Barefoot Beach (21 page)

His staying at Duke was also personal for me. I'd been accepted to Bennington College. Its dance program was among the best in the country back then, and I was excited to live in Vermont. I loved my Brooklyn nest, but I was more than ready to fly off to someplace exotic like New England.

My mother had been overjoyed at the Bennington admission and proud of me. By then the lung cancer had robbed her of most of her breath, but tethered to an oxygen tank, she'd dragged the machine as she danced around the living room waving the acceptance letter. My father had also been in favor of the out-of-town school. “You'll get twice the education, Nora. One in the classroom, another on campus.”

And then Mamma-mia's condition had taken an unexpected turn for the worse and she died two weeks before my high school graduation. When I saw how my dad was grieving, barely able to function, I made the wrenching decision to live at home instead and commute to NYU. When I eventually moved into a dorm room with Margo near the campus, I was close enough for a quick subway check on Dad. It had been the right choice for me at the time. I wouldn't have been able to live with the other one. For Jack, though, my sacrifice didn't bear repeating.

“We'll work something out,” I said, followed immediately by the
FaceTime alert from the iPhone on his dresser. Now,
that
screen I could see. On the second trill, Jack glanced at it, then at me. “Just don't sell the house. Mom, promise me.” He tried to stare me down, but when the phone chirped again, he couldn't resist and picked it up. Saved by the bell. And by Tiffanie. Go figure.

The Fourth of July parade kicked off at nine a.m. with the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church marching band's ragtime rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” After that came the floats sandwiched between church choirs and school bands blaring patriotic songs, heavy on the brass and drums.

In the past Jack and I had made sure to get there early enough to claim places in the curb row, but this year he had so many dogs to collect for his morning run he couldn't predict when he'd arrive. He told me to go ahead without him. Downtown was jammed, and by the time I got to Sawgrass Avenue, I had to settle for standing in the row behind a line of squirming Cub Scouts seated on the curb.

The heat climbed from steaming to blistering as the crowd got larger and tighter and the floats crept by. City council members, costumed as Mooncussers, the eighteenth-century pirates who lured ships to the spits and shoals around Tuckahoe to steal their booty, sailed through on a replica of a three-masted galleon. Local pols hurled campaign buttons into the crowd, real estate brokers pitched refrigerator magnets, and a procession of businesses showered the kids with candy, setting off scrambles all along the route. The Cub Scouts piled the stuff in their caps. Perched on the hood of a red Corvette, Edgar Whitman, my very own foxtrotting dentist, tossed pastel toothbrushes that the sugar-high kids mostly ignored.

The Coastal Medical Center gave away bumper stickers and chilled bottles of water. As the scouts rushed forward to scoop them up, a nearby hand shot out, wagging a bottle at me, and I turned to see Jack edging into the squeeze. “Hey, Mom. Been looking for you. I scored some water. Here you go.”

He maneuvered so a ponytailed blonde could sidle in next to him. “Mom, Claire. Claire, Mom. Claire and I work together at Coneheads.”

Ah, the cookie cutie, probably eighteen but she looked younger, sucking on a tricolor ice pop and checking me out with big brown eyes.

She waved hi with her free hand. I raised my water bottle and called out, “Nice to meet you.”

She said, “Nice to meet
you
, Mrs. Farrell.” Polite. Not Tiffanie. Then, as the music glided into a somber version of “America the Beautiful,” a swell of applause and cheers rose in acknowledgment of the oncoming float. A swag of red, white, and blue along its side announced VFW Post 8105. I spotted Tom Hepburn on board from his shock of silver hair and, in the next breathtaking moment, Scott in his crisp dress blues.

I'd replied to his last text:
Other nite was fun 4 me 2. C U soon.
Margo saw it, but only after I'd fired it off into cyberspace. Nonetheless, she'd approved, after my explanation that I'd decided against adding “Happy 4th” because with his wartime experience, his memories, and his souvenir injury, I wasn't sure “happy” was appropriate. But he was smiling up on that float, a dazzling smile that upped the drumbeat of my pulse.

