“I know how you feel, pal,” I say, looking down at the yellow envelope balanced on my knees. “It’s been that kind of day for me too.”
It coos a trilled response.
One gorgeous spring Friday right before she died, while people-watching in Dupont Circle, Mrs. Nash explained to me the best method of grabbing a bird, honed during her pigeoneering days. “Both hands, and come at it from above,” she said. “That way if it takes flight, you’ll still catch it.” The memory replays in my mind as the pigeon approaches, and I cup my hands over it. But it ducks and runs along the sidewalk, then flies away.
•••
I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering around the shopping center’s parking lot like it’s my own personal meditation labyrinth. I’m considering going back to the hotel to see if they have another room available. Or maybe I’ll retrieve my bag and find somewhere else to stay. Maybe I’ll pay some Lyft driver an exorbitant amount to drive me to Miami so I can hop on the next flight to DC. I consider—for longer than I probably should—the possibility of befriending some rich old man with a sailboat and making a long, leisurely journey up the East Coast, postponing a return to real life while still getting the hell away from here as soon as possible.
I wonder if Mrs. Nash was this eager to leave the Keys. All she said about her discharge from the Navy in late summer 1945 was that she was still hopelessly in love with Elsie despite also blaming her for the end of their affair. That she had a fiancé and a new life in Chicago waiting for her initially only exacerbated her heartbreak.
The morning she first told me about Elsie, I sat on the floor in front of her chair with my legs crossed like a kindergartener at library story time. “Please don’t think I didn’t love my husband,” she said. “I always had extremely warm feelings for him growing up, and I grew to love him very much during our marriage. Dick became a wonderful partner, and my dearest friend in the world. But when I married him, it felt like he was snatching me away from the life I wanted to live. The one with Elsie. For a long time, I believed she might have allowed me to stay with her if I hadn’t had any other options after the war, and I had a good bit of resentment toward both of them for a while. But I think now that Elsiewas never fully convinced of my love, and nothing could have changed that. She didn’t know how to believe that I would have chosen her out of everyone, no matter the cost. From what she told me about her childhood in Oklahoma, I’m not sure anyone had ever made her feel worth it before. I hope some lucky woman eventually did, and that Elsie let her.”
I glance down at my phone. It’s buzzing with an incoming call. My heart flutters until Dani’s name pops up.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s up?”
“You need to call your parents, Millie. They won’t stop checking in with me every hour to see if I’ve heard from you. For some reason they think you might be in jail?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll tell them to chill. I’ve just been busy.”
“Yeah you have,” Dani says with a verbal wink.
“Not that. We’re actually... that’s done now. He was just using me.”
“Oh shit. Give me an address and I’ll come kick his ass, cuz.”
“You’re even smaller than I am,” I point out.
“Hey, I’ve been taking kickboxing classes. But if you need the big guns, I’ll have Van come down there. The man’s built like Jason Momoa, and I’m covering his shift tonight, so he owes me a favor.”
“No, I’d much rather forget everything and go home.”
“Seriously, though. Are you okay? You sound... sad.”
“I am sad. I’m sad and disappointed.”
“You know who else was sad and disappointed? Pee-wee, when he found out the Alamo didn’t have a basement. But that wasn’t the end of his big adventure, and this isn’t the end of yours.” I hear Dani slapping the bar in emphasis of each word. “Uh-oh, the bossman just came in and he lookspissed. Gotta go. Love you, cuz. I have every faith that you’ll find your bike.”
She hangs up before I can thank her. Count on Dani to know how to get through to me without me ever even explaining to her what I’m doing in Florida. As I shoot off a quick text to reassure my parents I’m alive and neither imprisoned nor on the lam so they’ll leave my poor cousin alone for at least a few hours, I realize that the issue isn’t that my bike is lost; it’s that I’ve lost track of what my bikerepresents. Or rather, what is represented by my bike. This is getting confusing already, and the passive voice is not helping. The point is, I need to remember what I was searching for in the first place when I asked Geoffrey Nash for some of his grandmother’s ashes. It wasn’t proof of love’s endurance to win an argument. It definitely wasn’t my own chance at a happily ever after.
It was the trust I lost in myself.
I came here to find confirmation that it’s still worthwhile to be guided by my optimism. I wanted reassurance of my inherent belief that lasting love is worth the pain and false starts it takes to find it isn’t stupid. That I’m not naive to keep trying. To keep hoping. This was never supposed to be about meeting Elsie, or starting a relationship with Hollis, or being handed a stack of letters by a highly caffeinated real estate agent. All of those would have been welcome bonuses, but they were not my metaphorical bike.
So Dani is right—I can’t give up the search yet. And I think I know where to look next.
25
•••••
Boca Chica Beach isn’t the kind of beach I’m used to. For one, it’s apparently clothing optional, as I discover when I pass two sun-toasted old men, smoking cigars while both buck naked and sitting upon overturned five-gallon buckets. They give me a friendly wave, and I return it. As I walk along the shore to find a place that feels right, I encounter elaborate driftwood and rock structures and sculptures. An intricate mural is painted on a small, paved area of ground that looks like it was once a road. Small boats bob along the horizon. Two dogs roll around in the surf at the far end of the strip of sand, their presumed owners practicing yoga nearby.
I find a place under a large tree that reminds me of the stories about Mrs. Nash and Elsie’s spot here, and I twist my dress around my legs to keep the sand on the outside of my butt as much as possible when I sit. For a long time, I do nothing except stare out at the ocean and let my mind retell me Mrs. Nash’s stories—about her love for Elsie, but about other parts of her life too—in hervoice. It’s difficult to imagine Mrs. Nash as I knew her—plump, a bit hunched over, crepe-skinned and slow-moving, wearing elastic-waisted pants and bright-pink lipstick—at this nudist beach in the Keys. But I’ve seen pictures of her during the war, and it’s so easy to imaginethatversion of her here. Young Rose McIntyre, away from home for the first time, and so very in love with a woman who didn’t know how to believe in the possibility of forever. She would have fit on this beach as much as I do now. And considering no one is paying me any mind, I think I fit all right.
I slide my backpack from my shoulder and sit it in my lap. I discarded the bulky, yellow, clasp envelope back at the strip mall, tucking the bright-white envelope into the brown leather book and stuffing it in my bag. Now the edge of it sandwiched between the book’s pages greets me as I pull the zipper to open the main compartment.
Here goes nothing.
