The Art of Losing Yourself (6 page)

C
ARMEN

My car idled at the intersection of Bayou and Ninth while thoughts of The Treasure Chest churned in my mind. Over the past several months, life’s circumstances had strong-armed my affinity toward the place into hibernation. I had relegated the motel and its fate to a mental holding room—the space for all the things I would deal with later. Reminiscing with my aunt, though, had stirred that affinity awake, wiggling loose a whole host of memories. One in particular stood apart from the rest—the time Aunt Ingrid had warned me to be on the lookout for the new cabana boy.

I had responded with a snort of laughter. “Cabana boy?”

She wiped down the surface of the front desk with a Pine Sol—dampened rag. Over the past three years, I’d entertained two distinct identities—from September through May I was the overachieving meteorology major at the University of Virginia, determined to learn everything I could about the tempestuous atmosphere as though it could be tamed; and from June through August, I was Aunt Ingrid’s free-spirited, right-hand gal, with a sunburn on my nose and flip-flops on my feet. In all my years at The Treasure Chest, Ingrid had never once required a cabana boy.

“I hired him for you.” She wagged her eyebrows at me over her shoulder, then disappeared into the back room.

She hired him for me?

What was that supposed to mean? The question lingered as I answered the phone, took reservations, and fielded inquiries from guests wanting to know where to eat the best seafood or shop for the best antiques or golf the best puttputt courses. It wasn’t until my shift neared its end that Aunt Ingrid’s words made any sense at all.

I was in the back, moving a load of sheets from the washer to the dryer, when the front door opened. I threw in a few dryer sheets, hurried into the office, and came to an abrupt stop. A man stood in front of the desk—tall and
broad-shouldered with a surfer’s tan and an Ivy League haircut, the color of which could be brown or blond, depending on how the sun hit it.

“Welcome to The Treasure Chest,” I said, using the extra-friendly voice I reserved for motel guests. It came out sounding so unnaturally high that I had to clear my throat. “Are you, um, checking in?”

One corner of his mouth quirked. “Ingrid sent me in here to fix the dryer.”

“The dryer? But the dryer’s not…” Cue the mental light bulb. “You’re the cabana boy.”

“Cabana boy?” He donned a lopsided grin and a furrowed brow at the same time. He wore both distractingly well.

“My aunt tells me we hired a cabana boy. I’m assuming you’re him?”

He set his elbow on the front desk. “I’m no cabana boy.”

I forced my feet to move forward, momentarily sidetracked by the blueness of his eyes—bright like sapphire without a hint of anything else, not a speck of green or gray or even lighter blue. Not even the nose-to-the-grindstone Carmen could have resisted them. “Okay then, who are you?”

“Ben,” he said, offering his hand, “summer maintenance man.”

I slipped mine into his—his palm the perfect combination of rough and warm. “Carmen, summer guest service representative.”

“And famous niece.”

“Famous?”

“Ingrid talks about you a lot. I’ve only been here a week and I think I could have a go at writing your biography.”

I cringed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I think she’s trying to play matchmaker.”

“Wanna make it easy on her?”

A few butterflies took flight in my stomach. Cabana Boy was flirting with me.

He winked. “So, the dryer?”

“Not broken.”

“I had my suspicions.”

“Really?”

“Your aunt had a definite gleam in her eye when she sent me in here to check it out. I’m getting pretty good at figuring out when she’s up to something.”
He gave the desktop a few light taps and leaned closer. “Carmen, summer guest service representative, it has been a pleasure.”

A car honked, wrenching me from the nine-year-old memory. The same smile that had puckered my cheeks then puckered my cheeks now. The car honked again.

I made a quick decision and headed south on Ninth, away from the auto repair shop on Summit Boulevard, toward the Pensacola Bay Bridge instead. Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of Bay Breeze High School, not entirely sure why. After checking in at the front office and saying hello to several familiar faces, I put on a visitor’s badge and headed toward Ben’s classroom in the basement.

Most people assumed he taught physical education, since his favorite and most time-consuming role was head varsity football coach. But Ben taught Ceramics and Sculpture 1 and 2, two of the school’s most popular electives. We even had a pottery wheel in our basement. Once upon a time, Ben used to give me personal lessons. He would joke that we were channeling our inner
Ghost
. I would laugh and call him a cheeseball while he sat behind me. But in truth, I thought my husband was a thousand times sexier than Patrick Swayze, especially when he brushed spine-tingling kisses along the side of my neck.

