by Sarah Ockler
“He was more than your best friend.”
I nod absently, forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting that I’m talking to Jayne and not my journal.
“I — I mean, he was like a brother to me. You know, like Frankie. Well, she’s the sister. I mean —”
Jayne reaches for my hands across the table, shaking her head softly. “Sweetheart, when you say Matt’s name, you have the same look in your eyes that he’d get whenever he’d say yours.” Her voice breaks up at the end, but her hands are warm and firm.
What look? I want to ask, but the butterflies are back, mixed with a sadness that seems to stick and slow their wings as they climb into my throat. Beyond our corner on the deck, the ocean sighs, waiting for my response.
Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh.
“Frankie doesn’t know,” I say, though I’m not sure what I want her to do with this information. Tell Frankie? Keep my secret? My head and heart are entangled. I haven’t really said anything, yet Jayne and I have just shared more about Matt than I’ve shared with anyone — my own mother included.
“I know she doesn’t,” Jayne says. “She wouldn’t be able to keep a secret like that from me.” I think about Johan, but dismiss it. This is my secret, not Frankie’s.
“Aunt Jayne, I —”
“I can’t sleep, either.” Frankie startles us in her frog pajamas, pulling the sliding door shut behind her. “What are you guys talking about?”
An arrow of fear shoots straight up my spine, pushing me to my feet.
“It’s, um, it’s nothing, Frank. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” I study her face for an indication that she overheard something, but I see only sleepy eyes and sideways bed-hair sticking to the pink sheet lines across her cheek.
“Well, I’m awake now,” she says, pulling up a chair next to her mom. Jayne downs the rest of her tea and wipes her mouth with her hand, letting out a long sigh like the ocean. “Do-over?” she asks Frankie, point-blank.
Frankie nods and rests her head on Jayne’s shoulder. “All morning I was waiting for a breakdown,” Jayne says. “But by the time we got here, and I was unpacking and getting the house ready, I really thought I’d be okay.”
“Me, too,” Frankie says.
“When I went up to my room after you stormed up to the attic, I figured we’d all be packing up and heading home tomorrow morning.”
“And now?” Frankie asks.
Aunt Jayne reaches into the front pocket of her cardigan. “I think your brother wants us to stay. I found this in the back of the linen closet while digging around for a box of tissues.”
She holds out her palm, displaying a faded metal car the size of a peanut shell. Her eyes well up as she rubs the red paint with her thumb, but then she smiles.
“He was always losing these things,” she says, running it along the edge of the table. “Half the time Dad would slip on them and nearly break his neck. Remember?”
Frankie smiles. “But how do you know it’s his? Other people rent this place.”
“Look.” Jayne turns the car wheels up, revealing the plain metal undercarriage and two tiny letters in black marker: M.P.
Frankie gasps, reaching for the toy.
“See?” Jayne says, stroking Frankie’s cheek with her knuckles. “He wants us to stay.”
It sounds crazy, but things like this happen all the time. For me, it’s the pennies. Whenever we’d pass a penny on the sidewalk, Matt wouldn’t touch it. “Let someone else have a lucky day,” he’d say. I used to tease him and tell him that someday when he got to the great beyond, there’d be a room stuffed full of all the pennies he’d left for other people.
Now I find pennies everywhere. Not just on the sidewalk — which I leave alone, as he would have wanted — but in the strangest places. One in the shower. A few more in my shoes — that seems to be a favorite spot. Just yesterday, one dropped out of a book I brought. I put them in my pockets and drop them on the sidewalk the next chance I get. Let someone else have a lucky day, I say.
Jayne takes the car from Frankie and slides it back into her pocket, smiling. Is Aunt Jayne making her way back to us from the secluded island she’d been marooned on by Matt’s death? I can never be certain. Just like at dinner, a smile can turn into a code five freak-out as quickly as a storm can break over a ship.
But for now, she seems okay.
