Claire Cook - Lifes a Beach

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Copyright 2007 Claire Cook

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.

ISBN: 1-4013-8802-7

First eBook Edition: May 2007

ALSO BY

Claire Cook

Multiple Choice

Must Love Dogs

Ready to Fall

To Garet and Kaden

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A ZILLION THANKS, and more, to the incomparable Lisa Bankoff and Tina Wexler, whose support, advice, laughter, and excitement always make me want to write my next novel just so I can hang out with them some more. Josie Freedman and Michael McCarthy have been right there for me working their movie magic, too, and Im also very grateful to the foreign rights department and to everyone else at ICM.

I would have followed my brilliant editor Pamela Dorman anywhere, but how lucky am I that she decided to team up with Ellen Archer to start Voice. Im so proud to be one of the first authors to lend my own voice to their new imprint. Many thanks to Pam and Ellen, and to my fabulous associate editor Sarah Landis and wonderful publicist Beth Dickey, for their support and guidance, and a heartfelt and alphabetical thank-you to the rest of the talented Hyperion teamKathleen Carr, Jane Comins, Michelle Ishay, Maha Khalil, Claire McKean, Karen Minster, Shelly Perron, Sarah Schaffer, Jessica Wiener, and Katie Wainwright. Thanks so very much to Chris Barba and the Hachette sales group, too.

Gary David Goldberg came into my life to turn Must Love Dogs into the movie of my dreams and then stepped it up a notch and became something even more importanta great writer buddy. A huge thanks to Gary for faxing both notes and encouragement.

Thanks so much to Elisabeth Weed for bringing Elias John Amber Hansen with her to the Cape Cod Writers Center summer conference. Eli was such an original that suddenly a glassblower emerged in the novel I was just beginning to write. Thanks to the many glass artists who answered my questions along the way, especially Don Parkinson of the Sandwich Glass Museum, and also Marj Bates of glassthings.com, who kindly allowed me to crash her workshop. Thanks to Diane Dillon for airline insight and to Charlotte Phinney for support that cuts across the categories. And thanks to Sharon Duran for a funny carwash story that didnt work on paper but inspired a different kind of carwash scene.

Thanks to everyone on the set of the Must Love Dogs movie for letting me hang out. I was so sure Id get kicked off the set for taking notes, but instead everybody from the producers to the actors to the caterers answered all my questions and even started brainstorming ideas for me. I dont think any of them found their way into this novel, but I very much appreciate the encouragement. Thanks to Mike Moishe Moyer for being inspirational in the gaffer department, to Cathryn Michon for grrl genius insight into child actors, and to Billy Dowd for answering all my casting questions over a long laugh-filled lunch.

Many, many thanks to my fabulous extended family. Its such a thrill to be discovering more relatives almost every week. And thanks to my wonderful friends, old and new, for cheering me on and talking me up. In fact, so many old friends have come out of the woodwork that I held a random drawing and gave some of you a group cameo in this novel.

A huge thank-you to the booksellers, librarians, and members of the media who have supported me and spread the word. And Im forever grateful to my wonderful readers, who through the conduit of my website, www.clairecook.com, have become a kind of virtual extended family.

And my biggest thanks of all, always, go to my husband, Jake Jacobucci, who has turned into one helluva first reader, to our daughter, Garet, for all things cat, and to our son, Kaden, for encouraging Post-its on an early draft: Good line, Mom!

I WAS SQUEAKY CLEAN AND MY HAIR HAD BEEN conditioned for at least two of the suggested three minutes when the water went cold. I did a quick rinse, then turned the faucet off. The plastic shower curtain moved a few inches, and a clean white towel magically appeared. Noah had already left when I woke up, but maybe hed only made a breakfast run. Or maybe he just couldnt stay away. I smiled.

Here you go, my mother said from the other side of the curtain.

I screamed. I wrapped myself in the towel and stepped out of my tiny square shower and practically into my mother. Jesus, Mom, I thought you were... someone else.

Noah? He left at six-twenty-five this morning. And tell him to watch that pebble business or hell break a window. My mother started dabbing my shoulders with another towel.

Mom, stop.

My mother kept dabbing. There were no limits in our family. I could clearly remember sitting in the bathtub with a book one night when I was ten or eleven. My sister, Geri, had already gone off to college, and my parents had company for dinner. Suddenly, the door opened and four adults looked in at me and my bubbles. Say good night to Mr. and Mrs. OBrien, my mother said.

Today, my mother was wearing her GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN T-shirt, and a couple of tiny beaded braids in her thick gray hair made her look like shed just come back from the Caribbean. I was kind of wishing she were there now. Listen, she said, your father and I have found the townhouse of our dreams. The Village of Silver Springs. Fitness center with personal trainers, billiards, bingo, indoor boccie ball, salsa lessons. You know how your father loves to dance.

Its not just a townhouse, its a lifestyle, a strange voice said.

I peeked behind my mother to see two women wearing red hats. They were measuring what I liked to think of as my carriage house with a bright yellow tape measure. My cat watched silently from the rumpled sheets of my still-pulled-out sleeper sofa.

On my best days, I could convince myself that, with me at the far end of my parents driveway, and my sister and her family about a mile away, we had our own little Kennedy compound. On my worst days, I had to admit that I lived in an apartment over my parents garage.

The women waved. I hiked my towel up a little higher. Mom, I whispered, get them out of here. Now.

My mother reached down and scratched my cat under his chin. She said, Hi, handsome, and he purred his acknowledgment. She nudged yesterdays bra, which had somehow ended up in the middle of the floor, with her toe. Youre going to have to start keeping things a little bit neater around here, honey.

One of the women, the one wearing a jeweled red visor, didnt seem to be the least bit bothered by the fact that I was dripping all over the apartment she was trying to help my mother sell right out from under me. In fact, she acted like I wasnt even there. A FROG is a nice bonus feature, she said. Everybody loves a FROG.

Excuse me, I said, not that it was any of her business. But, actually, its not a Finished Room Over the Garage. It has a bath and a kitchen, which makes it technically more of a carriage house.

Everybody ignored me. If you bury a statue of St. Joseph in the ground, the visor woman said, the house will get scooped up right away. Guaranteed.

Mom, I said with every bit of outrage I could muster without dropping my towel. I wondered if telling these women this wasnt a legal rental unit would make them lose interest, or if it would only get me in trouble with my mother.

You have to be careful how you bury it, the other woman said. Her hat had a frothy drape of red netting that covered her eyes, so maybe I really was invisible to her. My cousin said she faced hers away from the house when she buried it, and the house across the street sold instead.