Barefoot Beach (15 page)

“She called me a dirty Arab. She said all Muslims should be put in jail. I said (a) I wasn't an Arab. I was American, and my parents are Turkish, which is different. And (b) that she was a racist and an idiot. She said I would burn in hell and that I stunk because Turkish people ate so much garlic and never showered. I said she was a bitch, and that's when she tugged the sheet so hard it snapped and ripped off my acrylic.” She held up a raggedy fingernail. “So much for Clean on Board's policy of zero tolerance for physical violence.” She singsonged the line. “Then she came
around the bed and got really into my face, so I pushed her away. I was just protecting myself. The kid Jason who said I started it? He's her boyfriend, so of course he'd back her up.”

Merry shivered in the sweater and jeans I'd swiped from the Driftwood's costume rack to replace her wet clothes. She took a sip of the hot cocoa Em had made for her.

“I mean, it's not fair. Like I was supposed to just stand there and take it?” She blew a frustrated breath through lips stained plum by recently applied lipstick. “So now
I'm
the bad guy.” She swiveled to face her mother. “And Dad's what? Off the wall about this?” She pinched an Oreo off the paper plate, slid the chocolate cookies apart, and licked the cream filling off one side, then the other. Still a child. “Consequences. Dr. Shrink or whatever his stupid name was loved that word. Con-se-quences.” Dr. Barton had been my recommendation, a friend of Josh's who specialized in adolescent issues. He was the latest of three therapists who had attempted to escort Merry through her rebellion. “And please don't tell me that cutting me off from Facebook for a century means Dad loves me, because that's just bullshit.”

Her mother's sigh was loud enough to drown out the music filtering in from the stage, “I Whistle a Happy Tune.”

We were sitting around the table in the greenroom. Merry had used the hair dryer and reapplied too much makeup from a basket of liners, shadows, lipsticks, and blushes while her mother made the call to Adnan to inform him that his wayward daughter had turned up. He'd been strangely silent on the phone, she'd reported, saying only, “Bring her home.”

“Soon,” she'd replied. Then to me, after clicking off, “I want to give him time to calm down.”

“Well, he'd better not threaten to send me to Turkey.” The girl wiped cookie crumbs from her mouth. “I won't go. I swear to God I'll run away. For good this time. Turkey, ugh. Like I even remember it. I was only, like, a baby, the last time we were there. And let's be honest here. You
know, Mom”—ah, Em was back to being Mom—“Nene Selda is a crazy-assed b—”

“Meryem!” As much as she shared her child's opinion of Adnan's mother, Emine couldn't let that pass without comment. “Your grandmother is your grandmother. Whatever you think of her, you show respect.”

Merry rolled her eyes.

“Come,” Em said to her daughter. “Before your father wonders if we've both run away, we're going home.”

“Great.” Merry dragged herself from the chair. “I am so looking forward to that.”

“I was wondering if you'd left without saying good-bye, which would have been incredibly rude,” Margo said, giving me the googly eye when I ran into her on the way out. “Where have you been hiding ou—” She never got to finish the question, because Emine with Merry in tow was ten steps behind me and the sight of them stopped her short. She hadn't seen Merry since the summer before, and what she had under her microscopic vision now was an entirely different specimen. The long ponytail and the pink lip gloss had been replaced with spiked hair and over-the-top makeup.

Margo put on her best blank, nonjudgmental face as she gave us the thrice-over. The woman did have very sensitive antennae, especially for things amiss, which was why I didn't altogether discount her suspicions about Pete wandering off the straight and narrow. She must have picked up from Em's stark white face, Merry's sullen slump, and my subtle headshake the cue for her next line.

