Lila Blue (8 page)

"How was the taffy
adventure?" Lila asked me.

"Fun," I said. "I
sent a giant box to Shelly. She'll be so surprised."

"And what's this?" she
asked, as I handed her the white bag full of taffy.

"Compliments of The Salty
Dog."

Lila took the sack and scrabbled
around in it until she'd retrieved all the Maple Syrups. "These are my
favorite," she said. "Did you try one?" She offered one to me,
but I declined.

"I tried enough," I said.
"So far, Vanilla Bean is my favorite. Lucky Lemon is a close second,
though."

"Maybe I should branch
out," she said. "Never good to run too deep a groove for
yourself." She exchanged some of her Maple Syrups for some of the others
in the bag. "And licorice for Herbert," she said, making a pile of
the gray candies on a clean paper towel in the middle of his freshly scrubbed
counter.

New customers came in, and after
watching haircut after haircut, I felt sleepy, so I said goodbye to Lila and
Herbert and walked back to the beach house through a chilly damp wind under
cloudy skies.

There was no rain, though, and as I
stood on the porch ready to use my key, an enormous full triple rainbow
appeared over the ocean. It was so close, so sudden, and so beautiful that I
gasped.

While I stood entranced, staring at
the dense bands of light that seemed heavy and solid, tears came to my eyes and
ran down my face. My heart ached with happiness, and something deep in my belly
expanded until I was as big as a dragon. For the very first time in my life, I
felt grateful to be alive.

After that, everything was easy for
a while. Lila and I walked on the beach most mornings, even when it poured
rain. We ate breakfast together some days, and other times we took care of
ourselves, rule number three.

Lila kept her retirement work
schedule, unless Herbert called to say it was slow on one of her half days.
Slow days were usually sunny days, because everyone flocked to the beach when
it stopped raining in Rainbow Village. Those extra afternoons Lila spent more
time on her newspaper columns or corresponded with friends.

In the evenings, we did cooking
lessons, then we read or played backgammon or she played the piano and sang.
She encouraged me to sing along, and sometimes I did. She said I had a
beautiful voice, but I think she was being kind.

On the days she worked, when I felt
like being around humans, I'd walk to her shop or visit the others in Rainbow
Village. I liked all the shops, and it was fun to describe them later to Shelly
in my letters.

The Bakery Boys next door to Lila's
barbershop belonged to Paul, the dad, and his two sons, Ronny and Donny. Paul
and Ronny did most of the baking. Donny, the younger brother, was the runner.
He ran everywhere. They all looked alike, except Donny was about three-fourths
the size of his older brother and dad. Donny could not stand still. When he
wasn't actually covering ground, he ran in place.

My first time there, we passed him
when we entered the bakery, and after a quick hello and smile to me, he raced
across the highway in between traffic and ran down the side of the road toward
the south end of town. He was carrying a blue zipper bag.

"Is Donny off to the
bank?" Lila asked Paul, who came out from behind the counter to greet us.

He laughed. "Any excuse to run
out of here."

I found out later the bank was
three miles away.

"Donny has running in his
blood," Paul said, and you could tell he was proud.

Paul seemed to really like Lila. He
gazed at her the way you'd look at a movie star.

Ronny, the older brother, loved
baking. He barely glanced at me while he shaped bread dough into long skinny
loaves and put them on huge baking sheets. You could tell he'd made thousands
of loaves by the way his hands and body moved so effortlessly. The smell of
living yeast and flour was very comforting.

Along the front of their store was
a glass display case full of fresh scones, donuts, giant cookies, and all shapes
and sizes of bread and rolls.

On the top of the counter was a
loaf of bread that looked like a life-sized bunny rabbit. It was crouched down
with its ears resting against its back, and its eyes were plump raisins.

Paul gave us a tour of the oven
room and storage area in the back, and then he handed me a paper bag full of
bread and cookies, on the house.

The same thing had happened when
Lila had introduced me to Franny, the flower and gift shop lady, the day
before. Franny wouldn't let us leave until she'd given Lila fresh red
carnations for her hair and a bouquet of orange lilies for me, on the house.

