I asked, “How far have you read?”
“Two pages. You?”
“Three pages, after lunch I’ll read it to you while you nap, and then you can read it to me while I nap.” I glanced at her, and for a tiny unsatisfying moment, our eyes locked.
She said, “Perfect.”
This was how our plans had been made; how we both knew we had made plans: we had finished our morning surf, last Friday, wet, sand-covered, breeze-cooled, wrapped in towels, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the waves, and I had asked, “What if we went to Malibu on Tuesday, just me and you, there’s a good swell coming.”
She smiled and looked at me from the corner of her eye, lashes catching the sun and shimmering there. “I’d like that, what if we spent the day, um, just me and you.”
I nodded. One of the locals caught a wave, my eyes followed him as he dropped in, sped down the line, and kicked out over the back. I turned to her. “All day—I’ll bring my pop up tent.”
She looked into my eyes. “I’ll bring food for the day. Sandwiches okay?”
We were discussing our simple Surfing All Day plans but also talking about moving to the next level. Suddenly, after all these years of friendship, we were going to change everything about Sid and me.
Plus we needed to finish reading Macbeth by Wednesday. We had a deadline. So that was part of it.
Sid punched the buttons on my radio and found Oasis’s Wonderwall, and we both sang along. It predated us, but it was her mother’s favorite song, band, sound, and so it was familiar, much like each other. Me driving, Sid playing air-guitar. Like the olden days, listening, riding home in our car seats from those Mommy and Me playgroups, holding hands, Wonderwall streaming loud through the speakers. Sid’s mom, Alicia, and my mom, Lori, singing at the top of their voices. Like that, familiar and also historic, like this now.
Six
Sid
The thing about surfing with Teddy was this—he’s epic. He started surfing with his dad once he learned to swim, and seriously surfing, just after his Nerf Gun (I Despise Sid) phase. His dad surfed all the time, so Teddy had lots of practice. Like it was in his blood. Genetic.
Once I took surf lessons and got competent, our moms would sit in the sand and discuss Mom Things while Teddy and I surfed. And I got better and better, but still Teddy was always leagues above. He could have been on surf teams, surfed competitively, but he said once, while we floated on our boards, “It’s not about that. It’s about me and my dad and my board and the ocean. The other stuff just gets in the way.”
I wasn’t other stuff. I was flattered that he wanted me along.
Seven
Teddy
Sid was fantastic at surfing. A strong paddler, fast down the line, beautiful turns, and she was learning aerials. Her only drawback was over-exuberance. I told her to sit, watch, count the waves, wait for the right one, be patient, and she would nod, say, “Absolutely Teddy,” in total agreement, and paddle like crazy for the very next wave—even though anyone watching could see it was a big crumbly mess. She’d tumble over the falls, head and feet flying, come up with a splash and a giant smile, and paddle, laughing, right back out to where I was sitting. She was almost always laughing.
We parked; loaded up our bags and cooler and books, boards under our arms; threaded through the surfers and cars; and hiked down the beach toward the point. Sid dropped her bags and screwed up her nose, facing the stagnant stretch of lagoon. “Explain this? How can a place so beautiful, so epically fun, have such a mucky cesspool butting up to it?”
“Don’t know, I hear they’re cleaning it.” I dropped the tent to the sand, but Sid was still staring at the lagoon. “The bad helps us keep the good in perspective, maybe? Dad says never to look that way, keep your eyes on the waves.”
She nodded and we set up my tent, loading our towels and cooler inside. This was a big production and we hadn’t even paddled out yet. So we did. The conditions were good, the waves were good, and it was a weekday, the surf wasn’t too crowded.
I looked out at the horizon, and she stared at the side of my face.
I pretended not to notice, but she did it deliberately, more intensely.
Without turning my head, I asked, “Yes?” Then added, “You’d be better if you’d watch the waves.”
“Oh I would, would I?” She plowed her arm into the water, and with a forceful splash all over my face, turned and paddled for a wave. She rode down the line, the top of her head disappearing as the lip curled, spray emanating from the arc of her turns. I watched the area where her ride would end. She kicked out of the wave and flopped to her board, beautiful, smiling, awesome. I cheered as she paddled back to me.
“Did you see Teddy? Wave of the day!”
I did see. I really did.
Eight
Sid
I returned to the beach first, exhausted, because of all those waves I kept taking, most of them not worth the effort, but don’t tell Teddy I said that.
He stayed out for another hour. I loved watching him, scanning the horizon in stillness, then spinning his board, movement and energy, to drop down the face, carve along the top, catching air; finally, he paddled ashore. Then he did what he always does, walked backwards from the ocean. It was as if he couldn’t drag his eyes away, only glancing toward me to correct his path, lingering on the waves; three more steps, then a surfer did a big air and Teddy whistled, took two more backwards steps, and stopped. His eyes swept the landscape, and then, at last, he turned and walked to me.
“Hi Sid.” He gently placed his board on mine.
I squinted up at him as his shadow fell across me. He smiled, brightness haloing his head, leaned over and flung his hair, sprinkling me with saltwater.
