Undertow

“I think it’s time we hit the water again, Levon, don’t you?”

Diego’s call was not unexpected. We’d talked regularly, at least every couple of weeks. They were check-in kind of calls, the how’s-it-going run-down of developments or non-developments. We were at the age where things no longer happened fast––the days longer, the years spinning by like a suicide bomber’s sprint to his final destination. These days we ran out of things to talk about quicker than we would’ve liked, but as sparse as some of our conversations were, they still never failed to lift my spirits. His signoff was always the same, a sardonic comment of some kind as to my cushy lifestyle (in his opinion)––the two-cars-in-the-garage, bland suburban paradise that signaled a capitulation to everything we’d promised to forego in our youthful pursuit of personal freedom. This time there was no such signoff, and the conversation was shorter than usual. 

I took a moment, his words ricocheting around in my head. I could scarcely manage a reply. “Well, yeah, buddy, it has been a long time.”

“Well, okay then, how about tomorrow? Can you pick me up tomorrow?”

There was something in his voice that I’d never heard before, an almost robotic intensity that made me pay attention. This wasn’t a casual request; it was an urgent matter.

“Okay,” I said.

“Dawn patrol?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“I’m thinking Trestles.

“You got it.”

“See you in the morning. Thanks.”

And that was it. I had things to do the next day, a whole schedule that I would have to unwind, but so be it. My wife, Molly, was out of town, and my sons had gone on a spring break outing with some high school friends, so no one to clear it with but my co-workers at the firm. I’d start emailing right now and couch the whole thing as a kind of mild family emergency of some kind.

But was it an emergency? I didn’t know. Diego and I hadn’t surfed together in some time. I still paddled out now and then, but Diego had been diagnosed with MS some years ago and I was pretty sure his surfing days were over. Unless he had miraculously improved recently there was no way he was going to be able to get up on a board. Last time I saw him, he was using arm-support crutches and he was pretty doddery on those. The guy was as strong as bull, but not even his almost supernatural strength seemed a match for the ravages of the disease.

Surfing? Madness. And I’d just said yes.

Trestles was a surf spot south of Los Angeles, its moniker taken from the train trestle over San Mateo Creek. It’s a treasure, always has been. Known for a clean south swell break and the relatively undeveloped area around it (for Southern California, that is). Yes, it had the classic palms framing the view (break out the Corona), but the ravine around the creek was also filled with chaparral, coastal sage scrub, willow and sycamores. You squint your eyes a little and imagine what it would look like without the freeway carving a path through it, and it could make your heart soar. Or at least my heart. I hadn’t been there in more than six years.

When I arrived at the crack of dawn as directed, Diego was waiting outside his small duplex bungalow in east Hollywood––a slat and plaster teardown bequeathed to him by his parents before they died, and the only house he ever owned or lived in. He was standing stoically in the threadbare yard, his surfboard by his side, crutches pinioned to the ground on either side of him, a grim but determined look on his face. Getting him in the car was no picnic, and the whole process made my anxiety surge to new heights. This was an impossible undertaking. But I said nothing. And he said very little. The thing you have to understand about Diego is he was basically a cripple now, but he looked good––upper body still carved, a deep tan, full head of hair, wrinkle lines from his eyes only adding to his handsome-pirate appeal. And don’t let the name fool you, his parents were Anglo Saxons, blue-eyed white people, a couple of embrace-the-rainbow hippies that named him after Diego Rivera, just because they happened to be in Mexico City and drunk on Tequila the night he was conceived. Good souls, decent folks, life loving and nurturing who loved their son and died exasperated and disappointed by every road not taken, every advantage not seized upon, every feckless, halfhearted venture not completed by their one-and-only offspring. And since I parted ways with my father quite young (he was a military man, we didn't see eye to eye on much, and after my mother died there was nothing to keep me in his orbit), I basically looked upon them as parental figures.

Now Diego was beside me in my aging Bronco that I had broken out for old time’s sake––a gas-guzzling, polluting beast that no self-respecting environmental lawyer should ever own or drive. He had a doobie going and handed it over. It wasn’t my style anymore to wake and bake, but as long as we were in throwback mode, I scooped up the smoldering, misshapen thing and sucked up a lungful. The smell alone was enough to get me high. Diego pulled in some air through his teeth, picked a speck of green off his lip and eyed the line of surf skimming by us.

“Looks like we got a descent swell out there.”

