Summer Hours

by Amy Mason Doan

  We’re only ten feet into the tide-wash when I know I can’t make it across. The water’s cold, getting deeper and dragging my shorts lower. It’s either dump Eric or turn around, so I turn around.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Can’t.” I just make it back, set Eric down on dry grass, pull up my shorts. The relief is intense.

  “Have I wrecked your spine for life? Are you permanently five-two?”

  I force myself to stand straight. There’s a twinge in my lower back but I resist rubbing it. “Five-eight again. Is your foot dry?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He gazes back at the choppy gray ocean, where a small white tour boat has stopped so passengers can photograph the candy-striped lighthouse.

  We’ll be in their pictures. Two damaged, weary bodies.

  The man in the boots smiles as he sloshes closer. “You’ve got a strong girlfriend there,” he yells.

  Now I’m positive he saw most of my butt when we about-faced.

  I jump in before Eric has to deal with the girlfriend mistake. “When will it be clear again?” I call.

  “This time of year?” The guy is close enough now that I can read his jacket: USCG. Coast Guard. He turns to survey the submerged causeway. “Twelve hours. Peak is five feet. You’re not the only tourists to get caught, but we haven’t lost anyone yet.”

  “Glad we’re keeping the locals amused,” Eric says under his breath.

  “Do you have some plastic garbage bags we can borrow?” I ask. “He can’t get his stitches wet.”

  “Sure thing. Or you could borrow a dinghy. Or...” He rubs his beard, considering. “It’ll be dark pretty soon. You’re welcome to spend the night here, if you can manage a few stairs. You two look pretty beat.”

  “That’s nice of you, but we can’t leave our car. We have a package in it.” I point to the convertible, now the only one in the lot.

  The Coast Guard man turns. “Oh, I could radio security to keep an eye on it for you. They chain up the parking lot at eight. Doubt anything’d happen to it anyway. Well, you two think about it. Plastic bags or the dinghy or a couple of warm beds. The room’s not much, we just keep it for training and such, but it works. Take your pick, I’m not going anywhere.” He saunters off.

  “I’m exhausted and you’re exhausted,” Eric says. “I can’t take you swerving around the highway again. Serra will understand. I’ll text her and explain. Let’s just stay here and start fresh tomorrow.”

  “You got eleven hours of sleep Thursday and eight Friday, plus the nap. And I’m totally fine, I’ll grab a big coffee in a drive-through—”

  “I got three hours of sleep Thursday and two Friday. That’s why I’ve been crashing in the car.”

  His voice isn’t just tired. It’s aware that he’s giving me something with this statement. Acknowledging something. And though I’m still shivering because my legs are still soaked, the fact that he has only slept for eight hours since Thursday morning warms me.

  It gives me hope.

  I’m stubborn; I have courageous stubbornness. Someone told me that once.

  57

  Minor Miracle

  August 1998

  The morning after Eric ran away from me at the Fairmont

  Orchard Hill

  WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | The all-company CommPlanet wellness meeting at the Liberty

  WHERE I WAS | Delivering a letter

  “Well. At last.” Mrs. Haggermaker opened the door, looking as fresh and pressed as I was stale and rumpled.

  It was 8:00 a.m.

  After the Fairmont I’d gone to Cielo-del-mar. Eric wasn’t there, of course. The sheets were still rumpled from our bodies, and I sank onto the bed where we’d been together only three hours before.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  I’d driven all night, pulling over only to leave messages for Eric. Nine of them, none of which he’d returned.

  When I got to my apartment he wasn’t there.

  I’d tried to drive to the paper for my meeting. But somehow I’d driven up Orchard Hill instead. To Francine’s.

  I still wasn’t sure what I was doing there.

  “Dear?”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t sent my last scholarship letter yet. Or answered yours. That’s why I came. To say I’m really sorry.”

  “I so enjoy your letters, whenever they come. I realize that you’re busy, dear.”

  “No. There’s no excuse.”

  “It seems you might have an excuse. It almost seems like you’ve been crying.”

  “I’ll get you your money back,” I whispered. I turned to leave.

  “Rebecca.”

  I looked over my shoulder.

  “Come in the house.”

  * * *

  I followed her through the entry to the hall. Eyes and nose streaming, exhausted, but trying to straighten my carriage to match hers. Even the bow in her hair was perfect: thin blue grosgrain, the tails exactly the same length.

  In the living room she whipped her right hand up and back so that her pale blue handkerchief unfurled down her narrow shoulder blade.

  I accepted it. Wiped my nose as she led me outside, to a bench by a sundial birdbath.

  “I believe coffee is in order,” she said.

  Alone in her garden, I smoothed her linen handkerchief over my knee. Below her initials—an unfussy, block-lettered, FAH—was a single embroidered forget-me-not. Her signature flower, the one like the pin she always wore.

  She returned with a tray of coffee and fruit and muffins, setting it on a wrought-iron table. “Cream or sugar? Or one of these horrid pink packets?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I didn’t think so. On certain mornings, black coffee is a minor miracle.” She handed me a cup. “My late husband used to say that.”

  I sipped, then drained the strong brew. I’d never had better.

