He looks vaguely familiar to me, but I’m having trouble placing him until he puts his hand to his chest by
way of introduction.
“I thought that was you,” he says. “Ben King.” I smile at him as I remember. This is Ben, my father’s
friend from college. The reason my father found himself on Padaro Lane three decades ago. The reason he saw
Windbreak in the first place.
“Ben, of course,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “It’s been a few years. I think you were finishing college.”
“Then it was many more years ago than that.” “They all start to bleed.” He smiles, offers a gentle shrug. “I
was really sorry to hear about your father. I hope you’re hanging in okay.”
He blushes in the way that has become familiar to me. In that way I’ve noticed so many of us do when we
try to offer sympathies, as if naming the grief will conjure it up, will be the thing responsible for adding to the
pain that otherwise could be forgotten. It makes it feel all the kinder to me when someone takes the risk and
does it anyway.
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate it.” “Are you staying here for a bit?” “Just the night, I think.” “Famous
last words,” he says. “This place grabs you fast.” I give him a smile. And he waves goodbye. Then he starts
heading down the beach, picking up a beach stick, throwing it to his dogs. They race out ahead of him,
working to catch it.
I watch him for a moment, this man who is so relaxed and happy. Isn’t this who my father wanted to be? A
man not unlike this one, not worrying where his next meal was coming from. In a cliffside house with his old
life (the old versions of himself) shed, far behind him. But that couldn’t be my father’s story of who he wanted
to be, could it? Not when he loved as intensely as he did. Not when he brought Joe along with him. When he
k ept all his families close. Not when he was nothing if not loyal.
No. The story was closer to something else. Something about a man holding on with as much force as he
also tried to flee. But to what? Which is when it hits me.
Cece. Cece ended up in this storied corner of the coast, hadn’t she said her husband was still here, not too
far from Uncle Joe? Not too far from my father?
I pull out my phone and do a search for her ex-husband. Davidson Salinger. A sales record listing his
address as Sand Point Road. A five-minute drive. Davidson Salinger, a Los Angeles native who graduated
from Yale University, where he met his first wife, Cece Kayne.
Yale. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Cece had said that she and my father went to school together, but I
assumed she’d meant Midwood High. Why did I assume that? Because she had said they grew up near each
other. Hadn’t she also said that?
I walk back up to the house, taking the st eps two at a time, closing and locking the gate behind myself, and
running the length of the property to the house. Until I’m inside the house, closing the door behind myself.
The house is freezing, and there are no lights on yet. I’ve called Clark to come by and turn everything on.
He has to do it from a locked power breaker. I have to learn how to do it myself.
But suddenly I don’t feel like waiting. I head to the living room, head straight to the bookshelves, pulling
several things down from the personal shelf: some of the playbills, the yearbooks, several of the photo albums.
I move it all by the window, and into the light and the heat from the late afternoon sun.
He has one yearbook from his senior year at Midwood, one marked the Yale Banner, from his senior year
there. I check the index in the Banner first, searching for any photographs of my father. There are none exc ept
for his senior portrait. I start going through the photo albums instead. Some of them are dated in the front, and
I look for any that take me back to the late 1970 s, when he was finishing college.
The second album I go through has a large group photograph in it. Several of his male friends are in it, but
not Ben King. Not anyone else I recognize on first blush, exc ept for my father, looking strong and young, his
arms crossed over his chest, his smile large and wide. And looking so much like Sam that it startles me.
I turn the page and see another group photograph. My father is in the center, several friends circled around
him. In this photograph, I recognize two people. On the far left is my uncle Joe. And, on the right, the only
woman in the photo. A young and very beautiful Cece Kayne. She is standing near my father, but someone
else has an arm around her. Maybe this is Davidson Salinger. Maybe it is someone else entirely.
Either way, Cece is leaning toward my father, even though this man is leaning toward her.
I pull the photograph out of the album, staring at all of their faces, holding them in my hand.
I hold it closer, hold him closer, wondering what it is that I can almost see.