“Sometimes.”
“And she’s feeling all sorry for you right now cuz she was sick.”
I didn’t like it when Nelson started talking about my mom’s cancer. “I don’t know if—”
“Quit being a wuss. This is our chance. I’ll bet he’s got some really cool surfboards and everything. So, here’s the plan, how long did you say he’s gonna be there?”
“Few days, I think.”
“So, you just tell your mom that you wanna learn to surf. And then you bring her the bong and make her put her feet up.”
I laughed. “Dude, you always got the plans.”
I’d been begging my mom to let me learn how to surf forever, and it made her so mad. “No! It’s too dangerous,” she’d always say. “Don’t ask me again.”
After we were done with homework and played our guitars, Nelson and I’d usually go over to Pleasure Point and watch the surfers. Nelson didn’t have a surfboard, and he wanted to learn just as much as I did, but my mom always thought I was gonna drown or something.
“What’re they doing right now?” Nelson said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Einstein, look out your room and tell me.”
I cracked my bedroom door open and saw my mom and Jax washing dishes and kind of whispering to each other. “They’re washing dishes, okay?”
“Well, call me later. This guy’s our ticket to surfing. Un-freaking-real. I gotta go,” he said. “See ya in school tomorrow.”
I hung up the phone and played my guitar, but something didn’t feel right. My mom had been acting all gushy and over-nice at dinner, and I had this weird feeling that she was lying to me.
I knew a lot more than my mom thought I knew.
Here’s some of what I knew: I knew where she kept those purple and pink plastic sex toy things (that was super embarrassing). Even before she got one of those licenses to smoke weed, I knew where she kept her pipes and stash. And I knew that the tea she made out of those poppy seed pods she ordered from some lady in Washington was really opium and not what she told me it was, “just a tea to help mommy sleep.” She told me not to drink the tea, and I wasn’t planning on it because it made her really woozy. I knew, because I looked it up on the internet, that opium was for pain, and it gets people high. And I knew that my mom had cancer. She told me all about that.
But I didn’t know what was in that metal box she kept in her closet. The one with the lock on it.
Lately she’d been drinking too much of that poppy seed tea and at night, and after she thought I was asleep, sometimes I’d get up in the middle of the night and see her sitting by the fireplace with her bong. She’d be crying and looking through that metal box where she had some kind of notebook she liked to write in. A lot of nights I’d crouch down real quiet behind my bedroom door and want to go hug her, but I couldn’t because that would’ve upset her more.
When my mom was at work, I’d started going through her stuff, and that’s when I’d found those gross sex toys and her pipes and that metal box that she kept in her closet. But I couldn’t find a key anywhere.
I set down my guitar and crept over to the window because I heard my mom laughing. I hadn’t heard Mom laugh in a long time, and it was kinda nice. She and Jax were sitting on the bench swing talking, laughing, and looking pretty darn comfortable. And that’s when I saw my mom turn to Jax and kiss him. It was just a little kiss, kind of a peck, but I’d never seen my mom kiss anyone before. She’d never had a boyfriend. “You’re all I need, honey,” she’d say, if I ever asked her about it. Most kids’ moms had boyfriends or husbands. But not my mom.
When I saw her kiss Jax, I jumped back from the window like I’d been shocked, kinda like when I tried to get my piece of toast out of the toaster that time with a fork. And then I saw Jax hold hands with my mom. I couldn’t move for a long time, so I watched, but that was about all that happened. Then they finally got up, and I raced to my bed before my mom came in my room to tell me to brush my teeth.
Something wasn’t right.
I knew more than my mom thought I knew, but some things I didn’t know. And I was planning on finding out.
Jax
“Nice ride, Rosalyn,” I said, as I slid behind the driver’s seat of her black Explorer.
“I know it’s not the bimmer, but it’s better for Eugene and me.” She turned around, patting Eugene’s hand. “Buckled in, baby?”
The plan was that I’d drop everyone off at school and work then pick them up later. “That way you can see where Eugene goes to school,” Rosalyn had told me. Honestly, there didn’t seem to be much of a plan in place, but that was only our second day together so I was following Rosalyn’s lead.
