Lila Blue (12 page)

"You stayed with us two weeks.
Your grandfather and I were so happy. The second week we closed the shop and
all went to a small fishing resort on a lake north of town. You lived in a
candy striped swimsuit and a yellow life jacket. Your mother was so afraid
you'd fall in the lake and drown."

"She still worries I'll drown,
even though I was on a swim team." I shook my head. "It's because she
can't swim very well. She fights the water instead of letting it hold her
up."

"That's a good description of
your mother, Cassandra," she patted my leg. "She'll learn to relax.
You'll see."

Lila stared out to sea, and her
normal smile was gone. Her face was lined with wrinkles, and I felt sad for
her.

"When we got home from that
beautiful week on the lake," she said, "Terry was waiting for us.
Mark was five years old, and I remember how scared he was. We were strangers to
him, of course, because she'd taken him to Texas when he was two." She
shook her head.

Then, as if the car could not
contain the next part, she got out and started down the walkway to the sand. I
followed her, and we found a drift log and sat side by side.

"They were sitting on our
doorstep when we pulled into the driveway," she said. "It was
horrible."

"I bet my mom went
crazy," I said.

"We all went crazy,
sweetheart," Lila said. "Terry demanded that David leave your mother
and take care of his wife and son. She'd never finalized the divorce."

"Your mother and Terry
screamed at each other. I tried to take you and Mark inside. You were both
crying and clinging to your mothers, and they wouldn't let you go. Your
grandfather, bless him, tried to get us all inside so everyone could settle
down and talk. He hated shouting."

"What did David do?" I
was furious at my father for letting the whole horrible thing happen.

"David was in shock," she
said. "He didn't think Terry would ever want him back. He was stunned. He
just stood there. I remember at one point Terry grabbed his arm to pull him
away from your mother and you, and he was like a lamppost stuck in the ground.
He wouldn't budge."

So he tried to stay with us, I
thought, scrambling for some way to excuse my father. "Didn't he try to
calm them down?"

"He did nothing," Lila
said. "I do believe he was in shock. He was incapable of responding."

"Janice was the one who
finally did something," Lila said. "She grabbed your suitcases, which
were still in our car, threw them in her car, and took you away."

Lila picked up my hand and held it
in hers. "I was afraid I'd never see you again. It broke my heart."

"Didn't my father try to fix
it?"

"No, Cassandra. I hate to say
this, but your father was weak that way. Terry wanted to get married, so he
married her. Janice wanted to get married, so he married her. Terry demanded
that he come back and take care of her and Mark, and your mother was gone, so
he went with Terry."

"I hate him," I said,
taking my hand out of hers. "I don't care if he is your son, Lila. I hate
him."

"Of course you do, sweetheart!
What he did was wrong. Everyone was hurt, everyone felt betrayed. What a
terrible mess he made by trying to please everyone he loved.”

"He never forgave
himself," she said. "He went back to Terry, even got his old job at
the lumberyard back, and the next year Terry became pregnant again. He tried
calling your mom, but she wouldn't speak to him. Who could blame her? Your
grandpa even tried to call her, he felt so bad about everything, but she
wouldn't talk with him. Thank goodness we had her address and your Grandma
Betty's address. Your Grandma Betty was kind to us. She loved David. Everyone
loved him."

She picked up a small gray rock and
started chipping away at it with her fingernail, carving the face of it. It
turned out to be sandstone, and it crumbled all at once and fell through her
fingers.

"I should have been more
careful when I named him," she said. "David means Beloved. It was a
blessing and a curse all in one."

We sat staring at the ocean for a
while, and then a dark cloud came from offshore and pelted the beach with white
hailstones the size of peas. We ran squealing for the car, but didn't quite
make it before we got stung by dozens of hailstones.

We sat inside the car and picked melting
ice out of our hair while hail bounced off the car body. It sounded like a load
of gravel being dumped on us. Other people had been farther along on the beach
when it hit, and we watched them race toward their cars, shirts pulled over
their heads, squealing as loudly as we had. It's amazing how fast you can move
when the sky falls on your head.

