Portion of the Sea (22 page)

1892

Ava

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him
.

—James 1:5

Orange-crowned warblers and orioles were frequenting the island, and it was fall. I was walking through the mudflats to get to school, appreciating the migrating songbirds, when all of a sudden what I thought was a wild creature came running up behind me, sending me splashing down with fright. It was Jaden.

“Look what you made me do,” I said. “This isn’t what a lady is supposed to look like on her first day of school.”

“I didn’t think you were a lady,” he said with a smile. And when I wiped my dirty, glaring face with the sleeve of my blouse, he gave me a hand and pulled me up. “Let me rephrase that. You’re too fun to be a lady.” I took that as a compliment, but when he tried brushing dirt off my behind, I turned and slapped him across the face.

“Don’t you dare!” I scolded. “I may be more fun than any other lady, but I still share the ladylike morals.”

“Fine,” he said. “But there was a grunt worm on your behind.”

“No!” I laughed.

“Yes. You want me to find it?”

“Forget it. Why were you running so fast? We’re not late for school, are we?” I asked.

“No, but I spotted tracks way back there and knew they were yours. I wanted to catch up with you.”

“Footprints? There’s no way. You couldn’t possibly have recognized them as being mine.”

“I did. You’ve got squiggly tracks, like those of a beetle.”

“I do?” I asked, looking behind me.

“Yeah. It tells me you’re not dull. You don’t walk a straight line.”

“What about your tracks?” I asked, looking back at the soft ground behind him.

“I don’t know. You tell me. What do they look like to you?”

“Full-foot prints,” I said.

“That’s right, like those of a tortoise. It means I place both heel and toe into the ground. I’m not in a hurry. I want to enjoy my walk to school, the slower the better. I couldn’t care less if I’m late. People are in such a hurry to learn what a textbook has to teach that they miss what nature is trying to teach them. There’s wisdom in nature, you know?”

I laughed. “I want to believe you, but you looked like you were in a hurry to me, the way you charged toward me like that.”

“I was only hurrying in hopes I might catch you. But I’m not hurrying any more now that I’ve found you.” He was blushing, which I hadn’t seen him do before. After that, we made plans to wait for one another under a certain tree every morning and walk together the rest of the way. And neither of us ever missed a single day of school that year, or starting the next.

“Do you like school?” I asked him one early-October morning.

“Only my walks there with you.”

“What are you going to do when you’re done with school?”

“Fish.”

“I’m serious. What are your plans?”

“I told you, fishing.”

“What else?”

He moved his hands as if he were reeling in a catch. “Fish, then fish some more,” he said.

“You’ve got to do something other than fishing all day. I’m sure one of these years my daddy is going to need help with his land. He wishes he had a son.”

Jaden smiled. “I can’t wait for the day when I can tell your daddy I love you,” he said, pulling me off the trail and behind the trunk of a banyan tree.

“Don’t you dare tell him, not yet,” I cried. “They know I’ve crossed paths and walked to school with you a few times. But they think we walk with a group.”

“Then we’ll wait. By spring, we’ll tell them. They’ll be ready to hear it come spring, I’m sure.”

I didn’t want to tell Jaden that my parents might never be ready to hear it, or at least not until I’m in my thirties. I was still their only child, and I don’t think they’d ever fully accept my leaving them to go live with a man, albeit a husband one day.

“Doll face, you’re too beautiful to look so worried,” Jaden whispered in my ear, then kissed my neck. I took his hands in mine and led him back to the path so we could continue our walk to school.

“Maybe when you’re eighteen,” he said, “your daddy will understand. I’ll wait as long as I have to.”

Lydia

I held the page I had been reading close to my chest. “That’s it,” I whispered.

“Time. All I need is enough time. It’s okay to slow things down.” But it already hurt me thinking of him there at the pier this morning with no one to hand him coffee and stand by his side, or plant a quick kiss
on his cheek. But I’d have to stay away a little longer yet, at least about a week so my father might no longer suspect. And then I’d meet up with him again but not in the morning sunlight anymore. We’d have to come up with another time and place to meet. None of it was fair. My father didn’t even know Josh, but he knew well what he wanted his daughter marrying. He didn’t care whether it was a man I truly loved. He only wanted me marrying someone just like him, who loved money and work more than anything. And maybe I’d have settled with that, but now thanks to meeting Josh and to Abigail for sharing with me the traits that make a good man, I wanted differently for myself. That’s not to say any man would ever override my goals.

I continued to read in hopes Ava might further lead me in the right direction.

Ava

It didn’t matter that there were close to one hundred people living year-round on Sanibel. When Jaden and I walked to school together, I felt like we were the only two on the island—just us, and the wildlife, that is.

He taught me so much about nature that at times I felt it easier living in harmony with it than with people. There were so many mornings when I walked out my front door feeling bad for my mama or mad that no one could possibly understand the love I had for Jaden, but all of a sudden, once I reached our path and spotted him, I changed, like one of those frogs that change their colorings to match their surroundings. And I felt at peace. I felt invigorated beside him and walked with a hop in my step, occasionally glancing back at my tracks to make sure I was still human.

With Jaden by my side, I felt wilder and freer than any girl could ever hope to feel, soaring like one of those bald eagles in the sky. I felt eternally alive and beautiful as if I had discovered the Fountain of Youth and would continue loving him forever, simple and pure.

