Ferris Beach Read Online Free PDF

each wave. Her hand was cool, lightly touching my cheek as if it were a burn or a tear, something painful.
    When we left Ferris Beach, she was still sitting there, herhands stretched out behind her, knees bent, head thrown back like in a cover-girl photo. The sun was low in the sky, heavy orange light that made even the most run-down of the bait shops appear gold-flecked and misty, like in a dream.
    “I’m meeting someone,” she had said when we left her there.
    “A man?” my father asked, and she turned her face toward the ocean, leaving us to stare at her profile, and at her beauty mark, a round dark mole just above her lip.
    “Always the big uncle now, aren’t you?” she asked, laughing softly, her own voice drowned out by a circling gull. “I’m a big girl now, Freddie. Cleva will tell you.” She reached out and moved her hand like a crab on the sand to his foot. “I’m a lot older than I look.”
    “So am I,” I said as a way to rejoin their twosome, perhaps to get her to crab her soft hand with those long, glazed nails my way, and they both laughed.
    “I just turned twenty-two, remember?” she asked, twisting a strand of her hair round and round her fingers. “I’m legal, dear
uncle
, white, single, the works.”
    “Well,” my father said as he stared out at the ocean, then took a deep breath. “I’m just about always at the college.”
    “Always?” she asked, laughed again, little lines gathering around the corners of her eyes.
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” She waved her hand and then reached and took hold of his. “Monday through Friday. I’ll be in touch.” She nodded and then turned to me. “And I hope you will keep in touch, too.” She pinched my nose lightly and then let her hand linger near my cheek.
    “You can touch it again,” I told her. “It doesn’t hurt.” But she just smiled and then let her hand drop to the sand, her glazed nails disappearing in the shiny white grains. “Leave, leave,” she said, waving her hands again. “You two are going to be in big trouble with
you know who
if you’re late for supper.”
    When we got to the top of the dunes, my father turned tolook back and she was still there, her arm raised and waving to a man on the beach; I couldn’t tell much about the man from that distance, only that he looked very tan and wore a cap pulled low on his forehead. He moved towards her like in those commercials that switch to slow-motion. I walked backwards up the huge dune, expecting her to turn and wave one last time. “Take one more look at the ocean, Kitty,” my father said, but he was not watching the ocean. He was watching Angela, who by then had her head leaned against that man’s shoulder as he hugged her close.
    “Who was that man?” I asked.
    “I guess a friend of hers.” He pushed me towards the dunes and the bathhouse where I had left my clothes, both of us turning to wave once more but she wasn’t looking. My father was silent as he drove, smoking one cigarette after another, checking his watch again and again. The sun was so low that I could stare right at it without hurting my eyes, and we drove toward the orange light, weaving along the small bumpy highway that cut through an empty stretch of marshland.
    When we got home Mama was out on the front porch, her hands in the pocket of her gardening jacket. Her hair, pulled and pinned and sprayed into place, was hidden under a multicolored scarf tied at the back of her neck. “I was getting worried!” she called out. Her cheeks were flushed with color. “Supper’s about ready.” She rearranged the clay pots of geraniums on the porch rail as we walked up. “I was beginning to think you’d left me.” She laughed a quick laugh, her eyes never leaving his face.
    “We had a great time,” he said. “I drove the new Buick they had. Boy, is she a beaut.”
    “Must’ve been a convertible.” She put her fingertip on my nose and pressed lightly, then turned the collar of