by Yvonne Prinz
Later that night, we sat in the idling car outside my house. Sonia definitely shouldn’t have been driving, but I don’t even have a license. I made stupid small talk.
“So, I guess we’ll see you at the party tomorrow.” I sighed.
“Oh, yeah. Wow, I feel crappy. I should really go to bed. I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep. Where’s the party, again?”
“The Heron.” I’d already told her that a few times. Where else would it be?
“Right, of course. I knew that.” She turned and looked at me. A tear rolled down her cheek. “How much does this suck, George?”
“Tons.”
She swiped at her cheek and nodded.
I got out of the car and went inside. My mom was busy in the kitchen making a pan of lasagna for the party. Though she still slept in Lucky’s bed at night, she was venturing out now, a bit more each day.
“Hi, baby.” She smiled wistfully at me. I went and stood next to her. She kissed the top of my head. “How was it?”
“Weird. Good. So many people.”
She nodded and went back to her meat sauce. Our finely balanced family routine had been toppled. My mom usually spent the days in her studio, a big, bright room with floor-to-ceiling windows behind the house that my dad built for her. She’s an artist. She’s kind of famous for her hand-built wood-fired pots. Her world is in her studio. She has an electric kettle out there for endless cups of tea and a stereo that she listens to classical music and jazz on. She has an electric kiln for small loads of work and a big gas one for bigger pieces. Out back there’s a kiln for wood firings in a sand pit. Before this happened, we didn’t see my mom in the house till dinnertime, and then she was only too happy to talk to another human about their day. Now the studio stood dark and we kept bumping into each other, acting as constant reminders of our collective pain. I hoped that my mom would feel like working again soon. It was hard to see her like this, thin and pale and hunched over, wearing Lucky’s clothes, her long, beautiful hair matted and dull instead of swept up into a tidy bun like she usually wore it, with a paintbrush or a pencil poked through it. My dad remained powerless to help. He and I said very little to each other. His world was the oyster farm. My world was less clearly defined.
The party turned out to be unbearably nice. Colorful pots and casserole dishes were laid out on a long wooden table in the dining room at the Heron. Too many people brought baked beans but it didn’t matter. Jeff and Miles closed the restaurant and Marc, the Heron’s temperamental chef, roasted some turkeys. Our neighbors brought salads and breads and cakes and liquor. There had to be about ten guitars in the room, and Lucky’s friends played all his favorite songs until later when a reggae band started up. I sat next to Vince, Lucky’s surfing buddy from just up the road. He got me a glass of wine at the bar and another one when I finished it. He didn’t know that I’m not supposed to drink because of my meds. The wine warmed me and unclenched my stomach. After the band, it was open mic. Lucky’s friends came up and spoke, one by one. Vince had had a few beers by then and he stumbled purposefully up to the stage.
“This is total bullshit,” he said loudly into the microphone. “Because, you wanna know why? Because shit like this doesn’t happen to guys like Lucky. It happens to assholes that don’t know how to read waves. I knew Lucky since we were six, man! Lucky was the one who made us safe on the water. That guy saved me so many times I lost count. I totally owe him my life. I don’t know how this could have happened to him but it’s total bullshit . . . okay?” He stared the crowd down and then he lurched off the stage.
The open mic was the hardest part of the night. Especially when my dad rose slowly, unsteadily from his chair and made his way to the stage, holding a mug of beer. I cringed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. The room went silent. He stood there a moment, gazing at something off in the distance. Then he cleared his throat and began speaking: “Thank you all for coming. My son . . . you know him as Lucky but he was born Ludwig, named for my grandfather, a stupid name for a boy like that, we soon realized. He was nothing like my grandfather at all. He was . . .”
My dad stopped. He took a deep breath and went on. I couldn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry, I’m not accustomed to talking about him in the past tense. Anyway, Lucky had a way of living that made me envious. He was ravenous for life. He couldn’t seem to pack enough of it in . . .” He paused. The room waited. “And he was always like that. When he was four, he started coming out on the boat with me and he’d stand up the whole way—he already had his sea legs—and he’d watch the horizon as though he was trying to figure out the fastest way to get there. He’d point to it and say ‘Papa, can we go there?’ ” He paused again and inhaled raggedly and then he seemed to remember something that made him smile.
