Mantua Bay (5)

5

Delanie cursed herself for not packing a rain jacket as she made the rounds, inviting herself into the camps of Eddie Bauer chairs, Igloo coolers, and Solo cups to advise vacationers to evacuate the beach due to the incoming bad weather. No matter how politely she carried herself there was always that one cranky middle-aged dad who got argumentative at being sent home during a thunderstorm. 

It made her upset to argue with these types of people, but Delanie found she couldn’t blame them much. A friend of her mother rented out their duplex during the summer months; she knew the kind of money people gave up for a week away from Queens, Staten Island, and wherever else talking like a Sopranos character was considered native.

The rain started to come down as they dragged the lifeguard bench to the butt of the dune. That is, her and Claire, the shy new guard. The rescue Jeep sped up the base of the dune to meet them then, driven by Austin Lepley, the lifeguard patrol lieutenant. It was a stuffy, overzealous title, Delanie felt, to describe her old pal, who was a college student between sophomore and junior year. Their parents had been close friends since they were toddlers. Historically very funny and loved to clown around, but Austin had shown to be a solid leader for the thirty-seven lifeguards that watched Mantua Bay’s beaches. It was qualities like these Delanie liked to focus on, in lieu of his impressively muscled physique that attracted attention from female colleagues and beachgoers. But this was a different Austin at the wheel of the idling Jeep that rainy afternoon. The pleasantly freckled face eyeing them from his hooded Mantua Beach Patrol sweatshirt looked weathered and aged. He might’ve been twenty-one, but at that moment, Austin looked passably forty.

“Delanie, would you come help me out, please?” She grabbed her Jansport backpack from the bench without another word and scooted into the passenger seat alongside Austin. He reversed the Jeep fast back down the beach entry as he spoke, breathing heavily, leaving Claire behind staring after them. 

“Car accident on Joshua Street. They’re saying a hit and run. Victim unresponsive. Likely dead. You’ll probably just help the police with crowd control. Your friend Carolyn is already there, but not communicating with them, oddly enough. She just froze up. Doesn’t sound good. I could kick myself for putting her on the bay today. But how was I to know? I’ve been listening to the police dispatch and initial responders…it’s ah, kind of a strange situation…” 

“How so?”

Austin turned his head to guide the reversed Jeep from the sand onto Mantua Boulevard, tires crunching harshly underneath them. He shook his head and pursed his lips, like he’d had something bitter to drink. “You’ll just have to see.”

Julia Morrow, the assistant lieutenant, appeared behind them on the rescue quad as they rode down Mantua Boulevard in tandem, bearing lefts at the old Jolly Roger Inn that sat on the Joshua Street block.

Couples holding cans of beer gawked outside Cape Cod-style houses that lined both sides of Joshua. An overweight grandmother in an ill-fitted houndstooth sarong squeezed two squirming little boys against her hips while she stared in horror from a screened-in patio.

Delanie’s gut somersaulted at the sight of the scene at the end of the street. A dark blue sedan sat overturned in a yard. Two Mantua Bay police cruisers were parked parallel to the accident. Two middle-aged policemen stood in front of it clad in rain ponchos, waving their hands in Carolyn’s face.

Austin passed Delanie an umbrella from the back of the Jeep as they stepped out to join the scene. The policemen turned to watch them approach, looking relieved. “Your associate here won’t speak,” one pudgy officer mentioned matter-of-factly to Austin. “We’ve been trying to get her to say anything at all. No such luck. Looks like a nasty hit and run.  Ambulance on its way. Though I don’t think it’ll do much good for our friend over here.” He stepped out of the way so that Austin and Delanie could see a third officer’s remains lying askew on the asphalt. His face, feet, and hands were hardly discernible, as the features appeared to have been melted beyond the point of recognition. If it wasn’t for the township blues and ID tag (S. Lipman), it would have been difficult to determine just what it was they were looking at.

A couple of drunk-looking neighbors tried to intervene (“Excuse me, but I am a doctor…”), which directed the officer’s attentions elsewhere for a time. Delanie tried to rouse Carolyn from her state, touching her at the elbow. “Carolyn. Carolyn, it’s me, it’s Delanie.” She looked into her friend’s face. The green eyes had checked out into a kind of fugue. The corners of her mouth quivered, like she would start to cry or laugh at any moment. Something in Delanie’s peripheral distracted her then: the sedan smoking in the yard. Its body had largely folded inward, and it seethed and spit automotive fluids. Delanie left Austin to have a go at Carolyn, who remained mute. 

