Safe Harbor (24 page)

“My baby,” Quinn whispered out loud, watching herself be passed from her father to her mother. Now she was in her mother's arms, feeling the sunlight come from above, feeling her mother's locket and the little key bump the top of her head.

There they were, right in the movie, catching the light: the silver locket Aunt Dana had given her mother and the tiny key her mother had worn on the same chain around her neck. Silver and gold: They didn't match, but they went together.
Besides my daughters, my two most prized possessions,
her mother had said of the locket and key.

Her mother had always kept a diary: like mother, like daughter. She had taught Quinn the pleasures of writing everything down, the necessity of it. And after a while, when it became as natural as breathing, the way it helped to figure everything out.

Her mother had taught her that diaries should be hidden. Quinn didn't know her mother's secret hiding place, but even if she did, she would never have breached it. Never in a million years. No matter how bad things got, how curious Quinn felt, she would never read her mother's diary. And she would have expected her mother, knowing how precious a diary was, to treat Quinn's with greater respect herself.

But this wasn't the time for blame, for anger. What was done was done.

“Grandma, Aunt Dana,” Quinn called as her mother danced for the camera, that wonderful Vineyard light shining on the key and locket. “Come watch the movie.”

“Soon, honey,” Grandma said.

“In a minute, Quinn,” Aunt Dana said, then lowered her voice again, telling Grandma about the dive, asking her questions about Daddy's projects, saying maybe it was time to stop looking, time to set all the questions to rest.

Staring at the key around her mother's neck, Quinn knew that was out of her control. Questions couldn't be set to rest until they were good and ready. The waves charged in beneath the Gay Head cliffs like mermaids' horses, fast and white. Blinking at the screen, Quinn could almost see the mermaids now, right behind her mother's head, dancing in circles with Quinn on her toes.

“I want to go back there,” Quinn whispered.

“Where?” Allie asked, looking up.

“Martha's Vineyard.”

“What do we need all that water for? We have the Sound.”

“You weren't born there,” Quinn said, her voice nearly as dreamy as the feeling in her heart. She wanted to see the place again before it was all built up, ruined by development. She looked at her mother's and father's faces and brought them into her mind. “You didn't live with them there.”

 

T
HAT NIGHT,
when the girls were in bed and the moon had fully risen to flood the eastern sea, Dana threw on her robe and went out into the yard. Once again, she couldn't sleep. More than anything else, she wished it were Thursday.

She wanted Sam.

She wanted to talk to him, to sit up with him in the thin, silver moonlight and talk about another night like this. How could Mark not have seen the tow rope? Dana gazed over the Sound, at the white light spread over the waves, and wondered how it would feel to be sailing along, to feel your boat be pulled into the sea beneath you.

She wanted to ask Lily, and she wanted to talk to Sam. Instead, the only thing she could think of doing was to go down into the garage and try to make sense with her brush and paints. This was her language, the way she had always solved her mysteries before. Turning to her canvas, she let herself work.

The dark, purple water topped with fine gold-edged waves. Staring at the painting, Dana touched her brush here and there. She worked on the seaweed and eelgrass below. Weaving the mermaid into the work, she wondered why she had ever thought she'd needed Monique for a model. She found herself painting Lily's face.

There in the dark garage, her sister came alive. Her features flowed from Dana's brush, and her bright eyes met Dana's and smiled. Her hair fell loosely around her beautiful face, the same face Dana saw every day when she looked at Quinn and Allie.

“Tell me what I need to know,” Dana said, painting furiously now.

Outside, leaves rustled above the garage roof.

“What do I need to know to help Quinn? Allie's all right,” Dana whispered. Her brush flew across the canvas. Blue-black water, clear as glass. A silver locket tangled in the weed. “But I'm worried about Quinn. She won't let go of you.”

An owl flew into the garage, roosting in the rafters. It might have frightened Dana, but she barely noticed.

“She keeps your ashes on the mantel. Yours and Mark's. She's convinced there's more to your story, that we have to find out before she's ready. Oh, Lily. I am too,” Dana said. Her hand brushed the key around her neck, and with absolute urgency she painted a tiny gold key lying in the sand. “What happened? What did you and Mark do?”

