The Last Beach Bungalow (4 page)

Vanessa walked in, walked right over, and grabbed me. She wasn’t tall or particularly strong, but she had a fierce hug. She pressed herself into you and gave you the feeling that she wouldn’t let go.

“It was five years ago this week,” I said.

"It was a Monday,” Vanessa said, " and this is a Wednesday, and five years is an amazing milestone so we should have a party.”

“You know how I feel about parties.”

“There should be margaritas. And a band. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a band?”

“We’re moving in less than a week. Christmas is in a week and I’m on deadline for a piece on organic cotton lingerie. We’re not having a party.”

“OK, then we’ll go out to dinner somewhere fabulous. Maybe Rick can get us into the dining room out at the golf course since he’s building half their houses. They have the most fantastic sushi salad.”

"Rick and I haven’t had sex in three months,” I blurted. We hadn’t, in fact, had sex in more than six months, but six months sounded far worse than three and I wasn’t ready to admit it, even to my best friend.

Vanessa laughed. She was certain three months without sex was an exaggeration.

“I’m not joking,” I said. “We probably couldn’t even agree on how to do it. We can’t agree on anything. I do five hours of legwork finding tumbled marble tile to match the granite and Rick takes one look and says, ‘It looks washed-out to me.’ Last week, I gave him printouts of the Whirlpool washer and dryer I wanted, and he didn’t even look at them before telling me that he’s putting Maytags in his golf course houses, as if everyone knows that Maytags are better than Whirlpools. And don’t even get me started about the food thing. We’re spending four hundred thousand dollars on this remodel and he won’t spend forty dollars on dinner out.”

“I bet he likes the beige,” Vanessa said, pointing to a swatch on the wall that was just barely off white.

“It’s called Swiss Coffee,” I said. “It’s the color he’s painted every house he’s ever built. I think he gets a kick-back on it from Benjamin Moore—you know, paint three houses, get the fourth one free.”

“But that turquoise is the best.”

“It’s called Caribbean Blue.”

“It’s perfect.”

“I had to beg him to put up the swatch. He says it’ll take three coats of Swiss Coffee just to cover it up.”

“So we’re just rubber stamping Rick’s beige?” Vanessa asked.

“Basically.”

“You should have married a lawyer.”

“Or a banker. I bet the wives of bankers get to pick the color they want on their bathroom walls.”

Vanessa looked at her watch. “I’m showing a house in Rolling Hills,” she said, then put her hand on my shoulder. “The beige will be fine.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Hey,” she said, as she turned to go down the stairs, “as long as you’re out researching lingerie, maybe you should pick up something sexy for yourself. It sounds like you could use it.” She disappeared down the steps.

“And about the party,” she yelled from downstairs, “don’t think you’re getting away without one.”

Organic lingerie in any fabric used to be a rather scratchy affair. You could buy underwear made from wool or linen, and some very rough stuff made from hemp, but the aesthetic was definitely utilitarian. All that changed after Patagonia and Nike started using organic fiber in their sportswear lines. The price came down low enough for fashion designers to go green, and now there was something of a revolution going on. The other day I interviewed the owner of a company in Ohio that made a line of bras and bikini underwear from pure organic cotton. They were dyed bright, happy colors and cut in modern shapes like boy shorts and thongs. She couldn’t keep them in stock. Today, I was talking to the proprietor of Avisha, an upscale lingerie shop in Redondo Village. She carried a line of lingerie called Good Karma, made entirely of organic cotton, and I wanted to run the fabric between my fingers so I could say something coherent about how it felt against the skin.

“Bonjour,” Manon said. “You must be April.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, and shook her hand. “Thanks for making time for me.”

“Come this way,” she said. She led me to a dressing area, where she had laid out a selection of Good Karma items on a padded bench. “These have a very nice shape and beautiful trim,” she said. “Do you see?” She handed me a chemise with an inset of lace just under the bust. It was a natural white with a tropical floral pattern. The cotton was very soft and had an earthy heft.

“This designer understands her fabric,” Manon explained. “She has used it to her advantage. She is more like a French woman than an American that way.”

