Under the sienna brown umbrella, Kitty Wolfe read her magazine.  Even under the umbrella, she wore a large brown sun hat with a brim as wide as her shoulders.  Her strapless bathing suit was a matching auburn with white polka dots the size of quarters.  There had been a time when she’d savored the scorch of the sun, spreading oil over her thin body and baking in the heat like toast.  That was when she wore bikinis.  Now, she could not so much as feel warmth on her cheeks without recoiling in visions of wrinkles round her lips and crow’s feet around her eyes.  She wore large sunglasses that matched her bathing suit and hat.  She kept her toes tucked inside the shade of the umbrella.

Beside her, in an identical beach chair, Colin watched the waves lap at the shore.  He drank from a crystal glass that flickered in the sun like a diamond ring.  His drink was bourbon brown; he wore khakis and white linen.  He was at the beach for the weekend, Labor Day weekend, the last weekend of summer.  Every hour or so, he walked up to the house to call the office and replenish his drink.  Although he tried to clear his thoughts of work, his mind always drifted back to stocks and bonds.  To him, the ebb and flow of the waves seemed only to mimic the stock market which was ebbing this past week and had him worried.

A few feet from his toes, Madeleine played in the sand.  She wore an orange, one-piece bathing suit, the color of sherbet.  Although Kitty bought her a handful of bathing suits before they left the city for the summer, this was the only one Madeleine wore.  From the back, she resembled her mother, spindly and narrow as a branch, the same mahogany hair. Madeleine wore her hair short, ear-length; Kitty wore hers long, past the shoulders, tucked in a ponytail under her brown hat.  Madeleine’s face was an exact replica of her father’s – grey eyes, straight nose, gaunt cheekbones.

            Madeleine packed sand around her legs.  She was never the type to build castles or dig holes, but always, always this – the desire to envelop her body in sand.  She liked to imagine the stretch of her legs as the Sahara Desert, and that the wiggling of toes and the lifting of knees caused earthquakes.

            “Daddy, will you cover my top half now?” she asked for the second time that morning.

            “In a minute.  I don’t want to get sand in my drink.”

            “Oh, come on, Colin.  She already asked you once.  Just bury the girl in sand,” Kitty said.

            “After my drink, I said.”

They continued to bicker, but Madeleine was no longer listening.  She missed her nanny, Magda, who spent whole mornings with her, taking turns covering their bodies with sand, shaping their legs into mermaid fins.  Magda didn’t even mind when sand got in her hair.  It was her day off, though, and she’d taken a bus back to the city to see her family. 

The ice cubes in Colin Wolfe’s crystal glass tinkled.  “All right, Maddy.  I’m ready.”

She lay back into the beach, and folded her arms across her chest.  He felt awkward kneeling beside his eight-year-old daughter, scooping handfuls of sand and sprinkling them over her stomach.  He knew it was ridiculous, but he was afraid to touch her. 

“Do I look dead?” Madeleine asked, opening her eyes.

“A little, but your cheeks are too red for a dead person.”

She giggled, and closed her eyes again.  “You have to pack it harder, Daddy.  Don’t you know how to bury someone in sand?”

“No.  I guess I haven’t a clue,” he said. 

“Just pack harder – like a snowball.”

Colin could not remember the last time he packed a snowball, but he tried to follow her directions. He wanted to impress his daughter and say something clever, but all he came up with was, “Have you had a good summer, Maddy?”

“Yes,” she replied, because what else is there to say to questions like that from fathers?

Kitty glanced up from her magazine and said to no one in particular, “She probably won’t remember a thing about this summer when she’s grown up.”

“Why do you say that?” Colin asked.

“Because it’s true.  I remember being sixteen like yesterday, but I don’t recall anything about being eight.”  Kitty shook a cigarette from her half-empty pack, and turned her gaze, thoughtfully, to the waves. 

“I remember being eight.  I had the biggest crush on a girl named Stacy Temple.”

“I remember being four.  I nearly drowned, and my father had to jump in the pool with all his clothes on to save me.  But, eight?” she said.  “Nothing.”

