by Ward, Susan
Only this hanging back, loving and waiting for her, even though it is the necessary move, I am ready to be done with. But this time I can’t go after Linda; I need to wait until she’s willing to come to me. There are some mistakes in life you can only fix by hanging on and waiting, and a man has to love a woman how they are, not how he wishes her to be.
I guzzle down two-thirds of my drink then set it in the sand beside my chair. I’m about to grab my rod and recast my line when my phone atop the cooler starts to vibrate with an incoming call.
I didn’t expect to hear from anyone this soon. It’s only been four hours since the text announcing that my granddaughter, Kaley, was in labor and on her way to the hospital.
I slip off my sunglasses so I can see the image on the screen better. Chrissie. FaceTime. God, I hate FaceTime.
I swipe it on. “Well, is it a boy or a girl?” I ask without preamble as I gaze at my daughter.
She laughs in her sweet urchin chime. “Well, nothing yet, Poppy. Why aren’t you down here? The whole family is here except you. It doesn’t feel right without you.”
“Don’t call me Poppy,” I counter, blowing past Chrissie’s question and hoping to change course.
“Why not? You let the grandkids do it. And somehow I’ve always had the feeling you don’t like it when I call you Jack. I sort of like Poppy. Why shouldn’t I call you that?”
“Yes, I don’t like it when you call me Jack, but I like it even less when you call me Poppy. What’s going on, baby girl? Why are you calling if it’s not to announce you’re a grandmother?”
Chrissie crinkles her nose playfully. “Grandmother. It sounds so much more intimidating when you say it. I can’t believe Alan and I are going to be grandparents.”
“It was bound to happen. Especially with having five kids. Ups the odds that one of them would do it to you. It happens to the best of us. Jeez, girl, I’m going to be a great-grandfather by the end of the day. Seems like only yesterday you were born. How’s Linda holding up?”
Even on the tiny five-inch screen I can see her face tighten, like I unexpectedly zapped her with that question. There’s a moment of silence, us staring at each other digitally, and then she recovers enough to make one of her comical faces.
“Why don’t you ask Linda yourself?” she states pointedly. “She’s here at the hospital. She hasn’t left Kaley’s side since they settled her in the birthing room. But if my daughter’s mood is any indication, Bobby’s mother or not, Kaley is going to ask him soon to boot Linda from the room. Give her a half hour. Then call Linda. She’ll need consoling.”
I laugh. “Good luck with getting Linda from the room.”
Chrissie giggles. “You’re the only one ever to be able to manage Linda.”
My head tilts to the side as I give her an intense stare. “Let’s not go there, Chrissie. All right?”
Her features grow taut, impatient. “Why not? Isn’t it time we went there? We all are at the hospital. Except you. Don’t pretend it doesn’t have anything to do with Linda.”
I reach for my iced tea, an excuse not to look directly into the screen. “My not being there doesn’t have anything to do with her.”
“Just answer me one thing, Daddy, and then I’ll give it a rest and I’ll never ask again. Did you and Linda end it because of me?”
I choke on the tea I just sipped and lock my gaze on the phone. “No. None of the times we’ve ended had anything to do with you.”
Chrissie’s eyes start to rapidly search my face. “What do you mean none of the times?”
Inwardly I grimace.
I didn’t mean to say that one.
Chrissie only knows the abridged history between me and Linda. And today is definitely not the day to go unabridged with my daughter.
“What happened between Linda and me is just that—between Linda and me. It has nothing to do with you, Chrissie. And it has nothing to do with why I’m not there today.”
“Then explain it to me,” Chrissie says, frustrated. “Why you prefer to be alone in Santa Barbara while your first great-grandchild is being born in Pacific Palisades.”
I try to force a smile for her benefit, but I can tell it’s not happening. “I’m not alone, baby girl. I’m spending this very special day with your mother. Let me do it my way, the way that makes me happy.”
