Summer Harbor (6 page)

At first Kiley was annoyed with Will for being late, then a little worried. As far as she knew he was only over in Great Harbor, poking around and looking for some new CDs. He’d promised to be on this side of the bridge by five, and to meet her here at the Osprey’s Nest for an early dinner. Kiley assumed that Will would be a little late, and had taken her time walking into town from the house. It was now five-forty and she was fighting the sense of maternal panic that always overruled rational thought.

Will had been so remote since the pot-smoking incident—not so much sullen as distracted. Unfortunately, she’d been equally distracted with the house. No, being truthful, it was being in Hawke’s Cove. Her initial hope, that bringing him here would open up the doorway of communication, was instantly put to the test when Will asked her about the photograph, and she’d failed. She wanted him to reveal his thoughts to her, yet she was unwilling to do the same. Well, maybe tonight she could get him to let her in a little. In her heart of hearts, Kiley knew that there had to have been some catalyst for Will’s behavior that night, something that pushed him into doing it. Will reacted to things.

Kiley sighed. There was so much going on right now that this silence, whether it was a defense mechanism or simple weariness, must not be allowed to continue. All too soon he would be far away, only a disembodied voice on a phone. Living a life separate from hers.

The waitress came over a second time to try and take her order. “You ready?”

“No. I’m still waiting for my son. He really should be here any minute.” Kiley resented her disagreeable need to explain to the waitress. “I’ll just have a glass of water in the meantime.”

“You bet.” The waitress brought over a pint glass of ice-cold water, then moved away.

Kiley sipped the water, wondering if she hadn’t asked for wine because she didn’t want to look like some pathetic creature, making those around her speculate that she was only pretending a son was expected. After all, a lady never drinks alone.

The customers within her view disabused her quickly of the notion that anyone was even aware of her presence in the small tavern. Mostly men, mostly tucking into heavy dinners of meat loaf or fried chicken; even if they had made note of this lone woman in the place, it had made no mark on their communal consciousness. These were men tired from a long day of physical labor; the invisible Covers, surfacing only to mend a sail, repair an engine, or help move a boat out of storage. Men in oil-weathered jeans and rubber boots who belonged to a different Hawke’s Cove from the one she knew. These were the men from whom Grainger had sprung.

Her parents hadn’t approved of her friendship with Grainger. “He’s a townie. You should be nice, but you don’t want to
encourage
him.” The implication being, “he’s not our kind.” Even Grainger’s accepted place with the MacKenzies failed to temper their opinion. The MacKenzies were “saints” for taking him in, but the boy was beneath regard.

Kiley wondered if Lydia’s late-in-life fear of being robbed had actually been foreshadowed by her rejection of Grainger’s annual offer to help unload the car. “Scurry along, we can manage.” Kiley could still hear her mother’s imperious rebuff; as if he would make off with the silver. And she’d been left to struggle with the over-heavy bags.

Then Grainger got the job teaching the young ones to sail the club’s Dyer Dinks. Her mother’s open disapproval changed into political correctness amongst her bridge partners, whose children “loved” him. But he still didn’t attend the Friday night dances. Kiley wasn’t able to avoid that enforced clubbiness, but as soon as she could, she always slipped out through the back hallway emergency exit, where Mack and Grainger would be standing under the lone streetlight in the club’s dirt-and-crushed-clamshell parking lot, waiting for her to make her escape.

When Mack’s parents finally joined the Yacht Club, both the MacKenzie boys, and Grainger as their guest, began to come to the dances. It was so hard to get either Mack or Grainger to dance with her. The pair preferred leaning against the wall with cans of soda in hand. Sometimes Mack’s older brother, Conor, fresh from college, would take her out on the floor in a deliberate tease to his brother and Grainger. Then he’d pay her a courtly bow and rejoin his own social circle, leaving Kiley to catch her hammering breath.

Grainger always wore tan chinos and the same blue polo shirt with the collar turned up, as current fashion dictated. Kiley suspected that Mrs. MacKenzie had given him those clothes, probably castoffs from Conor, since Grainger owned only faded jeans and unremarkable T-shirts.

