PACIFIC ECHOES,
by Charles E.J. Moulton
has "3899" words.
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The deep blue tone of the Sunday morning sky drove her out
of the house, away from her lonely breakfast table, onto her private beach. The
green grass on the peninsula gave Amanda a reason to take the easel, the
canvas, the paint and the brushes out and discover a familiar view anew. She
chose her favorite spot and settled down a few paces away from her house by the
bay, close to the water.
At first, she watched the almost cloudless early summer sky.
The occasional cloud slowly drifted across the blue eternity. The slight wind
blew little bubbles into the white fog of the cumulus gave her a kind promise
to remain steadfast until she had captured it in oil. The deep blue color
shifted into turquoise and onto a kind of greenish blue color. Higher up in the
stratosphere, though, the lighter blue tones transcended almost into white.
Deeper down, the darker and richer shifts and tinges appeared.
Four or five different colors and one mornings work waited right here.
Amanda began, hearing those Pacific echoes splash against the shore. She lifted her brush and dipped it into the color, mixing the blue with the white and adding some water. Her brush-strokes light, she created a shifting range of differences. Subtle and sensitive, the clouds slowly moved in with the sky.
The shadow in a dark corner at one point blended in with the cloud itself.
Amanda’s hair blew from side to side in the gust of a warm wind. It fluttered past her countenance, slipped in past her neck and down her back. The ocean breeze caressed her, giving her a closeness to nature that she needed in order to portray this bay in the right manner. As she moved the brush up and down, her eyes caught sight of the golden ring on her finger.. Memories of Alan and Johnny flooded her braincells. Pancake breakfasts on the terrace. Piano lessons in the music room, board games on the kitchen table. Amanda’s happiness over professional family luck proved greater than her own longing for their company. Naturally, she felt happy for them working together in such a great city.
Still, with them not around – life seemed emptier.
Shaking it off, she turned to the painting again.
Amanda’s artwork of this scenery had a three dozen faces: a night-time view, a morning view, an autumn sky, a winter landscape, at sunset, at sunrise. During the three years she had owned this house, the sky had never been so clear as today.
The bay all to herself, she could afford to feel free and easy. She didn’t. A light summer outfit thrown over a drying body. The painting beckoned, but so did the water. And for a while there, Amanda conversed with those two emotions. Yes, she came here to paint. Didn’t she actually want to arrange an exhibition near Sunset Boulevard with a selection of these paintings? Restlessness overcame her again and Amanda’s head snapped toward the left, as if the answer lay over there.
“Restless,” she whispered to herself. “I feel restless.”
That emotion smiled at her, giving in, telling her that the call of the water could claim its own right to abduct her for a moment.
And so, Amanda took off her sandals and stood up, letting the fingers of her right hand make love to the white canvas. She took a long, healthy, romantic look at the whiteness of it and wondered what the painting would look when it was finished.
The water called her to discover what was inside. Something.
She expected no one today and the private beach was deserted. Amanda threw her sandals off and walked barefoot into the cool water. The chill felt unusual on her warm body at first. It reacted with surprise. Her own gentle and large swim strokes resembled the technique she used when painting. Long and sweepingly emotional gestures. The unique sound of splashing water giving her a sense of security.
That “something” beckoned, called for her to come closer.
That “something” waited for her to discover it.
Soon, she found herself way out beyond the territory of her private beach.
Amanda Hines looked back onto where her canvas stood, splashing with her arms. The clouds appeared in a different light from here. They were not friendly. Cold. Maybe the chill of the water inspired it.
Amanda swam back, remembering a time when she had been a hardworking artist trying to make it in the competitive business. Back then there had been no million dollar beach house. No busy director husband travelling with his acting son. No thousand dollar paintings, no ten thousand dollar scenery for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Just Amanda, a chick with a Masters Degree. A girl desperate to get a job. Today, in her successful life, her husband and son took an increasingly more important role in her life. With them gone for longer than a month, Amanda felt restless.
“I need them,” she sobbed. “God, I need them. Why am I so dependent on them?”
As she swam back, she cried. The salty ocean water mixed with the saltwater in her eyes. Having them around at important exhibitions exhilarated her life. Those Sunday morning breakfasts with pancakes and maple syrup on the terrace gave her the joy now no success could give her. Here at home, she wasn’t the successful painter, the famous stage designer or the celebrity sculptor. Here, she was Johnny’s mom and Alan’s wife. With them in Paris, she felt incomplete. Lonely. She missed helping Johnny with his homework, making kissing Alan good night or complaining about how much washing there was to be done.
The water cooled down the rest of the jitters she had felt up until the opening of the gallery. As her beach approached nearer with every stroke and every splash, she remembered the buzz, the music, the stars, the food, the press, the interviews, the press conferences and the fans.
