Calm, Cool, and Adjusted (21 page)

There are tragedies in life that play over in the mind like a recurring nightmare. I squeeze my eyes shut against the home movies. I hope for a new ending when they play, only to be disappointed that, in fact, I’m not dreaming, but reliving history I cannot change.

I can’t swim fast enough.

I can’t pedal quickly enough.

And I can’t run far enough from those thoughts.

“Maybe my father is right. It’s time to go home and finish this.” The stars are blinking in the darkened sky. Parents certainly leave their mark. When you grow up and realize their flaws, it’s but a moment before you realize you’re left to clean up the mess they created. And then start one of your own in your own family.
Which is precisely why I don’t have a family.

The house, which I expect to find dark and eerie, is lit like a lighthouse when I approach the driveway, and I find myself blinking several times and looking at the surrounding landmarks to make sure I’m in the right place. I shiver as I think my father and Sharon are still in the house, not vacated as they told me. The last thing I need is to hear more about their move and their future as foster parents. Since neither one of them is the parenting sort, I can’t imagine what that’s about. If it wasn’t Sharon’s relatives, I’d wonder if they thought they might increase their income as foster parents. Once they find out it means less schmoozing and travel, I shudder to think what it will mean to the kids.

“What on earth?” I say, getting out of the car.

There are trucks along the street, and even one in the driveway, and I see a bustle of activity going on inside the house. My ears are assaulted with a constant, rhythmic banging.

I slowly make my way up the path to the house and find the door open slightly. I push it open, and see the house has been stripped down to the studs, and there’s a strong scent of bleach.

“Excuse me,” I call out to the workers. I step out onto the porch for one more look at the address. I am indeed in the right place. Each worker looks my way and then summarily ignores me. “Excuse me,” I repeat. “Who’s in charge here?”

There are men everywhere, some of them looking at plans, some of them pounding, and all of them ignoring me. It looks as though I’m employing the entire town of Santa Cruz, and on a Sunday night, this cannot be an inexpensive thing.

Oh, Daddy, what did you do?
One thing about my father, he’s usually very free with other people’s wallets and I’m sure he thinks he did me a favor here—that the sale will pay for all this.

One of the workers looks at me finally, rolling up plans in his hand, and nods his chin towards the back of the house. “You need to see the man?”

I nod. I guess I need to see the man. Naturally, I imagine pulling back the curtain in
The Wizard of Oz
because I’m quite uncertain of who “the man” is.

As I step through the rooms, the house is nothing like I remember it. It’s funny how your childhood home looks in your mind—so much bigger. And all the things that made it home are now stripped and painted over. Gone is the musty scent from the ocean and decrepit carpet of various bacteria strains. UC Santa Cruz probably could have found enough germs for antibiotics research to last for years. The carpet is gone to reveal the beaten oak hardwood floors underneath, stained and tattered by ancient nail marks. A small portion of the floor is being stripped by a loud, humming machine, and there the floor looks like fresh, raw wood.

I walk slowly, looking at each and every change and meeting the gaze of questioning construction workers.
What could this be costing?
I’m drawn to the backyard and step out onto the evening porch, which still looks exactly the same. I hear the familiar roar of the waves in the distance as I close my eyes and allow the emotion to wash over me. It smells like the beach, and I feel the touch of my mother on my fingertips.

I look heavenward. “Why leave me with this? I was thirteen, Mom.” Of all the things she could have done to finish off her will, this was a final slap in the face of my father. He never took it that way, though. For that, I’m grateful.

“Poppy.”

I open my eyes to see Simon’s hulking frame talking on a Treo. I blink a few more times, wondering if I’m seeing a Santa Cruz mirage of sorts. Which would never be too normal. Simon comes towards me, placing the phone in his pocket, and I just keep blinking, wishing I had my tryptophan supplements or ylang-ylang to dab behind my ears for calmness.

“Are you talking to yourself?” he asks.

“I suppose I am.” I close my eyes once more, and Simon’s still there when I pop them open. He looks good under the moonlight. His bulky, muscular frame is masculine and offers protection. I’m not exactly thinking like his doctor when I look at him under the moonlight.

