All That Was Happy (13 page)

Tears filled her eyes and she took a deep
breath.

“
When I was a kid,” she said, “we moved
around a lot because my dad was always looking for work--so I guess
what I always wanted, deep down, was to stay in one place--to never
have to move again, no matter what. To be honest about it, that’s
part of the reason why I married Bernie--my shrink, Dr. Black was
right--she confronted me about my selfishness. She tried to get me
to see it, to see that when I married Bernie, it wasn’t out of
love, but from a desire for security--I knew Bernie wasn’t going to
be flaky--I knew he’d be a good provider and give me the kind of
security my dad never could.”

“
You wanted security more than
anything,” he said. “So you compromised--you traded passion for
security.”

“
Yes,” she said.

“
It’s understandable,” he said. “Most
people do that. I never have--one of the vows I made all those
years ago in High School as a Young Fogy was to hold out for true
love--the kind Bogie and Bergman had--or the Duke with Maureen
O’Hara.”

“
I had a shot at romance when I was
just a little surfer girl,” she said. “Mickey Dora was interested
in me. That’s why I was on the beach that day. Perhaps I was his
ham sandwich. But I put it all away when I decided to go with
Bernie.”

“
After all this time, do you love your
husband?” Huntington asked.

“
That question is out of bounds,” she
said. “I haven’t had time to sort out my feelings about Bernie yet.
I’m still not certain he really means to divorce me. I’m half
expecting him to call me and come whining back.”

“
Do you love your husband?” Huntington
asked. “Tonight, at the restaurant, you said you weren’t sure what
love is--answer me--do you love Bernie?”

Beckie began to softly cry. “Turn out the
light in here,” she said. “I don’t want people walking by down
there to be able to look up here and see me crying in this
window.”

Huntington got up and hit the wall switch,
whereupon the room transformed itself into a floating island in a
moonbeam.

“
This is difficult to admit,” she said.
“But I’ve had no romance in my life in the entire twenty-nine years
I’ve been with Bernie. I guess to make up for it, I kept focused on
working to build the tool business. After awhile, I forgot all
about romance. Staying busy in the day-to-day running of the
business kept me from looking at myself--when Bernie closed me out
of the business six months ago, it caused me a lot of pain--pain I
couldn’t face, and a pain I didn’t understand--I started going
through my day very carefully, not looking at myself or what I was
feeling. I knew something was very wrong inside, but I couldn’t
face it. Every day, while Bernie was at work, I shopped for antique
ceramic figurines--I must have collected a zillion figurines--each
time I purchased one, I looked at it, trying to find the meaning of
its life. I realize now that I was trying to find myself inside
those shining figures. In a way, you could say I was searching for
my soul.”

“
Do you love your husband,” Huntington
said.

“
Yes,” Beckie said. “I love him--but
not with passion.”

“
I’m sorry,” Huntington said.
“Beckie--it’s not too late to have passion in your life--it’s not
too late. Look, we’ve found each other--the surfboard proves
it--you and I are connected--it’s the hand of fate.”

“
It’s too late for me,” Beckie said.
“Listen, Huntington, I can’t turn back the clock. I can’t go back
to where I was before I married Bernie. I can’t be that little
surfer girl again riding the beautiful black Jacobs board. I’m
going to have to live my life without the passion and the beauty
you speak of. The past twenty-nine years has left me with nothing
but ice and stone inside. Right now I’m tired--I’m more tired than
I’ve ever been in my entire life. I think we’ve done enough peeling
of layers for one night--I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I
just want to sleep. I want you to leave me alone--please go--and
lock the door behind you.”

Chapter
22

She knew Bernie was up there somewhere--she
could hear him but not see him. She had a long, silver cord
protruding from her navel. The silver cord extended upward, as far
as Beckie could determine, clear into Heaven. She was standing on
the beach, talking with the unseen Bernie. The full moon sparkled
on her silver cord.

“
I can’t hear you very well, Bernie,”
she said. She’d been talking to Bernie for a long time. He’d been
explaining to her about the Great White she’d seen at the
Pier.

“
You were supposed to feed your dog to
the shark,” Bernie said. “You were supposed to do that--when you
didn’t do that, I had to take your car and your home--don’t you
see? The dog is our child--our passion--you were supposed to feed
it to the shark so it could live again in three days.”

“
I can’t hear you,” she
cried.

“
I’m coming down,” he said.

He began to slide down her silver cord,
coming towards her from Heaven, getting closer and closer. But the
cord broke free from her belly and he started to tumble--as he
dropped into the ocean, she could see something was wrong with his
face. It was elongated, and lumpy. It was Bernie’s body, but with
the shark’s face.

Beckie screamed.

She awoke to the hammering of her heart, her
body hopelessly tangled in the comforter, her upper torso half off
the futon. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog was barking at the
moon. The background drone of the mighty city was subdued while its
people slept; she could hear the sound of a clock ticking somewhere
in the house. The room had lost its life, imparting to her the
sensation of lying bound within the dusty confines of a coffin. The
coffin began to shrink and as it shrank the air heated up--she felt
her skin starting to burn. She threw off the covers and stepped to
the window, unlatching it and pushing it open, letting the cool air
cascade in over her face. The shushing of the shore break muted the
sharper serenades of pre-dawn traffic--the moon was nearly down for
the night but still brilliant; the misty air completely still; the
world asleep. The telescope called to her--she scanned the moonlit
beach, pausing the lens at the shoreline, marveling at the glassy,
pristine condition of the waves, their combs sleek and smooth,
unruffled by any wind. A few night birds shrieked lonely
shrieks.

There was but one single solitary act left to
perform to properly atone for her sin of living a lifetime without
love, a lifetime of living with Bernie. Slipping back into her
sequined silver tube, she eased the door to her room open and made
her way to the second floor landing, opening the door to
Huntington’s master suite. She shook him awake and he sat bolt
upright.

