Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  I was on the beach by six, sprayed with sunscreen and stretched out on an old quilt, one hand caressing a bottle of the apple tea Emine sold in six-packs, the other playing absently in the sand, sifting the fine grains through my fingers. The two weeks since my arrival had been full and complicated, and because I was a therapist, my mind was always set to analyze. But not that morning. This was not a day for deep thought, I told myself, and shifted my focus to a figure paragliding over the Atlantic, canopy billowing, and after a while my mind soared and I imagined riding the wind across the sky, savoring the freedom of weightlessness. As light as the air itself, bathed in cloud-filtered sunlight, I flew high above the earth and its problems.

  Ten minutes later, shouts and laughter from hotel guests down the beach wakened me. I was hot and sticky. I peeled myself from the quilt to stand and took a swig of apple tea. The ocean was still smooth, and as if a trio of mythical sirens was singing to me, I found myself rushing toward it. I arabesqued over a sea turtle meandering across my path. I felt the sand under my soles go from brocade on the shore to satin underwater. I waded up to my neck and then I dove into a sea so calm, so polished to gleaming perfection, that my cleaving it was like cracking a mirror. The water was as cold as the dark side of hell and it was delicious. I carved my path with the front crawl, the way Miss Dorney in high school had taught me. I swam for twenty minutes, pushing toward that chemically induced Atlantis where endorphins were waiting to welcome me.

  The sirens made me think I could swim forever. But I couldn’t, of course. At some point, I crashed, chest aching and legs drawing and, for a split second of panic, I wondered if I’d miscalculated this time, like an addict shooting for bliss and overdosing.

  When my shoulders started freezing up, I slowed my stroke. I forced myself to remember the instructions Miss Dorney had shouted from the side of the pool. “Exhale under water. Don’t roll your head. Good work, Nora. You’ve got the rhythm.” I’d had it then. I had it now. I washed up on the shore like a conch shell, my outside inert, but alive within.

  I staggered to my quilt, toweled off, and decided that if I sat down I’d never get up. Shivering from muscle fatigue in the heat and still lightly panting, I gathered my things and made my way to the path and then to the house.

  In the kitchen, a box of doughnuts on the counter had been left with its lid up. Crumbs were scattered on the table next to a container of milk, cap off. When I went to put it back in the fridge, I saw the door was open a slit. In the sink, an orange juice glass, unrinsed, was waiting for me.

  Maybe it was my exhaustion from the swim. Maybe it was my conversation with Margo the day before, but something inside me snapped. No. Enough. I hated to even think the words, but we needed to talk, Jack and I.

  In my bedroom, I was stopped by a sheet of paper tented on my dresser. I unfolded it. As soon as I saw the Duke logo and the date, July 1, my heart sank. We were exactly a month before tuition was due for the fall term. The university emailed reminders to the students with a link to the site accessing the bill. Jack had printed it out and scrawled over the list of fees and next to a smear of chocolate icing, “This came in yesterday. Thanks, Mom.”

  Just like that. Thanks, Mom, dashed off by a child of entitlement. Margo had been right. I had only myself to blame for his great expectations and casual assumption that they’d be met. The dirty glass in the sink to be washed and put away by me. The stuff he wanted for Christmas that magically appeared under the tree. I’d given him a touch-screen laptop for his going-off-to-college gift last year. God forbid my child should be deprived of anything. Not after the Great Deprivation of his father’s death. Well, it might be too late to change things, but then again it might not be. I threw a robe on over my bathing suit. It was time for the talk. Now.

  A female voice filtered into the hall from behind the closed door of Jack’s room. My first thought was Claire and What’s going on in there? I knocked and heard, “Yeah,” which I took for permission to enter. Jack was at his desk Skyping, and the woman at the other end—he’d skewed the computer so I couldn’t see her face—was monologuing at a clip. I knew immediately it was Tiffanie. She was griping about her summer job and how mean her boss was, and Jack waited for her to take a breath before he said, “Right. Sounds like it blows. Hey, my mom’s here so I’ve got to go. Call you back later.”

