SUN, SEA AND CELIBACY
by
Joseph K. Novara (coypright 1997 All Rights Reserved)
He knelt at the waterline. Cupped Lake Michigan over
his head and neck. His wife had to be somewhere in the mile-long
beach he had just traversed--an aquamarine dot in a glaring
slide show. Overexposed pictures. No contrast. Anxious to share
the lab results with her, he would wait a bit and try again.
A woman in a long white robe, cowl pulled over her
head, glided by. Her light cotton gown trailed behind her
puffing like a spinnaker to reveal her legs and then spilling
air to drag in the wave wash around her feet.
**********
Bare feet. White robes trailing in the Mediterranean.
Sister Margaret Stella. It had been this kind of bare bulb in a
white room day. She had told him, if he were ever around Naples,
to visit her at the summer convent near the beach.
His bare feet stroked the cool marble floor as he
waited for his eyes to adjust to the quiet light of the atrium.
The sudden hush rang in his ears. He felt naked. He wondered if
he should have brought a shirt to wear over his bathing suit.
"Well, hello," she said from behind him.
He turned and couldn't help smiling. Her face had
escaped from the starched coif and he could follow the planes of
her cheeks all the way back to her hair, the color of a worn
gold wedding band, as it rounded in a relaxed way to a single
point under her short summer veil.
"I'm glad you could make it," she smiled as if pleased
at the impression she had made, "could I get you some lemonade?"
"Sure. Sounds good," he followed her into a simple
dining room crowded by a wide oak table and a four foot crucifix
on the wall.
"I'll be right back," she said.
He stepped over the backless bench, sat slowly, and
hunched onto crossed arms trying to minimize his nakedness.
"I was just looking at some old snaps," she announced
as she slid next to him, propping a photo album between them,
"let me show you my favorite."
She was framed in a 3x3, black and white snapshot,
smiling on the open deck of a ferry boat, surrounded by four
laughing sailors. She raised an eyebrow. If she wanted a
reaction, he wasn't going to bite. He took a sip of lemonade,
"Where were you going," he asked?
"Home, to Ireland, to visit my family. My companion
had dared me to chat-up the sailors," she smiled mischievously.
Later, as they walked the shoreline, she remarked,
"I'm going to miss our discussion groups."
"Me too."
"Too bad you have to go back to the States."
"Yep," he nodded, "time is up. Time to get to work."
He watched her bare feet splash in the bubbly froth
while the edge of her white robes dragged heavily in the
Mediterranean bringing wetness up to her knees.
"I guess we better stop here," she said.
He nodded agreement. They faced each other. Haloed by
the glowing white sky, like a parachute coming out of the sun,
she took each of his hands in her, "What a dramatic goodbye."
"I'll miss you too--so long," he said, then turned,
jogged down the beach.
After a while he could make out his classmates in the
distance. It was hard to miss thirty men in their mid-twenties
playing touch football, sun bathing, swimming. Not a woman in
sight. He splashed into the silty water to cool off, but felt
salt-sticky as he waded back toward shore.
A beach ball floated towards his shins. An Italian
woman in her mid-thirties waved at him to retrieve it.
"Grazie," she said, touching his arm lightly, "listen,
I want to ask you something."
He was surprised. Italian women seldom approached
strange men. She hitched one hip and arched her bikini patched
torso.
"You're with all those guys, right," she jabbed her
chin toward his classmates?
He nodded.
"What's the deal? Are you a sport's team on holiday?
What?"
"No, you see, we're seminarians, American seminarians."
"Priests," she asked incredulously, "all of you?"
"Si."
She rolled her black eyes to the sky,
"Madonna, what a waste of virility."
She appraised him from the corner of her eye for a
long moment, made a sucking sound through her teeth,
"Che peccato!" (what a sin).
He collected his beach gear and got on the bus feeling
a little proud and justified. Like a young soldier boarding a
troop train - pretty woman on the platform crying in
appreciation of his sacrifice. But when he looked out the
window, the Italian mother wasn't waving, she was playing catch
with her sons.
"Ohhh, they call her frivolous Sal," someone intoned
from the back of the bus and the sing-along was on.
"A peculiar sort of a gal
an all round good fellow
but dead on the level
was my Gal Sa-a-a-al."
**********
He nudged a rock with his toe. Too heavy for skipping.
His wife said she would be at North Beach. Still no sign of her.
He picked up a perfect skipping stone, looked for an open space
between the swimmers, pivoted like a shortstop and sidearmed a
flat trajectory--5, 6, 7, 8. Just beyond the concentric ripples
of the last skip, he spotted her blue bathing suit rising in and
out of the water in a slow relaxed breast stroke. He relaxed
too. Locked on her, he slowly removed his running shoes, tucked
his keys and wallet inside, ducked out of his golf shirt and
slowly waded into Lake Michigan. He could see his feet in the
cool, waist deep water.
As he got closer and she still hadn't seen him, he
decided to surprise her. Diving to the bottom, he watched her
for a long moment, an underwater voyeur studying exotic marine
life. Her bathing suit camouflaged her torso against the
backdrop of the sky so her tanned legs seemed detached as she
glided in a steady rhythm, up, out, thrust, together. The force
of the kick hinged from the fork of her body centered on that
secret place where their child was begun, was now growing, he
hoped it was a girl, swimming in her own private ocean inside
her swimming mother.
On the way to the surface, he tickled her feet. There
was a screech. Water splashed in his face.
"You scared the hell out of me," she sputtered, "What
are you doing here, anyway?"
He grinned.
"Did the lab call," she guessed?
He nodded.
"And it's positive--wow," she exploded as she wrapped
her legs around his waist and let the water and his arms float
her in a slow dance, circling to the rhythm of the waves