Track 16 Indiana Jones The Main Theme
Track 16
Indiana Jones: The Main Theme
Matt
Usually, the feeling of giving a pretty girl a ride home on the back of his bike with her hands wrapped around his waist made Matt feel valiant. Tonight, he felt like Indiana Jones, returning home with the Holy Grail.
He had single-handedly found Bea’s long-lost daughter, Shep’s granddaughter, and in some sick twist of fate, prevented her father, the infamous lifeguard who came between the Silver sisters thirty years before, from possibly making a move on her.
He stopped in front of the baseball field and climbed off the bike to fill Maggie in. He wanted to get in and out of his house unnoticed by his mother, the consummate interrogator, and Jake, whose own house was filled to the brim with visiting wedding guests. He still wasn’t used to passing the burly ferry captain in the halls of his home. He wondered if he ever would be. It didn’t much matter. Renee and Jake were set to make Jake’s home their full-time digs after the wedding, leaving Matt to officially take ownership of this home that he’d grown up spending summers in. He’d only recently begun questioning how he’d fill it.
“I’ll lock up my bike on the side. Follow in my footsteps as close as possible, so we get in and out unnoticed,” he instructed Maggie.
The moonlight caught the mischievous twinkle in her eye—like they were going on a raid at sleepaway camp. He felt bad, as if he had hinted at an adventure, when in truth she was probably going to be really freaked out by what he was about to show her.
“The second step from the top squeaks like a mouse on steroids, so be sure to skip that one,” he added before entering.
They made it into the house silently, aside from the creak of the screen door. Maggie paused at the entrance to his bedroom, flashing back to parental warnings of bad men promising puppies and candy, no doubt. Matt recognized her trepidation and whispered:
“I know this is weird, but don’t worry. My mother is in the next room, so you can always scream.”
She laughed, and he put his finger to his lips, reminding her to be quiet. She followed him in through his bedroom door and he shut it behind them.
“Sit,” he said, directing her to the one chair in the room.
He pulled a book off his shelf and held it up for her to see.
On Fire Island.
“You’ve never read this, right?”
“No,” she uttered, obviously confused.
“My neighbor across the street wrote this book about the summer after his wife passed away.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Yes, it was brutal, but that’s not the point. There’s a chapter in here about you, when you were born, the circumstances, and how your mother feels about it.”
“My birth mother,” she corrected.
“Your birth mother,” Matt repeated respectfully.
“This is insane. Why did the author do that?” she asked.
“Well, it’s a good story, and I think your mo—your birth mother thought publishing it for the world to see might lead to you finding her. Which I guess it did, ’cause you were about to jump ship, but here you are.”
He flipped through the book, found what he was looking for, and held it out for Maggie to take.
“Here, it’s not going to be easy to read, but if I were you, I’d want to know—chapter thirty-seven, ‘Bea’s Secret.’?”
She took it in silence.
Matt watched her intently; it was too interesting not to. At first, a joyful expression sat on her lips as she read about her mother.
“She sounds less crazy here,” she commented. “Is that why you wanted me to read this?”
“Just read,” he said with a gentle smile.
“Ohhhh”—she looked up at Matt—“Veronica stole her boyfriend.”
“I know.” He couldn’t help but chuckle at her repeating the contents back to him, as if he, and everyone he knew, didn’t know the story.
“He was the hottest guy on the beach—a lifeguard.”
“Yes.”
Matt worried that she would figure out that the bartender from tonight was the lifeguard and have another legitimate reason to run. Had she caught his name at the bar? If so, she may have put two and two together. He knew he would have to tell her eventually, but she’d come here to find her mother, whom Matt was certain she would be proud of. The two-timing lifeguard who had impregnated her, not so much. He loved his mother’s friend Bea and adored Bea’s father, Shep, and this girl seemed like a dream. He really wanted this to work out for them all.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
She got off the chair and sat on the floor next to Matt so that he could see over her shoulder what part she was reading.
“She didn’t know she was pregnant with me till the fifth month.”
“I know,” he said again.
She began reading the conversation between her mother and their neighbor aloud, straight from the book. It was surreal.
“The baby was born about two weeks before graduation. My mom flew down in advance. ‘Bea is depressed,’ she told my dad. She gave birth at a birthing center in Mt. Vernon to a beautiful baby girl. Six pounds, three ounces, with olive skin and a thick patch of black hair like mine.”
Maggie started to cry and handed the book to Matt.
“I can’t.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Please.”
Matt took over reading the book aloud to Maggie.
“I know that I made all those choices myself, but I still daydream about what would have happened if Veronica hadn’t slept with him. I swear I would have kept that baby and married the lifeguard. I’m not saying we would have lived happily ever after, like I had pictured us doing at the time, but I would have my daughter.”
“And you never had kids,” he said, sadly pointing out the obvious.
“Nope. And my sister has two, who I don’t even know. I just met them at my mother’s funeral for like two seconds.”
Matt paused. The next part was going to be tough to hear.
“Have you ever thought about finding your daughter?” Ben asked.
“More like have I ever not thought about finding her?”
Maggie let out a heartbreaking sob, and Matt fought the urge to close the book. But then he remembered how she planned on giving up and leaving the next day, going home without even meeting Bea—and Shep. He had to prevent that from happening. He continued:
“As luck would have it, the adoption agency burnt down years ago, which didn’t much matter because it was a closed adoption.”
“DNA tracing?”
“I did 23andMe—no close match. And you know, if she wanted to find me, she would have done it too—so there’s that.”
“Well, maybe. I mean, closed adoptions were pretty rare, even back then. There’s a chance she doesn’t even know that she’s adopted. How old would she be?”
“She turned twenty-one on May third.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie cried, putting her hands to her mouth. “This was nine years ago.”
“Your hands,” Matt observed. “They’re shaking so hard.”
Maggie looked down and pressed them to her knees, trying to stop them from trembling.
“I haven’t eaten all day. I’m so hungry, but also so nauseous.”
Matt recognized that the fish tacos that they took home from the Salty Pelican wouldn’t do.
“How about I make us some mac and cheese and then we can talk more.”
“The powdery Kraft kind?”
“Yes, Kraft—possibly the most comforting food in the world.”
“I could swallow that,” she said through tears. “Should I come help?”
“Stay here. The last thing we want right now is to have to explain you to my mother.”
Matt returned twenty minutes later with two bowls and two spoons to find Maggie sound asleep in the bottom bunk with the book lying on her chest. He removed it, gently placed his hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “Do you want to eat?” She rolled over to face the wall. He didn’t have the heart to wake her.
He climbed onto the top bunk, lost in the childhood memory of eating the same mac and cheese from the same bowl in the same bed. It was all part of the beauty of being lucky enough to be able to come home to the house you grew up in. Even though he only ever lived there in the summer, and even though he had lived in the same New York City apartment for most of his life, Fire Island would always be home.