Moonglass (2 page)

I surfaced a few feet away and tried to sound light, but there was an edge to my voice. “Sooo, are we gonna stay out here all night, or do I get to see the place?”

My dad glanced down the beach, started to say something, and then thought better of it. “Yeah. Let’s go.” With that he looked over his shoulder just in time to catch the next wave in. I waited for another one and pushed off the sand with my toes. The swell lifted me, and I put my arms out in the face of it, gaining speed all the way to the sand.

As I stood, twisting water out of my hair, my dad strode over the sand below the dirt road in front of our house. I heard a tiny click, and a motion detector light flipped on. When it did, I noticed for the first time what looked like a condemned cottage sitting on the beach, backed up to the cliff. A drooping fence surrounded it, overgrown with ice plant, setting it apart from our row of restored cottages on the hill. I hadn’t even realized it was there. Now, though, in the yellow light, it stood like a piece of history preserved in time. The cracked windows were barely translucent from the mist and sand accumulated on them, and the whole shack leaned precariously, as if the weight of the vines sprawled over it were too much for it to bear. I shivered a little.

“Anna, you coming?” My dad reached into the bus and grabbed two towels, wrapping one around his waist. He didn’t even glance over at the dilapidated cottage. “Here. Towel for ya.” He held the other one out to me.

I fumbled with it for a second, then slung it over my shoulder, still unable to look away from the cottage. As we picked our way up the uneven stepping stones in front of our new house, I opened my mouth to ask about it, but changed my mind just as the light clicked off. I paused and squinted at the cottage in the dark, waiting for something. But there was nothing. Just the crash of another wave and the stillness that followed.

My dad put the key into the dead bolt and nudged the door with his shoulder. We stepped into hot, stale air and darkness. The smell was unfamiliar but not unpleasant—something of the old wood the cottage was built of. The light flipped on, and he went straight to opening the windows.

“Gets a little stuffy in here all closed up.” He pulled a latch and threw open another window.

In the dim light I could see that the hardwood floor had been painted over with brick red paint. The pale yellow walls were smudged and cracked. It wasn’t my grandmother’s house, that was for sure. Once my dad had gotten here, he’d called to say it probably was a good idea for me to stay back with her while he came down here to get settled. I could see why. The place wasn’t exactly homey. Not much hung on the walls or softened the emptiness of it. In the few weeks I’d spent with my grandmother, I had grown accustomed to a comfortable life. She doted on me like I pictured her doting on my dad as a kid, complete with a commercial-perfect breakfast every morning and clean sheets every Sunday. Here I could see that wouldn’t be the case.

He must have seen it on my face. “I know. It needs some help. We’ll have plenty of time for that. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours since I got here.” I nodded skeptically, eyeing his sunburned face. “Plus, I figured maybe you’d have fun decorating.” I was silent. “Hey. I got started.” He gestured to a set of shelves in a little alcove.

In his own way he
had
tried. Scattered over the shelves were pictures of us that I knew were his favorites. Almost all were images of us smiling at the camera from a boat or our surfboards, happy and tanned. Between the picture frames were a few seashells—his attempt at decorating. I set my bag down.

“As long as you’re forcing me to be here, I guess there are a few things I could do with the place.” I gestured at the giant picture window framing the moon and the water. “I don’t think we should put curtains up there. It’s too pretty to cover up.” We looked out at the water, quiet, and it felt like one of those moments that was heavy with the things we didn’t want to say out loud.

“Well, come on. I’ll give you the full tour.” He put a hand on my shoulder and steered me through a narrow doorway, then flipped another light switch.

“This”—he swept his arm over a bare room with a bed in the middle—”is my room.”

“Wow, Dad … this is depressing.” I glanced around. On his ancient dresser was a plate-size abalone shell he had found on a dive in Mexico. Another attempt at decorating. Above it hung a black-and-white picture of my mom, from when they had first met. At this beach. In it she stood at the waterline looking down, like she was unaware of the camera. She wore a white sundress and a calm almost-smile. I squinted to see if I could glimpse any of the cottages in the background, but then felt my dad looking at it too, starting to get lost in the thought of it again.

