The Beach House (12 page)

“I don't see why not.”

“But if they won't, you could put one of them under Margaret's name,” she said, closing a possible escape route for her mother.

“Margaret might not want to do that,” Beverly said. “We'll have to ask her first.”

“You can talk her into it,” Tracy said.

Janice got up to clear her dishes. “I'm ready when you are,” she said to Chris.

“Give me five minutes.” One to let his mother know what was going on and four for a shower.

“I'll pack a lunch. You did say we were going to be gone all day, didn't you?”

He nodded. To Beverly he said, “I don't know for sure when we'll be back, so don't count on us for dinner.”

Tracy looked at Janice. “I was going to ask you to come with me. Jimmy said he could probably fix you up with one of his friends. But if you're going to be gone all day . . .” She let out a sigh, plainly waiting for Janice to jump in and tell her that she could arrange to be back in time.

Janice made a face. “I can't imagine anything worse than a blind date with a biker.”

Beverly gasped, almost choking on her coffee. “You're going out with a biker?”

Tracy glared at Janice. “Just because Jimmy said you were stuck-up is no reason to say something like that about him.”

“If he's not a biker,” Janice said, “how do you explain all the Harley-Davidson tattoos?”

“He has tattoos?” Beverly said, her voice rising a level.

“Everybody has tattoos out here,” Tracy said. “I've been thinking about getting one myself.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Beverly's reaction was swift and firm. “I have no control over what you do when you move out of your father's and my house, but as long as you are living with us, you will not disfigure yourself with tattoos. And—”

“It's my body. I'll do what I want to it,” Tracy challenged. “And there's no way you can stop me.”

“No, but I don't have to look at them. You seem to forget the application we sent to St. Michael's Academy was approved last month. All we have to do is—”

“How could you?” Tracy looked at Chris and then Janice as angry tears came to her eyes. “You promised you wouldn't say anything.”

Beverly also glanced in Chris and Janice's direction as if to gauge their reaction. “I'm sorry,” she said to Tracy. “I wasn't thinking.”

“That's the excuse you always use.” Tracy got up and ran into her room. Seconds later Beverly followed.

Silence hung heavy in the air between Chris and Janice. Finally it was Chris who asked, “Do you know what that was all about?”

Janice hesitated. “I'm only guessing, but I'll bet sending her away has something to do with the time Tracy's folks came home early from one of their trips and found her doing drugs with her boyfriend.”

He looked at Janice and realized that he probably knew more about what she thought and felt than he'd ever known about Tracy. Who was the girl he'd been in love with all this time? Had he simply imagined her?

“I've known Tracy all my life,” he said. “And I have no idea who she really is.”

“Are you okay?” Janice asked.

“I'm going to get ready so we can get out of here.”

“I'll make the sandwiches.”

“Don't bother.” He wanted to get away as fast as he could, wishing selfishly now that he could be alone. He had a lot of thinking to do. “We'll stop for something.”

On the way to his room, Chris spotted his mother on the deck. He stopped to tell his plans.

She looked up from her magazine as he opened the screen. “You don't have to say anything. I heard.”

“Did you know about the private school?”

She shook her head. “I suppose if I'd tried, I could have pieced the story together from little things in Beverly's letters, but I never cared enough to try.”

“You don't mind my taking the car?”

She closed the magazine and laid it on her lap. “I don't want you to get the idea I approve of you telling lies, but it's hard to be upset with someone and feel proud of them at the same time.”

He didn't know how to answer her.

“Go. Forget what happened here this morning and have a good time with Janice. Just don't forget you're expected at Eric's tonight.”

“What time are you and Beverly leaving?”

“I don't know.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know that, either.”

He gave her answer some thought. “What you're saying is that I wasn't the only one in there lying about needing the car.”

She smiled.

Chapter 8

Chris and Janice didn't make it to Big Sur. As they neared Monterey, Janice remembered him telling her about the aquarium on Cannery Row and asked to stop. They had to park half a mile away and stand in lines to see the exhibits with an overflow Sunday crowd, but nothing dampened Janice's enthusiasm. She stopped and craned her neck to see the life-size whale models suspended overhead in the main hall, becoming a rock in the constantly flowing river of visitors.

“Move it, lady.” Chris put his hand in the middle of her back and pushed gently. “We've got a lot to see and only six hours to do it in.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like if you were just swimming along minding your own business and happened to run into one of these things? One bite and you'd be history.”

“Whales don't eat people.”

“Tell that to Ahab.” Before he could answer, she was on to something else. She pointed to a two-story tank with so many people on both levels that it was impossible to see inside. “What's in there?”

