North Haven Read online

  They were gone. Danny’s chest hurt, his stomach clenched. His breath went short and shallow. He pulled the heavy plastic bag from under his seat and set it between his feet. They were gone, and his siblings were basically missing in action, sucked into the battles of their own lives. Here, they were always about to leave. There were good moments, the first day or two were usually good. Here their rooms were still theirs. But then they drifted. First to their own rooms and then to boats and then ferries and then back to their own houses. Back in Archer Avenue Scarlet had turned their rooms into studies, guest rooms. Tom’s old room had become just a collection spot, an eddy in the stream of stuff that moved through the house. They had called it the Bird’s Nest. And then the house wasn’t even theirs anymore. Sold. Her little apartment was gone too. Now he had no room at all. One day this place would be taken and them with it. It was this thought that got Danny rowing the boat again. This and the package at his feet.

  Danny sat in the Little Devil, hauling at the oars, letting the little bathtub-shaped boat follow the shoreline. He thought the squeak and clunk of the oars in their locks was saying, Big black hole, big black hole. The universe wasn’t expanding, it was imploding; it was going to crush them all to death, one by one. It was already happening. Everything sounded far away. He could’ve taken the Whaler, but he had never felt comfortable in it. Driving boats belonged to his siblings. Just another way the world kept him young. He was incapable of learning all those knots. He rounded Zeke’s Point. It was hard against the wind, still high, still early afternoon. So he stayed in close to the rocks. The plastic bag at his feet rustled in the wind. He found the cove he was looking for, long and thin with a small bridge at its far end. It was fringed at its apex with sea grass, the sharp kind that cuts your legs. There were wands of purple blooms deeper in the grass, where the land thickened and the sea was forced back. “I pine for lupine,” his mother used to say. Danny scraped his blister along the edge of the boat, ashamed that he had ever felt embarrassed by her. Maybe they were irises. He couldn’t tell. He was already forgetting.

  He imagined her sitting in a creaking wicker chair among a diminutive forest of lupine. He wished there was a grave, a place to go, a place to plant lupine. Instead it was just the urn, his mother in a knickknack. The bridge, still in the distance, was flaking white, and here at the cove’s mouth he was out of the wind. Still a good roll of wake from a passing boat could send the Little Devil dancing, send it over. He imagined this bathtub boat turtled, claw-and-ball feet turned toward the sky. This was the place. He would give himself a place.

  It was just far enough. They rarely ever came up this way. Usually Tom preferred to head out the thoroughfare past town or deeper into the island, not toward open ocean.

  He liked imagining his mother looking out toward him. And then he didn’t. He hated imagining her face; he hated that he already struggled to see it in its entirety. He could remember her nose perfectly, the snaggle of an incisor, the mole on one ear making them looked pierced though they weren’t. But he couldn’t put those pieces together, except in dreams. There she was whole, and he hated that more. He hated waking up crying.

  He had chosen this dinghy on purpose. He didn’t want to taint the house with one more death. He drew the oars into the boat and took the oarlocks out. They hung like empty bells from their strings, clunking the hull. Danny picked up the plastic bag; from that came the package wrapped in newspaper and twine, like a packed-up piece of fish. He had thought about the discovery, the cleanup, about what would be the least traumatic for the others. He thought about the bathtub in his parents’ bathroom. He figured if he did it when they were out on a walk, most of the blood would drain before they found him. But then the thought of another death in the house made him feel nauseous, and the Little Devil, another tublike thing, came to mind. And then he would be with them, sailing, swimming, rising, falling, rolling in waves and sun and sky. He would be a proton, no, a quark. So small, he would pass right out the other side of the black hole into a new compressed dimension. He would just be energy, raw and pure and immeasurable, hidden and everywhere.

