The Last Beach Bungalow

by Jennie Nash

  It was common knowledge around the rental apartment building that if you were trying to get rid of a piece of furniture, all you had to do was put it on the sidewalk that led from the parking lot to the pool, and it would be gone by morning. I’d seen metal filing cabinets with dents in the side get swiped away, and old-fashioned coffee tables with elaborately turned legs. There was one upholstered chair that sat forlornly for forty-eight hours—a gold and brown thing that looked like something Archie Bunker might have owned—but on the second morning, it disappeared. We hauled our Santa Fe plaid couch down there on Monday night. It was heavy and old. Rick and I maneuvered it out the door, down the hallway, into the elevator and onto the sidewalk. It was hard work. Jackie drew a Free sign, and pinned it on the back.

  As we hauled boxes of clothes and pots and toiletries down that same hallway and elevator, I must have passed that couch three dozen times. I couldn’t imagine that I had ever picked it out, brought it home, slept on it, made love on it. It was like it never belonged to me, and yet there it was, waiting for new life.

  “What are we going to do if no one takes the couch?” I asked Rick. We were wrapping dishes in newspaper.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “We can’t just leave it. We’ll have to haul it away.”

  “We’re not hauling it away,” he said. “Someone will take it.”

  When I walked down to the parking lot the next morning on my way to the new house, the couch was gone. I stood there and stared at the place where it had been, wondering if it had ever really existed.

  TUESDAY

  Whenever a new magazine is launched, the new editors invariably say that they’re going to produce stories that speak to real women about the things that really matter to them—and then they come out with an issue that looks like every other women’s magazine you’ve ever seen. There are only so many magazine stories. There are the you-can-do-anything-with-your-life stories, the how-to -please-your-man stories and the seasonal stories that appear like clockwork: spring cleaning, Christmas shopping, back to school, moving. The strange reality of life for people who work on these magazines is that you’re always working on these stories at least six months ahead, so in summer, you’re writing Valentine’s Day pieces, and on Valentine’s Day you’re working on back-to -school articles. Moving tips are usually featured in the summer, which means that someone was working on them in the dead cold of winter when no one in their right mind would move unless they happen to live in Southern California.

  What they recommend is that you meticulously label your boxes with a system of rooms and numbers and colors and that you make a master list of what’s inside. You would have stickers. You would feel in control. But does anyone really do that? We had boxes marked “Garage + laundry detergent” and “toaster, blender, bath mat + printer ink.” In a box with Rick’s mother’s wedding china, I’d stuck some elastic exercise bands. On top of sheets, I’d placed cans of refried beans we had yet to eat. I told the movers to put the boxes wherever they wanted.

  When the piano guys came, I directed them to the spot in the living room where the piano had been drawn on the blueprint the very first time I saw it. They hauled it in, and then started to remove the bubble wrap, which had been repaired with duct tape where I had slashed it the other day.

  “No, don’t,” I said abruptly to a man wearing a John Deere baseball cap.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t unwrap it,” I said.

  “Can’t set it up if we don’t unwrap it,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “That’s OK. I’m not sure where I want it, is all. I’ll have to call and have you come back when I’m ready.”

  “That’ll be an extra charge,” he said.

  I nodded. “I know.”

  After the piano guys were gone, Rick bounced in from the garage and said, “Time to get a Christmas tree!”

  I wanted to make up the beds, get food in the fridge, find my toothbrush and try to stake a claim, but I knew I couldn’t protest. It was two days before Christmas, and we needed a tree.

  We piled in Rick’s truck and headed to Home Depot. They always had a Christmas lot with trees hauled in daily from Oregon. They blocked off an area with a chain-link fence, set up two guys with chain saws to trim the trunks, and piped in Christmas carols while people lined up to pick out their Douglas firs. Despite the black-top and the curbs and the white slash of painted lines, it always smelled like a pine forest. You would think the scene would be a sad example of crass commercialism, but I always liked it. There was something miraculous about being able to pick out a fir tree from Oregon right there in a Southern California parking lot, making sure that the branches were exactly as far apart as you wanted them to be and that the top tapered just so. There was something picturesque about tying it with twine to the roof of your car no matter where you were.

  When we pulled up to Home Depot, however, there were no chain-link fences, no chain saws, no lines of festive families picking out their trees. There was one hand-painted sign on a lamppost: XMAS TREES SOLD OUT!

  “Let’s go to that lot over on Hawthorne,” Jackie suggested, “the one where they always have that creepy pumpkin patch.”

  “They charge eighty-five dollars for a five-foot tree,” Rick said. “It’s a total rip-off.”

  “But we need a tree,” I said.

  We drove over to Hawthorne and could immediately tell that there were no trees at that lot, either. Bales of hay lay under the strings of white and red lights, but there were no crowds of people, no forest of trees. A few green branches were scattered across the parking lot. Wired to the fence was a sign that read SOLD OUT.

  A feeling of panic began to set in. Christmas without a tree? Our first Christmas in a new house and no tree? “Target!” I said suddenly. “The Crenshaws said they got their tree at Target.”

