Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  Tears washed Merry’s eyes open. Now she was crying in earnest.

  “You’re okay, baby,” I said, wanting to reach out to her, but before we went further, Scott needed to assess her condition. When she was calmer, he asked her the name of her parents, the school she attended, her favorite TV show. I nodded at her answers. No obvious signs of concussion. She could move her legs, so he felt there was no acute spinal injury. “Good to go,” he said, and as debris rained from the ceiling, he methodically tweezed her free, shoulders, torso, and, with extra care, the arm that had been trapped under a jagged piece of roof timber. Her right wrist hung at an odd angle.

  Out, but wobbly, she propped herself against me. I wanted so much to fold her into a hug and comfort her, but as I reached around her waist Scott said, “Careful, Nora. There might be more bones broken or internal injuries.” Instead, as Merry rested her head on my shoulder, I stroked her cheek and crooned an Irish lullaby I’d sung to Jack in his crib. It seemed to soothe her. Her breathing evened, her skin warmed, and after I half sang, half whispered the last line, “May angels guard over thee,” she murmured, “I want my mother.”

  We called Em so she could hear her daughter’s voice. Merry was too weak to say much, just, “I’m okay, Mom. Please stop crying,” and when I took the phone Em was sobbing her thanks in two languages. I told her to meet us at the hospital.

  Downstairs, in the car and away from the crumbling house, we waited for the ambulance fighting through the storm. Shivering in the jacket that had led us to her, and wrapped in a blanket from the trunk, Merry told us the story of how she’d bashed her way into the kitchen, fed the cats with some of Sarman’s cat chow she’d brought along, and finally, exhausted—she’d been up before dawn and had walked miles—went down for a nap in the late owner’s bed. She was asleep when “all this crap came crashing down. I didn’t know what hit me, but it was totally wet and gross and when I tried to move, it, like, smothered me.” Her beautiful new cell phone had wound up somewhere in the junk pile, beyond her reach.

  She was, of course, not the usual mouthy Merry, though she dropped the F-bomb three times as Scott stabilized her wrist with a SAM splint from the tool bag. Jack intently watched the colonel shape and tie it. I watched Jack.

  “How do you know what to do?” my son asked.

  “Military. Amazing what you pick up on the fly. Like never pee on a snakebite. Doesn’t work. Pee on the snake. But at your own risk.”

  Jack laughed appreciatively, then moved in to observe Scott clean and apply antiseptic ointment to the slight abrasion on my jaw. When he was finished, Scott turned to Merry. “How you doing, sweetheart?”

  “Thirsty again,” Merry said. Jack fed her more swigs from a bottle in my tote. As she drank, he wiped plaster dust from her face with a mealy tissue he’d excavated from his pocket.

  “Actually you look good as a blonde,” he said. Which made her smile.

  “Jerk,” she said.

  “That jerk helped dig you out of this mess,” Scott said. “Listen to the man.”

  Jack flashed a look at Scott that told me there had been some kind of conversion under fire. I thought I saw respect, maybe even admiration behind it. Finally, Jack had witnessed some of what I’d seen in Scott from the beginning. My mood, already high from finding Merry alive and healthy enough to trade jabs with Jack, went soaring.

  “Okay, Ms. Merry, that should hold you for now,” Scott said. “The EMTs will redo it. Or the docs at the hospital. Or maybe they’ll think I did a brilliant job and send you home.”

  “Where I’m not going, as long as the grandmother from hell is still in residence.”

  It looked like the old, irrepressible, totally impossible, and mostly lovable Merry was back. Given her history and given Selda, for how long was another issue.

  chapter thirty-seven

  We followed the ambulance to the hospital through the tail end of the storm, which was now more fog than rain, but lost it at an accident on the highway that held us up for half an hour. By the time we got to the emergency entrance, Sarge was making gotta-pee sounds and Scott asked Jack to walk him.

  “No problem. Come on, boy, we’re going to let you empty your tank,” my son crooned as he clipped on the lead. Scott and I looked after them as they sprinted off.

