Life's a Beach

by Claire Cook

  Noah turned around slowly. “Well,” he said, “I really meant to do that, but then somehow most of the week slipped by, and it just seemed to make more sense to come over.” He smiled. “Pizza?”

  I took the slice he handed me. “Well,” I said, “at least this time you remembered I don’t like mushrooms.”

  The first time I met Noah was about two years ago. I had quit my job at an all-inclusive resort in Panama and moved to North Carolina to sell furniture. It turned out that wasn’t my thing either, so I quit that job and moved home.

  I was coming out of a Childfree by Choice meeting. Actually, I never made it all the way inside. I just lurked around in the back of musty old St. Mary’s Hall, listening for a while, staying safely behind the second set of double doors. Then I picked up a two-sided flyer and tiptoed back outside. I liked the idea that there might be some other people in the world my age whose lives didn’t revolve around either their kids or last-ditch efforts to get pregnant, but I wasn’t exactly the clubby type. Plus I’d just moved back to Marshbury and I was afraid of being recognized by someone I went to high school with.

  It was a Friday night in the summer, so Marshbury’s Main Street was closed to all but pedestrian traffic. A couple of sawhorses at either end did the trick. Marshbury merchants set up long tables on the sidewalks in front of their shops, and a farmers’ market featuring local produce took up the center of the street. Craftspeople and a couple of mortgage brokers occupied the remaining space.

  I sat down on a bench at the edge of the sidewalk and started reading the flyer. Wow, these people were serious—they even had T-shirts you could order. CHILDFREE BY CHOICE. PARENT YOURSELF. FAMILY OF ONE. NO KIDDING. I COULD HAVE KIDS, BUT I JUST DON’T LIKE THEM. Not only that, but there were activities for married or single adults who have never had children. I scanned the list. The Chocolate Trolley Tour sounded good, but it also seemed like something I’d bring one of the kids to so I didn’t have to go alone. Riley loved chocolate.

  I looked up. A guy was staring straight at me from one of the booths. “AA?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  He nodded toward the hall. “Did you just come out of an AA meeting?”

  I sat up a little straighter. “Nah, they make me too thirsty.”

  He brushed some hair away from his face and smiled. “Not very PC,” he said.

  “I have that tendency,” I said. I folded up the flyer and stuffed it into my pocket.

  He watched me do it. “So,” he said. “What kind of meeting was it?”

  “I can’t remember,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Well, I guess I could go in there and find out. For both of us.”

  I shrugged. “I guess you could. But then someone might steal your stuff.”

  “Good point,” he said.

  “Childfree by Choice,” I said. “I was just lurking.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “Childfree by Choice in a Catholic church? Isn’t that philosophically inconsistent?”

  “Church hall,” I said. “Maybe there’s an equal opportunity rental clause.”

  “Actually,” he said, “I was just wondering if the meeting was about to get out. Whether I should wait around for a few minutes or pack it in now.”

  Somehow I ended up helping him break his booth down. He introduced me to Sage, his cute, redheaded mutt, who followed his every move with such clear adoration that it seemed to me it would be a lot to live up to. I’d never really thought about it before, but Boyfriend’s indifference was a whole lot less pressure.

  “Do you live in Marshbury?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve lived here a couple years.”

  “And before that?”

  “I apprenticed in Seattle, which is supposed to be kind of the new Mecca for glassblowers.”

  “What’s the old Mecca?”

  “Venice. You should see the stuff they have over there. Anyway, Seattle didn’t work out for personal reasons, so Sage and I went looking for a place where I could make enough money to support us. I knew this was it as soon as I saw it. Great beaches, good vibe. No other glassblowers.”

  I didn’t know anything about glassblowing, but as I wrapped newspaper around a bunch of bowls I seriously wished I could afford, even I could see Noah was talented. I held up the waviest of the bunch. “This is amazing,” I said.

