Barefoot Beach (20 page)

Over the years, I'd been taught by experience that one person can't provide everything you need or want from a friendship. That people have different strengths, and if you're lucky they share them with you. For example, Margo was a cheerleader. Not in her own life. For herself, the score was usually 20–0, their favor, whoever
they
were. And if things happened to be going well, she was sure she'd strike out next time at bat. But for my games, she shook her pom-poms and rooted for me to hang in there because everything would turn out fine.

Em was my analyst. She liked to think problems through, slowly, methodically, usually aloud, and then suggest solutions. That worked sometimes, but I didn't think I could handle it today. I was juggling way too much: my work or lack of it now; my love life, probably ditto; my
son, who was getting away from me; my perilous financial situation. Everything seemed ready to crash, and talking about it was only going to make it worse. Sometimes you simply had to focus on keeping it all up and in motion.

Except Em was waiting, her knowing eyes fixed on mine. I blinked first.

She worked for me, but she also worked
with
me and she deserved to know what was going on. It would affect her future. I told her about Sal's rent increase, my financial shortfall, and the reason for it.

“The loss of your job with the Vintage company, I'm sorry for that,” she said. “But you will get another, I'm sure. Even so, you know I have thought for a while that the studio should be earning more money. We talked about it a year ago, remember? I had some ideas for increasing business, but you were in the middle of fixing up the house with Margo and you said one thing at a time and you weren't ready to hear them then.”

That sounded like me. “I'm ready now,” I said.

We batted possibilities around for the next fifteen minutes. I suggested more newspaper ads. Perhaps a radio campaign. A plane flying over the beach trailing an advertising banner.

Em had let me talk, but now she shook her head. “No, no. All that costs money. The trick is to make money without spending more to make it.”

Her suggestions were much better than mine. Belly-dance demonstrations at the Gold Coast Mall that would lure whole families to watch. The Powells and the Felchers on the Tuckahoe bandstand to show off their ballroom skills. “We could schedule more classes for our present customers, and extra classes in the new dances. Like the hip-hop. I'll ask Larissa. She goes to the clubs and she can teach them. Very sexy for the younger clients.”

“You're good at this,” I said as I felt the stirrings of hope.

“Let's think up other ideas,” Em said. “We can draw up a business plan
over the winter and try them next summer. It will take time for these efforts to turn into more profit, but eventually . . .”

I didn't have eventually. Decisions were waiting to be made.

“Ah, your mouth is glum again.” Em tugged down the edges of her lips to make a sad face. “There is a saying my father used to repeat.
Ağacı kurt, insanı dert yer.
Worry destroys a person the way that worms destroy a tree. Worry is not the answer,
arkadaşım
. Work is.”

Dear friend, she'd called me. She was mine as well, so I nodded to make her believe that I believed, which I did a little. Then I did what good friends do. I switched the focus to her life, her problems. All of them starred Merry, of course.

Adnan had appealed to the owner of Clean on Board to reinstate his daughter after the scuffle last week, but the decision was firm. So no job and no references either. But to let her languish through the summer wasn't an option, Em said. Merry would fill empty time hanging out with her equally bored friends, a recipe for trouble. So Em made sure she was busy first thing in the morning, helping to make cupcakes and pastries and package the coffee and cakes for the café's takeaway. Two hours of that and the girl was off to the food bank, where she stocked shelves and assisted in preparing lunch for the homeless and destitute in the area.

“It's important for her to see that a reward for work is not always pay. She has great compassion for animals, the cats especially, but not so much for people.” Em sighed as she slipped her bare feet into sandals. “And then, I think, she has started to go to the playhouse some afternoons.” She gave me a slitted glance made narrower by the heavy black eyeliner. “Did Margo talk to you about this?”

She hadn't. Interesting how our triangular friendship sorted out. There were subjects we split among the three of us. Others never made their way beyond two. Still others took circumlocutious routes so eventually everyone was in the loop.

“Merry came home with paint on her T-shirt the other day. That
shiny gold they used on the set of
The King and I
. And I found the script for the play in the hall bathroom along with a to-do list for a show called
The Gin Game
.”

The theater put on three plays a season. While rehearsals for the elaborate musical took over the stage weekday afternoons, the Driftwood drew audiences weekend evenings with a simple-to-mount drama or a singer or comic in concert.

