Lila Blue (21 page)

"David saved my life," he
said. "And you. You saved me from spending how many more miserable hours
in the cove by myself? My baby sister and my dead father saved my stupid
dumb-ass life."

He started laughing then, and so
did I. We laughed so hard Lila and Jamie came in to see what all the commotion
was about. They pulled up chairs and Mark told them about David telling him to
stand up and helping him to the tree.

One detail of the miracle he'd left
out before was how his backpack got to the tree.

"As soon as I broke my ankle,
I took off the pack and threw it as far as I could up onto the beach. It only
went six feet, so I knew I'd have to leave it. When the coasties found me, my
pack was safe and dry right beside me. The canteen was empty, so I'd drunk the
water without knowing it."

"Now it's Saint David's
Cove," Jamie said, and we all agreed that was a wonderful way to
commemorate the miracle.

When we'd all laughed and cried
some more, Lila said, "Okay, babies, party's over. The nurses will be in
soon. We all need to sleep before Terry and Rich get here." She kissed
Mark goodbye and Jamie hugged him and I bowed, "Namaste, Brother."

Before we left, I said, "Why
did you decide to tell me?"

Mark grinned at me. "Because
the last thing David said to me was, 'Compliment your sister on her new
hairstyle.'"

"Impossible!" I said.
"I didn't even know I was getting a new hairstyle until Molly grabbed me
at the shop."

"I guess nothing is impossible
when you're dead," Jamie said. We all laughed so hard that one of the
nurses came and kicked us out of the hospital.

As we were leaving, Mark said,
"Hey, Cass."

I turned around to see what he
needed.

"I like your hair," he
said.

"Thanks," I said, because
sometimes I'm like Zoe. I like to have the last word.

Jamie slept in the car on the way
back home, and I tried to be alert to help Lila stay awake, but I kept dozing
off too. There was almost no traffic and no rain or fog, so we were home by
three in the morning.

As soon as we got home, Lila called
Terry and Rich on their car phone. I still couldn't believe people could have a
telephone in a car. Didn't you have to have phone lines?

Anyway, they were driving into
Portland, where they were going to stop for food and coffee and then drive
straight to the hospital. They'd arrive there about sunrise.

I was so grateful when my head hit
the pillow in my little bedroom, I went to sleep whispering thank you thank you
thank you.

The sound of laughter woke me up
out of a swimming dream. After the big wave dream, I would have been happy to
forget my dreams, but it was like a rusty old faucet had been broken open and
dream images poured through my brain as soon as I closed my eyes for sleep.

In the swimming dream, I am
underwater in a river, swimming like a fish that breathes water. I have gills,
even though I'm still me. I'm the only human fish that I see, and the other
fish accept me and swim around me so we are a school. They are all beautiful
blues and greens and yellows and purples, but I'm just me. The sound of
laughter in Lila's house mixed in with my dream, so the fish were all laughing
and happy and excited, because something wonderful was happening.

I got up not knowing if I was awake
or asleep. It was only six-thirty in the morning, and there was definitely a
party. I peeked out of my room and sure enough, the living room was crowded
with people. Molly came and slipped into my room with me.

"Jamie's seal is gone,"
she said. "Her mom came and got her. Mrs. Mulligan saw them together on
the beach at first light, and she watched the baby follow her mom into the sea.
She lived!"

"Jamie's baby," I said.
"Is he awake?"

"Yes," she said.
"Come on, get dressed. There's food and everything."

Jamie was tucked in afghans in the
middle of the couch looking out to the beach where he'd first seen the baby
only four mornings before. It seemed like months had passed in between.
Everyone in the house was smiling and laughing and recounting stories about how
their relatives in Iowa couldn't believe the whole village was defending a baby
seal.

Ronny from the bakery was serving
everyone from a tray of fresh scones and donuts, and Mrs. Mulligan was pouring
hot cocoa and coffee from her station in the kitchen.

