The Second Home

by Christina Clancy

  It was a painful break, more painful than when she’d broken her ankle. Her jaw was wired shut, and the ever-moving life she’d been living for over a decade came to a grinding halt. For six long weeks she sipped Ensure from a straw and got strung out and constipated from Percocet. She spent her days feeding the chickens and stray cats that wandered near her tent. Her only companion Burl, who owned the surf compound. He was a leather-skinned, silver-haired old-school surfer with an outie belly button so large it looked like it had been sewn onto his stomach. She wanted Burl to be a father figure to her, because she missed her own dad, but drugs had turned Burl’s brain into scrambled eggs. He couldn’t hold a thought. He just nodded and smiled, grateful for her company.

  When the wires were finally removed from her jaw, she’d carefully go out on a body board, paddling safely beyond the breaks, or she’d walk the beach, dutifully videotaping Jens and the other surfers. The power of the water used to thrill her, but now it made her fearful. What if she’d snapped her neck? What if nobody else had seen her go under? Did she get injured because she wasn’t that good in the first place? It was winter, and the best surfers in the world had converged at Sunset Beach. They didn’t get hurt.

  She’d never made a conscious decision to quit surfing; she thought she was just taking a break, but her hiatus went on and on, just like the hiatus from her former life. She found herself drawn to what was happening on land. Hawaii had become a melting pot of all ages and religions; the culture that formed was all about surfing, travel, spirituality, and healthy living. Things were happening on the North Shore back then that were just beginning to be known elsewhere, like capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian form of martial art performed as dance. After spending so much time balancing on the water, she found this kind of movement natural: easy, even joyful. She was still strong and flexible, and she had great balance. She was drawn to any physical activity that allowed her to lose herself.

  One night at an ayahuasca ceremony, the Peruvian shaman passed around hallucinogenic tea. People flipped out, melted down, and became transformed. It was intense therapy for emotional stuff: victims forgave their abusers, alcoholics swore they’d stop drinking. Jens confessed that he’d been sleeping with a beautiful, blond Swedish surfer named Uma. Poppy didn’t care much; she wasn’t possessive. Her life was open and communal. She was attracted to elusive, adventurous men. She wasn’t looking for commitment.

  Poppy worried about what might happen to her when she took the drug. From what she’d heard, ayahuasca could unearth long-buried feelings, and she had plenty of those. Instead, she had a vision that changed her life. She saw herself with her palm pressed to a man’s forehead. A red heat came out of her. The man’s hands were clasped around her wrist in gratitude. She told the shaman about it.

  “There’s a light in you,” he said. “You can do healing work. You’re a healer. You’ve known this all along. Even strangers can see this in you. Give yourself to the experience. Just live it. Be it.”

  The next week she sold her VW and bought a one-way ticket to an ashram in Mulki, India. It was there that she learned about the Tamil Divya Prabandham and all the tricks of Iyengar, from liver-cleansing twists to handstands that improve fertility. She felt invigorated and reborn, full of new, useful knowledge and what she believed was healing energy.

  From there she went to Bali and fell into a new “soul family” of teachers and gurus and guides. She was told that she was in the process of being re-created, but first she had to be broken down. She was warned to avoid the awesome, lurking power of dark energy. She learned about planets of water and planets of fire, of sweat lodges and love altars, of energy work, auras, vibrations, and chanting. She studied in caves with mentors who taught her about animal interactions, past lives, and the rise of the supreme feminine. She prayed to twin goddesses and started calling her friends mermaids. She wore a bindi on her forehead and tulsi wood bracelets on her wrists, and she constantly handled the mala beads around her neck that helped her to focus on the channels of her heart. Everything was soft and loving and light.

  No greed. No hurt. No pain.

  From there she spun around to yoga festivals and ashrams and lived for a while with a Buddhist family in Sri Lanka. Things seemed to be happening not to her but through her, she was so open. She didn’t know what was going on; she’d forgotten who she was, and where she came from. She was so focused on her breath she could go for days without eating and slept only a few hours a night. She swore she could even levitate.

