Firefly Beach

by Meira Pentermann

  L,

  K

  Sunday, September 14

  Did I mention that I am in love? John loves me too. I’m sure of it.

  We did it again on the beach yesterday. I’m surprised we were able to sneak down here. I gave Dad another “I’m going to Sarah’s” excuse.

  Oh, the things this beach has seen. I can’t stop smiling. Dad noticed. I told him there was a cute boy sitting next to me in my English class. Since he has not seen me hanging out by the garage, I think he buys it. You know, flaky teenager, a new crush every week. He does not realize how grown up I am. He can’t accept it, me growing up. It would destroy him, I think. But that is not my problem. If I have to choose, I’ll choose John over Dad, so he had better not pull rank on me. He’ll be sorry if he does.

  Katherine

  Friday, September 19

  Dear Diary:

  I haven’t seen John all week. He said he would be gone over the weekend visiting his sister in New Jersey. I guess it is his nephew’s birthday. I wish I could go. I would love to meet his family. Unfortunately MY family would disapprove.

  I miss him!

  Love,

  Katherine

  Sunday, September 21

  It has been a lonely weekend. I can’t bear another weekend like this. I miss him. How did I ever live without him? That seems like a lifetime ago, way far away when I was a little child collecting seashells. Now I have much more grown up things to do on the beach.

  The pills have screwed up my period. It should have come during the week I took the green ones. But I started a new packet on Tuesday, almost a week ago. So it seems that now my period is suppressed altogether. I know that I followed the directions correctly, and I didn’t miss any pills.

  I don’t want to have to go back to that dreadful doctor. This is a real pain in the ass.

  Bye for now.

  Katherine

  Friday, September 26

  Dear D:

  I snuck out of class on Wednesday, and I went to John’s place. I couldn’t bear any more days apart. We made love in his bed. You wouldn’t believe how good his bed smells. I thought I was going to die of happiness. It was a soft bed, too. Softer than the beach. Ha ha.

  Hopefully we can get together again this weekend.

  L,

  K

  Sunday, September 28

  I couldn’t get a hold of John on Saturday. I don’t know if he went out of town again. He would have told me, wouldn’t he?

  Sarah and I got together in the afternoon. I finally had to tell her. The truth is, I wanted to ask her about the birth control pills. She knows about these things.

  She was kind of bitchy about it. She sighed at me. Apparently, she is still a virgin, so she has nothing to be self-righteous about. But she was glad I was smart enough to take the pill. She actually said that: “smart enough.” I could have slugged her. Anyway, she said that the pill is supposed to make my period very regular, so she didn’t know what was wrong. She said that I should go back to that doctor. I don’t want to go. I really, really don’t want to go.

  L,

  K

  Friday, October 3

  My period still has not started. I am on week three of my second pack. Something is wrong. I couldn’t possibly be pregnant because I’ve been taking them faithfully, the same time every night. However, I can’t let the pills end my period. I won’t stop taking them either. I can’t exactly ask John to wear a condom now. That wouldn’t be fair.

  I’ve made a doctor appointment for Tuesday. Sarah and I are going to ditch class and she’ll take me. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  L,

  K

  Beth’s stomach turned over in circles and she felt like she was going to be sick. It may as well have been the summer of 1990 when she noticed her own period had been absent for weeks. In the wake of her repulsive relationship with Larry, she found herself alone, with a terrible secret. She set the diary aside and tried to suppress her thoughts. But there was no holding them back. Beth and her painful memories stood face to face. The afternoon she went to the doctor. The shock. The anger. The self-hatred. And the morning she took the bus to downtown Minneapolis, unbeknownst to her mother. A day that irrevocably changed her life.

