Sand Castles

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Zina seemed to misinterpret his thoughtful silence. "I'm sure it's him," she murmured. "You were sure, too, Zack."

  "I only saw him from down the street, Zee," her brother said gently.

  "No, you really did sound sure. You were trying not to—but I could tell. You were sure."

  Helpless to undo the impression, Zack decided instead to change the subject. "Anyway, so what's the deal with your latest foster cat? The skunk—what was her name? Miss Petunia?"

  "Don't be so mean," Zina said, laughing. "Her name is Cassie, and she's really coming along. I think in a couple of weeks we'll be able to see about getting her adopted. She likes potato chips and frosted doughnuts; isn't that wild?"

  "There's your ad, then: 'Junk-Food Lover seeks Like-minded Companion'."

  And on that lighthearted note, they hung up.

  *****

  Over the droning of her electric toothbrush, Wendy heard a truck pull up on the street.

  "Oh, nutch," she garbled to her husband as she peeked through the shutters. "I yunt mow da Taurush. Udja dowa hor me, hweesh?"

  "What? Oh. The Taurus. Yeah, okay, I'll move it," Jim said. He was threading his belt through his pant loops, looking totally preoccupied.

  She glanced at him curiously. "You all right?" she asked between rinsing spits. "You've been out of it since yesterday." Letting the toothbrush run under a stream of water, she added only half in jest, "You haven't bought another ten thousand dollars' worth of Powerball tickets, have you? Because I have more than enough now to decoupage Tyler's room, in case you're wondering."

  He threw her a wry look and peered over the shutters at the street below. "Oh, Christ," he muttered.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. I'll go move the cars."

  He sounded tense and disgusted, and Wendy could see why. Every day it was the same old thing: rushing to get the household up and running by seven-thirty, getting in each other's way in the process. Tyler hated the disruption, and Jim, though he was gone most of the day, wasn't any better. Wendy had long ago figured out that males disliked changes in their domestic routines simply because they disliked domesticity: changes made them have to focus too much on a subject that bored them.

  She sighed as she ran a comb through her wet hair, then poked it haphazardly into shape. It was scary to imagine what life was going to be like once the crew knocked down the kitchen wall between the old and the new parts, and construction dust could travel freely. Where would they run? Where would they hide?

  "Damn it, we will have to move out," she muttered on her way downstairs. She could see the writing on the wall.

  It was another warm day, like the one before but without the clouds. Wendy threw the front room windows all the way up and breathed in deeply, happy simply to be inhaling June. It was far and away her favorite time of year; nothing else came close. By July it could get unbearable on the Point, despite the fact that they were only a block from the water. October, of course, was another fine month, but it came on the wrong side of summer and it could be mean, ushering in the first cold blasts from Canada.

  Nope. Give her June. Anytime.

  Lingering at the open window, she watched her husband park the SUV on the street in front of her Taurus as Zack pulled into the vacated drive. The new Expedition's days were numbered; since she didn't want it, Jim had decided to trade it in for something smaller and sportier for himself. A BMW had caught his eye.

  She continued to watch as Jim walked toward Zack's truck. Her husband looked annoyed. Maybe Zack hadn't pulled up far enough—in which case, one of the crew was going to end up hanging over the sidewalk, and Mrs. Almeida wasn't going to be able to get past it with her shopping cart, and the elderly widow would mention the fact to Wendy's mother, who immediately would pass it on to Wendy.

  Men.

  Vaguely unhappy with the lot of them, Wendy turned away from her bright spring day and, listening to make sure that Tyler was done with his shower, began to round up the dirty laundry for a wash.

  She found her son rummaging through the chest of drawers in his room and looking exasperated.

  "What'd you lose?"

  "My book report on Harry Potter."

  "Why would it be with your socks?" Wendy asked, dumping the laundry basket on his bed. She began to wade through the mound of papers, magazines, and CDs on the small student desk that was jammed between his narrow bed and the wall, but she had little hope. It would've been easier to find a contact lens in the ocean.

