"The Beach Chairs"
A sweet older man reflects on his long and marriage in this heartfelt tale by Hannah Orenstein, author of MEANT TO BE MINE and co-founder of Heartbeat.
Georgia says:
This week, I’m thrilled to be introducing the second short story from Heartbeat’s industrious co-founder, Hannah Orenstein. “The Beach Chairs” isn’t just a touching portrait of a love story for the ages, but happens to be the story that kick-started our newsletter! Many months ago, Hannah sent this piece to our mutual agent, the tireless and talented Allison Hunter. Allison loved it, but felt there was nowhere to place romantic short fiction. Yadda yadda yadda, Heartbeat was born. (Thanks, Allison! We love you!)
In this warm and heartfelt short story, Ted Birnbaum needs ten beach chairs, to help celebrate the 79th birthday of his beloved wife, Linda. Take a trip down Ted’s memory lane as he reflects on the secrets to his loving partnership, all while attempting to collect the illusive, eponymous beach chairs. Enjoy.
“The Beach Chairs”
It’s a quarter past five in the morning and Ted Birnbaum needs ten beach chairs. Pale pink streaks of sunlight poke through the gap in the hotel room curtains. Linda must have left them open. She always insists there’s nothing better than waking up with the sun, but if sixty-one years of marriage prove anything, it’s that she really just loves to snooze. As for Ted, he never could quite shed the habit of rising at the crack of dawn to make it into the office, and once he’s up, that’s it—he can’t fall back asleep. At home, he wishes that weren’t the case, but here in Aruba, it could be his superpower.
The whole family is down on the island to celebrate Linda’s seventy-ninth birthday. Or rather, they’re all there and it “just so happens” to be Linda’s birthday. She doesn’t like the idea of everyone making a fuss just for her — especially for piddly seventy-nine, not even a nice, round eighty. She would’ve been perfectly content staying home, as long as she could talk to each of her kids and grandkids on the phone, but Ted wanted to make this year’s celebration as special as possible.
It had been an awfully tough year. First, Doris, Linda’s best friend since grade school, died. Heart failure. Terrible. Then, his younger daughter Carrie got a job offer she couldn’t refuse down in D.C., and so she packed up with her husband and two girls and left. They were the last family they had left in the Boston area. Linda was beyond blue. She was lonely, she’d admitted one night in the deafening stillness of their condo. He knew a trip to the beach wouldn’t cure the root of her sadness, but it would be a good place to start.
♥
Ted met Linda on the sandy shores of Nantasket Beach in 1961. They were each sitting with their respective groups of friends on two separate spreads of towels. He saw a gal in a polka dot swimsuit making her way over to him—or no, past him, he assumed, because what business did a guy like him have with a girl like her? But she strode right up to him.
“Hi there. Do you have the time?” she asked, kneeling down in the sand so they could see eye to eye. She pushed her sunglasses into her curly hair to reveal pretty brown eyes. “My friend Doris has to be home by four, but none of us remembered to bring a watch.”
She could’ve asked any Joe Schmoe on the beach, but here she was. As a matter of fact, he did have the time.
“It’s one-thirty,” he said.
She smiled. “Thanks.”
Flustered, he blurted out the first question that came to mind, just so they’d have a reason to keep talking. “How are you liking your day at the beach?”
“It’s my favorite place in the world. Enjoy your day.” She stood. His heart sank. To her friends, she called out, “We’ve got plenty of time! It’s one-thirty.”
At eighteen, Ted was by no means a ladies’ man. He was on the shy side; approaching girls always made him nervous and he’d spent more than his share of Saturday nights alone. He was no dummy—he knew it wasn’t every day a beautiful gal like this walked right up to him. He had to do something.
She was halfway back to her friends by then, but he called out, “Wait!”
She turned and raised an eyebrow. Her eyes sparkled in the sun. He’d look into them forever if he could.
“Would you like to take a walk along the beach with me?” he asked, raising his voice so he could be heard over the crashing tide.
