The Lighthouse

“Oh, I do not. I’m as big as a horse, but I don’t care.” She pats her stomach and laughs. “I’ve been on every diet known to womankind and none of them work. I’ve just decided I’m going to be fat.”

“You aren’t fat.”

“Right, now if you add You’re just a big-boned girl, you’ll sound just like your mother.”

She laughs again and I start to, but something happens inside me. I look down, study the porch floor, feel like I’m going to start crying, but I manage to swallow back the tears, look up and smile.

“Tine, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, come inside. It’s been so long since you’ve even been over to the house. Get in here.” Sandra draws me into the house, and we stand in the middle of her parents’ familiar living room. More nostalgic feelings rush through me. The house is the same, homey as ever. Sandra’s mother, Josephine, loved antiques, deep burgundies and dark wood, the opposite of my mother’s taste, yet just as pretty.

“Are you having a nice visit?”

“I am,” I say, still feeling like an idiot for almost breaking down in front of her. I certainly don’t need to lay my problems on her. She has enough of her own.

“I’m glad. I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. Where has the time gone? Let’s go into the kitchen.”

We walk in the kitchen, and Sandra extends her hand as if presenting a grand prize on a game show. “Still the same old place. I haven’t changed much, haven’t had time. Sit right here.” She pats the 1940s café booth her parents found in an alley behind a restaurant years ago. “You want a drink?”

I laugh. “It’s not even two.”

“So? It’s 5:00 p.m. somewhere. Let’s have a drink to celebrate you being home and actually coming over to see me.”

“I don’t think I can handle a drink right now. Too early.”

“How about some hot chocolate?”

“Sure.” When we were little, Sandra’s mother used to let us practice our cooking skills on Saturday afternoons in her crazy warm kitchen. When Sandra’s grandfather passed away, we made a gloppy mess of chocolate syrup, milk and maraschino cherries for Josephine, brought it to her while she was sitting on the couch looking out the window. She smiled, hugged us both. That was the day she taught us to make hot chocolate from scratch.

“I still make it like Mama did.” Sandra turns from the stove, milk in hand. “Remember?”

“Of course. How could I forget that?”

“You look great. I swear you never change.”

“Oh, God, I look like hell. Last week I worked fourteen-hour days so I could come home for the holidays, so I’m worn out.”

“That’s a lot of hours. You must really like your job.”

“Oh, yeah. Love it. I’m the top-selling Realtor in my office.”

“I’m the top receptionist in my office, but I’m the only one so it was easy to be first.” She smiles wider. Sandra is big in every way. Always has been. She is three inches taller than I am. Even her hair is big—curly red, four inches past her shoulders and wild.

She turns the heat under the milk down low. “Do you really want hot chocolate or were you just being nice?”

I shake my head. “I’ve had about a million cups of coffee this morning.”

“Then you certainly don’t need any more liquid.” She snaps off the burner, takes the saucepan and shoves it in the refrigerator. “We’ll have it later.”

She walks over to the booth that is wedged in the bay window and sits across from me. “Since I’ve moved back home, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of you. Just the other night I was thinking about how we used truth serum to tell all our secrets. Remember that?”

“How could I forget?” I laugh. She was sixteen-and-a-half. I was thirteen. Friday nights were truth-serum nights if Sandra didn’t have a date. We’d pour Coke in a juice glass, add five teaspoons of sugar, drink it down in one gulp. And then we’d laugh our butts off, probably from the sugar high.

She’d tell me secrets about the kids she went to school with, the boy she might be dating.

“Remember what you told your mother one time about Tommy Bradford?”

I shake my head, try to remember, then suddenly the memory comes pouring in. I told my mother Sandra let her boyfriend touch her breasts.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “My mother wouldn’t let me date him again.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Tommy’s selling shoes at the Del Amo Shopping Center. Been married and divorced three times, has four kids, and last I heard, but this is from a not reputable source—read, Tiffany Brown—he was living at the Torrance YMCA.”

“Maybe I did you a favor.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks. My mother put me on restriction for a month. You know how long a month is to a sixteen-year-old?”

My mother was tucking me in bed. I was a late developer and she was explaining that soon I’d need a training bra. I whispered that Sandra’s boyfriend touched her titties. Her blue eyes widened, but she didn’t say a word.

“Okay, speaking of dating, are you? I promise I won’t tell Jake any of the details.” Sandra grins.

“No. I don’t date, I work. And Dad doesn’t seem to care what I do. We had a small blowout on the front porch a little while ago.” This slips out, and I shake my head.

“About what?”

“I’m not sure how it started, but it got around to how he wanted me to go to college years ago. I got angry.”

“Oh, that’s just him.” She waves her hand toward our house. “He was always that way.”

“True, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Did you end on an okay note?”

“He walked into the house, and I walked over here. Do you mind if we talk about something else?” I don’t want to think about my father’s sad face, or the anger I couldn’t hold back.

“Of course not. So you aren’t dating anyone?”

“I haven’t had a date in probably a year. I’m too busy. How about you?”

“How are you defining a date?” She grins.

“Drinks, maybe dinner,” I say.