Surfacing

At least here, he had a bed. At his cousin Ned’s apartment, he’d had to sleep on the sofa. With two cats. Listening to Ned and his girlfriend bang away. The night she slipped out of Ned’s room wearing nothing but her flimsy robe and let it fall open as she straddled him on the sofa, well, all hell had broken loose. Man, he was only human. Ned would have done the same thing. But Ned didn’t want to hear it.

AJ pulled up the blinds of the windows, taller than him and as wide as they were tall.

After he stacked all the boxes in rows along the wall, he sat on the bed beneath the windows. Though they were overdue for a wash, the bed had sheets and a cover. He could do laundry. He wasn’t as useless as his mother had accused him of being when she kicked him out.

Not a bad room, really. He’d remembered it as larger, but he’d been a kid then. A shrimp, at seven years old.

Not like he had a choice now.

He went to the kitchen, where Grandpa scowled at the newspaper as he sat by the sliding glass doors at the same yellow flecked Formica table he and Grandpa and Mom sat around so many years ago. About the only normalcy AJ had ever known.

Grandpa peered over his bifocals. “I made a pot of meatballs. Make yourself a sandwich.”

“OK.” AJ stifled a wince as he lifted the lid. Even the meatballs looked worn out. He wondered how many times his grandfather had reheated them. Except for a pack of crumbled vending machine crackers hastily bought at the station and not so hastily eaten on the bus, AJ hadn’t had any food since last night.

Though Grandpa turned the page of the newspaper, AJ felt the weight of his attention, his constant assessment, as he said, “Still make my own sauce. Tomatoes grow like weeds down here. Go on, eat. Plates are in the cupboard. Rolls are there on the counter. They’re a bit crusty.”

Crusty. Another word for old. The roll resisted the knife as AJ cut.

The old man winked. “It’ll put hair on your chest. Eh?” His raucous laugh bounced off the tan linoleum decoratedwith seashells. As a boy, AJ pretended he walked on the ocean floor instead of a tiny kitchen. Before the floor had cracked. As far as he could tell, his grandfather hadn’t made any improvements to the place since then. Like an unkempt museum to the past. Maybe now he had retired, Grandpa would see just how faded and worn it all looked.

He sat opposite his grandfather and shoved the sauce-soaked roll to his mouth.

His grandfather folded the newspaper and leveled his gaze at him. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to see my friend Tobias. He has the perfect job for you.”

“Perfect.” AJ could imagine. At this point, he couldn’t argue. Later, he’d search for a better job. Right now, he had to keep his grandfather happy so he wouldn’t kick him out like everyone else.

As the roll crunched in his teeth, AJ looked out the doors. Outside, palm trees, hibiscus and ferns rimmed the flagstone patio. They were all taller now, tall enough to act as a hedge. Beyond, a glimmer of white atop cerulean blue: the ocean. The one place that felt like home.

After he’d turned seven, his mom had moved him across a succession of states, farther north each time. South Carolina. Virginia. New Jersey, starting in Cape May, then Atlantic City, to Long Beach. Always in view of the ocean.

In his teens, after one of the many bands he’d joined finally found some success, AJ toured with them. They usually traveled farther inland, and AJ didn’t see the ocean for months. It left him unsettled, until he came within a mile of the shore and his skin could absorb the salty breeze, and he could almost feel the wet sand on his feet.