Barefoot Girls (47 page)

The door to the bedroom swung open and Daniel stepped into the room holding the same small overnight bag he’d brought for that first aborted visit.

She turned to face him, closing the drawer. “Hi,” she said softly.

“Hey. This is weird. But,” he said, dropping the bag unceremoniously on the floor, where it made a loud thud. “It is what it is. I’m going in the morning, though.”

“I know, you told me.”

“Just want to be clear. Damn, my head hurts. Those Mean Greens really are mean. Have you got any Advil?” He sat heavily on the side of the bed she usually slept on, and put one hand to his head. “This is two nights in a row of tequila.”

She looked at him rubbing his hand on his head. She wanted to sit down next to him, rub his neck, touch him, but she didn’t dare. What did he just say? “Two nights? You were out last night?”

He didn’t look at her, just nodded slowly, staring into space. “Yeah. Went out with Brian.”

She hated that he wouldn’t look at her. Hated this emptiness between them. And the mention of Brian, the Lothario of Lotharios, made her feel even worse. So they’d been out on the town last night, drinking and trolling the clubs, probably in the company of beautiful women. “Uh huh…”

“I’m going to ignore that. I don’t think I have to make excuses,” he said, glancing at her sharply. “Do have any Advil? Tylenol? I can go check downstairs if-“

“Yeah, sure, there’s some around here somewhere,” she said miserably, pushing away from the bureau to walk over to her suitcase that lay in the corner. She crouched down and started feeling around in the outside zippered compartments. She heard the scrape of the bedside table’s drawer being opened, Daniel searching, too. Then there was a particular silence, a breathlessness in that part of the room that made her turn to look.

Daniel sat on the bed, holding something between his thumb and index finger. Her engagement ring.

She gasped, and then the words rushed out before she thought about what they revealed. “Where was that?

He looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean, where was it?”

The drawer of the small table was still hanging open. That was where she had put it. Not in her suitcase, or her purse. It all came rushing back to her. That first night, how tired she’d been. She had been putting the ring on and taking it off all day, trying to fight the anxiety she felt when she saw it on her hand. As she lay in bed that night, her eyes heavy with sleep, she’d taken it off again and put it in the drawer next to her, blew out the candle in its pretty Delft candleholder that sat beside the bed, and her mind had rushed away into a deep dream-filled sleep.

She stood up and reaching involuntarily toward him, the ring, before dropping her hands to her sides. “I-I couldn’t find it.” There, the truth was out – the awful fact that, on top of taking it off, she had lost it.

He looked at her, and then back at the ring. “You lost it,” he said in a wondering voice.

She had to make him understand. “I was just taking it off for a little while, while I was getting my head on straight. I thought I put it in my suitcase, in the zippered pocket where it would be safe. I still wanted to marry you. I want to marry you now. I love you. I know you don’t love me anymore. You don’t want me, but-“

“No. You’re wrong,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the ring.

“Yes, I do. Stop telling me how I feel. Stop shutting me out!”

He looked up at her, his eyes bright and wet in the lamplight. “No, I’m not talking about you. You’re wrong about me. I never stopped loving you.”

“What?” Her breath caught and she stared at him, at the open and yearning way he was looking at her, had been looking at her all day, but she couldn’t see until now. How had she been blind to it? She had assumed his anger was a lack of love.

“Come here.”

She went to him, kneeling on the floor in front of him, her eyes fastened on his.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

She lifted up her left hand and he took it between his, still holding the ring between two fingers.

“Hannah O’Brien, will you be my wife?”

“Yes, yes, please. Oh, please,” she answered, sobbing and then laughing a little.

“If I put this ring on your finger, will you wear it for the rest of your life?”

“I’ll never take it off again, I’d rather die.”

He laughed at her earnest expression. “I don’t think it will come to that. I just want to know that you’re really mine, that you want to be mine. Because I want to be yours, Hannah. I don’t want anyone else. Only you.”

“You’re all I want.”

He put the ring on her finger, sliding it into place. Hannah looked at it, beautiful and glittering brilliantly, shooting sparks of color everywhere. She waited for the flutters of panic, but they were silent. Instead, there was a spreading warmth within her, unfolding. She looked up into his eyes, and watched them grow closer as he kneeled down beside her and drew her into his arms.

Chapter 45

Hannah opened her eyes, turned over, and looked at Daniel’s side of the bed. It was empty, early morning light pooling on the crumpled sheets. Suddenly frightened that he’d left, she sat up and looked around the room. There was his overnight bag, where he had dropped it in the middle of the floor, still zippered shut.

She sank back under the warm covers and sighed, smiling. Then she ran her hands up and down her bare arms, and then down to her bare thighs, her mind replaying the night before, remembering how quickly their kisses became fevered, their efforts to be quiet, the bed squeaking too loudly and them ending up on the rag rug on the floor with a blanket over them.

The door to the bedroom opened and Daniel crept into the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. He turned around and looked at her. She smiled at him. She started to speak before he put his finger on his lips.

He whispered. “They’re all still asleep down there, one big grown-up sleepover. It looks really uncomfortable. Don’t they all have houses here where they could sleep?”

“Yes,” she whispered back. “But I think they’re babysitting me right now. Keeping an eye on me.”

“You’re a troublemaker, all right,” he said quietly and climbed back into bed with her. “Oh, and a show off. Look at you there. I guess you were a big athlete, huh?” He nodded at the framed photo by Pam’s bedside, one of Hannah at seven years old. She was standing on Pam’s dock with her arms up and bent in a ninety degree angle muscle-man pose, grinning. “I was checking that out this morning while you were still sleeping and I wondered, do I really want to marry a show off? I mean, will there be any room left in the spotlight for me? What about my tender male ego?”