She exhales heavily and does a slight shake of her head. “Sitting on the beach alone isn’t spending the day with Mom.”
“It beats being in a crowded hospital. I can think here. I can’t think when the herd’s together in a single place.”
“Well, that was sort of a mean way to talk about your grandchildren, Jack,” she counters, but we’re both laughing now.
“Tell Kaley I love her, I’m thinking of her, and I’ll be down first thing once the baby is here.”
Chrissie studies me, gnawing her lower lip as if working up to say something I don’t want to hear. “Fine. I’ll tell her. But did it ever occur to you, Daddy, I may want you here with me?”
We square off with our eyes for a few seconds.
“Nice try. Not working, baby girl.”
She pouts. “Pretty good try.”
“I love you, sweetheart.” Before she can say anything else I click off the call.
I’m about to toss my cell back onto the cooler when I start to turn it in my hand instead. Then I click it back on and tap through my contacts and open Lovely Linda just to see her face.
An old joke—lovely Linda.
An old picture—jeez, that has to be from the ’80s.
Christ, she still gets my heart pumping.
Perhaps I should shoot her a text—
“Jack!”
I turn to spot Patty Thompson jogging across the beach toward me. She looks excited and happy. Someone must have told her Kaley is at the hospital. The curiosity in her eyes warns me she’s wondering why I’m parked on the sand instead of with my family.
Curious and worried—I should probably add nosy—but then, I’ve known Patty forever so our relationship is definitely without out-of-bounds territory. Heck, how do you put boundaries up between you and a woman you’ve gone to jail with? We shared an entire era together. Freedom riders, civil rights protests, march on Washington, and the Berkeley riots. Christ, she and George were with me at Woodstock.
We’ve been neighbors since 1970. I wonder if anyone from the old days thought we’d still be here.
“Hey, stranger, what are you doing out here in the heat of the day?” I ask as she plops down in the sand beside me. “You’re going to ruin that gorgeous skin of yours.”
She fiddles with her silvery hair. “I thought I’d find you here.”
I grab my rod and start reeling in the line. “Any particular reason you’re looking for me?”
“Rene called with the news. Any word on the baby front?”
I cast out my line. “No baby yet as of five minutes ago. How’s your daughter doing? I haven’t seen Rene in ages.”
She lays her cheek on her knees and grimaces at me. “Doesn’t have much time to visit her mother, busy plastic surgery practice and all, but you know how that goes, Jack. I guess she’s good.”
We laugh.
“Well, you’ve got to let them live their own lives.”
Her brows furrow. “How come no one ever said that to us? Go live your own life.”
I laugh. “Less enlightened generation before us. And as I recall we did a damn good job living our own lives without anyone telling us to.”
Her lips pucker as she beats back a smile. “Don’t remind me. Some of the stuff you, me, and George did was pretty crazy.”
“Do you talk to him?” I ask. “George hasn’t called me in nearly thirty years. Not since I didn’t go to his second wedding.”
She shakes her head. “No, not ever. We were married and the man won’t even take my calls since he remarried. Not even to discuss our daughter. It’s like an entire section
of my history, poof, vanished. No one to talk about it with. Except you. And those were the days, Jack. When we were out there trying to change the world.”
She turns wistful and I start feeling that way as well, but for different reasons.
“Were those the days?” I ask quietly. “Or is now the time we should—”
I break off when her gaze turns intently searching.
“What? I didn’t hear you, Jack.”
I shrug, glad I didn’t finish that thought. “Don’t worry, Patty. It was nothing important.”
“Why don’t you come up to the house? I’ll make you some lunch while we wait for news from the hospital.”
I prop my fishing pole in the sand again. “I’m doing just fine here, Patty.”
She frowns. “Jesus, you’d think someone by now would have told you this much sun isn’t good for you. You’re getting red on your stomach.”
I grin. “I always thought you thought a bronzed chest was sexy.”
“It was sexy when we were twenty.” She crinkles her nose. “It’s not sexy now.”