The crowd waited patiently. He looked out at all of Lucky’s rosy-cheeked, dread-locked, tattooed friends.
“And look at all of you. Most of you I’ve never even met and here you are, some of you came so far. My wife, Madeleine, and I are very, very grateful. It makes us feel better to know that you knew our son too . . . and that you miss him, and that you won’t forget him. Thank you.”
My dad raised his mug.
“To Lucky.”
The crowd raised their glasses: “To Lucky.”
My dad returned to his chair next to my mom, draping his arm around her shoulders. She kissed him and he took a folded handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed her tears. My mom had pulled herself together for the party. She was wearing a long denim skirt and a mohair sweater. I could see her telling my dad she wanted to leave. They got up together and slowly moved toward the entrance of the dining room. People stood up as they passed and my dad shook hands with the men and the women kissed my mom’s cheek or they hugged her. My dad squeezed my shoulder as they passed by.
“See you at home,” he said.
I scanned the room for Sonia and spotted her at the bar, having a conversation with a guy. He was wearing a T-shirt I thought I remembered Lucky wearing. I wasn’t surprised; Lucky always gave his things away. What was his was yours. He had no need for material goods. Sonia seemed to know the guy. She said something to him and he shook his head and looked hurt. Then she hugged him as though she was apologizing. They stayed like that, hugging, for longer than most people hug. I wondered who he was.
Later, I saw the same guy sitting alone at the bar as I made my way to the bathroom. I was dizzy from the wine.
“Hey,” he said as I passed him, “you’re Georgia, right?”
“Yeah.” I slowed. “How’d you know?”
“Are you kidding? You look just like Lucky.” He offered his hand. “I’m Fin.”
I shook his hand. It felt cool and his fingers were long and thin, like a pianist’s. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Lucky had probably mentioned him to me in his many rambling e-mails. He’d talked about so many of his friends. Fin let go of my hand. I reluctantly looked away and glanced around the room. The party guests were drunkenly hanging off each other, hugging and kissing. I looked back at Fin and laughed.
“Lucky would have loved this party,” I said.
“Yes. He was the life of every party.”
“How well did you know him?”
“Very. I was actually with him, you know, when he . . . had the accident.”
“Yeah?” I looked at him with renewed interest.
He nodded solemnly. I wished we could go somewhere quiet and he could tell me everything about the last few minutes of my brother’s life.
There were several friends who’d made statements to the Australian police about what happened. Fin probably had too, I couldn’t remember. A week earlier the report had been sitting on our kitchen table, and I sat down and read it till the hair on the back of my neck stood up. They said Lucky had wiped out off a big wave. No one else had dared jump on that wave. He was riding it fine but then he seemed to lose his balance slightly. The wave tossed him up and dumped him hard and a
massive wall of gnarly water slammed down onto him. Some of his friends said that they thought his board was tombstoning, which can mean that a surfer is trapped in deep water, disoriented, or that his leash could be caught on a rock or some coral. Everyone watched for Lucky’s head to pop up but it just didn’t. He was under for way too long. Someone, maybe it was Fin, got to the board and dove down into the churning water and found Lucky. He ripped the Velcro band off Lucky’s foot and pulled him to the surface but it was too late. Lucky had been hit on the head with his board and he was probably unconscious and unable to free himself. This had all happened in about ten feet of water. For Lucky, that was like drowning in a bathtub.
Fin didn’t look like a surfer. He looked more like a South American polo player: olive-skinned with dark, intelligent eyes and a longish, thin nose. His light-brown hair was tangled and fell loosely around his face. There was no sign of the early crow’s feet or the permanently sunburned nose or the sea-salt-fried, sun-damaged hair you see on most surfers. He had an intensity in his eyes that was separate from the rest of his face. His mouth turned up at the corners into a slight smile but his eyes expressed something else, something deeper. He also didn’t talk like a surfer. Frankly, I’d had enough surfer talk to last me a lifetime. The way Fin spoke was refreshing.
