Shining Sea (22 page)

Except she didn't
take
Kenny. That's just a myth Patty Ann has tried to introduce into the family history. Patty Ann gave Kenny to her.

She wouldn't mind taking Lucas now, though. Even with Ronnie's retirement coming up. She's been thinking she and Ronnie might start traveling together—all these years he's gone off on business trips on his own while she stayed back in Scottsdale—but family is family, and Lucas is her grandson. Not only does he look just like Lee, at fourteen he's also showing signs of having inherited his father's slippery personality. No good can come from the way Patty Ann lets him wander.

A purple bedspread covers Michael's old armchair, but when she sits down in it, the sensation is still familiar. Many a night after she lost him she would sit in it, once all the kids were in bed, trying to feel him. She fell asleep in it more than once, exhausted from the weight of it all.

She'll visit Luke and Michael tomorrow. Maybe Francis will want to come with her. She won't propose it, though. She'll let him bring it up.

“So, Sean, how's work?”

Sean has been working at a nearby gym, Gold's, since leaving school, maintaining the equipment, wiping down the exercise mats. He may not be like other kids, but—unlike his too-smart-for-her-own-good mom—he has been able to hold down a job.

“Mmm.”

“I can't offer you coffee,” Patty Ann says, walking through the room, her bare feet echoing on the wooden floor, toward the kitchen. “The electricity's out. And the gas is off—as you know. We've got orange juice, though.”

“That's okay, dear. We just came by to check you were okay.”

“We should drink the OJ before it goes bad,” Patty Ann calls from the kitchen. “Here, Sean, I'll pour you a glass. We can walk up to the Rose Café after and get scones.”

Patty Ann's living room is large and low-ceilinged, with white-painted wooden beams and wooden built-ins lining three of the walls. Bearing only a jumble of worn paperbacks, a collection of shells, and what look like crystal rocks, the shelving just adds to the house's abandoned feeling. In addition to Michael's armchair and the matching sofa she gave Patty Ann years ago, the only furniture are two oak rockers with lattice backs and torn leather seats that were in the house when Patty Ann moved in and a strange stone object with a wooden base that is either one of Glenn's sculptures or a coffee table. Or both.

Indian-print cloths are draped over the sofa and pinned above the windows in lieu of curtains. A few large, fluorescent canvases have been nailed directly into the walls. One is of a big peace sign. Dust and pollen lie in clumps on the floor. Patty Ann has never been much of a housekeeper. Her daughter also doesn't seem to have noticed the hippie era is over.

At least there isn't much to fall down on anyone during an earthquake.

“Ronnie needs to have
two
scones. Why's he losing weight?” Patty Ann says, coming into the room with two glasses of OJ, handing her one. “He's not fat.”

She takes a little sip of the OJ and sets it down on the marble object. Then, just in case it
is
one of Glenn's sculptures, she picks the glass back up and sets it down on the floor. How pale Ronnie looked, jerked awake this morning. “I think it's good he's retiring. You know. We're not that young anymore.”

“You look good, Mom. You always look good.”

Suddenly, the earth bounces. She reaches out automatically to grab the glass. It's just a small aftershock. Sean, drinking his orange juice, doesn't budge.

“Don't worry, Mom,” Patty Ann says. “This is a good house. A really solid house.”

“I don't know, Patty Ann. The roof…have you had it checked?”

Patty Ann frowns. “The roof is
fine
. The owner, he had everything checked before he bought it.
Everything
is fine. It just needs a little paint.”

“It does have nice woodwork,” she says, looking around, trying to find something positive to say about the big beaten-down shell.

“You'll see. A little work and this house will be worth a mint.”

Last visit, Patty Ann told her the scuffed oak table and chairs in the dining room, also left in the house by the owner, are by the same furniture maker—Stickley, Patty Ann called it—as the two rockers in the living room.
A little work and they'll be worth a mint,
Patty Ann insisted. Patty Ann is always saying with a little work something will be worth a mint.

If only Patty Ann would realize that with a little work Patty Ann could be worth a mint.