She’s probably right and I definitely shouldn’t want the darkening of my tan combined with the bleaching of the silver hairs on my abdomen. The younger women only pretend it’s sexy because they like to call me a silver fox when I’m trotting across Hendry’s Beach with a board or just sitting in my chair here.
Silver fox. Not a completely offensive term to identify an old surfer they think used to be hot in the day. Probably better than old dude with a board. Fuck, someone called me that yesterday.
“I think it’s a little late for me to worry about too much sun, Patty.”
“It’s never too late,” she chides, springing to her feet.
Never too late.
Another wave of wistfulness.
A trite saying that is rarely true, though it isn’t worth pointing that out to Patty or that I’ve spent a lifetime being too late.
Two
When I retrace the journey of my life I don’t go back to the year I was born. I go back to the summer of 1960, the year I was eighteen. Usually people have milestone moments they erroneously think significant in between those two events, so most people go back to the day they first took a breath, but not me. I go back to the day I took my first breath as a man. The day I met Lena.
To understand any part of my story you have to understand the world I became a man in. It wasn’t at all like our modern times. There wasn’t the Internet, 24-hour cable news, movies on demand—Christ, there weren’t even cell phones. What we knew of the world consisted of what we lived each day and if what was beyond our carefully constructed existence was different, we didn’t know it, and worse, we didn’t bother to wonder about it.
Someone once said no generation had a cushier birth than my generation, and I’ve always believed that saying true, though not because of the post-World War II affluence across our country by the time of John F. Kennedy, but because of the luxury of ignorance. And yes, ignorance is the ultimate, platinum credit card luxury when what you know of the world is only good.
What I knew of the world the year I graduated high school was better than only good. I thought I was just like any other average eighteen-year-old living in the US—a house on the beach, surfing when I wanted to, money always in my pockets, a car in the driveway, and all things of the real world pushed behind the mountains into a haze of nonexistence by the act of living wealthy and privileged. Average in every way, but then of course I wasn’t.
Beyond the mountains, the ocean, and the affluence that surrounds my hometown like a protective cocoon and forever kept Santa Barbara in permanent status of nonreality, there were lots of things happening in the world foreshadowing future crisis—not just for me, but for everyone—that I would have never known unless I chose to.
An important point to make, that I think is too often missed by people. I chose the future crisis of my life, by a series of decisions, that I never once could have envisioned turning out the way it did. But then, how could I have envisioned it? Let’s make no mistake at this stage of my story, it was never my intent to get caught up in anything beyond a pair of thighs or a gnarly wave or a chick-impressing guitar rift. My life pursuits consisted of girls, surfing, and hours jamming with talented musicians wherever I could find them—usually down on lower State Street just hanging out or at the music academy—and pretty much nothing else.
At the risk of sounding shallow, I confess that I didn’t want anything else in the summer of 1960. Hell, it was the year the birth control pill was unleashed on the American populace, the cusp of the social revolution soon to come that I was already in full apprenticeship for thanks to the always fully stocked, readily accessible drawer of rubbers in my bedroom, since it was more important to dear old Dad to avoid a political scandal than to obey his Catholic faith.
Life was good for me, the future seemed defined and certain, I was having one hell of a fantastic time each and every day, and I hadn’t learned yet the simple truth that the road always unexpectedly changes for everyone. That life wasn’t about where we thought we were going; it was about the journey and the road.
The day that brought my first unexpected change of road started like any other that summer before heading off to Harvard for my freshman year: pissing off my dad by not being where he wanted me to be when he wanted me there, and instead being at Hendry’s Beach with my best friend, George Thompson.
The morning had started with a high tide warning blasting from my transistor radio, tipping me off that surf was up, and that meant Senator Jackson Parker would lose in the unending tug-of-war of wills with his son that day. It didn’t matter that Pop was in a contentious battle for his US seat and needed me at a posh fundraiser so he could parade his golden boy son for votes, or that he was a Republican and hated all things Kennedy, or that I was his only child and the recipient of all his expectations and demands in totality. Things of the real world didn’t matter when surf was up, not to the Jack who was me then.
