“Mom, where’s your stuff?” Everything hanging up belonged to his father. His shirts were neatly pressed and starched, his pants hung on individual hangars, and even his bathrobe was hung with its cuffs tucked into the pockets as if it could walk on command.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the dresser.
Ned turned, his arm full of shirts, and examined the tall boy dresser with deep drawers. He had never realized all his mother’s clothes were neatly folded inside, never hung up.
“Don’t you have a coat? Any dresses?”
“They’re in your bedroom closet, honey. I didn’t like them smelling of cigars. It makes me sneeze.”
Ned was struck by the fact that she still called it his bedroom. He’d visited them so infrequently over the past several years. Most of their get-togethers were done at a local restaurant, where his father’s behavior was muted and under control.
He placed the stack of shirts on the bed behind her, while her fingers lovingly touched the buttons on the long-sleeved cuffs. “I’ll drop these off at the Salvation Army too. I don’t want to bag them, cause then they’ll get wrinkled. But you kept these all ironed and starched, didn’t you?”
“I love to iron. It soothes my mind.”
That sounded just like Aunt Flo, and that scared him. He retreated to the closet again, removing another stack of shirts and some slacks. He brought a large packing box and placed each pair of shoes carefully inside as she watched.
He knew she wouldn’t have been able to do it on her own. Just before he was to carry out the box of shoes, he stooped to pick up his father’s blue and green plaid slippers.
“Don’t! Don’t take those. I can wear those,” his mother said.
“But Mom, they’ll be too big for you. You’ll trip. Why don’t you let me get you a nice pair of women’s slippers?”
“Ned, I want these,” she said, her backbone showing. “I like the feel of them on my feet. And I’ll be careful.”
Ned tucked the slippers under the bed but on her side this time.
They sat in the tiny kitchen eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and canned soup. Ned had a beer, and his mother had a cup of tea. He’d never realized how small the house was. Growing up, it was just the place to sit, and do homework at night, or sleep. Ned’s whole world was outside the doors and windows of the tiny home. His focus was never inside.
He’d also forgotten how quiet it was. The neighborhood had stayed modest, unlike other neighborhoods in the San Diego area. There were a lot of original couples, like his parents, who had bought when the subdivision was new and raised their families there. Kids could play out in the street until past dark or ride their bikes to the beach to watch the sunset. Anywhere important, he could go on a bike. Now, sitting in the sparse kitchen with his mother, he enjoyed the satisfying calm. That pit in the bottom of his stomach wasn’t there. He didn’t smell fear, because the generator of all those things was absent.
All that was left was the quiet.
As he drove away near sunset, he recalled the discussion he had with his mother. He stopped to watch the sun melt into the horizon, reached up, and held the mermaid pendant between his thumb and first two fingers.
He had thought the little place would be perfect for her now and offered to have some of the minor repairs done to make it easier. She could read, garden, or do whatever she wanted to now that she no longer needed to tend to his dad.
Her answer was odd. “But whatever will I do with myself?”
Ned had never wondered about that. She’d lost her job. Indefinitely furloughed and not needed. Even though old Jake was gone, she wasn’t ready to stop being a wife and caretaker. Of course she would need some time to get back on her feet. She’d never considered another life.
“You have money, Mom. You could travel. Go on a cruise. Maybe you and Flo could take a train ride up north and see Canada.”
“By ourselves? The two of us?”
“You could hire someone to go with you. Maybe one of the helpers at Flo’s clinic would be available, like a companion nurse. Would that make it easier?”
“I don’t think Flo would like going to strange places. She’d be confused all the time. I think it would be hard on her.”
“You could room together. She could take the second bedroom here.”
“Oh, no. I think we’ve got to face facts. Flo is going to need some full-time nursing. I’m going to look for a memory care center for her. I think in another few months she’s going to stop remembering who I am. She has no friends, or at least none that she remembers. Your dad left me a little life insurance. If that’s not enough I could sell the house.”
“And then where would you live? Don’t you want to stay here?”
She’d thought about it for several seconds before she answered.
“What if I went on an adventure, Ned?”
And like a turtle peeking out from under its shell for the first time, Margaret Silver wanted to see the real world. She wanted an adventure. He tried to hold back the hope that was springing from his chest, making him feel warm and glad to be among the living.
He walked across the sand to his truck after all remnants of the sun were gone. Driving the few miles to his condo complex, he knew the world had changed. The passing of his father had altered both his and his mother’s trajectories.
Like falling from an airplane, he suddenly felt untethered, unrestricted, swimming through the blue sky toward an uncertain but somehow exciting future.
He grabbed the book of poetry but left everything else inside his truck and went inside his tiny box of a home, alone, but oddly happy.
Chapter 4
Madison rang her mother first thing in the morning and got no answer. She called the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Potter, whose cheerful voice annoyed her.
“Oh dear. I did see her yesterday morning. She was putting bird food out in the feeder. We have a terrible problem with the black crows and squirrels this year and they’re scattering the seed everywhere, making a mess.”
