Beachcombing at Miramar Read online

  My work took me into a world that might otherwise have been closed to me, and I discovered how it worked. I went to Indiana to see the flaming hearth of a steel plant, and to Vermont to see airborne computer chips floating down an automated production line. I went to a field campus in the Sierra to interview a noted economist about the underlying causes of inflation, and to Washington, D.C., to ask experts to explain the reasons for the nation’s lagging industrial productivity. I met with the chairman of a blue-chip corporation on the top floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, and with a conveyor-belt operator at the bottom of a sandpit.

  I went to all those places and I did all those things, and I don’t regret a moment, for each experience contributed mightily to the sum of who I am and what I know. But the day came when my children were no longer children and had moved into lives of their own, and I knew the hour had also come for me to move on to a place in life I had never been before.

  And now I stand with waves at my feet and words spoken on a hillside two thousand years ago blowing like spindrift through my brain.

  “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow …”

  How they grow! There’s the nub—that phrase tucked in so innocently, which we so easily overlook. I wonder how stunted I would be today if I were so worried about what I would eat, or what I would drink, or what I would wear that I never dared venture to Miramar.

  I stoop to pick up a pale flight feather, and as I do, a puff catches the blade and blows it away. I chase it down, holding it by the hollow quill, rolling it between my thumb and index finger, a wand so slight, so delicate, I hardly know it’s there. I judge by its length and color that it once belonged to a western gull who had no further need of it, so he left it on the beach for me to find and use in whatever way I choose. I could make a pen of it, but I know there’s nothing I can do with it that will give it greater utility than it has already served in the plumage of the bird. I decide to take it home and place it on my desk as a constant reminder of the weightless strength it takes to fly.

  Below the low-tide line, I see a pink scallop in the dark sand, exposed by a retreating wave. I pluck it out and examine it carefully. It’s a near-perfect shell, one with a small chip in its margin, which is how I know it’s what I’m looking for. I drop it into my shirt pocket. Later I will add it to the collection of periwinkles, razor clams, whelks, and mussels that decorate my kitchen windowsill. I display only those with minor flaws; it’s the blemish that gives a shell its character.

  I find a keyhole limpet and a turban snail. I put them to my nose and breathe in, hoping to catch the scent of tidal pools, but they are salt-washed and sandblasted, as sweet smelling as line-dried clothes. It occurs to me that I could string my shells together into a wampum necklace and offer it as legal tender to purchase this strip of land, this stretch of beach, this Miramar! And then I realize that it isn’t necessary for me to barter for what I want, because, by the immutable laws of nature, it is already mine.

  three

  a lonely stretch of beach

  The splintery deck of my beach house runs clear across the front, facing the declining sun. In the late afternoon I gather myself there with my make-believe watercolors and the easel of my mind. I’m a patient man; I can sit for hours if I must, motionless as a heron, waiting for a proper image to appear. I feel as if something momentous is about to happen and I want to witness it when it does. It may be huge, like a rogue wave washing over the dunes, or small, like a hermit crab crawling out of the sea.

  I wasn’t always filled with this sense of expectancy, as if at any moment the universe was going to reveal its deepest and darkest secrets to me. When I arrived at Miramar, I was like a castaway on a desert island, alone and suspicious of every living thing. But I feel now as I imagine Paul Gauguin must have felt when at long last he reached Tahiti, the land of his waking dreams.

  “I began to work—notes, sketches of all sorts,” he wrote in his memoir. “Everything in the landscape blinded and dazzled me.” As he painted, he shed the leathery skin of civilization and became the naked savage—“my body bare, except for the essential part”—he was meant to be.

  Immersing himself in noa noa, the heady fragrance of Oceania, he met Tehamana, his lover, “… and bliss followed upon bliss. Each day at dawn,” he wrote, “the light in my home was radiant. The gold of Tehamana’s face bathed everything around it, and both of us went naturally and simply, as in paradise, to a nearby stream to refresh ourselves.”