He could feel three pairs of eyes on his back from his surprised friends, who were all either engaged or married off by now, and he could see three pairs of eyes from her friends looking at him with intrigue. Four, if you counted hers, which swept over him and out to the water with amusement.
She crossed her arms and cocked one hip. “I don’t go out with strange men I don’t know.”
Ted scrambled to his feet and jogged over to her.
Extending his hand, he said, “I’m Ted. Ted Birnbaum. From Dorchester. In the fall, I’ll start studying accounting at BU, and I’m here with my buddy Al, whose family has a place down the street.”
She pursed her lips like she was weighing her options.
“See, I’m not a stranger anymore,” he added hopefully.
Dear God, the guts this took! How his friends had all managed this already was beyond him.
With a coy flash of her eyes, she said, “Well, Ted Birnbaum from Dorchester, it’s lovely to meet you. I’m Linda. Which direction down the beach?”
♥
Linda loved the beach more than anything. They spent every weekend for the rest of the summer together on Nantasket. The following July, Ted proposed on the same stretch of sand where they met. They took their honeymoon down the Cape, six nights at the luxurious Chatham Bars Inn. Their stay in the ocean-view room cost a whole semester’s worth of tuition at BU, but truthfully, Linda would’ve been just as happy in a clam shack, so long as she could still wade into the surf.
These days, they’ve been to the beach exactly once she recovered from skin cancer. They drove out to Nantasket yesterday, hoping to recapture a slice of teenage joy. But at 79, Ted could barely huff and puff across the whole parking lot carrying the new monstrosity of an enormous beach umbrella Linda now required. The climb over the dunes was tough on their knees and their dinky little folding beach chairs, threadbare from years of use, weren’t as comfortable as they used to be.
But there was another way. At a beach resort, the sand would be flat. The hotel staff would lug the equipment for them. The chairs would be sturdy and supportive. If anything could make Linda smile again, a beach vacation with the whole family would be it.
His daughters had grumbled a bit at first. Marcy, his eldest, said she was fed up with traveling the week of Christmas. She did it for twelve years while her son Brandon was in school, and now that he’s a freshman at Wisconsin, she had her heart set on a leisurely trip somewhere not too crowded in early January, when families aren’t all crammed into the same JetBlue flights and scuffling over the same dinner reservations at Madame Janette’s. Her husband didn’t bother arguing. He hates the beach no matter when he goes — something about disliking sand in his shoes, Ted doesn’t understand it. If you’re on vacation, you might as well live a little. Meanwhile, Brandon was “jazzed” or “pumped” or stoked,” or whatever word kids use these days, as long as he could bring Kenzie, his girlfriend of three months. (According to Laura, it’s really more like two-and-a-half.) Ted doesn’t want the girl hanging around during what should be quality family time. He has nothing against the her — he doesn’t even know her — but it’s not right for her to be here. But Brandon and Kenzie are apparently a package deal, so she’s here, too.
Carrie, on the other hand, insisted on the week of Christmas because her daughters, thirteen and nine, couldn’t miss school or their dance recital. Why two Jewish girls would want to perform the Nutcracker so badly, he doesn’t know. But Carrie’s husband posted a video of it to his Face page, and Ted could see that they did look awfully cute, twirling up there on stage.
But finally, they’re here! Together. On Saturday, though, the first day of the trip, Ted discovered the wrinkle in his grand plan. He’d assumed a fancy resort like the Marriott would be lousy with beach chairs and umbrellas, but no. There were only so many to go around. While Ted spent half the day trawling the sand to scrounge for available chairs, Linda retreated to a shady corner of the pool to watch the kids splash around. He promised he’d come get her as soon as he could. But every time he approached a fellow or a couple with an empty chair or two, they’d drape a towel over the plastic slats. “Sorry,” they’d say, claiming some relative was just grabbing a rum punch or napping in the room and would definitely be back in just a minute.
