yet—and yet. Every day I’d wake with the same resolve, but before long, I’d take that drink, and often that was the last thing I could remember. I’d come to behind the wheel of Gerry’s Range Rover, with no memory of where I’d been, heart jack-hammered at the thought that I might once more have done what only I knew I’d done before.
Since I could not stop drinking, nor prevent its consequences, my only recourse was to stop waking up.
I put one foot tentatively in the water. It was icy cold. You’ll get used to it, I told myself, Just walk in. I was barefooted, in jeans and t-shirt, and even though I had a sweater wrapped around me, I shivered in the bright winter sun. I tried to urge myself onward but couldn’t take the next step. Maybe if I were drunk, I could do this. I’ll drink, and this time I won’t try to stop, I just have to remember to get back here and walk in.
But I knew I couldn’t trust myself even to do that. Oh, God, help me. What was the matter with me?
“Brett!”
A young woman came towards me, negotiating the sand awkwardly in her chunky platform boots. She wore a high-cut denim skirt which showed off her long legs, tights with the kind of holes in them that used to be cause for throwing them out but which now made them more expensive, and a blousy spaghetti strap top revealing a thin collarbone leading to narrow shoulders and delicate arms. A tattoo of a serpent coiled round a rose on the top of her arm. It was only those big doe eyes and the juxtaposition of the beauty mark next to the chicken pox scar on her cheek that allowed me to recognize her at all.
“Julia?”
Had it been that long? She’d still been a child when I knew her, but her slender body had softened and curved; she was becoming a young woman. Her hair was cut well, in a subtle, expensive haircut that showed its natural wave to good effect; her skin was clear of any lines or blemishes.
If I’d thought I was dead inside, the sight of Julia proved me wrong. Like the wings of a great bird taking flight, I felt a wild surge of—could it be joy?—opening in my chest. It lasted only a heartbeat, and then it was gone. But for a moment I remembered what it was like to live in a world with good in it. A tide of love and loss overtook me, powerful as the wave I’d hoped to die in a moment before, from the time when I was her mother, and life seemed to work. I longed to hug her, but held back, paralyzed by my own unworthiness.
“Brett. I need to talk to you.”
“How did you find me?”
She looked puzzled, as if I’d seen her, and told her where I was staying. It was a look I was used to, on the faces of people who assumed I’d remember moments we’d spent together while I was in an alcoholic blackout. But surely, if I’d seen Julia, I would remember.
Wouldn’t I?
I ransacked my memory of the nights before, but there were hours, days, of lost time, when I truly had not known where I’d been or what I’d done.
“Did I tell you?” I asked tentatively.
But I thought I saw relief in her eyes. “My dad told me you were house-sitting for Gerry Talbot.”
“How did he know?”
In her face, I could see the dimpled cheek and chin of Jonathan, also the delicate bone structure and pale, haunting beauty of her “real” mother, the shiksa goddess Jonathan thought I might be but wasn’t.
“Maybe Gerry told him? I overheard him talking to someone about it on the phone, and I asked him.”
“Who was he talking to?”
What must I look like to her? My clothes hung off me; I had lost interest in food. I never combed my hair, never wore makeup, barely showered or changed my clothes. I was glad I was wearing a sweater and jeans, because I had scabs and bruises all over my body. I made a gesture to primp my hair, matted by the ocean air. My appearance didn’t seem to bother her.
She cast a quick glance behind her. I followed her gaze, but saw nothing but the multi-million dollar beach “bungalows” that lined the road.
“You’re all grown up! I can’t believe it! Look at you!”
It wasn’t only that she was beautiful; it was the layers of time her appearance carried. A teenager stood before me, but in her, I saw the little girl in a tutu I’d sprinkled with fairy dust before sending out to trick or treat. The eight-year-old in a snorkel mask whose squiggling body I held in the shallow water in Kauai. I remembered the two of us baking a cake for Jonathan’s birthday, collapsing in giggles at the sludge we produced but eating it anyway because, after all, it was chocolate. If only I could have been the person Julia thought I was when we snuggled as I made up Susie-Q stories how different my life would have been.
She shifted from foot to foot, scanning the beach from one end to the other, her eyes filled with fear. She still said nothing about why she’d come.
“You want something to eat? A coke or something?”
The beach was a private one, shared only with the neighbors, and at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning in February, it was empty of all but a few sandpipers. She agreed, and we began walking back up to Gerry’s.
“How did you get here?”
For the first time, she smiled. “I drove. I’m sixteen now. Dad and Lynda gave me a Prius.”
“Sixteen!”
When was the last time I’d seen her? I tried to think back. For a while after Jonathan and I split up, I’d had an apartment on Sunset Plaza Drive, and occasionally Jonathan would let me see her, although he wouldn’t allow her to stay overnight. I railed at him for taking her away from me, but she was his, not mine, and in some part of me, I knew he was right. It wasn’t long before it was more important to have money for drugs than for rent, and I was forced to move to a cheaper place on Hollywood Boulevard, and I was embarrassed for her to see it. I’d kept the same cell phone number, so she could reach me, and for a while she kept me abreast of news of school, or friends, or Jonathan, who quickly began seeing another woman, whom I was gratified to know she didn’t like.
On her fifteenth birthday, I’d arranged with Jonathan to drop her off at Musso and Frank’s, a restaurant not far from my house. But I’d fallen the night before, and as I was leaving the house to meet her, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had a big black and blue mark on my face, and I’d chipped a tooth. I thought she could only have the same feelings for me I had for myself—disgust, contempt, and hate. I got drunk and didn’t show up. I thought the best thing I could do was stay out her life. Now I realized how much I’d missed.
“Wait till you see this house. It’s incredible.” As we walked back up the beach, I couldn’t help but ask, “What’s with the tattoos?”
“They’re stick-ons. Cool, huh?”
“Way cool.”
Gerry’s house was a designer showcase, pristine and sleek, photo ready. The ocean side of the house was glass; the kitchen and dining room looked out over a large wooden deck. A few grasses sprouted on the dunes by the house then the sand extended, clean and bright, to the shoreline, where it turned darker and wetter in the low tide. The sun was high, the sky bright blue, the ocean calm. I opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator, took out two Diet Cokes, and poured them
