Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  “Off Roland Avenue. Much smaller than this one. Near you, huh? You still live in that place on Calvert Street. My God, I’ve moved five times since we worked together. No, you’d be here. We always try out our new programs at headquarters so I can keep an eye on how they’re going.”

  I processed that for less than twenty seconds. “The thing is,” I said, “my other clients are Baltimore based and my sessions with them are scattered through the week. You want morning and afternoon. That would mean driving back and forth between Baltimore and Bethesda five times on some days. And rush-hour traffic could turn an hour’s drive into two. I don’t see how I can do that.”

  She looked unimpressed by my problem. “You’re a smart cookie; you’ll work something out. And we’d make it worth your while. I would. I budgeted your project from my discretionary fund so I could leap policy. See what you think of this.” She scribbled something on her memo pad, ripped it, and handed it over. We were close to the National Security Agency, but this was a rehab facility. Was her office bugged? Was that a security camera mounted on the picture frame on the wall across from me? Was that the reason she didn’t just say the compensation figure out loud?

  “My AA researched the going rate. But I want the best and I’m willing to pay for it.”

  When my gaze rolled down, it stayed there. On the number she’d written. With my two other gigs—the vets’ center and Josh and company at Poplar Grove—I’d have enough to ensure the preservation of my summers and keep Jack at Duke and in lacrosse sticks. I’d be more than okay. Then again, I’d also need to put something aside for the long-term therapy I’d need as a result of driving a hundred and fifty miles a day.

  “I think it’s generous,” Tess said. “You?”

  I peeled my stare away from the scrap of paper and nodded. “Generous, yes. Very. Thanks.” I sucked in a deep breath. “And I report to?”

  “Me.” She tapped the title plaque. “I’m director of social services. Oh yeah, you look thrilled. What, you want warm and fuzzy? Work for Build-A-Bear. Seriously, I’ll leave you alone unless you piss me off, and I can’t imagine what you could do to piss me off. Unless, of course, someone dies in one of your sessions. Then again, the old folks have to die sometime. Better with music than with tubes.”

  “The stumbling block is the back-and-forth between Baltimore and Bethesda. That would be a killer,” I said. I didn’t say that the idea of having her as my supervisor was almost as off-putting as the drive. Almost, because I liked Tess. She had a sailor’s mouth and a bull’s balls, but at least you knew what you were dealing with. Maybe it wouldn’t be so awful. I waved the paper with the salary on it. “Nice. But couldn’t we stack the classes on the same—”

  “No.” She led with her sharp chin and jutted her jaw. I remembered the shovel jaw. It meant she was digging in. “Maybe we can pick up your travel expenses. I’ll think about it. Why the hell don’t you move, anyway?”

  “I’m going through enough changes in my life right now. Besides, I’ll never get a deal like the house in Baltimore.”

  “You’ll never get a deal like the one I just offered you.”

  Tess tipped her chair toward me. She reached out across the desk and patted my hand still holding the paper. “Also, it would be fun, us working together again.”

  I’d be working for her. Which wasn’t the same as working together. I didn’t say that. Fun? I was considering that when her phone rang again.

  She looked and sighed. “Different asshole, but this one has an MD attached to it, so I’d better pick up.” For the next minute she fired off a barrage of verbal bullets. “Impossible.” “Sorry, but no.” “It won’t work.” “No, I can’t explore the options because there are none.” “Report me to whomever you please. You won’t win this, sweetheart.” Sweetheart! “Why? Because your argument is laughable, that’s why. Listen, I’m in the middle of an interview here.” She winked at me, enjoying the sport. “I’m hanging up now.” She clicked off.

  My mouth was open. I closed it. She gave me a beatific—or was that amused? satisfied? triumphant?—smile. “Now, what was I saying? Oh yes, think about it. You don’t have to make a decision immediately. The job doesn’t start until November first, which is when the gal who runs the horticulture therapy program begins her maternity leave, which, I have a feeling—she’s having twins—will go on forever. Betsy makes a lot less than that figure.” She tipped her chin at the paper with the numbers on it. “But to reiterate, this whole dance-movement thing is my wild idea and it comes from my budget so I call the shots. I want to hear from you by September first so we can get our ducks in a row, orient you to the National Care brand. That gives you two months to rearrange what you need to rearrange and get back to me.”