I know a woman who just came back from a three-year stint as an expat in Paris. The thing she missed the most, she said, was the lingerie. Women in France spent far more money on their lingerie than their American counterparts. If they had a windfall of $500, they’d splurge on a made-to-measure bra from a shop on the Rue des Saints-Pères, whose proprietor, everyone knew, was the granddaughter of a woman who had been a corsetiere to queens. These women could have conversations about the difference between cheap Chinese silk and the finer quality French or Italian. Cotton was not discussed. “I understand that the French lingerie designers aren’t using much organic cotton,” I said.

“The French are very attached to their stretch lace,” confirmed Manon.

I scribbled her words in my notebook. “So you don’t feel that the organic fabrics will gain worldwide appeal?”

“In lingerie? No,” she said. She walked across the shop and took down a bra and a matching pair of panties that looked like a confection spun of sugar. The bra was a deep chocolate brown, with turquoise blue accents. The cups were brown lace with turquoise appliqués. The straps were delicately rolled—two small strings on each side. Beneath the cups and around the back was a band of stretchy swirled lace, which was echoed in the waistband of the panties. “You simply can’t make a brassiere like this without nylon and spandex,” Manon said, “and nothing in the world fits like this or feels like this.” She then held out the set to me. “Try,” she said. “You’ll see.”

I shook my head. “I had a mastectomy,” I said, as if these four words were enough to explain why I wasn’t a candidate for expensive lingerie.

“Come try it,” she said, placing the bra in a dressing room. “You will be surprised.”

I stood there, mute, unmoving.

“Come.” She held her hand out to the dressing room, and because it seemed rude to say no to someone who had agreed to help me, I followed her. She shut the door. I peeled off my sweater, unhooked my gray, pilling bra and slipped into the chocolate lace. Over my plain beige, high-hipped underwear, I pulled the brown and turquoise lace panties.

“How is it?” Manon asked. She was standing right outside the dressing room, waiting for me to appear. I had a jagged hip to hip scar where they had harvested the skin and fat needed to rebuild my breast. I had scars around my belly button, which was not a belly button at all, but a twist of flesh manufactured after the real belly button had been taken away. There was a circular scar running around my fake breast, tiny scars where they had created the nipple in the same way as the belly button, and a long scar running from the breast up under my armpit. The bra was light as air, yet somehow substantial. The size discrepancy between my breasts seemed as if it had been erased.

I opened the door.

Manon beamed and clapped her hands. “Beautiful, no? Just wait a moment,” she said. “Let me get you something to try so you can see how this changes the lines of your body. Your husband will love it.” She was back in a moment with a brown silk knit dress. It was a pullover with a shirred waistline and a deep V neckline.

I laughed. “That would look great on my daughter,” I said. Jackie was two inches taller than me and eighty pounds lighter. Her hair shimmered, her hips swayed, her skin was flawless. She looked fantastic in everything and I simply looked like somebody’s mother.

“Nonsense,” Manon said. “Come. Try it.”

I closed the door again and shimmied into the dress. It was so tight I had to yank it down over my rear end, but once I had it on, I turned to the side. The snug fit over the perfect bra made my body look voluptuous instead of lumpy. The drape of the wraparound made my waist look trim. I made a sound that must have seemed like approval.

“You see!” Manon exclaimed when I opened the door. “Gorgeous! Organic cotton is a good idea for relaxing. Good for the planet. But it cannot do this for a woman.”

I changed back into my own sad bra, put on my clothes and stepped out of the dressing room. On the coffee table next to the padded bench where the organic cotton had been displayed was the new issue of
Town & Country.
I was holding my notepad in my hands. “You mentioned that my husband would love the outfit you selected,” I said, casually, as if I were still digging for facts for my story. “Do you have a lot of men buying lingerie for their wives during the holidays?”

Manon laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said.

“I take it they don’t go for the organic cotton?”

“Perhaps,” she said, “if they are buying something to be a comfort. It is so soft, you know. But men like for their wives to be shapely and sexy.” She held up the bra and panties I’d just taken off. “They usually select something like this.”

