December 26

RAMONA IN MALIBU, SLEEPLESS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT...

R AMONA LAY NEXT TO J AY, SPENT AGAIN, EXHAUSTED, AND catching her breath. Her body tingled still from lingering arousal. She fidgeted her toes to release some of the energy. Jay was next to her, lying on his side, propped up on an elbow. She could feel him looking at her, even though her eyes remained closed. As her body had been exhausted with Jay—rolling, rocking, rubbing together—the exertion of them physically, the way he made her insist on her satisfaction until she was fully satisfied, which was twice this time (a second time she didn’t even know was possible), lasting until there was nothing more for her body to do. This left her mind free to wander, and where she returned was to the ocean. The water, the waves, the rush of power, of momentum, and the thrill of accomplishing something with her own self that was for her enjoyment alone. The use of her own body for her very own pleasures and delights, the reclamation of her internal and external spaces, this is what she thought of now. She thought of what was required for her healing, what would bring her back to wholeness. What she would claim of what remained of this trip to set her even. And there was only one thing, not to be given, but to be taken.

“What are you thinking about?” Jay’s voice was soft and crooning. The only other sound now was the quiet of midnight. Ramona considered his question, and the answer came.

“Leaving...” she said. “I’m thinking about leaving you, the ocean... and how I wish I could bottle it up, bottle everything up and take it back. And I wish I could see what I looked like, out there, on the water. What my face looked like, what position my body was in, just right at that moment when I stood up on a wave. Jay, that moment, I had everything... It was all me , just me... being enough. I felt it... I’m just... I’m afraid I’ll lose it. That when I go back, I’ll forget.”

Jay rolled over from his elbow to his back. He folded his arms underneath his head and turned again to look at Ramona. This time she was looking at him and he was smiling, they both were. The moonlight from the window was a silver twinkle in his eyes.

“What?” Ramona asked. In response, Jay smiled bigger, until his lips parted across his teeth and then he was laughing. Without quite knowing why, she was laughing too. “What?” she asked again.

“It wouldn’t be like your lesson, but I have a board and a wetsuit that I keep for my rental unit. I won’t be able to help you if you want me to take a photo—you’ll have to go out yourself. But if you’d like to try again, we can try to catch an early surf before your flight.”

Ramona was smiling now, big smiling, with her full face and eyes, with her mouth and her heart.

“So, you’ll take the picture?”

Jay nodded.

And Ramona realized from there that the rest would be up to her.

***

A T DAYbrEAK, THE SUNLIGHT REACHED ITS FINGERTIPS THROUGH the window to dance on Ramona’s face. She blinked, coming to. She’d been having a dream just then, of the ocean, of communion with her. Ramona had been swimming in her depths among the corals and large rocks at the sandy bottom. All around was a world of turquoise blue. And within that world was a voice, so calming and peaceful and serene, almost like a song through a wind chime. Relax... Your healing is here , the ocean said to her. The water... is your inheritance... Come home... the wind-chime voice intoned. As she lifted into wakefulness, Ramona struggled to hold on to that voice, to its invitation, to the feeling of peace that it imparted. The voice was all around her in her dream state and then gradually it wasn’t, fading like a distance was growing, until, as Ramona blinked her eyes into the sun, all that remained was an echo in her mind and the sound of the waves from outside the window in her ears.

***

T HEN, THERE WAS NOT MUCH TIME TO SPARE. A S QUICKLY AS SHE awakened, right at the alarm that she and Jay agreed to set, Ramona sprung up, arranged herself, and roused him. At seven o’clock in the morning, it was just dawn. By the time they retrieved the surfboard and the wetsuit from Jay’s back-of-house cottage and walked down to the beach, the sun had clearly decided to participate in Ramona’s goodbye to Malibu.

As she had in her lesson, Ramona began to peel the suit on, starting by dipping her feet toes-first into the narrow-bunched tubes of neoprene legs. Feeling Jay’s eyes on her, she remembered the instruction when she’d first done this days ago, sorting the thick fabric around her with tiny pulls and stretching.

She pulled upward, focusing first on her calves, then knees, then up across her thighs. With the suit at her waist, she dipped her arms in as Jay had shown her and finished her enrobing. As she wriggled with the zipper in the back, Jay came over to pull it up to the top. She was ready for the water.

This time, Jay was positioned on the beach, with just his ankles barely beyond the shoreline for risk of losing the precious phone he held to capture evidence of Ramona’s triumph. At least, her planned triumph—it was indeed a clumsy start. Wading out alone, Ramona fumbled and tripped at one point, managing the board for the first time without help. But, determined as ever, despite nearly falling in the calf-deep water, she continued.