Ted even ventured over to the hut in the center of the beach, where two hotel employees presided over the distribution of chairs, umbrellas, and towels. Surely, he thought, they had another stash of chairs tucked away somewhere. But they only said the same thing: “Sorry.” The trick, they told Ted, was to get up early to reserve what he wanted. Yesterday, he was out of luck.
That night at dinner, Linda clinked mai-tais with their daughters and tried to follow their granddaughter’s complicated explanations of a game on her phone — something called Clip-Clop? Tic-Tac? He saw his wife smile, but that twinkle in her eye was still missing. Their day had been good. He wanted to give Linda something great. Ted vowed to get up at the crack of dawn on Sunday.
Except it poured.
And it poured on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and even Thursday after that. This was Aruba, for crying out loud! All his friends had recommended it for its reliably flawless weather. The country’s slogan is even One happy island. Every morning, Linda would part the heavy curtains with a defeated sigh.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said on Thursday. “I hate that the weather’s ruining your trip.”
“It’s not ruined,” she insisted.
But her voice said otherwise — it sagged with sadness. She gazed wistfully at the pale gray sky. The Caribbean Sea’s famously aquamarine waters were a dull blue. Not a single beach chair dotted the sand.
Today, Friday, is Linda’s birthday and Ted’s last chance. Tomorrow, the family is scattering on flights to New York and D.C. Ted squints into the pale pink morning light, blinks, rubs sleep from his eyes. He’s cautious about getting his hopes up, but the weather looks promising. Within ten minutes, he’s gotten dressed, left a note on the nightstand for his sleeping beauty, grabbed Linda’s birthday gift and the bag he stashed away yesterday after a secret trip to the convenience store, and made it out the door.
Ted might not walk quite as quickly as he used to, but he doesn’t make bad time down to the beach, if he can say so himself. Or so he thought. Because as he rounds the corner, the beach hut comes into view, and it’s swarmed by other men. They’re mostly older folks like himself, dressed in gift shop baseball caps to protect their scalps from the sun, khaki shorts belted below the standard-issue pot bellies that somehow sprung up with no warning when they turned fifty, T-shirts in colors like cantaloupe, salmon, mint — the whole kitchen is represented. Ted hustles over as fast as he can.
“You’re waiting to reserve chairs?” he asks a gentleman with a thick watch tan at the edge of the scrum.
“The guys aren’t here yet,” he says in a strong Brooklyn accent, gesturing to the hut.
Sure enough, the hotel employees he spoke with yesterday are nowhere to be found. Ted’s heart begins to sink.
“But they should be here soon, shouldn’t they?” Ted asks, feeling very much like a rookie.
“They usually show up at six-thirty, seven.”
“So, what happens then? We all charge at ‘em?” Ted chuckles.
He’s kidding, of course. There should be a line, just like there is for the breakfast buffet.
Ted’s informant doesn’t chuckle back. “You’d think. Prepare your wallet.”
He feels around for it in his pocket. He flips past school pictures of the kids — outdated, come to think of it; they barely have any front teeth — and finds just a five-dollar bill. Hardly a bribe. He had arrived on the island flush with cash, but he slipped each kid a $100 when their parents weren’t looking, his annual Hanukkah tradition. The rest of his pocket change went to little trinkets for Linda: the seashell bracelet she admired in the gift shop; a bottle of SPF 100 since UV rays can even stream through windows on gray days; extra tips for the bartender so they’d never forget to garnish Linda’s mai tais with the tiny beach umbrellas she found so charming.
Ted eyes his competition: one has a Star of David on a thick gold chain nestled into his gray chest hair, another keeps jingling something in his pocket, a third has such a deep tan, there’s no way this could be his first rodeo. Ted tries to shuffle closer to the front of the crowd.
“What if we made a line? Nice and efficient,” he suggests hopefully to nobody in particular.
That gets a gruff hmmph out of a heavyset man about Ted’s age.
“Sure, as long as you get in line behind me,” he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
His words are cold, but his accent — well, it makes Ted smile.
“You’re from Dorchester?” Ted asks, naming the part of Boston he grew up in, praying he guessed correctly.