"It was a blessing to see them
swim out through the waves together," she said to Molly and me when she
handed us cups of chocolate. I recognized her then as the lady who said she
would light candles and pray for the baby. It seemed right that she was the one
who saw the happy ending to the story.

Molly and I circled back to the
living room. "Where's Lila," I asked Curtis, who was sitting in
Lila's desk chair.

"I don't know," he said,
nodding to Molly. "We got here a few minutes ago." I saw he had a
book in his hand.

"My friend Shelly is coming
all the way from Wisconsin to meet you," I told him.

"Me? Why?"

"I told her you were a famous
Reading Poster Boy."

"What?" he said.

"I had to get her out here
somehow."

He grinned, shook his head, and
opened his book. "You girls are always cooking up something. As long as it
doesn't involve braiding my hair."

We laughed and went up to the
Crow's Nest to see what we could see from there. It was strange to see people
walking their dogs in front of our house again. No signs, no guards, as if the
seal had never been there. She was safe, as safe as anyone could be in a huge
ocean with her mother.

"Molly, do you think seals
have guardian angels?"

"Sure," she said.
"We all have spirit helpers. Bradley talks to his sometimes when he's
working on his Legos. He has a creation committee who give him ideas for what
to build next. Sometimes they even fight, so he lectures them about speaking
respectfully to each other."

 "Mark told us that David
helped him get across the beach in the cove."

"We heard he got rescued. He
saw your father?"

"He didn't see him, but he
said he could hear him and feel him. It was a miracle he made it all the way to
the waiting tree from the edge of the cliff."

"Wow," Molly said.
"That's so far."

"He said when the rescuers
found him, his backpack was on the ground right beside him. He'd thrown it off
as soon as he broke his ankle."

"Definitely spirit
helpers," Molly said, nodding her head.

"How did you know about Mark
being in trouble?" I wondered if Marta had called everyone.

"After Lila found out the
rescue guys spotted Mark from the helicopter, she called my mom, who got the
word out to the whole village. I think the celebration downstairs is for Mark
being safe even more than for the seal."

"Maybe the seal pup's angel
was the one who woke up Jamie the first morning," I said.

"That makes sense," Molly
said.

"That crazy woman might have
stolen the seal baby for a pet or a science experiment."

Molly nodded. "Jamie saved her
life."

We heard the door downstairs open,
so we went back to the big round window that overlooked the street behind the
house. Everyone was leaving at once, it seemed. Lots of people had walked, and
they were headed back toward home, still laughing and chatting in groups.
Others got in their cars and drove off to work or wherever they normally needed
to be early on Thursday morning.

Molly and I went downstairs to find
Lila and Curtis sitting on either side of Jamie on the couch. Everyone else had
left. We went to sit on the floor near them, and pretty soon Chloe and Zoe came
and joined us. They'd been hiding under Lila's bed during the party. They both
jumped up on Jamie's lap and purred and kneaded the afghan covering his legs.
He petted them and rubbed noses with them while the rest of us enjoyed watching
them together.

Molly and Curtis left soon after
that, and Lila called the hospital. They said Mark was fine. Terry and Rich
were with him, and after Lila talked with Terry a few minutes, she hung up the
phone and said to Jamie and me, "We should go back to bed."

So we did.

That afternoon Terry and Rich
checked into the resort down the street. They brought Mark with them, and Jamie
and Lila and I walked down to see them after they got Mark situated in the
room. He had a cast on his right leg from his toes to his knee, and he had to
use crutches to get around. They were all exhausted, so we stayed long enough
to see they were okay, and then we went home.

After we ate a light lunch, we had
plenty of energy to go back and play in the resort swimming pool. We were the
only people using it, so Jamie decided to do as many cannonballs as he could.
Lila and I swam with our heads above water at the other end of the pool. It was
hard to believe it had only been two weeks since we'd been there the first
time.

"How come time doesn't behave
itself?" I asked Lila.

"What do you mean?"

"In some ways the last two
weeks seem like years," I said. "In other ways they seem like two
days. How is that possible?"

