Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  Then I called BGE and reported the air-conditioning situation and instructed them to phone Lieber Jr. to schedule the fix. No need to stay in the house any longer than necessary.

  Scott wasn’t on my mind—Jack was—when I drove over to Poplar Grove, the psychiatric hospital where I held Motion and Emotion sessions three times a week, September to June. This morning’s destination was the office of Josh Zimmerman, my professional colleague, unofficial shrink and mentor who’d come through for me before with advice about my son. Josh’s self-deprecating assessment of the quality of this service was, “Just a reminder, kiddo, you get what you pay for.” But he sold himself short. Josh was good.

  Poplar Grove was situated at the end of a graveled, treelined driveway that opened to a view of a sprawling three-story building dating from the 1920s. An interior refurbishing in the eighties had installed larger windows and lighter colors so the atmosphere was cheerful and airy and smelled like eternal springtime—the scent of promise manufactured by Glade. Poplar Grove maintained a locked ward for a few of the determinedly destructive, self-destructive mostly, but the majority of patients roamed freely through the halls and into the lounge with its high-def TV (though the programs were monitored for depressing or violent themes), the computer room (though some sites like porno and pro-anorexia forums were blocked), and the library, with shelves of books vetted for optimism and positivity. The humor section got a lot of space, as did biographies of subjects who had overcome adversity. Nonfiction was benign. Stephen King was persona non grata, as were vampires, shape-shifters, and aliens—many of the readers were already sufficiently haunted by phantom creatures of their own creation. Blood and gore were outlawed. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d excised war from War and Peace. All was calm, all was bright.

  Of course, some residents walked the halls with no destination in mind. The constant ambling was a hallmark of those grappling with depression or high anxiety, and it worked for much the same reason that dance therapy did—activity elevates endorphins and lowers stress hormones. The strollers, the staff called them, were aimlessly on the move all day and at night until their sleepy-time drugs kicked in.

  That morning, as I made my way down the second-floor corridor, I spotted a patient I’d worked with the season before, a young man who’d snarled at our final meeting that I was contributing to his abandonment issues by taking off for the summer. Now he shuffled past, obviously recognizing but ignoring me. I smiled and called out, “Hey, Jared. How’s it going?” He called back, “Fuck you.” His diagnosis had been something catchy like rage-management deficiency. The work must have been going slowly.

  I got a more welcome reception at Josh Zimmerman’s office. The sign hanging on his inner door had been turned from “Session in Progress” to “Available. Please knock.” I tapped, heard him bellow, “Enterrrrr,” and stepped over the threshold. He’d been transcribing notes, but now he swiveled to greet me, his face lighting with a smile.

  “Well, well, look who’s here. Miracles do happen. Nora. What a nice surprise. Good to see you.” He was a hugger and he hugged with gusto, then danced a two-step back and pointed me to the patient chair. “So sit. Relax. I’ve got coffee, iced or hot. Iced, yes?”

  After we’d settled in with our drinks and caught up on the gossip around the Grove, his grandkids, my Zumba classes, he said, “This is a social call because you just happened to be in the neighborhood?” The glance he raised behind his half spectacles oozed skepticism.

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “But not entirely. Something’s obviously important enough to interrupt your sacred summer. I’ve got twenty minutes before my next appointment. The meter is running. Shoot.”

  He’d been on my email list for the begging letter so he knew my employment situation, though not its ramifications. I told him. He shrugged. “You’ll work it out. This is a good thing, sweetheart, though it doesn’t seem like it now. Remember what I always say about change.”

  “It’s the mother of opportunity. But I gotta tell you, Josh, it’s also the father of anxiety.” Which elicited a laugh.

  “Your interview later could produce the perfect fit. Or not. But something will turn up. You’re losing sleep over this?”

  “Sure, I lose sleep over everything. But at least I have a handle on how to deal with it. I’ve done job searches before. I’ll continue to network. Actually, I’d like to discuss another situation.”

