Moonlight on Monterey Bay

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “You’re getting to look like a real Santa Cruz guy,” she said, coming up behind him and tugging on the hair that now curled over the collar of his shirt. “Another year or two and who knows?”

  “Just call me laid-back Sam.”

  “I won’t say what first popped into my head,” she said with a mischievous grin.

  “No need, m’love. Those eyes tell all.” He reached for her hand. “Come sit with me,” he said, and drew her down beside him on the outdoor couch.

  Maddie curled her long legs up beneath her. She took a glass of mineral water from the tray and sipped it slowly. “Joseph has had some inquiries about buying the business,” she said. “He’s thrilled, and we have you to thank, Sam. It’s because of this house and the attention it’s received.”

  “No, it’s because of what you did here.” Sam took a long swallow of his drink, then set it back on the table. “But that’s good about the offers. Will you stay on there if it sells?”

  “I don’t know. There are a lot of things I’d like to try my hand at. Gardening is one, if I could earn a living at it. I love working with plants and the earth. And later it would allow me time with the kids.”

  Sam frowned. “Kids?”

  “My kids. When I have them.”

  He nodded. “Oh, sure,” he said.

  “I think that’s important—spending time with them.” She wondered later if she had subconsciously skewed the conversation this way, a subtle reminder to Sam as to what she was all about, and what he didn’t seem to be about. But it was all vague in her mind, as if someone else were leading the conversation.

  “I’d like to be with my daughter more,” he said quietly.

  Maddie was silent.

  “She’s secure in England, where she is,” he added.

  Maddie nodded. “She probably is.” She fiddled with the edge of her sweatshirt, then said, “But it’s only here she’d get to know her father. Maybe here on this very beach, Sam, building sand castles, laughing with you, being a part of your life for a little while—”

  “If I thought it would be good for her—”

  “Sam—” The idyllic mood was already gone, romance postponed to some later date. Maddie could feel it in her own body, in the tightening of his, so she plunged in, spilling out undefined feelings that had been rumbling around inside her for days. “Sam, I think it’s a cop-out.”

  The furrow in Sam’s forehead deepened. “What’s the it here Maddie?”

  “The reasons for the distance from Sara. I think those excuses—about her security and her relatives and her stepfather and her being five years old—are simply rationalizations. You’re still her father, and you’re still a part of her life, whether it’s for a few weeks a year or longer. And I think you’re simply afraid of it all, of the commitment, of repeating past mistakes, of—” She felt the heat bubbling up inside of her, heard her words floating around on the early-evening air. “Sam,” she said, nearly collapsing on his name, “do you realize how lucky you are to have Sara in your life?”

  The sun was sinking down behind the hills, and the sky over the water began to deepen to a midnight blue. Maddie didn’t notice. Something had been let loose inside of her, and although a part of her said to hold back, the other, the stronger, refused to pull in the reins.

  Sam listened, his own emotions moving slowly and steadily up to the surface. He loved Sara so much it hurt sometimes, worried about her from a distance. “Maddie,” he said, “you don’t understand about this, about having a child—”

  He didn’t have to look at Maddie to know he had unleashed some awful kind of torrent in her, but he did look, and what he saw was heart-stopping green eyes brimming with sorrow, a face he had come to love crumbling beneath the force of an emotion he didn’t begin to understand. “Maddie—”

  She shook her head, and hushed him with a wave of her hand. Her voice was strained. “Sam, I do understand. I understand the emotion, the pain, the separation. Sam, I had a baby, too—a beautiful baby girl—”

  Sam’s breathing slowed. He turned and looked into her beautiful, sad face. “I don’t understand.”

  Maddie sucked in some air and plunged on in, her voice wobbly but clear. “Tomorrow is her birthday. She’ll be five years old.”

  Sam was unsure how to respond, but Maddie kept talking, her voice thickening with emotion.