Once Kiley gave up the struggle to get the boys to dance, the trio would duck out through the back hallway and down to the empty beach. They’d scamper down to the club’s private beach and shed their clothes, swimsuits underneath. Laughing, they’d plunge into the warm evening water. In the darkness that surrounded them, they’d tread water and stare at the Yacht Club lights reflected in the water in runny streaks of yellow, and think themselves rebellious. The music blared from the speakers—Pointer Sisters, Don Henley, or Donna Summer. Phosphorescence glittered greenish on the edges of the gently rolling waves tonguing the sand. Under cover of darkness, their intimacy was pure, eternal. They would always be friends.

Blind to each other in the darkness, their hands, gently stroking the surface of the water, would sometimes bump. Once a hand touched her breast and in the embarrassed silence, she assumed that whoever had touched her was as shocked as she had been. Her nipples had been prominent as the slight breeze over the water chilled her skin.

It was the first time that Kiley considered that their triangular friendship would be endangered if any one of them tampered with it. She dived beneath the dark water. Impossible. Nothing between them could ever change.

Kiley slowly became aware that she was looking at each nearby face, as if looking for one familiar to her. She dropped her eyes to the table’s slightly sticky oilcloth cover. What were the chances that she’d recognize him anyway? The last time she’d set eyes on Grainger Egan was nineteen summers ago—a lifetime. Will’s whole lifetime. Then she was equally afraid that he might be here and she
wouldn’t
know him. Men changed more than women. Her fifteenth high school reunion had proven that. The handsome boys had run to fat and most were balding. Their necks had thickened and their voices were too loud.

What would she do if she saw him? What if he was here and she
did
recognize him? Could she withstand the possibility that he would look at her with the same hatred he’d looked at her that last time? There had been no healing between them. And what would he do if he knew about Will? How was she ever going to deal with Grainger about her father’s boat, when she was so afraid to encounter him at all?

Kiley shivered in the faint air-conditioning.
Someone walked over your grave.
That’s what they said when you got inexplicable goose bumps.

The bell over the door clanged, and Will came in. Kiley shivered again, relieved to see him, happy to see his smile.

Will knew he was late; his mother’s worried face was a pure indicator. He hadn’t meant to be so late, although a little late would have been typical. He knew he was getting too old to use the “lost track of time” excuse, especially with the new watch his grandparents had given him for graduation. Maybe this would be a good time to suggest again that if he had a cell phone, she’d never need to worry about him. He flopped down in the seat to the left of his mother, breathless with his rush to park the car and get to the restaurant.

“Where have you been?”

“Ummm, I got lost. There’s that other road before you get to the bridge. I went right instead of left at the fork.”

“Will, you can read signs. Don’t play with me.”

“Well, maybe I did spend a little more time at the mall than I should have. It’s pretty small, but they’ve got a great music store.” Will opened his backpack and pulled out five new CDs. “I sort of got carried away.”

Will’s eclectic tastes were fanned out on the square table: Alicia Keys, No Doubt, Coldplay, and India. Arie, mixed in with a bargain-bin copy of the early Beatles.

The waitress returned to take their order. Kiley ordered her glass of wine.

“I hope you bought batteries. There’s no CD player in the house.”

“I know. I did.”

Will was glad that his mom forbore to mention the amount of money he had spent on the five CDs, even though he had every right to spend his money the way he saw fit. When he actually took off for Cornell, then he’d bow to economy. Right now he was still warm from his grandparents’ largesse. They’d been so happy Kiley had agreed to go to Hawke’s Cove that they’d handed Will a nice “allowance” to make up for his losing a month’s work at the burger place.

If Grainger agreed to keep teaching him after his first lesson, he’d use the rest of that money for that. Maybe there was something to heredity. His grandfather had been a competitive sailor. The waitress placed their dinners in front of them. An idea niggled at the back of his mind, prompted by the photo of his mother and the two boys leaning against the little boat, now tucked into his back pocket.

“Mom, who taught you how to sail?”

The question seemed to surprise his mother; she studied her plate for a moment. “Pop did. Although I was never that good at it, and he never let me race with him.”

“Did you sail with anyone else? Or did you only sail with him?”

