Goodbye, Frankie Chen
I have always been drawn to the coast, even if it hurts, even if everyone says it is no longer safe. Even as years pass, as I feel myself changing, no longer the child I was, I am pulled back to that place, the stretch of pebble and mud on the new shore between Alexandra and Crawford Bays. I go there when my mother and father fight. I go when dad cries. I go when the sadness of the world seems too much, when the sky seems to be a weight pressing down on all of us, on the remains of my family, the remains of my town. You might think I’d go anywhere but that stretch of coast—I could instead climb in the hills, or spend time in the gardens—but I find a kind of peace down on the shore, listening to the lap of waves, their receding hiss and fizz.
This morning Dad is crying again. He does this sometimes. It comes from nowhere, and I guess it is because of Bo. Because he still feels the loss, still carries the guilt—he tried, he swam out into that king tide, swam until dark, came home alone. Just as he cannot bear this weight, nor can I, because my back was turned, and I did not know what to do. There’s no sense in it, but I feel responsible for it all—for Bo, for my father, for the fights, for all of it.
So, as Dad cries, I leave. I keep my head down as I walk past the gardens, hoping no-one will see me—I should help, I know, but I don’t, I won’t. I dawdle down the side of Te Ranga-ā-Hiwi, following the path that has become a stream—bare feet washed in the hazy water, sliding in the mud. Here and there I jump over ledges where the rain has washed away parts of the hillside, carved it into the ocean below. When I get to the coast I stop, sit on a rock, look over the water towards the jagged headland, the faint outlines of islands beyond.
I try not to think of the past. It cannot change now. I think instead about the present. The smell of salt water. The breeze touching my skin, rustling my hair. The faint taste of metal in my mouth. Sometimes I fall into an empty space, between waking and dreaming. I look out over the water and imagine Bo, much older now, a boy on the edge of his teens, surfing across the waves, swimming back, waving to me as he wades from the tide. Or I fall into another dream, imagine him happy on some other island, laughing with friends, eating a wedge of orange or a slice of melon.
I’m thinking in this way when I see a movement in the distance, at the headland, along the forbidden path. A thin grey figure, travelling quickly as the waves crash, as the tide rolls in. A boy—well, nearly a man—scrambling as the water smacks his feet. I stand.
Hoy, I call. You. What are you doing? You shouldn’t be on that path.
There’s no answer. He’s knocked over, stands again, clambers over a rock, skitters down the other side. He pulls himself up a bank and sidles along, out of reach of the ocean’s fingers. Then he slides down the other side, onto the strip of beach.
Adi? he calls. Is that you?
I know the voice, and want to run.
Frankie Chen?
One and only.
What are you doing?
Exploring. He comes closer, and grins.
Out there? You’re not supposed …
I know, he says. It’s cool though. Quiet. You should go sometime.
But I’m thinking back. Of course I’m thinking back. The headland. The path that used to be so much wider. The path that we all thought was safe, but now isn’t.
Frankie comes and sits beside me. I want him to. And I don’t want him to.
You’re an idiot, I say.
I suppose, he says.
I’m shivering.
I’m sorry, he says. I didn’t mean to scare you. I go diving round there.
Alone?
He shrugs.
It’s beautiful, he says. Under the water. So quiet.
What’s there?
You wouldn’t believe.
Fish?
He nods.
Lots. But so much more.
I hesitate, then ask.
I don’t suppose …
He reaches across, squeezes my wrist. Shakes his head.
I look down.
You should go, he says. See for yourself. It might help.
I flinch, turn from him.
How? I ask. Salt in the corner of my mouth. How might it help?
Sorry, he says. I shouldn’t have said that.
No.
Truly, I’m sorry.
He releases my wrist, moves his hand to my shoulder, lets it rest there—not romance, just warmth.
What do you need? he says.
I shrug. His eyes are searching my face. Liquid brown. He stands.
I think maybe I should go, he says. Will you be okay?
I nod. Yes, best he goes; yes, I will be okay.
I watch him walk along the beach, up the narrow path. His body is long, lean. He moves fluidly, without effort, as if the air is parting for him. This must be how he swims, gliding and diving in the darkness, in the shadow of Matairangi.
It has always been this way. Me watching. Me drawn to Frankie, just as I am drawn to the coast. Even as children, I wanted to be in his presence, to play beside or near him, to feel his eyes on me, to exist in the light of his sun.
He was there, that day, on the beach. Not far away, Bo was playing by a rock pool. He was squealing, laughing, as he watched the darting minnows and the silent starfish. Dad was with him, watching him, or so I thought. Frankie was sitting against a driftwood log, gazing out to the ocean, his eyes half closed. As I walked over he turned to me, arching an eyebrow, just one, as if my presence was amusing.
We started talking—about places to swim, wrecks to dive in, undersea currents, the stands of white coral that were growing along the coast, covering the buildings from the old times; or places to walk, high into the hills, beneath the canopy of miro and white pine, where we could escape our awkwardness, be ourselves, or at least be unseen. I found myself agreeing with Frankie, echoing his words, his gestures.
Neither of us noticed. Not until it was too late. We felt it, I think, before we knew. We turned from each other hazily, and looked along the shore. The air, which not long before had carried Bo’s excited squeals and coos, was silent, except for the breeze, except for the wash of ocean on shore.