  I couldn’t imagine making it work. But if I didn’t take it—I grimaced as I watched my beautiful beach house slide into the sea of oblivion.

  Then I went off with her to check out the studio where she hoped I’d conduct my sessions. It was beyond luxurious, tricked out with a state-of-the-art speaker system, baby grand piano, multilevel bars, nonskid chairs for seated exercise, and a wall-mounted defibrillator. Everything deep pockets could buy.

  I’d be an idiot to turn it down. Or a masochist to take it. Rock or hard place, my choice.

  chapter twenty-seven

  The rest of the week was a necklace of diamond-bright days. Not a cloud in sight, sun high and white, giving way to a waning sickle moon in an ink black sky. There was even a shiver-making meteor shower exploding above the ocean Thursday night. After the shake-up trip to the beltway cities, all I wanted was to bond with my house and my beach and extract every last drop of pleasure from my ocean. I taught my classes and took care of the studio’s administrative details; then I hurried home to sit under an umbrella on the beach, listening to Andrea Bocelli and reading decades-old New Yorker magazines I’d found in Lon’s office. My idea of heaven.

  You’d think that after thirty years, my love for the house and the summers spent there, the infatuation of the early days, would have turned into a yawningly comfy T-shirt-to-bed, kiss-on-the-cheek marriage. But, no, just the opposite. The passion for the place and my time there was stronger than ever, maybe because I faced the threat of losing my precious Tuckahoe summers. I knew what those nearly three months did for my soul—how after cramped, rushed winters, they slowed my rhythm and lifted my mood, and that the endless sky over the vast ocean was there to provide perspective (should I choose to use it) for my own puny problems.

  I still couldn’t get over it: me, city born and raised, living steps from the beach, surrounded by so much natural beauty. My waking breath was of briny sea air. I fell asleep to the lullaby of the surf. I was constantly reminded of my blessings and, believe me, I didn’t take a single grain of sand for granted. And then there was my friendship with Em and Margo, which flourished like honeysuckle in these hot months. I was incredibly grateful for that too. Now all of it was at risk.

  Margo. I heard only one peep from her that week. She always became laser focused on rehearsals as opening night approached. She kvetched to me about costume flaws, slow pacing, unexpected changes, then tossed off a question about how I was doing. I said, “Fine,” which seemed enough for her in her distracted state. We’d catch up on my trip when she had some time. She was sure it had been interesting, but she’d skipped breakfast and her lunch had just arrived. Merry was unpacking her salad so she’d better get some food into herself. Bye.

  Em was caught up in high season at the café, so I faced the new reality alone. Well, not quite. The following afternoon Philippa Tarlow stopped over. Flip Tarlow and her husband were among the Manolises’ closest friends and members of Margo’s maven squad. The couple ran the most successful real estate agency on the Maryland shore. When I had called Flip to tell her, choking the words out, that I was considering—only considering, mind you—putting the house on the market and invited her over for
a first look, I’d also asked her to keep it confidential. Not that my concerns would have interfered with Margo’s current self-absorption, but just in case her focus slipped into a wider orbit, I wasn’t up to her meddling.

  “This is an absolutely knockout house,” Flip drawled as I led her on a tour. “Good bones. Elegant proportions. Super traffic flow. Incredible light.” And she loved what I’d done with it. I told her Margo had helped with the interior. “Of course, I see her signature style. It’s stunning. However . . .”

  I’d known the “however” was coming. A list of howevers was mounting on Flip’s legal pad. The guest room looked dated and needed a complete overhaul. While I was at it, I might want to spiff up Jack’s bathroom, which had taken a boy’s beating over time. The kitchen was lovely, but the downstairs powder room needed all new fixtures. The entrance hall begged (her word) for a redo.

