Chasing Sunsets (6 page)

I sat in one of the Adirondack chairs—the same one Dad had rested in—crossed one leg over the other, leaned back, and closed my eyes. The sun warmed the left side of my face and my skin grew clammy under the afternoon’s wet heat. Without opening my eyes, I raked my hands through the length of my blonde hair, forcing the roots up. Sweat beaded along my scalp as I twisted the strands until they formed a makeshift bun. When a breeze brushed across the back of my neck, I leaned back again. At my feet, Max plopped down with a sigh.

For a moment I imagined my sons had made the trip with me and that they were, right now, upstairs unpacking their suitcases, shedding their travel clothes, and then shoving their long, tan legs into swimming trunks. Any minute they would come skipping down the stairs, their voices reaching me long before they did. They’d call my name, “Mom!” and then they would insist I get up and take them to the park
now.
Max would beat all of us to the car.

But a dream was all it was. All it could be.

Anise had turned the bedroom Dad and Mom had used into a guest room, then created a master bedroom out of the room my sisters and I had shared. No longer was the room dominated by a king-sized bed draped in white linen. The mounds of fluffy pillows my mother had rested herself upon were also gone. Mom’s sense of Victorian-meets-beach had been wiped away. It now reflected Anise’s back-to-nature touch.

The old master now had twin beds with headboards of ornate black wrought iron. The wall behind them was draped with flax-colored curtains, though no window was there. The matching bed quilts were scalloped and white and had detailed vermicelli stitches outlining coastal shapes. The pattern of the bed skirts was of large flax and white check, and the pillows matched them. The windows were hidden behind wood-grain plantation shutters, which I threw open wide as soon as I entered the room. I stood for a while staring out at the sky, watching it turn deep shades of red and orange as the sun took its rest for the day. I leaned against the sill and tilted my head to the right to see large pink clouds forming above. Cotton-candy skies, Mom had always called evenings like these.

“Max,” I said to the one who had just made himself quite comfortable on one of the beds, “tomorrow we’ll go watch the sunset.” I looked at him. His tongue was hanging from his mouth as he smiled at me. “Sometimes, I swear you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

He barked.

I sat on the opposite bed from him. “You see, Max,” I went on, “this island is so special that if you look one way in the morning, you can watch the sun come up. But if you look the other way in the evenings, you can watch it go down.”

With that he bounded off the bed and out of the room.

Summer 1987

“Come on . . .”

“I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

I shook my head. The blonde hair that fell straight on both sides of my face tickled my shoulders in the late afternoon sunlight. I stood a few feet from the Gulf’s shoreline, brushed the wet sand from the tops of my slender tanned legs and then from my hands. “Obviously, you don’t know my parents, Steven Granger. If my father caught me out at 6:00 in the morning watching the sunrise with you, he’d kill both of us.”

Steven grinned, white teeth appearing whiter against the bronze skin of his face. “Then tell him. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” He winked. “Do you?”

I crossed my arms, felt the warmth of them against the bare skin of my midriff, and my cheeks flamed. “No,” I said looking down. At my feet was the crumpled canary-yellow cover-up that matched the bikini I’d begged Mom for before we came to Cedar Key for summer vacation. Mom thought the bathing suit a little too risqué, but I insisted it was the style and that we’d not find anything different anywhere else. “Besides,” I’d said, “it’s just a suit, Mom. It’s not like I have guys pawing me or anything.”

But in my heart, I knew whom I bought it for and just whom I hoped would take notice. And so far, it had worked. Steven’s eyes never left me when we were together . . . and he made sure we were together as much as possible. Even on days when he’d have done better to have worked with his dad.

Steven bent down to retrieve the cover-up, shook it loose of sand, and then handed it to me. The same sun that warmed me shimmered on the dark blond hair—cut in feathery soft layers—of the boy standing before me. “Need any help putting this on?”

I kept my eyes locked on his. “No, I do not,” I said. Then, slipping the gauzy material over my head, I said, “I’m not a child that you have to dress, you know.”

“I’d say.”