  Noah shrugged. “You can turn most of your mistakes into a wavy bowl. You just hang it upside down and start spinning. It’s basic angular momentum—when an object is spinning, everything flattens and goes to the outer edges.”

  He’d pretty much lost me, so I picked up a cute little folded-over glass plate that held Noah’s business cards. “Great idea,” I said, thinking maybe I could get him to make me one as soon as I figured out what my next business cards would say.

  Noah shook his head. “You would not believe how many of those silly things I’ve sold. I was always forgetting to put out my cards, so one day I just thought I’d recycle a mistake. . . .”

  “Wavy bowl,” I said. “Next time just turn it into a wavy bowl.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll remember that. So, what do you do for a living?”

  I told him how I’d just quit another stupid sales job because I found out that pretty much everyone who worked for this particular Boston rental car company had, like me, been told they were management track. And that I’d only moved Boyfriend and me into my parents’ garage apartment as a temporary thing until I could afford something more appropriate with my soon-to-be manager’s salary, but now it looked like I’d be there until I came up with something else to do. Or until hell froze over, whichever came first.

  Already I could see that Noah was one of those rare people who listened with full attention. His eyes didn’t dance around over my shoulders, on the lookout for something more interesting. When I finished, he picked up a paperweight, deep blue with an explosion of raised yellow swirls that reminded me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. “What if you started making something?” he asked. He made it sound so easy.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever interests you.” He handed me the paperweight, and I considered it like a crystal ball.

  “Too intimidating,” I said, though I was tempted by a quick vision of Noah’s sweaty arms wrapped around my sweaty body as he taught me everything he knew. “But how did you choose glassblowing?”

  Noah shook his head. “My father wanted me to be an accountant, but one summer I took a glassblowing workshop. Then I went back to school in the fall and figured out I could earn as much making bongs as I could putting on a suit.”

  I searched his table for drug paraphernalia.

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve become almost gentrified since college. But I still love glassblowing. It’s the greatest thing I could imagine doing. It’s my life.”

  Judging by the new Honda Element we loaded everything into, it looked like it must be pretty lucrative, too. At least by my standards. Or maybe he had a trust fund. “Can you make a living at it?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “If you work seven days a week and don’t sleep a lot. I mean, I’d do it for free, but it’s a lot more gratifying to make money at it. Plus, my dog likes to eat.”

  “You’d really do it for free?”

  “Sure. That’s the way it has to be. If you’re not really into something, you don’t put the time in, so you don’t get good at it. Passion is the key to everyone’s gifts.”

  I tried to remember that, so I could write it down later. Noah and Sage and I started walking along the street toward the water. Noah showed me a secluded little shelf of rocks between the big town pier and some private docks. As we climbed down there, I wondered if I should be more worried about the possibility of him being an artistic serial killer.

  But we just sat crimelessly on the rocks and looked out at the ocean, which was that really rich shade of blue it reaches before it gets dark out. Some early evening sailing wa
s still going on just past the mouth of the harbor, and closer to me I could feel electricity dancing between us.

  Noah gestured with his head and said, “Look.” On the far side of the harbor, an amazing orangey pink sun hovered just over the lighthouse. We watched it sink slowly behind the tip of the lighthouse and peek out around the sides. Then, all of a sudden, it burst through the glass part of the lighthouse and lit the whole thing up, as if someone had flipped a switch. We watched without moving until it dropped behind the lighthouse and the light went out.

  I turned to look at Noah, and he was smiling as if he’d made it happen just for me.

  “Thanks,” I said, just in case.

  He laughed. “You’re welcome. But I’m not sure I can take full credit. My magic days are over.”

  “You were a magician?” I asked, mostly just to keep him talking.

  “I was pretty geeky all right, but I think I drew the line at magic tricks. I spent most of my formative years playing Dungeons & Dragons. Do you know what a larper is?”

  I was back in serial killer fantasyland again, and I took a moment to visualize my escape route just in case I needed one. “Uh, no,” I said. “What?”

