The Last Beach Bungalow

by Jennie Nash

Rick folded a towel. “You’re writing about it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, the lie coming without a single hitch. “But the thing that was weird is I could picture us living there.”

  “Sweetie,” he said, setting the towel down and turning to face me. He put his hands on my shoulders. “You need to stop feeling nervous about the new house. Everything’s going to come together in the end, I promise. I ordered the paint today and Ruben’s starting on doorknobs tomorrow. We’re so close to the end. We’re going to be in for Christmas. It’s going to be perfect.”

  “Remember how I said the other day that I thought I’d seen a ghost?” I asked.

  Rick just stared at me.

  “There’s something about the house. I’m not sure I want to live there.”

  “We can paint the bathroom blue if it means that much to you,” Rick said.

  “The bathroom’s fine.”

  “Then what is it?” Rick asked. He raised his arms as he said this and let them slap back down on his thighs. “Just tell me what you want and I can make it happen. You want me to move the whole damn bathroom? I can do anything if you just tell me what will make you happy.”

  I moved a pile of just-folded jeans onto the coffee table. The football game was still going on, the dull buzz of the crowd.

  “You know how they say that cancer changes you?” I said. “I’ve been wondering the whole time what that means because I don’t feel any different than I did before. I actually feel worse, to tell you the truth. We lived through all that. We were so young, Rick. It was so awful. And look at us. I have a brand-new body, we have a brand-new house, but do we even like each other anymore? Are we any better off?”

  “So that’s what this is about?” he asked quietly.

  Tears started to roll down my cheeks. “I know it sounds stupid,” I said, “but I never stopped thinking I was going to die. I know you wanted this house to be a kind of fortress against the possibility of that, but I never stopped thinking I was going to die.”

  He leaned over to me, then, and took me in his arms. I wanted to let my weight fall against his, to let myself melt into him. It felt exactly the way it had when I first met him and we couldn’t, physically, stay away from each other. I turned my shoulder toward him and could feel his chest, his thighs against mine. All I would have had to do to set our lovemaking in motion was to raise my chin. I lifted my eyes, and in the next instant, he was kissing me. I opened my mouth to welcome him—just as Jackie stepped out of her bedroom.

  I pulled away.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked.

  “Your mom and I are going out with Vanessa and CJ,” Rick said.

  “We are?” I asked.

  “Vanessa twisted my arm,” he said, clearly pleased that he allowed it to be twisted. “We’re going to the golf club.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Jackie asked.

  “A clean mammogram,” I said. “Five years.”

  Jackie came over to where we were sitting on the couch and flung her long, lean body across our laps, and her arms around my neck. “That’s awesome, Mom,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled like man-goes, from her shampoo. She was surprisingly heavy in my lap, and her hair—the same apricot color as mine, but longer and straighter, the hair I’d always wanted— tickled my arm where it brushed against my skin. “I’m so glad you didn’t die.”

  I laughed. “I’m glad I didn’t die, too.”

  She kissed me again, then Rick tickled her feet and she squealed and got up and went into the kitchen to find something to eat.

  I knew exactly what I was supposed to wear if I wanted to look polished and put together—something in a fall shade to complement my reddish hair, something with a wide neckline to emphasize my strong shoulders. Having been bathed in the wisdom of women’s magazines my whole adult life, I could reel off the best ways to apply eye shadow, the best shoes to wear with a pair of pencil pants, a dozen different ways to camouflage an extra ten pounds, but the truth was that knowing how to dress was completely different from being able to do it. Most days, I wore the same pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but that was hardly going to work for a dinner at Donald Trump’s new golf course. The chairs in the restaurant were heavy brocade. The drapes that framed the ocean view were deep blue velvet.

  I pulled out a pair of black pants and a red silk knit sweater I’d worn for Christmas parties for at least eight years. They were a uniform, a safe bet. The only thing that would add any pizzaz whatsoever would be accessories. Scarves, shoes, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, belts— the list of things that could bring salvation were endless. I picked up two pairs of earrings and went and knocked on Jackie’s door.