The car interior had been seemingly stripped. No steering wheel, no gear shift, no pedals. No instrumentation of any kind. No cloth or leather seats. Just the key in the ignition. Instead, it was that odd-looking metal she’d noticed that morning covering everything. The windows had a dark tint on the outside, but the interior showed no indication of a window whatsoever, seemingly cosmetic. The metal film covered everything within. Delanie stood fixated once again while the police conferred with dispatch over radios beyond. Austin had his hands on Carolyn’s shoulders, attempting desperately to communicate with her. 

A red pickup truck joined the dysfunction, its driver door labeled CHIEF in white capped letters. Lee Coslet emerged from the cab, umbrella in hand, shielding a large First Aid box from a rain that started to sound like nails dropping on the parked cars. 

Lee had been patrolling the busier beaches in south Mantua all day and was already sporting the deep Native American tan that baffled his family and friends since the beginning of time. It was his twenty-seventh summer supervising the Mantua Bay Beach Patrol and Lee had seen far more than his share of ugliness in those years. The drownings, the heat strokes, the heart attacks, even a few ODs. But the afternoon of June 23, 2017 would leave its own memory scarring for years to come. He knew it then too, as he stared down at what remained of Officer Shawn Lipman, a very young member of Mantua Bay’s finest. Lee knew the Lipmans. His father Howard especially, a fellow class of ’81 alum from Mantua High.

Responding to the death of a young person like this was hell. He’d been through it before. But when it looked like this, well, Lee wished he never had to see Howard and Anne Lipman ever again. Not only was Shawn Lipman dead, he had been defaced. It was easily the most jarring aftermath of an accident he’d ever seen.

He knelt at the misshapen body. Misshapen, yes, yet not in the way you would have been if a car had mangled you. Lipman’s were a controlled set of deformities, as they only prevailed in the face, neck, hands, and feet. It looked like he’d taken a spin in a microwave for a couple minutes. Chemical burns were very possible. Lee looked at the sedan mangled in the yard then, the driver door hanging agape to reveal the metal interior. That was when he thought he’d be sick, and noticed Delanie standing too close.

“Get the hell away from there, Turner!”

She scurried back toward the mix of guards and policemen. Austin and Julia were consulting the two officers now, the four of them huddled under a monstrous golf umbrella in close collaboration over an accident report. The bystanders had retreated back to their houses at the onslaught of what was at that point a pelleting bout of rain. They’d all seemed to have given up on Carolyn, who stood off to the side in her soaked lifeguard sweatshirt and sweatpants. 

“I want these girls the hell out of here.” Lee had to yell to speak above the storm. He told Julia and Austin he’d be back and walked Delanie and Carolyn to his red pick-up. The latter sat up front with Lee so that he could monitor her for signs of shock. The scene had no doubt sent her into a state of panic so deep her system had gone into defense mode. This much, at least, was Lee’s diagnosis. He eyed Delanie from the rearview mirror. 

“Are you alright?” Lee said.

“How do you mean?” Delanie said.

“Delanie, you just witnessed a car accident,” Lee said. “A hit and run, maybe.”

“You expect me to believe that was a hit and run?” Delanie stared intently back at him.

The stoicism came from weathering divorce alone as a single child, Lee figured. Barb’s girl was tough. Sharp. Luckily these fronts had had their setbacks early on. It had taken him a good year to break through; there was a time she’d barely look at him. Then it seemed Delanie had relented overnight and his probationary period was over. They were on talking terms when he hired her last summer to work as a lifeguard for the first time. By summer 2017 they were friends. Even when Barb and him were the ones not hitting it off. 

He decided not to answer her question, and they rode in silence the rest of the way to Carolyn Bickford’s house, pulling off to the side at one point so that an ambulance and two blacked out Durangos could get by. 

The Bickford summer house was a Miami Vice-era relic that seemed to be made of windows. A glass block wall dominated the living room in plain view, bookended by coral armchairs and flamingo ceramics. Collaged Patrick Nagel art deco leered at visitors from the foyer. 

Lee watched Delanie walk Carolyn to the door and realized he was still repressing the urge to vomit. Mantua Bay was an odd place. He’d known as much since he was kid. And the peculiarities had a funny way of repeating themselves, and he’d reflected on this time and again. He’d heard about the car that was speeding all over the island and peeling out of driveways.  A slew of phone pictures had been sent to the township office. The mangled vehicle he’d just seen on Joshua was an undoubted match. If it wasn’t confirmed by then it would be in an hour. He was sure of it.

