by R. L. Fox
Copyright © 2015 R.L. Fox
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Interior and Cover Design: Creative Publishing Book Design
For Martha and Glenn
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Epilogue Sarah
Epilogue Daniel
Prologue
A riddle: Sometimes I’m taken lightly and sometimes darkly. Most everyone wants to embrace my wonders, but only a happy few ever have.
What am I?
Life would be very different without me—perhaps nonexistent. Human survival depends on me. I’m capable of permanently changing lives; as I move dangerously close, I bring with me the power over life and death.
If you haven’t yet solved the riddle, here’s a final clue: When I show up in full splendor, people tend to behave strangely. Still don’t have the answer? Read on. By the way, if you think you have the correct answer, the one that seems obvious, you’re in for a surprise
1
Sarah
Friday afternoon, July 25
Coronado Island, California
I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of my mother’s restrictions, at least that’s the way it seems. If I was, I don’t know that I’d always know what to do. Sometimes I feel as if I can do anything or change into anything. I imagine that I could just turn into a bird, like Manny, my Amazon gray parrot, and fly away. If I could fly away, away from myself, I would never have to make decisions again, never have to listen to anyone. Never again would anyone’s words cause me pain.
Now that I’ve lost my best friend I figure it’s definitely time to ask my mother about her mystery man and the fling she’s having, if that’s what it amounts to. Everyone at school has been talking behind my back, but I know what they’re saying—totally.
As I walk slowly along D Avenue, towards home, the treetops cast their smooth shadows, shaped like Egyptian pyramids on the white sidewalks and well-kept lawns. I pass by a live oak with leaves that are almost transparent in the bright sun. Here the lawns are immaculate, avocado green and magically untainted by fallen leaves. The houses are lavish (I love the sound of that word) and enormous, in a mixture of styles: ranch, Cape Cod, and Victorian, like ours.
I can hardly believe that my loving, dependable, predictable old fashioned mother is having a secret affair. Maybe it has something to do with the moon. People have been acting so crazy lately. Anyway, I feel betrayed. Mom is seriously messing up my life. But there’s hope, so I’ve been praying that it’s real love. Only love will save me, because there’s something missing from my life: a man. Not a man for me, but for my mother. Then we can do all the dumb normal stuff real families do.
I’ve also been hoping that my dad (with whom I sometimes speak on the other side) will understand. It’s all right to wonder what kind of man my mom is going for, because inside I know my dad will forgive us. It doesn’t mean we’ll ever stop loving him. We just need someone after all this time alone, that’s all.
Sometimes it seems as if my dad is talking to me in whispers from the other side, usually on windy days when I can barely hear him through the rustling of the leaves in the trees. But I can hear him, I’m sure of it. Maybe my dad has taken spirit in the wind. After he died, I thought I couldn’t live without him. Well, I told myself, you have a choice: to be happy or sad. I chose to be happy.
And I am happy most of the time, but today sadness has descended upon me. I brush a tear from my cheek, wiping it on my denim skirt. With the Ralph Lauren skirt, knee length, I’m wearing a white crew neck top, white ankle socks and my most colorful sneakers.
I have to stop crying because my nose is starting to run and I don’t have a tissue. Stop that, I order my brain. There’s no use in crying. But it’s hard to stop the tears when my dad isn’t here to hug me, and when just minutes ago I found out my best friend has dumped me because of my supposed slutty mother.
Duh, it’s not as if I shouldn’t have seen it coming, after having been tricked and made the gimp at Beth Miller’s slumber party Saturday night. I should have known there was something funny about Beth and her cool friends inviting “Baby Sarah” (me) and my best friend, Ashley, to their party. Then when they wanted me to hide underneath the bed before Ashley got there, so they could surprise Ashley after telling her I wasn’t coming to the party, well, I sure did fall for that one. How was I to know that while I was hiding they would tell Ashley about my mother’s fling, and that Ashley would call my mother a slut?
I haven’t spoken to Ashley all week. It was Beth Miller who stopped me today before chorus (cancelled because Ms. Wyatt is ill) and gave me the folded square of lined paper, the note from Ashley. When I read all about how Ashley couldn’t be my best friend any longer, and how Ashley had asked Beth to do homework with her tonight and spend the night this weekend, I’d become red-faced angry. Ashley also said in the note: “I would invite you, too, Sarah, except that you’ll probably grow up to be a slut just like your mother.” She’ll probably post something totally lame about it on her stupid Facebook page.
The part about losing Ashley really hurts, worse than Saturday night, because at least then I was worried only about crying in front of the others after hearing that my mother was having a secret affair. Losing Ashley as my best friend hurts so much I can’t feel mad anymore. I waited until I left the school grounds before starting to cry.
Ashley and I have been friends for a long time, ever since she moved to the Island when we were starting the sixth grade. Since I have no brothers or sisters, I was feeling like a freak in the neighborhood. Then Ashley came along and I gave up playing beauty parlor with my Barbie dolls.
