On The Beach At Bodega Bay

"When did it happen?" my sister-in-law Cybel demanded.  We were in a restaurant in Santa Rosa, my wife Ellen and myself, her brother Rupert and Cybel.  We'd made the two-hour drive from Sacramento to their retirement community that afternoon and, shortly after we'd been seated in the restaurant, my wife had chosen to break our news.

     I could give the exact time when it happened.  Our phone had rung at 5:20 AM on a Sunday morning.  It was our son Paul, whom we'd last seen when he'd left with some friends the night before, calling from the county jail.  They'd found a party, he'd gotten drunk on vodka (which he'd never had before), and had a car accident.  He was okay but he thought the other driver was badly hurt.  As we learned later, the other driver, a man named Barry Richards, had suffered a severe head injury and had been air-lifted to the UC Davis Medical Center where he'd had extensive surgery.  Luckily, he'd survived and was now at home, having been discharged from the hospital just the last week.

     "About six weeks ago," my wife answered.  "We didn't want to say anything before because things were so uncertain."

     Actually, she hadn't wanted to tell them because she'd always considered her brother judgmental and, in our family, Cybel was famous for her cross-examinations, such as she'd now just begun.  I'd urged my wife to let them know.  They were the only family we had in California and now was the time we needed their support.  If they chose to condemn Paul out-of-hand for his stupid action then we might as well know it.  We'd made the visit expressly to find out.

     "Did you know he was going to a party?" Cybel pursued.

     "No.  He and his little group usually went out on Saturday night but they’re not in the party crowd.  Sometimes they go went to a coffee house.  Sometimes they go bowling.  Sometimes when they can’t find anything else to do they get a few video movies and come back to our house and watch them all night.  This time they just happened to meet somebody who told them about this party."

     "Do they always do a lot of drinking?"

     "No, it’s usually just beer."

     "You can get drunk on beer if you drink enough of it.  Didn't you ever warn him about drinking and driving?"

     "Of course, constantly," I said.  "But who ever heard of a teen-ager listening to his parents?"

     "I listened to my parents," Cybel replied.  She'd always thought we were too lenient in the way we'd brought up Paul and his older brother Alan.  She and Rupert had no children, only a cat who was slightly overweight like themselves.

     "Why did his friends let Paul get into his car?" put in Rupert.

     "No one had any idea of the condition he was in.  They were sitting around the pool in the back yard when he got up and went into the house.  He didn't take his wallet and he didn't even have his shoes on.  They thought he was going into the house to use the bathroom or get something.  The next thing they knew he'd gotten into his car and had driven away."

     "But why was he drinking vodka?"

     "They'd run out of beer and there was a lot of hard liquor around.  He was also celebrating.  He'd finished the term and was leaving for Berkeley the next week."  Paul had gone to community college for two years.  He was a good but not exceptional student with a knack for computers, which had been the major interest of his life since he was 11 years old.  He'd applied to UC Berkeley because it had one of the best computer science programs in the country but had no real expectation of getting in.  We'd thought he'd be going our local college, UC Davis, which gave preference to our community college.  Then out of the blue he'd been accepted by Berkeley and had been elated.  Then had come the party, the drinking and the accident.

     "And he got drunk?"

     "Yes, on only two or three drinks.  But instead of passing out or getting sick or staggering around, he blacked out.  Paul says he doesn't remember leaving the party or getting into his car.  The only thing he remembers was being in the back of a police car after the accident."

     Cybel started another question but our waitress appeared and asked if we were ready to order so she transferred her cross-examination to the menu.  After quizzing the waitress about all of the dinner specials, she ordered the regular salmon off the menu.  First, she asked if the salmon could be broiled instead of grilled.  Then she specified that nothing be put on her baked potato.  "Do you have a low-calorie salad dressing," she asked.

     "No, I don't think so."

     "Oh," she sighed.  "Well, I'll take the ranch.  But put it on the side."

     Dinner with Cybel was always like this.  She worried about calories, percentage of fat and cholesterol.  Despite her careful ordering, she persisted in being slightly overweight, possibly because she had a weakness for desserts, and was constantly dieting.

     Rupert ordered the roast beef dinner.  Like Cybel, he was slightly overweight.  "Be sure to cut the fat off the beef," Cybel told the waitress.  She watched Rupert's diet as carefully as she did her own.

     Rupert was my wife's older brother.  Despite having moved into a retirement community the year before, he was still under 60.  He'd worked for the federal government since graduating from college and had taken advantage of a generous buy-out to retire early.

     As soon as the waitress left, Cybel continued with her questioning.   "Do you know anything about the other driver?"

     "Not much.  He's a man in his thirties.  We don't think he was married or had children.  We do know he doesn’t have any health insurance and we don't think he has any auto insurance."

     "Then how will he pay for his medical bills?"

     "Our lawyer says that Medi-Cal will pay the bills, then they'll have a lien on our auto insurance."

     By this time our meals had come and we started eating.

