|
April walked out of her molecular biology
class at UCLA, climbed into her Volkswagen Jetta, and drove toward her
home in Malibu. For many of her classmates the commencement ceremony
scheduled for Monday night marked the end of their formal education and
the start of their life as an adult. While her friends were celebrating,
arranging job interviews, and planning weddings, April was preparing to
enter medical school in the fall. Glancing out her window as she drove
past an isolated stretch of beach, she decided to park and take a walk.
It was a glorious day. The sun was high
in the sky, and the temperature was in the mid-seventies. The beach was
deserted, though, and April wondered where all the sunbathers had gone.
Once she locked her car, tossed her shoes into the backseat, and
scurried down the embankment to the sand, she saw the answer to her
question. A sign proclaimed the beach was restricted and swimming was
prohibited A sickly looking seagull stood beside the sign, balancing
itself on one leg. Black tar was clumped among its feathers. At first
April thought the gull had its other leg tucked underneath. As the bird
hopped off, she saw it possessed only one leg. She had driven to the
beach to lift her spirits, to enjoy the beauty of nature. Nature was not
always beautiful anymore, however, and April felt an overwhelming sense
of sadness. They were killing each other, killing the environment. What
the future might hold for her generation was frightening. Long dormant
diseases had recently resurfaced. Nature was fighting back with
formidable weapons, but for pathetic creatures like the seagull, the war
had already been lost. Walking near the water's edge, April saw
another gull soaring over her head. The gull seemed to be examining her,
almost as if it were trying to communicate with her. Was such a thing
possible? Could a bird distinguish her as something other than a mound
of garbage from such a distance? She was familiar with human anatomy,
but she had never studied animals.
"What a day, huh?" a cheerful voice
said.
April jerked her head around,
startled. Standing beside her was a tiny old man, his skin wrinkled and
gnarled. "Where did you come from?" she asked, her eyes scanning the
empty beach.
"Over there," the man said, smiling. "I
walk to the pier and back every day."
April squinted in the direction of the
pier. The man was in his late eighties. Using a piece of driftwood for a
cane, he seemed too frail and unsteady to walk such a long distance. His
legs were skinny, twisted twigs, pale and hairless. The tissue around
his knees was inflamed and swollen from arthritis. On his head was a
fishing cap, and he was wearing baggy blue shorts, a white polo shirt,
and a red nylon parka. The look in his eyes seemed vaguely familiar. "Do
I know you?" she asked. The previous summer she had worked as a
volunteer in a nursing home. Could that be where she had seen this man?
"You know me now," he said. "Nathan's
my name. Want to walk a piece with me? Gets pretty lonely out here this
time of day. Wouldn't mind a little company if you're game."
"I can't," April said, wrapping her
arms around her chest. She took a step forward, but the man's gaze held
her in place.
"Ah, come on," Nathan said, his eyes
roaming up and down her tall frame. "How tall are you, if you don't mind
me asking?"
April's shoulders slumped. Although she
was an attractive young woman, with long brown hair and almond-shaped
eyes, her height had always made her feel self-conscious. "Almost six
feet," she told him. "I guess in your day there weren't as many tall
girls around. My father says people are getting larger due to better
nutrition. I inherited my height from my parents, though. My mother and
father are both tall."
"Nothing is the same today," Nathan
said pensively. He turned in the direction of the pier, then glanced
back over his shoulder. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss April."
As the old man shuffled off, April
hiked up the embankment to her car. She removed a bottle of Evian water
from the seat and took a swig. When she glanced back at the beach, the
old man had vanished. She scurried back down the embankment to see where
he had gone. All she saw was the same one-legged seagull, pecking in the
sand for scraps of food.
The house was starkly contemporary.
The floors were marble, and the furniture was upholstered in white
fabric. April thought the decor her parents had selected resembled the
cold sterility of an operating room. Seated at the long oak table in the
dining room, she pushed her peas around with her fork.
"You're going to Baylor tomorrow,
right?" Dr. Stephen Markel said. A tall, slender man, he had dark hair
and fair eyes. Over his lip was a neatly trimmed mustache. "If you don't
get down there right away, April, all the apartments near the campus
will be taken. There's a flight leaving at three o'clock tomorrow
afternoon. You can go straight to the airport after your last class. All
you have Friday is the rehearsal. Getting your housing situation taken
care of is more important."
"She can't go tomorrow," Elizabeth
Markel said, frowning. "She has to see Ruben first and clear up that
other matter, remember?"
April dropped her fork on the table.
"Dad knows I'm having an abortion," she snapped. "It's not like I'm
erasing a mistake on a paper or something. That's the way you make it
sound, Mother."
Her father's face flushed in annoyance.
"Don't talk to your mother with that tone of voice."
April slouched in her seat, sullen and
silent.
"Let me tell you something," her father
continued, leveling a finger at her. "You came close to screwing up your
entire future, young lady. I never intended for my daughter to go to
Baylor. If you hadn't been so emotional when you took the entrance
exams, you might have been able to get into a better school."
"Stop it, Stephen," Elizabeth said,
narrowing her eyes at him. "Baylor's a decent school. April worked hard
this past year. She's graduating in the top ten percent of her class."
"Can I be excused?" April said. "I'm
not hungry."
