Tales From Sea Glass Inn

by Karis Walsh

  “Put this on,” Mike said, handing Maggie a nylon harness with thick straps. Were those the only words he knew? She stepped into the harness and he pulled the straps tight, bunching her baggy jumpsuit until she looked like she was wearing an extra-large Hefty bag with a snug belt.

  “We’ll jump at thirteen thousand feet. I’ll hook our harnesses together a few thousand feet before that. Once we’re out of the plane, don’t grab me or any part of the harness or chute. Got it?”

  Maggie nodded weakly. That was all she was getting from him? She’d expected an outlined lesson plan, some diagrams on a whiteboard, or a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe a quiz at the end to make sure she had assimilated the information. She sighed and followed him and the others as they trudged toward a teeny plane. Everything but the two front seats had been removed, leaving a small empty space for them to sit. A hole in the side of the plane, presumably where she’d be making her exit, was covered by a piece of canvas they kept insisting on calling a door. Doors, in Maggie’s mind, should be solid and not flap in the breeze. She wedged herself in front of Mike’s knees and scrunched in a ball.

  Maggie let her mind wander back to Tam as the plane taxied to the runway. Two days, and she still hadn’t heard from her. She couldn’t interfere beyond giving her and Markus the facts about his prognosis and the transplant procedure, but she hoped for Tam’s sake that she’d make the decision to go ahead with the initial tests. She’d witnessed it firsthand—rarely, but enough for it to make an impression on her—when long-lost relatives refused to help and then changed their minds after it was too late. She couldn’t bear to have Tam go through the emotional trauma it would likely cause. Better to do what she could to keep her dad alive, even if she never moved beyond hating him to forgiveness.

  Maggie’s throat felt paralyzed as the plane took off, bucking in turbulence as it climbed, and she fought down panic as she tried to swallow and couldn’t. She forced herself to relax, recalling her conversation with Tam. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from stretching her boundary of acceptable interference just a little. Tam was pushing her away, pushing her father away, but Maggie sensed she wasn’t as unmoved by his situation as she pretended to be. She seemed to be someone who felt deeply, whether it was anger or defiance, and Maggie wanted her to make a decision that would bring her peace of mind, not the opposite.

  The plane gained altitude in large, lazy circles. When she thought they must certainly be high enough to jump, she checked the altimeter on Mike’s wrist, where it rested on his knee. Twelve hundred feet. Only eleven thousand eight hundred to go. If she lived through this delightful adventure she’d gotten herself into, maybe she’d hear good news from Tam next week. Maybe she’d agree to start the tests. And then, Maggie would have a chance to see her again. She wanted to see her again, almost as much as she wanted to get her feet back on solid ground. She usually didn’t feel this way about the people she met while on the job, no matter how attractive or interested in her they seemed to be. Tam was different somehow. She’d been on Maggie’s mind since they’d met. Maggie had to keep distance between her personal life and the people she met through work. She used to pride herself on finding balance between maintaining a necessary detachment and still caring deeply about her patients, but lately she’d been listing dangerously close to an excess of the latter. The internal turbulence she’d been feeling since Gem left had weakened her defenses, and she’d realized she had to make some changes. She had to face her personal fears before they took control. Otherwise, she’d be consumed by the fears of her patients and their families.

  Maggie reached under the collar of her jumpsuit and fiddled with her locket, suddenly ready to jump and have the wind knock some of the painful memories she carried with her out of her mind. Too many sad stories for one person to bear. Sure, there were recoveries, both miraculous and expected, but sometimes the sad held more weight in her heart.

  Mike tapped her on the shoulder, and Maggie moved in front of him as he buckled her to his own harness. The next minutes were a blur as one by one the other student-and-instructor pairs jumped. She was just about to say she’d changed her mind when they were out of the plane.

  In the video, the skydivers had wafted through the air with upbeat background music, but in reality, Maggie was flung into chaos. The rushing sound reminded her of plunging into the ocean. Hearing and not hearing at the same time. Her cheeks lost all tension and flapped in the wind. Did she bend her arms and knees and keep her head up? She had no idea since time seemed to blur as she tried to reconcile the feeling of motionlessness with dropping out of the sky at a tremendous rate.

