Come Landfall: A Novel

Seven: Over the Threshold

seven Over the Threshold On a stretch of Virginia Beach near where Nana had grown up, dunes soared tall as a schoolhouse. During a driving trip with Nana and Lucky to Washington, D.C., when Angela had been a kid, Nana had insisted on a detour to that beach and an overnight at an ocean-side motel . Early morning, Nana had led Angela onto the dunes and showed her a childhood game of her own. They had stood on the grainy ledge, planting their feet, as waves rushed onto the beach and ate at the towering sands. Who could keep her footing the longest as the sand crumbled and they were pulled down—eruptions of laughter, shrieks of joy—into the roiling surf? Those sensations came back to Angela as she drove the Mississippi coast, looking at possible alternatives for Nana’s residence. When she had announced to her grandmother she wanted her to move in, Nana had refused, saying she preferred to stay at Coastal Arms. “It’s time to leave there,” Angela said. “Not for me.” “It’s not up to your standards. You can do better.” “You think so?” Nana asked meekly, looking off as though uncertain where she was at all. In case she couldn’t convince her, Angela headed to D’Iberville to see one nursing home the director had recommended, then Gautier to another. Like Coastal Arms, both were clean and bright, with colorful awnings and smiling staff. As she was shown around, the aides 100 Roy Hoffman stopped, hallway to hallway, to press security codes for entry and exit. “Is this a dangerous neighborhood?” Angela asked halfheartedly, dreading the real answer. “These locks are not to keep intruders out,” said a kindly nurse, “but to keep our patients in. Protecting them is an important part of the care we give.” Heading home, she thought of their lives as those dunes on longago Virginia Beach. Digging in as they might, trying to ward off collapse , the sand was giving way. She mulled over options while working temp jobs, not yet finding full-time work. “I loved my granddaddy ’til he lived with us,” said a girl handing out flyers with her at a car show, “then I hated him, too, I mean, I felt bad, because I still loved him, but he kind of disgusted me, he got so old, and Daddy had to bathe him, I looked once, God, you wouldn’t believe what happens to an old guy.” “My granna lived with us,” said a bleach-blond cashier at a hotel where Angela was hostess for a convention, “and she kept her nose in everybody’s business. I could hardly have a boyfriend without her asking if we were ‘doing it’ or not, and she didn’t approve.” Could Angela even handle Nana as roommate? When she met up with Frank near the Biloxi Lighthouse and she turned over her plight—“Should I really let Nana live with me? Can I handle it? Is it fair to Nana?”—he put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her with his deep, brown eyes. “One of the hardest things I ever did in my life was go to jump school,” he said. “I told you about how, when I was a kid, I read about Dodson, jumping with his weather gear on D-Day. What I didn’t tell you is that I was petrified of what might happen to me if I jumped. I’d lie awake, thinking. What if I can’t do it? What if I get to the open hatch of the plane, it’s my turn, I look down, and then I freeze. My knees shake, my legs buckle, my stomach churns. I can’t.” “It didn’t bother you when the time really came, did it?” she asked. “Hell it didn’t. I was there, chute packed, door open, toes on the come l andfall 101 threshold of here and nowhere, wind whipping my clothes. I prayed, yes, I prayed, but even that didn’t get me to cross over. Do you know what did? I thought of all the men and women who’d come before me, what they’d done, how they’d sacrificed, the moments they’d faced something that put fear into their bones—coming to America, or fighting in a battle, or having courage in the face of death...