Back on the beach, she sat down again on her garden chair.
Sighing, she closed her eyes, swearing to cool down.
After all, just a month and they would be back.
Not long.
Not long at all.
The colors mixed almost on their own without effort. A sunrise appeared, a bay, green grass, waves crashing against the shore. All the while, the warm weather eased the pain.
Soon, she could inspect a painting of her favorite beach.
Something called her onto the shoreline. Again.
That “something” called for her to wander and uncover it.
“Give me a sign, God,” she whispered to herself. “Anything.”
A sign that tells you what? God mused.
“A sign that relieves how much I miss my family,” Amanda cried. Her feet shuffled along the beach. As she gazed at the large house, she felt like screaming out at the entire paparazzi that fame really gave no security to avoid pain. First after having spent the last four years constantly with your family, she knew what it meant not to be with them.
Okay, she mumbled to herself, either Johnny was here or Alan.
Both of them gone?
Hard.
Very hard.
We already have given you a sign, dear, God answered. You just have to find it.
The sand tickled her naked toes and made her feel at one with this beauty. Where was Alan right now? Preparing a scene with Johnny, taking a walk in Paris? What time was it there? Six o’clock in the evening. Maybe, he dined with a friend. Arranged a Sunday shoot? Helped Johnny’s tutor coach him? Maybe Alan, Johnny and the other co-stars sat at Foquet’s half-way down Champs Elysée, chatting with Barbra Streisand or Mireille Mathieu.
Amanda remembered Alan proposing.
And cried.
Three months without them?
Too long.
Much too long.
These two months felt long enough.
But another month might force her to fly to Paris.
As she contemplated what her husband and son were doing in France at the moment, one bobbing bottle approached her. She saw it lightly dancing on the waves. It looked like an old friend, coming back to say hello. Transparent and most certainly one that they would sell at IKEA, it held a small note inside. It seemed no bigger than an A5 sized paper.
Amanda froze still, hearing God’s voice echo in her mind.
You wanted a sign, girl. There it is.
A revelation, she told herself.
Or maybe just a surprise.
Somehow, Amanda knew the premonition by the painting soared within her still. The manifestation floated on the waves. A message in a bottle.
A certain spookiness overcame her.
She quickly discarded it.
“From Alan?” she whispered to herself and then laughed.
How silly.
Of course not.
A famous woman on her private beach finds a message in a bottle, she rambled in her mind, imitating the press. Extraordinarily enough, Amanda looked inside herself and discovered that the pain in her subsided.
Why? Alan and Johnny were still just as gone.
Like a rainbow after a storm, the winds of change offered Amanda a resting spot.
“God always keeps his promise,” Amanda whispered to herself.
Now, Amanda felt like a little girl opening a present.
Amanda waded into the water, letting her body slowly delve deeper into the salty bay. Her hand stretching out and reaching for it, she slipped and fell. Seaweed trickled into her nose and, subsequently, a stone cut her foot. She yelped with pain, clutching her foot, the pain sending signals to her brain to sit down and take care of herself.
The sting that bugged every part of her foot made it difficult to walk. The waves were up toward her hips now. Suddenly, her fear crawled up from that foot to her hands and made them create fists. Amanda struggled to escape the waves, holding the bottle up above her head like runner holding a trophy.
Hobbling up on the beach, she sat down and examined it. A small cut graced the her left big toe. The blood trickled out quite badly, but she knew that saltwater had a healing function. And so, she stretched her feet out in the oncoming waves of the tide. Every wave at the moment felt like a really mean wasp penetrating her skin. However, she knew that the cut would be gone in ten minutes. Accordingly, she remained sitting at the edge of shore.
The bottle beckoned, like the painting had before.
She gazed at the canvas and the easel quite a way over toward the other side of the beach. A connection? God called her out to paint, but here she was holding a message in a bottle. How quaint.
“Who threw you in the water?” she remarked, talking to the bottle, feeling a bit silly again doing so. Would the bottle answer her? Probably not. Even big celebrities feel insecure at times, she thought to herself. At those moments, they talk to bottles. Or drink what is in them, she added with a laugh.
But this bottle was special, was it not?
It held a message inside it.
When she opened the bottle, it made a small pop, like the sound of a small champagne cork. The bottle indeed looked like the ones she had in the kitchen. Indeed, she bought these kinds of bottles at IKEA and God knows that the fans had been there, too. But she was almost positive this bottle had a few more years on its back that that. The clear marks of years of salty ocean waves could be noticed and the message itself yellowed with age.