“Yeah,” I said, “oughta be good.”

“When’s the last time you were out?” I asked, trying to ascertain what I should expect once we hit the water.

“Can’t remember.”

“Okay then . . .”

He squinted his eyes against the smoke as I handed the joint back to him, and in one tsunami of a toke seemed to inhale a half-inch of the damn thing. He came up for air.

“I broke up with Jayde.”

I looked at him, more than a little surprised, but really there wasn’t any reason to be. Diego had been burning through the women for some time now, a vast constellation of womankind that had been pulled into his orbit, only to disappear in short order. But Jayde, to my mind, had been different. Sure, she was too young for him, half his age, and pretty. Hell, they were all pretty, and leaned to the exotic side––the kind of women who would wear a slinky cat suit on Halloween. On first glance you might dismiss her as a tattooed twinkie with a hippy-dippy attitude, and questionable grooming habits. But that wasn’t the whole story; she was actually smart and capable, with a finely tuned sense of what people had to offer. I don’t think Diego’s act fooled her for a minute; I think she loved him for reasons he would never understand. The point is that she did seem to really love him, had stuck around even as he descended into MS hell, and it wasn’t like he was offering her security and stability.

This was terrible news.

“No way,” I said, “I like Jayde. She seemed like a keeper.”

“You think they’re all keepers.”

“Not true. I can name a good 20 or so that I thought were unacceptable.”

Diego cracked a smile. The first smile of the morning. “The skanks.”

“I think skanks is uncalled for.”

“Jesus, Levon, some of those girls woulda traded me in for a guy with a better tattoo.”

“Perhaps they just had a rather transitory nature when it comes to the mating game.” (The dope was getting to me.)

“Transitory, yeah.” And he laughed a laugh that went all the way through him. It was bracing to see, and the very basis of our relationship. “Anyway,” he said, “I sent her packing.”

“Why?”

“It was getting pretty obvious, you know, the way she was embarrassed to be out in public with me. The whole gimp thing.”

“No way,” I said. “I never saw that. You sure you’re not imagining this?”

“No, dude, this is real. I did her a favor. I gave her an out, so she didn’t have to feel like she was bailing on a sick old guy.”

“How’d she take it? She seem relieved?”

“No, she cried a whole bunch and begged me to not let her go.”

I stared at him. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses tethered to his neck and let his eyes go out to the horizon. I took a breath and then it just came out––“Maybe being alone isn’t the best thing, you know.”

He never took his eyes off the horizon, but I could see an artery move in his neck, a blue throbbing line that seemed to get a little brighter. “I’m not alone, I got you,” he said, and then suddenly grinned.

This was supposed to be something to laugh about, but neither of us was laughing. “Yeah, you got me all right. Nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing at all.”

By the time we got near Trestles, a coastal fog had drifted in and the beach and break were shrouded in a dark, swirling mist. Patches of blue could still be seen, but they disappeared just about as soon as they appeared. These are challenging conditions for a surfer. You can’t see the waves until they are upon you, so it’s hard to set yourself up properly. You’re always out in front or too far behind and the wave breaks on your head, or slides by underneath you. Not to mention the danger of other surfers dropping in right on top of you. Because of this I was a little worried––how was I going to be able to keep an eye on Diego when he’d be sucked into the gloom as soon as he paddled a few feet away? I suggested we try Old Man’s, just a little farther south, until it cleared up, but he nixed that idea immediately and gave me a look that made me feel sorry for suggesting it. The waves at Old Man’s rolled in gently then petered out in the shallows––like sitting in a rocking chair, a favorite of the geezers on long boards, knees shot, shoulders rusty, and unable to maneuver from a prone position to upright without difficulty. I wasn’t far from that reality myself. But no, Diego pointed me toward the turn off and we made our way up the access road to upper Trestles and the bigger stuff.

We pulled into the parking lot just above the beach. I made one last suggestion, offering him my old long board. I figured it was a better bet for him, because it was so buoyant and broad you could stick a mast on it and sail it to Tahiti. It was the one Molly used when she was pregnant with the boys, back when we still lived on the beach in a rundown rental near Latigo Canyon. This was before I wised up, bought a house in the valley where you can get more bang for your buck, went back to school––so I could earn a more dignified living––and ditched the whole bohemian beach bum persona. It was well overdue; I was a pretty stubborn holdout, but time and children and the need to make a living won out. For Diego it was a different story. Hence the failure of the long board as a concession to his condition. Diego didn’t have a backup plan. There was no shedding of personas for him. There was only one way––his way. 

