Wavehouse

by Kaltman, Alice;

  Eventually my heaving stopped. I raised my head and saw that everyone else was also a bit waterlogged. I’d been bawling so loud that I hadn’t noticed. Even Chris had little salty tracks down his caramel cheeks.

  Grandpa took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his dripping eyes, then blew his nose foghorn loud. His face was as red as a tomato. “Okay, enough of this sappy shit. What do you mean you had to do this for all of us?”

  “You’ve been taking care of me my whole life,” I said. “All of you. And now you need some taking care of.” I looked up at my mother. Her eyes were like dark tidal pools. “I know having me wasn’t part of your original life plan. And I know that sometimes I can be a snarky little bitch. Or a scared one. But you’ve still shown up for me when it mattered most. And you just risked your life to save me. The least I could do was put my stupid shy ass on the line to win the tournament and help pay your hospital bill.”

  “Oh Anna,” she started. “You didn’t have to—”

  I held a finger up to her lip to shush her, and kept talking. “Don’t worry. I did it for me too. For the first time, I didn’t let my demons get in my way. I just went for it. Like you told me I should.”

  “Left foot and shoulders back?” she asked. “Digging in that rail?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Charging. It was insane. I might be into this competing thing after all.”

  Sara sat bolt upright. “Really? Because you know the Long Beach Junior Invitational is in September. I think sign-up starts—”

  I held my stop hand up. “Whoa. I said I might be into competing, not I am into competing. Don’t get ahead of me.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Sara took a deep breath. “Whatever you decide to do, just know that I have always been proud of you. Even when you were a snarky bitch, or when I was one; or when we both were together.” She nudged the trophy with her cast. “You didn’t have to win this. You could’ve bailed and you’d still be my hero. I’ve got your back, you little weirdo. Always.”

  Then my mother was the one bawling with her head on my shoulder. As I patted her much nicer head of hair, I turned to Grandpa and said, “And you. Enough with the tough guy routine. Don’t be a pain in the ass. You need to have that heart operation whether you want to or not. This money can pay for it. Or at least help pay for it.”

  “You can do whatever you want with your money,” Grandpa grumbled. He leaned back in the La-Z-Boy with the foot rest flipped up and stared at the ceiling.

  Meanwhile, Gramma was a petite gray-haired, peach-

  scented volcano about to erupt in geyser tears.

  “Mrs. Dugan, are you okay?” asked Chris.

  “Fine, fine, Christopher. Thank you for asking.” Gramma nodded and tried to smile, but when she did she looked like a demented Halloween jack-o’-lantern. I knew that the sheer relief of knowing her Tom-Tom might have his heart mended had undone her.

  “Can I get you anything? Something to drink, maybe?” Chris’s voice was so sweet and gentle that it left me wanting to drink him.

  “Well, there might be a bottle of schnapps somewhere in the kitchen,” she squeaked in a quaky voice. “Perhaps on the countertop, near the sink, but I can’t be sure, it’s been so long since I’ve had any.”

  “Okay, I’ll go see if I can find it for you.” When Chris left the room, Gramma broke down in sobs, which caused Sara to lift her head off my shoulder and look over at her mother.

  “Ma,” she said. “Who are you kidding? You’re a mess.”

  Gramma sniffed. “Well, maybe I am a bit overwhelmed. This is all too…too…wonderful!”

  In a flash, Sara was down the couch sitting with Gramma in her arms. I’d never seen them so much as shake hands before and here they were hugging, with Sara cooing lovingly in Gramma’s ear.

  Grandpa yanked on his La-Z-Boy lever and jerked into an upright position. He looked over at his wife and daughter nuzzling each other like a couple of puppies, and a few more tears dribbled down his tomato cheeks before he turned to me and smiled.

  “Look what you’ve gone and done, missy,” he said.

  I smiled back. “Funny what a little risk-taking can lead to, Tom-ster. Maybe you should try it.”

  “Okay. Give it a rest,” Grandpa sighed. “I’ll take your money and have your goddamn operation. Happy?”

