A walk on the beach

By mid afternoon I am tired of waiting for it to quit raining so I put on my slicker and walk to the beach. The blue chairs and umbrellas are empty, spread out across the shore, the umbrellas tied shut against the wind and the canvas on the seats sagging with water. I turn right, and walk.
A mother holds her small son by the shoulders in the ocean, in knee-deep rough water. The little boy’s eyes are wide, and he cries and frantically wraps his arms around his mother’s legs, rocking back and forth, one leg to the other, begging to step back on the shore. “Mama, mama!” he cries over and over. His mother cups her hands, scoops water and pours it over his arms like a baptism, like the salty water on his brown arms will make it all better. I watch him cry and remember being small, and feeling the strength of the current, my feet disappearing in the sand below, salt scratching my eyeballs, the crash of the waves. “I’m scared,” he says, looking at me. I know you are, I think. I walk on.
Four teenage boys with short haircuts play in the surf, tossing a football back and forth and sharing a raft. Their father, in a windbreaker and an Alabama ball cap, walks up. “Do you know what the red and purple mean?” he asks, pointing at the flags billowing in the wind. The red flag, I say, means rough surf and rip currents. And the purple flag means the presence of sea pests. “Critters,” he says, nodding his head. “THANK you.” As I walk away he turns to his boys in the surf and beckons them in, yelling about bad currents and jellyfish. They scurry back to shore, not too big to listen to their daddy. I feel powerful, like an expert.
The rain is light and blowing sideways. My skirt is salty and damp. I taste my hand. Ahead I see what I think is a sea creature, washed up on the sand — maybe a sponge? It’s the color of sweet potato. I look down. It’s a half-eaten ripe plum from someone’s picnic, the outer skin ripped away, a little bit of flesh and the pit left behind.
Three women approach, twirling umbrellas like parasols. The mother smiles brightly. She has nice teeth, wears pressed Bermuda shorts and her auburn hair is in a neat twist, despite the wind. “Can I ask you something, if you don’t mind?” Her daughters pull out their phones and turn away. She wants to know if there is a lot of seaweed on this beach. “We usually go to Pensacola, but there’s so much seaweed there!” They’d driven over to investigate this beach, as a future possibility. I assure her I haven’t seen a lot of seaweed. I mean, it’s the beach. So there’s some. “But not a lot?” She is very concerned. Three times she asks about the seaweed, then senses I am puzzled and changes the subject. The girls smile wanly. I walk on.
After a while I turn around to head home. The ocean, so clear and blue yesterday, is now many shades of green and angry. The summer I was five my father went to England on a research trip. While he was gone my mother took my brother and I to the beach to vacation. For hours I stood on the shore, looking at the horizon line and waving. The horizon line was England. My daddy’s just over there, I thought. That’s the very very last time I remember missing my father, in the good old days, when I believed the earth was flat and that fathers could be trusted.
I pass the mother and son again, right where I left them, except now they are back on the beach. The little boy, wrapped in a thick towel, babbling and giggling, pushes a toy dump truck with fat wheels through the sand. His mother stands with him, arms crossed, resigned, gazing out at the sea.