The three of us sit at the dark table, retreating into our own silent memories until our breathing unites us with the waves against the shore. Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh. Many minutes pass this way, and as I look from Frankie to Jayne and back out to the water, I don’t want it to end.
When the silence finally breaks, it’s Jayne, jumping up from the chair and grabbing our hands.
“Come on, girls,” she says. “Follow me.”
Frankie and I follow her down to the beach, squealing as the icy water hits our toes. Jayne jumps back and lies down in the sand, just clear of the tide.
We stand above her, unsure whether we should join in or call for Uncle Red. Suddenly she’s flapping her arms like a flipped-over butterfly stuck in the sand, and all we can do is laugh.
“Sand angels,” she says, as though it’s perfectly normal for a grown woman to run down to the beach at three in the morning to make them. “Come on.”
We lie on either side of her and flap our arms and legs as hard as we can, tears streaking our cheeks, though from laughing or crying we can no longer tell.
“Do you think he sees them?” Jayne rolls over and asks after we’ve made three angels above the tide.
“If he does,” Frankie says, “he’s probably wondering why the women in this family are so certifiably nuts.”
The women in this family. For now, I’m one of them. Not the neighbor kid. Not a barnacle. But a woman in this family, running back to the house in a fit of slumber party giggles, freezing cold with sand in my hair.
eleven
“What were you guys talking about last night, anyway?”
My sleep-sticky eyes blink open one at a time like a broken doll’s, unable to piece together the images in front of me. Frankie, sitting on the edge of a bed that isn’t mine. A strange room. Sherbet sunlight falling on my face at all the wrong angles. I sit up quickly, my memory kicking in late to remind me that we’re in Zanzibar.
It’s the morning of our first full day.
And Aunt Jayne knows. Not everything, but more than anyone else.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Just a little bit about Matt.” My heart beats faster.
“That’s what I thought.” Frankie slides off the bed. “Do you really think she’s okay now?”
“Yeah, I think she’s good. Last night was fun, wasn’t it?” I run my hands through my tangled hair, shaking more sand out on the wood floor. “I mean, the beach part.”
Frankie scratches her head. “Yeah, tell me about it. I have sand in my ears.”
I check the white plastic clock on our shared night table — eight a.m. We didn’t sleep more than four hours last night, but excitement for the day ahead overshadows any lingering sleepiness.
“Anna, thanks for staying with me last night when I freaked. I’m sorry about all that weirdness and yelling at dinner.”
She looks at me and half smiles, and I think of the therapist guy Frankie’s parents sent her to a few times last year. I went with her once. If he was here, he’d probably say something like, “It’s okay, you needed to explore the memories triggered by your first vacation without your brother.” But all that comes out of me is, “Don’t worry, it’s cool.”
I slide off the bed and stretch, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes.
“Hungry?” I ask. “We could make chocolate chip pancakes.” It’s not psychotherapy, but chocolate chip pancakes work for a lot of things.
She nods. “Anna, can I ask you something?”
“I know what you’re going to say. Yes, we can use strawberries, too.”
Another smile — a hint of a laugh. “No
,” she says. “Not that. It’s… Why are my parents such freaks?”
“Because they’re parents. It’s in the job description. Must drive minivans. Must be immune to fashion. Must be freaks.”
“I’m serious, Anna,” she says, peeling a broken fingernail. “Mom is, like, yelling and crying one minute, then she finds an old toy car and she’s running down to make sand angels on the beach. Why did they want to come here?”
I consider her question, one I asked myself a thousand times in the weeks after their initial invitation. “I think they just want to make things better, Frank. Maybe they thought it would get things back to normal.”
“But it won’t,” she says. “They don’t get it.”
I open my mouth to say something in their defense, but Frankie shakes her head. “It’s okay, Anna. I’m just a little out of it. I mean, last night was fun, but it’s still kind of weird after Mom freaking out over my stupid spilled drink like that. Let’s go downstairs — I think they’re already cooking something.”