  He knew about the circumstances surrounding Jack’s conception. I’d filled him in when I was struggling with my eleven-year-old’s sorrow after Lon died. I’d wondered to Josh if it made a difference in the intensity of his grief that his dead father was not his biological progenitor.

  He’d told me then, “Lon raised him. Lon loved him. Lon was his dad. So Jack will go through the same shit as any boy who loses a father. You haven’t hidden how much you wanted him, what steps you took to bring him into the world. And Lon was the one who shared that with him. Which was brilliant. No, you’re the primary force in his life now and his biologic link. You’re the reality. To an eleven-year-old, the sperm donor, Mr. 1659, is just a number.”

  Well, he wasn’t anymore, I told Josh. Dirk DeHaven was a living, breathing human being with a name and a life that looked like it was going to include Jack. He’d visited once already and he planned to return in August and I was scared of what might be coming next.

  We talked about that for a while. How I shouldn’t anticipate problems. That if they arose, I needed to act out of love and not fear. “What does Jack call him, by the way? How does he refer to him?”

  “Dirk to him. Usually the Donor Dude or just the Dude to me.”

  “Good. And if he has any fantasies about the Dude being Superman or LeBron James, time and contact will shrink them.”

  This was when I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I don’t know about Superman, but he’s dropped hints about a fantasy that concerns me.”

  Josh leaned forward, hands steepled, nodding empathically.

  “I think he sees us as a couple, the Dude and me. Dirk is divorced and age appropriate, so Jack’s got the idea that we’d be a good match.”

  Josh stroked his beard. “He said that?”

  “Implied it.”

  “Tell me,” Josh urged, and I heard an undercurrent in his voice. Alarm? Amusement?

  I gave him Jack’s “other fish in the sea” advice. I rehashed Margo’s geometry theory.

  “I go with your friend. Jack sees the puzzle pieces fitting, the two sources of his DNA. The human instinct always moves us toward order and against entropy. ‘Let’s get it together’ is the motto of our species. So does he have any basis in reality for this? For instance, did Dirk come on to you during the visit?”

  I shook my head so vigorously I dislodged one of my earrings.

  “And you, do you find the Dude attractive?”

  “He’s fine. I mean, nice looking, pleasant, kind of charming. But no, not the way you mean. No chemistry for me. Besides, he lives in California, though he may do a visiting year at Hopkins, which would bring him to Baltimore.”

  “Interesting, the Baltimore move. That’s fueling Jack’s fantasy. Not that I’m insinuating he has a point, but is there someone else in your life?”

  I thought of mentioning Scott, but what was there to mention? I’d heard him call himself useless in his bedroom the other night. It was clear that he didn’t see a future, or even a present, for us, so how could I?

  I might have taken a second too long to answer Josh, but when I spoke, my voice was strong. “No, no one else.”

  “Then let it ride,” my shrink friend said. “There’s nothing pathological about Jack’s thinking. In fact, it’s logical from his perspective. Address it if it gets worse, or if it bothers you. If you do bring it up, treat it with respect. And if no one else turns into someone else, be aware you might get some initial
resistance from him.” He paused for a sip of his iced coffee. “That’s it?”

  Josh’s other credo, besides the one about change, was, “If you don’t have something to say, shut up.”

  “Okay,” he said. “In any event, you want any more of my priceless advice, you have my number.” He rose. “And I have yours.” My time was up. At the door, he switched the placard and pecked my cheek. “As the song says, see you in September.”

  Which suddenly seemed not so far away. I had to get moving.

  chapter twenty-six

  I should have passed Go and headed directly to Bethesda. But I had five hours left before my appointment with Tess Gaffigan, and I couldn’t skip a once-a-summer opportunity to stop at the Woodberry Kitchen for a plate of their best-anywhere oysters. It was when I was on my way again after lunch, stopped at the first red light off Clipper Mill Road, that my stomach suddenly churned. It wasn’t the oysters.

