Life's a Beach (2 page)

He put the bag on the couch, and my cat disembarked when he realized the fun was over. My father reached down and pulled up his red sock until it was even with his brown one. “Listen, Dollface. You’ve got a nice lily pad here, but it’s all gonna go away if we don’t play our cards right.”

Now he was talking like he was in a bad movie. My mother must really be serious about this. “I’m with you, Dad. We have to stop her before it’s too late.” Apparently talking like you were in a bad movie was contagious.

My father straightened up and put both hands on his lower back. He swiveled his hips around a little, as if he wanted to be sure they were still working. “Don’t worry, Toots, I already have a plan cooked up.”

Ever since I could remember, my father had always been there for me. I felt my eyes tear up. “Great, Dad. What is it?”

He didn’t answer. He was too busy stuffing his garbage bag into my tiny shower.

“DID YOU KNOW
Mom wants to sell the house?” I asked my eight-years-and-three-months-older sister Geri when she answered her phone that afternoon. “And she won’t even call me back to discuss it.”

“You shouldn’t still be living there anyway.”

“I’m not living here. I’m just staying here for a little while until I figure out what I want to do next.”

“Technically, two years is not a little while.”

I tried not to do the math in my head. “I have
not
been here for two years.”

“Have too.”

“Have not.”

“Yes, you have. It’s time to get a life again, Ginger.”

Get a life, Ginger
, I mimicked silently. I didn’t say it out loud because I thought there might still be a slight chance I could talk her into being on my side, so I didn’t want to piss her off unnecessarily. I twisted some silver wire around a piece of bottle green sea glass while I held the phone against my ear with one shoulder. “So you
did
know,” I finally said. “Gee, thanks for telling me.”

My sister sighed. “Every four seconds a baby boomer turns fifty,” she whined into the phone.

I held the receiver away from me and looked at it, thinking it might somehow cough up the missing conversational segue. Geri was still waiting for a reply so I said, “Think of all the company you’ll have.”

“And every three seconds, more or less,” she continued as if I hadn’t said a word, “I consider the fact that I’m about to be one of them.”

“Excuse me, but what exactly does this have to do with Mom selling the house?” I asked.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

I added another loop of wire, keeping my eyes closed so it wouldn’t come out looking too anal. “Come on, Gerr, you have almost a month left.”

“I wish. It’s not even half a month.” My sister sighed again.

I fished a hypoallergenic pierced earring wire from a Ziploc bag and worked it into a little loop I’d made at what I’d randomly decided would be the top of the earring. I executed another perfect twist with my wire, then walked to the bathroom mirror to hold the earring-in-progress up to my nontelephone ear. Not bad, if I did say so myself. Now all I had to do was make another one that looked reasonably like it.

Geri was still wound up. “They say fifty is the new thirty. I like that. I don’t believe it for a minute, but I like it a lot.”

“They say tangerine is the new neutral, too, if that helps any.”

I swirled my finger around in a jar of sea glass, then placed three likely candidates on the floor in front of me. I covered the receiver and called, “Here, Boyfriend.”

Apparently I didn’t cover it very well, because Geri said, “Don’t call him Boyfriend. It’s undignified.”

“I can call him anything I want. It’s not your business.”

While Geri ignored my comment, something she’d been doing fairly consistently since I was born, Boyfriend, my cat of indeterminate age and lineage, stretched provocatively. He eyed me, as if deciding whether he remembered me or not, then vaulted off the couch and leaned his full weight possessively against my lower left leg.

I reached down and scratched him behind one ear. He began to purr, and the vibration made the back of my throat tickle, the way it always did. I nodded toward the sea glass. He eyed all three pieces, then reached a paw out like a hockey stick and shot one across the room.

Boyfriend’s taste was impeccable. “Good boy, Boy,” I said as I stroked him slowly from the top of his head along the full length of his tiger-striped back. I reached down to pick up the winning piece of sea glass. Boyfriend gave me a dismissive look and headed for his water bowl.

