Life's a Beach (10 page)

“Nope. I’m pretty much heterosexual.”

“Funny,” I said. “But I meant girlfriend.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, and I tried not to check out his shoulders. “Define girlfriend,” he said.

I had a better shot at defining trouble. Even though I wasn’t actually wearing a watch, I glanced down at my wrist anyway. “Well, will you look at the time,” I said before I walked away.

After I grabbed an old bat and ball from my parents’ garage, I headed up the steps to say a quick hello to Boyfriend. Sitting just outside my door was one of Noah’s vases. It was deep turquoise with long strands of sea green cording, and it was filled with purple lilacs.

“See,” I said to my cat when he met me at the door. “He really is trying.”

SINCE IT WAS RILEY’S BAT,
he got to hit first. Manny was pitching, and I was catching. A bunch of the kids were out in the field, which was actually one end of the roped-off beach.

Manny threw the ball so wide I had to run after it. “I don’t swing at garbage,” Riley yelled to him.

“God, I love this kid,” Manny said. I managed to throw the ball back to him without seriously embarrassing myself, and he tried again.

I scooped up the ball, and Riley put the bat behind his head and twisted his torso from side to side. “We need a pitcher, not a belly-itcher,” he yelled.

“Let’s see you hit my knuckle curve,” Manny yelled.

Riley swung and hit the ball out into the water. He ran around the beach stone bases, pumping both hands up in the air, while Manny’s personal assistant waded in to get the ball.

Eventually, a worried-looking guy wearing a suit waved us all back to the set. “Bummer,” Manny said as he handed me the bat and still soggy ball. “Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.”

Riley ran in from the outfield, and the three of us started walking back together. I could never resist this kind of opportunity. “You know,” I said. “I was just thinking, since I have to be here anyway. Just in case you need any more extras or anything. . . .”

Manny stopped. “Oh, no. Not you, too.”

“You can have my part, Aunt Ginger,” Riley said.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay,” I said.

“My own mother even offered to use her frequent flyer miles to bring herself out here. ‘Just a small part, Manuel,’ she said. ‘Nothing anybody else would miss.’ ”

“Sorry,” I said. I held up the bat and ball. “I think I’ll put these back in the car. Just so we’ll know where they are.”

Allison Flagg followed me out to the parking lot. “You know,” she said, “I’m only saying this because the other mothers are starting to talk about you. They think you’re kissing up to the director to get some lines for your nephew.”

I threw the bat and ball into the trunk, then slammed it shut. “Guess they’re on to me,” I said before I walked away from Allison Flagg.

Maybe I didn’t have much of a life right now, but at least I had more than a stage mom did. And if I could just get focused, possibly I could have even more than that. I wondered if your ability to change had a shelf life, like your looks and your fertility, and even the amount of time you could live in an apartment over your parents’ garage before they sold it on you. I hoped not, but just in case, even I could tell it was time to use it or lose it.

“THANKS FOR TAKING
me out a book on your card, Aunt Ginger,” Riley said beside me. “I needed some new jokes.”

“You’re welcome.” I put on my blinker and pulled into his driveway. The backseat of my car was piled with anything and everything I could find at the Marshbury Public Library about jewelry and jewelry making and beach art and found art. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going, but for once in my life I was determined to stick with it until I figured it out. “Just don’t forget to return it.”

Riley pushed open the car door and jumped out. “I won’t,” he yelled over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

“Hey, loser,” Rachel said as she came running out the door, “it’s your turn to set the table.”

For a minute, I thought she was talking to me. So much for personal growth. Then Riley stood on his tiptoes and punched her in the shoulder, and Becca ran out after her sister. “Yeah,” Becca said, “just because you’re shark bait doesn’t mean you get out of doing chores.”

“Mo-om,” Riley yelled as he ran past her.

Rachel came over and stood by my door until I rolled my window down. “Mom wants you to come in for a minute,” she said as she hiked up her jeans.