“
What’s wrong?” he said.

“
Get up,” she said. “The moonlight’s
bright as day outside. The waves are two feet and
glassy.”

Groggily, he stood up and yawned. “You’re
dressed,” he said. “Okay. I understand. I’ll drive you over to the
Marquis--but you can’t blame me for trying.”

“
That’s not where we’re going,” she
said. “Follow me.” She led him down the spiral staircase and into
the living room. Mr. Boopers, comfortable on his pillow before the
fire, wagged his tail and made a few licking sounds but did not
rise, it not being an hour he cared for.

“
Take the surfboard down,” she
said.

“
My Robert August surfboard?” he
said.

“
If you want a shot at having me in
your life, you’ll take the board down,” she said.

Opening the front door, Beckie stepped out
into the night, surprised at how quiet it was, and how many stars
were shining.

“
You’ve got to be kidding,” he
said.

“
I’m not kidding,” she said. “I’m going
surfing. I’m doing what I should have done twenty-nine years ago. I
should have stayed on the beach and let Mickey Dora devour me while
he hung ten.”

“
It’s 4 o’clock in the morning,” he
said. “The water’s freezing--don’t tell me you’re going surfing
wearing a two-thousand dollar silver-sequined Gucci tube
dress.”

“
Give me the board,” she said. “While
you’re at it, you can grab yours from the back of your car and join
me.”

She didn’t wait for Huntington--it was
something she had to do by herself. The board, at ten feet six
inches long, was heavy, and wide, and she had to balance it on her
head, the way she used to do long ago. It took some effort to cross
the wide expanse of sand to the chill waters where, it was thought
by some, that all life began. The setting moon, with its roadway of
strong moonbeams hinted at the existence of a place beyond the
freezing waters, a place where human weakness would fall away like
a baby’s tears--a better place than where she now stood.

She hadn’t forgotten how to knee-paddle, or
turn turtle to roll beneath a breaking wave--for a brief instant,
there was a joy to it, and she could almost sense the weight of her
long blonde hair once again, and the weightlessness of it as it
unfurled beneath the depths. On her way out through the breakers,
she felt the joy she remembered feeling and gained a little freedom
for her soul. The water was freezing cold but she paddled hard and
soon her pumping blood began to warm her freezing limbs. After she
was past the break line, and she could see the shadows of the
rising swells of the new set coming in behind her, she turned the
board and began to paddle, putting her in synch with a beautiful
swell of water, feeling the awesome energy of the swell lifting her
up, at which point she managed to make it to her feet, her body
crouching for balance as the board shot forward, swiftly dropping
her smoothly into the crest, her ears singing with the hiss of the
rails--after all that--she finally felt the peace she’d been
seeking, a peace which flowed through her, and which invited her to
join herself with the energies around her, taking her home, a
place, she knew, where romance, and passion, and the ever-changing
power of life was to forever become her new constant in the
never-changing world she was leaving behind. She turned around and
paddled out again. This time she was going to hang five.

Chapter
23

“
You’re going to have a real shiner,”
Huntington said. “The right eye, for sure, and maybe even the
left.”

“
I’ll look like a raccoon,” Beckie
said.

The pair sat together on the edge of the huge
redwood hot tub just off the rear balcony of the second-floor
master suite, their legs dangling in the steaming hot, bubbling
waters, examining a bump on Beckie’s nose and a spreading bruise
surrounding her right eye. The bump was currently rising faster
than the morning sun.

“
I think it makes you look a lot like
Streisand wearing a mask,” Huntington said.

“
I’d just caught the perfect wave,”
Beckie said, “and was scooting up to the nose to try and hang five
when my feet went right out from under me. I slipped off into the
curl and took a pounding on the bottom. When I came up to the
surface, the board smacked me right in the face.”

“
There wasn’t any wax on the nose of
the board,” he said. “It was only waxed in the middle.”

To properly prepare a surfboard, one had to
apply a rough coating of melted paraffin which provided a non-skid,
rubbery traction to the surface when wet. Beckie, in her haste, had
violated this rule, and found herself attempting to maintain her
balance on the slippery nose, her chances of staying on her feet at
that point about the same as her chances of standing on top of a
whirlwind.

“
It’s a good thing you arrived when you
did,” Beckie said. “The board nearly knocked me
unconscious.”

Huntington, having elected not to go surfing
at 4 o’clock on a chill April morning, and having instead chosen
the softer, easier route of simply driving down to the water’s edge
in the Suburban, had handily retrieved his priceless Robert August
surfboard, along with his shimmering, silver-sequined, ocean-soaked
tube-wrapped, newfound love, and transported both of these
treasures quickly back to the comfort and security of his tiny home
at the edge of the world, whereupon he attempted to remedy the
various ailments and complaints presented by Beckie, chief among
which was that she was half-frozen to death, and secondly, was
fearful that her nose might be broken, this latter point quickly
dismissed, as there was no bleeding, and no blockage of the air
passages, the nose not appearing to be pushed to one side or the
other, and the main damage limited to some heavy swelling and the
inevitable bruising around the eyes.

“
Oh man,” Beckie said. “For a minute,
just for one beautiful minute, I had my right foot over the edge of
that board. I think I can honestly say that I can die now, and have
no regrets--Huntington! I surfed! I did it! Nobody can take that
away from me--not ever!”

“
I watched you,” he said. “When you
started off across the sand with that board balanced on your head,
I ran up to the loft and filmed the entire thing through the top
window--it was incredibly impressive--with the moonlight shining on
your dress, you looked like a knee-paddling angel. And when you
caught your first wave, and came up out of your crouch, I felt like
I was watching some sea-goddess at play.”