Jill Barnett - New Beginnings

“You always were an over-achieving asshole.”

“Better than just being an asshole.”

“You’re jealous because Gramps liked me best.”

“No. He worried about you the most. It was that IQ test you failed.”

“Screw you, Mike.” Rob laughed, finishing off his beer.

Rob and Mike were the same age, personality and shared the same fire in the heart, both forced to survive in a conservative family run by men who demanded they be anything but what they were. In each other they found the strength to hang onto their fire when others kept trying to extinguish it.

“We had to do a project in my shop class,” Mike went on. “I figured I could combine the idea of a Snurfer with something like a skateboard, a surfboard and skis. That first skiboard was made out of wood and a piece of carpet and aluminum.”

“Man…was it fast.” Rob shook his head. “If you could stay on and if you could control it, you could book-it down a hill.”

“We started racing each other on those.” Mike pulled out his wallet to pay the bill. “I’m still trying to find the right material for the board’s bottom. The aluminum facing isn’t right. Still, these boards are so much more controllable than last year’s. But there’s got to be something better.”

March had one of those contemplative looks on her face again, and for a tough, doubtful moment he wondered if she was thinking like his dad. He worried that he’d just bored her senseless talking about board construction. Rob was right. He was a weird geek.

She tapped the tabletop. “Have you thought about this stuff? Formica? I remember seeing my dad install it in our kitchen. Don’t you laminate it onto a wood base?”

Mike exchanged a look with Rob, who was shaking his head. It was so simple.

“What?” she asked, looking back and forth between them. “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“Sunshine…it’s the perfect idea.”

By the time they were scraping the snow off the car, she was talking to him about how he needed to apply for a patent. Back at the cabin they walked inside and she turned around, walking backwards, her hands moving in time with her mouth. “I think you should try to sell your boards, Mike.”

With those few words from her, everything his father had said to him evaporated. March Randolph was the smartest girl he’d ever known and she believed in him. Until then, he hadn’t actually admitted to himself how badly he wanted to be important in her eyes.

Later that night, after they were lying in the dark, legs tangled, March in the crook of his arm, he told her how proud he was when she came down that hill. That he was surprised. Amazed. And his cousin was right. She was a natural.

She told him she loved him and was quiet for a long time, but awake, fiddling with his chest hair. He was almost asleep when she asked, “Mike? Are you awake?”

He looked over at her. Something about her tone said trouble. “Yeah. Why?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“When I was about thirteen?” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t admit this.” Her voice gave her away. She was trying not to laugh.

He rolled over with her and pinned her to the bed. “Spill it.”

“My dad bought me a Snurfer for Christmas.”

After a heartbeat of silence, he was the one laughing. And he knew then he wanted to live the rest of his life drinking only milk.

“Sweetheart…Can’t you and Mike just have a normal wedding? In a church?”

With those words, March realized that Beatrice Randolph, her mired-in-tradition and old-fashioned mother, didn’t remember there was supposed to be romance in a wedding. Clearly her parents could never possibly understand the open, unfettered appeal of marrying the man you loved outside of a church, on rolling lawns, surrounded by the freedom of open blue skies and cypress trees twisted by the wind. How could marrying on a San Francisco hillside not be the perfect wedding venue, surrounded by nature’s honest realism?

In the time March had lived away from home, nothing had really changed there. Her parents could never see her unique place in the world, as least not in the way she did.

“It’s a religious ceremony,” her mother said, standing in the family kitchen, a large eat-in room with off-white painted cabinets, copper pots hanging alongside fish-shaped aspic molds, and those classic blue and white dishes that had been around for more than a few hundred years displayed on crisp ivy papered walls. “We belong to a perfectly lovely church. The whole congregation has known you since you were baptized.”

“It’s not their wedding,” March said simply. “It’s mine. And Michael’s.” In her heart, she wanted no traditional trappings. She was acutely aware of that fact while standing inside her parents’ home, which only reinforced her determination to make their wedding about the two people taking the vows.

“The wedding is about the bride, dear, not the groom,” her mother corrected her.

“It’s his wedding, too. It’s our marriage. This is important to both of us.”

“Of course it is.”

“We’re only going to do this once, Mother.”

“Then I don’t understand why you want your only wedding to be in the woods.”

“It’s not the woods. It’s a park. You’ve lived here long enough. You know the city. The view from that hillside is spectacular. When you stand up there, you can see from the ocean to the bay, you can see the bridge and all those blue skies.”

“March. Please…” Beatrice Randolph sat down hard on a kitchen chair, a sure sign she was disgusted. Littered across the painted tabletop were bridal magazines and old-fashioned etiquette books with gingham covers her mother had borrowed from the neighborhood library, along with printers’ samples of engraved invitations on heavy cream-colored stationery with vellum inserts and embossed tissue. Her mother must have brought them home and called March after the very first flush of wedding news.

“The park is closer to heaven than inside any stuffy church,” March told her.

“And so windy you’ll blow away. Think of your veil.”

March snapped her fingers. “Not a problem, Mom. I’m not wearing a veil.”

Beatrice sank her head into her hands and groaned.

“No white lace gown with a train either.”

“You need to think about this. It’s outside, March.”

“I know.”

After a too long silence her mother said, “The seagulls will poop everywhere.”

“Oh, Mom…” March burst out laughing. “If we were Greek, that would be good luck.”

“If we were Greek, you’d still live at home and we wouldn’t be having this argument.”

March sat down across from her mother and took her hand, looking her straight in the eye. “Are we really arguing about my wedding?”

Her mother swallowed, clearly uncomfortable, then looked down at her hands, thoughtful. Her nails were manicured into perfect ovals, cuticles pushed back, and painted with her immutable Coty red. The familiar pale skin of her mother’s hands didn’t have a single mark, not even a freckle. Her mother had the ivory complexion of a natural redhead. For as long as March could remember, a bottle of Jergen’s that smelled exactly like maraschino cherries sat next to the kitchen faucet. Her mother’s hands had always been one of the softest things in her life.

Harsh paint cleaners and hard, city water purified with bleach made her own hands a mess, split her impossibly short nails. Her cuticles were hopelessly snagged and often bloody. The engagement ring Mike gave her was lovely, perfect really: white gold and a row of small baguette diamonds around an oval aquamarine, her birthstone. Just looking at it made her unbelievably happy. But her hands were godawful, and she said as much.