Where the water was waist-deep, sloshing up against her wetsuit, it came time to steady the board so that she could lay her body on top of it, horizontal and flat. She put her hands on either side of the board, where Jay had told her to, took a deep breath in, and lurched herself forward to flop unevenly on the surface. On the first attempt, she slid off, back to where she’d stood, as the board tilted to one side, lifting up from the water. Ramona sighed. She turned back to look at Jay. He was standing there, at the edge of the surf, looking worried, but dutifully holding the phone in his hand, camera pointed in her direction. Seeing what she needed to see, and reminded of her mission, Ramona turned around to once again face the horizon.

“If I’m supposed to be here, then you have to help me,” she whispered to the water below her. She placed her hands again on either side of the board, watching the whitewash of the waves break ahead of her. The flow of the water in toward the shoreline lifted the board up some, bobbing it up and down in her hands in rhythm. She took a deep breath, bent her knees, and launched up again, pushing past the grip of gravity, the pull of the water, and put enough air between her and the surface below to land with a satisfying splat of the neoprene suit against the top of the board. She’d landed somewhat diagonally, but still landed... enough to steady herself, which she scooted over to do, to find the centerline and align with it. She was floating now, on the top of the water. But she had farther to go.

With one arm on each side of the board, her hands dipped into the salt water beneath her, pushing along, alternating sides stroke after stroke, with a frantic freestyle out ahead. It was exhausting, and she quickly became winded. As she moved farther out, the waves began to lift her up and push her backward, erasing her progress. But onward Ramona paddled. She had to reach the calm, the space of the lineup. The place where the waves began to break, where she would try to catch her ride.

She paddled to the strip of calm sea, reaching it with much relief, and pulled herself up to a seated position straddling the board, just to catch her breath. She was breathing hard by now, panting almost, with the exertion of the swim bolstered by the urgency of the occasion. As she sat out behind the break of the waves, floating alone with only a speckling of other surfers down the shoreline from her, she breathed in the air. She took in everything she wanted to remember. The birds flying overhead in the blue sky. The rising sun. The feeling of her feet in the water, the gentle lifting and dipping of the rocking of the ocean. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to hear that voice again, the one from her dream, the wind chime in the breeze. The voice telling her that she belonged, that this place was for her too, that the water in her body came from this place. That she could bring her pain here, her uncertainty, her mistakes, her fear, and exchange it all in a baptismal experience. She would claim her joy here, her confidence, her faith in the new thing her life would become. This was the time.

Opening her eyes now, Ramona could see her wave approaching along the horizon. Very deliberately, she began to lower her torso to the board, positioning it toward the shore. Her belly tightened with anxiety, knowing that the moment would be fast approaching. When the wave came to meet her, she’d be lifted up into the arms of the ocean, hoping to be re ceived with kindness. She began to paddle fervently forward, toward the shore, picking up surprising speed. But it wasn’t her speed, was it? No, it was the water rushing beneath her, with its power and grace. She was ahead of it now, the roar was behind her, the rushing of the waves, the froth of the breaking wave; this was the time to stand, to stand up and, for whatever moment she could, find her footing and balance. She pulled herself up on her knees, on all fours, ready to pull her left foot forward, balancing on the centerline of the board. The speed and the rush of the water reminded her that it was time now, now, Ramona. Now!

She pulled her foot forward, seeking the centerline of the board, crouching, riding; she felt the breeze in her hair, on her face, all around her as she moved with momentum toward the shore. With another breath, deep and held in her lungs, she took the final push in her body to stand. To stand in her lunge, to try to balance, to wobble, wobble, to tip, tip, but then try in milliseconds to correct herself, to find her footing again, so desperately trying to stay upright. But too far to the right now... as the wobbling increased and became unsteady, Ramona fell into a rumble of the waves beneath her.

CHELSEA IN CHICAGO

O N THE MORNING OF HER DEPARTURE, C HELSEA AWOKE TO THE surprise of Carlos still sleeping snugly in the bed with her. When he finally rose, groggy and rubbing his eyes, she’d already completed most of her packing. She was so relieved that Carlos had decided to stay. She’d passed some threshold with him, she thought, to some kind of mattering possibly, and maybe that she wasn’t like all of the other girls—the ones he invited places, like he’d invited Chelsea, but maybe had not seen them the same way. She found it impossible to believe that he could have seen her so clearly without knowing her, and then spoken to her in that same language that artists speak, found the truth that sparked a flame in her heart. She was burning now, with a fire of ideas—what she wanted to paint, not just landscapes or animals this time, but people, bustling life, the city and all of its lights.

