Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

Sean has been working at a nearby gym, Gold’s, since leaving school, maintaining the equipment, wiping down the exercise mats. He may not be like other kids, but — unlike his too-smart-for-her-own-good mom — he has been able to hold down a job.

“Mmm.”

“I can’t offer you coffee,” Patty Ann says, walking through the room, her bare feet echoing on the wooden floor, toward the kitchen. “The electricity’s out. And the gas is off — as you know. We’ve got orange juice, though.”

“That’s okay, dear. We just came by to check you were okay.”

“We should drink the OJ before it goes bad,” Patty Ann calls from the kitchen. “Here, Sean, I’ll pour you a glass. We can walk up to the Rose Café after and get scones.”

Patty Ann’s living room is large and low-ceilinged, with white-painted wooden beams and wooden built-ins lining three of the walls. Bearing only a jumble of worn paperbacks, a collection of shells, and what look like crystal rocks, the shelving just adds to the house’s abandoned feeling. In addition to Michael’s armchair and the matching sofa she gave Patty Ann years ago, the only furniture are two oak rockers with lattice backs and torn leather seats that were in the house when Patty Ann moved in and a strange stone object with a wooden base that is either one of Glenn’s sculptures or a coffee table. Or both.

Indian-print cloths are draped over the sofa and pinned above the windows in lieu of curtains. A few large, fluorescent canvases have been nailed directly into the walls. One is of a big peace sign. Dust and pollen lie in clumps on the floor. Patty Ann has never been much of a housekeeper. Her daughter also doesn’t seem to have noticed the hippie era is over.

At least there isn’t much to fall down on anyone during an earthquake.

“Ronnie needs to have two scones. Why’s he losing weight?” Patty Ann says, coming into the room with two glasses of OJ, handing her one. “He’s not fat.”

She takes a little sip of the OJ and sets it down on the marble object. Then, just in case it is one of Glenn’s sculptures, she picks the glass back up and sets it down on the floor. How pale Ronnie looked, jerked awake this morning. “I think it’s good he’s retiring. You know. We’re not that young anymore.”

“You look good, Mom. You always look good.”

Suddenly, the earth bounces. She reaches out automatically to grab the glass. It’s just a small aftershock. Sean, drinking his orange juice, doesn’t budge.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Patty Ann says. “This is a good house. A really solid house.”

“I don’t know, Patty Ann. The roof…have you had it checked?”

Patty Ann frowns. “The roof is fine . The owner, he had everything checked before he bought it. Everything is fine. It just needs a little paint.”

“It does have nice woodwork,” she says, looking around, trying to find something positive to say about the big beaten-down shell.

“You’ll see. A little work and this house will be worth a mint.”

Last visit, Patty Ann told her the scuffed oak table and chairs in the dining room, also left in the house by the owner, are by the same furniture maker — Stickley, Patty Ann called it — as the two rockers in the living room. A little work and they’ll be worth a mint, Patty Ann insisted. Patty Ann is always saying with a little work something will be worth a mint.

If only Patty Ann would realize that with a little work Patty Ann could be worth a mint.

“But what worries me, is it safe? I don’t mean the house. I mean the street. The neighborhood.”

Patty Ann laughs. “Well, that’s one good thing about being married to a guy like Glenn. Nobody fuc — I mean, bothers you.”

She won’t ask why. Glenn’s mom is American, but his father’s family is Mexican, and for some reason he landed below the border with an aunt and uncle for a few years while he was a teenager. There’s a story behind that she’s never asked about. Everyone has some kind of past, whether good or bad. Nowadays Glenn is sober, on the right side of the law, and committed to her daughter. He doesn’t mistreat her grandkids. That’s all she needs to know.

“What’s a scone?” she asks.

“Sean!” Patty Ann says. “Grandma doesn’t know what a scone is!”

At the Rose Café, Patty Ann brings up her house again. “It’s so large! Big enough to take in a boarder. Or make the top-floor bedroom into a B and B for weekly guests. I told Francis he and his girlfriend would be welcome to stay with us.”

She’d like to call Francis, but neither Patty Ann’s phone nor the pay phone at the Rose Café is working. Will he still be able to join them for lunch at 1:00 p.m.?

Another aftershock rolls through. Ronnie grasps her arm. Her heart leaps. Life has so much uncertainty.

“I think I wouldn’t mind a nap before lunch,” Ronnie says, climbing carefully down from his high stool. This café is a funny place. A huge wall painting of a rose almost swallows the front door. “All this excitement. It’s taken the life out of me.”

“Great idea.” The phones at the hotel will be good. She’s sure of it.

In fact, there’s already a message at the hotel reception: Lunch will have to be dinner, 6:30 p.m. Same restaurant. Francis says sorry.

“Just as long as he shows up,” she says, drawing back their room’s curtains, opening the window. Amazing that the cleaning service has managed to pass through already, while elsewhere in LA some people are undoubtedly battling fires, rummaging through rubble. If not for the aftershocks, she could pretend there’s no disturbance anywhere but the one inside her.

She lost one son already during the Vietnam War. It would have been too much to lose another. But she knew Francis would return someday. She never gave up hope.

The Pacific looks so blue and calm. The beach stretches long and flat and brown. A strip of white licks the shore where the waves hit. It seems so long ago and yet just yesterday when she and Michael would bring the kids down to the beach here to play. Francis was, already, a beautiful baby. She’d unlock the bassinet from the baby carriage, set it in the sand, prop an umbrella up overhead, and turn away to play with the bigger kids. When she turned back, there’d be some woman or girl cooing over him.

“What’d you say?” Ronnie asks, slipping his shoes off, stretching out on the bed.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

When she flew to Dublin to see Francis six months after he called, the only time she’s seen him since he resurfaced, she refused to think about the possibility he might not be there waiting as promised. Shall we lay bets on whether he’ll show up? Patty Ann said during the flight over. She’d brought Patty Ann along, partly because she didn’t want her to be the only one of the kids — now that Sissy had spent her junior year of college in Paris — never to have been outside of America and partly because that was before Glenn, and she didn’t know what Patty Ann might get up to with her out of the country. Kenny went to stay with the younger boys, and Patty Ann came to Ireland with her.

It was her first time across the Atlantic also.

Don’t be ridiculous, Patty Ann, she said, looking out the plane window, down below at the vast gray nothingness of sky and ocean. Even Francis wouldn’t have me fly all the way over here and not show up.

She turns away from the hotel window and sits down on the other side of the bed from Ronnie. Francis was right there in the airport when she and Patty Ann disembarked. The rest of the week was perfect also. Even Patty Ann behaved well. They went around, eating smoked salmon and brown bread, visiting music halls and old town houses, laughing at how she kept forgetting to look right when she stepped off the curb. Being together. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t ask whether he would ever come back to America, even to visit. Now, finally, he has.