If You're Lucky (2 page)

The day before the party I spent the afternoon making Meyer lemon tarts. The Meyer lemons grow on a tree in our backyard, a miracle really, considering the lack of sunshine. I was glad to be in the kitchen, doing something I knew. Lucky loved my lemon tarts. The pale yellow curd filling came out too puckery, but I hate it when lemon curd is overly sweet. To compensate, I added a touch of sugar to the crust. The sugar made the tarts turn golden in the oven. They came out perfect. I lined them up in even rows on a long sheet of parchment paper. I half expected Lucky to appear and snatch a few like he always did when I baked at home.

“Let's just call it a party,” said my mom the day we planned it. “He was too young for a memorial. He would hate that word.” She was still in Lucky's room, off the floor and in his bed. She was speaking to us now and making sense, though she spent hours staring into space. She was wearing one of Lucky's T-shirts and my dad's sweatpants. I brought her cups of hot tea and toast with blackberry jam.

That was a week earlier. It was the same day that we scattered Lucky's ashes. We drove to the estuary together and got in my dad's boat. He started the engine and steered up the coast to the spot near Fort Ross where Lucky loved to free dive for abalone. The wind was biting and cold and forced little whitecaps onto the bay. My mom, out of the house for the first time, sat huddled in layers and layers of clothes, gazing out at the horizon. The box filled with Lucky's ashes sat next to her on the seat. When my dad cut the engine, my mom put the box on her lap and held it in her hands for a moment. Then she opened it up and dipped her hand into the gray powder. She took a handful and opened her palm, letting the wind take it from her. She handed the box to my dad. I held Rocket's collar and tried to keep the boat pointed upwind while my dad shook the rest of the ashes overboard into the dark water. The boat kept drifting and we ended up with ashes in our hair and our clothes. We watched the swirling ashes mix with the water and change it to pea soup. I wondered how so much life could amount to a box of ashes and the occasional bone chip. The ashes in my dad's beard and my mom's hair made them look old. Within a few seconds, the boat had drifted far away from the greenish slick. I read Lucky's favorite passage from Jack Kerouac's
On the Road.
Then my dad played “Forever Young” on his harmonica. My mom cried. I felt numb.

My dad started the engine again and we headed home. As we pulled into our driveway my mom proclaimed that we would have a party for Lucky. “Nothing macabre,” she said, “a celebration of his life.” Then she went right back to Lucky's room and curled up on his bed. My dad and I joined her. Sitting side by side on the bed we planned Lucky's party, among his things, surrounded by his surfing posters taped all over the walls.

The night before the party, Sonia, Lucky's girlfriend, arrived home early from college in Vermont to attend. I watched from the kitchen window as her mom's car pulled into their narrow drive, just down the road from our house. Sonia's flight had arrived late. In the dark she looked dazed and moved gingerly, like she'd been in an accident herself. She took a duffle bag from the trunk and went in the house. I was so relieved to see her. Even like this. We were getting close before she went back to college last August. Sonia was someone I could talk to. I hoped that she would stay for a while.

Lucky's friends started pouring in from all over the world. No one expected such a big crowd and we certainly couldn't accommodate everyone. They filled the nearby campground, building a big fire to congregate around at night and share stories about Lucky. It was a beautiful sight from afar, the fire and all of Lucky's friends milling about. They strung a massive old oak tree with fairy lights and decorated it like a Christmas tree, with memorabilia for ornaments. Photos, ski gloves, socks, jewelry, hacky sacks, flippers, surfboard leashes, CDs, sunglasses, and wine bottles hung in the branches. The big tree drooped under the weight of all the stuff.

Sonia and I drove up there in her mom's car and walked through the campground. “The sister and the girlfriend,” I heard them whispering as the crowd parted. Sonia knew some of them from when she went to Australia over Christmas break. They offered us beers and shots and pot. I said no thanks but Sonia accepted everything. She seemed to prefer to stay completely wasted, which made her seem uncharacteristically fragile. She was always quiet but decisive and confident. She could almost keep up with Lucky on a surfboard or a ski slope or the side of a cliff. It took Lucky about ten minutes to fall for her when they met two and a half years ago. Sonia and her mom, a radiologist who works in Santa Rosa, rented a small blue house just below us on the hill above town. Lucky was home that summer, working for my dad, and Sonia was home from college. It only took a week before Lucky was following her around like a puppy. Even with all the girls Lucky met out in the world, he'd fallen madly in love with the one whose bedroom window he could see from his own. They were perfect together.

