by Claire Cook
Geri was making St. Christopher dance back and forth along the railing now. “How did you ever get the nerve to do all that traveling? Especially when you went by yourself? I’d be so afraid I’d get lost before I even got out of the airport.”
I shrugged and put my feet up next to Geri’s. “Any airport in the world, you just follow the signs to the baggage claim. And, anyway, some of the best times happen when you get lost.” I looked over at the little sliver of moon. “Traveling’s so much easier than staying in one place.”
Geri put St. Christopher down for a nap in her lap. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I should have been more adventurous. I’ll never get anywhere now.”
“Sure you will. The kids will grow up, and you and Seth will have plenty of time to travel.”
“Yeah, right. You know, those Childfree people have a point.”
Even though I knew Riley was safely inside the hotel room, I still looked over my shoulder. “Don’t say that. I mean, you’re a mother.” She didn’t say anything, so I added, “Come on, Gerr, you’re scaring me.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry. Of course I love the kids. And Seth. They’re the best things that ever happened to me. It’s just that I think turning fifty means you want to keep everything you already have, but you also want everything you haven’t managed to get yet, too. Before it’s too late.”
Geri pushed her feet against the balcony until the front legs of the chair lifted off the ground. It was one of the more daring moves I’d ever seen her make. “God,” she said. “I never had any idea how selfish I’d been until I had kids. All that time to think about whether I felt like going out or staying in, or spending hours in the bathroom without anyone banging on the door.”
“Yeah, it’s great,” I said. “Especially at holidays, when you’re forty-one and they still put you at the kids’ table.”
My sister shook her head. “Oh, puh-lease, nobody puts you at the children’s table.”
I pushed my own chair back, much farther than Geri’s. “I was speaking metaphorically.”
“So what’s going on with Riley’s rock tumbler?” she asked.
“I’m making homegrown sea glass.”
“Is there a market for that?”
I plopped my chair back down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Geri plopped her chair down, too. “Nothing. I’m just trying to figure out what to do next, that’s all. And a thought just crossed my mind.”
“Not a long journey,” I said.
“Very funny,” she said. “I was thinking maybe we could go into business together or something. I’m going to need a new job, and you could certainly use some help getting your jewelry act together.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I’ve already done some research. We definitely need an online presence so we can sell directly to customers, and I was thinking we could also do home jewelry parties. We can keep the sea glass earrings. . . .”
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
“But we need something that will brand us. Something unique and fresh that nobody else is doing.”
An idea that had been rattling around in the back of my head finally stepped forward. “Hey,” I said. “You know those bottles of sand Mom and Dad collected? What if we found tiny bottles with corks and made them into necklaces? We could add sand, or leave them empty, or maybe put a message inside. You know, something cute that explains that you’re supposed to fill them with sand from your favorite beach. Or wishes or fairy dust, or even samples of blood. Didn’t Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton do that when they were married?”
“See,” Geri said. “That’s why you need me. You start with a good idea, but then you don’t know when to stop. Okay, I’ll go online first thing in the morning and find out where we can buy the bottles. I think the necklace part might be a little tacky, but the sand bottle idea is great. If we can find the right bottles. Maybe we should think about multiples, like those rows of test tube vases.”
“I still like the necklace idea,” I said. “It wouldn’t have to be tacky.”
“We’ll see. And we’ll have to get going right away, because we’ll need to sell about a zillion of them so I don’t have to get another job. Our mortgage payment was killing us even when I was working.”
Amazingly, I had another brilliant idea. “What would it do to your payments if you bought Mom and Dad’s house?”
“Probably cut them in half. You know, that’s not a half bad idea.”
“I could pay you rent, and we could run the business right out of the garage. . . .”
“Seth would never go for it without a garage for his car.”
“Fine,” I said. “We wouldn’t want Seth’s Beamer to get wet. We could run the business out of my apartment. But we’ll have to renegotiate the rent.”
“Wait, just let me think about it.” We both sat quietly for a minute, and I resisted the urge to push too hard, because that always backfired with Geri.
Finally, she took a deep breath. “Okay, let me talk to Seth and see what he thinks. Dad’s right, you know. New houses have no soul. Great closet space, though.”
Chapter 26
“SO,” I SAID. “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO CALL SETH?”
“Not tonight. I have to plan my strategy first. It’s a big decision. And I think he’ll be a little bit worried about whether Mom and Dad will actually move out.”
I smiled. “Well, at least you know Mom will. Maybe you should call them first, just to get the ball rolling.”
“No. It’s way too soon for that.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I can wait till tomorrow.” I picked Allison Flagg’s book up off the balcony floor and handed it to her. “Come on, let’s find something good to do for your birthday.”
Geri leaned over the balcony so she could catch the light from the parking lot. “One of Last Call’s intoxicatingly handsome employees will deliver himself to your place of inebriation by way of motorcycle. Once there, the custom Italian cycle folds up and stows neatly in your trunk, and said handsome employee drives you home again in your car. God, that sounds so sexy.”
