Whole Latte Life (29 page)
Before he opens his eyes Sunday morning, Michael breathes in the aroma of fresh brewed coffee and salt air. The salt air gives it away. No way is he at home in Queens. He sits up on the chaise to slats of sunlight streaming in through the porch lattice windows. A high shelf is filled with big white conch shells and rows of painted sea gulls, in flight, nesting, perched, mounted on driftwood.
Yesterday they were busy and now the sills are cleaned, the spider webs wiped out of corners, the walls sponge washed, the rag rugs beaten over the clothesline, the pillows fluffed. With a soapy solution, Rachel swiped out the flower boxes outside the porch, preparing them for fresh soil and summer blossoms.
Michael stands and stretches, then rubs a stiff shoulder muscle before following the coffee aroma into the kitchen. “Rachel?” he calls as he pours himself a mug.
“Out here.” On the back porch, the windows are opened to the distant sea. She is freshly showered, her damp hair combed back off her face. “Good morning, you.” A cup of steaming coffee sits in front of her as she surmises his tousled hair and shadow of whiskers. “Sleep well?”
“Morning,” he says, and kisses the top of her head. “Sorry about last night. You should’ve woken me.” After picking up staples at the grocery store, they returned to the cottage with a take-out fried clam dinner. That and a glass of wine were the antidote to patrolling Manhattan, to Summer’s impending move, to worrying how to keep Rachel in his life. He’d fallen fast asleep on the porch. “Where’d you sleep?”
“I found the linen closet and made up a bed.”
“Were you comfortable?”
“Very. I took a walk on the beach—”
“Alone? I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Michael, it was fine. There were other people around. Then I came back and found a magazine to read.”
“What’ve you got there?” he asks, sitting beside her with his coffee.
“It was on the front porch yesterday, leaning against the lamp.” Rachel turns a plaque around. “It must hang on a wall somewhere.”
Michael centers it in front of him, a navy blue plaque with a sea gull painted on the bottom, blades of sea grass painted lightly around it. The words
Little Gull
curve across the top in faded silver letters.
“This belongs outside, near the door. Come on, I’ll show you.” He grabs a cinnamon roll she’d heated, and they pick up their coffees. She hands him a napkin and follows out through the front porch. “It’s the cottage name.”
“Little Gull? That explains the painted seagulls on the porch. What a cute idea.”
“Didn’t your cottage have a name?”
“No. Should it?”
“Rachel. It is an unspoken law that summer cottages be named. You didn’t notice the others when we came in yesterday?”
“Jeepers. They’re all named?”
First he rehangs
Little Gull
on its nail, finagling it precisely straight. “Bring your coffee. You’ll see.” They head down the street toward the boardwalk, passing a white cottage with deep blue shutters. Painted on the corners of the shutters are simple white sailboats.
“There,” he says, pointing with the pastry in his hand. The sign above the cottage door says
White Sails
. A pale yellow cottage the color of the summer sun bears the name
Early Dawn
.
Fiesta
is next door to
Siesta
. Another snow white bungalow with board and batten siding and multi-paned porch windows seems as elegantly detailed as a
Swan’s Feather
.
“It’s a fairy tale,” Rachel says, reading the signs while sipping her coffee. Michael finishes the sweet roll and wipes his fingers on the napkin.
“There’s another.” A renovated home is reshingled, reroofed and reporched. The brass knocker on its door is a golden anchor. Large crank-out windows open to the sea.
Finally
is its name.
They reach the boardwalk and at the far end of the beach, a bank of fog burns off in the rising sun. Seagulls swoop and cry, searching for washed up crabs, diving into schools of minnows.
Rachel mentions her old wish for her own place at the beach some day, for a piece of heaven. “The cottage names remind me of it.”
“Of your wish?”
“Well think about it. If heaven is paved with streets of beach sand, these would be the street names. Finally and Fair Weather and Grey Mist and White Sails and Life’s Dream.”
Michael drinks his coffee and after a moment, agrees. “Where else could you be?”
“It’s because of Sara Beth that I rented the cottage.”
After their coffee, Michael took a quick shower and called his daughter to be sure she was home, before they headed back to Queens. He wants to get to work early. Rachel likes that even though the hostlers groom Maggie daily, Michael brushes her mane and tail before his shift. He says it tunes her in to him. Maggie’s ears listen to his voice saying she is the prettiest horse in the department.
“Sara Beth?” Rachel turns to him in the truck cab.
He keeps his eyes on the highway. “She got me thinking, watching her have a breakdown in the city, then finding the gumption to put herself back together as someone new.”
“And
that
made you rent a cottage?”
“I’m just saying that maybe she’s on to something.”
“I don’t know.” Rachel remembers how afraid she was when Sara Beth disappeared. “She’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“Listen. Maybe turning forty scared the hell out of her. It was like a door opening on her life. And you’ve got Sara Beth looking in, saying Damn it, I’m going through, come hell or high water. She saw that life’s short and she resolved to make it sweet in the face of all odds.”