  “Bonding,” I said.

  “I hope so. Jack did a good job today. Never hesitated. Jumped right in.”

  “He would have climbed right on and collapsed the debris pile if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  “I knew the technique and he didn’t, but he showed initiative, guts. Points for that.”

  Scott curled an arm around my waist. “And you were great back there, too. Cool under fire. Arms of steel. You’re a woman of many talents.”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I answered, evoking a smoky glance from him.

  In the ER waiting room, Adnan was sitting hunched over, running a tesbih, a chain of worry beads, through his fingers. His eyes brightened when he saw us, and he rose to shake Scott’s hand and embrace me. I’d known Adnan for more than ten years, and this was the first time he’d come close enough to touch me, let alone pull me into a hug. “Thanks God,” he kept repeating. “And thanks to you. I am so grateful.”

  He told us Merry was in an exam room being checked out. Em was with her.

  Adnan wanted details of the scene at the Henlopen place and Scott had just started relating an edited version—no need to paint that heart-stopping picture—when Em emerged from behind the double doors.

  “She’s fine, she’s fine. The X-ray showed only the wrist is broken, not the arm. They had to remove your very good splint, Colonel, to look at the injury, but they said it was like a doctor’s work. They’re putting on a cast now.” She exhaled relief. “So, please, tell me what happened.”

  After Scott finished, a paler Adnan, worry beads in motion, said, “Nora, your son, he is a hero for putting in the finding app in Meryem’s phone. You are all heroes to us.”

  “The dog too,” Emine said. “So amazing, this dog. He gets lamb from me the next time he comes to the café.” I noticed her accent was thicker, her sentences more arabesque than usual. Stress did that.

  “This cannot happen again,” Adnan said. “Meryem was lucky this time. But her luck will run down one day. Steps must be taken.”

  Emine drew her lush eyebrows into an arrow pointed directly at her husband.

  “Steps have been taken,” she shot back. “The wrong ones. What must be taken now is an airplane. Back to Istanbul. With your mother on it.”

  Which was our cue to get out of there.

  An email from Merry to Jack arrived during the drive home. He read it aloud: “‘Wrist broken. No big deal. Could have died in that crap pile. You guys saved me. Tell all thanks a heap. Get it, bro? Heap?’”

  “She’s crazy.” He laughed and read as he typed, “‘Next time no one’s going to dig you out, so there better not be a next time.’”

  “We’ll see,” she fired back. “It all depends.”

  There’s a strange beauty that takes over a beach the day after a storm, a kind of breath catching all around. I walked the shore at dawn. The air was clean and quiet. No wind at all. Hardly any people. A few gawkers had come out to see the damage and an elderly couple with metal detectors swept for treasure, but if there was glitter it was buried. Nothing shone or shimmered under the washed-out sun. The waves were tame, as if they’d knocked themselves out and needed time to recover. The sand was ironed to a matte finish and littered with driftwood and empty shells, overturned trash cans and their spilled litter, and abandoned towels, as if their owners had stayed until the very last minute before surrendering to the storm and literally throwing in the towel.

  As I walked the quiet beach, I remembered praying yesterday when it was touch-and-go. So, I told myself, it wouldn’t be hypocritical of me to give offi
cial thanks for answered prayers. It had been eight years since I’d set foot inside a church for anything but weddings and funerals. Now I felt the need. I Googled the weekday mass schedule of Saint Martha Star of the Sea up the road in Bethany. Eight thirty. If I hurried, I might be able to slide into the pew on my knees.

  The service at Saint Martha’s, with what my father used to call “all the smells and bells,” was like turning the pages of a family photo album and looking at your used-to-be self. You recognized the person, you remembered the surroundings, but nothing was what it had been. Yet it was still comforting, a mix of nostalgia and surprising regret. I said my thanks, prayed not for the house I loved or the job I wanted, or even for my son’s happiness, but like the spiritual sailor I was, like the sailors we all are, for guidance on choppy seas.