Turning the bottle on its head, the message fluttered out on her lap and made a little dance in the gusts of wind. These gusts felt almost divine. Amanda felt something she hadn’t felt in years. The texture and feel of the paper seemed familiar. Childish excitement spread like wildfire in her spirit. She recognized this thing. That couldn’t be, could it? That small paper, pink on the inside and white on the outside, resembled her own child stationary.
An excited little bird fluttered around inside her soul.
God sent you a message. God sent you a message, it sang in a famous teasing melody. Amanda laughed at that little bird.
“Stop it,” she reprimanded the bird.
But it’s twue, the bird answered.
And now, Amanda knew the name of that teasing bird: her own favorite cartoon character: Tweety.
Tweety graced the top of the child stationary.
She looked up, letting the wind kiss to her again, and wondered.
The writing of a girl seeking a loved one decorated the pages. Curved, elegant, childish, it entailed an attempt at adult attitudes. Memories came flooding back, memories of early love, schoolgirls on yards writing boyfriend’s love notes. Lost youth, gained wisdom, inner pain? Whatever that meant, here in her hand lay a proof of youth. Some people would say that Amanda still retained her youth with 36. But these words echoed of an earlier time.
One tear trickled down her cheeks, her heart throbbing.
She slapped her hand on top of her own mouth, giving out a shriek of excitement.
Amanda started laughing uncontrollably.
She looked out toward the sea, trying to imagine where this bottle had been all this time. Had it traveled the entire coast from Washington State to the lower Californian coast. And why did it come to her, exactly at this time, when God promised to give her a sign.
Words of confusion and surprise buzzed about inside her head.
This message had been thrown in the water by herself many, many eons ago.
Quickly as a speed train and light as a feather, she picked up the bottle and left for the house. Arriving on the terrace, she realized the canvas and the easel and the rest of the art waited somewhere down the shoreline. So, Amanda set down the bottle, pointed at it and reprimanded:
“Don’t you dare move!”
Feeling like a little kid, she ran to her painting, thinking about how good God was and how much he helped her through all of the difficulties in her own life. She felt not at all like the graceful woman that had jet-setted through Hollywood yesterday. She probably looked like a silly, female version of Mr. Bean running off to save her own painting from the approaching tide.
Giddy and giggly, she mumbled non-distinguishable words to herself about returning to paradise. What a joy to have a private beach house, she thought to herself. You can run around looking silly and nobody cares. Nobody tells you to stride around and try to impress the press or give them all perfect dental gloss when CNN orders a press conference.
Scrambling and shoving adding her summer frock to her bathing suit, she hummed the family song. It was actually Alan’s and her song. With Johnny’s arrival out of her tummy, the song elevated to the status to family song.
John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” took form within the confines of a female painter’s voice.
“You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest,” Amanda chanted.
Running like crazy once again to the house, she tore the terrace door open and rushed inside. The painting artillery landed straight in her art studio to the left of the living room.
Not much time was wasted on this action.
One thought was in her mind and one thought only.
She headed for the phone, trying to remember the telephone number of Alan’s hotel suite in Paris. She called the number every day. It didn’t matter. Her mobile phone knew the number. But where was the phone? The spacious house deserted and twice as large today, it took a while to comb through the white emptiness of it. The beige couch. Had she dropped it over by the big windows overlooking the grassy patch? Had she left it on the brown cupboard? In the kitchen, maybe? Gosh, sleeping on the couch last night probably served her ill. In the art studio? On the stairs? Why would it be in the bedroom?
Finally, she sat down on a chair in the kitchen for a while, desperate, realizing in all the hubbub that she had left the bottle outside on the terrace.
Tired from all the searching, Amanda finally loafed in slow motion out to get it.
Once out there, with the bottle in her hand, the phone rang.
“Oh, come on,” she yelled.
Running in to get the call, she again stubbed the same big toe that had been wounded in the water before. Yelling in pain, again, she hobbled, spitting swearwords to herself over her own clumsiness.
“Don’t hang up, don’t hang up, don’t hang up,” she whispered to herself, frenetically.
Plopping herself down on the big couch in front of the wide-screen TV, she answered the phone, panting. “Hines Residence.”
The other voice on the other end possessed male depth. Sweet like a warm blanket, it tasted of rich wine and melted on her taste-buds like dark, rich chocolate.
“Hi, pookums,” Alan mused.
Amanda sang inside. She felt like flying. She wanted to embrace him.
“You been running?”
Amanda laughed, rubbing her toe.
“I stubbed my toe running to the phone just now. It is the second time today.”
“Oh, dear. That’s not like you,” he whined. “You’re always so in control. Is it bad?”
“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll rub it for five minutes and then it’ll be fine.”
“My clumsy princess.”
“Hey, big guy,” she spat. “Don’t get arrogant or I won’t let you back in.”