Our first stop was to pick up Eugene’s friend Nelson. “It’s right here on the left,” Rosalyn said, pointing out a modest, white, one story home that could’ve used a fresh coat of paint. A few forlorn roses strained toward the sun from a rose bush that’d been planted under the picture window.
A boy Eugene’s age with blond hair, faded jeans, and a Nirvana T-shirt waited on the front porch. Spotting us, he slunk toward the car, leaning forward to balance his heavy backpack.
He slid into the backseat and started talking right away. “You’re Jax Priest, right?”
I smiled and reached my hand around for a shake. “Pleased to meet you. And you must be—”
“Nelson, at your service,” he said with a big grin.
I put the truck in gear, and we were off.
“So, you surf big waves, huh?” Nelson said.
“Yep. I guess Eugene told you.”
“Dude, that is flippin’ awesome! Do you get to surf Mavs?”
“Only my favorite surf spot in the world.”
“And you get to surf Jaws?”
“Yep, I like to surf Maui in the winter.”
He slapped the back of the seat and said, “Un-flippin-believable. Will you take Eugene and me out there?”
“I don’t think so. Not safe for beginners. Maybe we could go out on some of the smaller waves.”
Rosalyn piped up and said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Boys, Jax is pretty busy—”
“Yeah?” Nelson said. “Busy doing what?”
“He’s just busy, Nelson.”
Then Eugene said, “Mom, come on, let’s go down to the beach while Jax is here, and maybe he can take us out.”
I said, “I give surf lessons.”
Rosalyn shot me a look. “It’s not safe for Eugene out there. And I don’t know if Nelson’s mom wants him—”
“My mom don’t care,” Nelson said. “So maybe we can go, right?” He leaned forward until his head was right between Rosalyn’s and mine. “I mean, you might not be here that long. We want a lesson.”
“It’s this next right,” Rosalyn said. She tapped me on the arm. I turned down the driveway where all the other parents were lined up to drop kids off, and soon we were in front of the school.
Eugene and Nelson unbuckled their seat belts, grabbed their backpacks, and hopped out of the car.
“You got your lunch, honey?” Rosalyn said.
Eugene blushed and said, “Yes, mom.”
Nelson stuck his head through the passenger window, his face inches from Rosalyn’s, and said, “So, maybe Jax can take us surfing?”
“He’s busy,” she said.
“But he’s on vacation, right?”
“No, Nelson, he’s not on vacation.”
“But he’s got time off. How long’s he gonna be here?”
Rosalyn said, “You guys need to get to class.”
Nelson directed his attention to me. “So, you’ll be here a few days? Can we hang out?”
Eugene tugged at Nelson’s shirt. “Come on, we gotta get to class.”
I laughed. “Yes, we can hang out.”
Nelson pumped his fist twice. “Right on! See ya after school.”
The two boys raced toward the school, Nelson in the lead.
I gr
ipped the steering wheel and faced Rosalyn. “Why won’t you let him surf?”
She folded her arms in front of her and stared straight ahead. “I already told you. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not with what they’ll be doing. I’ll take them out on a nice easy day.”
“Eugene can’t swim that well. He’s … fragile.”
Why was she treating him with kid gloves? “Doesn’t seem that fragile to me.”
“And I don’t want him to get hurt.”
“He won’t get hurt.” I studied Rosalyn. “Roz, you already know what I’m going to say. If Eugene were my kid … I mean if I’d raised him, he’d have been surfing from the time he was a toddler.”
She uncrossed her arms and whirled around to face me. “But he’s not—I mean, he hasn’t been your kid … I mean, oh just stop making this difficult. Surfing’s dangerous.”
I glanced at Rosalyn. “Did you stop surfing when you moved here?”
Her mouth was a firm line. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I had a child to raise.”
“But you live in Santa Cruz. Waves here are some of the best on the coast.”
She turned to face me. “Not everything in life is about the waves.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t say it was.”
Rosalyn’s voice became high pitched. “You don’t know what it’s like, raising a kid, and …”
I placed a hand on her arm. “Well, let me find out then.”