When he greeted her, she couldn’t resist asking, “But, I thought you said you wouldn’t stay?”

Carlos, still in the throes of sleepiness, seemed to perk up at this. “I usually don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t do attachments. A good time, but not a long time, you know? You stay the night and then expectations come. I can only be what I am—not somebody’s boyfriend, or brunch date, or valet, or cook, even. I’m an artist . I work three jobs, take extra shifts, to save for my exhibition. I can’t compromise that, not for anyone.”

“Then why last night?”

“Because it’s different with you. You want what I want. And it seems like you have even less to give than I do.”

“Christmas Eve... what made you—”

“I think you know.”

“The painting?”

“You finished the painting. That first night... it was on the table. You’d just started it.”

“Just an eye,” Chelsea said. “Did you know it was of you?”

“Yeah, I did. But what does it mean when it’s just a sketch of an eye? You know as well as I do that people find inspiration anywhere. A start is just a sketch, an idea. You could have left it there and never come back to it again. I saw how you finished it. That’s what made it meaningful. That’s when I understood... you were letting me go.”

“So last night... is you letting me go...”

Carlos smiled. “Maybe, I wanted just once, to see what you look like, first thing in the morning.”

“Will you take a picture of me?” Chelsea asked. “Just to have.” She added that last part quickly, as if it excused her request.

“Like this?” He gestured to her. Her hair was a mess, all unruly and flaming bramble of tangles, not unlike the night they just spent together.

“Like this.” As she spoke, she started to slide off the strap of her bra and then the other and pulled her arms behind her back to unhook the clasps that held it together. And then she stood up and pulled down the sides of her leisure shorts, hooking into the band of her underwear, that she pulled down along with it so that she was fully naked. She didn’t know what part of her he’d want to capture, so she turned for him, unashamed, to the right and to the left, the full front of her and behind to let him choose. It was the ultimate practice of vulnerability, but also she did not want him to forget her. She wanted him to remember her lips and her breasts, her hips and the curve of her ass, her lines, her tones, the colors of her as well, like she had memorized his. She hoped that he would care to capture it in his form of art. After all, she had placed him in her own.

Carlos lifted himself from the bed and reached for his phone. Chelsea observed the rippling of the muscles underneath his skin the color of custard, doing their obvious work of moving his body, his abs and arms, toned and sinewy, themselves a luxury to look at. Trying not to move from her pose, Chelsea watched as he moved toward her, as the sheets fell away, uncovering him, the dark hair on his thighs, the lines of his quads and the power in them. She saw his masculinity hang between his legs, what he’d used to pleasure her in the night, swinging casually against his thigh, forgotten for now, just an appendage as was his arm reaching for his phone—his focus was elsewhere. And she wondered if she aroused him, if he thought her beautiful, or just interesting. If he’d wanted her body as something available, or if he’d wanted her. She posed some more, trying different things—making her chest concave, and then lifting it by pulling her shoulders back, so that her nipples would stand up high in the air, their pinkness perking perfectly—to see if it mattered.

As she moved, he moved around with her, around on the bed. He was naked, as was she, exposed, vulnerable, and in conversation somehow. Two artists, a call and response of physicality, one trying to touch the heart and the other trying to capture an idea. Chelsea pulled her arm across her face to pull her hair up, and then, deciding to leave it there, hair pulled atop her head like a flower, hand resting to hold it there, she tried to figure out what to do with the other hand, where to put it.

“Bring your other arm up,” Carlos said. “Bend it and rest your fingers there, the tips right on your collarbone.” He snapped again, tapping the screen of his phone. Chelsea wondered if she was doing what he wanted. If finally, he’d seen what he wanted to see. She felt her breast compressed against her forearm and was stimulated as the lower part of her wrist grazed its sensitive parts. She was alive now and released of fear. Carlos crossed the bed to her and left the phone somewhere in the tangle of sheets between them. He reached for her, and she reached back, arms intertwined and then lips. And then their bodies were locked together again like they’d been before, and all of him was present to pleasure her. But this time she felt connected to him and like none of those other girls. She’d made him see her, something of herself she gave him more than her body, more than her pain and longing. She’d let him see her fire, her freedom, her true self.

RAMONA AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN...

