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by Tess Thompson

  He sat with the sun on his back until the pounding of his heart returned to its usual dull thud. Around him, children shouted with glee. Smiling dogs chased the surf. A young mother fixed sandwiches under an umbrella. Teenage girls in bikinis tossed a Frisbee back and forth. An elderly couple passed by, arm in arm, sunhats shielding their delicate skin from the afternoon rays. All of them alive. Going about the business of living. He was chasing ghosts.

  I need help.

  When he got to the parking lot, he tossed his surfboard into the back of his truck and drove up the street to his office. It was Saturday. The parking lot was empty. He didn’t bother to lock his truck. No time to waste. He unlocked the back door of his office and strode down the hallway. He yanked open his desk drawer and grabbed the box with the engagement ring in it. Tonight, Sharon would come for dinner. Tonight, he would propose. Enough insanity. Enough.

  At his dad’s house, he left his board in the garage and hung his wetsuit on the railing to dry. He stopped to hose the sand from his legs and feet before climbing the stairs to the deck.

  “Jackson, is that you?” It was his father, calling from inside the study. The windows were open. Jackson could make out his shadow through filmy curtains. He was in his favorite chair, probably reading.

  “Yes. Going to take a shower.” He entered the airy kitchen. A heap of lemons in his mother’s favorite blue bowl adorned the table. A pile of mail was next to it, left by the housekeeper. Go about the business of living. He rifled through the mail. Nothing of note caught his attention, other than a travel brochure for France. Was his father thinking of taking Janet to Europe? The last vacation they’d taken was to Italy before his mother got sick. The idea settled like a spiny ball inside his chest. A breeze from the open window mingled with the scent of lemons. A memory slipped through the passage of time. Lemons. Italy.

  He was sixteen again. His mother wasn’t sick. It would be a year before they knew about the cancer. His father had surprised his wife, Jackson, and Maggie with a trip to Italy. For two weeks, they stayed in a hillside village that overlooked the Mediterranean.

  It was late afternoon and everyone else had wanted a nap, so Jackson had taken the winding stairs down to the water and swam with the brightly colored fish until his eyes stung from too much salt water. Half way up the stairs to their rented apartment that seemed carved from the hillside, he stopped to catch his breath. Late afternoon sun toasted his bare shoulders. Salt water crystalized in the coarse hair on his arms. A gasp rose from his chest at the beauty that stretched out before him. Even after a week, it made his knees weak to see the color of the water.

  Rested, he tore up the stairs. With a suddenness that surprised him, he yearned to see Maggie, like it had been days not hours since he was last with her. Maggie reclined on a chaise under the shade of a blue awning. An open paperback on her chest covered the top of her purple bikini. Her pale skin was flushed pink from heat and sun.

  “Did you bring me a fish?” She smiled in that slow way, with that mouth that was like a pink rose. He was mad for her. Practically sick with love. If only he could tell her the truth. I’m in love with you. I always have been.

  “No, they were too fast for me.” The gray stone of the patio felt pleasantly coarse under his bare feet as he crossed over to her. “Plus, I didn’t bring a spear.”

  “No spear? How American of you.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He grinned as he sat on the end of her chaise. The shade soothed his scratchy eyes.

  “Well, we’ll have to be satisfied with bread then.” She brushed her white, slender throat with the tips of her fingers. “Italy’s making me fat. Miss Rita will be disgusted with me by the time we get home.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you have much to worry about.” She was too slender, despite the muscles that formed almost every inch of her. “You’ve gotten more freckles since we’ve been here,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me. Just pretend they’re not there.”

  “I love them. They’re like a sky filled with nutmeg stars.”

  “That’s a terrible metaphor. Stars aren’t the color of nutmeg.”

  “They should be.” He scooted closer to her. “How about this? The sea’s almost as beautiful as you, but not quite.”

  “You can’t compare a girl and the sea,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

  “To the sea?”

  “Yes, right.” She smirked and sat up straighter, then crossed her legs. Crisscross apple sauce, like in their first-grade class.

  “Do you really think I’m beautiful?” she asked. “Not like from one friend to the other, but the other kind. The other kind of love.”

  “Bird, don’t you know? Don’t you know how I feel?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I only know what I hope.”

  “What is that?”

  “That it’s the other kind of love. Not pretend like when we were kids and we’d talk about getting married and living in the French house, but for real.”

  “I’ve never pretended. I’ve always known. It’s you and me, Bird. Not like other people.”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because I love you too.”

  He would kiss her for the first time right here with the scent from the lemons and the sea. “May I kiss you?” he asked.

  “You don’t have to ask,” she whispered. “Just do it.”

  He placed his mouth on hers. What did one do? Wriggle their lips from side to side.

  But he needn’t have worried. Girls must have instincts about these things because Maggie wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her rosebud mouth just slightly and suddenly they were kissing. Gently, like the fluttering of butterfly wings.

  “You taste like the sea,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “You smell so just unbelievably good.”

  “That’s the air,” she said, laughing.

