Tales From Sea Glass Inn (7 page)

She’d made a mistake and had made Helen
angry. Jenny rarely had long enough relationships to need to worry about
apologies or fights, and she wasn’t convinced she knew how to handle either of
them, but she didn’t want to back away right now. She wanted to move closer, if
only for a brief time.

She took a huge bite of her second pastry and
turned her attention to Helen. She had spotted her immediately, of course, as
soon as she had looked into the auditorium, but now she let the rest of the
world fade away and saw only her.

Helen was cleaning the grebes’ cages with her
accustomed grace and efficiency of movement. She gently herded the birds into
one end of the pen before she removed the soiled papers from the other. Then
she moved them to the clean side and repeated the process. Pen after pen, with
a quiet and experienced touch. She had developed a routine, and Jenny loved
watching her work. Mostly because she was good at her job and kept the birds
calm, of course. The tempting sight of Helen bending over to pick up a dropped
glove or tie a full bag shut was only a bonus and
not
the reason Jenny was mesmerized by
her.

Jenny wiped her powdered-sugar-covered
fingers on her jeans and grabbed a pair of gloves from a supply box. She walked
to the pen Helen was cleaning and stepped over the side of it, silently going
to work alongside her. Helen didn’t acknowledge her verbally or even with a
glance, but she subtly altered her rhythm to accommodate Jenny’s presence.

From the start, Jenny had recognized her own
work ethic in Helen. Helen understood the importance of behind-the-scenes work.
She stayed on the grubbier side of the rescue effort, cleaning pens and holding
birds while a special food mash was tubed into their stomachs. Because she was
such a familiar part of their days, the birds seemed to have adjusted more
quickly to temporary captivity here than at other rescue sites Jenny had
managed. She took on the role of assistant now, letting Helen move the birds.
The elegant black-and-white grebes with razor-sharp, slender beaks waddled
silently from one end of the pen to the other as if they’d been following
Helen’s directions their entire lives. Helen might not realize what a difference
she was making, but Jenny did. She’d have to find a way to thank her for taking
care of the chore that was usually the least favorite for the volunteers but
was one of the most vital to the well-being of the birds. Jenny had a few ideas
about how she could thank Helen, but they all involved a more hands-on approach
than Jenny usually took with the people she briefly met in disaster-torn
communities. Maybe she’d have to settle for getting her a gift card instead,
but the other options seemed much more enticing. She kept her thoughts to
herself and wordlessly stuffed paper into garbage bags. Together they finished
cleaning the remaining grebe pens and then carried the trash bags to the
Dumpster behind the center.

The back lot of the rescue center was quiet
in the growing dusk as they lobbed the bags into the huge, rusty container.
Helen led the way back to the building, but Jenny put her hand on Helen’s arm
to keep her from going through the door and returning to the brightly lit,
crowded auditorium.

“I’m sorry,” she said, picking up the thread
of their earlier conversation as if it had just happened. “I shouldn’t have
implied that you had a boring or easy childhood. And I didn’t mean to sound
like I thought I was superior because of the way I was raised or because of the
way I live now. I’m not. It’s just the only way I know how to live.”

Helen shook her head and looked off into the
distance. The fading colors of the sunset gave her skin a peachy glow and made
her eyes glisten. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have insulted your parents or
the choices they made. I just heard some echoes of my own loneliness when you
were talking about not having many friends, and I wanted to take your side
against them. And maybe I was a little jealous because you were such a huge
part of their lives and their work.”

Jenny realized she still had her hand on
Helen. She should move it, let go, step back. Instead, she slid her palm down
Helen’s arm until she reached her hand. Their fingers interlaced loosely.

“You weren’t close to your parents?” Jenny
asked. Admittedly, after watching Helen interact with her neighbors in Cannon
Beach, Jenny had pictured her growing up in a close-knit family. Learning how
to bake in the kitchen with her mom. Experiencing the cozy domesticity Jenny
had sometimes longed for.

