The Mother

Undertow

Chapter 12: The Mother

The phone rang at seven o'clock on Sunday evening, the way it had rung at seven o'clock on every Sunday evening for the past fifteen years. The call arrived with the punctuality of a tide. Sunday was the day, seven was the hour, his mother's voice would ask the questions, and the answers would be the careful protective lies James told because the truth was weight and the weight was not hers to carry. She had carried enough. She had given him the water, and the water had given him the life, and the life had given him the weight. Returning that weight to its source would not be gratitude but cruelty.

Carol. She was Carol to James, had always been Carol to James, not Mom, not Mother, not the formal or informal appellations that other sons used for their mothers. Carol. The name she had introduced herself with when she met people, the name on her driver's license, the shortened form of Caroline that she had adopted in high school and had carried through her life the way a person carried a key -- automatically, without thought, the thing that opened the doors of daily interaction, the name that said: I am Carol, I am this person, I am the person you may call by this name. Keith had called her Caroline. Keith was the only person who called her Caroline, the formal name reserved for the formal relationship, the marriage name, the name that belonged to the house on Hawthorne Avenue and the kitchen with the Formica counter and the eleven years of the marriage that had produced James and then had produced the silence and then had produced the departure, the departure to California in 1999 when James was eleven and the world was about to end because the computers were about to fail and the calendars were about to reset and the civilization was about to collapse, which it did not, which the computers did not, which the calendars did not, but which the marriage did, the marriage collapsing not because of the millennium but because of the accumulated distance between a man who did not speak and a woman who needed speech, between a man whose language was the tools and the bench and the structural presence and a woman whose language was the spoken word, the conversation, the verbal exchange that was the currency of intimacy and that Keith did not trade in, could not trade in, the currency being foreign to him, being a language he had never learned, the way he had never learned to swim, the absence being not a choice but a history, and the history was the marriage, and the marriage was the distance, and the distance was the departure.

She was from Red Bank. Red Bank, New Jersey, ten miles south of Asbury Park, a town on the Navesink River that emptied into Sandy Hook Bay that opened to the Atlantic, a town where the water was a fact of the geography the way the streets were a fact, the Navesink running through the town and the ocean running along the coast and the coast being ten minutes east, Belmar and Sea Girt and Spring Lake, the beaches where Carol had grown up swimming, where her parents had taken her every summer, where she had learned the ocean the way the ocean was learned by the children of coastal towns -- by immersion, by repetition, by the daily summer exposure that turned the foreign into the familiar and the familiar into the essential, the water becoming the thing the body needed, the thing the body sought, the thing the body returned to with the regularity of a tide.

She was white. She was the daughter of Robert and Mary Hennessy of Red Bank, Robert being a high school principal and Mary being a nurse at Riverview Medical Center, Irish-Catholic, the third generation of a family that had come to Monmouth County from County Cork and that had built itself into the middle class of the Jersey Shore through the specific instruments of education and healthcare, the principal's salary and the nurse's salary combining to produce the house on Maple Avenue and the two daughters and the summers at the shore and the particular mid-century suburban existence that the Shore produced for the families that lived near it, the existence that included the ocean, that took the ocean for granted, that treated the ocean as a recreational resource the way it treated the parks and the schools and the library, as a public good, as a thing that was there, as a thing that belonged to the people who lived near it by the simple fact of proximity.

She married Keith Calloway in 1985. She was twenty-three. He was twenty-four. They had met at a party in Asbury Park, a party in one of the apartments on Cookman Avenue, the apartments above the storefronts that in 1985 were cheap because Asbury Park was in its decline, was in the decades between the burning and the renewal, and the cheapness attracted the young people and the young people had parties and the parties mixed the populations that the geography separated, the Red Bank population and the Neptune population, the white population and the Black population, the mixing that happened in Asbury Park because Asbury Park was the mixing place, was the town between the towns, the town that had burned and that in the burning had lost the walls and the losing of the walls was the opening, and in the opening the mixing happened.

