Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans

by DeMaio, Joanne

  “Shit,” Lauren said under her breath, touching her hair where Neil had before turning to see Matt and Jason sitting side-by-side at ease, watching her fret. They looked from her, to each other, before tipping their cans together in some toast of collusion.

  Moments, expressions, phrases of that epic July Fourth night take shape in her mind like images under the wash of a chemical developer. Lauren puts away the ketchup and mustard and wipes down the kitchen countertops with Eva still taking pictures of everyone. If they had snapped photos that long-ago night, would they see a hint of what was to come? Of her and Kyle sitting at either end of the picnic table, miles apart? Of Matt formally shaking Vinny’s hand when Vinny arrived today with Paige and their kids? Would there be a premonition of the group photo caught in a gaping silence mid-conversation with no one really meeting the other’s eye? Can they ever go back? Can they ever be who they were to one another on a different July Fourth? Now one of their circle is dead; another unemployed; still another missing a leg; while Eva is still missing a mother, ever seeking some connection she longs for from behind that camera of hers, every click a search.

  “Well, well. Look who’s finally arrived,” Maris says while washing a few serving pieces in the kitchen sink. “I wondered if he’d show up today.”

  Lauren looks over Maris’ shoulder out the window to see Jason sitting at the picnic table beside Matt. His dark hair is still damp from a shower as he talks to Kyle across from him. She lets out a low whistle. “My oh my. Looks just like his brother. Those Barlow boys were always so easy to look at.” Eva and Maris turn to her in a stony silence, with Eva giving her a flick of a dishtowel. “What. I can look, can’t I?”

  “No, you cannot,” Maris insists. “You know, I haven’t seen you guys in years, and I noticed that you and Kyle seemed tense today, Lauren. I hate to think you’re having issues, so maybe you should think about your husband, who, for your information, isn’t too hard on the eyes either.” Maris takes her by the shoulders. “Keep your focus. And sheesh, eat something, would you? You’re skin and bones.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Lauren, wiping a pot dry, walks over to the back door and looks out as Jason opens a beer and toasts it to Matt’s. And there it is in that one moment, that one snapshot, that glimpse of the past filled with all their story. “Remember the time we stole that boat?”

  “Huh,” Eva answers. “What I remember is spending the rest of the summer sweating it out sanding and painting fresh whitewash on the boardwalk after we got caught.”

  “Oh man,” Maris says. “And wasn’t it the hottest summer ever?”

  “Vinny had the last laugh, didn’t he?” Lauren asks. “The only one not on the boat when we got busted. He got off free as a bird.”

  And somehow, Lauren knows. There’ll be something of their friendship in those photographs Eva will surely post on Facebook. Some reminder will be caught in a flash, some memory of a seventeen-year-old Maris in her tie-dye jeans, mid-leap jumping onto that cabin cruiser. There will be dripping Kyle looking back at Vinny in the dark water. Lauren holding Paige’s long hair as she got sick over the boat’s side. Neil uttering Shit when they pulled back into the marina to find Lipkin and the police waiting there. And Kyle taking her hand, helping her off the boat, then not letting go all night that summer they began dating. Oh there will be a photo album of memories, of spirits, in the July Fourth moments Eva caught today, if they look hard enough beyond everything else that has happened since.

  Chapter Six

  Stars emerge from the black cocoon of night far over Long Island Sound. Vacationers walk past on the boardwalk, and on the beach the last of Kyle’s bottle rockets blow into the sky. He runs backward a few steps, unsure of its wavering course, until it whistles into multi-colored oblivion over the dark waters.

  “Show’s over, folks,” Matt says when he and Kyle return to the others sitting together on the boardwalk. Matt sits beside Eva, slipping his arm around her shoulder. “This is just like old times.”

  “Not really. Twenty years ago,” Kyle says, running his hand back through his hair, “we’d be headed to Foley’s right about now.”

  “Instead we’re all ready to go to sleep,” Vinny answers. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. A glow-in-the-dark Frisbee he found on the beach hangs loosely from his fingertips.