“It sounds okay,” I said. “But we’d have to get drunk first. And then we’d probably puke all over the handsome employee. And, most likely, they don’t have a Last Call franchise on the Cape anyway.”
“We could start one,” my sister said.
“Yeah, but then we’d have to go all the way to Italy for the motorcycles.”
“And the handsome employees.”
“And what would we feed them? Where would they sleep?”
Geri sighed. “You’re right. It’s a lot of work.”
“It always is.” I pushed myself out of the chair and tiptoed into the hotel room. I opened the minibar and took out two minibottles.
I tiptoed back out and handed one to Geri. “Here you go. We’ll just stay right here and pretend.”
“Is Baileys Irish Cream from Italy?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” I said.
“Where’s my glass?”
“Don’t you know anything? You have to drink from the bottle or it’s not an authentic minibar experience. Plus, I don’t want to sound like Mom, but we have no idea who’s been drinking from those glasses.”
We put our feet back up on the balcony, and Geri got St. Christopher up from his nap to do some more dancing on the railing. He looked bored, so I borrowed him from her and started teaching him a gymnastics routine. It was almost completely dark now, and he was starting to glow.
“Careful,” Geri said when I had to move fast to catch him after an aborted tumbling pass. “It’s a long way down.”
“Relax,” I said. “It’s only two stories, and we’re not even sure he’s breakable. Plus, he’s St. Christopher, for God’s sake. He can protect himself.”
Geri took a tiny sip from her tiny bottle. “You know, guys like Noah make me nervous. I feel like they’re looking right through me.”
I wasn
’t exactly sure where that came from, but there was a guilty pleasure in sitting in the almost dark and getting to talk about Noah without having to be the one to bring him up. I took my own tiny sip and almost dropped St. Christopher again. “You mean like they have X-ray vision?”
Geri grabbed St. Christopher from me and put him back in her lap. “No, it’s more like I’m transparent. Like there’s not enough there to see. Or something. Never mind. This is too heavy for me.”
“Guys like Seth are so boring,” I said.
Geri laughed. “He loves you, too. Hey, what’s the longest you’ve ever been without a boyfriend?”
“Let’s see. I don’t know. Maybe two or three months. I’ve always been pretty magnetic, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah, right.”
“How about you? What’s the longest you’ve ever been without a husband?”
“Ha.” Geri took another sip of her Baileys and pretended to feed some to St. Christopher. He seemed to like it.
“Did you ever date anyone before Seth? One of the Cro-Magnon men or George Washington or something? I can’t even remember.”
“I can’t either.”
I reached over and put my little twist-off cap on St. Christopher’s head. It tilted to one side, which I thought gave him kind of a jaunty look. “Say you did date back in prehistoric times,” I said, “and you had to pick between two cavemen. How would you have done it?”
“Oh, that’s so easy. You just make lists of each of their good and bad points, and whoever has the best list wins. It’s in all the magazines and on all the websites.”
St. Christopher and I looked at each other. At least one of us rolled our eyes.
Geri took another tiny sip of her Baileys. “Okay, I’ll do it. Tim Kelly is cute, funny, he has great eyes, he has a trade so he can always find work, and he seems to be completely normal.”
“We hardly know him, he travels constantly, and he has a six-year-old daughter.”
“So,” Geri said. “You like kids.” She took another sip and put the bottle on the floor beside her. “Okay, now Noah. He doesn’t call you, he doesn’t need you, he’s completely self-absorbed, he’s talented, and he has a great bod.”
“Was that the good list or the bad list?” I asked.
“I decided to combine them.”
“He is kind of like his own planet,” I said. “You know, completely self-sufficient, an entire world of his own. But I’m a lot like that, too. Even if I am living in an apartment on my parents’ property and planning to go into business with my sister. So, maybe that’s why Noah and I make sense, because neither of us really needs anyone else.”
Geri held St. Christopher up to her mouth like a microphone. “ ‘Everybody needs somebody la-la,’ ” she sang, possibly channeling both Dean Martin and Jewel at the same time.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He did call me, though. He said he wants things to be different.”
“Of course he does,” Geri said. “That’s because he can feel the gaffer breaking through the force field. Guys can always tell when someone else is interested.”
“You are so bizarre,” I said.
“It’s true. How else can you explain the fact that you can go months without dating, and as soon as one guy asks you out, they’re suddenly coming out of the woodwork?”
“I thought you said you couldn’t remember dating?” I drained the last of my Baileys and pushed myself up from the chair. “What country shall we go to next?”
“What are my choices?”
“France or Scotland.”
“Surprise me.”
When I came back out, Geri was hanging over the balcony and flipping through the Fun, Feisty, and Fabulous book again. “Is Riley asleep yet?” she asked.
“Yup. Snoozing away with his stuffed shark.”
“You don’t happen to have a flashlight with you, do you?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle giving this back to Allison tomorrow unless I get my own copy. Maybe you can watch Riley tomorrow while I find a bookstore.” She turned it over. “It’s only twenty bucks.”
