LEAH - CHAPTER TWO

 

Leah bends down and releases Scusi from her leash. The beagle dashes toward the water, ears lifting like kites. Afternoon beach walks are no-cone time. There must be some enjoyment — at least for Scusi, who loves the ocean and is tempted to take off to the shore whenever it is close. Not that she is a great swimmer, but she delights in splashing through the shallow surf and can sit in the sand and stare at the waves for hours on end.

 

Their usual stomping ground is the off-leash area in Golden Gardens, but the adjacent beach is a no-go zone for dogs, like most in the city. So a few times per week, Leah makes sure to drive to a spot where Scusi can get wet. They both like Richmond Beach Saltwater Park, and here in the south corner by the train tracks, she lets Scusi run free when nobody is around.

 

Leah gazes into the distance. Across the Puget Sound and the Kitsap Peninsula, the sky is clearing. The sun stands over the Olympic Mountains in a silvery haze — in about an hour, it will disappear behind their peaks, leaving a hem of pinks and purples.

 

Scusi is racing along the water edge with a holdfast between her teeth, a kelp stipe trailing behind. The air bladder bounces up and down on the soggy ground, drops flying everywhere. There is always natural debris on this beach to play with, lots of driftwood and seaweed, rocks and gravel adding to the general appearance of messiness.

 

Though Leah has learned to like the wild and rugged grandness of the area, she still harbors a slight preference for neat and domesticated beaches furnished with deck chairs and canvas umbrellas, tended by waiters serving fruity drinks, where bronzed people lounge on air mattresses supported by mild-mannered waves and show off their latest Versace swimwear. That is surely the scenario Stenton and Maxima are envisioning: less Pacific Northwest, more Portofino.

 

Leah winces. Why must she remind herself of that?

 

She and Cole had spent a weekend of bliss in the little Italian fishing village with the pastel-colored houses that nestle against a backdrop of emerald pines covering gentle hills, all set off by the shimmering turquoise sea. They enjoyed their first time abroad together right there in the playground of jet-setters and celebrities who park giant yachts in the small harbor, but they didn't need anything or anybody else to admire — they had only eyes for each other.

 

Ercole Abano looked like the famous Italian actor who wasn't famous yet. With his easy, unstudied elegance, whatever he put on suited him. And he wasn't just gorgeous but gifted too, already promoted to senior project manager at Craven Architecture, a company specializing in the remodeling of luxury resorts and boutique hotels. Leah deemed their tastes and talents a perfect match.

 

They were a handsome couple, and as she saw it, predestined to embark on a life of luxury, pleasure, and designer stardom. The picture-perfect scenery was the appropriate setting for the launch of their relationship.

 

At a posh restaurant on the piazzetta, they ate roasted octopus, crispy-skinned sea bass on saffron risotto, accompanied by too much Pinot Grigio, and Leah felt drunk on wine, and love, and her dream of creating beautiful things for beautiful people who lived in beautiful places.

 

Close by, Scusi barks at an incoming wave. Leah looks down at the water swirling around her rubber boots — the right footwear for Seattle in March. Yet, she can still feel the sand entering her new Ferragamo sandals (when she and Cole went swimming at nearby Paraggi Beach after having 'dessert' in their hotel room), caressing her soles, fine and soft like icing sugar, heated by the sun. She had bought the shoes the day before in Milano, after her first meeting with Maxima at Coramelli, as part of a celebratory shopping spree, before joining Cole in Genoa, who had been in France for a week, supervising the finishing touches on the renovation of a spa resort in Antibes.

 

He would travel farther to his father and stepmother in Livorno, and Leah take a return flight to the States from Milano.

 

Scusi has found a piece of weathered cedar and drops it in front of Leah's feet. “Go get it, girl!” Leah shouts and hurls it wide across the muddy stretch of sand. Icy liquid runs into her sleeve; the wood had been soaked.

 

Milano — if she had ever succeeded with Coramelli, the Riviera would have been only a stone's throw away from where she lived.

 

“Isn't your Mediterranean soul vexed by all this roughness?” she had asked Cole once, teasingly, on a day in January when the fog hung over the strait and the wind churned its ever-frigid waters.

 

But he only laughed.

 

“Sorpresa, this is freedom” he said, with a sweeping arm gesture. “In Italy I always have the feeling as if every stone has already been picked up by generations before me.” He had a true love-hate relationship with his father's country. His arms were still spread wide as if he intended to hug the scenery. “I just love this place.”

 

And he loved Richmond Beach. “We should move here too,” Cole said one day early in their relationship when they jogged up the hundred eighty steps connecting the upper and lower parking lots. His friends Malcolm and Izzy had just bought a house in Shoreline to raise their little daughter in a quieter setting.

 

“But I only came to Seattle six months ago,” Leah answered, panting. She liked their home in the hip and bustling Ballard neighborhood. “Why do you want to live in a sleepy suburb?”

