Keith's Question

Undertow

Chapter 26: Keith's Question

The last Saturday. Keith arrived at the bench at nine o'clock in the morning, the same time he had arrived every Saturday for twenty years, the nine o'clock that was not approximate but exact, the nine o'clock that was the postal carrier's nine o'clock, the nine o'clock of a man whose career had been organized around specific times at specific addresses, the mail arriving at the house on Ocean Avenue at 10:47 and the mail arriving at the house on Sunset Avenue at 11:03 and the mail arriving at the house on Prospect Place at 11:22, the life lived in increments, in scheduled deliveries, in the arrival of the thing at the time the thing was expected, and the bench at nine o'clock was the delivery, was the arrival, was Keith Calloway delivering himself to the Kirchner bench on the boardwalk at Asbury Park at the scheduled time.

The cooler was at his feet. The sandwiches were inside. Turkey and Swiss on rye. Two sandwiches. One cream no sugar for James's coffee, in the thermos, because the Dunkin' Donuts on Cookman Avenue did not open until six and by the time Keith arrived the coffee would be cold if he bought it there, so he made it at home, in the kitchen on Hawthorne Avenue, in the Mr. Coffee machine that was the same Mr. Coffee machine he had owned for eleven years, the machine that produced coffee that was not good and not bad but that was the coffee, the specific coffee, the coffee of this kitchen and this morning and this Saturday routine that was the routine.

He sat on the bench. He looked at the beach. The beach was September's beach, almost -- the last Saturday of August, the penultimate Saturday, the Saturday that was one Saturday from the last Saturday, which was Labor Day weekend, which was the end. The beach was thinner, the crowd smaller, the sand wider because the tide was low and the low tide exposed the sand that the high tide covered, the revelation of the shore that the ocean's retreat provided, the temporary gift of space that the low tide gave and the high tide took back, the gift and the taking, the arriving and the departing, the thing the ocean did twice a day, every day, without exception, without rest, without the need for the bench, without the need for the nine o'clock, without the need for the man who sat and watched.

James was on Stand 4. Keith could see him. He could always see him, from this bench, from this angle, the specific line of sight that the third bench south of the main ramp provided, the sightline that went from the bench across the boardwalk and down the beach to Stand 4, the straight line that connected the father to the son, the watcher to the watched, the man who did not swim to the man who swam.

Keith watched James scan. He had watched James scan for twenty years and the watching had taught him nothing about scanning and everything about attention, about the quality of attention that the job required, the continuous unbroken focus that James maintained on the water for eight hours, the focus that was visible from the bench, visible in the way James's head moved, the slow steady sweep left to right, right to left, the metronome of the scanning that Keith could see from two hundred yards, the motion that said: I am watching, I am here, the water is under my observation.

The morning passed. Keith ate his sandwich at eleven-thirty, the way he always ate his sandwich at eleven-thirty, the scheduled meal, the routine consumption that was part of the routine morning that was part of the routine Saturday that was part of the routine twenty years that was ending. He ate the sandwich and he watched his son on the stand and he thought about the things he always thought about on this bench, the things that were not thoughts exactly but feelings, the feelings that were the bench's contents, the emotional material that the sitting produced, the pride and the fear that were the Saturday's two elements, the two chemicals that the bench combined.

The pride. The pride was the thing Keith felt when he watched James on the stand, the specific pride of a father watching his son do a thing the father could not do, the pride that was not competitive but generative, not the pride that said: I am better than you but the pride that said: you are better than me, you have exceeded me, you have gone beyond the thing I could give you and into the thing you gave yourself, the swimming and the scanning and the saving that were not Keith's gifts but James's achievements, the things James had built from the raw material of his mother's water and his father's discipline and his own body and his own choice and the twenty years of daily application that had made him the thing he was, which was the thing Keith watched, which was the thing Keith was proud of.

