Rain
Their wet clothes cling to their bodies, neither of them came prepared for the sheets of slick rain that met them. They saw it coming as they arrived: the black clouds blooming over the water, rolling closer and closer to the shore as they emptied themselves. By that time though, they had already gotten out of the car. “I didn’t drive all the way here to sit in the damn car,” her husband had said, shutting off the ignition and the pumped in heat. So, she had stepped out with him, flinging the too-thin jacket she had brought over her shoulders, realizing too late that the zipper was broken and useless. The thing now hangs limp on her shoulders, framing her soaked shirt, now see through from rain. She plucks at the wet fabric where it sticks to the roll of her tummy above the waistband of her jeans, hyper-aware of the way she must look and the way her body is shaking for warmth. The way the icy wind slicing through her wet clothing and sticking instead to her very skin.
They drove out here to see the beach and the giant rocks that look like castles jutting out of the water. The tide has pooled water across the sand, the waves licking further and further up, greedy to devour the entirety of the shoreline. At least no, instead of sheets of rain, there’s only a dull haze of water hanging in the air, drops clinging to her face and nose, both of which are numb. The whole beach swallowed by a cloud. Her husband is walking in front of her, hair dripping, jacket blowing backward in the wind. He tosses his head back and forth to keep his hair from hanging in his face, to keep the water it’s collected from dripping down the sides of his cheeks. If she walks slow enough, the outline of his body blurs and all she can hear is the sound of the waves crashing, crashing, and her breathing. In the distance, she can hear a dog’s bark, but the sound is soft and pillowy against her through the fog.
Her husband is the kind of man who walks with his shoulders pulled back and his chest out: always sure of himself. He is tall and wide, the span of shoulders the same as the span of a doorframe. Whenever they move through a crowd, people automatically give him a wide berth, leaving a wake in his path for her to scurry after him. Even now, he doesn’t bother reaching his hand back to grab her, to pull her towards him, because he is a man that you follow, a man to be listened to. She can hear him say this to her in his mean whisper, the smell of whiskey still smoking from his mouth. When he says this, she has to suck at her teeth to keep herself from smiling, or worse, from laughing. Not because he’s joking, but because she knows that he’s serious. The giant rocks that they’ve come to see look like ghosts, mist hanging from their sides.
At the edge of the water, she squats down and dips her fingertips in, each one turning bright red from the cold. A tennis ball rolls to a stop at her feet and a black Lab comes beside her and snatches it in its mouth. She puts her hand out towards the dog and he drops the ball and sniffs her now numb fingers. The dog lets her pet the damp fur along its sides, its body somehow still warm. Someone is calling the dog’s name, she can hear the thump, thump of its tail, but it stays and lets her wrap her hands in its fur to warm her, lets her press her cheek against the side of its face, the smell of wet dog flooding her nose. The dog sits at her side, but she can’t figure out how to say, “thank you,” before her husband emerges from the fog and the animal runs off, ball in its mouth.