  “Yeah?” she asked, ear buds still in her ears.

  “Which ones, do you think?” I asked, holding up the earrings.

  She pulled the ear plugs out. “I’d definitely go with the gold,” she said, in a voice that was too loud for the real world but just perfect for me.

  We had an appetizer of walnut and shrimp sushi and California rolls made with crab that had been flown in from Maryland. Rick ordered warm sake, which we both love. For dinner, we had pecan-crusted salmon with baby bok choi and for dessert, there were three kinds of crème brulee. Rick ordered a bottle of champagne and raised his glass to make a toast. “To five great years,” he said. He leaned down to kiss me and presented me with a blue Tiffany box. Inside was a silver heart-shaped key ring with a key to the new house, and a small card that said, “Here’s to forever.”

  “Here, here,” CJ said, and drank another sip of champagne.

  I squeezed Rick’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you, sweetie,” I said. He looked at me and winked.

  Vanessa produced a small white oblong box.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Just a little something,” she said.

  It was a gift certificate from a spa that had recently opened in the Village. On a line at the bottom of the coupon were the words “Energy Healer: One Session.” Vanessa was a connoisseur of healing treatments. She’d had massages in red rock canyons and pedicures designed to cure every ill known to the foot. She’d had people manipulate the bones in her skull and wrap her entire body in seaweed. Some people thought that there was a pill or a prayer to heal every ill, some people turned to shopping or to drink, but Vanessa thought anything could be made better with a treatment at a spa.

  “What magical powers will this bring me?” I asked.

  “It will help you stay calm through the big move. I booked you an appointment for Monday.”

  “Calm sounds good,” I said.

  “Plus,” Vanessa said, “it will ignite your sexual energy.”

  “Oh, la la!” CJ said.

  I slapped his forearm.

  “Ouch,” CJ said. “She could do some serious damage with that right hook.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Rick.

  “No need to have any security guards with her around,” CJ went on.

  “Or Ghostbusters,” Rick said.

  “Halloween is long past, buddy,” CJ said. “You’re good with the ghosts.”

  Rick drained his glass. “April thinks there’s something wrong with the house. Evil spirits, that kind of thing.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I said.

  “It’s just the bathroom wall color she doesn’t like,” Vanessa said.

  “That’s not true, either,” I said, my voice getting higher pitched.

  “She’s fantasizing about another house,” Rick said.

  Something about the way my husband said the word fantasizing made my belly go cold. Was Rick having an affair? Is that why he had remained so cheerful through all these months when we’d barely touched each other? I scanned my mind for any suspicious comments, any unexplained late-night meetings. An image flashed through my mind of Rick in bed with another woman— a faceless woman, but with dark hair and smooth skin, and hunger in every move she made. Anger welled up in me, as if I’d caught him with his pan
ts down.

  “Rick, that’s not fair,” I growled.

  “But it’s true,” he said, and then turned his face toward CJ. “She keeps talking about some house down by the beach.”

  “She’s writing about that house,” Vanessa said. “It’s the house from the contest.”

  I thought of what it had been like to walk through the front door of the beach bungalow, confronted suddenly with the trellis, the trees and the fireplace that was so much like my grandmother’s. I thought about how often I had wished that my mother hadn’t sold Gram’s cottage by the lake. I could swim all the way across that lake, from her dock to the dock of the boys’ camp on the other side. There were blueberries to pick on the old dirt road and thick novels on the shelf in the den, and even though it made no sense whatsoever to have a grand piano in a house in the woods, Gram had one. That house had a presence to it that, had I been older, I would have fought to keep. “I’m not writing about it,” I said. “That was a lie.”

  There was silence at the table, even from CJ, whose face was flushed with drink. Even he could tell that some line had been crossed.

  “You lied to me?” Vanessa said.

  Rick sat back in his chair and crossed his arms in front of his body. “So you’re saying that you went to that open house because you actually want a different house?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t go looking for a different house,” I said. “It just happened.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Rick spat, and turned his body, slightly, toward the thick curtains on the window beside us.

