Life's a Beach (17 page)

“Time will tell,” Allison Flagg said.

I walked up to the top of the beach and stood beside the bathhouse. I had a clear view of Riley from here. They were wrapping his real arm tight against his body and attaching a bloody stump to him. At least one of us was having a good day.

I found my cell phone in my shoulder bag and called Geri. She answered on the first ring. She probably had her cell phone Velcro-ed to her, although then where would she keep her BlackBerry? “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“You’re turning into Mom,” I said. “Why does something always have to be wrong?” It was cooler on the Cape than it had been in Marshbury yesterday, but you could still smell full-blown summer in the air. And the light was gorgeous. The light was always the best thing about being near the ocean. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe the light was actually brighter, or maybe it just seemed like there was more of it because of the reflection of the water. God, I was forty-one and there was still so much I hadn’t figured out yet.

“Why does something have to be wrong?” Geri repeated. I could hear the clicking of Geri’s keyboard over the phone. I had to give her credit—she had great typing skills. “How about because you actually called me?”

“Oh, yeah, good point. Well, Riley’s fine. They’re covering his arm in blood right now.”

“Did he have a good breakfast?”

“No, but he can just chew off the other arm if he gets hungry.”

“I was just asking. You know, it’s not that easy being here while you two are down there having all the fun.”

I leaned back against the cold cement wall of the bathhouse and imagined myself stretched out on a towel on the beach below. Maybe even next to Noah. I tried to picture his face, but I couldn’t quite get it. Then I tried to picture his dog. Clear as a bell.

I sighed. “Allison Flagg is here.”

“Is she still talking about you?” Geri asked. The clicking had stopped, and now I could hear her crunching away on something that sounded healthy. It was quite possible she’d lost the ability to do one thing at a time.

“That would be my guess,” I said. From here, I could just barely make out Allison Flagg, who had rejoined her posse. Maybe she’d have to head back to Marshbury soon. I mean, surely the Beautification Commission had important work to be done.

“Welcome to my world. You should hear those soccer parents. Oops, I have to go.”

“Nice talking to you, too,” I said to the dial tone.

The phone rang again just as I was starting to put it away. My heart did a little flip, maybe that tiny optimist part of me thinking it might be Noah. The rest of me wasn’t surprised when I heard my father’s voice.

“Hiya, Toots.”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Just wanted to let you know Champ here and I are holding down the fort and everything is fine and dandy.”

“That’s great, Dad.”

“Here, somebody wants to say hello. Come on, Champ, you don’t want those young whippersnappers to show you up, do you?”

“Hi, Boyfriend,” I said in one of those sappy voices people use to talk to their pets on the phone.

“It’s me again,” my father’s voice said. “Listen, Champ and I were just wondering. You haven’t seen that Ann-Margret yet, have you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, let us know if you catch sight of her, okay, Toots? And if you’re talking to you-know-who, don’t let on we were asking, okay?”

I finally made the Ann-Margret connection. “Hey, Dad, we’re not in Hollywood. We’re on Cape Cod.”

“Did I know that?”

“I’m not sure, Dad. I just barely found out.”

“Well, you’d think the old goat could have told me. Listen, I better go check on the babies.”

“Awhh, how’re they doing?”

“Better than the bee’s knees. See ya later, Dollface.”

“Bye, Dad,” I said to my second dial tone of the morning.

18

I SPENT THE NEXT CHUNK OF THE MORNING
alternating between watching Riley and hunting for stray pieces of glass. Then I tracked down the gumball machines for Riley, who would be thrilled to hear they hadn’t accidentally been left behind in Marshbury.

During a break between shots, Riley and I headed up to use the restrooms at the bathhouse. His bloody stump took a bit of getting used to, but I was fine, as long as I didn’t look directly at it. “Nice job,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s pretty fun today.” He held up his stump. “Do you think they’ll let me take this home with me?”

“We can ask.”

“Cool.”

The twins came up beside us. Just as I looked over and started to smile at them, one of them shoved Riley hard. He took a few hops, trying to stay on his feet, but the prosthesis must have thrown off his balance, because he toppled over into me, and we both went down.

As I was chomping a mouthful of sand, I distinctly heard a duet. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

I pushed myself up onto my knees, then jerked my way into a standing position. It hurt a lot more to fall now than it had just a couple of years ago, I noticed. The sand wasn’t as much of a cushion as you’d think it would be, and I felt like I had tiny shards of glass imbedded in my knees and palms. Maybe I could dig them out and turn them into sea glass.

Riley was already up. The twins were probably out of earshot, but he yelled after them anyway. “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.”

“You okay?” I asked.

He held up his stump and waved it back and forth. “Look what they did to me,” he said. Then he smiled.

We walked up the hill and stopped where the signs pointed one way for men and the other for women. “Meet you back here,” I said. “Hey, other than getting shoved around, are things going okay with the other kids?”

Riley gave me a thumbs-up with the hand he could control. “Yeah, we all work together. It’s a beautiful thing.”

I wasn’t buying it. “Are you sure?”

Riley lowered his voice to a squeaky whisper. “They said you did sex with someone so I could be in the movie. So I told them then their guardian did it with two people.”

“What?”

Riley grinned. “Get it, Aunt Ginger? There’s two of them?”

I reached for something a good parent might say. “Riley, you know I didn’t really do anything to get you your part in the movie, don’t you? You got it all by yourself. One hundred percent.”

Riley nodded. “Yeah, I know that. But it was a good line, wasn’t it?”

I TRIED CALLING GERI
to tell her she might want to check in with Riley to make sure he wasn’t being scarred for life by the twins, but she didn’t answer. I thought I was handling things pretty well, though. Riley was probably starting to think of me as a third parent by now.

