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Kelsey’s Quest
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     The soft moist rose-pink fingers of the insouciant five-year-old twins dangle like warmed dewdrops from their mother’s strong hands. Awed by the calm beauty of this strange and distant-from-home place, the three visitors glide almost timidly along the high beach road, as the grains of crushed stone sing like little chirping crickets under their delicate feet. They were seduced by the colorful assortment of exotic flowers and plants whose aromatic gifts waft gently through the air, mixing with the sea air below and the heat of the morning sun above to shape a gentle mood for the young family. Everything is quite calm and near quiet, when Sandy, the precocious one of the twin sisters, begins tugging excitedly at her mother’s hand; she points with her free hand as she squeaks the universal appellation for her female parent.

     “Mother, Mother.”

     She cranes her neck as she calls high up toward her protector’s head.

     “Mother, that man there; isn’t that Tara’s daddy?”

     Kelsey Stewart, the twin’s mother, has been walking quietly as her mind wandered off to distant concerns and thoughts. Her young family had recently come west to California and had taken refuge in her sister’s Karen’s Santa Monica home. She had gone walking with her once-quiet daughters, seeking some fresh air and a moment’s peace from the tumult that had recently turned her life upside down. But the tugging at her hand and the squeaking of her daughter’s voice snaps her quickly and not so gently back to this moment’s reality.

     “Mother, look, Mother. See him, that man over there, Mother? Look, look, Mother, look.”

     As her daughter excitedly tugs at her hand, Kelsey finally turns to look at the man in question, and she quickly understands her sweet daughter’s incessant querying. Just steps away from where they are walking, a man sits crumpled in a corner mere feet away from a green metal bench; he is actually leaning against a thirty-foot-tall palm tree and the bench. He is nesting, it seems, as a debrislike mess of things is all clustered around him: a green army duffle bag filled with his stuff, a dirty beige Whole Foods cloth shopping bag filled with more of his stuff, a take-out sandwich bag from McDonald’s, and container of Tropicana Orange Juice that rests full of juice precariously teetering and leaning like the Tower of Pisa on the grass next to him.

     The young mother and daughters stop walking as the man at the tree steals their attention for the moment. The picture of the three of them walking is a nineteenth-century impressionist portrait, a bit out of touch with this twentyfirst-century moment. The sweet little innocents are dressed seemingly too, too formally for the more casual California beach. The girls stroll along happily and lightly, all ironed and starched in lovely pink sundresses neatly ensconced behind starched and ruffled white pinafores, all dolled up and seemingly readying for a glass of fresh, cold lemonade. And as the dust kicks up on their patent leather Mary Jane’s, they appeared a little more Shirley Temple-ish than these trashy chic times demand. Overdressed may have been the theme of the day, as the object of the twin child’s overbearing curiosity was wearing combat boots, army fatigues and a heavy jacket in the middle of a California heat wave.

     “No, sweetheart, that’s not Tara’s dad, sweetheart.”

     The precocious child is not easily convinced, as she continues insisting.

     “But, Mother, he has the same clothes like Tara’s dad, and the ones like Daddy wears when he comes home.”

     Lately, Kelsey is sometimes so terribly sad and heavyhearted that her young strong body feels like there’s another whole body resting on top of it, resting right on the top of her original set of bones. It weakens her. And it’s often a strain lately just trying to muster the energy sometimes to fi nd the words to explain things to her child’s insistent and frequent inquires concerning one thing or another. But she’s a good mother, so she manages to muster up the effort once again.

     “No, sweetheart. Listen, do you remember Mommy telling you that there are many, many men and women who wear these very same uniforms just like Tara’s father and like your father?”

     The child seems disappointed at the same time that she seems to grasp the concept.

     “But, Mommy, why is that man wearing his clothes like Daddy’s in the summertime? Isn’t he too hot, Mommy?”

     It’s just too much to hold back. Kelsey is overcome as the constant allusions to her husband pricks her tired, fragile heart, a heart so full of pain and conflicting emotions that she begins to shake. She lets her daughter’s hands go as she walks a few steps to the nearby bench, where she sits down heavily and drops her head into her hands crying.

