I heart Green Valley
Althea Bricks had arrived in Green Valley the previous night. She was staying at the Sky Lake Lodge, a fancy mountain retreat with her mother.
The trip had been booked a year previously when they were still trying to bridge their differences. At present, they were monosyllabic in their interactions with one another.
Mira Bricks had written off her daughter since Althea had run off with Bobby Brown, in her senior year of high school. Althea had been eighteen and in love so she had moved in with Bobby and his family. Her life had changed and not necessarily for the better. Both Bobby and Althea had finished high school, neither with good enough grades to go even to college. So, they had worked for five years as waiters at the same restaurant in Knoxville.
It was there that Bobby had caught the eye of an up and coming thirty year old yoga teacher with sexy moves and a business plan in Nashville. Without further ado, explanations or regrets he had left Althea via a text message she had found at the end of her shift. 'I am going to Nashville to be with Thalia, the love of my life. My parents want you to move out tomorrow. I want to say something nice to you but you have kept me back from reaching my potential for so long that I can only say that I am glad to be free.'
Althea had known deep down that her and Bobby were not going to be together for ever but she had been furious when she had read that message. She had been waitressing for five years because of Bobby. He had said that they would move to Florida where they would start a scuba diving business. Every summer they had spent three months at a scuba diving school on Jacksonville Beach, helping out and learning the skill.
She had moved in with another waitress, a friend she had met at the same restaurant she was working at. Lettuce Eat Healthy was a trendy restaurant with a young professional clientele where the tips were great. Corinne, though having a boyfriend, lived on her own in a studio, a couple of blocks from the restaurant. Both young women were the same age, twenty three. Althea had been used to live in one room with Bobby and to cater to the requests of his family so she didn't find her new situation much different. However, Corinne found the constant presence of a roommate in her studio apartment overwhelming and after two months she had asked Althea to try to find her own place somewhere else.
Meanwhile, Althea had tentatively got in touch with her mother who had felt vindicated that Althea's relationship with Bobby was over. 'I told you so,' was heard at almost all of their encounters. Althea had accepted that she had to eat humble pie in front of her mother however upsetting the continued rehashing of the past was for her.
She had asked if she can come home while looking for somewhere to rent.
That had been the point when mother and daughter had tried the most to get on with one another and in a burst of gratitude, Althea had booked a week of pampering at the Sky Lake Lodge in Green Valley. Corinne's boyfriend, by the name of Kevin Arthur was a barber and a stylist, a very sought after man. One of his clients by the name of Cletus Winston had talked at one point about the exquisite refurbishment of the Donner Lodge in Green Valley, now known as the Sky Lake Lodge and about the wonderful Donner bakery next door to it. Hearing the high praises of the place, Althea had looked it up. She would have liked to book a week straight away but the place was booked solid for a full six months. In the end, she had found a half price offer if she was booking the holiday for the following year.
Fast forward and here they were at Sky Lake, in the middle of May.
A knock on the door the following morning and Althea let in a smiling woman,
'Hello! I am Laura and I am here for your hand massages and aromatherapy.'
She set up a small table and asked Mira and Althea to choose their preferred oils. They both chose the orange oil and Laura started her work firstly on Mira's hands.
'Is this your first visit to Green Valley?' she asked a relaxed Mira.
'Indeed it is.'
'I am sure you will return again and again. Have you traveled far?'
'We live in Knoxville. I had always taken exotic holidays, Hawaii, Cancun, Italy, Greece. Green Valley was my daughter's choice.'
'I hope you will like it here. People are very friendly and welcoming.'
'Can you scuba dive at the lake?' Althea asked.
'I am sure you can snorkel and swim and get on a jet ski. For scuba diving there is Philadelphia Quarry but you might know it as it's closer to Knoxville.'
'I scuba dived only in Florida,' Althea said feeling like a snob. She had cringed when her mother had listed the faraway places they had gone on holiday during her childhood but she had sounded as lofty with her 'only in Florida' reply.
'One of our jet ski instructors, Nicholas Foley, is from Tallahassee,' Laura said. 'It's his second season here, May to October. He is the best.'
'Why is he here instead of Florida? Wouldn't it be better to employ local people as swimming instructors?' Mira inquired.
'Oh, there a plenty of swimmers around these parts but the Lodge wanted an expert and Nicholas is that. He is somewhat of a local too as he had spent most of his summers here at his uncle's cabin on the other side of the lake.
'If you take the jet ski on the lake you will see his uncle's cabin. Out of all possible designs he had built himself a lighthouse.'
