Grand Romantic Coup
Sadie
Iheaded down the boardwalk toward the main stage with the banner reading Valentine Bay Summer of Love Bachelor Auction: Bid on Your Destiny, phone in hand, as the air vibrated with heat and the anxious, sticky anticipation that comes from a small-town crowd giddy with the prospect of a communal spectacle.
The annual bachelor auction was the evening’s centerpiece, and it seemed like every woman in a hundred-mile radius had convened, armed with purses and the ruthless, carnivorous energy of charity for a cause most couldn’t name.
Somewhere in a bandstand, musicians were warming up with a cover of “Brown Eyed Girl,” and the air smelled of kettle corn, sunscreen, and the briny, slightly rotting sweetness particular to a coastal Oregon town in early June.
Navigating the pier, I kept my eyes on my phone screen instead of the crowd, while at the other end of my Facetime call, my Uncle Ronnie and his husband, Lorenzo, sat in their kitchen in Boca Raton in matching “Nassau or Never” T-shirts and with fresh cruise tans.
Behind them, their cat, Galileo, kneaded the cushion on his bed.
“So, Sadie-girl, how long until you are back home?” Uncle Ronnie asked, leaning in so close to the phone that his right nostril briefly dominated my entire screen.
This was the longest I’d gone without speaking to my uncle since I’d moved in with him at eighteen.
Even after he and Lorenzo retired to Florida, we always spoke at least twice a week, if not more.
It felt good to hear his voice and see his face again.
I’d filled him in on everything that had been going on.
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “At this point, I’m thinking weeks, could be more.” I kept my voice casual, but heat crept up my neck as I said it. I was still working out how I felt about it.
Lorenzo, who was sixty-eight but managed to look both younger and older, depending on how much time he’d logged in the sun that week, cut in, “Let us see the hunky lumberjacks! Turn the camera around, show us the scene!”
For some reason, Lorenzo had always associated lumberjacks with Oregon.
The fact that I was raised on a Christmas tree farm didn’t do anything to dispel his assumption.
With the resigned affection of someone who’d been forced to FaceTime every meal, milestone, and mid-level professional achievement since my uncles moved to Florida, I obliged.
I flipped the camera and did a slow pan, capturing the booths stuffed with tie-dyed T-shirts, locally sourced pickles, and a glassblower demonstrating his craft while shirtless behind a thick barricade.
Neon lights blinked around a makeshift bar, and the line for the funnel cake snaked so far that it threatened to merge with the line for the dunk tank.
“Oh, Babygirl, that’s precious,” Lorenzo enthused. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell if he painted for ‘Queer Eye.’”
I flipped it back on me.
“Before I let you go, are you happy?” Uncle Ronnie ended every call with the same question, voice softening, tilting his head so that his brow creased in what he probably thought was a fatherly gesture.
I thought about it. I weighed the gnawing, low-level anxiety that had followed me since I’d arrived in town a couple of weeks ago, but also the serenity of feeling like myself for the first time in a dozen years.
“I’m not here on vacation, I’m here for Buddy. It’s not about my happiness,” I pointed out.
“Happiness isn’t based on geography or circumstance, it’s a state of mind,” Uncle Ronnie went full Buddha.
“Where’s everyone headed in such a hurry?” Lorenzo ignored Uncle Ronnie’s lesson in Zen, commenting on the people swarming around me to get to the main stage.
“The bachelor auction.”
“Oh, that’s fun!” Uncle Ronnie smiled.
“And you’re wearing that?” Lorenzo grimaced with disapproval.
I laughed, then glanced down at my plain T-shirt and midi-length, flowy skirt and informed him, “I’m not the merchandise.”
Lorenzo tilted his head. “Still.”
“I was packing for a three-day conference and ended up being here indefinitely. I have limited options,” I defended myself.
“Leave her alone, Renz, she looks adorable,” Uncle Ronnie chastised.
“Is adorable the standard we’re settling for?” Lorenzo, who spent his career in the fashion world as a stylist, defended his stance.
I knew better than to weigh in on this debate.
“I gotta go. Love you both.” I blew them kisses.
“Love you, darling.” Lorenzo waved. Ronnie blew a kiss and made the universal sign for ‘call us later or else.’
I hung up and slipped the phone into my purse, trying to steel myself for the crowd.
I didn’t realize how many people in Valentine Bay remembered me until I tried to walk, inconspicuous and solo, down the midway of the Summer of Love festival.