She gave him a little shove and laughed. “Silly, you know I’m not like that. I’m the last person who wants to be in the spotlight. That’s more my mom’s kind of thing.”

“You can’t tell from that photo. Look at you.”

She turned and looked. It was an unusual photo of her, but then, it had been an unusual summer. “I’d just turned seven. That was the summer I learned how to swim.”

“At seven? Isn’t that late? I think I was swimming at, like, four or five.”

“Yeah, most kids learned then. Not me, though. I was scared of the water.”

“You spent every summer out on this island and you were afraid of the water?”

“Terrified,” she said, nodding and remembering. “That was the first time my mom ever pushed me to do something I didn’t want to do, and I hated her for it.”

“Really? What happened?”

Hannah looked at him closely and saw that he really wanted to know. She took a big breath and began to speak.

From my first memory of Captain’s, I remember thinking that the water looked too dark, too deep. Huge and strange things moved under that water, things with tentacles and sharp teeth. The only time I liked the water was at low tide, when the sand was right there, just below the water where I could see it. Then I didn’t mind wading in the shallows or just sitting in the water if it was a hot day, but generally I preferred dry land. Instead of splashing around with the other kids, I’d sit on our little beach and make sandcastles and play with my dolls. Mom didn’t like it, thought I should be learning to swim already, at four like she had, but Aunt Zo came to my rescue. She said she didn’t learn to swim early either and she turned into a fine swimmer. What was the rush?

At the Dog Days celebration the year I was four, I was out on the dock with the rest of the kids, watching the watermelon-rolling contest. That’s the contest where all the three and four-year-olds have to roll big greased watermelons out of the shallow water by themselves, and most kids are just falling all over the place. I think the adults held that contest purely for the comedy of watching those kids slipping around and falling on their butts. I wasn’t competing, just up there on the dock with all the kids and somehow, even though I preferred to stay away from the edge of any dock, I ended up standing in front of the crowd. There was some pushing and then there wasn’t any room and, plop! Fell right in the water.

The water wasn’t that deep, but it was deep enough. I sank like a stone according to everyone there. I don’t remember much except the surprise of the splash and being under the water, and the air drying up in my lungs. Then the witches started grabbing me and I was terrified. No, I know, they weren’t real witches, but I thought they were. It was probably just seaweed or sea grass or something brushing up against me. But I was convinced. There were witches everywhere back then, in my bedtime stories and on television and in
The Wizard of Oz
. Of course they were under the water, too.

Aunt Zo saw it happen and jumped onto the beach. She waded in right past the kids and their watermelons, and pulled me out. I hadn’t been in long enough to start drowning, so she just had to deal with a screaming hysterical kid, and then deal with my mom when she found out she’d missed the whole thing and I could have drowned. It was another of those it-takes-a-village moments my childhood was filled with.

Still, after that you couldn’t get me near the water unless we had to take a boat ride somewhere, and then I sat in the middle of the boat with my arms wrapped up around my life-jacket. I wouldn’t play in the water at all anymore, wouldn’t even go near the beach. The year I was five, everyone just laughed it off, said I’d get over it. When I was six, mom started trying to do things to entice me into the water. She let me pick out a bathing suit, which I ended up wearing while running around on the boardwalk. She bought every kind of inflatable toy and water-wing type thing, but that didn’t work either.

The following winter, she enrolled me in swim classes at the local YMCA. Evidently, I pitched a fit every time they tried to get me in the water with the other kids. Just screamed and cried and wouldn’t budge. The teacher gave up, told my mother to wait another year, that I “wasn’t developmentally ready”. That really got my mother going.

“That idiot doesn’t know what she’s talking about, ‘developmentally ready’. Of course Hannah’s scared. Someone takes a header at four, she’s gonna be. But you get over it. I swear, the teachers today are incompetent boobs. Can’t even get a little kid to learn how to swim. Fine, I’ll do it myself,” she’d said, nodding, to anyone who stopped by the first few days we got to the island the following summer. I remember hearing that and a wall going up. I was
not
going to swim!

My birthday was in early May and we had already celebrated at home with a small party in our back yard, but suddenly, my mother kept talking about having a birthday party for me on the island.

“So, birthday-girl, what do you think about a party in your honor? Cake, ice cream? We could get you a Carvel cake with those crunchies you like. I know, let’s make it a mermaid party! Wouldn’t that be fun? You and your friends can all pretend to be mermaids, and we’ll get shell and pearl necklaces for all of you to wear. Ooh, this will be great!”

I didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say. The other kids on the island were nice, but we weren’t friends. I didn’t really fit the Captain’s mold. The other kids were all way ahead of me, diving and sailing already. It was hard to imagine them wanting to play mermaids with me, even more impossible as I wouldn’t go near the water.

The day of the party, my mother gave me a huge beautifully wrapped present with a filmy blue bow, the box decorated all over with glued-on shells. I was excited, hoping it was a new Barbie or a Barbie outfit. Instead, it was a shiny turquoise one-piece bathing suit.

“Don’t you love it? It looks just like a mermaid, so pretty. Perfect for today.”

“I’m not swimming, Mommy. I thought we were just going to have a regular party. Why do we need to go in the water?”

“Oh, come on, sweetheart. Everyone can swim. So can you. It’s not bad, it’s fun!”

It got worse when everyone showed up in their bathing suits. Evidently, this was definitely a swimming party, only I hadn’t been told. Other than the cake, which was cut and served inside before it melted, the Barefooter house lacking a gas refrigerator and freezer, all the games my mom had organized were water games. I refused to go in, wouldn’t even put the bathing suit on, and my mom and I got in a huge fight. The kids played and had fun anyway. I ended up watching my own party from a window, safe inside the house.