“Hey, I’m dry!”
“Exactly! You came in too early, missed all the best waves. If you would just let the bad ones pass, wait for the great ones, you could stay out longer.” He smiled because of course I knew that, he always said it, and yet I still took every wave that came. Just my way I supposed.
“You and all your crazy ideas. Patience? I’m a woman of action, reaction.”
He dropped beside me on the towel, “Speaking of action, I’m hungry, can you hand me a sandwich, I’m wet.”
I pulled the cooler over and rustled inside, pulling out the first layer of sandwiches, and passing him one.
He tore off the wrap and flipped up the edge of the bread to inspect the inside and took a big bite. Chewing, he said, “Epic day, huh? What were you thinking about up here on the beach?”
“I was thinking, why don’t we come here more often?”
“Yeah, me too, but I don’t believe you.” He swallowed. “I think you were thinking, I wonder if Mary Queen of Scots would have liked surfing?”
I laughed, “It crossed my mind, but I already worked that issue out, like three years ago. The answer is, no. She would have hated it. She only went on the ocean when she was being transported from home to a place she barely knew.”
He took another bite of sandwich and stared out at the horizon while he ate, then he said, “Have you got your passport Sid?”
“Not yet, you have one?”
“My mom got me one last year, when she and Dad started planning our trip to Indo next Spring. You should get one. We should go to Scotland.”
He fiddled with his sandwich, eyes cast down. We had talked about going to Scotland together, but in a Friends-Want-to-go-Explore-Castles kind of way, not this, this seemed big, important, today, on this day, Teddy said he wanted to go with me to Scotland. Me and Teddy. He leaned on his shoulder, looking up at me from under his brow. His eyes squinting, his gaze intense.
“I’ll ask Mom to get one tomorrow.”
Nine
Mary
(Explained to Teddy, when he and Sid were 12)
Sid was sitting on a swing at their favorite park, dangling and spinning, feet twisting in the sand. “Teddy, did you know Mary was a teenager in France?”
Tedd
y was sitting sideways on the other swing, swaying side to side. “I didn’t realize that.”
“She was, she played music, wrote poetry, danced and had a bunch of friends. Imagine that—she was a baby in Scotland and then was shipped off to France. The weather was probably so much better. She lived in a palace surrounded by exquisite gardens, fancy dresses, riches.”
“That was probably cool.”
“She was promised to the Dauphin of France, that’s a prince, at five years old, Teddy, can you believe it? Marriage plans—at five. He was a year younger, and then she married him and at sixteen, she was the Queen Consort of France and the Queen of Scots.”
“That’s a lot of power.”
“And contrast that with before, contrast it with what comes next.”
“What does come next—it must have sucked, because she isn’t known as the Queen of France or anything.”
“Because all that ended a year later, Teddy, one year. The prince died of an ear infection. I’m serious, an ear infection.”
“That’s totally tragic.”
Sid looked at Teddy for a long pause and then said, “Thank you.”
Teddy asked, “For what?”
“For getting the tragedy of it all.”
Ten
Teddy
Why today? Why now, why not five years ago, why not three years from now, next week? How come we both decided to spend this day, full of locking eyes and long pauses, together. I didn’t know, I couldn’t explain it, but we were leading up to something big.
That’s what kept running through my mind, but now, after we finished our sandwiches, lying half in and out of my pop-up tent, I thought, why here, in a tent in Malibu, why not at home? If I had ever said, “Hey Sid, let me spend the night.” All of our parents would have swooned with delight.
The Moms would have rejoiced, “We get all of our Thanksgivings together!”
My parents would probably give Sid a key to the house and book every Christmas with her, mark it on the calendar, with ink. This was a lot of pressure. Maybe that’s why we were here, now. Spontaneous. (Can a lifetime relationship be spontaneous?)
Sid gathered up our trash and deposited it in the cooler and then fluffed up the sand into a pile to lean against. She was half under the tent’s shadow, her legs jutting out into the sun. “Naptime!”
I pretended to be incredulous, “Naptime? We have the entire Scottish Play to get through!” She groaned.
“Now now, the Moms said we have to read the play before we go see it, and I’ll remind you, the Griffith Park Shakespeare Festival starts tomorrow.”
“Didn’t they graduate us already? You’re going to college, you’ve been accepted, I didn’t think we’d have to do anything educational. Ever again.” Sid grinned. Then she added, “And aren’t Willy’s plays supposed to be seen? Why do we have to read it first? But man, I love opening night.”
“Never missed one yet. I argued all of this with Mom, and she said, and I quote, ‘Teddy, when you were homeschooling high school,’ she put air quotes around high school, ‘you surfed every day, all day, and hung out with your friends, and I literally,’ she stressed literally, ‘am asking you to do one thing that acts educational. Read Macbeth, then go see the play. We’ll call that the English class that I already gave you a grade for.’”
Sid cocked her arm under her head. “So this is going down on your permanent record?”
“And yours, the Moms have spoken. Or if they haven’t spoken, they’ve mind-melded over it.”
Sid asked, “So you’re reading to me?”