I smiled at him before we turned to walk toward the grassy knoll rising above the beach where 2nd Street crossed in front of City Park. Behind us the voices of children and adults playing and laughing faded into the sound of gulls cawing. Steven and I were in a world of our own. We took slow steps, occasionally bumped shoulders, cast longing gazes, and then finally clasped our hands together. “So, what’ll it be?” he asked. “Just say the word and I’ll pick you up at your front door at 6:00. Otherwise, I’ll meet you at the end of the lane from your house.” He stopped walking, and I stopped with him. “Just promise me that tomorrow we’ll be watching the sunrise together.”

I looked at him long and hard. “Dad will say no.”

“Tell your mom you want to take some pictures, then. You’ve got your license, you can drive the car. I’ll meet you where Dad docks his boat.”

I felt myself smiling long before my lips broke apart in a wide grin. “Okay, then.”

Steven looked elated. “Really? Are you serious?” And then he laughed. “I’ll bring the coffee.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Hot cocoa, please.”

He pulled me to him, pressed his lips against mine for one salty sweet moment. “I’ll bring whatever you want.”

“What shall I bring?” I asked, picturing us, blanket spread out on his father’s dock, legs dangling over the edge, feet grazing the water. A thermos of hot cocoa stood between us and napkins filled with . . . I didn’t know what . . .

But Steven shook his head. “Nothing. I’ll bring it all.”

“Okay.”

We started walking again, over to the gazebo and then back to where he’d parked the red ’76 GMC 4-by-4 his father had allowed him to buy with the money he’d saved over the years of working on the boat. “How about tonight?” he asked. “Got plans for tonight?”

I couldn’t help but giggle. After all the years I’d stared after him, Steven Granger finally knew I was alive. Really alive. And not just in the “kid sister” kind of way. Not as it had always been before when he treated me no differently than any other summer resident on the island.

Not that I hadn’t worked hard to make sure it would happen too. After winter break on the island—the one where Steven hardly said hello to me—I joined one of the new women’s workout clubs near home, lost some excess girl-to-woman pounds, and firmed up my stomach muscles. A month before we were scheduled to come to Cedar Key for the summer, I’d talked Mom into a shopping spree at Dillard’s, which included the bathing suit and a stop at the Clinique counter where I was taught—at last—how to properly wear makeup. The salesgirl admitted it wouldn’t take much to accent my positives, telling me I was a natural beauty. Still, I’d come away with eyes shadowed in smoky shades and lips pouting with shimmery lip gloss.

As usual upon arrival at our summer house, my sisters and I bounded up the stairs to get everything unpacked so we could get to the water as quickly as possible. And, as usual, I was the first to meet up with Dad by the shoreline. “Good gracious alive. Who is this young woman standing in front of me?” he asked, sizing me up and down.

“Dad . . .”

He stood from his chair, rubbed his chin in mock admiration and study, and said, “Now, I do believe my daughter, my little girl,” he said winking, “who rode all the way from Orlando with us ran up those stairs a few minutes ago. But I do not remember this young woman riding with us in the car.”

“Dad!”

His face grew stern then. “Seriously. What’s with all this? Do you need all this makeup and . . . do those shoes actually match your swimsuit?”

I turned. If he were able to read my face—and I knew he could—he’d know that seeing Steven again was behind the transformation, and he’d have me in a gunnysack before I had a chance to protest. “I’ll meet you at the car, Dad.”

“Uh-huh,” he called after me.

“I’m driving!” I yelled back.

“Only if I say so!”

“Dad!”

Now it was Steven who eyed me, albeit in a different way than my father had. “What about tonight?” I asked him.

“Do you think your dad would mind if we went to see the sunset together?”

“We’ll be there anyway. Mom told me earlier that tonight will be a good one to catch some shots.”

Steven squinted in the sunlight. “Well, that’s all well and good . . . but can I pick you up and take you with me? Do you think they’d mind?”

We reached the truck. He opened the passenger door for me. A red towel was scrunched along the seat, placed there to protect the fabric. I straightened it, then hoisted myself up and in using the chrome running board. Steven closed the door behind me and ran around the front as I leaned my arm out of the opened window, hoping for a breeze. Even though he’d parked in the shade of the one bushy tree at City Park, inside the truck felt like two hundred degrees.