  I nodded. “Over the moon.”

  “And also—” he grunted.

  “Also what?”

  “You’re my hero, too. The best thing since sliced bread.”

  Of course that got me crying again. And Grandpa, too. By the time Chris returned with the schnapps the whole living room was a blubberfest.

  Grandpa grabbed the glass out of Chris’s hand as he walked by. “Give that drink to me, kid. My wife’s over there getting what she’s always wanted. Me? I’m about to have my chest cracked open. I need that schnapps more than she does.” Grandpa downed it in one big gulp.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” I muttered, as Myra and I rode our bikes up the Secretspot path.

  “No one’s making you do anything, Anna,” Myra reminded me. “We told you last night if you weren’t ready, you didn’t have to come.”

  Ah, yes. The night before. Myra and Chris in Myra’s living room. Peas in a pod. Planning a morning rendezvous at

  Secretspot, while Jimmy sat across from them nodding his head like a bobblehead on a trucker’s dashboard. Planning my future. Not letting me get a word in edgewise. Chatting away like old friends while we all waited for the gobs of black hair dye combed through my fried blonde mess to dry, adhere, stick—whatever it is that hair color is supposed to do.

  Myra was right, I didn’t have to go. But of course I went. “I’m not making any promises,” I reminded her. “I may just watch.”

  “Whatever. I’m just glad you agreed to put on the new gear ahead of time.”

  Myra had gone all out, buying me a skin-tight black rash guard and super-short red board shorts that barely covered my bum.

  “They’re a present,” she had claimed last night. “My make-up gift.”

  She held them up, and Jimmy and Chris, sitting side by side on the couch, clapped and whistled.

  “See? That’s exactly why I can’t wear them,” I had protested.

  “No,” Myra asserted. “That’s exactly why you have to wear them.”

  Now Myra peddled ahead of me, pure Wicked Witch, while I kept my pace snail-like. I finally got to the end of the path where the sky opened and the blue ocean shimmered in the orange sunrise. Jimmy—the only other surfer besides Sara who knew exactly where to find our special break—would join us later that morning. He had to supervise the pool-cleaning guys at the motel. Jimmy was sworn to secrecy, but surfers were a relentless bunch. One whiff of a mystery wave and they couldn’t control themselves. It was only a matter of time before the hoards discovered Secretspot.

  Even if it stopped being a secret, this spot would always be beautiful. Myra had already parked her bike and was organizing her supplies. I leaned my bike on Pee Pee Rock and walked to the cliff’s edge.

  “Hey, Belly Flop!” Chris called from below. “Look what I have for you.” He held up a beautiful new light-green surfboard with a white stripe scoring the center, a double-edged tail, and two fins.

  “I hope that thing doesn’t have ‘Ceekay’ plastered all over it,” I yelled.

  “Nothing. Totally blank. But one of these days your name will be plastered over surfboards worldwide.” He flipped the board over; the top of the board was my favorite shade of my favorite color—a brilliant sunshine yellow. Either the boy had great instincts or he’d done his due diligence, and either way, I was impressed. Scampering down the cliff-side path, I arrived breathlessly on the beach.

  “Don’t push it, pro-boy,” I warned, playfully poking Chris in the chest.

/>   “Sorry, I can’t help myself,” he grinned unrepentantly.

  “You know after I take that thing out—if I take it out—it will be covered in dings,” I said.

  “You can do whatever you want with it. It’s yours.” He deposited my new board on the sand and proceeded to wax his own.

  Myra came up beside me and sighed. “He is so phenomenally sweet.”

  “It’s true,” I agreed. “Even Sara thinks so now.”

  “I’m glad you got to explain the whole camera chaos to your family, and the misunderstanding about Inga, before one of them hauled off and punched him.”

  “Luckily they were so overwhelmed by the news of my big win, they were a captive audience. Plus Chris was so great with them, especially Gramma. She wants to bring him to the church to meet the biddies.”

  “Oh my god! For real?”

  I nodded.

  “Now that is something I refuse to miss,” Myra acknowledged with a grin as she unpacked her equipment.

