The Second Canopy on the Beach

“I saw my babies,” Hilda said. “And I didn’t see you. I didn’t see your tank. I pulled those stakes and I didn’t even look. And when Flora looked at me I said that awful thing about the car.”

She looked at me then. Straight at me, for the first time all day.

“I’m sorry, Flora. I’d give anything to take it back. Anything at all.”

I have thought a lot about what I said then. Some things would have felt good for about a minute, and then I would have had to live with them.

“I know you would,” I said. “Eat your sandwich. Zoe’s going to steal it if you don’t.”

Zoe giggled into her mother’s neck, and the whole blanket breathed out at once.

Mom set her plate aside. She reached into the beach bag beside her chair, slow, and took out her wide straw hat, the one she had worn to every beach trip since 1985.

It is faded nearly white now, with a blue ribbon around the crown. Dad bought it for her on this same strand.

“Come here, sugar,” she said to Zoe, holding the hat out in both hands.

Zoe climbed off Hilda’s lap and went to her. Mom set that big hat down on Zoe’s head. It came down nearly to her nose, and Zoe pushed it up and laughed.

“That’s Grandpa’s hat,” Mom told her. “He bought it for me right over there by the pier. You wear it today, and you keep that pretty skin out of the sun for me, all right?”

“Okay, Grandma,” Zoe said, and held the brim down with both hands like the wind might steal it.

Then Mom looked at Hilda, and her face was as soft as I have ever seen it.

“Emery burned like that once,” she said. “Carolina Beach, 1987. He was six. I fell asleep on the blanket after lunch, and when I woke up he was red as a boiled crab from his neck to his knees.”

Emery looked down at his hands. “I remember that,” he said. “I remember the vinegar.”

“I sat up with him all night,” Mom said. “Vinegar rags and cool baths. He cried till four in the morning, and I cried right along with him. I can still see his little back.”

She reached across and put her hand on Hilda’s knee.

“You don’t forget it,” Mom said. “Not ever. That’s not meanness, honey. That’s a mother. You just pointed it in the wrong direction this morning.”

Hilda put her hand over Mom’s. I watched her fingers find the thin skin on the back of my mother’s hand, the bruises from the blood draws, and stay there.

And I sat there with a chicken leg in my hand and cried. Not loud. Just the kind where your eyes keep running and you let them.

Hilda did not move from Mom’s side the rest of that afternoon.

I don’t mean she sat near her. I mean she pulled her towel right up next to Mom’s chair, under the seam of the two canopies, and stayed there like she had been planted.

She ate her lunch there. She refilled Mom’s sweet tea twice from the jug. When Mom’s arms started to pink up where the cover-up sleeves ended, Hilda got her own sunscreen and put it on Mom’s arms, slow and careful.

“Is this too cold?” she asked. “My mama always said it was too cold, every single time.”

“It’s just right,” Mom said, and closed her eyes while Hilda worked the lotion in.