I thanked Manon, then drove away from Avisha down to the Esplanade and sat there looking at the winter beach. The waves broke steeply down from their crests and crashed hard on the sand. The water was in a muddy froth as it spilled onto the beach. There were two bulldozers a few blocks away pushing sand into huge mounds to preserve it for the summer. When Jackie was little, we’d climb up the steep sides of the dunes—two steps up, one step back—then race down the far face. We’d pick a tire track and follow it half a mile down the beach, trying to keep our footprints within the outlines and analyzing her little steps compared to my big ones. I’d forgotten to come to the beach the whole time we’d been working on the house. How could I have forgotten how pretty it was in the winter? And how could I have left that lingerie store without even seeing the price tag on the chocolate brown bra?

I looked at my watch and pulled away from the curb. I took the first left away from the crashing quiet of the beach and sped down the block, but when I got to the stop sign at the end, I turned around and went back. That block was one of a dozen seaside lanes that ran perpendicular to the Esplanade. During the early part of the century, when Redondo Beach boasted a resort hotel, where Hollywood stars and well-to-do-families splashed in the big indoor pool and danced in the high-ceilinged hall, a cluster of bungalows sprung up on these streets. They were built by hand in the California Craftsman tradition—casual houses for weekends by the sea. They were within steps of the steep stairs that led down to the sand and came with the promise of a screen door slamming in the breeze as sunburned kids scurried down to the beach. On the street I had chosen to speed down that afternoon, there was only one beach bungalow left. It stood in the middle of the block on the south side of the street surrounded by Mediterranean mansions, modern glass boxes and Spanish-style villas.

It was for sale.

I parked the car at the curb and rolled down my window for a better view. Even though the houses surrounding it were all far grander and more modern—houses that had been remodeled just like mine to accommodate families who had a pressing need for travertine-tiled entryways, high-capacity washers and dryers, and walk-in closets big enough for a bed—the bungalow felt like the most important house on the street. It had a presence to it. It sat on its piece of ground as if it had sprung up organically. I had spent so much time over the last year looking at slick photos of big houses and scouting out materials and appliances in huge showrooms, that I had forgotten what an authentic home even looked like.

The house sat on a small patch of lawn behind a white picket fence. It was wrapped in white clapboard, and each of its windows was outlined in hunter green trim as if drawn in by a child. The front porch was like an invitation. It extended from one side to the other—a long, wide expanse large enough to hold a porch swing, a bench, a table and two chairs and six pots of lavender, with their chaos of long purple stems. A gently arched beam framed the opening of the porch, held up by square tapered columns. Two tall windows flanked the large front door—each with an etched transom above it that looked as though it came from a completely different time and place. In the center of the front door was an enormous pine bough wreath tied with a red bow.

The yard was lush and overrun. Along the front of the house was a riot of winter flowers: lavender, salvia and tiny white-dotted rosemary. Running down the side yard nearest to me was a cement driveway with a strip of grass in the middle, and at the end of the drive was a garage with big, wide doors whose windows matched the ones on the front door. Eucalyptus trees towered above the house from the backyard, and there were palm, lemon and lime trees along the drive.

The thing I thought about as I sat in my car, transfixed by that house, was a piece of art I’d seen seventeen years before. I’d gone to a conference on early childhood education in Portland, Oregon. During one of the afternoons off, I went to lunch with a group of new teachers at a restaurant across from an art gallery. We sat outside eating our sandwiches and I kept looking at that gallery as if someone were looking back. Hanging in the window were enormous black-and-white canvases depicting trees—an oak tree, a pine tree, one of those cypress trees that jut out over the water in Monterey. They were just black branches on a white background, sparse and eerie. After dessert, I went across the street to take a closer look. It turned out the trees were drawn with ballpoint pen on paper. The artist had made a hundred thousand tiny strokes, creating shape and shade with nothing more than little black marks. I stepped into the gallery to gawk and hungrily sought out the price tag of the pine tree, my favorite. It was $10,000.