Geri was talking again. “And,” she continued, “they also say that a happy family life and the courage to take on new challenges are the best indicators of a successful transition to the second half century of your life. Rachel, open a window if you’re going to use nail polish in here, and Rebecca, turn that TV down. Now. Half century. God.”

“Deep breaths,” I said encouragingly. “If it’s still possible at your age.”

She gulped in some air. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“The kids are all begging to go to that open casting call thing. Even Riley. I still can’t believe they’re actually shooting a movie in Marshbury.”

I had a clear vision of dollar signs. “It would probably be a great experience for them,” I said.

“Are you going?”

“Hmm, I hadn’t really thought about it.” Boyfriend looked up from his water bowl, and I gave him a wink.

Geri sighed again. “Do you think you could take them for me? I really have to get back to the office for a few hours.”

I’d never understood why the whole world was in such a rush to have children just so they could ask somebody else to take care of them. What was the big deal about procreation? I mean, possums do it. I let Geri wait another second or two, then went in for the kill. “I’d need to hear the magic words first.”

“Okay, I’ll pay you. Time and a half. You’re going to need it. Wait a minute. Riley wants to talk to you.”

I got to work on the second earring and waited for my eight-year-old nephew’s voice. Eventually I heard it. “Aunt Ginger, how do you move a seventeen-hundred-pound shark?”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll bite.” He laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Riley was my best audience. I gave him a minute to settle down, then asked, “How
do
you move a seventeen-hundred-pound shark?”

Riley waited a beat before he delivered his punch line. His timing was probably genetic. “Ve-ry carefully,” he said, in his cute, squeaky voice, which sounded like it had just a touch of helium in it. I heard the thunk of the phone on the counter.

“Nice one, Ry,” I yelled, then I braced myself to listen to my sister again.

2

THE EMBARRASSING TRUTH WAS THAT I WAS DYING TO
be an extra in
Shark Sense
. I just couldn’t resist that kind of thing. It would distract me from waking up every day thinking I’d somehow ended up in the wrong life. I simply knew I was destined for something else, but I really would have thought I’d be further along by now when it came to figuring out exactly what.

I’d maxed out this year’s therapy allowance on my lousy health plan in my quest for direction, and honestly, it didn’t help all that much. Even my therapist didn’t quite get it, or me, for that matter.

However you painted the picture, I was still forty-one and single and, though I’d managed a life full of adventure, I hadn’t quite found myself yet. After a few too many years in sales, some more and others less lucrative, my new plan was to transition to the more fulfilling life of an artist. At the moment I made sea glass earrings and sold them for a living, which, by my calculations, meant I was well on my way.

I threw a tank top on over my best jeans and, to complete the look, added a pair of my earrings. The weathered blue glass matched my eyes exactly, plus I liked to wear my own stuff, since you never knew when you’d make a sale. I had to admit that I was still more comfortable thinking in terms of dollars and cents rather than creative opus or artistic oeuvre. It might have been a personality thing. I’m a direct descendant of P. T. Barnum on my mother’s side, and by the way, he did not say there’s a sucker born every minute. He said there’s a
customer
born every minute. I read that somewhere. Since he died in 1891, it’s not like he ever said anything directly to me. Even my sister, Geri, isn’t quite old enough to have met him.

Speaking of reading, I’d also read an article recently that said you could give yourself a mini face lift by extending your eyeliner vertically at the outer corners. Not that I really needed one yet, but what the hell, I tried it out anyway. I added some mascara and lipstick, then turned my head upside down and gave my hair a good brushing. When I flipped my head back up, it looked full and thick and shiny. I grabbed the hairspray quick, before it got any other ideas. I was one of those lucky tawny-haired people whose occasional gray strands came in looking like highlights. Either that or I was in total denial.