CHAPTER
19

A
S
T
HURSDAY APPROACHED, THE GIRLS FOLLOWED
Dana as if they were baby chicks and she were the mother hen. The plan was for Martha to come to Hubbard's Point and stay overnight, with Marnie available for backup. Quinn objected every inch of the way.

“It's not fair to Grandma,” she said while Dana got dressed. “You know how the salt air bothers her arthritics.”

“Arthritis,” Dana corrected her. “But it's kind of you to be so concerned.”

“Well, I am. And I'm worried about Mrs. Campbell too. She's always looking after us, and I think it's too much. Mommy took turns with her—we'd take care of her girls once in a while.”

“That's a good point. We'll have Cameron and June over when I get back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes in disbelief and despair. “I can't believe you're just leaving us here. What if something happens? New York is too far for you to go without us. You should take us, Aunt Dana. That way, if you need us, we'll be right there—we'll keep you safe.”

Dana smiled at Quinn, touched because her niece was thinking of something happening to her—not to them. In Quinn's world, bad things happened to the adults, the parents. Dana, dressed in her all-purpose art-world black Catata suit, took Quinn's hand and pulled her to the edge of the bed.

“I'm going for only one day,” Dana said.

“A day and a night and at least part of tomorrow,” Quinn scowled. Allie, who had been silent until then, rolled out from under the bed and grasped Dana's ankle.

“Don't go,” Allie said.

“It's the little girl who lives under the bed,” Dana said, lifting her up and setting her on the pillows.

“What about your painting?” Quinn asked. “Your gallery lady will understand—in fact, she'll want you to stay here and work. Give me the phone—I'll call and tell her how beautiful it is, how it's your best one yet.”

“New York is too far,” Allie said.

“Unless you take us,” Quinn jumped in. “That's alternative number two. Number one is that I call the gallery lady, number two is that we go with you.”

“Okay, you two—listen to me,” Dana said. She took a deep breath. “I have to go, and that's that. I'm very careful—always. I've spent lots of time in lots of cities, and New York is one of them. And I plan to come home with presents.”

“We're not material,” Quinn said. “We don't care about that.”

“Presents, Quinn,” Allie whispered, tugging her sister's shirt.

“Come here and hug me,” Dana said, wrapping them in her arms as tightly as she could. Her heart hurt with how much she loved them. Outside the window, pine trees swayed in the August breeze, and joyful seagulls wheeled and cried. It was almost enough to make her change her mind and stay home.

Almost, but not quite. Dana needed a day away. She didn't want to think about her sister's problems anymore. She needed a break from these children she loved so much. She craved a business lunch with other grown-ups, an afternoon of wandering the galleries of SoHo with no one wanting anything from her—a taste of her old life, when all she had had to do was paint the pictures and let others sell her work. And she needed to see Sam. That night, seven o'clock at Lincoln Center . . .

“What's that?”

At the sound of Quinn's voice, Dana pulled back. The jacket of her suit had fallen open to reveal the small gold key on the silk cord around her neck. The girls stared, mesmerized, at the key.

“Is it Mommy's?” Allie asked.

“Why do you say that, Allie?”

“She had one like it.”

“Do you know what it went to?” Dana asked, her stomach flipping.

“Her diary, I think,” Allie said. She giggled nervously, but her eyes looked upset as they swung to Quinn. “She tried her key on Quinn's diary to see if it fit before she broke it open. Mommy's key didn't fit.”

“Shut up, Allie.”

“What happened, Quinn?” Dana asked, shocked.

Quinn shook her head, her face growing red. Allie moved closer on the bed, as if to comfort her sister. The younger girl looked up at Dana. “Mommy read her diary.”

“Is that true?” Dana asked.

Quinn nodded, ashamed.

“Why did she do that?”

“She said she was worried about Quinn,” Allie said. “That she didn't want to, but she read it for Quinn's own good. It made Quinn really mad.”