The fear. The fear was the thing Keith felt when James came down from the stand and ran across the sand and entered the water. The fear that was the specific fear of a man who could not follow, could not assist, could not enter the medium his son was entering, the fear that was the helplessness, the particular helplessness of a father whose child was in danger and whose body could not respond to the danger because the body did not know how, because the body had never been taught how, because the body's history had excluded the teaching, the closed pools and the absent lessons and the generational absence of water that was Keith's inheritance and that Keith had not passed to James because Caroline had intercepted the inheritance, had broken the chain, had taken the boy to the water and said: this is yours, this belongs to you, the water is not the thing your father's history says it is, the water is the thing I am giving you, and the giving was the breaking and the breaking was the gift.

Keith had never thanked Caroline for this. Caroline had left when James was eleven, had moved to California, had married again, had built a different life on a different coast, the Pacific coast, the other ocean, the ocean that was not the Atlantic, that was not the ocean James worked in, that was the ocean of Caroline's second life, the life after Keith, the life after Neptune Township, the life after the marriage that had produced the son who was on the stand. Keith had not spoken to Caroline in fifteen years. The not-speaking was not anger, was not bitterness, was the silence that followed the departure, the silence that was the space the departure created, the space that neither of them had filled because the filling would require the speaking and the speaking would require the words and the words would require the opening of the thing that was closed.

But Keith thought about her on the bench. He thought about her every Saturday, not deliberately, not as a decision, but as an occurrence, as a thing that happened in the mind while the body sat and the eyes watched and the pride and the fear mixed in the chest. He thought about the day she took James to the water, the day James was six months old and Caroline carried him into the shallows at Belmar and held him in the small waves, the day Keith watched from the sand, from the towel, from the dry position that was his position, watching his wife hold his son in the thing Keith could not enter, and the watching was the beginning, the beginning of the twenty years of watching, the beginning of the bench.

The afternoon came. The beach thinned. The September thinning that was the summer's exhale, the letting-go of the crowds, the releasing of the bodies back to their inland lives. James was still on the stand. The stand was still in the sun. The sun was still the August sun, lower now, softer, the late-August sun that Keith had watched for twenty years and that was, on this Saturday, the last August sun, the last Saturday sun, the last light on the last stand on the last day of the weekly vigil.

At two o'clock James climbed down from Stand 4. Keith watched him climb down -- the four steps, the descent that Keith had watched ten thousand times, the coming-down that preceded the walking-across-the-sand that preceded the climbing-up-to-the-boardwalk that preceded the arriving-at-the-bench. James walked across the sand. He climbed the ramp. He walked along the boardwalk. He arrived at the bench.

He sat down.

Keith handed him the sandwich. James took the sandwich. They sat on the bench together, the father and the son, the man who did not swim and the man who swam, the man who watched and the man who was watched. They looked at the ocean. The ocean was calm, was the late-August calm, the end-of-season surface that was not dramatic but constant, not spectacular but present, the ocean that was simply the ocean, doing what the ocean did, without performance, without audience, the ocean that did not know it was being watched by a father and a son on a boardwalk bench.

They ate their sandwiches. They did not talk. The not-talking was the tradition, was the custom, was the established protocol of twenty years of Saturday benches, the silence that was the conversation, the silence that was the language, the silence that said everything the words could not say because the words were too small and the silence was large enough.

The silence continued for ten minutes. The sandwiches were eaten. The thermos of coffee was shared, James pouring a cup, Keith pouring a cup, the sharing that was the sharing, the thing itself, the thing that needed no commentary.

Then Keith spoke.

"You scared me every day," he said.

James looked at him. Keith was looking at the ocean. Keith's face was the face James had known for thirty-eight years, the face that was the first face, the original face, the face that had looked down at him in the crib and that had looked up at him from the kitchen table and that had looked across at him from the car and that was now looking at the ocean, not at James, at the ocean, because the looking at the ocean was easier than the looking at the son, because the ocean was the thing the words were about and the looking at the thing was the way Keith could say the words, the way Keith could open the thing that was closed, by looking at it instead of looking at the person he was saying it to.

"Every day you went in that water, you scared me," Keith said. "I sat here every Saturday scared. I sat here proud. Both."