  But then Poppy got a bad bladder infection, and one of her “mermaids” disappeared with what little money she had. Her guru told her that the gods love her, and it was time for her to go back. She assumed “back” meant the North Shore, so that’s where she went. She returned to Oahu feeling suddenly lost and stripped raw. Years had passed. Everything in Hawaii felt different: the colors, the earth, the water, the auras. She saw dark energy around all the party people, and felt that the island had become suddenly aggressive—and expensive.

  Burl’s surf compound had been sold to a software developer from Silicon Valley who had torn down not only the tree houses but also the trees, and turned it into a multimillion-dollar estate with a pool and gated entrance. Most of the people she’d known before were gone, including Jens and Uma.

  With no place else to go, she lived in a tent behind a food truck. She wouldn’t have minded the tent before, but the tiny, nylon confine snapped in the wind and rustled when animals skittered past. It made her feel unsafe and claustrophobic, and her back ached from the hard foam mat. “Don’t attach to bodily concerns,” she’d tell herself.

  She wanted to heal someone—anyone—but she also needed to eat, so she started teaching yoga. She made simple flyers advertising “Beach Yoga with Poppy.” She distributed them to the resort concierges, and stapled them to the bulletin board at Ted’s Bakery, and on every lamppost and palm tree she could find.

  Rain, sun, cold, or impending hurricane, she was there on Sunset Beach with her portable sack of mats and blocks. She had a battery-operated boom box that she set on a towel. When her students showed up for class, and there were somehow always students, she’d greet them with her sweet, open smile. She’d watch them congratulate themselves for finding an instructor who looked every bit the vacation yogi they’d expected. They loved her Oakley Big Taco sunglasses, deep tan, muscular limbs, and golden-auburn hair pulled back into braided pigtails that somehow appeared sexy instead of childish.

  She’d try to think of something inspiring to say from all she’d learned from her studies and travels, but it all seemed too involved and complicated to communicate to her students in a meaningful way. Instead, she read from a cheesy book of inspirational quotes her friend Monique had given to her when she’d broken her jaw. She tried to quote something that made her seem profound, like “Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.” She used her best poetry-reading voice, imitating her mother.

  No matter what she said, her disciples would always nod in agreement, like she’d thought it up herself. She’d start to explain why a certain pose was important, or she’d explore a Sanskrit saying, but she’d forget the words and the meaning and talk herself into a corner while her students waited expectantly for her to get to the ideas that would help them change their lives.

  That’s when she got good at improvising. She’d make up names for poses, like “sitting cow,” and tout health benefits that probably didn’t exist, like “emulsifying the bile” and “pulsing kidneys.” Poppy often forgot where she was in her progression, because she didn’t plan her classes, and her jaw hadn’t healed right, so yoga inversions caused her so much pain that she couldn’t teach unless she was stoned. Her hamstrings, IT band, and shoulders were tight from years of surfing.

  She’d look around at all those bodies, sunburned, twisted, and prone, and wonder: Did they just do their right or left side? What apex pose had she told them they were working toward? Crow? Tittibhasana? Did anyone even care? She could tell them t
o strip naked and hump each other and they’d do it.

  Silence is an ocean.

  Speech is a river.

  At the end of class she’d collect her ten bucks from each participant. She hated that yoga was yoked to money, but she was barely scraping by. Maybe it was the money collecting that began to erode her love for yoga, or maybe it was her students. Travelers to the beach destinations were mostly wealthy middle-aged people who used the word “blessed” too much. The truth was they weren’t blessed, they were privileged. They could afford to stay in fancy resorts and boutique hotels, while the people who actually worked in these places had to sleep in huts, the backs of vans, crappy apartments above souvenir shops, or in tents.