“Otters.”

“Real otters?”

He laughed. “As opposed to . . . ?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, they're real otters.”

“Oh, I want to see.”

It took almost a half hour to work their way to the front on the top level, where they could see the otters in and out of the water. A woman appeared behind the Plexiglas, dipped into the bucket she carried, and began throwing pieces of fish into the water. Janice bobbed up and down like a piston as she followed the otters' movements as they dove and either swept the prize into their mouths with their hands as they swam or brought it to the surface, where they rolled to their backs and used their stomachs as a dining room table.

Noticing a couple of five-year-olds trying to get a better look, she let them crowd in front of her but stood her ground when their parents tried to follow. Finally the only way Chris could get her to leave to see the rest of the exhibits was by telling her about the touch pools where she could “pet” bat rays and sea cucumbers and whatever else happened to be on exhibit that day.

She asked a hundred questions. Those Chris couldn't answer, she asked the volunteers who worked at the pools.

At the kelp forest Janice challenged Chris to a contest to see which of them could find the most sea life. It looked as if Chris would win right up until the last minute, when three fish appeared simultaneously in front of Janice and she instantly identified them from the information plates in front of her.

“I win,” she announced gleefully.

“Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not nice to gloat?”

“Who cares—it's fun.”

He almost smiled at the mischievous look she gave him. “That sounds like something Tracy would say.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt. “Take that back.”

“And if I don't?”

“You walk home.”

“You seem to forget, it's my car.”

She thought a minute. “Oh, yeah.”

He took her hand and led her back through the main floor to the jellyfish exhibit. Three hours later they made their last stop—the gift shop. Janice headed straight for the books. It took forever for her to decide which one she would buy. Chris thought she was being incredibly picky until she opened her wallet to pay. Without meaning to pry, Chris couldn't help but notice the book took half the money she had left.

“Guess what I'm going to be doing the next three weeks,” she said as they walked outside.

“I'll go in half if you'll share,” he said.

She smiled. “You can borrow it as much as you like while I'm here. But this puppy goes home with me.”

He liked that she'd had a good time and wasn't afraid to let him know. A lot of the girls in his crowd would have acted bored because they thought it was sophisticated. Not Janice.

She was interested in everything and fascinated by almost as much. Halfway through the aquarium she'd announced, “The next time I come to California, I'm going to know how to dive. I want to see what it's like out there myself.” She'd turned to him, her eyes filled with excitement. “Can you imagine actually swimming with otters? Could there be anything cooler?”

After the ten days she'd put in with Tracy, Chris was surprised Janice would ever want to come back.

They were on their way to the car when Chris asked, “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“Hamburger okay?”

“My dad said he'd shoot me if I didn't eat fish at least once while I'm out here. Would you mind if we make it today?”

“Sure. I don't know any special restaurant around here, but I guess we could ask.”

They went into a T-shirt shop and talked to the clerk. He told them about a place not to be missed that made the best fish tacos north of Mexico City.

“Fish
tacos
?” Janice said when they were outside again. “I don't think that was what my father had in mind. How about we find someone else to ask?”

“Thank God—I was afraid you were going for it.”

She looked up at him through the longest lashes Chris had ever seen on anyone. “I don't know,” she said. “Maybe we should give it a try.”

“I will if you will,” he said, convinced she would back down.

“Okay.”

“You're kidding.”

“What have we got to lose?”

“Our lunch, for one thing.”

She laughed. “Come on, where's your sense of adventure?”

On their way home, Janice insisted she'd loved the tacos and would have them again. Chris told her she was crazy, that his grandmother's rhubarb-and-strawberry pie and the bellyache it had given him afterward had been a better experience.

Later that night the dessert Eric had promised turned out to be rhubarb-and-strawberry pie with vanilla bean ice cream on the side. Janice had to turn away to keep from laughing when she saw the look on Chris's face.

When they arrived back at the house and found it deserted, Chris decided to ask Janice to go with him to meet Charlie Stephens. He liked that he didn't have to talk her into it and that she acted properly impressed when they were introduced. But what Chris liked best was that her enthusiasm wasn't put on. She asked a lot of questions that Chris would have never thought to ask, even wanting to know why his 1984 Los Angeles gold medal seemed tarnished. When he told her the gold had rubbed off from the number of children who had handled it, Janice smiled and told him that he was her kind of hero.

Then she did something that left Chris in awe. Not only did she eat all of her own pie, she insisted on sharing his, digging out the inside and leaving him the crust. All in all, it was the second best day of his life.

Or so he thought until they thanked Eric and said good night to Charlie and started home.