R AMONA’S BODY TWIRLED AROUND ITSELF IN A BALL AS SHE bounced off the sandy ocean bottom. The air that was in her lungs pressed its way out of her mouth, and a rage of desperation flashed through her as she hovered on the edge of panic. That stream of thoughts cascaded into oh no , she’d gone too far. She feared now that she didn’t belong, and what everyone warned about—why you didn’t go into the water, why the ocean wasn’t hers, or home—was true. But, below the water, as the energy of the surf started to dissipate, Ramona heard the word from her dream. Relax... The sound of the wind chimes reminded her. Relax , she thought. Relax . She let her feet drop, unballing herself. And she found that she was closer to the bottom than she realized. With her soles on the ocean floor and her knees bent, Ramona stretched herself upward, in the direction of the sun, and burst through the surface of the water.

The tug on her leg brought her attention to her surroundings. She was standing in the shallows now but being pulled aggressively by the board leash connected to her ankle.

“Grab the board!” Jay shouted in her direction, splashing toward her. “Pull the leash line, quick!”

Spitting the last salty seawater out of her mouth, Ramona focused quickly, bending down and grabbing the thick black plastic cable and pulling it against the force of the current, until she could feel the board moving back in her direction. It was heavy, even in the water, large and still unwieldy. But she managed to get it into her hands and then pushed herself heavy step by heavy step back toward the shoreline.

“Are you okay?” Jay asked, reaching her quickly. All Ramona could think of was one thing.

“Did you get it?” She was out of breath, panting from the exertion of it all. But she was safe now. She had succeeded. And she was no longer afraid.

Jay smiled. “I got the whole thing...” he said.

“I stood up, right? You saw that?”

Jay put his free hand behind Ramona’s back as the two of them walked together out of the water, clearing themselves past the damp sand. He reached his hand still holding the phone toward her and scrolled to a video.

“Here, right here.” Jay hit the pause button, and Ramona pulled his hand toward her so that she could see more of the screen. It was her, frozen in time, for just one glorious moment when she was riding on the water, in her stance, balanced and looking forward. The moment just before she fell, but she had it now. This was enough .

CHELSEA ON A PLANE HEADING WEST, SOMEWHERE OVER KANSAS...

D URING THE HOURS THAT C HELSEA SAT IN HER PLANE SEAT, buckled in on the return to California, she thought of Carlos. She remembered him as he looked dropping her off at the airport terminal. She smelled him still as she smelled him then, pulling her bags through the sliding doors, in a whoosh of the last of the Chicago winter wind to whip its way around her, making its own icy farewell. As the plane took off, she sat in her seat by the window and watched as the snow-covered plains retreated from her. The frozen lake got smaller and smaller, until there were only the clouds and the sky to see. Once she lowered the flap of the window and closed her eyes, the images she’d captured played like highlights across a screen. She saw two people, in a restaurant, one with flaming red hair and another with eyes the color of sunlit iced coffee, smiling and laughing, eating a pizza between them with tendrils of melted cheese hanging about. Their mouths were open and hands up with fingers splayed in front of their faces. Imagining this, she felt the sides of her face rise, goofy looking probably to others. But Chelsea didn’t care. She didn’t care anymore. She was flying now. She was going home.

RAMONA ON A FLIGHT BACK TO CHICAGO, TURNING EAST HIGH OVER THE PACIFIC...

S OMETHING FELT RIGHT ABOUT LEAVING M ALIBU. A S HER PLANE lifted up, up, out over the sea, Ramona felt an unmistakable sense of lifting in her body, of weightlessness, of freedom. And when, already thousands of feet above the country, the metallic wings turned for a gigantic loop around, becoming a boomerang headed back east, Ramona sighed heavily. Her engagement ring was still solidly tucked away in her bag. Already, her exposure to the sun had caused enough of her melanin to conceal the shadow of it on her finger. She’d said goodbye to Jay, and to the ocean, and to Malibu itself in a way that left her with this deep sense of accomplishment. Perhaps it was only the simple act of leaving with a new version of herself, to have created a catalyst for something, for anything, for the rest of what her life could be.

This feeling of resolve, mixed with a bit of longing, stayed with Ramona until her car pulled up in front of the unmistakably familiar greystone, right there on East Forty-Eighth Place, where her bedroom used to be, and her childhood was spent, and where her parents still were waiting for her to return. This time, the view of what was so familiar filled her with apprehension. She understood what kind of a scene she’d likely caused there, what kind of fear and angst she’d created for her parents, how upset they must still be. And all of that brought her feet to the ground, setting them firmly in the snow. She crunched her way through salt and ice up the walkway to her parents’ door.

