Sunset Beach(18)
Poor Nonni. Her darling grandmother had been heartbroken at the change in her only grandchild that summer. The sweet, fun-loving child who’d spent two weeks at Coquina Cottage every summer since she was old enough to walk had turned into a selfish, sullen shrew.
She had the address, of course—409 Pine Street. But after such a long absence, the street, the houses, virtually everything was unrecognizable. Papi’s cottage—for that’s how she would always think of it—had been the middle house in a row of five humble wood-frame homes. The Harrells, a family with three rambunctious red-haired boys, had lived in the white house to the left of the Sanchezes, and the Maroulises, a retired pharmacist from Tarpon Springs and his wife, lived in the pale green house to the right.
Those summer weeks had been idyllic for a tomboy like Drue. She spent long sunny days swimming, bodysurfing and skateboarding with Brian, Charley and Davy Harrell, and evenings fishing and crabbing from the Johns Pass Bridge with Papi. In those days, she was rarely indoors.
Now, on the lot where George and Helen Maroulis had tended their basil, tomato and banana pepper plants, there was a boxy, towering gray concrete three-level contemporary house so large it completely blotted out the view of the Gulf behind it.
And the Harrells’ home had somehow morphed into a pink stucco faux-Mediterranean villa, with terra-cotta roof tiles and a turret that looked straight out of the Alhambra.
But there, crouching on the sand, dwarfed in between the pair of magnificent mansions, was Papi’s humble place, easily distinguished from its splendid neighbors by its complete lack of splendor—and the blue tarp covering the roof.
Everything about the cottage, from the peeling blue paint on the cedar shingles, to the dust-covered windows, seemed sad, saggy and forlorn. It was a far cry from the tidy, trim home on which her grandparents lavished with love and attention.
Papi was so proud of this cottage. After tobacco imports from Cuba were embargoed in 1962, shuttering most of the cigar factories in Tampa, including the one he’d worked in most of his adult life, Alberto Sanchez had operated a small neighborhood grocery store in Ybor City. Somehow, he’d managed to save enough money to begin building this small summer cottage, and eventually, when their only daughter, Sherri, married and left home, Papi and Nonni, whose given name was Anna, retired and moved full-time to Sunset Beach.
A blast from the car directly behind hers, a gleaming white convertible, let her know she was blocking the narrow road. How long had she been stopped there, just staring at the house?
She gave an apologetic wave and pulled the Bronco into the rutted sand driveway.
Drue picked up the key chain her father had given her and looked wistfully at the cottage.
She thought of that last summer, more than twenty years ago, when Brice had pulled into the driveway and beeped his horn, impatient to load her onto the Greyhound bus back to her mother in Fort Lauderdale, and out of his and Joan’s hair. Papi had stowed her suitcase in the back of Brice’s BMW, and at the last minute, Nonni had tucked something into the pocket of her shorts and whispered in her ear, “This is for you. Come back whenever. You call, and Papi and I will come get you.” It wasn’t until she’d climbed into the front seat of her father’s car that she’d thought to examine her grandmother’s gift. It was a fifty-dollar bill, wrapped around the key to the cottage.
But she hadn’t come back. Until now.
* * *
Brice had warned her not to expect much.
“We had the same tenant for the last seven years. I hired some guys to haul out the crap he left behind, but I just haven’t had time to really take a look at what needs to be done.”
Of course, Wendy had to put her oar in the water. “I walked through it. It’ll need a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of work to make it livable. Frankly, if I were you, I’d sell the house to one of these rich gay couples and walk away.” Drue had stared Wendy down with what Joan had termed her “dead-eye.” “I am not selling Papi’s house.”
* * *
The front door had been painted red for as long as Drue could remember. Somebody, the hoarder, maybe, had slapped a coat of school-bus-yellow paint on it. She easily flecked a chip of the paint with a fingernail, revealing the red beneath. “Repaint front door” would be among the first items on her to-do list for the cottage.
The door hardware was shiny brass, obviously new and cheap-looking. She fit the key into it, turned the handle and pushed. The door was stuck, the old wood swollen and warped. She pushed harder, leaning into it with her shoulder. The rusted hinges squealed and the door gave way.
It wasn’t until she’d stepped over the threshold that she realized she’d been holding her breath.
Once she’d exhaled, and inhaled, she wished she hadn’t. The air inside was hot and fetid, ripe with the dank smell of mildew and the lingering stench of cigarette smoke.
She was standing in the living room. The wooden floors, which Nonni had mopped and polished weekly with her homemade lemon-wax mix, were now covered with garish green wall-to-wall shag carpet coated with a fine dust of plaster from the peeling walls. She walked slowly through the wide arched opening into the dining room. Like the rest of the house the room was bare of furniture. The doors of the corner cabinets Papi had built to house Nonni’s wedding china gaped open, their glass panes coated with a thick yellow sludge of nicotine.