Life's a Beach

by Claire Cook

  Sage tilted her head at Noah and wagged her tail. “Cats are completely self-sufficient,” I said. “They’re happy to see you, but they don’t really need you because they have a life of their own.”

  Boyfriend batted a yellow marble out from under the couch. “Dogs have your back,” Noah said. “Their feelings for you are completely unconditional.”

  “Cats are discriminating. You get what you earn with a cat.”

  We stared at each other. One of us seriously needed to smooth things over here, but it certainly wasn’t going to be me.

  “So,” Noah said. “I guess tonight’s not really going too well.”

  I took a deep breath. “Maybe next time you should call first.”

  “It never bothered you before.”

  “Well, it does now.”

  Noah and his dog were almost down the stairs before I remembered to yell, “And by the way, thanks for the flowers.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he yelled back.

  Chapter 14

  I PACED THE FULL LENGTH OF MY APARTMENT. FOR seven steps in one direction, and seven steps back again, I replayed my fight with Noah over and over in my head. It was a really stupid fight. Not that I’d had many really smart fights in my life, but still. Bottom line, though, he was old enough to know you don’t throw pebbles at a girl’s window. You call.

  Now the worst thing was that he didn’t know Riley and I were going to Hollywood. Or maybe the best thing was he didn’t know we were going. It was hard to tell. Possibly it didn’t matter. I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t be back in a week or two. Though maybe a little time to miss me wouldn’t be a bad idea. But what if he didn’t even notice I was gone?

  Okay, the other way to look at it was that what if he’d already written me off, and then I’d get back and find out he’d had all that time to move on, and I wouldn’t know I was supposed to start moving on, so I hadn’t even started. That would really suck.

  But, wait. This wasn’t about the guy. It was the perfect time to go. For me. While Riley worked, I could devote myself entirely to my art. My apartment would be in the hands of fate, or at least my mother, and completely out of my control. I wouldn’t be hanging around comparing myself to my talented boyfriend, or possible ex-boyfriend. Or even to my talented cat. I’d bring my books and supplies. I’d scour the shops and galleries for ideas. Maybe I couldn’t figure out how to have a relationship to save my life, but all that suffering might end up being great for my art.

  I felt better already. I reached over and picked up my cat. I carried him down to his pet carrier on wheels and took him for an extra long walk. The summer crowds would be arriving in Marshbury this weekend, just like they did every Memorial Day weekend. July and August would be worse in terms of numbers, but still, you’d feel the difference right away, and everybody’s lives would change at least a little until after Labor Day. You knew the best time to shop and which back roads to take to avoid the worst of the traffic during the summer months, and you adjusted. When I first moved home again, the summer rhythm had come right back to me, as if I’d never been away.

  It was too dark to walk the beach, but the stars and the streetlights gave us enough light to walk around the beach parking lot. I picked up a couple tiny pieces of driftwood from the sandy edges, and put them into the compartment with Boyfriend. He immediately batted one of them into the netting. “Score,” I said.

  It was surprisingly quiet. Maybe all the tourists were stuck in traffic. We took our time walking back, enjoying the empty streets while we still could. I stood outside the open garage door and looked up at the sky. It was probably really silly, especially since it was Geri’s idea, but I had this sudden urge to dig up St. Christopher. Maybe he could be my good luck charm for the artistic travels on my horizon.

  Boyfriend meowed loudly. “Just give me one minute,” I whispered. I turned on the garage lights, inside and out. I could make out the green circle of grass from here, so I grabbed a shovel and got to work.

  Ten minutes and a trip up to my apartment to get a flashlight later, and I was sure. St. Christopher had completely disappeared. I unzipped Boyfriend from his carrier and ran up the stairs with him as fast as I could. I locked the door behind us and dialed my parents’ number.

  “Mom?” I whispered when she answered the phone.

  “Why are you whispering?” she whispered.

  “Mom, can you come over here?”

  “Ginger, tell me what happened.”

