I was on my feet and running, and down the beach I saw the dog’s owner sprinting toward us, too. We both arrived at the exact instant that momentum got the better of Charlotte and she went flying across the sand. She screamed like she’d broken something essential.
I had her in my arms before I could stop to think, brushing away the sand, feeling for lumps. She wasn’t badly hurt—sandpaper scrapes on her knees, a lump on a thigh—but a scratch across her cheek was oozing a thin line of blood. The dog’s owner dragged him away, apologetic, as I rocked Charlotte in my lap. I didn’t have a Band-Aid or Neosporin, just a bottle of tepid water and the hem of my T-shirt. Her tears felt like an accusation, that I hadn’t been diligent enough, that I hadn’t been watching her when it really counted, that I wasn’t prepared for this at all.
She pushed her face into my chest, leaving a smear of snot and blood and sand across my front. A biplane cruised by overhead, towing a banner that advertised a marijuana delivery service called High Supply. I wanted to hide Charlotte’s eyes from it even though she couldn’t read yet. Someday she would, though, and by then it would be far too late to protect her from dogs and drugs and things she didn’t yet understand. All the diligence in the world can’t keep a child from harm. My mother could have warned me about that.
“Lala go home,” she said tearfully.
“Time to go home,” I agreed, even as I wondered where, exactly, home was supposed to be for each of us.
* * *
—
We arrived back in Santa Barbara to find my mother working in the front garden, pruning back the lavender along the path with a pair of garden shears. I extracted a tearstained and sticky Charlotte from the back seat, and she wobbled onto her feet and charged across the yard to her grandmother. She flung her arms around my mother’s veined legs and my mother wobbled a little with the impact, a painful smile on her face.
“Ouch,” she said softly, and stuck her fingers in Charlotte’s soft curls, holding her tightly against her body. She lifted Charlotte’s head with a cupped palm and traced a finger down the bloody scratch.
“Oh my God. What happened?”
“It’s just a scratch. She had a little fall.”
Charlotte looked up at my mother, sober as a judge. “Bad dog.”
My mother looked over Charlotte’s head at me. Her voice was hot with accusation: “She was attacked by a dog? How did this happen?”
“We were at the beach. And she wasn’t attacked. The dog wanted her stick and Charlotte wouldn’t let go and she got knocked down. That’s it.”
“What were you doing during all this? Just sitting there letting her be attacked by a dog?” My mother approached me and pushed her face so close to mine that I could smell the lemongrass oil she used for her joints. She sniffed.
I leapt backward. “Jesus, Mom. Are you trying to tell if I’m drunk?”
My mom’s hands flew up in mock defense. “I just don’t understand. Dogs aren’t allowed on the beach in Santa Barbara.”
“We weren’t in Santa Barbara. We were near Laguna Beach.”
My mother frowned. “Laguna Beach? Why all the way down there? I thought you had gone to the aquarium?”
I realized I’d screwed myself. “I found a list of addresses at Elli’s house and I thought they might belong to people who would know more about what she’s gotten herself into in Ojai. So we went to check it out.”
I saw something flicker behind my mother’s eyes, a momentary bump, before she was able to smooth it away. She was worried, I realized. “And? Did you learn anything?”
“Not yet,” I said. “There’s still one more address, but it’s in Arizona.”
The muscles around her mouth twitched, turning her lips into tight little raisins. “I appreciate that you’re concerned about your sister,” she said carefully. “But, Sam, didn’t we decide that we were going to give Elli some personal space? She’s on her own journey. It’s not our place to judge.” She tilted Charlotte’s head up, examined her crusted face. She curled her nose, as the vinegar scent of Charlotte’s sodden Pull-Up wafted up. “Poor baby, spending the whole day in the car. And then getting attacked by a dog! Did you take a break to do anything for her? Or was it all about you?”
“About me? This is about figuring out what’s going on with Charlotte’s mother. It’s all for her.”
My mom shook her head forlornly at Charlotte, as if the child shared her disbelief. “So you say.”
“Mom, just stop.” I walked past her toward the front door.
She untangled Charlotte from her legs and followed me up the steps. “I don’t understand what you think you’re doing. We asked you to come stay with us to help with Charlotte—to take her to the park, push her on a swing—not to drag her around Southern California while you play at detective.”
I stopped. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Playing some sort of game?”
“Honestly? I can’t help but wonder if you’re on some holier-than-thou quest to prove that your sister is just as lost as you are.” Her eyes met mine, and I could see her recalculating, realizing her mistake. “As you were, I mean.”
Was she wrong? I felt a small twitch of dismay; maybe this whole endeavor was just an attempt to drag Elli down with me into the muck. And yet, something whispered at me that this was not normal. GenFem wasn’t just a benign self-help group, like an extended stay at Esalen. “OK, so I hang out and push Charlotte on a swing for a few hours. And then what? Just sit back and hope that Elli will come home and fetch her? Because it’s been two weeks since she left, Mom. And Elli has shown no sign whatsoever that she plans to return. She’s missing. Can you honestly tell me you’re not worried? What are you going to do when I have to leave?”
This elicited a sharp “shhh” from my mother. Her eyes followed Charlotte as she toddled up and down the garden path, chasing a butterfly. “You don’t need to be so melodramatic,” she said, her voice low. “This is what Elli has always struggled with, you realize. You turning everything into a performance, even when you aren’t onstage. You want all the attention on you, all the time. You can’t just let things be, you can’t just sit on the sidelines and let someone else have their moment.”
Something hard and hot had lodged in my throat. “Elli isn’t having a moment, she’s joined some kind of cult. And I don’t think it’s wrong to try to get her back home.”
“It’s not a cult. Stop being so judgmental.”
“Mom—I went to Ojai. She’s staying in a locked compound in the middle of nowhere and they wouldn’t let me in to talk to her. The women who came out of the place were wearing identical outfits and had shaved heads.”
Uncertainty flashed in my mother’s eyes. “It sounds like a monastery.” She brightened. “Maybe that explains why she’s been so out of touch—she’s on some kind of a silent retreat!”
“Mom—Elli’s selling her house. She put it on the market last week. Does that sound like just a moment to you?”
She studied the gardening shears in her hand. “Of course she’s selling the house. That’s what happens when you get divorced. There doesn’t have to be a nefarious reason for everything.”
I threw up my hands. “Why are you making me out to be the bad guy? I’m trying to help.”
“Then help. Make Charlotte some dinner. Take her to a museum. Teach her to swim. Just don’t make my life any more stressful than it already is.” She picked up the shears and lopped a waving lavender tendril off the shrub in front of her. Charlotte picked it up and ran out into the garden, waving it like a wand. Her leggings sagged from the weight of her Pull-Up.