Safe Harbor (6 page)

Not much in the room had changed since last
year. The bed was made—but sloppily, with the spread uneven and the
sheet under it wrinkled. The hardwood floor was clear—but only
because a variety of junk was heaped haphazardly on the bookshelves
and the top of the dresser. The oval braided rugs lay on either
side of the bed, and the red-white-and-blue kite Kip and Shelley
had launched every year on the Fourth of July was rolled and
propped against a corner of the window seat overlooking the side
yard. The only alteration Shelley noticed was that Kip had removed
the poster of the solar system which used to adorn one wall, and
hung in its place a framed parchment map of Block Island with
pen-and-ink sketches of clipper ships sailing around it.

“I was reading,”
he told her, rummaging through the clutter on his dresser top for
something that would serve as a book mark. He settled on a scrap of
paper covered with gin rummy scores, stuffed it into the copy
of
The Catcher in the Rye
lying face down on his bed, and put the book on
the night table.

“I read
The Catcher in the Rye
in English this year,” Shelley remarked, lifting the dark red
paperback from the night table and flipping through the pages to
see how far Kip had gotten into the story.

“We were supposed to read it,” he told her,
“but I got stuck in Mr. Goober’s class—”

“Mr.
Goober
?”

“Well, his real
name is Mr. Goebler, but everyone calls him the Goob. He said he
wasn’t going to teach
Catcher
because it was a dirty book. He made us
read
The Turn of the Screw
instead. You ever read anything by Henry
James?”

Shelley shook her head.

“He sucks eggs,”
Kip said. “Anyway, first thing I did was take the T into Boston and
buy a copy of
Catcher
. I figured, if the Goob thought it was dirty, it was
something I wanted to read. So far it’s great.”

“You think so?”

“You didn’t like it?”

Shelley
shrugged. “I thought it was okay. I know it’s supposed to be this
classic and everything, but...” She gazed thoughtfully at the book,
tracing the stiff edge of the cover with her fingertip. “Well, it’s
just...it’s about a boy. I mean, everything we read in school is
always about boys coming of age. We read
Huck Finn
and
The Red Badge of Courage
and
Billy Budd
, and they’re
all about boys. Boys growing up, boys facing crises, boys becoming
men and all that. We never read anything about
girls.”

“Maybe nobody’s written a good book about
girls.”

She gave him a
withering look. “You want to read a good book about a girl coming
of age?
To Kill a
Mockingbird
. The best book I’ve ever
read,” she told him. “It won a Pulitzer Prize, it was made into a
movie, it’s a great book. I don’t know why they don’t teach it in
school. They should. I’m really sick of reading about boys coming
of age all the time.”

Kip frowned. It dawned on her that he was a boy
coming of age; maybe he took her comments as a personal insult. “On
behalf of boys all over the world,” he said sarcastically, “I
apologize for inspiring such boring literature.”

“I didn’t say it was boring,” Shelley hastily
clarified. “I just said it would be nice to read about girls
sometimes, too.”

“Boys who are coming of age read lots of stuff
about girls,” he said, grinning mischievously.

“In
Playboy
,
right?”

“You know me too
well, Shelley,” he said with a sigh. His smile became sincere and
he held up his hand to make a pledge: “I promise that I will
read
To Kill a
Mockingbird
.”

“Good. And then
you can read
The Diary of Anne
Frank
, and
Little
Women
, and—”

“Hey, why don’t you just write me a
list?”

“I will,” she said. “Better yet, let’s bike
down to the library tomorrow and I’ll pick out some books for
you.”

“What a
vacation,” he protested. “I’ll read your books if you’ll
read
Guadalcanal Diary
. You turn me into a wimp, and I’ll turn you into a
marine.”

“Yuck,” she said before bursting into
laughter.

Kip laughed, as well. “You wanna play
backgammon?” he suggested.

“Okay.”

He reached up to pull the box down from the
shelf in his closet when the sound of a moped motor rumbled through
the open window. “Uh-oh,” Kip murmured ominously. “The lovebirds
are about to make the scene.”

Shelley tiptoed to the front window, ducked
down so as not to be visible from the front yard, and looked out.
She saw the moped coasting up the driveway, with Mark steering and
Diana perched behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. “Maybe
we should go downstairs and turn the porch lights on and off,”
Shelley said.

Kip shook his head. “They aren’t going to get
in too much trouble. Diana knows I’m here. Whatever they do,
they’re going to have to do it outside.” He knelt beside Shelley
and peered out the window. “I can’t see them anymore—can
you?”

“The angle isn’t good.”

“Let’s go upstairs.” Kip helped her to her
feet. Together they hurried out of his room, down the hall to the
small bedroom and up the ladder through the attic to the
cupola.

From the tiny room atop the roof they had an
unobstructed view of the front yard, the moped, and Diana and Mark,
who were seated on the porch steps, talking. “See?” Shelley said in
Diana’s defense. “Your mother doesn’t have to flash the lights at
them. They know how to behave.”

“Sometimes.” Kip and Shelley arranged
themselves on their knees, resting their arms on the sill in front
of them and gazing out through the open window. The cupola was
dark, so they didn’t have to worry about being detected from below.
“After you and your mother and the Sussmans left Saturday night, my
father had one of those disgusting little chats with Mark,” Kip
informed her. “You know: ‘What are your intentions, young man?’
That kind of stuff.”

“Oh, God, how embarrassing! I’d die if my
father did that to a guy I was dating.”

“That’s the trouble with you, Shelley—you’re
too introverted. You’ve got to learn how to direct your hostility
outward. Diana didn’t threaten to die. She threatened to kill my
father.”