“What a great guy,” Janice said as they crossed the public pathway to the beach that separated the two houses. “Eric, too.”

“Thanks for coming with me.”

“You're welcome.” She stopped in the middle of the path and held her arms wide, as if gathering the day's memories. Looking up at the sky, she turned in a circle. “And thanks for threatening to break my leg if I didn't.”

He laughed. “It was your arm.”

Pretending to lose her balance, she purposely bumped into him. “Arm—leg, same difference.”

On impulse he bent, picked her up, and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. “If anyone sees us, they're going to think you're drunk.”

“And if they see me like this, they'll think I passed out and you had to carry me home.”

She hardly weighed anything; he'd carried heavier grocery bags. He could have held her forever, but he hadn't thought how short her dress was when he'd picked her up or considered the possibility that lace-trimmed panties would end up inches from his face.

Sensing the change in Chris, Janice put her hands on his shoulders, propped herself up, and slid down the front of him. Neither of them moved as they looked into each other's eyes.

Heavy ocean air, still warm from the heat of the day, wrapped them in an intimate cocoon.

Slowly, confident only of his own feelings, Chris moved to kiss her. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, blocking all other sounds, even the rolling roar of the ocean. She tilted her head to meet him, her lips open in anticipation, the tip of her tongue reaching for his. With a low groan Chris wrapped his arms around her and deepened the kiss. When it was over, with his chin gently touching the top of her head, he said, “I don't know where that came from.”

“Boy—me either.”

“Did you mind?” He felt like an idiot for asking, but he needed to know.

She didn't answer right away. Finally, looking up at him, she said, “I'm not sure. Maybe if you did it again, it would help me decide.”

A feeling came over Chris he recognized but had never experienced in this way before. He didn't just want to kiss her, he wanted to make love to her.

Her mouth was unbelievably sweet, the touch of her tongue intoxicating. The way she put her arms around his neck and stood on her toes to bring herself closer sent his mind rushing ahead days and weeks and months with pictures of them together, laughing, loving, intimate.

What he'd felt for Tracy was in his imagination. This was real.

And it was so much better
.

“No,” she whispered.

“No?” he repeated.

She smiled as she dropped from her toes to stand flat-footed again and looked up at him. “I didn't mind.”

He touched her cheek. “Want to go for a walk?”

“Yes.”

She didn't have to say anything else. It was enough to let him know they shared the same thoughts, the same feelings.

They headed for the stairs. As they stepped on the beach, Chris took Janice's hand. She looked at him and smiled. His legs were moving, but his feet weren't hitting the sand. Was this what it was like to walk on air?

“I'm going to be gone when you get up in the morning,” he said. “And I'm not sure when I'll be back.”

“Where—”

Finally he told her about the movie. She was wide-eyed with excitement. “When you get home tomorrow I want to hear everything, even the smallest detail.”

He hesitated. “I don't want Tracy to know. . . .”

She nodded, not asking or needing an explanation.

Chris sat on a salt- and sun-bleached log washed up by some long-ago storm and pulled Janice down to sit next to him. They talked about school, their friends, their hopes, their dreams. They talked fast and free and nonstop, as if trying to make up for all the time they'd wasted.

Everything about Janice fascinated Chris, from her allergy to olives to her love of Irish folk songs. They found a hundred things they had in common, from politics to philosophy, and a dozen they didn't, from
Star Trek
to which was the best fast-food restaurant.

They continued to talk as the moon moved across the night sky, as the high tide moved in and claimed more and more of the beach, as the still night air became a breeze, and as the temperature dropped steadily.

A lifetime was hard to share in one meeting, but they tried. It was as if each held desperately important information that had to be divulged before they could be sure what was happening to them was real and lasting.

In the end, it was the cold that drove them from the beach. Despite having Chris's arms around her, Janice could hardly talk, she was trembling so hard. Still, she told Chris she didn't want to leave, but he, reluctantly, insisted they should go in.

Though it was less than six feet from his own, Chris walked Janice to her bedroom door. He kissed her good night, and then she kissed him back. He marveled how perfectly they fit together, as if they'd been custom fitted. She felt it, too. He could tell by the way she put her arms around him, the way her hips nestled into his.

“Will you wait up for me tomorrow night?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she breathed against his ear.

He started to say something more but heard a sound coming from inside Janice's room. The last thing he wanted was to have Tracy find them together. He gave Janice one last kiss and crossed the hall to his own room. “I'll get home as soon as I can.”

“I'll be here,” she said softly.

Chris dreamed when he went to sleep that night, but for the first time in years, it wasn't about Tracy.