“Oh, dear,” he mused. “Johnny is already going crazy here. We miss you.”
“Oh, I miss you, too,” Amanda cried. “I’m going nuts, man.”
Alan laughed.
The silence seemed to wait for one of them to make a move.
Neither one of them did, so Amanda picked up the conversation again.
“How’s the film coming along?”
“My bones feel like Jell-O. Johnny is super. He’s a real pro.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“How was the exhibition?”
“Vogue was there. A girl from this art magazine ... Uhm, what’s it called?”
“What? The one that did the interview with you in April?”
“Yeah.”
“Art’s Fair.”
“That’s the one. They were there, too.”
What a joy to hear his voice.
Electricity danced across the Atlantic Ocean.
“Good to hear your voice.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“When you guys back?”
“4th of July.”
Her heart sank. His response opened a canyon a mile wide.
“Alan, I think I’ll take the plane to Paris and see you guys. I just have to.”
“Please do.”
A moment’s pause served as a good opportunity to mention the bottle.
“I have something amazing to tell you, Alan,” she said, shaking the note back out of the bottle again. Amanda laughed. “I still can’t believe it myself.”
“Funny,” Alan responded. “I have something to tell you. Who reveals the first secret?”
Although Amanda felt a great quantity of eagerness, that certain “something” told her to let her husband tell his story first. Another cute surprise awaited her on the other end of that patience. Maybe that little Tweety bird, fluttering in her stomach, had something special in store. The bird chanted, again and again:
God sent you a message. God sent you a message.
“I had a dream about you last night,” Alan began.
“Oh, really?” Amanda chirped, just like Tweety.
“Yeah, it was really cool. You were on the beach alone, painting. Then you walked along the beach and guess what you found floating toward you in the water?”
“Please, don’t tell me, Alan. Please, don’t.”
“A message in a bottle,” he laughed. “From yourself.”
Amanda dropped the phone, feeling a mixture of confusion, divine intervention and joy. On the other end of the line in Paris, where Alan soon would be taking his son to eat supper at Fouqet’s, a voice called out a worried: “Hello?!”
Amanda picked up the phone again.
This time she stuttered.
Never before had she stuttered and laughed at the same time.
“Amanda?”
“Y-yes-s?” she laughed.
“What are you on?” he cackled. “I thought you gave up coffee.”
Amanda started laughing again, this time so hard that she almost fell over.
“Alan, you are not going to believe this ...”
The stunned silence at the other end made the line crack and tingle.
“Please,” he said, “don’t tell me.”
“I h-have a message in-n a bo- ... bottle here,” she giggled. “It’s from myself.”
“What?”
“Do you remember that I threw a bottle into the ocean back when I was a kid in Washington State?”
“Yeah,” Alan said, suspiciously. “So?”
“I found it.”
“Huh?”
“The bottle. It just appeared here on our beach.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alan said, laughing.
Amanda waved the bottle around, laughing so uncontrollably that she felt like a girl on the way to her junior prom.
“No, sweetie,” she giggled. “That message is in my hand. The wish to find my heart’s true love is in my hand.”
“How did that message end up in your hands after all these years?”
“I wrote it myself,” she exclaimed, sounding like a proud seventh grader with her first essay in her hand. “I was 12 at the time.”
“I know the story, Amanda,” Alan interrupted. “You’ve told me a thousand times.”
“I wanna tell it again. Everybody had a boyfriend. Everybody but me. So, I wrote this ‘love contract’.”
She took out the paper, rustled it a bit and cleared her throat.
“Should I read it for you?”
“Okay,” Alan answered.
“All right, here goes nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
And Amanda began reading the note.
It read:
Four or five different colors and one mornings work waited right here.
Amanda began, hearing those Pacific echoes splash against the shore. She lifted her brush and dipped it into the color, mixing the blue with the white and adding some water. Her brush-strokes light, she created a shifting range of differences. Subtle and sensitive, the clouds slowly moved in with the sky.
The shadow in a dark corner at one point blended in with the cloud itself.
Amanda’s hair blew from side to side in the gust of a warm wind. It fluttered past her countenance, slipped in past her neck and down her back. The ocean breeze caressed her, giving her a closeness to nature that she needed in order to portray this bay in the right manner. As she moved the brush up and down, her eyes caught sight of the golden ring on her finger.. Memories of Alan and Johnny flooded her braincells. Pancake breakfasts on the terrace. Piano lessons in the music room, board games on the kitchen table. Amanda’s happiness over professional family luck proved greater than her own longing for their company. Naturally, she felt happy for them working together in such a great city.
Still, with them not around – life seemed emptier.
Shaking it off, she turned to the painting again.