Later that night, we sat in the idling car outside my house. Sonia definitely shouldn't have been driving, but I don't even have a license. I made stupid small talk.

“So, I guess we'll see you at the party tomorrow.” I sighed.

“Oh, yeah. Wow, I feel crappy. I should really go to bed. I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep. Where's the party, again?”

“The Heron.” I'd already told her that a few times. Where else would it be?

“Right, of course. I knew that.” She turned and looked at me. A tear rolled down her cheek. “How much does this suck, George?”

“Tons.”

She swiped at her cheek and nodded.

I got out of the car and went inside. My mom was busy in the kitchen making a pan of lasagna for the party. Though she still slept in Lucky's bed at night, she was venturing out now, a bit more each day.

“Hi, baby.” She smiled wistfully at me. I went and stood next to her. She kissed the top of my head. “How was it?”

“Weird. Good. So many people.”

She nodded and went back to her meat sauce. Our finely balanced family routine had been toppled. My mom usually spent the days in her studio, a big, bright room with floor-to-ceiling windows behind the house that my dad built for her. She's an artist. She's kind of famous for her hand-built wood-fired pots. Her world is in her studio. She has an electric kettle out there for endless cups of tea and a stereo that she listens to classical music and jazz on. She has an electric kiln for small loads of work and a big gas one for bigger pieces. Out back there's a kiln for wood firings in a sand pit. Before this happened, we didn't see my mom in the house till dinnertime, and then she was only too happy to talk to another human about their day. Now the studio stood dark and we kept bumping into each other, acting as constant reminders of our collective pain. I hoped that my mom would feel like working again soon. It was hard to see her like this, thin and pale and hunched over, wearing Lucky's clothes, her long, beautiful hair matted and dull instead of swept up into a tidy bun like she usually wore it, with a paintbrush or a pencil poked through it. My dad remained powerless to help. He and I said very little to each other. His world was the oyster farm. My world was less clearly defined.

The party turned out to be unbearably nice. Colorful pots and casserole dishes were laid out on a long wooden table in the dining room at the Heron. Too many people brought baked beans but it didn't matter. Jeff and Miles closed the restaurant and Marc, the Heron's temperamental chef, roasted some turkeys. Our neighbors brought salads and breads and cakes and liquor. There had to be about ten guitars in the room, and Lucky's friends played all his favorite songs until later when a reggae band started up. I sat next to Vince, Lucky's surfing buddy from just up the road. He got me a glass of wine at the bar and another one when I finished it. He didn't know that I'm not supposed to drink because of my meds. The wine warmed me and unclenched my stomach. After the band, it was open mic. Lucky's friends came up and spoke, one by one. Vince had had a few beers by then and he stumbled purposefully up to the stage.

“This is total bullshit,” he said loudly into the microphone. “Because, you wanna know why? Because shit like this doesn't happen to guys like Lucky. It happens to assholes that don't know how to read waves. I knew Lucky since we were six, man! Lucky was the one who made us safe on the water. That guy saved
me
so many times I lost count. I totally owe him my life. I don't know how this could have happened to him but it's total bullshit . . . okay?” He stared the crowd down and then he lurched off the stage.

The open mic was the hardest part of the night. Especially when my dad rose slowly, unsteadily from his chair and made his way to the stage, holding a mug of beer. I cringed. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. The room went silent. He stood there a moment, gazing at something off in the distance. Then he cleared his throat and began speaking: “Thank you all for coming. My son . . . you know him as Lucky but he was born Ludwig, named for my grandfather, a stupid name for a boy like that, we soon realized. He was nothing like my grandfather at all. He was . . .”

My dad stopped. He took a deep breath and went on. I couldn't look at him.