  Here in the cove, once done, the dinghy would inevitably dump him into the sea. Back to the sea and the lobsters and the ashes. His pockets were filled with rocks. Danny tightened his belt. Just one more bad thing in a boat. That was what his mother always said, “Bad news comes in boats.” He knew his father had left the summer he was conceived. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t some lobsterman’s baby. But he wasn’t natural enough on the water to be a seaman. Plus, he looked like Tom, like Tom after a long illness that weakened his bones and thinned his hair. Maybe that was it, he was a shadow of Tom, never meant to be born, a spirit that should’ve flown over his parents, not stopped and taken root. He was never supposed to have been on a boat.

  Danny was living on a boat the day he found out his father died. He had been on Outward Bound for weeks, living on a sailboat, just a few hours from their house. One night, when he had to hang his ass over the side in front of the sleeping heads of the other kids, he thought, I am only three harbors away. Danny felt a constant pull to steal the boat in the middle of the night and sail past seals and gulls right to his own dock. He knew the way. The next morning the “captain” took him to the bow, put a hand on his shoulder, and told him there would be a boat to motor him home. “Because of your father.” Danny wondered if he had made it happen. Careful what you wish for.

  The water moved with the wakes, the trees with the wind. Everything was reacting. The wind rubbed against the trees like a cat, nuzzling up branches and pressing leaves flat against each other. Danny watched the path of the wind wind through the branches. Perfect. And it would be gone soon, taken by fall, by cold and frost. Taken away by some fucking suit who saw investment potential and market growth. Real estate winter.

  “Fuck him,” Danny said. Everything is going out, the tide can take us all to the East. He just needed his place. His face went hot and felt full of pins and needles and his lips shook. Danny clapped his hands over his mouth. He could taste the salt on them. He pressed his mouth shut, his lips still. Holding his own face so tightly meant the air whistled fast in and out of his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The periphery was beginning to grow darker, and Danny was sinking into his body. If I pass out now it will all be ruined. Slick with sweat, his hands slid into a cup over his mouth and nose. Slowing his breath helped bring the color back into the sky, the blue into the black. This was the place.

  Danny started to untie the twine around the package in his lap. He picked at the knots with his fingernails. Danny wanted the quiet sea to enfold him too, swaddled in waves and seaweed. He didn’t want to make a sound. He wanted it to be silent; the world would go to sleep with him. But sound travels over water. The knot came undone, and he turned the package over, letting the twine unwind. It was close to high tide, but he wasn’t sure if it was going in or going out. Libby and Tom seemed to have an innate ability to know the tide’s direction, like an Australian aborigine who can be taken blindfolded into the windowless basement of an office building and still tell you which direction is north. I have no internal compass now. Bob and Scarlet had been those forces, north and south, high and low; they were tides and oceans and stones and love. And he was just there, the water boy, the alternate. They were the answer to some bizarre family equation, and he was just the remainder. Even Tom and Gwen and Libby were integers, factors, participants.

  And yet he felt like maybe he loved his parents more than his siblings did. They didn’t seem to miss them. They seemed to just go on, and that made him hate them a little, and need them even more. How do you go on? He didn’t want to think about Scarlet, or his dad, or his siblings. He wanted to stop thinking completely. He was drifting closer to the bridge, and he knew he had to do it before he got there. He needed a moment of privacy; he didn’t want some summer kid in his father’s speedboat to see him drop, see some red flash bright against the green trees. He wanted
it nice and simple. Danny unfolded the paper from the tight bundle in his lap, each layer pulled back like gray petals around a great black seed.

  He looked up at the sky; there were no clouds, and he wondered if God wanted a clear view. Then the dinghy, having turned slowly horizontal to the oncoming waves, rocked violently with the frothy wake of a speeding yacht, not a real one with a sail, but a double wide outfitted with a motor. Danny clutched at the sides of his dinghy; the package sprang from his lap and fell hard to the bottom of the boat; his hands sprang up, shielding his face.

  “Having some trouble there?” Danny turned to see Remy in his boat pulling up the only lobster pot in the cove all of twenty feet away. “It helps if you use the oars.”

  Danny’s hands were shaking. His spinal cord pulsed with heat. How long has he been there? Danny pushed the package back under his seat. Did he see?

