Page 20 of The California Dreamers

19

Sapphires and coins

2002

The island

Day 2, late afternoon

“What have you and Dyl not told us, Mag?” I asked after Dyl ran off, as Griff sank next to me on the grass.

Mag took a deep breath. “Dyl got into some trouble. Last month.”

Pacing in front of us, occasionally pounding a tin of fruit leather in a frustrated drum solo, he explained. He began with a quote of Cap’s: “‘The chain of sapphires grows ever-longer.’”

The chain of sapphires was the Sapphire Resort in El Zafiro.

“Dyl got into trouble at the hotel?” I asked.

“That plot of undeveloped land abutting it, near where the picture was taken,” Mag said. “Remember? You and Dyl were pretty fond of it.”

An understatement. We’d treated it like sacred land.

“I remember,” I said.

Mag hesitated, then went on. “They’re finally developing it, expanding the hotel. New time-share and spa and conference wings. Five-star all the way, no van trash allowed within a mile.”

“They’re destroying the Secret Sea,” I said softly. “How sad.”

“Yeah,” Mag went on. “Greedy prick, that hotel owner.”

I wanted to stop my ears from the rest, but I needed to understand where this was all leading.

“So Dyl and I were surfing nearby,” Mag continued. “This was five or six weeks before Cap died, right before we realized the press had identified us and the van bumper in the museum-exhibit picture, the whole other nightmare waiting. I didn’t know the hotel expansion was coming, I was trying to cheer Dyl up. Cap couldn’t hide being sick anymore, Mama was a mess…

“So anyway,” Mag went on. “I was at the showers and Dyl was alone on the beach. And this reporter from the Sun-Register …” Mag shook his head, envisioning it. “He approaches Dyl and tells him about the land development just south. All the gory, money-making details. Asks if he wants to comment, given his family’s ‘unique ties to the area.’”

“No,” Griff said, anger flaring in his eyes.

“Yep,” Mag said. “Dyl wants to bail but he’s desperate to see the development, of course. So the reporter walks him over there where it’s fenced off. Hoping to get quotes, his reaction, whatever. And the design renderings have just gone up, showing the finished development in all its glory. Slick placards staked in the ground, with diagrams, and photos of people getting seaweed facials, and taking meetings with a view of the golf course, sitting under umbrellas, swimming… And…” Mag paused dramatically. “Guess what other picture they’re using to lure potential time-share buyers?”

No.

“Ours,” Griff said. “Since it’s uncredited, they consider it fair use.”

“Yep. Taken near that very sand—you can tell from the banyan tree roots when it’s blown way up,” Mag said. “A historical touch.”

He continued, his voice a murmur in the background. I was right there with Dyl, hearing the birds in our secret sea, feeling the cool shade of its overgrown boughs. Feeling his pain, his powerlessness in that moment.

“… In fairness, the reporter was trying to get the environmentalist angle on the development. And it’s not like we have a telephone, or like he knew Dyl’s…personality…”

I pictured the Sapphire Resort owner with his cigar, lording it over his ever-growing empire. Over Cap. How dare that vacuum inside a Tommy Bahama shirt destroy our refuge.

But a steady beat of shame also pulsed through me. Because the Secret Sea was never ours, and I shouldn’t have made Dyl believe it was. He’d trusted in the magic of the place, the stories I’d concocted there. Our own little reality. I’d promised, It’ll always be here when we need it…

“… Dyl walked off without a word. That’s what the guy put in his article. ‘One long-time area surfer too shocked to comment…’ But Dyl was…” Mag shook his head.

I stood and paced, trying to collect myself. “So when Dyl learned they were ruining that land he took it hard.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Mag said. “Another is he booked down to the resort in the middle of the night, yanked the sign with our picture on it out of the ground, ran over to the hotel, and used it to smash the glass walls of the aviary all to hell.”

I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against a fir branch. Oh, Dyl.

