Summer by the Sea

by Cathryn Parry

  They walked through the beach sand together, he and Lucy. When she was little, he’d held her hand, but now that she was older, they didn’t do that.

  When they got to Cassandra’s door, Lucy gave a small, hesitant knock on the glass.

  Cassandra answered immediately. She radiated “earth mother” authority, her billowing, colorful pants as bright as her smile. Reading glasses sat atop her head of white-gray hair, and in her right hand was a cane—solid metal of some type and vividly purple.

  “Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider, smiling broadly at his daughter. “Welcome, Lucy.” Then Cassandra looked directly into Sam’s eyes. “You’ve brought your father with you this time. That’s good.”

  Sam nodded to his neighbor. “Good to see you, Cassandra. I don’t mention it often enough, but thanks for everything you’ve done to help Lucy over the years.”

  “I enjoy her company very much.”

  He glanced over to find that Lucy had taken up a perch in a vintage, lime-colored beanbag chair. A small black-and-white tuxedo cat wandered over to investigate her on silent cat feet. Lucy scooped him up into her lap and pressed him to her cheek.

  Yet again, Sam was taken aback. Lucy had never been cuddly with him. Other than the worn teddy bear he’d been surprised to see in her luggage, he hadn’t realized she had this side to her.

  Cassandra shuffled over to her kitchen and bustled with a plastic grocery bag on the counter. The front half of the cottage was one big room—a combination art studio/library/kitchenette and seating area. A stereo on one of the shelves played a jazz song from the thirties or forties, sung by a woman with an emotional, raspy voice. Sam felt unsettled by the unfamiliar environment and the strange new revelations his daughter had given him.

  Cassandra brought over a snack for Lucy.

  “Blueberry cake!” Lucy said, excited.

  Sam remained standing, not sure what to say.

  “Cassandra gave me The Witch of Blackbird Pond to read,” Lucy told him, her tone serious again. As she contemplated him, that studious look came over her and she turned silent once more.

  He instinctively touched the doorjamb. “What’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond?” he asked Cassandra.

  Cassandra smiled at Lucy. “Shall you explain the story to your dad, or should I?”

  “It’s an old story,” Lucy said, settling the plate on a table beside her. “It’s a novel about a teen who has to travel to a new place in the 1600s, and it isn’t anything like what she’s used to, and she gets upset because she doesn’t fit in. So she runs away and meets a kindly Quaker lady who lives by herself on a pond, and she takes her in and feeds her blueberry cake and lets her play with a kitten every time she comes to visit.”

  He just stared at Lucy. “So you’re saying you’re upset when you come to see me, and that every time you visit Cassandra’s you eat blueberry cake and play with a kitten?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No. It’s not literal, Sam.”

  But there had to be some truth to it. And Cassandra appeared to be watching him closely. He wasn’t sure he liked the scrutiny.

  It bothered him that his neighbor seemed to know more about his daughter than he did.

  But he shook the feeling off. Decided to get right to it. Giving Cassandra his charming smile, the one that usually got him places with women, he said, “Lucy’s mom is going to be away for the summer. It looks like she’s going to be staying with me for a couple months.”

  “Yes, I heard that from Lucy last week,” Cassandra said noncommittally. “You must be very excited.”

  The back of his neck tightened. He’d momentarily forgotten that his neighbor had known about the change of plans before he had.

  But he kept smiling. Folding his arms, he said quietly to Cassandra, “I am excited that she’s here. In fact, I’m resigning as a lifeguard supervisor in order to spend as much time as possible with Lucy.”

  As he said it, he knew it was the right thing. Years ago, he’d never expected he would one day have the privilege of living with his only child. Maybe this summer was a gift to him.

  But evidently, Lucy didn’t think so. Her face drooped as if he’d dropped a depressing bit of news on her. He felt his own sadness in the hollow of his breastbone.

  Outside, the new lifeguard recruits were being drilled. Wind sprints.