Helen shook her head. “I never had a chance.
We were in a car wreck when I was still a toddler. The truck hit us head-on,
and since I was in the backseat, I was the only one to survive.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Grieving is abstract when you barely knew
someone.” Helen leaned against the metal siding of the auditorium, still
keeping her hand in Jenny’s. “Anyway, my uncle brought me to live with his
family, but he was…well, he wasn’t a nice man. I don’t think he and my father
were ever close. As soon as I was old enough to pack a bag, I was running away
on a regular basis. I stayed on the street or in foster homes, but then I’d be
taken back to his house. We lived in a small town, so the cops got to know me
well enough to recognize me and I never got far. Once I turned eighteen and
graduated from high school—barely—I got the hell out of there.”

Jenny sighed and propped her shoulder on the
wall next to Helen. She felt a current of excitement being this close to her,
their hands joined and their thighs barely touching, but she put her own
responses in the back of her mind. This was a time for a different kind of
intimacy, and she didn’t want Helen to stop talking. Jenny lived her own story.
When she went to disaster sites to work, the focus was always on the
present—how to deal with the crisis of the moment. Rarely did she stand still
long enough to listen to someone else’s life unfold through their words and
expressions. Rarely had she ever
wanted
to hear.

“What did you do once you left?”

Helen shrugged and Jenny felt the friction of
the movement against her own shoulder. Her fingers tightened on Helen’s
reflexively, and Helen returned the squeeze.

“I was directionless. For most of my life, I
had been straining to get away, but I never had any idea where I was headed
to
. I didn’t have the
best support system in place. Most of my friends were runaways, too. Ditching
school, leaving home, getting into trouble. I managed to stay clear of the
worst parts of street life, but I was on a downhill slope. I was crashing with
some people I knew and couldn’t seem to get a decent job, let alone hold on to
one if I managed to get hired.”

Jenny shuddered to think of the direction in
which Helen’s life could have gone. She realized the sharp edge she had seen beneath
Helen’s surface had been honed by survival. The added dimension made her even
more attractive to Jenny, but it scared her, too. She wasn’t accustomed to
seeing depth—just names and faces that blurred together and faded from her mind
once she moved on.

“And now you’re a pastry chef and
entrepreneur. I’m impressed. What made you turn your life around?”

Helen looked at her with an appreciative
smile, as if Jenny’s compliment actually meant something to her. “I got a job
washing dishes in a diner. Not exactly the dream career for most people, and it
didn’t pay much, but I got a hot meal every night. It was owned by a huge
Italian family, and I loved watching them fight and laugh and run their
business together. They were everything a family should be, and nothing like
the one I had. At first I figured I’d be there for a month or two and then
leave—my usual work pattern—but I stayed. Every once in a while, one of them
would give me a little cooking lesson, and eventually I was working on the
line. My favorite things to make were breads and desserts. I worked my way
through culinary school and saved enough to open a bakery of my own.”

Helen spoke the last three sentences with a
casual voice and a shrug, as if the journey had been as simple as
one-two-three, but Jenny knew better. The effort and discipline required to
start from scratch and build a new life were awe-inspiring to her. She felt an
inexplicable sense of pride in Helen’s accomplishments, and she wasn’t sure
why. She’d had nothing to do with Helen’s life before this, and she had no
stake in her future. She didn’t understand how an attachment seemed to be
forming between her and Helen, but she had to stop it before it got strong
enough to threaten her life’s work.

And she would stop it. Later.

Right now, though, Jenny gave in to the itchy
feeling in her fingers and she reached out to touch Helen’s hair, tucking a
strand of gold behind Helen’s ear. She let her hand linger there, feeling the
warmth of flesh and heartbeat.

“You seem to fit here,” Jenny said, feeling
somewhat sad because she herself didn’t fit anywhere. “After accomplishing so
much, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble making your bakery a success.”

Helen gave a bitter laugh. She straightened
and pushed away from the wall, breaking all contact between them. “Thanks, but
I’m already on my way out of business. Everything I read told me to have at
least six months of living expenses saved before trying to start a new
business, but I only had saved enough for maybe three when I found the
opportunity to rent here. I thought I’d be okay since the summer season was
about to start, but then…”

“But then…” Jenny echoed. The spill. The
damaged beaches and wounded animals. Jenny had seen this happen again and
again, when lives were ruined by this type of disaster. She did her best to
help everywhere she went, but somehow this felt different. She was inside, with
the rest of the community. “You’ve been doing more than your share of work, but
we can get by if you need to spend more time at your bakery. And all the
donated pastries you bring each night—you really don’t need to feel responsible
for feeding everyone here. It must be costing you a fortune in ingredients.
I’ll come to your store with cash when I need my sand dollar fix.”

