Chapter 51: Helena

Fog was rolling in hard from the west. The wind drew it over the rooftops of houses like snowdrifts and yanked it mercilessly through streets of technicolor houses rendered sepia by the moving moisture and the yellowing glow of city lights. In her mind’s eye, Helena could see the beach and she thought about nothing else for the entire ride.

“Why do you want to go there now?” Ryan asked as they crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge. “It’s cold and foggy.”

“I want to go swimming.”

In Ryan’s every response, she heard his trepidation. “Go swimming? At night? It’s cold out and the water’s rough-”

“I can handle rough.”

If she had a good reason for what she wanted, she would have given it to him but even to herself this impulse was a mystery. She kept thinking about the shock of the cold water rising over her or a wave lofting her off the sand as if she was going airborne then spitting her up onto the shore, rejecting her for being too terrestrial. For not belonging in the cold, wet environment of the Pacific.

She had spent her childhood seeing the beach in every angle of her house. She had wasted so many teenage days sprawled out on the sand that started at the end of their property line desperately tanning before the cloud coverage rolled in for the winter. There was nothing familiar to her anymore and she had nowhere to go that wouldn’t remind her of everything that just transpired so she wanted to be at the beach. The reason was as simple as that.

For a moment en route, she truly wished she was alone. Ryan’s relentless observation pricked at her; the apprehension in every inch of his being was tangible. He had come to her rescue and she could tell he thought of her as his ward, as a life for which he was now fully responsible.

“If you never see the pack again, we’ll have to leave here,” Helena said, out of nowhere. “We can’t be in the same city as them and think we wouldn’t get tangled up with all their shit.”

“So we’ll leave,” Ryan answered. He was trying to sound matter of fact about it, Helena noticed, but every word faltered. “We’ll go somewhere sunny. Put all this fog behind us.”

The truck crested the last hill that rolled out the downward slope to the water, the black carpet of road leading the way. Helena’s shoulders unclenched; that awful feeling she had had tunneling in her chest since that morning abated if only a little. There were going to be feelings from that day she would never be rid of.

Ryan pulled into the squat Ocean Beach parking lot. There was an RV at the far end and another car right by the exit but otherwise, they were alone. He killed the engine and tried one last time to get to the bottom of this directive but Helena had nothing else to say.

“I want to go to the beach,” she repeated. “I just want to go swimming.”

“But you understand what I’m worried about, right?”

His features were so soft in that moment that Helena could see exactly what he looked like as a child. She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him gingerly on the mouth.

“I just want to go swimming.”

She got out of the truck and crossed the sand swept stairs that led out to the beach. Ryan’s door closed behind her, his footsteps going slow as he sank into the unstable surface. There was a magnet in Helena’s chest drawing her toward the murk of the nighttime waters. In the day and up close, that water was clear. Many times Helena had stood in it and watched the red shells of dead crabs crash against her ankles but it was black where she was headed, so dark light would be defeated within it.

“I don’t think you should go in the water, Helena,” Ryan said as she stripped down to her underwear, wading slowly up to her knees.

“Just a quick swim.” She faced him as he twitched and paced with nervous energy on the shore. “I promise I’ll come back out.”

“I’m not great at swimming but if I think you’re staying under, I will risk it to pull you out. You get me?”

Helena nodded. She closed her eyes and let a reluctant smile curl up the corners of her mouth. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, Ryan.”

“Yeah, so you have to come back out.”

Helena turned back to the water and walked in until she was up to her waist. A sizable wave came at her and she dove headfirst into it, going limp so it spun her around in its ballet, jerking her deeper with the undertow then delivering her onto her feet again. She dove into another wave, connecting with the sandy bottom, trying to stay down there as long as she could.

The water was indifferent to her but it seemed to know she was there, spun her and moved her and put her where she was supposed to be. Each time she dove deeper, stayed down longer. She wanted to get further out until she was literally and figuratively out of her depths and let the ocean do with her what it would but it kept returning her to the shore. It kept putting her feet back on the ground.

Helena broke through the peak of a wave and saw Ryan knitting his hands above the high water mark. When it all came rushing up at him, he stepped back but he never looked away from her. She couldn’t see his eyes and yet she could tell he was watching her. She dove under again, exhaling out every morsel of air in her lungs and finding the quiet comfort of the bottom.

The ocean was too rough to settle into, too rough to let her hideout and close her eyes and maybe, just maybe, sink into the void. Her chest was burning from the lack of oxygen but she wanted to stay; she didn’t to have to go back to the surface. The force of a wave knocked her into the shallows and she inhaled despite herself.

She had been tossed onto the sand. The ocean’s verdict was final. Its eternal movements continued on without her and she let it hypnotize her; let the perpetual rush and retreat of the frothing whitecaps convince her she was feeling very sleepy. They told her that she had survived and she had persevered and now it was over. Now she could rest.

Helena stood up and gathered up her pile of clothes. Her back was to the ocean and she was watching the rapid drifts of fog across the open plain on the beach. The crashing waves synched to the moving fog, and she remembered how beautiful it was out here at night. She remembered how alien and magical it looked when it was empty and shrouded in darkness and wetness. She peeled off her soaked undergarments and squeezed as much water as she could out of her hair.

“Ok,” she said, slipping on the borrowed jeans, the shirt she’d been wearing for days on end.

Ryan jolted up to her side. “Ok?”

“Yeah, ok.”

“Ok what?”

Helena met his eyes. The street lights turned jaundiced everything but with the opalescent patina from the fog, Ryan’s whole face was a beacon. It glowed.

“Ok, then,” Helena said, resting her hand on the side of his jaw, “let’s go home.”

The End