 

“Maybe something we should re-consider,” Cole mumbled, turning the round counter at the top of the staircase. “When the babies are here.”

 

She remembers it as the first time the phrase popped up in their conversation.

 

“When the babies are here, we will travel locally,” Cole said, on another pre-Scusi beach walk. They had just come back from Hong Kong. He talked about taking the Clipper to Vancouver Island or renting a camper and driving down the west coast, the whole family on board.

 

The babies — he made it sound as if they could be obtained with a one-click buy at Amazon.

 

The wind is tugging at her hair. Leah zips up her hoodie. “Beachy and breezy,” she mutters, trudging forward on the soggy ground. She has not made one sketch since reading Maxima's email. The pictures of Stenton's new line of light summer clothing have left no lasting impression on her mind; they are a blank canvas waiting for the strokes of an artist's hand. But she feels incapable of even lifting a brush.

 

Loud rumbling behind her back makes Leah spin around. On the tracks hemming this part of the beach, a train rolls past. She remembers the rides with Amtrak Cascades from Seattle to Bellingham when friends or relatives visited. This isn't the sleek light-blue train snaking along the scenic route though, but a chain of identical mud-colored cargo containers with coal from Montana on its way to Vancouver — destined for China.

 

In recent years, those trains could never pass without Cole praising the virtues of renewable energy. “Darn fossil fuels,” he said. “We need to leave our children a better world.”

 

Sometimes she teased him then, pointing out that the people vacationing in his exotic boutique hotels could hardly reach them with e-bikes instead of airplanes. Had she been secretly happy to find him a hypocrite saying one thing and doing another?

 

Leah hears barking. Scusi is squabbling with a Labradoodle pup over a soft pink Frisbee, and the overload of cuteness forces a smile on Leah's face.

 

The Labradoodle's owner, a skinny guy around forty with white headphones that look like earmuffs, takes the opportunity to show her his teeth in return, and she senses that he is thinking of a good line to start a chat.

 

Leah pulls the wide-brim of her rain hat over her eyes and turns away. “Scusi,” she hollers and marches northward, peeking over her shoulder a few times to make sure the beagle is following.

 

A week ago, Scusi disappeared in the Lower Woodland off-leash park (probably through a hole in one of the fences), and Leah spent forty-five increasingly frantic minutes before spotting her by the Green Lake Aqua Theater.

 

This time Scusi is obedient, though, and at her feet in a few moments. Leah puts her on the leash, and they continue their walk on the stretch where the outgoing tide has soaked the ground. The sand is dark and glossy, reminding her of Cole's hair when wet.

 

“Let's make something beautiful together,” Cole had said one morning, fresh from the shower and wrapped in a towel. She beamed at him, sure he was about to involve her in his latest project, the concept for a luxury boutique hotel in the heart of Barcelona.

 

Leah remembers the flush of joyful anticipation rushing through her at that moment as real as the Pacific gale that is stinging her cheeks now.

 

She had just designed a line of home textiles. A friend had been unable to work after an accident and asked her to help out. Cole had loved it. Maybe he wanted her to come up with some custom-made cushions and throw blankets, curtains, or rugs — the possibilities of incorporating the Catalan city's rich cultural heritage into her designs made Leah almost giddy.

 

“No, I mean something only you and I can create,” he added, unusually perceptive, his arms slipping around her waist. “Something with my smarts and your lovely golden hair.” He gave her his broad I'm-only-kidding smile before he kissed her. In essence, of course, he was serious.

 

“Bambini? What did you expect? He's Italian, right?” her sister, Trish, asked when Leah had hinted at Cole talking offspring. Leah was visiting their parents for a week while Cole oversaw a project in Orlando, and the sisters sat together over pumpkin spice lattes in their favorite coffee shop in Essex.

 

“He's not a walking cliche,” Leah said, surprised by the sharpness in Trish's voice. She pointed out that Cole had spent his teenage years with his American mother in Port Townsend after his parents divorced. Her sister seemed happy, though, to have found a flaw in Leah's perfect existence.

 

Leah felt sorry for Trish — her jealousy was so obvious. She managed the customer service department in their stepfather's company and had been forever dating the head of finances, Tyler, a nice-enough guy and decently handsome. Yet his long-expected proposal had still not been made, though Trish and their stepdad (ready to hand her and the company over to Tyler) were dying for it.

 

However, it happened eventually.

 

Gulls scream overhead. Leah looks up. Two grey-brown birds, not yet in the white plumage of mating season, are flying out to sea.

 

Leah closes her eyes. The last trip with Cole — how well she remembers it, travelling to the small Caribbean island where turmoil hit full force.