Keith was a postal carrier. He had been a postal carrier for three years. He was quiet and tall and had the hands of a man who fixed things and the posture of a man who walked six miles a day, the upright carriage that the route produced, the body's response to the daily discipline of the walk. Carol saw the hands first. She saw the hands at the party, holding a beer, the long fingers wrapped around the bottle with a gentleness that was not delicate but careful, the care of a man whose hands were his tools and whose tools were his expression and whose expression was physical rather than verbal, the hands saying the things the mouth did not say, the hands that Carol read the way she would later learn that her son read the water -- by attention, by focus, by the particular quality of looking that saw beneath the surface to the thing the surface concealed.

They married. They bought the house on Hawthorne Avenue in Neptune Township. They had James in 1988. Carol carried James to the ocean when he was six months old, to the beach at Belmar where she had swum since childhood, the beach that was her beach, the beach of her inheritance, the inheritance she was passing to her son by the act of carrying him into the water, the act that was not ceremonial but practical, the mother introducing the child to the medium the way a mother introduced a child to solid food, by exposure, by the gradual introduction of the thing the child would need, the thing the child would use, the thing the child's body would learn to inhabit and navigate and survive in, because the mother knew the water and the knowing was the gift and the gift was the carrying-into, the holding-in, the first immersion.

Keith watched from the towel. He watched the carrying and the holding and the immersion with the attention of a man watching his wife give his son a thing the man could not give, the water that was Carol's by daily practice, by the life lived in the medium. Keith did not object. He did not say: don't take the boy into the water. His silence was trust, permission, the consent of a father who knew the gift was not his to give.

She taught him to swim. She taught him at Belmar, in the summers, in the shallows where the water was warm and the waves were small and the sand was the floor that the child's feet could touch, the floor that was the safety, the touchable bottom that said: you can stand, you can touch, you can put your feet on the thing and the thing will hold you. She taught him the way swimming was taught to the children of coastal families -- not in a pool, not in a class, not with a instructor and a kickboard and the chlorinated controlled environment of a YMCA lesson, but in the ocean, in the actual medium, in the water that moved and pulled and pushed and that was not controlled but was real, the real water, the ocean water, the water that the swimming was for.

She held him in the waves. She held him under the arms and let the water rise around his body and the water held him the way she held him, buoyantly, supportively, the medium lifting the child the way the medium lifted everything -- by displacement, by the physics that Archimedes had described in a bathtub in Syracuse and that Carol described by holding and releasing, holding and releasing, the child floating when held and sinking when released and floating again when held, the cycle of the holding and the releasing that taught the body the lesson: the water will hold you, the water will lift you, the water is not the enemy but the medium, and the medium is the thing you will learn to move through.

By five he could swim. By seven he could swim in the surf. By ten he could bodysurf and read the waves and find the channel where the rip ran and avoid it, the avoidance being the knowledge, the knowledge that was the mother's teaching, the teaching that said: the rip is here, the rip moves, the rip is the water going back to the sea, and you do not fight the rip, you swim across the rip, you swim parallel to the shore until the rip releases you, and the releasing is the escaping, and the escaping is the knowing, and the knowing is the thing I am giving you by bringing you to this water every summer since you were six months old.

She left when he was eleven. She left in the fall, in October, after the beach season had ended and the lifeguard stands had been taken down and stored in the equipment building and the boardwalk had emptied and the Atlantic had entered its winter mode, cold and gray, not for swimming but for watching.

She left because the marriage had ended, had ended not in a moment but over years, over the eleven years of the silence and the distance and the particular loneliness of a woman married to a man who loved her structurally but not verbally, who was present physically but not communicatively, who was the bench and the tools and the sandwiches and the sitting-beside but not the talking, not the sharing, not the saying of the thing that the marriage needed said and that Keith could not say, not because the thing was unsayable but because the saying was not in his vocabulary, the emotional vocabulary that his history had not given him, the vocabulary that the closed pools and the Bergen Street apartment and the postal route had not taught, the vocabulary that Carol needed and that Keith did not have and that the not-having was the distance and the distance was the leaving.