  “Well, Dad and I tried to dig up St. Joseph. Actually, I was only the lookout. But St. Joseph wasn’t there and I didn’t want you and Dad to get into a fight, so I asked Geri for another St. Joseph, but all she had was a St. Christopher, so I buried him instead. But he turned out to be the patron saint of travelers, and Geri thought that might be why Riley and I were going to Hollywood, so I tried to dig him up to bring him with us for good luck.” I looked down and saw actual goosebumps on my forearms. Maybe this was how people became born-again. “And now he’s gone, too.”

  “I’ll be right there,” my mother said before she hung up.

  MY MOTHER WAS wearing slippers and her old terrycloth bathrobe. She must have just finished washing up, because a stretchy aqua headband held her thick gray hair off her shiny face, and I could smell Pond’s cold cream as soon as I opened the door.

  I threw my arms around her. “Mom,” I said.

  I stepped back and rubbed my hip bones. “Ouch. What was that?”

  A greenish yellow plastic statue was peeking out of each of my mother’s two square bathrobe pockets. “Mom?”

  My mother pulled out the statues and placed them on my kitchen counter. “This place could use a good cleaning,” she said. “And why is that scooter still here?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” I said.

  She sat down at my kitchen table, and I did, too. Maybe it was because I was used to seeing her in yoga pants instead of a bathrobe, but my mother looked almost old tonight. “Seller’s remorse, I suppose,” she said finally, “but as soon as we buried St. Joseph, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to rush things along. So many memories.”

  “But what about St. Christopher?”

  She shrugged. “How did I know that’s who he was until I got him home? My night vision’s not what it used to be.”

  “Don’t say that, Mom. You have eyes in the back of your head.”

  My mother smiled.

  “Does this mean we get to keep the house?”

  “Honestly, Ginger. Sometimes you sound like the world’s oldest living adolescent.”

  My eyes teared up. “I know. I know. I just can’t seem to get my bearings.” I put my elbows on the table and leaned my head into my hands, and Boyfriend rubbed up against my legs. “It’s embarrassing, Mom. I’m forty-one years old, and I haven’t been this completely and utterly lost since I was sixteen.” I looked up. “But I really do want you and Dad to be happy. You should do whatever you want to do about the house. I’ll be fine.”

  My mother put her hand on my arm. “Of course you’ll be fine, honey. I think the best thing for all of us is to sell the house. We’ll do it fast, like pulling off a Band-Aid.”

  I nodded. The kitchen table felt warm and safe under the light of the little yellow lamp hanging over us. I tried to imagine sitting around a table at my mother’s age, and wondered who the other people would be. I couldn’t get a picture.

  My mother picked up a piece of sea glass from the table and put it back in Boyfriend’s sculpture. Boyfriend jumped up on my mother’s lap, and she started petting him. “Hi, handsome,” she whispered.

  “You know, Dad says one of your red hat friends is always kissing him.”

  My mother smiled. “Oh, they’re awful. They’ll be lined up at his door in five minutes if I go first.”

  “Do you really think Dad will be okay in the townhouse, Mom?”

  “He’ll be fine, honey. It just takes him a while. I tell you, that father of yours would hang a tea bag out to d
ry on a clothesline just so he wouldn’t have to say good-bye to it.”

  Boyfriend jumped off my mother’s lap and circled around and jumped up on mine. “Hey, Champ,” I said.

  “Deep down inside, I know it’s the right thing to do. There’ll be dances and parties and a first-rate gym, and we won’t have to mow the lawn. And your father and I have always wanted to live in a house that’s brand spanking new.”

  I nodded.

  “The only thing I’m worried about are the cliques and the claques and everyone knowing everyone else’s business.”

  “Don’t tell me people still do that at your age? I was hoping things would get easier by then.”

  My mother blew out a puff of breath with the same horsy sound Geri always made. “It’s an active adult community, fifty-five-plus, not a nursing home. There are some real youngsters there. Some of them aren’t much older than you and your sister.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mom.” Boyfriend jumped off my lap and headed off to chase down a marble. “Mom?”