I said, “Margo is playing the female lead in
The Gin Game
.” A two-act, two-actor play. “I guess Merry is helping her out over there.” I shrugged. “If you're concerned, ask Margo.”

“I'm not concerned, only curious. But perhaps this is better as a secret between them. Margo loves such things. The drama. Merry too.” She laughed. “In some ways they are both teenagers. Secrets, secrets.”

Then she said, “Adnan saw you Tuesday night. At the restaurant, the Flying Jib. With Scott.”

That took a moment to sink in.

“We went out for a drink after class,” I said, trying to keep my voice feathery. We were up and walking now toward the women's changing room. “What was Adnan doing at the Flying Jib so late on a weeknight?”

“Ah, making a delivery. They have my chocolate baklava and the Turkish Delight Torte on the dessert menu. The café slows down by eleven, so a night delivery doesn't interrupt the flow. On his way back to the van, he saw you coming out the front door and then walking outside. He said you two were very romantic. He wasn't spying. But he saw you kissing.” She whirled, not the full barrel turn she'd taught in class, but a half turn that ended with a hug. “I'm happy for you, Nora.”

The perfume Em ordered from Turkey that mixed patchouli with lemon flower was close up and calming. I needed calming.

I detached myself, forced a smile, and said, “You're a little premature. The kiss was a surprise, but no big deal. I don't think it will happen again.” It had, on the path, but Adnan hadn't been lurking behind the
cypress trees on my lawn, so I saw no need to mention it. And after the second kiss and the reaction from the window above, I had no expectations of another one.

“Oh, I hope it will happen. He is such a nice man. A true gentleman. You are two good people. I think you would be a fine match.”

Me too. I just wished Jack thought so.

July Fourth is the make-it-or-break-it weekend for retail businesses in resort towns, and a year when Independence Day fell on a Monday brought record-breaking crowds to Tuckahoe.

Visitors began to trickle in late Wednesday and streamed in on Thursday. By Friday there was a gush of them. Up where the hotels clustered, the beach was chair to chair, blanket to blanket. On Friday night, Tuckahoe was one giant party, and the next morning those who didn't sleep in took a beach breather and wandered through the downtown, jamming the narrow alleys of the Mews. Merchants had added extra staff for the busiest days of the season, and Em had doubled her baking output at the Turquoise Café.

I started Saturday early, up at five forty-five, scanning the scene from my widow's walk. A yolk of sun skimmed an eggshell horizon, smooth and creamy. High above, ruffles of clouds were beginning to go sheer. Below, the water was a calm pale blue. The muted pastels that soothed my soul would last only a short time before the vivid colors, the primaries and the hots, took over. This early, the beach music was still pianissimo—the soft cawings and cooings of seabirds, the wind tickling arpeggios. In an hour, the stretch of sand I loved most—Barefoot Beach—would start to fill, not with the armies of tourists that invaded farther up, but with
scattered sunbathers. Until then, I reckoned I could own a parcel of the finest sand on the Delmarva shore in relative solitude. That was a luxury, an irresistible one.

I was on the beach by six, sprayed with sunscreen and stretched out on an old quilt, one hand caressing a bottle of the apple tea Emine sold in six-packs, the other playing absently in the sand, sifting the fine grains through my fingers. The two weeks since my arrival had been full and complicated, and because I was a therapist, my mind was always set to analyze. But not that morning. This was not a day for deep thought, I told myself, and shifted my focus to a figure paragliding over the Atlantic, canopy billowing, and after a while my mind soared and I imagined riding the wind across the sky, savoring the freedom of weightlessness. As light as the air itself, bathed in cloud-filtered sunlight, I flew high above the earth and its problems.

Ten minutes later, shouts and laughter from hotel guests down the beach wakened me. I was hot and sticky. I peeled myself from the quilt to stand and took a swig of apple tea. The ocean was still smooth, and as if a trio of mythical sirens was singing to me, I found myself rushing toward it. I arabesqued over a sea turtle meandering across my path. I felt the sand under my soles go from brocade on the shore to satin underwater. I waded up to my neck and then I dove into a sea so calm, so polished to gleaming perfection, that my cleaving it was like cracking a mirror. The water was as cold as the dark side of hell and it was delicious. I carved my path with the front crawl, the way Miss Dorney in high school had taught me. I swam for twenty minutes, pushing toward that chemically induced Atlantis where endorphins were waiting to welcome me.