  Paige stands and looks at them all sitting there, the boats in the marina behind them shining in the moonlight. “Well come on people. What are you, a bunch of duds? I’ve got some rock and roll left in me. How about a drink or something? A beach toast on the boardwalk? Hm?” Her gaze moves across their faces. “Like a summertime Auld Lang Syne? For old acquaintances, guys.”

  “I’m game,” Maris says, punching the air. It’s what she and Eva had hoped for, connecting somehow with everyone again. Jason sits beside her and she gives his shoulder a nudge. “What about you?”

  He looks first at her, then past her at everyone else. “Shit, let’s do this then.”

  “Where do you keep the good stuff, Eva?” Paige asks. “I’ll go back and get it.”

  “Plastic cups are in the cabinet over the fridge, and there’s a bottle of wine right on the kitchen counter. You can’t miss it.”

  “I’ll help,” Lauren says. “I want to check on the kids, anyway.”

  “Use the canvas tote on the porch,” Eva tells them. “Put everything into that.”

  Kyle stands and steps onto the sand, watching them go. He kicks off his sneakers and heads down toward the water.

  “Hey,” Vinny calls out, standing on the boardwalk. “Heads-up.” He flings the Frisbee to Kyle, who barely catches it flying over his head. Vinny runs onto the sand and Kyle throws the Frisbee back to him. On the night beach, it softly glows between them.

  Maris watches for a moment, then slips out of her sandals. She joins Kyle and Vinny and when she does, the others follow. A few groans and stretches come as they jockey for position in a circle on the beach. The Frisbee wobbles and does a few dives and loops.

  “Hey, Officer,” Vinny calls out. Matt leaps and makes the catch, immediately turning around and spinning the glowing Frisbee to Jason. He catches it easily and considers Vinny waving his long arms wildly for it before sending it in his direction.

  Vinny dives, landing in the sand. “Damn. Good throw.” He stands, sweeps the sand from his shirt and eyes the group. He squints into the night, takes aim at Kyle, then flies the Frisbee to Eva. “Ha! Faked you out, Kyle,” he yells.

  When Eva spins it over all their heads, Vinny and Kyle chase it until Vinny lunges and hits it out of the air, whooping and falling on top of it.

  “You’re a maniac, Vincenzo,” Kyle says, retreating back to his space in the circle.

  “What’s that, sour grapes?” Vinny stands and gives it all he has, whistling the Frisbee over Kyle’s head. Kyle goes for it but stumbles over his own feet so that the Frisbee heads for the water, directly between Maris and Jason. They both run for it.

  “Look out!” Vinny covers his eyes and sinks to his knees.

  Maris calls “I got it!” just as Jason yells “It’s mine!” right when they trip on each other and fall hard. Maris turns on her back, lying flat on the beach and laughing as Jason pulls an arm from beneath her.

  “I got it,” Jason tells her, catching his breath and laughing at the same time.

  “You cheated.” Maris looks over at him, grinning. Her clip has come loose from her hair, which now fans out in the sand.

  “Cheated? How?” He brushes a strand of hair from across her forehead, his face close to hers in the dark.

  “You tripped me,” she insists.

  “I did not.”

  “Did to.”

  “So are you all right?”

  She squints at him in the darkness. The touch of his fingertips lingers on her forehead, but she had felt the prosthesis against her leg during their tumble, too.

  “Are you okay?” she asks in all seriousness now.

  “Barely.” He sits up and
wraps his arms around his knees, the Frisbee hanging from his fingers.

  “Well,” she says, her grin returning. “Serves you right.” She sits up beside him then, still winded. “I haven’t had this kind of fun in years.”

  “What’s going on over there? We playing Tag now?” Vinny calls out.

  Jason stands and brushes himself off. “Matt, catch! You’re it.” Jason whizzes the Frisbee to Matt and Eva moving away from the boardwalk, away from the friends, effectively ending the game. Matt and Eva run after it and don’t return.

  Kyle looks back to the boardwalk, then sits in the sand near the water. “I was watching The Weather Channel,” he says, his voice steady in the dark. “They predict a hot summer on the East coast. It’s something to do with the waters in the Florida Gulf being warm this year, and that warmth will move north. Kind of like El Niño, but it’s not. El Niño is in the Pacific region and they referred more to the Gulf.”