“I’ll have it cooled down in a minute,” he said as he bounded into the driver’s seat. He started the engine, adjusted the air-conditioning, then fiddled with the gearshift on the floorboard between us. Looking from it to me, he said, “Scootch closer.”

I happily complied.

Halfway to the house he asked, “So what time can I pick you up?”

“We usually eat about 7:00. How about 8:00?”

“Sounds good. That’ll give us plenty of time before sunset.”

“Why don’t I bring some Cokes? I mean, after all, you’re bringing the hot cocoa in the morning.”

He smiled at me. “
If
your parents say it’s okay.”

I thought for a moment before answering. “It’ll work out.”

He shifted gears as he rounded the road from A Street to 3rd. Thick shrubs and palms lined the right side so densely it was impossible to see through. I stared out at the landscape, thinking. Devising a plan, as I seemed to be doing a lot of lately. I knew what needed to be done for it to all work out. The best time to talk to Mom. The right time that she’d agree to anything. Just as she had with the shopping spree.

The perfect time . . . “It’ll all work out,” I said again, then glanced at Steven, who looked at me and then to the road.

“If you say so, Boo.”

A million butterflies took flight inside at the sound of the endearment spoken from his lips. So different than when Dad said the exact same name. “I say so,” I said, then leaned back and closed my eyes, already dreaming of the life Steven and I would someday have together.

A life in Cedar Key.

I was awakened early the next morning by bamming at the door. I forced my eyes open; Max was already scrambling out of the room. “Max,” I called out, then pushed the sheet from off my pajama-clad body. “Max!”

The bamming continued. Max added his two cents by barking like a mad dog.

“Max, get back,” I said when I finally made it to the door. I gently pushed at the bulk of him with my foot.

He complied, forced or not.

“Who is it?” I asked through the barrier between me and whoever thought it was so important to wake me at—I looked at my watch—7:00 in the morning.

“Who are
you
? That’s the question.”

The voice sounded as though it belonged to an older woman. I cracked the door open and peered out. “May I help you?” I asked.

Sure enough, my early morning intruder was an older woman—in her late sixties if I had to guess—with silver hair cut in a pageboy. Her skin was tanned and leathery like that of women who’d spent too much of their days in the sun and not enough time listening to the warnings of the surgeon general. Her eyes, though kind, were distinctly authoritative. “May I ask who you are?” she asked again.

“Yes, you may,” I answered. “I’m Kimberly Tucker.”

“Well, you are in Dr. and Mrs. Claybourne’s house, and I’ve not been notified that anyone was coming.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Dr. Claybourne or Mrs. Claybourne always notifies me if anyone other than them is coming here for a visit. I got no such call.”

“Who
are
you?” I asked.

The woman put her hands on her hips. “Are we back at that again? I asked you first.”

I pressed my fingertips to my chest. “I am Kimberly
Claybourne
Tucker, Dr. Claybourne’s daughter.”

The woman stepped back. “No,” she said. “Oh my goodness, but you sure are. Why I haven’t seen you in . . . I don’t remember when I last saw you.”

I shook my head. Behind me, Max shuffled away, sensing, I suppose, that the “danger” was over and his role as protector was no longer necessary. “I still don’t know who you are,” I said.

“Why, honey,” she said, her accent that of the natives, “I’m Madeline Lewis. Oh, just look at the expression on your face. You don’t remember me. Of course you don’t. I’ve worked down at the market since God laid sand on the Gulf beach. Your mama used to call me and tell me what she needed and I’d bring it to her. Remember?”

I did remember. Still, it didn’t tell me why my father would use her to secure the beach house. I nodded. “Yes, I remember now. But, Mrs. Lewis, why are you checking on my father’s house?”

“Miss Lewis, honey. Though the good Lord knows I wish there had’ve been a pretty gold ring around my finger . . .”

I thought,
You can have my old one
. . . but I remained silent.

“Your daddy started asking me some time ago—goodness, I guess it was shortly before your pretty mama died, back when she first came down so sick. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

“Oh,” I said. “Would you like to come in?” I stepped back, opening the door fully.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, then walked past me. Stale tobacco and used ashtrays wafted past me in her wake.

