Beyond the Horizon

I never understood what it was my father was looking for out of life and he died without telling me. But he was looking for something, maybe real, maybe intangible, and often seemed to be looking most intensely whenever we were at the beach. He loved the beach.

We lived back East then and there was one popular beach that in summer was carpeted its vast length with bodies on blankets. The only openings to navigate to the ocean were on strips of solesearing sand, then once at the shore entering the water required jockeying between scores of people lined up as thickly and determinedly as early bird shoppers at the entrance to a department store for day-after-Christmas sales. Even if they only stood wading knee deep with hands on hips, smoking cigarettes as they watched their kids cavort in the Atlantic's modest lukewarm wavelets, their flicked ashes sizzling on the water's surface, these folks were stubbornly territorial. If my father jostled one of them as he attempted to get out into the water they'd turn on him with a surly look, ready to pick a fight.

"Hey there neighbor," he'd say in a pleasant but very firm voice. "Just going out for a swim." My father stood no taller than 5'8 or so but he had close to a bodybuilder's physique. He wore his jet-black hair slicked back in a pompadour. He rarely smiled and his expression often appeared severe, as if he was boiling inside about something. I thought he very much resembled George Reeves, an actor who'd played Superman in a television series, and maybe others noted the resemblance because their looks of antagonism would soften and they'd shift a bit so he could squeeze past the gridlock of fellow citizens desperate to cool off. Once far out beyond the waders and splashing kids my father would swim powerfully in laps parallel to shore. He had poor vision and wore prescription glasses even while in the water, and in all the years I knew him lost only one pair. He brought me and my brother down to the shore to search for them without luck. He couldn't see without his glasses and was very agitated that they were lost. After that experience he learned to always own two pairs of glasses.

I can see him peering through those glasses, studying the ocean. He loved best the time past sunset at the beach when it cleared out, leaving acres of rumpled sand and a clear view to the sea. The sand was silken and cool by then. He'd leave my mother to shake out our blanket, fold up the chairs, pack up all our other gear and get my brother and me cleaned and dressed, and go troll the water's edge, the tepid brownish water lapping at his

ankles. He'd squint into the distance, maybe at the horizon, maybe beyond the horizon to a place only he could see, a place he wanted to be rather than a city-bound nine-tofiver who commuted daily in grimy subway cars and came home to a wife who carped non-stop and two kids who lived in fear of his deep silences that gave way to fits of volatility, like a coiled snake suddenly striking.

One year he stumbled upon a wild strip of beach beside a busy highway. It was a little-known spot, with parking for only about six cars. Large Puerto Rican clans gathered in the parking lot and made barbecues, seldom heading out to the thin crescent of sand. Occasionally horseback riders from a stable galloped the length of the beach then reined sharply and went back. The water was very shallow, the sand so brown, moist and glossy it reminded me of chocolate pudding, and footprints remained as if made in a plaster cast until the tide came up to fill then dissolve them. Several sandbars rose above the shallow water, tempting children who'd read endless stories of island adventures, pirates and mermaids. My father warned me and a friend about becoming stranded on a sandbar if the tide came in and of course we paid no heed and had to call to him in terrified shrieks to rescue us. Silently he did so, sprinting through the water then holding our hands so tightly it seemed a punitive gesture, and walked us through the swirling water up to dry sand.

Like a sentinel he'd stand at the far end of the thin crescent of sand, studying driftwood forms and tangled mounds of beach vegetation and sunset-tinted clouds. He'd hesitate when my mother would call his name, remind him that it was a school night and we needed to start home, traffic would be fierce. He'd ignore her, listening only to the cadence of waves as they swept in and washed over tracts of pebbles.

He's been gone a long time. When I visit Nicholas Beach in Malibu I sometimes scan the long length of it, looking for a familiar silhouette in the misty distance. He would have loved this beach, which has a rugged aspect and lacking Zuma's convenience and facilities draws only widely-scattered visitors. In all the years I knew him-not long, as depression prompted him to take his own life the day before my 17th birthday-I never asked if I could accompany him on his solitary beach walks, or reached to hold or squeeze his hand.

At Nicholas the beach is deserted by sunset, raked by winds, and sets of waves tumble in vigorously, breaking in colors like liquefied stained glass. Usually the dark glistening fins of dolphins can be seen as a pod travels north. I pull up my sweatshirt's hood and stuff my hands inside my pockets, peering at pale lavender tendrils of fog hovering on the horizon, wondering what is beyond what I cannot see, earnestly hoping my father finally found his way there and that it was a very fine place worth dreaming about, and a good fit for him at last.