  She didn’t say a word. Just sipped her coffee.

  “I’ll give you your money back. It will take a while, but I want to. I don’t want to owe you anything.”

  “What are you talking about, dear?”

  “The letter.”

  “Letters have been tardier, dear.”

  “Your letter about the museum board. The graffiti and the misuse of funds. How Derrek Schwinn told you I violated the morals clause.”

  “Pardon me, dear?”

  “I’m admitting it.”

  “Admitting what, exactly?”

  “How I protected Yvonne Copeland’s vandals and embezzlers. Also, I cut classes. Drank. Smoked marijuana with my roommate. Twice. And played hooky from work. All the time. I’m playing hooky from work right now. And it turns out I’m a pretty bad reporter. Sloppy.”

  “What else?” She pursed her lips, her pale pink lipstick crinkling.

  “You don’t know that part? I slept with Devin McCallister for more than a year. You know, our mutual acquaintance across the Bay? I slept with him and lied about it. To people who deserved better. Add it to the list.”

  “Would you like a muffin, dear? Or strawberries? The last of the season.”

  “Did you hear me? I’m confessing. But you don’t have to worry about broadcasting it and ruining my life because it’s already ruined. I’m a liar and a coward. And I’ve hurt the last people in the world I wanted to hurt.”

  She nodded. Drank her coffee. Pressed a napkin to her lips.

  “I’ve never smoked marijuana,” she said, reaching over to touch the soil in a white stone planter of hollyhock near the table. “Needs water.”

  For a second, I didn’t understand what she was getting at. Maybe her mind wasn’t as sharp as it seemed.

  But no, I was the slow one.

  She had never smoked.

  But she’d done everything else on my list. That’s
what she was saying.

  “Yvonne Copeland is a friend, dear. She’s the board member who called me. To tell me the truth about her liberal grant recommendations and her...private art projects. And the business with Schwinn. Who lives across the Bay.

  “I think Yvonne’s project is an excellent use of funds, don’t you? I may find a way to contribute to it so it can continue.”

  “You—?”

  “In fact, I once did something quite similar, myself. A long time ago. But you thought I’d side with that, pardon, rutting pig, Schwinn?”

  “I—”

  “Is that why you found it so difficult to write your letter?”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You’ve said that three times now,” she said. “I wonder why.”

  “I didn’t realize I was saying it so much. I’m...” I stopped myself before I could make it a fourth.

  She laughed. A surprisingly throaty, infectious burst. “All we’re missing is the little wooden booth. And I’m not even Catholic.”

  “I’m sort of a mess today.”

  “I like it. Nobody tells you these things when you’re my age. As if you haven’t lived, yourself.” She tilted her gray eyes up at me with a quick girlish smile, then looked down at her hollyhock again.

  “So tell me.” She picked a dry leaf from the bird feeder. “Do you wish you hadn’t violated the morals clause, as you say? Truth, now.”

  I stared at the stone sailboat in the center of the birdbath, thinking about Cal. Not how it ended, not how confusing and messy it got in the middle, but how it started: that first golden summer.

  “No.”

  “Good answer.”

  “But Eric hates me. Serra will, too.”

  She nodded, reached for my cup, and filled it with her perfect coffee.

  Only after I’d finished the cup did she ask, “Do you hate yourself?”

  “I should.”

  “Poor answer. You’re a bright girl. I heard this expression once—don’t should on anyone and don’t let anyone should on you. I’ve always rather liked that. So try again. Do you hate yourself?”

  “No,” I said softly. She pressed her pale, wrinkled lips together slightly so I said it again, louder. “No.”

  “Good.”

  We sat quietly for a minute, and I asked her the thing I’d wanted to ask for years. “Why’d you pick me?”

  She considered. “Your letter was...impenetrable. Like all the other application cover letters. But I liked what you wrote about Nellie Bly. It was touching, quite wise, the part about never giving up and how ‘sometimes life required courageous stubbornness.’ Now, may I show you something?”

  * * *

  When she walked me to the door two hours later, she said, “Will you email me sometimes? I appreciate your lovely stationery but my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and your handwriting presents challenges.”

  “You have email?”

  She smiled. “Of course, dear. But write only when you want to. We’ll call this visit your fourth letter.”

  58

  Sundeck

  2008

  Saturday, 6:30 p.m.

  Our host is Grigg Harris. He’s been with the Coast Guard for thirty years. Sixteen at this lighthouse, living here full-time even in the off-season.

  Eric and I sit at a small table in the tiny crescent-shaped kitchen tucked behind the gift shop on the first floor while Grigg heats tomato soup, opens a box of Cheez-Its for us to throw in our bowls.

  With GPS the lighthouse isn’t needed anymore, so it’s maintained only for historical purposes. “It’s quite a beauty, though. One of the finest on the West Coast, original astragal bars in the lantern room. The lamp was the first in the US to have an illumination radius greater than twenty miles. But you didn’t come for the tour, look at you two.”

  Because though we’re both listening attentively, trying to be polite, we’re yawning behind our hands, and Eric looks like he’s about to face-plant into his soup bowl. We pass up the pudding cups Grigg offers, hungry only for sleep.

