Page 9 of Just Beachy

There’s chin jutting and arm folding. “Not without Sydney.”

My mother knows that tone as well as I do. She gives me a look I also know.

“I’ll be glad to come. What time will we need to leave?”

“It’s only about thirty minutes away,” Mom says. “Maybe a little before ten.”

I nod and tell myself I’ll get a run on the beach in first. Or not. I order dessert.

When my stomach is completely full, yawning commences. I was on the road for four-and-a-half hours, foiled an attempted robbery, and have now consumed a steak, a baked potato, two pieces of bread, and a slice of key lime pie. I need a shower and then I need to be horizontal.

As soon as the bill comes, I help Grand up and we make our way outside to retrieve our cars from the valet.

“I’ll drop Grand off at Myra’s,” my mother says when her car arrives. “See you back at the hotel.” She hands me a room key.

The Bilmar Beach Resort is only a block away, and I’m in bed by the time my mother gets back. Although I’m not proud of it, I pretend to be asleep. When I finally begin to drift off, thoughts of my lost career, the role my mother expects me to play in her plans for Grand, looking inept in front of Luke, and hulks with guns assail me. It takes every ounce of willpower I possess to dredge up a pleasant memory or two, which finally, mercifully, allow me to drift off to sleep.

Five

“I’d slit my wrists beforeI’d live anywhere thisbeige.” Grand dismisses the restrained elegance of the Covington Arms Senior Living Community with a flick of one of said wrists. “Everything here is beige. Including the residents.”

Her pronouncement complete (there is no more offensive word in my grandmother’s vocabulary than “beige”), she turns her back on the dining room’s grass cloth wallpaper, silk-covered dining chairs, and floor-to-ceiling casement windows, which frame an exquisite pond with a spraying fountain. A bricked walking path cuts through a beautifully arranged flower garden.

“Mother,” my mom says carefully with a nod toward the saleswoman conducting our tour. “This facility is beautiful. It has a fitness center, a state-of-the-art performance hall, a movie theater, tennis courts, and bicycle paths. It even hasa clinic, and classes and guest speakers and organized travel. It’s owned and managed by the Ritz-Carlton and was featured inArchitectural Digest.”

Grand sniffs. “The apartments are the size of a postage stamp and there’s no closet space, let alone room for a studio. And I do not plan to paint in an arts and crafts room. Nor do I need a group bus or a social director, and I never would have come here today if you hadn’t forced me.”

My grandmother’s voice is strong, but I can feel her trembling next to me. I take her hand and squeeze it.

“Please don’t make a scene,” my mother says. “You know the house in Atlanta is much too big for you to keep up on your own.”

All our eyes tear up at the allusion to Grandpa Henry’s absence. He was the port to my grandmother’s storm. The soft to her loud. The rational to her instinctual. I’ve never seen such a clear example of opposites not only attracting but somehow converting all of that opposite energy into a cohesive unit.

“And since you’ve repeatedly refused to have live-in help or a driver, it only makes sense for you to be in a place where everything’s at your fingertips and you have people around you,” my mother continues. “If you insist on doing it in Florida, this is the perfect place. They provide a town car and driver, for God’s sake. You’re free to come and go at will. They could take you to visit Myra anytime you like.” She shoots me a look that demands backup. But I just can’t do it.

Grand’s eyes narrow to slits. Her cheeks redden. “And who took away my keys so I need a driver?” Grand’s tone is belligerent, her voice too loud for the main dining room of Covington Arms. Even those with hearing aids have given up all pretense of eating in order to focus on the conversation. I’m pretty sure the regular entertainment doesn’t come anywhere close to the show playing out in front of them. “For all I know, you’ve sold my car right out from under me.”

As we exit the dining room, one of three we’ve toured on the property, my mother draws a steadying breath. “You know very well the Cadillac is sitting in the garage back home. No one’s doing anything behind your back.” She glares at me.

I remain mute, unable to come up with an idea that would satisfy either of them.

“I’m perfectly capable of driving,” Grand hisses.

“I’mnot the one who hit all those parked cars and then talked their owners out of reporting it to their insurance companies,” my mother hisses back. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not the one stopped for going the wrong way on a one-way street. A street you’ve been driving your whole adult life, I might add.”

My mother takes another deep breath. The saleswoman is still trying to locate the smile she lost somewhere between “beige” and “size of a postage stamp.”

We pass the library, a cozy café, and the movie theater. Just beyond the theater a wall-hung television is set to agame show. But as we’re about to move on, the show is interrupted, and a shot of a newsroom takes over the screen. The shot zooms in on a reporter. A photo of “abstract artist Phillip Drake” appears behind the reporter’s shoulder with the headlinePhillip Drake dead from cancer at 90.Some of his best-known works flash across the screen including hisMissing Madonna, which disappeared more than sixty years ago. My grandmother gasps. When I take her hand, it’s shaking.

“Grand. Are you okay?”

She swallows. “Yes. Yes, of course.” She gathers herself, turns from the TV, and drops my hand. “I’mfine.” She raises her chin and squares her shoulders, but I can feel her trembling beside me. “But this place is still beige.”

My mother takes another deep breath. One more and she’ll be hyperventilating.

“Covington Arms is one of the nicest retirement communities of its kind on the west coast of Florida.”

Grand turns on her heel and heads toward the entrance foyer, forcing my mother, me, and the no-longer-jovial saleswoman to follow. Our heels clack loudly on the marble floors.

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