When Ashley and I started the seventh grade we decided that we would marry two handsome brothers, twins, when we grew up, and then we’d get pregnant at exactly the same time and our chests would grow bigger. Ashley told me you don’t even have to be pregnant to make your chest bigger. You can just talk to it a lot, saying “grow, grow.”
But whom is Ashley calling a floozy now? Unlike her, I’m probably the only tenth-grade girl on the planet who hasn’t even been kissed. At Beth’s birthday party last year when we played spin-the-bottle in the game room I turned away from Bobby as he tried to kiss me on the lips, while Ashley, and Beth, went right ahead and got kissed when it was their turns. They thought it was just so cool when Crystal Navarro told us her story about b
eing fondled by a hot guitarist in a metal band, a senior at Coronado High. How can Ashley accuse me just because my mother has a boyfriend? And why should that qualify my mother as a floozy and me as a future floozy?
Is Ashley doing this because she and Beth really do think of me as childish and immature, not cool enough? They’re always commenting about how I get all emo and how I’m such a prep. And after all, they have their own cell phones and my mom won’t allow me to have one until I turn fifteen and a half. It’s like my mother thinks I need my learner’s permit before I can operate a cell phone.
Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I haven’t begun to get my period yet like Ashley and Beth and everyone else. They ridiculed me for days after Mr. Bascom read to the class my Mother’s Day essay, “What Motherhood Means to Me.” I’d written, “Being a mother is the most important responsibility in the world. The miracle of having a baby, of giving life to another human being, is God’s most precious gift to women; it’s the most wonderful experience possible in His universe ...”
Then Beth said to me after class, while Ashley and a lot of other people, including boys, stood nearby, “What would you know about motherhood? You haven’t even got your period yet. Maybe you never will, did you ever think about that?”
Since then I’ve been wondering if something might be wrong with me. I went to the public library and read everything I could find on the menstrual cycle. For a while I even imagined having a congenital defect of some kind, like not possessing a uterus. I opened my bedroom curtains at night and slept in the back yard when there was a full moon, hoping the moonlight would help get things started.
My mother took me to her gynecologist who said everything looks normal, that the cause of the delay is probably emotional and don’t worry, it should happen soon. But perhaps it’s only that God is punishing me, for unclean thoughts. I do want to be kissed, French-kissed, although not by just anybody, like Bobby. Is that a sin?
I know I’m pretty, yet all through the ninth and now tenth grade the cutest boys have completely ignored me. It seems I’m too tall (five eight and three quarters), taller than most of the boys in the tenth grade.
Suddenly I stop walking as I have an epiphany: What if boys don’t think I’m sexy because I don’t think of myself as sexy? Obviously I don’t have wild and crazy adventures like Ashley and Beth because I never open myself up to them. The truth is that I’ve yet to step outside the box. I’ve been a circle of banality, fifteen years around. I’ve lived my entire life guided along by my mother (until this affair of hers), in the same boring and predictable way as every other Coronado Island WASPy rich bitch adolescent, and it’s my own fault.
Something has to be done about it, I tell myself. And I’m the someone who has to do it. I can change. I will change.
2
Daniel
Friday afternoon, July 25
Suncrest, Califonia
The old Spanish door opens and Mr. Christie appears. With his knowing eyes and long goatee and meerschaum pipe extending from the corner of his mouth, he seems the perfect African-American rendering of Gandalf in The Hobbit, minus the conical hat and flowing robe. His mouth isn’t visible, but his beard gives the illusion of a smile when he speaks.
“Such a surprise, Daniel. Enter, son.”
Leaning on his walking-stick (its silver handle in the shape of the head of a lioness) to help conceal his faltering steps, Mr. Christie shuffles down the narrow hallway. I follow closely as we move into the living room, past the Yamaha baby grand and the shelves crammed full of books.
At the rear of the cottage, Mr. Christie pulls aside the glass door and motions to a chair in the shade of the covered patio. “Green tea? Water?”
I shake my head. “No, thanks, sir.” The afternoon air seems as warm as Mr. Christie’s glowing spirit, but I’m not thirsty, in spite of my nervousness. I just want to get on with it. I take my seat, with a westward view of the Valley below.
Mr. Christie sits in a cushioned chair, facing me, cane in hand. “Have you spoken with Liz recently?”
The question awakens a familiar feeling of uneasiness within me, though I trust Mr. Christie with my life. He’s a real mensch. Unlike the congressman (my father), Mr. Christie is a man of integrity.
“I’m hoping to see her at tomorrow night’s cast and crew party,” I answer. Something seizes my heart, painfully, as I experience a flash of recollection and longing.
“Yes, well, David informed me of a disturbance between you and Liz, but he didn’t go into detail.” Mr. Christie gazes into my eyes, as if waiting for me to elaborate.
I begin to wonder just what it was that David, my best friend, was referring to. Liz and I had struggled through more than a few disturbances in that stormy relationship of ours, a relationship that had ended just before my mother’s death.
