“You heard me.”
“How; are you sure?”
“What do you mean how? You were there”
“Maybe your wrong.”
“Gee, Genius, you’d think I’d know.”
“Well…..I thought you were all kinda weird when you’re young and all.”
“I bought a test.”
“They can be wrong, can’t they?”
“Yeah, well, my doctor says it’s not.”
“Doctor!, now everyone is gonna know about it.”
“If we keep ‘It’, everyone is gonna figure it out; don’t ya think?”
“Don’t go puttin’ that ‘we’ stuff on me. I don’t want nothing to do with it.”
“You had lots to do with it, Derek”
“I’m graduating in June. You don’t understand, you’re just a Freshman. This could screw up my chances in college, you know?”
“Yeah, I know…I know that I’m more screwed by this than you are. But it’s our baby, we’ve got to decide, together. Like you said it would always be. Like you said when we”
“Our baby? How do I know that? Tell me, huh, how do I know? You mean that one time down there on the beach? That doesn’t count; I mean you was drunk and all, so it can’t be like it’s my fault. You let me.”
Teri didn’t even slow as she walked past the palm tree were she and Derek had argued.
She wandered along the low rock wall that lead to the top of the stairs descending to the secluded beach at Lover’s Point. The soft hiss of the waves sliding gently across the sand no longer sounded musical as they had that night, Teri just knew they never could again.
Standing at the very top she hesitated, debating whether it was time to walk down the steps one last time. Quickly she turned and crossed the park to the jumbled rocks that marked the point. Several fishermen where still standing in the last rays of the sun. Teri picked a comfortable spot out of the troubling chill breeze to wait them out.
She had come back here often since that one and only argument with Derek; it helped her think. But this was the first time she had come near nightfall, the dark rolling ocean, once so sensual, now seemed cold and evil.
Sheltered from the wind, the late sun warmed her. It chased away the creeping chill that had invaded her when she realized she was pregnant. That chill hadn’t ever left since then, until now, confirming that she had made the right decision.
There was nothing else she could do, nowhere to go, no one to help. Teri had come to this place for the last time. It seemed right that her anguish should end where it had begun.
In her backpack she had some of her father’s pills, her mother’s tequila, her brother’s swim fins, and her diary.
She just knew that “big on family Dad”, wouldn’t be big on her little family, not now, not ever.
It was almost over. All she had to do was pop the pills, drink the tequila against the cold, put on the fins and take her diary with her while she swam out until she got too sleepy, then kick off the fins and just let go. She’d never make it back to the rocks, even if she chickened out.
‘Soon’, Teri thought; ‘oh, so soon’ as her hand dug into the sand while watching the last of the fishermen pack up.
“Do you mind if I sit here, this is my usual spot. Of course, you were here first.”
Teri started at the sound of his voice; soft and frail as the breeze in the Cyprus trees. She wanted to be alone, but without turning to look found herself mumbling, “Go ahead, I’ll be leaving soon anyway.”
“That’s what I thought too, during the war, in the depression, when my son died in the German war, when I buried my wife, and most of all, when I buried my great grand-daughter”. His voice seemed to ebb and flow with the waves, and yet somehow it reached into her head and heart.
‘Good Lord’, Teri thought; ‘This old man is going to babble away the last of my life’.
“Life can sure be hard. Yet in a place as pretty as this, you realize that life can be filled with joy as well.”
‘Yeah, right, this place really makes me happy’ a voice snarled in Teri’s thoughts.
“Sorrow is easy to come by. I lost my wife in ’63, my grandson in ’76 and my great granddaughter just a year ago. Yep, sorrows are easy to come by”.
‘Tell me about it, I’m just 15, pregnant, and dumped.”
“Joys now, them you have to work for. But you can tell a good person by how hard they work to be happy. “Cause that’s hard, while being sad is easy.”
“Work to be happy? Sad is easy? Never thought of it like that.’ Teri’s hand dug deeper in to the cooling sand.
“Yep, seemed like every time a sorrow came, I was left here to grieve, more alone than before.”
‘If I die, will grandpa, mom, dad, and everyone else feel more alone?’
Touching something hard, Teri pulled a golden bracelet out of the sand and saw that it was engraved; “Life, Those I Love, Those who love me.”
“I made that for my wife, she wore it, as did my daughter, grand-daughter, and great-grand-daughter. I’d like you to have it.” His words faded into the surging waves.
“I was wrong, this old man hasn’t talked my life away; he has talked it back to me.”
Teri looked up; a tearful thank-you on her lips. But the old man wasn’t there. Frantically she looked left and right, but he was gone. She looked for his footprints, but found none.
Smiling, she slipped the sparkling bracelet over her left hand, vowing that it would remain there on her wrist until the day she passed it on, to the daughter she suddenly knew she was carrying.
(originally submitted for 1997 Short Story Contest by Monterey Bay Independent Booksellers; maximum 1,000 word story set in Monterey County - reedited)
©Copyright, 2020, Marty K Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