“Poppy, it is Simon.” He gives me his sideways grin. “Are you trying to decipher that? Or having trouble with those hallucinations again?” he quips.

I shake my head like a cartoon character. “I don’t understand.” I look back towards the house. “This is my house, right?”

He smiles and walks closer to me. He’s so much younger than I think of him at the office. I think because he’s been so successful and seems to have everything under control, I neglect to remember he’s only thirty-five. He feels about fifty, and with the excess golf and time off, I think of him as more my father’s contemporary than my own.

But here in the moonlight, I think perhaps I’ve only been protecting myself. Simon is the kind of man who tempts me because he knows who I truly am. Well, with the exception of the Hawaiian spa idea—that’s all his own. Naturally, it’s not odd I haven’t noticed how truly attractive he is. He’s my patient. It’s my job
not
to notice him that way.

Seeing Simon under the familiar blue of my Santa Cruz moon, with the scents of the Pacific so nearby is like seeing my first-grade teacher at the grocery store: a mixture of awe and confusion.

“Simon, what on earth?” I ask, stepping back and looking again at the house. “Do you have something to do with all these men here?” Granted, stupid question, but I’m not feeling like myself here.

“What are
you
doing here, Poppy? I wanted to be done before you saw it.”

“Done with what? Don’t you have to have permission from the owner to rip a house apart? What is this world coming to? Where’s my lawyer?”

He crosses his arms. “If I lived in fear of lawyers, I’d never get anything done in California, where they breed like rabbits. So your threats, while made in jest and pathetic at best, don’t scare me one iota.”

“Simon, I can’t pay for this.” But that’s not really true. I’m
afraid
to pay for any of this. I’m afraid to be without the money I’ve put away for a rainy day—and my father’s latest escapade. Which, interestingly enough, will now probably come in the parched dryness of the Arizona desert.

He smiles. “Did you think I would make you pay for it, Poppy?”

This raises alarm bells. “Simon, I don’t want to owe anyone anything.”

“I realize that. Do you think that’s the healthiest of attitudes?”

“I’m not going to Hawaii. I’m not going to give up my practice because you went over the top. You have
too
much money.” I use my hands to emphasize that fact. “You need to start a foundation or take care of an orphan. Anything but this.” I point back at the house. “I would have managed this fine. Did you ever think I might have wanted to sell the house as-is? Or not sell it at all.”

“No, I didn’t, because you’re a perfectionist, Poppy. Not only would you have not wanted to do that, but you couldn’t have done it. It would have cracked your core.” He laughs. “So you’re not happy to see the house different?”

“No, I am, but—”

“It was crumbling on its foundation, Poppy. Cracks everywhere. I knew you couldn’t deal with seeing it destroyed. We needed to reshore the foundation, and that took the longest. Some people have a hard time caring for what’s given to them.”

Feeling cared for is just not an emotion I’m comfortable with, and I sort of want to kick him. He knows this, and that’s exactly why he did it!

“Simon, you still haven’t explained what you’re doing here and why you’re in my house. Knocking it down, I might add, with no permission from its rightful owner.”

He exhales, deeply, nodding his head.

“And don’t pull that fake concerned look with me. Don’t you think I know your tricks by now?”

“I’m not nearly as bright as all that. I’m thinking of how I want to say this. Relax a minute. You’re getting to be completely non-Zen. If I didn’t know any better—”

“You’re stalling.”

“My best friend is a flipper,” he says

“A what? Is that some sort of fetish or something?”

“No, Poppy. My friend flips houses for a living. He buys garbage, run-down houses that people can’t sell, fixes them up, and sells them a month later for twice the price. He buys granite and high-end products in bulk and makes all his places look the same inside. Always upper-end quality, just the same.”

“So why is he here? And what are you doing here?”

“Your dad told Emma what he was doing with the house and Arizona. That he was returning the house to its rightful owner, and you were that rightful owner. Then, I heard him tell Emma that you needed to go back and face the past. All this Dr. Phil crap . . . I don’t know—it just made me boil inside. You just don’t leave this kind of work for someone else.”

“And you heard this?” I really have to get an office with more privacy.