'Why? How was he allowed? Are there no planning rules on these parts?' Mira was an architect at pains to keep up with all the requirements and zoning of an area.
'He is our famous resident writer, Carlton Foley. He is indulged in his folly,' Laura laughed and Althea smiled at the pun.
'I have never heard of him,' she confessed.
'He writes apocaliptic science fiction. It's not everyone's cup of tea.'
'I have read Seaglass,' Mira said sounding surprised, ' it's about the earth being completely submerged in the oceans and people living on submarines, cruise ships and mountain tops with oxygen masks or on oil platforms that are rusting away. There is only seaweed and fish to eat and nothing can be rebuilt. Babies cannot be born because there is nowhere to live anymore.
'I would have thought its author lived somewhere fancy like New York,' she added.
'He is a very unassuming old man,' Laura said, 'you can get his books for free from the reception desk.'
'I would never have thought about what happens to humans if land disappeared,' Althea exclaimed. 'How did the story end?'
'Sadly, the human life is extinguished on earth by the end of the novel but we know that there are other life forms in the universe,' Laura answered.
'Carlton Foley is not so old,' Althea said reading from her phone. 'He is fifty five, the same age as you, mom.'
Laura who had finished massaging Mira's hands had asked the two women to swap places at her small table. Althea was now sitting having her hands massaged while Mira was retouching her lipstick in a hand held mirror.
'My daughter used to read voraciously when she was sixteen. She was aiming to do pre-law at Stanford. Unfortunately, instead of doing that, she had found a boyfriend by the time she was eighteen.'
'I did the same,' Laura said cheerfully, 'but it's never too late to get back to studying. I got my GED last year when I was twenty eight. I am still together with my highschool sweetheart and we have a seven year old daughter. I want her to know that it's no shame to do things differently.'
Mira had hoped that Althea would go back to the girl she had been at sixteen, eager to go to college. She was willing to pay her fees at any good local college or university. But Althea had refused, continuing to do her waitressing. That was the crux of their bitterness, the mother unhappy that her daughter wasn't more ambitious and the daughter unhappy that her mother couldn't accept that waitressing was what she wanted to do at that point in her life.
'I am done,' Laura said, 'I might see you around the Lodge. Don't forget to check out the water sports on the lake.'
Still not actively talking, Mira and Althea went to reception where Mira asked to borrow a few of Carlton Foley's books and Althea inquired about the water sports timetable. She was shown the directions to the pontoon and had found out that she could jet ski anytime between twelve and six.
'Are you coming with me?' she asked Mira. She was hoping that her mother would see her on the water and realize how good she was at watersports and how happy they made her. Last summer, she had gone back to Jacksonville Beach by herself and she was planning to go again for three months this summer.
'I have never been on a jet ski,' Mira said.
'I will take you around the lake, you will love it,' Althea said excitedly. She would show her mother that she wasn't a write off. She might not be doing law but she loved being on water.
The water sport shop was perched at the edge of the lake, a group of people already being kitted up for water activities.
'How can I help you,' a shop assistant asked Althea.
'I want to book a jet ski session for me and my mom on a double scooter.'
'Have you been on a jet ski before? You can ride with our instructors if you dont want to go on your own.'
'Yes, I have been on jet skis before, I am a certified instructor myself,' she said, proudly showing her certificate.
'Great, I can book you two for three o'clock. At the moment, all of us are looking after a group who had booked a team bonding session.'
Indeed, four shop assistants were explaining the safety elements of the jet skis to ten young men and women.
Althea and Mira walked over to a bench further up on the bank and sat down, each poised to read a book while at the same time watching the proceedings on the lake. They both felt softer towards each other. Mira had decided to stop seeing her daughter as a disappointment and a failure that reflected bad on her as a mother. Her daughter was already twenty four years old, she was healthy, had a job and she apparently loved jet skis. Althea was her own person who wasn't living the fairytale life Mira had wanted for her and Mira had to accept it.
Althea had decided to stop seeing her mother as a control freak and see her only as a person who had tried her best to raise a daughter on her own. Althea's father had been a sporadic presence in her life. He was an interior designer in Nashville and gay. The story was that Mira and Nathan had met as students, then worked together for the same architecture firm and got engaged when they had turned thirty. They had been both brought up as straight laced Baptists so it had been a long struggle for Nathan to come out as gay. He had paid regularly his child support money and had taken Althea out a few hours on the first Saturday of every month until she was eighteen. That had been the extent of his involvement in the life of his daughter. At present, he had offered to help her if she had wanted to rent an apartment but when she had told him that she was back at home with Mira, he had bought her a three year old Ford Mustang instead.