We stretch and head for the stairs, slowly moving toward the breakfast smells floating up from the kitchen. I pick out Aunt Jayne’s French toast from the vanilla and cinnamon in the “secret” recipe she learned from a cooking show, along with the usual coffee and bacon staples.
“Morning, my angels.” Aunt Jayne kisses Frankie’s cheek and gives me a wink that’s quick and subtle like a secret handshake.
“Hi, Twinkies,” Uncle Red says, a frying pan full of bacon in hand. “Hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m starving.” Frankie sits at the table and reaches for the orange juice. “And still wondering what happened at dinner last night. If anyone cares. Which I’m sure they don’t.”
“Sweetheart, let’s not talk about last night,” Jayne says, patting Frankie’s hand. “We called a do-over, right?”
“Mom, that’s not the point.”
“Okay, kids.” Uncle Red joins the table with a dish towel on his shoulder and a platter of French toast at the ready. He’s prepared to prevent another stomping, door-slamming incident at all costs. “Eggs are getting cold.”
Frankie puts down her glass and takes a deep breath. “Dad, I was just surprised, okay?”
Red stands with the frying pan awkwardly balanced over the plates, waiting to dish up breakfast like he’s the hired cook rather than a man embroiled in a conversation about his dead son.
Frankie continues. “You guys are the ones that wanted this trip in the first place. You didn’t really ask me. Well, I’m scared, too, you know? All the things I remember about California — I just don’t want — I’m scared I’ll remember new stuff, and everything else will be — erased.”
Jayne stands up from the table and moves to the sliding door, her back to us. Her shoulders shake lightly, but she doesn’t make any sound. After a minute, she wipes her eyes and joins us again at the table. I’ve seen this movie a hundred times, but it never gets any easier. I want to crawl under the table and disappear.
Uncle Red gives up on the eggs and sits with us. My face is hot as I focus on the interlocking circle pattern along the edge of my blue plate. I can’t stop thinking about the back door, and how good it would feel to run straight through it and down to the shore.
“Frankie.” Jayne reaches again for Frankie’s hand. “We aren’t trying to erase memories or pretend that everything is okay.”
“I know that, Mom. It’s just —”
“My girls,” Uncle Red says, voice soothing, eyebrows crinkled, “let’s just get through breakfast, okay? We have to take it as it comes.” He puts his hand on Jayne’s cheek and smoothes it with his thumb.
Jayne nods and pats Frankie’s hand.
Frankie sighs and touches her foot to mine under the table. “Sorry,” she mouths.
“You girls were up late last night,” Red says, resuming his position as head chef and dropping a healthy scoop of home fries on his plate. “Causing trouble?”
“Just a little girl talk.” Aunt Jayne smiles at me as she passes the maple syrup. My eyes lock on hers for a moment, and I wonder whether she can read my thoughts: that I want to tell her more about Matt and me. That I don’t know what to do about Frankie. That I’m not sure how I can compete in the Twenty Boy Summer contest when there’s only one boy I ever think about.
A new wave of guilt laps at my toes, threatening to creep up into my heart with the rest of my regrets. Aunt Jayne was a great listener last night, and I’m glad I said what I did about Frankie, but maybe I shouldn’t have let her believe that I cared about Matt as more than a friend. If she sees us talking to other guys on the beach, will she think I’m cheating on her dead son?
“Right, Anna?” Frankie kicks me under the table, shaking me from my thoughts.
“Right. Sorry, what was that?”
“Our plans today. We’re just going to lie around the beach near the house, right?”
I know Frankie has no intention of staying anywhere near the house or its private, secluded beach and designated middle-aged lifeguard, but I nod. “I go where you go, Frank.”
“Dad and I are going grocery shopping after,” Jayne says. “We have to get stuff for the rest of the trip. Don’t you want to come?”
“Let’s see,” Frankie says, holding her hands out to her sides like Lady Justice. “Walk around in a grocery store for two hours while Dad evaluates the quality of the produce, or hang out on the beach where we can swim, get a tan, and meet — I mean, swim and get a tan. Tough choice, Mom, but we’re gonna have to pass.”
