An eternity later, they hobbled out to
the backyard just as the sky was beginning to pinken. Bedraggled, they dropped into the beach
chairs with a scrape of aluminum against concrete.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this dirty
in my entire life.” Madeline plopped a family-sized container of hummus and
triangles of pita bread on the upside down packing box that their Sam’s
purchases had been carried in.
“Me, neither.” Avery dropped a bag of Cheez Doodles beside
it and swiped the back of her forearm across her forehead, managing to add
another streak of dirt to her face.
Nicole set an unopened bottle of
Chardonnay on the pool deck next to her bare feet and handed a plastic cup to each
of them. “If there was an inch of water
in this pool, I’d be in it.” Nicole
slumped in her chair. “I think we should
make it a top priority.”
“We barely have a working bathroom,”
Avery pointed out. “It took me forever
to clean the shower and tub up in the hall.
There’s pretty much no water pressure.
I’d rather have a shower than a swim in a pool.”
“I want both,” Nicole said, lifting the
cup to her lips. “It’s not an either/or
sort of thing.”
“Well, it is here.” Avery took a long sip of wine as the sun
slipped farther toward the Gulf.
“Everything’s not going to get done at once, but I will talk to Chase
about the schedule and how things should be prioritized.”
Madeline looked ruefully down at
herself. Together they could have posed
for the illustration of “something the cat dragged in” – even Nicole in her
high-end running clothes and her hair pulled back in a glittery clasp. This was only day one; she could hardly imagine what they’d look like
after the long, hot summer that lay ahead.
Her arms were so tired that it took real
effort to lift even the small plastic cup, but she nonetheless touched it to
the others. “Cheers!” she said, and they
nodded and repeated the toast. “Will you
be able to run your business from here?” she asked Nicole as they contemplated
the sinking sun.
Nicole’s cup stopped midway to her
lips. In the pass, a boat planed off and
gathered speed as it entered the Gulf.
“Sure,” she finally said. “Have
laptop and cell phone, will match make.” She turned her gaze from the boat that
was now disappearing from view to focus on Madeline. “How about you?” Nicole asked. “Can you really leave home for the whole
summer?”
Madeline finished the last drops of wine
and set her glass on the makeshift cocktail table. “You make it sound like going to camp,” she
said in what could only be described as a wistful tone. “I was hoping my husband, Steve, would come
down and help for a while.”
“Oh, is he retired?” Avery asked.
Madeline felt her cheeks flush. Nicole raised an eyebrow and poured them all
another glassful.
“Not exactly,” Madeline admitted. “He was a financial planner who made the
mistake of putting all his clients’ money in Malcolm Dyer’s fund. Along with his family’s.”
Her teeth worried at her bottom
lip. She hadn’t meant to say so
much. Or sound quite so pathetic.
“He stole my father’s entire estate,”
Avery said. “Everything he’d built over
a lifetime of hard work went into that thief’s pocket.” She grimaced and shoved her sunglasses back
up on top of her head. “I still can’t believe
it. Anything short of being drawn and quartered
would be far too good for him.”
Madeline saw Nicole shiver
slightly. “Are you cold?” The sun had not yet set, but its warmth had diminished.
“No.”
Nicole turned her attention to the boat traffic in the pass. A Jet Ski swooped close to the seawall, its plume
of seawater peacocking behind it. The
rider was big shouldered and solid with jet black hair and heavily muscled
arms. Nicole watched idly at first,
presumably because he was male and attractive, but straightened in surprise as
the rider locked gazes and offered a mock salute before revving his engine and
zooming away.
“Do you know that guy?” Madeline asked
Nicole, surprised. “He waved at you.”
“No,” Nicole said. “I don’t think he was actually waving at
me. He …”
“Yes, he was,” Madeline insisted. “He acted like he knew you.”
“That guy was definitely hunky,” Avery
said. “And he was definitely eyeing
Nicole.”
“He must have thought I was someone
else,” Nicole took a sliver of pita and chewed it intently before changing the
topic. “So, how many kids do you have?”
she asked Madeline.