The sirens made me think I could swim forever. But I couldn't, of course. At some point, I crashed, chest aching and legs drawing and, for a split second of panic, I wondered if I'd miscalculated this time, like an addict shooting for bliss and overdosing.

When my shoulders started freezing up, I slowed my stroke. I forced myself to remember the instructions Miss Dorney had shouted from the side of the pool. “Exhale under water. Don't roll your head. Good work, Nora. You've got the rhythm.” I'd had it then. I had it now. I washed up on the shore like a conch shell, my outside inert, but alive within.

I staggered to my quilt, toweled off, and decided that if I sat down I'd never get up. Shivering from muscle fatigue in the heat and still lightly panting, I gathered my things and made my way to the path and then to the house.

In the kitchen, a box of doughnuts on the counter had been left with its lid up. Crumbs were scattered on the table next to a container of milk, cap off. When I went to put it back in the fridge, I saw the door was open a slit. In the sink, an orange juice glass, unrinsed, was waiting for me.

Maybe it was my exhaustion from the swim. Maybe it was my conversation with Margo the day before, but something inside me snapped.
No. Enough.
I hated to even think the words, but we needed to talk, Jack and I.

In my bedroom, I was stopped by a sheet of paper tented on my dresser. I unfolded it. As soon as I saw the Duke logo and the date, July 1, my heart sank. We were exactly a month before tuition was due for the fall term. The university emailed reminders to the students with a link to the site accessing the bill. Jack had printed it out and scrawled over the list of fees and next to a smear of chocolate icing, “This came in yesterday. Thanks, Mom.”

Just like that.
Thanks, Mom
, dashed off by a child of entitlement. Margo had been right. I had only myself to blame for his great expectations and casual assumption that they'd be met. The dirty glass in the sink to be washed and put away by me. The stuff he wanted for Christmas that magically appeared under the tree. I'd given him a touch-screen laptop for his going-off-to-college gift last year. God forbid my child should be deprived of anything. Not after the Great Deprivation of his
father's death. Well, it might be too late to change things, but then again it might not be. I threw a robe on over my bathing suit. It was time for the talk. Now.

A female voice filtered into the hall from behind the closed door of Jack's room. My first thought was
Claire
and
What's going on in there?
I knocked and heard, “Yeah,” which I took for permission to enter. Jack was at his desk Skyping, and the woman at the other end—he'd skewed the computer so I couldn't see her face—was monologuing at a clip. I knew immediately it was Tiffanie. She was griping about her summer job and how mean her boss was, and Jack waited for her to take a breath before he said, “Right. Sounds like it blows. Hey, my mom's here so I've got to go. Call you back later.”

Without a good-bye for him or, of course, a hi for me, she severed the connection.

He turned, took a deep breath, looked me up and down, and gave me a squiggly smile. “Someone went for a swim. Nice out there, huh?” His gaze shifted from my disheveled state to the paper in my hand. “Another year, another fifty thousand bucks.”

“Closer to sixty a year with room and board,” I said. “But, yes, with your scholarship and loans, forty-three thousand.” Per term, it was still a number big enough to make me choke, but I found voice to add, “You left the milk out on the counter.”

“What?”

“The milk. In the kitchen. You left the container on the counter. And you didn't close the refrigerator door completely when you took it out. Cold air was leaking through.”

“Jeez, I'm sorry. A call came in and I—”

“Jack, you can't do that kind of stuff. You know how much a gallon of milk costs these days? You've got to be more responsible.”

He was nodding like a bobblehead doll. “I'm sorry. I'll work on it, Mom. This is about milk?”

“This is about my losing my job,” I said.

Never underestimate shock value. It's worth the price for the attention it buys.

He rolled his chair halfway across the room. His eyes bugged when I told him that the ax had swung on my Vintage contract. That a solid chunk of our income was gone.

“Wow,” he said. “I'm sorry, Mom.”

“Yeah, me too. Your college fund that Grandpa started? The money runs out after this semester. Come January, I'd better have a new job to replace the missing Vintage paycheck. If I don't, we're going to have to make some sacrifices.”

“Sacrifices,” he repeated. “Okay. Like what?”

I knew I would have to get it out fast or I wouldn't get it out at all. “Like selling this house.”

Jack stopped breathing for a few seconds. After his first intake he said, “What? No. No. You can't do that, Mom.”

