Summer Harbor (10 page)

Kiley took a bite of sandwich before replying. “Mack’s going to the University of Rhode Island.” Her tone was light, pleased a little that they were interested. Still, she felt an unreasoning need to defend Mack’s choice of a state university. “He’s going to major in marine biology and that’s the best school for it.”

“What about the other one? Heathcliff.”

Kiley set down her half-eaten sandwich. “You mean Grainger?” Her tone remained light, but her defenses were engaged.
Heathcliff?
Bitch. “He’s going into the Army first. He’ll be attending college while he’s in.”

“Hmmm. He’s cute in a rough sort of way. Mack is cute in a more Andover sort of way.”

“I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“So, Kiley, which one do you date?”

“Neither. We’re just friends.” An unpleasant heat touched her cheeks. What a ludicrous idea.

“So if you don’t care, then maybe you’d introduce us at the next Y.C. dance?”

“Sure. I guess.” Kiley looked from one twin to the other, trying to see if, behind their matching Ray-Bans, they were winking at each other. A wave of suspicion washed through her, countered immediately by self-doubt. Why wouldn’t Missy and Emily want to meet her friends? Like the twins said, they were cute. She had no romantic claim on them. Yet there was something out of kilter here. The Claridge twins were the products of prep schools and privilege. They consorted with her only because her family had been in the Yacht Club since 1935.
Their
parents allowed that
her
parents were acceptable because her father was a successful litigator in an affluent community, and her mother came from good stock, second-tier Boston Brahmin. Kiley herself had the right physical attributes of good skin, straight teeth, and a powerhouse backhand.

Slumming. Wasn’t that the word for what the Claridge twins were suggesting? No, there was nothing wrong with Grainger, nothing rude or crude about him, or risky. In the strange social hierarchy of the clubbier summer folk, those who made Hawke’s Cove their home year round were viewed as lesser souls. Because of their own “summer people” origins, the MacKenzies were tolerated, particularly because of Dr. MacKenzie’s professional status. But Grainger, as she well knew from her mother’s remarks, was beneath regard. She’d known girls at school who liked to date the rough boys, to flout convention and strike fear in parental souls by running with the dangerous ones.

She was surprised to see avidity on their matching faces. Something just this side of it. Curiosity?

Kiley forced the wave of discomfort to settle. She was being an idiot. After all, the club was overrun with young women; boys were at a premium. It didn’t mean anything, yet she had the overwhelming feeling that she didn’t
want
to share her friends with the likes of the twins.

Of course, Mack and Grainger would be falling down with laughter at the idea that the Doublemints wanted to date them. They’d all have a good laugh.

“I’ll give them your number.” Kiley swallowed the last of her lemonade, then made a show of looking at her watch. “I’ve got a tennis lesson in a little while, so thanks for lunch. See you at the club.”

“Will you be there Friday? The dance?” The Doublemints were standing up, twinning the same stance.

“Yeah. I guess so.” Kiley felt horribly monosyllabic.

“Are they coming?”

Kiley could see the italicized word
they
as if printed in front of her.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not their keeper.”

Deliberately, Kiley turned left at the gate and headed back to the MacKenzie house. She wanted to laugh: how could they assume that she was dating either of them? The idea should have been ridiculous, but like a mischievous imp licking at the back of her subconscious, it took on a life of its own. Kiley couldn’t imagine what profound alterations her relationship with the boys would have to undergo to enable that to happen. Having no siblings, she believed that Mack and Grainger filled some of that lack in her life, as fond cousins might.

Kiley stumbled a little on a rough spot in the pavement. Catching herself, she thought suddenly of Mack’s blue jar full of daisies and her sense that day of things being suddenly off balance. As if walking through cobwebs, Kiley rubbed her hands down her arms as though to brush away the unwelcome thought. Dating would change everything. The easy camaraderie would become overladen with the things a romantic relationship required, demands and expectations that their simple friendship avoided. Surely they never thought of her that way.

And how could she ever choose between them?

She pushed open the gate into Mack’s backyard. The boys weren’t back yet from Great Harbor. Not satisfied yet, the imp brought up the memory of that anonymous hand touching her bikini-clad breast that Friday night. Surely it was accidental. It was inconceivable that either one would want to “cop a feel” of her breasts. It just couldn’t be that they might see her as a “girl.” Nor would she ever look at them romantically. Kiley, mindless of her white blouse, picked up the palm sander.

Let the Doublemints have at it, then. Yet a swift surge of jealousy surprised her. She saw herself standing outside while the four of them held hands, a fifth wheel. How could she bear to share them this last summer together?

Emily Claridge’s voice brought Kiley back to the moment. “I was calling to remind you about the Fourth of July Picnic. Can you believe it? Some things never change, and the picnic is still going on after all these years.” Emily chatted away, mercifully giving Kiley time to gather her thoughts. “Anyway, we’re hoping you’ll bring the famous Harris potato salad.”