I clapped my hands together and looked around. “So. Where’s my room?”

“Well, you have to go through my room to get to yours, but you have an outside door too.” My mind hummed at the potential of this as I followed him past his bed and to another doorway. He stopped, hand on the doorknob to my room, and turned abruptly to face me, so that I almost ran into him.

“Listen.” He took me by the shoulders. “I know I asked a lot of you, to pick up and move.” My eyes welled up instantly, for too many reasons to name.

“And maybe you don’t understand all the reasons I decided to take the transfer.”
Maybe
I didn’t understand?

I kept myself from saying anything, because I knew exactly how it would come out. I was too tired to start it all over again, so I let him go on.

“Honestly, I’m not sure I do either. But I think, if you give it a chance, you’re gonna love it here. It’s a pretty special place. Wait til you wake up in the morning and look outside.” He squeezed my shoulders, searched my eyes for an answer.

I sniffed and nodded, trying to smooth it over for now. It couldn’t be easy for him, either. “That beach out there is the only thing you have going for your case, you know.”

He smiled and opened the door to my room. All of my furniture was there, unpacked. He had even made up the bed.

“You arrange it however you want. I just didn’t want you to come home to an empty room.” He cleared his throat. “Most of your stuff is still in those boxes, but I got a few things out. You still have plenty of time to get settled in before school starts.” I stood in the middle of my new room, amidst my things, and tried to feel it. The word “home.” But it wasn’t there yet. For me, anyway. When my dad said it, though, it had a ring of old familiarity to it, and that was somehow comforting. I sat down on the edge of my bed, which felt the same as it had back home, ran my hand over the same worn-soft quilt.

He rubbed his neck. “I gotta open the park in the morning, so I won’t be here when you get up, but I’ll leave some money on the counter if you wanna walk up to the Shake Shack for lunch. We can go for a dive or a surf or something when I get off.” He walked over and kissed the top of my head. “Good night, kiddo. I love you.”

“Mm-hm. You too.”

When the door closed, I stood up and looked around again. On top of my dresser sat my jar of sea glass, full with the greens and blues of countless hours spent combing the beach. I walked over and examined it, wondering what the ocean might uncover here, on this beach. Maybe a rare piece—purple, or yellow, or red. I set the jar on my nightstand, where it belonged, then changed out of my wet swimsuit.

Any other day I would have opened my door to the outside and sat on the step, breathing in the night and listening to the ocean. But this day had been long and heavy, and the only thing I wanted was to start over in the light of the morning. I climbed into the cool of my sheets and switched off the light. For a long time I lay there listening to the sounds of my new home. The most noticeable was the rhythmic smack of waves on the shore, and then the static-like sound of their foam rolling up in disorganized ripples. The rest of the night outside was silent.

I wondered what Laura and Shelby were doing at this moment. Thought of my grandma, probably sitting up with her glass of wine and a “late movie,” like she loved to watch. I replayed the conversation I’d had with my dad, spoken and unspoken, until I had myself convinced we’d be all right here … somehow.

But then I rolled onto my side and thought of my mother, here on this beach.

And like a reflex I closed my eyes against it all.

I needed to run. Because for as long as I could remember, it was the one time when I could just move and not think of
anything
. Being in the water could calm me, but it wasn’t the same. When I was younger, after my mom was gone, the ocean was the place I went to be near her, where I would dive under the waves, thinking I’d maybe catch a glimpse of her there, hair splayed out like a mermaid’s—swimming, beautiful and strong and free. She felt close and peaceful that way, and since then, the water had become the place where I felt most at home. But being here, where she’d been before I even existed, where she and my dad had a history he had laid to rest until the night before, it somehow all felt too close. So I needed to run.

