Sisterchicks Down Under (19 page)

T
he second half
of the “Opera Favorites” performance put both Jill and me in a weepy mood, and we used up all the tissues that we had between us. I didn’t sense any self-pity from Jill. This was a peaceful sadness.

With few words, we took a cab back to our hotel. If there is such thing as a beautiful sorrow, that was the sensation Jill and I shared under the stars that night.

We carried our shopping bags to the elevator and arrived back at our hotel room a full fifteen hours after we had left. Unlocking the door, we both sniffed when we entered. Not from tears but because the room still smelled like a big fruit ambrosia.

The message light was blinking on our phone. Jill listened and said, “One message. From my brother-in-law. He invited us to his house for lunch tomorrow. What do you think?”

“It’s up to you.”

“Let’s decide in the morning,” Jill suggested. “It’s too late to call him now anyway.”

Jill decided the next morning not to see her brother-in-law. I would have been fine either way, but she told him we were going to visit a nearby church and then do some more sightseeing.

The closest church was a small community church where we were welcomed as special visitors from America and invited to stand and say a few words. Jill said a few, and I said even fewer. It turned out that even the pastor that day was visiting. His message was from a familiar passage in the Gospel of John.

After attending the same church for so many years, I enjoyed the freshness of being with this group of eighty or so faithful believers. It was a personal time of worship with nothing about the service that resembled a corporate production. This church in Sydney was similar in many ways to Jill’s church in Wellington that Tony and I had visited the week before.

As Jill and I boarded the bus that stopped a few blocks from the church, I mentioned how much I enjoyed being at a small church.

“It’s interesting that you would say that because I was just thinking how much I miss the megachurch we used to belong to in California. Grass is always greener on the other side of the world, isn’t it?”

We headed for the harbor without a set plan of what we were going to do with the rest of the gloriously sunny day that stretched out before us. I looked through a couple of pamphlets on Sydney that I’d picked up in a rack at the hotel.

“What about going to the beach?” I asked. “We can take a ferry to a couple of different beaches, or we can take a bus to Bondi Beach.”

“Sure.” Jill looked over my shoulder at the map. “I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“Do you remember that clerk in the first shop we went to yesterday and how he was trying to convince us that the hat he was showing us was a Manly Beach hat?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look on the map. Manly Beach.” Jill chuckled. “He wasn’t teasing us or making it up. There really is a Manly Beach, and that was a Manly Beach hat!”

“Then that’s the beach we’re going to.”

We got off the bus at the Quay and found the right dock for the ferry to Manly Beach. I stopped in front of the sign that read, “Manly Ferries,” and wondered if anyone else thought that sounded funny.

“Come on.” Jill ignored the sign. “This is the one we want. They’re boarding now.”

We packed into what felt like a floating, wide-bodied bus with more than a hundred other eager weekend beachgoers. The seats outside on the deck in the delicious fresh air were all taken, so Jill and I went inside and sat at the end of a long row. It felt like sitting in a movie theater except the show was all around us outside the windows.

With smooth maneuvering, the ferry pulled out of the busy dock and headed for the open bay. On both sides we could see dozens of sailboats of all sizes with passengers seizing the gorgeous day. The tall buildings that lined the harbor area began to diminish as we motored past some of the many bays and inlets of the wide, deep blue harbor.

Flipping through the tour pamphlet, I found a map and saw that we would soon be on a beach that faced east, and the water would be the Pacific Ocean. The South Pacific, to be exact. I was amazed that, after so many years of facing west to
put my feet into the Pacific Ocean, I was now on the other side of that vast expanse of water. It was one of those moments in which my mind tapped into the amazement of where I was.

When we docked in Manly Cove, all the other travelers seemed to know where to go to cross the peninsula to Manly Beach. A loud, chirping sound accompanied the green crosswalk sign. We moved like an army of ants through a long outdoor mall of shops and came out at a wide, sandy beach teeming with Sunday swimmers of all ages.

Jill tapped my arm and pointed to a young man who stood a few feet away with his arms crossed and his back to us, gazing out at the water. He had on a broad-rimmed khaki beach hat like we had seen in the store yesterday. He wore red swim trunks and a tank top. On the back of the tank top, in bold letters, were the words, “Manly Lifeguard.”