     The child reacts to protect and please her mother, as strong children will often do. Eying the strange man’s clothing as the problem, she rushes to her mother’s aid.

     “Mommy, don’t cry, Mommy, I’ll tell that man to take off his jacket, it’s too hot.”

     Quickly, in a fl ash, the sweet, innocent, misguided child is at the man’s side before her mother can engage a reaction from her grief-weakened body.

     “Mister, mister, it’s too hot. Take off your jacket so my mommy will stop crying.”

     The disheveled man turns his weary head as his soft sad eyes meet the sparkle in the little girl’s eyes for the first time. But before he is aroused enough to speak his piece, Kelsey speedily arrives there next to her daughter’s side, and like a swift yet gentle breeze, she caresses her with one arm under the child’s arms and pinches around her pinafore, while her other hand tethers the other quiet twin by the outstretched arm that follows behind her like the tail of a rhesus monkey.

     “Mommy, Mommy, the man’s eyes are like Daddy’s eyes, Mommy, look.”

     Kelsey’s head loses control of her eyes to her heart’s driven curiosity, as they peek to where directed by her child’s instructions. And indeed the percipient child is right, for when she turns and looks into the stranger’s eyes, she sees the same distant sadness seen in the eyes of the man for whom her heart has been constantly filled days and nights full of tears. After she turns away embarrassed by her first glance, Kelsey’s heart draws her right back to his eyes again. Compelled by her first glance, Kelsey turns, and now this time she stares into this strange man’s face. But now, she’s not the only one staring, for as Kelsey stares one way, Mr. Michelson—if the name on the fatigue jacket is indeed his—also stares back from the other direction into her eyes. Both sets of eyes lock in curiosity over a long moment, but then Michelson quickly averts his eyes away from hers and looks self-consciously toward the ground.

     That this man’s eyes show a sudden softness must have released Kelsey’s inner tension as it gives way to a surge of unanticipated courage far beyond her old and usual habit; she has changed much in her short time while in California searching for her husband.

     “Don’t turn away, Mr. Michelson, there is no ridicule to be found here.”

     She calls him by the name on his jacket, intuiting that the man inside the jacket is indeed called by the name on the outside of the jacket. As she unconsciously squeezes her curious daughter’s waist, the child squeaks. “You’re squeezing me too tightly, Mommy. Are you afraid?”

     It was then that the man whom Kelsey had just called Michelson turns his eyes again to the little family of females and says in a voice as soft and cool as shade, “Don’t be afraid of me, I wouldn’t hurt a fl y anymore.”

     Sandy smiles first, and then her mother Kelsey smiles, one from relief, and the other out of the sheer joy of innocent and playful life.

     “Mister, take off that jacket; it’s too hot, please, so my Mommy won’t cry anymore.”

     Kelsey quickly shows her humanity as her face flushes with the hint of embarrassment of the kind that only the words of innocent, uncensored child can induce without a hint of effort. The weathered ex-military man, his chocolate face drawn and gaunt from mental anguish and physical needs, as if just ordered by a superior officer, and without a hitch owed to hesitation, immediately begins to wiggle out of his jacket. First, he wiggles from the shoulders, in an action like the shedding of a heavy second skin. His movements make the twins giggle, which in turn makes him giggle as Kelsey’s late rendition chimes in, and finally makes a quartet of gigglers. Sandy’s amusement adds again an unexpected wave of emotion to the festivities, when she adds, “That’s very funny, Mommy, he’s like Daddy used to be, before he got hurt in the fighting.”

     As the laughter trails off from the adult duet, the two playful twins, now thoroughly aroused, find further amusement in the mimicry of shedding skin, while their mother and the military-garbed stranger seem to silently commiserate an unspoken yet intuited certainty that they are sharing a moment where words have no place. For a brief interlude, until the children’s laughter dissipates, the two veterans of sadness speak not another word.

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