So mother and daughter were sitting quietly by the lake hoping that the holiday would weave a magical rapprochement between the two of them.
The lake was still and sparkling white in the sunshine. The noise of the jet skis was the background of their Carlton Foley reading experience.
'Do you think we should stop to say hello to him while on the lake?' Althea said. She had been perusing Seaglass whilst trying to figure out who out of the three male instructors on the shore was Nicholas Foley. They were all buff young men, the fourth being a woman.
'Say hello to whom?' Mira had asked engrossed as she was in her book, not paying attention to anything else.
'Carlton Foley, who else?'
'No, I think we shouldn't intrude. In fact, he might even shoot at trespassers docking on his pontoon.'
'We can call for him and wave at him from our jet ski,' Althea said.
'No, that would be extremely embarrassing.'
Althea kept looking towards the lake,
'Which of those men do you think is Nicholas Foley?'
'The brown hair guy with the black t-shirt,' Mira replied. 'Carlton Foley has brown hair, I noticed his picture at the back of my book.'
Althea checked the back of her own book and then looked him up on her phone.
'He kept a low profile during the years. He is twice divorced, has one daughter who is thirty two and who is a writer herself. He has one brother, Callum, so probably Nicholas is Callum's son.'
They were both looking forward to jet skiing, Mira with trepidation and Althea with excitement. Lunch had been forgotten in favour of a couple of slices of banana cake from the Donner Bakery next door to the Lodge and for coffees from a vending machine by the water sport shop.
'This cake is to die for,' Mira exclaimed. For years, she had been the type of helicopter mother baking for all of Althea's school events so she knew a lot about good baking. Nowadays, she was a frugal eater, everyday having a late brunch and an early dinner, rarely bothering with a dessert. The banana cake had been a treat.
At two thirty they made their way back to the shop where the brown hair guy greeted them, introducing himself as Nicholas.
Mira smiled secretly, glad that she had guessed correctly who he was.
Althea had liked his friendly manner, ending up telling him all about her summers spent on Jacksonville Beach and him telling her about his all year round jet skiing at Carrabelle on the forgotten coast of Florida. The two women signed their waivers and were ready for their forty-five minutes ride.
'We heard about Carlton Foley, the writer, having a very easy to spot house on the lake,' Althea said. 'Is he welcoming if his fans are stopping by for pictures?'
'No, he is not welcoming,' Nicholas replied, 'he had put a sort of netting on a ten meters radius around his pontoon and he had installed a camera with an alarm on the pontoon itself. At least once a month that alarm is triggered by something and it makes a crazy barking noise for a full five minutes.'
He smiled at Althea,
'If you really want to meet him, I can briefly introduce you to him tonight. He is my uncle and most evenings, we have dinner at the Lodge.'
'We are guests at the Lodge ourselves,' Mira intervened, 'can we invite the two of you to join us for dinner? It would be such a pleasure to meet him and we promise not to be embarrassing.'
'I will speak to him. Usually when I tell him that someone would like to meet him, he literally just shakes their hands and he is done. Since his accident five years ago he has lived a very solitary life.'
'I am so sorry. I didn't know about his accident ,' Mira said crestfallen. 'Of course, just a brief hand shake with Mr Foley would be an honour.'
Their life jackets on, Althea and Mira got on their jet ski. Sky Lake was four miles long and about half a mile wide at its widest.
Not wanting to scare her mother, Althea was keeping the speed at thirty miles per hour. The lake was quiet, no other scooters or boats, but they could see pontoons and glimses of houses on the shore. In less than ten minutes they had reached the other end of the lake where the round roof and top windows of a building peaked through the green foliage of dogwood trees. It was well hidden in the woods, very inconspicuous; if you didn't know it was there, you could have missed it. There was net fencing on wooden posts around a black painted pontoon. Althea stopped their scooter close to the shore and the net.
'Shall we go for a walk around?' she asked Mira.
'Or do you want to have a go at driving the scooter?'
'Neither,' Mira replied, holding tight on to the rear handles. Althea had made the journey look easy but Nicholas had told them to be careful that at slow speeds the doubke jet ski was tippy. Althea had smiled and had said confidently that she knew what she was doing.
'I don't want to trespass on Foley's property, especially if we are to meet him tonight,' Mira added.
'Then let me show you what I can do on a scooter,' Althea said gleefully, 'hold on tightly.'