  “Some people say a warm summer means an active hurricane season,” Jason says.

  “I read somewhere that scientists can track El Niño by studying tree rings. Depending on the tree’s location, they find evidence of El Niño in ring patterns that mean a rainier or drier season than normal.”

  Jason sits beside Maris on the sand. “He’ll talk about anything but his life,” he says under his breath.

  Maris looks over at Kyle explaining weather patterns. Everyone saw the way Lauren kept her distance from him today, and the way Kyle watched her, their words tense. He goes on now about the details of the weather phenomenon, with no sign of Lauren returning to the beach.

  Jason presses his fingers against his eyes before sliding them down his face and behind his neck as he drops his head.

  “Hey,” Maris asks. “You okay?”

  He looks out over the Sound. “Yeah, thanks,” he says. “I had a nice night.”

  She looks to see what he is watching over the water. The moon throws a golden path across the Sound and in its light, a tugboat moves across the horizon. Lighthouse beams flash on opposite shores and the waves retreat with the outgoing tide. She jumps a little when he reaches over and presses his hand over hers before withdrawing back to himself. All the while, his eyes never leave Long Island Sound, as though he’s boarded a distant ship taking him somewhere far away from Stony Point.

  Farther down the beach, a few boats are moored just beyond the swimming area, their cabins glowing with yellow light. Beyond the boats, the lighthouse at Gull Island faintly beckons. An occasional faraway call of a foghorn moves through the night.

  “We really can’t go back, can we?” Eva asks as they walk at the water’s edge. Something about the very act of doing that, walking at the edge of the sea, always stirs her questions. “Once we’ve left a place, or a time, it’s gone, isn’t it? It’s just a memory.”

  “Maybe we didn’t really want to go back to that time.”

  “Not even for a day? It seems sad not to.” She stops near the end of the beach and sits in the sand. The shadows of the patch of woods reach beside her.

  Matt sits with her. “Sad? If we have good memories, at least we have that.”

  Eva considers what Maris told her about having so little. But sometimes happiness is simply all about the memories. And Maris comes from a home of memories where she at least knew her family; she knows that love existed, even though her mother’s love was cut short. But still, it happened, that love. She has the memory.

  Matt stands and takes her hand, walking back near the lagoon grasses.

  “Matt? What are you doing?”

  “Time travelling.” He leads her to long shadows on the beach where no one will pass.

  “We can’t do this,” Eva says, resisting a little, knowing exactly which memory he wants to travel to. “Come on, we’re not kids anymore, Matt.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good memory of being a kid, though.” His words come through a smile she feels through his lips and she closes her eyes at his touch. The lagoon grasses whisper behind them, the waves break and the shadow of the forest hides them. Matt tangles his fingers through her hair and kisses her once, twice, then again. His hands move to her face and she feels his lips touch her eyes, her cheeks, her throat.

  The black sky spreads over them, stars twinkling. It is amazing how the sadness, the longing, always leaves when she turns to him like this. Under the cover of a summer night, she takes the teenaged memory of love he offers. At that moment, she no longer cares where or who she really is, wanting only to lie in the sand and feel each soft grain against her skin, feel the damp sea air, the heat of the July night, feel everything physical, nothing emotional, every pore of her skin covered by Matt and the beach and summer. All that matters is the sensation.

  Maris opens the door to the telephone ringing in the kitchen.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Scott?”

  “I’ve been calling all day. Your cell, the cottage. Haven’t you been home at all?”

  “It’s the Fourth of July. I was at Eva’s barbecue.”

  “This late?”

  Scott would never understand hanging out on the beach, walking on the boardwalk, the spontaneous game of Frisbee. He’s lived in the city all his life. “It’s such a beautiful night here, we took a walk on the beach. That’s all.”

  He exhales a long breath. “I’m sorry, Maris. I’ve just been trying to reach you all day and I worried when it got late.”

