Free Salt Water by Charles Simmons Page B

situes at home. You seem pretty blasé about it.”
    “He told me that people feel love is magical because it’s making something out of nothing. If he wants to make something out of nothing, I can’t get too excited about it. Also, it’s his business.”
    “Absolutely. As long as no one finds out. If they do—and I mean your old lady—he’ll make nothing out of something.”
    “Is that what your father did?”
    “Yep.”
    I phoned home. Father was still there, about to leave for his office. He hadn’t known I was in town. “You
must
tell me when you’re coming to town,” he said. Then in a lighter tone, “We might have had dinner.”
    “I couldn’t. I was in situ.”
    “In what?” Then he got the joke. “Anyone I know?”
    “A gentleman never tells.”
    “Quite right.”
    I asked about his plans for getting to the Point. He suggested he pick me up outside the apartment.
    Father pulled up promptly, with Mrs. Mertz beside him. Zina was in the back. I got in beside her. She took my hand and squeezed it. Father gave me his big smile in the rear view mirror, and Mrs. Mertz continued talking. It was a while before I realized she was talking about a recent trip to Russia.
    “The people of course suffer. Italians eat, the French talk, the Germans make, and Russians suffer. It’s their métier, and now they have no culture to protect them from the suffering. No cuisine. No etiquette. Everyone wants to leave. You should see the hard-currency whores in the tourist hotels. And very attractive whores they are. You look at them, and you say to yourself the Russians have put the flower of their womanhood into prostitution.”
    “I came to see you at your place last night,” I whispered to Zina.
    “Mother told me.”
    I waited for Zina to say where she had been, but she didn’t.
    “I asked one of the girls,” Mrs. Mertz went on, “what her favorite nationality was. ‘The Japs,’ she said, ‘they pay well and they’re quick.’ ”
    Mrs. Mertz thought Father was enjoying this, but I could tell from his polite nods that he wasn’t. As for me, I had not expected to be driving back with Zina, and I was pleased. Every now and then she touched my hand.
    We pulled into the station parking lot. Mr. Strangfeld was waiting with his beach buggy. Father got in front, and Mrs. Mertz squeezed in back with Zina and me. She kept talking. Everyone stopped listening but Mr. Strangfeld, who said
“Ja!”
a couple of times.
    Finally Mrs. Mertz said something to him in German, which tickled him, and he said,
“Ja, ja, ja!”
    We got off on the hard sand, and as we trudged up to the house through the soft sand Blackheart barked behind the screen door. Mother was there watching us. She let Blackheart out but didn’t come out herself. Mrs. Mertz gave Father a parting kiss on the cheek, a mistake. When we got inside, Mother was gone. Father and I changed and went for a swim. The ocean was in a late afternoon mood, smooth and cool. We avoided talking about town, I thought.
    Mother brought it up at supper. “Did you get done everything you wanted to get done?” she said to Father.
    “Just about.”
    “Did Mrs. Mertz get done everything she wanted to get done?”
    Father gave her his ironical quizzical look.
    “I asked you a question.”
    “I don’t know the answer.”
    I said, “I went to the Mertzes’ last evening, and Mrs. Mertz was going out to dinner with a man named Jack Packard.”
    “Would you say she got done what she wanted to get done?” Father said to me.
    “I’d say she probably did. Zina wasn’t there.”
    Mother stared down at her plate for a few seconds. We said nothing. She burst into tears. Father indicated that I should leave them alone. I went to my room.
    Whatever Father was up to, I don’t remember blaming him very much. I suppose I didn’t take the problems between him and Mother seriously. And, sure enough, the next morning she was sunny, even though it was raining. Father had soothed her.