"Hmm," she said, nodding
in agreement. "I think it's because clock time and natural time are
completely different, almost from two different universes."

"Like science fiction," I
said.

"Maybe, but maybe more like
dream time and machine time. Clock time is a relatively new concept that humans
made up. It came with the mechanical revolution, when logic gained supremacy
over magic.”

I shook my head, trying to
understand how magic had anything to do with it.

Lila smiled at me and said, "Ancient
peoples observed the seasons and the moon's progress around the earth, so their
time was connected to big natural events. They didn't divide up the time from
one sunrise to the next in equal segments so you would have the illusion that
one segment was as important as the next. This is getting too technical for
you, isn't it Cassandra." She swam without speaking for a while, and I
kept up, trying to sort out how her answer related to my question.

I said, "You mean one clock
hour dreaming and one clock hour sitting in a boring class and one clock hour
reading a book and one clock hour stranded in the cove with a broken foot are
not equal in a real way, only in a made-up logical machine way?"

"Precisely."

"Oh," I said, but I
wasn't satisfied. "But how come it feels so weird, Grandma?"

"Because our culture values
machine time, so we accept it as real, meaningful, and true. It's a faulty
premise, a wrong belief that everyone accepts as true. When our real life
experience points out the error, it disturbs us. It rubs us the wrong way. Our culture
values logic, sometimes above truth, beauty, goodness, justice, and grace. It
takes a brave person to see the truth. Sometimes a courageous person is like
the child who says the emperor has no clothes."

"The fairy tale," I said.
"When one innocent child sees the truth and says it out loud, everyone
else's eyes are opened."

"That's the miracle,"
Lila said. "That's how one person can change the world."

Everything was quiet after that. We
rested after our swim, then joined Terry and Rich and Mark in their hotel suite
and had room service bring us dinner. It was fun to eat hotel food for a
change. I had a club sandwich with potato chips and a strawberry milk shake.

Mark seemed relaxed and happy. I
think the pain medication was strong, because he was spacey and silly.

Terry and Rich fussed over him,
making sure he was comfortable and had the best ocean view. He was the prince
surrounded by adoring subjects. Getting hurt had it rewards.

Jamie told his parents all about
the baby seal protection project, and how happy he was this morning when the
baby was strong enough to swim out to sea where she belonged.

Lila and I said goodbye to Mark and
Rich there, and Terry and Jamie came back with us to pack the boys' things.
They would leave early in the morning for home.

Jamie and I went down to the beach
to say goodbye to the sun and to each other. We sat on a heavy drift log near
our sea wall and watched the sky change colors. The sun melted into an
hourglass and then a pyramid and then a gold brick resting on the horizon. We
didn't say anything. We watched until the last brilliant orange pinpoint of
light slipped into the sea, flashing a brilliant green light that shot two
beams of green out from the center point up into the sky like searchlights.

With the afterimage of it still on
my brain, I looked at Jamie and his expression mirrored mine. "The green
flash!" we cried.

Jamie jumped up and grabbed my hand
to hoist me off the log. "Let's see if the others saw it," he said,
and I ran up the stairs after him.

Lila met us on the porch. "The
green flash," she said, jumping up and down, clapping her hands, and
yipping her coyote yip.

Jamie called the hotel. Mark and
Rich had been watching the sunset too, but only Mark saw the green flash. Rich
thought Mark was teasing him when he cried out, so Mark was thrilled that we
had seen it. Jamie went upstairs to ask his mom if she saw it, but she had been
packing clothes and didn't see the last few minutes of sunset.

When Jamie came back downstairs, he
said to Lila, "Maybe it was David giving us a sign, because we're the only
ones who could see it."

"Yea," I said. "It
could be him saying goodbye until the next time we're all at the beach
together."

"Isn't life grand, my
darlings?" Lila said, hugging us both to her. "Anything is possible.
Everything is a miracle. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Delight in every
moment."