'Don't you dare to scare me with your antics,' her mother screamed when Althea sped up and a splash of water drenched them both.
They got back to the Lodge in six minutes and with a perfect turn they went back towards the lighthouse, each time going a bit faster.
'This is the last turn,' Althea shouted after the fourth round. They both had huge smiles when they got off the jet ski. Mira's legs were shaky but she was feeling exhilarated. Althea was on her element, already talking about booking another session for the following day.
'Not for me,' Mira said, 'tomorrow, I will spend the entire day at the spa and indoor pool.'
They had agreed with Nicholas to meet with him and his uncle at the bar at eight o'clock that night.
By seven thirty, Mira and Althea were already at the bar each with a fruity cocktail watching the other guests. The Sky Lake Lodge seemed to attract an odd clientele. Some twenty women dressed in 1950's attire were milling around surrounded by an assorted entourage of men, children and other women.
'What is going on here?' Mira asked one of the bartenders.
'Tonight, we have the prize giving and farewell party for Miss Pin-Up beauty pageant. The first of its kind in Tennessee, we even had a contestant from Memphis.'
'Did we miss the contest?'
'I am afraid you did. The pageant was held yesterday. The organisers had booked the Lodge's ballroom for both Saturday and for tonight. The awards will be given at nine, the doors to the ballroom will open at eight. The event was sold out for months especially as Sienna Diaz is part of the jury.'
'Sienna Diaz, the actress?' Althea gasped. 'What is this place? Firstly, Carlton Foley and now Sienna Diaz!'
The bar was suddenly empty, Mira and Althea the only ones sitting with their drinks.
It was eight o'clock and Mira was wondering if they should still wait for the Foleys at the bar or take a seat in the restaurant.
'Althea, Mira, pleased to see you again tonight,' they heard Nicholas saying from behind them.
They were introduced to Carlton Foley, a tall man with a piercing stare. Being the only guests in the restaurant, they couldn't avoid sitting together.
'Did you know about Sienna Diaz being here tonight and about the Miss Pin-Up pageant?' Althea asked Nicholas.
'I knew a pageant was on but I didn't really care about it. I came over from Florida only a week ago.'
'What is it you are talking about?' Carlton asked.
'That tonight, everyone at the Lodge, with our exception, is in the ballroom at the award ceremony for Miss Pin-Up Tennessee,' Mira said.
'I am glad of it,' Carlton said perusing the menu. He preferred quietness, his usual table at the Lodge being in a hidden alcove out of sight and hearing of other guests.
He rarely accepted to eat with strangers but Nicholas had been so keen to get to know this Althea that he had agreed to meet the two women. He thought that the mother looked like she could have been part of the Miss Pin-Up pageant herself with her pencil skirt, bow shirt and pinned up hair.
'We love your books,' Althea said, 'how do you come up with ideas for them?'
'I take plenty of ideas from every day life and from every day disasters. I need only patience to develop them into my own stories.'
The dinner went on with two separate conversations: Nicholas and Althea going back to chatting about their love of water sports and, to their own surprise, Mira and Carlton were talking about how fulfilled or not they felt in their own skins.
'I must confess, I live for my work,' Mira said. 'Even my holidays are a study of architectural styles and designs. I imagine it's the same for you, as a writer.'
'Since my accident, I am more of a rambler than a writer. In both the sense of a walker and a person who spouts nonsense.'
'What happened to you?'
'I was in a stupid rear end car accident where the airbag deployment in my car caused me permanent hear loss in my left year and tinnitus in my right ear. I struggle to keep up a conversation in a noisy environment, I cannot sleep well and my concentration levels have plummeted. Instead of writing, now I am journalling, putting on paper incoherent ideas and daily frustrations.'
They were finishing their meal when the manager of the hotel approached them with a request,
'Mr Foley, on behalf of the organising committee of our pageant, we would like to invite you to be the one who hands out the prizes tonight. It would be our greatest pleasure and honour to have you take part in our event. We hope that the pageant would return again next year, bigger and better.'
Althea and Nicholas were watching him pleadingly and even the workaholic Mira was smiling beguilingly at him so Carlton couldn't refuse. He handed out the prizes and smiled for pictures and was introduced to Sienna Diaz who was approachable and funny and ended up inviting their party of four to a picnic at her house.
Our Althea and Mira went to their room that night happy in the knowledge that they would be meeting again with Nicholas and Carlton throughout their stay at the Lodge. Who knows, maybe a kinship of sorts would emerge: they would get to know each other better, maybe they would keep in touch.
The End