  “A larper is someone who dresses up as his, or her, character. Think swords made from foam wrapped around PVC pipe with duct tape.”

  “Whew, I bet you got a lot of dates with that stuff.”

  “No kidding. Not a lot of prom action going on for me.”

  “What were you? I mean who was your character?”

  Noah rubbed his hands over his face. “Tassrigoth the Elf.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot to recover from. I only played princess for about a month in kindergarten, and then my mother started telling me things like if a princess has a college education she won’t need to be rescued and even princesses should have a prenup. It kind of took the fun right out of it.”

  Nobody said anything for a few seconds, which always makes me nervous, so I reached for something to fill the silence. “You’re not married or anything, are you?” slipped out before I thought it through.

  He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “And apparently I never was.”

  I waited for the rest of the story, but it didn’t come. “Apparently?”

  “My in-laws pulled some strings and had it annulled. So, essentially, my marriage never existed. I’ve always been single. That’s a no. Not married. Or anything.” He rubbed his hands back and forth on his jeans, just above his knees, and looked out at the water.

  Eventually he asked, “So, what about you? Are you married or anything?”

  “Nope. Almost a couple times, I think, but now I’m not even sure I’m remembering it right.”

  He nodded, and Sage rested her head on his knee. This was getting really depressing, so I thought I should try to lighten things up. I hunched over and sighed an exaggerated sigh. “So, anyway,” I said in an old lady voice, “I guess I’m just destined to end up as the crazy maiden aunt living with my cat in an apartment over the garage.”

  Noah sighed, too. “Yeah, I know. Sometimes I just pretend I’m a monk.”

  One of us had to move things along here, and clearly it wasn’t going to be Noah. I leaned back and turned toward him, eyes wide, going for kind of a flirty disbelief. “You’re celibate?”

  He laughed and I laughed. But I’d been around the block enough to know that early in a relationship with anyone, friend or lover, the other person reveals himself. It might take you a month or a few years before you believe it, but he’s already told you who he is and what you can expect from him.

  I didn’t expect a lot from Noah. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted much from him. If you were to graph our relationship over the two years we’d known each other, it wouldn’t have a lot of peaks and valleys. We saw each other fairly regularly, took long walks, went to the occasional movie or art show. We had great sex. I wasn’t sure if we knew much more about each other now than when we first met. Maybe we both just happened to be in the same place, and we were marking time together until one of us drifted away to something else. Or maybe I just couldn’t admit to either of us that I wanted more, because then I’d have to notice if I didn’t get it.

  Chapter 9

  “SO, DID YOU SAY IT?” GERI ASKED FIRST THING SATURday morning.

  I held the phone in place with my chin so I could use both hands to move my father’s garbage bags out of my shower. “Yes, I said it. I said, Did we have dinner plans? Just the way you told me to.”

  “Then what happened? You didn’t let him in, I hope. And if you did, I certainly hope you didn’t do anything.”

  My older sister had a disturbing interest in my sex life. I shoved the garbage bag out into the main room and pulled the door closed. I looked in the mirror and, yes, I was glowing. “Of course not,” I lied. I reached into the shower stall and turned on the water.

  My sister blew some air through her lips and made a sound that horses make. “Don’t you know anything?” she asked. “From a strategic point of view, the worst thing you can do is sleep with him. At least make him work a little.”

  It didn’t seem worth pointing out that sex was the one thing Noah and I had figured out. It was only when we got out of bed that things seemed a bit vague.

  “You know, if you don’t believe you deserve better treatment, you’ll never get it. Look at me. I got everything I wanted.”

  “Yeah, and now you have Mom’s hips.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject. Is he still there?”

  “No, why?”

  “Why? Why? So what, he just shows up, gets laid, and then leaves before he even cooks breakfast for you?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to hang up on my sister, or turn the shower off so I wouldn’t run out of hot water before I even got in. “Oh, please, not that it’s any of your business, but he had to go home to take his dog out. He’s very conscientious like that.”