  "When did you see it last?"

  "I dunno. Last week, I think. I was almost finished; all I needed was to quote three lines of good description, and I couldn't make up my mind," he said, as if that explained the disappearance.

  "When is it due? Stupid question; never mind," Wendy said, lifting the dark blue bedskirt and looking under the bed. "God, you're going to be late for school again. Tyler, why do you always do this? You know? You did so well, writing the report while the book was fresh in your mind—and now you go and blow it." She reached back toward the wall and pulled out a dirty shirt covered in dust bunnies. "If you're not forgetting one thing, you're losing another. How many backpacks have I bought this year? Three? If you would just try to get a little organized—"

  "Ma!" Her son slammed the drawer hard enough to topple the lamp on the dresser; the ceramic baseball batter ended up hanging over the side with his bat pointed at the floor, his red shade askew.

  Wendy sat back on her calves and said, "What was that all about?"

  Wide-set green eyes burned with startling fury at her. "If I didn't live in this crummy hole, maybe I could find my book reports once in a while. Maybe I'd even have someplace to put them!"

  "Excuse me? You have a room all to yourself. You have a desk! When I was growing up here—"

  "Yeah, yeah, I already know about the bunk beds and the cardboard drawers under them. So what? Just because you and everyone lived like jailbirds, why should I have to? All the kids are laughing at me," he said, his jaw trembling. "They think we're so uncool, staying here. We could afford to buy some neat place, with electronic gates and stuff! But no-o-o, we hafta stay here because you were born here. What a stupid, dumb reason! I hate living here!"

  It was the most he'd said at one time in weeks. Wendy was flabbergasted at the depth of his emotion. He had seemed so easy with everything that was going on, floating above it like a cork on a stormy sea. He'd certainly been happy before the windfall; why shouldn't he be happy after it?

  Because he wasn't living up to his classmates' expectations of him. In a blinding flash, Wendy understood. His friends wouldn't think it was cool that he was still living an ordinary life just like them; they would despise him for it.

  "Oh, honey, I didn't realize it bothered you so much." She stood up and tossed the retrieved shirt into the basket. "If that's the case, we'll move out—"

  "For good?" he asked stiffly.

  "For now. Tyler, you were born here," she said in a coaxing tone. "All of your family and friends live on the street or around the corner. You have a good life, a happy life, here. Why do you want to change?"

  "Because we are changed," he said, with not so much as a hint of a

  sneer. He simply looked amazed that she didn't get it. "We have over ten million dollars now," he explained, almost in a kindly tone.

  "No we don't. Not even close. Stop exaggerating. And even a millionaire should like this place."

  It was pointless to explain that the house was a block away from one of the most historic, beautiful streets in New England, or that by the time he was grown up, gentrification of their little corner, for better or for worse, would be complete and they'd be yet another pearl on the necklace of Providence's exquisite east side. Tyler didn't care about pearls or historic. He cared about his friends, and his friends valued new. Or at least big. Big and new, preferably.

  Aware that her value system was swaying like a battered dock in a vicious storm, Wendy struggled to reach safer ground. "We'll talk
about this later. Now you have to get going or you'll be late."

  He moped his way down the stairs with Wendy trying not to whack him over the head from behind with her basket of laundry.

  "Listen to me!" she wanted to scream. "Bigger isn't better! It's a myth. It's an American con!"

  But Tyler was ten and he wasn't done growing yet. The concept of big was bound to look pretty darn good to him.

  Her son split off for the kitchen and Wendy continued on to the basement, the only conceivable place in which to tuck a washer and dryer. The house of Tyler's dreams undoubtedly had a laundry nook on the upstairs landing; he could slam-dunk his muddy sweats on the way down to breakfast.

  What's wrong with me? she wondered, not for the first time recently. Why don't I crave all these treats?

  At the foot of the stairs she wasn't surprised to see that one of the crew had gotten to the basement before her. Zack was at the soapstone sink, filling a water bottle for himself. He glanced over his shoulder at her approach and gave her an uncharacteristically sheepish look, considering that he'd been brief to the point of rudeness when she ran into him at the Hurry Curry the day before.