“What did Mark do?”

“He had the script memorized: `I like Diana,
we’re good friends.’ The whole thing was really gross.”

“You were eavesdropping, I take it?”

“I couldn’t help myself,” Kip said, feigning
innocence. “I was in the kitchen with my mother, cleaning up. They
were in the living room, right across the hall. Besides,” he added
with a grin, “my mom was eavesdropping. Every time I made a noise
she’d shush me and strain to hear what Mark was saying.”

“Like mother, like son,” Shelley
scolded.

“Yeah? Well, here you are, spying on
them.”

Shelley mirrored his smile. “I don’t feel so
guilty. They aren’t doing anything worth spying on.”

It was true. Diana and Mark sat quietly, Mark’s
arm looped around Shelley’s shoulders, their voices drifting
indistinctly through the night air. They looked nice together,
Shelley thought, suffering an unexpected pang of jealousy. She
wished she were a few years older, having college guys like Mark
falling in love with her.

“So,” Kip broke into her thoughts. “Given how
exciting this is turning out to be, would you rather go back
downstairs and play backgammon?”

Shelley considered. Backgammon was okay, but
what they had now—the cupola, the night, the pleasantly cool
breezes and the lulling sound of Mark’s and Diana’s voices floating
up from below... She didn’t want to leave this. She wanted to stay
up here with Kip, thinking about how wonderful it would be to fall
in love.

Not with him, of course. Even though he was
tall and well built, even though his face had grown into his
eyeglasses and his eyes had grown intensely handsome, even though
this summer he smelled less often of suntan lotion and more often
of aftershave lotion, and his voice had settled into a husky
baritone, and his arms and legs had developed muscular
contours...

Kip was her friend, and she would never risk
destroying their friendship by falling in love with him. She wanted
to share this tranquil evening with him, though.

“Let’s just talk,” she said. “Guess who I got a
letter from today?”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kip pulled a face. “What did he
have to say for himself?”

“He said he was sorry he couldn’t come to the
island so often this year.” Sighing, she lapsed into thought for a
moment. “You know, he never talked to me about his job before. He’d
go to work, he’d come home, and when I asked him what he did he’d
say, `I made money.’ This letter—it was like the first time he
actually said anything to me about how hard he worked. He confided
in me, Kip.”

Kip continued to gaze at her, measuring her
response. Gradually his lips curved in a smile. “It was nice of him
to write. My dad never writes to me.”

Because he
always comes to the island and sees you
,
Shelley thought. In all the years her family had summered on Block
Island, this was the first time her father had ever sent her a
letter from home—and the first summer he hadn’t come every
weekend.

Maybe the letter didn’t bode well. Maybe he’d
keep writing letters and never come. Maybe she and her mother ought
to go home and help him.

No. Shelley refused to let pessimism ruin what
was left of her summer. She would interpret her father’s letter in
the most favorable light. He thought she was smart and mature, and
he loved her. He wanted her forgiveness.

She forgave him and loved him back, and that
was that.

Below her, Diana and Mark had stopped talking.
Mark nuzzled Diana’s neck, and she leaned closer into his
arms.

“Do you date a lot?” Kip asked
abruptly.

Shelley flinched. Given that he hadn’t even
noticed her string bikini, she figured he didn’t pay much attention
to that sort of stuff yet.

She herself was on the slow side when it came
to dating—compared to some of her classmates, anyway. Rumors had
run rampant through the school last April that Kim Shearson had had
an abortion over spring vacation, and once in the gym locker room
Carrie Billington’s purse had overturned, and among the scattered
contents Shelley had noticed a plastic case of birth control pills.
She knew some girls—girls her own age—were sexually active, while
all she herself had done was a little kissing and touching and a
lot of resisting and arguing, none of which she had found
particularly satisfying.

Still, she had
to be more advanced than Kip, who seemed to think his sister was
some sort of a freak for wanting to make out with Mark. He
read
Playboy
, for
heaven’s sake. What could be more immature?

She gave herself a moment to consider possible
answers to his question. “What’s `a lot’?” she
equivocated.

Kip narrowed his eyes on her. “Do you date at
all?”

“Sure. Do you?”

“Yeah.”

It was her turn to narrow her eyes, to regard
him skeptically. If he were aware of the opposite sex enough to go
out on dates, he should have been aware of her bikini. Then again,
maybe he had been aware of it, but it had looked so awful on her
he’d tactfully refrained from commenting on it.

“Have you ever gone steady with anyone?” she
asked.

“No,” he said.

“How many girls have you dated?”

“I don’t know, a few. Parties and movies and
stuff. I took this girl to a school dance, that kind of thing. How
about you?”

She knew he was being honest with her, which
meant she would have to be honest with him. “Pretty much the same,”
she conceded.

“Do you make out with guys?” Kip asked in so
casual a tone Shelley almost forgot to be offended.

Almost. She gave him such a hard shove he lost
his balance and fell against the side wall of the cupola. “Hey,” he
protested, “it was just a question.”

“And that was my answer,” she
snapped.

“I was only wondering.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “We’re friends. Friends ask each
other stuff. I’m sorry,” he concluded, sounding less apologetic
than peeved as he pulled himself back up onto his knees beside
her.

Chastened, she turned away. What he’d said was
true. She and her friends in Connecticut asked each other how far
they let a guy go on a date, and Shelley saw nothing wrong with it.
In his own way, Kip—his gender notwithstanding—was as close a
friend as any of her girlfriends at home.