She moved to San Diego. She married a man named Richard Stahl, a high school chemistry teacher, a man who talked, who spoke, who used words the way Keith used tools, fluently, daily, as the primary instrument of engagement with the world. Carol and Richard lived in a house in the Clairemont neighborhood, a house with a yard that had a lemon tree, the lemon tree being the detail that James held in his mind when he thought of his mother's California life, the single specific image that represented the whole of the life he did not see, the life that was not New Jersey, the life that had a lemon tree instead of a chain-link fence, the lemon tree that was the Pacific coast's rebuttal to the Atlantic coast, the warm yellow fruit on the warm green tree in the warm persistent California sun that was not the New Jersey sun, that was not the sun James worked in, that was the other sun, the mother's sun, the second-life sun.

She called every Sunday. She had called every Sunday since she moved to San Diego, since James was eleven, the call that began as the divorced mother's obligation and became the divorced mother's ritual and became the thing itself, the Sunday call, the seven o'clock call, the voice on the phone that was the voice of the person who had given him the water and who now lived beside a different water and who called every Sunday to ask about the water she had given him, the water she had carried him into, the water that was the thing between them, the thing that connected the mother in San Diego to the son in Neptune Township, the telephone line carrying the voice carrying the questions carrying the concern that was the love that was the calling.

"How was the week?" she said. She always began with the week. The week was the container, the temporal unit that organized the conversation, the seven days between calls that Carol asked about and that James answered about and that the asking and the answering were the conversation, the Sunday conversation, the ritual exchange that the fifteen years had refined into a specific protocol, a sequence of questions and answers that covered the territory of James's life with the efficiency of a postal route, each question a stop, each answer a delivery, the information deposited in the mother's ear the way the mail was deposited in the mailbox, the communication that was the connection, the connection that the distance required.

"Good," James said. "Quiet week. Green flags most days."

The lie began with the green flags. The green flags were true -- most days were green flag days, most days the conditions were moderate and the swimming was safe and the patrol operated at its baseline level, the standard vigilance that the standard conditions required. But the green flags were the editing, the selection, the curation of the week's events that presented to Carol the version of James's work that Carol could receive without the fear, the fear that was the mother's fear, the fear that was different from the father's fear but that was fear nonetheless, the fear that her son was in the water and the water was the thing she had given him and the giving of the thing was the making of the danger and the danger was the thing she could not bear to hear about, not fully, not in the detail the truth required.

She did not know about Tommy Raines. She did not know the name. She did not know the date. She did not know that her son had swum into a rip current on July 19, 2016, and had reached for a boy and the boy had gone under and the going-under was the loss and the loss was the thing her son carried in his chest, in the place behind the sternum, in the place that buzzed when the water said the word danger. James had not told her. James had not told her because the telling would be the giving of the weight, and the weight was not hers, and the giving would be the transferring, and the transferring would be the cruelty, because the mother who gave the son the water would hear that the water had taken a boy from the son and the hearing would be the knowing and the knowing would be the guilt, the guilt that said: I gave him the water, and the water gave him the loss, and the loss is my fault because the water is my gift and the gift is the origin and the origin is me.

James would not give her that guilt. He protected her from it the way he protected swimmers from the current: by interposition, by placing himself between the danger and the person it would harm. In the water, that was his profession. On the phone, it was filial love.

"How's the shoulder?" she said.

"Fine," he said. The shoulder was not fine. The shoulder was the shoulder, the right shoulder, the can-carrying shoulder that spoke every morning in the shower with the specific ache that the twenty years had produced. But fine was the answer, fine was the word, fine was the lie that said: the body is holding, the body is functional, the body is not the thing you need to worry about, the body that you made and that you carried into the water and that the water has used for twenty years is fine, is holding, is still the instrument of the saving that the water requires.