  She didn’t need those all-too-familiar, disparaging voices to interrogate her now. It was what needed to be done at the time. She knew it, but that did not make it easy, nor did it fill the hole that had taken residence within her ever since that day. She never told anyone, not Bill, not even her mother. Would her mother have given her different advice? Would her life have been better…or worse, had she made a different decision? It was pointless to ask such questions. But after twenty-two years, she wondered why the aching never went away. It was not fair what had happened to her. Was it? As much as she wanted to blame some force outside of herself, she knew that it was her own weak self-esteem that had put her in that dreadful position in the first place – forced to choose between one nightmare or the other. And with such admonitions, the voices plagued her until she shut them up and pushed them away.

  She grabbed her cell phone and called Sarah Wylder’s office again.

  “Cleveland Women’s Care, how may I help you?”

  “Hi…uh…this is Beth LaMonte again.”

  “Hello, Ms. LaMonte.”

  “Yes, hello. I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering, is Dr. Wylder available yet?”

  “She got called over to the hospital. One of her patients went into labor.”

  “Labor, right. Okay. So when will she be back?”

  The young lady laughed. “That is entirely up to the baby.”

  Discouraged, Beth did not appreciate the joke.

  “I’ll give her your message, Ms. LaMonte.”

  “Thank you.”

  Beth put her head in her hand and sighed. She set the cell phone on the coffee table and stared at it for several minutes before picking up the diary. On its pages, she read the words she already knew were written.

  Tuesday, October 7

  Dear Diary:

  I’m pregnant.

  Only Sarah knows. And now you. Please don’t let Dad find out.

  I’m scared, and I’m angry.

  I guess I was supposed to take the pills for a month and use extra “precaution” until I started my second pack, preferably my third. I asked the doctor why he conveniently left that part out of our little talk. He became rather belligerent and said that he told me, but I just wasn’t listening. I KNOW I was listening. He DIDN’T say that. I told Sarah he barely said two words to me, that he spent more time sticking his hands all over where they don’t belong than talking to me.

  She said, “That’s why men shouldn’t be gynecologists.”

  It’s too late for that piece of wisdom.

  I have to talk to John. I have to get him alone. But I can’t be too weird or Dad will know something is up. But he’ll know eventually…

  Oh my God.

  John, I need you!

  L,

  K

  Thursday, October 9

  Diary:

  Everything is falling apart.

  I was finally able to catch John alone. I knew Dad was going on an errand-run, so I skipped school.

  God help me I’m going to die this minute! John was mad at me. He actually yelled at me. He’s never yelled at me. He called me stupid. I’m so ashamed. He said he thought I knew what I was doing and that it served him right for fucking a stupid child.

  I’m not a stupid child. It wasn’t my fault. The doctor. Oh my God. What am I going to do?

  Katherine

  Friday, October 10

  Dear D:

  Sarah says I should get an abortion and get on with my life. I don’t know what to do. I guess she’s right.

  I’m scared.

  L,

  K

  Monday, October 13

  My life is over.

  John’s gone. Dad says he wasn’t at the garage on Friday, and that he
didn’t come in today. I tried not to show any expression. He left because of me.

  Mom died thirteen years ago. Thirteen years on the thirteenth. I hardly remember her. Dad assumed I was sullen all day because of Mom’s death. We went to her grave. But I was numb inside. I might as well have been lying in the grave right next to her, in the barren plot of land Dad purchased thirteen years ago. My final resting place…my destiny.

  I’ve lost everything on the thirteenth. Everything.

  I wish I was dead.

  No. I wish I was never born.

  Beth turned the page. It was blank. Then she flipped through the book. There was nothing else written. The last words hung in the air as if a large, harsh bell had been rung, and its discordant sound lingered. “I wish I was dead. No. I wish I was never born.”

  Beth held the diary to her chest, her eyes watering.

  “Oh, Katherine, what did you do?” Beth looked toward the clearing, the place where she first saw the firefly. Even though it was mid-morning, her mind conjured up the image of the graceful creature, glowing in the dark of night. Beth did not want to believe that Katherine was dead or, even worse, that she might have killed herself. Katherine’s paternal grandfather had committed suicide, so there was a family history. Furthermore, Beth thought. Rod Thompson isn’t exactly a shining example of mental health.

