Portion of the Sea (20 page)

She laughed and waved me out her door.

My father was resting on a hammock under a palm tree when I returned to the cottage, and he had confessed that he walked to the store for a bag of basics, which would get us through the night. I felt concerned that he would do such a thing and risk his recovery, and I felt bad for having not taken care of him like I should have.

We ate the snacks he bought and played cards out on the lanai until way past midnight, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I thought my yawns were going to kill me, but I didn’t want to say anything or let on as to how tired I was. I didn’t want our game to end. Time together like this would never happen back home, not when he had to be at the office by five in the morning.

XVII

I SPENT THE ENTIRE
next day doing what women do on a regular basis. I skimmed through the pages of the
Betty Crocker Cookbook
, selecting recipes I would make for the week. Then I created a list, four pages long, of all the ingredients I would need for those, seven times three, twenty-one recipes, plus seven desserts equals twenty-eight. Doing all of this was like exercising parts of my brain I never knew I had. I found it excruciating.

With my list in hand, I went to the island’s general store and shopped for over three hours, going up and down every aisle about eight times each until I could find what I was looking for. It was helpful to learn that the fruits and veggies were stocked together in one section and the meats in another. I had no idea there was organization to a store. Next time, I decided, it would be simpler since I knew where everything was.

I hated to do it, but I called for a driver to pick me up and take me home. I then had him set all the bags outside. I wanted to carry them in myself, which I soon regretted, because it then took me another hour to do so and put it all away. I then collapsed on the sofa next to my father who had been reading a novel all day. He went ape when I handed him my grocery receipt. I had spent over one hundred dollars.

“What do you mean, watch my budget, father? I didn’t know we had one.”

“Yes, you should always look at the prices of things and try to pick the
least expensive cheese, that is, without compromising quality. You didn’t do that?”

“I was too busy finding things. If I sat there comparing prices, I’d still be there now. Grocery shopping is more time-consuming than I ever imagined.”

“I hope you bought food that will go far,” he said.

“I’ve got enough for twenty-one meals, plus seven deserts, so roughly, one week’s worth of food,” I said.

“Damn, I better find you a wealthy husband.” He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly time for dinner. What are you going to make? I’m starving.”

I spent the rest of the evening doing things I never thought I’d do. I chopped and minced and peeled and cried. I boiled and soaked and drained and shriveled up a few times mentally. I stirred, blended, mixed, and tossed my hands in the air with frustration. I dropped, spilled, and cracked eggs onto the floor, and even slid myself, landing beside a pile of breadcrumbs. I grieved over the fourth egg yolk dead on the floor.

Dinner was ready by ten o’clock. But first, I had to set the table. If I had children, or a husband, I thought, I could make them do that for me. A man that sets the dinner table is—Abigail might disagree—another ingredient that goes into the making of a good man, I thought.

“Did you buy any Scotch?” I heard my father call from the other room. “I’m ready for a glass with ice.”

“No, father. I’m only seventeen. I can’t buy liquor.”

“Damn,” I heard him say. “I’ll get it myself in the morning.”

We ate. I don’t remember a thing about the meal. And that’s a shame. I went to all that work and don’t remember the meal. I did offer Lloyd seconds, which he refused. And I was glad, for there was nothing I wanted more than to dive into bed. “Good night, Father,” I said, pushing my chair away from the table. “I’m turning in.”

“Lydia,” he said with a frightened look in his eyes. “The dishes. The mess.”

I was so fatigued I forgot we didn’t pack our housekeepers and assistants in our suitcases. That meant there was only me to clear the table, wash the dishes, dry them too, put them away, and clean the stove and
oven, cabinets and floor. By the time I finished all of that, my father was sleeping. I climbed into bed, but still my mind went on working, worrying about the kitchen corners I might have missed cleaning, places the ants might find. I tried falling asleep, but my mind had chased my body around in that kitchen all night, and now it didn’t know how to turn itself off.

I had a new respect for my fellow women, for the wives and the mothers and the daughters who help their mothers and for anyone who had ever gone through the agony of preparing a single meal. I wanted to look up each person that has ever made me a dinner, whether in our home or in a restaurant, and thank them personally for their behind-the-scene efforts.

I also wanted to sleep, but Mr. Sandman never came. Maybe he figured there was already enough sand on Sanibel. I felt mentally lopsided, and so I remembered the words of Ava and allowed myself to think of Josh. It was as if thinking of him inflated my heart, and I felt as if I were riding the peaks of the waves.

I felt so ready to live and way too excited to sleep, and so I climbed out of bed and headed for the kitchen. There I pulled out the
Betty Crocker Cookbook
once more and flipped to the dessert section. I then took out sugar, brown sugar, flour, baking soda, butter, one egg instead of two—since I dropped so many on the floor while making tonight’s meatloaf—and a bag of chocolate chips.

As I watched the sun rising through my kitchen window, I also watched the cookies rising through the oven window. And I wondered, as I sat on the tile floor, which would rise first. It turned out that the good old sun defeated my cookies in many ways. The sun was beautiful, my cookies ugly. The sun continued rising, my cookies fell. The sun was only getting warmer, my cookies cold, by the time I scraped them off the pan and dropped them into a bag.

