Barefoot Beach (9 page)

“I needed some time away. Meryem and I are like chalk and cheese, oil and water. I get on her nerves by breathing the same air she does.”

“That's the mother-daughter thing,” I said. “I hear it all the time from my sister-in-law. My niece is adorable, but she's thirteen, with the fresh mouth and the slammed doors, and her mother says she understands why some animals eat their young.” What came next slipped through my censor. I'd planned on sharing with her and Margo. But later. Eventually. Not now.

I said, “The mother-son thing is no picnic either.”

Emine gave me a quizzical look. She'd gone to boarding school in England, but sometimes the American idioms escaped her.

“Picnic. Not easy,” I said. It lost something in the translation.

“Where
is
Jack? I haven't seen him. He is usually with Pete and the baseball players.”

Just then a train of clouds began to chug across the sun. Not poetically. One minute we were sitting in a pool of yellow light, the next in
blue shadow. Which cast the perfect mood for telling Em everything, starting with Jack contacting the fertility clinic and ending with our face-off in the hall that morning.

“Margo knows?” she asked when I'd finished unloading.

“You're the first. I wasn't sure if this was anything to worry about. Because it's possible Sixteen fifty-nine”—I fumbled, unable to bring myself to say “DD”—“won't get back to him. I still don't know how this will turn out. But now I've decided that's not the point. The point”—the one that stabbed me in the heart—“is how eagerly Jack's going after this. Him.”

“But you seemed fine with it last year,” Emine said. “And suddenly you are so concerned. Why is this?”

I had to push the words past my reluctance to say them because saying them would give them life. “I guess because now it's happening. I didn't know that it would feel like Jack is leapfrogging Lon's memory to get to this new guy. And I'm scared. Who knows what this Donor Dude has in mind for my son? He could turn Jack's life upside down. Kidnap him emotionally.” I felt myself beginning to lose it. Quivering lip, moistening mascara, the works. I swallowed back tears.

Emine reached over, propped a finger under my chin, and lifted it so I couldn't help but stare into her eyes. “Now who's jumping to the conclusions?” she asked. “Take it day by day. You may like this man. Jack has his genes, so how bad can he be?”

We'd been following Margo as she bobbed and weaved her way to Pete, waving hellos here, squeezing hands there, but never losing track of her mission to yank Pete the ultimate wedgie with his new underpants. But now, finally, she'd been stopped by an irresistible force—the press. On hand to cover the softball game, they always featured the children's inning, in which retired Orioles players pitched to the kids.

In a semicircle of reporters, photographers, and videographers, the
star of the show, apparently unharmed and fully clothed, was shining his media smile, extra-wide and super-bright. Pete loved the camera and the camera loved him back, Margo used to say during his highest-earning phase, when he was king of the endorsements. That earnest, trust-me visage had shilled for shaving cream, designer cologne, hot dogs—no beer; he didn't want to tarnish the image—and later, only because the hair dye company made him an offer that bought the Tuckahoe house, he starred in “Batter Up for Color-Up,” an ad campaign so wildly successful that it landed him a spot on
Letterman
, where he was surprisingly witty in the bantering exchange. Margo, the actress without her name in lights, had been a little jealous.

As the photographers moved in for the requisite grip-and-grin, my attention shifted to the field beyond, where some guy in a Blue Herons T-shirt was laying down bases. “They're getting ready for the game,” I said, and Emine put down her fork.

“Dessert,” she said. “They'll be descending like locusts on the dessert tables. I should see how Adnan is doing.” Also Merry, was the unspoken tag.

“I'm coming with you.” My minor meltdown over the Donor Dude's intentions had to have messed around with my makeup. “I could use a little freshening up.”

On the Manolises' endless multifanned screen porch, where he'd laid out desserts, Adnan was plugging in an espresso machine. A table was covered with an array of Emine's pastries and cakes and, center stage, her fabulous Turkish Delight torte, layers of pistachio sponge cake and rosewater buttercream.

I exclaimed to Adnan, “You've outdone yourself. More pastries than last year?”

“Yes, every year more.” He smiled a proud acknowledgment.

“More, but not everything.” Emine's sharp eye had picked up a
missing tray of cherry baklava and the absence of her child. “Where is Meryem?”

“I sent her in for the baklava.”

“I'll check,” she told him.

She led and I followed her into the Manolises' back hall. Its peach walls with white scallop molding and a vaulted ceiling made it feel like the inside of a seashell. I'd planned on detouring to my handbag, tucked behind one of the sofas in the massive living room, but on the way we heard, faintly at first, then as we moved down the hall louder and louder until we were bombarded with it, a barrage of laughter, hooting, and the rhythmical banging of metal on metal. Em and I traded panicked looks and she said, “The kitchen. Merry!”