As soon as I pushed through the double doors at the bottom of the stairwell, the smell of chlorine and sawdust greeted me. Ben’s classroom was located across from the pool and up the hall from shop class. School had started on Monday and already a layer of dust decorated his floor and students worked busily on what appeared to be coffee mugs.

Ben stood with his back to me at one of the high tables, still broad shouldered and narrow waisted, wearing work boots, tan Levis, and a casual button-up shirt cuffed to his elbows. One of the girls at the table noticed me in the doorway and said something to him. He turned around and cocked his head, then met me where I stood. I wasn’t in the habit of showing up at his classroom in the middle of the school day.

“Hey.” His brow furrowed with the greeting, a question sprouting in his eyes. I often forgot how striking his eyes were in their blueness. But not today. Not after reliving the Cabana Boy memory. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Is everything okay?” He set his hand on the small of my back and led me
out into the hallway, away from the unwelcome attention of his pupils. “Did the social worker call?”

Oh, Ben thinks…

My heart contracted. He thought I’d come with good news to share. He thought I’d come because a birth mother had chosen us. He thought our wait was over, that we somehow flew through the process in record timing. The hopeful look in his eye had me regretting my decision to come. “No, she didn’t call.”

“Oh.” He curled his hand around the back of his neck. “So why are you here?”

Because I missed him? I missed us? I had a memory that resurrected feelings I hadn’t felt in much, much too long?

Ben raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“I ran into a sign.”

“A sign?”

“Earlier this morning. In the Toys R Us parking lot.”

“How did you run into a sign?” The condescension in his voice was audible enough to set me on edge, faint enough to make any defensive words on my part unreasonable. Ben had this delicate, frustrating balance down to an art form, and I was pretty sure he didn’t realize it.

“It was for expectant mothers.”

He scratched the stubble underneath his chin. Ben shaved three times a week, never enough length in between for a full beard, but long enough for thick scruff. “So…is there something you need me to do?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come here to tell me?”

“I don’t know, Ben.” Maybe I didn’t want to have the conversation later. Maybe all the reminiscing with Aunt Ingrid had made me nostalgic. Or maybe some part of me, deep down, no matter how much I balked or prickled, really did want Ben to do something.

“Is the car damaged?”

“There’s a dent in the front bumper.”

“How bad?”

“We’ll probably need to get it replaced.”

His jaw tightened.

I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming.

We stood there in the hallway—he and I—all the tension in the world between us, and I couldn’t help but wonder how we got here. To this place of constant misses. I thought about that ancient Chinese proverb often quoted on the cusp of a long endeavor: The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. People associated it with inspiring journeys, worthwhile journeys. But the thing was, it was every bit as true for the accidental, unfortunate ones.

My phone chirped inside my purse. I fished it out and said hello, thankful for the distraction.

“Carmen, it’s Dad.”

“Dad?” He didn’t usually call in the middle of the workday, not without some sort of provocation. “Is everything okay?”

“Not exactly. A dispatcher from the Escambia County sheriff’s department called me. Apparently, somebody reported a trespasser at The Treasure Chest.”

“A trespasser?”

Ben leaned closer, trying to tune into the conversation.

“They sent a deputy to check things out. I guess she found signs of a breakin. They need someone to drive out there to secure the property. Do you think you could go?”

“Yeah, sure. I can do that.” After the conversation I was having with Ben, some time at my old stomping ground sounded like the perfect way to recalibrate. Besides, I was long overdue for a visit.

“Thanks, sweetie.” He paused on the other end, then filled the empty space with a sigh. “You know, we’re going to have to decide what to do with the place soon.”

His words, though softly spoken, stretched a seam of longing stitched inside my chest.

C
ARMEN

I could almost feel the seam splitting apart as I drove across the Bob Sikes Bridge, heading eastbound on a stretch of two-lane highway called County Road 399. Resort hotels and high-rise condominiums shrunk in size and grandeur and frequency the farther I drove away from the tourist hub that was Pensacola Beach, eventually giving way to a breathtaking view of emerald waters and white sand, dotted with sea oats and yucca and scrubby growth.

The Treasure Chest, formerly known as La Tresor Motel, was established in 1939 by my great-grandfather, Frank Sideris, with the financial backing of his good friend, Charles Darrow, whose invention of the game Monopoly earned him millions during our nation’s worst depression. Back then, the motel had been the first of its kind on Santa Rosa Island, ushering in an era of roadside hospitality. When Frank passed on, he left the motel to his youngest daughter, who happened to be my aunt Ingrid. She loved the place every bit as much as he did and made it her life’s breath to see it thrive. Now, however, The Treasure Chest was a dying breed, no longer just the first, but also the last of its kind on Santa Rosa Island.