  “It wasn’t planned, the pregnancy. When I found out, the man I thought I loved held me, told me it would be all right, and then the next day he was gone, leaving me money for an abortion. It was an awful time. My mother was still living, but she was very sick, and I was taking care of her.

  “I decided to have the baby, but I knew from the start that I couldn’t keep her. My mother needed me all the time by then, and there wasn’t any money. No relatives who could help. No father.”

  Sam put his arm around her, gently, carefully. “Maddie, you don’t have to go on.”

  “Yes I do, Sam.” She touched his arm gently, as if to apologize for something, he didn’t know what. And then she continued.

  “People helped me. Angela, the lady you met that day in Capitola, found a wonderful couple who desperately wanted a baby. She took care of the legalities, and helped me in other ways too. She was there with me, helped with my mother, and then afterward. After my mother died, she suggested I come down here to Santa Cruz.

  “I thought I was okay, but after the baby was born, I crumbled up inside, like a flower without water and sun. I was brittle and brown and dry. It was only after I moved here that I began to heal. Joseph and Sadie, Lily and Jack, the ocean, they all helped to put the pieces back together and breathe life back into me.”

  “And the baby?” Sam asked.

  “She’s with a wonderful family. And I know in my heart it was right. But it still, even now—” She looked off toward the darkening sky. A sad smile slipped across her face. “Do you know sometimes, like on her birthday, I still can feel it, the fullness in my breasts, the connection between her body and mine? Silly …”

  Her voice drifted off, and inside of Sam an enormous ache welled up for her pain and her sadness. “Are you in touch with the family?” he asked, his voice tight.

  Maddie shook her head. “I’ve built my own connections with her. That tree in your driveway is her tree. Each year on her birthday I go out to one of the parks and I plant a tree for her. The tree … well, it’s life, you know?”

  Her damp eyes grew large with sadness. Sam thought he would drown in them. “Oh, Maddie,” he started, but found he couldn’t say more.

  “And each year I write her a letter,” Maddie went on, knowing if she paused for too long, she wouldn’t continue, and somehow it was vital to her to let Sam know, to tell him who she really was. “In the letter I tell her about me, about my year, my thoughts, about her tree and where it is, about what my love for her means, how it helps me. How I pray for her—”

  “And the letters … you mail them to her?”

  “No. I don’t know where she is. I don’t want to know. I didn’t think that would be fair to her or to her parents, and I didn’t know if I would be able to stand it. I put my letters in a box, and some year, when she’s older, I’ll have Angela give them to her adoptive mother, and she can decide, she can do what’s best with them.”

  Sam thought about the tree in the driveway. Her child’s tree, a young oak tree that would grow up strong and healthy and sturdy, just as she prayed for the child she had given birth to. His heart swelled, his arms tightened around her shoulders. “You’re some lady, Maddie Ames.”

  “It’s survival,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. And then they came, in bucketfuls, down her cheeks, onto her sweatshirt.

  He held her, rocked her, and kissed the tears away.

  “Do you know something, Sam? I’ve never cried for her. Never before—” Her voice broke, smothered by sobs of grief.

  Finally Sam stood up, pulled her up beside him. “Come on.”

  Maddie wiped her
cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “Come dance with me, my love.” He held out his arms and took her into them lovingly.

  And as the moon slowly filled up the sky and the old dance band played songs of love and life, Maddie and Sam clung to each other and glided slowly across the deck.

  The next day Maddie set out by herself. She needed to be alone when she planted the tree. “It’s my ritual, my special thing,” she explained, and set off in the borrowed pickup truck.

  Sam watched her from the doorway to the beach house. Her thick black braid shifted beneath a floppy green hat as the truck bounced down the drive on worn shocks. In the side mirror he caught her smile, her green-gold eyes. He watched her until the truck turned onto the road and disappeared from sight. And then he turned and strode down to the beach, where he ran until his chest burned fiercely and his eyes stung with saltwater spray.

  The huge jagged rock he climbed afforded him a view and the aloneness he sought. The time to think.