“Thought so,” Aunt Jayne says. “Just make a list of anything you want. And make sure you wear sunscreen, and reapply after going in the water. And if you’ve been out there more than two hours, reapply again. Actually, you shouldn’t be out there between twelve and two, so —”
“Got it covered.” Frankie rolls her eyes. “You guys act like I’ve never been in the sun before.”
“No,” Red says, patting her shoulder, “we act like you get burned every time we come out here.”
“Dad, that’s not burning. That’s getting a base tan.”
Uncle Red shakes his head and smiles. “All right, you girls can wander down to the concessions area if you’d like, but I don’t want you going near the alcove. There aren’t any lifeguards. Okay?”
“Okay, Dad,” Frankie says.
“Good.” Uncle Red. So loving. So trusting. So naive. “Have fun, my lovelies.” After seconds and a few thirds, he pushes his cleared plate away. “Mom and I are heading out soon. Call the cell if you need anything. Otherwise, be back before dinner. Mom wants to cook Chinese.”
Such a normal family breakfast on such a normal family morning. If they had a dog, his name would be Spot, and he’d start barking outside until one of us tossed him a Frisbee.
After breakfast, we (and by we, I mean Frankie) spend over an hour getting ready to swim in the ocean. She switches between sandals a few times and agonizes over which earrings to wear. Hair and makeup are another discussion — hair casual and messy like always, or swept back with a classy headband? Waterproof mascara, or just a touch of lip gloss? Serious or playful?
“Listen,” I say, standing ready in my bikini — which I’m still not used to — and sarong. “No one is going to notice what you’re wearing. They’re going to notice you. Everything else is just background noise.” I twist my uncombed hair into a loose bun on top of my head.
“Anna, for your information, nothing you put on your face, hair, or body is just background noise. Speaking of which, why aren’t you filming? We need to document these things.” She pulls her camera from her backpack and hands it to me.
I almost laugh, but she isn’t joking. Like the boy contest, this is a project for her, carefully planned and executed, recorded start to finish for posterity. Not even her toe rings will be left to chance.
I keep the camera on her as long as I can, discreetly turning it on and off to spare future audiences from the tedium of Frankie applying lip liner, Frankie blow
ing her nail polish, Frankie tweezing her eyebrows. I’m about to leave without her when she finally announces she’s ready.
“Thank God,” I say, closing the camera and sweeping my journal and two paperbacks into my bag. “Can we please get down to the water now?”
“Wait!” Frankie shrieks with such immediacy that I almost think there’s a scorpion or tarantula on my head. “We still have to do you.”
“Frank, I’ve been ready for an hour.”
She laughs. She actually laughs. “Anna, you can’t go out like that. Look at your hair!”
“Please, Frankie. We’re going swimming. In the water. Remember?”
“Don’t be lazy about your looks,” she says, coming toward me with a comb and a few bobby pins in her mouth. She’s one creepy step away from spitting on a tissue and wiping my face with it. “It won’t take that long.”
Be strong, Anna. Be strong.
twelve
By the time we get to the water, it’s close to eleven and the waterproof mascara Frankie combed over my lashes feels heavy and goopy. I worry that all the good spots on the beach are gone, but Frankie assures me that there will be plenty of spots when we get down near the alcove and away from all the “old people.”
The other end of the beach is actually a whole different beach — an entirely separate stretch of sand with no water buoys, hot dog vendors, lifeguards, or people.
It does have one thing conspicuously absent on our beach — a No Swimming sign.
“See?” Frankie asks. “Totally private. No screaming kids or annoying families.”
“Or witnesses.”
“Don’t be a baby, Anna.”
“Frankie, it says No Swimming for a reason. Sharp rocks? Sharks? Undercurrent?”
“It says No Swimming because it’s not a public beach, so they don’t have a lifeguard,” she says, crouching to unfold the beach blanket. “It’s the same water, Anna. If there are sharks here, there are sharks at our beach, too. It’s not like they read signs.”