“I hadn’t planned on…well, sure. Of course I will. Enough for how many?”

“We’re asking everyone to bring for twelve.”

“Great. No problem.”

“So, how’ve you been?”

Kiley had no idea how to answer that question. “Good, fine. You?”

“Oh, there’s my call-waiting. I’ll catch up with you at the picnic. Same place, same time. Maybe you’ll come for cocktails beforehand?” Emily’s voice disappeared, leaving a soft hum on the line.

Kiley raised her eyes heavenward in thanksgiving for call-waiting.

Almost as soon as she stepped away from the phone, it rang again. Surely this time it was Mother.

“Kiley, I’m so glad I caught you.” Not her mother, but Sandy from the office.

“Sandy, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, God, Kiley, it’s the doctor.” Sandy’s voice was muffled as she blew her nose. “Doc John is dead.”

Kiley sat down in the small chair beside the phone table.
“What?”
Disbelief thinned her voice. Dr. John Finnergan, Doc John to them all, was only in his early sixties, fit, healthy and vital; surely he couldn’t have dropped dead. “What happened?”

“He was on his way home from the hospital last night. When…” Sandy paused again to gather herself. “When his car was hit by a guy running a red light.”

“Dear God.” Kiley struggled to speak against the lump in her throat. “I’ll come right home.”

“No, don’t. There’s no need to disrupt your plans. His wife says there won’t be a funeral, just a memorial service later. But you should know…” Sandy began to cry in earnest. “…we’re closing the office. For good.”

“On whose say-so?”

“It was in his papers. That if anything happened to him, Dr. Ruiz was to take over his patients.”

Elmer Ruiz, principal in the family practice located in their building. The practice was fully staffed, and would have no need for a receptionist or additional nurses. Or a nurse practitioner. Kiley bit back the thought. “Sandy, it’ll be all right. Don’t panic. I’ll come home and talk to Dr. Ruiz.”

“Don’t, Kiley. Don’t change all your plans. It won’t do any good.”

“I’ll call him anyway.” Certainly there was something she could do. A long time ago, someone had warned her about working for a single doc, instead of a partnership that would endure anyone’s departure. It just didn’t seem possible that Doc John hadn’t included them in his contingency plans. She and Sandy had been with him for over ten years, and his nurse, Fiona, had been with him nearly as long. “Sandy, we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Just don’t worry.”

“Okay, Kiley. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

After the knee-weakening shock passed, it leveled into grief. John was a good man, a wonderfully compassionate doctor, and she would miss him. It was so unfair.

After a few minutes, Kiley dialed Mrs. Finnergan’s number.

Grainger drove away from the Yacht Club and Will as fast as he could. He didn’t want to know if Will was entertaining any notion that he might be his father. It was obvious that the boy had some inkling that his mother and Grainger knew each other a lot better than a curt “yeah” revealed. Will’s open-eyed examination of Grainger’s face unnerved him. Grainger found only Kiley’s face in Will’s—not his, not Mack’s. And yet, he kept looking.

Pilot fidgeted on the seat, turning to look at Grainger, then pointing his blunt nose at the window, as if to tell him he was being cheated of a walk. The spaniel part of him relished the rain, but the unknown quantity in him made him smell pretty rank, once wet.

Back at the boat works, Grainger knew he had a million things to do. The July deadlines were approaching: promises to have the Murrays’ boat rerigged, and the Worths’ little fiberglass fourteen-footer repaired where one of the kids had banged it up against a dock. It was too damp to paint. He should go back and start bending the replacement planks for
Miss Emily
.

Mr. Claridge had been the “Admiral” of the club for a little while before some long-forgotten minor scandal deposed him. Now he returned every August, when his daughters and their princeling husbands came to stay in Hawke’s Cove.

Mr. Claridge rarely sailed
Miss Emily
anymore; the two-masted yawl was too much for him alone, and the twins’ husbands weren’t good sailors, or even very interested. Still, he kept her in trim, throwing a lot of business Grainger’s way. Grainger hoped that eventually he might get to broker
Miss Emily
to a new owner.

Grainger ran into one or the other of the twins every summer, but they spoke only of the boat, as if their common past was forgotten. He’d been working on this boat for the better part of two months without giving much thought to either Missy or Emily, but, oddly, today he remembered their nickname. The Doublemints. And he recalled so clearly Kiley telling him to call them.

“They want you to call them.” Kiley held out a piece of scrap paper between two fingers, reaching across the kitchen table, where they had Scrabble set up. Mack was in the bathroom, and Grainger and Kiley sat alone.