After Jamie and Mark left,
everything got so quiet it was strange. I tried to remember what we did before
they came, but everything felt weird. Lila's house seemed different having had
them in it.

I hibernated for the weekend,
staying indoors with the cats and feeling restless. The cats were fine. They
were good teachers for "going with the flow" and "being here
now," which Lila said were wonderful spiritual practices. Siamese cats
must be highly evolved spiritual beings then, because they were happy napping,
washing themselves, and looking beautiful and serene. I, on the other hand,
must have been on the spiritual level of a flat worm. All I did was wiggle
around for two days.

Sunday morning in a fit of nerves I
decided to do something about my braids. They were more than a little ratty
looking, so I took them out, saving the beads in a shell dish on the bathroom
counter. If my hair had been wild before the braiding, now it was truly insane
looking, so I spent several minutes making goofy faces at myself in the
bathroom mirror.

I took a hot shower and scrubbed my
hair and scalp good, and then got dressed and decided to try my own braids. The
most I could manage was Pocahontas style pigtails, which were kind of cute. I
even got the glass beads on right to decorate the very ends of the braids.

"Very nice," Lila said
when I finally emerged from the bathroom an hour later.

She gave me plenty of space and was
her regular cheerful self, but I thought she missed the boys, too. She only saw
them three or four weeks a year. Plus this time she didn't get much time alone
with them, because I was involved, reacting to everything and needing her
support. I hoped I hadn't been a nuisance.

When she went to work Sunday
afternoon, I called my mom. We hadn't had a long talk since before Mark and
Jamie came.

"Mom," I said. "I'm
glad you're home. How are you?"

"Oh. Sandy. It's you. I was
wondering when you'd have time for me again."

"Mark and Jamie left
Friday," I said, ignoring her foul mood, "so it's pretty quiet around
here. How are you?"

 "Baby, put Lila on the phone.
I need to talk to her."

"She's at work. Do you want
her to call you when she has a break?"

"Who's there with you,
Sandy?"

"No one, Mom. The cats. We're
fine. This is a very safe place. I know practically everyone in town
already."

"I want you home this instant,
young lady. You are never to stay by yourself. You know that."

"Mother, I'm twelve years old.
People have babies when they're my age. I'm almost grown."

"You're not pregnant, are
you?" she said, sounding completely insane.

"Of course not,” I said. “Mom,
are you okay? You don't sound right."

"How would you sound if you
lost your job and your car?"

"Mom? Are you hurt? What
happened?"

"I was sick of that job
anyway."

"You always liked the club.
What happened?"

"I need to talk to Lila."

"I'll ask her to call you
tonight," I said, feeling cautious and estranged from her. I didn't really
want to know what had happened, because I was sure there was nothing I could do
about it.

"Baby, you still love me,
don't you?" she asked. Her pitiful voice penetrated my guard and tugged at
my heart.

"Of course I love you. You're
my mom. I've always loved you and I always will. What happened?"

"They said I was drunk on the
job. I wasn't drunk. Maybe I had a few, but I was stressed out from the extra
hours. What did they expect?"

"Mom, are you home by
yourself? Is someone with you? Do you need anything?"

"I'm not in the mood for your
attitude,” she said. “Tell Lila to call me."

"Okay," I said. "Can
I do anything?"

"Stop feeling sorry for me. I
can't stand it when you do that." She hung up the phone without saying
goodbye.

I was so worried I tried calling
back, but she didn't pick up. I called Grandma Betty's number but she wasn't
home. I thought about calling my mom's sisters, but they had their hands full
with jobs and kids, and they'd never been able to help me before. Grandma Betty
complained that her three daughters competed for whose life was the most
screwed up.

Then I called the number for Barb,
my mom's friend from work. There was no answer. I didn't know what else to do,
so I did Lila's favorite thing. I prayed.

Maybe my dream was right. Maybe my
mom was lost, just like Mark had been. Maybe she needed a miracle to help save
her life. I hoped the angels and spirit helpers would be there for her and help
her get where she needed to be. But I did not want to be with her now, not for
anything.

