"Rituals" by Brucie Jacobs
Originally published in The Crescent Review (Vol. 14, #1, 1996)
Maud closes her eyes, concentrating. She sweats under the blanket he pulled over them both. Her cotton dress is bunched around her waist. He's in a T-shirt. They lie on their sides, face-to-face. Their bodies, pressed together, rub rhythmically against each other.
But he does not enter her.
This is how he likes it. Eyes wide open, body taut, he's quick and methodical.
Maud breathes in his heat, feels pleasure in her groin. Then, on cue, she moves into the faster rhythm he prefers. She wants to tell him this kind of bare bones sex is about as intimate as riding an elevator together. But they've mastered it, made it a ritual.
Finished, they turn from each other and lie still, his arm barely grazing hers. The white ceiling fan quietly hums. Ribbons of sunshine and salty sea air spill through the open window. Maud hesitates, then reaches to stroke the damp hair off his forehead.
"Don't," he snaps.
She flinches. Without a word, she kicks off the blanket. She yanks at her dress, swings her long legs over the side of the bed, and glances at the clock. Only ten minutes has passed since he took her to bed.
They arrived in St. Martin late that morning. She'd arranged the trip herself, on an impulse. A week in the Caribbean, she thought, might revive their relationship. On the flight from Miami, Sam took the window seat. Beside him, Maud watched him peer at the Caribbean through bright red binoculars.
"It's so blue," he said. "Just like a postcard."
"Yes," Maud murmured. But when she leaned across him for a closer look, what caught her attention were the murky splotches sprawled like underwater islands beneath the sparkling blue. She remembered snorkeling when she was a child, while her parents watched from the beach. The reef had swelled below her in every direction, rich with lacy fans of coral, lichen-covered rocks, parrot fish streaking like quicksilver in and out of crevices. She'd drifted along, intoxicated by that world until she heard voices calling her back.
The plane dipped over a mountain onto the narrow stretch of runway. Murmuring a steady stream of Hail Marys, Sam gripped the seat.
A taxi took them through ramshackle mountain towns to Orleans, a fishing village on the island's southern tip (Maud's guidebook mentioned Orleans as off the beaten track, a secluded spot frequented by the French). The taxi dropped them at the Coralita Hotel, set back on a black rock cliff that dropped into the sea. They lugged their bags along a path of broken shells until they reached a large open courtyard. Filled with wicker furniture, white fading to a despondent yellow, the courtyard was bathed in afternoon light. Tiny birds flitted about, drawn to water trickling from old stone fountains, and lighted on masses of scarlet bougainvillea. A sulky, somnolent air hung about the place as if it belonged to another era. The telephone rang until an old man wearing a tired white jacket shuffled into the courtyard and picked up—his French had a lilting island flavor.
Hoisting Maud and Sam's bags onto his thin shoulders, he led them through the hotel and outside across a brick patio to a cluster of rooms fronting the sea. On the way, Maud noticed a rough wooden sign with Beach painted in black. It pointed toward a path running precariously along the edge of the cliff.
She glanced over her shoulder at Sam. The binoculars clutched to his eyes, he stood at the cliff watching a black pelican glide overhead. The pelican suddenly plunged into the sea after a fish and then soared away, its beak flashing silver.
In the room now, Maud bends over the suitcase on the floor, fumbling through shorts and T-shirts for a bathing suit. "I'm going to the beach," she tells Sam. "Are you coming?"
There's no answer.
She slips into the suit and glances down at him, the blanket pulled shroud-like over his body, even his face. Why had she imagined he would be different on this trip? Real sex takes too long, he always says. He gives her pleasure when he's in the mood. He doles it out as methodically as a doctor dispenses pills. Until lately, she thought she was content, relieved not to have to put up with his staring down at her through impatient eyes while he pumped away inside her.
"Sam?"
When still he says nothing, she grabs a towel and goes to the door.
"Hey, wait a minute." His face pokes from out of the blanket. Head cocked to the side, he leans back on his elbows and studies her. "Sexy," he says. "New suit?"
It's the same old blue tank suit she's worn for years. "Come on, Sam. Let's go."
"You go ahead…I'll be along."
Maud follows the sandy path tracing the edge of the cliff. She steps gingerly around clusters of coral, brittle as volcanic rock. The air is sultry, sweet with the aroma of something burning in the distance. The sea is a pattern of grays and greens mingling in the sunlight. So late in the day, only a few patches of bright blue remain. A solitary pelican glides uncertainly, scanning the water below. The path cuts through a grove of plants and shrubs that thrive in crumbly, dry soil. Cacti, as tall as she, sprout thorn-like needles. Shorter varieties, topped with clusters of orange and yellow flowers, rise from the ground like giant thumbs. Bunches of fat sea grapes hang from bushes that drape the path with shade.
