Barefoot Beach Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Happy Any Day Now

  “A charming read for women of any age, especially those who have mothers, fathers, boyfriends, former lovers, or careers. Judith Soo Jin Raphael is unique and also completely like your best friend, facing decisions and doubts with courage and lots of LOL humor. I learned so much from reading this book, and had such fun!”

  —Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Cottage and The Hot Flash Club

  “A smart, funny novel that explores the midlife angst of Judith Soo Jin Raphael, a half-Korean, half-Jewish classical cellist. Caught between two cultures, two lovers, and an errant father who reenters her life just as her professional and personal lives collide, Judith struggles to accept that what she wants might not truly be what she needs. Fast-paced and witty, with great dialogue and three-dimensional characters, Happy Any Day Now will ring true for many women.”

  —Cathy Holton, author of Beach Trip

  “If you’re looking for smart, upbeat fiction with snappy dialogue and a fun peek into ethnic traditions, Happy Any Day Now is perfect. A lively read that offers an interesting behind-the-scenes look at a symphony orchestra and a midlife heroine who is all grown-up but still capable of being comically and poignantly bewildered by life.”

  —Nancy Martin, author of the Blackbird Sisters Mysteries

  “Judith Raphael is half-Korean and half-Jewish, and full-on fabulous! Toby Devens’s novel is warm, witty, and wonderful.”

  —Wendy Wax, author of The House on Mermaid Point

  “Never has a midlife crisis—or actually a perfect storm of them—been treated with such charm, insight, and smart, sardonic humor. Judith Soo Jin Raphael, the heroine of Toby Devens’s engaging new novel, is half-Korean, half-Jewish, and facing her fiftieth birthday; she is carrying enough emotional baggage and family history to last several additional lifetimes. With a deft touch, Devens spins a tale of lost opportunities and rediscovered romance, second chances and second thoughts, family secrets and lasting friendships. Set in the fascinating world of classical music—with all its pressures, rivalries, passions, and loyalties—Devens’s Happy Any Day Now is a virtuoso performance that is bound to win Devens a host of new fans.”

  —Liza Gyllenhaal, author of Bleeding Heart

  Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  Visit us online at penguin.com.

  Also by Toby Devens

  HAPPY ANY DAY NOW

  MY FAVORITE MIDLIFE CRISIS (YET)

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Toby Devens, 2016

  Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  New American Library and the New American Library colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Names: Devens, Toby, author.

  Title: Barefoot beach/Toby Devens.

  Description: New York, New York: New American Library, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015041940 (print) | LCCN 2015045294 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780451418999 (softcover) | ISBN 9781101616246 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Female friendship—Fiction. | Vacation

  homes—Maryland—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/

  Contemporary Women. | FICTION/Family Life. | FICTION/Humorous. |

  GSAFD: Humorous fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3604.E885 B37 2016 (print) | LCC PS3604.E885 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041940

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for HAPPY ANY DAY NOW

  Also by Toby Devens

  Title Page

  Copyright

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  chapter twenty-six

  chapter twenty-seven

  chapter twenty-eight

  chapter twenty-nine

  chapter thirty

  chapter thirty-one

  chapter thirty-two

  chapter thirty-three

  chapter thirty-four

  chapter thirty-five

  chapter thirty-six

  chapter thirty-seven

  chapter thirty-eight

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  chapter one

  The summer house on Surf Avenue carried some kind of spell, concocted of—I don’t know—salt air, sea grass, and Old Bay Seasoning, that over the years had permeated its walls and floorboards. Whatever it was, the place cast fabulous magic. For a while, anyway.

  The drive from Baltimore to Tuckahoe had taken me two hours and ten minutes, which was good for mid-June. I pulled into the garage but left the few suitcases and boxes in the trunk; first things first. The sky was in motion. I walked around back through the Indian grass and wild geranium and down the path to the beach.

  At the bottom of three weathered-to-silver wooden steps, I slipped out of my flip-flops. The stretch of sand behind my house that some equally besotted Victorian had named Barefoot Beach invited its guests to kick off their shoes. The fine-grained sand, paler and silkier than the grittier stuff up the strand, was pure bliss. As I buried my toes in its warmth, I felt my tense muscles slacken, my shoulders relax, and my rib cage expand to hold my suddenly larger but lighter heart. I exhaled a breath of release. I was here! It was summer! I had nearly t
hree months to look forward to! Everything in me but my knees wanted to cartwheel.