“Merry, darling.” She moved on her like a tank in heels. “Look at you. So grown-up. I haven't seen you in ages. Oh”—she reached out and ran a hand over Merry's hair, gelled as stiff as porcupine needles—“I love the brush cut. So avant-garde. Now, that shows real courage and a sense of
style. But the eye shadow has to go. Too much and too blue. Only old ladies wear blue eye shadow. Blue rinses on their hair and blue on their eyelids. With your coloring, I'd say a smoky, subtle eye. I'll show you how to do it.”

Merry seemed transfixed.

“We'll make a date if it's okay with your mom. Lunch at the Breakers.” The most expensive restaurant in Tuckahoe. “And we'll play with makeup after that. I've got all kinds of stuff here to experiment with. How does that sound?”

“Cool,” Merry said. She skipped a bewildered glance from Margo to her mother to me, then said, “My dad's waiting.”

“Call me. Your mom has my number. Or better yet, drop by here and we'll set something up.”

Margo waited until the door closed behind them before saying, “What the hell happened to that darling child?”

I decided Margo was right about getting on with my life.

When I finally told her about my semi-date with Scott at Coneheads and my waffling on a future one, she'd lashed out. “Oh, for chrissake, Nora—and forgive the blasphemy if you've decided to return to the Mother Church, which is the only possible explanation for your self-imposed chastity—what next? Entering the convent? The Sisters of Insanity? Really, what are you waiting for? Are you expecting Lon to float through the window and give you permission to live your life? To quote some rabbi, if not now, when? If not you, who?”

Margo and her Jewish wise guy swung my vote. When Scott and I were next in each other's arms on Tuesday—swaying to some romantic slow dance—I'd say, “Your suggestion that we have a glass of wine after class tonight? I'd like that.” There. I had a plan. But first there was Lon's legacy and that particular sputtering flame I did need to tend.

For eight years, I'd been wary of approaching his fourth book, but
Thunder Hill Road
was brilliant. I fell in love with the characters, which included two strong and vulnerable women, one of them a redhead, and was totally caught up in the story line when it ended abruptly, cut off by writer's block and then the tragedy in San Francisco.

Jack spotted me reading the manuscript and lifted a page from the pile on the table next to me. He screwed up his forehead. “This some of Dad's stuff?”

“Yup. The book he was working on when he died. He never got to finish it.”

“Damn shame. Maybe I'll read it someday.”

Which could have led to an interesting conversation, but we got interrupted by my son's phone beeping. Cellular ringing and singing surrounded him almost constantly these days. Dirk, I figured. Maybe Tiffanie, though he hadn't mentioned her lately and in the past he'd peppered his conversation with quotes from her as if she were the Dalai Lama or Ellen DeGeneres. I hoped some of the calls were from the female coworker at Coneheads whose gift of home-baked chocolate chip cookies sat on our kitchen counter along with its note, “Enjoy!,” a tiny heart subbing for the dot above the
i
in “Claire.” God bless whoever was making him happy, even Tiffanie if she was the cause. And I was counting down until Tuesday, when I'd see Scott again. That was my current flirtation with happiness.

On Monday morning, I called Nate Greenberg, Lon's agent, and asked, “How do we find the right person to finish
Thunder Hill Road
?”

“My God, you finally read it! And it's
that
good?” He laughed boisterously and didn't wait for an answer. “Email it as an attachment. Flag it for my eyes only. And then leave it to me. I know two writers I'd trust to bring this off. Let me approach them confidentially.”

“I want a say in the final choice.”

“Of course. You'll have approval of everything. Writer, material, publisher because I'm not sure we want to go with the previous one after the last experience. If you send me the manuscript ASAP, I'll get back to you quickly. Not too quickly, though. I want to make sure we do this right.” A long pause; then, after he cleared his throat: “This isn't all business for me. You know that, right, Nora? I loved the man. He was a mensch—a man of honor. And as close to genius as anyone I'm ever going to represent. Frankly, his last novel wasn't my favorite. But this gives us a chance to redeem his legacy.”

His legacy. Ah, yes. I felt the flood of relief. Nate and I were on the same page.