Amanda’s artwork of this scenery had a three dozen faces: a night-time view, a morning view, an autumn sky, a winter landscape, at sunset, at sunrise. During the three years she had owned this house, the sky had never been so clear as today.
The bay all to herself, she could afford to feel free and easy. She didn’t. A light summer outfit thrown over a drying body. The painting beckoned, but so did the water. And for a while there, Amanda conversed with those two emotions. Yes, she came here to paint. Didn’t she actually want to arrange an exhibition near Sunset Boulevard with a selection of these paintings? Restlessness overcame her again and Amanda’s head snapped toward the left, as if the answer lay over there.
“Restless,” she whispered to herself. “I feel restless.”
That emotion smiled at her, giving in, telling her that the call of the water could claim its own right to abduct her for a moment.
And so, Amanda took off her sandals and stood up, letting the fingers of her right hand make love to the white canvas. She took a long, healthy, romantic look at the whiteness of it and wondered what the painting would look when it was finished.
The water called her to discover what was inside. Something.
She expected no one today and the private beach was deserted. Amanda threw her sandals off and walked barefoot into the cool water. The chill felt unusual on her warm body at first. It reacted with surprise. Her own gentle and large swim strokes resembled the technique she used when painting. Long and sweepingly emotional gestures. The unique sound of splashing water giving her a sense of security.
That “something” beckoned, called for her to come closer.
That “something” waited for her to discover it.
Soon, she found herself way out beyond the territory of her private beach.
Amanda Hines looked back onto where her canvas stood, splashing with her arms. The clouds appeared in a different light from here. They were not friendly. Cold. Maybe the chill of the water inspired it.
Amanda swam back, remembering a time when she had been a hardworking artist trying to make it in the competitive business. Back then there had been no million dollar beach house. No busy director husband travelling with his acting son. No thousand dollar paintings, no ten thousand dollar scenery for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Just Amanda, a chick with a Masters Degree. A girl desperate to get a job. Today, in her successful life, her husband and son took an increasingly more important role in her life. With them gone for longer than a month, Amanda felt restless.
“I need them,” she sobbed. “God, I need them. Why am I so dependent on them?”
As she swam back, she cried. The salty ocean water mixed with the saltwater in her eyes. Having them around at important exhibitions exhilarated her life. Those Sunday morning breakfasts with pancakes and maple syrup on the terrace gave her the joy now no success could give her. Here at home, she wasn’t the successful painter, the famous stage designer or the celebrity sculptor. Here, she was Johnny’s mom and Alan’s wife. With them in Paris, she felt incomplete. Lonely. She missed helping Johnny with his homework, making kissing Alan good night or complaining about how much washing there was to be done.
The water cooled down the rest of the jitters she had felt up until the opening of the gallery. As her beach approached nearer with every stroke and every splash, she remembered the buzz, the music, the stars, the food, the press, the interviews, the press conferences and the fans.
Back on the beach, she sat down again on her garden chair.
Sighing, she closed her eyes, swearing to cool down.
After all, just a month and they would be back.
Not long.
Not long at all.
The colors mixed almost on their own without effort. A sunrise appeared, a bay, green grass, waves crashing against the shore. All the while, the warm weather eased the pain.
Soon, she could inspect a painting of her favorite beach.
Something called her onto the shoreline. Again.
That “something” called for her to wander and uncover it.
“Give me a sign, God,” she whispered to herself. “Anything.”
A sign that tells you what? God mused.
“A sign that relieves how much I miss my family,” Amanda cried. Her feet shuffled along the beach. As she gazed at the large house, she felt like screaming out at the entire paparazzi that fame really gave no security to avoid pain. First after having spent the last four years constantly with your family, she knew what it meant not to be with them.
Okay, she mumbled to herself, either Johnny was here or Alan.
Both of them gone?
Hard.
Very hard.
We already have given you a sign, dear, God answered. You just have to find it.
The sand tickled her naked toes and made her feel at one with this beauty. Where was Alan right now? Preparing a scene with Johnny, taking a walk in Paris? What time was it there? Six o’clock in the evening. Maybe, he dined with a friend. Arranged a Sunday shoot? Helped Johnny’s tutor coach him? Maybe Alan, Johnny and the other co-stars sat at Foquet’s half-way down Champs Elysée, chatting with Barbra Streisand or Mireille Mathieu.
Amanda remembered Alan proposing.
And cried.
Three months without them?
Too long.
Much too long.
These two months felt long enough.
But another month might force her to fly to Paris.
As she contemplated what her husband and son were doing in France at the moment, one bobbing bottle approached her. She saw it lightly dancing on the waves. It looked like an old friend, coming back to say hello. Transparent and most certainly one that they would sell at IKEA, it held a small note inside. It seemed no bigger than an A5 sized paper.
