Chapter Three
How the Great Love Affair Began
We
met near the crash and burn of the ocean.
Above us, a plane flew across the sky, far away from this place…
Confessions of a Post-teenage Hermit
Okay, I may have given you a false
impression; time to set things straight. No one should feel sorry for me. First
of all, I am now officially employed most mornings at The Beach Shack, my
favorite café overlooking the sea along the main boulevard of Wentworth. My
cousin Keira manages this place. Like me, she’s kind of the black sheep in her
family. Unlike me, her family are kind and generous and proud of her. It is
from this lofty countertop that I can start to tell you all about the story of
my young life, how I met Ben, fell in love with Ben, lost Ben (yes yes yes all
of that is included) but also about my family and the picturesque coastline I
grew up visiting.
When I was small, my family owned real
estate in a vast connection of Los Angeles streets, but it was the sprawling,
ostentatious Bel Air mansion that my father liked most. My mother, on the other
hand, enjoyed shifting with the seasons. She was from an old, eccentric
European family but liked to roam around Venice Beach on weekends with me and
my sisters after she’d finished shopping along Rodeo Drive. We took long trips
together and one summer Mom discovered a tiny coastal town called Wentworth,
not far from Los Angeles and fell in love with it.
My parents were polar opposites, so their
split, a few years later, was not a total surprise. My Mom liked picnics,
markets and the beach, amongst other things. My father preferred expensive
restaurants, designer stores and playing tennis at his stuffy country club. He
owned an office block near Rodeo Drive and frequented The Hide Out (my sisters
and I named the company-owned apartment because it was the place my father’s
dalliances with his secretary took place) way out in the Hills. When we were
growing up, Dad lived a life of careless disregard for the feelings of others
and excessive monetary wealth gave him power he mostly abused. He was also
almost as vain as my sisters and never met a mirror he didn’t like. Finally my
mother had enough of his philandering and his selfishness; two ‘vices’ as she put it, one in the same.
My mother returned to New York and my
sisters and I became bi-coastal. As I grew up, my older sister Liz was left in
charge of Melissa and me (a lot). When we were in our father’s care, his lack
of parental supervision allowed me to effectively raise myself. In many ways I
was a scholarly and quiet child. I was often found reading and scribbling
whilst Melissa and Liz jostled for supremacy in front of the full length
mirrors of their adjoining bedrooms, trying on our mom’s discarded designer
outfits. There was only a year between us all, so we shared clothes as often as
we jostled for parental attention.
My sisters never showed any interest in
the animal shelter I volunteered at when I was growing up and even less
interest in the various dogs and cats I adopted and brought home. The good
thing about my Dad is that he liked Sable, our part Persian cat; color: cream, coat: long, texture: fluffy and
Muffin, our part boxer part something else rescue dog; color: tan, coat: short haired, texture: wrinkly. Most of the dogs
are mixed with something else. It’s a sad fact of life but the pure breeds
never get left by the roadside. I love my mutts, though. Sable and Muffin are
the most gorgeous pets any person could want.
It’s kind of strange that my Dad has a soft
spot for them. I say “strange” because he doesn’t have a soft spot for any
other living creature – although he’s quite fond of my older sister Liz. She’s
made him proud since my Mom left; she’s sort of taken over. Before the
financial crisis my father lived an extravagant life. Let’s face it, my sisters
and I were spoiled; just not with any obvious displays of affection.
As our carbon footprint grew, so too, did
we grow, living in a fancy house with plenty of food to eat and nice manners
reserved for important people and lavish dinner parties. The Bel Air mansion
where I grew up was effectively a house of women ruled by one man, my father.
There were often producers and directors along with the actors wandering into
the house in various stages of disrepair.
Liz, my older sister, has been absent more
than present. She only recently returned to LA, after going away to college on
the East Coast. Melissa, my sister, younger by one year, had her own ideas and
her own set of friends. As we grew up, we grew apart, and we’d never been close
to begin with. Melissa married the first rich guy who asked her. She explained
to my parents that she was “so in love” she couldn’t resist and they
approved of her choice, though she was only eighteen.
The summer house, Kellynch, has been in the family since my great-great-grandfather
migrated from England to establish one of the big movie studios California
would one day become known for. Over time, the family sold off parts of the
land overlooking the beach; land that had been my family’s history, my father
told me (my mother was not impressed with American history) for a hundred
years. This was forever time in my
world. My great-grandfather had married a European heiress to replenish the
family fortune after the Depression but the money had long-since been depleted
through the decades and divorces (my family was known for divorces and
depression problems – “it’s just who we are” my mother informed me) before she
went to New York to “fulfil her potential”).