  I was within a few blocks of TV Hill, where four television stations clustered at the highest point in the city, so it wasn’t that bizarre to see Dana Montagne, WBJ’s news anchor, on this street. Her face, instantly recognizable, as familiar to me as my own, was beamed in high definition three times every weekday.

  If she’d been stunning when she’d started out in her twenties—her features sculpted to just short of beautiful in a medium where beautiful would have been overkill—now, in her late thirties, she’d achieved telegenic perfection. She projected warmth and an earned confidence that inspired trust and brand loyalty among all demographics. Beloved by Baltimore, and as I watched, my heart beating in my throat, it seemed she was particularly beloved by someone I knew—the man at her side.

  Because I wanted to be sure, when the light turned green, I slid into a parking space a few slots back from the jewelry store from which Dana Montagne and Pete Manolis had just exited. The Svengali and Trilby Studio produced one-of-a-kind handcrafted jewelry in platinum, gold, and precious gems. I’d salivated over its ads in Baltimore magazine. As the couple moved toward the sidewalk, I began to pray, No, no, God no, then, Oh shit, as my amen. It was Pete Manolis, Pete freaking Manolis.

  His signature gorilla-length arms were very much occupied, the left one draped around the newscaster’s shoulders, the right swinging a tiny lavender shopping bag with the jeweler’s ST swirl-patterned logo. Gallant as ever, he was carrying the gift he’d just purchased for a woman who was definitely not his sixtyish secretary, Janet Buxbaum, or one of the groupies in Margo’s paranoid fantasies.

  They’d known each other for at least a decade, Pete and Dana. In the first few years after his retirement from the O’s, he’d occasionally subbed for the weeknight sportscaster at WBJ. I’d seen her a few times at the Manolises’ dinner parties, single, then married, recently divorced. I had to wonder how long this had been going on.

  Just before I decided to get the hell out of there, she leaned over and said something to him that caused him to laugh large but without any detectable sound, not his standard roar. It was a laugh that kept their secret. Her return smile gave it away. Dazzling, even more dazzling than the one that cast a spell over her TV audience.

  Poor Margo.

  Tess Gaffigan kept me waiting a full twenty minutes before she appeared on the run in the hall outside her locked office.

  “You’re here,” she said. No apologies. Just a jerk of the head to follow her. She was a small woman, but her heels—I noticed as I clipped behind her—were inappropriately in-your-face-for-work four inches high.

  From the looks of her digs, a large corner triangle done up in chrome, glass, and a view overlooking downtown Bethesda, she’d come a long way since we’d hung out together at Poplar Grove years ago. She’d been a social worker then, doing clinical work that was a bad fit for her personality. Hardly a paragon of empathy, Tess was too judgmental, strident, always in overdrive, unapologetically ambitious, with no place to move and therefore frequently frustrated, which led to testy. But she was witty and bright and fun to be with for drinks after work or gossip cackled over restroom stalls. When she got the offer from National Care, she took off like a shot and never looked back. Correction: she looked back long enough to hit me with invitations to the company’s fund-raising events or contributions to its nonprofit arm. I didn’t attend but wrote token checks. So now it was payback time. I hoped she knew that.

  As I stared at the desk nameplate and her title, “Director of Social Services,” I wondered if the open position would require working under her. Not an enticing prospect.

  She motioned me to the only seat across her skating-rink-sized desk, sat, and pulled a tablet from some niche onto her desk. She typed something into it, then stared. My file probably.

  She looked up. “So.” There was no offer of coffee, no cozy reminiscences. Her meter obviously ran at a faster speed than Josh Zimmerman’s.

  “I know who you are and I know what you can do. Did, anyway. The dance-and-movement program. Has anything changed?”

  “Well, there have been numerous studies in the past decade that demonstrate the benefits—”

  “Yes, yes.” She actually waved to cut me off. “There are studies for everything. Given enough bullshit, you can prove the world’s flat. I’m talking about your routines. The stretching, the expression, the individual journey material, the poetic expression—we’ve never done anything like that before at Nat Care. It would be an innovation here. And you’re the best at it I know.”