  Tehamana, Tehamana—I say it over and over, as if I could wring the mystery from it by repeating it softly under my breath. How far, I wonder, must a man journey to find a woman with such a name?

  I feel as if I understand the painter’s impulse better now than ever before, for these long, quiet days have taught me that I am less alone on this stretch of beach than I was on the streets of New York. Gauguin wasn’t drawn to isolation; he was fleeing from it. It was loneliness that drove him to the South Seas, the searing loneliness that overwhelms us in a faceless crowd or a loveless marriage, the loneliness that evaporates in the gentle warmth of a tropical breeze. The gravitational pull of that faraway place was so powerful that he had no choice except to forsake his wife, his children, and his job, and migrate, as a swallow migrates when the season turns.

  What he wanted to do, what he had to do, was paint with a moral intensity. He had to paint—not paint his canvases, which are masterworks in themselves, but paint himself, paint the very medium through which he looked, which is the more enormous task by far. He had to create the man he wanted to be, and he could accomplish that miracle, which we call transfiguration, only on a soil that was congenial to his heart and soul.

  I believe we are all bent upon this course, whether we know it or not, because, like Everyman, we are all caught up in the same morality play. I see now it is so for me, and I understand how it came to pass that in the aftermath of my marriage I made my solitary journey to the sands of Miramar. I was alone when I arrived, more alone than I had ever been before. But day by day, as I dwelled with my aloneness, my loneliness faded, and my life as the sole creator of myself began.

  I covet my solitude and I try to protect it, to defend myself against the intrusions, the interruptions, the well-intentioned invitations of others who want to drag me into their way of life, which is the only life they know. I resist their efforts as best I can, but each time the phone rings I’m afraid it’s the couple across the road, who can’t bear to see me sitting by myself on my deck, staring at the sea.

  They have made it clear to me that they think I’m lonely because I’m alone, so they ask me to dinner at least once a week because they are sure I could use, as they put it, “some cheering up—some company.” But when I join them, I find they are the dispirited ones and that the onus is on me. I feel as if I’m not so much their guest as their entertainment for the night. They want me to be charming, my conversation witty, skimming the surface, never delving too deep or disclosing too much, and that is more of a burden than I can bear.

  I would share my inner life with them if they would let me, but I know if I revealed the intimate details of my days, they would be embarrassed, as if I had undressed in front of them and stood stark naked in their living room. I try to talk to them one at a time as individuals, as man and woman instead of husband and wife. But they make it impossible to talk to one without talking to both, and they are in constant contention as they try to convey what they think and how they feel.

  “What we believe …” the wife will say, and the husband will modify her statement, explaining what she meant to say, and she will take exception to his interruption, claiming he misinterpreted what she said. He will smile wanly, conceding her point, and she will acknowledge his apology with a nod and go on talking about their joint point of view, as if they were some mythological beast with two bodies and one head.

  Whenever they vie with each other in this way in my presence, I have no choice but to sit there quietly, sipping my soup, hop
ing against all hope that they will find a common ground before dessert. It’s all I can do to keep from blurting out that he doesn’t have to speak for her and she doesn’t have to speak for him—that he can have his perceptions and she can have hers and the two don’t have to jibe. But that simple thought never seems to occur to them, so they go on playing out their life-and-death struggle in a minor key, never realizing how portentous it is.

  As the evening draws to a close, I am filled with sadness—for I sense the hopelessness of their plight and I know there is nothing I can do. I see how they are trapped in their loneliness, and how each blames the other for the isolation they can’t escape. Since they have never learned how to be by themselves, they have never learned how to be together. It seems to me as though they skirmish because they have nothing better to do; the combat itself is a form of relief, a way of letting them know they are still alive.

