Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  Hi, Mom. Walking the pups, then hanging out with Ethan. I may stay overnight. Don’t wait up or worry. Cell is on. Love ya.

  My reaction was mixed, relieved that I wouldn’t have to face more questions, irritated that there wasn’t even a hint of “I’m sorry” in his note for the acting out and the damaged-goods slur. His suck-up arrangement of coffee and cookie, while it amused me, didn’t entirely appease me. So best we didn’t run into each other until he’d had time to think it through.

  The coffee tasted bitter. I poured it down the sink, tossed the cookie into the trash, slathered myself with sunscreen, wrapped a pareo around my swimsuit, grabbed my straw hat, pulled a book from the shelf in the great room, tossed it and a bottle of water, two towels, and my cell phone into a bag, and exited the kitchen. As I crossed the deck to hook a folded beach chair, I stopped at the chaise littered with Jack’s discarded vape and a magazine with the cover ripped off. Playboy? God forbid, Hustler? I hesitated for a morally split second and snatched it up. It turned out to be Rolling Stone, one of my own favorites at twenty. See, I told myself, he really wasn’t a bad kid.

  I was the only person on Barefoot Beach, though it was beginning to get spotty with blue rental umbrellas three blocks up where the boardwalk began. The sun was still low in the sky and I could have walked the night-cooled sand without flip-flops. Local news had warned of an invasion of jellyfish on the Delaware coast, but according to the reporter, the stingers hadn’t crossed the state line yet.

  Just as I sank into the beach chair, my cell started ringing. Scott, I hoped, though I wasn’t sure what we would say to each other after the way the night before had ended.

  It wasn’t Scott, at least not from the name on the screen. Who was Petersen with a Maryland area code?

  I answered it, and on that warm beach my blood ran cold. “Hi, Nora.” I recognized her voice, the Vintage corporate administrator, but I made her say her name anyway.

  “It’s Kimberly Kline. So sorry to bother you on your vacation.” She waited for my protest, which didn’t come. “I promised I’d get in touch as soon as I knew something. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.” As if she had to tell me, as if her voice hadn’t oozed pity from “Hi” on. “It went down to the wire between you and pottery, but—”

  I interrupted her, trying to stave off the inevitable speech. Seized by the urge to shut her up, to bury my phone in the sand or toss it into the ocean, I death-gripped it and bought ten seconds by saying, “You came up Petersen on my cell.”

  “Right. I’m working from home. My cell phone is charging so I’m using the landline. Petersen’s my married name. So . . .” She would not be diverted.

  Digging in my beach bag for a tissue, I tuned out most of her long explanation rigged with financial terminology that supposedly explained why I was being—I heard her humming search for the right words, although she had to have rehearsed this speech before delivering it—“released.”

  “I’m beyond sorry, Nora. I did everything I could. But in the end, since it applied to more than one facility, this was a board decision.” She sighed. “I really wanted to give you better news.”

  Yeah, I really wanted to hear better news. A part of me had read the headline during our meeting on the day I left for the beach: “Nora Farrell Fired. Life Falls Apart.” But another part of me, the one that protected me against pain, was deliberately illiterate. That’s why, how, I’d been able to shelve the issue of my Vintage contract in the attic of my mind for the past couple of weeks, assuring myself, as I shoved it behind rhyme and reason where cobwebs grew, that the executive committee would never opt for clay play over dance therapy. And that if they tried, my supporters would revolt like the peasants in Les Mis, only wielding their crutches and canes while chanting for justice.

  Kimberly seemed to be reading my mind. “I have to tell you, lots of folks aren’t happy about the outcome. In fact, Mr. Lewisohn circulated a petition to retain you. He filled two pages with signatures. Unfortunately, the budget has been officially approved, so it’s a fait accompli. Still, I thought it might be a comfort to know how our residents feel about the decision. And about you, Nora.”