  After church I headed to the Haydars’ to check on Merry. Downtown was relatively untouched by the storm; a few fallen tree limbs, a traffic light out. The Mews Merchant Association had its cleaning crew sweeping the alleys of strewn flower petals—beautiful potpourris of them piled in drifts against the curb—and shopkeepers were stripping protective tape from the windows and replacing merchandise on outdoor kiosks. At the Turquoise Café, Adnan, wielding a broom, moved to the picket fence that separated the patio from the street to greet me and thank me again. No hugging this time.

  Inside, Emine waved from behind the counter. Merry was sitting at a corner table, playing with a smartphone that looked familiar.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked up and gave me a smile lit to a level of incandescence I hadn’t seen since she’d accepted the glory from Margo onstage.

  “Oh God, Aunt Norrie. Can you believe it?” She held up the phone with her left arm. “It’s like a miracle. You want to hear something insane? This phone was still charged when the lieutenant from the fire department dropped it off this morning. I’m so relieved. Aunt Margo would have killed me if I lost it.”

  Nah, Margo would have replaced it, but not without a stern lecture and a barrage of warnings for Merry to get her act together. Merry gestured to the empty chair across from her and I sat. She accorded me the honor of her full attention, slipping the phone into the pocket of her blouse. Not a prissy white one. A crop top printed with colorful butterflies that skimmed the waistline of her jeans. She was also wearing sandals. “Thanks again for saving my sorry butt.”

  I was about to ask if she was as sorry as her butt when Selda appeared like the anti-genie. I gave her my order. “A decaf grande with milk and two packets of sweetener on the side.” I wanted to hold on to my church mellow.

  She wrinkled her nose at the abomination that decaf was to every proud carrier of Turkish blood. “Volkan is your server today. I’ll tell him.” She turned to Merry. “I need you in the kitchen to box the baklava.”

  “Excuse me?” Merry held up her arm to display the cast.

  Selda snorted. “You have another hand.”

  “But I’m right-handed,” Merry volleyed. “And I’m not supposed to bend those fingers.”

  “You have been tap-tapping the words on your phone with your left hand, so you can box baklava with your left hand. Everybody works here. Your mother since six o’clock and she needs some time to talk to . . .” She pointed at me. I wondered if she remembered my name. I was the eggplant hater. “So for a little time at the counter I am taking over.”

  “You’re good at that,” Merry said sweetly.

  “Is this an insult?” Selda’s nostrils went to full flare.

  “No, Babaanne, a compliment.”

  “Nice, then. Come. Now.”

  Merry sighed herself to her feet and waited a beat before following her grandmother. Behind Selda’s back, she held up three straight fingers on her injured hand and all five of the other. She whispered, “Eight more days. I almost died, but it was worth it.”

  I was still laughing when Em slipped into her empty seat.

  “Eight more days?” I asked.

  “Selda? Yes, she stays through Eid.” Eid al-Fitr, the elaborate dinner marking the end of the month of Ramadan. “She leaves next Tuesday.”

  “Adnan is all right with that?”

  “He booked her flight. She wasn’t happy when he broke the news, but the mother of a sultan still defers to the sultan. And he did it on his own, without my having to threaten him, without even the imam’s advice.”

  “Good for Adnan,” I said, as Volkan placed a mug of steaming coffee in front of me.

  “He was scared. He realized Merry could have died in that old house. At the end, his heart told him his children come first. Which reminds me, I didn’t get to thank Jack for yesterday. He leaves for school when?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” I took a scalding swallow of coffee, and its heat spread from my throat to my chest. Perhaps it wasn’t only the coffee that burned too close to my heart.

  “Well, if I don’t see him in person, I’ll make up a package of treats for him to take back to college. Not a reward. I could never reward him enough. Him or any of you. Just a gift.”

  She stared out the window at the pallid late-August sun. “So soon the summer is over.”

  I nodded, surprising myself by choking up. “Too soon.”