Ten minutes from Navarre Beach with more high-rises ahead in the distance, I spotted the motel sign growing up from the side of the road, its neon lights darkened now for months. During prime tourist season, no less. As I turned into the parking lot, vacant except for a lone police cruiser, the seam of longing split apart completely. Aunt Ingrid’s pride and joy looked much more like a rent-by-the-hour establishment than the family-friendly resting stop it had always been. The once-charming art-deco-meets-vintage-1960s thirteen-unit motel, complete with neon and chrome accents, sat abandoned and derelict on what must have been an incredibly valuable chunk of real estate.

How had this happened?

I thought about the past four years—Gerald’s unexpected death, helping Aunt Ingrid through her grief, assuming her forgetfulness would ebb with
time, noticing instead that it was only getting worse. The doctor’s diagnosis, moving her into Pine Ridge, getting her adjusted to life at the care facility, all while dealing with my own secret losses. I had made a promise to Aunt Ingrid that I would look after her baby, but over the past two and a half years, I’d barely been out here at all.

I stepped out into the balmy air and nodded hello to the woman standing by her police cruiser. Beneath her deputy’s hat, she had a mass of freckles on her face and wore her carrot-red hair in a long braid down her back. “Deputy Ernst,” she said, extending her arm. “You’re the proprietor’s daughter?”

“I’m the proprietor’s great-niece. My father’s her nephew, as well as her power of attorney.” Which technically put him in charge of the property. “He lives in Gainesville, so he asked me to come in his place.” I surveyed the units forming a U around the drained, kidney-shaped pool, installed for vacationers who’d rather swim in water uninfested with sharks and jellyfish. “He said something about a break-in?”

Deputy Ernst nodded. “A tourist taking a run along the beach called in the report this morning. He saw someone lurking on the property, thought it was suspicious. So he gave our precinct a call. Whoever it was isn’t around anymore, but I think they left some things behind.”

“Some things?”

She motioned for me to follow her.

As we approached the entrance to the front office, something inside of me wilted. Boards had been rent loose. Windows had been broken. At some point, vandals had spray-painted crass words along the stucco facade. The offensive artwork dribbled onto the glass block surrounding the office doors.

“I grew up in Mobile,” Deputy Ernst said. “Every summer my family would pile into the van and drive along the coast until we got to my meemaw’s house in Rosewood. We’d stop at places like this along the way. We even stopped here a handful of times.”

Aunt Ingrid would love the deputy’s story.

“Most of the mom-and-pop motels we used to stay at lost the battle to those boys over there.” She nodded a mile or so east, to a skyline that towered with hotels lining Navarre Beach. They crept closer with each passing year. “It’s a shame to see this one so beat up.”

She nudged the front office door open with her foot. We stepped inside, our shoes crunching over bits of debris and glass, and a small gasp tumbled from my lips. “Did the trespasser do this?”

“I’m not sure. The graffiti isn’t fresh. I’m willing to bet that was the result of some bored teenagers over the summer. The rest, though, I can’t tell.”

Whoever it had been took extra care to ruin the little that remained inside, smashing an old-fashioned rotary phone, a couple of chairs, and the framed art on the walls, including the vintage monopoly board signed by Charles Darrow himself. Thankfully, they must not have known who the man was, because they left it behind.

A string of desperation threaded itself around my mess of emotions, pulling them together in a bundle more pathetic than the motel. It wasn’t so much the vandalism that had me shaken as much as what was underneath the vandalism—the signs of neglect, of erosion, of slowly falling into disrepair. Thick layers of dust on all the surfaces, grime on the unbroken windows, the worn carpet and the cobwebs and the peeling paint. All of it hit too close to home.

“I think whoever broke in must have been squatting here for a while.” Deputy Ernst led the way toward the hospitality room, which would have been empty except for a blanket and a pillow off in the far corner. “We have a lot of drifters in the area. Vagabonds passing through from one town to the next, holing up wherever they can find shelter. But I’m not so sure this is the case here.”

“Why not?”

The deputy stopped in front of a duffel bag and crouched beside it. “It’s clothes, mostly. Nothing too unusual. But then I found this.” She handed me a postcard.

I recognized it immediately. They used to sit in a stack on the check-in desk during my summer college years. I flipped the postcard over. A note had been written on the back in Aunt Ingrid’s loopy scrawl.

See you next summer, Gracie. You bring your sass. I’ll bring the cookies
.

“You don’t happen to know this Gracie, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” I looked up from the handwriting. “She’s my sister.”