  But this evening I don’t have to cope with the couple across the road. The interval before the sun sinks below the horizon belongs to me and me alone. I rise from my deck chair and head for the kitchen. I shell some peas, stuff them into my pocket, and wander barefoot—nibbling as I go—to the sacred place where the surf meets the land.

  I arrive as the rim of the sun touches the edge of the sea. The light glints off the water and strikes a polished object beside my little toe. I squat and pick it up; it’s an oval piece of pale blue beach glass worn smooth by the waves. I stare into its clear surface, as if there’s a scene hidden somewhere within its reflective planes—and then I remember seeing a long time ago another piece of beach glass like the one in my hand.

  It was at a dinner party given by friends—the husband, a carpenter; the wife, a schoolteacher—to celebrate their tenth anniversary. During dessert, the husband reached into his pocket and took out a small white box, which he held in his calloused hand. Silently, he offered the gift to his wife, his eyes wide with anticipation. The room grew quiet as the guests witnessed the carpenter’s simple gesture, more eloquent than words.

  I knew that the box contained a triangular piece of glass set in a brooch, for the husband had showed it to me beforehand. He told me that he and his wife had found it on their wedding trip while strolling together along a beach beside the Irish Sea. They had handed it back and forth, admiring its rare beauty, sure that it was an artifact from the Roman Conquest and that it had washed ashore at that moment in that place just for them.

  The carpenter had pocketed the glass, taken it home, and kept it in his dresser drawer, planning to give it to his wife on their tenth anniversary. He had never mentioned it to her, but he had never forgotten, and now the day had come, the time had arrived, and he was sitting at their dinner table with friends, holding a white box in the palm of his hand.

  His wife glanced at the extended hand, but she didn’t take the gift; instead, she pointed at the leather brace around his swollen wrist, which he had sprained while making new cabinets for their kitchen. Turning to her guests, she said, “Isn’t it amazing how he always manages to hurt himself when he is working around our house?” She tried to pass it off as a lighthearted remark, a gentle tease, but her lips were thin and there was an undercurrent of derision in her voice.

  The carpenter had a wonderful face, a lively face, but his head drooped and his eyes turned sad. He looked at his wife as if she had shot an arrow through his heart. He twisted slowly in his chair and put the white box on a windowsill behind him, out of reach, and asked her to apologize. He smiled when he asked her, but it was clear to me, clear to everyone in the room, that he was wounded by her ridicule.

  “Why must I apologize?” she said. “Must I apologize to get the present? Is that the price?”

  She was cool, she was logical, she was civilized, and she left her husband with no choice. He was still smiling when he turned, picked up the box, and offered it to her once more. This time she accepted it, opened it, made a fuss over it, passed it around for her guests to see.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. But she gave no sign that she remembered where it came from or what it was.

  When I think back on that terrible moment, what haunts me most is the face of the carpenter, the glazed smile that masked his anguish and despair. It was as if he was forced to admit to himself for the first time the gap between them, a gap that he could never bridge no matter how hard he tried. I know all too well his sense of futility, for I have been there myself in my own life, and I know how hopelessness seeps into the bones day by dreary day, like some dread disease we know is there but are too scared to recognize. And then one evening we offer a gift, which is the gift of ourselves, and the gift is spurned. But the truth, the inescapable truth, is revealed, and for a while it dazzles us and makes us blind.

  I look again at the beach glass in my hand, wondering whether to keep it or throw it away. I decide to pocket it, to save mine as my friend, the carpenter, saved his, because it’s too precious a gift to give back to the sea.

  I climb higher up the beach to a dune and lie against it. The sun is down but the sand is warm, and I burrow into it up to my knees. The evening star hangs like a lantern in the western sky, so low on the horizon, it looks as if it’s stuck atop the mast of a passing ship. A full moon rises against Aquarius, the water bearer, and casts a river of light across the ocean.