  His worry isn’t about a cookout or her being out all day. It is that she hasn’t given him an answer, hasn’t told him how beautiful the ring looks and that she can’t stop showing it off. Oh, she knows exactly where his worry stems from—that one velvet box sitting on her dresser.

  “Well, I’m fine,” she says. “Really.”

  “Good then. Okay.” A second passes. “So how was the cookout?”

  Maris sits on a wicker stool at the breakfast counter. She reaches up and opens a white shutter over the window. The evening sky fills her view. “Eva invited some old friends. We all grew up together here and it was nice to see everyone again.”

  “Anyone I should be concerned about?”

  “What? No, Scott. Just old friends with lots of catching up to do. It’s been twelve years since I’ve been here.”

  “And almost a month since you’ve been here. I’m going crazy missing you. You’ll be ready to leave next Friday, right?”

  Her car will be tuned up for the drive, this rented cottage will be closed up, Matt and Eva will help her ship the packed boxes she kept from her father’s estate and will temporarily take in Madison. “I will.” It is Thursday night. She has seven days left. Seven days of tending flower boxes brimming with red geraniums and snow white petunias. Of throwing windows open to sea breezes and walking her dog along the high tide line. Of finishing Eva’s redecorating. Of sitting in a sand chair, sketch pad and pastels beside her.

  “I made my airline reservation. You’ll be busy packing, so I’ll get a ride to your cottage from the airport, okay? Then we’ll drive back together. Take my flight number down.”

  Maris opens a drawer for a piece of paper and bumps into the dog. “Let me call you back, Scott. I can’t find a pen and Madison has to go out. She’s been inside all day.”

  “I still can’t believe you got a dog.”

  “I didn’t get a dog. She was my father’s. What else could I do? Abandon her?”

  “No, but a dog won’t really work here. I thought your friends found a home for her.”

  “They’re working on it.” She finds a pen in the third drawer and takes down the flight details. A dog won’t work. A garden won’t work. The touch of plants and cool dirt won’t work. Designing on the porch to the sound of breaking waves won’t work. There.

  Here, her sketch pad overflows with new denim designs, all inspired by the sea, the cottage. Maybe she can have a potted garden on her townhouse balcony, a place where she can draw outdoors and feel the sun warm on her back. Madison sits in front of her, ears erect
, eyes happy. When she hangs up with Scott, the dog follows her to the porch, dancing in place as Maris reaches for the leather leash hanging on a hook before deciding that she doesn’t need it at this hour.

  Paige and Lauren never returned with the wine earlier. Wine or not, friends or not, all Lauren wanted to do was go home. But walking the beach road, Maris wishes she had that wine now to loosen Scott’s tension knotting her shoulders.

  Along the beach, the Sound’s waves roll onto the shore. From the boardwalk, the sky, heavy with stars, subdues her. She remembers her mother’s long-ago touch. Or maybe she only remembers the video of it, lighting on her hair. But the thought of her mother lifting and stroking salty strands of her hair seems so real. The closeness of it has her reaching for her gold pendant as she looks out at the water.

  Madison runs down the beach along the high tide line in search of driftwood. Maris follows, walking barefoot to the water’s edge when a figure emerges from the shadows on the beach. She knows by his gait that it is Jason.

  “It’s not safe to be out alone at this hour,” he says as he nears her. He had put on a black sweatshirt over his tee.

  “I’ve got my dog for protection.”

  “What, this beast?” Madison trots behind him, tail swinging, her face filled with anticipation as she waits for him to toss the driftwood. “Madison, right?”

  “And you have just discovered the key to her heart.”

  Jason tosses the driftwood up the dark beach toward the boardwalk. “She’s a beautiful dog.” He stands beside Maris and they watch the German Shepherd lope after the driftwood. “Come on, I’ll walk you home. Unless you wanted to walk on the beach still?”

  So he understands walks on the beach. And salt air therapy, curing what ails you. And lingering at the water’s edge listening for voices in the breeze. He even understands random games of Frisbee. “That’s okay, I’m ready to go.” She falls in step with him.

  “Eva and Matt went all out today,” Jason says.