  “I was just enjoying the view. But thanks for the tip.” Danny began fumbling with the oarlocks, half on purpose, wanting Remy to leave before he had to try to row.

  “You wanna tow? I’m going your way.”

  “That’s okay, I got the wind on my side.” Please leave. Please leave.

  “But you ain’t got the tide.”

  “Really, I’m fine. Just hanging out.” Locks of Danny’s hair were pasted to his sweaty face. He tried not to make eye contact. He didn’t want to look a guy like Remy in the eye right then. Remy probably had never cried.

  “I suppose when you live in the city you get that peaked look. All that soot.” Danny imagined that the last city Remy set foot in resembled Worcester during the industrial revolution, offal in the gutters, powdered manure in the air, palm oil in every man’s hair. Maybe Remy was an immortal living in this place separate from time so no one suspected. Remy Everlasting. He didn’t need to cry. He’d seen it all. Danny looked up at him, the heat in his spine receding and a powerful nausea taking its place.

  “My mom really liked you,” said Danny, his voice shaking.

  Remy nodded. “She was a good one, that’s for sure.” Putting slowly, he pulled his boat alongside the dinghy.

  “Here.” Remy tossed a coil of towline, which unraveled in the air soft as a ribbon, but clattered into the bottom of the boat with a small splash. Danny tied the line to the cleat on the bow. His hands were still shaking as he looped the rope under itself and over again. The rocks in his pockets knocked together. He hoped Remy didn’t notice.

  “You set?” Remy looked over his shoulder from the wheel.

  Danny nodded.

  “You forgot your life jacket.”

  Danny shrugged.

  “Me too.” Remy gave him a wink and eased on the throttle. The dinghy’s bow tilted up as they pulled faster out of the cove. The water in the hull sloshed toward the stern, but the package stayed at his feet. Danny breathed hard, felt his lunch come up fast, and he leaned over the side, letting his hot insides pour into the cold sea. He was glad Remy didn’t turn around. He thought of Gwen throwing up in the ladies’ room of the ferry depot on their way over. He thought of Libby in Scarlet’s hat. He thought of Tom pushing him up the gangway in front of him, of throwing an arm across Gwen when they pulled over to the side of the road, of folding a sweater Melissa left in a ball. He rinsed his mouth with a handful of seawater. Now his escape pod had been jettisoned without him. Maybe there was no easy way out. He replaced the oarlocks and felt his stomach drop with each wave. How do you keep going?

  Ten feet from their dock, Remy stalled in neutral, and Danny untied and threw back the line.

  “Thanks for the tow.”

  “Yup.” And off Remy went, without a look back, just a hand held high over his head.

  Libby came down the gangway as Danny started to pull the boat out on the outhaul. Why is everyone everywhere today?

  “Everything okay?” She nodded at Remy disappearing toward town.

  “Oh, yeah. I ran into him and he offered me a tow.” Because I’m pathetic.

  “You feeling okay? You’re sort of gray.” She put her hand on his forehead. Danny rolled his eyes. He couldn’t let her look too closely.

  “I’m probably anemic. I’ll go eat some raw beef right now!” He bounded up the gangway, a plastic bag heavy in his hand.

  “Don’t blame me if it turns out you have SARS or Lyme disease or mono,” she shouted after him. Danny stopped on the porch and looked back. Libby was pulling the dinghy in, looking it over carefully.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ANOTHER SUMMER

  Their mother is here alone, came up a few days ahead to open the house. Her husband will come tomorrow with Tom, Gwen, and Danny. But Libby comes home today; she is not so little now, twenty-five this year. She thought it would be just them for the night, her Libby, all to herself. But coming back toward the house in the small boat, there are three. Libby has brought a friend. Riley. Arriving on the late boat. The sun sinks enough to make them think of strong drinks in low glasses, cheese, legumes crystalled with salt.

  She has been busy, the chairs are out, the cushions in place. The ice bucket is full, and she sends Libby to make drinks; their bags sit quiet in the dining room by the door, no rush, let us sit, quiet the errant hairs. Feel the sun, watch the lobstermen chug toward home and dinner.

