The Beach House (6 page)

She nodded. “Thanks again, Eric—for everything.”

He didn't say anything, just smiled, gave her a quick wave, and left.

Watching him walk away, Julia was once again aware of how alone she was. The feeling had become as familiar as the road she would take back to Atherton. The odd part, what she hadn't realized until that moment, was how often the past week she'd forgotten.

PART TWO

June

Chapter 1

Margaret Sadler parked her ten-year-old Volvo in the driveway of the beach house and popped the trunk lid. She turned to her son and said, “Help me unload and then you can take that run on the beach.”

Chris opened the door, got out, and stretched. “Feel that?” Salt-laden air swirled around them, riffling his hair and the narrow leaves of the eucalyptus overhead. “I swear I'm going to live on the ocean someday.”

She started to make an automatic, flippant statement about the price of beachfront property but caught herself in time. Since her and Kevin's divorce three years ago, Chris had assumed a role she'd never asked of him and could do nothing to stop.

With the loss of his college savings and her income less than half what it was when she'd been married, Chris no longer talked about going to the University of Southern California or Stanford or Yale. He'd accepted that if he was ever to have a car of his own, he would have to pay for it himself. He had even taken a job in his uncle's restaurant to pay his own way to wrestling camp despite her rule about working during school. He rarely talked about the dreams that had once been as much a part of him as his wheat-colored hair and lanky, muscular build.

Margaret opened her own door and got out. The drive up from Fresno had left the car a bug-encrusted mess. She'd have to see what she could do to bribe Chris into washing it for her later. “Just remember when you get that house on the ocean . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Be sure it has an extra bedroom. You're going to have to put up with me visiting—a lot.”

“That's okay, you just have to remember to give me plenty of warning so I can clear out the beer and babes.”

Margaret laughed. “How thoughtful.”

“Hey, I'm a thoughtful kind of guy.” Chris waited for Margaret to open the trunk and then started unloading.

Ten minutes later he made his final trip. “What do you want me to do with this box?” he called out to her as he nudged the front door closed with his foot.

“What does it say on the side?” Margaret answered from the kitchen.

“C.S.”

“Cleaning supplies—bring it in here.”

Chris waited for his mother to move the flowers before he slid the box on the table, cut the tape, and peered inside. “I don't understand why you need all this stuff. The house always looks clean to me.”

“Which is precisely the way I want to leave it.” She took his arm and moved him out of the way.

“I'll bet everything you need is already here.”

“What's here belongs to Julia and K—” She stopped and waited for the quick stab of indignation to leave. Why was it the world was filled with cruel, unproductive people who would live to a hundred and a man like Ken died when he still had so much to give? “It's still hard to believe Ken's really gone. He was so young.” She handed Chris the cleanser and dishwashing soap and pointed to the cupboard under the sink.

“Yeah, five years younger than you and Dad.” He lowered himself to his haunches and popped up again with effortless grace. “How's Julia doing?”

She motioned for him to stay where he was and passed him the pine cleaner and bleach. “I thought about asking her, but it's such a dumb question.”

“I don't think so.”

“She's undoubtedly heard it a thousand times by now.”

“That doesn't make it dumb.”

“It's a rhetorical question, Chris, like saying ‘How are you?' when you're introduced to someone. I wanted her to know I cared more than that, but didn't know how to tell her.”

“Is that how you felt after you and Dad got divorced and people asked you how you were doing?”

When was she going to stop being surprised that he was no longer her little boy but a near adult with uncanny powers of observation? Had she done this to him? Had she made him a misfit in his own generation by letting him assume too much responsibility? “It's how everyone feels who's gone through a big change in their life.”

“You're not answering me.”

“What I felt is over and done with. When you spend all your time looking back—”

“You miss the opportunities ahead,” he finished for her.

She laughed. “I must have used that one before.”

“About a hundred times.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“It isn't true,” he again finished for her.

She handed him the last of the cleaning supplies and closed the box. “Put those away and get out of here before I unleash my entire repertoire of clichés on you.”

He made a movement as if to ward off impending blows. Finishing his task, he asked, “What are you going to do?”

She sighed in pleasure at the prospect of two whole hours with absolutely no demands on her. At home, between full-time school and part-time job with mother and homemaker thrown into the mix, she rarely had five minutes to call her own. “I should wash the car . . . but I'll probably read a book or, if the urge strikes, take a nap.”

Chris shook his head. “You really are getting old.”

“Watch yourself, young man. You're not too big to take—”

“I'm ready for you, Mom,” he challenged, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “I'll even make it easy on you, two out of three falls with one arm tied behind my back.”

“Don't you think for a minute I couldn't win. I just don't feel like taking you on right now.” She swatted him on the rear with a folded paper bag.

Of all the sports Chris could have chosen, he'd settled on the one Margaret liked the least. For three years she'd watched him wrestle the state's best on his way to the championship and had yet to comprehend how he could leave a match bruised and bloodied and smiling.

He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “I'm always telling the guys what a macho mom you are.”

She handed him the empty box. “Here, take this to the garage on your way out.”

He started to leave, but before he'd reached the living room, he turned and asked, “What time are they coming?”

Margaret glanced at the clock over the stove. “Beverly said their plane got in at three-thirty. Figure three hours to pick up the rental car and get through rush-hour traffic. That should put them here between six-thirty and seven—assuming they don't stop for dinner.”