 

At JFK, while changing planes, Leah had spotted a Birkin bag knock-off on the arm of a woman in front of her, such sloppy stitching. Talking about it to Cole, she somehow dropped a remark about the job application. A friend had told her about an opening at one of the major French fashion houses a few months ago, and Leah, frustrated with Maxima and Stenton, had sent her resume and portfolio. Just yesterday, she had learned that she has been shortlisted, being now among the ten remaining candidates. Leah had kept it a secret so as not to break the spell.

 

“I'm sure they'll love your work. Just like Coramelli does,” Cole said. They had reached their seats and he was stuffing her carry-on duffel bag into the overhead compartment.

 

“It's not freelancing, though,” Leah said, sliding toward the window. “It's a position at headquarters in Rue Royale.”

 

Cole remained standing in the aisle.

 

“Wouldn't you have to live in Paris then?”

 

“Of course,” she said, slumping into her seat.

 

“Without me?” His voice sounded shrill. A small clot of passengers was building up behind him.

 

“First I would have to get it, don't I?” Leah hissed, pulling him toward her. “Let's talk about it later.”

 

They only exchanged the most necessary words during their flights, had silent meals, and watched movies (not the same ones as they usually did).

 

The following two days passed in a state of polite stasis. They moved around each other with caution, as if walking on a wooden suspension bridge, afraid of looking through the gaps between the boards.

 

Cole spent maximum time at the site of his project, and Leah lay either in the sun or sketched during the daily downpours (September offered the low-season price on rentals and lots of precipitation). The growing concerns about the route of a brewing tropical storm went unnoticed by both of them.

 

On the third evening, they found themselves hiding in their beach house's walk-in-closet on the mattress of the spare room bed, surrounded by seat cushions and accent pillows, their packed-up belongings, and hastily acquired emergency supplies.

 

They sat with their backs propped against opposite walls under the empty clothes bars, both busy with their digital devices, trying to distract themselves with work.

 

Leah doodled on her graphic tablet, devising possible logos for her future brand. It usually lifted her spirits to imagine her name embossed on patent leather or a gilded zipper handle. Leah Wrey had a ring to it, though her mother had pointed out to her recently, with a twinkle in her eyes, that Leah Abano might be preferable, having quite a musical quality. (Of course Leah had emphasized again that marriage — such an ancient notion — wasn't in her plans.)

 

But this time, playing with her name did not give her any satisfaction nor did it calm her as the howls of the wind outside increased in volume.

 

Cole answered work emails, the whitish light shining up from his laptop bringing out lines in his face Leah could have sworn hadn't been there before.

 

A crashing noise (later discovered to be a branch smashed onto the metal roof of the garage) made them drop everything and lunge into each others arms.

 

“Don't you want a family with me?” Cole blurted.

 

“Of course, I do.”

 

They clung to each other, both in tears, and then made love with a force equal to the gales raging overhead. In that Caribbean walk-in-closet while the house shivered all around them, Leah realized losing Cole would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to her.

 

They survived. The storm had spared the island and caused only minor damage.

 

A few days later, they flew home, with plans for a spring wedding and the resolution to seek medical help if Leah still wouldn't be pregnant by Christmas.

 

February came around, and their doctor did not find anything amiss. He recommended patience and fun. Leah had neither. By now she felt cursed — and punished.

 

Cole suggested going to the kennel to pick up a fur baby, and even though Leah had been skeptical at the time, she is now truly thankful for it.

 

Scusi pulls the leash; she's smelling food. They walk toward the bridge. In the picnic shelter nearby, a family, bundled in coats and blankets, is sharing pizza out of a box.

 

One of their small girls waves at Scusi. She looks about the same age as Izzy's oldest — she and Malcolm have three by now. Leah is godmother to the middle one, Marianna, and also aunt to Trish's boy Henry, born two years ago and Cole's godson.

 

Scusi leads the way onto the long narrow path spanning the train tracks. Leah looks down at the empty rails, but Scusi drags her away. Leah knows the little beagle is hungry and tired by now.

 

They reach the car. Over at the playground, some children are still climbing on the blue ship structure.

 

After eating a couple of chicken thins, Scusi curls up in the passenger seat while Leah checks her phone: A few work-related e-mails, an invitation to a friend's housewarming party, Trish has posted an ultra-sound picture taken today — a sister for Henry.

 

Leah drives to the upper parking lot. She lets the car roll into one of the spaces facing the ocean and turns off the engine. Scusi has fallen asleep — her little legs twitching as if she's still frolicking around at the waterline.

 

Leah gazes at the disk of light vanishing behind the mountains. How often has she sat here with Cole? He liked this spot best, though they had watched many sunsets together at so many different shores. Can she even think of a single one without him? It seems to her now that all the beach memories of her adult life have Cole attached to it.

 

Through the half open driver window, she can hear the kids in the playground below. Happy noise. It reminds Leah of her nephew's hoots and her goddaughter's giggles.

 

She starts the car.

 

The babies have been forthcoming after all. Just not for her.

 

“Scusi, this will not do,” Leah whispers, reversing. ”We need fresh beaches.”

 

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