I recently met a man from Ireland at a cocktail party. I didn’t notice his presence until he waved at me twice. The first time, I assumed was meant for someone else. We spent an hour getting acquainted. The next day, he emailed to propose a walk on the beach. How did he know beach-walking is the one thing in the world that soothes all anguish, dilutes all despair in me?
We met at dusk in front of the San Francisco zoo. As soon as we reached the shore, I took off my green suede boots and black socks. He followed suit, and took off his sneakers and tennis socks. When we began to walk along Ocean Beach, the sun was playing peek-a-boo with an enormous cloud hanging above the water. The sky dressed in cobalt blue and charcoal. The wet sand cast an iridescent pink while rows of sandpipers scuttled by.
We talked of our aging mothers, his in Dublin, mine, in the suburbs of Paris, both of them ill and lonely; of the trips we took back and forth twice a year to ensure their well-being as best we could. The wind grew fiercer. He offered me his vest. “I’m fine, thanks,” I said. He then offered me his scarf. I pointed to the one wrapped around my neck. “Right,” he said with an impish smile, “thought you might need an extra layer.” We began to hold hands, lightly, barely, like the two strangers we were, while the Pacific foamed at our feet. When the windmill appeared to our right across the Great Highway, he said we should turn around and go back to the car before it got pitch black. I followed though I didn’t mind if darkness caught us.
As we were heading toward the cement walk, he suggested we sit on a near-by rock to put our shoes back on. I sat to his left. Before I knew what was happening, he reached for my right foot with a “Sorry, I have no towel or tissue. This’ll have to do,” and began to wipe the sand off with his scarf. I was stunned. No one had ever done that for me: not my mother; not my father; let alone the man I used to call my husband. By then, night had fallen, and the headlights of cars speeding down the Great Highway put the two of us in the spotlight. Self-consciousness took over: the varicose veins crisscrossing my feet, even after two surgeries, were now brightly exposed. I thought of pulling away as I imagined he’d recoil at the sight.
Instead, he released my foot and reached for the other one. All resistance drained away from me then. Without another thought, I twisted around my makeshift seat to let him. Gently, he held my heel in the cup of his hand and proceeded to clean and dry my foot with his scarf, as if it were the most natural gesture in the world. I closed my eyes to savor feeling like a child again, unguarded, watched over. And for that moment, the incessant force of the ocean behind me washed away all fear, broke through all dams to usher only peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caroline (“Carolene”) Smadja is a French-born author of North African heritage. Her work has appeared in France, the US, Canada and South Africa, notably in CA Quarterly, Where We Find Ourselves: Jewish Women Around the World Write about Home, anthology by SUNY Press and in The Flying Camel, Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, anthology by SEAL press. Recently, her fiction has appeared in online magazines, including Czech-based Meluzina and US-based Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk. She holds an MFA in fiction from Pacific University, OR, and teaches literature in the Bay Area. She lives in San Francisco.