As the music swung into “It's a Grand Old Flag,” he climbed down to hand out miniature U.S. flags. First he worked the opposite side of the street. Then he pivoted, and I knew the precise instant he saw me. One moment, he was grinning, glowing at the rousing reception from the Cub Scouts. The next, he spotted me with Jack. And he hesitated.

Beside me, Jack said, “Oh shit.” We'd been pressed in the crowd, but
now he shifted. He took a few steps back and brushed my arm as he began to turn. I knew—a mother knows—he was scoping a path out of Scott's target zone, mapping his escape. I reached back, grabbed his wrist, and gripped hard.

“Don't . . . you . . . dare!” I said.

“What's happening?” Claire asked.

Jack mumbled, “Nothing. We're getting flags.”

Scott had braced his shoulders and resumed crossing the broad avenue to where we stood. Arriving in front of us, he fastened his gaze on the boys at our feet.

“Hey, guys, you pick up enough candy?” The scouts showed him their orange caps filled with sweets. “Oh yeah, the dentist is going to send his kids to college on your cavities. Who wants a flag?” He dealt them out to eager hands.

One of the boys piped up, “You got a lot of medals. You army?”

“Yes, sir,” he said to the boy. “Army. But I'm not on active duty anymore. Do you know what ‘retired' means?” A chorus of nods. They had grandfathers. “But once a soldier, always a solder.” That's when he straightened up, held out a flag to me, and said, “Hi, Nora.” And damn, damn, damn, it was only when he said my name, when he smiled a squiggle that betrayed his nervousness, that I got ambushed by a wave of warmth that had nothing to do with the sun's sizzle. Fondness, pride, admiration—a mix of perfectly respectable emotions—surged. I took the little flag and returned the smile.

His gaze was still fixed on me when Claire said, “Hey, Colonel.” The look he tugged from me went to Jack, with a nod, before landing on the girl.

She said, “Claire? From Coneheads? You're double vanilla on a waffle cone. Or sometimes a hot fudge sundae.”

His eyes sparked with recognition. “Claire, of course. Happy Fourth.
I didn't know you without your scoop. And the blue lipstick threw me off.”

Her lips were stained by the blueberry ice stripe.

“Good parade this year, huh?” He was still keeping me in his wavering line of vision. I watched perspiration bead above his upper lip. “Flag, Claire?”

“Absolutely,” she said. She pinched the teensy flagpole between two fingers and gave it a teensy wave. What I'd heard of her voice so far had been chirpy. But now it dropped an octave and went somber: “Thank you for your service. I mean, really. From the heart.” She was one for hearts, Claire was.

“Right, thank you for your service,” Jack echoed, startling me. Too little and late, but I was willing to give credit where due.

I took a deep breath. “My son,” I said. “Jack.” Pause. “Farrell.”

They performed the male greeting ritual, shaking hands and taking each other's measure.

Scott snapped a backward glance as the band launched into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the traditional music that signaled the approaching end of this year's parade. On cue, the floats picked up speed for the last lap toward home, which was the parking lot of the West Woodruff Middle School.

“Looks like your ride is leaving,” Jack said. Could have been rude, maybe not. Oversensitive, I wondered whether it sounded like he was hustling Scott along. I sent my son a warning look. He sent me back all innocence.

Scott answered good-naturedly, “Yeah, the photographers want us posed on the floats, so I guess I'd better hop on.” He smacked his right thigh. So when he leaned in to me, I figured that, in spite of his easy climb down from the float, whatever he wanted to say privately had something to do with his leg. But what I got were a few hurried words. “I've been really busy, Nora. Hit by some unexpected stuff. I'm going to try to make class
tomorrow, but right now everything's up in the air. It may be a last-minute call. I hope that's okay.”

No,
a part of me wanted to say from inside my hermit crab shell, where I'd been burrowing in for most of the last eight years. Life was so much safer hunkered down in my house on Surf Avenue, where even when waves broke hard at high tide or a nor'easter slammed the coast, you didn't get swept away.

The other, braver part nodded yes.

