We sit in silence, finishing our ice cream.
She points at the street I'm parked on. "I live down that way. I'll just need to grab a few things."
"I'll walk with you," I tell her.
Turns out she lives two doors down from where I'm parked. She pops in and comes back out a few minutes later decked out in a bright purple bikini with a gauzy pale blue wrap around her waist, a straw visor with an oversized brim, and a giant pair of bug-eye sunglasses. She also has a Tupperware container of brownies and an absolutely massive canvas bag which obviously contains a bottle of alcohol of some sort, along with who knows what else.
I grin at her as I lean on the hood of my bus. "Damn, girl, that fit is fire!"
She harrumphs. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
I cackle. "It means your outfit is awesome. I fucking love the bikini, Faye. Good thing we're not hitting any public beaches or you'd have the boys swarming around us like flies on honey."
She snorts. "I appreciate the sentiment, Ember, but you need your eyes checked. No boys are gonna be swarming around an eighty-five-year-old woman." She flicks a finger at me. "You got your suit on under there, or what? You can change in my house if you want."
I'm wearing a white sleeveless sundress, the hem flirting with my knees and the neck scooping indecently low. "Yeah, I've got my bikini on under this."
She twirls her finger in a circle over her head. "Well then, let's fuckin' go."
I cackle. "Faye, we’re gonna be best friends, I can already tell."
She harrumphs crankily, but I can see her blinking a little too hard as she heads for the passenger door.
A few minutes later, Pumpkin is humming along merrily northward, Simon and Garfunkel singing about feelin' groovy from the speakers, and Faye is, true to her word, keeping up a tour guide-worthy running commentary about the business and homes we pass.
A little over thirty minutes later, we're squealing to a halt behind a vintage red SUV with the top off. Faye carefully lowers herself out of the van and shoulders her bag, stuffing the Tupperware into it to keep her hands free for the climb down.
She leads the way to the far north end of the turnoff, where the guardrail ends. Some enterprising soul built a set of wooden stairs leading down to the beach, some fifty feet below. "Huh," she huffs. "These stairs weren't here last time I was here, but that was…ten years ago? Fifteen? With my daughter and grandkids."
I glance at her as we start down the stairs—she's on the inside, gripping the handrail in her right hand and clutching my arm in her left. "How many kids and grandkids do you have, Faye?"
She sighs. "One daughter, one granddaughter, and one grandson. Tina, my daughter, went through a horrifically messy divorce about three years ago. Her ex was a cheating shitbag, and she'd been a stay-at-home mom their whole marriage. His idea. When she found out he was screwing half of his office staff, she filed for divorce so fast everyone's heads spun. But he had the money, and he knew the judge, so it was a hell of an uphill battle for my Tina. She had to go back to school and get recertified as a CPA and go back to work. She got full custody, child support, and alimony because it turns out he was also a drug addict, secretly." Faye waves a hand. "She got a job offer in California, and she couldn't turn it down, so she moved across the country and now I only see her and my grandbabies at Thanksgiving and Christmas."
"That's rough, Faye, I'm sorry."
She huffs. "Is what it is, missy. I miss 'em somethin' fierce, of course, but I just couldn't see myself moving to California. I’ve lived in Three Rivers my whole life. My husband Thomas, built the house I live in, and I've lived there for over fifty years. I suppose at some point I'm gonna stop being able to take care of myself and she'll haul my ass out there and put me in some facility." Faye pauses, looks at me thoughtfully. "To be honest, Ember, I guess I hope I die before that. I'd rather die in the bed I shared with my Thomas than in some smelly old folks home where I'm just one more forgotten soul."
She resumes the descent, and I try to figure out how I feel about what she said, and what to say.
She glances at me, cackling. "Not sure how to answer that one, huh, missy?"
“No, Faye, I am not. I understand your position, certainly, but speaking as someone who lost my grandmother, I wish I'd had more time with her."
Faye sighs. "I wish I had more time with them, too. But there's no good solution, Ember. Tina is taking care of an eleven-year-old and a seven-year-old by herself in LA. She can't take care of me too, even if I did move out there. She ain’t got room for me, for one. She ain’t got the time, for two, and she ain't got the money, for three. So if I went out to LA, I’d have to get my own place or go into a facility, both of which I'd have to pay for since Tina is just barely getting by. And I'd barely see them anyway, since she works sixty hours a week and the kids are in a billion sports and activities to keep 'em busy and supervised while she works and I'm well past the babysitting age.”
“That sucks."
She nods. "Yup, it sure does." She shrugs. "But then, that's life. Some things just suck and there's nothing you can do but suffer."
I laugh bitterly. "Wow, that's heartening, thanks, Faye."
She pauses again and gives me a nasty glare. "Oh, hush, you. That ain't all there is to life. The flip side of that coin is the good things that come along are sweeter and deeper because of the suffering. It all balances out in the end, one way or another, I've found."
We descend again, and I can't help a deep sigh. "I hope so. I've had a lot of suffering, so I'm ready for the good."
She squeezes my arm. "It's comin', missy. You just gotta have the gumption to grab it and hold on tight when it does."
We reach the bottom, the wooden plank steps giving way to warm sand. We both kick off our sandals, and I bend and scoop them up. They go into my beach bag, which contains a small umbrella, a mesh sand blanket, a towel, sunscreen, bug spray, my ereader, and a wide paint brush for brushing sand off my feet.