I loved Janice, but if she was drowning,
I didn't want her to take me with her. I wanted to live.

I held myself back from running to
Lila's shop. She'd already had to close her business early because of grandkid
emergencies. I didn't want to make a habit of it.

Besides, what could Lila do? Send
money? I didn't think money could fix the kind of problems my mom had.

I prayed for us all to be safe,
healthy, and happy. I knew it was right to pray for those things, but I also
had a very selfish wish that I prayed would come true. I wanted to stay with
Lila Blue. I wanted to live at the beach and make a good life for myself. I
wanted to live.

It was not yet three o'clock, so I
needed to do something for three hours. I couldn't concentrate on reading a
book, there was no TV or radio, and I'd already walked on the beach, read my
dictionary, and written in my journal. I decided the best thing to do was go
see what was happening in the village.

I popped my head in Lila's shop to
tell her where I was headed, and she smiled and nodded. She was cutting
someone's hair, a lady I recognized from the seal watch crew, but I didn't know
her name.

When I went in The Salty Dog, Les
was cleaning the taffy machines getting ready for a new batch. Each batch took
about two hours, so she could get another one done and clean everything before
closing time at six. There were no customers, and Kim was in the back room with
Sailor, doing paperwork at the big desk there.

I peeked in to visit them, and
Sailor came to me. She was so gentle she reminded me of a deer. She slipped her
head under my hand and lifted up, inviting me to pet her. She was so grateful,
how could anyone resist?

Kim said, "I see Lila is
working her regular shifts again."

I nodded.

"Is it hard to adjust to the
boys leaving?" she asked.

"A little," I said.
"It's weird, because I barely know them, but it seems we did so much
together. I wonder how it feels for them."

"Maybe like a dream," Kim
said. "When we get back from a vacation, I always feel it didn't really
happen, I just dreamed it."

"Lila said some people believe
all of life is just a kind of dream," I said, hoping I didn't sound too
weird.

"Lila's a very wise
woman," Kim said.

"How long have you known
her?"

"It was a coincidence, or
maybe fate," Kim said, "but Les and I opened our shop the very week
Lila opened hers. We helped each other right from the start. She taught us so
much about keeping our business records, making schedules, and spending our
advertising money wisely. It was her idea to have the ledge outside so children
could see us make taffy from out there. She helped us get permission from the
county officials. She's one of the most generous, good natured people we've
ever met."

"She's helped me a lot
already," I said. And then because it was so easy to talk to Kim, I said,
"I hope I can stay here when school starts."

"That would be
wonderful!" Kim said.

Then I saw I was keeping her from
her work, so I went back to the front part of the shop where Les had just
finished cleaning the machines and mopping the floor in the work area.

"Cassandra," Les said.
"Just the person I wanted to see."

"What did I do?" I asked,
smiling at her.

"Ask not what you've done, but
what you can do," she said.

"What can I do, then?" I
asked, thinking if I dug myself a deep enough groove in the village, nothing
could pry me out.

"You can come learn the
business so Kim and I can run off to Tahoe for a vacation."

"Right," I said. "I
knew you were the gambling types." I was sure they'd never even put one
nickel in a slot machine, much less gamble. My mom was a gambler. I knew what
she was like.

"Now don't be sassy with
me," Les said. "If you must know, we go for the skiing and fine
dining. We don't squander our hard-earned taffy money on booze and card games."

"That's a relief," I
said, washing my hands carefully in their big sink in the back and coming to
stand by her at the metal monster. "I'm ready if you are," I said,
feeling pretty intimidated by the whole process but willing to learn everything
I could.

"It's pretty simple,
really," she said. "I learned it, so I'm sure you can. If you want to
watch this batch, I'll talk us through it step by step."

"Sounds good," I said,
really meaning it. I could see myself waving to the folks outside and calling,
Welcome to The Salty Dog. Best saltwater taffy on the Oregon Coast!