Back in Lila's shop, I said,
"Don't people use money here?"

Lila laughed. "I cut
everyone's hair, so we have a casual barter economy. It's more fun than
money." Lila and all the Rainbow Village people did seem to enjoy each
other and their work.

Lila's village was like a fairy
tale compared to the way my mom worked. Janice was always exhausted and
stressed about her job, and her coworkers were always lying or stealing or
fighting over tips or having accidents. Lila worked in heaven and Janice worked
in hell.

Some days, instead of going to the
shops, I stayed at the beach house with Chloe and Zoe, who turned out to be
great companions when I wanted to talk to someone about what I was reading. And
reading was mostly what I did through the next week.

I gathered interesting titles from
the top shelf of the Crow's Nest library first. Lila had science fiction and
fantasy up there. Mysteries, biographies, and some westerns and historical
novels were on the second shelf. Next came psychology, physics, biology,
environmental science, geography, natural history, archeology, and other
college stuff.

The weird thing was, Lila hadn't
even gone to college, except barber college in Portland. When I asked her about
it, she said she'd tried a few college classes, but she decided books were her
best teachers. She said sometimes college teachers had limited life experience
and that lack warped their judgment.

I agreed with her there. Of all my
teachers so far, only two seemed as smart as I am, so what does that say about
the profession?

When I shared my observation with
Lila, she laughed and said, "Maybe it says something about you."

On the bottom shelf of the
bookcase, resting on the built in drawers below it, were the books about
philosophy, religion, and art, which Lila said were the foundation of
civilization. She had several versions of the bible and copies of other
scriptures she'd mentioned to me, like
The Bagavad Gita
,
The Tao te
Ching
,
The Koran
,
The Teachings of Confucius
, and
The
Buddha's Four Nobel Truths
. She also had books by Plato, Socrates, Rumi,
Wendell Holmes, Florence Scovil Shinn, Louise Hay, and Benjamin Franklin. A
thin paperback called
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
caught my
eye as well.

The art books were heavy glossy
coffee table books with gorgeous pictures of great art and commentaries in
small print about the artists' life and times. The art books made me wish
Janice liked to read, because I thought she would really enjoy them. One time I
heard her tell a boyfriend if she were rich she'd have a huge house filled with
modern art.

I didn't know how long I was going
to stay with Lila, so I concentrated on the top and bottom shelves of her
library. I was beginning to wish summer vacation would last forever.

I talked with Shelly nearly every
day on the phone. Salty Dog taffy was a hit at the lake house in Wisconsin.
Soon after they got it, Shelly sent me money and a shopping list of which
flavors to send, so I returned to The Salty Dog. When I walked in, Les told me
the job offer was still on. I smiled and told her no thanks. To myself I thought,
I already have a job wearing a nice little groove in Lila's beach house.

Shelly was getting tired of
waterskiing and of trying to keep boys from pestering her to death. Two of her
tall blond cousins, both in high school, appointed themselves bodyguards,
solving the boy problem for a few days. Then they both transformed into
slobbering idiots and competed for her attention, so she was doomed. I was
relieved to be tall and big-footed and gangly, and I felt a deep gratitude for
my insane orange hair. Being invisible to boys was a blessing.

My description of Lila's library
intrigued Shelly. Every time we talked, she'd send me on a scavenger hunt.

"Find out how long humans have
been on the planet," she said one day. "I'm trying to predict how
long it will take for boys to evolve beyond chimpanzees."

When I gave her the answer the next
day, she said, "Okay, what did Gauguin's family think of his naked lady
paintings?"

Necessity had forced Shelly and me
to progress to something more fun than game shows. I felt closer to her than
ever, even though we were a thousand miles apart.

I worried enough about the phone
bills though to talk to Lila about them. Rule number four,
Communicate
clearly and completely
. One morning while we walked barefoot on the beach, winding
along right where the water kissed the shore, I said, "My mom gave me some
money. I'll pay the phone bills." I hoped I had enough to cover the calls
I'd made so far.