  She yelped when the parachute opened and broke their fall with a sudden jerk on the harness between her legs and under her arms. She was going to feel that tomorrow. She caught her breath as they floated toward the ground in a more controlled manner, and she managed to enjoy the swing of her legs every time Mike corrected their course.

  One last turn, and they swooped down to the gravel landing site. A whole lot of scary preparation for a few seconds of cacophony. Had she changed anything about herself, or proved anything? She didn’t feel different, just a little more battered. She ran a few yards once her feet touched the ground, trying to get her balance back, and she would have fallen on her face if Mike hadn’t held her upright. Once they were standing still, he unbuckled her and Jocelyn bounded over with a big grin.

  “You were so tiny up there when you jumped,” she said, squeezing Maggie tightly. Jocelyn’s girlfriend, Ari, stepped up next to hug her.

  “What did you think?” Jocelyn asked. “Was it fun? Would you do it again?”

  “I’m not sure to the first, and no to the second,” Maggie said, pulling off the leather helmet and running a hand through her damp, flattened hair. She felt as if her body had been put through some daunting ordeal, like running a marathon, when all she’d really done had been to dangle in the air. “I think once is enough. Where’s the champagne?”

  “Back at the car,” Jocelyn said with a laugh. She tucked her arm in Maggie’s and leaned her head on her shoulder as they walked. “I was worried about you.”

  “So was I,” Maggie admitted. They stopped to drop off her jumpsuit and helmet before going to the car. An indifferent clerk tossed the suit on top of a pile behind her in what seemed to Maggie to be an anticlimactic ending to her afternoon. “I guess it was worth doing once.”

  “Can you describe what you were feeling when you were on the plane?” Ari asked, pulling a notepad and pen out of her back pocket. “What did it sound like? What were you thinking?”

  Maggie wasn’t about to admit she’d been thinking about Tam to her sister’s author girlfriend. “Are you interviewing me for a book?”

  Ari shrugged. “Maybe, or a story. I wanted to get your impressions while they’re still fresh.”

  Maggie looked at Jocelyn for support, but she was gazing at Ari with a look of absolute adoration. Maggie rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you go in and sign up? You can jump today and write your own notes.”

  “Are you kidding? I saw your face before you went up, and you looked even worse when you landed again. I’m staying on the ground, thanks.”

  Jocelyn poured them all some champagne, and they leaned against her bumper and toasted Maggie’s step toward bravery. She fended off Ari’s questions and watched the two of them snuggled up against each other and felt something lacking still. She’d jumped out of a plane, she’d been scuba diving, and she’d gone on a miserable spur-of-the-moment trip to a Mexican resort. She didn’t feel any different, any more fulfilled. She was no closer to feeling unbound and fearless than she’d been before Gem left.

  Maggie drained her paper cup and let Jocelyn pour her another. She sighed. On to the next adventure. Maybe this one would be the key to changing her life.

  *

  Tam went to the hospital and stood outside her father’s room, leaning against the wall and not making a move to either leave or go inside. She kind of wanted s
omeone to call security and have her ass hauled out of the ward, but the nurses and other patients walked past her as if she belonged there.

  She’d called Maggie and told her to go ahead and schedule the tests. Maggie had sounded relieved over the phone and hadn’t wasted any time getting Tam’s appointments set up. She was right. Tam didn’t have anything to lose at this point. She could always say no before anyone started to cut her open. Besides, she needed to figure out why she had accepted the job at Cannon Beach after getting the letter about his cancer. The new field office had been created after the oil spill, and Tam was offered the job since she had ties to the community from her past and from the work she had done here in the aftermath of the disaster. She’d turned it down, preferring to stay in the more neutral town of Newport. She’d never been there as a child. But as soon as she’d heard about her father, she had applied for the new post, barely making the deadline. Why? Why hadn’t she just tossed the letter in the trash and forgotten it?

