Girl Out of Water(3)

“Oh, I do.”

As we leave the Shak and head back to the surf, his fingers graze against mine.

This time I don’t pull away.

? ? ?

Six hours later, I’m trailing up the sandy wooden walk to my house. My surfboard is damp and gritty under my tired arm, but the strain is good, the kind that tells me my muscles are growing, the kind that tells me this year I’ll be able to paddle longer and harder than ever before. The sun is half-set, the Santa Cruz horizon a mess of orange and red with the faintest hint of violet. The ocean reflects the light and resembles a giant bowl of pink lemonade.

I’m late for dinner. Very late. If the sun has almost slipped away, it must be close to nine. But Dad won’t mind. He understands the call of the water in the summer, when I can surf all day instead of cramming in a couple of measly hours before and after school. The few times he’s lectured me for staying out too late, I calmly reminded him that he was the one who bought his little girl a surfboard when she was seven.

And besides, there was no chance I was going to come home early tonight. Eric and I surfed together all day, catching wave after wave, taking breaks on the shore, digging our toes into the damp sand while discussing the details of each ride. As the day progressed, I felt him pulling closer. It wasn’t my imagination—the way I’d catch him watching me out of the corner of his eye, the way he’d sit next to me so that his bare shoulder would press against mine. Maybe wanting my friend of seventeen years isn’t so wild. Maybe I’m not the only one wanting it.

I readjust my grip on my board as I approach home, a ramshackle one-story house perched right behind the dunes. It’s a fourth-generation inheritance from my great-great-grandparents, a small and crumbling structure sitting on about a million dollars’ worth of prime beachfront property. Sometimes when the bills start stacking up, Dad considers selling and moving further inland, but then the construction company he owns will pick up a few extra jobs, and we’re in the clear.

Before heading inside, I grab our mail because Dad never remembers to get it. I tuck the stack of letters under my free arm and head into my garage. Like a true beachfront family, we keep the vehicles in the driveway and the gear in the garage. The entire two-car space is packed with surfboards, kayaks, paddles, as well as buckets and boogie boards for when my younger cousins visit, not to mention decades’ worth of beach chairs, umbrellas, and extra towels hardened from years of salt water.

After dropping off my surfboard, I enter the house through the garage door, which is unlocked like always. I call out, “You home?”

“In here!” Dad calls back.

As I follow his voice to the kitchen, I pick through the mail to see if SURFER Magazine came. It’s mostly bills and junk, but then I spot a postcard. The front side shows a picture of some bar called Kelsey’s in Reno, Nevada. I flip it over. The backside reads Dear Anise in handwriting I haven’t seen for years.

My mom’s handwriting.

“You coming?” Dad calls.

“One second!” My voice cracks and I clear my throat with a quick, tight cough. I slip the postcard into the entryway table’s junk drawer. I’ll read it in private after dinner, away from Dad’s prying eyes and questions: Are you okay, sweetheart? Let’s talk about it. I love you.

I head into the kitchen with the rest of the mail and find Dad sitting at the small, round table. A two-person family doesn’t need much eating space. When company comes over, we sit out on the deck, relaxing on the weathered patio furniture and watching the waves.

Instead of joining him at the table, I hoist myself up onto the kitchen counter, letting my feet dangle. I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and take a huge bite. Hunger never strikes in the water, but it sure as hell makes up for it later. I glance back at the entryway. My hand shakes—more of a tremor really, like my blood sugar is low. Hopefully Dad doesn’t notice.

“What’s up?” I ask and direct my attention back to him, taking another bite of the apple.

He looks more stressed than usual—the three lines on his forehead crunched a little deeper, his shoulders sagged a little lower. For forty-one, Dad’s in great shape, mostly from working construction during the day and then running the beach and practicing yoga in the evenings. But that hasn’t kept his hair from turning salt and pepper or the arthritis in his knees from kicking in. “Well…” he says slowly.

Fuck. My grip on the counter tightens. Dad is a come-right-out-and-say-it type of guy. For him, open and honest communication is the solution to just about every problem. He almost never picks his words carefully, and when he does, it’s never to share good news.

He leans forward on the table and clasps his hands together. “Now I don’t want you to worry,” he says, “because she’s going to be perfectly all right, but—”

My mouth goes dry. I struggle to swallow a bit of apple stuck in my throat. She. He must be talking about my mom. Something happened to my mom. I fight the urge to jump off the counter and grab her postcard. I will myself to not care. This is the woman who abandoned us and who still repeatedly abandons us. The woman who took off before I started walking to follow a band no one had ever heard of around the country. The woman who came back full of presents and apologies when I was three. The woman who left again weeks later because she wanted to work on some fucking riverboat casino in Louisiana. The woman who has been in and out of my life so many times that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night wondering if she exists at all.