I carried both our boards as we made our way down the steep trail to the beach. It was slow going, an arduous process that seemed endless because it was like walking in a grey void––no sense of progress. Finally, we passed beneath the trestles looming upward in the fog and took the last switchback that dropped us onto the beach. I helped him to the waterline, his crutches sinking into the sand, the tendons on his shoulders standing out with the strain. I knelt down, attached his leash, and steadied him as he waded out into the water, pushing the board before him. Shadowy forms of other surfers drifted before us in the gloom, the booming sound of the waves, the hiss of water sucking the gravel and sand past our feet. Knee-deep now, I steadied him and tried to get him on his board. On the transition downward he collapsed and fell hard upon the edge and the board ricocheted away. I positioned it again and this time we both went down as the tail end of a wave surged over us, the foaming whitewater engulfing the board and sending it spiraling. We came up sputtering and laughing. Really laughing. Laughing like lunatics, like kids, like brothers with an inside joke––something that we only needed to be reminded of with one or two words before cracking up.

He hooked an arm around my neck, and I grabbed his leash and yanked the board back to us, then rolled him on it. His strong arms pulled it beneath him and he hung on as I slithered the attenuated lower part of his body into position. And he was on. I was in the water next to the board, the water chest deep, hanging on as I pointed it toward the swell of waves in the distance, shrouded in mist, shifting and blurring into ever-changing patterns. The water beneath my suit was now warmer, my bare head and neck icy cold. I was still laughing; we both were still laughing. I took a breath.

“I think you’re ready to go, bud,” I said. “You ready to go?”

He nodded, and then in a gesture that was not unlike him, but something I hadn’t seen him do for some time––something he’d always done, through the years, something that was very much a part of his adolescent self, his most endearing quality because it was always so sincere and completely un-self-conscious––he pulled my head close, cupped my face against his shoulder and kissed me on the back the neck.

“I’m ready,” he said.

And with that, he pushed off and started paddling away, straight out into the surging maelstrom of fog and waves. I hurried back to my board, and by the time I’d turned around, he had disappeared into the mist.

—

He was always disappearing. It was his signature move. The guy you couldn’t get away from would be the guy that wouldn’t return your calls, or texts when texts became a thing. It took me some time to figure it out, but over the years I started to put it together. He was hiding his life from me––a whole set of low-life, druggy friends and acquaintances. I wouldn’t put up with them and he knew it, so he cut me out. I saw them starting to creep into his life back in our wanderlust surfing days. You can spot them anywhere. Jackals. And like jackals they could sniff out a wounded creature. They spot the weakness––the feckless indifference that makes one vulnerable to their attack. They were no match for Diego at his best, but as time went on, he wasn’t very often at his best.

But at his best he was a fine companion. For a good two years running we must have spent the majority of the year down in Baja, just south of Rosarita. Big surf, cheap digs, and a crew that liked to party. We’d burn off last night’s drunken debauchery with a morning ride, the sun baking down on our throbbing heads, the feel of sinew and muscle drawn tight as we stroked our way up a mountain of water. The green depths of it. The endless cycle of waves like a mantra, a chant, that made you feel like you could live forever. Forever frozen in time. And for a while it did seem like we could keep doing it forever.

For a while.

I met Molly toward the end of our Mexican adventures. And I guess I was ready for a change, because she made no demands, or gave me any ultimatums about my lifestyle. None. And it wasn’t because she became pregnant with our twin boys. It was just simply, for me, unsustainable. I guess I wanted a more defined role to play, the kind of thing that I would’ve completely rejected at an earlier age. As my life changed, Diego kept up the treks in between odd jobs that he’d latch on to and then quit––selling cars, real estate, crewing on boats, you name it. As soon as he got a wad of cash in his pocket, he’d be off. Meanwhile, we had our boys––Danny and Flynn––moved to the Valley, and I finished school, passed the bar, and started earning a little money. We still kept in touch, but not as often.