Helen laughed. “I’d much rather be here doing
something good than sitting in my empty bakery and watching the empty street. I
like bringing food, too. I crunched the numbers, and if I stopped it would only
delay the inevitable. I wouldn’t save enough to make a real difference. But I can
make a difference here. I think I’ve always felt like it was me against the
world, but now I’m part of a team. I don’t want to lose that feeling, even if
it’s only temporary.”

“I’ve always been the team coach,” Jenny said
with a grin. “But I’ve never really been part of it, until—”

“Jenny, there you are. I have a surprise for
you.” Mel’s voice broke into their conversation, shattering the intimacy Jenny
felt growing between them. Jenny turned to see Mel framed in the open doorway,
backlit by the bright fluorescent lights. She didn’t have to hear what the
surprise was since she recognized the two silhouettes behind Mel.

She sighed and walked toward them, away from
Helen. “Hello, Mom. Dad. It’s good to see you both. Why didn’t you tell me you
were coming?”

*

Jenny opened the door to her room at the inn
and dropped her mom’s light canvas bag on the floor next to the bed. She
shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was to see her parents at the center
tonight. She knew they were in the States—albeit on the other coast, in
Florida—and they often came to see her and help with her rescue efforts
whenever they could. She tried to be grateful because they were giving their
time, and they worked hard no matter what job they were given, but somehow
their visits were more exhausting than the hard work of disaster relief.

“You’ll be staying in here and I’ll move to
the smaller room upstairs,” Jenny said. She didn’t like leaving what she’d come
to think of as
her
room. Now she’d have to share a bathroom with two of Danny’s college friends,
and she’d miss sleeping in this room with Pam’s beautiful painting of the tide
pool. She stared at the mosaic whenever she felt despair or weariness settling
in her bones. The sun shining through her window and making the sea glass sparkle
gave her the lift she needed and the incentive to keep going until the beach
returned to the state of Pam’s vision. Still, she couldn’t begrudge her parents
the larger room, and she was glad Mel had space for her somewhere besides the
floor in here. She was accustomed to much more primitive conditions than this
on most of her job sites, so she wouldn’t complain.

“Very glamorous,” her father said, as if
reading her mind. “I hope you don’t forget you’re here for work and not a
vacation.”

“I never forget why I’m here,” Jenny said
softly, but he had already walked over to the window where her mother was
standing. She watched the two of them as they looked out at the dark and
looming hulk of Haystack Rock. Eve and Lars Colbert. Dark and light. They
looked as young as they had when she first left them to attend vet school in
the States. Similar in build and quick in movement, they only showed the
passing years in a few lines on their faces. They would be leaving for the
Sudan in a few days and stopped here to volunteer along the way. She wondered
where they got their energy to keep moving and changing. She was always on the
go, too, but the effort was sometimes too much to bear.

“Mel’s partner Pam did the paintings for all
the rooms,” she said when Eve turned away from the window and came over by the
bed. “They’re spectacular. I can show you the others one of these days.”

Her parents both made the right comments when
they admired the mosaic, like Jenny had when she’d first seen it. The
difference was, Jenny had immediately wanted to buy one like it, impractical as
it would be. Mel had told her that almost everyone who stayed at the inn wanted
to buy one of the paintings. The cost was prohibitive for most, but Pam had
created a line of smaller, more affordable canvases, each with a scattering of
sea glass. Jenny had already bought one with a purple- and coral-colored
starfish on it. She didn’t offer to show it to her parents, though. They would
have liked the small oil painting if they’d seen it on display somewhere, but
not as a possession. She didn’t want to hear the lecture about how impractical
it was to purchase souvenirs from all her trips. Mental pictures were easy to
pack, her mom liked to say. Anything besides the essentials for living was a
waste of space and travel funds.