Grainger stared at the scrap, unsure what this meant. Certainly he knew the twins, and well enough to know that he wasn’t considered their kind. They weren’t his type, either. Kiley sat across from him, her blue eyes challenging him with this bit of silliness, one hand casually flipping her blond hair over her shoulder.

“Should I?” He meant to be flip.

Kiley lay the scrap of paper down on his last word, S L O P E. He’d gotten a double-word score and was ahead by six points. “I don’t care.”

“Maybe I will.” Grainger wanted her to laugh, to see the witty sarcasm.

“Maybe you should.” She kept her eyes on her tiles. “Is grezix a word?”

“No.”

“Look it up.”

“It’s not a word, Kiley.” Grainger was annoyed, not at her insistence on imaginary words, but that she so cavalierly would have him date one or both of the twins. Didn’t they stand together, all three of them, against the world? Hadn’t they an unspoken pledge to remain a trio? Especially this last summer. Whatever leave he might get from the Army, two things were certain: It would be brief and it might not be during this halcyon time of summer. The long summer days of swimming and Scrabble and working on
Blithe Spirit
were dwindling, and every day he felt the pressure of imminent change, the way barometric pressure portends a change in the weather. It might be years before the three of them were together again, and by then, they would be different people.

And here was Kiley, treating their remaining time together as cheap, as if they had all the time in the world. Her flippancy brought to the forefront the strain they were all under that summer to keep up the pretense that everything was the same.

Maybe it was the long nights of physical frustration as he dreamed of Kiley, and the more frustrating days of pretending he cared for her only as a brother might, or a pal. Whatever it was, he was hurt. All summer long, Grainger had believed that their threesome was more valuable than his own happiness, and that the sanctity of it was reward enough.

Mack came back into the room and plopped down in his chair, rocking the small kitchen table a little when he banged his knee against the table leg.

They fumbled around straightening the tiles, but their desire to play the game was gone, and Grainger stood to go home. As if in afterthought, he plucked the scrap of paper off the tiles and stuck it in his pocket.

Kiley glanced at Mack, and Grainger could see that she’d already mentioned this nonsense to him and he’d rejected the notion. For him, it wasn’t a challenge. For him, as with so much, it was a joke. It was an example of the two sides to their natures. Mack saw lightness, Grainger saw dark. But Mack wasn’t in love with Kiley.

Walking along the high bluff toward the village, Grainger knew he couldn’t make himself go back to Mack’s house, knowing that Mack would soon appear and wonder what had gotten into him. He’d pester and tease until Grainger found an excuse he’d accept. He just didn’t have the energy to make up some believable reason for his stalking away. Grainger punched the air. Maybe he should just confess to both of them his feelings. As he had repeatedly done since his first glimpse of Kiley dancing blithely in her window, Grainger choked back the impulse to speak of his love. Not this summer, not this temporary and fragile summer. He couldn’t bear to ruin their perfect friendship with his secret desire. Especially if Kiley didn’t share his feelings.

Right then, Grainger decided to hitchhike into Great Harbor and see his father. No longer a sleepover guest, Grainger had lived with the MacKenzies ever since Mrs. MacKenzie handed Rollie Egan a paper giving her rights
in loco parentis
over Grainger. She had explained gently to Grainger that it meant he was safe.

With any responsibility for his son effectively removed, Rollie had given up having a permanent address, and, when he wasn’t out to sea, stayed at the Seasaw Motel in Great Harbor. It was there Grainger headed, needing suddenly to remind himself of who he was.

He was lucky and caught a ride with Joe Green. Mr. Green was always good about not asking stupid questions of kids. Their small talk centered on Grainger’s baseball success, and it was easy to give answers or remarks without having to let go of the thoughts he was chewing on.

“So, where are you off to in the fall?” An innocent enough question.

“Army.”

Joe Green sighed deeply. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Grainger remembered that Joe had lost a son in Vietnam, a boy who’d signed up against Joe’s wishes.

“Can’t afford college unless I do.”

“Scholarships wouldn’t help?”

“It’s hard to explain.” He needed to strike out on his own, and the Army provided a way.

Joe Green pulled his truck onto the side of the road at the one-lane bridge that connected Hawke’s Cove to Great Harbor across the marshy wetlands. Everyone knew the former milk-man never left Hawke’s Cove.

“Thanks for the ride.”

Joe leaned one elbow out the window. “Tell your father hello.”

“I will.”

Rollie had been in the Marines. In Vietnam, he’d been wounded and sent home with a Purple Heart and an honorable discharge. Grainger’s mother had been visiting her brother in the VA hospital where Rollie had been recovering. That’s all Grainger had ever known about their brief courtship, which resulted in his conception and her misguided insistence Rollie marry her. Grainger often wondered if she’d ever imagined that the passive patient lying on white hospital sheets, seducing her in his hospital bed, would turn out to be the bitter, mean-spirited man he did. Grainger never blamed her for leaving, only for not taking him with her. Maybe he represented her youthful mistakes, and that’s why she left without him.