Amanda froze still, hearing God’s voice echo in her mind.
You wanted a sign, girl. There it is.
A revelation, she told herself.
Or maybe just a surprise.
Somehow, Amanda knew the premonition by the painting soared within her still. The manifestation floated on the waves. A message in a bottle.
A certain spookiness overcame her.
She quickly discarded it.
“From Alan?” she whispered to herself and then laughed.
How silly.
Of course not.
A famous woman on her private beach finds a message in a bottle, she rambled in her mind, imitating the press. Extraordinarily enough, Amanda looked inside herself and discovered that the pain in her subsided.
Why? Alan and Johnny were still just as gone.
Like a rainbow after a storm, the winds of change offered Amanda a resting spot.
“God always keeps his promise,” Amanda whispered to herself.
Now, Amanda felt like a little girl opening a present.
Amanda waded into the water, letting her body slowly delve deeper into the salty bay. Her hand stretching out and reaching for it, she slipped and fell. Seaweed trickled into her nose and, subsequently, a stone cut her foot. She yelped with pain, clutching her foot, the pain sending signals to her brain to sit down and take care of herself.
The sting that bugged every part of her foot made it difficult to walk. The waves were up toward her hips now. Suddenly, her fear crawled up from that foot to her hands and made them create fists. Amanda struggled to escape the waves, holding the bottle up above her head like runner holding a trophy.
Hobbling up on the beach, she sat down and examined it. A small cut graced the her left big toe. The blood trickled out quite badly, but she knew that saltwater had a healing function. And so, she stretched her feet out in the oncoming waves of the tide. Every wave at the moment felt like a really mean wasp penetrating her skin. However, she knew that the cut would be gone in ten minutes. Accordingly, she remained sitting at the edge of shore.
The bottle beckoned, like the painting had before.
She gazed at the canvas and the easel quite a way over toward the other side of the beach. A connection? God called her out to paint, but here she was holding a message in a bottle. How quaint.
“Who threw you in the water?” she remarked, talking to the bottle, feeling a bit silly again doing so. Would the bottle answer her? Probably not. Even big celebrities feel insecure at times, she thought to herself. At those moments, they talk to bottles. Or drink what is in them, she added with a laugh.
But this bottle was special, was it not?
It held a message inside it.
When she opened the bottle, it made a small pop, like the sound of a small champagne cork. The bottle indeed looked like the ones she had in the kitchen. Indeed, she bought these kinds of bottles at IKEA and God knows that the fans had been there, too. But she was almost positive this bottle had a few more years on its back that that. The clear marks of years of salty ocean waves could be noticed and the message itself yellowed with age.
Turning the bottle on its head, the message fluttered out on her lap and made a little dance in the gusts of wind. These gusts felt almost divine. Amanda felt something she hadn’t felt in years. The texture and feel of the paper seemed familiar. Childish excitement spread like wildfire in her spirit. She recognized this thing. That couldn’t be, could it? That small paper, pink on the inside and white on the outside, resembled her own child stationary.
An excited little bird fluttered around inside her soul.
God sent you a message. God sent you a message, it sang in a famous teasing melody. Amanda laughed at that little bird.
“Stop it,” she reprimanded the bird.
But it’s twue, the bird answered.
And now, Amanda knew the name of that teasing bird: her own favorite cartoon character: Tweety.
Tweety graced the top of the child stationary.
She looked up, letting the wind kiss to her again, and wondered.
The writing of a girl seeking a loved one decorated the pages. Curved, elegant, childish, it entailed an attempt at adult attitudes. Memories came flooding back, memories of early love, schoolgirls on yards writing boyfriend’s love notes. Lost youth, gained wisdom, inner pain? Whatever that meant, here in her hand lay a proof of youth. Some people would say that Amanda still retained her youth with 36. But these words echoed of an earlier time.
One tear trickled down her cheeks, her heart throbbing.
She slapped her hand on top of her own mouth, giving out a shriek of excitement.
Amanda started laughing uncontrollably.
She looked out toward the sea, trying to imagine where this bottle had been all this time. Had it traveled the entire coast from Washington State to the lower Californian coast. And why did it come to her, exactly at this time, when God promised to give her a sign.
Words of confusion and surprise buzzed about inside her head.
This message had been thrown in the water by herself many, many eons ago.
Quickly as a speed train and light as a feather, she picked up the bottle and left for the house. Arriving on the terrace, she realized the canvas and the easel and the rest of the art waited somewhere down the shoreline. So, Amanda set down the bottle, pointed at it and reprimanded:
“Don’t you dare move!”