James looked at his father. His father's hands were on his knees, the hands that had carried mail for thirty-seven years, the hands that had held the mailbag and the letters and the catalogs and the bills, the hands that had delivered the things people were waiting for, day after day, the hands that were the hands of service, the hands of the daily work, the hands that James recognized because they were his hands, the same hands, the shape and the size and the color, the mixed-race hands that were Keith's father's hands and Keith's mother's hands combined, the hands that were the inheritance, the physical evidence of the history that had produced them.

"I sat here every Saturday scared," Keith said again. He said it the way James said the entries in the notebook, as testimony, as the record of the thing, the thing that had happened, the thing that had been felt, the thing that the saying was the acknowledging of. "I watched you go in that water and I could not go in after you. I watched you swim and I could not swim. I watched you bring people back and I could not bring you back if the water took you. I sat here and I watched and I was scared and I was proud and I was both at the same time, every Saturday, for twenty years."

He paused. The pausing was the space between the sentences, the space that was not empty but full, full of the thing the sentences had released, the pressure that the saying had vented, the twenty years of compressed feeling that the words were decompressing, slowly, carefully, the way a diver decompressed, rising from the deep in stages, pausing at the decompression stops, allowing the body to adjust to the change in pressure, the change from the deep silence to the surface speaking.

"Your mother gave you the water," Keith said. "I couldn't give you the water. My -- what happened to me, growing up, the way things were -- I couldn't give you the water. She could. She did. And the water made you the thing you are. The water made you the person I watched from this bench every Saturday. The person who goes into the ocean and comes back with people. The person who stands between." He paused. "I understand what that means now. Standing between. I didn't understand it when you started. I thought the job was the swimming. The swimming is the job. But the standing between is the thing. The standing between the people and the water. The standing between the living and the dying. I watched you do that for twenty years. From this bench. From this distance."

He looked at his hands. He opened them. He closed them. The same gesture James made in Dr. Okonkwo's office, the unconscious movement of the hands that was the body's expression of the thing the words were trying to express, the opening and closing that was the grasping and the releasing, the holding and the letting-go.

"I never told you," Keith said. "I never said the word. I'm telling you now. I am proud of you. I am proud of what you did in that water. I am proud of the 219 people you brought back. I am proud of the person you are. And I am scared. I am still scared. I was scared for twenty years and the scared does not stop because you tell me you're going to Trenton. The scared is in me now. The scared is permanent. The scared is the thing the watching put in me, the twenty years of watching you go into the water put the scared in me the way the water put the salt in you, and the salt does not wash off and the scared does not stop."

He turned and looked at James. For the first time in the conversation, Keith looked at his son. The looking was the thing. The looking was the face of a sixty-five-year-old man who had held the unsaid for twenty years and who had opened the unsaid and who was now looking at the person the unsaid was about, the person the unsaid was for, the son who was the subject of the pride and the object of the fear and the reason for the bench and the cooler and the sandwiches and the nine o'clock and the twenty years.

James looked at his father. He did not speak. He did not need to speak. The silence that followed the speaking was the response, the receiving of the words that was the acknowledgment of the words, the way the sand received the wave, by being there, by being the surface the wave reached, by being the thing the wave broke on.

They sat on the bench. They looked at the water together. The father who never learned to swim and the son who swam into the water 219 times to bring people back from it. The man whose history had kept him from the water and the man whose mother had given him the water and who had given the water his life, his body, his twenty years, his 219 saves, his two losses, his identity, the who-I-am that lived on the stand.

The ocean was calm. The waves arrived and broke and hissed and receded and arrived again. The rhythm. The breathing. The music that was the water. The music that Keith heard from the bench and that James heard from the stand and that they both heard now, together, from the bench, the shared hearing that was the shared presence that was the love.

