You Don't Know Jack - Part 2
We piled into the van and headed for the coast. The lady's address was only a mile away, but it might as well have been a million. The seaside roads spike over the interstate, through new stucco condominiums where tiny tired beach cottages used to exist, and spray into cul-de-sacs filled with brand new identical shiny ocean-view rentals. Most of my town is a memory to me, even though I've lived here six short years. I remember the baby pink house with a hundred waxed surfboards tipped at attention along the ashen fence and the row of venus-fly traps on the scraped wooden pink porch. I remember the Latino missing two fingers from his right hand who sat on his scrubby lawn and sold hand-made hats woven from palm fronds. He never uttered a word, would point to a hand-lettered sign with prices when anyone asked him the time of day, the cost of a hat, directions to a good breakfast place. Now I remember these places but my children don't. They only know the new homes, the way yellow bulldozers graze like cattle near the beach. Most of the coastline itself is owned by the state, miles of bluffs and beaches and campgrounds of sand and scrub. But one tiny access road looms at the edge of the water, one road with two handfuls of homes guarding silent sentry against the waves.
We pulled up to the gate and I leaned out the driver's window and entered the code on a gleaming metal plate. The cast iron slid discreetly into a wall of lavender azaleas and I piloted the van into a road like a jungle, so unlike the dust and sage of my neighborhood, a jungle of mature twisted vines and king palms and the pink trumpets of datura. My customer's house sat immediately to my right, a three story monster of dark wood and metal with porthole windows and an American flag, and six redwood decks circling the structure like a hoop skirt.
I stood at the double entry, two doors made of thick oak panels and carved with an intricate Japanese design. I rang the doorbell and turned to give my two young boys a warning glance.
"Yes?" A woman in denim overalls opened the door in one big gust. She wore a backwards baseball cap over short frizzy gray hair and black flip-flops on gnarly feet. Her mouth turned down in a perpetual frown and her face was lined and spotted with sun damage. I estimated her age to be fifty.
"Hi! I'm Birdie the Avon Lady! I have your Skin-So-Soft and a brochure so you can order a fresh bottle." I held out the bottle with my biggest grin. My 9-year-old held out the Avon Campaign 16 brochure on cue.
"Hey! Does this house really cost a million dollars?" 7 interjected his question with a high-pitched rapid-fire voice and I turned to give him the evil eye.
"Ha ha, he's such a kidder!" I stuck my right leg behind me and kicked him gently in the shin.
"No, I'm not kidding. You said only millionaires live here and this lady sounded like a weird millionaire. She doesn't look that weird to me except for THAT!" He pointed at the bunion on the side of her foot, a painful peeling red onion of a bunion overhanging the side of the flip-flop.
I wanted to drop the Skin-So-Soft and run. I wanted to leave the boys there, with books and bunion talk, to fend for themselves, but I forged ahead.
"Oh my, I'm so sorry, I'm so embarrassed. 7! Apologize right now!" He mumbled an insincere apology and looked quizically at his brother who shrugged his shoulders, arm still outstretched with the brochure.
The woman glared at me and grimaced. "Just come in. Nana is expecting you."
Ok, I lied. It's gonna be three parts. It's a long story....and my virus is gone and I have to get those brochures out!
8:57:51 AM 
|