  Cassandra took her cane and thumped her way across the room. Picked up a paintbrush from a jar on the table. Based on the chemicals and rags spread on a piece of newspaper, she appeared to have been cleaning her painting implements when he and Lucy interrupted her.

  Lucy was gazing down at the cat in her lap, stroking his black fur, saying nothing.

  It hit Sam, all at once, that while he’d thought he and Lucy were doing okay together all this time, they really weren’t. Lucy was as remote and detached from him as anybody he’d ever known.

  He’d lived this way for years. On the surface, he welcomed his daughter to his home two Saturdays a month. They did something interesting and fun together—a movie, a trip to a marine wildlife reserve or a museum, a visit to his brother’s house where she played with her two cousins’ electronic toys to her heart’s content.

  But always she ended the visit at Cassandra’s cottage. He’d considered Cassandra a warm grandmother figure to Lucy, filling a role that was missing in Lucy’s life, but it was becoming clear to him that Cassandra had been more to her than he’d realized.

  Cassandra connected with Lucy. He didn’t.

  He was a piece that didn’t fit in Lucy’s story.

  And he didn’t want that to be true any longer.

  He glanced back at Cassandra and caught her studying him. She relinquished the brushes and slowly made her way back toward him. Thump, thump, thump.

  “Isn’t this usually the week that you take a backpacking vacation?” Cassandra asked him softly. “School got out yesterday.”

  “It did.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “And I cancelled the trip yesterday.”

  “Because Lucy needs you.” Cassandra said it as a statement and not a question, and he gave her a short nod. He wasn’t even attempting the charming smile anymore.

  “Where were you going this year?” Cassandra’s voice was very low, meant as a conversation between two adults, with Lucy left out of it.

  He frowned. “To Scotland. Hiking.”

  “Ah, with the Scottish lassies.” She exhaled.

  The older woman couldn’t know. Nobody did. It was his own personal secret. The day after school let out, every year, Sam chose a different place in the world to escape to, alone. Someplace interesting to him. And there, wherever “there” was, he nearly always met a woman, though they never exchanged last names. For a week they would get closer, and it was intimate, yet anonymous. That vacation lasted him for a year. For the other three hundred and forty-odd days, he lived his life separate, detached, not really opening himself to anybody. Not even, he realized now, his own daughter.

  “This is a small town,” he said to Cassandra, falling back on his old excuse. “A bad idea for a single male teacher to...” To date, and therefore to provide gossip for the mill, he was going to say. But he didn’t want to get into it in front of Lucy.

  “Hmm.” Cassandra left it at that. “Your job is very important to you,” she finally said.

  He shrugged. Honestly, teaching was interesting and it was a paycheck. That was about it.

  Cassandra glanced sharply at him as if reading his mind. “I meant being a lifeguard.”

  He blinked. It was true, he looked forward to his lifeguard job all year. He liked the keeping-people-safe aspect of it. He liked sitting in his chair, looking out over the ocean and feeling calm and at peace with the world.

  “Well, yes, it’s a good job. But my daughter is more important to me. I’ll take care of her, Cassandra, you don�
��t have to worry about her being here all the time while you have work to do.”

  “Please, Dad!” Lucy interrupted. “I don’t want you to quit your lifeguard job to take care of me!”

  She’d called him Dad, not Sam.

  He felt himself grinning like a fool.

  “Cassandra says you’re really good at what you do.” Lucy continued. “She says you’re the only lifeguard trainer she’s ever seen who teaches the lifeguards how to meditate to stay calm. And you show them the best way to return lost children to their parents. And...to defuse tense situations.”

  That was the most Lucy had said to him in a long time, and Cassandra smiled sheepishly at him. “Your lifeguard station is right in the line of sight of my workspace. I’ve been listening to you lead morning training sessions for years.”