Quinn was shaking. Scowling, beet red, she looked ready to bolt. Dana took both her hands and shook them gently. “I don't blame you,” she said. “Your mother was wrong to do it.”

“Even though it was ‘for my own good'?”

Dana shook her head, remembering back thirty years. “Quinn, I'm sorry to tell you we come from a long line of diary readers. When I was your age, or a little younger, my mother got it into her head that I was taking your mother and Marnie—Mrs. Campbell—on dangerous expeditions.”

“Like where?”

“Well, on rowboat picnics out to Gull Island. And across the railroad tracks to look for Indian caves. And trying to swim across the Sound.”

“Were you?”

“Umm, of course not.” She coughed. “I would never do such dangerous things. What do you take me for? The fact is, I wouldn't have written about it if I had. But my mother thought I might have, so for my own good she rooted out my diary and read the whole thing.”

“Were there boys in there?” Allie asked.

Dana nodded gravely. “It was loaded with boys.”

“Mine's not,” Quinn said. “I haven't had time for boys.”

“Well, anyway, my mother read my diary, and I felt as if she had read my soul.”

“I felt like that,” Quinn said.

“It took a long time for us to build our trust back.”

“It would have,” Quinn whispered, “but my mother died first.”

Dana hugged her. “Now I almost wish I weren't going to New York,” she said. “I'm really glad we talked about this. I'm coming back tomorrow, and I promise not to read your diary. I promise, Quinn. No matter what happens.”

“Really?”

“Really and truly. And, Quinn—I know your mother wishes she hadn't read it either.”

“How?”

“Because I know your mother. She let her maternal instincts get in the way of remembering what it was like to be a girl. Don't be mad at her for that. It only means she loved you so much, she couldn't help herself.”

“I wish she was here so I could hear it from her,” Quinn whispered.

“So do I,” Dana said into her braids.

 

O
NCE SHE CLIMBED
onto the train, Dana felt like a different person. Her mother and the girls stood on the platform outside the small blue station, seeing her off. They might have been waving white lace handkerchiefs and she might have been a boy departing for war, so great was the pathos in their faces.

But as the train picked up steam and headed west, Dana felt the responsibilities of aunthood flying off her shoulders. She was a single, world-traveling artist once again, leaving behind the pressures of small-town child-rearing, of suburban life. The train was air-conditioned. Outside, steam rose from the Connecticut marshes. The tide was out, and crab tracks scuttled through the mud. Herons hid in the shadows. New Haven and Bridgeport were hotbeds of traffic and trackside drama. Whizzing by, Dana saw it all. It was a child-free feast for her eyes.

She got off at Penn Station. Instead of getting a cab, she took the subway: the three train, down to Fourteenth Street. She meandered past the brick town houses along Twelfth Street, into the West Village. With time to kill, she stopped at a café on the corner of West Fourth and West Eleventh. The pictures on the wall were of Brittany, and drinking her espresso, she felt homesick for France.

Making her way through the Village, she window-shopped and people-watched. It wasn't at all hard to get used to. This was how she had lived for so long: losing herself in the world, using the details of everyday life to inspire her art and spark her muse.

When she came upon a small boutique that sold nothing but mobiles, she saw one with mermaids: five smiling mermaids swimming through the air, their hair streaming out behind them. Dana actually bolted away from the window. She didn't want to think about Hubbard's Point, the ocean, or any of her personal mermaids today.

Crossing Houston Street, she entered SoHo. This part of town was late to get going. The cafés were just starting to fill up. Dana felt a twinge—although she had always been an early riser, Jonathan had loved to have his coffee and croissant at their local
boîte
just before noon. She hurried along.

Shops and restaurants abounded. SoHo had changed over the years. When she'd first graduated from RISD, this had been the domain of artists living in lofts in the beautiful old cast-iron buildings. She and Lily had considered applying for AIR—artist-in-residence certification—and trying their luck in the big city.

They had gone to the Vineyard instead. Even now, Dana felt the pull of downtown New York. It was wildly energetic, filled with artists like herself, but she knew the sea always won out. Victoria DeGraff, her friend and gallery representative, knew that. She had planned their luncheon at Luna Mer: Moon on the Sea.