  "Sorry to be in your way," he said, noting her load. "I forgot to pick up some bottled water on the way over."

  "Oh, that's all right. I keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator, by the way. Would you rather have that?"

  "Nah, thanks anyway. It's sunny."

  "It's—oh. Right. So your water wouldn't stay cold, anyway. I could put ice in a glass for you," she volunteered, to show that she didn't hold a grudge.

  "This is fine. Really."

  "Are you sure?" she asked. "Because it's no trouble."

  "No, thank you," he said with a hint of a smile. "Really. Truly. I'm good."

  She felt her cheeks warm, as they always did when she watched herself behaving like an idiot. "Can you tell that I want all the crew to be happy?" she ventured.

  "I'll do good work for you," he said as he capped his bottle. "Happy or unhappy."

  "No, that's not what I—" But of course it was exactly what she meant. But he didn't have to point it out! God, he was prickly.

  Confused and distressed by his manner, she turned to sorting her coloreds from her whites, thinking that it would be best, after all, if she and the family were living somewhere else for now. Being forced into everyday intimacies with complete strangers really was awkward. At best. There could be an ax murderer among them; who would know?

  Apparently he had something further to say.

  "Mrs.—"

  "Please. It's just Wendy," she said as she tossed dark clothing over her shoulder into the machine.

  "You missed a sock. It went behind the machine," he told her. He added in a more musing voice, "You know, once they make it to the back of the machine, they're practically home free. After that it's just a short sprint to—"

  "That other world. I know," she said, responding instantly to the smile in his voice. She stood up and peered over the machine, then said, "Life must be good, wherever they go. We've had dozens of socks make a break for it over the years. And why not? No smelly feet to put up with; no wear and tear on the heels. No danger of being shrunk if you're wool, or bleached if you're gray. Wouldn't you get out if you could?"

  He laughed—a surprised laugh, she thought—and said, "Sockland. It sounds like a nice place to visit. Not sure I'd want to live there, though."

  He looked directly at her long enough for her to notice that he had absolutely beautiful blue eyes, and then he said abruptly, "Well, daylight's burnin'. Better get hammerin'."

  He all but doffed an imaginary cap to her before he turned on his heel and walked out, lugging the air compressor and his bottle of water.

  Bemused, Wendy took down a wood yardstick from Jim's pegboard and began fishing out the sock from the dark and cobwebby gap behind the machine. A nice guy, she decided. Probably not an ax murderer at all; just socially inept.

  Over the noise of the filling machine, she heard the phone ringing and began a dash up the stairs to answer it, but her husband got there ahead of her.

  "Hello," he answered in that flat, guarded tone he'd adopted since the lottery. He listened for a few seconds and then said, "Look, we're not interested, okay? We're not interested." He hung up on someone who Wendy could hear was still in mid-sentence. "Who turned off the answering machine again?" he asked as she came near.

  "I unplugged it for a minute and forgot to reset it," Wendy explained, then added, "You know, maybe you should let me answer the phone from now on."

  "The hell I will," Jim snapped. "You couldn't hang up on the devil himself if he called direct."

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa—you'd better go back to bed and try getting up on the other side, mister," she warned him. "What's the matter with you today?"

  "We need to get a new goddamn number. We may as well have this one plastered across a billboard in Times Square." He glanced at the door to the basement. "What're they, just hanging around and shooting the shit down there? I heard you going on and on with one of them just now."

  "Yes—Zack. But hardly on and on," Wendy answered, wondering at Jim's tone. He sounded almost jealous. She glanced at her son, still at the kitchen table. "Tyler, close the book and finish your breakfast. You said you were done with your homework."

  "I am," he said without looking up. "I'm reading ahead."

  "Close it. Eat. Go."

  With a melodramatic sigh the boy—an avid reader practically since birth—did as he was told and began shoveling his cereal as fast as his mouth would open and close, without necessarily swallowing.

