Page 44 of Ten Beach Road

Sixteen

They used the weekend to remove the last clingy bits of wallpaper and paste and the stray bits and pieces of debris and carted away what Avery promised were the last armfuls of useless “stuff” from the detached garage. By Saturday Madeline could have made the trek to and from the Dumpster with her eyes closed and sometimes did; she imagined their footprints indelibly etched into the brick of the drive. As they hauled and sweated together the formalities began to slip away. Madeline began to respond to “Maddie” and even “Mad” as she did at home. Nicole, who appeared particularly bedraggled, looked less and less like a “Nicole” by the hour. The first time Maddie called her “Nikki” she’d looked up quickly prepared to apologize, but Nicole was busy trying to get a glob of wallpaper paste out of her hair and didn’t seem to notice.

At sunset Kyra sat on a kitchen chair that Avery dragged out for her. Maddie tensed briefly when Nicole offered Kyra one of the frozen margaritas she’d whipped up, but Kyra opted for a glass of iced tea, which she sipped as she watched not just the show but them in much the same way Jane Goodall must have watched her apes.

Madeline noticed that her daughter’s presence altered their group’s dynamic; they all thought a bit more before they spoke, and Maddie sensed a bit of editing taking place. The conversation stalled out completely when Kyra pulled out her video camera and began to shoot not only the red ball of the sun, but Bella Flora and them bathed in its glowing light. It was only when the sun had finally set and the tequila in Nicole’s frozen margaritas kicked all the way in, that their conversation resumed.

Madeline watched her daughter out of the corner of her eye, wishing that for just a moment she could see her as these strangers might, but it was almost impossible to see beyond the child Kyra had been and the troubles she now faced. In the lengthening dusk they raised their glasses in a final sunset toast and searched their weary brains for a good thing to share.

Though she normally went last, Nicole was the first to raise her glass. “Frankly, the only thing that feels really good right now is the buzz from the margaritas.” She stared out over the Gulf, apparently thinking. “Which I guess leads me to how good it is that Maddie bought that blender.”

Madeline laughed. “My pleasure.” She turned to Kyra and found herself looking into the camera lens. Gently, she pushed it away. “We have a sunset tradition of coming up with one good thing that happened during the day. But I’m not sure those things are always suitable for public consumption.”

She returned Kyra’s automatic eye roll with a small shake of her head.

“Your mother invented it,” Avery said, her voice slightly slurred. “And coming up with even one thing can be a real . . . difficult.” She paused and downed the last drop from her glass. “So that’s my good thing tonight, too.” She raised her empty glass and they clinked. “Let’s hear it for the blender.” She thought again. “And a weekend without the organ grinder.”

“That’s Chase,” Maddie whispered to Kyra. “They’re having a little communication problem.”

“Ha!” Avery said, staring down into her empty glass. “That’s a gross understatement.”

They fell quiet for a moment waiting for Maddie to share her good thing so that they could go inside and either make more margaritas or eat something that would blot up the ones they’d already consumed.

Maddie raised her glass with its tiny bit of pale green slush in the bottom and smiled, motioning for Kyra to raise her glass of iced tea along with theirs. “I’m really happy that Kyra was able to join us in our mission to bring Bella Flora back to life. We may have our occasional differences of opinion . . .” She paused to make eye contact with Kyra. “But she’s always been one of the very greatest things in my life.”

Chase showed up Monday morning, walked all four of them over to a ground-floor window that had two broken panes, positioned Madeline next to him, and began to demonstrate the re-glazing process as if he’d intended to do so all along.

“First you scrape off the old paint and the glazing compound,” Chase said as they huddled together, watching him demonstrate how to work the putty knife in the thin opening of the mullion.

Midway through the explanation, Nicole’s eyes began to glaze over, Kyra retreated behind her video camera, and Avery’s faith in her choice of Maddie for the job was confirmed.

Amazingly, he neither rushed nor cajoled as he not only demonstrated each step of the process on the pane next to Maddie but watched carefully as she performed the process on her own.

“Then we take out the broken pane and pull out the points.” He showed Madeline how to use the needle-nosed pliers to remove the paint-caked diamonds of wood that held each corner of the glass in place. “Then when you’ve scraped the rest of the old paint and compound out, you set the glass in place.”

Maddie’s fingers moved awkwardly in the latex gloves and sweat popped out on her brow, but Chase talked in the same kind of tone that a cowboy might use to gentle a horse. If he hadn’t called Avery Vanna the moment he arrived and then ignored her completely, Avery would have thought some kinder, gentler spirit had taken possession of Chase’s body.

For twenty-five more minutes, he demonstrated and led Madeline through the delicate and tedious procedure of affixing the glass with the “points,” which were too small for easy handling in latex-covered fingers and often hit the ground and had to be retrieved. Avery didn’t have the heart to mention how common a problem that was or how frustrating it could be when you were up on a ladder or scaffold.

Maddie grimaced as she pressed a point down at one corner of the new square of glass. They all watched it crack. “Shit!” she said.

Nicole reached for a work towel and lifted a corner to dab at Madeline’s sweat-soaked forehead like a nurse mopping the brow of an operating room surgeon. “You’re doing great, Maddie. I would have been cramming those pieces of glass into position whether they wanted to go or not.”

Kyra moved in for a close-up of the broken glass as Chase helped Madeline remove it, then once again demonstrated the best way to slip it in between the rabbets. They all held their breath while she worked and broke out into smiles when she got it into position without mishap.

“Phew.” Maddie wiped her forehead with the back of one gloved hand. “My eyes are crossed from concentrating so hard.” She looked pleased.

“You did good,” Chase said as he showed her how to roll the glazing compound into a very thin, snakelike piece and press it around the edges. “That’s the last step out here. We go inside next to straighten the seams and seal the pane.”

“Gee, there’s more?” Nicole asked. “And here I was afraid the fun was over already.”

Madeline peeled off the gloves and held them out to Nikki. “I won’t be at all offended if you’d like to share this job.”

“Thank you,” Nicole said pushing the offering away. “You’re too kind. But I’d rather poke out my eye with a sharp stick.”

Kyra laughed behind her camera.

Avery tried to hold back her own smile and failed. “I hear you,” she said. “Unfortunately, pretty much everything from here on out belongs in the category of tedious and tortuous.”

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