Portion of the Sea Read Free Page B

come on! You can do it,” she said.
    I raised my eyebrows at her. “I don’t think so.”
    “You still don’t get it. You still don’t believe that anything is possible, do you?”
    “Realistic things are possible,” I said. “But one can’t build a snowman in the sand.”
    “You can do it,” she reassured, then stooped over and helped me pack sand atop the first ball. Once more, it all slipped down. “This is why we must be flexible,” she said, scratching her long dark hair with her sandy hands. “You’ve got to change your mindset. Make him lying down. Who says snowmen have to stand up? Keep going,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of the world teaching a girl she ‘can’t’ do this, she ‘must’ do that. She should do this and she shouldn’t do that. Can’t, must, should, shouldn’t! What is it that you want in life, Lydia?”
    I couldn’t think of anything. My father got me everything I ever wanted, which is like eating before getting hungry and never knowing what a hunger pain feels like. We owned three sixteen-inch black-and-white televisions. I had been the first of all my friends to get a Hula Hoop and Silly Putty. When the bridal dolly had come out, my father went to every store in Chicago until he found one for me.
    My father, Lloyd Isleworth, was gone most of the time, but I was never alone. He employed an entire staff of females to handle our housework, shop, prepare our meals, tutor me in reading, writing and arithmetic, teach me piano, and so on. And when they all went home to their own families, the television went on, and it kept me good company.
    Lloyd had told me this would be our first no-work-allowed vacation, but then he bumped into that man. The man was a developer and had all kinds of things he wanted to develop, and my father, a banker, had all kinds of money he wanted to lend. He gave me a new dress, and I felt better.
    “A new pink dress—that’s what I want,” I finally said. “This one was new, but look at it now.”
    “Dig, dig deeper!” she chanted. “Think hard about all that you want from your life. You’ve got to dig to find the real answers, to discover whatyou want. It’s easy to live on the surface, so dig! Dig harder! What else might you want?”
    Curves. I wanted curves, but they were something my father couldn’t buy me. As I felt the sand working its way deep into my girdle, itching me horribly, I knew how ridiculous it was to wear a hot, uncomfortable item in Florida. Still, a girl never knows when she might bump into the man of her dreams, and curves are essential to getting the all-important husband and insuring one’s economic future. Money, thanks to Daddy, I would never lack, but alluring curves, I had no idea why they weren’t yet showing up on me. I wanted them badly. I wanted to look as curvaceous as Marlena. Her hips were wide and the same size as her bust, and her waist was tiny like the necks of the birds trekking along the shore.
    “Why are you grinning?” she asked.
    “I think trying to build a snowman in the sand is funny,” I said, using my arm to rub sand out of my eyes.
    “My dear. Then stop thinking and keep moving. There are times when thinking hinders us from achieving the impossible,” she said as she stood with her arms stretched overhead. She began swaying as we do in art class when our teacher tells us to act like trees, feel like trees, then paint those trees. “You are in the spring of your life, child, when possibilities are blooming as profusely as Florida’s wildflowers.” She leaned to the left, then to the right again. “It’s looking so much like a snowman,” I heard her say. “You’re about there. Now let me rephrase my question to you. What is it that you dream of for your life, Lydia?”
    Her words suddenly reached me as if she were a fairy godmother and was tapping me on the shoulder with her magic wand and the world was growing pinker by the moment, probably from the setting sun. And then I