Becka called her mom two days after she’d left her fiancé at the alter.  “How did Daddy propose to you?”

“Apparently, he had just came from a handball game… He came in in like a tee shirt and he was kind of sweaty and I kind of liked that… He said, ‘You’re not beautiful, by far, but we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna make it work and that’s that…’”

“And you believed him?”

“I loved him as much as… I could possibly love someone at that time… He had the poise, the charm, the grace, the concentration, the nine yards plus the field goal, until he started hanging around biker bars and lesbian clubs…”

“Daddy??”

“He was a very radical feminist…”

“He always used to tell me, ‘life is a river.  You can either drown, swim or find a boat.’”

“Yes,” her mother said.  “and he’s in such a different mode these days… he’s in more of a spiritual, sit back and chill, do some yoga and call it a night mode.”

Boy, Becka thought, we have such layers of reality laying on top of nothing and legitimately there is no rhyme nor reason why things happen… “Well, thanks for the pep talk, mom, I gotta go.”

“Ride long and hard, baby. We’re red-liners, that’s what we do.”

“Will do.”

Becka hung up, got into her old Suzuki Jeep.  No insurance.  Bad breaks.  Drove to Venice beach, where she really began to dig her heels in and isolate herself.

She thought that sisterhood was powerful, until she realized that the ocean was incredibly loud and she couldn’t hear a thing.

She stopped, looked around and knew that she understood the world and she understood life.

Her nerves left her and she was never like that ever again.