  “Yes, but it will come again.” She reached for my hand. “It always does.”

  If I hadn’t wanted to keep her sympathetic touch I would have told her there is no such thing as “always.” That was a lesson I should have learned at my mother’s bedside when I was in high school and in my own personal graduate course when Lon died. But I was still flunking reality. Some spark within may still have believed in Saint Martha and the possibility of forever. For summers. For love.

  The next afternoon, a call came in from Josh Zimmerman, who’d just returned from Italy. I explained the job offer from National Care (which elicited a “Mazel tov!”) and how the nonstop commuting was the deal breaker. However, I said cheerily, if I could jam my sessions at Poplar Grove into a single day, I might be able to swing it. The silence at the other end lasted, even for a shrink, ominously long. It ended with a groan. “I’ll do my best, Nora,” Josh said, “but juggling staff scheduling is always logistically complicated and emotionally charged. You’re asking for four days of adjustments. I’d be messing around with a lot of people’s lives. I’ll see what I can do, but I’ve got to tell you, I don’t have high hopes.”

  Five minutes later, while I was Googling “Employment dance therapist Baltimore,” my email chimed incoming. It was Tess Gaffigan.

  Long time no hear. Have relevant news to share. Betsy the preggie plant lady is quitting in her fifth month instead of sixth. The woman knows how to plant seeds. She just found out she’s carrying triplets. I thought baby elephant myself from the Everest size of the baby bump, but it’s a trio. One was hiding out behind the twins. So, start time for you would be pushed up from November to beginning of October. To sweeten the pot, I’ll pay you for the entire month of September. Such a deal. Need to know your decision by next week. Really, Nora, we’ll have lots of fun and you’d be making a big difference in some valuable lives. What say you?

  We’d worked together. Tess knew my professional hot buttons, like the “making a big difference” appeal. But it occurred to me suddenly that I also knew hers. She couldn’t have changed that much since back in the day. That kind of stuff is hardwired. I knew the lineup of her instrument panel—what turned her on, what set her off. The power surged in both directions. Two could play.

  She’d given me a week and I responded that she’d hear from me by deadline. It had been more than a month since we’d met at her office, and my internal knee-jerk reaction—and now my calculated one—was Don’t rush me, my theme song.

  But time is a workaholic and it rushes. The following day I was standing with Jack in our driveway next to his car packed for the return trip to Durham. Registration at Duke started tomorrow and he w
anted to get settled in.

  I tossed his tennis racquet on top of a pile of clothes on the backseat. The car smelled like a bakery. The takeaway box with two pounds of baklava Emine had sent over was sitting on the front seat next to a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies Claire had dropped off yesterday on her way to freshman orientation at the University of Virginia. I hadn’t been home, but she’d also left a foil-covered paper plate of them for me, with a note: “Glad we got to meet this summer, Mrs. F. Hope to see you again next year. Bye for now.” Signed with the inevitable, endearing heart, “Claire.”

  “So,” I said, wanting to postpone Jack’s leaving, reaching for small talk and, if I got up the courage, big talk. “Plans to see Claire before next summer?”

  “Sure. UVA isn’t that far from Duke. I Mapquested the drive from Durham to Charlottesville and it’s only three hours. She’s a freshman. College is a big change. I think I should keep an eye on her.”

  “Like a big brother? Or like a boyfriend?”

  His mouth curled in an amused smile. “Wow, you really cut to the chase, don’t you, Mom? Okay, not like a brother.”

  “Ahhh. What about Tiffanie?”

  “We’ll see. I’m keeping my options open.”

  “So I can do the same?” It was a leading question. I was fishing and he snapped at the bait.

  “Give me a break. You have so shut down your options. And I’m okay with that. Not that you need my permission for who you date.”

  “No, but I care what you think.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I think Scott’s a good guy. He carries his weight. More than. He was freaking amazing digging Merry out. You’ve got to give him credit.”

  “Right, but not extra credit. He doesn’t want that.”

  “For the leg. I get it.”