“The Yacht Club sponsored races for kids.” She pushed her meat loaf around on her plate, then looked up at Will. “Why?”

“I was thinking about taking sailing lessons.” If she would just smile and say,
I have a friend who could teach you,
he could avoid pretending. “I mean, while I’m here and all.”

“If you’re serious, we can look into lessons at the club. And maybe we could charter a day sailer from the Yacht Club. I’ll check tomorrow if you want, though we’ll have to do it after I get the house…” For a moment she looked excited, just like she always did when they planned some fun outing.

“What about Pop’s boat?” Will watched the tension build in his mother’s face, supplanting the pleasure.

“It’s in dry dock, and besides, it’s way too big.” She turned her face away from him.

Will took a big bite of his cheeseburger, wishing he had just shut up. It seemed like everything he did or said lately created this pained expression on his mother’s face. “That’s okay, I was just toying with the idea. Call it a whim.”

Kiley reached across the table and touched his hand. “I wish I did have the time to teach you. It would be fun, although I’m not sure I could still tell a halyard from a turnbuckle, or port from starboard. Which reminds me of a joke.”

“What?”

“Did you hear the one about the captain who had a wooden box in his cabin?”

Will shook his head.

“Well, the crew was mystified. Every single night the old captain would go to his cabin, open this locked box, and look inside. Finally, the old guy dies and the crew can’t keep back their curiosity anymore. The first mate runs to the locked wooden box and pries it open. Inside lies a single slip of paper.” Kiley paused for dramatic effect. “ ‘Port is left, starboard is right.’ ”

Will laughed with the sound of a person not quite getting the joke, more pleased to see the tension begin to fade away from his mother’s face.

“I suppose you have to be a sailor to really appreciate that one.”

Will felt a flicker of inspiration. “So who told you that joke?”

His mother was smiling, but kept her eyes on her plate. “I don’t remember. A friend, I suppose.”

The bell above the door jangled again, and Kiley’s eyes went to it, as if she were expecting someone. Will finished his cheeseburger, hesitating to ask anything else of her.

He’d put the photo in his back pocket, hoping he’d have an opportunity to bring it out and get a flow of conversation going, like he’d done with the picture of when they were ten. In hesitating, he’d missed his best opportunity tonight. He should have pulled the picture out and, pointing to the faces in the snapshot, asked, “Is this the friend who told you that lame joke? Or this one?” But he didn’t. He couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t about jokes.

Will knew instinctively that his mother wouldn’t like the idea of him taking lessons from a man she had so clearly excised from her life, and, by extension, his. If—Will’s train of thought lurched onto a dead-end branch line—if Grainger was his father, surely the circumstances of his conception had been traumatic. Why else had Grainger been eliminated from his life so effectively? Will shoved the last of his french fries in his mouth. He’d known for years that his mother’s reluctance to tell him the truth was not a sign of true and absent love, but of adversity. The french fries were suddenly tasteless in his mouth as his gut contracted. What if he was trying to befriend a man who had done harm to his mother? Will swallowed the fries. There was only one way to find out: he needed to keep at this quest and not balk at the first obstacle, no matter how scary. He’d started this undertaking to find out what Grainger knew, and he would, by God, get some satisfaction. If this guy had abused his mother, he’d pay for it.

Which brought to mind a slight problem. His lesson was at seven-thirty, and he’d have to come up with some reason he was up so early on Tuesday morning. No way his mother wouldn’t suspect something if he was up three hours early for no reason, and then took off for the morning.

She worried about his movements so much since that stupid night when he and D.C. and Mike got caught with the weed. It wasn’t like he was a habitual user, a slacker who thought only about getting high. And it really wasn’t like him to keep things from her. But that night, the pot was available, and he needed to be a little wild.

They’d all been to Lori Amandie’s party. Lori was his girlfriend all senior year, and when she brought him outside to the back porch that night, he expected she just wanted a little private time. Instead, she said, “We need to back off a little, Will. We’re heading in two different directions, and I don’t want to hold you to a commitment you might regret.”