  Without a good-bye for him or, of course, a hi for me, she severed the connection.

  He turned, took a deep breath, looked me up and down, and gave me a squiggly smile. “Someone went for a swim. Nice out there, huh?” His gaze shifted from my disheveled state to the paper in my hand. “Another year, another fifty thousand bucks.”

  “Closer to sixty a year with room and board,” I said. “But, yes, with your scholarship and loans, forty-three thousand.” Per term, it was still a number big enough to make me choke, but I found voice to add, “You left the milk out on the counter.”

  “What?”

  “The milk. In the kitchen. You left the container on the counter. And you didn’t close the refrigerator door completely when you took it out. Cold air was leaking through.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry. A call came in and I—”

  “Jack, you can’t do that kind of stuff. You know how much a gallon of milk costs these days? You’ve got to be more responsible.”

  He was nodding like a bobblehead doll. “I’m sorry. I’ll work on it, Mom. This is about milk?”

  “This is about my losing my job,” I said.

  Never underestimate shock value. It’s worth the price for the attention it buys.

  He rolled his chair halfway across the room. His eyes bugged when I told him that the ax had swung on my Vintage contract. That a solid chunk of our income was gone.

  “Wow,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Yeah, me too. Your college fund that Grandpa started? The money runs out after this semester. Come January, I’d better have a new job to replace the missing Vintage paycheck. If I don’t, we’re going to have to make some sacrifices.”

  “Sacrifices,” he repeated. “Okay. Like what?”

  I knew I would have to get it out fast or I wouldn’t get it out at all. “Like selling this house.”

  Jack stopped breathing for a few seconds. After his first intake he said, “What? No. No. You can’t do that, Mom.”

  “Well, I might have to, sweetheart. I love this place as much as you do, but we might not be able to afford it anymore. I can’t swing our living expenses and the cost of Duke on what I bring in from the other two jobs. Selling the house may be the only way.” I reached out to pat his hand. He pulled it back.

  “You can’t sell it. Dad would turn over in his grave.”

  The sea was Lon’s grave, but my son was right. His ashes would spin a tsunami at the thought of our giving up Surf Avenue. But ashes couldn’t write checks.

  Jack was up and pacing. “We’ll think of something. There’s got to be other options.”

  I’d thought of them all. Examined them from every angle. Dismissed them all.

  “You could rent it out,” he said.

  “If I rented in season, we’d lose our summers here.”

  “Rent it out for a month. July. And we can be here for August.”

  “It’s not that easy. Arranging rentals is a full-time job. I’d have to pay an agency to do it and they’d take a percentage. And you really have to be on top of the day-to-day problems that crop up. There are property managers who do it, but they charge high fees, so there goes your profit. Also, some of the people you rent to don’t take care of the place like they should. It’s not their own home and they don’t treat it like it is.”

  I repeated landlord horror stories I’d heard from women in my Zumba class. The one about a young couple, two-week renters, who on their first night at the beach decided to dine alfresco and hauled the mahogany dining room table onto the deck. They
left it out there, exposed to the elements, for their entire stay. A warped and peeling total loss.

  There was the gas grill rolled onto an enclosed screen porch that set the house on fire. The stuffed toilet that stayed stuffed for a week while the tenants used the two other bathrooms. The pack of grad students who had fun with a sign the owner had posted downstairs. “We appreciate your NOT smoking.” The “NOT” had been crossed out and replaced with “POT.” It took weeks to rid the house of the smell of weed.

  I sighed. “It would cost a ton to get this place in shape for renters. I’d have to buy enough dishes and glasses for at least twelve. Big-screen TVs for all the rooms. And most families want a pool, which we don’t have.”

  “Okay,” he conceded. “Strike renting. How about this? You could turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast.”

  I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I had to laugh. “I’m not sure the neighborhood is zoned for that. But even so, a B and B requires upkeep. Doing other people’s laundry. Making waffles. Making beds.”

  “I’d help,” he said.