We were halfway through that hazy purplish hour before sunset, waiting for night to fall so we could watch the fireworks explode over the ocean. Margo had claimed territory for us by spreading an old blanket on the sand, her island among the hordes that occupied every square foot of beach. A Brooklyn girl, she loved those hordes. They reminded her, she told me, of the precious, rare summer nights of her childhood when, every other Tuesday, her favorite aunt, Tante Violet, her mother's twin and temperamental opposite, plucked little Margo from the dreary Wirth brownstone to watch the fireworks splash light and color over Coney Island. Memories that for Margo shone brighter than anything in her jewelry box.

She settled back against the towel draped to protect her delicate skin from the plastic beach chair (like the ones they'd carried on the subway to Brighton Beach), took a sip of her Diet Coke, rummaged in her beach bag, and dug out a bottle of sun block formulated from Tuscan herbs especially for exposure to twilight. Margo swore the most damaging rays ambushed you at dusk.

“You too,” she said, pointing to my arms. “You're beginning to fry.”

When I declined to smell like a Caesar salad, she went from casting a “you'll be sorry” glance at me to a longer look at her husband, who was stretched out in a lounge chair next to her, earbuds in place, sunglasses
nested in his chest hair, eyes closed. I wondered if he really had “WWFG—The Shore's Home of Country Music” coming through, or if he'd dialed the volume low enough to pick up outside chatter. He looked blandly innocent, but was he tuned in to our conversation?

“Maybe it's your lack of sex paired with your lack of estrogen, Nora, because everything's shriveling up in you, including your brain. Cut Scott some slack. The man
does
have a life besides learning the cha-cha.”

That was unfair and I fought back. “All I said was I was disappointed about maybe not getting to see him in class this week. You kept pushing me to expand my horizons. Okay, so I did, and now that I'm disappointed that they're shrinking, you're telling me I'm overreacting.”

“I'm saying, roll with it. This is real life, honeybun, not some schoolgirl fantasy. Relationships take time. They need to be nurtured. They face obstacles. And you told me yourself, Scott and Jack shook hands at the parade, so you've made it over the first hurdle.”

My gut warned me it wasn't as simple as a quick change of heart. I knew my kid. He'd played nice as a peace offering to me because he was tired of tiptoeing around Tiger Mom. It was also possible he had something brewing with Claire, who was obviously a fan of the vanilla-loving colonel, and Jack didn't want to mess that up.

“You know Pete thinks Scott's a great guy, right?” Margo was spritzing sun block. “When they were on the board of the retired veterans' home together, Scott had some good ideas about staffing. Pete was disappointed when he resigned. Scott said it was for personal reasons, no details, but now I think that must have been about the time of his divorce. Pete never did get the Bunny-Scott matchup. Like the time she came to the home's fund-raiser one year in a dress cut down to there.” Margo pointed to her well-covered navel. “Everything, and I mean
everything
, was on display. Her skirt was so short you could almost see her whiskers.
Totally inappropriate, though Pete said it gave the old soldiers a lift. Well, not below the belt, considering they were the last of the World War II and Korea vets, but there were a lot of bushy white eyebrows raised. The woman has no class. Sleazy.”

“But pretty,” I answered.

Margo wrinkled her nose, probably not at the scent in the air, which was a blend of boardwalk hot dogs and that Caesar dressing sun block, but at the thought of Bunny.

“Pretty? I suppose. If you like the ‘rode hard, put away wet' look. Trust me, Bunnicula will not be a tough act to follow.”

“She must have had something.” I sighed.

Margo clucked in obvious disapproval. “I hope you're not having a crisis of confidence, Nora. Back in college, you were the poster girl for breezy self-assurance. Which is probably why the boys fell for you like ten-pins. And Lon—he could have had anyone, but you just bowled him over.”

She dropped the spray bottle of sun block in her beach bag and pulled out a jar of neck moisturizer. Margo had specific potions for each part of her body. Greased up like that, she should have slid through life. She hadn't.

“Your parents thought the world revolved around you, so of course you were confident. And confidence is very sexy.”

“You were the sexy, confident one,” I countered.