think I’m being callous or anything. Just tell me and I’ll put the camera away right now, seriously. Your well-being is much more important to me than getting a MacArthur Genius Grant.”
“Very funny. No, that’s okay. I told you it doesn’t bother me as long as you’re just documenting reality, not creating it.”
“Absolutely. Look, we both need a chance to decompress; we’ve barely had two seconds to ourselves since the baby was born. This is first and foremost a vacation. All I’m really doing is making a home movie so that Moxie will have a record of meeting her grandma. It might be the only time she ever does, right?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Being in Avalon has dredged up a lot of things that Henry blocked out about his childhood. He has spent many years stewing about the past, about his mother’s failures and his own. Blaming her. Escaping the hurt by escaping her, physically moving halfway across the country to get away. Joining the Marines. But being back here is opening a strange trove of memory, like finding a box of forgotten pictures in the attic. Pictures that tell a slightly different story than you thought. Not because the story is different, but because you are.
That realization of how much he has changed comes as a little bit of a shock. Henry wasn’t aware of it happening—it has been so incremental that it caught him off-guard. Yet why should it be surprising? He is middle-aged, a husband and father, a war veteran, hardly the same person at all as the little boy who lived through all this—that was someone else entirely. It’s hard for him to believe that these things he has agonized over for so many years—and by which he has largely defined himself—are suddenly not so significant, mostly the product of his own overheated imagination. Catalina is not the island he remembers; neither magical nor terrifying. It’s just a place like any other.
Wandering the town after Moxie’s nap, Henry snags again and again on the disconnect between past and present:
First there is the traffic. Then all the old people—there seem to be tours of geriatric condo buyers everywhere he looks. Was Catalina always such a magnet for the leisure set, or is he only sensitive to it because at forty-five he’s fast on his way to becoming one of them himself? That’s a scary thought, but the presence of Ruby on his arm reminds him that he’s not dead yet.
The taffy-pull is gone—how many times had he stared longingly at that thing? Then the greasy-spoon where his mother worked for a short time, now a trendy clothing and gift shop. The pocket Safeway is now a Vons. A lot of little things, but they add up to a far different reality than the one he remembers.
With Moxie dozing in her stroller, Henry and Ruby go into one of the souvenir shops and browse through the exact same relics that Henry was always fascinated by as a kid: Lucite-encased seahorses, gold-plated buffalo chips, whimsical shellfish art; the dead husks of sea creatures made into google-eyed kitsch. Some things never change. The walls are covered with framed newspaper accounts of island history—visitations by catastrophes and celebrities.
A reedy voice pipes up behind them, “Shovelnose guitarfish.”
“What’s that?” Henry says, turning around.
A bright-eyed old man with translucent pink ears is standing at his elbow. “That’s a shovelnose guitarfish you’re looking at. Interesting species of ray, closely related to the sawfish. They dry it on a frame and string it and it becomes a ukulele. Sounds pretty good, too! Try playing it.”
“I can’t play.”
The old man takes it down. “Here, listen.” He plunks the strings and in a high, warbling voice sings “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Putting the instrument back on its hook, he shakes his head fondly, saying, “Tiny Tim—remember him? Great entertainer. He came in here once—the nicest fellow you’d ever want to meet. Married that Miss Vicky on TV. You folks interested in anything special?”
“Just browsing, mainly.”
“Go right ahead. That’s what I’m here for. I like to think of this place as a museum, a piece of the island’s history. I guess that goes for me, too!”
The door bell tinkles and the old man excuses himself to greet the new customer. Henry is interested to see that it’s the same hulking bald man from the restaurant. While Ruby tries on sun hats, Henry maneuvers himself closer, pretending to study some wood carvings of whales and dolphins.
“Excuse me, but