“How? By taking my baby out in that dangerous ocean?”
“He’s not a baby,” I said. “He’s thirteen.”
Rosalyn looked out the window. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
I was getting nowhere. “It’s not a mistake. Why’re you being this way?”
“I’m not having a good morning, Jax. If you want to know what’s going on, the truth is I don’t sleep much anymore.”
I cleared my throat and gripped the steering wheel tight. “I’m sorry.”
Her voice was a whisper. “Jax, Eugene is all I’ve got.”
So I let it go.
We fell into a routine over the next few days of me driving everyone to school and shuttling the boys to their band practice. Eugene and Nelson had been playing in a band with two other boys, one who played drums and another who played guitar. They practiced in the garage of one of the kids whose dad had about a million tattoos on his arms and a German Shepherd so full of energy that every time I pet her, she peed all over herself.
This life, filled with peanut butter and honey sandwiches, family dinners, and carpools, was so different from what my life had been no more than a week prior. Far cry from the Ritz-Carlton, I thought wryly.
I still couldn’t believe that I had a son. Eugene was a sweet boy on the verge of becoming a teenager. I smiled. He even had peach fuzz on his chin. Every time I looked at him, I tried to find Rosalyn, tried to find myself. I wanted to hug and hold him, wanted to know every single thing about his life. What was he like as a baby? How was it when he took his first steps? What did he feel on his first day of school? What inspired him to become a musician? I thought of Tyler again, who had always felt music and always interpreted life through the songs he wrote. I swallowed, a lump in my throat.
Rosalyn’s child. My child.
In those thirteen years we’d been separated, I’d somehow gotten on with life. But all it took was a few minutes in Rosalyn’s presence to make me realize that I’d never gotten over her. I knew my life would be changing radically, and I embraced the thought.
I was so in love I could barely concentrate.
The day before, she’d walked out to the front yard where I was screwing my surfboard fin into the fin box of the board. I’d stared at her delicate bare feet caressing the grass, her shapely legs, and then her gorgeous bedroom eyes when my hand slipped, and I cut my other hand. She’d run and gotten me a bandage but all I wanted was for her to kiss it and make it better. As she tenderly applied the dressing to my hand, I gazed at her luscious lips that I’d kissed so many times, and all I wanted was to kiss her and make everything better.
Rosalyn put up a good front, making dinner, helping Eugene with his homework, even putting in a few hours at work every day, but I saw how much of that poppy seed tea she drank at night, and she’d been hitting the bong pretty hard. Heck, she’d always hit the bong hard, so nothing new there, I thought with a grin.
Every time I thought about Rosalyn’s predicament, my chest became tight with panic, so I tried not to think about it. Instead, I surfed.
During the day I’d paddle out to the lineup at The Hook, Steamer Lane, and Pleasure Point, enjoying the brisk Santa Cruz ocean, the abundance of sea life, and baby sea otters popping up next to my board, their whiskers twitching, their eyes inquisitive. I surfed for so many hours that I thought my arms were going to fall off from paddling.
I’d been there almost a week. One day, I picked Eugene and Nelson up from school.
“You guys want to go to the pier?” I asked.
“Does a chicken have a pecker?” Nelson said. “Heck yeah, we want to go.” I shook my head. I remembered what I had been like at Nelson’s age. I had wanted to work swear words and off-color jokes into conversations with friends. He must have felt comfortable enough with me.
We drove to the Santa Cruz wharf, a place of arcades, novelty shops, and touristy restaurants, some of which overlooked Cowell’s and Steamer Lane surf spots. We strolled along the boardwalk that day, the warm sun shining down on us, a few sun-weathered fisherman intent on catching their dinner.
“Can we go in here?” Nelson said when we came to a place called Marini’s.
“Sure,” I said, and both boys ran ahead of me.
Marini’s was an old-fashioned candy shop with glass display cases that held a wide assortment of handmade chocolates and other sugary treats.
“Yuck,” Eugene said, pointing to a rack that held freshly made chocolates. “Chocolate covered bacon.”
