Breathing Water, page 28
I’m never truly alone on the beach, even in autumn, even this early in the morning.The surfers come in their wet suits, carrying their boards like giant satchels under their arms.They paddle out to wait for the waves, bobbing and dipping like shiny black seals. The bums who sleep under the pier emerge, scavenging for food, for cigarette butts left in the sand. Middle-aged woman sometimes rise early and walk up and down the beach, purposeful in their velour track suits, still believing that the inevitable might be delayed, if not halted entirely. They rarely acknowledge me; to those women, I am a reminder of the one thing they cannot change, the reminder of a future they aren’t ready to imagine. But if they were to look, to really look, this is what they would see: an elderly woman in a green bathing suit walking slowly toward the water’s edge. She is old and she is thin, but there are shadows of an athlete in her strong shoulders and legs underneath that ancient skin. She is a swimmer, peering out at the water as though she might be looking for someone. But after only a moment, she disappears into the cold, her arms remembering. Her whole body remembering, her whole body memory, as she swims toward whatever it is, whoever it is she sees in the distance. If they were to listen, to really listen, they would hear the waves crashing on the shore behind her, beating like a pulse: Eva. Eva.
All names, characters, events, and places in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, incidents, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 1999 by T. Greenwood
First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: August 2000
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7991-0
T. Greenwood, Breathing Water