  “I know you want our house to save me,” I said quietly, “to be a fortress against anything bad ever happening again, but I don’t think I believe a house can do that. I don’t think anything can do that.”

  No one said anything. CJ just kept staring at his glass of champagne, Vanessa was looking at Rick and Rick was looking out the window as if he were watching Tiger Woods teeing off the first green and didn’t want to miss a second of the swing.

  “Who said anything about being saved?” Rick asked.

  “You didn’t have to say it,” I said.

  “Guys,” Vanessa said. “Time out. This is supposed to be a party. Come on. Let’s finish our champagne.”

  We sipped our drinks, but the evening was clearly over.

  When we got home, I slipped out of my clothes, got into bed, turned away from Rick and quickly closed my eyes as if I couldn’t possibly stay awake another minute.

  SUNDAY

  When I woke up, Rick was gone from the bed. He was showered and dressed and sitting at the kitchen counter reading the sports page.

  “Do you want some eggs?” I asked.

  “I already ate,” he said.

  I nodded and poked my head into Jackie’s room. She was leaning close to the mirrored closet doors and brushing mascara onto her eyelashes. “Do you want some eggs?”

  “Already ate,” she said. She glanced at my flannel pajamas. “Max will be here soon,” she said.

  It seemed too much trouble to make eggs just for myself. I put two slices of toast in the toaster and heated water for tea. I stood at the sink with my back to Rick and ate so fast it seemed like I wasn’t even chewing.

  “Mom?” Jackie said from her doorway. She was staring at my wild hair and my pajamas, “It’s eight forty-five.”

  I tossed my crusts in the garbage, dashed to the shower, threw on a black skirt and a white blouse, dried my hair and came out just as Max knocked on the door.

  Jackie let him in and introduced us. He held out his hand to shake mine, and I felt instantly nervous, which seemed utterly unfair. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one whose hands were sweaty?

  “Your church sounds interesting,” Rick said. “Jackie told us a little about it.”

  Max nodded. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “Have you been going there long?”

  “Pretty much all my life,” he said, “but I don’t go that often anymore because of swimming.”

  “Max swims butterfly,” Jackie said. “He’s going to nationals in the spring.”

  “Good for you,” Rick said.

  “Congratulations,” I added.

  “We better go,” Max said, glancing at Jackie. He reached out his hand first to Rick, then to me. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I said.

  As they walked out the door, I saw Jackie take his hand.

  I wanted to tell Rick that I was sorry I’d needled him at dinner last night, and I was sorry about what I felt about the bungalow, and sorry that I hadn’t said more than two words to the boy that Jackie brought home, but Rick went to brush his teeth, and then he stood by the door jingling his car keys, saying that it was time to go in a voice that was still brittle with anger.

  We rode to church in total silence.

  We belonged to an Episcopal church that was tucked into a grove of eucalyptus trees in a small canyon that I always imagined to be the exact spot where Redondo Beach, the surf town, gave way to Palos Verdes, the hilly home of doctors and Hollywood lawyers. All the towns in the South Bay were crammed together so that you were never really sure where one began and another ended, but the Redondo-Palos Verdes border felt like a line of demarcation. The curve of beach melted into crumbling cliffs, the hills rose up behind them, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula began its audacious jut out into the sea. The Beach Boys sang about Redondo Beach. It was one of the hot spots you’d hit on your endless summer surfing safari, a place of leisure and delight. But it was from the hills of Palos Verdes that you could view it all: the palm trees silhouetted against the sunset, the crescent of sand wrapping around the Santa Monica bay, the spread of lights across the L.A. basin.

  Saint Francis Episcopal Church stood like a sentinel on the road leading up to those lofty views. Rick had been baptized in the original chapel and later served as an altar boy there. He’d kissed a girl named Patti Patter-son in the choir stalls of the new sanctuary building one Easter morning in eighth grade. I’d done all those same things, too—except the kissing—at a Methodist church in Houston, Texas. Far from feeling like a compromise, adopting Rick’s church and religion felt like a gift I was giving to our marriage. In the beginning I kept noting the differences between the two services: where people prayed or didn’t pray, how they kneeled or didn’t kneel. After a few years, I stopped paying attention.