  “No, it’s you. I can’t even describe how you smell. Not even with those fancy adjectives on our SAT study guide.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  From inside the apartment, he heard the faint sound of his mother and father’s laughter coming from the kitchen, followed by the pop of a wine cork.

  If heaven were a moment, it was this.

  Now, he came back to purgatory.

  Jackson showered and then dressed in nice jeans and a button-down shirt in his childhood bedroom. It still had a single bed, although the sailboat wallpaper had been replaced with light blue paint. Leaning closer to the mirror, he noticed his eyes were bloodshot. He reached for the eye drops next to his wallet.

  Jackson kept his hair cropped short. The sun had bleached it to the color of wet straw since he’d been back in town. However, there seemed to be less of it these days. Either that, or his forehead had grown larger.

  His cell phone blinked with a message from Sharon.

  Just landed in S.F. Will be there around 8:00.

  He tugged on the collar of his shirt, suddenly warm.

  Jackson typed a message back to her. Great. I’m taking you to dinner.

  Seconds later, another text arrived. Someplace nice? I hope.

  There was only one place in town. The Oar. She knew that.

  Fantastic.

  It was possible to convey sarcasm via text.

  How about dinner in, then? I can make steaks.

  Better.

  Her snootiness did bother him. It worried him, too. Despite the beauty of their little town and the impressive beach, this was a small place with people dedicated to living simply. Would she fit in? Would she hate it here?

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Was Sharon not the right woman? Yes, she was. Of course, she was. Put the worries aside. I made the decision. He was like this, fretting over the smallest things until he was paralyzed with indecision.

  His therapist thought that he hadn’t grieved Maggie properly when he lost her and that was why he couldn’t seem to let
go. Sharon, though—she was alive and she wanted him.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone. Stop panicking. He knew when he proposed that there was no going back. This was the right step. She was the right woman.

  It was way too warm in this small room. He tossed the phone aside and stretched out across the length of the bed and stared at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars his mother had pasted there when he was a little boy still remained. This room was like him—unable to move forward in time. Photographs of Zane, Maggie, and Jackson from high school were still tacked onto the cork board over his desk, their corners curled from time into cruel smiles.

  Maggie at a dance recital, wearing a flowing skirt and leotard; he and Zane on the beach with their surfboards; the three of them in their graduation gowns.

  Photographs. There was a box in his desk drawer—a Pandora’s box of pain he avoided. For twelve years they’d sat in the drawer. He never looked at them. His therapist disagreed with this approach. To move forward, she had said, you must embrace both the good and bad memories of your past.

  How was he to move forward when all he wanted was to fall back into the past?

  He crossed the room and jerked open the desk drawer so hard it fell on the floor. Like ripping off a bandage, he lifted the lid of the box and tossed it across the room. On the top of the stack was a photograph of Maggie and her mom. They both smiled into the camera, but Mae’s eyes were flat and dead, like a woman who had given up on life.

  Maggie was eight in this photo. He knew because she had bangs that year and her two front teeth were missing. Freckles covered her nose and face; her skinny arms were wrapped around her mother’s neck.

  The next was a photograph of the two of them sitting side-by-side on the couch. Maggie’s head leaned against Jackson’s shoulder as they grinned into the camera. Another was of the two of them walking to school holding hands on what looked like the first day of school, given their shiny, new backpacks. He remembered that backpack—fourth grade. The year before Mae was killed.

  On the way to school, she would slip her small hand into his rough one. When they were teenagers and so in love—it didn’t matter where they were—if they could get away with it, some section of their bodies touched.

  He put the photos back in the box. No more for tonight. His therapist was wrong. Remembering the good times only made him feel worse.

  Jackson picked up the ring box from the dresser and shoved it in the pocket of his jeans. There would be no more visits to the cemetery. No more pining over a dead girl. Today had proven that what he needed was an intervention. He intended to give himself one in the form of one very much alive fiancée.

  His dad looked up from his book as Jackson entered the study. “How was the surf?”

  “I didn’t go in,” Jackson said.

  “Why?” His dad looked good for sixty, with salt and pepper hair, deep brown eyes, and a smile that had the power to reassure even the sickest of his patients they were going to be fine. Lately, he had a new spark in his eyes, courtesy of Janet Mullen.

  Jackson didn’t answer. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a two-finger scotch and downed it in one gulp.

  “Son, you okay?”

  He poured another scotch before sinking into the armchair across from his father’s, cradling the glass of scotch in the palms of his hands.

  “Jackson?”

  “I’m tired.” Jackson leaned his neck against the back of the chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  “I know it’s a tough day for you.”

  Jackson’s eyes stung from unshed tears. “I think I’m going crazy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat up straighter as he glanced over at his father. Late afternoon light leaked through the wooden shades and made patterns on the hardwood floor. For the first time since he walked in the room, he noticed a decanted bottle of wine and two glasses on the coffee table. His father’s only indulgence: good wine and the cellar to store it in. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t see you’d opened wine.”

  “It’s nothing. Some evenings, a man needs a scotch.”

  Jackson nodded and drank from his glass. “I see Maggie everywhere.” He called her Maggie when he spoke of her now. Bird gave him away.