  Sam had brought a bottle of champagne with him the night before. He was going to ask Maddie to move in with him, to live in the beach house, and in San Jose.…whenever she wanted to. To be with him. In the trunk of his car was a plaid dog bed for Eeyore, proof of the seriousness of his intent.

  But in the flash of an evening it had all changed. Suddenly his plans, his invitation, were discolored with self-interest.

  His love for Maddie was enormous, bigger than anything in his life. But a selfish love was bound to die. He needed to think about Maddie, about her life. About her future.

  He would do it, would work it all out, but not today, he thought as he climbed down from the rock. Today he needed to be there for Maddie when she came back from planting her child’s tree, her lifeline to the little girl who lived in her heart. He needed to fix her dinner, to take her for a swim in the ocean, to hold her, and to love her through the night.

  TWELVE

  It was a few days later that Eleanor walked into Sam’s office unannounced, closed the door quietly behind her, and sat down on the small couch.

  Sam was standing at the bank of windows in his office, his hands shoved in his pants pockets, his forehead creased.

  “Sam, would you like to talk?”

  He shrugged. “It’s all kind of complicated.”

  Eleanor nodded in understanding, concern shadowing her face. “You love her deeply, Sam, I can see that.”

  What Eleanor said was true, but it didn’t come near to describing what he felt. She didn’t know the half of it; what she saw was the tip of the iceberg.

  “And I know that she loves you too.”

  “Eleanor—”

  “Hush, Sam. I’ve known you for many years and that gives me some rights here. I see the pain in both your eyes, the uncertainty as to where you are going, what you’re going to do with this love now that you’ve given life to it. I love you like a son, Sam, and I’ve grown very fond of Maddie. I don’t want either of you to be hurt.”

  Sam took the words in, tucked them away. “You know,” he said, “I had almost convinced myself Maddie and I could go on like this indefinitely, with maybe a shift in living arrangements, and that loving each other would be enough.”

  “Love is certainly the cement. But you also need bricks, mutual goals.”

  He smiled with a sadness that made Eleanor flinch. “It would be less complicated if I didn’t love her so much,” he said. “Then maybe we could go on like this. But she has dreams, and needs. Needs that I don’t think I can fill.”

  “I don’t know that you can’t, Sam. But the needs are real, yes. I see her love for children, her desire for a family.”

  Sam knew all that, but hearing Eleanor say it was painful; it made the reality too jarring to hide any longer. He knew what Maddie needed—a houseful of kids and love spilling out all over the place. She needed a man like Jack Thorpe, a wonderful, dependable husband, a great father.

  He looked out over the city, and a great sadness, like a thick, morning fog, began to settle over him.

  Eleanor got up and walked over to him. She rested her blue-veined hand on his arm. “I’m not meaning to interfere. I know you’ll do right by Maddie. Just be careful, Sam. Love is a powerful thing. And it can cause great pain as well as the joy.”

  Sam didn’t dismiss Eleanor’s words. They lay heavy on his dreams, interrupting sleep. He explored his options painfully, and was brutal in his introspection. If he continued this way, being with Maddie every chance he had, loving her, he would be denying her the dreams that nurtured her, the future she deserved. And as for permanent commitment … Sam thought of his past marriage, the mess he had made of it. Maybe that would be the biggest hurt of all to her, especially after the losses Maddie had already suffered in her life.

  The next afternoon he drove to Santa Cruz, his thoughts weighing him down like enormous sandbags. There weren’t any choices left. If he loved her, he’d give her the biggest gift, make the only selfless move he could, just as she had done for the baby that marked her life forever. He would give her up.

  Maddie was sitting on her steps when Sam drove up. Eeyore was asleep at her feet. She was reading the paper and had a cup of tea sitting beside her. Sam wanted to take a picture, to catch the late-afternoon sunlight as it drifted across her hair and face, and to hold her still in that place, that moment, forever.