     "Is Paul's in Berkeley now?" asked Rupert.

     "Yes," I said.  "He's out on bail.  We're waiting for the court notice to come, then he'll have to come back to Sacramento and appear."

     "Rupert, you don't have to eat that roll," Cybel said.  "What kind of sentence do you think he'll get?"

     "We don't know.  The worst thing is that he caused such a serious injury.  Also, they've really cracked down on drunk driving the last few years.  Our lawyer says there's a good chance he'll have to serve jail time."

     "They should crack down on drunk drivers.  They've been getting away with murder all these years." 

     In the circumstances, it was a rather unfeeling remark but typical of Cybel.  "The point," I said, "is that Paul's not a typical drunk driver.  He's a kid who got drunk, which was admittedly a stupid thing to do, and who caused a serious injury, which is something he'll have to live with the rest of his life.  Anyway, we've been asking people to write letters on Paul's behalf, saying that this was something completely out of his character to have done.  We've gotten letters from his teachers, some of our neighbors who've seen him grow up, even a letter from his high school swimming coach.  We hope we can get a letter from you.  You're his only family in California."

     Cybel frowned.  "But you said he was in the habit of going out and drinking.  So this wasn't really the first time."

     "All kids his age have a few beers."

     "I don't know."

     A silence fell over the table at these words.  Finally, Rupert, who'd been steadily eating his roast beef, said, "We'll talk it over tonight."

     At this point, Cybel reached into her purse and brought out two handfuls of pills, setting one beside her own plate and one beside Rupert's.  There were at least a dozen in each pile.  She and Rupert took pills for every conceivable condition, besides every vitamin known to man. 

     Our waitress once again appeared and asked if anyone wanted to order dessert. We all said that we'd just have coffee.  "Wait a minute," said Cybel.  "How is your strawberry cream pie?"

     "It's delicious," said the waitress.  "It's our specialty."

     "Well, I know I shouldn't but I'll take a slice.  I'd like low-fat milk for my coffee, not cream.  And sweet-and-low instead of sugar."

                                *      *      *

     The next morning Rupert drove us to Bodega Bay, only about an hour's drive away, and one of the main reasons my wife and I, living in the hot and dry Sacramento Valley, liked visiting Santa Rosa.  It was one of those gray foggy mornings on the coast which are common during the summer.  Rupert parked by the side of the highway and we made our way down dilapidated wooden steps to the beach, which was almost deserted.  An old man was roaming about searching the sands with a metal detector.  In the distance, a woman wrapped in a heavy coat, a scarf tied over her head, was walking a large dog.  That was all.

     Rupert and Cybel started to walk briskly along the edge of the beach.  They'd told us they walked every day as part of their exercise regimen but it had to be at a fast enough pace otherwise it did no good.  After a few minutes, they pulled ahead of us.  "We should walk faster," my wife whispered to me.

     "I'm in no hurry," I said.  "If you want to walk with them, go ahead.  I'll meet you later."

     "All right.  I think I should stay with them."  She quickened her pace until she caught up with them and then the three figures proceeded down the beach.  I purposely lagged behind.  I wanted a little time to myself.  The initial shock of Paul's accident had worn off but I still had a difficult time thinking about it and last night's discussion in the restaurant had brought all of the anxieties back.  The worst thing about considering the actual event, visualizing the crash, was the realization that the result might have been just the reverse and Paul would be the one badly hurt.  As it was, he merely faced the prospect of going to jail.

     When I'd first come to California I lived in San Francisco and during a particularly bleak period would drive to the ocean to walk along the beach.  The sight of the waves coming in, one line after another, was somehow comforting.  Endless waves like these had come in long before I'd ever come to San Francisco and would continue to do so long after I was gone.  As the saying went, it gave some perspective to my little problems.  What did they amount to in the overall scheme of things?

     But now, standing high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, watching the waves smash against the rocks. sending up spray which almost reached me, I had a different feeling.  I wasn't comforted by an unchanging nature; I wanted a signal that something had changed.  For the first time since the accident, I began to cry.  I cried for my son Paul, I cried for Barry Richards and his family, I cried for my wife and for myself, I even cried for put-upon Rupert and unhappy Cybel.  My tears fell in a torrent upon the ocean, causing the waves to rise even more, the spray hitting on my face.  I wanted my tears to change the very composition of the water, to overwhelm the uncaring ocean, to make the world aware, aware of the pain, the sadness, the frailty of life.

     "Are you okay?"  It was my wife's voice.  "How did you get so wet?"

    We were all standing on the beach, at the water's edge.  "I don't know.  The tide's coming in.  I must have gotten too close to the water and been caught by a wave."

     "It's too cold out here anyway," said Rupert.  "Why don't we go back to town and get some clam chowder?"

     My wife and Cybel turned and started walking back.  Rupert put his hand on my arm to hold me back for a minute.  "I'll have that letter ready for you by the time you leave," he said.  The four of us climbed up the stairs and got into the warm car.