Christmas at the Beach

by Wendy Wax

  A crowd of neighbors and early bird tourists begins to form. A Pass-a-Grille traffic cop is trying to figure out how to hang a parking ticket on Bella Flora’s mini-me.

  In the kitchen, a big box of donuts is open on the reclaimed wood table. Avery’s dunking a glazed chocolate in a cup of steaming coffee. I know it’s not her first cup because she’s smiling and talking—two things she doesn’t do until the caffeine kicks in. I bought her a T-shirt for Christmas that reads, I DRINK COFFEE FOR YOUR PROTECTION, and I’m tempted to give it to her now.

  Deirdre’s eating a small cup of yogurt and is sitting as far away from the donuts as she can get. I’m guessing Nikki is out running; she’s kind of like the post office that way—neither rain nor sleet nor . . . well, none of those things apply today, when the sun already looks like a big golden ball and the sky is a robin’s-egg blue, but you get the idea. Nobody seems to be wearing more than a light layer or two, even though the Weather Channel is predicting that a cold front is headed our way.

  My mother stands at the counter sipping coffee. The oven is already emitting mouthwatering turkey smells. My dad’s reading the newspaper like there might be actual news in it and not just after Christmas sale ads. I try to imagine being with someone as long as they’ve been with each other, but my brain stalls out completely.

  Dustin cries, “Gee-dad!” and launches himself into my father’s lap, thrilled to see him but once again not surprised. So far in his world, absent fathers simply appear from time to time.

  My mother walks over and kisses her grandson on the head. “Merry Christmas, Dustin.” She smiles.

  “Murree Krimas!” Dustin says and reaches his arms out to her. She scoops him up and settles him on her hip. There aren’t a lot of people who can compete with my mother in Dustin’s eyes.

  There’s a tap of a horn out front and a text dings in right afterward.

  Chase and Jeff and the boys are out front. Are you ready to move the playhouse?

  My dad leaves to get Andrew and I know it’s going to take some time, and possibly a crowbar, to pry him out of bed.

  “Do you want to stay inside with Dustin until we get it moved?” my mother asks me. She’s untying her apron, and I notice that she’s fully dressed for the day in black slacks and a bright red Christmas sweater with snowflakes and a snowman. I’m wearing the first thing I pulled on, and while I wouldn’t mind staying here, I hate the idea of hiding. Especially on such a magnificent Christmas Day. “Hold on.” I race upstairs and change into jeans and a Do Over sweatshirt. I refuse to dress up for the photographers, but if I can’t avoid them I might as well plug the show.

  My dad comes back with Andrew. My brother’s face is shadowed with stubble, his eyes are barely open, and his clothes look slept in. In fact, he may still be asleep in a vertical, malleable sort of way. My mother puts a glass of orange juice in his hand and slips a pair of sunglasses on his face.

  Deirdre meets us in the foyer. She’s impeccably dressed in black knit pants and a royal blue tunic sweater. She looks like she might have hair and makeup people stashed in her room.

  Avery takes one look at her and snorts. “Jesus,” she says. “She can smell a photo op a mile away.”

  “I see no reason to face the media unprepared,” Deirdre says. “They can only make us look bad if we allow it.” She rubs her arm pointedly. “Perhaps you should go up and . . . dress.”

  “I am dressed.” Avery’s not hiding in those big oversize clothes anymore, but she’s not into wardrobe coordination any more than I am. She has on jeans and a Do Over long-sleeved tee. “And that’s not the media out there. That’s a group of professional stalkers.”

  “Whose photographs will be on magazine and tabloid covers. And could possibly be picked up for television.” I can see that Deirdre considers stopping there but can’t quite do it. “You remember when you ignored my warning on the way to South Beach and you ended up on-camera in that halter and those cutoffs?”

  They both get that stubborn look on their faces. The set of their jaws is identical. As stressed as I feel about the horde outside and what we’re supposed to do with Dustin’s Christmas present, it takes some effort not to laugh.

  We all tromp outside.