  She looked down at her cell phone and had to hold back the overwhelming urge to call Sarah Wylder a third time. Instead, she grabbed the phone and walked to the secret beach. She spent the entire day on the beach. She didn’t eat or work. She just sat, sorting through her memories of that unpleasant summer, wondering about the fate of Katherine, and making peace with the choices she herself had made. Beth considered the naïveté of her youth and found a way to forgive herself for wanting to be loved by a man more than she wanted to take care of herself.

  In the late afternoon, she slowly climbed the cliff. She was hungry. She looked at the time. 4:47 p.m. Sarah Wylder had not returned her call.

  “Damn.” She hit redial on her phone and listened to it ring. The Beth-on-a-mission emerged after a day of self-reflection.

  “Cleveland Women’s Care.”

  Beth took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. “Is Dr. Wylder in, please?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  Beth bit her lip and paused for a moment. “This is Beth LaMonte.”

  The friendly voice on the other end of the line turned sour. “Ms. LaMonte, I have given Dr. Wylder your message. She will call you when she’s available. Typically she catches up on her phone calls at the end of the work day, so she’ll probably call you this evening.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said in defeat. She had become a liability to her own quest.

  * * * *

  Beth tried to go to bed early. She could not sleep. She got up at 11:00 p.m. to take a sleeping pill, and she saw the firefly hovering in the clearing. She pulled on some clothing, grabbed a jacket, and walked out to meet it. She marched up to the light creature, saying not a word. She stared at it for a long time. Then she wandered toward the cliff and sat down about six feet away from the edge. The firefly drifted behind her.

  “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what I can give you,” Beth said finally. She gazed up at the sky. There was no moon and a million stars seemed to overwhelm the darkness. She shook her head in dismay. “Why do you haunt me and drudge up all of this stuff? I don’t need this in my life right now.” She put her head in one hand. Then she sat upright and hollered at the light creature. “And just for the record…I didn’t commit suicide. I had the courage to face the consequences of my actions and the difficulty of my choices.”

  Beth picked up a rock and rolled it around in her hand.

  The firefly began to drift away north, slowly, toward the secret beach. It slipped into the trees and disappeared.

  “Yeah, you run now,” Beth shouted after it. “You run and hide. Leave me here to sort through the Pandora’s box you’ve opened.” Beth stood up. She threw the rock as far as she could, not a decent throw. It bounced off the rocks and tumbled helplessly down the side of the cliff before reaching the water.

  * * * *

  The flying dream interrupted Beth’s sleep almost hourly. With each pass of the dream, the car seemed to be moving faster, but its headlights grew dimmer. Just before she awoke for the day on Tuesday morning, the headlights were dim enough that she could make out the image of her father at the wheel. He looked terrified.

  Beth jumped out of bed and ran from it as if it were filled with snakes. She screamed in anger, a growl that started low and crescendoed into a piercing cry of desperation.

  Chapter 19

  Quest

  Sarah Wylder sat in her office on Tuesday morning sorting through charts and paperwork before her scheduled appointments began. The waiting room was already filled with women and shrieking toddlers. Dr. Wylder tried to concentrate. She looked at her watch.

  Her receptionist buzzed.

  “Yes?” Sarah responded wearily. She was tired before the day had even begun. How did she let her life get this hectic and out of control?

  “Dr. Wylder, I’ve got that Beth LaMonte on the phone again. She insists she talk to you. She called a jillion times yesterday. It is about Virginia Point, Maine. I don’t even know where that is.” Her receptionist had a tendency to ramble and throw in unnecessary details. It was annoying, but her talents outweighed her quirks. “Anyway, now she wants to hold. Can you believe it? She says she wants to hold until you are ready to talk to her. I told her, ‘We can’t keep a line tied up that long.’ Doctor, I know you’re busy, but this woman won’t leave me alone until you speak with her. Could you please take the call? I’ll owe you a batch of chocolate chip cookies.”