Molly got pregnant again, a girl this time, who swam out of her womb too early and died. It’s human nature to picture your child before they are born, what they might look like, what kind of person they might be. For our boys, the whole thing was so new that I didn’t dwell on it, but for this little one––and it has only gotten stronger with time––I felt like I knew the kind of girl she was going to be. This was a girl that would have the ocean in her eyes, I was sure of it. I love my boys, but they are more like their mother, and that’s probably a good thing. They are swimmers and learned to surf, but the ocean doesn’t speak to them, not as it spoke to me and not as I imagined it would speak to this girl. She would’ve been a risk-taker, a stay-up-all-night-and-worry-about-her kind of girl. She was, in my mind, my penance, my atonement for my heedless ways, for all the friends I disappointed, the father I fled, and for the weaknesses in my character that shame me to this day. I can say that I was a pretty decent father, responsible, mostly patient, and, with some coaching from Molly, nurturing. But a part of me was still attracted to the wildness, to the green depths. I stood apart too often, and I could not change that. This girl-child was going to save me. Of course, it makes no sense, not really. And it goes without saying that this is not something you talk to your wife about––to anyone about. There is nothing to be gained. Nothing.

About a year after the miscarriage, Diego showed up at our door, drunk, as we were eating dinner. This wasn’t an anomaly––drunk or sober, he usually breezed in unannounced, no matter the length of time since his last visit. He went straight to the liquor cabinet and liberated a bottle of Don Julio Tequila, sat down with us and held forth on his latest trip to Baja. When I first set eyes on him that night, I was a little alarmed because his face was a mess––black and blue and swollen. I knew a story was coming, and I was hoping it was G-rated. No such luck. Danny and Flynn were happy to see him; they worshiped him, his out-sized bravado, the tender way he roughhoused with them, the grown-up way he talked. Couldn’t get enough of him. Molly was a little less enthused. She liked Diego, he’d been such a big part of lives for so long, but she had grown less and less patient with his shenanigans, and since we lost the baby, her capacity to tolerate his man-child entitlement had disappeared.

The story was an awful one, though not surprising. This had been brewing for some time. He was with his usually scumbag friends, drinking at a bar, and some local Mexican guys had taken issue with something or other, a fight ensued, a broken bottle was brandished, and they were thrown into jail overnight.

Mexican jails are notorious for a reason––they’re hellholes. Within minutes he and his ersatz gringo buddies were fighting for their lives. As they were outnumbered (and I’m sure Diego caused some damage, he had fists of stone), one by one they all ended up with their faces in the toilet or in a prone position getting their balls worked over with a boot. Diego got the boot.

The boys were listening, with gleeful, smirky grins, Molly was cringing and shooting me looks, and I was doing my best chuckle-and-nod routine, hoping for a quick end. Diego finished his tale, downed a last swig of Don Julio, stood up, and dropped his pants.

“Look at those puppies, you ever seen anything like it?”

Indeed, I had not. His balls were the size of grapefruits and a deep shade of purple. The boys broke into shrill giggles; this was just too wonderful for words. At the best of times, this would’ve been a transgression that Molly could not ignore, but because of the raw state she was in––we both were in––it was a deal-breaker. Diego disappeared a little further out of my life. He was no longer welcome, and if I wanted to see him, I would have to do it alone and somewhere else. Another milestone. Another distancing from my previous life. Another step away. 

—

I grabbed my board and paddled out after him. Had to duck-dive under a couple of good-sized waves, came up and looked out across the churning water. No sign of him. Perhaps he’d already caught a ride and was somewhere behind me in the misty darkness. The tide at Trestles tends to take you south so I caught a wave, rode it in, and then drifted a little farther down the beach. No Diego. I figured, even if I located him, he wouldn’t want me hovering over him. The fact that there was no way he was going to stand up on his board, that he was going to belly it in, might be something he’d want to do alone. I caught a few more waves, then paddled out past the break just as the fog broke and a patch of blue opened up all along the shore. Sat up on my board and looked out––nothing but the hard glassy surface of the sea, and a few surfers behind me, dark cutouts as they dipped out of view beneath the curling peak of a ferocious wave. No Diego. He had to be on the beach. Had to be.

Back on the beach, I saw a sight that stopped my heart––Diego’s board in the foaming shore break, rocking back and forth. I waded over to it and pulled it up on the sand. The leash wasn’t broken; the Velcro ankle collar had been removed. I squinted and looked out. Nothing. Took a couple deep breaths and walked up the trail to the Bronco in the parking lot. There was a little elevation there and I’d be able to get a better look at things. Got my binoculars out of the glovebox, stood on the hood and looked out. And then I saw it––a figure about a mile out, swimming. Swimming straight out to sea. The steady churning of arms, the tiny flash of splashing water catching the light. 