  She covered her mouth and yawned again. “Excuse me. What, honey?”

  “Did you ever wish you hadn’t had kids? I mean, not now maybe, but when you were younger? You know, was there ever anything you really wished you could have done but couldn’t, because of us?”

  She clasped her hands together and stretched them up over her head. “Well, when you were little I used to tell you I wanted to be the first woman president, but the truth was I would have loved to dance on Broadway. I had such dreams of being a Rockette.”

  I leaned forward over the table. “You gave that up for us, Mom?”

  “No, I gave that up because my legs were too short.” She pulled her stretchy headband back down over her ears, then rested one hand on mine. “You make a decision and you don’t look back, honey. Have a family. Don’t have a family. But, meanwhile, you’ve got a great big world out there to enjoy.”

  “It just seems like everyone else is already out there living their lives, you know, buzzing right by me, two by two.”

  “You’ve got a boyfriend named Noah, honey. You can probably get a good seat on the ark.”

  My fight with Noah bubbled up again, and I sat with it for a minute. “I’m not sure this is even about Noah, Mom.”

  My mother stood up and retied the belt on her robe. She put St. Joseph back in her pocket and handed me St. Christopher. I stood up, too, and she placed her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the forehead. “Ever since you were tiny, you always had to find the hardest way to do everything. Remember, Virginia, you choose your life or it chooses you.”

  I was pretty sure I recognized this as just another variation of her You Can Be Anything You Want to Be speech, but I let it go. My mother was the only one who ever called me Virginia. Geri was named Gerianne after a favorite great aunt, and eight years later I was named Virginia after the state where I was conceived during one of the romantic getaways my mother was always dragging my father along on. It seemed a statement on the trajectory of my mother’s growth. Had I been born a few years later, I might well have been named Pilates.

  “Got it,” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure I did. “Hey, Mom, do you think there’s a patron saint of disappearing statues?”

  “God only knows,” my mother said. “Come on, your father was sound asleep when I left. Let’s go give St. Joseph a quick burial.”

  Chapter 15

  “PSST,” MY FATHER SAID BEHIND ME.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said without turning around. I had every bit of clothing I owned spread out on my pulled-out sofa, and I was trying to figure out what could be packed right away and what should probably be washed first.

  “Just tell me, what was the old bat doing over here last night?”

  “Just tell me you didn’t bring another garbage bag with you, okay, Dad?”

  “Better than that, Dollface, better than that.”

  I wasn’t sure if I turned and then heard the meows, or if I turned because I heard the meows. My father pushed Boyfriend’s pet carrier on wheels all the way into the room. Even I had to admit it definitely looked like a stroller right now. My father was grinning from ear to ear.

  I leaned over. Two tiny kittens, one mostly black and one mostly white, were curled up on a pink blanket under the green mesh. The white one opened its mouth, and the sound it made was actually more like a mew than a full-blown meow. “Awhh,” I said. “Where did you get them?”

  “The Take It or Leave It,” he said. “No way that mother of yours would put two defenseless kittens out on the street. Champ and I will take care of them while you’re gone, and when you get back, you can help us out.”

  “You brought cats home from the dump, Dad? What if Boyfriend catches something from them?”

  My father pressed on the handle and started bouncing the stroller up and down. “Don’t be ridiculous, Toots. I got them from a very respectable lady who had them in a fancy wicker basket. They’ve had their first shots and all the rest of that rigmarole. Good thing, it’s highway robbery what those vets charge these days.”

  Boyfriend was eyeing the carriage and circling it with the long careful steps of a leopard hunting its prey. “Dad, I think one cat might be enough.”

  My father leaned over to pick up Boyfriend, who sprang across the room like he’d been shot at. “Oh, they’ll be thick as thieves before you know it,” my father said. “Come on, now, spill the beans about last night and then we’ll go buy some kitten chow.”

  “It was just girl talk, Dad. No cloak-and-dagger stuff at all.”

  “You’re not pulling my leg now, are you, Toots?”

  “Cross my heart,” I said.