He was supposed to attend a swimming lesson that day but then had heard about the pervert instructor at the Wahoos Swim Club. Lee tried to explain to his mother  and begged her to keep him home. She ignored the complaints and had to push him through the doorframe so that he’d leave their house. She even watched him mount his Schwinn and peddle away. 

He rode through the crunch of clamshell bits that filled out the club parking lot. Somewhere Glen Campbell sang “Wichita Lineman” from a transistor radio while Lee watched the pervert from a chainlink fence. He sat back in a wood lounger on the pool deck, staring down a group of kids Marco Poloing their way to the deep end. Eventually his eyes found Lee, when he smirked, waving him over. Lee about-faced and fled, to be almost taken out by a Chrysler Imperial that stormed through the lot, kicking up shell shards that showered his Schwinn like shrapnel. 

He took to the oceanside streets in case his mother had trailed him. The drut came when he rode past old Earl’s Court. Years before Durkin Real Estate came through and knocked Earl’s Court down. 

The drut. Yes.

“—in case.” Delanie in the front seat now. 

“Say again?”
“I ought to get to my car on Inlet Street. Just in case we get called back to the beach.”

“In case I call you back, you mean.”

The virtue about living on a barrier island, Lee knew, was that the bad weather never hung out for that long. Clouds downpoured and monsooned to their heart’s content for the better part of an hour, only to clear away once again and restore the benign beach conditions renters prayed for. Mantua Bay was considered “The Bubble” of the Jersey Shore for being exceptionally immune to summer storms. By Lee's assessment, it was looking like a characteristically bipolar summer afternoon.

“You haven’t been to the house in a while,” Delanie said.

“Your mom,” Lee said, pulling away from the Bickford house. 

“Apologize.”

“Working on it.” Lee detected a sarcastic tone.

“You promise?”

“Yeah, promise.”

The Mantua Wawa came up on their right on the boulevard. Lee wanted a coffee, offered the same to his passenger. They stood among the flavored dispensers, creamers, and cardboard cups moments later. The rain had petered off to a drizzle. Lee suspected he’d be radioing the lifeguards back to their benches after they’d purchased their caffeine fixes. 

“She wants to be made an honest woman.”

Lee laughed at that.

“Her words, not mine.”

“I could’ve figured.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So put a ring on it.”

“We’ve been together two years, Delanie. Not even. Eighteen months?”
“No one’s getting any younger.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Her words.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you not want to?”
“It isn’t so simple.”

“Explain then.”

“Marriage is a tremendous commitment, Delanie. For anyone, at any age. One of the biggest you can make. Just because we’re past our prime doesn’t mean we need to snap to it. Life shouldn’t work like that.”

“Says the guy who will never get married.”

“We’ll see, alright?” Lee handed the counter clerk a handful of singles for the coffees. “I can’t believe I’m even allowing this discussion to take place. We’re at work, technically.”

“I can’t believe I got you to say ‘we’ll see.’ ”

They drove the rest of the way back to Inlet Street in silence. Lee dropped her at the Toyota Camry parked alongside someone’s molded bulk trash of patio wicker and cushions. 

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“No sweat.”

They locked hands in a frozen handshake for a moment, the parting gesture that fit the bill on both ends for genuine affection, before Delanie slid out of the cab, Jansport backpack in tow. Lee checked his mirror before pulling a three-sixty, returning to the boulevard, looking back at Delanie in the Camry only for a moment. He knew he was due back at the scene. Text messages had been flooding in from the commissioner and police chief in regards to the accident. The accident he knew was no hit and run. He took a left at the block before the Jolly Roger Beach Suites though, pulling over so he could finally vomit. 

He rode around the PLEASE KEEP OUT sign at the mouth of the derelict Earl’s Court, where the drut was happening somewhere within. He pedaled from one house to the next, each mansion more decrepit and abject than the last, trying to find its source. Lee took the horseshoe counter-clockwise, kick-standing the Schwinn at eleven o’clock where the drut proved most pronounced. 

A large grey mansion with its high weeds that buzzed a mean tune; he shouldn’t have been there, and was missing a swim lesson that was going to put him in hot water with his mother. He strode up the gravel walkway to the side of the house and its three-car garage with sunken in wooden doors that looked like they’d give if you spoke too loud.

Yet the drut spoke from there, and it spoke loudly.