Fog
2016
Sunday, midday
I sat in the front passenger seat of J.B.’s truck, the goody bag on my lap. We’d be finished today. One postcard, one more picture. Done.
Casey had secured the goody bag with one of Elle’s ponytail holders. Purple, with sparkly stars on the end. I squeezed the bag until the stars jabbed into my palm.
Casey sat in back, the oversized denim shirt she’d brought in lieu of a jacket bunched up against the window for her pillow. But she didn’t nap. Nobody napped.
Nobody talked, either.
Not until we were half an hour out of Coeur-de-Lune and J.B. couldn’t handle the silence anymore. “Everything okay?” he said, eyes darting from Casey’s reflection in the rearview mirror to me.
“I told her,” she said. “About me being sick. She’s a little bummed out.”
“Oh.” J.B. glanced at me.
I twitched one side of my mouth sideways in a facsimile of a smile and stared out the window.
A little bummed out.
Yes. Just a little, Casey.
I concentrated on the shades of green whipping past the window. Trees that got blurrier as my eyes filled. I wiped them with my sleeve, trying to be discreet.
“Laur, don’t,” Casey said. “We’re going to have a good day.”
“I’m fine.” I cleared my throat, flicked on the radio. News. Some guy analyzing Hillary Clinton’s smile again. Maybe we could go to the same smile coach, a former pageant queen with a special protractor for measuring lip angles down to the arc second; I needed to work on my forced smile, too.
I flipped to a jazz station, turning it low so I could think.
She’ll tell Casey. I have to protect Casey.
Would you want to know, if you were her?
J.B. tapped my knee. You all right? he mouthed.
I nodded, rested my cheek against the cold glass.
“I can’t wait to see the beach,” Casey yawned out, and after a few minutes I knew without turning that she was asleep.
Casey was sick. And I’d gotten something wrong in the garden years before.
Those two facts were clear. But nothing else was.
I stared out the window as the forested mountains of my childhood gave way to beige farmland, gray industrial towns, the blue of the bay. All the way to the foggy coast of San Francisco, I tried to knit images, clues, memories together into one piece that made sense.
* * *
We pulled up at the Ocean Beach scenic lookout after two. It was damp and cold; the sightseers on the narrow esplanade beside the highway were shivering in their shorts.
Refreshed from her nap, unburdened of her secret, Casey was in high spirits. She fed quarters into a coin-operated silver binocular stand, pivoting it back and forth eagerly. “I think I see a seal,” she shouted. “Or maybe it’s a rock, but let’s pretend it’s a seal.”
We joined the tourists trudging up the hill toward the Cliff House, a boxy restaurant teetering on the edge of a rocky cliff. Sometimes Sam and I sat side by side at a window table there, sipping extra-spicy Bloody Marys. If you stared at the water long enough, hard enough, the murmurs and clinks of the bustling dining area receded until it almost felt like you were sailing out to sea.
“Lands End,” Casey said thoughtfully, pausing by a sign. “What’s that?”
“We’re there,” I said. “This whole place is called Lands End. You never came here that year you lived in the city?”
“Never. Poor, deprived me.”
We wandered past the restaurant to the ruins of the Sutro Baths. I’d never thought the ruins were much to look at. Just some sad, burnt stone foundations, the eroded remains of stairwells in the sand. Puddles where there had once been massive saltwater swimming pools.
But Casey was entranced, marveling at how close we were to the ocean. She ran past the Keep Off, Dangerous Waves sign and climbed onto a broad rock, staring at the endless expanse of white-capped teal waves. Leaning into the wind, she pulled the flapping tails of her unbuttoned denim shirt taut around her stomach for warmth, revealing the too-lean curve of her back, her jutting shoulder blades.
I wondered if the stark beauty of this place made her sad, knowing what the future held. Was every second of happiness now a trap, ending in quick, devastating calculations? How many more waves will I count? How many more rocks will I climb on?
But when she turned from the sea her face was calm.
* * *
Casey led us from the rocks to a grassy area where a woman was singing for a knot of tourists.