  It was a comfort, actually. I sniffed, I blew my nose, but I didn’t cry. I shut my eyes and managed to say, “Mr. Lewisohn is a sweetie. They all are, the ones in my classes.” Mr. Hancock, depressed after a stroke, whose participation in the weekly Dance Out Your Feelings exercise had strengthened his left side and occasionally teased out a laugh. Mrs. Morgan, totally blind, who sang along with the music in our stretching circles, and Estee Friedenham, our ninety-four-year-old Holocaust survivor. I’d set her poetry to movement so the group could express their fury and then the triumph of the human spirit. Even the nursing home patients with dementia, the violent charges who took swings at the nurses and hurled breakfast trays at the wall, calmed down when I played “Paper Doll” or “I Found a Million Dollar Baby” and laid my hands on their shoulders to sway them in their chairs.

  At the moment, I felt a bit like taking a swing at someone myself. So much was slipping away.

  “I’m going to miss them,” I choked out. Oh God, miss my life with them, making a difference fifty minutes at a time.

  “Well, the economy could take a turn next year and free up money for ancillary services,” Kimberly said, her voice chirpy with false optimism. “One never knows.”

  One never did. And that was, to my mind, the crux of the problem.

  As the conversation drew to a close, I opened my eyes and stared out at the everlasting sea, which looked smooth and glassy this morning. But I knew that was an illusion. The sea was always moving, with tides, with waves. Nothing stood still as the earth turned.

  For a movement therapist, I was lousy at moving. Well, I’d better get good with it—moving on, and moving out too, I reminded myself. And ASAP, because, like it or not, those effin’ everlasting waves carried you where and when they wanted to go.

  When I’d received the phone call telling me they’d found Lon’s body, and for weeks after that, I didn’t cry. Couldn’t really, and was convinced I was a crazy person because my grief was deep and wide, but dry. It made my bones ache and played havoc with my sleep, my appetite, my ability to work, because I’d lost my focus, and my legs hurt, but mostly because music, which was essential to my practice, made me itch. Not metaphorically—really, physically. Especially the theme music from old sitcoms, which was all I wanted to watch on TV. No news, no murders, no wars, no political debates, no drama—just Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, old familiar reruns. I sat huddled on the living room sofa or in bed with the blanket pulled to my chin, bingeing on TV Land, Lifetime, and Netflix. The Golden Girls was my favorite, but its theme music made me break out. “Thank you for being a friend,” the chorus sang, and boom! hives blossomed on my arms and neck. I chuckled and I scratched but I still didn’t cry.

  And then one night, almost a month after we scattered my husband’s ashes, I was in the shower, ready to soap up, and it occurred to me that I was tasting salt in the fresh spray. I moved from under it, touched my cheeks, and then brushed my fingers against my tongue: tears. I licked snot from my upper lip, and that was when I felt my chest heaving and knew I was crying. Uncontrollably, almost soundlessly, and, it seemed, endlessly. When I finally stopped, my fingers were pruny and there was a net of my hair lacing the drain, but I felt better. And I never cried again about Lon. Not consciously. Some mornings, I woke up with my cheek pressed against a damp pillow, but I couldn’t connect the tears to Lon because the dream had already vanished.

  That’s why I was so surprised when after I said good-bye to Kimberly Kline I collapsed back into the flimsy plastic woven beach chair, stared at my toes, their blue polish peeling, and, with a long gasp to get me going, began to sob.

  By the time Margo called that night, I could talk about it without those jagged hiccups you get post-hysterics. Besides, I rationalized, it was s
ufficiently shocking to sidetrack her desire to dissect my date with Scott.

  She opened with, “Just checking in. Everything okay?”

  And I said, “Actually, no. I’ve been fired. Correction, let go. Vintage canceled my contract with both residences. As of this morning, they said adios, au revoir, sayonara.”

  “No! The bastards. Said it? Oh my God, they canned you on the phone? How cold is that!”

  I wasn’t going to tell her I’d been given fair warning face-to-face but had ridiculously hoped against unrealistic hope that I’d beat out the pottery therapist, an attractive young guy with one earring who helped the residents make vases and other gifts for their adult kids. The odds had been stacked against me from the start. I also neglected to add that I’d held off telling her because I didn’t want to deal with the drama prematurely.