  I was trying to stay away from them, but I couldn’t help myself. I unzipped the zipper that ran down the center of the netting, and reached in and took out the black kitten, and then the white one, and I cuddled them both to my chest. They were so tiny. We’d had kittens growing up, but Boyfriend had been a full-grown shelter cat when I adopted him, so it had been a long time since I’d smelled that kitten smell.

  Eventually I zipped them back in their stroller. “I am so out of this, Dad. When Mom finds out, just tell her you got them after I left, okay?”

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON by the time I made it over to Geri’s house. When I walked into her kitchen, she put her BlackBerry down in a ceramic bowl on her granite kitchen island, where it nestled in right next to Seth’s. I nodded at them. “Life is but a bowl of BlackBerrys,” I said.

  She ignored me and picked up her phone and pressed some buttons.

  I opened the refrigerator and had to settle for an apple. My sister needed to shop more often. I held it up. “Is this washed?” I asked.

  “Shh,” Geri said. She pushed a button on the phone. “Ohmigod, will you listen to this.”

  She handed me the phone, so I did. “I don’t know if you’re involved in casting for the movie,” a woman’s voice said. “But this is Laura Meeker and my son is on Riley’s soccer team and I understand there are roles for school-age children. My son is a redhead and would look great with Brad Pitt. Even though Brad Pitt isn’t a redhead, but you could dye it. My son, not Brad, of course. Is Brad Pitt really in the movie? That’s what I heard. Anyway, I know it’s a little forward of me to ask, but I thought it was worth a try. I can send you a head shot if you’d like. Again, this is Laura Meeker and my son usually plays defense and his name is Josh and he and Riley are very compatible. We’re at 781-555-5335.”

  “Wow,” I said as I handed the phone back to Geri and took a bite of my possibly unwashed apple. “Are you going to call her back?”

  Geri shook her head. “No way. She didn’t even invite Riley to Josh’s last birthday party. And it’s not like she didn’t invite half the soccer team.” Geri put the phone back and opened the refrigerator and got herself a piece of string cheese. “I hate this stuff,” she said as she chewed. “Anyway, I think that’s call number seven or eight. My favorite was from one of Mom’s friends who offered me money to d
ump you and hire her.”

  “And you didn’t take it?”

  “It wasn’t that much money.” Geri was back sitting at the counter and making a list on a legal pad.

  “Hey,” I said. “You didn’t happen to hear that I slept with someone to get Riley his part, did you?”

  Rachel came into the room and opened the refrigerator. “Oh, that’s so old news,” she said. “So, have you and Noah said good-bye yet?”

  “Possibly,” I said.

  Geri opened her eyes wide. “Did he break up with you?”

  I opened my eyes wider. “What makes you think he’d be the one to break up with me?”

  “Listen,” Geri said. “I can FedEx you anything Riley forgets, and Riley’s teacher will fax his last bit of homework for the year to the hotel and you can bring it in to the set teacher. Call me every day when you get up. Riley has a cell phone so he can call me, too.”

  “Riley has a cell phone? I barely have a cell phone.”

  “Of course he has a cell phone. All kids have cell phones. They’re like umbilical cords. When the girls go to sleepovers, Seth and I make them send us periodic photos so we know they haven’t tiptoed out of the house while the parents weren’t paying attention.”

  “The way you and I used to in high school?”

  Apparently Geri wasn’t in the mood to reminisce. She wrote a few more words on her list, then put her pen down and looked up. “Okay, what happened with Noah?”

  I took a bite of my apple and chewed it slowly. “We had a fight.”

  “And . . .”

  “And I’m not even sure if he knows I’m leaving. Although, come to think of it, Allison Flagg probably told him when she told him I was sleeping around. And that I wanted to have kids.” This was the downside of living in a small town like Marshbury, where everybody knew everybody else. If you weren’t paranoid when you moved in, it didn’t take long.

  Geri peeled off a long string of cheese and popped it into her mouth. “So, call him.”

  “Why should I have to be the one who calls?”