  On Sunday, I focused on the purple candles on the Advent wreath and tried to feel some connection to God as I sang the familiar hymns and listened to the familiar prayers, but nothing was familiar because Jackie wasn’t there and anger still hung in the air around us. During the opening prayers, I tried to focus on the words, but all I could think about was the way Jackie had grabbed Max’s hand. During Communion, I tried to pray for the soldiers who had just pulled Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground and I tried to feel grateful for the simple fact of being able to sit in church on Sunday morning and not worry that I would be shot. My head, however, was filled with an image of the house on Pepper Tree Lane.

  The gospel reading and sermon that day were taken over by the pageant. Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper and assorted shepherds and lambs assembled at the back of the church. You could hear them shuffling and whispering, jockeying for position. The real Mary was purported to be a shy young thing, obedient and respectful of the law, but it was a coup to be chosen to play Mary at Saint Francis Palos Verdes, so it was usually a rather pushy girl who got the part—someone with a loud voice and a mother who was capable of spinning light blue silk into a fetching robe. The lights dimmed and a young girl, about twelve, came out and sat down at a piano that had been rolled into the sanctuary for the occasion. She was wearing a black velvet dress with a wide red ribbon around her waist, and her black hair was slicked back in a bun. She smiled and struck the first chord of “Once in Royal David’s City.”

  Mary came up the aisle, the angel Gabriel followed, Joseph came and gave his travel plans, the shepherds who watched their flock we
re amazed by the star in the sky, but I never took my eyes off the piano-playing girl. I played piano for eight years as a child and I used to love wearing a beautiful dress onstage. It was a thrill to play Chopin, to hit all the notes, to lose myself in the music in front of the audience of adoring parents, but it was all made even better by a great dress and patent leather shoes. It was the clothes that made all the students stand up straighter and walk with a lighter step. My teacher Mrs. K believed in renting an auditorium with a real stage and a grand piano for the recitals, and she insisted on the formal dress. “So you’ll know what it’s like to play Carnegie Hall,” she used to say.

  I’d wait in the wings, craning my neck to see if I could see my mom, and if I was lucky that night, my dad. I wanted to memorize where they were sitting so that when I clip-clopped out onto the stage in my shiny shoes and sat on the black bench to play, I wouldn’t have to look to know exactly where they were sitting.

  My parents never yelled “Brava!” the way some parents did, and they never had a red rose or a little bouquet of flowers for me. My mom would sit and clap until everyone else stopped clapping, and if my dad was there, he would clap three or four times, but that was enough. It was everything. It was all I needed to decide that being onstage was going to be my life. I switched to singing in junior high because the kids who were nice to me in the new school in our new town were in the choir. Whenever my dad wasn’t home, I went around the house rehearsing every song to obsessive perfection and became so confident in my voice that in my sophomore year in high school, I landed the role of Cinderella. Those Rogers and Hammerstein songs about love and loneliness and possibility helped me nurture illusions of a singing career until one day at the start of my senior year when my mother took me to hear Kathleen Battle sing.

  Ms. Battle was giving a master class at the College Conservatory of Music, and the concert was part of her appearance. She sang from Aida, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. From the moment she walked onstage, I was smitten. The unmistakable sweep and grandeur of celebrity clung to everything about her—her hair, her skin, her black top with the wide scoop neck— but it was her voice that devastated me. That magnificent voice. I watched her waltz onstage, saw her open her mouth and heard the sound that came out. I wept, it was so beautiful. And I wept because I knew that she belonged onstage in a way I never had and never would. She owned it. She came alive on it. She told amusing anecdotes between songs and offered to sign the students’ sheet music after she was finished. All the college students lined up to get her autograph, and as I watched them jostle for position, and heard them flatter her with their overenthusiastic praise, I felt utterly deflated. I was utterly destroyed by her talent, and I sometimes wonder if that wasn’t the thing my mother had in mind in bringing me there that night.