“Aunt Joan?”
She buries her face in a towel. Ms. Joan Patterson, Sexy Paralegal by day, Man Hunter by night, disappears completely, and out comes Joanie, the wild red tower I remember from when I was little. Without artificial color, her face looks like a sepia photograph. I want her to look in the mirror and see how beautiful she is without paint, but she’d never believe it. She wants to be a sultry femme fatale, not the hippie tomboy she was born to be, the loud girl who refused to let me call her Aunt Joan for years because despite being in her twenties, she was still “too young” to be an aunt.
“What are you doing?” I say. “It’s Saturday Night. Date Night.”
“Beach Night. Put on warm clothes. It gets cold.”
“Now? For how long?”
“Till it gets warm again. Dress in layers.” HJ turns her head. “Pats! Beach Night!”
“Oh, Christ,” Mom says in the living room, like she’s talking to herself.
“Coming?”
I hear ruffling pages of whatever book or magazine she’s reading. “Um … no?”
HJ turns back to me. “She’s coming.”
*
Hurricane Joan earns her nickname again by tossing heaps of clutter into her car: beach chairs, blankets, a big cooler, bags filled with all sorts of stuff including one with split wood from an ancient pile in the backyard. A few times Mom tries to put something back and HJ grabs it again.
Once while HJ is outside at the car, Mom says to me, “You nervous?”
“No.” I’m a bit anxious, though, like I felt when Nolan would ramp up.
“You should be. Lucky for all of us, this is the happy fun version of not taking your meds. Let’s hope it’s as far as she goes.”
By the time we climb into HJ’s Honda, I can barely squeeze in the back with everything else—sleeping bags?!—and can’t get my seat belt on. The beach is only ten minutes away, though, with no freeways. I don’t fear for my life.
Instead of turning into the beach lot, HJ parks across the street. I figure this is because the parking lot closes at 10 p.m. It takes us four trips across the street to the particular spot on the sand where HJ insists we camp. The sun is about to drop into the ocean when we finally start setting up.
On the upside, the blankets, chairs, and sleeping bags, still rolled up, form a picturesque camp, including a fire pit made from nearby rocks piled around a pit HJ digs in the sand. It’s elaborate and looks planned, like we’re campers from out of town who do this a lot.
On the downside, the cooler and bags are full of random kitchen stuff: cans of beans and fruit cocktail but no can opener, glass jars of mayonnaise and pickles, a carton of orange juice, like she mindlessly swept whole shelves out of the fridge. I see Mom wince when she comes across things like a week’s worth of deli ham—it’ll definitely go bad out here—and she smiles wistfully to me.
Mom and I pile up unreasonable amounts of meat and cheese to make sandwiches while HJ struggles to build a fire. After minutes of frustration, she rips the spout off the lighter fluid and gleefully dumps out the entire contents. Mom and I cower on the far side of the blanket as HJ drops a match and crows at the eruption.
All at once, commotion turns to calm. We sit in beach chairs, the fire between us and the sea, the sun almost below the horizon, wiggling our toes in the warm sand at the edge of the blanket, eating around the edges of sandwiches too tall to fit in our mouths.
“Know what I think at times like this?” HJ says to me. “How much your dad would love being out here with us.”
Mom and I laugh and spew bits of bread and meat to sizzle in the fire. HJ rocks back in her chair and cackles.
“Hey!” she says. “Sun’s almost down! Look for the green flash!”
Some guy she knew—I never call them boyfriends—told her sometimes you can see a flash of green at the horizon just after sunset. Probably a line about the color of her eyes. She’s been looking for it ever since. I guess it’s a real thing if you Google it, but HJ wants to see it in person and never has. Including tonight.
“Someday …” She sips her beer. “Someday …”
“Good evening, ladies,” a man says. A cop in uniform steps over from the parking lot.
HJ smiles big. “Good evening, Officer.”
“Are you not aware fires aren’t allowed on the beach outside the fire rings?”
“Sorry. We made it here for the best view. We’ll let it die out.”
“That’s fine. But the beach closes at ten.” He points at the sleeping bags. “No staying overnight.”
“It’s still March,” HJ says. “It gets cold enough for sleeping bags way before ten. Who tries to stay out here all night?”
“It’s usually people who have nowhere else to stay. I’m going to drive by later to make sure you’ve cleared out.”
“Of course. About when, do you think?”
I stare at her. Does she think she’s subtle?
“At the end of my shift, around midnight.”