  The flashes start firing. “Over here, Dustin! Look this way!”

  “Give us a smile, Kyra!”

  “Did Daniel send the minimansion?”

  “Does Tonja know?”

  “Will Daniel be here today to see Dustin?”

  The whir of motor drives is almost as loud as the shouted questions. Together they blot out the caw of gulls and the wash of the waves. They are like a pestilence. Put on this earth to torment anyone who has so much as a brush with fame.

  “Will you leave the minimansion for the new owners?”

  They know so much about all of us—too much. My heart is pounding in my chest but I do my best not to react.

  Nicole arrives back from her run, sees the photographers, and tries not to huff and puff. Chase Hardin and his father, Jeff, who used to be in the construction business with Avery’s father, and Chase’s two sons are all over six feet, which makes them only slightly taller than the playhouse’s gabled roof. Chase slips an arm around Avery and tucks her close to his side. I get this weird little jab of awareness. All Dustin has is me. How will I protect him from all of this? What will he think of being a celebrity’s illegitimate child when he’s old enough to understand?

  But as I think this, everyone assembles around the outside of the playhouse, kind of like a human shield, so that Dustin, who’s chortling with glee, can go inside and check it out. I go with him and I don’t even have to hunch over. We both giggle. There’s no floor, but the inside walls are plastered and painted like a real house; there’s a faux fireplace on one wall. It feels warm and safe. If there weren’t a mob of photographers outside, it would be perfect.

  I’m peeking out one of the floor–to-ceiling windows, trying to see past our human wall, when I spot a familiar figure. It’s Troy Matthews, the Lifetime cameraman. At the moment he’s standing behind the outer ring of paparazzi. The sun glints off his shaggy blond hair. His video camera is perched on one broad shoulder. I spent the last few months editing Do Over with him, but when I left Nashville yesterday morning he never said a word about being here today. The rat.

  I’m careful not to look his way, but I won’t be able to ban him from the house or the grounds like I can the others. He’s kind of like a vampire that you have to invite in.

  I see Avery and Chase conferring. She comes inside. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Here’s the plan.”

  At Chase’s cue, I pull Dustin into my arms and hold on tight. Everyone else grabs a window opening, a wrought-iron balcony, a cupola, a column—any protrusion they can use as a handhold. On the count of three, they lift the house off the ground. The house bobs up and down as they carry it, like an army of ants carrying a picnic basket, up over the curb and across a lot-sized patch of grass strewn with sand and scrub, a sort of no-man’s-land that separates Bella Flora from the path that leads to the jetty, fishing pier, and beach.

  There’s a lot of grumbling and laughing as they try to synchronize their movements and compensate for their disparate heights. I just hold on to Dustin and do my best to keep pace so that we don’t trip on the uneven ground or get flattened if they drop it or whacked by a wall if we fall out of step. Once we’ve made it around Bella Flora, the house comes to a bobbling halt. I dart out with Dustin and watch while Avery and Chase confer about its placement. It ends up next to Dustin’s beloved sandbox, smack up against the loggia, with its back to the gulf.

  “If we were getting to stay here, all we’d need is a fence down the property line and Dustin could play all he wanted,” my mother says.

  Of course, it would have to be a see-through fence, which would sort of defeat
the purpose. This will never be a gated property. No one in his right mind would block 150 feet of prime waterfront or the spectacular view out over the gulf.

  The paparazzi reposition themselves three hundred yards away as required—do they have tape measures in their heads? This puts them on the far edge of the no-man’s–land, and I hope they get stickers and seagull poop all over them. But the playhouse does help block their view of the loggia a little.

  I watch Dustin race in and out of the playhouse. He carries a favorite fire truck inside and then some other toys. Troy sets up his camera on a tripod and shoots. I’ve mostly given up trying to hide Dustin from the network camera. My famous child is one of the reasons we have a television show at all. There’s no getting around it. And the show’s too important to all of us for any one of us to walk.

  “You could have told me you were coming to shoot today.”