“You mean that
you
might regret.” He was hurt. He felt like he really loved this bright, pretty girl. From the first time she’d appeared in his government class, breathlessly explaining her lateness by some silly excuse the teacher had happily swallowed, Will had had no doubt that he wanted to be with her. Now he felt as if he’d just been some sort of practice boy, someone to sit with at lunch, an assurance of a busy weekend, protection against the overtures of less desirable boys. A guarantee of a worthy escort to the Senior Ball, but not worth restricting her social life at Purdue.

Will had stared off into the darkness. “Fine. Whatever.” He’d left Lori on the back steps, her face charmingly puzzled, as if surprised that he was unhappy with her. Apparently in her deluded view, he should have been glad for the parole. For the first time, Will understood what the poet said about there being in every relationship the lover and the beloved. He’d smacked his open palm against the porch post and gone to find D.C.

He meant to go home, to get into bed before his mother could notice the beer on his breath. He wanted nothing more than to bury his head in his pillow and let the unmanly tears make their silent way out, to burst this suppurating blister of feeling. Instead D.C. winked at him, oblivious to the anger on Will’s face, and put his hand in the deep pocket of his baggy green pants, showing Will just the edge of the plastic zipper bag. It seemed the perfect retaliation. Lori was madly anti-drug, president of the high school’s chapter of Teens Against Drugs. Screw her.

Will nodded and the three of them got into Mike’s car to find a secluded place to enjoy the dope. All year long his friends had made fun of him because of his loyal prohibition against smoking, calling him “wuss” and “whipped.” Though his pals kidded him, they’d respected him for his acceding to Lori’s wishes. Even now, the invitation to smoke had been made out of politeness rather than any expectation that Will would say yes. The surprise on D.C.’s face made Will scowl and refuse any explanation for his about-face. Soon enough, they’d figure it out. Figure out that he’d been dumped.

But he still couldn’t tell his mother that, even though he knew in some way it might comfort her and make her less worried. Kiley hadn’t cared for Lori, which made Lori’s rejection all the harder. For some stupid reason, Will dreaded his mother would bad-mouth his ex-girlfriend. He wasn’t ready to hear, “You’re probably better off without her,” which is exactly what he’d been trying to tell himself. But it wasn’t Lori’s fault he’d smoked the dope; it was his own misguided rebellion.

He kept his eyes on his empty plate, afraid to make eye contact with his mother, because she would see that he had something on his mind. She almost always knew. It was like his brain was visible to her. A tightness to his smile or hollowness in his voice, and she’d jump on him. “What’s the matter, honey?” It was a miracle that, distracted as she had been with the legal ramifications of his smoking the dope, she’d evidently chalked up his glumness to that too. Not to a breakup with his girlfriend. She didn’t mention Lori, even in passing. Will supposed she thought, out of sight, out of mind.

Kiley put down her knife and fork. “Pop asked me to see about selling the boat.”

His mother’s voice yanked him out of his reverie and Will glanced up. The same degree of tension edged her jaw as when Nana and Pop had asked her to take care of the house, as it had when he’d asked about the boat just now.

Will shrugged. “Just tell him, ‘one overwhelming project at a time.’ ”

“That’s what I said.”

“Good for you.”

At his mother’s laugh, Will was suddenly glad that he’d asked to come to this hole-in-the-wall tavern for dinner. She was still smiling, although now she seemed distracted, looking up at every face that came through the door. If he felt a little devious, not telling her that he knew where the boat was and with whom, Will stifled it.

Tuesday he would be able to observe close at hand this man who had once been a part of his mother’s life. He would watch closely to see if any answers would be revealed; look for some mannerism or movement or preference or dislike that would bond them together not in coincidence, but by blood. Will wiped a film of prickly sweat from his neck. Despite the air-conditioning, he felt feverish with excitement. Something like how he imagined the Olympic snowboarders he’d watched last year must have felt as they stood at the top of the half-pipe. He could only imagine what they were thinking:
Am I good enough?
Knowing that the next minute would be life altering, whatever the answer might be to that single burning question.

Emotionally, Will felt as if he, too, stood at the top of an icy drop, board waxed, training completed. Only his burning question wasn’t whether he was good enough, but more deeply primal.

Who am I?