The reggae band had started up again. Fin said something to me I couldn’t hear and I leaned in closer. “What?”
His lips brushed against my hair and I felt his warm breath on my ear. The wine had relaxed me and I felt a small current of attraction zip through my belly. He repeated himself. “I said you’re beautiful.”
I wasn’t expecting that. Could he be flirting? I was flattered. I felt myself blushing.
He laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s just that I feel like I know you already. You look so much like Lucky.”
“Yes. You said that.”
“But different, more delicate, and your eyes are a bit more green than blue. Lucky’s eyes were blue.”
“He had my dad’s eyes. I have my mom’s.”
I looked down. I noticed he was wearing a black cord around his neck. There was something silver hanging from it, dangling just below his T-shirt collar. I pointed to it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He pulled the silver charm out from below the neck of his T-shirt: Fearlessness, written in Sanskrit.
“It was Lucky’s,” said Fin, leaning in again.
“I know.”
“He gave it to me. When I first met him, I’d just crashed my motorcycle. I was a bit of a mess. Then I fell off a roof I was working on and then he watched me surf and he figured I needed it more than he did.”
“Oh.” I was a bit hurt. Lucky had always said that I could have it. That was typical Lucky though; he’d probably given it to Fin without a second thought. I remembered one time, I’d slipped it off Lucky’s neck while we were sitting side by side on the sofa, and put it on mine. He angrily demanded I give it back. I remember taking it off my neck and dangling it in front of him, teasing him. He grabbed for it and I yanked it away and stuffed it in my mouth. It tasted salty. He pounced on me, squeezing my cheeks together till I laughed so hard that I spit it out. It’s for luck, he had said. You can have it when I’m dead. And I remember my response too: If you’re dead it’s not really working, is it? I never thought about that charm again until I noticed it was missing from Lucky’s neck at the morgue.
Fin studied my face. “Do you want it? You should have it. Here . . .” He started to take it off.
“No. Don’t be silly. He gave it to you. You should have something to remember him by.”
“That’s very kind of you. It means a lot to me.” He gestured at the empty barstool next to him. “Why don’t you sit down?”
I looked at the empty chair and then back at him. “Did Lucky tell you about me?” I asked.
“No. Sit. Tell me all about you.” He smiled.
I could feel my face getting hot again. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
I rushed to the bathroom but someone was using it. I walked quickly down the hallway and out onto the front porch of the Inn where the air was heavy and cool. I took deep breaths. I shook my head at how childishly I’d just behaved, running away from Fin like an overly sensitive little girl. The porch was quiet and I could hear the soft rumble of the surf rolling in. I smelled Marc’s peculiar European cigarettes. He sat in the shadows on the porch swing, smoking, still in his chef ’s whites. Marc is Swiss French and barely civil to anyone, though lately I’d received a few nods of approval from him for my desserts.
“Sorry for your loss,” he said, exhaling smoke.
“Thank you.”
“Would you like a cigarette?” He expertly shook one out of the pack and offered it to me.
“No. Thanks.” I took the wooden porch steps down to the pavement. I crossed the highway and found my way through the darkness to the beach where I sat down in the damp sand and watched the oily black water until I was numb with cold. I heard raised voices and heavy steps on the wooden deck behind me. I looked back at the brightly lit Inn. A girl I was quite sure was Sonia ran across the porch with someone following her.
“You shouldn’t have come!” she shouted. It was definitely Sonia.
“Wait!” said a man. He followed her down the stairs to the parking lot. They disappeared into the darkness. I watched the Inn and listened but I heard nothing more except the dull noise from the party. After a few minutes I saw Sonia walk back inside alone. A car passed by on the highway. I turned back to the water.