  “I figured you knew.” Troy is tall and good-looking, and although I don’t plan to tell him this any time soon, he’s a really good cameraman. If we needed one besides me, which we don’t, he’d definitely be a keeper. But we set out to do a renovation show, and when we arrived in South Beach last spring, we found out that the network had turned it into a reality series with Troy’s camera focused on us.

  “It’s Christmas Day.” He locks his camera down, leaving it aimed at the door of the playhouse to catch Dustin as he runs in and out. I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it. “Could there be a better time to let you know where the next season of Do Over will be shot?” He says this casually as if it’s not one more slap in the face. Part of the network’s strategy has been not revealing the house we’ll be renovating or its address until we arrive in the city they’ve selected. Which puts a real crimp in the ability to prep the renovation and adds a whole unnecessary layer of stress and panic that Troy gets to capture on camera.

  “Do you want to give me a small hint?” I ask because at the moment one more thing that I don’t know and have no control over could push me over the edge.

  “They didn’t tell me,” he says, and I look at his face to see if this is true. “They think I’ve been turned by the ‘enemy.’ That I have an unhealthy attraction to you.”

  I have no idea what to say to this. He did invite me to edit with him, which Lisa Hogan, the network head, whose nickname is “the chief bitch in charge,” didn’t like. And he did make fifteen minutes of the worst of our infighting disappear. Sort of like that seven minutes of Watergate conversation that took place in Nixon’s oval office that was accidentally erased.

  “All I have is a sealed envelope, which is supposed to be opened when you’re all together and on-camera.” He loosens the shot so that he can follow Dustin through the playhouse windows. I grit my teeth.

  “Time to open presents!” Mom pokes her head out to yell. Everyone troops inside. The smell of turkey infuses the air. Christmas music is playing. Mom has a tray of orange juices plus a couple of bottles of champagne to turn them into mimosas sitting on the game table. A platter of donuts, mini–cinnamon buns, and muffins sits nearby.

  There are a ton of presents piled under the tree. Even though it’s supposed to be in the seventies today, someone has lit a fire in the fireplace. We start to tear through the presents. In minutes there’s wrapping paper and ribbon all over the floor. Troy is filming, and for once I don’t care because it leaves me free to help Dustin open his gifts. My son is all about tools and transportation and everyone knows it, so he gets a set of toddler-sized tools tucked into an adorable tool belt from Avery and Deirdre, a truck pulling a speedboat on a trailer from the Hardins, and a whole fire station complete with a pimped-out fire truck and crew from my mom, dad, and brother. I save the kiddie video camera with its eyepiece and a zoom lens that I bought for him for last, and my heart does this weird kind of stutter when he swings it right up onto his shoulder like he’s seen me do a thousand times. I look up and see Troy moving in for a close-up; he and Dustin look like dueling cameramen. I’m about to give Troy some shit about it when I notice that his lips, which are about all you can see behind the camera, are curved up into a genuine smile.

  I look down at my son, who’s so excited he doesn’t know what to play with first, and then around the room. I’m touched that everyone—even the teenagers—brought something for Dustin. He does belong to all of us in a way I don’t think a child with two parents can. This is the village that is helping me raise my child.

  ***

  “Wow!” Chase grins when Avery opens her present from Deirdre. The lingerie is incredibly skimpy, the barest wisps of pink silk, nude satin, and black lace. The chance of her actually wearing any of these things seems pretty close to zero. She spent most of our time in South Beach hiding in baggy clothes so the network couldn’t focus on her chest all the time like the last network did. Her favorite accessories are the pink hard hat her father gave her when she was a little girl and her father’s tool belt, which has extra holes punched in so it doesn’t fall down around her hips.

  “I think this is the same pink as your hard hat.” Chase nods at a silky thong and waggles his eyebrows. “Thanks, Deirdre!”

  “This was supposed to be my present,” Avery complains. “Not his.”

  “It’s for both of you,” Deirdre replies. “But you don’t have to wear any of it if you don’t want to.”

