A Hard Bargain by Lia Matera

Author:Lia Matera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

We sat on a pile of smoothly twisted driftwood, drying our feet with sand. Lehommedieu watched me, grinning shyly, eyes dancing with interest. The combination again reminded me of a freckled teenager with crow’s feet and a slack jaw. His thinning strawberry hair was damp with sea mist, tousled by afternoon wind. His too-small sweater was unraveling at the cuff, and his corduroy jeans were worn to a dull sheen. I summoned the energy to smile back. It had been a chore, dragging the boat farther up onto the sand.

“What a strange time,” he commented. “For the family.”

I wanted him to hurry, wanted to return to Sandy, make sure he was all right. I forced myself to be polite. “You’ve been gone a year?”

“A little over. I’ve lived in communes on and off since the sixties, but this was going to be different, I thought. I thought I’d finally let go of enough ego to become part of a community.” His brows crimped wistfully. “To be totally honest, as much as I try to appreciate other spirits, they suffer by comparison to Sarah and Hannah and Ted. I end up coming home and getting off the path. Missing my master.”

I’d wondered, when that parlance was more popular, why people followed masters. Growing up under my “aunt” Diana’s thumb, a master had been the last thing I’d wanted.

Lehommedieu brushed sand from his blue-veined feet and fumbled with his sock. “The guru-devotee relationship is probably the hardest in the world, you know. Because it forces you to turn your back on traditional allegiances. In a sense, it makes you choose your family.”

“Well, your family—your real family—seems close.” Hurry, I urged silently.

“I haven’t seen my parents or my brother in twenty-five years. They basically divorced me when I married Sarah. And god, she was so gorgeous and so wise—I couldn’t believe all they saw was her skin.” His shoulders drooped. “I tried one time to reconcile with them. Ted wanted to meet his grandparents, so I took him up to Oregon to their summer place and walked in on them—a real mistake. They were very cold to me, wouldn’t even speak to Ted, pretended he wasn’t there. Except one time when he knocked over a lamp—my dad slapped him and called him a pickaninny. But”—he brightened—“that’s just the family I was born into. Sarah’s is the family I chose.”

I’d gone full circle, choosing Hal. I thought of him at age eight, pleasing his parents with swimming trophies and home runs; at age sixteen, rejecting as symbolic of them their gift of a sports car. I’d disliked him when he was my “cousin.” Only later, seeing how totally he’d shunned us, did I grow close to him. If you could call us close.

“I’ve worried about Ted at times. I’ve been in and out of his life. Sarah has too: three years with the Krishnas, a couple of times she went back to New York, that time she broke down. And Hannah, well, she’s been with Sarah sometimes, with me sometimes.

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