  We drove to the sprawling store, parked and made our way through the Christmas decoration displays to the garden center. There was no one there, but propped up against the wooden guardrails that had been constructed for just this purpose were a handful of evergreens. Jackie dashed to the nearest one and hauled it up. It came up to her nose and was fat, like a gumdrop. She let it fall back against the rails.

  Rick hefted another upright. “How does it look?” he asked. It had a gaping hole on one side and a crooked top.

  “It looks like Charlie Brown’s tree,” Jackie said.

  We evaluated all the trees that were there—six of them—and decided the Charlie Brown tree was the best. It took us half an hour to get someone to come out and ring us up, and then there was no string to tie it down. We threw it into the back of Rick’s truck, but before he even started the ignition, Jackie said, “Mom? Where are all the decorations?”

  I thought of the boxes scattered throughout the house, in bedrooms and closets, in the garage and the dining room. Somewhere in that forest of cardboard were six boxes of Christmas decorations that we’d been collecting ever since Jackie was a child. There were delicate glass teardrops, a little mouse on a ladder stringing lights, marshmallow snowmen, a Santa on skis and paper snowflakes Jackie had made out of magazines when she was three. I knew they were somewhere in the house, but I had no idea where to even begin to look.

  We went back into Target and bought three boxes of cheap red balls. On sale. $3.99 each.

  We had a party to go to that night—an open house at the home of one of Rick’s biggest clients. I wore my black pants, the red sweater, the gold earrings, and a pasted-on smile. I didn’t feel like having eggnog or mulled cider. I tried a piece of homemade shortbread, but it was so dry and bland that I turned my back, spit it into my green napkin and threw it in the trash. Rick laughed and drank, and wanted to stay late, but we had left Jackie home alone in a brand-new house with a bunch of cardboard boxes. The TV wasn’t plugged in. Stuff was piled on all the chairs and couches. I kept picturing her sitting there freaking out, feeling the dark of the night pressing in on her. Rick finally agree
d to leave around 9:00. On the way home, I put both my hands on the steering wheel and carefully navigated the hill back to our house.

  We found Jackie sitting on a bar stool at the big central island in the kitchen. Music was blaring from the computer, which she had set up on the counter, and a little mound of M&M’s was piled up beside it. She had filled a jar with M&M’s and wrapped it with red tissue paper. “Hi, Mom, hi, Dad,” she said.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Burning a CD for Max for Christmas,” she said. “He’s taking off to go skiing tomorrow.”

  “When did you get this stuff?”

  “Yesterday with Tania,” she said.

  I nodded, then suddenly remembered that I hadn’t gotten a gift for Vanessa.

  “Can I use some of the paper?” I asked.

  “Knock yourself out,” she said. “I’m going to sleep.” She flicked off her computer and hopped off the stool.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked.

  “Just to go to sleep,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  I kissed her and watched her go up the stairs to her big bedroom with the big window seat and the big walk-in closet.

  I fished my little Buddha out of my purse, wrapped it in red tissue paper and dropped it into the bag with the pumpkin-colored spatula. On one of the cards left over from Jackie’s soldier project, I wrote:

  This is the Buddha of Long Life, but I think he’ll work as the Buddha of Long Friendship, too. Thank you for being there for me so often. xxoo, April

  When I got up to the bedroom, Rick was sound asleep.

  I found my toothbrush and a washcloth and stepped into the magnificent bathroom. The Swiss Coffee on the walls gleamed like polished pearls. Lucy had scrubbed the new tile and left the mirrors dust- and streak-free. There was so much room in that bathroom, I could have danced, if I’d felt like it. I took off my party clothes and stepped into the shower. There was a huge overhead faucet with multiple settings—for every hour of the day, it seemed. I dialed to one that would pummel me with hot water, then blasted the water, hung my head and cried.

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  On Christmas Eve day I sat at the kitchen counter and wrote about Chuck Williams and his love of the white porcelain cow creamer, of a little sauté pan and of things that would last a lifetime. He had more faith in that pan than I did in my whole house.

  When it was time to get ready for dinner, I went upstairs, walked into the bedroom and saw Peg Torrey on television. Rick was sitting on the edge of the bed, a shoe in his hand. Our TV was sitting on a box by the window and on the TV, Peg Torrey was sitting in the front room of her house—it was all wood and sunlight. She was wearing khaki pants and a crisp white shirt I felt certain her daughter had ironed. She was sitting on the leather couch next to a reporter who was wearing a tweed pencil skit and a jacket with a cinched waist.

  “We’re back with Peg Torrey, the Southern California widow whose offer to sell her house at below market value to the buyer who can prove he’s worthy has sparked a real estate frenzy this holiday season.

  “Is it true that you were offered three million cash and turned it down?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “You weren’t even tempted?”

  “I’m seventy-eight years old,” she said. “I don’t need three million dollars.”

  “Can you tell us about some of the other things people have sent to try to win your favor?”

  “There’s been a lot of chocolate and a lot of wine, a painting of the house.”

  “And have any of these things caught your eye?”

  "They’re all lovely,” she said, “but none of them is right. ”

  “How will you know when you find what’s right?” the reporter asked. You could tell by her face and by the way she held her body that she knew she had a gem of a story.