  “It’s a business, Margo. They don’t play by Miss Manners’ rules. And they made it clear it wasn’t personal. They were forced to make cutbacks because of the economy. A profit-making company with shareholders can’t afford to be sentimental. Whatever, there goes one huge chunk of my life. And my income.”

  “Oh, baby, I am so sorry.” I closed my eyes and could imagine her putting on her game face. Not the player’s—the cheerleader’s. She didn’t disappoint. “Nora,” she cooed, “you’re wonderful at what you do. You’ll find something.”

  “Maybe, but not contractual in this economy. Everyone’s cutting back on nonessentials. If I land something, it will be full-time, probably base salaried, and year-round. To keep Jack at Duke and a roof over my head in Baltimore, it’s good-bye, Tuckahoe. Good-bye, summers.”

  “Never,” Margo said. “You can sell the Calvert Street house and take that money and . . . oh shit, you’re still renting, right?”

  We had been for decades, from Mr. Lieber, the same sweet man who’d drawn up the lease for Lon when he started to teach at Hopkins. The rent was still absurdly low.

  We’d looked to buy once, but Lon’s purchase of the beach house had taken the largest chunk of his royalties on the first book and the advance on the second and we were helping to support his mom in California. Money was tight.

  Then Lon went to part-time at the university so he could write more and we were living mostly on what I brought in. When the taxes and upkeep on the aging Tuckahoe house skyrocketed, we’d abandoned the notion of buying a place in Baltimore.

  “So you can’t sell Calvert Street. But you have a portfolio, right?”

  “No, darling,” I said. “People like you have portfolios. I have investments. In my case, lousy ones.” I’d put Lon’s life insurance payout into what seemed like safe mutual funds, but nothing had been safe in the last downturn and I’d lost most of it.

  “The only way Jack’s been able to go to Duke is because my father started a college fund for him. Dad banked a year and a half’s worth of tuition before he went into assisted living, which gobbled up whatever resources he had left. Still, I figured between what I earned from Vintage, the vet therapy gigs, the psych hospital, whatever savings I had, and what the dance studio brought in, with Jack’s scholarship and loans, I could squeeze out the other two-plus years. But now—now I’d better land a job stat or I’m screwed. More important, come January when the college fund runs out, Jack’s screwed.”

  I’d exhausted myself totaling all the work it took under normal circumstances to keep our heads above water. Without the Vintage contract or something to replace it, we’d go under.

  From my seat on the sofa, I could see the ocean, which, under the last of the light, looked still, black, and—for the first time ever for me—dangerous. Light-headed, I sucked in air that suddenly seemed too thick to breathe. So, I thought, so . . . this is what it feels like to drown, with your lungs fighting to gasp, your brain deprived of oxygen struggling to make sense, make plans.

  Margo was saying, “Nora, get a grip. There are options if you’ll listen . . .” That hauled me back to the surface.

  “No way,” I said, knowing what was coming next. For a self-defined free spirit, Margo was predictably predictable and invariably generous. I was touched, but I was also intransigent. “I will not take a loan from you because that would be like sticking a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage and even more because it would ruin our friendship. Yes, it would”—I could see her lips trying to form a protest—“money always does.”

  I heard the huffed dragony breath. “Fine. Be that way. I’m not going to worry about you. You’ll figure something out.”

  Oh yes, I wound up telling her about the date with Scott anyway because it was inevitable and it made sense to get all the catastrophic breaking news out in a single broadcast.

  I did the BFF thing and detailed the evening, including the mussels, the kisses, the dancing on the path, and Jack’s insulting reaction.

  “He’s a great kid, but you spoiled him rotten.”

  I forgave her. She’d never been a mother, didn’t have the experience or the instinct.

  “All that crazy guilt you concocted over Lon. And poor Jack, God forbid he should feel any more pain.”

  “I sent his father off to his death.”