Anyway, we were still seriously rich up
until a few weeks ago. Big deal, as you may have noticed we’ve been poor in
most of the things that matter. There were family portraits in the hallway of
the Bel Air mansion (I always called it that when I was older) of my great-great-grandparent’s
wedding. My great-great-grandmother was pictured in her wedding gown; white lace
dripping over her shoulders like she was drowning in snow whilst saying her
vows (as if there would ever be snow in Los Angeles!). As a little girl, I looked at her sepia image
and wondered how happy she had been on that day. They never smiled back then.
At sixteen, I believed in the perfect love.
Mostly, I have Ben to thank for that.
Ben Wentworth’s family also had some claim
on the seaside town that was named after his ancestors. Although Ben’s family
had emigrated from war-torn Europe, they had once owned most of the beach side
real estate until it was sold up over the years and the family assets were
decimated in the same way my family’s assets had been enhanced.
One
summer, Ben Wentworth was new in town and he volunteered to help the life
guards near The Beach Shack on Saturdays. He’d made headline news amongst the
summering teenagers because he was nearly famous. Ben had played a role on a
children’s television show that filmed along the beach that summer (his aunt
was the casting director) and he was officially on his own while he filmed the
series. The production paid for him and the rest of the cast to stay in modest
accommodation near the beach and on his days off he’d be surfing with his
brother Harley and their friends, hanging out on the beach without their on-set
chaperone. I’d noticed him loads of times but never had the courage to speak to
him.
I was way too shy to become an actor or a
model like my sister Elizabeth; and as my father assured Liz when he thought I
was out of earshot, “Jane’s not nearly decorative enough. I mean, she’s pretty
but she lacks that certain… star quality. She can barely manage to speak up for
herself in company. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her. Perhaps she has
one of those modern conditions…”
“Aspergers?” my older sister ventured.
“That’s not funny Liz…. I can hear you…” I
yelled from the kitchen as I helped stack the dishwasher.
“Ah, she speaks,” my father said, in one of
his rare displays of humor.
I was used to the hurtful comments Dad
found amusing and usually did my best to ignore them. I’d take off after I’d
arrived home to go up to my room and write. I loved that summer in Wentworth
and I refused to let my family ruin it. I’d seen Ben for the first time, the
weather was almost always clear, the sky a perfect blue. My aunt and uncle had bought the coffee shop
along the boulevard and renamed it The Beach Shack. The place served good
coffee. It housed perfect light and benches for me to use while I wrote in my
blog.
Ben had finished filming the television
show by then and attended the local high school. My sisters and I were
preparing to go to boarding school after summer. We’d previously attended high
school in Los Angeles (The Los Angeles High School for Young Ladies or HSYL)
with our cousins. HSYL was a notoriously snobbish place filled with stuck up
girls from rich families like mine. The difference between our old school and
our new school, Hallowed Halls (HH), was that HH was co-educational. My Godmother
insisted that Hallowed Halls would be better for forming social connections.
Our cousins still attended HSYL but were transferring to Sunrise High – where
the notoriously mean Princesses, a
social group only comparable to the Socials
in our select new boarding school, ruled.
That summer I religiously took Muffin (who
was just a puppy) for his morning walk along the boardwalk from our beach
house. I’d stop off at the café to write; anything to get away from my family
as breakfast was a noisy affair inevitably resulting in an argument.
Sometimes I’d meet up with my cousins, Keira,
Lia, Hailee, Ella and Kate, and their parents along the way. Keira was the
cousin I was closest to and we were so alike we’d become close friends over the
years. Together, we’d shop or go to the beach during summer and sometimes all
the sisters would join us. It was always fun with them around and for some
reason I got along with my cousins way better than my own sisters.
I tried to write in my blog most days but
often I wasn’t sure where to start. Back then, my journal was titled, Confessions of a Teenage Hermit. Original, I know. It was just before freshman year
and my sisters and I were in the process of transferring from The Los Angeles
High School for Young Ladies to Hallowed Halls. There was a more official
sounding name but that was the name we called it. It had an ominous façade and
dark lattice work, but a strangely modern, welcoming interior.
I was excited to be getting out of my
immediate area. After all, only summers were spent in Wentworth. The rest of
the time I was in Beverly Hills and Bel Air and those streets, though lovely,
were as familiar to me as air.