The rounded vowels and familiar, lilting cadence clued him in: he’s not Irish-Catholic from Southie or second-generation Italian from the North End. Ted would know.
The man stares, then nods. “Blue Hill Avenue, born and raised.”
Inwardly, Ted sighs in relief, glad to have found common ground. Maybe it’ll earn him some goodwill.
“Me too. I was over on Morton Street. Dorchester High, class of sixty-one.”
His old neighbor gives a nod. “Huh.” For a moment, it seems like he’s going to end the conversation there, but then he offers, “I graduated in sixty-four.”
“So’d my brother! Maybe you knew him. Barry Birnbaum.”
Ted could call this a small world, but finding a fellow northeastern Jew in Aruba at Christmastime is like finding sand on the beach.
His new friend squints. “Birnbaum... He’s not the one who had an asthma attack and lost us the final baseball game of the season, was he?”
Ted sighs. Nobody ever let Barry live that one down.
“The one and only,” he says, trudging off to form a line behind the king of grudges.[11]
Linda rarely holds a grudge. On their wedding day, he tripped on her train while walking up to cut the first slice of cake. He got a face full of icing. She just laughed and scooped a taste off his cheek.
Luckily, the other folks are more agreeable once Ted suggests lining up in the order they arrived.
“It’s not even six yet,” he points out. “We’ll all get chairs. We don’t want some bigshot walking in at seven and taking what should be ours, do we?”
He wasn’t Salesman of the Year in 1975 for nothing.
Mostly everyone was amenable to that plan except for the fella with the ruddy bronze tan, who protested, “But I’ve got seven grandkids!”
Ted never liked folks who bragged like that. He was blessed with three fabulous shayna punims. Who can keep track of seven? Dayenu already. Fertile Bert remains firmly planted in front of the hut, and the rest get in line.
As sand runs between his toes, Ted shakes his head at how stressful vacations have become. When Marcy and Carrie were young, every winter, they’d go down to Hallandale to visit Linda’s mother and father. In good years, they’d fly. In other years, they’d take the train or do the full twenty-two-hour drive. It was a long slog, but at the end of it, Edna and Sol’s condo had a pool with a diving board, and that made the kids happy. Ted could watch them flip and jackknife with a cold Sam Adams in hand. Linda would fall asleep under the sun with a water-splotched Danielle Steel flopped upside down on her stomach.
Winters were nice, but their summer vacations always took the cake. He and Linda would pack up the station wagon with folding chairs and drive to the beach. It didn’t matter which one: Nantasket, Falmouth, Brewster; they liked them all. Wherever they were, they’d stay in some little motel by the water — nothing much, but something close so that the girls could carry their own shovels and pails — and they’d go splash around in the surf for a week.
Ted would play Big Fish, Little Fish with the girls while Linda read romance novels in front of a three-way mirror propped against her knees. Sometimes, he’d be the Big Fish and chase the girls, and other times, he was the Little Fish, paddling just slowly enough that they could pile onto him in a heap of giggles and seaweed. They ate Linda’s turkey sandwiches out of little plastic baggies for lunch and ice cream sundaes from the beachside truck for dessert. On days the ocean was too brisk to swim in, the four of them would hold hands as they strolled along the edge of the water where the waves kissed the wet sand. At night, after the kids’ bedtime, he and Linda would sneak out to smoke in the briny breeze, or take a walk through the neighborhood, pointing out which homes they’d buy if they could.
There’s one night Ted will never forget, when their Cape trip lined up with their tenth anniversary, and on a nighttime walk, they passed a cottage with the windows thrown open. Music drifted out — the good old stuff, Sinatra, that sort. He and Linda slow-danced right there under a street light. It felt like something they’d see in a picture at the theater.
With her cheek pressed to his, she’d said, “You’re so good to me. You’ve always been so good to me.”
He wondered if she could feel him blush in a tangled mix of pride and embarrassment. “This is nothing fancy,” he said. “Next year, if I get promoted, I’m taking you to Hawaii. Just us. My parents will take the girls.”