“Sunshine, go away today...”
The busker grinned up at the leaden sky, hamming, and got a laugh from her audience. Casey pushed forward to drop a bill into her guitar case.
“She was a wreck at first,” J.B. murmured. “Only got out of bed because of Elle.”
“I’d still be in bed.”
“It’s moving slowly.”
“So she said. I guess she’s supposed to celebrate because of that?” My voice, though low, was cracked, ugly. “And that’s why Alex wanted us to reunite now. Because Casey’s sick?”
He paused before answering. “Yes.”
I hesitated. Saying it out loud would make my mistake real. But I had to know. I spoke quickly, rushing to get my question out before Casey came back. “J.B. You and Alex never—”
Casey returned and we smiled wide. Too wide. “Nice try. I know you’re talking about me. Laur, where’s your friend’s place?”
“That blue building up the road.” I pointed. “You can’t miss it.”
“Good. I’m starving.”
J.B. and I followed her out of the ruins and up the steep sidewalk toward Sam’s until a woman asked us to take a picture of her family. Casey walked ahead while J.B. stopped and accepted the iPhone.
The family posed, the little girl in her dad’s arms, the ocean behind them. J.B. framed the shot carefully. “Say...beach.”
But the kid wouldn’t cooperate. A curly-haired girl of about four in a tiny black Star Wars sweatshirt, she was red-faced, writhing and wailing. The parents gave up and apologized for holding us up. “Nap time,” the dad said and laughed.
J.B. took my hand, rubbed it between his. “You’re freezing. And Casey’s way up there, we should catch up.”
I walked up the hill backward. Slowly, taking one last look at the ruins from above. Sand, pools of mucky green water, rubbly outlines of foundation. Families posing for pictures.
Pictures.
“J.B., wait.” I turned and grabbed his hand.
“Tired? I could use a coffee myself, and maybe—”
“That picture of Alex you used to stare at,” I said. “From when she was a toddler. It was taken by the ruins. That’s why she put this place on the list. I thought it was because of my work but that’s not it, is it? This one is about Alex.”
“You’ll have to talk to Alex about that.” He strode on, up the hill, breaking free of my grasp. Suddenly desperate for his espresso.
“And...” I chased after him. “And you never slept with her. Did you?”
That stopped him cold. I was aware of bodies passing us, aware that we were making a scene, blocking the sidewalk.
“I thought you didn’t,” I said softly, coming closer to where he stood. “I thought maybe I’d been wrong about that.”
He turned, eyes wide with shock. “You actually—”
“I know it’s not true. Now.”
“Me and Alex? Why would you think that?”
“I heard you talking about keeping something from me. In the garden. The night after my dad’s service. I was sure you were talking about how you’d been together. I thought you still wanted to be together. But that wasn’t it. Was it?”
“Jesus.” He closed his eyes, ran his hands through his hair, as if he could mess it up any more than the wind had already. So many filaments of silver in with the black now.
“You were talking about Casey,” I said. “How she’d get sick.”
He nodded. The weary pedestrians parted around us. When J.B. opened his eyes they were so sad and disbelieving I had to look away.
It was the disbelief that hurt most. He couldn’t believe how utterly foolish I’d been. Foolish, and vain, assuming their conversation had to be only about me. It disgusted me to see all that reflected in him.
I stared downhill at the ocean, at the distant line where the water disappeared into a wall of fog.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said after a minute.
“I was a wreck.” My eyes were streaming, the ocean before me a misty layer of color, grays over blues.
“But...to just leave. To leave, without... Look at me!” He shook my shoulder.
I turned to face him but still couldn’t meet his eyes.
A panting older woman in a pink Ghirardelli Chocolate sweatshirt, the hood cinched tight around her face, glared at me behind J.B.’s back. Annoyed we were blocking the sidewalk. Realizing that I was crying, that J.B.’s arm on my shoulder wasn’t an embrace, she softened her eyes in pity, locking her gaze on mine for a minute before ascending the hill.