Four
Several weeks had passed since the party for Lucky. Somehow it was already late June. I was starting to tire of the looks the locals kept giving me. I look enough like my brother to light a spark of hope in their eyes. I could almost see them thinking, Lucky? And then remembering, Oh, right, Lucky’s dead, it’s just George. They didn’t mean any harm by it, but couldn’t they tell by my face that I missed him so much it hurt?
I was reluctantly back in the work groove at my other job at Katy’s Kites and Salt Water Taffy, which opened at ten sharp on Saturday mornings. The sharp part is because Katy, the owner, who lives in Petaluma, likes to call every morning, even though the place never gets customers for the first hour. Once she knows the store is up and running, she can go back to her gifted twins’ soccer games and ballet recitals. At 9:55, I unlocked the front door, turned off the alarm, flicked on the neon open sign, and went outside where I hung several long-tailed kites from their hooks under the eaves to flap around in the wind all day. No one really buys kites anymore. People come for the taffy. The phone started ringing right on time and I ran inside to answer it.
“Hi, Katy.”
“Hi, Georgia. Everything okay? Have you restocked the bins?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Everything’s great.”
The fog was thinning. Big puzzle pieces of blue were appearing through the gray. It would most likely be sunny by early afternoon. I restocked the taffy bins. Katy’s features thirty-five flavors. I used to like how some of the flavors, like lemonade or apple pie, would evoke happy memories of my childhood with Lucky, but I’ve come to hate all of them. The flavors are all fake. The thought of a whole summer of this made me feel weary, but I needed the job.
Sharona, my part-time coworker, arrived late, full of the usual apologies and hung over, the remnants of last night’s makeup blurring her pretty features. She smelled like liquor and cigarettes. Sharona and I are only three months apart in age but there is little evidence to suggest that. For instance: She already owns her own car, a rusted-out Toyota wagon she’s been driving since the minute she turned sixteen. She knows how to get a fake ID and how to get cheap concert tickets online and how to apply smoky eye makeup. She knows how to buy lingerie and where to get a good tattoo and how to get to San Quentin to visit her dad every month. He got into some sort of trouble years ago but he found religion in jail. Sharona went the same way when her home life s
tarted to fall apart and she believes that God has forgiven her dad. She told me that they read the Bible together when she visits. The thing I like best about Sharona is that she never judges anyone. We get along great and she’s one of the few people in town who really knows me and still treats me like I’m normal.
I handed her a latte in a to-go cup. Lattes are part of my Saturday ritual. Before work I always stop by the Heron and pick up one for each of us.
“It might even still be hot,” I said.
“Mmmmm.” She smiled and sipped it gratefully. “Hi, by the way.”
“Hi.”
I counted out the change drawer while Sharona straightened up the bins of taffy. The smell in this place, a sweet artificial berry smell, is sickening so early in the day. I pulled my wool turtleneck up over my nose. All of my clothes smell like this place.
Sharona’s not a fan of dead air. She likes to chatter away while she works but I don’t mind. I like listening to her. I watched her wince as she bent over the lowest row of bins. A small gold crucifix dangled between her breasts, bouncing off a tattoo of a coiled cobra.
“Man, I feel awful,” she said, standing up straight, arching her back.
“What did you do last night?” I asked.
“Mags and I were at the laundromat because my mom’s washing machine broke again and we met this guy there who was on his way to a party in Santa Rosa so we went with him. It was off the hook. I think it was the Jell-O shots that did me in. . . .” She paused and a look of alarm spread across her face. “Damn!”
She ran over to her purse at the checkout, digging through it till she found her phone. “Damn!” she said again as she punched in a number and looked at me, shaking her head, tapping her foot.
“Hey, Mags, it’s me. Did you happen to pick up the laundry last night? ’Cause I didn’t. Please say you did. Call me.” She clicked off her phone. “Oh, man. I hope she remembered. We left our stuff in the dryer. I am such an idiot.”
She dropped her phone into her bag. That’s another thing about Sharona: She carries a purse, not a backpack, and it’s full of things like car keys and lipstick and cigarettes and birth control.