“Oh well,” I mumbled as I headed for my room to get ready. “At least my cookies are comforting as the sun. I’m sure Josh will appreciate them.”

I quickly got dressed, not in my dungarees this time, but in a nice yellow dress with short white gloves. I then applied eyeliner to my top eyelid only and peeked into the room at my father. He was still sleeping and
would be for hours. I would have just enough time to sneak over to the pier and find Josh and return home before he awoke. Ever since his heart attack, he had been sleeping way past ten o’clock. I never believed that was possible.

XVIII

JOSH, POLITE AS HE
was, ate three, and the other men standing by us on the Sanibel Fishing Pier each took one, but a few minutes later I spotted large crumbs, chunks, and then whole cookies floating by in the water below the pier.

“Are they that bad?” I asked Josh.

“We’ll know in a couple of days if a bunch of dead fish wash ashore.”

I punched him on his shoulder and laughed as I spotted one fisherman whipping his cookie across the water as if trying to skip a stone. It didn’t skip, but rather fell apart in mid-air. “Baking is not one of my strengths. It should be, I know. I am a woman, but I guess I find it rather …”

“Where are your shoes?” Josh asked looking down at my naked toes. “What if you step on a hook out here?”

“It’s a risk I’ll take,” I said, smiling. “There’s nothing better than the feeling of toes touching the ground. I want to feel grounded, connected, and in touch with the Earth, you know what I mean?”

“You are unique.”

“Thank you. That’s the second nicest thing you could say to me.”

“What’s the first?”

I looked down at my toes and thought about whether or not I wanted to tell him. I didn’t want to live my life confined within a limo or the walls of a house. I didn’t want a mansion to become my world. It’s why journalism continued to interest me. The stories brought me out there, into that
world full of different kinds of people with different backgrounds and perspectives and quotes so unlike what I had been raised with inside the sheltered walls of the limo and mansion. I curled my toes along the splintery edge of the pier.

“The first nicest thing you said to me,” I told Josh. “was that you thought it was great that I wanted to be a journalist.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “It meant that much to you?”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “I’ve never heard any guy say anything supportive like that before. My father and the men he introduces me to, the ones we have dinner with occasionally, certainly don’t think my career aspirations are a good thing.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, me too. It’s screwed up, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but if you don’t mind my asking, what is it that you’re after? Because I’m guessing it’s not the money. I may be wrong.”

“You’re right about that. I don’t care about money.”

“Then you’ve probably never gone without, right? Because anyone who has ever gone without money does care.”

I thought good and hard about what he said, and maybe, to an extent, there was accuracy in it. My father was just turning into a man and entering the workforce when the Great Depression hit, and he witnessed firsthand how the loss of fortunes, big or small, devastated everyone he knew and didn’t know. It was nearly impossible for him at that time to land any job at any bank because thousands of banks were failing and closing back then. He watched his own father lose his job and with it the house when he could no longer pay the mortgage.

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “I’ve never gone without money. Maybe that’s why I’m not at all concerned with making it. But my father, he’s gone without, and maybe that’s why he works so hard at his career. He’s gone without a job and a house before, but you should see now the way he stores up his money and works all the time. I don’t know. For me, it’s not at all about money. It’s all about having choices in life and maybe one day women won’t think about this because they won’t have ever gone without choices. Everyone should be able to have choices in life, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Isn’t that what freedom is?”

I nodded. “Do you believe women should be free to work in whatever field they choose?”

“Why not?”

“You’re the only one who thinks so. You, and my friend, Ava.” I stopped there. I didn’t want to tell him that Ava was just some girl whose diary I had been snooping through. And I also stopped talking too deeply about my career aspirations, for the more I talked with Josh, the more I liked him and the less I wanted to spook him away like I did all the other men, although he didn’t appear to be the type to be spooked away by a woman like me.

After that first morning of not catching a single fish, I stopped thinking about career aspirations and started having fun, pure and simple fun that continued for the next fourteen mornings in a row. Every morning on that pier was fun with Josh, despite my not catching any fish. Josh said it was because they tasted my cookies and were scared about what my bait might taste like, but I didn’t care. To me, fishing was no longer a competition with the men. Somewhere into our second week together, fishing became all about standing alongside Josh, talking or not talking. I liked both, for even when we were quiet, I felt like I was getting to know him by the way he moved, patiently and relaxed, never in a hurry, nor angry even when I dropped a pole in the water.

My father didn’t know about my early mornings out. But if Ava could sneak out at night to meet up with Jaden, I told myself, then I could sneak out at sunrise to meet up with Josh. A woman does what she must to see her man, and with all the cooking and domestic responsibilities I was attempting for my father, there was no time for me to get together with Josh during the day. Besides, I had a gut feeling that my father wouldn’t like the idea of me spending so much time with him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked Josh one morning as I stepped onto the pier carrying our two cups of coffee.