  Wendy turned back to her husband and said, "What is bothering you today?" She was afraid that he'd done something wildly impulsive again, something so reckless that even he was afraid to own up to it. She waited to hear the worst.

  He looked ready to tell her exactly that, she realized with a surge of panic: his face twisted into an expression of sheer agony. But almost immediately he made an impatient, dismissive gesture and said angrily, "Where are we supposed to talk in this fishbowl? Exactly where?"

  She didn't know. There were men outside the kitchen windows downstairs, men outside the bedroom window upstairs. That left the bathroom, not exactly the place to confess and then argue afterward.

  God, what had he done? Bought a football team somewhere?

  Feeling vaguely as if they were trying to sneak around in an illicit tryst, Wendy said, "After Tyler gets off to school, why don't we take a thermos of coffee and walk down to the park?"

  The park was a pocket-sized patch of green a couple of blocks from their house, with benches that overlooked the bay. It would be quiet there, and private enough to hash out their opposite views about money—because Wendy had no doubt that this was going to have something to do with money.

  Jim looked doubtful about her suggestion, so she took his wrist and said with a cajoling tug, "C'mon ... when's the last time you walked down there with me?"

  He shook his head, then wrapped his other hand around her wrist and gently removed it from his own. "I won't do it, Wen. I'm entitled to have a conversation with you in my own home—in private."

  Tyler muttered into his empty bowl, "Well, excuse me for living."

  "Button it up, Ty!" he said sharply to their son. He turned back to Wendy and said, "We've got to move out of this house; the sooner the better. I've had all of this I'm going to take. If you want to do something together this morning, then let's go looking for a place to rent until they're done. You can see it's going to take a year and a day at the rate they're going. I'm sick of coming home to this. I'm sick of living in a fishbowl," he repeated.

  Somehow, Jim had seized the advantage. If she wanted to know what was on his mind, she was going to have to let him have the house he craved. It was as simple as that. She took comfort in the fact that whatever seemed to be bothering him, it wasn't so urgent that he felt impelled to spill his guts that minute. Maybe it really was the mess and disruption that had h
im in such a foul mood.

  Wendy sighed and said, "All right. You win. I give up. We'll try to find another place—but somewhere near."

  "Yes!" said their son, raising his skinny arms in a victory clench.

  Jim said, "I don't see why it has to be around the corner. That limits us."

  "I want to stay close," she argued. "I've been worried about my father lately, and I want to be able to dash over here if there's a decision to be made, and Ty should be near his cousins ... and then there's school. We'll probably be living in whatever we rent right through next fall; staying on the east side would be the least disruptive."

  Tyler had grabbed a towel and was swinging it over his head and whisper-yelling, "Woo-woo-woo."

  It annoyed Wendy a vast amount that no one wanted to live in her house. "If I'm not mistaken, Ty," she said in a deadly voice, "you have exactly six minutes and forty-three seconds to get to school. And I'm not driving you there. Do the math, my son."

  Chapter 8

  The rent was scandalous, but the view was sublime: a white, sandy beach rolling into the sparkling waters of Narragansett Bay and the ocean beyond. Wendy, a Rhode Islander born and bred, had always been at home on a beach, but she never thought she would actually be at home on a beach; the concept still boggled her mind. She gazed through the huge multipaned bay window in the master bedroom at a small sailing dinghy that was pulled onto the backyard beach. The sail was raised and flopping back and forth casually in the breeze. It looked like a prop.

  "Does the little sailboat come with?" she asked the realtor, curious.

  "Of course," said the agent. Her smile could easily be construed as condescending. "Everything that you see is included in the rental—including the geraniums in the window box."

  There were at least a dozen of them, all a no-nonsense pink and as big as softballs, lolling with gaudy confidence in the dark green planter that lined the bay window of the gray-shingled house. Who had watered them? For that matter, who had hoisted that cheery red-and-white sail on the dinghy? Who had cut the grass and dusted all of the charming antiques that surrounded them?