North Haven Read online

  Tom couldn’t understand this, the covenant that bound them. He saw only what pushed them apart, and then only the most literal aspects. Her husband had upturned a stone that lay upon his heart, and he would not be ashamed of what was beneath it. A son and a father share a bond that Tom saw broken, and he couldn’t understand how a repair was possible, so he chose to believe it was a lie. Tom could not fathom that his father liked men. Let alone the fact that he could like his wife even more.

  So she handed him the ashes and said, “Make your peace. There is no second chance.” The rest of them watched from the top step of the porch. Tom put up the sails, but they hung slack on the windless sky. And so he motored out to the spot, the deep channel that ran the length of the thoroughfare. He gave them a wave, an arm stretched high and swung in arcs from one shoulder to the other. They waved back. That’s the spot; go ahead.

  They didn’t speak. The sparrow called for Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody. They could see Tom on the deck of the boat, still as a perched bird. They must be speaking now. To forgive, divine, little one. And then an arc of gray mist swept up over him as both arms threw something into the sky. Gwen cheered, jumped to her feet, standing on the bottom step, and whooped and whistled with both fingers between her teeth. Libby and Danny sat on either side of their mother, hip to hip. They leaned in close, her bairns, now grown themselves. But still her children, still needing her. She squeezed their shoulders, and they leaned into her.

  “A good send-off,” she told them. “We done good.”

  Now, she is alone in the house, and the warmth of summer faded just a week after the children left. For hours every day she has been staring at the water. She heats up canned soup on the stove. Boils one lobster in the small stockpot for Sunday dinner. She melts butter. She paints the window frame on the south porch. She sits in the garden and pulls up marigolds. He hated them. She does all the little things he wanted to get to but never could.

  Today she has to wear a hat and scarf while she drinks hot tea on the porch. Remy has told her that she must leave tomorrow. “The pipes,” he warns. The float will be pulled out once she goes on the early ferry. She is not ready yet. She taps her wedding ring against the mug.

  She thinks of selling. Once she leaves, coming back will feel like looking at a photograph, a hollow substitution for a memory that will blot out the real thing over time. She takes a few steps toward the door. Stands in the spot where he died. She wonders if his spirit could’ve been absorbed by the pine planks. Untreated, after all; that was his choice. Maybe he had planned it from the start. For them to turn gray, to show their age, to soak him in, in his final moments. She laughs and scrubs the decking with her rubber sole. It grates and splinters.

  She moves to the steps and sits down where she watched her oldest pour her husband into the sea. She thinks of the All-American running up the path in front of her, taking these very steps two at a time. She wonders where he left his keys. She takes a slurping sip of her tea, wishes for ice cubes to cool it.

  The tea’s steam warms her cold nose. Soon she will have to start pulling cushions off chairs, and alone and tired she will have to drag the porch furniture into the house.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TOM

  July 11

  They stood on the porch together, Tom and Libby, discussing the state of the wind. Tom just needed to get the mail in town, but Libby always had to discuss things, she couldn’t just come along for the ride.

  “Never seen this many days of calm,” he said, sure that she would disagree with him. She couldn’t let him be right about anything up here.

  “There’s often a lull in late July. Guess it’s just a bit early,” Libby said, “though there’s a bit of something out there.”

  “After you get past the lee, but not much.”

  “The sailing class is out there on something,” she said. The small flock of dinghies was jostling in a tight group, looking like the trim corners snipped from a sheet of white paper. They were at the far side of the thoroughfare, close to the shore of the opposite island, but the voices of the students came distinct across the water. Tom could hear the squeals of teenage girls, a boy shouting, “Nathaniel!” the clunk of two dinghies colliding, and the persistent honk of the instructor’s air horn, and when he abandoned that, some sharp instructions about the mainsail.

  “If they can avoid running each other down, they might get somewhere on that starboard tack,” said Libby.

  “The wind is a mess; from here it’s coming in from the south, but if they’re on a starboard tack, then out there it’s coming from the west. It’ll only get worse as it gets later.”

  “The real drop will happen around five thirty,” Libby said. “Things always calm by cocktails, which gives us a good three hours. I think we should risk it.”