Jill whispered, “I wonder if that helps bolster his self-image.”

Now she was ready to start with the Manly jokes. “Do you think it’s a joke T-shirt, or is it real?”

“Oh, it’s real,” Jill said. “There’s another one.” She pointed to another “Manly Lifeguard” positioned in a lookout stance in the sand.

“It’s good to be under the watchful eye of so many Manly Lifeguards,” I said.

“I know. Especially with their Manly shoulders bulging out of their Manly tank tops.”

We shared a giggle and found an open space where we could sit in the sand. Both of us had worn summer skirts and cotton blouses to church that morning. Since we didn’t know we were coming to the beach on this trip, we hadn’t packed our swimsuits. Not that I would have gone swimming, if I had
my suit. But I could have waded in up to my knees, just for the experience of being in the Pacific on this side of the globe.

Jill sat demurely in the sand while I ventured out to the water. I thought of the Victorian woman in the painting who strolled along the beach in a cotton gown that fell to her ankles. I imagined I was she and stooped to pick up a broken shell.

The warm salt water rushed over my bare feet, as a wave tumbled to shore. I waded out a little deeper and wedged my feet into the sand. Hundreds of swimmers and splashers, along with a few body surfers, frolicked in the sparkling surf, their voices mixing with the crashing sounds of the waves. At the spot where the long sidewalk edged the sandy beach, dozens of tall star pine trees anchored themselves into the sand the way I planned to anchor myself into the sand.

This might be “Manly” beach, but I’m having a very “womanly” moment right now.
I smiled at the beauty all around me and twisted my feet deeper into the soft sand.

Just then a loud siren sounded from the shore. Everyone looked around to see what was going on. A voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Everyone out of the water. We’ve had a shark sighting. This is not a drill!”

I never knew I could run so fast in sand.

I wasn’t the only one who kicked into high gear. The water emptied in seconds. Everyone stood and stared out to sea. Three of the Manly lifeguards jumped in a motorized raft and entered the water. As the crowd of stunned beachgoers watched, the raft headed out to where several surfers had been paddling on their boards, waiting for the waves to pick up.

“I saw it,” a woman next to us said. “Did you see? The fin was sticking out of the water.”

We all squinted and tried to make out what was going on as the lifeguards motored in a wide circle. One of them motioned to shore, and another raft was launched with three more lifeguards.

“Something is definitely out there,” a guy said, moving closer to the shore.

“It’s no small wonder, really,” said a short woman who stepped up next to us. She was smoking a cigarette with quick, short puffs and wore a bikini even though she had to be at least sixty. “You know they keep sharks in the Oceanworld aquarium just the other side of the wharf in Manly Cove.”

“Really?” Jill said, as if trying to make polite conversation yet keeping her eyes glued on the water.

“That’s right. You can get in the tank and swim with the sharks, if you like. But swimming out here, in the ocean, you don’t know what you might meet up with.”

As one great audience we all were standing, inching closer to the water to see what was going on. Everyone spouted opinions and impressions of what was seen out there.

With both rafts motoring in a circle, we watched while one of the lifeguards threw a rope into the water the way a cowboy would toss a lasso.

“They’re not going to catch it like that!” someone exclaimed. “That shark will eat them alive.”

“It’s not a shark,” another viewer said. “It’s a person.”

Everyone in earshot of that observation gasped and strained even harder to see what the lifeguards were now pulling to shore.

“They wouldn’t haul a body in like that,” someone said. “It has to be a fish. Dolphin, maybe. It’s big, whatever it is. Look, isn’t that a fin sticking up? Could be a shark, after all. Wouldn’t
be the first time here. Ah, wait. No worries. It’s a log!”

A collective sigh rippled along the shoreline as everyone saw that the Manly lifeguards had bravely lassoed a log with a finlike branch sticking out the topside. Some people laughed; some just looked relieved. A few joked loudly enough so the rest of us could hear.

“They better throw it back in where they got it!” the woman next to us said, rubbing her cigarette stub into the sand. “Otherwise the Greenies will be all over them for disrupting the natural habitat of floating logs.”