“But what worries me, is it
safe?
I don't mean the house. I mean the street. The neighborhood.”

Patty Ann laughs. “Well, that's one good thing about being married to a guy like Glenn. Nobody fuc—I mean, bothers you.”

She won't ask why. Glenn's mom is American, but his father's family is Mexican, and for some reason he landed below the border with an aunt and uncle for a few years while he was a teenager. There's a story behind that she's never asked about. Everyone has some kind of past, whether good or bad. Nowadays Glenn is sober, on the right side of the law, and committed to her daughter. He doesn't mistreat her grandkids. That's all she needs to know.

“What's a scone?” she asks.

“Sean!” Patty Ann says. “Grandma doesn't know what a scone is!”

At the Rose Café, Patty Ann brings up her house again. “It's so large! Big enough to take in a boarder. Or make the top-floor bedroom into a B and B for weekly guests. I told Francis he and his girlfriend would be welcome to stay with us.”

She'd like to call Francis, but neither Patty Ann's phone nor the pay phone at the Rose Café is working. Will he still be able to join them for lunch at 1:00 p.m.?

Another aftershock rolls through. Ronnie grasps her arm. Her heart leaps. Life has so much uncertainty.

“I think I wouldn't mind a nap before lunch,” Ronnie says, climbing carefully down from his high stool. This café is a funny place. A huge wall painting of a rose almost swallows the front door. “All this excitement. It's taken the life out of me.”

“Great idea.” The phones at the hotel will be good. She's sure of it.

In fact, there's already a message at the hotel reception:
Lunch will have to be dinner, 6:30 p.m. Same restaurant. Francis says sorry.

“Just as long as he shows up,” she says, drawing back their room's curtains, opening the window. Amazing that the cleaning service has managed to pass through already, while elsewhere in LA some people are undoubtedly battling fires, rummaging through rubble. If not for the aftershocks, she could pretend there's no disturbance anywhere but the one inside her.

She lost one son already during the Vietnam War. It would have been too much to lose another. But she knew Francis would return someday. She never gave up hope.

The Pacific looks so blue and calm. The beach stretches long and flat and brown. A strip of white licks the shore where the waves hit. It seems so long ago and yet just yesterday when she and Michael would bring the kids down to the beach here to play. Francis was, already, a beautiful baby. She'd unlock the bassinet from the baby carriage, set it in the sand, prop an umbrella up overhead, and turn away to play with the bigger kids. When she turned back, there'd be some woman or girl cooing over him.

“What'd you say?” Ronnie asks, slipping his shoes off, stretching out on the bed.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

When she flew to Dublin to see Francis six months after he called, the only time she's seen him since he resurfaced, she refused to think about the possibility he might not be there waiting as promised.
Shall we lay bets on whether he'll show up?
Patty Ann said during the flight over. She'd brought Patty Ann along, partly because she didn't want her to be the only one of the kids—now that Sissy had spent her junior year of college in Paris—never to have been outside of America and partly because that was before Glenn, and she didn't know what Patty Ann might get up to with her out of the country. Kenny went to stay with the younger boys, and Patty Ann came to Ireland with her.

It was her first time across the Atlantic also.

Don't be ridiculous, Patty Ann,
she said, looking out the plane window, down below at the vast gray nothingness of sky and ocean.
Even Francis wouldn't have me fly all the way over here and not show up.

She turns away from the hotel window and sits down on the other side of the bed from Ronnie. Francis was right there in the airport when she and Patty Ann disembarked. The rest of the week was perfect also. Even Patty Ann behaved well. They went around, eating smoked salmon and brown bread, visiting music halls and old town houses, laughing at how she kept forgetting to look right when she stepped off the curb. Being together. She didn't ask questions. She didn't ask whether he would ever come back to America, even to visit. Now, finally, he has.

“Glenn told me, while you were inside, that he and Patty Ann have a chance at buying their house,” Ronnie says.

“That old wreck?”

“The owner's going into foreclosure. They could get it for a song. One hundred and forty thousand dollars, Glenn says.”