"And the weather? Is it hot?"

The weather was the safe topic. The weather was the thing Carol could ask about and James could answer about without the editing, without the curation, without the protective lying that the other topics required. The weather was the weather. The weather was eighty-six degrees, which it was, and humid, which it was, and the ocean was sixty-eight degrees, which it was, and the report of the weather was the report, the unedited truthful complete report of a thing that was external, that was impersonal, that was the condition and not the experience, and the condition could be shared without the editing because the condition was not the weight.

"It's hot," James said. "Eighties all week. Water's getting warm."

"Are you wearing sunscreen?"

He smiled. The sunscreen question. The sunscreen question was the mother's question, the question that contained within it the entire maternal relationship, the relationship that said: I cannot be there, I cannot watch you, I cannot stand on the boardwalk the way your father stands on the boardwalk, I cannot be the body on the bench, the body that is present, the body that watches, but I can ask about the sunscreen, I can ask about the thing that protects the skin, the skin that I made, the skin that is half mine, the skin that is in the sun for eight hours a day and that the sun is aging and damaging and that the sunscreen is supposed to protect and that the asking about the sunscreen is the protecting, the only protecting I can do from twenty-five hundred miles away, the verbal sunscreen, the telephonic application of the concern that is the love.

"Every day," he said. This was true. He wore sunscreen every day. SPF 50, applied at six in the morning, reapplied at noon. The sunscreen was the truth inside the lies, the one answer that was not edited, not curated, not a protective fiction but a fact, the fact that he wore sunscreen, the small true thing that Carol could receive and believe and be comforted by, the comfort of the sunscreen being the comfort of the small protection in the face of the large danger, the one thing that was within the mother's reach.

"How's your father?"

"Good," James said. "He comes to the bench on Saturdays."

This was true. This was the other truth inside the lies, the report of Keith's Saturday presence that Carol received with the complicated feeling of a woman hearing about the man she had left, the man who sat on a bench and watched the son they had made, the man who was still there, still present, still the structural presence that he had always been, the bench and the cooler and the sandwiches and the silence that Carol had left because the silence was the distance and the distance was the loneliness, but that she heard about now, on the phone, from the son who sat beside the silent man on Saturdays and ate the turkey and Swiss on rye and did not talk, and the not-talking was the thing Carol recognized, the thing she had lived with, the thing she had left, the thing that was Keith.

"Tell him I said hello," Carol said.

She said this every week. She had said this every week for fifteen years. The hello that was not a greeting but a message, the message that said: I am here, I am still here, I have not forgotten, I have not erased the years, the years are in me the way the water is in James, the years that were the marriage and the house and the Formica counter and the chain-link fence and the man who fixed things and who did not speak, the man I loved because the hands were eloquent and the presence was structural and the tools were the words, and the words were enough until the words were not enough, and the not-enough was the leaving, and the leaving was the thing, and the thing does not erase the years, and the years are the hello, and the hello is the every-Sunday hello that the son is supposed to deliver to the father and that the son delivers to the father and that the father receives with the nod that is the receipt, the acknowledgment, the signed-for delivery of the message from the woman who left to the man who stayed, the message that says: I was there. I was there and now I am here and the distance is the distance and the hello crosses the distance and the crossing is the thing.

James never told Carol about the sessions with Dr. Okonkwo. He never told her about the annual evaluation, the fitness-for-duty assessment, the sitting in the sand-colored chair and the telling of Tommy Raines to the woman with the fern. He never told Carol that the city of Asbury Park employed a psychologist to assess the mental fitness of its first responders and that the assessing included her son and that the including of her son was the acknowledgment that the work her son did produced in her son a condition, a psychological condition, a weight that required professional assessment, professional monitoring, professional attention, and the attention was the Dr. Okonkwo and the Dr. Okonkwo was the thing Carol did not know about because the knowing would be the worrying and the worrying would be the fear and the fear would be the guilt and the guilt would be: I gave him the water.