  Her phone rang. She checked caller ID, said, “Screw him,” and let it go to voice mail. “I was sorry to hear about your husband, by the way. I read the obit in the Post online, but I was in London for a conference. I hope I sent flowers.”

  She hadn’t. “I was kind of in shock. I don’t remember who did what. But thanks.”

  That produced a nod and a half smile. “Listen, this is the deal, Nora. Four days a week. Two sessions in the morning—that’s when our older folks are fresh. The ones with dementia start going downhill after ten. And then—bear with me here—I want another session around four or even five. It sounds counterintuitive because of the sundown effect in Alzheimer’s, but our medical team thinks activity late in the day mitigates it. Also, group gatherings tend to reduce depression for our guests with mood disorders. Especially in winter.”

  I took a moment to digest that. Something in the monologue had caught in my throat and I needed to clear it. “By morning sessions, what time do you mean?”

  “We start early here. Maybe eight thirty. Breakfast is over and we’ll get them on their feet. I remember you do fifty-minute sessions. So maybe another group at nine thirty? Then again at four, five, something like that.”

  “Wait. I have sessions in the morning? Then I leave. But I’m back in the afternoon?”

  “The rest of the day is full. We give these people an enriched program. They go to PT, OT, group and individual psychotherapy. Art. Guest lectures. Cooking demos. We tried out pottery last year and it was a huge success.” It had certainly been a hit with the Vintage board. “So yes, you’d be in morning and afternoon.”

  I could manage that. It would take a little zipping around Baltimore, but it was doable. I hadn’t mentioned my summer-free requirement in my email, because I wanted to get my foot in the door, but we were down to details, so it was now or never.

  “You remember I always had summers at the beach,” I began.

  “Right, when you were playing super-mommy with Jack. My God, he must be shaving by now. And that house of yours hasn’t been swept out to sea?”

  “Jack just finished his freshman year at Duke and the house will last for centuries.” I felt myself hesitate at the edge of a cliff. Then I jumped. “I’m still doing summers in Tuckahoe.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re still taking two months off?” She rolled her eyes, as light as a cat’s but more readable. They spelled out, “Give me a break.”

 
“Two and a half months and they’re not off. I’m working.” I told her about the dance studio. How we were five years in and holding our own, but I had plans to build the business. How that time away was non-negotiable.

  I’d figured back when I’d jumped at the chance to interview that Tess would never go for my ten-month plan, but I was hoping that our history and my charm—not that either was of particularly high quality—might inspire her to work something out. Maybe we could negotiate a compromise, though Tess had never been the compromising type. As she blank-stared me, I slipped my handbag from my lap and slung the strap over my shoulder, preparing to stand for good-byes, expecting hers to be a snarl of “Why did you waste my time?” Instead, after what seemed like a full minute with her eyes closed, she popped them open and announced, “Okay. I’m good with that.”

  “You are?” I sounded far too incredulous. I wasn’t much of a negotiator myself.

  “I am, believe it or not.” She tapped a stack of promotional brochures next to her laptop, then slid one across the desk to me. “We got to be number one in the country because of our creative approach to organization. We hire the best, and we hold on to them by keeping them happy. As for our program, though we have a full and varied array of activities, quality takes precedence over quantity around here. Summer has a different emphasis anyway. We have more outdoor activities like tai chi and sun salutations yoga. Also more water work. All of our facilities have pools. Our outdoor one here is on the rooftop. Gorgeous. Wait till you see it. And when we’re finished here, I’ll show you the studio that would be perfect for dance.”

  It took me a minute to register.

  “Here? The studio is here? Is the Baltimore studio the same?”

  “Baltimore? Did I say Baltimore in my return email?”

  She hadn’t. I’d assumed. “I thought Baltimore. You have a branch in Baltimore, near me.”