She’d pulled back just far enough that he could see the glowing moon reflected in her eyes. “I’d love to see Hawaii, but this is just perfect. I mean it.”
“The motel room smells kind of musty, no?”
“Okay, twist my arm, I’ll take an upgraded room. But seriously. I love you.”
They had kissed and danced under that beam of light for a long time. His hands roamed her waist, her back… he was tempted to do something that’d get them arrested for indecency. (Not that any police would be patrolling such a sleepy block at this hour, but they were five feet away from someone’s front lawn.) So, he savored the simple sweetness of that kiss and resigned himself to merely holding her hand on the walk back to their room.
But instead, she tugged him in the opposite direction, toward the shore. Linda threw her arms up with exuberance and ran the last fifty feet to the ocean’s edge.
“We’ve never had the whole beach to ourselves before!” she said.
They kicked off their sandals. Cool water nipped at their ankles. Linda had a way of making Ted feel brave. Around her, he could say and do things he’d never do otherwise. So he pulled his T-shirt over his head.
“Let’s skinny-dip,” he said.
She laughed. “You’re not serious.”
He unbuckled his belt. “I am.”
For a moment, she was stunned. Then she traipsed up to the dry sand to shimmy out of her pedal pushers and blouse. They left behind a heap of clothes. She dove in first, then he followed her. He’d follow her anywhere.
♥
At seven-ten, the two hotel employees arrive at the hut. Ted’s back has been aching terribly, but he shifts from foot to foot, willing the pain to give up before he does. The system soon becomes clear: The older man, maybe forty, jots down each person’s name, room number, and what they’re taking, while the younger counterpart, barely older than Brandon, hauls them on his back across the sand. There’s about a dozen men in front of Ted and another dozen behind him. As he moves up the line, he goes over what he’ll say so he can communicate as quickly and efficiently as possible.
When he reaches the hut, Ted leans gratefully on the counter and recites, “Ted Birnbaum, room 502, ten chairs, ten towels, two umbrellas, please.” Finally.
The man in charge glances at his wrists. “These are for hotel guests only.” His eyes flick to the next in line.
“I am staying at the hotel. The Marriott. Room 502.”
“You need a wristband. All hotel guests receive green wristbands at check-in.” He looks bored, as if he’s tired of having this exact conversation several times a day.
“I have a wristband. It’s just in my room.” In his hurry to get dressed, he didn’t think about slipping it on.
“I need to see it. You can go get it.”
Hope drains from his body, leaving him cold. “But I’ll lose my spot in line?”
Just as Ted feared, the chair czar shrugs. “First come, first served.”
Ted glances at the dwindling stacks of chairs behind the counter. It’s already a quarter to eight. The line has grown to include young couples and families, not just old farts like him who haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep since the nineties. If he goes to his room now, he shouldn’t even bother coming back. It’s not fair.
Feeling every bit a schmuck, Ted pulls out his wallet and slides his meager cash forward. “I’ve been here all week. I swear. I know the soap in the room smells like coconut and there’s a framed painting of a palm tree over the bed — I couldn’t come up with that if I was an impostor, could I?”
This does not sway the hut manager.
Ted tries one more time.
(He bluffed because Linda is right. Seventy-nine holds no weight.)
“Come back when you have your wristband,” the man says, beckoning the next person forward.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Ted is crushed. He did everything right. A pang of sadness hits him square in the chest as he stumbles, then regains his footing in the sand. Linda always makes him feel a little braver than he’d be on his own, and so in her honor, he straightens up and faces the man standing between him and his wife’s happiness.
“Look, mister, I don’t want to be rude,” he says, using his firmest voice. “I know you’re just doing your job. I don’t want to get you in trouble. But the fact is, I need these chairs. My wife Linda’s greatest joy in the world is a day at the beach. Sand, sun, waves, a book, her kids and grandkids splashing around — that’s what makes her happy. You know how many times she’s been to the beach since she got cancer? Once. That’s not right."