He told her about the saves in the abstract. He told her about the number. "Two-fourteen now," he had told her at the end of last season, the number that was the count that was the career reduced to a figure, and the figure was impressive and the impressive was the pride and the pride was the thing Carol could feel without the fear, because the number was the positive, the number was the lives preserved, the number was the evidence that the water she had given her son had been used for the saving and the saving was the good and the good was the thing a mother wanted to hear, the confirmation that the gift had been well used, that the inheritance had produced the intended result, that the carrying of the infant into the shallows at Belmar had led, through thirty-eight years of consequence, to 214 people alive who would not have been alive without the swimming the mother taught.

She did not know about Margaret Daly. She did not know that the second loss had produced in James a silence that lasted three weeks, a silence that was not Keith's silence, not the structural silence of a man who did not speak, but the emergency silence of a man who could not speak, the silence that was the containment of the thing that the speaking would release, the thing that if released would flood the container the way the ocean flooded the shore on a storm tide, the uncontrolled inundation of the feeling that the silence held back, and the silence held back the feeling and the feeling was the loss and the loss was the second loss and the second loss was the confirmation that the first loss was not an anomaly, was not the exception, was the condition, the condition of the work, the condition that said: you will lose people, you will enter the water and you will not bring everyone back, and the not-bringing-back is the weight, and the weight is the thing you carry, and the carrying is the job.

He told Carol the weather. He told her the ocean temperature. He told her about the sunscreen. He told her about Keith's Saturdays. He told her about the Trenton job, the EMT training coordinator position that he had accepted, the desk and the classroom and the fluorescent lights and the not-being-at-the-beach, and the telling of the Trenton job was the only truth that was fully true, fully unedited, fully complete, because the Trenton job was the future and the future was not yet weighted, was not yet carrying the losses and the sessions and the shoulder and the knees and the twenty years, the future being the clean thing, the thing without the history, the thing that Carol could hear about without the fear because the future did not have the water, did not have the stand, did not have the rip current and the red flag and the swimming and the carrying and the person who went under and did not come back.

"I'm glad," Carol said, when he told her about Trenton. "I'm glad you'll be safe."

Safe. The word was the mother's word. It meant the absence of danger, the end of the daily entering of the water she had given him. It also meant the unspoken agreement between mother and son: she would ask about the weather and the sunscreen and the shoulder, and he would answer in the version of truth she could bear. The not-asking was love. The carrying was love. The Sunday call said everything by saying less.

"I'll be safe," James said.

He said it because she needed to hear it. Comfort was the thing he could give back. She had given him the water; he could give her the sentence that made the water seem less dangerous. From this kitchen in Neptune Township, from this phone, from the distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the lie was the kindness available to him.

He hung up. He put the phone on the counter. The counter was not Formica -- the counter in the house on Tenth Avenue was laminate, a different simulation of a different material, the apartment-grade surface that the rental provided and that James had never replaced because the counter was functional and functional was sufficient and sufficient was the standard the son of Keith Calloway applied to the domestic surfaces of his life, the standard that said: if the thing works, the thing does not need to be improved, the standard that was Keith's standard, the inheritance from the father that lived alongside the inheritance from the mother, the tools alongside the water, the silence alongside the swimming, the two inheritances coexisting in the son the way the two oceans coexisted on the two coasts, the Atlantic and the Pacific, the father's and the mother's, the quiet and the fluid, the fixed and the moving.

He sat at the counter. He looked at the phone. The screen was black, the call ended, the Sunday completed, the ritual performed, the lies told, the mother protected. She had carried him into the shallows and held him in the waves and taught him to swim and given him the ocean and then had left for another ocean and called every Sunday to ask about the one she had given him. The asking was love. The lying was love. The mother wanted to know; the son wanted to protect. Between them, the kitchen went quiet, and James sat alone with the weight she did not know about.