She'd tried to sound as casual with her answer as Chris had with the question. She knew Chris wanted her to think he was over his near lifelong crush on Tracy. For the last ten of the sixteen years that the two families had spent each June together at the beach house, Chris had arrived with his heart on his sleeve, hoping, believing, that in the eleven months since he'd last seen Tracy she'd become the girl he desperately wanted her to be, that she would finally realize how he felt about her and maybe even reciprocate that feeling.

It was Margaret's hope that at the very least, Tracy had matured enough to let Chris down easily this time. His ego was like a newly sprouted seed, easy to nourish with a little encouragement and kindness, just as easy to destroy with the cold of indifference. At home he was completely oblivious of the girls who turned to watch him as he passed. The muscles he worked so hard to develop were for his sport. It never occurred to him to show them off. He was unfailingly polite, gentle, and caring. The kinds of qualities a woman looked for in a man, but that a girl thought boring in a boy.

“I don't understand why Beverly always insists on flying into San Francisco. San Jose is a lot closer.”

“It's a direct flight from St. Louis. She hates changing planes.”

“Beverly hates a lot of things.”

“Chris.”

“Well, it's true.”

“She has a lot of strong opinions,” Margaret admitted. “And she doesn't hesitate to express them. I suppose you could say she's a lot like Tracy that way.” She knew she was on dangerous ground even hinting that Tracy might be less than perfect.

Chris chose not to offer a defense. “Whatever.”

“If you don't get out of here, I'm going to find something for you to do.”

He held up his free hand in surrender and backed out the door. “See ya later.”

Margaret returned to the kitchen to put away the few groceries she'd brought from home—basic things for them to get by with until she and Beverly went shopping the next day. Chris tapped on the window as he rounded the house on his way to the beach. She smiled and waved and took a minute to watch him. After hitting the stairs, he disappeared for several seconds, then reappeared again, running through the soft sand on his way to the water's edge. He headed north toward the rocky outcropping that cut them off from the neighboring beaches, running with effortless strides.

As soon as she lost sight of Chris, Margaret left the window. She picked up the bouquet to return it to the table, adjusting a yellow rose that had fallen to the side. The mingled fragrances sparked a memory of the first time eight years ago when she'd arrived and found flowers on the kitchen table. For one glorious second she'd set aside logic and let herself believe Kevin had sent them to apologize for the fight they'd had before she and Chris took off to meet the McCormicks in Santa Cruz.

Kevin had been defensive and angry that she had dared to question him about a lipstick-marked cigarette butt she'd found in the ashtray of his car. When the argument escalated to her desire to go back to work and then to how she handled the household money, he abruptly announced that he was not going on their vacation that year. She and Chris could go alone.

Margaret had realized the flowers weren't from a florist at the same time Chris had stated the obvious—someone had picked them from the profusion of blooms that had been planted around the house.

Every summer since, unfailingly, there had been flowers to greet them, always accompanied by a note of welcome. This year, there were only flowers. She missed the note.

 

Chris made the turn at the outcropping and headed back down the beach. He ran a zigzag pattern, veering to step on kelp pods and broken sand dollars to hear them pop and crunch beneath his feet, stopping to watch a novice surfer take a header, and searching the faces of those he passed for one of the locals he'd come to know over the years.

He glanced up as he passed the house again, looking to see if his mother had come out on the deck. He worried about her—what she would do when he went off to college next year, if she'd ever find someone she liked, if the Volvo would last until she could afford a new car. She hated it when he told her she should get out more, that she was never going to find someone unless she put some effort into it.

He had to give her credit for leaving him alone about when he went out and who it was with. She never said anything, but it was obvious she knew about him and Tracy.

Him and Tracy?
What a joke. There was no more “him and Tracy” than there was him and Stanford or Yale or USC. All his life he'd figured both were a given eventually. For as long as he could remember, his dad had talked about the savings account he'd started the day his son was born to pay for Chris's college.

Although community property, at his mother's insistence, the account was not divided in the divorce but left intact for Chris's use later. Her only mistake was in trusting his dad to take care of the money. When his father remarried—a woman with three children of her own—the funds slowly began to disappear. Believing his father an honorable man, neither Chris nor his mother thought to check the account. Not until Chris went to make a deposit of the tips he'd saved from working at the restaurant did he learn the money was almost gone.

When he'd confronted his father at his office later that day, Kevin had asked Chris to try to understand how hard it was to deny his new family basic necessities. Besides, it wasn't as if there had been any formal agreement about the savings account.

Sure, Kevin had agreed the money should go to Chris for college, but at the time there'd been no way for him to foresee the financial circumstances he'd be faced with in the future.

Chris left through the company garage and did something he had never done before or since. He took the key to his mother's old, beaten-up Volvo, dug it into the front fender of his father's new red BMW, and walked the full length, trailing the key behind him.

It took Chris months to realize it wasn't the money he cared about, it was being burdened with a dream his father had instilled and then abandoned.

Now, with only a year to go before graduation, he still had no idea where he wanted to go to college or what he wanted to study. At seventeen how was he supposed to know what he wanted to do for the rest of his life? He wasn't even sure what he wanted to do tomorrow.

Lost in what had become depressingly familiar thoughts, Chris almost missed seeing a volleyball headed his way. More on reflex than intent, he lunged and hit it back. A guy with shoulder-length black hair, wraparound sunglasses, and a baseball cap with the bill facing backward received the ball and made a perfect spike over the net. The ball came back, to the server this time. He passed it to Chris, and without anyone saying a word, Chris was in the game.