The Wind on the Water - Chapter 39

Kate had found a class on the lake.

She described it over the telephone while Laura stood at the kitchen counter, watching her dog follow a chicken across the yard with exaggerated innocence. The dog stopped when the chicken stopped. When the chicken resumed walking, he did too.

“What kind of class?” Laura asked.

“Paddleboarding.”

Laura opened the back door and called the dog. He came at once, looking pleased to have been noticed.

“I’ve never done it,” she said.

“That’s why there’s a class.”

Kate had already made an appointment, checked the weather, and established that falling in was a possibility.

“You’re making it sound more appealing all the time,” Laura said.

“I thought you’d be interested in the falling.”

After they hung up, Laura found herself thinking about a different board, a sail she could not persuade to stay out of the water, and Michael standing on a beach trying not to laugh.

He had been laughing before they reached the water, though he denied it when she mentioned it later.

It was a Saturday in Southern California, some months after their first bicycle ride. Laura had borrowed Helen’s blue bicycle several times by then and was considering one of her own. Michael had developed the habit of describing activities in terms of what she would enjoy once she knew how to do them. The period before that point received less attention.

He had mentioned windsurfing on a Friday evening, while they were deciding how to spend the weekend.

“You sail standing up,” he said.

“I gathered that.”

“There’s a place where you can take a lesson.”

“Have you done it?”

“A few times.”

Laura waited. He had learned that this look meant she was considering the difference between a few times and whatever account might be offered by someone who had been present.

“I can get across the water,” he said.

“And back?”

“Usually.”

She had seen people windsurfing from the shore: the bright sails moving over the water, the riders leaning away from the wind with an ease that made the whole arrangement look nearly effortless. She had also seen them fall. They generally stood up again, which suggested the effort was manageable.

“Let’s try it,” she said.

The next morning she found Michael waiting beside his car with a bag of towels and a change of clothes.

“You didn’t mention those.”

“I thought you might like them afterward.”

At the lesson, the instructor began on land. The board rested in the sand while Laura practiced standing on it, lifting the sail, and moving her hands where she was told. The sail was heavier than it looked, but the board remained still beneath her, which seemed a promising arrangement.

The instructor explained how the wind filled the sail and how to move it to change direction. Laura listened carefully. She liked instruction that had a purpose she could immediately test. By the end of the demonstration she believed she understood the sequence.

Michael had signed up for the lesson too. He said he could use a reminder, although Laura suspected he had done it partly to keep her company. On the sand, he executed the movements with the relaxed efficiency of someone who remembered more than he had admitted.

She took note of that.

When they carried the equipment into shallow water, the board became less cooperative. It moved away from her hand, turned sideways, and appeared reluctant to remain where she placed it. The instructor steadied it while she climbed on.

Laura stood with her feet where she had been shown. The board shifted. She adjusted. The board shifted again.

“Keep your knees loose,” the instructor said.

“They are loose.”

“Your shoulders aren’t.”

She looked down at him. “I’m using those.”

She bent to pull the sail from the water. It rose partway, took hold of the wind, and drew her forward before she had decided to go. She stepped back. The board went one way and Laura went the other.

The water was warmer than she had expected. She surfaced with her hair across her face and heard the instructor asking whether she was all right.

“I think so.”

A short distance away, Michael had managed to raise his sail. He was moving slowly, which Laura thought might have been considerate of him until his board turned and he stepped off into the water.

He came up smiling.

“That looked intentional,” she said.

“I wanted to check the depth.”

They spent the next hour discovering how much there was to remember. Laura could lift the sail or balance on the board, though doing both at once remained uncertain. When she managed that, the wind introduced another consideration. The board moved, and she forgot which hand was supposed to go where. Twice she began to travel in a direction she had not chosen, then fell while trying to correct it.

She was glad she had eaten breakfast.

On shore, the instructor had made the movements look like parts of a single action. Laura now suspected that each one had several smaller decisions inside it. She had been good at learning for most of her life, but she preferred the early stages when no one else could see them.

Michael came past her, upright and moving at a modest pace. She watched his feet and the angle of the sail until he noticed.

“Any advice?” he asked.

“Keep doing that.”

A gust caught him shortly afterward. He disappeared into the water with enough noise that the instructor turned around.

Laura waited until he surfaced before applauding.

By the time the lesson ended, she had managed one brief passage across the water. She had raised the sail, found the wind, and held her position long enough for the board to move beneath her without immediately attempting to leave her behind. The shore slid past. She could hear water against the board and the sail pulling steadily in her hands.

Then she remembered she would eventually have to turn.

She did not complete the turn. Still, when she climbed back onto the board, she was laughing.

They carried the equipment in together. Laura’s arms felt longer than they had that morning, and there was sand in places she did not care to inspect until she had privacy.

Michael handed her a towel.

“Well?” he asked.

She watched another woman farther out, leaning back against a full sail as she crossed the water.

“I almost had it.”

“You did have it.”

“For about thirty seconds.”

He considered this. “That may be longer than I managed the first time.”

“Were you laughing at me?”

“I was enjoying myself.”

She dried her face and looked at him over the towel.

“That isn’t an answer.”

He took her to lunch at a place near the water. Laura’s hair dried in uneven waves, and she discovered a bruise on one knee whose origin she could not identify. They sat at an outside table, hungry enough to accept bread they would ordinarily have declined.

Michael asked whether she wanted to try again.

She had been about to ask him the same thing.

Over the following weeks, they found mornings when neither was working. Some plans changed; others required negotiation with people who considered Saturday a reasonable time to call. Laura began writing the lessons in her calendar as appointments. She did not volunteer that information to everyone who asked for her time.

She improved unevenly. One morning she could raise the sail and move away from shore with confidence; the next, the wind seemed to have entered into an agreement with the water against her. Michael was usually better, though not beyond giving her an occasional demonstration of how quickly a person could fall.

They began bringing lunch and staying after the lesson. Sometimes they talked about their work. Sometimes they watched other people on the water and speculated about how long it had taken them to make it look so easy.

Laura bought a bicycle during that period, too. It stood near her door, and the first time she came home tired from the office and saw it waiting, she changed her clothes before she could think of something else she ought to do.

One Saturday, after a morning on the water, she and Michael returned to her apartment. He carried the wet towels to the bathroom while she opened the windows. They were both tired and slightly sunburned. Laura made tea, and they sat close together on the sofa with their feet on the table, watching a patch of sunlight travel across the floor.

Michael reached for her hand. She let him hold it while she considered whether she had enough energy to make dinner.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Food.”

“I was hoping.”

She turned toward him. “And that I’d like to go back next weekend.”

“To the restaurant?”

“To the water.”

“We could do both.”

She leaned against him and closed her eyes. He began listing what remained in her refrigerator. By the time he reached the eggs, she was nearly asleep.

---

Outside Laura’s kitchen window, the chicken had resumed its inspection of the yard. The dog watched from the doorway, now prevented by Laura’s hand on his collar from offering further assistance.

Her phone sounded again. Kate had sent the time and place for the class, followed by a photograph of people standing comfortably on paddleboards.

Laura looked at the photograph, then at the blue sky beyond the trees.

What should I bring? she wrote.

Kate replied: A towel.

Laura smiled and went upstairs to find one.