Failing to secure another ride on the other side of the short bridge, Grainger walked the rest of the way into Great Harbor. From across the parking lot of the Seasaw Motel, he saw his father just coming out of his room. As always, upon seeing his father, he felt this desire to spit. He couldn’t grasp the logic behind wanting to visit him, except that he needed a reminder of who he was. Where he’d come from.

Three days’ growth of beard, condor eyes staring at Grainger as if he was an unwelcome stranger, his father stood in worn jeans and rubber boots, and, despite the July warmth, a flannel shirt, tucked incompletely into his pants. A leather case dangled off his belt, his fishing knife. In one hand he held a gym bag, and Grainger knew he was off again.

“What brings you here? I sent money.”

“Don’t know. Some filial urge, I suppose.”

“Filial, eh. Big words, kid. Looks like living with the doctor’s smart-ass son and his beautiful-ass wife has rubbed off.”

Grainger never touched anyone in anger, but the desire to now was powerful, and served to remind him of their connection. “I’m here to see how you are.”

“Out again. Squidding.” He walked toward his son.

Grainger squinted against the late July sun as he approached.

“When do you leave for boot camp?”

“September fifteenth.”

Rollie was beside him now, and Grainger smelled the beer on his breath. It was as close as they had stood in a long time, and Grainger was surprised to find himself taller than his father. Rollie took a step back, as if he’d noticed the same thing. “It was a good choice, boy. The service. Make a man out of you. Shake out some of that la-di-da crap you got from the MacKenzies.
Filial.”
He said the word as if to taste it, then spat. “Filial, my ass. Got no proof of that. Who knew who your mother was fucking?”

Grainger remained standing in the shadeless parking lot as his father walked away; then he turned around and started walking back to Hawke’s Cove. It would be a relief not to be his son, not to contain the genetic material for abuse. It made sense then, this mistreatment of his mother. Yet if it were true, why did she leave him with Rollie? Could his mother have loved him so little?

His thoughts churned in his brain and into his belly, until he bent over by the side of the road and vomited.

Grainger hadn’t realized how close to the surface his memories were, how fragile the layer of years covering them was. Two years in the Army, then college at Maine Maritime; the nearly dozen years in the Merchant Marine. Traveling, months at sea, even two love affairs. All of this had only covered his past the way topsoil covers seeds. Since hearing of Kiley’s return to Hawke’s Cove, the seedlings of memory had begun to sprout, to work their way toward the sunlight. Forcing him to yank them out by the stems before they took full flower.

He pulled into an empty parking space in front of Linda’s Coffee Shop. Toby Reynolds’ Lexus was in its usual place, straddling the white line in an attempt to prevent dings. Some devil in Grainger always wanted to make him slide his truck up close to the driver’s side door, but his truck wasn’t so old that he really wanted to get into a silent battle of dings and dents. As soon as he got out of the truck, Pilot took up his vigil, chin on the steering wheel, eyes on his master’s back as he went into the coffee shop.

Grainger sat next to Toby, nodding to the teenage waitress who set a mug of black coffee in front of him and dropped a handful of creamers beside it. Grainger reached for
The Boston Globe
lying on the counter. Red Sox were doing okay. His day might brighten, after all.

“Mornin’.”

“Mornin’, Toby.”

Their usual morning conversation.

“Watch the game last night?” Toby slid the sports section over to Grainger.

“Yeah, good one.” Grainger dumped the contents of two of the creamers into his mug. “Nice to see them win.”

“That Kiley Harris is a piece of work.” Toby, in his inimitable way, leapt right into whatever thought was at the forefront of his mind.

All Grainger wanted was to glance at the paper and have his third coffee of the day before going back to work on
Miss Emily.
He stirred his coffee with slow counterclockwise strokes; he would not rise to the bait. Who better than he knew just what a “piece of work” Kiley Harris was?

“She’s sounding like she could be an obstacle to a sale. Doesn’t want the place to change, but doesn’t want to be there herself, either. Go figure.”

“I couldn’t say.” Grainger kept stirring long after the two creamers had turned his coffee a light tan.

“I shouldn’t talk about clients…” Toby held the front section of the paper in front of him.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“…but she has this crazy notion it’s up to her. It’s her parents’ house; she’s just getting it ready. She practically threatened to fire me. No one else will get them the best money. How much influence do you suppose she has on their decision?” Toby was off on one of his monologues. “At the same time, she can’t want to jeopardize her kid’s education.”

Grainger tossed a couple of dollars down on the counter and stood up, leaving his coffee untouched.

Toby still had his eyes on the paper in front of him. “I heard you used to date her.”