"It's very considerate of you
to offer, Cassandra, but no thank you. It's such a joy having you here. I want
to pay for all our expenses.”

"I'm glad you and Shelly are
close," she said. "Sometimes long distance friendship can be the
sweetest, the most intimate. Something about all the miles in between cuts to
the heart of things."

"But long calls three times a
week?" I asked, wondering if I should try to cut back. Shelly's parents
were rich, and they traveled all over the world, so she always had plenty of
money for anything.

"More often if you like,"
Lila said. "Don't think about money, Cassandra. I have plenty. It's an
honor to share with my only granddaughter."

I nodded. A thought was sneaking
around in my head just beyond consciousness. I wasn't sure I wanted to know
what it was. Lila seemed lost in her thoughts, too, so we walked along in
silence a while, letting the water lick our toes.

Just then a huge wave knocked us
both down and rolled us up the beach, where it left us drenched and covered in
sand. I couldn't believe it. The waves weren't even big that day, just medium
sized and well behaved. Where had this monster come from?

I looked over to see if my grandma
was okay, and she was laughing so hard she couldn't get up off the foamy
debris-littered beach. She looked like a cartoon sea monster, complete with a
rope of brown kelp across her arm. My hair was plastered to my head with foamy
sand, so I must have looked pretty funny myself, because she took one look at
me and laughed so hard she had a coughing fit. She had to roll over and pound
on the sand until she could gather herself together enough to stand up.

"That was wonderful," she
said, lifting her arms to the sky. "Fabulous!" She came over to see
if I was all right. "That's why they're called sneaker waves. That giant
came out of nowhere."

I didn't see what was so fabulous about
being drenched in icy seawater and rolled in the sand like a jellyroll in
powdered sugar. My coat weighed about twenty pounds, so I sloughed it off and
starting wringing water out of it. Gritty water was trickling down my face and
into my eyes, and when I wiped it away, the sand scratched my cheeks. Plus I
was freezing.

"We better get home
quick," Lila said, still laughing. "We'll turn into pillars of
ice." She took off running ahead of me, nearly tripping on her soaked
denim skirt. Her sweater was hanging down to her knees, and she squeezed water
out of it as she ran.

"Wait for me, Grandma," I
yelled, and when she glanced back without slowing down, I didn't have any
choice but to run after her.

We still had little streams of
ocean running off us when we stood panting at her front door. Lila took my
jacket and dropped in on the porch and wrestled her sopped sweater over her
head and dropped it there too. She opened the door and pushed me in the
entryway ahead of her. "Undress here," she said, "and toss everything
on the porch. We'll deal with it after we've showered. You first," she
said.

When I came out after a quick
shower, she handed me hot cocoa with marshmallows on top and went to take her
turn in the bathroom. I sat on the couch wrapped in an afghan until my teeth
stopped chattering and I could drink my cocoa. The warm, sweet chocolate was
delicious, and I finally saw why Lila had laughed so hard. Mother Ocean sure
knows how to get a person's attention. No lollygagging allowed.

I tried to remember if we'd passed
anyone else on the beach before the wave got us, but I couldn't remember. I
hoped everyone else survived the sea monster as well as we did.

That afternoon when my mom called I
told her about the wave getting us.

"Are you sure you're okay, Sandy?"

"I'm fine, Mom. It was funny
really. How are you?"

"Lila should be more
careful," she said. "Are you safe there? Maybe you should come home.
It's too quiet around here."

"I'm safe. Don't worry,"
I said. "How's Roger?"

"I'm not sure." She
hesitated. "We haven't talked in a few days."

"Why? Are you drinking
again?"

She didn't answer, and I could
almost see her chewing on the cuticle of her right index finger. She nagged me
about biting my nails, but she had long fake nails so she bit her poor cuticles
bloody when she was upset.

"Mom," I said. "The
truth."

"The truth is I'm not sure
Roger is good for me. He's too rigid."

"You're drinking," I
said, and I didn't feel like talking to her any more.