Becca peered into my backseat. “Cool,” she said. “Are you gonna make more stuff?”

“That’s the plan,” I said.

“I have some extra beads I’m not using,” Rachel said.

“I think I have some polymer clay in my room that hasn’t dried up yet,” Becca said.

I pushed my car door open. “Bring it on,” I said.

Geri was sitting at the kitchen island, and no surprise, she was immersed in her burgeoning birthday folder.

I walked over and opened her refrigerator. “Can I get you anything?” I asked politely. When she didn’t answer, I checked out some kind of as-yet-uncooked chicken thing to see if it was worth waiting around for, and grabbed a bottle of water. “What are you doing home, anyway? You haven’t put in eighteen hours yet today, have you?”

Geri ignored me. “What about this? I invite everyone to a party and tell them to wear black and white, and then I show up in red.”

“So, what, you can stick out like a sore thumb?”

“Never mind,” Geri said.

“Guess who left me flowers today?” I said.

“Hel-lo?” my sister said. “We’re not talking about you. I’m having a midlife crisis here.” She sighed. “Anyway, it’s the very least he could do. What do you mean, he
left
you flowers?”

“When I got home, they were waiting outside my door,” I said. “It was very sweet.”

“So, when are you going to see him again?”

“You know,” I said, “I really think we should stay focused on your birthday.”

I drummed my fingers on the table while Geri hunted some more.

“Will you stop that?”

“Sorry,” I said. Rachel and Becca were taking forever getting me their stuff. “What does Seth think you should do?” I asked as if I cared.

“He says we should go away for a weekend and you can babysit for us.”

That sounded boring even for Seth. “Don’t you have any friends turning fifty this year? Maybe you could all do something together.”

Geri actually looked up. “Yeah, I’m still in touch with some friends from college. We got out our calendars a couple times, and it looks like we might have a window in late August. . . .”

Geri went back to her endless search, and I took a sip of water and started thinking about friends. I’d had lots of friends over the course of my life, but I seemed to be without many actual
active
friendships now. Most of them had been the casualty of marriage and kids, and others had turned out to be all about work and had evaporated pretty quickly once I left that particular job. And still others turned out to be based on the shared interest of going places to meet men, and that whole thing just got old for me. I must have drifted away from the rest of them when I headed back to live in the compound. You don’t want just anybody to know you live over your parents’ garage.

“Hey,” I said, thinking maybe I should work on my conversational skills in the unlikely case I ever made any new friends. “Wanna hear something strange?”

Geri didn’t say anything, which I took as a yes.

“Mom buried a statue of St. Joseph to help the house sell, and when Dad went to dig it up, it wasn’t there.”

“That’s nice,” Geri said.

“You don’t happen to have any extra statues kicking around, do you? I’m just thinking I should put another one in the hole so they don’t start blaming each other. That way if Dad looks, he’ll think he just missed it the first time, and if Mom checks, she’ll think it’s still there.” Even at my age, I hated the sound of my parents fighting.

Geri sighed and looked up. “The drawer to the left of the silverware.”

I found it on the first try and pulled it all the way out. “Wow,” I said as I rooted around in a tangled mass of CCD books, church bulletins, dried palm frond crosses, and an ancient mantilla that must have belonged to Geri when she was a kid, since I’d had one just like it. “What’s this, your God Help Us drawer?”

Geri closed her folder and pushed her chair back. She reached around in the drawer and handed me a small plastic statue.

“I don’t think this is the same one,” I said. “The other guy didn’t have anybody sitting on his shoulder.” I’d always been able to distinguish the boy saints from the girl saints by their beards, but beyond that, one cheap plastic statue looked pretty much like the next one to me. Possibly it was a matter of so many saints, so much skipped Sunday school. Yes, we’ve all heard of St. Joseph, but could we pick him out of a lineup?

“Do you want it or not?”