We were both hungry by the time the
hail stopped, so Lila drove along the slippery road to the fish place, which
was a flimsy looking building called Barney's. It was out on the end of a sandy
peninsula, and it seemed that one good sneaker wave could knock it down.

The parking lot was full of cars.
Some of the license plates were from Washington and California, and there was
even a car from Louisiana.

When I pointed it out to her, Lila
said, "That's a ways to go for clam chowder."

"Yea," I said.
"You'd think they'd stay home and have shrimp."

Lila laughed her wonderful laugh,
and I realized I was happy again. My emotions were like the weather on the
Oregon coast, rainy one second, sunny the next, hailstones falling out of the
sky, rainbows.

There was a line to get into
Barney's, so we browsed in the gift area for fifteen minutes until we were
seated at a table right up against the window. The place was packed with
families, and in some spots they'd pushed three tables together for big groups.
The noise level was extreme, especially after I'd spent so many peaceful days
secluded in Lila's house. Everyone seemed happy and excited, though, so it was
okay.

After I read the menu, which was
printed on the paper placemat and gave you five meal choices, I looked out
across a narrow bay and saw the seals, dozens of grayish brown lumps arranged
like giant rocks along the sand on the beach. Every once in a while one would rouse
up, bark, and lumber off into the water for a swim.

Dozens of seals were already in the
water. Their heads looked like puppy dogs with big eyes and no ears. In the
water they were so agile and free, but on land they were clumsy lumps. Water
was their element.

Our waiter seemed to be in fast
gear, which I guess you'd have to be to work there. I ordered fish and chips
and diet cola. I waited to see if Lila would forbid the diet drink, but she
smiled and said, "Some house rules only apply in the house." She ordered
clam chowder and lemonade.

All the waiters looked like high
school or college kids, and they wore blue Barney's t-shirts and white pants.
The shirts were available in the gift shop. On the front of the shirts was a
portrait of a cartoon bulldog wearing a sea captain's white hat and smoking a
pipe. The caption said, "Barney's. Best Clam Chowder in the World."

A Barney's shirt seemed the perfect
thing to pay Shelly back for the pink catch of the day shirt I had on under
Lila's red jumper. While we waited for our orders, I went back to the gift area
and bought Shelly a Barney's shirt.

It only took a few minutes, but
when I wound my way back through the packed restaurant, a basket of fish and
chips sat steaming on my paper placemat. Lila was stirring a large, flat bowl
of creamy clam chowder.

"I got a spoon for you,
too," she said, grinning. She opened a pack of oyster crackers and
scattered them on top of the thick soup. It smelled good, and since my fish was
too hot to touch, I tried a small taste of the chowder.

Now I'd never even seen clam
chowder before, but this tasted so good, like thick buttery gravy with the
slightest taste of salty sweet clams. I guess Barney had a right to brag.

My fries were not quite cool enough
to pick up, so I took a sip of diet cola. It tasted so nasty I had to force
myself to gag it down. "Ughh," I said, pushing the glass away.
"That's horrible."

Lila smiled a satisfied little
smile and offered me her lemonade. I drank some to get the nasty taste out of
my mouth.

"There's something wrong with
it," I said.

Lila nodded.

Just then the waiter stopped by to
see if everything was okay, and I said my drink tasted wrong.

"Diet, right?" he said.

I nodded.

"No problem," he said,
and he brought a new one right away.

The new one tasted just as nasty. I
felt my mouth had betrayed me. Diet cola had been my main staple food before I
got to Oregon. What had happened?

As if she read my mind, Lila said,
"You've been off artificial sweeteners for nearly three weeks. Your taste
buds woke up. When you're healthy, your body rejects poison, even if you've
been addicted to it all your life. You're healthier now. Be grateful."

I was grumpy for a minute, but as
soon as I bit into a hot, salty French fry, I got over it. No wonder people
drove from all over the country to eat at Barney's! The food was scrumptious.
Between us, Lila and I ate all the fish, most of the chowder, and most of the
fries. Even the tartar sauce was homemade and delicious.