  “Jack, I have to get on your case to make your own bed. And speaking of beds, how would you like some kid who isn’t toilet trained sleeping in yours?”

  The whole idea of strangers taking over our house gave me the creeps. It was an invasion of privacy, a disturbance of our personal space. Icky.

  Jack, though, wasn’t about to give up. He snapped his fingers. “Movie shoots. The people a few doors down from the Winslets rented out their house to a Hollywood production company for major money. It was a set for a horror movie about a serial killer who roamed the beach back in the olden days.” The Winslets lived on a street lined with Victorian houses. Ours had been built in the sixties. “I’m thinking Jennifer Lawrence sleeping in my bed? Now, that would be cool.”

  He walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll figure something out.” At that moment, I tucked away the self-doubt I’d been feeling since Margo trashed my parenting skills. Maybe I hadn’t done such a bad job.

  I was still clutching the bill from Duke, which figured as one of the possibilities. I shoved it in the pocket of my robe. Jack was too smart not to notice.

  “Even with my scholarship, Duke costs a bundle,” he said. “I’ll bet Maryland would be half the cost.”

  He was right about the savings, and the University of Maryland was a fine school with a top-notch lacrosse team. But the campus was huge and the population overwhelming. On our college tour, Jack had been unnerved by its size. “Too big,” he’d said, eyes darting to take it all in. “It’s like a city. You could get lost here.”

  More than geographically, I’d thought, watching my not-mature-for-seventeen son nervously gnawing his knuckle. “That’s a no,” I’d said.

  Which wasn’t going to turn into a “yes” even under the current circumstances as long as I had options.

  Jack was up for co-captain of the Duke lacrosse team in his sophomore year. He was doing well academically. Most of all, he loved the place. And yes, Durham had Tiffanie, but a photo of Jack horsing around with Claire at Coneheads was pinned to his bulletin board. I pinned my hopes on that.

  “You’re good with Maryland?” I wanted to gauge the look on his face when he answered.

  “I’ll do what I have to do,” he said. Then, giving himself away, he added, “You know, I could probably get work at the school store at Duke. Pull in some more money that way in the fall. And I saw a sign in the window at Marty’s Surf Shop saying they’re hiring for part-time. I can apply for that today.”

  His staying at Duke was also personal for me. I’d been accepted to Bennington College. Its dance program was among the best in the country back then, and I was excited to live in Vermont. I loved my Brooklyn nest, but I was more than ready to fly off to someplace exotic like New England.

  My mother had been overjoyed at the Bennington admission and proud of me. By then the lung cancer had robbed her of most of her breath, but tethered to an oxygen tank, she’d dragged the machine as she danced around the living room waving the acceptance letter. My father had also been in favor of the out-of-town school. “You’ll get twice the education, Nora. One in the classroom, another on campus.”

  And then Mamma-mia’s condition had taken an unexpected turn for the worse and she died two weeks before my high school graduation. When I saw how my dad was grieving, barely able to function, I made the wrenching decision to live at home instead and commute to NYU. When I eventually moved into a dorm room with Margo near the campus, I was close enough for a quick subway check on Dad. It had been the right choice for me at the time. I wouldn’t have been able to live with the other one. For Jack, though, my sacrifice didn’t bear repeating.

  “We’ll work something out,” I said, followed immediately by the FaceTime alert from the iPhone on his dresser. Now, that screen I could see. On the second trill, Jack glanced at it, then at me. “Just don’t sell the house. Mom, promise me.” He tried to stare me down, but when the phone chirped again, he couldn’t resist and picked it up. Saved by the bell. And by Tiffanie. Go figure.

  chapter twenty

  The Fourth of July parade kicked off at nine a.m. with the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church marching band’s ragtime rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” After that came the floats sandwiched between church choirs and school bands blaring patriotic songs, heavy on the brass and drums.