“Yeah, okay. I mean, I guess it’s pretty dark in that hole anyway.” Before she could close the drawer again, I grabbed a pair of rosary beads. The beads looked like real tigereye, and they were linked with intricate silver filigree. I held them out of my sister’s reach. “Can I have these, too?”

Geri tapped her toe on the kitchen floor. “For what?”

“I don’t know, I was thinking I might start praying again.”

“Yeah, right.” My sister held out her hand. “Give those back to me right now. You cannot turn them into earrings.”

I held the rosary beads behind my back.

“You’ll rot in Hell,” my older sister said.

“No you won’t, Aunt Ginger,” Rachel said as she came into the room with Becca right behind her. They both had their hands full. “Everybody’s making rosary jewelry. Paris Hilton has a whole line.”

“She’s already going to rot in Hell,” Geri said. “Your aunt still has a slight shot at Purgatory.”

When I got home, I decided to give St. Whoever He Was a quick burial before it got dark. I was happy to discover that when it came to digging holes, the third time in the same place was a total piece of cake.

11

I PUT THE SHOVEL BACK IN THE GARAGE, BRUSHED OFF
my hands, and headed upstairs with my library books and hand-me-down art supplies. I took a few steps into the apartment and stopped. For a split second I thought I’d been robbed, but then I realized that Boyfriend had been shredding again.

Boyfriend loved to shred. His favorite thing was to wiggle the toilet paper, or even the paper towel roll, off the holder. He’d wrestle it down the hallway, thumping it with his hind feet as if he were subduing a dangerous criminal. Then he’d pull a long sheet off the roll, wad it up, and carry it around the house with him. Sometimes he’d leave it on my pillow as a present.

“Oh, Boy,” I said out loud as I surveyed the damage. He’d pretty much covered the apartment in little nests of toilet paper. I wondered if my HMO had a therapist who’d be willing to give my cat and me a group rate.

I decided I’d deal with the mess in the morning. I changed Boyfriend’s water and poured some more dry food into his bowl. And then I saw it. The cardboard box I kept my earring supplies in was lying on its side under my tiny kitchen table. Boyfriend had managed to unravel the better part of a spool of wire and empty my bag of sea glass into the center. All that was left in the box were a pair of needle-nose pliers and two packages of hypoallergenic pierced earring wires.

I’d planned on bringing my earring supplies with me to kill some time on the set tomorrow, and maybe even make a few sales while I was at it. But it would take me forever to straighten everything out tonight, and I was just too tired to deal with it. “It’s okay, Boyfriend,” I said. It wasn’t really my cat’s fault. I was the one who’d taught him to play with sea glass in the first place.

I took a step back. I tilted my head to one side. The sea glass shards weren’t just dumped on the wire, they were nestled in it, with tendrils of wire crisscrossing in the most surprising ways. It looked like a sculpture of sorts. You could solder it to some sheet metal for a wall hanging, or I could even see it as kind of a chandelier if you added some strands of little white lights. It was balanced and yet unexpected, with that certain je ne sais quoi that made it recognizably, if inexplicably, art. Carefully, I lifted the whole thing up onto my kitchen table.

Wouldn’t you know it, even my goddamned cat was more talented than I was. I put the beads and the polymer clay down on the table. Maybe one of us could put them to good use.

“KNOCK-KNOCK!”
a strange voice yelled just before my door opened.

I was sitting on my pulled-out sofa bed. I’d been trying to decide whether to make dinner, drag myself the three steps it took to get to my bathroom to wash up, or just go to sleep in my clothes.

My mother walked in, flanked by the dreaded red hatters. I considered making a quick dive under the covers, but they’d already spotted me.

The woman closest to me was wearing a red fisherman’s hat. It was covered with buttons. One of them said,
A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE
. I wondered if all the other buttons had an aquatic theme to match her hat, too. Before I could read any more of them, she said, “Oh, dear. You’ll never find a husband with these housekeeping skills.”