Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

“Right,” his mom says now. “She’s with Lee. That makes me feel miles better.”

There’s no way to reach Patty Ann if she’s left the coffee shop. Maybe she and Lee went to the movies, or maybe they’re just hanging out in Lee’s car — although, normally, Patty Ann would have said if she weren’t coming home for dinner. If anything, Patty Ann seems to enjoy telling his mom when she’s staying out with Lee.

They go ahead and eat. Afterward Mike does the dishes without protest, even though tonight is supposed to be Patty Ann’s turn. His mom bathes Sissy and tucks her into bed, and Luke goes to read to Sissy as promised while he stays in the kitchen to dry the dishes and help Mike put them away. When the kitchen is all cleaned up, he and Mike return to sit in the living room again, Mike pulling out a deck of cards. Soon, his mom joins them.

As the night crawls in, his mom gets more and more irritable. She smokes one cigarette, and then lights another. A little before ten, Mike taps the cards neatly into a pile, slides them back into their cardboard box.

“Good night, Mom,” Mike says and disappears to their bedroom, yawning and stretching.

The house is quiet around him and his mom now, just the radio, the crickets outside, the low hum of the fridge. She starts folding laundry on the dining room table, something she normally never does at this hour. He sits in his dad’s old armchair, listening to KHJ. The DJ is talking about the Beatles playing the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. His favorite band is the Byrds, though, and he waits patiently for their new song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” to come on. He knows it will eventually. McGuinn’s voice sounds like no one else’s, and his guitar is reedy and twangy, almost like the little piano-organ at church. He’s never heard a guitar sound like it before. If only he had a record player, he’d buy the 45 for “Mr. Tambourine Man” and listen to it over and over again.

Maybe he’ll get a job after school this year, so he can buy a guitar and learn to play it himself. So he won’t have to wait for it to come on the radio.

But what kind of job can he get during the school year that’ll pay enough for a guitar? Could he start bagging groceries on weekends already? Or washing cars after school? Delivering newspapers before school?

Eugene will have an idea. Eugene always needs money.

At eleven, the phone rings.

“Can you get that, Francis?” his mom says, looking hard at him from the sill of the dining room. She reaches into a pocket for her cigarettes.

She doesn’t follow him to the phone, but he can feel her expectation trail after him.

“Hello,” he says into the receiver.

“Francis? Is that you?” Patty Ann’s voice sounds funny — faint and crackly — but it’s definitely Patty Ann. He glances at his mom. She has her hands on her hips, smoke trailing from her cigarette, watching him.

He speaks low into the receiver. “You missed dinner.”

Patty Ann laughs. “That’s not the half of it. Guess where I am?”

From outside the house, he can hear night sounds, a creak of a screen door, a lone car driving past. There’s noise behind Patty Ann’s voice, too, over the telephone line, but he can’t make it out. “I don’t know. With Lee.”

Patty Ann laughs again. “And how! We’re in Las Vegas .”

He turns away from his mom, as though she might otherwise be able to hear, and the receiver slips in his hand. He grabs it before it hits the floor. This time Patty Ann is really going to catch it.

“Francis? Are you there?”

He looks out the picture window, through his reflection and into the dark glow of the street lamps, avoiding the feel of his mom’s eyes on his back. Why did he stay up? He should have gone to bed when Mike did. He really would rather not be around when she finds out about this. “Yes.”

“Were you guys listening to the radio this evening?”

“Yes. It was a bad game.”

“No, I mean the news . Did you hear the news? Did Mom hear the news?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. We were listening to the baseball game. She was listening with us.”

“Well, Lee and I weren’t. We were sitting in his car…and a newscast came on. President Johnson signed an executive order this afternoon saying couples married after midnight tonight will no longer be eligible for the draft deferment for married men without children.”

“So?”

“So we drove straight to Las Vegas. Me and Lee. We got married.”

For a few moments earlier today, he was air, he was lighter than air, he was as free as the tern that skimmed right over his and Eugene’s heads. He felt no fear. He felt no weight. There was nothing but his body moving through the sky and then into the water.

And then he plunged into the cold, and the sea pushed him back up.

“Hold on,” he says. He can’t slip out the door unseen now. Could he hand over the phone and make straight for his bedroom? Or the bathroom, like he needs to pee? He’d need to be peeing for a long time, though. What comes next isn’t going to end swiftly. “I’ll put Mom on the phone.”

“And Francis! Don’t tell her. I want to tell her myself.”

That will not be a problem. He cups his hand over the receiver. “It’s for you, Mom. I mean, it’s Patty Ann.”

He holds the phone out, stretching his hand into the night, waiting for his mom to take it. Figuring out how he can make like air. Like water.

THE DODGE MATADOR PULLS up to the sidewalk in front of the florist’s. Behind the steering wheel, Patty Ann’s face, too pale for Southern California, strains over the head of the baby to see out the passenger window.

“Mom,” Patty Ann says.

She bends down to look in at her daughter. “I was starting to worry.”

She stows the basket of daisies, daffodils, and blue carnations in the backseat, then tucks the bouquet of roses and baby’s breath in next to it, pushing them close together for stability. They look like odd lovers snuggled there, one sunny, the other red and formal, against the dirty vinyl. She lifts a wad of papers and other trash off the front seat and slips in, scooping the baby onto her lap.

“Jeepers, Patty Ann. A person could catch something just sitting here.”

“So which bouquet is for which?” Patty Ann says, ignoring her complaint, surveying the flowers through the rearview mirror. “I mean, don’t you think it’s a little weird? ”

With that, Patty Ann tears away from the sidewalk.

She clutches the door handle to keep herself and the baby from jerking sideways. The baby plays with the cheek curls of her bouffant, then grabs for her cigarette. So maybe the timing is a little strange. The bottom line is Jeanne couldn’t come out to California twice but was determined to be here for both events, to show no hard feelings about her getting remarried. Also, Father O’Malley wasn’t available any other afternoon over the Memorial Day weekend.

She takes a last puff of her cigarette and tosses it out the window. “Ronnie doesn’t like my smoking.”

“No?” Patty Ann screws up her nose. “Ronnie.”

She won’t point out that if it weren’t for Patty Ann, she probably wouldn’t be marrying Ronnie McCloskey later today, a few hours after they get back from the cemetery. She might never have picked up the phone to ask him for help with the oven. After Patty Ann ran off to Las Vegas to get married, she was just too tired with trying to make everything work on her own.

“That’s enough, Patty Ann. I am lucky to have Ronnie.”

“Nothing to me,” Patty Ann says, reaching over to turn the dial up on the radio. “I won’t ever have to live with him.”