“That’s disgusting,” Nelson said. “Bacon’s cool on its own, but with chocolate?” He made a face and stuck his finger in his mouth like he was going to throw up.
“Can we get some cotton candy?” Eugene asked.
A teenage boy stood behind the counter smiling broadly, displaying a mouth full of braces. “Make it while you watch.”
Both boys got blue cotton candy because, they informed me, pink was for girls, and we sauntered down the dock. When we made it to the end, we heard the distinctive barking of sea lions. There, on the pilings that support the landing, lived several families of sea lions and walruses. They slept in a big tangle of dark, blubbery skin, whiskers and teeth. We stood looking over the side of the jetty as the animals slowly flapped their fins and rolled over. Two even got into some kind of heated argument that included baring their teeth.
“Did you see that?” Nelson said, jumping up and down. “That big one almost took a hunk out of the other one. Sick.”
Eugene gazed at me, his green eyes peeking out from behind his dark hair, plucked a mouthful of cotton candy off the stick, and said, “My mom never lets me have this kind of stuff.”
And then Nelson said, “Your mom’s cool, but she’s kind of a buzzkill sometimes. Jax, when you gonna talk her into letting us surf?”
“Wish it were my call, but she seems pretty protective.”
“Can’t you at least talk to her?” Eugene said.
“I can try, but I’m not making any promises.” When I was Eugene’s age, I was already dropping into double overhead waves on the biggest days at Sunset Cliffs during winter swells.
“You really drop in on fifty foot waves?” Nelson said.
I smiled. “Yep. It’s a rush, that’s for sure.”
“Freakin’ awesome is what it is.”
I told them about all the places I’d surfed, and some other places that I advised I’d have to kill them if they discovered because the locations were top secret.
“Shoot,” Eugene said, picking another piece of cotton candy off of the stick and stuffing it in his mouth, “I’ve never even been to Mavs, and it’s so close. You’re lucky. What’s it like?”
“Not for beginners.”
“One of these days I’m going. I don’t even care what my mom says. There’s buses that go there, you know. She can’t tell me no.” He stared at the ocean. “She can’t stop me.”
“And what’re you gonna do there, bonehead?” Nelson shoved his friend.
“Just … nothing. I don’t know. I just want to see it.”
We drove home. I couldn’t tell if Eugene was warming up to me or not because he was pretty shy.
When was Rosalyn planning on telling Eugene about Tyler, about her diagnosis, about me?
When we got home, I asked, “Hey, you guys want to help me wax up my boards?” If Rosalyn wouldn’t let Eugene surf, the least I could do was show him my surfboards and educate him.
Nelson’s face lit up. “Heck yeah we do.”
The boys crowded around, and I grabbed the boards I’d brought out of the back of my truck, laying them out one by one on the grassy area in front of Rosalyn’s house.
I unzipped the protective cover off the first board. “This is my Pearson Arrow, Jay Moriarty Gun for charging big waves.”
“You tow-in on that?” Nelson asked.
“Nope. Tow-in boards have straps for your feet. This is for paddling into a wave.”
Eugene’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you paddle with your arms into those big waves?”
I smiled at him and said, “Yep. Tow-in’s cool, but whatever it takes to drop into a big wave is all I care about.”
I removed the next board from its cover. “This is my Jeff Clark, Formula Four, Four Fin Gun.”
“Dude! You mean Jeff Clark shaped that board?” Nelson said.
Jeff Clark was a Mavericks pioneer. Nelson had been doing his homework.
“Yep. And he would know how to shape a big wave gun. Surfed Mavs before anyone else. For fifteen years. By himself.”
The boys were practically salivating over the boards. “Let’s see the next one!”
“And this,” I said, carefully removing the next board from its cover, “is my Harbour Nose Rider. You guys know who Rick Harbour is?” They both shook their heads. “Well, he’s been shaping since 1958 in Seal Beach, and this one is meant for walking the board, hanging ten, and nose riding. Do you know what that is?”
Waves of Desire: Pleasure Point Series Book Three Page 8