Free Nine Women by Shirley Ann Grau

slightly, tipped, it seemed, by the weight of its glasses.
    The sand was very hot to her feet and she hurried to the water, tossing her things on a vacant lounge.
    I need bathing shoes, she thought. I did have a pair once, years ago. But Hugh disliked them. Those things make you look like a grandmotherly washerwoman, he said.… I wonder if I still have them at the house, put away in a box somewhere.
    She stood in the cool sand at the very edge of the water, curling her toes in the damp softness.
    At once her two grandsons appeared, swimming rapidly to stand next to her. Gleaming sleek creatures, smooth muscles under taut skin.
    She smiled at them, noticing for the uncounted thousandth time how very much they resembled Hugh.
    For a second or so she allowed herself the comforting thought that they were Hugh, that he was here, in them, young and strong and healthy, younger even than when she’d first met him.… The idea flitted, soothed, vanished with a tiny pop like a bubble.
    Hugh did not live in them. Hugh was dead. She was here alone.
    Oh, but they were good boys, they were wonderful boys. So well-mannered that they truly seemed to enjoy keeping Grandmother company.… And she was glad to have them. Glad to warm herself at the glow of their youth and health.
    “This first day, today, is very hard for me,” she told them, explaining calmly and carefully. “Last year I was here with your grandfather. This year it’s very difficult for me to come to the same place without him.”
    Two pairs of brown eyes watched her, understanding, patient, loving, obedient. Like fine spaniels.
    “But none of that has anything to do with you. Go back to your friends,” she said. “I’ll have a swim and a bite of lunch and I’ll go home early. I don’t want to get too much sun the first day.”
    They were gone into the ocean then, like porpoises, arcing and playing, ribbons of wake behind.
    The water was very cold, and she went in backwards, sinking down slowly in a kind of curtsy at the last. She swam out forty strokes, counting carefully, then side-stroked in. Her arthritis—stunned, she liked to think, by the combination of cold water and sudden exercise—did not twinge or ache as she walked back across the sand to the deck. She toweled her hair quickly and stretched out on her lounge, face down, letting the sun dry her bathing suit. She could feel the rays, like a dentist’s drill, vibrate against her spine.
    Jane Landrieux and her daughter Linda sat on a large red and blue beach blanket littered with plastic toys—shovels and pails and sand sieves—and watched two lifeguards give swimming lessons to a line of small children.
    “Mother,” Linda said, “do you think they learn anything like that? I mean, those lessons aren’t cheap.”
    Jane’s eyes found her granddaughter in the shrieking crowd. “Well, I think she’s learning. She just hasn’t got the breathing right, that’s all.”
    “That’s all! That’s the important part, Mother.”
    “I love her haircut. It makes her look, well, French.”
    “I’m not sure I like it.”
    “Watch out! Deerfly.” Jane swatted at her leg. “Got him, bury him quick.”
    “Mother, you’ve got to kill them or they’ll dig right up out of the sand.”
    Jane said, looking off across the beach, over the crowded heads and through the forest of umbrellas, “Isn’t that Myra Rowland?”
    “Pink bathing suit? Yes. I saw her earlier, sitting at Papa’s table.”
    “Her husband died last winter.”
    “You sent us a newspaper clipping, remember?”
    “I meant to,” Jane said. “I just didn’t think I had.”
    “I wonder why she came back.”
    “It’s a beautiful house with a lovely view. She must like it.”
    “But she’s got enough money to go anywhere.” Linda was again watching the children thrashing about in the shallows.
    “She must like it here.”
    “Can’t,” Linda said firmly. “No way.”
    “Then I don’t know.” Jane reached for her paperback to