Madison cut her off or she’d get a description of the grime collecting on the insides of Mrs. Potter’s washing machine.
“When was that?”
“I think it was about eleven. Maybe earlier. I didn’t see her the rest of the day. She went for a walk afterwards, but came back an hour later.”
“She was dressed, then, not looking ill?”
“Oh just like she always is. Wearing that bright-colored kimono over her black stretchies and that big red clip doing a piss-poor job of holding all that hair up. She had lipstick on, too, as I recall.” Mrs. Potter began prattling on.
That relieved Madison a great deal. “I’ll stop by to check on her later before I go to work. Thanks for the information.”
“Should I stop by for a peek?”
“No, please don’t.”
Her mother had complained numerous times about her nosey neighbor, which is why Mrs. Potter was the first person Madison thought to call. If her mother was about, and dressed, then it ruled out so many awful things.
She took her coffee outside, checking the beach, which was beginning to warm up. The sunrise was long gone. Birds were slowly being replaced with beachcombers and scavengers looking for pieces of sea glass and colorful pieces of shells.
Barefoot and still wearing her favorite pair of stretchy pajamas, she walked in a straight line to the gentle surf. The water was calm, looking crystalline and transparent. September and October were her favorite months here on the gulf. The crowds were small, and the winds were mild between possible storm developments. But the long, sunny, languid days were just the elixir she needed to stay sane and whole. The calm before the storms of life. She wondered if the storms she seemed to run into were just her way of fully embracing and enjoying the life-restoring calm of the ocean.
The beach heals everything, was still her favorite slogan, hanging in various forms in every room in her house, even the bedroom. Her mother had painted a huge one that stil
l hung in her living room.
Madison sat, giving the cool surf a wide berth. She wasn’t ready to get wet just yet. She watched an older couple walk hand-in-hand along the shore and mosey back to their address. It made her wonder about her mother and the mysterious someone special Noonan had mentioned last night. She knew studying her mother’s face would tell her part of the story that would probably never be fully revealed.
Mother, what is this private world you live in and why do you leave me out?
She loved her as surely as she was sitting on the beach this morning. But she was a daughter to this magnificent woman, and that meant that her mother’s embrace would only reach so far. And her mother’s world of love would remain private no matter how much she tried to pry a little crack to sneak inside her womanly shell. She lived and taught Madison not with words, but by example. Unlike most women, her mother wore her flaws on the outside and saved her insides for the very best part of her.
Did you share yourself with this someone special?
Madison was convinced she did.
Noonan had said there might be salvage work coming up. That brought a smile to her face and a scurrying in her belly—that quest for the storm and excitement of an adventure. Diving around shipwrecks was always risky and never predictable. But the secrets they told of humanity long gone were fascinating. She loved delving into the mystery of loss and separation. It wasn’t a morbid headspace. It celebrated the shadows of a life lived and now gone. Uncovering those secrets was like figuring out what had happened to her mother in the space of years that floated by before Madison was born.
Madison had had her little flings, mostly with older married men because it was safe. She could send them home to their wives transformed. She liked to think they were happier men and even their wives would benefit from the spark she brought to their lives.
Afterward, although she knew it wasn’t common at all, her spirit was calm with the separation as she retreated to the land of her own making, alone and satisfied to be there. All the cliches aside, she was happy to be her own best friend, her own cheerleader, like all the books and gurus talked about. As long as she was free to swim in whatever blue ocean that lay before her. She knew she always would live by the sea, finding things discarded by the petulant being with an unpredictable energy. As long as she didn’t fight, the ocean gave her everything she needed.
She twisted her bright blonde locks into a bun and walked through the cool ankle-depth waters, the waves washing away her footprints as if she’d never been there at all. She remembered the James Bond actor she met on the set of his new movie two years ago. Ruggedly handsome and tall, he was even better looking than how he appeared on the screen and Madison had seen every one of his movies. She was hired to be the body double for the villainess in the movie, the dark mermaid who would first make love to him and then try to kill him on an underwater dive. A evil, black siren.
Madison had to wear a cap glued with bits of dark black hair to hide her sundrenched locks that glistened like gold, even when wet. He was a good enough swimmer to do the takes with her. Back and forth they frolicked in one embrace after another, constrained by equipment and wetsuits, until the scene called for the two of them to emerge from the surf to strip and make love on the beach at sunset. It wasn’t hard to feel what it would be like to wake up with him in her bed. And for several mornings they did just that. Nicer still that it was private—no black wig that might get dislodged, no one giving direction. Just the sound of their lovemaking and the background of the breathing ocean.
Her heartbeat raced as she remembered the incredible feeling of being the object of his desire, even though she knew it would only be for a week, maybe two. He made promises but she never did, knowing full well he’d never keep them. He promised to write, promised to stay in touch, promised to never forget her. That part she did believe. But as to the writing and keeping in touch, unless he was feeling her quickening libido, well, their magic would not stretch between Florida and Hollywood. Like a tender child growing up without the love of a parent, the magic would fade away into a beautiful memory like the clouds in the sky at sunset on Treasure Island.