After that I just hung around out of Allison Flagg’s line of vision and read my library book. There was a great idea for linking fishing swivels together to make bracelets. The best thing about it was I could probably get some right at the Fisherman’s Lodge. If I could manage to drill some holes in my sea glass, I could even thread some small pieces of it onto the swivels, maybe alternating them with beads. I’d make a few samples and visit a couple of the Cape shops while I was down here and see if they’d take any on consignment.

Of course, I should get back to work on my sea glass earrings, too. I’d managed to pack up some of my supplies, at least the ones my cat wasn’t using, so I had two small bags of sea glass, plus most of a spool of twenty-gauge wire and half a bag of hypoallergenic pierced earring wires, with me. There was a whole chapter in this book about wire-wrapping techniques, so maybe I could master something new in that department.

So far I was fairly limited. I’d perfected kind of an asymmetrical wire wrap, with an extra little loop. I could also do a wrap that made the piece of sea glass look like a tiny present. And then there was the double-wrap present technique, which added a second strand of wire right next to the first, and let’s not forget about the asymmetrical wrap with two extra loops instead of one. I had a lot to learn.

I kept reading. I could hardly wait to try twisting and coiling and even hammering the wire to make spiral cages for the sea glass. There were some figure eight techniques that could work, too, as kind of a backdrop for the sea glass. It might also be interesting to try to make something called a jig by hammering nails into a piece of graph paper glued onto a block of wood to try some more complicated wire patterns.

Wow, there was even a section in the book about making jewelry with electrical supplies. Little tiny metal things called condensers could be used to create earrings if you ran wire down the middle of them. Who knew?

I looked up. The gaffer was staring at me from over by the video monitors. He put down the big cord he was holding and waved. I looked down again and kept reading.

Riley and I both managed to eat our lunch without anyone shoving us. We even sat right down at the table with Allison Flagg and the twins, just so they didn’t think they could push us around. Some of the women at the table actually seemed pretty friendly. One of them pointed to my book. “There’s a great place for jewelry near the town square. It’s called Sand, Sea and Sky. You should check it out.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“In your spare time,” Allison Flagg said. One of the other women giggled.

I didn’t even bother to look at her. “All set, Riley?” I said as I pushed my chair back from the table.

We stopped at the gumball machines on our way back. Riley stretched out his arms and gave one of them a hug. “I missed you guys,” he said.

That gaffer was everywhere. “Hey, are you still following me?” he asked as he walked over to us. He flipped his sunglasses up to the top of his head.

“Are you almost ready, Riley?” I asked. I’d never really noticed before how handy it was to have kids around. They were a great social buffer.

“Okay,” Tim Kelly said. “You can take my drill. But just for one night.”

Riley gave me a handful of M&M’s and went back for more. “You don’t happen to have any old electrical condensers you don’t need, do you?” I asked. “Little ones?”

The gaffer shook his head. “Give ’em an inch. . . .” He turned around so we were both facing the same way, and draped an arm across my shoulder. “I knew it. You’re much brighter than you pretend to be.”

“Brightest bulb in the pack,” I said as I slid out from under his arm.

He grinned. “Are you trying to turn me on with all this electrical talk?”

I groaned. “Yuck. And you were almost likable for a minute there. Listen, thanks so much about the drill. I really appreciate it. Well, better get back to work.” I took a few quick steps toward Riley.

“Right,” he said. “Let me know if you need me for anything.”

I was pretty sure I could think of a couple things if I tried, but I was definitely not going there.

RILEY GOT BUSY AGAIN
and I tried to. Every paragraph or two, I’d find myself peeking over the top of my book to look for the gaffer. I imagined stretching out beside him on a beach blanket, rubbing sunscreen on his back. Handing him the bottle so he could rub some on mine. . . .

I was saved by the ring of my cell phone. It was my father. “Just to let you know,” he said as soon as I said hello, “we took our daily constitutional and walked way the heck over to the Take It or Leave It so I could show the babies where they were adopted.”

“That’s nice, Dad. You didn’t try to put Boyfriend in the stroller with them, did you?”

“Champ decided to stay home, but I told him I’d keep an eye out for a double stroller. We’ll work things out, don’t you worry. By the way, you don’t have any of that Bactine ointment hanging around anywhere, do you?”

“Ask Mom.” I stood up so I could get a better look at things on the film front. Riley was splashing around in the water now, and everybody on the beach was screaming. It looked pretty scary, even from here.

“Listen, Champ and I were just thinking maybe we’d drive the babies down to see you. How’s that sound to you, Toots?”

That got my attention. “Dangerous?” I suggested.

“Oh, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. We were thinking the babies could stay with you, and Champ and I would take the ferry over to Nantucket. Some lady at the Take It or Leave It told me you could make a million dollars in one month on the things they throw away at the dump over there. None of those rich people want to bother to haul their old stuff off the island, so they just leave it for the taking.”

“Dad, Boyfriend doesn’t like to ride in the car. What’s Mom up to today? Maybe you should ask her to take a ride with you.”

“Keep this under your hat, but I think the old broad is spying on me.”

“What?”

“The babies and I are pretty sure we saw her over at the dump today.”

“Maybe she was just getting rid of some things.”

“Everybody knows that’s not her department. Anyhoo, did I tell you what we found at the Take It or Leave It today?”

I was wearing a watch today. I looked at it. “No, what?”

“A ship’s wheel coffee table exactly like the one in our rumpus room. We’ll have a matched set once I talk you-know-who into it. They just don’t make tables like that anymore. Right now we’ve got Champ’s food and water up on top of it. I don’t think he likes sharing with the babies, so they’ve got their own chow area on the floor over by the kitchen cabinets.”