Together we trekked our way through autumns with the eagles courting above us in mid-air, then into winters when passing cold fronts cast
millions of seashells onto the ground below us. And always in the spring, like two shorebirds we walked wing to wing. I wanted to cry with the first drops of rain, for it meant summer was coming and school was ending. It was already hard enough each day after school when my tracks continued eastward toward my house and his turned and headed south.

Lydia

There was more to read, but I wasn’t ready. I tied the pages together and placed them back in the drawer as I had found them.

I sat there a moment, thinking about what I should do, but my mind was as indecisive as Florida’s summer sky. Come fall, I’d be leaving the island to start school. If I were to continue seeing Josh, he and I would be one of those long-distance love affairs, nothing like Ava and Jaden, living year-to-year on the same island.

“Ours would be trickier,” I said as I stood up.

“What would be trickier, dear?” Marlena asked me. I didn’t know she had been standing in the doorway.

“I wish I could stay and talk, Marlena, but I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to figure everything out.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“I don’t know. For starters, I’m going to read everything I can about the wildlife on this island. Ava and Jaden have inspired me like that. Then I’ll try and figure out what to do about Josh.”

“Can you come back tomorrow?”

“I’ll try,” I said. “It’ll be soon.”

XX

AS THE REMAINDER OF
the week and the following week sauntered by, I felt like one of those fanatical birdwatchers, for everywhere I went, my eyes were looking for Josh. And I thought I had spotted those eyes of his a few times, at the general store, the library, the beach, and the wildlife refuge. But they belonged to other creatures, ones I didn’t feel like watching.

I knew where to find him, perched on that pier every morning at sunrise. But I was still a coward when it came to Lloyd threatening to pull my finances. So I spent my mornings walking ankle-high in the water, searching for shells. I think it turned into an addiction, for I did it for hours and found it quite hard to stop, and, then, well into the night, I’d glue those shells to mirrors, heart-shaped boxes, picture frames, anything I could think of, and I considered talking to someone about the long hours I was putting toward this activity, but I figured no harm done, other than feeling tired the next morning.

I went to Bougainvillea often, carrying with me my morning bucket filled to the rim with shells. The bucket and the shells gave me more of a lift than a strong cup of coffee, but I still drank the coffee Marlena made for me whenever I arrived. She was the only person who made coffee nearly as good as I, and I greatly respected her for it, but I knew her secret. Double the amount of beans until it is dark as mud, and so after a few sips it has one believing she might conquer the world.

We drank coffee, talked, and laughed a lot. I stayed away from the yellow room with the wooden desk. I needed a break from Ava’s journal, and Marlena agreed. She saw the impact it was having on my life. I needed to make my own choices on loving Josh and didn’t want Ava’s romance with Jaden to influence my heart in any way.

“Have you heard anything from your agent?” I asked her one morning.

“No, and patience is not a virtue of mine.”

“Mine, either. It’s been eleven days since I last met Josh for a sunrise on the pier. You’d think he’d at least come find out what happened to me, don’t you?”

“One would think,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t know where you’re staying.”

“No. He knows.”

“Then maybe he’s busy.”

“No. He’s not.”

“Then you may not like what I’m about to say, but there’s one thing I know from my own personal experience and that’s when a man stops actively going after a woman, it means only one thing: The fish doesn’t like the bait any more.”

Those words pierced me, and I didn’t want to believe them to be true, so instead I asked Marlena about her own love life. She said she chose her dreams of becoming an actress over her love life, having dated numerous men throughout the years but always ending things before there was ever talk of marriage. I liked talking with Marlena. She told me good stuff, and I told her things I wouldn’t have told anyone else, and in doing so, I no longer felt as remote as I once did.

When I wasn’t laughing over at her place or compulsively gluing shells together, I was spending time with Lloyd. We had been enjoying a good amount of father/daughter time together in the evenings while our mornings and afternoons were our own. He went golfing or fishing, not on the pier, but out in a boat with a guide. And come evening, we’d catch a sunset together and then go out to a restaurant, which meant I was making dinner less and less. Somewhere between Tuesday’s Sloppy Joes and
Wednesday’s baked hamburgers, Lloyd decided he needed a break from my cooking. And so did I!

“I’ve been thinking,” he said over dinner at a restaurant. “Remember Leo Fairbanks?”

“Yes, that young guy you mentored at the bank some time ago? The one who said he gets along better with numbers than people?”

“That’s the one. You remember him, don’t you? I spoke to him the other day when I called the bank. He’s rising quickly.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, Daddy. Everyone you mentor rises quickly.”

“I guess, but he especially made a good impression on me, and when a young man does that, I enjoy investing my time in him for the betterment of the bank. I was thinking of inviting him out here for a visit. He’s not that much older than you.”

I put my fork down. It made a loud noise and people at the next table turned. “What are you trying to say?”

“You wouldn’t have to cook for him. I wouldn’t want you to. The three of us could go out for dinner every night. We’ve got three more months here. It might be nice to have company and for you to spend time with the right kind of man.”

I handed my plate full of food to the waiter and pushed the napkin off my lap and onto the floor. I was disgusted. He had put thought into it. He just didn’t get it after all this time that I didn’t want to marry a man for his money, his title, his education, nor the house he could buy me in the suburbs. And up until I met Josh, I didn’t think I wanted a man at all.

“Ever since we went fishing on the pier our first day here,” I said, “I haven’t been able to get Josh out of my mind. It’s time for me to step up and be honest with you, myself, and Josh.”

“Dear, you better get him out of your mind because I don’t think Josh is interested in you anymore—At least he wasn’t when I spoke to him last.”