  Peg smiled. She had a beautiful smile. It lit up her whole face. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll know it when I do.”

  “Do you have a deadline?”

  “My daughter has given me until New Year’s Day,” she said.

  The reporter leaned in. “Why are you doing this, Mrs. Torrey? You lost your husband just a few weeks ago. It’s the holidays. Why go through the hassle of having so many strangers vying for your attention?”

  “It’s hard for people these days to understand, but I was a housewife for forty-nine years. I was married as much to this house as I was to my husband. I can’t stay here another minute without him. I can’t bear it. But I won’t just throw the house to the wolves. I helped my husband die, and I’ll help this house in the same way. I’ll usher it to a good place. For a house, a good place means people who will be alive in it, who will draw on all the years of love that happened here, and add layers of their own.”

  The reported turned toward the camera. “Back to you, Katie, from the last beach bungalow on Pepper Tree Lane.”

  When the segment was over, Rick switched off the TV and finished putting on his shoes. But he didn’t say a word.

  Christmas Eve in the Episcopal Church is an extravagant affair. There are the banks of outrageously bright red poinsettias, the sprays of evergreen, the flickering candles, and more people than the church was ever meant to hold. The congregants shoehorn themselves into the pews with tight-lipped smiles. Any woman who has a fur, whether real or fake, always wears it, and wool coats come out of the closet, too, so that the prevailing smell in the church is wet dog. There’s always a trumpet, a soprano to sing the first lines of “Once in Royal David’s City,” and a full choir dressed in neatly pressed red robes. You sit there waiting for something to happen. And there is always the feeling that something is going to happen. It’s an occasion, after all, an event—the thing you’ve been working toward for weeks.

  What I thought about, for the most part, was my mother. She was in Chicago. My brother, his wife and kids would have had her over to their house for a very elaborate meal served on very elaborate china and silver. The conversation would have been wholly about the food—the unusual choice of fennel for the stuffing, the surprising richness of the pea soup. At church, they would all sit in the same pew they always sat in and my mother would sing the hymns in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from her nose. People would stare, because she sang so loudly and sounded so strange, and because when it came time to sing “Silent Night,” she would start to cry, and her voice would crack, and she would be overcome, but she wouldn’t stop singing. It had always been so, and it was a memory that made me cry, when we sang our version of “Silent Night” in our coastal town of California, because singing “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve was the only time I could ever remember my mother expressing much feeling for anything at all.

  I also thought about Rick’s mother and father and how nice it would have been if they’d still been with us. I liked them. I liked being part of their family.

  If someone had asked me what the sermon was about that Christmas Eve, I would have had to say that I had absolutely no idea.

  We got home from church at midnight and all three of us went straight to sleep. I thought I heard something around 2:00, but figured it was just the unfamiliar noises of a new house. At 3:30, I awoke and couldn’t sleep. I was hot, I was hungry. I tossed and turned until 4:00, then finally got out of bed and went downstairs for a glass of milk. When I moved toward the refrigerator I accidentally stepped into a brown paper shopping bag and spilled garbage all over the pristine bamboo floors. I turned on a dim light, reached down to gather up the Subway wrappers and soda cans from our moving day lunch, and noticed Rick’s handwriting on the lined paper from one of Jackie’s school notebooks. I uncrumpled it and read what he had written:

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  My name is Rick Newton. I’m a custom home builder here in the South Bay. My wife is a writer. We have a daughter who’s a junior at South High. We’re currently building a home on Vista del Mar.

  There were wads of paper everywhere. I sat on t
he floor to read them one by one:

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  I’ve lived in Redondo Beach my entire life. There’s nowhere else I’d rather live.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  I’ve built houses all my life and I’ve always believed in good craftsmanship.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  I’ve worked with my hands all my life, so putting words on paper isn’t easy for me.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  I met my wife when I was 29 years old, but I feel like I’ve known her forever, and I need your house to make sure I do.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  Houses are tricky things.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  If anyone asked me why I love my wife so much I’d never be able to explain it. The same is true about your house.

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  Fuck you.

  I smoothed out the notes, then went to Jackie’s backpack and ripped out two pieces of paper from her binder. She had one of those tiny staplers in her pencil case. I used that to turn one of the pieces of paper into a makeshift envelope. I used an erasable pen and wrote my own letter:

  Dear Mrs. Torrey,

  My husband doesn’t know I’m sending these letters. I found them crumpled up on the floor just now, very early on Christmas Day. We used to make a big deal out of setting things up so that our little girl would believe Santa had come. We would eat the cookies she left out, drink the milk, fill her stocking with chocolate. We wanted her to believe in Santa because it seemed so close to believing in God, and believing in God seemed really important to us. You have to believe in something, right?

  That little girl is 15 now and I don’t think she believes much in either Santa Claus or God. I didn’t think I did, either, until just now. Seeing these letters from Rick scattered on this floor was the closest I’ve come to believing in a long time, because it’s the closest I’ve come to being known for who I am. It felt exactly like a moment of grace. And it made me realize that this might be what you’re looking for, as well.