Rene sticks her finger into the guacamole, loudly sucks it off the tip, and makes a popping sound as she pulls her nail through her lips. “A sad ghost in the pool house. I am intrigued.”

Jack squeezes Rene’s shoulder. “Be intrigued some other time. I mean it, little girl. Stay away from the pool house. Now go away.”

Chiding, parental and smoothly charming. Jack can be so multifunctional with Rene.

“Before you disappear, go out on the patio and say hello to the guys,” Jack says to me. “Just a smile and a hello, Chrissie. Then you two can run off and do whatever you two do.”

Just a smile and a hello. I feel her again, the small child in me. I didn’t talk from 1975 until 1977. One morning, I just lost my words and they all stopped. Mom was alive when this phase of me started, and the way each of my parents handled it was so very different.

It was mom who forced me to play the cello, to take the lessons that would force me into public recitals and get comfortable speaking before people and hopefully end my silence. I remember my first recital. I was five. I had to give my name and the piece I selected to play. I didn’t want to talk. The words were painful in my throat and made me sick in my stomach. I had to force them out which didn’t feel good and I hated that people were watching me. When the performance was over, I ran to my seat beside my father, promptly threw up and cried in his lap. Jack was a good dad that day. He said nothing, let me cry, and I remember those gentle fingers stroking my hair even though Mom was humiliated by me.

Jack’s solution was to pretend I had no problem. He would take me with him to those places in town he could go comfortably, he would hold my hand, and before we entered a store or restaurant he would say: Smile and say hello, Chrissie. It makes people happy when you smile and say hello. And he would smile his stunning smile and I would want to make him happy so I would force myself to smile and say hello to each stranger we met.

I still smile and say hello to every stranger I meet. I can’t seem to stop myself, and sometimes I have these really long, involved conversations that are more comfortable and significant because I don’t know these people. It is just easier to let out the words when the people are not people active in my life. It really annoys Rene, because while I can’t manage a reasonable conversation with the kids at school, I can talk thirty minutes with the gas station attendant.

I don’t want to please Jack tonight so there will be no smile and hello from Chrissie. I lean across the marble breakfast bar and grab Jack’s keys. “I can’t get my car out of the driveway. Do you mind if I take yours?”

Jack lifts a golden brow. “You just got home, Chrissie. Where do you want to go?”

It’s not a reprimand and not words that precisely express that I can’t leave, just a query I can do what I want with. There is a hint of disappointment in Jack’s voice, that is all, but it is not enough to make me stay. I feel a familiar desperation to get out of the house.

“I want to go sit at the beach and have some dessert. We won’t be late,” I say, smiling.

I can tell Jack doesn’t want me to leave, but he won’t say it. “You have an early plane in the morning. Drive carefully. There isn’t any fog now, but it’s been rolling in every night so be careful.”

“Let’s go, Rene.” I drop a fast kiss on my father’s cheek, push away from the kitchen counter, and go quickly to the front door without bothering to look if Rene is following. I know she will eventually.

I wait in Jack’s car a handful of minutes before Rene comes bouncing out front. She sinks in a disgruntled way into the seat next to me.

I turn on the ignition and put the car in gear. “What took you so long?”

“Since you’re dragging me away, I wanted to at least be sociable and say hello to everyone. Are we really going to get dessert? I can’t eat another bite.”

“No, I just wanted to go to the beach for a while. Get some air.”

“You’re pissed off about dinner aren’t you?”

“I’m not pissed off about anything.”

“Then why are we at Hendry’s Beach hiding from Jack?”

“I’m not hiding from anyone.”

Rene stares at me speculatively, but I ignore her, pretending to focus on the short drive to the beach. I pull into the empty beach lot and park in a space close to the walkway to the sand. I quickly climb from the car.

Please, just let her let this go. My trusty lockboxes feel all shaky at present, I don’t want Rene to probe and for some reason I am afraid for them to open. I just went postal over a cocktail. I don’t want to know how I will feel, what I will do if a lockbox is opened. Not tonight.

I make a hasty retreat toward the beach. I am sitting on the bottom of the narrow, short flight of steps from parking lot to sand, pulling off my UGGs, when Rene sinks beside me in her loose limb way. The beach is nearly deserted: a couple walking, a man with a dog, and us, spoiled brats from the Ranch as the public school kids like to call us.

We leave our shoes by the steps and Rene takes my hand, dragging me across the sand to put distance between us and the restaurant on the rocks.

“Why didn’t your father come tonight?” I ask.

“He’s in DC on a case. Remember?” I flush. I know that, but in my desperation to make any conversation, rather than conversation of why we are here at the beach, I foolishly blunder into sensitive territory. Rene is studying me. Then she shrugs. “He’s going to be gone four weeks. Remember?” Then making a face: “One week trial. Four weeks screwing young law associate. Maybe you’ll get to meet his fembot thirty-seven at dinner.”

Fembot: Rene’s term for her father’s pretty young girlfriends. They are pretty. They are young. I loop my arm around her shoulders and sing: “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child...” and because we are alone I sing louder, letting my voice flow from that place deep inside of me that makes it bluesy and throaty and pure like Jack’s.

Rene instantly laughs and when I am done I can hear someone somewhere clapping. We collapse into each other, laughing harder as Rene pulls me farther away from my secret admirer.

“Why don’t you ever sing? You have a beautiful voice.”

“Too close to home. I prefer the cello.”

“That’s close to home, too. Only it’s your mother not Jack, that’s why you prefer orchestra.” She says it in that knowing way, as best friends do.

We lie back against the sand. Above us the moon is a hazy blur and the sand feels good. A light fog is rolling in; the air is slightly damp and heavy with the mist, and the white bed beneath me is inviting, moist and slightly chilled. Behind me is the sound of the restaurant, to the left a dog barks from the sandy stretch beyond the slew where dogs are permitted to run unleashed, and in front of me there is only the sound of waves. The sounds are familiar and calming.

Rene pulls from her pocket a pack of Marlboros and pops one into her mouth in a careless way as she rummages in her pocket for a lighter. I watch the smoke swirl around Rene’s face.

I turn on my side to face Rene. “Why do we call this beach Hendry’s? The sign says Arroyo Burro, but I’ve never heard anyone call it that. It’s always been Hendry’s.”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“Why don’t we just stay here? Let’s not go off to college, Rene. It all seems so pointless. Does it seem pointless to you?”

Rene seems to give it thought. Then, “You know what our problem is, Chrissie? Why everything seems so pointless? We are the generation of nothing. There is no war. There is no grand social struggle. There is no political wrong to right. There is nothing. We have everything we want and nothing we need. Even the music isn’t good. We live in empty houses. We have too much time to think only of ourselves. It would be better for there to be a little strife than to be a generation with too much time to think only of ourselves.”