“I’m a business man; I pay attention and your office isn’t exactly set up for privacy. Yet another reason I want to help you get a real clinic. Anyway, he mentioned the house was a little run down and hoped it wouldn’t be too hard for you to fix.”

I give him the look that says I want more information.

“Emma said you were already pushing it, with ten-hour days, the carpal tunnel syndrome symposium, plus two hours a day of training for your triathlon. She didn’t think you could handle it, and your dad shrugged it off, saying you always handled everything else.”

“So why wouldn’t you believe that?”

“I just thought I knew the right man to help you. Leif and I went to school together, and I knew he could flip this house faster than you could get a permit. I just saw a need and I filled it. That’s what I do, Poppy. I’m an efficiency expert.”

“Sometimes the most efficient way is not always best. Why did you think that any of this was your business?” It comes out harsher than I mean it to, but I can’t quite grasp what I really feel. My heart is thoroughly grateful that this mountain doesn’t lie before me.

He steps closer to me, and I feel a sharp intake of breath at his proximity. “Because, Poppy Clayton, in case you haven’t noticed, I want to take care of you. I know you slap me back at every turn, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to stop just yet. How long did it take Edison to get that lightbulb right?” Simon towers over me and I want to step back, but my feet don’t move. “You’ve taken care of me for three years, and now it’s my turn.”

I swallow my emotion. “Haven’t you heard of this thing called women’s liberation?”

“I have. I think it’s all crap, actually.”

“Well, you should meet up with the plastic surgeon from next door. He seems to think we should all be barefoot and pregnant. And then, of course, erase all signs of such commonness later with plastic surgery.”

“You’re rambling. I don’t care what that mouse thinks.”

“Mouse?”

“A man who has to drive a car like that has something to prove. I don’t.”

“So what are you trying to prove with this?”

“That a man takes care of things. Unlike Dr. Plastic. And—” He looks at me again, and we both know he wants to say my dad, but doesn’t go through with it.

I nibble on my lip, wanting to laugh, but I find I can’t. There’s not a sense of mirth in anything he says, but maybe it’s the way he’s saying it.

“Simon, you could sell a shark on fresh water. Now, if you’ll tell me who’s in charge, I’ll take care of getting payment ready and finding out what they’re doing to this house.” I start to walk away, but I feel Simon on my heels and turn to face him. “What?”

“You’re telling me you can pay for this?”

“Well, not yet, of course, but when I sell the house.”

“What happened in this house?”

“You know,” I say, reminding him. “My mother went into a diabetic coma and I found her.”

He shakes his head, “What else? There’s got to be a reason you’ve avoided it. People die, Poppy, and I’m sure it was tragic to lose your mother at such a young age, but that doesn’t explain everything”

“Isn’t my mother’s coma bad enough?” I try to laugh it off, but he never cracks a smile. He doesn’t look away, and he keeps those brown eyes of his fixed on my own, challenging me with their intensity. Simon reads me like an X ray. With him, I feel transparent.

He drops his gaze. “I’m sorry, Poppy. I should have asked you before I just took over. What can I do to fix it since I’ve already screwed up?”

“It’s complicated, Simon.” I turn back toward the house, but I feel Simon’s arms come around me. When I turn around and look up into his steady brown eyes, every part of me feels his presence.

I crave things that are bad for me, like my mother craved sugar and carbohydrates. Her addictions killed her when she couldn’t resist. I should have never let myself get this far. I should have never treated Simon like he didn’t matter, while growing dependent on his weekly presence in my office.

I close my eyes, waiting for his lips to touch mine. But they don’t, and when I open my eyes his are clamped shut as though he’s really wrestling with something emotionally.

“Simon?”

“I’m sorry, Poppy. You’re right. Maybe I should have started a foundation.”

chapter 15

A
spring night in Santa Cruz is filled with wonder. The stars shine against the black sky and twinkle in their neon light. It’s magical. I’ve often pondered how people can live without an ocean in their life. Hearing its thunder, watching its power, and knowing its all-encompassing consistency will be there night and day is a constant reminder of how we’re nothing more than a grain of sand in life. Whatever happens in life, the tide will come in and the tide will go out. How do people in the Midwest know that they’re small and insignificant? How do people in Hollywood
not
know?