I think about adding a tip that at his age he should also rethink the concept of short-shorts, but there’s not time. I check my watch and it’s exactly eleven o’clock. Ben’s going to be here any second.
“Do you have to stretch here?” I ask.
“I guess I could do it in front of the Bakers’ house, but I think that would look a little strange.”
“Spoiler alert: It looks strange anywhere,” I say as I scan the neighborhood for Ben. “And why are you wearing a bandanna with a smiley face? Did you lose a bet?”
Dad stops for a moment and gives me a confused look. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”
“No, there most definitely is not,” I say. “Now, would you please get inside before you ruin it?”
At first he’s completely baffled, but then a look of comprehension comes over him.
“Too late.” He nods down the block to where Ben is walking toward our house. “I think I figured out why you’re stressed. His name is Ben, right?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Howdy, Ben!” he calls out.
Howdy? Seriously? When did we become cowboys?
“Howdy, Mr. Lucas,” Ben says as he reaches the walkway. “Hi, Izzy.”
“Hi,” I respond, trying to smile at him while simultaneously giving my dad the cue to disappear.
Dad doesn’t seem to get the hint, because he’s continuing to stretch and has now moved on from lunges to deep knee bends.
“Just ignore me,” he says, as if that were possible. “I have a whole stretching routine I have to do after I run.”
“Me too,” Ben says. “It drives my teammates crazy.”
“Teammates?” my dad says.
“I run cross-country at my school.”
“What a small world!” Dad says. “I coach cross-country at PB High.”
Do you ever wish that life were like a DVR? I do. That way I could hit pause and rewind this in hopes of it playing out a different way.
“We should run together,” Dad suggests.
“That would be great,” Ben replies. “I signed up for a 10K next month and I need to train for it.”
“The Rocket Run?”
“That’s it.”
“I’m running it too,” my dad says. “We can train together and then keep each other company during the race.”
I mean, this is seriously not how I had envisioned the day unfolding. But just when I think it can’t get any worse, Ben says three words that break my heart.
“It’s a date.”
When he said it to me about our day together, I took it to mean that it was an actual date. But now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just something he says.
Finally Dad finishes stretching and asks, “So what do you two have planned for today?”
“A major makeover,” Ben says. “Izzy’s going to teach me the ways of Pearl Beach. She’s going to help me blend in with the natives.”
I am totally ready for Dad to finish me off with some joke like “How would she know?” But that’s not what he says.
“So you’re a runner . . . and you’re smart,” he says. “That’s a good combination. You guys have fun.”
It may sound hokey, but in person, in the moment, it’s sweet. Once Dad is inside, Ben turns to me and rubs his hands together in anticipation.
“So where do we begin?”
“That depends,” I reply. “How much of a transformation are you looking for?”
“Total witness relocation program,” he says. “Wardrobe, attitude, everything.”
“Well, then,” I say with a smile, “we better get some ice cream.”
The Islander has been serving ice cream on the boardwalk for as long as there has been a boardwalk. It has entrances on both the beach and street sides, and there is a double counter in the middle of the shop that faces each way. This counter looks like an island, which is how the shop got its name. But because PB actually is an island, locals co-opted it and they like to wear the shop’s “Islander” T-shirts as a sign of civic pride.
I order my usual, a waffle cone with two scoops of mint chocolate chip, and Ben gets a junior sundae with hot fudge and whipped cream on rocky road. There is a row of booths against the wall, and we take the one in the middle.
“I’m always up for dessert,” he says. “But I don’t see how a sundae is going to give me insight into Pearl Beach. You know, we actually have ice cream back home in Wisconsin. That whole ‘America’s Dairy Land’ thing isn’t just for the license plates.”
“We’re not here because of the ice cream,” I say.
I turn sideways so that my back is pressed against the wall and stretch my legs out on my side of the booth. He gets the hint and does likewise. Now we’re looking right at the counter.
“We’re here for the view,” I explain.
“What’s so special about a view of an ice cream counter?”
“There are two sides to Pearl Beach,” I tell him. “The tourist side and the local side. You can’t have one without the other. We need the tourists and the tourists need us.”
“Okay,” he says. “That makes sense.”
“But our beach and their beach are different,” I say. “They’re coming here for something they’ve seen in movies and on postcards. It’s kind of like the theme park version and not the real one.”
“You’re starting to lose me.”
“I’ll give you an example. Have you been to the candy shop down by the arcade?” I ask. “The one with the big mixer machines that twist taffy?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I went in there when I was handing out posters. It’s really cool.”
“Did they offer you a sample of the saltwater taffy?”
“Two,” he says with a guilty smile. “They were delicious.”
“Do you know why they call it saltwater taffy?”
He looks at me like it’s a trick question. “Because it’s made with salt water?”
“No,” I say. “It’s just regular taffy made with fresh water.”
“Then why do they call it that?”
“Because over a hundred years ago there was a candy shop on a boardwalk in New Jersey that got flooded in a storm. All the taffy got seawater on it, so the man at the counter joked that it was now ‘saltwater’ taffy. He was joking, but when people heard about it, they started buying it up. They figured saltwater taffy must be something that you can only get at the beach. And from that point on all boardwalks are expected to have saltwater taffy.”
“So you’re saying that the beach is full of con artists taking advantage of tourists?”
“Hardly,” I reply. “You like the taffy. It’s delicious. And people expect it to be here. They want to come to the beach and see the pretty candy being made in the big machines. They want to buy a decorative box of it to give to their grandma. There’s nothing wrong with that. But while tourists think of it as something to do with the beach, we think of it as something to do with tourists. It’s fake. That’s true of almost everything on the boardwalk.”
“So the locals don’t come down here?” he asks.
“Not much. Some of the kids do when they’re scamming for a quick summer vacation romance, but for the most part, the locals only come down here for two things: work and . . .”
“Ice cream,” he says, putting it together.
I nod.
“The Islander is just that good. Now, if you look toward the boardwalk entrance, most of the people you’ll see coming off the beach are tourists. But if you look toward Ocean Ave., you’ll see the locals. This table is where the worlds collide. It is the perfect place to study them side by side and see how they’re different.”
Ben takes it all in and understands what I’m talking about.
“Okay,” he says, turning toward me. “This is kind of brilliant.”
“And don’t forget the ice cream is amazing.”
He takes a spoonful and nods his agreement. “Yes, it is.”
We spend a half hour people watching, and Ben quickly picks up on some of the basic differences. He starts off with the obvious ones, like clothes and sunburns, but eventually starts to pick up on the more subtle things, like attitude.