The Lighthouse

“Still gonna challenge the crowds?”

I nod. “You could come with me, if you feel okay. I’ll drive. We don’t have to stay out long.”

“No thanks.”

I fill my lungs. “Doing something with a friend?”

“Nah. Thought I’d hang out around the house, get some work done.”

“Do you see any of your friends?”

“Chet and I have a beer once in a while. Most of our friends were your mother’s. She was good at making friends.”

Chet is a friend of my father’s. They knew each other in Vietnam. He’s a nice guy, quiet, tall and gray-haired like my father.

“I know, but they liked you, too. You could still go to dinner with them, have a drink. It’s got to be lonely without people around,” I say, knowing this from experience. I don’t have a lot of friends in Tucson because I work too much. When I’m home, I watch TV, then fall into bed so I can start another day early.

“People quit calling months ago.”

I think back to the time of the funeral. The phone rang and rang and rang, and for the two days I was home the house was thick with people. Now the house is almost silent.

“What do you do all day?” It’s funny how I’ve known my father all my life, but I don’t really know him. It was always my mother who made the plans, talked to people. She was the life in this house.

“I watch TV, walk, putter around. This spring I’m going to paint. Your mother always wanted me to paint the house yellow.”

A memory presses in, takes center stage. My mother standing by the kitchen sink, telling me she met my father on a beach at sunrise when the sun looked like a big pat of butter. I can almost hear her voice, the way she said the word. Even then I thought it odd, yet so much like her. She held out her arms, danced me around the room, and I laughed when she told me I’d find my Prince Charming, and we’d have a soft yellow house.

A sigh escapes my lips.

“What?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. We’ve had enough happen tonight.”

“You said something.”

“No, I sighed. I was thinking about when Mom told me she met you at Cabrillo Beach at sunrise when the sun looked like butter. You know how she used to talk, and how she loved the color yellow.” My words cut the air like typewriter keys. “How she always said I’d find the right guy.”

His lips flatten a little. “We met on Cabrillo Beach in the morning. It might have been sunny.” His solemn expression crumbles a little, and I feel his sorrow under my heart, beneath my eyes.

“You know, when I was about six, she told me the sun spilled out a big puddle of lemonade when it was sunny.”

Dad takes another sip of hot chocolate, clears his throat. “I’d better go to bed. Thanks for the hot chocolate.” He scoots his chair back.

I watch him rinse his mug, rub his fingers around the edge, then put it upside down in the sink. He walks out of the room, and I swear, for a moment, I can feel my mother’s arms around me.

It’s early morning and I’m standing on the sidewalk that edges Point Fermin Park. The area almost matches the memory I tucked away years ago, except the park looks smaller, not as bright. Every time I come home I have this same experience—things look different, not by much, but enough to startle me for a moment.

The wet grass paints the bottom of my jeans as I walk across it. I woke at seven, found Dad sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee from the same mug he used last night. He was working the New York Times crossword puzzle, like he always does. I checked his hands. They looked much better, scabbed over and not so red. He seemed okay, told me he’s fine and I should have a great walk.

The sky is California blue, clear. I walk past the old bench, reach the lookout point and wrap my fingers around the metal railing. Cold slips to my fingers, moves up my arms and finds my shoulders. The ocean below rolls back and forth, like a window shade, rhythmically drenching the rocks.

To the right, the abandoned lighthouse sits. My mother once told me she loved the lighthouse because it brought people home. When she’d say things like that, I’d laugh and tell her it was ridiculous to love an old building.

The ocean breeze lifts strands of my hair, dances them around my face. I make a stab at brushing them back, then give up and study the lighthouse again, remember my mother explaining years ago that it was built in the 1800s. Two women ran it until they got so lonely they moved back to Los Angeles and both found true love. I told her I didn’t care.

Oh, honey, you need to let yourself dream.

A wave of hurt rushes into my chest, fills up my lungs. Maybe coming to the park wasn’t such a good idea. I turn, cut across the length of grass, take the sidewalk to the Point Fermin Café and go inside.

People are scattered throughout the familiar restaurant, sitting at wooden tables or large booths. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” meanders from the radio on the freezer and floats through the braided conversations.

I order coffee and smile at the young waitress because she’s sweet, so young she looks like a colt, and it isn’t her fault my mother isn’t here. As she heads toward the kitchen, a man walks by, stops, turns around.

“Christine McGuire?”

“Yes,” I say, before I realize I don’t know him. He smiles as if I should. Out of habit, I stand when he offers his hand.

“Don’t get up.”

“Do I know you?” I ask. I squint, really look at him.

“Well, you used to. We went to high school together.”

High school, my God. His face looks a little familiar, but I can’t remember his name. I was a nobody in high school, like ninety percent of the kids, and I hated it.

“Adam Williams,” he says, like he knows I don’t remember him.

“Right. How are you? It’s been a long time.” Short dark hair covers his head. He’s an average-looking man. I have the same sensation I did in the park, where things look kind of the same, but not really.

“Yeah, twenty some years.” He laughs and I laugh, a reaction like a yawn that people sometimes share. “I don’t know why I expected you to recognize me.”

And then, for a moment, I’m seventeen, in a stuffy classroom, sitting across from Adam. I smile, feel like a teenager. “Oh, yeah, now I remember you.”

Johnny Mathis begins singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” and someone turns up the radio.

“Christmas music. God, I’ve had enough already,” I say.

“What?”

“The Christmas music.” I gesture toward the radio on the freezer.

He looks confused, then laughs. “I love Christmas music, always have. They should play it all year.”

“Please, no. I loved it before they started playing it in October.” This isn’t exactly the truth. I loved it until my mother died, but why go into this with someone I hardly know?

He motions to the chair across from the one I just got out of. “Mind if I join you for a minute? Catch up on old times.”

“Well, I guess not.” I don’t really want to talk or even think, but what can I say? I didn’t sleep well last night, when I finally got to bed, and then I woke up early.