Feeling like a little kid, she ran to her painting, thinking about how good God was and how much he helped her through all of the difficulties in her own life. She felt not at all like the graceful woman that had jet-setted through Hollywood yesterday. She probably looked like a silly, female version of Mr. Bean running off to save her own painting from the approaching tide.
Giddy and giggly, she mumbled non-distinguishable words to herself about returning to paradise. What a joy to have a private beach house, she thought to herself. You can run around looking silly and nobody cares. Nobody tells you to stride around and try to impress the press or give them all perfect dental gloss when CNN orders a press conference.
Scrambling and shoving adding her summer frock to her bathing suit, she hummed the family song. It was actually Alan’s and her song. With Johnny’s arrival out of her tummy, the song elevated to the status to family song.
John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” took form within the confines of a female painter’s voice.
“You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest,” Amanda chanted.
Running like crazy once again to the house, she tore the terrace door open and rushed inside. The painting artillery landed straight in her art studio to the left of the living room.
Not much time was wasted on this action.
One thought was in her mind and one thought only.
She headed for the phone, trying to remember the telephone number of Alan’s hotel suite in Paris. She called the number every day. It didn’t matter. Her mobile phone knew the number. But where was the phone? The spacious house deserted and twice as large today, it took a while to comb through the white emptiness of it. The beige couch. Had she dropped it over by the big windows overlooking the grassy patch? Had she left it on the brown cupboard? In the kitchen, maybe? Gosh, sleeping on the couch last night probably served her ill. In the art studio? On the stairs? Why would it be in the bedroom?
Finally, she sat down on a chair in the kitchen for a while, desperate, realizing in all the hubbub that she had left the bottle outside on the terrace.
Tired from all the searching, Amanda finally loafed in slow motion out to get it.
Once out there, with the bottle in her hand, the phone rang.
“Oh, come on,” she yelled.
Running in to get the call, she again stubbed the same big toe that had been wounded in the water before. Yelling in pain, again, she hobbled, spitting swearwords to herself over her own clumsiness.
“Don’t hang up, don’t hang up, don’t hang up,” she whispered to herself, frenetically.
Plopping herself down on the big couch in front of the wide-screen TV, she answered the phone, panting. “Hines Residence.”
The other voice on the other end possessed male depth. Sweet like a warm blanket, it tasted of rich wine and melted on her taste-buds like dark, rich chocolate.
“Hi, pookums,” Alan mused.
Amanda sang inside. She felt like flying. She wanted to embrace him.
“You been running?”
Amanda laughed, rubbing her toe.
“I stubbed my toe running to the phone just now. It is the second time today.”
“Oh, dear. That’s not like you,” he whined. “You’re always so in control. Is it bad?”
“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll rub it for five minutes and then it’ll be fine.”
“My clumsy princess.”
“Hey, big guy,” she spat. “Don’t get arrogant or I won’t let you back in.”
“Oh, dear,” he mused. “Johnny is already going crazy here. We miss you.”
“Oh, I miss you, too,” Amanda cried. “I’m going nuts, man.”
Alan laughed.
The silence seemed to wait for one of them to make a move.
Neither one of them did, so Amanda picked up the conversation again.
“How’s the film coming along?”
“My bones feel like Jell-O. Johnny is super. He’s a real pro.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“How was the exhibition?”
“Vogue was there. A girl from this art magazine ... Uhm, what’s it called?”
“What? The one that did the interview with you in April?”
“Yeah.”
“Art’s Fair.”
“That’s the one. They were there, too.”
What a joy to hear his voice.
Electricity danced across the Atlantic Ocean.
“Good to hear your voice.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“When you guys back?”
“4th of July.”
Her heart sank. His response opened a canyon a mile wide.
“Alan, I think I’ll take the plane to Paris and see you guys. I just have to.”
“Please do.”
A moment’s pause served as a good opportunity to mention the bottle.
“I have something amazing to tell you, Alan,” she said, shaking the note back out of the bottle again. Amanda laughed. “I still can’t believe it myself.”
“Funny,” Alan responded. “I have something to tell you. Who reveals the first secret?”
Although Amanda felt a great quantity of eagerness, that certain “something” told her to let her husband tell his story first. Another cute surprise awaited her on the other end of that patience. Maybe that little Tweety bird, fluttering in her stomach, had something special in store. The bird chanted, again and again:
God sent you a message. God sent you a message.
“I had a dream about you last night,” Alan began.
“Oh, really?” Amanda chirped, just like Tweety.
“Yeah, it was really cool. You were on the beach alone, painting. Then you walked along the beach and guess what you found floating toward you in the water?”
“Please, don’t tell me, Alan. Please, don’t.”
“A message in a bottle,” he laughed. “From yourself.”