  Tam opened the door and walked in without knocking. Her father was lying in the same position as before, eyes closed even though the television was turned on. She hadn’t made any attempt to be silent like she had the last time, and he opened his eyes as soon as she got close to his bed.

  “Hello, Tam,” he said. He’d always called her Tamsyn, but he must have listened when she gave her shortened name to Maggie.

  “Where were you?” she asked instead of returning his greeting. What a strange question, spanning over thirty years. It might take hours to answer, and Tam wasn’t going to hang around that long.

  “All over the place. Nowhere important.” He paused, as if those few words had worn him out. “Fishing in Alaska, oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana. Kuwait for a few years. Wherever the money was, I’d follow. I was young and foolish, Tam. Not ready to settle down and have a family. I made a mistake leaving you after your mom and I split up, but I didn’t realize until too late.”

  “And you didn’t try to contact me until you needed something.” Neither of her parents had been ready for family life. Tam had been a mistake, and her dad had been the first to leave. Her mom was next, leaving Tam with her grandparents while she pursued second-rate acting and modeling jobs. At least she would visit every once in a while.

  “I thought about you all the time,” Markus said.

  “Oh, okay. That makes it better. Is this where you pull out the scrapbook with photos of my first piano recital and my graduation and tell me you’ve been secretly keeping track of my life?”

  He sighed and his fingers moved on the sheet again, as if he was winding a rope. Tam had a sudden flashback to her first lesson in a sailboat, a year before her capsized rowboat incident. Her dad had taken her out on the ocean, and she’d laughed at the breeze and the powerful swells. She’d forgotten that day, mistakenly remembering another time as her first sailing experience.

  “I don’t have a scrapbook, Tam. I don’t know where you went to college or anyone you’ve dated or what you do for a living. Yes, I only contacted you because of this damn cancer, but it’s brought us here together. We’ve got a second chance, no matter how it came about. I don’t want to blow it again.”

  “Too late,” Tam said. She turned and walked out of the room, leaving him there alone. She could have left the hospital, too, like she had last week, but instead she consulted a directory and found Maggie’s office.

  “Tam, come in,” Maggie said with her wonderful smile when she saw Tam standing in her doorway. She pulled a file across her desk and opened it. “Thank you for being here today. We’ll pull some blood and have you fill out this questionnaire, and then a coworker of mine will give you a physical. Nothing major, just a general health check.”

  Tam wondered why Maggie wasn’t doing the physical, but she didn’t dare ask. She wouldn’t lie and say she hadn’t pictured Maggie’s hands on her, but she’d prefer it to happen somewhere outside of a doctor’s office. She’d be less awkward having someone else see her naked and prod her stomach and glands.

  “I saw my father,” she said. She’d guessed Maggie wouldn’t ask, but she wanted her to know.

  Maggie closed the folder and rested her clasped hands on it. “How did the visit go?”

  Tam shrugged. “He didn’t apologize or anything. Just said he hadn’t wanted to be tied down, and he told me some of the places he went after he left us.”

  “Do you still want to go ahead with the evaluation today?” Maggie fingered her locket and Tam watched the patterned gold reflect the light from Maggie’s desk lamp.

  “Yes.” Tam hesitated. She wanted to talk more about her past and about her confusing feelings toward her father, but she changed the subject instead. “You play with your locket sometimes,” she said, her eyes on Maggie’s hand and the delicate pendant cradled in it. “Is it a family heirloom?”

  “Hmm, I suppose it is,” Maggie said, glancing down at the necklace. She lowered her hand to her lap. “My twin sister had cancer when we were children. Leukemia. There were times when we didn’t think she’d survive the night, let alone make it through childhood, but she did. During one of those bad times, an aunt gave me this locket with a tiny braid of Jocelyn’s hair in it. She said I should have something to remember her by if she died.”

  Tam shuddered at the misguided and callous words. She could see the residue of young Maggie’s reaction in the expression on the adult Maggie’s face. “How cruel.”