  Why? So the two of them could spend half an hour paddling across a glassy thoroughfare while Tom had to yet again defend his position on selling the house. Really he just didn’t want her out on the water for so long.

  “No, let’s just go to town and grab the mail. If we try to sail, we’ll just end up rowing back.”

  She rolled her eyes, but said she’d grab the mailbox key if he’d pick up the life jackets from the porch steps. He wondered why she was giving up so easily, why she just didn’t go herself, the gaff rig dinghy was easy to handle on her own; really, she could’ve handled the sloop on her own, if they still had it. He worried she would ask about Melissa, though he couldn’t imagine she’d picked up on it. Maybe there was something else on her mind.

  He had the Whaler pulled into the float as she came down the ramp.

  “I’ll drive,” he said. She shrugged.

  Now he was sure that something was wrong. What if she was sick? He couldn’t handle one more death. They had all looked to him as their mother lay in her hospital bed, the switch, not a plug at all, ready to be flipped. No lingering, she had said. Danny had been practically catatonic himself, Gwen had her hands full with him, and Libby had already begun coping with the funeral arrangements, the cleaning out of the Crocker Street apartment. She had a small notebook devoted to all things related to their mother’s death, except this. Who should flip the switch?

  He did. They had all paused, and he said, “I’ll do it.” He said it with confidence, a tactic he used often in conferences. So they believed that he could. He knew only that he must, that as the oldest, it was his job to spare the others from the act of killing their mother.

  He wanted to cry, to hold Libby to him, no more switches. Not for anyone, not for his baby sister. He had already saved her once; what if he couldn’t do it again? He wanted her to tell him there, standing on the float. He didn’t want to be one step farther from a hospital, from trial therapies and second opinions. But instead he lowered the outboard into the water and started the boat. She sat on the seat just in front of the wheel, leaning back on the small wheel stand.

  “Why don’t we toot up Perry’s Creek,” she called over her shoulder, “see if the fornicatoriums are putting in for the night.” Perry’s Creek was a jaunt he loved, a long, deep, narrow cove, good for going fast or for drifting and catching sights of seals.

  “Sure,” he replied, totally unsure. He had always seen Libby as fragile. If one of them were to be hurt or sick, it would be her, of that he was positive. He was unsure of her own natural instinct to survive.

  They cruised out into the thoroughfare and, in a great arc of wake, turned up Perry’s Creek.

  “Slow down, Tom. Look at all the work they’re doing to the Burketts’ house.”

  He eased the engine down to a slow putt, and shaded his eyes as he looked at the shore.

  “A whole new slate roof. Christ, hate to imagine what that cost,” said Tom.

  “But it is gorgeous, and if you can get it on, then it’ll last forever. Like copper gutters.”

  “Yeah, if you want to spend your money on gutters, sure.”

  “Let’s go up to the creek head,” Libby said.

>   “We don’t want to miss the post office. I’ve had these letters in my pocket for two days.” Tom hated to be late, or to miss things because he was rushed. He wanted to get things done.

  “Come on, Gramps, we’ve got plenty of time.”

  But with that long-ago day on his mind, with the memory of Libby’s limp ten-year-old body pressed against him in the water, he felt he needed to give her time to say whatever it was she was going to say. Maybe they’d have time to try all the things they couldn’t for Scarlet.

  The water was flat and held just the smallest undulations from their slow progress. Up into the creek the lobster pots all pointed their stems straight up. High tide, just about to turn, and then those stems would swing down and point out to sea. Got to watch those pots closely once the tide turns, especially farther up. Gwen had run this boat aground here before, forced to get out and walk across the flats to the road for a ride. Libby knew better, Libby knew to watch the pots. Fog clung in among the pines, a light blanket tucked within their folds, just forgotten scraps here and there. Few fornicatoriums could come up this far. But when storms came, they tried it, preferring to wreck their boats themselves rather than let the storm do it for them.

  “So, Bibs, how are you?”