  In the past Jack and I had made sure to get there early enough to claim places in the curb row, but this year he had so many dogs to collect for his morning run he couldn’t predict when he’d arrive. He told me to go ahead without him. Downtown was jammed, and by the time I got to Sawgrass Avenue, I had to settle for standing in the row behind a line of squirming Cub Scouts seated on the curb.

  The heat climbed from steaming to blistering as the crowd got larger and tighter and the floats crept by. City council members, costumed as Mooncussers, the eighteenth-century pirates who lured ships to the spits and shoals around Tuckahoe to steal their booty, sailed through on a replica of a three-masted galleon. Local pols hurled campaign buttons into the crowd, real estate brokers pitched refrigerator magnets, and a procession of businesses showered the kids with candy, setting off scrambles all along the route. The Cub Scouts piled the stuff in their caps. Perched on the hood of a red Corvette, Edgar Whitman, my very own foxtrotting dentist, tossed pastel toothbrushes that the sugar-high kids mostly ignored.

  The Coastal Medical Center gave away bumper stickers and chilled bottles of water. As the scouts rushed forward to scoop them up, a nearby hand shot out, wagging a bottle at me, and I turned to see Jack edging into the squeeze. “Hey, Mom. Been looking for you. I scored some water. Here you go.”

  He maneuvered so a ponytailed blonde could sidle in next to him. “Mom, Claire. Claire, Mom. Claire and I work together at Coneheads.”

  Ah, the cookie cutie, probably eighteen but she looked younger, sucking on a tricolor ice pop and checking me out with big brown eyes.

  She waved hi with her free hand. I raised my water bottle and called out, “Nice to meet you.”

  She said, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Farrell.” Polite. Not Tiffanie. Then, as the music glided into a somber version of “America the Beautiful,” a swell of applause and cheers rose in acknowledgment of the oncoming float. A swag of red, white, and blue along its side announced VFW Post 8105. I spotted Tom Hepburn on board from his shock of silver hair and, in the next breathtaking moment, Scott in his crisp dress blues.

  I’d replied to his last text: Other nite was fun 4 me 2. C U soon. Margo saw it, but only after I’d fired it off into cyberspace. Nonetheless, she’d approved, after my explanation that I’d decided against adding “Happy 4th” because with his wartime experience, his memories, and his souvenir injury, I wasn’t sure “happy” was appropriate. But he was smiling up on that float, a dazzling smile that upped the drumbeat of my p
ulse.

  As the music swung into “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” he climbed down to hand out miniature U.S. flags. First he worked the opposite side of the street. Then he pivoted, and I knew the precise instant he saw me. One moment, he was grinning, glowing at the rousing reception from the Cub Scouts. The next, he spotted me with Jack. And he hesitated.

  Beside me, Jack said, “Oh shit.” We’d been pressed in the crowd, but now he shifted. He took a few steps back and brushed my arm as he began to turn. I knew—a mother knows—he was scoping a path out of Scott’s target zone, mapping his escape. I reached back, grabbed his wrist, and gripped hard.

  “Don’t . . . you . . . dare!” I said.

  “What’s happening?” Claire asked.

  Jack mumbled, “Nothing. We’re getting flags.”

  Scott had braced his shoulders and resumed crossing the broad avenue to where we stood. Arriving in front of us, he fastened his gaze on the boys at our feet.

  “Hey, guys, you pick up enough candy?” The scouts showed him their orange caps filled with sweets. “Oh yeah, the dentist is going to send his kids to college on your cavities. Who wants a flag?” He dealt them out to eager hands.

  One of the boys piped up, “You got a lot of medals. You army?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said to the boy. “Army. But I’m not on active duty anymore. Do you know what ‘retired’ means?” A chorus of nods. They had grandfathers. “But once a soldier, always a solder.” That’s when he straightened up, held out a flag to me, and said, “Hi, Nora.” And damn, damn, damn, it was only when he said my name, when he smiled a squiggle that betrayed his nervousness, that I got ambushed by a wave of warmth that had nothing to do with the sun’s sizzle. Fondness, pride, admiration—a mix of perfectly respectable emotions—surged. I took the little flag and returned the smile.