  A tired smile briefly crossed Sarah’s face. Then she took a deep breath, puffed up her cheeks, and let it out slowly. Finally, she said, “I’ll take it, Rachel. Line one?”

  “Yes. Thank you, thank you, doctor.”

  Virginia Point, Maine. Sarah had not gone back since she packed up the Chevy and drove to Seattle thirty-six years ago. Her parents had moved to California, her brother to New York. She had visited New York and Los Angeles dozens of times, but she never felt the desire to visit Virginia Point, Maine. Everything she had there was gone. It was a provincial childhood. When she left, she was ready to leave her hometown behind. Who could possibly be looking for her from Virginia Point?

  She picked up the receiver. “Hello. This is Dr. Wylder.”

  * * * *

  “Dr. Wylder!” Beth exclaimed. “Thank you for taking my call.” She was so excited she found herself shaking. A night of interrupted sleep and disturbing dreams did not put her at her best.

  “How may I help you?”

  Slow down, take your time, Beth said to herself. “My name is Beth LaMonte. I live in Virginia Point, and I’m looking for someone you may have known when you were in high school. Katherine Thompson.”

  A long silence ensued before Dr. Wylder responded. “Yes, I knew Katherine Thompson.”

  Beth’s stomach turned upside down. She bit her lip, trying to choose her words carefully, but everything came out jumbled. “Do you happen to know how she ended up? I mean, what happened to her? Where she is?”

  “Katherine was a mess. She could have ended up any number of different places.”

  Beth did not know what to make of that response. “Uh—”

  “Listen, I have no idea what became of Katherine Thompson. She got pregnant. She dropped out of high school…are you writing this down? Because the list of Katherine’s screw ups goes on and on.”

  Beth was shocked by the woman’s callous tone. “She was your friend, wasn’t she? Don’t you care what happened to her?”

  “She was a cheerleader and I was a feminist. I mean, how far is that relationship supposed to go? We were friends as children, but we grew apart. She only came to me when she needed something, and she always needed something.” Sarah’s voice was har
sh and intimidating. “She was a disaster. I wanted more out of life.”

  Beth frowned. “You don’t know anything about what happened to her?”

  Dr. Wylder groaned and remained quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. She started seeing a jerk who worked for her father. I warned her to take precautions, but she got pregnant. I told her she should get an abortion and move on with her life. And that was that.”

  That was that? Hardly. That is not such a casual decision to make. Beth stifled her urge to tell the doctor a thing or two. First, it would be counterproductive in her effort to get information on Katherine. Second, she never approached the topic with anyone.

  “Anyway, she called me a month later—”

  Beth sat up straight and interrupted. “A month later? She called you a month later? Are you certain?”

  “Yes. She said that she was ‘moving on with her life.’ I figured that was her way of telling me that she had had an abortion, and that she was leaving Virginia Point and her troubled past behind her. I told her I was happy to hear things were working out.”

  “Did she tell you where she was?”

  Sarah sighed. “She told me she was working for a dentist, a Dr. Bennett or Barrette or something in Bangor. She wanted me to know in case her father came asking about her.”

  “Did he?”

  “No, he did not. And then I graduated and moved on with my life.”

  Beth tapped her pencil on the tablet. “Do you think Katherine was suicidal?”

  “She was awfully depressed the last time I saw her. I mean, I’m assuming you never actually met her. This was an emotional roller coaster of a girl. She could have been suicidal one minute, and she could have been flying on a kite the next. But the last time I spoke with her, when she was in Bangor, she sounded fine.”

  Beth felt relief wash over her. Maybe she was wrong about Katherine. Maybe she didn’t kill herself. And then it was all a matter of finding her and bringing her home to mend the conflict with her father. Beth could offer Katherine some personal I’ve-been-there understanding about what happened and help Katherine heal. She chided herself. Such a fairy tale was a bit far-fetched to hang her hopes on.