JUNE 1976
It had all been done in secret, whispers behind closed doors because they’d wanted to surprise us. I was eleven years old so I had everything figured out. I was unruly and made of bent twigs, tripping over both myself and also everything else. My five-year-old brother, Percy, was all adorable, constantly amazed and alert to changes around him.
The air conditioner in the woody station wagon was broken and although the windows were open, the breeze only circulated the muggy air. Percy lay on my lap in the backseat and I tried not to move. Mom was in the front seat, singing show tunes one after the other, and Dad was in such a good mood that he didn’t even ask her to stop.
“What do you think it is?” Percy asked, wiggling his fingers through mine, winding and unwinding.
“Obviously they rented a house for the summer,” I said. “The car is full of beach toys and stuff.”
“Oh,” he said and curled on his side, his eyes already closing as the lull of the car sent him to sleep.
I held on to his hand and wished I could rest. Instead I just felt carsick, a low, nagging feeling that only sleep could cure. I closed my eyes, wishing I could read my Nancy Drew book without throwing up. It would wait. If we really were going to the beach, as I’d confidently told Percy, I could read all day every day.
The car rocked and Mom and Dad whispered and sometimes Mom laughed with a simple sound that made the world seem rounder and softer. I must have drifted off because I awoke to the lurch of the stopping car. Startled, I sat up.
Dad had pulled the car over and stepped out into a patch of grass on the side of the road.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Blurry with sleep and the slight sway of nausea, I opened the car door to get out, too. Maybe this was it. The Big Surprise.
“Nothing’s wrong, Bee,” my mom said. “Nothing at all.” That was what she called me: Bee for Bonny Bee.
With the door open, I swung my feet onto the soft grass. Dad’s back was to me as he stood in front of a wooden sign. Welcome to Watersend. He ran his hand across the top edge of it. We’d never been here; I’d never seen this sign, and my heart did a quick step, just like I was scared, but I wasn’t. I was happy. This was a new something in the world. But I didn’t know yet what. There was an expectation like I was at the edge of a cliff and I would soon be able to fly.
Dad turned then and saw me, and he smiled. “Welcome to Watersend.”
“What is Watersend?” I asked, stretching, inhaling fresh, wet air.
“A town. Our town,” he said.
“Ours?”
“Yes.” He sauntered over and picked me up and swung me around in a circle with his strong arms under mine. The air felt different, unlike the beaches we’d visited before. And I gulped it like water. It was ours, Dad said. Ours. Belonging to us.
Back in the car, Percy and I watched the town breeze by our open windows. Cedar shake houses. Green lawns and water of every shade—blue, gray, greenish, sparkling, dark and clear—everywhere water twisted past, disappeared and then surprised us around another corner. This town seemed an island without a bridge. I was Peter Pan, or maybe Wendy. I was Jim Hawkins on Treasure Island. I was Lucy in Narnia. All adventure was mine. We’d left Atlanta only four hours before, in the late morning, and arrived in the middle of the day, but it still felt like a new day, another world.
The car made a slow turn onto a side street and stopped in front of a sprawling white house. An orange moving van was parked out front, its back end open. Inside was a puzzle of furniture and lamps and boxes.
Dad and Mom climbed out of the car and stood next to each other, facing the house. They linked arms. They didn’t usually link arms, and this was an anomaly I didn’t really understand, but I was willing to suspend my judgment to see what needed to be seen. So this was the Big Surprise?
Percy and I fell out of the car—well, he fell out of the car and I lifted him and propped him on my hip. We stood next to Mom and Dad.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They unlinked their arms and turned to us. Dad took Percy from me and shimmied him onto his shoulders.
“This,” Dad said in his loud proclaiming voice, the kind he used when he had a surprise or great news. “This is ours. Welcome to Sea La Vie, our new beach house.”
“There’s no beach,” Percy said. “Just that river there.” He pointed behind the house to where a sliver of blue water ran like a ribbon. Tall grasses lined the banks, swaying like someone was running their hands through them.
“Yes, that is the river, son. Where we will keep our boat and go fishing and shrimping and digging up oysters. So yes, let’s call it our river house.” He gestured across the street. “That,” he said, “is the beach, just one block thataway, up and over those dunes. Just a little path between us and wide open beach.”
