Whole Latte Life (38 page)

There are oil paintings and there are watercolor paintings. Both are layered. Here, at the beach, Sara Beth thinks they are watercolor. Light. Translucent. Blending. Watercolor paints are transparent, never fully covering the layer of paint beneath. So it is important, in a watercolor, to work from the lightest color to the darkest. And that is what Sara Beth does.

She drops in her feelings and motivations, tips the paper and blots them with stories of Tom, and how she’d nearly divorced him before Owen came along. From that canvas, she pulls out the bigger picture of her life, glazing over it with the color of growing up in a well worn old home and introducing more color in the hue of her mother and how she included her children in her day-to-day life, her restoration of that home, her lesson that you’re never alone in its history because of the stories in the walls, the furniture.

But in her painting, it felt lately like color was being lifted out when Owen came along, taking all her time, and then even more color drained with her mother’s death. Sara Beth doesn’t paint in every detail; they’d been friends long enough for Rachel to know them. So she suggests her recent feelings, her frame of mind, her desperation, with mere brushstrokes.

Now and then, they step back from the work at hand and let the canvas dry. They walk on the beach, have a glass of wine, work on a plate of cheese and crackers. But always they return to the painting, their brushstrokes seeking out the texture of their friendship.

“Owen’s what ended up saving me.” Sara Beth stands and looks out the old porch windows facing the sea. “I love Owen so much. But differently than the girls.” She leans against the sill, touching the little seagulls on the shelves. “My pregnancy stopped me from leaving my marriage.”

“What? Leaving? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“And say what?” Sara Beth asks, turning to her. “This wasn’t the life I wanted? That I fell into it because Tom was my safety? The thing is, it had nothing to do with security. Choosing Tom back then, and everything that happened this year, had more to do with Mom.”

“Your mother?”

“She knew me like no one else, loved me like no one else, and growing up with her, restoring that house, furnishing it with antiques she bought with me tagging along, well, it’s a connection I can’t lose, to the most special person I’ve known. Me, and a shop, are an extension of her. With Tom, I’m finding a way to do it.”

After a moment, Rachel says, “We should all be so lucky, having that love in our lives. But why the mystery? Why didn’t you tell me this in New York?”

“It was grief, Rach. All the furniture and treasures in that carriage house? They were a gift from Mom on my fortieth birthday.”

“No way.”

Sara Beth tells the story of the package delivered on the morning of her birthday and how her mother arranged the delivery with Lillian a few weeks before her death.

“Seeing that carriage house was like Mom coming back to me. And it did something else, having her return like that. The sadness of her being gone came back too. By the time we went to New York a few months later, I’d wake up some days and cry. I remember when Mom died, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get a breath. And that started happening again, like I’m trying to fill up this big hole inside me. I didn’t know how else to get away from that, to start fresh somehow, without my partner filling my life with calls and visits and emails. So I ran away from it.”

Rachel picks up the wine bottle. “That’s why Tom was devastated,” she says as the bottle tips into Sara Beth’s glass. “He didn’t realize it was about your mother.”

“He thought I was leaving him again.”

“
Are
you?”

“No.” She sets down her glass. “Let’s walk outside, okay?”

The late afternoon sun has faded, the tide gone out. Rachel tells her she loves this lingering time of day here, walking along the driftline, barefoot.

“Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I’d done things differently. Remember Claude? My old college boyfriend?” Sara Beth picks up a seashell, then another, for her daughters.

“Are you serious? He was so, I don’t know, hippy? Really, really into the art thing. Studio painting, right?”

“That’s right. It was Claude’s passion that drew me to him. He was so free and unbounded, the same as I saw in my mother growing up. And in the end, his passion shaped his life, too.”

They look across Long Island Sound, the horizon darkening.

“I imagine it’s the Atlantic sometimes. That’s where he is, Claude. Across the pond. He’s a curator at a French museum.”

They sit for a while, the waves lapping, the sand warm. “This is what the sea is for, you know,” Rachel says.

“What do you mean?”

“Now I see why you said we needed time on a boat. We needed the sea to contemplate all this beside.”

One of the important rules when painting is to know when to stop, to know if any further layers will add to the painting. If not, there’s no reason to dab your brush, wet the canvas, blot. And with Rachel dabbing the sea onto the painting Sara Beth decides this particular picture is complete.

After dinner, Sara Beth pokes around the cottage, coming across pieces of Rachel’s new life when she walks into her bedroom. Michael’s worn boat shoes are set neatly beneath a dresser; his cargo shorts folded over the back of a straight chair. A man’s razor and toothbrush hang in the bathroom. She picks up his razor and wonders about the connection between Michael and her friend and herself. It is intensely here, some invisible thread, or wire, or rope, tying them together.

