Acts of Love

We’re lying belly-down on our beach towels, side-by-side but not touching, facing the water, when Adam asks me what I want to name my kid. He watches me, waiting. He is impatient. I can’t look away from the ocean. My mother says to always keep your eyes on it, to never show it your back, or else sleeper waves will sweep you off your feet and drag you into the riptide. I know she says this because she wants me to be safe. Because she loves me.

“I mean, in the future,” he says. “But, if you had to choose right now, what would you name him?”

“I don’t know,” I say. It’s not like I’ve never had a passing thought about chubby arms reaching for me. But it would also be a lie to say I’ve never regretted these thoughts, deep in the pit of my stomach, because every time I do I flinch at imaginary, outstretched fingertips that would be all too easy to break. Even in my daydreams, I can’t trust myself to protect them from me.

I tell him, I’ve never come across a boy’s name I’ve liked enough to say, yes, that one. That will be my child. There are, however, a hundred names that I hate. I would need to see it, I tell myself, to name it.

“Major Mikhail,” Adam says. “That’ll be my son’s name. I like the double-m’s.”

I hum. Diplomatic. Kind.

I hate it.

He’s watching me watch the ocean. He asks, “What do you think?”

“It’s nice.”

He smiles, satisfied, and finally looks away, toward the water. I tell myself that I really don’t mind giving him this kind hope—that somehow, someday, my son will share the same name as his; that one day we’ll have the same son—because it’s better than breaking his heart. I know Adam likes me like that (and has for nearly two years), but he’s never said anything to me. I’ll never ask him to. I won’t give him the chance. He’s my friend. A good friend. So I can’t hurt him, not like that. But I can give him this hope as consolation—at least until we graduate from college in nine months. Then I’ll leave. And, after that, I don’t know when I’ll see him again so it won’t matter.

It’s warm and crowded today—in a stereotypical way I’m told the beaches in Southern California are always supposed to be, but I’m not used to. I’m from Northern California, where the beaches are cold and barren. There are so many people around, but all I can imagine is the two of us lying here with a smaller version of Adam resting next to him, between us. Round, brown-skinned, with thick glasses. Smiles and belly-laughs. He’d be in a shirt and jeans, in non-beach clothes. Like Adam. Like me, I guess. It makes me nauseous.

The sand in front of us is littered with broken clam and hermit crab shells. All varying shades of white, orange, and purple. My favorites are the ones that are perfect upon first glance, but then you look closer and see the little chips—just enough to make them incomplete. I grab every shell I can see out and lay them on the corner of my towel.

“I want his first language to be Klingon,” he says. “Because it’ll give him something to talk about.”

“You don’t speak Klingon.”

“I can learn.”

I don’t doubt him.

I keep collecting the shells until there’s a small hole in front of me. Then Adam reaches over, puts his fingers into the pit, and digs away the sand to reveal fuller, unbroken shells. They are solid, shiny, and still wet. We both reach for them. Our knuckles knock against each other, the thick bones of his fingers bruising mine, making me flinch. He has strong hands.

“This is mine,” I say, only half-teasing. “Get your own.”

“Fine.” He laughs. He digs his own hole, but piles his shells with mine.

We continue like that for a long time. My mother would be screaming if she saw me. Telling me to stop, before I dig too wide, too deep, or else I’ll fall in and suffocate. But I dig until my whole arm disappears into the sand and my fingertips can’t reach the bottom no matter how hard I stretch. The pile of shells and wet sand grows larger and larger. Adam, at some point, stops to watch me. When I push myself up, the sand crumbles underneath my palms, and I fall down, back into the hole. And I think, for a moment: oh god, Mom was actually right. Adam catches my shoulder.

“Oh shit!” he says, laughing. “Are you okay?”

I swat him away, embarrassed. “I’m fine.” And I am. I was the whole time, I tell myself. The hole was too small, just a little bit wider than my arm. My mother is wrong. There is nothing to be afraid of. I manage to sit up just fine the second time.

“Maybe don’t dig anymore?” he says, like I hadn’t thought of that.

“Yeah.”

I look back at the ocean again. The tide is coming in.

“Ready to head back?” Adam asks.

We’ve only been here an hour. It took us an hour and a half to get through traffic. There’d been plans. We were going to spend our whole day here, away, just the two of us. Spend time together before the fall quarter starts and we’re both too busy to do this. But I’m not the one who drove us here.

I say, “Yes.”

I pocket the shells I dug up and leave Adam’s behind. We stand, collect our towels, and walk with our shoulders to the ocean, towards the city.

There’s a market off the pier, with towers of makeshift tents and collapsible tables that we must navigate to get back to his car. I keep a hand in my pocket—holding my wallet, my shells—as we walk. There are a couple artists selling large, cheap paintings of the pier and the water and the crowds that I want to stop and look at. Adam would let me if I asked. He’s kind like that. He’d understand. I want art to put in my bedroom, the hallway, the living room of the house I live in. I want others to know where I’m from, where I’ve been—I want physical proof of my life here, in Southern California, before I have to move back in with my mom because I don’t have enough money to live down here by myself. It’s also why I take shells from the beaches I visit. I want to steal as much of this life as I can because once I go back to living with my her, she’ll scream if I even mention the coast—she’s scared of the ocean; of the sand suddenly opening up and swallowing her whole. The few times we went, when I was a kid, she would make me sit next to her, where the grass turned into sand, where there were no shells, even broken ones. We’d watch the ocean the whole time. She would say it’s just because she wants me to be safe. Because she loves me. Now I collect while I can. Because I will remember: the beach will not eat me. These shells, broken and sharp and still wet from the sand, are proof of my bravery; of the truth. I can survive.