Mag said, “He cut up his arms and feet, left a trail of blood that led the cops to the van.” He went on with the grim facts. “Trespassing, destruction of property, B and E. He did five thousand dollars’ worth of property damage, apparently. A felony is anything over a thou. It’s thirty thou, if you include the birds that got out. But that part of the charge sheet is bogus because I know for a fact nearly all the stupid birds came back. They only lost one hyacinth macaw and, I don’t know, some green-toed warbly-face chacalacha.”

None of us laughed.

“Dyl got arrested,” I said.

Mag nodded. “Arrested, but not charged. I dealt with it. His record is clean…for now.”

“You bought someone off in the PD?” I asked.

“No. But we settled it, shall we say, paralegally.”

“Is that like paranormally?” Griff asked with dry resignation.

“It was the only way,” Mag said. “Could you picture Dyl in county, even for a night?”

No. God, no. The idea was heartbreaking.

I said, “So you borrowed money to make the problem go away, and I take it you don’t mean from a bank.”

Mag shook his head.

I sank against the tree trunk and buried my face in my hands. I wondered what kind of lowlifes had loaned Mag the money to help Dyl; maybe I didn’t want to know.

My family wasn’t just struggling; they were every flavor of screwed up. They didn’t even have proper shelter, with the Gull in the RV graveyard. Mag claimed they’d been crashing with friends, but I wondered if this was true. I imagined them camping on cold beaches, sleeping in the park, cops shoving them at 3:00 a.m. If they didn’t get money from Pauline, that would be their lives forever.

And I would be to blame.

“Mama doesn’t know,” Mag said. “She was dealing with enough. And we never told Cap, but I wonder if he found out.”

“Quite the coincidence,” Griff said, then didn’t speak for a while, considering.

When Griffin had first mentioned “media attention” due to the museum show, I’d pictured reporters tramping over our sweet-smelling lavender fields, hounding my sons. I’d feared the truth coming out about who took Dreamers , and the Merricks turning their backs on me for good.

But now, only two days later, I found I couldn’t turn my backs on them , come what may. That would be a permanent obliteration of all they meant to me. And not just of the five Merricks on the island, alive and dead. Of me. My history. The years of my life that made me who I was.

“We should do the interview,” I said softly.

“What about your life in Oregon?” Mag asked, brow furrowed over my reversal.

My life…meaning my lies .

“I don’t know what I’d tell people there if my past got out,” I admitted. That was a risk I would have to take. “But I want to help.”

My brothers went silent. Dyl crept back then, visibly weighed down by shame, and I guessed he’d been eavesdropping. He sank to the ground next to me and I hugged him hard. I whispered, “Mag told us how they were provoking you, about the development. None of this… none of this . Is your fault.”

He nodded at his feet, but I knew I hadn’t convinced him.

“It’ll be all right, little brother.” Griff squatted next to us, clapping Dyl’s knee. “Cap would have understood.”

Mag sat, too, tapping Dyl’s foot with his. “We’ll handle it together, the four of us.”

Dyl was still so quiet, so stricken with guilt, that even though he was twenty-five I pulled Rontu-dog out of my pack and set him on his knees, in the center of our circle of four, to try to cheer him up. “The five of us.”

After a few minutes, Mag said, “It’s moronic to be afraid of a…snapshot.” There was a strange relief in his voice, as if disclosing this mess with Dyl and the Secret Sea had lifted a weight off him. “Is Dreamers the truth? Sure. Life was and is still perfect. We only need sun and waves, nothing more.”

Griff: “And Cap had all the answers and explained them to us in minute detail, just like he did inviting SWELL magazine to his wake.”

Mag and Dyl’s sudden, wide-eyed silence said they were just as shocked as I was. Griff had never, to my knowledge, admitted frustration with our father.

But the twins were right; we could tell this stranger anything. That our upbringing in the van had been one blissful day after another, that Cap and Mama had been perfect parents, perfect people, and none of us had a single reason to long for anything different. Perhaps that’s all she wanted—a pretty article to match the pretty photograph.

“Right,” I said. “We’ll sit for the interview. We’ll plan it all out and control every word, and Pauline Cowley will never know we’re lying to her.”

“Excuse me.”

It was Pauline, resplendent in a silk fuchsia pantsuit.