“It’s just enough, isn’t it? This cottage?”

“You bet,” Rachel answers from the porch glider.

“I know you’re tired tonight. We’ll leave in the morning?” Sara Beth asks, leaning on the front porch doorjamb.

“But we’re not done, party pooper.”

“What do you mean? How much more can I explain?”

“Okay fine, so far so good. You’ve earned your manicure points.” She goes to her bedroom and comes back with a bottle of coral nail polish. “Sit down and give me your hand.” And Sara Beth sets her hand on a white wicker table between them, just like old times, a lifetime of beach porches, hurricane lamps, salt air in the breeze, waves in the distance, wishing stars.

“So tell me about this Michael dude, Rach.”

“Wait a minute. You’re still kidnapped and I’m still feeling kind of miffed about your walking out on me in New York.” Rachel brushes a line of coral down the center of one of Sara’s nails. “Like, I could have helped you, you know.”

“You’re a tough negotiator.” Sara Beth points to a nail not covered enough. “Fix that one.” So Rachel applies a second coat and tells her to dry. Sara Beth waves her fingers, blowing on them gently. “First tell me about your guy. I need a little gossip.”

“How did you even know we were seeing each other? I never told you.”

“I saw you together. In the grocery store one day, he must’ve come to Connecticut.” She takes the nail polish bottle and Rachel’s hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Your nails! We’ll be twins. Now hold them out,” she orders as she dips the brush. And while she dabs on color, she doesn’t say she knew they were together by the way Rachel and Michael looked at something on the shelf, and the way Michael’s hand touched the small of Rachel’s back, and how the gesture seemed intimate and Sara had to turn around and leave, dropping her basket in front of the store.

“I guess what you need to know about Michael, who, yes, I am seeing, is that he’s behind all this. That’s the kind of guy he is.” Rachel watches her draw lines of coral polish along her nails. “Michael saw the other side of your story.” She lays her second hand out and Sara Beth continues polishing. “He saw my side. He saw me going crazy trying to find you everywhere: on the streets, stopping women from behind, grabbing their arm when I was sure they were you. Something seemed really, really wrong and all I wanted to do was help you.” The sunlight outside fades. Nearby porch lights come on, passing voices on the sandy street are hushed. “He saw me realize all the losses you’ve had recently,” she explains.

Sara Beth closes the nail polish bottle and stands, her arms crossed in front of her.

“But see, after all that panic, even though it still feels like you used our friendship,” Rachel begins, then hesitates, “I feel like maybe it was my fault too.”

“Your fault? No way.”

“Maybe I should’ve seen some of this. Or maybe, maybe I did. And I thought it would all pass with time. It would be easier to just look the other way and be busy with my own life.”

“So you asked Michael if you could use his cottage to do this?”

“Partly.” Rachel looks around the porch. “Someday I’ll explain how we’re here doing this, in this cottage, mostly
because
of him. And because of a situation that made him
ask
me to keep you close in my life. He’s behind a lot of this.”

“Rach,” Sara Beth interrupts. “Stop. For a little while? Let’s take a break.” The image of a man she doesn’t know encouraging all this affects her. You can stand in one place, like here on a little seaside porch, absolutely still with your pretty coral nails, and inside everything shifts, gently, the smallest wave.

They walk down to the beach and sit in the dark on the boardwalk. “What a haven this place is,” Sara Beth says. She turns and looks at the pleasure boats corralled into the boat basin behind them. Nearly every slip is full. “Have you spent a lot of time here?”

“Pretty much,” Rachel answers.

“Lucky.” They watch the night sky over Long Island Sound. The cottages on the east side, up on the hill, are dark now. People are sleeping. The flag was taken down at sunset. Sara Beth sits with arms folded, leaning forward on crossed legs.

“Just think,” Rachel says. “If you chose Claude, you wouldn’t be here now.”

After a moment, Sara Beth says, “No I wouldn’t.”

The way she looks out into the dark, toward the water, Rachel doubts she’ll ever believe some choices completely.

“We should get back,” Sara Beth tells her.

“In a minute.”

“Oh, I get it.” Sara Beth follows her gaze to the sky. Stars glimmer behind wispy clouds. “I can’t believe we’ve been doing this every summer.”

“I guess it’s our thing. Twenty-five years of wishing on stars. They must hold some celestial answer for us.”

“We take death to reach a star. That’s what van Gogh said.”