  I think of the ancients sitting on the beach like me, studying the heavens night after night, painting pictures in the sky: Sagittarius, the archer; Andromeda, the chained lady; Pegasus, the winged horse; Capricornus, the horned goat, and Orion, the mighty hunter with a red star for a shoulder and three bright ones for a belt. What were they dreaming, these early artists, when they sketched their mythic figures on the blackboard of the sky?

  The celestial bodies are foreign to me, but I have become more adept at deciphering their signs since I arrived at Miramar. I look for Gemini, my own particular place in the zodiac. The inseparable twins, Castor and Pollux, are out there somewhere on this starry, starry night, and I know that if I wait long enough they will wheel into view. I am drawn to them whenever I find them drifting in unison over my head, flickering symbols of perfect companionship and eternal love.

  Is it possible, I wonder, for two people to share the same small piece of sky? Is it possible for me to find a woman who sees the world through my eyes, as I see it through hers? The art of the ancient mythographers tells me this isn’t my dream alone, that the desire for union goes far back in human history, dwells deep in the human soul.

  Yes, I am alone, and at this moment of my life, that is where I choose to be. Although it may not be the ideal state, I’m consoled by the knowledge that I’m nowhere near as lonely as the mismated husbands and wives I see everywhere. Two individuals who are together but not together, who don’t respond to the world about them in the same way, are by far the loneliest people of all. The sun rises and the sun sets; for one it’s an incalculable mystery, for the other a time of day.

  I burrow deeper into the sand and scan the heavens once more. After a while I close my eyes. When I awake, the air is chill and the morning star is climbing over the dunes.

  four

  the real world

  My phone rings at six in the morning, waking me from a sound sleep. I roll over, pick up the receiver, and before I can say hello, Leo starts to talk. A former colleague, he has been a reliable friend and steady source of work throughout my freelance life. Even so, I want to protest—to tell him that just because it’s nine o’clock on his coast doesn’t mean it’s nine on mine. But I know the futility of that. Leo doesn’t recognize time zones or any other conventions, social or natural, that come between him and what he wants.

  He begins, as he always does, by praising me. He tells me he has an assignment, something special, which only I can write, he says, “because you’re the best.” It’s a speech for the chief executive of a major corporation to deliver before an august body of businessmen in Geneva, Switzerland. I know what’s coming and I try to stop him before he goes too
far, but he’s an express train roaring down the track. He dangles a substantial fee, one that might have proven irresistible at some other moment in my life, and then he adds, “This speech will be easy, extremely easy, especially for you. The guy knows exactly what he wants to say. All he needs are the words.”

  “Leo—” I begin, but that’s as far as I get.

  “I know, I know,” he says. “You’ve taken a solemn vow never to write another speech as long as you live. But this one is different. This one is easy, and you have to admit the money is good—very good. Besides, I need you. I need you for this assignment and I won’t let you turn me down.”

  “Leo—” I say, not trying to hide my exasperation, but he interrupts me again.

  “Look,” he says, “don’t say anything. Don’t say anything now. Think it over. Take twenty-four hours. I’ll call you tomorrow, same time, and then we can make arrangements to put you on a plane and bring you back to the real world.”

  The receiver clicks.

  I pull on some clothes and head for the beach. The morning mist is in, filling the air with a fine drizzle that coats my skin and soaks my hair. I can hear the raucous call of a gull somewhere beyond the breakers and the cutting blare of the foghorn, like clockwork, every ten seconds, pulling me toward the head of the harbor. I go the back way, along the beach, over the breakwater, and when I reach the restaurant on the pier, I settle into a booth by a window and watch the sky, growing lighter by the minute as the sun burns the fog away.

  The waitress knows my order without asking, for she has, by her own word, served me “a thousand times.” She brings me a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, waffles, and a cup of hot water with a wedge of lemon. As I raise the cup to my lips, I realize that my hand is trembling, as if my entire being were under assault. I can see Leo clearly, lean and electric, pacing around his huge mahogany desk, and I can hear his insistent voice echoing in my brain, urging me to return to the real world.