  I was cruising along with her suggestions, tallying the costs of the improvements as we canvassed the rooms. Where was I going to get the thirty thou I figured it would take . . . so far? Then Flip redirected the conversation to a whole new level of pain, from stratospheric financial to deep down in the emotional center of my world.

  “You do know it’s a buyer’s market out there now.”

  I hadn’t known, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Over the last few weeks, I’d felt like a target of what my superstitious mother had called the malocchio. It was as if God himself had been giving me the evil eye.

  “The thing is, you’re competing in the second-homes category in general and in your price range and location in particular.” Flip’s smile, so inalterable I thought it might be tattooed on, flipped into an arch of sympathy. “There are three other homes comparable to yours available on the beach between Bethany and Ocean City. And yes, Tuckahoe has panache, but so does Rehoboth. Even Delaware being the land of low taxes hasn’t helped move two listings that have been on the market there for almost a year.” She let that sink in and hit me again. Hard this time. “What I think would make this house infinitely more marketable, because people like to plan for the future, is a first-floor bedroom.”

  “Which it doesn’t have,” I said.

  “But it could.”

  All we needed to do was overhaul Lon’s office. It was certainly large enough, and a few steps from a full bathroom. We’d strip the bookshelves, fill in that space with a wall-to-wall closet. “And voilà! A first-floor bedroom.”

  And voilà! A sacrilege.

  Or maybe not. Could be this was just what I needed for my breakthrough. Maybe I could get rid of Lon’s shrine if I knew his literary legacy was safe.

  I got back to work reading the ghostwritten chapters, which, if they passed my test, would allow me the dream of a bestseller, a critical success, and money enough to keep the Surf Avenue house afloat.

  Nate knew his stuff. Hector could write. He’d captured Lon at his best, the vivid river rush of prose of the early years. My late husband, who’d struggled so against the current in the later ones, would probably have been jealous of this fresh talent. But he would also have calculated the sales, predicted the reviews and the revival of his reputation. “Giddyup,” I could hear him saying, one of my California cowboy’s favorite expressions.

  I sent Nate a businesslike email. “Essential: my approval of cover type size for Hector’s author credit. Also I have final say on completed manuscript.”

  The return response flew at the speed of light. Hardly businesslike. “Yes and yes and yippee!” Nate’s words virtually danced on my screen. “We’re on our way.”

  Suddenly it was Tuesday again, and I was worrying about how Scott would handle our first encounter since our bungled bedroom scene. He handled it by texting me a barebones message late that afternoon. Can’t make class tonight. Sorry.

  During my mandatory foxtrot with Tom Hepburn, I asked offhandedly, “Scott’s all right?”

  “Far as I know,” he said. And that was all he said before handing me over to George Powell for the final waltz.

  I gave myself a pep talk on my solitary walk home. Our bedroom misadventure, plus the tone of Scott’s afternoon text, plus his nonappearance in class . . . I did the math and it added up to over and out. I understood we were just getting started, and I got the reason he was backing off. Still, it was unfair, damned unfair, that when I finally found a man who made me feel something other than indifference, it fell apart for technical reasons. But that was nothing I could fix, so, I told myself, I’d just better suck it up, move back into the no-cry zone, and resume my regularly scheduled life—the one that had served me reasonably well for the past eight years, familiar and safe, with no rewards but also no risk. In the thick humid air, that logic hung pretty well.

  At one fifteen a.m., after I’d thrashed about in bed since midnight, it all came tumbling down. So good-bye, logic. Hello, feeling, and the feeling was ouch. I toughed it out for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling before picking up the unfinished Embrace Your Fabulous You, but its uplifting platitudes only made me feel sadder. In a last-ditch effort to pull it together, I paced the widow’s walk, tracing the supposedly mood-elevating pattern of an exercise I used in my Motion and Emotion sessions. It didn’t work. Was I a charlatan on top of everything else? Eventually, I crawled back to bed, where I snatched snippets of sleep until dawn.

  I had a Wednesday class, but there was no way I could Zumba! with an exclamation point after my raggedy night. I made a call to Larissa, who agreed to sub for me.