She never looked him up on social media either. It didn’t matter if she missed his encrypted message left so that only she would understand it. If she didn’t look, she would never know. And she’d never be disappointed.
But a new film would be fun. Her heart could take one more big, epic romance before—what? She was speaking like a crazy woman. She was not thirty yet. Maybe for her birthday Poseidon himself would come to rescue her and take her below, shower her with jewels and gold, and keep her all for himself. Everyone would wonder. But she might like feeling she belonged to him, even if the world didn’t know.
A true, private love would be something she could live for.
Madison liked the little artist community by the beach where her mother lived, mostly made up of old hippies and even beatniks from the Upper East Side in New York. Some of them were poets and had made and lost fortunes on their art, had it stolen or had managers abscond with all their loot. Living at the beach community of Treasure Island was a leveling out process where it didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor. They had to have that inner spark, like her mother did. They had to have talent of some kind, some creative talent, or they were really good at making martinis or cooking a wild seafood pasta.
Madison had grown up with these people and had ridden on the shoulders of some who had graced the covers of Playbill, Vanity Fair, and Cosmo. They laughed reading the articles speculating where they’d disappeared to. Nobody came there looking for the rich and famous. Some were. Some weren’t. And no one in the group cared.
Her mother had been in love with one or more of them, sometimes at the same time, which made for a confusing childhood. There were songs written about her. She’d taken in her share of broken, tarnished stars, polished them up, and sent them back out to shine again, hopefully living an inspired life.
Her dad would drift in every other year or so. He and her mom would do the tango, baiting each other to be the first one to fall in love again. Always one of them would, dragging the other one back into memories too sweet to ever forget. Then it would be all bedroom time and shouts and screams throughout the night followed by fights within three days and another separation. Then quiet.
“Ah, he’s like the ocean. He comes in bearing gifts. Refreshed and ready to try the impossible again. He deposits his shells, takes a piece of me back with him, and disappears back out into the ocean to chase something else. It’s his life, not the life I want. But he’s hard to resist.”
Madison had asked her if she loved him and why he didn’t love her growing up.
“I’m his little girl, mama. Doesn’t he care?”
“He’s not capable. He wants to, but he can’t get away from himself. But he made you and for that I’m eternally grateful.”
Another time, she’d put it this way, “I love you, Madison. That’s all you need to know. You don’t want a man who doesn’t know where he stands or isn’t sure which wave he’ll ride. You take the lighthouses in life. Sometimes they’re boring as hell, but they’ll always be there.”
Except her mother never followed her own advice. Being hard to resist was always the most prominent feature of her love affairs, and often, the quality of her new love was held in highest regard. It was like the pull of the moon on the ocean. Only releasing to grab hold again. Dangerous and unpredictable. But yes, oh so irresistible.
Her mother would brush her long hair every night before bed. Just the two of them with the sight of the moon twinkling on the water beyond. The sound of her mother’s brush and the warm feel of the boar bristles on her scalp were just as soothing as listening to the surf lapping on the sand all night long.
As she started puberty, she worried perhaps she had too much of a fixation for her mother, even going so far as to wonder if she perhaps loved her too much or was falling in love with women and not boys. But
what Madison came back to time and time again was that one quality in her mother she found so special in a man.
Her mother was irresistible.
At her mother’s cottage door, she knocked. Wind chimes started up as if recognizing the daughter coming home one more time. The alleyway leading down between modest and brightly colored shacks was covered in white rock and crushed shells. It was early for the beach, and only a stray dog wandered along the path.
Her mom had painted her house a deep rose color, trimmed in vanilla. A large vine with bright purple-pink flowers was holding up the overhang above the front door. Madison noticed that someone had tried to paint in between the crisscrossing vines that wrap themselves around the wood bracing like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, but had given up. She wondered how long that had been there, but it was the first time she’d noticed it.
Madison knocked again.
She heard music, which grew louder as her mother graced the doorway with a bright, warm smile. “What a nice surprise!”
That’s what she always said. But she knew her mother meant it every time. It would take her several minutes before she could untangle herself from her mother’s arms. Her big grey hair was tied up with a bandana ending in a floppy bow at the upper right side of her forehead.
“I’m painting again, Madison. Come! Let me show you.”
The one thing Madison had loved about this house was the great room off the kitchen that faced the ocean. They’d had large dinners where they’d moved all the furniture out and brought in folding chairs and served over thirty on occasion. But everything about the back of the house was focused on the ocean, facing west.
In past years, Madison’s old room had also been the craft room. Often, she’d wake up and work on sewing or painting projects, sometimes working until dawn. After Madison moved out, her mother returned it to the library it had been before she was born. With two high-backed chairs facing each other, the room was so filled with books that it totally insulated the sounds of anything else, even the traffic outside and calls from the ocean. Many nights she’d stop by late for a visit and find her mom curled up in one of those chairs asleep with a book in her lap and a fuzzy afghan around her shoulders.
Treasure Island SEAL: Pirate SEAL Rescues his Mermaid (Sunset SEALs Book 3) Page 3