I was amazed how everyone entered into the conversation and joked around, as if we had all come to the beach that day as one big group. No one seemed to be taking himself or the situation too seriously. I felt like we were at a grand neighborhood picnic.

When people returned to the water, Jill joined them. I watched her step right in, kicking playfully at the waves. I pulled out my camera and took a couple of pictures of her.

Beyond Jill rolled blue, blue ocean for thousands of miles. I thought of my home at the other end of that blue. I missed Skyler; she would love this beach. She would love the “everybody’s on vacation” feel of this town and these people. Tony would love it here, too. I wondered if the three of us would ever visit a place like this together, or were our family travel days over?

Using my sweater as a pillow, I lay back and felt the powerful sun on my face. This was a good day. This was a good place to be. I thought of the hundreds of trips to the beach I’d taken at home in California. Those treks always meant packing an ice chest, towels, blankets, and umbrellas. Today we had taken a bus and a ferry to the beach, and here I was in my “Sunday
clothes” enjoying the beach with nothing more than a sweater for a pillow. My life definitely had become simplified since we moved here.

A contented smile traipsed across my lips. I wondered if moving into the minimalist apartment had been the first step in learning how to live comfortably with less.

“You look relaxed.” Jill stood next to me and playfully sprinkled the last of the salt water that clung to her fingers.

“I am. Hey, is it raining?”

“Just sprinkling.”

“How was the water?”

“Shark free and log free. Very nice. Wish we had brought our togs.”

“Our what?”

“That’s what they call swimsuits here. Our bathing togs.”

“I’m sure you could go buy a new one in any of those surf shops we walked past.”

“Yeah, I saw a lime green bikini in the window of one shop that I thought might work for me.”

I sat up. “Let’s do it, Jill. Let’s buy a couple of bikinis. Lime green ones. Who cares? Nobody knows us here. When are we ever going to be on this beach again?”

Jill laughed. “My bikini days ended after my third child.”

“Who cares? You saw that woman who was standing with us during the shark roundup. And look at that lady over there.” I nodded toward a woman who was larger than either Jill or I was. She had on a bikini top and a pair of shorts that covered most of her large rear but didn’t stop her belly from hanging over.

“Oh, the peer pressure of it all!” Jill pretended to bite her thumbnail.

“We’ll buy cover-ups and stay covered up except when we’re in the water. What do you think?”

“You’re serious.”

“Yes, of course I’m serious. Come on, we’ll never be eighteen again, but we can pretend we are for one afternoon while we swim at Manly Beach. What do you say? We might even get a second look from one of those Manly lifeguards.”

“Oh, we’ll get a second look, all right,” Jill said under her breath. “I can almost guarantee you that.”

Breezing through several surf shops near the shore, we quickly found that the sizes they carried in swimwear catered to a crowd that was at least thirty years our junior. The first store we went into looked promising because they had such a wide selection on a rack in the back. A sale clerk asked if she could help, and we guessed at the sizes we each needed. She pulled a pink bikini off the rack and handed it to Jill. It was at least two sizes smaller than what Jill needed and three sizes smaller than what I estimated I needed.

“So sorry,” the salesclerk said. “That’s the largest size we carry.”

“Come on.” I pulled Jill out of the store. “Shopping for bathing suits is rarely a good idea. In a beach town like this with a strip of fashionable shops, it’s a really bad idea.”

“They have no idea, do they?” she said, fanning herself. “She had to be all of what? Nineteen, maybe? I doubt she’s ever weighed more than a hundred pounds in her life. Young and thin and beautiful. They think they rule the world.”

“I know She’s probably a cheerleader, too.”

Jill paused and then gave me a glinty-eyed look. “Oh, that was low, Salerno!”

That’s when I remembered that Jill had been a cheerleader.
I wasn’t referring to her; the words had just bumbled out of my mouth.

“Sorry!” I pinched my fingers together and pretended to zip my mouth closed.

“You don’t have to zip it, Kathy. I’m way beyond being offended. Let’s go do something else.” Jill pushed back her hair and flapped the collar of her blouse in an effort to cool off.