I walked the narrow path to the sand and glanced at the run-down beach cottage as I passed it. In the weak morning light it seemed especially still and quiet. All the windows on the first story were hidden under sprawling bougainvillea, but upstairs I could make out a small window shrouded in dirt, and a tiny sagging balcony facing the water. Someone had woken up to a deserted beach a long, long time ago and had probably seen the same simple beauty of pelicans gliding in a line, wing tips hovering impossibly close to the surface of the swells.

The beach and its cottages stood out in stark contrast to the other side of Pacific Coast Highway. Across four lanes, lining the hill s was a series of homes that were really more like the celebrity compounds I’d seen in magazines. The higher up the hill they were, the tall er the columns and the wider the arches got, like each house was in competition with the next. It was ridiculous. And sort of intimidating, if I was being honest with myself.

These were the people whose kids I was gonna go to school with. Kids who sat up there on the hill with million-dollar views of the ocean, but who probably never really
saw
it. They probably liked the status it gave them, to live near the beach. But other than that, I guessed it was just a pretty backdrop for their BMWs and designer clothes.

As soon as I had the thought, a tiny part of me realized how self-righteous that would sound if I actually said it out loud. But still . My friends and I prided ourselves on cute thrift store finds and our ability to dig up change anytime we needed to put gas into our old cars. Those were the things that entertained us and made life fun. And now they were the things that were missing. Before I let myself think about it too much, I walked over the sand and breathed in the morning.

At the waterline I looked south to where my dad had pointed the night before, and I shook out my legs before starting off in a slow jog. On a good day mine were the first footprints on the sand and I floated, legs moving effortlessly over a landscape of sand, shells, and seaweed. Today my legs felt a little tight, so I eased into it. As I ran, my eyes automatically went to the ground, scanning for sea glass. It was an old habit.

One that probably slowed me down. I followed the high tide line and the bits of shells, seaweed, and pebbles, but nothing glimmered at me from the sand, so I let my eyes wander up and over the waves that broke gray-green in the rising sun. Down the beach, in the shadow of the cliff, two heads bobbed in the water. A wave rose behind them, and one of the surfers paddled hard to catch it. I stretched out my strides and settled into a smoother pace, curious about the guys in the water.

As I got closer, I could see they were shortboarders and that they were sitting practically on the rocks, waiting for a set to come through. A look at the flat glassy water said they were either extremely optimistic or extremely inexperienced. I decided they were good-looking, charming optimists and picked up my speed a little more. The sun had emerged from the morning gray, and the warmth of it loosened me up. As I neared the point, a small wave rose off it, and both surfers paddled hard. One stood and pumped his tiny surfboard with his legs, trying to maintain some kind of momentum. My dad would have rolled his eyes. He surfed a ten-foot single fin board and never wore a leash. Had he caught the same wave, he would have paddled in smoothly, popped up, and gone straight to the nose to finish out the ride.

I hopped over their backpacks and turned my attention to the point, where black cliffs rose sharply from the green water and mussel-covered rocks. Briefly I let myself wonder how my parents had met here. I couldn’t even picture them that young.

Was it my dad out in the water and my mom walking the beach early in the morning? He’d probably tell me if I asked. He’d probably be happy to.

I dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had come into my head, and hopped over a tangled-up strand of seaweed. Three more paces brought me to a large rock, and I tagged it with one foot, pushed off, and turned around. As I did, I stole a sideways glance at the guys in the water, which wasn’t enough to tell how old they were or what they looked like, but enough to know that they were looking in my direction, probably trying to figure out those same things. I put my head down, suddenly self-conscious, and picked it up again. This time to a pace that was faster than comfortable. A slow burn spread out in my chest as I flew over the sand, hoping they didn’t realize.

thankfully, just up the beach something caught my eye in the brightening sunlight. It looked like a piece of frosty ice sitting on the sand. Out of place, but next to invisible if you weren’t looking for it. I stopped abruptly to pick up the thick half-dollar-size piece of sea glass, then turned it in my fingers and held it up to the light. It was pitted and translucent on the outside, but there was one edge that was still crystal clear, a window to the inside of the glass. In the center I saw the small spots my mom had told me about. Something about the process of making the glass that meant it was close to a hundred years old.