  “And you think I’m dramatic. Lon was acting like a first-class putz that summer. Driving everyone crazy with his writer’s block. No noise in the house. Jack couldn’t have friends in to play. He was even short with you. So you told him to accept an invitation to speak at the conference. Doesn’t sound like a death sentence to me. It sounds like a brilliant plan.”

  The annual Jack London Fanfare Conference in San Francisco. Lon had declined when the organizers first asked him in April. A week before the symposium, I pushed him to call them back and see if there might be room for him last minute. They were thrilled.

  Margo was saying, “Lon would bask in the adulation of his fans, take time away from the book, and reboot his brain. It was a good idea, Norrie.”

  “An idea that killed him. He asked me to go with him. I told him no.”

  I hadn’t wanted to pull Jack out of his day camp tennis program. And the truth was, I’d needed a breather from my husband. He’d been a bear to live with for two months.

  “If I’d been there . . . ,” I began.

  “You might have saved him. Yes, I’ve heard it before. The man died of a heart attack in a hotel room, in bed, maybe in his sleep. But if you’d been by his side, it never would have happened. You do know that’s delusional thinking.”

  There was something else. We’d been arguing on the morning of his flight to California. He was pissed at me for not going along. I was pissed at him for being pissed. At the door with his suitcase, he’d pecked my cheek, an ice cube of a kiss. I’d wished him safe travels, but no “I love you.”

  “You’ve been eating your heart out over this for eight years. And treating your son like glass because of it. That didn’t do Jack any favors. And now you’re learning that you reap what you sow. That window-slamming tantrum? With no apology? The kid should have been grounded till his first Social Security check came though.”

  “He’s nineteen, Margo.”

  “Not when he’s acting twelve.”

  After returning from his overnight with Ethan Winslet, Jack had stayed out of my way. The rare times we found ourselves together, we exchanged tight smiles and few words. It was uncomfortable, but for once I wasn’t going to buckle. Maybe Margo wasn’t that far off the mark.

  Her final lines: “Hang in there, baby. You’re like a cartoon cat shoved off a cliff. Right now, you’re spinning around in midair, working on your eighth and a half life. I guarantee you’ll land on your feet. You always have; you always will.”

  No one did best friend better than Margo. But for once, the woman who won a Rising Star nomination for an off-off-Broadway production of As You Like It and a Bancroft for her role in the Driftwood’s Three Sisters sounded as if she was overacting.

  chapter ei
ghteen

  Another day passed before I heard from Scott. He had my cell phone number. He could have called, but he texted: Enjoyed other nite. Hope U did 2. C U Tues. Happy 4th.

  I reread it, trying to prod intent from the words. On my way back from the studio, I stopped off at the Manolises’ to show it to Margo, who hustled me out to the veranda. Under a green-striped awning that protected her delicate skin, surrounded by air suffused with the vanilla fragrance of her favorite milkweed flowers and pepped up by the ginger-flavored iced tea she swore was better than Red Bull for a burst of brain power, we huddled together on a wicker swing for two, like CIA code breakers out to save the free world.

  Margo inspected the text through one of the pairs of magnifying eyeglasses she bought in batches at the Tuckahoe flea market. She squinted. She bit her lip. She pushed her specs up on her nose. “Well, he got back to you, which says something.”

  I’d thought about that, but he really had to, I’d concluded, or it would have been awkward in class, especially since there he had to hold me in his arms. Then again, he could have quit class and he hadn’t. So far. That was a promising sign.

  “It’s not exactly poetry,” she said. “He’s not gushing undying love. But remember, he’s a military guy. They talk in stripped-down sentences. Hooah. Bravo Zulu. High and tight. Pete uses that one. He won’t tell me what it means. It sounds sexy, but it probably has something to do with marching in formation.” She stroked Scott’s text message with one lavender-polished fingernail. “Now, I like this part: ‘Hope you enjoyed it too.’ That sounds like he cares.”

  We should have been having this conversation in middle school, not in middle age.

  “Scotty Goddard looked at you in English class.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did too. I saw him. And he kind of, like, smiled.”