Track 20 La Mer
Track 20
La Mer
Paul
Paul sat on a beach chair, staring out at the ocean, and wondering if the wife he knew and loved was still inside the f-word-wielding meanie he had witnessed back at the house. Except for the time she’d cut her finger chopping onions, he had never heard her curse like that. Not because she was a prude, but because of her infinite respect for the English language.
With two of his own, Paul was no stranger to sister troubles, though he had always tried his best to steer clear of them. He was still scarred, quite literally, from trying to break his older sisters apart during an epic spat over a pair of Jordache jeans in 1989. Even with that, the feud between his wife and Veronica was unlike anything he had ever witnessed between his own siblings.
Bea casually plopped down in a chair next to him while quoting Henry James.
“?‘Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.’?”
“So, you’re OK now?” he asked, hiding a smirk that he knew might set her off again.
“Yes, why?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ve never known you to have such a strong eye roll game. You could compete with the freshmen in my geometric analysis seminar when I assign weekend homework.”
“I’m fine. Good, even.”
He thought to ask her what happened to being nice, but decided to leave good and fine alone.
“OK then,” Paul remarked instead, picking up the science section of the Times and folding it to one-fourth of its size to read on the windy beach. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get through a single article. This trip, which had been billed as a relaxing fun time, was not looking promising.
“Want to hear the schedule?” Bea asked.
“Sure, bring it on.”
“Today’s a beach day. Renee is bringing down a whole setup soon. Tonight, I’ll be making my mom’s famous paella for the neighbors and out-of-towners, which I was excited about, but will now be annoyed about, no doubt.”
“Why?” he asked, already guessing the source of her pending annoyance.
“Because it’s so much work, and when my mom would make it when I was growing up, Veronica would cry at the sight of the langoustine eyes and disappear to her room to get out of helping.”
“Well, I’ll help you. It’s nice of you to make a special dinner for Renee and Jake. I look forward to meeting them.”
“I hear you talking to me like I’m about to break. You can stop, I’m fine.”
“Yes, you said that.”
This time, he risked a smile. Luckily, she laughed. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a hug, even though the arm of the chair dug into his side as he did so.
“I got you,” he reassured her.
“Thanks. I know that.”
She perked up.
“Tomorrow night they’re showing Mamma Mia! on the Bay. Saturday night, the wedding; Sunday, brunch.”
Her phone dinged.
“It’s Renee. She’s sending Matt’s girlfriend down with beach blankets—I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.” She looked at Paul curiously.
“Well, I certainly didn’t know.” Paul laughed again.
From her seat by the shoreline, Bea caught sight of a young woman struggling with a pile of blankets at the top of the stairs. She jumped up to help her.
“Want me to come?” Paul asked.
“I guess another set of hands would be helpful, sorry.”
“It’s all good.”
The two did a quick dash across the sand, both wishing they had thought to grab their flip-flops.
“We’re coming to help,” Bea called out when they were just a few feet away. The pile of blankets was blocking the girl’s sight line. Bea grabbed the first few to reveal her face. The young woman looked surprised, as though she had never seen the ocean before.
“It’s beautiful, right?” Bea smiled, acknowledging the young woman’s look of awe.
“It truly is,” the woman agreed.
Paul followed, grabbing more than his share of the pile while Bea jubilantly declared, “Follow me—and keep those flip-flops on!”
Bea and Paul ran across the sand like they were traversing hot coals while the girlfriend walked easily behind them. They both plopped down in their chairs for relief. Bea smiled as the young woman caught up to them.
“I’m Maggie,” she announced, awkwardly reaching out her hand.
“I’m Paul.” He made a feeble attempt to rise back up from the beach chair, leaving Maggie to respond with the requisite “Don’t get up.”
“And I’m Bea. We live catty-corner to Matt and Renee. First time here?”
“Yes,” Maggie answered, still standing, and holding her pile.
“You two are in the same boat,” Bea said, motioning to Paul. “Paul has never been to Fire Island either.” Bea took a towel from her beach bag and laid it out in the sand. “Have a seat. We need a few seconds to regroup.”
She sat, pulling her knees into her chest, and wrapping her arms around them.
“Where are you from, Maggie?” Paul asked.
“Ohio,” Maggie responded tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure of her answer.
“Wow! Really? We live in Gambier,” Bea reported enthusiastically. “We teach at Kenyon College.” She pointed to herself, “English lit,” and to Paul, “applied mathematics.”
“Two professors! That sounds like a good life. I’m happy for you.”
The young woman, Maggie, must have realized it was an odd thing to say, as she turned bright red.
“And you?” Paul asked.
She again took a beat to answer.
“I live in a small town outside Cleveland, Chagrin Falls.”
“I’ve heard of that place—they famously drop a popcorn ball on New Year’s Eve, right?” Paul asked Maggie.
“A popcorn ball?” Bea questioned.
“Yes! The Popcorn Shop has been dropping an eighty-five-pound ball for, like, seventy-five years,” Maggie explained proudly. “It’s not Times Square, but it’s pretty great.”
“How very small-town Ohio,” Paul noted.
Talking about her town seemed to break the girl out of her shell. She continued at about three times the pace of her previous revelations.