  “Sure. Too bad you’re not his dog. I hope you at least talked him into helping out at Mom and Dad’s today.”

  “Why? They’re not his parents. Listen, I have to go. I’ll see you over there.”

  “HEY, DAD,” I said, about twenty minutes later when I wandered over to my parents’ house. “Is there any coffee left?”

  “It was nice of that young fellow of yours to help us out before he left,” my father said. “He swept the whole porch.”

  “What? You made Noah sweep the porch?”

  My mother let the screen door slam behind her. “He didn’t seem to mind at all,” she said. “I told him he should show up during daylight hours sometime, so you could bring him over here for dinner.”

  “I can’t have this conversation without caffeine,” I said.

  My mother caught up to me in the kitchen. I poured myself a cup of stale coffee and she climbed up on a stepladder. “We’ll whip the house into shape this weekend, and then get to work on your place early in the week.”

  “Dad’s already helping me with my place,” I said. “We’ve got it under control.” I took a sip of my coffee, then poured the rest of it down the sink. “Where’s the coffee?” I asked.

  “Same place it’s always been.”

  I opened the cupboard next to the refrigerator and grabbed the old tin coffee canister. It wasn’t hard to find, since there were only about three items left on the shelf. “Hey,” I said. “Where did everything go?”

  “We’re trying to make the cupboards look bigger.” My mother climbed down and placed some old bottles on the counter, then climbed back up again.

  I filled a new coffee filter with extra coffee and added water to the coffeemaker, then went over to help my mother. She handed me some more bottles.

  I managed to get them onto the counter without breaking them. They were tiny. The dark brown and green ones looked like they might be antiques, and a clear one looked like the bottom of a baby food jar. Some of them had corks in the top, and others were topped with a circle of fabric tied with a piece of ribbon. “Hilton
Head,” I read out loud from a faded yellow label. “Sanibel. Virginia Beach. Paine’s Creek. Pegotty. What are these?”

  “Sand,” my mother said. “From every beach your father and I have ever walked.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet,” I said. It was strange to think of my parents having collections I hadn’t bothered to notice. I started picking up bottles and reading them. I lined them up across the length of the old flecked counter my parents had never gotten around to upgrading.

  My mother climbed down from the stepladder and leaned back against the counter. She picked up one of the bottles. “We sure walked a lot of beaches in our day.”

  I picked up another one. “Detroit?”

  My mother giggled like she was Becca’s age. “That was from your father. He brought it back from a business trip. I’m sure there are lovely beaches in Detroit, but he scooped the sand from the ashtray in the hotel lobby.” She shook her head. “I think that’s my favorite one of all.”

  “Do you have a box I can pack these in?” I asked.

  My mother handed me a half-full garbage bag. “Just dump them in here.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Mom,” I said.

  “Honey, we can’t take it all with us. There’s nothing worse than a couple of old people with a whole big house full of clutter crammed into a little townhouse.”

  “You’re not old,” I said. “But, okay, I’ll just split these bottles with Geri when she gets here.”

  WHEN I FINALLY GOT HOME from my parents’ house, it was dark and Boyfriend was meowing at the door like he hadn’t seen me in a month. I squatted down and scooped him up in my arms. “Sorry,” I whispered in his ear.

  He started grooming my cheek with his sandpapery tongue. “Yeah, I know, I’m a mess,” I said. I was carrying a bag containing my half of the sand-filled bottles, along with a few empty ones my mother and I had found on the same shelf. I placed the bag on the kitchen counter and reached around with one hand until I found an empty bottle. You never knew when you might pass a beach.

  Boyfriend and I headed down the stairs, and I yanked up one of the heavy garage doors. I dragged out Boyfriend’s pet carrier on wheels, and stood back to take a look at it under the outdoor lights.