I closed the door. “Would you like coffee, Miss Lewis?” I asked.

“No, no. I just had my morning coffee down at the café.”

We walked the three steps down into the family room, where sheets still covered the furniture and the blinds kept the room dark from the morning light. “I haven’t really had time to do anything,” I said, pulling a covering from the overstuffed loveseat and then directing Miss Lewis to it.

“First things first,” she said. “And what I mean by that is: you call me Maddie, like everyone else, okay?”

I sat on the covered sofa across from her. “Maddie,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I stood then, walked over to the windows, and jerked the drapes apart. The room came to life, and I squinted against the harshness of the light. When I turned, I was instantly dismayed and embarrassed by the thin layer of dust dancing in the air and lying across the few uncovered pieces of furniture. “Goodness, looks like my work really is cut out for me.” I returned to my seat. “You may be able to help me, Maddie. Dad sent me here to find someone to replace Eliana. At least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.”

“Ah,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere.” She sighed. “Eliana. God rest her soul.” Then she paused before adding, “A replacement in what way?”

“Um . . . in the cleaning way,” I answered. “Dad told me she was still keeping up with the house . . . but not since she died.” I laughed at my statement. “Of course, not since she died.” I leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t Eliana keep watch for visitors?”

Maddie leaned back and crossed her legs. She wore knee-cap shorts. Again I noticed how dark and wrinkled her skin was. “I don’t claim to know why your daddy asked me to do what he asked me to do. I just did it. But, on the other point, here’s what I’d do if I were you,” she stated. “I’d post something down at the market. You know, a flyer with your phone number written several times across the bottom so that people can tear them off and call you.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “I have to go to the market later anyway for milk and things like that.” I pulled my hair over one shoulder. “So then, I take it you don’t know anyone off the top of your head.”

“No,” she said. She remained quiet for a moment, then added, “I suppose you know that her daughter Rosa works down at the realty office.”

“I didn’t know that, no,” I said. “But I was hoping to get to see her.”

Maddie’s lip thinned. “Well,” she said.

I wasn’t sure where the conversation was heading. I said, “It looks like it’s pretty hot out there already.”

“This summer has been just miserable so far,” she said. “The humidity is thick enough to kill ya.”

“Fortunately, I won’t be here long enough to suffer under it.”

“You’re married, I take it,” she said. “You said your last name was Tucker now.”

I looked down at my left hand, naked of any rings whatsoever but still marked by the thick band I’d worn. “Divorced,” I answered. “Two boys—Chase and Cody—who are with their father right now.” The familiar knot formed in my throat.

“And the rest of the family?” She coughed out a throaty laugh. “Your stepmother is the nicest thing but pretty closemouthed, so I don’t ask too often. But I’d love to know how the rest of you are doing.”

I laced my fingers. “Fine. Doing very well. Jayme-Leigh and Dad have a pediatric practice together. I’m sure Jayme-Leigh will have the whole thing soon enough.”

“It’s about time your daddy stopped working so hard. I tell him every time I see him, I say, ‘Ross Claybourne, why don’t you and Anise quit all this working all the time, sell the house in Orlando, and move to Cedar Key.’” She laughed again. “He always blames it on Anise, saying that she wouldn’t want to sell her flower shop.”

“No, I don’t imagine she would.”

“How about the rest of you?”

“Heather is married. Three kids. Ami is a member of the Atlanta Ballet Company.”

“I remember how proud your mama was of her. Of her dancing.”

“Yes.”

Then she pointed a bony finger, its nail painted in shimmery fuchsia. “But you,” she said. “She was especially proud of you.”

“Me?” I laid my hand against my chest. “Why was she proud of me?”

Maddie laughed one more time. “Goodness, what wasn’t she proud of. You played piano, you were a cheerleader, you were homecoming queen, your all-A grades, your photography . . . the list goes on and on.”

Mom was proud of me. I looked around the room, my eyes resting momentarily on each piece of her framed work. “Mom’s photography was the best, though,” I said.