“I'm sorry, I'm not accustomed to talking about him in the past tense. Anyway, Lucky had a way of living that made me envious. He was ravenous for life. He couldn't seem to pack enough of it in . . .” He paused. The room waited. “And he was always like that. When he was four, he started coming out on the boat with me and he'd stand up the whole way—he already had his sea legs—and he'd watch the horizon as though he was trying to figure out the fastest way to get there. He'd point to it and say ‘Papa, can we go there?' ” He paused again and inhaled raggedly and then he seemed to remember something that made him smile.

The crowd waited patiently. He looked out at all of Lucky's rosy-cheeked, dread-locked, tattooed friends.

“And look at all of you. Most of you I've never even met and here you are, some of you came so far. My wife, Madeleine, and I are very, very grateful. It makes us feel better to know that you knew our son too . . . and that you miss him, and that you won't forget him. Thank you.”

My dad raised his mug.

“To Lucky.”

The crowd raised their glasses: “To Lucky.”

My dad returned to his chair next to my mom, draping his arm around her shoulders. She kissed him and he took a folded handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed her tears. My mom had pulled herself together for the party. She was wearing a long denim skirt and a mohair sweater. I could see her telling my dad she wanted to leave. They got up together and slowly moved toward the entrance of the dining room. People stood up as they passed and my dad shook hands with the men and the women kissed my mom's cheek or they hugged her. My dad squeezed my shoulder as they passed by.

“See you at home,” he said.

I scanned the room for Sonia and spotted her at the bar, having a conversation with a guy. He was wearing a T-shirt I thought I remembered Lucky wearing. I wasn't surprised; Lucky always gave his things away. What was his was yours. He had no need for material goods. Sonia seemed to know the guy. She said something to him and he shook his head and looked hurt. Then she hugged him as though she was apologizing. They stayed like that, hugging, for longer than most people hug. I wondered who he was.

Later, I saw the same guy sitting alone at the bar as I made my way to the bathroom. I was dizzy from the wine.

“Hey,” he said as I passed him, “you're Georgia, right?”

“Yeah.” I slowed. “How'd you know?”

“Are you kidding? You look just like Lucky.” He offered his hand. “I'm Fin.”

I shook his hand. It felt cool and his fingers were long and thin, like a pianist's. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Lucky had probably mentioned him to me in his many rambling e-mails. He'd talked about so many of his friends. Fin let go of my hand. I reluctantly looked away and glanced around the room. The party guests were drunkenly hanging off each other, hugging and kissing. I looked back at Fin and laughed.

“Lucky would have loved this party,” I said.

“Yes. He was the life of every party.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Very. I was actually with him, you know, when he . . . had the accident.”

“Yeah?” I looked at him with renewed interest.

He nodded solemnly. I wished we could go somewhere quiet and he could tell me everything about the last few minutes of my brother's life.

There were several friends who'd made statements to the Australian police about what happened. Fin probably had too, I couldn't remember. A week earlier the report had been sitting on our kitchen table, and I sat down and read it till the hair on the back of my neck stood up. They said Lucky had wiped out off a big wave. No one else had dared jump on that wave. He was riding it fine but then he seemed to lose his balance slightly. The wave tossed him up and dumped him hard and a massive wall of gnarly water slammed down onto him. Some of his friends said that they thought his board was tombstoning, which can mean that a surfer is trapped in deep water, disoriented, or that his leash could be caught on a rock or some coral. Everyone watched for Lucky's head to pop up but it just didn't. He was under for way too long. Someone, maybe it was Fin, got to the board and dove down into the churning water and found Lucky. He ripped the Velcro band off Lucky's foot and pulled him to the surface but it was too late. Lucky had been hit on the head with his board and he was probably unconscious and unable to free himself. This had all happened in about ten feet of water. For Lucky, that was like drowning in a bathtub.

Fin didn't look like a surfer. He looked more like a South American polo player: olive-skinned with dark, intelligent eyes and a longish, thin nose. His light-brown hair was tangled and fell loosely around his face. There was no sign of the early crow's feet or the permanently sunburned nose or the sea-salt-fried, sun-damaged hair you see on most surfers. He had an intensity in his eyes that was separate from the rest of his face. His mouth turned up at the corners into a slight smile but his eyes expressed something else, something deeper. He also didn't talk like a surfer. Frankly, I'd had enough surfer talk to last me a lifetime. The way Fin spoke was refreshing.