Her parents exchanged frustrated looks
as April rushed out of the room. "That boy," her father said. "I know
he's dead, Liz, but I wish he'd kept his hands off my daughter."
"He wasn't a boy, Stephen," she said. "He was a twenty-three- year-old
man, and your daughter was in love with him. April could have easily
been in the car with him at the time of the accident. If nothing else,
we should be thankful our daughter is alive today. Of course she was
emotional when she took her entrance exams. Pete was killed only three
days before."
"There's no reason for a girl as bright
as April to get herself pregnant," Dr. Markel said, a disgusted look on
his face. "I guess that's what annoys me the most, that she was so
reckless. What if this man had been infected with AIDS or some other
sexually transmitted disease? How can my daughter be a physician when
she acts so irresponsibly?"
April sat on the window seat in her
room and gazed out into the darkness, too distraught to sleep. She had
seen pictures of a fetus in the first trimester of pregnancy and could
imagine its minute features. In the photos it looked like a tiny
seahorse. If she concentrated, though, she could imagine Pete's features
taking shape inside the dark waters of her womb. Did her unborn child
understand why she had to end its life?
Many of her friends had already had
abortions. It was nothing, they told her. Having an abortion was similar
to having a tooth pulled. Her friend Sarah Johnson had undergone three
abortions during the. past five years. Birth-control pills made her gain
weight, so the girl relied on abortion as a form of birth control.
Pete's death had been devastating, but April was mature enough to know
that life went on. She would give birth to other children once her
medical training was completed and she found another man to love. The
spark of life inside her was Pete's child, though, the one thing he had
left behind. She wondered what his parents would say if they knew the
truth. Wouldn't they want to see their grandchild?
Something fluttered outside her window.
April saw a seagull sitting on the outside ledge, balancing itself on
one leg. Hoisting the window up, she reached out thinking she could grab
it, but the bird quickly took flight. It couldn't possibly be the same
gull from the beach, she told herself. Their home was ten miles from the
stretch of beach where she had seen the old man and the one-legged gull.
Nathan's parting comment played over in her mind: "Nice to make your
acquaintance, Miss April.”
Was she going insane? She was certain
she had never told the old man her name.
Instead of driving to the UCLA campus the following
morning, April returned to the beach. The sky was overcast and the air
was chilly. A storm cloud loomed on the horizon. She stared off into the
distance at the pier, then walked toward the water's edge. After
listening to the weather report, Nathan must have stayed home. “Decided
to come back, huh?" a voice said from behind her.
“Where were you?" April asked, grabbing
the edge of his parka. “I looked for you when I got here. I didn't see
anyone."
"Same place as yesterday," Nathan said.
"I was up there in the sand dunes. We walking or not?"
"I can't walk all the way to the pier,"
April told him, falling into step beside him. "I'm supposed to be in
class right now. I don't know why I even came here this morning. It
looks like it's about to pour any minute."
"It's okay if you have to leave,"
Nathan said. "Don't apologize. Stay in school. Get an education. Are you
in college?"
"I graduate UCLA on Monday," April
said. "I'll be attending Baylor Medical School in the fall." As she
watched, Nathan strode out into the surf, soaking his tennis shoes and
the bottom of the khaki pants he was wearing. "You shouldn't go in the
water," she cautioned. "When a storm is moving in, the currents are too
strong. Besides, you'll get chilled."
"I like it," Nathan said, giving her a
toothy grin. "It's refreshing. The colder the outside air is, the warmer
the water feels. Today might be a good day to take a swim."
April saw frothy whitecaps churning in the ocean. She was certain Nathan
would be swept out to sea the moment he entered the surf. He bent down
and placed his hand in the water, then flicked the drops at her face.
"Pretty funny," she said, kicking sand at him. "Promise me you won't go
in the water after I leave. This beach is posted. Swimming isn't
allowed. Didn't you see the sign back there? They must have had an oil
spill or something."
"I don't really have to worry about
those types of things," Nathan said, arching a bushy white eyebrow.
"That's one of the nice things about growing old. I could swim in sewage
and it wouldn't be a problem."
As April watched, he dropped the piece
of driftwood he used as a cane, waded out into the surf, then placed his
palms together in a diving position. "Stop," she yelled, racing into the
water with him Nathan slowly turned his head to her and smiled. "Got
your feet wet, at least," he said. "See, it isn't that cold."
April sighed, then headed off toward
the pier. The old man was crazy, more than likely senile. She wondered
if she should notify the authorities. He might have walked away from a
nursing home. Nathan appeared beside her, both of them sloshing through
the shallow water near the shore.
"Can I tell you a story?" he asked,
steadying himself with the piece of driftwood again. "It won't be a long
story. Then you can tell me a story. That way our walk will be more
meaningful."
"I don't know any stories," April said.
"Sure you do," Nathan told her.
"Everyone knows stories. Just make stuff up if you can't remember all
the details. That's what I do when my memory fails me."
"Where do you live?" April asked, her
concern deepening. He had mentioned the sand dunes. Was he homeless?
Homeless people sometimes lived in cardboard boxes high in the dunes.
"Is there someone you want me to call for you, a relative or something?"
"Shucks, no," Nathan said, chuckling.
"My family is dead. You can call all you want, but no one is going to
answer." |
