Bea honked the horn and the girl jogged over and hopped in.
Bea accelerated and headed for the beach.
“I asked somebody,” Allie said, “and they said you get to the ocean by taking this road. It’s more than four miles, though. I thought I’d just walk a ways to someplace where I could see it. But it was a lot of ups and downs.”
“Those are the worst,” Bea said.
The girl reached out and fingered the sweaty neck of the cold, sealed beer, which Bea had set in the cup holder.
“So you took your drink to go.”
“Something like that. Yeah.”
“Where are we going?”
“The ocean.”
“Oh. Good. I didn’t think you’d want to do that. I thought you’d think it was a waste of gas.”
“I’m changing my mind about what’s wasteful and what’s not,” Bea said. “Seems all my life I had to make choices between what I considered wasting money and what I now see was wasting my life. If it keeps you from wasting your life, it can’t very well be a waste, now can it?”
“Wow. You always make so much progress when I’m not around. I should go away more often.”
Just past a beach parking lot with a backdrop of powerful waves crashing on the sand, Bea stopped at the gate of the RV park.
“I think you have to pay to go in there,” Allie said.
“Yes, you do. Here.” Bea handed her the money she had scooped out of a stranger’s panama hat. It had been sitting in the other cup holder. “Tell them we want to be by the seawall.”
“I’m missing something,” Allie said, staring at the money but not taking it. “How do you know they have a seawall?”
“Some locals at the tavern told me.”
“They must have made it sound great. Two nights in a row you agree to shell out for expensive campgrounds?”
“It sounded appealing, yes.” While she waited, watching Allie look at the money but not take it, Bea berated herself for cowardice. And for being a liar, at least by omission. All Bea’s life she had been lying by omission, she now realized. When you omit nearly everything you could be telling people, there isn’t much truth left to go around. “Actually, there was more to it than that. I told them we couldn’t afford it, and they took up a collection so we could come down here.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, it was very nice of them.”
“I meant wow, you told them we couldn’t afford it. But yeah. That was really nice. See? I told you most people are good.”
“I could have done without the ‘I told you so.’”
“Right. Sorry. The minute it came out of my mouth I knew it was wrong.”
Between the dunes and the seawall, along a road of deeply rutted dirt, they drove past a row of trailers. It took Bea a moment to realize their occupants were not overnighters. These trailers were permanent. And probably what the man at the bar had been referring to when he used the word “funky.”
The trailers themselves were tiny and ancient, huddled close together, even older than the one Bea had left behind. Most had fences hand built around them, often out of driftwood. Fishing nets and floats decorated the yards, along with a carved ship’s masthead and even a full-size anchor. Imaginative, these residents were. Rich, they were not.
“Why aren’t you driving?” Allie asked.
It startled Bea, who had been lost in thought and hadn’t realized she had stopped.
“I was just looking at these trailers. I was just wondering . . . maybe I could afford to live in a place like this.”
“But don’t those trailers have refrigerators and little bathrooms?”
“Oh. Right. Of course. I forgot about that.”
“And it might be expensive to stay here, even though it’s not too fancy. Because it’s right by the ocean. And everybody wants to be right by the ocean.”
“True.”
“And it might get cold in the winter.”
“Okay, I’ve got it. You talked me out of it.”
“I wasn’t trying to talk you out of it. Just wanted you to think about those things.”
“No. You’re right. It was just a thought.”
But it was a thought Bea hated to see fly away.
Bea pushed her easy chair closer to the back doors of the van, which stood wide open, providing a view over the seawall and Tomales Bay. She saw hills in the distance behind the water, a little fishing pier that seemed to be part of their campground, and the sun going down in a surprising location, reminding Bea that she had no idea which direction was which. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the way the late sun sparkled on the water.
“Aren’t you afraid of letting Phyllis out?” Allie asked.
The girl was tying on her shoes again.
“Those first few days I was. I thought she might try to escape and run home. But I think she’s used to the van now. I think she’ll hunker down in here to feel safe. Anyway, I’m watching her.”
“Come out for a walk with me. Just down onto the sand. We won’t go far.”
“Where do you see sand?”
“Right at the end of the seawall there’s a place where you can get down onto the beach.”
“Tell me all about it when you get back.”
Allie sighed. Then she vaulted from the back of the van, over the low seawall, and onto wet sand on the other side. Phyllis spooked and ran under the passenger seat.
Bea sighed contentedly, breathing in the sea air. Drinking in the scene. Drinking her second beer while it was still cold.
What seemed like only a minute or two later, Allie was back, sticking her head in through the open doors.
“You have to see this.”
“I’m too comfortable.”
“No, really. I mean it. You have to see it.”
Bea sighed, not so contentedly this time.
“All right, all right. But I hope it isn’t very far.”
“It’s not. You can practically see the spot from here.”
Bea set her beer down on the van floor and carefully stepped out, closing and locking the back doors behind her. She shuffled along beside the low wall, following the girl.
This had better be good, she was thinking. But she did not say so out loud.
“For one thing, I wanted you to see him,” Allie said, pointing to a pelican. He was hunkered down in the parking lot, his neck entirely withdrawn into himself, his comically long, clumsy beak angled off his feathered chest and into the air. Bea could see every detail of his brown feathers. He was only a handful of feet away, and apparently not inclined to move away from them. Not in the least concerned about their presence.
“But it gets better,” Allie added.
“I thought pelicans were white.”
“Some are. But here on the coast we have Pacific browns. They’re pretty common.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I grew up near the beach.”
“Oh. That’s right. You did, didn’t you?”