  I made my way through scattered blankets and striped umbrellas, skirting sand dollars and half-buried scallop shells, inhaling the coconut scent of suntan lotion that was eau de summer for me. Up the beach, in the shadows cast by the towering hotels, the crowds were beginning to thin. The childless would probably spend the next few hours in dry clothes with a drink and the breathtaking view from the Crow’s Nest bar atop the Boardwalk Hilton or Rick’s on the roof of the Hotel Casablanca. The kids, of course, wanted to play until the last shred of light vanished. I nearly got mowed down by a sextet of preteens racing to the surf, the boys clamping boogie boards to their hairless chests. The girls, whose bikini tops displayed them in all stages of flowering, held their boards high, shrieking as they ran.

  Downwind, kites were up, swaying on gentle drafts. A fish kite, puffed with air, swam in the wind. An origami bird rode the currents.

  Nearby, a little girl danced around, clutching the string of a large yellow smiley-faced balloon as she chanted, “I want to let it go. I want to see it fly.” She stopped and faced her mother. “Mommy, please.”

  “Okay, but if you let it go, it won’t be coming back. You know it will be gone forever, right?” the mother answered.

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “Then it’s up to you.”

  Yelling, “Wooo!” the girl flung the string. The three of us followed the balloon lofting past the horizon, becoming a speck of yellow as it reached cloud altitude.

  When it disappeared, the girl said, “I think it’s in heaven.”

  She skipped off, swinging her plastic pail. Children move to a faster rhythm than grown-ups. The mom and I exchanged smiles.

  Now it was sunset. Beams of rose gold made fuchsia glitter trails on the water. And as I stood there basking in the warmth, the sky brightened to flamingo.

  I turned to take in the silhouette of the Surf Avenue house against the shimmering sky. With my sunglasses on, I could make out its details: white trim against cedar shake shingles; the second-floor widow’s walk, my refuge when things got really bad; and the deck where I’d spent luxurious afternoons napping in the hammock or stretched out on a canvas lounge chair, reading and sipping lemonade or, once upon a time, sharing coffee or wine and easy conversation with my husband.

  Lon had brought me here to propose. Smart move. I’d met him at a book signing, an event so mobbed that his adoring fans had to take a number to queue up. I drew lucky seven and approached his table carrying my well-worn copy of his first book, Canyon of Time. (Twenty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. “Brilliant, epic debut novel.”—Publishers Weekly. “Brings the rugged mountains of California to life with unforgettable characters and thrilling plot twists.”—The New Yorker.) He looked up at the redheaded grad student, twelve years his junior, and turned on the Irish charm. As the crowd behind me rumbled with impatience, Lon and I chatted. Finally, he wrote, “To Nora and great first chapters,” on the flyleaf of his newly released Banshee River. I wrote my phone number on the back of the business card he’d nudged toward me and we traded. So, I suppose, I’d fallen for him hard at first sight, and he supposed I’d fall that way for the house and say yes to both of them. He’d been right.

  We were married on that deck overlooking the beach. A small, just-about-secret ceremony for the media darling and his young bride, one designed to duck the potential for paparazzi lurking behind the dunes. We were wed at dawn, when only the best of friends, the most devoted family, would show up, Lon said. Thirty of them had come and tossed bread crumbs instead of rice, so the gulls wouldn’t choke.

  When I settled in that first summer, it was as if I’d lived there forever. And now twenty-some years later, it had been almost forever. The house stood dune-high to watch over the tides that counted as much as clocks this close to the water. Within its walls or in its giant shadow, life happened: the conception of a child, the creation of a book, the ambushing loss of a husband in his prime. I always felt that as long as a hurricane didn’t thrash it to bits and sweep it out to sea, the house would be in our family for generations.

  As of today, I wasn’t so sure.

  No time for worrying about things that might never happen, I thought as I made my way along the path. Live in the moment. Isn’t that what Margo liked to say? Not that my best friend’s advice was always sound. But this bit I tried to believe. So, better unpack and get things in shape before my son got in from college. Haul the cushions out and hang the hammock. I climbed the steps to the deck. Give the planks a good sweeping. Citronella candles. Need to find those and . . . Someone was moving around my kitchen. Beyond the glass I saw flashes of pink and blond. That gave it away. Also the music filtering from—I peered in—the iPad she’d propped on the counter. “Shall We Dance?” from The King and I. Of course. The local rep theater was putting on the musical this summer, and Margo was going to be its director.

  I stood watching for a moment as she fussed around in the kitchen in a halter dress that displayed too much cleavage for a forty-seven-year-old woman. But Margo was not your average forty-seven-year-old. She was not your average anything, this Welcome Wagon lady sporting DKNY sunglasses as a headband and two-carat diamond stud earrings.