“You'd have to
pay
me more than that to live there. I think there are drug dealers on that street. Anyhow, where would Glenn and Patty Ann come up with one hundred and forty thousand dollars? Who would give them a loan?”

“Well,” Ronnie says.

She takes in his profile. Ronnie is lying on his back, staring at the hotel bedroom's ceiling.

“Ronnie. You are so good to Patty Ann. But you don't have to do this. She's got a husband again now. She turned forty in July.”

“The owner said they can keep the furniture he left behind. Maybe Patty Ann is right. Maybe that Stickley stuff is worth something. And it is only a block from the beach. Four bedrooms.”

“That's not the point.”

“It wouldn't really require that much money. We can afford it.”

“That's not the point, either.”

“Look, I know Patty Ann has never taken to me like the other kids did. We've never had such an easy time together. But she's a good person, deep inside. She means well. And she's smart, she's strong. She's like her mother.” Suddenly, he sits up on the bed and takes her hand. He looks her in the eyes. “I love you, Barbara.”

What in the world has gotten into Ronnie? He's affectionate, but he never says stuff like this. She squeezes his hand. “I love you too, dear. But that doesn't mean you have to buy my oldest daughter a house.”

He keeps hold of her hand, keeps looking straight at her, so serious. “I'd insist the title goes under her name. I won't be here forever, and I want to be sure she has something solid for her future.”

“Good grief. You are talking like you're one hundred years old! And if we did help her to buy a home, why not a cute little two-bedroom condo in Marina del Rey, at least? Or, if that's too much, in Culver City? Someplace clean and new and safe.”

“Barbara. This house in Venice is what Patty Ann wants. It's who she is.”

The homemade wind chimes fluttering on the porch. The mysterious muddle of books and shells on the shelves. The scrappy neighborhood.

She sighs. He is right. This
is
Patty Ann.

“You'll tell her she has to pay it back? To be fair to the others?”

“I'll guarantee the loan and give her the down payment as a gift. We paid for everyone else's college tuition but Mike's. I know I've helped her out more than the others over the years, but I think it still works out fair. Mike worries about her. He'd give her the money himself if he could. If she'd even take it from him.”

“You have this all figured out.”

Ronnie lets go of her hand and lies back down. He closes his eyes. “Yes. I do.”

He folds his hands over his chest. She rolls onto her side and lays her head by his shoulder. Not on it but touching.

“Well, who knows?” she says. “Maybe Patty Ann's right. Maybe it'll turn out to be worth a mint.”

Ronnie laughs softly.

She closes her eyes also.

After their nap, they use the hotel phone to call Patty Ann, whose home phone is working again, and let her know lunch has been moved to dinner, in case Francis hasn't gotten through to her. Neither of them is feeling very hungry, so they share a club sandwich in the hotel's restaurant. Then they venture out and walk north through Palisades Park, stopping to rest under the shade of the palm, pine, and fig trees. Even here by the beach, the day weighs heavily, hot and soupy. A few Rollerbladers have come out, and bike riders. When another aftershock occurs, everyone freezes, reliving the morning. Then they pick themselves back up and keep at whatever they were doing.

The same sudden quiet occurs again that evening when they are in the restaurant, waiting with Patty Ann, Glenn, and Sean for Francis and his girlfriend to arrive. But this time it's not from another aftershock. It's
Francis
. When he walks through the front door, the other diners clearly think because of his looks that he must be a famous actor.

Has life always been like this for poor, shy Francis? The other diners all swiftly return to their grilled chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and their blackened ahi. This is Los Angeles.

“Hello, Mom,” he says carefully. He kisses her on the cheek and greets everyone else slowly, individually, politely shaking hands with Glenn, whom he's never met before. Then he introduces his girlfriend, standing a few steps away and looking around the nautical-themed whitewashed walls of the restaurant with an amused expression.

“This is Georgina,” he says. “I should tell you. We were married three weeks ago.”

Francis has gotten married? Without telling any of them? Will she never be part of her youngest son's life again?
Was
she ever?