The Wild Women of Brigantine

Martin Miller and his wife of fifty-three years, Shelly, had a standing appointment with their old friends, Grady and Margie Wilson, every Wednesday in May: on the beach by 10 a.m., picnic lunch, then back to one house or the other for wine, maybe dinner out if everyone could stay awake. The weather was often warm enough, though the water was still cold, but more importantly the tourists hadn’t started flitting in yet. The Wilsons had volunteered to drive for the first Wednesday this year, and when Martin stooped into their Corolla to find Margie behind the wheel instead of Grady, a flash of memory from a little more than a half century ago overcame him, back when Margie had a bob dyed horrifically blond and he had finished having sex with her in the back seat of his old Buick. Margie had climbed back into the front seat, narrowed her eyes at Martin and ordained, “We’re of course both sworn to secrecy.”

Martin fell into the passenger seat, this sudden surge of a previously forgotten moment deflating him like a squeezed balloon. Grady sat behind Margie, sunglasses like an unfinished Lone Ranger mask strapped to his head. Shelly put her hand on Grady’s knee as she clambered in next to him. “Something wrong, old timer?”

“Cataract surgery,” Margie answered through the rearview. “Monday.”

Shelly leaned towards Margie. “Should he even be out in the sun today?”

Margie raised her voice. “Not as long as he keeps his damn shades on, according to the doctor.”

Grady rocked in place but kept his face pointed to the near window.

Martin gazed at the glove box, as a maelstrom frothed in his stomach and chest. He’d honored Margie’s decree. They’d never spoken of that incident, even with each other. Over the decades, he’d grown to doubt such a thing had ever happened. And now this flash of memory, so vivid it made him wonder if everyone else in the car had somehow seen it.

“Get that buckle on, Grandpa.” Margie pulled the gear methodically to D. Once again she was that old woman with silver hair tucked unsuccessfully into her dull-white bathing cap, the corner of her mouth hidden behind one of the jowls her jaw had sagged into.

Shelly hooked a finger over Martin’s shoulder from behind. “Do you want some help?” she muttered. His left arm was still weak from the ministroke three months ago.

“We’re running late,” Margie warned, “and I’m counting on one of those closer spaces,” as she rubbed one of her knees.

•

Shelly and Grady were both going out of town—Grady for business, Shelly to visit her mother—so Shelly suggested to Martin that he take Margie out for the evening: “Margie gets bored when she’s on her own.” The women had been pals since elementary school, but Martin was doubtful he’d spent more than fifteen minutes alone with Margie by that point.

Margie and Martin had an awkwardly quiet dinner. He’d known her for three years at that point, but the women were the ones who usually maintained conversation when they all went out together. Margie had done herself up in a blue dress with matching Alice band. Martin had probably worn a jacket and tie. After he paid the bill, Margie suggested with an annoyed sideways squinch of her mouth that they do the Steel Pier next. Martin considered the place on the decline, but he didn’t want to bore her further. Still, “Half the rides are condemned,” he probably argued. But Margie insisted.

Turned out, there was little left to do on the pier, which was half-shrouded in darkness. The water show and its finale, the diving horse, had shut down the previous summer, but they did luck upon seeing Maynard Ferguson, or maybe it was the Stan Kenton band.

Martin remembered that they still didn’t talk all that much, though the live music gave them a better excuse. But he must have bought her a paper cone of caramel corn, because she fed him a kernel, warm and buttery, her finger brushing along his lower lip.

After the show, he agreed to come to her house for a glass of wine, but they never got that far. Margie turned to him, bit her lower lip and raised her eyebrows. Then they got into the backseat together as though they had a schedule to keep, though Martin could no longer be sure if they’d done this in the pier parking lot or in her driveway. He also didn’t know if he’d enjoyed himself or if she’d climbed off him before he was finished.

Either way, they turned away from each other as they caught their breaths. He wondered if this was the end of his young marriage, but then Margie climbed into the front seat facing him, pinched his chin and drew him towards her to make her decree. Her makeup was still fresh, as they hadn’t kissed.

“I trust we’re both in agreement on that?” she added. Martin nodded, helped along by Margie’s hand.

For months, Martin worried he was behaving suspiciously, that Shelly was side-eying him. When he wondered if fessing up would be a relief, he simply couldn’t find a good way of putting it. It just happened was accurate but still sounded like an excuse. Besides, Margie showed no such conflict. She and Shelly remained tight as ever: prone to giggling, arm-in-arm when they walked ahead of their husbands, on the phone together when they watched their afternoon soaps.

In desperate moments, when he’d snap awake late at night, Martin wondered if sex with Margie had been half of a swap the two old pals had bargained between each other. But if Grady was also hiding something, he was too professionally stoic to give away much. Did Margie put it on herself to test out her old friend’s choice of husband and give him her seal of approval? Or was Margie a wild child once Grady wasn’t around?

