Our mothers were magazine gorgeous.

That’s what you told me, once. The morning deluge outside fell hard enough to bounce off cement and scatter leaves on the grass. Trade winds blew water like bedsheets across the swimming pool surface, turned it gray-white. Somebody would need to get up soon and turn on the pump before things overflowed. That was almost always you, because you didn’t mind getting wet.

You held a stack of old photographs, but you didn’t look at them. You watched the rain. Your hands rested on the table top, as if you meant to deal snapshots like cards. A kind of pastel Tarot deck, maybe, one made from houses that didn’t stand anymore, peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, grape Kool-Aid, dogs that played now in the sky. Sometimes, if I close my eyes, you take me with you, back into Polaroid-land.

Our mothers were magazine gorgeous, you said, and you were right.

The day is so brilliant it glitters. The waves change from barest blue to deep, translucent green as they roll beneath the pier at Santa Monica. Two women stand a little apart at the railing, because they don’t know each other. They are much younger than we’ll remember them, later. Your mom has a can of Tab and a cigarette. My mom glances over and wishes she did, too.

They’ve never met and never will, but they recognize that Cadillacs don’t have fins this year and Cronkite knows the world has changed. Kennedy and Monroe still float like sad smoke over everything. Our moms wear sunglasses and sleeveless blouses and bright scarves, and the world is different now, so they don’t need husbands to show them this blue horizon or anything else. Forever is coming, and they are beautiful and fierce and ready.

You and I are little, and we hold onto the bottom railing and look down, down, down for fish, or maybe mermaids if we’re double-lucky. I’ve loved the smells of warm creosote and salt ever since, my whole life. You point at something, and glance over at me—dark eyes—did I see?

I’m never going to quite forget you, or this ice cream day. Years later, it will drive me west. There will be hot dogs for lunch, on a bun with ketchup and mustard, if we’re good. You’ll be gone by then. We’ll have our lunches apart, but in the strangest ways that really matter, we’ll always be together.

A long gust snaps the flags over the arcade, and the young women thumb scarves off, at the same time. Hair blows across cheeks, snapping just like the flags. They both smile, at the same time. They don’t know each other, but yes, they do. This is forever.

Our mothers were magazine gorgeous.