“Sorry, Boyfriend,” I said as I wiggled my way out the door without creating any space for him to follow. “I’ll make it up to you tonight.” As every pet owner knows, leaving the house alone always involves massive quantities of guilt.

Geri and the kids were waiting for me when I pulled into the driveway of her starter castle, her house on steroids, her cookie-cutter McMansion. Okay, I could admit it: I was a tiny bit jealous that she had a house and I didn’t, not that I’d ever, in a million years, want to live in this pretentious monstrosity. A hip little bungalow would be more my style, though at this point I’d probably be perfectly happy to settle for a ranchburger.

Geri was instantly recognizable by her crisp white blouse and black power suit. And by the fact that she was communing with her BlackBerry, which seemed to interest her more than life itself. I put my trusty old VW Jetta into park and gave the door a little kick right where it tended to stick. I jumped out fast, before Geri scaled the entrance to her SUV. When you’re dealing with family, you
always
get the money up front.

I held out my hand, and Geri handed me a check. I would have preferred cash, but at least I knew it wouldn’t bounce, and I’d learned to pick my battles. Rebecca and Riley swept past me to fight for the front seat of my car. Rachel, who knew she had the age card to play, sauntered over to me, giving her jeans a tug in the general direction of her belly button. “What did you do to your eyes?” she asked.

I batted them extravagantly. “You like?”

Rachel squinted up at me. “You look kind of like a geisha. Is that what you were going for?”

I rubbed the sides of my eyes, and Rachel headed off to my car to conquer the front seat. Geri laughed and handed me a tissue. I gave her a little glare and blew my nose in it. She shook her head. “So,” I said, “how many more hours till you’re fifty?”

“So,” she said, “how many more hours till you’re homeless?”

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY
a movie gets shot in Marshbury, Massachusetts. In fact, it’s not any day, at least up until now. So what if it was a horror movie they’d only moved to Marshbury because a great white shark had conveniently managed to get itself stuck in some shallow water off the coast, and could save them a ton of money.

Various officials had been pledging to drive the shark away for over a week when the movie people called. Even the governor had formally called for its eviction, but the fourteen-foot shark seemed to have other ideas. So, the movie people made an offer, and the board of selectmen asked them to double it, and when they did, you’ve never seen permits issued so fast.

The bad news was it was harder than ever to find a parking place at Scuttle Beach. We cruised the lot a few times, then gave up and headed down the street to park in Noah’s driveway. Noah was my human boyfriend. Allegedly anyway.

A line of people stretched almost to Noah’s house. We hopped onto the end of it, and over the next hour or so, we followed it across the causeway, along Sea Street, and halfway across the parking lot, where it seemed to be winding its way back from the rickety old bathhouse.

It looked like the whole town had answered the casting call. Of course, the full-page ad in the
Marshbury Mirror
had been hard to miss:

SEEKING ACTORS FOR HORROR FILM IN MARSHBURY, MASSACHUSETTS

Description: Open casting call for Worldwide Studio production of
Shark Sense
. Theatrical Type: horror or possible horror-comedy hybrid. Talent Type: men, women, and children of all ages. Comments: Union and nonunion. Casting will be at the Scuttle Beach parking lot on May 22 from 3–6 pm.

The movie people, who were walking up and down the line handing out clipboards, were hard to miss. It wasn’t just the clipboards. They were dressed all wrong for the town—one tall man wore high-top sneakers with a suit. You just don’t do that in Marshbury. Some people up ahead of us, three women in red and purple jogging suits who were probably in their seventies, all grabbed greedily at the clipboard he offered. He cleared his throat dramatically and said, “Take your sheet off and pass the clipboard back when you’re through.” He walked off at a brisk pace.

Rachel was flirting with a boy standing next to us at this point. She was fifteen, so I decided she was entitled. “Becca,” I said to her sister, who was unoccupied and also only twelve. “Go tell Riley to get back here quick so he doesn’t miss out.” Riley had taken off to kick a soccer ball around the parking lot with some friends.