  “You mean, you think you see her and then it’s not her?”

  “That’s right,” Jackson said. “It used to be once a year. Then, it stopped. But since I came home, it’s increased. I thought I saw her standing by the bench today. I swear to God, I thought it was her. I might have even said her name.”

  His father set aside the book on his lap and poured himself a glass of wine. “It’s to be expected on a day like today, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It’s every day, Dad.”

  “Have you talked to your therapist about it?”

  Jackson downed the rest of his scotch. “No.”

  “The memories are fresher here.”

  “It’s been twelve years. I mean, seriously, what’s wrong with me?” Jackson asked.

  “I used to see your mother everywhere too.”

  This was new information. “When did it stop?” Jackson asked.

  His father rubbed the finger where his wedding band used to be. “I can’t remember. I only know it’s been a long time since it last happened. Perhaps I finally stopped looking.”

  Stopped looking? Did that mean that he was still looking for Bird, knowing she was dead? Perhaps he was certifiable.

  “I’m asking Sharon to marry me tonight, Dad. Enough’s enough.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s time to move forward. If I don’t, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me.”

  They were interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the patio door. “Hey, you guys home?”

  Zane. Jackson yelled for him to come in. “We’re in the study.”

  Seconds later, Zane stood in the doorway, holding a woman’s sweater in his hands. “Sorry to barge in, but I told Janet I’d swing by and deliver her sweater to you. She left it at the bar last night.”

  “How kind of you,” his dad said. “Care for a drink?”

  Zane shuffled his feet. “Nah. I want to go out to see Maggie before it gets busy at the restaurant.”

  Jackson turned away. A hive of bees buzzed inside his head. Or was it real?

  It was real, unlike his other visions. A bee was trapped between the glass and the wooden shade. He went to the window and lifted it, then opened the window all the way. The bee flew out and up toward the blue of the sky.

  “How’s business?” His dad asked Zane.

  “We’ve had a good summer so far. Hope it stays that way,” said Zane. “I worry pretty much all the time, but so far so good.” He raked a hand through his blond hair. Bird used to say they looked like brothers. “Running this place is making me an old man.”

  Zane had taken over from his father a little over three years ago. He’d added forty microbrews and spruced up the inside and outside and changed the menu to attract a younger crowd. To the horror of the old-timers, people were coming to town not only to surf but also to go to Zane’s restaurant.

  Zane stretched his arms over his head. “I better run. I stopped by to see my dad this afternoon, so I’m running late as it is.”

  “How’s he doing?” Jackson asked. Zane’s father was in a memory care facility just north of town.

  “He has good days and bad. Last week he almost seemed like his old self,” Zane said. “Today he didn’t recognize me. But, you know, he’s still polite and thoughtful, so he pretends like he does.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Son,” said his father.

  “Yeah, well, what’re you gonna do but carry on, right? You taught us that, Doc. But hey, I have to run. I’ll see you two cats later. No need to walk me out.”

  After Zane left, Jackson poured them both a generous glass of wine and took the chair just vacated by his friend. The wine tasted of blackberries with a slight tobacco finish. Befor
e he could take a second sip, Kyle arrived. Dressed casually in shorts and a t-shirt, he set a bottle of wine on the coffee table. “Found a new one I want you to try, Doc.”

  “Great. What brings you over?” his dad asked.

  “I have news. But first I need a glass of vino,” Kyle said.

  Jackson grabbed another glass from the bar and poured a generous amount for his friend.

  Kyle accepted the glass with a grateful smile. “The weekend couldn’t have come soon enough. I’m losing sleep over this damn project. Not to mention that Violet’s out there with her band of protestors every day.”

  “Still?” His dad grinned and shook his head. “They have stamina. I’ll give them that.”

  “There’s only four of them,” Kyle said. “But they’re out there every day with their picket signs. I swear, that woman has it out for me. She hates me.”

  “That’s not true. She just hates what you’re doing,” Jackson said.

  “No, she hates me,” Kyle said. “I’m offensive to her in every way. Anyway, enough about that. I have big news. I might have found you a house. Let me start by saying, it needs a lot of work, but the potential is huge.”

  “A lot?” Jackson asked.

  “You remember the documentary of the two sisters who lived together in that old house in New England and basically ruined it?” Kyle asked.

  “Grey Gardens?” his dad asked.

  “They were some relations to the Kennedys, isn’t that right?” Jackson asked.

  “They were cousins of Jackie,” his dad said.

  “Yeah, well that’s what the house looks like,” Kyle said. “The old lady who lived there for the past twenty years pretty much Grey Gardened it up. It needs massive cosmetic work.”

  “Wait, are you talking about the Arnoult house?” His dad sat forward in his chair.

  “Arnoult? Right, that’s the name of the owner,” Kyle said.

  “So, it is the Arnoult house,” said his dad.

  “From what I gathered, the heirs have wanted to sell, but the elderly aunt was living there,” Kyle said. “She recently passed. The kids described her as eccentric. That’s a nice way of putting it. The house is a wreck.”