Colin packed the sand down around Madeleine’s chest until it was smooth as an iced cake.  Madeleine tried to breath without moving because she knew deep breaths would cause small cracks on the surface of her sand body.  Kitty returned to her essay on the state of affairs in Israel.

She read the first paragraph three times before giving up.  Kitty Wolfe was more interested in reading about affairs than the states of them.  Every week, from their condo in the city, her husband brought The New Yorker for Kitty to read.  By the time she got the magazine, it smelled like a bathroom.  She tried to read it front-to-back because she knew her husband enjoyed discussing it over cocktails, but some of the articles were simply unbearable.  They were just so wordy or boring or something.  She flipped through the watermarked pages, pausing over a cartoon on page thirty-five, which showed a decrepit old man lying in a psychiatrist’s chair.  The caption read, “I blame my mother.”  

On the weekends, Kitty read this insipid nonsense, but on weekdays, she read romance novels.  She liked the drama of paperback romance novels, the steamy love-making between the man with chiseled pecks and the woman with long hair.  They all started with the same premise – a man and woman who hated each other.  Kitty hated her husband, but thought their opportunity for romance had long since passed.  Colin did not approve of romance novels.  Although he did not straight-out forbid Kitty to read them, she took to hiding her novels a few years ago.  She offered them to Magda or threw them in the trash.

Last night, Madeleine nearly blew her cover.  Kitty and her husband were drinking gin martinis on the verandah when Madeleine came out in her Tinkerbelle pajamas.  “Mother, I found your novel under my bed,” she said, holding Kitty’s copy of Love at the Lighthouse.  Kitty was almost finished (less than fifty pages left), so instead of throwing it in the trash, she’d tossed the novel under Madeleine’s bed to hide for the weekend.

“Don’t be silly.  That must be Magda’s, and why are you awake?  It’s way past your bedtime.” Madeleine looked at her strangely, but didn’t say anything.  “I’ll go tuck you in.  Colin, do you want another martini while I’m inside?”

Thinking about it made her mad.  Kitty turned the page, and skimmed through Ian Miller’s newest theatre review.  A few years ago, Kitty met Ian Miller at a cocktail party.  He wore copper, wire-rimmed glasses and a maroon turtleneck.  She’d never heard of him before, and felt embarrassed when he said he wrote for The New Yorker.  He leaned in too close to her face when he said this, but after meeting him, Kitty began reading his reviews religiously.  She thought of him as a friend and liked to bring him up in conversation.

 “Colin,” she said now, “can we go to the theatre next weekend?  The New Plays Company is putting on Nobody Here but Me, and Ian Miller says it’s the must-see of the season.”

“I thought you wanted to go to the opera.”

Last week, Ian Miller wrote about an avant-garde production of Madame Butterfly.  (Also, indisputably a MUST-see.)  “The opera’s playing all season, though, and this is the last weekend for Nobody Here but Me.  Please, honey?”

“Whatever you want, dear.  I’m going up to the house to check in with the office.”

Madeleine stood up after her father.  “I’m going down the water.”

“Don’t go in too deep,” her mother warned.  “I’m too far away to save you if you drown.”

Magda always went down to the water with her, and for a moment, Madeleine missed her again.  Madeleine loved swimming out deep and letting the waves crash her back to shore.  Magda called it body surfing.

At the shoreline, Madeleine sat down and waited for the waves to wipe away the sand like fingers.  Finally, she grew impatient and helped it along.  She looked back to her mother, who disregarded her magazine for another cigarette.  She waved, but her mother did not wave back.  She was not watching Madeleine, but staring at a flock of birds flying circles above the water.

Kitty watched the birds dive into the waves; she wondered if they were eating or just diving; she wondered if her husband was really calling the office.  For as long as she could remember, she assumed he had another woman – someone young, someone blonde, someone who shared his bed Monday through Friday while she was at the beach with their daughter.  She thought the woman had a name like Tiffany.  She thought Colin gave her diamond necklaces on her birthday and shopping money for their nights out.  She tried to go through their bank statements to see if Colin withdrew money for these purposes, but she never understood numbers and couldn’t decipher which expenses might be fake.  She wondered if he didn’t want to see the play because he’d seen it before, with her, the other woman. 

