his adding machine, checking, rechecking. If growth means feeling a little off balance all the time, desperate and dependent on others, if it means putting your faith in people and dusting yourself off and starting fresh when they let you down, then this was going to be a tense few months.
And back at home, another mouth to feed. Right now, the baby feels like a money-gobbling parasite. He thinks of a joke that was going around e-mail recently, “So you wanna be a parent? First, go to the grocery store. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.” Ha ha ha. Of course he knows it won’t always be like this, that Wyeth will start to give back in some way, be more than a drain on their energy and finances. But as he pulls into his driveway, Paul wonders: When, in his entire life, has he done anything that resembles giving back to his parents?
23
Waterbabe
CHLOE
“Chloe!” the Intro to Windsurfing instructor yells in his heavy German accent. “You are jibing too late. That is why the wind is pushing you, back sail, into the water.” Chloe stands up in the waist-deep Pacific Ocean, wiping the salt water from her eyes, suffering her humiliation in the shallow cove near Kanaha that she heard Kurt and Paolo refer to as the Kiddie Pool. They’re sitting under the flags at the adjacent kiteboarding cove with Dan, waiting for the wind to pick up.
Frustrated, Chloe grabs her board, prepares to get back on and uphaul the sail for the millionth time. Tacking is easy; but she cannot make the stupid downwind turn, with its jazz-stepping fancy foot-work.
“Chloe, wait.” Jesper, the instructor is beside her, one hand on the shoulder of her mandatory life vest. Chloe squints up at him, the ravines of his cured leather face, his eyes impossible to read behind the orange iridescent Oakley mirrors. “Too late,” he murmurs. “Feel the wind.” He draws out the phrase like a yogi. “Trust that it will tell you when. Mach schnell, we have only”—Jesper checks his watch, the blue nylon straps streaked white with dried salt water—“thirty-five minutes more.”
Sweet Jesus, she thinks.
Later, Chloe wraps a towel around her Portland-white body and plunks down in the shade next to Dan.
“Well, that was fun,” she lies gamely.
“I think I just found our first Windsong instructor,” Dan says, his eyes on the adjacent kiteboarding cove. “See that girl, in the white rashguard?”
“Yes.” Chloe doesn’t have to look to find her; she is carving the water in front of them with singular concentration.
“Her name’s Mischa, and she just moved here from Tenerife. She’s only been kiteboarding four months, but she’s busting moves none of the guys are even trying. Look at that! Christ! Did you just see that?” Mischa had been sailing in against the sideshore wind, jibing at the beach, and then on the way out, against the waves, she catches air and does a skateboarder-type trick, grabbing the board, bending her knees behind her, twisting her body. Chloe is sure, from how hard it is to even stand up on the plank of a board and control the tiny handkerchief of a sail, that this is very hard. But it all looks rather…pointless. Back and forth, in and out, jump up, grab your board, spin around, stick your landing? She has seen girls half Mischa’s age bear down and flex unseen muscles to squeeze out babies with heads the size of pomelos, and what’s more, hours later, they sign papers that sever the connection between them and the human being they have been growing inside them for months.
“Amazing,” Chloe says.
“Yeah.” Dan exhales. “Anyway, she’s bartending right now.” Of course she is, Chloe thinks, and she’s probably got an adorable mutt dog that licks at the wind and wears a pink bandana around its neck when she drives around in her battered old Jeep. “But I told her about the kiteboarding business, and she’s totally stoked to get in on it. She said she could start whenever we need her. Mischa and Paolo can bring in the clients, and you and I will run the business.”
Ah, vacation talk, Chloe thinks. The kind of thing you say when caught up in the beauty and isolated moment of time on vacation. She is prepared to indulge Dan for now. In a week she’ll be back in Portland, and before long Dan will come back too. She’s sure of it. I’m nothing without you. She’s got Heather’s