  Cassandra had obviously been talking him up to his daughter, and he appreciated that. “Thank you, Cassandra,” he said quietly.

  She folded her hands and slid a sideways look at him. “I wonder if you could do a favor for me this summer.”

  “Oh?” He felt his smile tightening.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Cassandra hastened to explain. “I have a young houseguest coming here from the West Coast, on sabbatical from her demanding job. She’s looking for someone to tutor her in meditation. I wonder if you could teach her some techniques?”

  He almost burst out laughing. He would just bet this “young houseguest” was single, a sweet young thing, and Cassandra was attempting to fix him up. He was thirty-two and unattached, and his fellow teachers tended to do that to him, too. Cassandra he couldn’t get mad at because she was Lucy’s friend. Plus, he could see the irony in her request.

  Cassandra noted his amused expression and tsk-tsked him. “You know how important meditation is, Sam. Sarah asked me to find her a class, and I thought of you. I never saw anyone teach neophytes at work like that until you came along. The other lifeguard supervisors scream at the recruits and blow their whistles. Run, swim, practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

  “Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is quite important,” he teased.

  “Staying calm and responding appropriately to stressful situations is more important.” She nodded at him.

  He agreed with her, but that wasn’t the point. “How old is your houseguest?” he asked.

  Cassandra didn’t bat an eye. “Sarah is in her thirties, like you, and she’s quite pretty. She returns to California after Labor Day.”

  So here was this summer’s anonymous yet intimate fling—was that what she was implying?

  “No, Cassandra. Sorry.” Honestly, the morning’s uncomfortable realizations about him and Lucy not having an emotional connection were making him not want to have his yearly fling. It seemed pathetic now. Maybe he’d only thought he’d been connecting with these women, just as he’d thought he’d been connecting with Lucy during their twice-monthly Saturday outings. Lucy had made him see that it hadn’t been true, at all.

  “Please, Dad, help her!” Lucy’s voice was a shriek. He nearly jumped, it surprised him so much.

  “Luce, I’m going to be busy with you. You and I can hang out and do stuff together. We can go to the library and read books together all day, if that’s what you want.” He would miss his job, and money would be tight, but at least the time spent together would bring them closer.

  “But, Dad, you don’t understand...” Lucy got up and shrugged out of her backpack. She riffled through a stack of books and papers and pulled out a magazine.

  Business Roundup. He stared at her, confused. This was an adult publication, and not something he or her mother read, that was for sure. He couldn’t quite picture bohemian Cassandra reading it, either.

  Lucy flipped the pages open to an article she’d marked with a yellow sticky note and showed the pages to him. One featured a huge, glossy picture of a severe, unsmiling woman.

  He blinked and looked up at his daughter.

  “This is Sarah Buckley,” Lucy said. “Haven’t you heard of her?”

  Should he have? He shrugged and held up his hands.

  “She’s one of the most important women in Silicon Valley,” his eleven-year-old informed him.

  He studied the picture again. Sarah Buckley wore a black suit jacket with a white shirt and had dark chin-length hair. Her fighting gaze made her look like she battled and scrapped for what was hers and never gave up trying.

  “I didn’t know you were interested in business,” he said to Lucy.

  “She’s a woman of substance. That’s what it says. Read the article.”

  He took the magazine from her and flipped through the piece. It was five pages long. When he heard his daughter loved the library, frankly, he’d thought she meant the young adult section. Cassandra had all kinds of artsy friends who wrote literature for kids and teens, but seriously...business magazines?

  “Sarah Buckley talks about setting life goals and making daily progress and moving above the limitations of your background.” Lucy set her chin as she spoke, and in that moment, there was no question, she absolutely reminded Sam of the driven woman profiled in the piece.

  He moved away from the magazine with the photograph of the intense Silicon Valley executive that Lucy so admired. He strode over to a couch across the room and sank deeply into the cushions. The whole day so far had been staggering to him. What other parts of herself had Lucy kept hidden from him? He had such a gap to bridge with her that it felt overwhelming.