First, Dana went to the DeGraff Gallery itself. Located on the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street, its large windows were filled with two of Dana's underseascapes. Her name had been stenciled in classic white:
DANA UNDERHILL, NEW WORK
.

When Dana opened the door, Vickie's young assistant called her from the back. Vickie herself swept down the long space—no one in SoHo called their rooms “rooms”—in her flowing gold Tibetan robe, her dark hair cut as close as a bathing cap, and kissed Dana on the cheeks three times—Belgian style—before folding her in a huge American hug.

“Darling, darling, darling. I have missed you!”

“And I you,” Dana replied.

“Here you are! In person, and on canvas. What do you think?”

“It's hardly new work,” Dana said, looking around. “I did these five years ago.”

“I know. Thank God for the backlog. Who can predict when the blocks will come?” Saying “block,” she shivered at the word.

Dana nearly told her the block was over, but she didn't want to curse herself. Art was a strange thing—a gift beyond measure, and she knew better than to take it for granted. Guiding her by the arm, Vickie led Dana around the gallery. Dana saw her old paintings, greeting them as if they were old friends: the scene done in Corsica, the one from Positano, two done on the Isle of Wight, the rest in Honfleur.

“Underhill Undersea,” Vickie said. “That's what I'm seeing right now.”

Dana nodded. She wondered how she had managed to make each undersea environment so specifically its own. The marine life was different, of course, but it was the color of the water that identified each place.
Royal purple and dark blue . . .
she thought of the paints Sam had given her, and she looked at her watch and thought about that night.

Moving along, she saw that Vickie had put out one actually ancient painting: It dated back to the Vineyard days. Dana recognized the clams, the bluefish, the spent shell from the old army bombing range at No-man's Land—the deserted island just east of Gay Head—the gloriously nude mermaid, one of the only obvious ones she had ever painted.

“Where did you get this? I don't remember you having it,” Dana said.

“One of your first collectors died,” Vickie said. “His wife put his entire collection on the market, and I had to break the bank to buy you back. You are a valuable commodity, my dear. But it was worth it—early Underhill. Thank God for death—it gets you back into circulation.”

Dana nearly jumped.

As if realizing what she'd said, remembering Lily as the source of Dana's block, Vickie grabbed her arm. “Dana, I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, Vickie,” Dana said, staring at the mermaid who was, in fact, Lily.

“Come on, before I have to consume my other foot as well. We have a lunch date with Sterling Forsythe, an absolutely charming journalist from
Art Times
. Don't tell him I told you, but he's madly in love with you. He's heard the ridiculous rumor that you and Jon are done for good, and he hopes to do this fabulous article on you and get you to capitulate. Don't you dare, Dana.”

She laughed, still gazing at the Vineyard painting. She had done it that first summer in Gay Head, fresh out of art school. She thought of Sam, and for the first time in a while, it clicked that he had mentioned the Vineyard to her several weeks earlier, something about seeing her there. . . .

“What is it?” Vickie said.

Dana laughed, shaking her head. “Nothing. Just that I've been so busy lately, I haven't had time to think.”

“About Jonathan.”

Dana stopped smiling. “Not about him.”

Vickie pointed at a small canvas on the brick rear wall. Dana hadn't seen it before, but together they walked the length of the gallery. It was a portrait of her done almost a year earlier, not long after Lily's death. Jon had caught the sorrow in her gaze, the intensity of her stare. She was nude. They had just made love, and her arms were flung wide on the bed in helpless abandon. The picture was emotional, erotic, and to Dana, incredibly disturbing. Their lovemaking had been only half there during those months. Dana would try, but her heart wasn't in it.

“He wants me to represent him,” Vickie said. “He told me you two should be together in all aspects of art.”

“Victoria,” Dana said, turning her back and feeling the searing pain of that terrible memory. “He is full of shit. I'm hungry—can we go to lunch now?”

“Yes, we can. Off we go to Luna Mer with the woman who paints like a mermaid!”