James put his hand on his father's knee. The hand on the knee. The gesture that was not words, that was the body's language, the language Keith spoke, the language of presence, the language of the thing done instead of the thing said. The hand on the knee was the response to the words, the answer to the pride and the fear and the twenty years and the bench and the scared and the proud. The hand on the knee said: I heard you. I receive what you said. The words are in me now, the way the scared is in you, the way the salt is in me. The words are permanent. The words are the thing you gave me today, the last Saturday, the last bench, the thing you gave me that I will carry to Trenton and beyond Trenton and into the rest of the life, the life after the stand, the life that will not have the ocean but that will have this, this moment, this bench, this hand on this knee, this father and this son looking at the water together.

Keith put his hand on James's hand. The hand on the hand. The two hands. The father's hand and the son's hand, the same hands, the shared hands, the hands that were the inheritance, the physical connection, the chain that the history had not broken, that the closed pools and the absent swimming and the twenty years of fear had not broken, the chain that held, that held because the holding was the love and the love was the chain and the chain was the hands and the hands were on the knee and the knee was on the bench and the bench was on the boardwalk and the boardwalk was on the beach and the beach was on the shore and the shore was on the ocean and the ocean was the thing, the thing that had made the son and scared the father and brought them here, to this bench, to this Saturday, to this moment when the said was said and the unsaid was said and the saying was the thing, the thing that twenty years of coming to the bench had been building toward, grain by grain, Saturday by Saturday, the slow patient accumulation of the courage to say the thing that the silence had held.

They sat until three. They did not speak again. They did not need to speak again. The words had been said. The words were in the air and in the bodies and in the space between the bodies, the space that was the bench, the eighteen inches of Robert and Helen Kirchner's memorial bench that separated the father from the son and that connected the father to the son, the eighteen inches that were the distance and the closeness, the gap and the bridge, the apart and the together.

At three o'clock Keith stood. He picked up the cooler. He picked up the thermos. He looked at James.

"I'll come Monday," he said. "The last day."

James nodded.

Keith walked along the boardwalk to his car. James watched him go, the way Keith had watched James go into the water for twenty years, with the attention that was the love, with the watching that was the being-with, with the eyes that followed the person until the person was out of sight and then continued to see the person in the space the person had left, the afterimage, the persistence of vision, the impression that the loved one left on the retina and the mind and the chest, the impression that did not fade.

James sat on the bench alone. He looked at the ocean. The ocean was the ocean. The ocean was the thing his father had watched him enter and had been scared by and had been proud of and had sat beside for twenty years without saying the thing he had said today, the thing that was now said, the thing that was in the air, the words that were dissolving into the breeze the way the foam dissolved into the sand, the temporary physical form of the permanent thing, the love that had been shaped into words and that was now returning to its formless state, the state in which it had existed for twenty years on the bench, in the cooler, in the sandwiches, in the nine o'clock, in the coming, the coming that was the saying, the coming that had always been the saying, the coming that was the love's original language, the language before the words, the language of the body on the bench, the body that showed up, the body that sat, the body that watched, the body that was scared and proud and both, the body that was the father, the father that was the love.

James stood. He walked back to Stand 4. He climbed the four steps. He settled into the chair. He looked at the water.

The water did not know what had happened on the bench. The water did not know the words had been said. The water did not know the father had spoken and the son had listened and the listening was the receiving and the receiving was the love. The water was the water. The water did not know.

But James knew. And the knowing was the thing he would carry, the last gift of the last Saturday, the words on the bench that were the father's offering, the offering that was twenty years late and exactly on time, the way the wave arrived at the shore at the time the wave arrived at the shore, the time that was the only time, the time that was the right time because it was the time it happened, and the happening was the thing, and the thing was the love, and the love was the bench, and the bench was the Saturday, and the Saturday was over, and the ocean continued, and the father drove home, and the son sat on the stand and scanned the water and the water was the water and the water did not know and the water did not need to know because the knowing was theirs, the father's and the son's, the knowing that was the said thing, the said thing that was the love, the love that had always been there, on the bench, in the silence, in the coming, and that was there now, in the words, in the air, in the space between a father who never learned to swim and a son who swam 219 times into the water to bring people back from it, the space that was the bench, the space that was the Saturday, the space that was the love.