  She was larger than life and had been making mine crazier and more fun since we’d found each other back in college. I had no sisters, but I loved her like one, consistently but ambiguously. There were times when I wanted to smack her. More times when I wanted to hug her. Like now, I thought, smiling as I watched her lay out her annual thanksgiving-for-summer-and-my-arrival gift.

  I tapped the glass. No response. I pounded on it, sending her spinning. Eyes afire, she strode over to click the lock and nudge the sliding glass door open just wide enough so I could edge myself in.

  “Brilliant, Nora.” She flared her surgically narrowed nostrils at me. “Sneaking around out there. You almost gave me a heart attack. And you’re late. I had to let myself in and the key jammed in the lock. I was jiggling out there on your porch for at least three minutes.”

  She stretched an arm to turn down the volume on the music. Then she kissed me on both cheeks, one of her affectations that used to drive Lon crazy. “She’s from Brooklyn, for God’s sake,” he’d said. “Who kisses on both cheeks in Brooklyn?” When she released me, she murmured—already into a new, forgiving role—“I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed you too,” I said.

  Which sounded as if it had been forever, as if we hadn’t caught up by phone on Wednesday or seen each other two weeks ago in Baltimore.

  During the colder seasons, I lived in a row house in the city’s Charles Village neighborhood, a hive of academics not far from Johns Hopkins University, where Lon had taught. Margo and her husband, Pete, former star second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, resided half an hour, and half a world, away in the tony suburb of Greenspring Valley, where their towering Tudor sat on a sward of lawn large enough to graze a flock of sheep. Their place up the highway in Rehoboth, Delaware, was twice the size of mine, but I had the fabulous ocean view.

  The Manolises always arrived in early June so Margo could get a head start at the Driftwood Playhouse, where she chaired its board, sometimes directed, and frequently acted, and which she generously funded.

  Now she flourished a hand toward the granite-topped island where she’d parked the yeasty part of her annual welcome-back gift. In a special see-through bag designed to keep them fresh were a dozen bagels. Also a babka coffee cake, a package of black-and-white cookies, which were to New Yorkers what madeleines were to Proust, and a tin of rugelach, the sweet-cinnamon-and-raisin-studded pastries my son, Jack, relished.

  I’d eaten last at eleven a.m., a cupcake at an assisted living center. I was starved. I swiped a rugala and bit into the rich dough.

  “Hands off. Those are for Jack.” Margo slipped the tin away
after I’d grabbed two more.

  She loved my son, had played his aunt throughout his childhood. “When does he arrive?”

  I shrugged. Midafternoon, Jack had called to tell me that his plans had changed and he wasn’t going to be leaving Duke until eight or so, and, “Please, Mom, don’t wait up. Promise me.” His voice had been ragged, which made me think the delayed start was due to the latest episode in the soap opera featuring his off-again-on-again girlfriend, Tiffanie. So, of course, I added a layer of agita about that to my garden-variety fears of him dozing off at the wheel or getting hijacked at a gas station in some hick Carolina town.

  I was a mother. I worried. Maybe more than most because we’d gone through so much to bring him into the world and I didn’t trust the fates. Fickle broads. They could smile on you one day and backhand you the next.

  “Jack will be fine,” Margo assured me. “Whatever time he gets in, there’s all kinds of stuff for a late-night snack. Check out the fridge. Come on,” she urged, trying to distract me.

  She’d stocked it with her idea of staples: smoked salmon, sliced sturgeon, a container of organic cream cheese, a wedge of Fontina from Italy, an obscenely expensive jar of caviar, and two pounds of hand-carved Jewish deli meat.

  “A feast,” I agreed. “But, really, you don’t have to do this every year.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Didn’t Mamma-mia teach you manners? The correct response to a gift is a simple thank-you.”

  She’d also brought flowers from her garden—rugosa roses, blue-flag iris, and a cloud of moonbeam coreopsis—and had arranged them in a vase on the center island.

  “Beautiful,” I said. “Thank you, Margo.”

  She looked around, nodding with pleasure. “I love this kitchen.” Of course she did. She’d taken charge of renovating it the summer before.

  When she’d first suggested the makeover, I’d countered, “I’m in no hurry.”

  “That’s a major understatement. You, my dear, are stuck. It’s been seven years since Lon died. To put it bluntly”—and no one was better at blunt than Margo—“he’s moved on.” She pointed upward. “Now it’s time for you to do the same, though in a different direction. May I suggest forward? And I’ll bet brighter, more open surroundings will do wonders for your mood. The entire downstairs needs an update and I’ve got ideas for turning that dreary living room into a gorgeous great room. But, in deference to your aversion to change, we’ll start with the kitchen.”