Turned out, Martin’s life continued with no comeuppance, no dramatic reveals, no tear-soaked speeches about betrayal. Martin’s occasional dread of discovery eased into doubt, which eventually flattened into denial. In a couple of years, Steel Pier shut down completely. Later, it burned, removing Martin’s last reminder of his one dalliance.

The wives chatted while froth churned around their calves, their bowed and mottled figures stark against the background scenery.

The conversation en route to the beach had been all Margie and Shelly, as usual, the husbands invited in only to confirm something or provide further detail: the latest dramas among their children and grandchildren, who rarely called and hadn’t visited in a few years; the latest restaurant to close; how Grady one day turned left instead of right while coming home and ended up in the wrong driveway. Martin watched Margie for brief intervals, but he couldn’t picture that bob or Alice band on her anymore. The memory that had plunged him into a chasm of anxiety with no apparent way out was already fading, like a dream.

“Luck-ee,” Shelly marveled as Margie pulled into a spot close to the path between the dunes. Margie hobbled on her left leg, but she still carried her and her husband’s chairs and mini-cooler.

“He’ll trip over something if he carries it,” she whispered loudly to Shelly. “He doesn't take a lick of help.” Grady had already set out on his own, his hands bent upwards in a vain attempt to look like he wasn’t feeling his way along. Margie handed Martin the keys while he fumbled at the belt clasp with his weak hand.

“Lock up,” she reminded him. She and Shelly walked side-by-side, Margie refusing to let Shelly take any of the load.

“Come on, Martin,” Shelly called over her shoulder.

•

He and Shelly’s courtship had started only six months before their elopement, Grady and Margie their witnesses (they’d gotten hitched less than a year before Martin was in the picture). After the civil ceremony, the Wilsons treated the newlyweds to water ice and a lobster dinner. Martin had to tear apart a crustacean for his new wife, maybe for her and Margie to share, as Shelly was hesitant to touch the creature. That evening, Grady drove them to a beach north of Atlantic City, where Steel Pier was just a distant spear of lights jutting into the ocean. They’d all worn bathing suits under their dress-ups. When it grew dark, Margie and Shelly squirmed out of their bathing suits too and ran to the water. They held hands and jumped in the surf, their naked bodies barely silhouettes against the moon undulating on top of the waves.

Martin and Grady sat on beach blankets, the chardonnay warm and a little sandy now. Neither dared the cheese and grapes they’d laid out an hour ago.

“Your wife,” Grady mumbled. “A bad influence, I tell you.”

“You think this was her idea?” Martin sat up, tempted to join them, but knew it would be unseemly if Grady didn’t come with. “Do you think anyone can see them?” The beach was empty, and Brigantine didn’t have a boardwalk. The nearest beach houses sat a good walk away. The moon had ducked behind a cloud, inking up the scene further.

“Who wouldn’t want to?” Grady lifted his glass in their wives’ direction, though all they could make out of them anymore was the sound of splashing and laughing. “The wild women of Brigantine.”

Martin mirrored Grady’s toast. He looked at it all then—marriage, kids, career, retirement—as a long string of memories that he would be happy to recollect in his old age and reminisce over with these friends. If he ever embellished them, he felt sure that he’d always have the original moments engrained flawlessly into his past.

But now, hobbling onto the beach when his friends had already dropped their stuff and made for the water, he wondered if the lobster dinner had been for one of Margie and Grady’s anniversaries, if the skinny dipping had happened a couple of summers after his wedding. His son lived along another coastline, his wife and two children more vivid to Martin as the still images his son sent every birthday or holiday.

•

Their spot on the beach sat a tad higher than the water line, so Martin easily located everyone. Grady got taken by surprise by a couple of waves at first, but soon he seemed to sort out when one was close enough for him to thrust his chest into the breaker and let it wash past him. He’d ditched the sunglasses for a pair of tinted goggles Margie insisted onto him. The water was still cold, so Margie and Shelly walked in up to their shins, stepping towards shore a bit when a larger swell came at them. Someone had rebuilt the Steel Pier a couple of decades ago, but none of them had felt any pull to visit it again. They all knew it wasn’t their scene anymore.

Martin covered the cooler with a towel to help the ice packs inside. He sat and pointed his face towards Shelly, but under his sunglasses he watched Margie. Did she ever have sudden flashes of memory like his this morning? How to ask her? When Shelly shielded her eyes and upturned her other hand towards him, Martin gave her a thumbs-up. With his weak arm, his usual swim out the length of the pier and back was out of the question. Shelly’s gesture had been a reminder to her husband not to be foolish.

Martin pulled up his knees and tried to hug them, but his left arm didn’t cooperate. Out there, in the water, Grady interrupted the continuity of a wave now and then with his body, but the ocean kept on, undeterred. The wives chatted while froth churned around their calves, their bowed and mottled figures stark against the background scenery. Martin wondered if he’d hold on to this image, but he knew such things were not his call, doubted they ever were. Plus, he would never know just how many secrets the women kept between them. He got up, but only to put a toe in the water, to see if it was worth teasing the wives for being babies about the cold.