At first, I could almost pretend I was just another face in the technicolor crowd, one more anonymous Pacific Northwesterner in a sea of windbreakers, sunglasses, and ironic vintage band tees.
But it’s impossible to be invisible when every third person stopped to ask me about Buddy, as if I were not only his granddaughter but also his nurse, publicist, and spiritual proxy.
I had to keep reminding myself that this was supposed to be temporary. I’d be back in New York soon enough, once Buddy was stable and the drama of his spectacular, near-fatal collapse had faded to mere folklore legend. But the longer I stayed, the less certain I felt about anything.
I’d made it ten steps before I was ambushed by a woman in a sequined visor and a boy with a shaved head and a cast on his arm, who both greeted me by name.
For the next twenty minutes, I couldn’t move five feet without someone flagging me down.
My old babysitter, Beverly Cooper who had just turned fifty and was now a hot yoga instructor, wanted to know when Buddy would be released and if there was anything she could do.
An elementary school teacher, who I barely remembered but who seemed to remember me, pressed me for news about Buddy’s condition.
Buddy’s neighbor, Earle who was pulling his beloved senior bulldog Sampson, who’d survived three heart attacks and recently made local news by swallowing an entire tennis ball, in a cart decorated with photos of the dog and flowers, making it look almost like a float, asked when Buddy would be released and coming home so he could drop by his famous Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, Buddy’s favorite.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket, hoping it was Dawson.
He was on the auction block tonight and I hadn’t spoken to him all day because I’d been in the hospital.
I wondered if he was thinking of me at all or if he was more focused on who would win him.
The thought of another woman going on a date with Dawson, even one she’d paid for and he was obligated to attend, left a very bad taste in my mouth.
But it was for charity and we weren’t together, so I knew I was being ridiculous.
When I glanced down and saw the contact, my heart sank.
It wasn’t Dawson. It with a text from my boss, Arthur, reminding me to submit the Q4 proposals by end of day EST tomorrow.
I’d sent him my resignation with the recommendation that Janine was ready to step in and take my place, but he countered by pitching that I work remotely.
I declined, but he wasn’t giving up that easily.
I typed out my response, that I didn’t have the report completed since I resigned, and even if I hadn’t, I was on leave, and my thumb hovered over the reply button.
I waited to feel guilt, or at least the familiar jolt of panic, but all I felt was an intense desire to throw my phone into the nearest oyster cart and run.
I didn’t want to do ad work anymore, not really.
Not after seeing how easily everything could be upended by a single, phone call, every priority in my life shifted.
“Sadie Rose!” The voice was both a shout and a caress, somehow. I’d know it anywhere.
I lifted my head to see Selma Lockhart, barely five feet tall, in a wrap dress that matched her eyes, smiling at me like she’d just run into her own daughter after a semester abroad.
I barely managed a “Hi, Selma!” before she enveloped me in the kind of hug that had once convinced a traumatized, motherless sixth grader that maybe the world hadn’t gone completely to shit.
“Don’t you look beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Tell that to Lorenzo, I thought to myself. I was wearing a floral midi-skirt and a baby doll shirt, which I’d planned on wearing to brunch on my L.A. trip before I got rerouted to my hometown.
I let her fuss over me, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from my sleeve and brushing a stray hair from my cheek. No one mothered like Selma did, not even my own mother, and it was both deeply comforting and slightly mortifying to feel my emotional guard drop so instantly.
Selma wasted no time. “Honey, how’s Buddy?
” she asked, and her eyes were so open, so guileless and intent.
It was a test, almost, to see if I’d keep up the brave front or let the mask slip.
Someone once said that Selma Lockhart had a sixth sense for other people’s pain, and I’d never known her to miss a beat.
“He’s…he’s okay, considering,” I said, voice already thickening.
“I was going to send flowers but I ran into Nonna at Ever After Blooms and she told me he’s not a big fan of them, she told me to get him a succulent instead, that’s what she got him and apparently when he eighty-sixed all the floral arrangements he kept her succulent.”
“Nonna got him the succulent?” I hadn’t even considered Gio and Gen’s grandma, mainly because I only thought of her as Nonna, but her name was Teresa.
Teresa Russo. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
She was age-appropriate. She was a widow, like Buddy, and she’d also lost a child.
Her oldest son passed away in a car accident.