I landed, breathing hard, at the entrance to Margo's cavernous kitchen, and it was a few seconds before I took in the scene. Merry Haydar, with a freshly applied slash of almost-black lipstick, and her skirt rolled at the waistband to hike the hem way above the knees, was dancing down and dirty with one of the catering company's help, who looked to be high school age from the mustache and the overmuscled arms. Off to one side, the pot banger spotted me and halted his spoon midair. Emine caught up and froze at my side. The hooting stopped. The room fell silent except for the gush of water from the faucets of the double sink. Her partner had backed off, but Merry, unaware, continued to move her hips in a sexy spiral.

Em and I were shoulder to shoulder so I could feel her shaking. “Merry!
Hayır! Dur!
” Then in English, “Stop that!” She rocked on the new shoes but couldn't seem to step into the scene.

Merry looked our way and her smile vanished. “Oh shit!” she said. “The cops are here.” She stretched her arms, wrist against wrist, toward us. “Cuff me, Danno.” Then she backed up and the boy slipped the trap.

He looked at us, grabbed his towel, and said to Emine, “She came on to me. Not the other way around. I swear.”

“Come here, Meryem.” I could hear the quaver behind Em's barely controlled command.
“Şimdi!”

“That means ‘pronto' in Turkish,” Merry said to the backs of the boys,
who were already swiping dishes or, eyelids lowered, sliding trash from trays into plastic trash cans.

“Okay, coming.” Merry waved a bye to no one. When she got to her mother and me, her face was all fake innocence, her tone sarcastic. “Yes, Emine?”

For a moment, I thought I'd misheard. Emine, not Mom?

Breathing fire, Em clasped her daughter's wrist and tugged her a few steps down the hall, where Merry stopped short. “Don't . . . pull . . . me.” The girl flung her arm out of Em's grip and faced her. “You're mad at me. What did I do wrong? I was just being friendly. You tell me”—here she switched to singsong—“‘Merry, Americans are friendly. Always be friendly.'”

Emine pressed her fingers to her eyelids.
“Tanrı bana yardım edin.”
The phrase wasn't new to me. She uttered it frequently when dealing with her daughter. God help me.

“Let's go,” I said. Merry allowed me to steer her down the hall, one hand on her shoulder.

“Please don't tell Margo about this,” Em said, trying to keep up. “We cater so many of her parties and our reputation is good. I want to keep it so. And I don't think the boys will tell.”

“Of course.”

“Like it's such a big deal.” Merry yawned extravagantly. I tightened my grip on her shoulder, maybe a little too hard. I navigated so we avoided the screened porch and Adnan. “Now what?” I asked.

“I will call Adnan and tell him to get the baklava. For her, I will make some excuse.” Emine flashed her daughter a furious glance. “She's not coming back.”

As we exited the front door, a scratchy old recording, an organist's rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” filtered over from the side lawn. That signaled Pete was about to take to the stage for the welcoming speech that preceded the migration to the field.

We were on the fringes of the gathering crowd when ten-year-old Erol
rushed up to us. Emine said a few final brusque words into her cell and clicked off the conversation, all in Turkish, with her husband.

“Guess who's pitching to me. I just found out.” Erol was hopping from foot to foot with excitement. “Cal Ripken Jr. The most famous Oriole of all time. Can you believe it? Can you, Mer?”

Merry wiggled under my grip and nodded.

“Cal Ripken, you love him, Erol. This is good.” Emine turned to me, her dark eyes flashing joy. Her young son was a never-fail source of happiness.

“Will Dad be there watching? Not cleaning up or something?”

“He will be there,” Em said. From the fire in her eyes, I knew she'd make sure he would.

“Yesssss! Go, Birds! We rock!” Erol shouted as he bounded away.

The band played a drumroll, and Pete took center stage, looking a good—a really good—decade younger than his fifty-three years. You couldn't blame Margo for feeling her husband was still fem-bait.

“Welcome to the tenth annual Father's Day cookout and softball game,” he boomed into the mike. “A decade, which makes this game a tradition.” Now, there was a word that had become an obscenity in my household. At least in Jack's lexicon.

Jack. At some point midafternoon, after my first mimosa, I'd decided it was unhealthy to obsess over whether my son would show up at the party. Occasionally, I'd skim the crowd, but after a second drink and no sightings, I'd almost stopped caring. Almost.

All I could make out of the players gathered near the stage were the backs of Oystercatcher and Heron T-shirts and a jumble of gray-and-blue baseball caps. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Pete announced, “I give you the Oystercatchers. They're ready and eager for their first win in five years and this may be their year to break the Dreaded Father's Day Curse.”

After the challengers lined up, Pete called the Herons by position. I startled out of my fog only when he announced, “On second base, Jack Farrell.”