"When my mom comes," I
said, "we can bring her here."

"Indeed," Lila said.
"Mark and Jamie love it, too."

"How much does Janice know
about Mark and Jamie?" I asked.

"Your mother and I have talked
over the years, and of course my holiday letters. I don't think she'd want to
be here when they are visiting, though. It might bring up painful
memories."

"How did he die?" I
asked.

The waiter interrupted then to
thank us and give us the bill. "You can pay on your way out," he
said, and he had our table cleared before we could gather our stuff to go.

We put our things in the car and
walked along the narrow beach that wound all around the little bay so we could
let our lunches settle and study the seals. There were babies lumped among the
adults on the part of the beach that seemed reserved for seals. The babies
looked so helpless I didn't see how they could make it in the wild dangerous
world.

"When Terry became pregnant
with Jamie, she turned up the pressure on David. I think they'd had a brief
time where they were trying to forgive each other and get on with their life
together, but that time didn't last long. She wanted him to get a better job,
work longer hours. She wanted a house of her own. She wanted a good provider.
David was not ambitious though. He was easy going. He loved to fish and play on
the floor with Mark. He could never be the kind of husband Terry wanted.

"David used to drop by the
barber shop and have coffee with your grandpa and me if he was making a
delivery in our part of town, so we visited a lot. He did his best to be
cheerful and positive around us, but there was a deep sadness in him. We didn't
know how to help, so we prayed and loved him."

"It's so painful to talk
about," she said.

It was painful to hear about too,
but no matter how painful, I needed to know.

We stood looking across at the
seals a while. I couldn't figure out their pattern for getting in and out of
the water. Maybe they got too hot on the shore? Did they get hungry? Sometimes
an isolated adult would lumber down to the sea, swim out several yards, then
dive underwater. There were so many seals in the bay that I couldn't tell when
a particular one would surface after a dive.

Other times as many as six adults
would all go in together, like a team. The babies stayed on shore, and it seemed
the adults ignored them.

Seal babies probably never worried
about their fathers. Mothers meant survival, and when you are that small and
helpless, survival is all that matters.

"David showed up one day at
the barbershop with a motorcycle," Lila said. "In high school he had
pestered us for a motorcycle, but we'd refused. He was used to us giving him
everything, so he was furious about us saying no for once. A lot of the farm
kids he went to school with had snowmobiles and dirt bikes, so he thought we
were being unreasonable.”

"So there he was,” she said, “twenty-six
years old, with a big grin on his face and a new toy."

"'Don't tell Terry,'" he
told us. "'Gerald needed money for more darkroom equipment, so he
practically gave it to me. Isn't she a beauty?' Gerald was David's best friend
since kindergarten. They'd played baseball together in high school, and they
worked together at the lumberyard.”

"David was as light and giddy
as a child,” Lila said. “His sadness had completely evaporated, but I had a
horrible feeling in my stomach. Ray went outside and admired the motorcycle
with David for a few minutes, while I stayed in the shop and watched them
through the window. After David put on the shiny blue helmet that matched the
bike, he waved goodbye to me."

Listening to Lila, I had a horrible
feeling in my stomach. I didn't want her to go on. I felt I was back there
watching it, the way you watch a movie and you know something terrible is
coming and you have to close your eyes and cover your ears.

Suddenly I was so cold my teeth
were chattering. "Can we go back to the car, Grandma? I'm cold."

"Yes, sweetheart," she
said, touching my arm. "Oh, you're freezing!" She took off her
sweater and draped it over my shoulders like a shawl. It felt like a live
thing, heavy, warm, and fragrant.

We sat in the car in the crowded
parking lot, and the sunlight coming in through the windows warmed me quickly.
When Lila was sure I was warm enough, she told me the rest.

"That was the last time we saw
him alive," she said. "I try to console myself with the picture of
how happy he was at that moment, the moment he waved goodbye to us.”