Girls of Summer(55)

nineteen


Theo slept late again and woke grumpy. He showered and pulled on board shorts and a tee. He was aware of Juliet in her bedroom talking to someone on the phone. In the kitchen, he brewed himself a cup of coffee, made toast, and used up most of the jar of strawberry jam. As he ate, he heard Dave and Tom chatting and laughing in the living room.

Loneliness and a sense of uselessness nibbled at him. He put his toast back on the plate, suddenly ashamed of pigging out on the great glob of jam.

The only thing Theo considered himself good at was surfing, and he was hardly an ace at that. Surfing was always challenging, even dangerous, and while they might look the same, each wave was different. A few times, Theo had caught the tube, surfing inside the barrel of a humongous wave, with water around him in a loop as he sped just in front of the crash. In those moments, he’d experienced the almost religious high of being part of the spectacular unnamable energy that created the wave and lit the wave from the sun and made his body and the sun and the wave one quantum whole. Those few times he’d felt exalted, way out of body at the same time he was totally in his body. He’d felt touched. Chosen. Blessed.

   But those rides in the tube were few and far between. He’d never belong to the elite core of surfers, no matter how many years he tried. And when he was slammed into the ocean floor, he’d felt more than hurt—he’d felt rejected. Dismissed. Damned.

Without surfing, what was he? He worried about whether or not he would ever feel brave enough to surf again. His mind played over and over in an endless loop the shock of that monster wave slamming him into the ocean floor. The knockout punch bashed the wind and all sense out of him, and for a long moment he’d squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he was about to die. He didn’t die. The water lifted him up, and he swam to the shore, his leash tugging his board with him. Everything hurt. He’d never wiped out like that before, and he was embarrassed and angry at his weakness.

Often when someone wiped out, the guys gathered around, slapping one another on the back, shouting encouragement or sarcastic insults meant to get a surfer back up and in. This time, Theo’s left arm hurt like hell, and he couldn’t shake it off. Finally, Eddie drove him to a hospital where the fracture was diagnosed and his arm set in a brace and a sling, and he was actually glad, because Eddie could tell the others that the wave that slammed Theo had broken his arm, allowing him to retain some kind of dignity.

The doctors said not to try to surf until he’d had his arm x-rayed to check that the fracture was healed. That had been fine with Theo, but now he hated himself for just sitting around doing nothing.

   For being a coward.

He was afraid of going into the ocean. The waves on the east side of the country were tame compared to San Diego, but still, Theo felt no pull. He didn’t even want to swim at Sesachacha, which was a waveless pond. The summer was getting hotter but he had no urge to cool off even in the shallow shores of Jetties Beach.

Maybe this fear was temporary. Maybe.

Pushing away from the table, Theo rose and wandered into the living room. “Hey, guys.” He was impressed by Dave and Tom, how contained they were, how deliberately they moved. They looked to be in their early forties, probably married with children, and Theo felt like a douche around them.

“What do you think of the ceilings?” Dave asked, nodding upward.

“Good. They look good.” Theo had no idea how to judge ceilings. “What’s next?”

“Your mom’s bathroom. We’ve got to renovate it, take out that old bathtub—”

“But hey, doesn’t it have claw feet?” Theo asked.

“It does. It also has the cast iron showing through the porcelain because so much has worn off over the years. We’ve got to put in a new floor, fix up the window, paint the walls, put in a new tub.”

“We’ve found a new claw-foot tub for her,” Tom added.

“I suppose you need a plumber’s license,” Theo said.

“We have them. Mack has a contractor’s license but no one needs carpenter’s licenses. We like working for Mack because we get to do a lot of different stuff.”

“Huh. Well, let me know if I can help,” Theo said. “I can’t do the plumbing stuff but I can help carry.”

Dave and Tom exchanged looks. “Man, you don’t need a license to carry a tub. After we detach the plumbing, you can help us carry it down the stairs and out to our truck.”

“Great.” Theo gave a thumbs-up.

   “Do you have some time to do it now?” Dave asked.

Let me check my calendar, Theo thought.

“I absolutely have the time,” Theo told him.

They hiked up the stairs to his mother’s bathroom. It didn’t take long for the men to disconnect the plumbing.

“Okay,” Dave said. He was tall and burly, with a bandana around his forehead to catch sweat from dripping down his face. It was actually a very cool look, and Theo wanted his own bandana because sweat dripped down his face, too, but he thought he’d probably look like an asshole if he wore one. “This tub weighs three or four hundred pounds. Theo, you and I will take one end. Tom can take the other.”

Tom was a small, wiry little dude. He saw Theo’s flash of consternation and grinned. “Theo, I could take you in a fight.”