The hut manager’s tired expression doesn’t budge.
“I brought decorations,” Ted adds, lifting the bag hopefully. “Tinsel for around the edge of the umbrella and balloons to blow up and tie to the back of her chair. Maybe you think that’s silly. That’s okay. But I’ve been married for sixty-one years, and let me tell you, it all goes by like that. One day, we were kids meeting for the first time on a beach up north, and then taking our own kids to the ocean, and then we blinked, and we’re old and sick and our friends are gone and our family has scattered all over the place. I’m afraid we won’t have many beach days left. Not like this, with perfect weather and everyone we love in one place.”
His voice is about to crack. He draws in a shaky breath.
“Oh, come on, give him the chairs,” says the guy behind Ted.
“Yeah, really,” another guy chimes in.
The hotel employee sighs. “What did you say the hotel room soap smells like?”
“Coconut,” Ted says breathlessly, praying his memory isn’t failing him.
The man gestures to his assistant. “Go get him the chairs.”
Ted has been slacking on attending Temple Beth Shalom’s Saturday services in recent years, but even so, he whispers a prayer to the big guy upstairs. Thank you, he thinks.
♥
Within minutes, Ted is the proud renter of ten chairs, ten towels, and two umbrellas. He leaves the five-dollar bill as a tip and makes a mental note to visit the ATM later so he can give an extra $20. As he watches the young man set up their accommodations for the day, he’s thankful to have a place to sit. He sets up his decorations, huffing and puffing into the balloons, and when the scene is set, he calls his family to come down. As he waits for them to join him, he admires the view.
He checks the time on the gold watch Linda gave him as a twentieth anniversary present. (Inside the card, she wrote, “Because you never know when a girl’s going to ask you for the time.”) It’s almost nine. Linda will be getting up right around now. He dials her cell.
“Hello?” she says in a sleep-tinged voice.
“Good morning, my sleeping beauty,” he says. “Have you looked outside yet?”
She sighs. “More rain?”
“Go look.” He can’t suppress his grin.
A few moments later, he hears a soft gasp. "You got me sunshine for my birthday."
“I had nothing to do with that,” he says. “If I was in charge, it would’ve been beautiful all week. But I do have something else for you downstairs. Come find me on the beach.”
By the time she traverses the flat, fine, white sand, the whole family has gathered by Ted’s small kingdom of chairs and umbrellas.
“You got the best spot, Dad,” Marcy says. “It’s not too crowded over here.”
“Thanks for getting up early,” Carrie says.
Linda just shakes her head and takes in the whole spangled setup. Squeezing his hand, she says, “Nothing could be better than this. It’s perfect.”
It really is. They all settle down into shady and sunny spots, according to preference. Ted leans back and takes in the view: Beyond the slopes of white sand, turquoise waves lap gently at the shoreline. Sun dapples the water, creating sparkles of light. A genuine smile lights up Linda’s face. He did it.
We have a podcast! Listen to episode one here, for romance recs, an author interview with Alison Cochrun, and more.
Next week on Heartbeat, get ready for a short story from Katalina Gamarra, author of Ben and Beatriz.
Follow Heartbeat on Instagram at @storiesbyheartbeat for upcoming behind-the-scenes sneak peeks at Katalina’s story!
Three quick things from Georgia:
I’m already obsessed with the second season of Young Royals on Netflix. Give me hot, gay royal romance or give me death! One of my all-time fave romance subgenres. For fans of Red, White, & Royal Blue, i.e. everyone.
I’m hosting/performing at two live shows in New York this month before heading off to Oz for the holidays: Erotic Fan Fiction tonight, 11/4—playfully rude comedy—and Generation Women, on 11/9—inspiring, uplifting stories from performers of all ages. Both at Caveat in the LES. Come thru!
For a weekly laugh, I tune into Smartless, hosted by hunnies Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. In each episode a pop culture icon riffs with the old mates about work and play. Their Anderson Cooper interview is a delight.
What did you think of this week’s story? Let us know in the comments below!