That afternoon, I received my own interesting email. Return address: [email protected]. That's what my eye took in first. Then the header: From Dirk DeHaven, MD. So there was no possibility of mistaken identity and exile to my spam file.

My first reaction was a jumble of emotions. Could be he'd had second thoughts about shaking up the status quo and was enlisting me to prepare Jack for the bad news. For me, the doc's change of heart might be a relief. But my son would be devastated. I opened the note, aware that my head had begun to ache—collateral damage, I supposed, from the war of feelings being waged inside.

Dear Mrs. Farrell,

Perhaps in the not too distant future I'll have your permission to address you as Nora. I hope so, but that will be your determination, as will be the subject of this email. I'll be attending a conference in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which would place me within a few hours' driving distance of Tuckahoe Beach. I could easily extend my Maryland visit to Saturday the ninth, which would allow me to meet and spend some time with Jack. I haven't mentioned the possibility to him yet, thinking it best to clear it with you.

I look forward to hearing from you and, if and when you're willing, to meeting you.

My best wishes,
Dirk

I read it three times before I walked off the deck and into a very dry martini. Okay, I thought, as the vodka worked its numbing magic, it looked as if I'd been too hard on the dude. The truth was he and Jack didn't need my consent for any of this. Dirk's request was a courtesy, though if I was cynical, possibly a clever man's way of ingratiating himself with the mom, sending the coded message, “You're still in charge, Mrs. Farrell. Nothing to fear from me.”

Play nice, Nora,
I told myself. I waited until the martini buzz ebbed and sent a response thanking him for soliciting my input and said that, of course, the final decision was up to Jack. The tone of my answer was slightly warmer than a lawyer's letter and included no response to his suggestion that he and I might, at some time in the future, have contact.

I signed it, “Best, Nora.” Which settled the name issue, at least.

I was stretched out on the living room sofa, watching the eleven o'clock news, when Jack just about bounced in from the kitchen, two of Claire-with-a-heart's cookies in hand. His smile was high wattage. He bent nearly in half to kiss the top of my head, straightened, took a giant bite of a cookie, and handed me the other one.

Mouth crammed, amber eyes sparkling, he looked like himself as a kid on Christmas morning. The big gift—the scooter, the bike, the set of beginner skis—covered by the biggest green plastic trash bag Home Depot carried, or sometimes two sacks Lon had taped together, the awkward package topped with a gigantic red ribbon, was always opened last. The dream-come-true present. How long had Jack been dreaming about this one? Since Lon broke the news about his beginnings on the Lake Tahoe camping trip? Or since my boy's father came home to Tuckahoe as ashes in an urn? Or did it start on the night Tiffanie ragged my handsome, tentative son about not knowing who he was?

“Dirk just emailed me about his visit.” Jack's baritone reminded me how far he was from a kid. “He said you were okay with it. So, thanks, Mom.”

“No problem.”

“He said you sound like a great mother.” I gave my son an eye roll. “Hey, you
are
. Anyway, he's driving in on the eighth after a dinner meeting at Hopkins, so he'll get in late. He's staying at the Boardwalk Hilton.” The hotel that abutted We Got Rhythm.

“That hotel was your idea?”

“I figured he'd like it. It has a gym—he works out—and the best rooms have the ocean view. And he has Hilton points. We're meeting Saturday morning and then we'll have lunch. If you want to join us . . .”

“I think it should be just the two of you this time, Jack.”

“I guess.” But he looked relieved. “So, we'll hang out on Saturday, then dinner I don't know where yet. And he needs to leave early Sunday to make his noon flight back to Frisco.”

“I don't think people from San Francisco like it to be called Frisco.”

“Didn't know that. Glad you told me.” Jack bit his lip. “Maybe you ought to be there so I won't screw this up.”

“Hey, he's the one who has to watch screwing up. You'll be fine. Just be yourself.”

Which was enough, I thought. More than.