard.

“Watch him while I drive,” Casey said.

Mike was up as soon as we were moving. He fell hard jumping the wake of a Coast Guard boat, and called for us to swing around and give him back the rope, which Casey did. I saw Clare stiffen when Mike finally let go.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, folding his sunglasses and looking for a place to put them until Melissa held out a hand.

“You're gonna love it,” Mike said, water streaming down his body as he caught his breath with his hands propped on his knees.

“Just push down with your free hand and jump up,” I said. “Don't think too much.”

Clare jumped in feet first, keeping his head above water, and swam out to the board.