“But you could buy a solar-powered milk frother for that.”
She gave up on trying to read in the dark and came back to her plastic seat again. I handed her a nip of Grand Marnier. “France it is,” I said. “The Scotch bottle was the wrong color. This way we can tumble a brown batch after we break them.”
“We’re not really going to break them, are we?”
I ignored her and held up my tiny bottle. “Here’s to minibars,” I said. “May the road rise up to meet them.”
“May the wind always be at their backs,” Geri said, holding her bottle up.
We clanked our minibottles. “May the roof above them never fall in,” we said together.
“Which might well happen here,” I added.
“By the way,” Geri said, “two’s my limit.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all we can fit into the tumbler anyway.”
“REMIND ME NEVER TO GO to Ireland and France on the same night,” Geri said the next morning while we waited for Riley to get out of the shower. She popped two Advil into her mouth and washed them down with a large swig of water.
I held out my hand for some Advil. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re both European. You can’t get a hangover unless you mix continents. Plus, I think it takes more than two bottles each containing three drops of alcohol.”
Geri poured two Advil into my palm. I tapped the bottle and got another one. “So, why are you overdosing on Advil then?” she asked.
“My foot is killing me. I had no idea little bottles were so hard to break.”
“I told you not to jump on them. You put them in a bag and crack them on the edge of the balcony.”
I swallowed the Advil and chased them with a gulp of my sister’s water. “Who made you the bottle-breaking expert?” I asked.
“Hey, my feet feel fine.”
Riley came out of the bathroom and handed his mother the hair gel. “Can you do this? It gets my hands all sticky.”
It hadn’t seemed to bother him before his mother got here. I probably would have done a great job on his hair gel if he’d asked. “Meet you in the car,” I said.
We got to the set in time to have breakfast, and as soon as we finished, Geri and Riley headed over to get his stump attached. I’d brought my earring supplies with me, and I decided I’d take advantage of the fact that the movie people had roped off such a large area. It was prime real estate and probably more square footage of Cape Cod beach than I’d ever have to myself in season for the rest of my natural life.
I’d find a nice quiet place at the top of the beach and spend most of the day wrapping wire around my new pieces of sea glass. As soon as I had enough earrings, I’d stop by Sand, Sea and Sky again. I’d tell them about the new idea for the sand-holding bottles, too, though I should probably think of a better name for them first.
Just as I was getting comfortable, Allison Flagg sat down beside me, which pretty much ruined everything. “Ooh, what’s that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I wrapped another loop of wire around a piece of dark green sea glass.
“Well, you don’t have to be so nasty.” She picked up a small rock and moved it to a more aesthetically pleasing position in the sand. “Anyway, since I knew you weren’t going to do it, I have a surprise party all planned for Geri.”
“What? How did you know I wasn’t going to do it?”
She moved the rock back to where it had started. “Oh, puh-lease. Anyway, it’s all set for tonight. As soon as we wrap for the day, everybody will meet over at the hotel pool.”
I pulled tight, and the sea glass popped right out of the wire and landed on the sand. Allison Flagg was seriously bad for my art. “Today? It’s not even her birthday until tomorrow.”
“Exactly. She’ll be completely surprised this way. Anyway, Manny is sending stuff
over from craft services, and I ordered the cake, so all you have to do is take your time getting back to the hotel and then deliver the birthday girl. Think you can handle it?”
I couldn’t imagine anything I’d rather do less. But I knew how happy it would make Geri, so I caved. “Yeah, okay.” I took a deep breath. “And thanks.”
Allison Flagg almost smiled. She moved the rock again, then hugged her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “So,” she said. “I went to the party supply store and bought a whole bunch of pink balloons, and I rented a helium tank.”
“Thank goodness you thought of that,” I said. “Whatever would we do without a helium tank?”
“I know. It just isn’t the same if the balloons don’t soar. And I got pink paper garlands. Oh, and those puffy paper birds. You know, the kind you buy folded shut, and when you lift the metal tabs and open them up, they make those wonderful honeycombed shapes.”
“You mean those lovebirds they use at weddings?”
As soon as I said it, Allison Flagg’s potential smile disappeared. “They can be for anything you want to use them for.” She pushed herself up to a standing position and brushed her hands back and forth to get the sand off. “I can’t imagine why you’re still single,” she said.
Chapter 27
I PICKED UP MY CELL PHONE AND CALLED MY apartment, just to see who might happen to be there this time.
My father answered on the first ring. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “If they come back for me, I might have to make a break for it. They have no idea how sorry they’re gonna be. I know my constitutional rights.”
“Dad?” I said.
“Oh, Toots, I thought you were the other Toots. Wait a minute, let me tell Champ and the babies you’re on the line. Here, say hello to them yourself.”
“What’s going on, Dad?” He didn’t say anything, so I talked some baby talk to Boyfriend. I wrapped it up with “I’ll be home soon, honey, now go get Dad for me,” hoping it might get my father back on the phone.