It was just another day, just another fuckup, and a whole lot of unforeseen.
George stood at the edge of the surf as I sprinted from the water carrying my board. He’d bailed from the ocean hours earlier because the sets had gotten too intense, though if I called him out on it, he’d claim he’d hit the beach because Patty was there.
Patricia Stovall was every guy’s fantasy, a super bubbly hybrid of Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren. All the world may have fallen in love with Jackie Kennedy, but for your standard hot and horny college guy, Patty was the epitome of the wet dream. She was that sexy in her youth, and I probably would have made a play for her myself, except she was more trouble than she was worth, even at seventeen, and George was two years my senior and my longest friend.
George tossed me a beer. “You done for the day, Jackie?”
“Blown out. No point in staying out. Especially since there is just as much happening here with you, Georgie-boy, than there is in the ocean.”
I flashed my smile at the girls flanking him and received a chorus of giggles—though I probably shouldn’t have, since by the end of high school I’d known each of them in the biblical sense and they all knew it. I saw his face flush as he shot me an asshole kind of glare because we both knew the beach bunnies, all except Patty and even that wasn’t a certain thing, were here because of me and not him.
“Are we packing up, Jack? Wasn’t your pop expecting you home hours ago?”
I shrugged carelessly. “Probably, but he shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not there. And why should we cut out? I’m already late and I just got here. The party hasn’t started.”
The girls laughed and my gaze made a leisurely float from suit to suit, pausing at Patty probably longer than I should have. She had a new tight pink bikini on that was prudishly modest in retrospect, though it did do quite a bit for me the first time I saw her in it.
I shifted my gaze to my can of beer and focused for a moment on the lar
ge red X in the design for Lucky Lager. Yep, “lucky” was the brand word for my generation, though I didn’t realize it until too late or note the irony of it.
I set my board in the sand near the circle of beach chairs and towels where Patty was surrounded by her court of pretty companions puffing on their Lucky Strikes. I popped open my beer and guzzled two-thirds as I unzipped my wetsuit to free the sweat-glistening top half of my body before I sank down close beside Patty.
Even though I was horny as hell, there was no point in picking a girl just yet since there was a lot of daylight left and cozying up to Patty would give George just the right push her way. Two years they’d been sparking with no flame. Next week we were heading east for Harvard, and he needed to close the deal on her soon or he’d lose her once she started Barnard College in the fall. She just wasn’t the kind of girl who would stay unattached after she left home.
Patty leaned in to me and whispered, “You’re such a tease, Jack. Are you going to finally claim me or are you just going to keep razzing George to do it?”
I grinned and guzzled my beer. “Why don’t you be my girl at the fundraiser tonight? That might light a fire under him. We could have fun. Pop’s friends and donors. A Haydn string quartet, free food and booze, and me. How can you resist?”
She rolled her eyes, since we both knew it was going to be a snooze, and stomped out her cigarette in the sand. “Just what I thought. You know darn well I’ve already promised to go tonight with George and that’s the only reason why you’re inviting me. But say the word. I’d be your girl tonight, Jack.”
“And I’d be dropped by you and pounded by George before morning.” I polished off the last of my suds and held out my hand for another can. Over the rim I noted Patty’s angry stare at me. We’d flirted forever, practically since grade school, and I wasn’t sure why this time she’d gotten pissed off over it. “No point in getting frosted, Patty. We both know George is the man for you.”
She shoved her face within a breath of mine. “Says you. Maybe I have other plans, Jack. Have you ever considered that?”
Her lush mouth was so close I couldn’t stop myself, so I planted a hard one on her lips before saying, “It’s time to ice it with me and put George out of his suffering,” and then I shot to my feet.
