‘Perfect Beach Day” is a collection of 16 short fiction tales of life in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Stories range from a holiday celebration to a visit to the burial ground of the region’s original people, the Nanticoke Indians.
The Jersey-born author, Lonn Braender, who divides his time between Washington Crossing, PA, and Rehoboth Beach, may be familiar to many in the community. He is an artist known for landscapes and seascapes, the former owner of the BOI’s Gallery in New Hope, and past president of the Trenton Artists Workshop Association. One of his works is currently on exhibition at “TAWA at 45” at the Trenton City Museum.
However, as he notes in his bio, after 25 years as a visual artist he “stumbled into an alternative creative outlet — writing” and saw his first short story published: the 2016 “Beach Nights,” a “Rehoboth Reads” anthology.
Since then, he has contributed to several other beach-related anthologies published by Cat & Mouth Press and published his first book, which includes the story “Woman in White Silk,” a sample of which appears below:
The smile on Ella Evans’ face was small, but Dawn could see the pure joy there. They were browsing the Antiques Mall in Lewes and the shop transported Ella back in time. It was exactly like her grandmother’s house, filled with porcelain figurines, chipped china, and dusty books. Her grandmother hung paintings like the antique shop, frame to frame. It even smelled like Grandmom Daisy’s, dusty and worn.
“You should buy this place.” Dawn, Ella’s best friend, elbowed her.
“Right? My grandmother’s house looked just like this.” Ella waved her arm without knocking anything over.
“Is your grandmother from here?”
“Rehoboth and her house looked just like this. I loved it there. It was the only time I wasn’t scolded for touching things — I was that kid.” Ella smirked. “My grandmother would even get on the floor and play with me with porcelain figurines, like that one there.” She pointed to a Hummel. “She’d make up fantastic adventures. We spent hours in castles, on islands. My favorite tale, hers too, was with this romantic artist who painted our portraits as we posed in gorgeous landscapes.
Hannah moved to the next aisle, it was filled with colorful glass, deep reds, and blues, some that glowed green. Unlike Ella, she touched nothing. They moved on to the next aisle which was case after case jammed with tarnished trinkets and silver spoons.
“Polish silver? Ugh!” Dawn shuddered.
“Look at that!” Ella pointed at a case.
There, on a tattered velvet cloth lay a tarnished brass key with a faded pink ribbon laced through the filigree end.
“What?”
“There, see that key? My grandmother had one just like that. I found it one summer and wore it like a necklace. She almost fainted when she caught me.”
“Really? She worried about wearing a key but not about bouncing Hummels across the floor?”
“Can I show you something?” A bespectacled grey-haired man greeted them.
“No.” Dawn thanked the merchant.
“And you Miss? You have your eye on something.” He smiled.
“My grandmother had a key just like that one.” She turned to Dawn. “It had engraved letters on one side. What were they?” Ella smiled at the memory.
The gentleman fumble through his key ring and unlocked the case. “Which one, Miss?”
“That one, with the pink ribbon.”
Gingerly, he picked up the key and held it out like a host. “A letterbox key. During the war, ladies guarded love letters in them.”
“I was wearing her key one day…” Ella turned away from the shopkeeper. “…when all of a sudden grandmom came in the back door. She was supposed to be on the beach with my mother. I panicked. There was this little door thing in the bathroom that opened to ‘my secret hideout.’ It was just a space under the stairs. It was dark so I never went far from the door until that day. Of course, Grandmom came home to use the bathroom so I pulled the door closed and kept crawling. When I passed the stairs, there was a space, maybe two feet wide with a vent at the end. I crawled fast and banged my knee into this metal box. Guess what the key went to?”
“Really?”
“I haven’t thought about this in decades.” Ella caressed the key. “There was just enough light to see. There were letters and drawings, and that photo! Oh my, I was only seven or eight so it shocked me. A picture of a man carrying a woman, they were both nude.”
“Grandma porn! Did you read the letters?”
“No, the vent sprang open, and there was my grandmother, angrier than a hornet.”
“What’d she do?”
“She pulled me out, slammed the box shut, and put the key in her pocket. I think she even cursed. She didn’t speak to me for days.”
Perfect Beach Day by Lonn Braender, $15.99 Uncle Fuzzy Press. For more information, visit lonnb.com.