  By ten, I was cocooned under a striped umbrella with a cup of coffee and a book featuring a brave heroine. The sky was overcast, with occasional spritzes of drizzle, and the beach was almost empty. Also quiet, until my cell phone let loose a shrill cry from Margo. Depression must have addled my brain, because I picked up.

  She didn’t bother to say hello. “Get over here. Now. I need you.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m having my own problems.”

  “That’s an incredibly self-absorbed response, Nora. Mine are worse. Besides, it will be good for you to focus on someone besides yourself. Therapeutic.”

  I groaned. “Can’t you come here? My therapy is reading the latest Nicholas Sparks and the heroine is about to—”

  Margo interrupted. “My life is not a romance novel, Nora. It is real and it is crashing down on me and I don’t trust myself to drive. Not in my current condition. I’m serious.”

  “It had better be a matter of life or death,” I warned.

  “Matter of death or death. Suicide or homicide.”

  “Okay, then,” I sighed, “but I’m not dressed. Give me fifteen.”

  Twenty minutes later I let myself in her front door, heard her call out, “Upstairs,” and found her sitting yoga style on the bed, still in her leopard-print silk pajamas, eyes red rimmed and shooting furious sparks. An open, picked-through box of See’s chocolates seductively nuzzled her left thigh.

  Her first words were not a greeting. In fact, hearing them, I almost pivoted to exit. She looked up from her iPhone to ask, “It reeks of sex in here, doesn’t it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t smell it?”

  I drew the quickest, shallowest breath that would sustain me. It did carry the tang of spent passion.

  “Ugh, Margo, have you no boundaries? I’ll never be able to look at Pete again. Honestly, if I didn’t have to inhale, I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath. You’re going to be here for a while. Think Eugene O’Neill. Think Long Day’s Journey into Night. Only morning.”

  I begged, literally, for as few details as possible, so what she settled on was that this latest crisis had begun with Pete waking at dawn to hit the bathroom—the commode flush roused her for only seconds—and sometime later nudging her awake. He’d been eager, willing, and more than ready for a sunrise romp on their California king.

  “Six
o’clock, top of the morning, and he’s on top of me rock-hard nearly nonstop for more than ten minutes.” She managed a weak smile. “That was the main course. The hors d’oeuvres included some new stuff, inspired by the girlfriend. I guess. Well, thank you, Brianna or Kendra or whoever. My husband went through his entire repertoire to please me and, dammit, he succeeded. Give the gentleman two cigars, as my agent Lou Beigleman, of blessed memory, used to say.”

  We then fast-forwarded to Pete heading to the shower and a wiped-out Margo collapsing back to sleep. When she woke he was gone, having left a note on her pillow. “Tomorrow. Same time, same station.”

  “That’s when I panicked.” She popped a truffle pacifier into her mouth and said between sucks, “I’m thinking the girlfriend can be no more than thirty, thirty-five at a stretch, and if I have any chance of holding my own, and Pete’s, it’s time to step up my game. But how?”

  I could feel a grand “uh-oh” coming on.

  “Then the lightbulb. Pete takes these vitamins called Super Silver designed for fifty-plussers. Okay, so I’m three years short of fifty, but I thought I’d give myself a head start. I read the dosage info. One pill a day. If one is good, two should be better, especially the first day, like a booster shot to get me started. Drastic times call for drastic measures, right?”

  She waited for a sign of agreement, didn’t get it, and pressed on. “I read the label. The ingredients were only vitamins and serotonin in megadoses. That seemed harmless enough. So I shook two out”—she took a pregnant pause—“and got not Super Silver. I got Super Low-Down Dirty Liar, Super Cheating SOB.” Chocolate spittle gathered in the corners of her mouth.

  She opened her hand, finger by finger, for dramatic effect. On the cushion of her palm rested two diamond-shaped blue pills. “Read ’em and weep. You read. I weep.”

  I read the stamped name aloud, “Pfizer.”

  “Wrong side. Flip it over.”