  Poppy began to resent how hard it had become to find a place that was truly authentic, beautiful, and cheap—all the best beaches had been monopolized by the travel industry and catered to women in tight-fitting, eighty-dollar Lululemon tanks and butt-hugging Lycra yoga pants, and men in shirts with country club insignias. But it seemed that the more she resented her students, the more they liked her. They thought she was living the life they didn’t have the guts to live, when what scared Poppy most was their lives of responsibility and commitment.

  Who was she to tell these people to make space inside themselves with their breath, while she was wondering if this was really possible. Wasn’t breathing just breathing? Did prana even exist? She’d talk about the light in herself connecting to the light in her students, even though she knew she’d be forgotten as soon as their plane touched down in Cleveland or Bismarck or San Antonio. It seemed navel-gazey to devote so much time and energy to self-improvement—this had nothing to do with healing.

  The hard questions, the ones she used to keep at bay with weed, beer fogs, and meditation, grew more persistent. Could she do this forever, or would she end up like Burl? Should she call home? Visit her parents? Try to make peace with Ann and get to know Noah? Her dad said they weren’t even in Milwaukee anymore; Ann finally got her wish and moved to Boston.

  Go-time. Poppy decided to pack up her things and move to Panama. It seemed the more she moved, the more she felt like she was standing still. But if that was the case, how come she saw an older, startling version of herself whenever she snuck a peek at her reflection in the window of a parked VW van?

  Could she give up the tides and the moon and the damp warmth and move back to Milwaukee? Milwaukee: the name of her hometown sounded funny, strange. She could return to the Wellfleet house. It didn’t matter how far away she got from it; it called to her. All it took was the smell of a marsh or the sound of a catbird to make her want to go back. Was that what she should do next?

  As if in answer to the question, she finally checked her “poppybythesea” email—something she hardly ever did, because it was a pain to get to the library. Mixed in with all the spam, she found about ten messages from Ann, who rarely wrote unless she had updates about Noah.

  She opened up the last email Ann had sent:

  Where are you? I have no idea how to reach you. Look, I didn’t want to say this in an email, Pops, I really didn’t, but you need to know: Mom and Dad were in an accident. A bad one. They didn’t make it. I’m sorry. It’s already been two weeks, so I guess there’s nothing you can do at this point. Everything’s been taken care of—for now. Call me when you get this, send a smoke signal, something—please?

  NINETEEN

  Michael

  It was so cold that February day that it seemed like a miracle the salt water managed to shove its way into Drummer Cove and escape back to the sea without hardening into ice. The Cape was so quiet, so frigid. The water was the only thing that moved.

  It was high tide. From the roof, Michael took a break from his work and stopped to admire the view—there were so many trees around the Gordons’ house that this was the only real way to take it in. The surface of the water sparkled royal blue against the light dusting of snow that had fallen earlier that morning on the bluff and the small islands of beach grass. The storm was off to sea now. Michael could see the thick layer of once-threatening clouds, like an army in retreat in the distance. It created a dramatic contrast between the hovering darkness on the horizon and the pure, high midday light of winter.

  Michael loved the cove, a place that felt special and secret, especially this time of year, when it was hidden from the tourists’ greedy eyes. He wished like hell that the Cape’s economy and his own livelihood didn’t depend on weekly renters who arrived on summer Saturdays in their minivans, armed with cell phones, floaties, flip-flops, and People magazines. In winter, the tourists and all their crap were thankfully gone. The roads were clear, and the greasy sheen of sunscreen had vanished from the surface of the ponds, now frozen and still.

  On days like this, it was so quiet that Michael could fool himself into thinking that the cove belonged to him alone. It felt like it did: he loved the whole Outer Cape, but this spot was especially sacred. The earthy smell of rotting peat and sulfur somehow made his whole confusing life make sense. He appreciated the danger of the silt, the privacy of the cove, the rhythm of the tides—a change that was predictable, the only kind of change he could stomach.