  “Even better.” Chase grins. “Here.” He hands Avery a crudely wrapped box that clearly doesn’t hold lingerie. “I’m going to picture you using my present while you’re wearing one of Deirdre’s.”

  We’re all watching now. Avery rips off the paper. Her face lights up as she pulls out a shiny new drill and—be still my heart—a tape measure. Apparently it’s possible to go through these items regularly.

  “I love them!” Avery exclaims. “My old ones are on their last legs.”

  “Your turn.” Avery hands him a box.

  Chase makes quick work of the wrapping paper. He holds up what looks like some ancient instrument of torture.

  “What is it?” Nicole asks as we all stare at the U-shaped piece of wood with a knob at one end and a squared pointy thing on the other.

  “It’s an antique brass-plated brace,” Chase’s father, Jeff, says. “It looks English.”

  “It’s gorgeous.” Chase runs a hand over the worn wood, turns it gently in his hands. “I’ve been lusting after one of these for years.”

  They’re handling their tools intimately and staring into each other’s eyes. Chase leans down and whispers something in her ear and she blushes. I’m surprised nobody tells them to “get a room.”

  “How incredibly romantic,” Deirdre says drily. “You are clearly and irrevocably your father’s daughter.”

  “The last time I got that excited about a gift, it had four wheels and a convertible top,” Nikki says. I wonder if she’s referring to her classic Jag.

  There’s a flash of light on camera lens and I see Troy framing a shot of my mother, who’s handing a fresh mimosa to Deirdre. Troy turns smoothly, panning the camera across the room to my dad, who’s just kind of staring into the fire. My parents have been through some really rough times in the last year and a half; neither of them behaved in quite the way I expected—my dad fell apart, and my mom was a rock—but they’re an inspiration. Not that I have any real options or anything, but I’m not planning to marry anyone who’s not in it for the long haul.

  My mom and Nicole and Deirdre head to the kitchen. After asking Avery to keep an eye out for Dustin, I join them. I love the kitchen, with its reclaimed wood and tile and its glass-fronted cabinets. Deirdre can be a bit much at times, but she’s one hell of a designer. Bella Flora and The Millicent down in Miami wouldn’t be anywhere near as spectacular without her input, and she can talk anyone except Avery into pretty much anything. The furnishings and artwork that fill Bella Flora now are on loan for staging purposes. The mystery owner bought it all, which
is a win-win for the design firms and stores who installed everything. And it says something about the buyer, though I’m not sure if it says he’s lazy but has good taste or just has more money than he or she knows what to do with.

  “Oh, good. Will you help set the table?” My mother gives me a hug and a smile, and I see that she’s brought a tablecloth and her good silver from home. Nicole, Deirdre, and I cart everything into the dining room and start laying it all out while my mother bastes the turkey and pops the sweet potato soufflé into the oven. It looks like a total repeat of Thanksgiving, which was also Dustin’s birthday, and I wonder if she just made double then and had everything waiting in the freezer. That’s so Maddie: the perfect homemaker and mother. I don’t have a Martha Stewart thought or bone in my body. No home, no matter how spectacular, is as exciting to me as a film set. Even though none of my film and television experiences have turned out remotely the way I hoped.

  Six

  Our Realtor, John Franklin, and his wife arrive at 11:30, and we sit down to Christmas “dinner” at noon. John Franklin is somewhere in his eighties with a ruff of white hair and a long face dominated by the droopy brown eyes of a basset hound. He’s lived on St. Pete Beach since God was a boy and is full of information about Pass-a-Grille, which began as a small fishing village, and Bella Flora, which was built in 1928, when he was a boy.

  All of us except my father adore him, but even we are surprised that he found a buyer for Bella Flora. And that that buyer paid almost full asking price. His wife, Renée, is younger and more robust than John, but they sit close to each other and lean even closer. It’s possible that this is more about maintaining balance than affection—John does use a cane—but it’s hard to miss the fact that they gaze adoringly at each other. My parents do not.