“Your mother told me one time, she said, ‘Maddie, Kim is going to go far with her photography. She’s got the eye for it.’” When I didn’t answer, she added, “So, what are you doing with it?”

I shook my head. “I’m teaching full-time now. The boys, church, different things like that. I’m afraid I just don’t have a lot of time . . .”

With that Maddie pushed herself forward. “Well, now, that’s a real shame,” she said.

After Maddie left, I made coffee, fed Max, then took a shower. I dressed in a simple pair of plaid bermudas with a matching red-wine tee. I slathered my skin with sunscreen, put on a little mascara and lip gloss, then slipped my feet into a pair of white sandals. Max was sleeping on the cotton rug in the guest bedroom so I was able to leave unnoticed and without guilt.

Little about downtown Cedar Key had changed since my last visit. Or, for that matter, since my childhood. Perhaps a shop here and there, but it was still the island time forgot and I had not.

Years ago my father purchased a book by John Muir, a man who, in the late 1800s, walked a thousand miles from his home in Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico. Quite a bit of his time had been spent in Cedar Key. Dad read his copy of the book until the pages fell from the binding and insisted we girls do the same. Afterward, he asked me, “Well, Boo. What did you learn?”

Wanting to make Dad proud, I stood as if I were about to give a book report crucial for an A and said, “I think that when we push ourselves to do something like walk a thousand miles, we find more than just people and towns and plants and water.”

Dad’s expression showed just how pleased I’d made him. “And what would that be, Boo?”

“I think we find ourselves . . .”

Now, with the car parked on 2nd Street, I stood staring at the crossroads of my past and present. And something that felt like my future, though I couldn’t imagine how that might be.

My stomach rumbled; I realized I’d not eaten breakfast. Hot as it was—and it was sticky hot—I walked to a small diner, Cook’s Café. There was nothing fancy about it, but it was air-conditioned and offered the aroma and presence of bacon and eggs and pancakes.

After breakfast I walked the block to Dock Street. In the marina, boats rested from their labor. In the Gulf beyond Dock Street, a few of their brothers and sisters were already hard at work or play. Tourists and locals milled in and out of the shops and cafés, chatting casually. Some rode around in rented golf carts.

As it had always been, nothing about Cedar Key conveyed effort—not even work, hard as it might be. To my left, water lapped lazily against the shoreline and the cement breakers. Gulls cawed as if to demand everyone stop what they were doing just to listen. The sun—nearly straight up—beat down as though it were on a mission.

I spotted a bench shaded by a shiny tin roof where A Street curved at the harbor. Wanting time to just sit and absorb, I walked past the tour boat docks—all three of them—and forced myself not to look at the one owned by Steven’s father. Too many memories . . . most of them good.

Too good.

Each one leaving me remarkably sad and unsatisfied. How was it, I wondered, that the moments of our youth could affect the emotions of our adulthood?

When I made it to the bench, I sat and stared straight ahead. It was easy to do, to sit and watch the water. The boats. The couple leaning against the metal barrier between the sidewalk and the Gulf below. Too easy to pretend it was me, as it had once been. One half of a whole.

Past the couple and the edge of a restaurant that jutted out over the water, I spied the tip of Atsena Otie Key, the island that had been the original Cedar Key. I remembered the old history lessons Steven had given me, of how Atsena Otie—pronounced without the
t
in Atsena—had played its role in the Civil War and how the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company had built a lumber mill there in the late 1800s.

“Thirty years later,” Steven said as we sat upon one of its beaches, “a ten-foot tidal wave hit the island and the mill was destroyed. Only a few houses survived enough to live in or repair, and those were floated over to 1st Street on Cedar Key.” He pointed; I followed the long tan arm and callused hand and tender finger to the land on the other side of the water.

Just the night before, that very same arm had slipped around my shoulders, had drawn me close to its owner, and its owner had pressed his lips—soft and sweet—on mine. The kiss had intensified and, as is often the case with teenagers, had left us both frustrated and wanting so much more.

In my seventeen years, it had been my first such experience. Sitting there next to Steven, I only knew that I didn’t want it to be my last.