Sandcastles
My father-in-law is seventy-four. In the mornings, he walks along the shore and performs an impressive stretching routine that he refuses to acknowledge as yoga. Our wives spend the afternoons shopping but my father-in-law and I stay at the beach where time stretches and contracts. We finish long novels and take naps between the chapters. We drink countless beers then float deep in the high tide, alone and insignificant in the vast ocean.
I should mention, he isn’t actually my father-in-law. His only daughter and I are not yet engaged. We live together and have dated for several years. I have every intention to marry her. I’m gathering the courage to ask my father-in-law for permission. My wife—I refuse to call her my girlfriend; she is not a mob mistress and our love is not juvenile—tells me her father likes me. When she speaks to him on speaker phone, I hear him ask about me, and after every visit, her mother tells her that he misses us.
In the evenings, when we have finished using the Marriott Coastal Villas’ communal grills, and it is just him and me left at our kitchen table poker game and it’s late as we’re essentially trading chips back and forth while muted Pink Floyd concerts stream on the television, I still do not ask. I want the perfect moment to find me, the way people speak in tongues in church. I want to feel compelled.
On an overcast day, I’m missing the blessing of the sun. The beach is mostly empty. Even the sand appears gray, but then, far in the distance, I see white foam splashing in the dark waves. There’s no one around to share this sight but my father-in-law. I tap him on the shoulder and point towards the water.
Only strong and violent words can describe what is before us. A stampede of dolphins, a megapod. There are hundreds of them leaping and writhing in a massive rhythm. The waves crash and recede over our ankles and we remain rooted, staring.
I become a little bored with this unceasing freight of dolphins, the way I always think fireworks last far too long, but my father-in-law is smiling widely and when it’s over, I turn to him. I’m going to marry your daughter, I say. I’d like your blessing.
He’s still staring ahead. What do you think it means?
Marriage? I ask him, and he says, No, the dolphins.
I don’t know but I love your daughter. I never thought another person could bring me happiness. I thought it was something I would find buried within myself, that it was a product of some level of self-actualization I hadn’t achieved yet, but it’s the total and complete love of another person. Your daughter, specifically.
We’ve spent every day together this week. You must think what we saw is significant, he says, since you’re asking me now. The dolphins inspired you. Why?
I don’t know. It’s uncommon and nature is so mysterious. Why so many dolphins? Why so close to shore?
It’s a food abundance, my father-in-law says. A bounty.
A simple explanation.
Always is, he says. I wish I could feel like a kid again, mesmerized by everything. He looks at me. Lay down over there, he says and points to an unremarkable area of the beach.
Why? I ask.
I’m going to bury you in the sand.
My life changed the first time, he tells me as he throws sand over my body, when my house burned down. Imagine how a little boy must feel, all his toys destroyed, the confusion. My mother hysterical in front of the burning building, my father stoic. My older sisters are resisting hysteria, striving for adulthood but feeling the confusion of everything changing as children do. Then my brother and I, bleary-eyed, middle of the night, he reminds me, but in awe of the firefighters. Every boy is obsessed with firefighters. You ask them what they want to be and the answer is always firefighter. The yellow suits, the big hats, the danger, the awe of flames, the hose, the truck.
No time for stairs, I say.
Yes, he says, a pole in the middle of the station.
It becomes hard to respond. I’m quite claustrophobic. I don’t like elevators or MRIs and now the sand is piling on top of me, becoming heavier and heavier on my chest.
With pride, my father-in-law recounts marrying his wife, having his only daughter, buying his first home. These moments punctuate a life, he says. Do you remember summers as a kid?
I think back to those long, endless days, of the midday heat and the relief of every room’s air conditioning unit, of the late golden-hour sun casting an earnest glow upon the dining room walls, of crisp vegetables from the backyard and meals prepared on the grill, of aimless afternoons.
I try to nod. He tells me not to disturb the sand too much. One moment, he says and when he returns he has a child’s red plastic bucket, a plastic rake, and shovel. Where did these items come from? I can’t move my head. Elevated slightly, my only view is the sky and the deep ocean.
I want to return to that feeling, he says as he begins to build elaborate sand bucket towers around me. My perception of time is warped. It moves too quickly. He makes several trips to the water to fill the moat that circles my body and then he doesn’t return.
Left alone, I contemplate my own life, the moments when the world came into focus. I don’t know where to start. A life, even half of one, is so much to consider. I’ve always been bad with time, it unfolds before me in a kaleidoscopic blur.
I start from the beginning, my first memory. I’m under a stool and there is a battery-powered elephant moving across the kitchen floor. The toy stops and lifts its trunk. It blows a weak imitation of an elephant’s trumpet, its cheap speakers distorting the sound further. I’m disappointed by the weak emulation of a stately mammal. My first moment is a cynical one.
There are moments of bliss but it’s easy for these memories to be tainted by what comes after. There are old lovers, even some where the pain of our demise is dimmer than the joy of our time together but it is still unpleasant. There are great friends and shared meals and late nights but it is never enough.
I have never lost my innocence because I have always been jaded and as I lay in the sand and watch storm clouds gather in the distance, I vow to change. I will be a different man. I will be content. I will no longer self-flagellate. I will no longer consider realistic synonymous with doomed.
Lightning cracks across the sky and there is the boom of thunder. I will practice now. Perhaps the storm will pass, I say to myself. The pressure drops, the winds blow and scattered drops fall but I remain hopeful.
In my periphery, I can see our belongings, though my vision is strained as I struggle to keep my head straight. The sight of them is more like an impression. But in this impression, I believe I detect movement, something rummaging through our tote bags. I try to remember the signs indicating wildlife in the area but can only envision illustrated sea creatures, hermit crabs with spiral shells and jellyfish with stringy tentacles. I try to remember what’s inside our bags but it’s useless. I feel like I have sleep paralysis. The ghostly suggestion of a thief is like the feeling of something in the room, the sand on my chest like a succubus. The storm is approaching the shore. I take long, deep breaths.
My father-in-law comes running over with one hand on his hat. He continues past me to the edge of the ocean and looks up and down the beach. His shirt is flapping wildly around him. He stands tall with his round belly, like a monument. He turns toward me and smiles. He kicks and stomps on the castles he erected until each one is smashed. He offers a hand. The lightning is audible, it cracks directly above us. The rain can’t be contained much longer.
Julian Ramirez is a writer living in Brooklyn. Previous writing has appeared in the Prism Review, GQ, and The Drive.