They were low on three flavors, so
Les let me pick which one to do, and I picked Lucky Lemon, my current favorite.
I'd eaten so many of those, maybe
I
was the reason they needed more.

It did look pretty easy, really.
There was a recipe for the syrup, and I was good at following recipes from all
the cooking Lila and I had been doing. The industrial size portions were a
little shocking at first. Instead of one cup of sugar, five pounds of sugar.

Getting the syrup at exactly the
right temperature and consistency was a little tricky, because humidity and air
temperature and barometric pressure and all sorts of things affect candy, so
Les said you had to go with feel, experience, and intuition. "I'm an
expert now," she said, "but I had a few disasters when we first
started out."

Kim, who had returned to the shop
area, said, "Remember three strikes?"

They both laughed.

Les said, "I had to throw out
three batches in a row. It was our first season and we were counting every
penny. We both cried ourselves to sleep that night."

I looked at Kim. "No," I
said.

"It's true," Kim said,
nodding her head. "We did. I think we were scared, tired, and overwhelmed,
and we both melted down at the same time."

"Usually we take turns melting
down," Les said, "which makes everything easier. Someone's always
left standing to steer the ship."

"We do okay," Kim said,
smiling the sweetest smile at Les.

I was struck with the sudden
knowledge they were lovers. It hadn't entered my mind until I saw Kim's smile,
and at that moment, I knew without a doubt. I felt very wise, worldly, and
proud I'd noticed something so grown up all by myself.

I wondered if Lila knew. I felt
almost dizzy with this grownup knowing, and I wondered if kids go around all
the time missing stuff adults know. I knew it was the other way around of
course, that kids knew lots of stuff adults didn't, like which girls in class
pretended to be kind but were really sneaky and cruel.

"When the taffy syrup is exactly
right," said Les, "you open this valve and let it run into another
part of the machine where it is cooled and stirred until it is right for
pulling."

Most of the process was automatic,
but you had to pay attention at critical times and make sure the taffy didn't
jump off the pull arms and stuff like that.

"Think of it as watching six
little kids on the playground," Les said, seeming to enjoy herself in the
role of teacher. "Most of the time they're fine on their own, but
everything can fall apart in a nanosecond."

"I'd rather deal with this
monster than six kids," I said, thinking of the times I had to look after
all my little cousins at Grandma Betty's house.

"Good girl," she said.
"Spoken like a taffy maker."

The two hours went very quickly,
and the entire time I wasn't worried about my mom. I wanted to remember that
learning something new helps take your mind off your troubles. It helps to be
around relaxed, funny, loving people, too. It helps very much.

I thanked Kim and Les and left
their shop with some still warm Lucky Lemons. Life was sweet indeed.

Lila was locking up her shop when I
got there. She touched the base of the barber pole outside the door, the way
she did every time she came and went, and this time I asked her why she did
that.

"It's my touchstone," she
said. "In some cultures people have a small ceramic tile or figurine at
the entrance to their home or business, and every time they come and go, they
touch it and say a prayer to keep their place safe, prosperous, and holy. Ray's
barber pole is my touchstone."

I touched the pole in the same
place, praying for safety and happiness, and then we turned and started walking
home together. Usually she took her car, in case she needed it for errands, but
she didn't need it today, so we took our time walking home through a misty
rain.

"Don't you look bright,"
she said, smiling at me. "What did you do?"

"Les taught me to make
taffy," I said. "I loved it, Grandma. I could be a candy maker if I
wanted to. It's not that hard. I watched this whole batch." I held up the
bag and offered her one of the still warm candies.

She took a piece, sniffed it and
smiled. "Lemon. Your favorite." She unwrapped the candy and put the
whole piece in her mouth, and I followed her example. There's something about
fresh taffy that makes conversation impossible and unnecessary. It consumed us.

Chloe and Zoe met us at the door,
and we all entered together. Just as we stepped inside, the phone rang. The
sound of it paralyzed me, because I was afraid it was Janice with bad news, or
worse yet, someone else with bad news about Janice.