When I wrote in my blog I usually added a
few words and pictures describing the places and people I was acquainted with,
“nothing of consequence” my father noted when he found one of my printed posts
lying around in the living room of our beach house. I wrote about meeting this cute boy (Ben) and
how I’d probably never see him again.
“Who’s the boy?” my sister Melissa giggled.
I snatched the page away from my nosey
little sister.
My father showed less interest.
I’d met Ben earlier, at The Beach Shack
café and way before that when his father had worked for us. Ben was older now.
I was fairly sure he’d have plenty of teenage girl admirers. It certainly
seemed like he did if the text messages that kept beeping on his cell as he sat
with his friends over lunch were anything to go by. I remember chewing the end
of my pencil, as I tried to conjure up the structure of a particularly
meaningful sentence. I was just looking at him walk out of the room and return.
“You love to watch him go,” my cousin Lia
(who was a year younger than me), added as she wrapped her hands around my
face, to surprise me, giggling as she entered The Beach Shack. I blushed and
looked away.
He’d had a slight smile when we met up
again in the coffee shop that summer before my freshman year.
I was reading Sense and Sensibility. It
was one of my favorite Austen novels. After reading Little Women and all of the Brontes I’d now set myself the task of
reading the complete works of Jane Austen.
“Hey, I’ve read that,” Ben said, as he
leant over to help me retrieve my papers from the floor. Conveniently, a rare
ocean breeze had swept them off my table after my cousins had left. I could not
hide my surprise.
“You’re the first boy I’ve ever met who’s
read a Jane Austen novel,” I said, in disbelief.
“Well, I’m not exactly typical.” He leant
in closer, “My agent was putting me up for a role in some British film, it’s
Austen-inspired, so I had to school myself up.”
“Wow. Did you get the part?”
“Nah. Would I be hanging out on the beach
if I got the part? They said I wasn’t the right type, wanted someone more like
a teen Hugh Grant.”
“And what are you?”
“The casting agent described me as a teen
Channing Tatum.”
“Oh, please,” I said. It was true. Ben was
so buff but I was barely out of middle school and wasn’t going to be the first
to tell him. Lack of confidence was not his problem.
“It’s okay; I’m over all of that. It was my
aunt’s idea. She’s the agent. I think I’m going to concentrate on high school
now. This acting gig was just a favor to her. All I’ve ever wanted to be is a
pilot; a fighter pilot in the Air Force. I need perfect grades for that.” He
pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket in the shape of a paper
plane and glided it through the air.
“Besides, I just got a letter. I’m going
to Hallowed Halls in my junior year. I just won a full scholarship.”
“Wow. That’s where my sister and I are
going to school this fall.”
He considered my response and nodded.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he continued, “I
didn’t even submit the application, my parents did. But I need to do well at
school and… that’s the best place to go… no distractions. They’re not enrolling
me until junior year. My parents don’t want me moving away from home until I’m
sixteen.”
I could have told him mine were glad to see
me go, but I didn’t. I was disappointed I wouldn’t get to see him again for
another two years, if ever. Plans could change.
Just then a plane flew overhead beyond the
windows of the café. We both stopped and watched it form a tiny blip in the
distance.
“That,” Ben said, “is pure freedom.”
Wow, actor, waiter, officer-to-be. Was
there anything this boy wasn’t or couldn’t be?
“Rich,” my sister Melissa informed me when
I told her about him that night. “I heard about his family. Sure, they founded
Wentworth but now they are just poor relations. The Elliots bought up the town
about twenty years ago so I don’t think you should tell Dad too much about your
new best friend.”
See what I mean about my family being
elitist? I’m totally embarrassed for them, it started way back then.
That night, as I lay on my bed in the
beach house I finished blogging. I remembered Ben’s smile, his tan and his
faded t-shirt. He looked like he’d been living outside his whole life. His hair
was a blonde streaked, tousled mess. He smelt like flowers and sun. I
remembered his parting words…
“The story was kind of interesting. It’s
what girls read, right? I have an older sister so I’ve acquainted myself with
the female mind.”
“Is that a joke?” I mumbled.
“Just kidding. I’ve got an older sister
and she left it lying around.”
“Oh, I have sisters too.”
“Younger or older?”
“Both.”
And our conversations continued like
that, every morning for the next week until he turned up on my porch a month
later.
“Just like one of those strays you insist
on bringing home,” my sister Liz noted.
