The breakfast room at the Sea Crest Hotel is directly above the beach—an elevation of only about ten feet -- so diners can enjoy the view of the ocean as they make their way to and from the buffet table, or wait for the waitress to bring a special order. I was there that morning as part of a wedding party, and most of the restaurant’s patrons were part of the same wedding: guests, family members, cousins from far-flung places. The day was sunny, and the prospect of lazing about on the beach all day before having to dress for the ceremony was pleasant. Nothing rushed, no worries about being late, no details that hadn’t already been attended to.
Even in a room with a dramatic view, people tend to focus inward, on each other, on the food in front of them, on the small scenes in which they play a part. You notice the dramatic vista when you first enter, framed in large picture windows--narrow strip of clean, white, sand; broad expanse of bright blue ocean; white sails in the distance—and then turn it into a backdrop, a natural wallpaper whose presence makes the bacon, eggs, potatoes, fruit, yogurt more enjoyable, but is not there to be studied or gazed upon.
But before long, several of us noticed a small group of perhaps five or six people standing by a south-facing window, looking intently down at the beach. The mood or attitude of a group, even a small one, communicates itself instantly, through subtle gestures, the way people are standing, their expressions. There was no doubt that these people were seeing trouble below. Noticing this, more and more diners left their tables to join the group at the window. No one spoke.
The restaurant’s maitre d’, a young man whom I guessed from appearance and accent perhaps to be from Spain, passed our table and explained that “somebody got drownded in the water.” He seemed concerned, but unsure what to do. Whatever had occurred had happened outside of his restaurant, beyond the perimeter of his responsibility. Yet, because of the room’s expansive windows, it had happened within the visual borders of his jurisdiction, as evidenced by the growing crowd now gathered to look down at the beach. He fidgeted nervously, repeating the report he’d given us moments earlier to diners who passed him at his station.
Should we be ashamed or embarrassed by being drawn towards such scenes, by giving in to curiosity, by being pulled, as if by gravity, to look out the window on whatever spectacle, or disaster, or mishap lies without? I began to wrestle with these questions for a moment, but then they were resolved for me. My partner, the mother of the groom, had begun to panic that the stranger who “got drownded in the water” could possibly have been one of the many wedding guests. Who knew what late-night parties had occurred the night before, what levels of intoxication had been reached, what poor decisions made?
We walked to the window and looked below, where a small group of five or six people was kneeling in a circle intently administering CPR on a figure that was not visible. Two of them were young women wearing lifeguard t-shirts, and two of them were police officers in summer uniforms; the others seemed as though they might just havebeen passersby, and were wearing bathing suits. One person would perform chest compressions as long as he or she could, then fall back in exhaustion, giving way with no pause in the rhythm to the next person in the circle. I remember noting that no one was performing any mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and had a vague memory of reading somewhere that this was no longer a recommended technique.
At this point, the young maitre d’ apparently decided that he needed to do something, and, perhaps impelled by a sense of decorum, or respect, or propriety, had his staff move throughout the restaurant discreetly but efficiently closing the shades. I understand this. I’ve been in his position. You can’t just do nothing, even when there’s nothing to do. We went down to the beach and joined a small group standing about twenty yards from the rescuers who formed a tight ring around the victim. It was a man, a large man, parts of whom could be glimpsed when a gap would open in the circle around him
Strangely, I wasreminded of summer scenes where members of my family would gather around the old ice-cream maker, taking turns churning the handle, and taking care that there be no break in the action. When one person left off, the next picked up the motion, mid-cycle. But this was going on too long. The rhythm and energy of the arms pumping and pumping, and the smooth transfer of responsibility from one responder to the next were hypnotic, creating the illusion that the purpose was just to keep going as long as possible. But the reality was that the longer this went on, the more purposeless it was—though this was not a thought that any of the silent watchers would ever have spoken.
Within fifteen minutes, a storyline had emerged, and was being passed among the small community of strangers who had gathered to watch. A grandfather, kayaking just offshore with his fourteen year-old granddaughter, the grandmother and grandson having gone to Fenway Park for the day. A heart attack. An amazingly quick reaction by lifeguards. (“It was like in those old Westerns where the cowboy would race to the horse and leap on, that’s the way the guy got onto the Jet Ski.”) Then the coda, the epilogue, spoken by someone, and immediately embraced by the small crowd as if it were unassailably the truth: “They did everything they could. Nothing more could have been done.”
Within a half hour, the body had been removed, and all evidence of the event had evaporated. A beautiful summer day was begun. The beach was festooned with the orange umbrellas and blue striped towels provided by the Sea Crest, children splashed in the waves, adults slathered themselves with sunscreen lotion, laughed at someone’s joke, ordered drinks from the bar, and sank without care into a perfect day on Cape Cod. Summertime. The livin’ is easy.