They were expecting her, Melba and Phillip, who’d done so much together, who’d stayed together through good times and lean times, through the challenges of raising two children on Chicago’s South Side, where there wasn’t ever quite enough of anything other than love and good discipline. Together, they opened the door for Ramona. Facing them now in person, Ramona couldn’t help but think of her childhood when her brother or Carlos might warn her, “Oooh, you in trouble.” But she wasn’t in trouble, she was grown . She was grown and could face the consequences. She was grown and could make decisions. She was grown and, therefore, could tell the truth. Ramona took a deep breath and walked forward, to close the door behind her. She continued into their outstretched arms, which quickly came around her, arms from both her mother and her father, encircling her. All of them connected, six arms together, hugging one another very tight.

Melba pulled herself back from Ramona and looked at her. It was a mother’s inspection of close concern, a survey starting at the top of her daughter’s hair, worn now in a makeshift poof, to her clothes and how they fit—whether she’d lost weight from not having enough to eat.

“You hungry?” Melba said, seemingly satisfied with what she saw.

Ramona was starving and nodded yes, observing her mother turn from the doorway toward the kitchen. This left Ramona on the landing with her father, and the understanding that the universal words for forgiveness had been spoken—her mother’s “You hungry?” did mean just that. Between them, at least, all was forgiven for now, to be talked about later perhaps, but hard feelings would not linger.

“Come over here, baby girl, let’s talk for a minute.” Her fa ther guided her gently toward the sofa in the living room. It was a place where he’d talked to her once about what not to do on prom night, and where he promised that she could always come home—no matter what—when she left for college.

“Okay, Daddy,” Ramona replied softly, and followed the short distance. She sat on the sofa next to him, sank into the cushions and waited for what he was going to say.

Her father released a long sigh, his charcoal wool cardigan rounded at the shoulders a bit more. It was a pronounced reminder that time had also weathered him into much softer lines than the rough edges of his younger days. “Ramona, that young man, Malik, he came to the house the other night and said you weren’t together anymore. Is that true?”

Ramona was surprised that her father was still allowing for the possibility that somehow, even after all that had happened, she believed they were. But his unshakable faith in her wasn’t the right shelter for now, or an excuse to use. The time had come for Ramona to tell the truth, all of it.

“Yes, Daddy, it’s true.” It physically pained Ramona to admit this, but she continued. She owed this much. “We broke up. We broke up months ago. We started fighting during counseling... there was so much we’d never talked about. It started to feel like we had nothing in common. When he moved out, I just thought he’d come back and we’d work it out like you and Ma do. I really thought we might get back together... That we’d go ahead and get married—”

The words poured out of Ramona. The feeling of tears was there, the pressure behind her eyes at the corners. But she wanted to say what needed to be said first. She wanted to look her father in the eyes and apologize.

“I thought he just needed a little more time, and maybe I did too. I—”

Ramona’s father stopped her. “You don’t need to explain all that,” he said, and put his arm around his daughter. His time- weathered hand, he placed over her still smaller one. “That ain’t the point.”

She looked at him, eyes glistening now. The water of tears had gathered, ready to fall. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” It was all she could manage before she sobbed, into the charcoal-gray wool of his shoulder, into the embrace of his arms around her. And there she released the rest of it—the expectations, the guilt—as she mourned the version of herself she once believed she was supposed to become.

Ramona’s father let her cry. He let her weep and shudder, but he did not let her hang her head. When she pulled away, her father positioned his fingers just under her chin and pushed her head up. He wiped her tears, and then the new ones. He dabbed the corners of his eyes behind his glasses.

“Do you still want to have your wedding?”

Ramona blinked and looked at her father, confused. “What do you mean? I just don’t want you and Ma to lose money. There’s so much that you’ve paid for, that—”

Her father looked pained. “Ramona, I’m not rich, but I’ve got money.” He paused, long enough for the words he said with his whole chest to complete their reverberating journey. “For you, when it comes to you... I’ll pay for that. If you don’t want to see this wedding through, worst case we’ll throw another party. But no child of mine will ever be stuck anywhere they don’t want to be on account of me.”

“Daddy, I—”

“ Never ,” her father said. “Never on account of me.”

Like her family, Ramona was a saver. Her parents, she and her brother, and Carlos too had learned to make the most of a little, to focus on what mattered. And the little things, they stayed little. They didn’t always have everything, but they had love and a good amount of healthy discipline. And Ramona realized her father was saying that forgiveness was a part of love, and she already had all she needed, and beyond that, all that he had to give.