Adam slows down to look at a booth covered in crystals and rocks. Next to it, there’s a booth selling lucky anklets and posters with seahorses—nothing that I want. I turn to leave, but Adam grabs my upper arm. “Wait,” he says. He’s completely focused on the booth with the rocks and crystals. He reaches over, grabs two blue rocks, and then holds them out to me.

“Choose one,” he says.

I want to tell him that it should be his choice, that he’s putting too much pressure on me, that I don’t know—what if I end up choosing wrong—but the lady running the booth steps forward and asks where we’re from before I can’t find the words. She asks if we’re from Huntington Beach.

“Riverside,” Adam says.

But that’s a lie, for both of us.

“I’m from Lake Elsinore,” she says, and Adam nods and says okay like he understands. He probably does. He’s from Corona. He usually knows where we are whenever we go anywhere. I don’t, even though I’ve lived down here for three years.

The woman running the booth—she has business cards laying around her tables, but they only identify her as the Rock Lady—shows Adam some more smooth stones, keeps talking to him about her day. She’s had it rough, she says. She doesn’t look at me. Still, I frown and nod to show that I’m interested in her story, that I feel bad for her, that I’m capable of actually caring for another human being’s emotions and well-being. Just in case.

While driving down from Lake Elsinore with her partner, their car broke down at the top of the Indian Path. This means something to Adam because he’s immediately concerned and telling her that’s awful. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He asks if she’s okay, how they got out, and I don’t understand why he cares. But he’s always been open, brash in a way I can’t understand. He’s concerned. Too invested in somebody he’s just met. He’s like my mom in that way. I still get daily texts from her, asking how I’m doing, where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m with, why am I not home, how long will I be out, can I send her a picture for proof, and if I don’t respond fast enough she writes, “I love you!” I can’t stand it. (But, I have to remind myself, that’s just what love is. Caring too much.) The Rock Lady and her partner had to wait for AAA to come for them and when they finally got to Huntington, they locked their keys and purses in their car and had to call AAA again. And then, when they finally got in, she went to pour out her cigarette ash and caught an entire trash can on fire because she didn’t put her cig out right.

The Rock Lady tells him, as a thank you for listening, that he can keep both of the blue rocks he picked up. Then she asks him to hold out his hand, the rocks in his palm, and she grabs a squirt bottle. Two quick sprays and the rock changes color. They’re now shiny, darker.

“When the two of you have kids,” she says, looking directly at me for the first time, just in time to see me flinch at the mention of children, “all you need to do to entertain them is give them a squirt bottle and let them spray rocks. It’ll be like magic. And once it dries out, the game starts again.”

I smile, because it’s good advice, but I don’t tell her that we’re not a couple. Things like this happen more often than I’d like. Strangers have picked up our tabs at restaurants—“because you’re such a sweet couple”—and people ask me how long we’ve been together, then look doubtful when I tell them we’re not.

It’s not that Adam’s a bad guy, he’s really not. He’s smart. He’s majoring in bio-engineering and already has some cushy job lined up in Los Angeles. He makes me laugh, we have the same friends, he’s kind, he’s generous, he watches Star Trek with me, he’s the one who’s always down for last minute adventures to the beach or just to get some pho, and, one night—when I was at his house, broken down and crying after a hard week—he hugged me and said, “I only want you to be happy.” He’s the only one who’s ever said that to me. He wants me to be safe. He loves me.

I think of Major. I think of him standing, between us, unable to speak his mind, unable to say that he’s bored, that he doesn’t care about the rocks, that he just wants to go home, please. I could save him from that. I could grab his hand, lead him back towards the art and tell him about how beaches are meant to be cold, share a part of me that nobody down here, not even his hypothetical father, really understands. Maybe Major could be a part of me. I could, maybe, even love him.

I reach into my pocket and feel the shells and their smoothed edges, solid and real. They will be there when I get back to my home in Riverside and, eventually, the house I share with my mom. They will be wherever I go. Major won’t.

Adam and I say our goodbyes to the Rock Lady.

When we get in the car, Adam keeps talking about Major.

He thinks he’ll be a decent dad. He doesn’t want to be overprotective. He wants to send his kids to public school because he hated private school and doesn’t want them to feel elitist. He won’t force a religion on them. Won’t tell them to shut up. And I can’t tell if he still wants me to be the mother of his hypothetical, atheist, Klingon children, but I know that it could only happen in some other life—because in this one I don’t know how to make myself care like everyone else. That part of me is broken, incomplete. Adam deserves to have somebody who can love him and his children like they deserve to be loved: without flinching, without doubt, without pretending. And I know I can keep our children safe from all of that by making sure that they’re never born. That is the greatest act of love I am capable of.

CONTRIBUTOR

Rebecca Calloway

Rebecca A. Calloway is a writer who bounces up and down the West Coast. Currently, she's based in Seattle, Washington. She is a contributor to The Wrangler and her work has also appeared in Mosaic Art & Literary Journal. When she's not writing, she's desperately trying to find her glasses.

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