They hadn’t made love since the Fourth of July, and that turned into a fiasco.  The fireworks were long over, and they’d been the last to leave the Bernstrom’s annual gala.  He wore a navy sear-sucker suit; she wore a gold sundress (red, white, and blue lingerie underneath).  Both of them were stumbling drunk; he could barely get it up.  Perhaps, they’d try again on Monday.  She wondered if he had this problem with Tiffany. 

Madeleine came back from the beach and said in a whiny tone, “I’m hungry.”

“Magda made us sandwiches.  They’re in the picnic basket on the kitchen table.  Go tell your father to bring it down.  Get me a gin martini, too, while you’re up there.”

Madeleine agreed and headed up to the house.  This past summer, Kitty taught her how to make drinks.  She could make martinis, gin and tonics, and Bloody Marys.  Whenever Kitty’s friends came over, she would ask Madeleine to make their drinks.  She thought it impressed them to have such a mature, obedient daughter.  Her friends applauded Madeleine’s efforts, but secretly found the drinks too strong.

Colin and Madeleine hobbled back to the umbrella.  Madeleine carried the martini in her right hand and in her left, a thermos of lemonade Magda put in the fridge.  Colin carried his crystal glass and the picnic basket. 

 “Have you been practicing your arithmetic?” he asked her (again, so awkwardly).

“Yes,” she said, although he suspected it was a lie.  Colin worried about his daughter.  She barely passed second grade because of her poor math skills.  She read at the level of a fourth grader, but could barely add single-digit numbers.  He should sit down with her this weekend, maybe go over some subtraction.

At the house, he called the office and talked to his secretary, Stephanie.  He gave her some instructions about the Rutledge account, and she told him to enjoy his weekend.  He would like to have an affair with Stephanie.  She was a curvy woman whose clothes were always a little wrinkled, but she was so – nice.  She always smiled and asked, “How are you doing today, Mr. Wolfe?”  He would like to have an affair with her, but he had no idea how to go about it.  Should he ask her for a drink after work?  Should he invite her into his office, pin her against the door, kiss her pale orange lips?  There was also the question of their marriages, and what if she said no?  Work would become terribly awkward, and he would need to find a new secretary.  Stephanie was a good secretary and a good woman.  Who was he kidding?  He’d never have an affair.  Still, he thought of her puffy lips, her constant smile.

In the picnic basket, they found three sub sandwiches, apples, one giant bag of potato chips, a jar of pickles, plastic plates, napkins, and a red plaid picnic blanket folded and tied up in white string.  Madeleine’s sandwich was turkey, cheese, and mayonnaise.  Her parents’ sandwiches had tomato, lettuce, red onion, and mustard, in addition to turkey and cheese.

Colin untied and laid out the picnic blanket.  Kitty fidgeted with the sienna umbrella in an attempt to garner more shade.  Madeleine opened the potato chips and began shoving them in her mouth by the fistful.  Besides a piece of toast with strawberry jam in the morning, she’d eaten nothing all day.

“How many times do I have to tell Magda?” Kitty said. “No potato chips.”

“Oh, they’re fine,” Colin replied.  “She’s a growing girl; she can eat what she wants.”

Madeleine looked up from the potato chips to find her parents staring at her.  She felt like she’d been caught doing something wrong.  She felt greedy, and fat.  Then, she remembered she was just as skinny as her mother, and she took another fistful.  The chips were organic, salt and vinegar.

“She’s going to get fat if she eats like that,” her mother said.  “Besides, the point is I told Magda not to buy them, and she got them, anyway.”

“She probably just forgot.”

“Whatever.”

Madeleine spoke up, “Don’t be mad at Magda.  I asked her to get them.”  She held up a six-inch sub wrapped in cellophane.  “Want your sandwich?” 

“Not now,” her mother said, shaking another cigarette from her pack.  She blocked the wind with the rim of her hat and lit it on the third try.  “Did you call the office?”

“Yes, I needed to give Stephanie some instructions on a new account.”