Amanda dropped the phone, feeling a mixture of confusion, divine intervention and joy. On the other end of the line in Paris, where Alan soon would be taking his son to eat supper at Fouqet’s, a voice called out a worried: “Hello?!”
Amanda picked up the phone again.
This time she stuttered.
Never before had she stuttered and laughed at the same time.
“Amanda?”
“Y-yes-s?” she laughed.
“What are you on?” he cackled. “I thought you gave up coffee.”
Amanda started laughing again, this time so hard that she almost fell over.
“Alan, you are not going to believe this ...”
The stunned silence at the other end made the line crack and tingle.
“Please,” he said, “don’t tell me.”
“I h-have a message in-n a bo- ... bottle here,” she giggled. “It’s from myself.”
“What?”
“Do you remember that I threw a bottle into the ocean back when I was a kid in Washington State?”
“Yeah,” Alan said, suspiciously. “So?”
“I found it.”
“Huh?”
“The bottle. It just appeared here on our beach.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alan said, laughing.
Amanda waved the bottle around, laughing so uncontrollably that she felt like a girl on the way to her junior prom.
“No, sweetie,” she giggled. “That message is in my hand. The wish to find my heart’s true love is in my hand.”
“How did that message end up in your hands after all these years?”
“I wrote it myself,” she exclaimed, sounding like a proud seventh grader with her first essay in her hand. “I was 12 at the time.”
“I know the story, Amanda,” Alan interrupted. “You’ve told me a thousand times.”
“I wanna tell it again. Everybody had a boyfriend. Everybody but me. So, I wrote this ‘love contract’.”
She took out the paper, rustled it a bit and cleared her throat.
“Should I read it for you?”
“Okay,” Alan answered.
“All right, here goes nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
And Amanda began reading the note.
It read:
“To whom it may concern:
I am seeking somebody to love.
So, please, God from above.
Or the finder of this flask,
It is not too much to ask,
My heart, it seeks a home,
For I feel so awfully alone,
So, if you read these lonely lines,
Think of Amanda Hines.”
I am seeking somebody to love.
So, please, God from above.
Or the finder of this flask,
It is not too much to ask,
My heart, it seeks a home,
For I feel so awfully alone,
So, if you read these lonely lines,
Think of Amanda Hines.”
Extraordinarily enough, after that, Amanda and Alan did not stop laughing for twelve and half minutes. After that, she called her secretary to book the first fight over to Paris, France. All the way to the airport, Amanda whispered her I love you’s to the message in the bottle that lay on the passenger seat. She had glued a picture of Alan and Johnny on the flask.
Riding in business class, Amanda smiled all the way to Europe.
Needless to say, God was with her.
At the airport, her husband and son greeted her with such warmth that it seemed they would never be able to let go. Spiritually, they didn’t.
She spent a week in France with her boys, playing with her son, eating créme brulée and baguettes and getting drunk on tasty French wine. She watched Alan and Johnny work. They ate at fancy restaurants. At night, she kissed her husband good night.
Alan read the note from the bottle to Johnny, Johnny read the note to Amanda, Amanda read it to everyone else. And the painting she had painted that day by the beach received a very special place at the exhibition on Sunset Boulevard.
One twelve-year-old’s wish, written on pink stationary and thrown into the sea, had reached divine ears.
Amanda Hines, famous artist with a million dollar house, was not alone anymore.
Riding in business class, Amanda smiled all the way to Europe.
Needless to say, God was with her.
At the airport, her husband and son greeted her with such warmth that it seemed they would never be able to let go. Spiritually, they didn’t.
She spent a week in France with her boys, playing with her son, eating créme brulée and baguettes and getting drunk on tasty French wine. She watched Alan and Johnny work. They ate at fancy restaurants. At night, she kissed her husband good night.
Alan read the note from the bottle to Johnny, Johnny read the note to Amanda, Amanda read it to everyone else. And the painting she had painted that day by the beach received a very special place at the exhibition on Sunset Boulevard.
One twelve-year-old’s wish, written on pink stationary and thrown into the sea, had reached divine ears.
Amanda Hines, famous artist with a million dollar house, was not alone anymore.
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About the Author: Charles E.J. Moulton has been a stage performer since age eleven. His trilingual, artistic upbringing, as the son of operasinger Gun Kronzell and actor Herbert Moulton, lead to a hundred stage productions to date, countless cross-over concerts, work as a drama- and a vocal-coach and as a big band vocalist with The J.R. Swing Connection. He is a regular contributor for Idea Gems, has written for Shadows Express, Cover of Darkness, Vocal Images and Pill Hill Press and has also written for Swedish magazines. He is a tourguide, a filmmaker, a painter with art that can be viewed online, a voice-over-speaker and a translator. Mr. Moulton is married and has a daughter.
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