“Two,” Madeline said, unsure how much
information to share. “My son’s
struggling a bit at school; he’s in his freshman year at Vanderbilt,” she
said. “And my daughter, well, right
before I left she lost her job-she’s a filmmaker- and she came home
unexpectedly to live.” She cleared her
throat as if that might somehow stop this bad news dump. “That was right after my mother-in-law moved
in.”
“Good Lord,” Nicole said. She lifted the bottle, eyed the little that
was left, and poured the remaining drops into Madeline’s glass. “No wonder you want to go away to camp.” She smiled with what looked like real
sympathy. “Drink up. Girl; I’d run away
from home, too, if I had to deal with all that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes,
sipping their wine, as the sun grew larger and brighter. A warm breeze blew gently off the Gulf,
stirring the palms and riffling their hair.
“Maybe you should get your daughter to
come down and shoot some ‘before’ video for us,” Avery suggested. “That’s actually what led to Hammer and Nail.” She furrowed her
brow. “I had no idea what was coming
down the pike when I shot that first ten minutes.”
Madeline considered the small
blonde. “My mother-in-law seemed to
think it was your husband’s show, that he got you on it.”
“A lot of people came to believe that,”
Avery said, her tone wry. “Including my
ex-husband. But the idea was mine. I’m the one who sold it, and us, to the
network.”
They fell silent as the sun burned with
a new intensity, shimmering almost white, then turning golden red that tinged
the Gulf as it sank smoothly beneath it.
“God, that was beautiful,” Madeline
breathed as they all continued to stare out over the Gulf, unable to tear their
gazes from the sky and the last painted remnants of daylight. “It makes me feel like anything is possible.”
No one responded, and she supposed she
should be grateful that no one trampled on her flight of fancy. The show was over, but Madeline could still
feel its power. It moved her in a way
her fear and even her resolution and Little Red Henness had not. She raised her now-empty glass to Avery and
Nicole. “I propose that we all make a
sunset toast. That we each name one good
thing that happened today.”
“Good grief,” Nicole said. “Look around you.” She motioned with her empty plastic glass at
the neglected house that hunkered behind them, the cracked and empty pool, the
detached garage with its broken windows and listing door. “Is your middle name Pollyanna?”
Madeline flushed at the comment, but she
didn’t retract her suggestion. “I’m not
saying we should pretend everything’s perfect,” she said. “I’m just saying that no matter how bad it is
it would be better to dwell on the even slightly positive than the overwhelming
negative.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Avery asked.
They all still held their empty glasses aloft. “How good a thing does it have to be?”
“That’s up to you.” Madeline said. “I’m not interested in judging; there will be
no ‘good enough’ police.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Nicole snorted.
“All right, hold on a sec,” Madeline
said. She went into the kitchen and
retrieved a second bottle of wine from the fridge, grateful that John Franklin
had had the power turned on. As she
refilled their glasses, she searched for a positive. Nicole was right, it wasn’t an easy task.
“Okay.”
She raised her now-full glass and waited for the others to do the
same. “I think it’s good that three
complete strangers were able to reach an agreement and commit to a course of
action.”
They touched glasses and took a sip. Madeline nodded at Avery. “Your turn.”
“Hmmmm, let me think.” She looked out over the seawall at the
gathering darkness as the three of them sat in a spill of light from the
loggia. A few moments later she raised
her glass. “I think it’s good that this
house is not going to be torn down. It
deserves a facelift and a new life.”
They clinked and drank and turned their
gazes to Nicole. Madeline could hardly
wait to hear what she would say.
Nicole looked back at the house, then at
them. A small smile played around her
lips, and Madeline wondered if she was going to tell them to stuff the happy
crap or simply refuse to participate.
But she raised her glass in their directions and with only a small sigh
of resignation said, “It’s a good thing no one saw me in that minivan. I can’t imagine how I’d ever live it down.”
©Wendy Wax
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