The sky is a silvery gray, like an old tintype. So is the sea. So is the sand. I feel like I’m watching an old movie from the balcony of my room. I watch for a while then go in and slide the glass door shut and turn on the gas fireplace.
I’ve never stayed in a place right on the beach, though I’ve always wanted to. I can barely believe I’m actually here, and that it’s just as nice as I imagined it.
What is equally hard to believe is that I’m standing here not wearing a cast. I saw the foot doctor just about 24 hours ago. I was nervous and sat in the waiting room joking around with the receptionist, a plump, maternal woman whose name, honest to God, is Hope. When the doctor finally unwrapped my foot he beamed and said, “You’re all healed up. See me in two months.”
The next morning I got on the bus and watched the buildings turn into trees as we sped along the narrow highway toward the coast. Everything was shrouded in fog, it all looked eerie and mysterious.
Check in wasn’t for hours, so I wandered around the little town of Seaside until then. A lot more was open than I had expected, considering it’s the dead of winter and the middle of the week besides. I had some coffee and a surprisingly good bagel with lox, checked out the antique mall. They had a display case filled with glass floats of all sizes. In Japan, they used these to keep their fishing nets afloat, and storms would cut them loose and they would drift all the way across the Pacific where people would find them washed up on the beach. There was a bowl full of tennis-ball sized ones which were inexpensive, but I couldn’t justify getting more useless baubles to sit around in my already cluttered apartment.
I headed up to the beach. A paved promenade runs the length of the town, the closest to a boardwalk that Oregon offers. Right in the center of it is a roundabout with a statue of Lewis and Clark and their faithful dog Seaman. The inscription reads THE END OF THE TRAIL. I watched the whiteheads roll in as the line of the flag behind me banged against its pole like a gong.
Eventually I plodded out to the edge of the surf. I kept thinking of Jasmine; she loved the ocean, though we never went there together. I wish we had. Aside from a few distant figures, we had the ocean to ourselves. I watched her run in and out of the surf, chasing gulls and screaming at how cold the water was. Then the fog erased her. I stood mesmerized by the foamy hem of the tide approaching and receding, until a. wave snuck up and rushed over my shoes. I hadn’t been able to wash my bad foot in months. I welcomed the chilly baptism.
And now here I am, damp clothes hung over a chair in front of the fire. Jasmine is still out dancing in the waves but there’s another ghost here, and I slip my arms around her as she too looks out at the gray. Eydie loved the ocean as well. She always said being near the water made her horny. We never came to the beach together either, and again I wish we had.
When it gets dark I walk back downtown and treat myself to crab cakes at a nice restaurant. Aside from the masks, it’s easy to pretend we’re not in the middle of a pandemic. Everything seems back to normal, even as the hospitals fill up and the state keeps breaking its record for cases. A woman at the next table scolds her granddaughter for coloring outside the lines of her coloring placemat. “And use some different colors,” she admonishes. “You can’t just use the same color all the time.”
As I walk back to the room, I pass a shooting gallery, where an animatronic bear calls out to me in a voice which is either supposed to be southern or Black or both, daring me to step up and try my luck. “Let’s see what kind of a shot you are,” he says, chuckling and jerking his paw at the targets around him.
Back at the room I change into my pyjamas and flop down on the bed with my sketchbook and a glass of wine. My plan is to stay up all night drawing and writing, but I soon find myself getting sleepy. I watch a little TV then finally give in and turn out the light.
The next morning I’m up at five, as is usual for me these days. I draw for a while and when it gets light enough out to see where I’m going, I traipse out to the beach. Jasmine puts her arm through mine and we walk with our heads down into the wind. By the time I reach the water’s edge I’m alone again. The wind drives the rain against my face like ice. I feel like I should do something out here, perform some ritual, recite some incantation, but nothing comes to mind. The howling indifference of the ocean is devastating. I stand there and I face it.
*
I have continental breakfast in the tiny kitchen behind the reception desk. Fox news vomits an endless stream of disaster from the TV as I munch my bagel; not as good as the one from the day before, but anything is tolerable if you slather enough cream cheese on it. It’s still early, so I go back to the room and lounge around, watching old movies until check out.
I walk out to the beach again. The wind has died down but it’s raining so hard I can hardly see through my glasses. I hope to find some sand dollars to take back but they’re all broken. I do find some molted crab shells, which I gently slip into the pocket of my coat.
I wander through the neighborhoods somewhat aimlessly. My legs are starting to ache; I’ve pushed a lot harder than I should, considering the state of my foot, but there aren’t any dry places to sit, so I just keep plodding along. I think of those glass floats, and suddenly feel the need to have some. They are lovely, after all; a cool, watery blue, like a soap bubble. The fact that these fragile globes travel so far, get tossed by the waves for thousands of miles, are splashed out of the way by leaping whales and ocean liners, then end up on the shore miraculously intact…. I change course and slowly make my way toward the antique mall.
The one place I’ve been looking forward to seeing is the aquarium. I’ve been there before, and it always struck me as a little sad, but this time I feel nothing but fondness for it. It’s basically just two rooms, one with seals which you can feed, though I don’t, and a larger room of black concrete, filled with the tanks. All the sea life is local, what you would find if you could just step into the waves and keep walking on the ocean floor. I move slowly from tank to tank, taking everything in, reading all the labels.There are swell sharks (so named because they swell up when threatened), elaborately tangled basket stars, phallic sea pens, delightful lumpsuckers. I learn that rockfish can live to be 110. I look at the preserved body of Victor, a 25 pound lobster who was the museum’s mascot until he was dropped by a would-be lobsternapper. A sweetly awkward young attendant tells me everything I could ever possibly want to know about baby sharks, and proudly shows me a tank full of their egg sacs, or mermaid purses. I ask him what they'll do with the sharks when they hatch. He says that most of the young fish born at the aquarium end up being used to feed other fish.
The best by far are the octopuses. The aquarium has two, and they are spectacular. One is in a tank, hurling its tentacles against the glass as it circumnavigates its cell. The other is in an open concrete pool, blowing bubbles just below the surface of the water, so close I could reach down and stroke its bumpy, spiky head. I'm amazed that it doesn't try to get out. The attendant says it's too heavy to drag itself up the concrete walls.
As I step outside again, my head filled with the wonders of the deep, I notice two children scaling a steep path between the dunes, holding hands. I realize they’re not children at all, but adults with dwarfism, little people. I watch as they make their way stiffly up the incline together, their forms silhouetted against the silver sky.
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