“I don’t know why you keep her around.  She always looks so unkempt.”

Madeleine moved on to the sandwich and appeared to eat without breathing.  Within minutes, she finished her lunch and curled under her lime-green towel, napping in the sun.  Her cheeks were red from not wearing sunscreen.  She knew she would get burned, but liked the feeling of the heat against her skin, against her bathing suit straps.

Kitty opened the picnic basket and took out the jar of pickles.  She began eating them.  Ever since she was a child, she’d loved pickles – not the round ones on top of hamburgers, the long ones beside sandwiches.  She craved them as other women craved chocolate.  She liked their bitter crunch, their aftertaste.  She ate five.  She drank her martini.

“I need another drink,” Colin said.

“You just got one,” Kitty said back.

“Well, I need another.  Just because you don’t drink until lunch doesn’t mean you can criticize my drinking habits.  What are you, counting?”
            Colin stood up, and Kitty didn’t reply.  Although she was – counting, that is.  Four.  This would be his fourth drink of the day.  It made her feel embarrassed, as if her husband needed to get drunk in order to survive a day at the beach with her.  Although she knew he drank on weekdays too, even when she wasn’t home.  She could tell when they talked on the phone.  That made her feel better.

“Get me another martini, too.  While you’re up,” she said.

A handful of seagulls surrounded the picnic basket, pecking at the potato chips Madeleine left in her wake.  Kitty lit a cigarette off the end of the one she almost finished.  She buried the stub in the sand.  The seagulls were ravenous, and she thought about feeding them her sandwich.  She took a potato chip from the bag, and one swooped down and grabbed it.  Her hand instinctively jumped back to her side.  She thought about feeding them her cigarette butt.  She finished her drink.

The wind blew cold from the sea, and Kitty shivered under her sienna umbrella.  She reached for her shawl, tawny brown, and put it around her shoulders.  Madeleine woke from the cold.  She felt like she’d slept for hours, although it had been only a few minutes.  She shuddered under her towel and dug her feet under the sand.  A cloud blocked the path of the sun, and she admired its turtle-shape.  When it passed, Madeleine’s eyes were momentarily blinded.

“Maddy,” her mother said like a question, “Maddy, I have an idea.  Come here.”

            Madeleine wrapped her towel around her shoulders and went over to her mother.  Her mother held the string from the picnic blanket in her right hand.  “What is it?” she asked. 

            “Get my sandwich for me,” her mother said.

            Madeleine retrieved the sub, still cool from the shade of the picnic basket.  She handed it to her mother, who unwrapped the cellophane.  Very carefully, her mother tied the string around the sandwich and gestured to Madeleine.  “Come, sit beside me,” she said.  “Give me your ankle.”  Madeleine put her leg in her mother’s lap.  Kitty tied the end of the string around her ankle. 

“OK, Madeleine,” she said, “Now, what I want you to do is run down the beach.”

            “Why? What’s going to happen?” Madeleine asked.

            “Don’t ask questions.  Just do it.  Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

            “Do I have to?”

            Kitty grabbed her daughter by the arm.  “Yes.  Now listen to me: You’re going to remember this day for the rest of your life.  This is it.  This will be the only thing you remember about this entire summer.  So don’t be mad,” she said. 

Kitty motioned with her martini glass towards the beach.  “Now, go!” 

Madeleine began to run.

Colin walked out of the house and watched a flock of seagulls descend upon his daughter’s ankles.  Madeleine gaped back at the birds and ran like hell.  Kitty stood up beside the sienna umbrella – brown hat discarded, brown sunglasses discarded, hands at her waist, laughing like a banshee.  The seagulls thought only of eating and focused their beady eyes upon the sandwich.

The birds enveloped her like a grey cloud of noise.  Madeleine thought they’d pick her up by the hair and swallow her whole.  She tripped in the sand.  Bent down.  Untied the string, and ran to the water.

The seagulls devoured the sandwich behind her.  From the back, Colin could see her hands on her knees, the shape of her panting frame.  He moved forward, and his hand wavered.  The crystal glass shattered like diamonds beside his bare feet.