  Maggie touched her locket again, running her thumb over the gold. “I agree. I’m sure she meant well, but what an awful thing to say to a child. I wouldn’t leave Jocelyn’s side for weeks after that. Whenever someone tried to get me away or put me in my own bed, I’d scream and cry, so they let me stay with her.”

  “And you still wear it?” Tam asked. She was amazed by Maggie. Her decision to specialize in oncology had to have roots in her sister’s illness. She was helping other families through the very situation she’d experienced as a child.

  “I do. It reminds me that none of us knows the future. My aunt passed away four years ago, and Jocelyn is alive and well.”

  “Jocelyn. The owner of the bookstore in town?” Tam had been wondering why Maggie looked vaguely familiar. She’d thought she must have been one of the volunteers after the oil spill, helping to clean the birds and animals. Tam didn’t believe she would have walked past Maggie anytime, in any situation, and not notice her. “I met her when I worked at the rescue center after the spill. I was in her shop a couple of times, too.”

  Maggie laughed. “Did she recommend just the right book for you to read?”

  “Three of them, actually. I thought it might have been a sales gimmick, but then I started reading the books and realized she was eerily accurate with her choices. She looked healthy and happy. I take it she made a full recovery?”

  “Yes. After chemo, surgery, radiation, and a stem-cell transplant.”

  “From you.” Tam didn’t need to ask the question, she simply stated it as a fact. Maggie had looked away when she mentioned that aspect of Jocelyn’s treatment. She had no doubt Maggie, even as a child, hadn’t hesitated to offer anything her sister might have needed to survive. “Given freely, I’m sure.”

  “Tam, don’t compare our situations. She’s my twin, and we’ve always been close. We still are. Would I have made a different choice if I’d been older? If we’d lost touch for years, or if she’d been someone who had abandoned me? Perhaps. Every situation is different, but some things are the same in this ward. Entire families, not just the patients, experience emotional upheaval and face nearly impossible choices.”

  Maggie came around her desk and leaned against it near Tam’s chair. “I’m here for you, Tam, if you ever need to talk. I’ll explain the procedures as many times as you need and answer any questions you might have. If you just want a friend to talk to, I’m available for that, too.”

  Tam wanted to shift her legs an inch or two to the right and make contact with Maggie’s calves. She reminded herself that
Maggie was only making this offer because of her job, not because she cared about Tam in particular. She might take her up on it, though. If only because she wanted a chance to spend more time with her and learn more about her.

  Tam stood, her leg gently brushing against Maggie’s. The barest of touches, but the sensation coursed through Tam’s nerves until she felt as if Maggie was touching her everywhere.

  “Maybe, someday. I’m sure I’ll have questions as we go along.” Tam cleared her throat. She was trying to sound noncommittal and unaffected by Maggie’s closeness. She needed to get away before she made a fool of herself and asked Maggie on a date when she was only trying to be a kind and helpful physician. Tam grabbed at the first excuse she could call to mind. “I should go. I wouldn’t want to be late for my doctor’s appointment.”

  Tam left the office and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment before walking toward the elevator. She was strong and didn’t rely on anyone. Usually. Now she was forging a distant but undeniable connection with her father by agreeing to the tests, and she seemed to have a crush on his doctor. She’d get through the day and get out of this place. On her boat, on the open sea, and heading south. Away from Cannon Beach and all the complications it seemed to provoke.

  *

  Maggie came through the open front door to the Sea Glass Inn and poked her head in the kitchen, looking for Mel. The room was empty, as were the dining and living rooms. She leaned against the banister of the staircase leading down to the private downstairs rooms.

  “Mel? Pam? Are you here?” she called. No answer. A glance out the kitchen window let her know Pam wasn’t in her art studio. Maggie sighed. She’d hoped to find her friends here and had used Jocelyn’s book club as an excuse to come to the inn. Usually members came to the bookstore and bought copies of the next month’s selection, but these had been delivered behind schedule, and Maggie had volunteered to bring them here.