Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

“Aw, hell, Luke,” Eugene says.

“Now, no need for that language, Eugene,” Ronnie says. “Come give us a hand with the barbecue.”

Luke next finds Francis, who hasn’t bothered to hide at all, just climbed into the backseat of Ronnie’s car with his guitar.

Kenny starts to squirm. She hands him the cookie.

“Let me guess where Mom and Kenny are,” Luke says loudly, entering the kitchen. He opens the oven door. “Are they in here?”

Kenny stifles a giggle. He has a dab of chocolate on his upper lip, and she wipes it off while holding a finger in front of her mouth.

Luke opens the fridge. “Are they in here?”

Kenny cries out, “Silly!”

“Aha! Do I hear something?” Luke lifts the top of the cookie jar. “They couldn’t have fit in here. Nah, not Kenny. He’s much too fat.”

Kenny giggles. She smiles at him.

“Oh, now I definitely hear something.” Luke pulls away one of the chairs and sticks his face under the table.

She waits for Kenny to crawl out first. “How’d you find us so fast?” she says, smoothing her red-and-white skirt. She made it herself, and the side seam isn’t hanging quite right. The little blue blouse is nice, though. “Did you peek?”

Luke laughs. “I knew I’d find you in the kitchen, Mom. That wasn’t hard. That’s where you always go to hide.”

Luke! Maybe if they leave Los Angeles, things will be better for him. All the kids are smart, like their father, but Luke is the smartest. She just has to get him away from that crowd he’s running with. In truth, getting Luke away is half the reason she’s supported moving to Phoenix.

“Well, it still was a great hiding place, wasn’t it, Kenny? Almost everyone else has been found. Plus we got cookies.”

Kenny nods. “Lost.”

“No, buddy. Not lost.” Luke picks him up. “Even when you’re not with family, family is still with you. And family never loses family.”

And there is her seventeen-year-old son tossing her toddler grandson in the air. Both babies, her babies. She reaches out for Kenny. “Better go find Sissy. I bet the steaks are on the grill now. Ronnie likes them done just right.”

She sets Kenny down on the floor and gets the potato salad out from the fridge, the bean salad, and then the green salad, laying them on a big tray.

“Patty Ann! Come in here and help.”

She picks up the second tray, with all the plates and napkins and silverware, using her hip to open the screen door onto the back patio.

“Hello? Happy Fourth!” Their neighbor Gary O’Connor appears around the house, gripping two six-packs. His wife, June, crowds in behind him with a cake.

“Oh, Barbara,” June says. “I am so sorry we are so late.”

Ronnie turns the last steak on the grill, then frees Gary from the six-packs, claps him on the shoulder. “Perfect timing! I was slow getting the grill going.”

She gives June a peck on the cheek and accepts the cake. “Let me get some glasses,” she says, nodding at the beers. “Where’s Meg?”

Meg is the O’Connors’ teenage daughter, in the same grade as Francis at school, and usually as fast as a shooting star at finding an excuse to come over. It’s embarrassing, really. Girls don’t have the pride they used to.

Gary and June look at each other uneasily.

“We had a little trouble with Meg,” Gary says. “That’s why we’re late.”

“We had to go get her from the police station!” June blurts out.

Gary gives June a look. He says, “She’s gotten all involved with these peaceniks. You know we don’t support it. We forbade her to go, but—”

“She snuck out.” June looks about ready to cry. “Meg was such a sweet little girl. But lately…”

“We were told a large protest was planned for today up at the school,” Mike says. His girlfriend takes hold of his upper arm.

Gary and June exchange glances.

“We’re sorry, Mike.”

“We just can’t seem to control her.”

The kitchen screen door slams. In his playpen, baby Sean startles or maybe wakes — it’s hard to tell; Patty Ann’s second child is such a quiet baby — and throws his hands in the air. Patty Ann lays the tray of salads down hard on the table next to the old white pitcher, then picks Sean up. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. O’Connor.”

June chucks the baby under his chin, nervously. And little wonder — Patty Ann looks ready to bite her. “Isn’t he darling?”

The baby shrinks from her touch. Patty Ann shifts him away from June.

“Well,” Ronnie says amiably, “Meg still has to eat.”

June twists her hands. “She…she didn’t feel like socializing.”

So Meg doesn’t want to eat with Mike, because he is ROTC. Mike probably puts up with stuff like that all the time on campus. In fact, if he weren’t their brother, Patty Ann and Luke would probably be treating him as though he had a disease, too.

Luke. Where is Luke?

“You can bring a plate for Meg later,” she says. “Unless she’d think it would contain napalm .”

“Oh, Barbara, never—”

“I was just joking. Listen, is beer okay, June? Something else? We were just finishing a game of hide-and-seek. Practicing for that jungle combat! Luke? Luke!” She turns to Mike. “Where’s your brother gone?”

“I’m here,” Luke says ambling around the side of the house, a whiff of sweet smoky aroma accompanying him. He nods at the O’Connors without saying hello, something Michael would have sent him to his room for were he still here. Ronnie doesn’t try to be a father to the boys — more like a wise older friend. A friend to all of them. But it’s good. Really, it is. No matter what Patty Ann says. The boys like him. Even Sissy tolerates him. It’s only Patty Ann who seems to have it out for him. “But I can’t find Sissy.”

“Oh, she has a good hiding place. She wouldn’t have suggested playing otherwise,” Patty Ann says, rocking baby Sean in her arms. Kenny sits down in the grass and sticks his thumb in his mouth. He was such a sweet baby. Sean is a different story, quieter but fussier. “She’s probably been thinking about it for days.”

“Should I put the steaks in the oven to stay hot?” Ronnie asks.

“Sissy!” she shouts. “You’ve won! Now, come out!”

Evening is starting to fall, just a little bit, just a touch of veil over the sunlight. The smell of the lemon trees winds in and out through the smoke of the barbecue. Where did she put the sparklers? There’s no point in arguing with anyone, not today. Not with Luke. Not with Patty Ann. Not with the neighbors’ daughter. It’s a perfect afternoon, a perfect evening. They’re together, still a family.

“Come on, Sissy,” Luke says. “I give up.”

“I’m up here.” Sissy’s freckled face leans over the edge of the roof.

“For God’s sake, Sissy!” she cries. “How did you get up there?”

Sissy smiles. Her red hair flashes in the late sun. “I flew.”

“THIS IS BEAUTIFUL,” THE girl in the beige bra says, pulling him further and further into the lake, further away from Molly and Eugene. The girl’s laughter breaks over him in murky, rhythmic waves. “It’s like the river Jordan, man. It’s like everything bad that’s ever happened is being washed away.”

Somewhere in the near distance, cows are mooing, their moans plaited with the sound of more laughter; farther away guitars, people singing, the concert. Water fills the hollows of his knees, slipping against his naked thighs. Something soft but determined is clutching at his neck, a clinging slopping strangling water lily, a reed, the arms of an octopus. He pulls on it and, when he’s finally freed, hands the bandanna to the girl in the beige bra and high white panties, throwing his lanky sunburned seventeen-year-old arms open wide.