Had to be him.

I loaded up my surfboard. Stripped off my wetsuit, toweled my hair, got behind the wheel, closed the door and rolled up the window. I waited another hour, then called the Coast Guard. I knew if they found him alive, he’d never forgive me. Not that I thought they’d find anything. About a mile out, the ocean floor dips to around 300 feet––a cold water stream filled with sea life, a white shark superhighway. A veritable movable feast. They’d find nothing.

Jayde held a memorial at a local dive bar on Sunset Boulevard close to downtown that Diego favored. It was the kind of place you’d expect––no windows, dark, dirty cement floors, ruby red Naugahyde booths, flayed at the corners, sticky bar top, the liquor bottles glowing against the wall with a Technicolor brilliance. He played bass for a “Dad” band over the years, and they did a set of his favorite tunes (Margaritaville wasn’t one of them), guitars dangling over melon-like bellies. Jayde was sweet and welcoming and just as sad as you’d expect a person to be, if they truly loved someone. It somehow made me angrier than I’d been for a long time––to throw that away, to not let that goodness change you one tiny bit seemed like a crime. An unforgivable crime. Of course, I mourned Diego, but I was so unhappy with him in that moment that I could hardly bear the eulogies, the fond memories, the heartfelt camaraderie. Goddamn it. Goddamn them all! I had cried in the Bronco after I called the Coast Guard––ugly cried, as Molly calls it after watching one of her favorite romantic movies. Completely lost it. But now I had no tears. None at all.

Just before I left, Jayde sidled up to me, put her hand on my arm, and with moist eyes, gave me a photograph. She said he kept it pinned to the wall near his side of the bed. It was the two of us in Baja, mid-twenties, side-by-side in board shorts, wooly-haired and bronzed, and looking like a couple of half-zonked extras from one of those gladiator epics they shot in Rome in the sixties. Send in a five-headed Hydra and we’d slay it, or die trying.

I thanked her and went home.

Woke up later that night, Molly sleeping soundly beside me. She’d missed the memorial, as did the boys, which was a good thing to my mind. I wasn’t in a talking mood. Molly flew in after the memorial, jet-lagged, and conked out as soon as I got home. We’d had only a few words about the whole incident. She would mourn him, I knew; I could see it in her eyes and in the way she held me tight when she came in the door. What I didn’t tell her about was how long I’d waited before I called the Coast Guard. That one was going with me to my grave. I owed it to him. Had owed it for a long time.

I walked downstairs, broke out the Don Julio, sat, and eyed that picture. I remembered the circumstances of it now. It was one of our last trips down together––maybe even the last one. We’d gone out fairly late in the day, when a big swell was coming in strong. The wind was bending the palm trees, shredding the fronds, peeling them away. They covered the trail down to the beach. Not a soul on the water––only the two gringo madmen.

We paddled out as the sun was dipping into a mantle of storm clouds on the horizon and the water went dark. The waves were savage and came at us relentlessly. In short order we were ragged with exhaustion. But, there’s always one more, and then one more. I crashed and burned on a monster of a wave, and my leash broke. When my head surfaced above the wall of foaming water, my board was long gone, and worse yet, I was caught in a two-wave hold-down, barely able to suck up a breath of air before the next wave slammed into me. I was plunged into the depths, and just as I was about to resurface again, my lungs about to explode, a current pulled me down again. It was going in the exact opposite direction as the surface current, an undertow with real teeth and force. This beach was notorious for them, and all of us knew the routine––you let it take you out until the deeper water where it dissipates and then you swim in. Fighting it only increases the chances that you wouldn’t have enough left in the tank to swim in later. But that’s not what I did; I panicked and fought it. Fought it with all my might. And by the time it released me I was completely thrashed. I could barely raise my arms, or get a breath. In the distance the shore was drifting farther and farther away. I was just about to shout when Diego paddled up. He hauled me out of the water, slithered me up on his board, and started for shore while I remained belly-down, my arms useless things that trailed in the water. I am certain that he saved my life.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about being pulled under, about the force of that undertow, about being encased in dark water. I know what you’re thinking, that as a surfer and an environmental lawyer I am attuned to the natural world––an earth-first, the mother-of-us-all kind of thing. That’s not what I’m feeling. I’m feeling the terror. I’m feeling the ocean’s vast indifference.

That feeling of helplessness, it’s still with me. It’s right here, right now, and it’s more than any man can bear.