“I’m confused,” I said.
Mom placed her hands on my shoulders. “This is our new house.”
I looked at the house again and with new eyes. We weren’t staying here for a week and running through its rooms seeking treasure (a game we played at beach rentals). That U-Haul—it was full of our stuff for this house.
“We’re moving here?” I didn’t know how to feel about that yet. It was all too new, too soaked with possibility.
Mom laughed, which she didn’t do very much or very well, so I laughed, too.
“No, it’s our summer place, silly. Our home away from home.”
It’s a different thing to know something is yours when only a moment ago you didn’t know it existed at all. Percy and I, as if on cue, ran toward the house with the kind of glee we saved for rare snow days or Christmas morning.
The house was empty that day. We ran from room to room, calling out each other’s names and proclaiming, “This is so cool. So cool. So cool.”
By the time we came back outside, Mom and Dad were walking toward a car that had just parked next to ours. A family poured out of the car like a little replica of our family, except the boy was older than the girl. The boy was drowsy like he’d just fallen out of bed. His brown curls couldn’t decide which way to go and his smile was aimed directly at me, all lopsided like he knew a secret he wanted to tell. My stomach did a little flip like I’d come down too fast off the seesaw, and I avoided his gaze. The little girl was blond and dressed for a birthday party or church in her sundress, her pigtails so tight they must have been painful. I smiled at her, ready for a friend. I wore a little wrinkled sundress covered in white and yellow daisies—it was my favorite but suddenly felt babyish and silly.
Using his proclamation voice again, Dad took my hand. “The surprises aren’t over yet,” he said.
Percy jumped over and over, twisting like a five-year-old cyclone. “It’s the best house ever, Dad. Ever. There are all these little places and the floors are wood and the fireplace is huge. I can fit inside it . . .”
Dad held his fingers to his lips, which meant shush.
“I know, son. It’s perfect. But I want you to come here and meet the McKays. This is Clara and Bob, and their kids . . .” He faltered.
Mrs. McKay spoke. “This is Owen; he’s thirteen. And this is our daughter, Lainey. She’s eleven.”
They appeared so exotic, dressed as if they were going to a party, and yet they’d climbed out of a station wagon just like we had. The dad, Bob, looked like Burt Reynolds in that movie where he stole a car.
Then there was the mom, Clara. She was like a glitzy model from a magazine. Her flowered sundress matched her daughter’s, and her platinum hair was piled high in a ponytail. Her large round sunglasses covered half her face and her scarlet-painted lips were smiling in that same way as her son, secretive and amused. Who on earth was this family and why were they parked in our front yard when I wanted to scream and yell and do cartwheels because we had a river house and it was all ours? I couldn’t act like that in front of glamorous strangers.
I wanted to hug Mom and Dad, go crazy with happiness. Instead I tried not to stare at the drowsy, rumpled boy who made me feel self-conscious and nervous. They needed to hurry along wherever they were headed—probably a perfect house that should also be in a magazine.
Mom sprang forward and hugged the woman so tightly that I wished she hugged me that way. “Isn’t this all so exciting? Just like the old days when we would road-trip together. Clara, I’m so happy you’re here.”
Dad did this weird half handshake, half hug with the Burt Reynolds lookalike. “Welcome.”
Mrs. McKay lifted her sunglasses and stared at the U-Haul. She swished her hand, with its bright red fingernails, through the air as if she were swimming. “Looks like we have our work set out for us.”
Nothing was making sense. Did they own the house, too?
Dad lifted Percy, who had started to make his way to the backyard, the one place we hadn’t yet explored.
“This is our son, Percy.” Dad threw him in the air and then caught him. “And our daughter, Bonny.” He ruffled my already tangled hair. I swatted his hand away.
“Kids, say hello to the McKay family. They’re our best friends from college and they’re here to help us unpack and to stay for a while.”
Mrs. McKay lurched toward the house in tiny high heels, almost like the plastic ones my Barbie doll wore. When she stepped onto the porch, she swayed the littlest bit, like there was a strong wind coming from inside. She peeked over her shoulder as if posing for a photograph. “This is dreamy. Very, very dreamy.”
We all watched her like it was a TV show and she was the star. Maybe she was. Or would be. Me, Clara McKay seemed to say. Look at me. And we did.