  Carrying Eric’s crutch, Grigg leads us up the iron spiral staircase that carves its way through the center of each floor.

  “How’d you hurt your foot?” he calls back.

  “Lawn mowing accident.”

  I smile at this.

  “Ouch,” Grigg says. “One of the perks of not having a yard, I guess.”

  “How are you managing?” I ask Eric.

  “Fine.” Though his forehead is sweaty by the time we step onto the third floor.

  “Well, this is it.” Grigg hands Eric his crutch. “If you’d come last week you’d have shared with a maritime historian from Cal Poly and a trainee from the lighthouse gift shop at Cape Mears. We call it the sundeck.”

  Because there are no windows. It’s a sparse, round whitewashed space with a bare wood floor. An iron bunk bed, a bookcase, a bulbous RCA TV/VCR on one side, and a jerry-built bathroom on the other.

  “Sleep tight.”

  We take turns brushing our teeth with our fingers in the little bathroom. There’s a sticker on the mirror, two crisscrossed anchors with the Coast Guard motto inside it: Semper Paratus. Always Ready.

  “Well,” Eric says, yawning from his bottom bunk below mine. “It hasn’t been boring.”

  * * *

  I’ve been lying awake for at least an hour under my scratchy, heavy wool blanket. I’ve reached a state of maximum alertness.

  It’s too dark. There are strange noises. Shudderings and creaks, a mysterious, rhythmic humming.

  I imagine that the hum is from the light, that it’s sweeping around and around like it did in its glory days. It’s beaming across the ocean, toward land. I picture the great cone of light circling clockwise, with me and Eric in the middle. I count its revolutions, like counting sheep.

  “Eric?” I whisper.

  “Yeah?” he whispers back.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Me, either. This lighthouse is too dark. Except for that weird blue line up there. What the hell is that from?”

  We watch the curve of blue light swim across the ceiling. A moment later, a smaller curve follows, and I lean over the bunk to track its source. “It must be coming through the staircase hole. Some fancy lighthouse equipment downstairs with a digital readout. A...wave-scope. A marine-o-scope.”

  He chuckles sleepily. “Grigg’ll tell us the official name in the morning.”

  “Now, what about that humming?” I ask.

  “Generator, maybe?” A minute later, he asks, “Why aren’t we sleeping?”

  “Sleep begets sleep, I read,” I say with a yawn.

  “What does that mean?” Eric asks.

  “That we’re like overtired babies. We’re too tired to sleep.”

  It’s easy to talk, here in this room with the moving lines of blue light. It’s like being underwater.

  We talk about our work. The people we’ve dated and broken up with. Our parents. We talk about New York, California, getting older.

  It rushes out, flies out like the day we first met, back in high school. The lovely surprise of being totally comfortable with someone from the first words.

  “Your mom sent me all of your articles, when you were still writing. I loved them, Becc. Those profiles you wrote for Coastal Weekly were my favorite. That surf family who lives in the van, and the one on the old guy who’s been picking up litter for fifty years?”

  Mom. Once, this might have annoyed me. My petty judgment used to clash with her stifling worries like low-and high-pressure systems, creating a fog. But after college I grew to see her more clearly. Her kindness, her sacrifices. And I’m glad she did what I didn’t have the guts to do.

  “She never told me.”

  A blue line, scalloped like a wave, glides across the
white boards. Then a warped infinity sign, which is probably from an 8 on the mystery machine, working hard below us.

  “Eric?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You were right. I have had a hard time since Francine died. If you’d told me when I was a senior in high school that my closest friends would someday be my mom and Francine Haggermaker, I’d have thought you were insane.”

  “So Francine stayed in her house until the end?”

  “Yes. And she was perfectly sharp. We had some of our best talks just a couple of years ago.”

  His voice is soft, like a gentle touch in the dark. “I’m so sorry, Becc.”

  “Thank you. I miss her.” I clear my throat. “But she used to say she’d had more than her fair share of life. Eighty-nine, and...she did so much. She left me her journal, from when she was in her twenties. There’s so much I wish I could ask her.”

  “I’d like to read that sometime,” he says. Another yawn. “She must’ve seen a lot in Hollywood, back in the day.”

  “She did. Francine saw everything.”

  “The eyes watching over you. Remember?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “My mom said they’re making Crystal Cove into a hotel.”

  “I refuse to...” I yawn “...stay there.”

  “Me, too. No way.”

  We speak in fragments. Then single words.

  At 1:00 a.m. we go silent. Spent, relaxed, I watch the curves of blue light above me. Soothing as a mobile.

  But we’re still rustling blankets, flipping pillows.

  “Pudding?” Eric says into the darkness.

  “Genius. Dairy sedative. Stay here.”

  I jump down from the top bunk and fumble in my purse for my flashlight keychain. I tilt my purse out on the floor and pat over the contents until I feel it.

  I flick on the tiny LED flashlight and make my way down the cold iron staircase, clinging tight to the thin railing with my right hand, illuminating my bare feet with the other. On the second floor and below, windows make it easier to see, and from Grigg’s quarters on the ground floor come the comforting sound of snoring.