  “Like men in suits coming from the subway at 5:15,” says the friend. Libby’s mother imagines those men streaming toward lit doorways and set tables. Libby makes the drinks. Her mother sees the wedding ring on the friend’s finger, asks about her husband, her own suit streaming home to an empty house.

  “How is it that you’re here and he’s still home?”

  She is charming, the friend, and makes a sweet response; she has slipped away, leaving him to fend for himself. This friend is easy in the wicker chair, not too comfortable, but not stiff. She is complimentary.

  “This place”—she sighs, looking around her—“there are no words.”

  “Yes,” Libby’s mother says. She likes that this girl understands. “Words are too small for this place,” her mother continues, “and they don’t smell as good.” This one will fit in fine, she thinks. She can always tell in the first few minutes. Can they be a guest, respectful, thoughtful, always volunteer to do the dishes, while they are as relaxed as they would be in their own home? This is what it means to fit in here, to carry your own weight and still appreciate this sharp point piercing the waterway, making only the houses on the other side of the thoroughfare visible.

  “Too bad your husband couldn’t join you.”

  “He wouldn’t get this place; it would be all hassle, the car, the ferry, the boat.” Libby’s mother recognizes something. A distance she is familiar with.

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Two years.”

  Two years and no honeymoon shine left on her is a bad sign. Again the friend says that she has escaped from her life, slipped under its slim gate, and stolen off to watch lobstermen work.

  The friend is conspiratorial, the friend wants to bond with her, wives that steal away. But Libby’s mother only knows husbands that slink away, and even that was a long time ago. The girl is less charming every minute.

  Libby comes with the drinks, with the ice tinkling soft in full glasses, and there she sees it. Her mother sees that thing that she once spent four years blind to, or closed her eyes upon. Libby hands her friend the glass, already frosted with the cool of the drink, the warmth of the sun. Her friend takes it with two hands, like they are passing a bird between them, holding it delicate and tight, wings in. The friend looks up into Libby’s face, and there between them goes something, a reddening of the lips, a widening of the pupils, and for a moment the sun moves, shines from a space between the two of them, above the folded bird of a glass. This is the moment, if they were alone, when they would kiss.

  Her mother sees this kiss floating between them with the sun and the glass, this undone kiss is the soft bird they pass between them. It is the thing that shines so glaring to her mother’s eyes. It is
a mirror reflecting the light back into her face. The glare makes her put down her own glass, stare intently at the cheese, cut a rough slice. She chews slowly and looks away from them over her shoulder, over the steps, the water, the other island, to the real sun, whose light, in comparison to theirs, is soft, full of honesty. It hides nothing. It will set, as promised. It will rise, as promised, over the eastern tip of their island. It will keep appointments, it will lay bare all, it leaves nothing in dark cabins or in the wet bottoms of unbailed boats or in black footprints on polished wood or unmentioned until it steps lightly from the ferry boat, lighter with the husband left at home.

  The friend needs the bathroom, and Libby gives her directions, says her room is right next to the bathroom down the back hall. The friend takes her bag as well, will settle in and then be back to finish her drink. She goes smiling through the screened door, through the dining room and the china closet, toward the kitchen.

  “She’s great, isn’t she? I knew you’d love her. What?”

  Her mother looks as hard and gray as the pebbled beach by the boathouse, like she may be sick.

  “Are you all right?”

  “You should’ve asked, Lib.”

  “I just figured, what’s one more person, one friend apiece, right?”

  “She’s not your friend.”

  With this Libby is brought up short. She doesn’t understand. Hadn’t she just seen, through the dining room window, her friend’s charm radiating from her like heat, and her mother basking in it? But Libby has somehow let it be known, some little unconscious action has revealed something meant to be hidden.

  “You should have told me.” Her mother says it again, clearer this time. “She is not just your friend.”

  “No, not just a friend.” Libby feels that she has been caught stealing from her mother’s jewelry box, a string of illicit pearls curled in her hand. She cannot put them back.