  Lucy settled back in the chair, rereading the article about the woman she obviously idolized. Cassandra wore a thoughtful expression that Sam couldn’t place.

  “She’s my niece,” Cassandra said quietly. “My deceased sister’s only daughter. She’s in trouble with her job and she’s coming here to destress for the summer.”

  “Sarah Buckley is your niece?” He stood up and glanced over Lucy’s shoulder at the photograph again. He saw no family resemblance to Cassandra.

  A movement out the window caught his attention. On the beach, a crew on a town dump truck was delivering freshly painted lifeguard stands to each of the assigned stations.

  A pang went through him. As much as he wanted to improve his relationship with Lucy this summer, the reminders of what he was giving up for that made Sam think again of all the good things he loved about his job that he would miss once he tendered his resignation. He would miss the early morning swims with the lifeguard teams, being calmed by and at peace in the vast, powerful ocean, his refuge since he’d been able to walk. Being one with the ocean was a feeling he couldn’t easily describe, a home to him. It was his peace and his anchor. He’d hoped Lucy would feel this way too, but she didn’t.

  Not everybody loved the ocean, he reminded himself. Lots of people couldn’t swim or didn’t know how to manage the powerful rip currents that could drown even strong swimmers in seconds if they didn’t know how to read and navigate the tide’s unique signals. Sam loved the rescue teams, the camaraderie of the other lifeguards, his older bosses and the younger men and women, still in college, that he trained and mentored. He loved helping lost kids find their families and he loved diffusing tensions between beachgoers who’d sat too long in hot summer traffic.

  He was good at it. He would do it year-round if the wages were good enough and he lived in a region of the country that supported it. Because of Lucy, he had stayed in Wallis Point, a town close to her home. It had now become his permanent home, too.

  “Dad, you shouldn’t quit your lifeguard job,” Lucy pleaded again. “Please let me stay with Cassandra.”

  She must have been watching him stare wistfully at the beach. The magazine was slack in her lap, and her serious brown eyes seemed sorry for him.

  “She’ll be in good hands here,” Cassandra added softly.

  “What about your work?” he asked Cassandra.

  She resumed washing
her brushes. “Don’t worry about me. I always take care of myself.” She glanced up at Sam with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “I’ve never told anyone this, but I do have regrets from Sarah’s childhood.”

  Both he and Lucy had given her their full attention. They waited for her next words with rapt curiosity.

  “Her parents both died when Sarah was twelve.” Cassandra paused to scrub at an especially tough stain on one of her brushes.

  “I know this story.” Lucy jumped in eagerly. “Sarah talks about it in the article. She said that facing tragedy and then a difficult home life in her younger years helped hone her focus and showed her the importance of hard work in creating her own destiny.” She read from the magazine. “‘Because only in creating one’s own destiny can one ever be free.’” She put the magazine down. “She won a full scholarship to study engineering at university, where she started developing her own patents and inventions. She started her own company, and now I think she’s really rich. Nobody can push her around anymore.”

  Sam stared at his daughter, confused on all kinds of levels. Money was what was important to Lucy? He hadn’t had an inkling that she placed so high a value on wealth. He certainly hadn’t passed that onto her. Business and power had never been important drivers to him. He was more of a helper, and he liked to live simply. Humbly. Sarah Buckley’s world just wasn’t his kind of place.

  Cassandra shuffled over, bringing the platter of blueberry cake with her. She plunked it down before him. “Some refreshment, Sam?” she asked drily.

  “That is just like what Hannah the witch gave to Nathaniel, too!” Lucy exclaimed. “Dad, you can be Nat!”

  Cassandra raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Let me guess,” he said, realizing he would have to get used to living with Lucy on her terms and not just spending two afternoons per month on a fun, distracting outing he’d dreamed up. “I’m living in The Witch of Blackbird Pond?”