“You’ve given this some thought.”
“Because I see you’re still bothered by her. And I see a correlation between her situation and ours.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” Michael tells her. “We gave ourselves the summer to see what happens between us. To me, that’s like Sara Beth turning forty and seeing the time she has left. Sensing some day it will end, she decides she better do something with it now.”
“So forty shook her up?”
“No. What’s left of life at forty shook her up. And summer’s damn short, too. Kind of like life, once you’re forty.” He signals a lane change, then reaches over and takes her hand. “If one summer’s all the time I have with you, then, like Sara Beth, come hell or high water, I’m going to make the most of it. If you’re with me on this.”
“So you rented the cottage.” If Sara Beth only knew she was behind all this.
“I know you’ve got a whole life filled with people who love you in Addison. And I don’t know if this can work, what we have. But I’d hate to give up without finding out.” Michael slows for his exit and as he pulls off the highway, picks up a key from beside a wrapped cinnamon roll on the console. “Here.” He presses it into her palm. “It’s an extra cottage key. Use it Rachel. Whenever you want to. Even if I’m at work, or with Summer, just know you’ve got a place at the beach for the next month.” He maneuvers the busy streets and the city heat works its way into the pickup. “Anytime. But be careful, okay?”
“About what?”
“Being alone there. Locking up, drawing the blinds.”
“Michael, you’ve got to stop that.” He glances over at her. “Telling me to be careful. I know you care, but sometimes you go overboard. It’s a little insulting.”
“I’m sorry. Of course you can take care of yourself. It’s just that I worry.”
After they drive along for a while, Rachel says, feeling the key in her palm, “See, here’s the thing. I know what you’re saying about my life back home, and it’s true. But there’s more. There’s you. You’ve been my knight in shining armor, a little overprotective, but still, ever since sitting up there on your chestnut mare that day…”
“Maggie.”
“And you swept right into my life. We did Manhattan and The Plaza and, well, bowling and cupcakes, all in a whirlwind. And now this.”
Michael turns the truck onto his street.
“Little Gull is like an answered prayer,” she continues. “The easiness of the beach, and of a little cottage. But I’m afraid there’s a catch, that you’ll sweep right by, or change your mind, or, I don’t know, worry
too
much.”
Michael parks his truck in the driveway beside her car. He glances at her, then gets out and walks around. She’s afraid that she hurt him and he misunderstands. When he opens her door, she explains, “What I’m saying is that Anchor Beach is the perfect place for us to—”
“Stop. Let me finish for you.” He pulls her close, moves his hands to her face and kisses her. It insists, that kiss, that he will not sweep past like Sara Beth and Carl and Ashley. He pulls back and moves a strand of hair from her face. “Anchor Beach is the perfect place to find answers, okay? There’s no way I’m sweeping right by you.” His arms slip down around her waist, holding her close. He bends like he’s going to kiss her again but stops just shy and touches her lips with his finger. He hitches his head back toward his tended home. “See that house there? This is it. This house and Manhattan and a month at the shore.
It’s all I have. There’s nothing else. It’s where I’ll
always
be.” Then before kissing her again, he presses into her hand written directions to the Cross Sound Ferry back in Orient Point, assuring her it is a much more pleasurable journey back to Connecticut than the expressway. He opens her car door for her. “Did you ever think about trading in this hybrid?”
“My car? Why?”
“Well it’s black. It’s not that visible at night, you know? Silver is statistically the safest vehicle, with fewer accidents.”
“You’re doing it again,” Rachel says as she gets in the car.
“Sorry.” Michael gently closes the door. “But you’re on the road a lot.”
She starts the car and opens her window. “I know,” she agrees. “Lock my doors, don’t speed.”
“Hey. You said it, not me.”
And during the ninety minute boat ride across Long Island Sound to the Connecticut shore, she can’t help thinking of what he said after that. Not of their plans to meet at Little Gull on his next day off, the day after the Fourth of July. Not that he’ll miss her all week, then kissed her again, longer and deeper than the last. Well, she thinks of that too.
But that he someday wants to have a long cup of coffee with this Sara Beth, because he has a heck of a lot for which to thank her.
T
he town maintenance crew uses a fire department bucket truck to string banners high above the street. Red, white and blue swags reach across The Green. In two days, it’ll be crowded with smoking grills, hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, and people wearing shorts and polo shirts, tank tops and sandals. Addison High School’s Marching Band always gives a Yankee Doodle concert mid-afternoon. The poor kids will wilt beneath their tubas and big drums in this heat.
Sara Beth just came from the party rental shop with a small display tent shoved into the back of her car.
Dip or dive?
It’s how she and Rachel consider decisions hanging over their heads.
Dip your toes or dive headfirst? Dip,
she wanted to tell Rachel.
This is a dip,
this little tent set up with the other crafters at the town barbecue, except hers will be filled with small antiques. Staying on deck, dipping her foot in.