We both jumped up, ran to the pool, gazed in at the starfish, the kelp, the unmoving shells. Dad was there, snoring. I shook him awake. Then Frankie and I ran along the beach, shouting, calling Bo’s name. Frankie dived into the water, swam from one end of the cove to the other, emerged drenched, and ran straight up the hill—the path was easier then, broader. I’d watched his receding back that day too, watched his limbs slicing through the air; I was still watching when Dad sat up, groggily, and shook his head, and slapped his face, and looked around. A sound came from him, an exhalation, a breath, a whisper, though it seemed to echo along the beach. Then he stripped to his waist, ran across the sand, dived into the water. I sat on the shore, crying, as the sun crossed the sky and dipped behind the ridge.
At some point Mum came and sat beside me, put her arm around my shoulders, leaned into me. I could hear her soft breathing, sniffing back the tears. I pushed her off, turned, slapped her.
Where were you? I screamed. Where were you? Where were you? Where were you?
She nodded.
Yes, Adi, she said. As if to say: This is my fault. Mine and Dad’s. I shrugged. We were facing each other, both crying, when Dad emerged, splashing out of the blue-black water. He approached us, shook his head, then slumped down in the sand. He sat there for a long while, then got up and went again.
It isn’t deliberate, what I do. It’s not something I have planned. It’s not even a decision. Just a kind of following, a drawing in. I should, I suppose, resist it, follow Frankie up the hill, back through the gardens, back to the town and home.
But I do not.
I stand, dry my tears, and find myself walking, retracing Frankie’s steps—over the rock, along the bank, along the narrow coastal path, beneath the ragged cliffs, out to the headland. As I walk the ocean tugs at my feet, crashing in, knocking me off balance, pulling and sucking as it recedes. A calling.
I reach the headland, a finger of serrated rock, rust-brown, glistening in the dull light. To the north there are cliffs, a great wall of stone and scree, sea-battered Matairangi plunging into the ocean. To the east there is a sea channel—once an isthmus, once part of a city—and, in the further distance, the faint white outline of Te Motu Kairangi. I kick off my sandals, my shorts and shirt. Salt breeze whips my skin. I walk out onto the rocks, feeling the sting on my skin. The tide calls, it tugs and roils. I flex my knees and dive.
It is warmer than I have expected, a silver-green blanket wrapping around me, drawing me in. I kick my feet, push away from the shore, take a few strokes out, then dip my head beneath the surface. It is a long time since I have dived—not since Bo, not since Frankie—but the memory returns, the flexing of muscle, the pop of each cell. I swim along the pebbled shore, among the sprats, the mussels and tuatua, the clumps of kelp. Then I lift my head, suck in my deepest breath, and push on, down, beyond the kelp forests, beyond the salt-flecked shafts of light, into the rougher water, the empty liquid field, the space where the schools of trevally and moki swim, where the sharks hunt, where the octopi lie in wait.
I had forgotten this peace, forgotten the faint easy world beneath the surface, beneath the slicing wind, beneath the call of land and babble of thought. I had forgotten the curl of the current, the whorl and slipstream of a ridden tide, the ease of it, of giving in to the ocean’s power. Since Frankie, since Bo, I have feared this place, feared what memories it might pull from me, what shames. But it does not do that, it guides me, it calls.
For years afterwards Frankie and I did not speak. For years, each morning, he disappeared, returning only at dusk, while I immersed myself in the land, in the gardens. Was he diving all this time? Did he come out every morning, to look for Bo?
For a moment I want to scream, to release the last of my air into the infinite ocean, to burst in its constant tide. It was only a moment, I tell myself. It was only a second. It was only Frankie. I was a child. I didn’t do anything.
I swim on, well past the headland now, halfway to the island, halfway to the deep. Here and there, rocks rise in ragged spires, reaching for the layer beneath the surface; here and there, the wreckages of storm-pushed ships, hooked and gouged on the reefs, now flaking with rust, now sunk into the ocean floor sand; here and there, the homes, some buried whole, some battered and pulled from the untethered shore. Life is change, Mum says. Life is change.
Somewhere, in this space, in this darkness, the faintest whisper, the faintest song. Hush, it calls; Hush, Adi, hush. A faint, flickering song in the ocean roar; a faint, flickering light in the ocean-black. He calls. He calls, he sings—his song a rhythm, a thrum; a faint, faint line; a fleck of salt in the ocean-cloud.
I am here, he says. I am here. No matter what changes, I am here. I empty my lungs of breath, allow myself to drift—down into the depths, the blackness, the great open space. Bo is here. Everything is here. Eyes closing, mind drifting, body dissolving into the greater space. Out, out beyond the island; beyond the mainland too. Out beyond the shores and reefs and rocks of a whole broken planet; out beyond the fields of kelp and the fields of plankton; out beyond the tropics and the last remaining flecks of ice; out beyond the idea of it all, out beyond memory, out beyond time, out beyond hurt and regret and shame, the ocean is endless, it is endless. I swim, and swim, and he calls. He calls.
Bernard Steeds’ short fiction has appeared in the collection Water: Stories (Penguin Books) and in various journals and anthologies including The Penguin New Zealand Anthology. He has won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award twice, and the At the Bay Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose Award.