  He wished his daughter, Avery, could be there with him, but she was at school. He’d never brought her to the Gordons’ house or told her about them. But two or three times a week he took her to Blackfish Creek so they could walk along the crunchy straw path that wrapped around most of the cove. They’d stomp on the sand and watch the hermit crabs scamper back into their holes and inspect the carcasses of upturned horseshoe crabs. The small, young ones had golden backs as thin and clear as varnish, while the bigger crabs had thick shells like tree bark, and could live to be over a hundred years old. He liked to run his finger along the spiked toothy ridges of their backs. Avery knocked her small fist against their crab shells so she could create a drumming sound. She’d flip the dead ones upside down and yank off their sandy, barnacled legs like she was pulling petals off a flower. She could do that without hesitation; she was a child of the Cape, comfortable with the ocean and its creatures in a way he never would be, although his distance created a space for a sort of reverence that she’d never understand.

  Michael pounded a nail into the side of the Gordons’ chimney and wrapped wire around it. What started as a simple project had become more complicated when he realized the mortar between some of the bricks had started to crumble, and the chimney needed tuck-pointing. He’d taken care of that last week. Now he could proceed with the original task at hand: repairing the grate on the top of the chimney that kept the squirrels and raccoons out. This was something Ed should have checked when he left. It wasn’t like he hadn’t learned his lesson.

  That second summer Michael came to the Cape with the Gordons, Connie opened the door and backed away, overcome by the odor in the closed-up house. They discovered a family of dead raccoons in the living room. Their nest had collapsed down the chimney, and the animals couldn’t get out of the house. The signs of their desperation were everywhere: in the dirty animal prints all over the rugs, upholstery, and floorboards, the scratch marks on the windowsills and the nose prints on the windows. He should have seen it as an omen of how that summer would ultimately end.

  Michael looked at the roof. The shingles needed to be replaced, but that was the kind of big job he couldn’t tackle without being noticed. There were plenty of other big jobs he itched to take care of: spackling the cracks in the living room walls, sanding the floors, putting dormers in the second floor to make decent living space out of the attic—his old bedroom.

  He’d wanted to fix the Gordons’ house ever since the first year after he’d left Milwaukee, when he’d spent part of the winter living there undetected. That was the loneliest time of his life. No television, no companions, no job to go to, no school to keep him busy, no family, no friends: just Anthony’s threats rattling around in his head, and the reverberating thoughts of Ann telling everyone that Michael was the father of that prick’s kid. It
crippled him to think of what Ed and Connie must have said about him, how wrong they thought they’d been to have adopted him. He was crushed and sorry for himself. By the beginning of March, he’d decided he couldn’t hide out at the Gordons’ place anymore. Sooner or later someone would find him. He closed the house down, careful to conceal every single trace of his presence, and he showed up at Jason’s.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “I graduated early.”

  Jason could tell Michael was lying. “You’re going to need to get your GED.”

  “Fine. Can you give me some work?”

  “I knew you’d be back.”

  Michael could tell that Jason knew something was up, but he was grateful that his old boss—and now his only friend in the world—played along. “I could also use a place to stay for a while if you’ve got some extra room.” It was all he could do to hold it together. As much as he hated asking for help, it was better than spending a dime of Anthony’s dirty money.

  “I’ve got a couch in the basement. It’s not much, but sure beats sleeping on the beach.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “I’ve seen you work your ass off. I’m not worried about that. You hungry?”

  Michael nodded yes. For months, he’d eaten only nonperishables. He was overcome with gratitude for Jason’s company and warm food. He felt, for the first time in months, that it might actually be possible for his life to improve again.

  Jason took Michael’s bag off his shoulder and ushered him into the kitchen, where his wife, Angela, was pushing steaming food around in a frying pan. “Hey, Michael,” she said. “You know you’d better like yourself a whole damn lot if you decide to live on the Cape in the off-season.”