“Well, I might have to, sweetheart. I love this place as much as you do, but we might not be able to afford it anymore. I can't swing our living expenses and the cost of Duke on what I bring in from the other two jobs. Selling the house may be the only way.” I reached out to pat his hand. He pulled it back.

“You can't sell it. Dad would turn over in his grave.”

The sea was Lon's grave, but my son was right. His ashes would spin a tsunami at the thought of our giving up Surf Avenue. But ashes couldn't write checks.

Jack was up and pacing. “We'll think of something. There's got to be other options.”

I'd thought of them all. Examined them from every angle. Dismissed them all.

“You could rent it out,” he said.

“If I rented in season, we'd lose our summers here.”

“Rent it out for a month. July. And we can be here for August.”

“It's not that easy. Arranging rentals is a full-time job. I'd have to pay an agency to do it and they'd take a percentage. And you really have to be on top of the day-to-day problems that crop up. There are property managers who do it, but they charge high fees, so there goes your profit. Also, some of the people you rent to don't take care of the place like they should. It's not their own home and they don't treat it like it is.”

I repeated landlord horror stories I'd heard from women in my Zumba class. The one about a young couple, two-week renters, who on their first night at the beach decided to dine alfresco and hauled the mahogany dining room table onto the deck. They left it out there, exposed to the elements, for their entire stay. A warped and peeling total loss.

There was the gas grill rolled onto an enclosed screen porch that set the house on fire. The stuffed toilet that stayed stuffed for a week while the tenants used the two other bathrooms. The pack of grad students who had fun with a sign the owner had posted downstairs. “We appreciate your NOT smoking.” The “NOT” had been crossed out and replaced with “POT.” It took weeks to rid the house of the smell of weed.

I sighed. “It would cost a ton to get this place in shape for renters. I'd have to buy enough dishes and glasses for at least twelve. Big-screen TVs for all the rooms. And most families want a pool, which we don't have.”

“Okay,” he conceded. “Strike renting. How about this? You could turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast.”

I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but I had to laugh. “I'm not sure the neighborhood is zoned for that. But even so, a B and B requires upkeep. Doing other people's laundry. Making waffles. Making beds.”

“I'd help,” he said.

“Jack, I have to get on your case to make your own bed. And speaking of beds, how would you like some kid who isn't toilet trained sleeping in yours?”

The whole idea of strangers taking over our house gave me the creeps. It was an invasion of privacy, a disturbance of our personal space. Icky.

Jack, though, wasn't about to give up. He snapped his fingers. “Movie shoots. The people a few doors down from the Winslets rented out their house to a Hollywood production company for major money. It was a set for a horror movie about a serial killer who roamed the beach back in the olden days.” The Winslets lived on a street lined with Victorian houses. Ours had been built in the sixties. “I'm thinking Jennifer Lawrence sleeping in my bed? Now, that would be cool.”

He walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. “Don't worry, Mom. We'll figure something out.” At that moment, I tucked away the self-doubt I'd been feeling since Margo trashed my parenting skills. Maybe I hadn't done such a bad job.

I was still clutching the bill from Duke, which figured as one of the possibilities. I shoved it in the pocket of my robe. Jack was too smart not to notice.

“Even with my scholarship, Duke costs a bundle,” he said. “I'll bet Maryland would be half the cost.”

He was right about the savings, and the University of Maryland was a fine school with a top-notch lacrosse team. But the campus was huge and the population overwhelming. On our college tour, Jack had been unnerved by its size. “Too big,” he'd said, eyes darting to take it all in. “It's like a city. You could get lost here.”

More than geographically, I'd thought, watching my not-mature-for-seventeen son nervously gnawing his knuckle. “That's a no,” I'd said.

Which wasn't going to turn into a “yes” even under the current circumstances as long as I had options.

Jack was up for co-captain of the Duke lacrosse team in his
sophomore year. He was doing well academically. Most of all, he loved the place. And yes, Durham had Tiffanie, but a photo of Jack horsing around with Claire at Coneheads was pinned to his bulletin board.
I
pinned my hopes on that.

“You're good with Maryland?” I wanted to gauge the look on his face when he answered.

“I'll do what I have to do,” he said. Then, giving himself away, he added, “You know, I could probably get work at the school store at Duke. Pull in some more money that way in the fall. And I saw a sign in the window at Marty's Surf Shop saying they're hiring for part-time. I can apply for that today.”