“Hey, slowpokes!” Casey shouted into the wind from the crest of the hill. “No making out in the street!”
* * *
When I walked inside Goofy Foot Surf & Coffee Shack, setting off the tinkling bell over the door, Casey and Sam were already sitting together at a window table like old friends, Casey sipping a tall whipped-cream-topped drink.
“We thought you’d been carried off by a sneaker wave,” Sam said.
I hugged him. He was so solid, so familiar, wearing the soft vintage Aloha shirt I’d given him for his sixty-fifth. He smelled like coffee and Big Red cinnamon gum.
When I finally let go he said to Casey, “What’s gotten into this one?”
“My mom cooked up this game to keep us occupied,” Casey said. “And we’re a little worn-out from it. My mom can do that to you.”
“I know what’ll perk her up,” Sam said. “Think she can handle one, Casey?”
“Maybe.”
Casey nudged me, looking out the window at J.B. He was sitting on a bench across the street, unmoving. “What’s up with him?”
“He wanted to see the view.”
“Right.” She scrutinized me. I’d made a hasty attempt to clean up outside, wiping my eyes and nose with my sleeve. But my face had to be a crumpled, blotchy mess. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Just tired.”
Sam patted my shoulder only once, then entertained Casey with surfing stories as he made me a drink like Casey’s, a new invention called a Gnarly Mocha. Three kinds of chocolate, cinnamon, and a little cayenne to give it a kick. I didn’t touch it.
I stared blankly at the poster on the wall in front of me. It was a big emerald green print, art deco, showing the inside of the baths in their glory days. People in old-fashioned bathing costumes swimming, swinging on ropes, descending slides under a massive glass ceiling. I’d often admired the intricate design.
At the bottom it said, “When the Sutro Baths complex was completed in 1896, it was the largest indoor swimming center in the world... The structure, long vacant, burned down in 1966.”
“Sam,” I said. “Is this right? The baths burned in ’66?”
“Yep. Must’ve been something to see.”
1966.
Alex was born in 1959. She’d said it all the time, how she was one of the last children of the fifties. I calculated.
Truthful postcards the silly shop sells; buy one so I can tell.
“I like this guy,” Casey said. “Guess you were right about the clue, Laura. My mom must have wanted me to meet Sam. Searched online or whatever, saw you designed for him?”
I nodded, though I knew for sure now that she was wrong, that Alex had another reason for sending us here.
“Sam. You have a postcard with this Sutro print, right?”
“That rack over there. Top.” He watched as I spun the postcard rack. “We only have one left.”
Sam would never know this ordinarily. He was terribly lax about inventory. So I wasn’t surprised when I flipped the card over and saw his handwriting:
Tucker, 8 p.m.
4 Ridge Farm Road.
I slapped the card on the table.
“Busted,” he said.
Casey sighed. “So you’ve met my mom. Is she in the back room with champagne or what?”
He shook his head. “She called today and asked me to write that. That’s all. Who’s Tucker?”
“Not who,” I said. “Where. A little town near where we grew up.”
* * *
J.B. didn’t speak on the drive back. Somewhere around Sacramento, Casey began snoring softly.
I had worked out one more fact:
The baths burned in 1966.
Alex was supposedly born in 1959.
But in the picture of her as a one-year-old the baths had already burned. If she was telling the truth about her age it would be way before 1966 in that picture. And the baths would still be standing.
So she’d lied about her age. Truthful postcards, Alex had written in the clue. I’d glossed over the word, thinking it was just filler, but truthful meant something here. And so I can tell didn’t mean “so I can tell that you went there.”
If my math was right, Alex couldn’t have been older than sixteen when she’d had Casey, not twenty-two like she’d said. Was that what she wanted to tell us? That she’d been really young when she got pregnant? And she had been too ashamed to say it all these years?
J.B. stared straight ahead, driving carefully. His hands clutched the steering wheel a little too tight. When he felt me watching him he glanced over, pressed his lips together in a tight, wan smile.
I was grateful for it, but it was sadder than if he’d wept.