The path stops abruptly at a flight of rickety, wooden steps leading to a mile-long stretch of beach. Not as many people as Maud expected are there. But she pauses, startled to see most of them are naked. She thinks of Sam. He won't like it. She imagines the shock on his face, and for an instant wants to turn back. But instead, she takes the steps and walks along the shore. Just ahead, a woman stands knee-deep in the shallows. The woman's skin is the color of wet sand. Hands on her hips, knees bent, she peers into the water, watching something drift by. Her breasts are small and pert, her thighs dimpled with middle age.
Maud keeps on. Her bare feet slosh through the shallows. A slight breeze, fragrant with the smell of the sea, brushes her skin. She tries not to call attention to herself. Most of the men are naked, their skin browned and course from the sun. The women are slick as seals with lotion that smells like coconut and baby oil. Their breasts range from ripe swells of flesh with taut brown nipples to honeyed bulges. Several elderly couples, gray and fleshy, doze on deck chairs arranged in a semi-circle in the sand.
People of all ages stand talking, gazing about. A few smile at Maud as she passes. She stops to watch some children dump plastic pails of water into a gully they've dug around a sand castle. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, their damp hair flying, race each other to the sea. They shriek with laughter and tumble into a swirl of foamy brine.
Feeling conspicuous in the blue tank suit, Maud glances back toward the cliff, at the roofline of the hotel just beyond. She's startled to see Sam standing on a bluff, his outline a brief marker against the bowl of sky. A gull hovers above him. She raises a hand to wave, then stiffens. He's scanning the beach through the binoculars. Motionless, his legs seem rooted into black rock. The striped collared shirt tucked into white bathing trunks that almost reach his knees give him a crisp country club look.
Maud veers right, toward a crescent of palm trees, and sits cross-legged in the sand, half-shaded by an enormous palm bough. A few yards in front of her, the teenagers flop on their backs in the sand, too breathless to speak. The girl's small white breasts are delicate things, the boy's body slender and loose. When the girl straddles a leg around his as naturally as if it belonged there, Maud stares. The boy's penis is hard. Some rawness inside her begins to spread.
"Where've you been?" Maud says, keeping her tone light, when Sam comes and squats beside her.
They sit, awkward together, silent as two birds just flown in from some remote place, surveying the situation.
"Did you know the beach would be like this?" he asks.
"No." She watches the teenagers, now propped against their backpacks.
Sam squeezes a fistful of sand onto his knees. His eyes slide toward the teenagers and back again.
"Let's go," he says, cocking his head in the direction of the cliff. He stands, brushes sand from his knees, and holds out a hand to Maud.
She gives him a doubtful look. "Don't you want to swim?"
"You go ahead. I'll wait for you." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his trunks. A small echo of regret sounds in his voice. Maud searches his face for a sign, but his expression betrays nothing. Whatever uncertainties flicker inside him are buried too deep for her to reach, abandoned like old relics with the dead.
She shrugs, heads for the sea. The sand is hot against her feet. When she passes the teenagers, she tenses under their frank gaze.
As she steps into the water, she feels as if eyes are boring into her from every direction. Froth from the waves laps at her feet. She wades out slowly, awkwardly. She takes a deep breath and dives into a wave. Coming up, she skims along the surface, heads further out, and floats on her back. Eyes half-closed, she feels the water seep into her pores, cleansing her. She pulls the bathing suit straps from her shoulders, slides the suit down below her navel and wriggles out of it. Salt water washes over her breasts like cool silk. The tide feathers deliciously between her legs. Not bothering to swim after the blob of blue spandex now drifting away, she watches a wave swallow it up.
She floats with the undertow down the coast, further and further. She nosedives, sending schools of rainbow-colored fish darting every which way, and reaches to touch the fan coral swaying beneath her. When she stops to tread water, catching her breath, she gazes down the beach. The teenagers are sitting up, side by side, their faces turned toward the horizon. Sam paces back and forth under the palm trees.
Maud can barely make out the red binoculars dangling from his neck. But she sees from the way he keeps looking in her direction that he's struggling to keep her in sight. And so he must. Without her, the blankets and binoculars, the self-absorption and thin sex, all of it would flutter away like feathers caught in a breeze. When he spots her rising naked from the sea, he won't know what to make of her. Her heart goes out to him.
Maud swims on. The sea pulses into her, filling her with something as large as the world.
Biographical/publication information: Brucie Jacobs is the author of Secret Girl (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), Small Burials, a short story collection (1998), as well as stories and essays published in literary journals, including The Baltimore Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Rosebud, The Baltimore Sun (2000), and The Ngami Times (Botswana, 2000). Literary awards include first prize /nonfiction book and third prize/essay in the Southwest Writers 2002 Literary Contest, as well as first prize/fiction in Baltimore's 1998 Artscape Festival. With a BA in Asian Studies from Cornell University and a JD from Columbia University, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she paints with encaustic wax and writes. http://www.bruciejacobs.com