“Her father whisked her away from the cemetery the moment my mother was laid to rest,” I say. On that unusually cold, drizzly day, I recall, my maternal grandmother had asked, “Who’s that girl?” and I’d answered, sadly, “Just an old friend, Grandma.”
“Nasty situation that was, between the two families,” says Mr. Christie, adding quickly, “How did it go over there, my boy? We’re awfully glad to have you back.”
“It was worse than hell, sir, to be honest.”
“As I presumed. Would you like to tell me about it?”
I take a deep, resolute breath. “I—uh, well, in Basic I couldn’t hit the side of a hill with the M-16, or with a handgun, and I never made the live grenade throw. But they passed me anyway.”
“Because of your father,” Mr. Christie says.
“Yes, and in Afghanistan I saw no action, for a while. I begged my platoon leader to let me go on patrol. Finally, he relented. In my first and only firefight, I froze, and then I ran away. My heart was beating so fast I almost passed out. I was given a medical exam and found unfit for duty.” I avert my eyes. “I’m chickenshit, Mr. Christie.”
“Tell me about the firefight, Daniel, and please, spare none of the details. I want to hear everything, son.”
I take myself back to that Monday afternoon, the fourth of July, three or four weeks ago: “Well, sir, no one was actually killed, or even wounded. We were on patrol in the city, Kandahar, not far from the air base. Six of us, one by one, slid out of the Humvee, five grunts and then the lieutenant, his flak jacket sagging with 40mm grenades for the M.203. I was the boot, and like the others I’d pasted photos inside my helmet, of my mother, and of Liz.” I pause, look down at the floor and say in a dispirited tone, “She’s like some lost part of me I have to fit back into place or I will die.”
“Yes, I understand,” Mr. Christie says sympathetically. Please, continue.”
Reluctantly I go on, “The midday sun was beating down on us, as we walked slowly along a narrow backstreet, as timeless as the conquest of Alexander the Great, or so it seemed, towards the open-air market. Suddenly there was incoming, the metal streaming all about. Lacking cover, we dropped to the ground, our backs against a mud brick wall. The lieutenant was shouting, ‘Rooftop! Rooftop!’ He was pointing at a dwelling about fifty yards ahead. The other grunts were already putting rounds downrange from their M-16s. They lived only in the instant, while my mind simply stared at itself. I guess the snake of envy, my constant companion, slithered after me in Afghanistan, too, sir.”
“Yes, yes, what happened next?” Mr. Christie asks impatiently.
“I, uh, released my weapon and hugged the handset as if it were Junior, the stuffed monkey I’d clung to until I turned twelve, until my father took him away. Then the lieutenant started barking: ‘Air support! Tell ‘em we’re takin’ enemy fire!’ It was my job to call for the Apache. I was the communications specialist and I should have answered, ‘Roger that, sir!’ But I lay chilly in the packed sand, unable to speak. My eyes were fastened shut.”
“It’s good to be fearful, Daniel.”
Although my hands are trembling, I go on, “Th
en the firing stopped as abruptly as it had begun and someone wrenched the field radio from my hands. Turned out to be Blade, he could sneak up on anyone. I started to shake. My heart was pounding on the walls of my chest. ‘Pick up your weapon, Private Rosen,’ the lieutenant commanded. I opened my eyes, but I wasn’t capable of securing my M-16. Instead I found myself jumping up and fleeing the hot zone, running so purposefully I could almost feel the earth tumbling under my feet. That’s basically it, sir.”
Mr. Christie stares thoughtfully at me, as if he’s searching for something more in my eyes. “That’s quite a story, Daniel. Thanks for sharing it with me. You were brave enough to join up, and you have the courage now to speak candidly about what happened. That says a lot about your character, my boy. We’re not all meant to precipitate death. Frankly, I was stunned when David told me you had enlisted.”
“I needed to get away, after Liz broke up with me and then the thing with my mother happened. I had to wait until I turned seventeen, but joining up seemed like a good idea.” I let out a long sigh, and then continue, quietly, “I suppose I wanted to experience the thrill of combat and have the opportunity to do something courageous.” I chuckle. “To survive over there you have to almost hide from the things you see. You can’t be too sensitive, like I was. Fortunately, they gave me a hardship discharge, under honorable conditions.”
Mr. Christie smiles warmly. “I understand, son. Your experience in Afghanistan brings to mind this mysterious business of the moon’s orbital shift. Never thought I’d live long enough to witness such an apocalyptic event, and perhaps I will not. But if something isn’t done soon to correct the situation, we’ll all be stuck with enormous tidal bulges that will bring tsunamis at least once daily. Not to mention the fluctuating weather conditions unlike anything we’ve ever known. It can only end with a horrific collision, but none of us will be around by then to see it.”
I haven’t been giving this moon thing much thought, but Mr. Christie is probably right. News reports on the moon’s changing orbit, the fact of its slowly spiraling towards earth, and interviews with leading scientists, like England’s Stephen Hawking, have been going viral since CNN broke the story last month. “I’m sure something will be done, sir, before the problem gets too far out of hand,” I reply.