“We take our traditions very seriously in Chagrin Falls. After Halloween there’s a huge pumpkin roll. High school kids swipe hundreds of pumpkins off people’s lawns and roll them down Grove Hill. It started as a prank in the sixties and stuck. No one really knows when it will happen. We go all out for Christmas too. The store owners compete for best window decorations, and Santa arrives in the town square in a hot-air balloon. Plus, there’s a documentary film festival every October and Art by the Falls in June.”
“Let me guess. You work for the Chamber of Commerce?” Paul joked.
“No,” she laughed, blushing, “I own a record store—it’s a family business.”
“Wow! Matt must love that!” Bea surmised.
“I heard record stores are having a resurgence. Kids today are embracing that delicious feeling of peeling the cellophane off the album cover, pulling out the sleeve, and reading the liner notes,” Paul said with a sentimental smile.
“They are,” Maggie agreed, putting her hands to prayer. She saw Matt in the distance and jumped ten feet in the air before taking off toward him.
“Young love,” Paul observed wistfully. “Remember when we couldn’t be apart for ten minutes?”
“We still have young love,” Beatrix countered.
“Yeah. As long as you don’t go postal on your sister and end up in jail. I’m not making conjugal visits and smuggling in copies of the Paris Review and those bran muffins you love from Wiggin Street Coffee.”
Bea laughed.
“I’m not going to kill Veronica. I still love her, you know. She’s still my baby sister.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” he said under his breath.
She responded with another dramatic eye roll.
“Just behave this one weekend, for your dad’s sake. I know you. If you don’t, the guilt will eat away at you for months.”
She appeared to be pondering his words again when Matt arrived and greeted Paul. The two couples began laying out a varied collection of blankets and throws that brought to mind exotic destinations like Marrakesh and Jaipur, though they were more likely sourced from mall stores like Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters.
After weighing down their edges with books and sneakers and beach chairs, the four took a big step back to admire their work. It looked beautiful, like a Bedouin beach festival. Jake arrived with two surfboards (yes, he could carry two at one time) and instructed everyone to construct two long mounds of sand. He placed a surfboard on each and voilà—two cocktail tables ready to be covered in snacks and libations.
The whole experience reminded Paul of one of those bonding exercises at freshman orientation that he and Bea were forced to attend. They were once charged with building a tower out of spaghetti, marshmallows, string, and tape. Bea was surprisingly competitive.
Before long, the blankets were peppered with the early arrivals, cousins of Jake’s and Renee’s, college friends, and a few of her best mates from the law firm she had worked at for twenty-odd years. Renee and Jake had been stingy with the off-island guest list, not wanting to deal with housing and feeding too many nonnatives, but more generous with the local invitations.
Captain Jake and Professor Paul got into a complex discussion about the mathematical metaphors in Moby Dick , to which Beatrix couldn’t help adding her two cents. The married professors had big plans to coauthor a book about mathematics in literature during their upcoming year abroad.
“We’ll both be overseas,” Bea explained. “I’m running the Kenyon-Exeter program in Southern England and Paul is taking a sabbatical to research and work on our book.”
“Wow. There’s enough material on that for a book?” Maggie piped in from the sidelines. The three of them turned their heads to see that the olive-skinned, curly-haired young woman was glued to their conversation, while the others her age were playing kadima and KanJam. Bea kindly widened their circle so that Maggie would feel included. Maggie smiled and shifted her stance.
“Yes, Tolstoy writes about calculus, and both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake reference geometry. And there’s much more,” Beatrix explained.
“Bea is a literary virtuoso,” Paul boasted, patting his wife’s leg proudly.
Veronica had slithered in quietly, taking her place on one of the beach blankets. She had been flying under the radar all day, possibly in deference to her sister, the matron of honor, possibly because Shep had told her the truth about her invitation.
A football flew over their heads and Matt dove for it.
“Why have you been hiding this one from us, Matty?” Jake joked.
Jake still called him Matty, and Matt didn’t bother correcting him. It was pointless. Jake did not seem to be one for change.
“I wasn’t hiding her. Just wasn’t sure she could make it here until the last minute.”
“Where did you two meet?” Jake continued.
Matt sat down in the sand next to Maggie while goading her like one of those old couples in When Harry Met Sally.
“You tell them, honey.”
“No, you!” she goaded back.
“OK. We met at the Austin Record Convention. It’s a huge show, three hundred vendors. Maggie had a booth, and I was shopping.”
“Yes, we argued over the price of an album. What was it again?” she asked Matt.
“Miles Davis, Kind of Blue .”
“Of course. He tried to undercut me. But it didn’t work.”
“She was very forward. Said I could have it for a little over my price if I bought her dinner!”
They all turned to Maggie and nodded in approval at her chutzpah. Except Veronica. Veronica came close to her, advancing toward her from every angle, like a moth to a flame. She stared right into her eyes.
“Do I know you?” she asked with a hint of suspicion, adding, “You look so familiar to me.”
“I sat behind you on the ferry,” Maggie responded, without missing a beat.
Beatrix looked at her watch and shot from her seat.
“Time to start the paella!” she announced.
“Would you like help?” Veronica offered.
Paul nudged his wife.
“Sure,” she conceded, “that would be great.”
The two walked off the beach together, leaving everyone in the know both worried and hopeful.