  But Maddie heard the car, looked up, and a smile spread slowly across her face. “Sam,” she said, her voice as soft as a whisper.

  Eeyore lumbered down the walk, tail flapping, and licked Sam’s outstretched hand.

  “Do I get a lick, too?” Maddie asked, and Sam’s heart began to tear in two.

  His silence made her look at him more closely. She noticed the shadows beneath his eyes, the pain glossing the surface. “Are you okay?” A fear, planted long ago, began to grow within her.

  Sam held her face between his palms. “Maddie,” he said slowly, “I think it’s time we talked about some things.”

  She nodded and walked back toward the house.

  Sam waited until they were inside, sitting like strangers on the couch that had held him that foggy night a lifetime ago. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on Eeyore, then a plant, a painting. His head felt like it was going to explode. How could he ever let her go? Finally he began.

  “Maddie,” he said carefully, measuring each word, “I love you more than I thought I could ever love anyone. It’s … it’s an overwhelming thing.…”

  Maddie sat silently. Slowly the thoughts she had pressed down, forced into shadows for days now, began to take shape, and she knew before he spoke, what thoughts would be spoken, what agony articulated.

  “I can’t ruin your life, Maddie.”

  Maddie lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. She tried to snuff out the fear, to lighten the moment. “I didn’t know that was being considered, Sam,” she said. “But good. I support the decision.”

  “No, listen, Maddie, let me say this while I still have the courage. I can’t make the kind of commitment you need. Your needs—they’re so real, so vital. I’ve messed up people’s lives once before, and I can’t do it again, not to you. I love you more than my life. But I can’t let that love cause you to have less of a life than you deserve. You’d come to hate me for that.”

  Maddie was silent. For a long time she sat as still as the coffee table, her mind sifting through his words. She tried to sort them out, to extricate them from the pain she felt. And then a tiny seed of anger bubbled up from the thick morass of emotion, a clean spurt of indignation. Her eyes were lit, her voice strong and clear.

  “What you’re saying, Sam, is that this is it. Summer is over.”

  “Maddie, I—”

  “No, wait—” She put her hands up in front of her. “I’m a part of this, too, Sam. I have a mind, feelings—”

  “Of course. And that’s what matters the most to me.” He touched her arm, but when she stiffened, he pulled his hand back. “I can’t be what
you need. I can’t fulfill the dreams you have, and you shouldn’t have to alter them. You deserve the best.” His voice faltered, then broke off. He wasn’t sure how much strength was left in him, and for one brief moment he considered backing off, coasting awhile longer. And then he looked at her face, the face he loved, and he knew he was doing the right thing. “I’m not the man who can give any of that to you.”

  “Just like that?” Her voice was tight. “You’ve decided that this is best, so just like that—whazoom!—it’s over?”

  “Not just like that, Maddie.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re a coward, Sam Eastland. You’re hiding behind who you were five years ago. And you know who’s being hurt the most?” Her eyebrows shot up into her hair. “You, that’s who. You’re denying yourself the chance to grow, to change, to be something maybe you weren’t all those years ago. And that’s terribly sad.”

  Sam’s voice was strained. “Maddie, I love you. This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Her anger was settling in around him, a soothing balm for the great sadness that numbed his face, his lips, his jaw.

  Maddie was getting up from the couch. She wobbled slightly, then caught her balance and looked beyond him, past his ear, to the edge of a picture frame. Tears stung her eyelids, but she refused to allow them to escape. “That’s too bad, Sam,” she said slowly. “Life is difficult.” The tears were so close now that the colors in the room were beginning to run together. She couldn’t see him clearly. Good. That was good.

  She turned, her head held high, and forced her legs to work. With Eeyore slowly trailing behind her, she walked sedately out of the living room, up the stairs, into her tiny room. Once inside, she closed the door, crossed to the narrow bed, and flung her body across it. And pressing her head into a pillow, she filled it with silent cries of anguish.