Em wagged a finger at me. “You see, he showed up.”

Of course he had.
Never had a doubt,
I told myself as I swallowed the last little lump of it that had lodged in my throat all afternoon.

Jack took his place. No bounding or bow for him, though he did tip his hat and then held it against his heart as the Summer Breeze Quartet launched into “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Everyone joined in singing the national anthem, the way Marylanders did at Camden Yards, roaring the “Ohhhhh” for Orioles in the line “Ohhhhh, say does tha-at star-spangled, ba-a-nne-er yeh-et wave.” When the last note faded, Pete called out, “Play ball!”

Jack stopped by on his way to the field. Maybe he'd noticed me from the stage, or maybe he'd spotted Merry at the end of the row, and my son, the thoughtful one I used to know as late as yesterday, jogged down our aisle to land in front of Merry, who'd been sulking until she saw him. Then she lit up.

“Yo, Jack. Hi-five me, bro.” They spanked palms. She doffed her cap, skimming a daring glance at her mother.

“What's with the hair, Mer?” Jack said. “Lawn mower run you over?”

“Creep,” she answered, but she beamed, obviously pleased by the attention. She'd always looked up to Jack, who treated her as the classic pest of a little sister, one he teased but actually liked.

“I thought punk had peaked. I gotta tell you, you're looking very last year, Mer.”

“And you're looking half jock, half geek and all bullsh—”

“Hey,” he cut her off. “Watch your mouth. You want to save it to cheer for the Herons.”

“Go, Herons!” Merry hollered.

“What a pain. Okay, you're hired.” He snatched the Herons cap from her hand and slapped it over her bizarre hairdo. Shaking his head, he jerked the bill low on her forehead. “Now you're presentable.”

She grinned.

He said hello to Em, added, “Need to borrow my mom for a sec,” and pulled me a little aside.

Eyeing the rush to the softball field, he said, “Apologize for this morning. For, like, the attitude. You didn't deserve it. What's going on isn't your fault. I'm just wound up, you know, with everything happening and”—he patted his back pocket, where I assumed his iPhone sat dormant—“not happening. And then Father's Day on top of all this other father stuff, well, I'm sorry.”

I didn't say it was okay, because it wasn't, and I didn't reach to nudge back a hank of blond hair that had drifted over his left eye, because he was nineteen and I was forty-six and I'd learned my lesson with Tiffanie and debating his choice of a major and tiptoeing around more issues than I cared to remember. But, oh, I wanted to smooth the hair back and roll up the cuffs on the sleeves of his T-shirt and look down to see if his sneaker laces were tied tightly and, if they weren't, crouch down and double knot them. What I did was nod. What I said was, “I understand.”

“Appreciate it.” And because keeping your selfish anxiety under wraps is sometimes rewarded, he leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek.

Then he raced off, one shoelace trailing—I knew it, I knew it—and his iPhone sticking out of his back pocket.

The kids' game lasted twenty chaotic, hilarious minutes so everyone could have a chance at the plate, and when Erol smacked a two-bagger off Cal Ripken Jr., who'd deliberately sweet-pitched to the boy, I thought Adnan was going to scream himself hoarse, in a very dignified way of course. Merry did an Orioles' bird dance to celebrate.

She had insisted we stand close to the action so she could lead the cheering for the Herons in the adults' game, especially for Jack, who hit a disappointing pop fly in his first at bat, a “can of corn” easily caught by an aging Hall of Famer in center field.

Heading out of the eighth inning, the reputation of the Blue Herons, undefeated for half a decade, was on the line. The score was 4–3 Oystercatchers.

It was when Jack was trudging in from the field, eyes downcast, mouth locked in a lip-biting twist, that I saw something set off his startle reflex. His head snapped up; he came to a full stop and whipped the iPhone from his rear pocket. Not a call. He stared at that screen as if the words were alive and dancing. This had to be even bigger than a message from the hot, mean girlfriend. As he read, Jack bobbed a series of small yeses. And from the bliss that bloomed on his face, you would have thought that Moses had emailed him the Ten Commandments or Jesus had texted him the Sermon on the Mount. Sixteen, aka #1659, aka Donor Dad and Dude, had arrived for the big reveal. I was sure of it.

As Margo would have said, “Oy.”
No, this is good news,
I corrected myself,
good news.
Good news.
Hoping that if I hammered it home hard enough, I'd actually believe it.

As he passed me, Jack whammed a triumphant air-punch with such force that I was afraid he'd dislocated a shoulder. I gave him a “Mom gets it, Mom's okay with it” thumbs-up in return.

In the final inning, with a man on first base, he was up at bat. Pulsing with energy, he blasted a two-run homer that decapitated one of the Manolises' loblolly pines at the fringe of their property and captured a delirious win for the Blue Herons.