“I’ll start, sure.” I fished the book from the bag and plowed sand to make a berm to lean against, but Sid patted her stomach, inviting me to use her as a pillow. So I did.
Saying it like that belies the moment though, makes it sound casual and easy, comfortable. Getting my head down to Sid’s belly and relaxing enough to bring the book up to my eyes and calming enough to read the words on the page was fraught with difficulties. Somehow though I read aloud, head nestled on her soft skin, and maybe I could continue, but then she entwined her fingers through my hair. Twirling. I tried to concentrate. I read to the bottom of the page and halfway down the next before I dropped my arm holding the book to the sand.
She continued to twirl, indifferent to my reading or not.
I turned my head, rested my ear on her belly, then I turned over and kissed her stomach, under the bellybutton, in the soft skin just above her bright pink, bikini bottom.
There.
I kissed it again.
I have to admit this was a baller move: to go straight from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, page four, to kissing her between the bellybutton and the panties, and whoa, here’s me and Sid, can’t do things the same as everyone else.
I fell in love with her when I still wore a cape safety-pinned to my shoulders, in public. Had been best friends with her for all these years, and our first kiss? It was on her stomach. First kiss.
I put my ear back to her stomach and looked up at her face again; her eyes were closed. Her lips curled up in a half-smile. An unmistakable bedroom smile, the kind of smile that happens in the dark, eyes closed, not to be shared, just because what you’re feeling makes you happy—that kind of smile. Sid was Bedroom Smiling for me.
I rose onto my hands and knees and crawled up her body, aiming for her lips—her bag emitted Jack Johnson, crooning Banana Pancakes. Sid giggled. “Perfect timing for a phone call.”
I dropped to the side and laughed too.
She said, “Wait, that’s Dad, why would Dad be calling?”
She sat up, rifled through her bag, and fished out the phone. “Hi?” Then “Umhmm,” and “oh,” and, “uh yes, okay, um,” She looked away from me, at a seashell near her foot, madly twirling the end of a strand of hair. “Yeah, about an hour, I’ll call when I’m close. Okay, room 148. Okay Dad. She’s okay, right? Um hmmm. Okay.”
She hung up the phone and covered her face with her hands.
“Sid, is everything okay?”
“Mom’s in the hospital. It sounds bad.” She ran her hands up her face and through her hair and looked around at the stuff, the tent, our boards. “I have to go.” Her voice sounded like an explanation, but I was already packing our bags.
Eleven
Sid
Mothers aren’t supposed to fall down. We all know that. So when they do—causing the gasp to run the opposite way—when it’s the children with panic in their hearts, asking, “Mommy, are you okay?” It’s a tragedy. If every moment of mother panic causes another grey hair, what does panic in children cause? Shortness of breath? Despair? Lack of ease—it might not show on the outside, but inside you’ve gained a bit of something bad, dislodged something important, like your center’s gone askew.
And that’s when Mom falls down.
What happens when Mom falls down dead? What if she acquires a Falling Down Dead Disease, or a Can’t Stand Up Anymore Syndrome? Something that knocks the knees out from under her and causes her children not just to gasp but to stumble over themselves trying to pick her back up. And what if mom can’t be picked back up? What then?
Twelve
Sid
Mom was asleep on the bed. Mouth open, small snores, pale thin skin, dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was stringy. I tried to remember what she looked like last time I saw her. It wasn’t this morning, she had slept in while I packed sandwiches. Had I seen her last night? I passed her in the kitchen to eat dinner in my room. When was the last time I sat and talked to her, looked her in the eyes, three days ago? Jeez. That sucked.
There were two chairs in the room beside Mom’s hospital bed. Dad sat in one, staring at the side of Mom’s face, “We’re waiting for the Doctor to come during his rounds.”
I slumped in a chair beside him. “What did he say when you saw him this morning?”
“It’s liver failure and that’s a lot to deal with. But luckily she’ll just be here for a few days.”
It took two more
hours before mom woke up and looked around, surprised to be in the room. Her eyes fell on me. “Oh, Sid, when did you come in? I wish you would have woken me.” She acted as if she’d just taken a small nap on the comfortable blue couch in our living room, instead of sleeping for hours in a hospital bed.
“Just a little bit ago.”
She gestured for me to come to the bed, so I perched on the side. Her hand had wires and tubes sticking out and looked veiny and dry and fragile. She placed it on my knee, so light, like it might float away. “How was the beach?”
“Good, or I mean, great, Teddy kissed me.”
She said, “Well, it’s about time.”
I giggled, “Actually it wasn’t an official kiss, it was right here,” I pointed where Teddy’s lips had been just hours before, “and then we were interrupted.”
Mom said, “Well shit, I always did have terrible timing. Sorry about that. Is he here?”
“I don’t—probably, outside somewhere, he can’t come in because he’s not family.”
The Doctor walked in.
He told us he “didn’t know anything,” that we were, “waiting to see,” that we, “would know more tomorrow,” that they were, “doing all they could.” And then he was gone, and Mom drifted away to sleep.
Thirteen
Mary (Sid, a year earlier)
Sid and Teddy Page 2