  “I’m heading in,” Chris called. “You do what you want, Belly Flop. The board is here. And by the way, you look redonkulously hot.” He turned away, grabbed his own board—another new beauty—and raced to the water.

  I watched him paddle, duck-dive, paddle, duck-dive and paddle his way out past the break. Effortlessly, as if he was a kid playing in a bath. He sat out there for a moment until his first wave arrived. It was ginormous, swelling up out of nowhere to the size of a two-story A-frame. Chris paddled into it, and suddenly appeared on top. He popped to his feet and headed right, staying high near the lip; then he catapulted downward in a beautifully timed free-fall before turning back up in a wide graceful curve. For a moment I thought he was going to bail, cut his losses and head over to the other side. But no, Chris was a pro. He continued to slip ’n slide the wave as if it were the easiest thing in the world. As the wave petered out a good hundred yards farther down the shore, after he had aced a perfect backside aerial, he shot back over the crest, plopped down on his board, and paddled back out for more.

  “Oh, what the hell,” I sighed. Chris had already waxed my beautiful new board, so all I needed to do was attach my leash and dive in. I stared out at the ocean and a twinge lurched in my gut, almost making me sob. Everything was changing and it gave me pause. Change is good, I reminded myself. For everyone, including me.

  “Anna,” Myra called from her rock. “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. Maybe I wasn’t fully out of the shy-girl cave, but at least I was hovering by the entrance, or rather, the exit. “This time, please, none of those arty close-ups of my body parts. Just me surfing, plain and simple.”

  “You got it,” Myra grinned. “Now go for it, BFF,” she added, waving her camera. “Don’t you love that? BFF? Best Friend Forever, Belly Flop…Flop. Multiple meanings. It works for everyone.”

  I attached the leash, picked up the board, and paddled out to Chris. He nodded calmly at me when I arrived, then resumed his silent study of the horizon—the wave-waiting game. We were together in what Gramma might call “companionable silence.” Until I broke it.

  “So, do kids ever do independent studies when they’re on these pro tours?” I asked.

  “Independent studies in what?”

  “I don’t know.” I pretended to think. “Maybe learning to speak Mandarin, or the history of, say, Uzbekistan, or maybe studying, like, drawing, or maybe, um, architecture?”

  “I know one dude who does some archeology thing. He’s always going off with his notebook and camera to check out some temple or famous ruin.”

  “Really?”

  Chris shot me a snaggle-toothed smile. “Really.” He pointed toward a beautiful hump heading our way. “Looks like you got out here just in time, Belly Flop. Here it comes, big and steep, just the way you like them.”

  “You sound like my mother,” I called, as I paddled to position.

  I could barely hear Chris cry, “I hope sounding like your mother is a good thing.”

  Well, it’s not as terrible a thing as it used to be, I thought, as the wave pulsed nearer. And then it was me on top, heading down the steepest face, dicing and slicing the wave with my board. The wave broke behind me, roaring at me, chasing me, playing with me. It caught up to me and I stalled on purpose, letting the best part happen. The wave curled around me as I continued to ride. I was deep. Everywhere was water, except straight ahead of me, where I saw an open window to the sun, the land, the sky, my life. I was in the Wavehouse. I was home.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to:

  The East End of Long Island and the people who live there, for inspiring this story.

  The generous surfers I’ve shared waves with, here, there, and everywhere.

  Jaynie Royal, editor and publisher extraordinaire, and everyone else at Regal House who helped my Wavehouse dream come true.

  Zoe Sandler, agent amazing, for her savvy and support, making sure I’m taken good care of out there in the big, bad publishing world.

  Alison Seiffer for nailing it with cover art that belongs in a museum.

  Traci Inzitari, who helped shape Wavehouse early on, and to whom I will always be enormously grateful.

  My father Jack Kaltman, a true waterman who instilled a love of all things ocean-y in me. I miss you every day.

  Family and friends who have believed in Anna’s story for years; we are finally in the Wavehouse. We are home.