  He was not able to make this sound natural, except maybe to strangers and business partners, people who would never be expected to answer it honestly. They had come to the quiet point of the creek, and she threw out the small anchor and cinched its rope to the cleat on the bow. Tom sat down behind the wheel. She was at the bow, facing him. Bad news in boats. He looked at her, waiting for the conversation to thread toward her health, to twist down some dark path lined with small, malignant stones.

  “We need to talk about the house,” she said finally. “It’s pretty clear that you and I are the ones that will bear the financial brunt of keeping it.”

  Tom felt the buoyancy of the ocean, the way it repelled the boat. They were riding on the back of Neptune’s hand. He felt the relief of a leeward port, of a homeward wind. She was well.

  “Don’t look so excited. I’m not about to give this place up.” She stood up in the bow looking at him. “I think if they had to, G and Dan would step up.”

  “You’re kidding? Those two can barely change a tire. Dan can’t even manage to go to class. He tell you about that?”

  “Well, he’s committed to keeping the house, so—”

  “Gwen didn’t sound so committed the other night,” said Tom.

  “I don’t think it would take much convincing.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to make one hell of a case to convince me.”

  “I know. Because, it seems like your mind is made up.”

  “I have other places I need to put this money.” Tom waved in the direction of their house as if it were made out of bricks of cash. For a moment he saw himself with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, full of bundled bills.

  “Right. So it seems like there’s only one option here,” said Libby. Tom shrugged. He knew this was hard for her to face. She continued, “I want to buy you out.”

  And somehow it was like she was dying again; or maybe he was. He was some fading apparition in their lives, and she, tearing a check from her checkbook, would snuff him out. He could hear the perforation of the check unzipping; he was fading into the fog. He rested his head on the small steering wheel. He wondered what happened if you passed out on a boat.

  “Tom? You alright?” She had moved to kneel on the bench seat in front of the center console. She rubbed his shoulder.

  “So, what would that even look like?” he said to the wheel. “Would you guys still come up for the Fourth? Would I not be welcome?” No place for me here, no Melissa for me at home. He looked up at her. “How could you even afford it?”

  “I’ve been saving for a down payment. I have my 401(k). And I’m sure I could get a loan. If Gwen and Danny help, I know I could swing it. Eventually. We’d need some sort of installment plan.” And he wasn’t sure how to ask his question again. Was the idea of losing him so easy to accept? She wasn’t hearing him.

  Libby had her fingers wrapped around the edge of the wheelhouse, and she was looking up at him, like a rabbit peeking out of a burrow, like his little sister.

  “Do you remember when you jumped in the water at Bar Island?”

  Her hair was lighter then, with a slight wave at the ends, which she had since outgrown. It had always seemed to bounce in the wind instead of snap. They had taken a day trip to Bar Island for a picnic and swimming. She was just ten, narrow and pale, still early summer. Tom had watched Libby from a rock where he sat leaning back on one hand, holding half a tuna sandwich in the other. He watched her talk to their father on the pebbled beach; watched her point at the big, whale-shaped rock jutting into the little cove; saw her plead and their father shake his head. Then she’d stomped right past Tom, nearly trampling his fingers under her demanding little feet. She kicked at a tide pool.

  He could see the idea come to her, saw her looking from her father to the rock. The decision forming in her mind, “Why not just jump? The water isn’t that cold.” She tapped the surface of the pool with the ball of a foot, as if to prove it to herself. Tom laughed at her, though, let her catch it from their dad. Let her sulk in the back of the boat all the way home under the cloud of some infantile punishment, no candy for a week, no friends over this weekend. Let her see their parents’ dark side can come down on her too. He challenged her, dared her, silently. And she obeyed.

  “I was just telling Melissa that story—Dad, the big hero, diving in and fishing me out. The rest of the details are kind of hazy.”

  She had stood at the back of the rock, up on its tail for a moment and then had taken a running leap off its head and into the center of the little cove. It had to have been twelve feet deep. The rock blocked his view, and he stood to get a better look. Tom waited for her to surface, waited for her to come up shrieking from the cold. But he heard nothing. She did not rise, but he could see her through the flat surface adrift at the bottom of the cove. It was her hair and hands that he could see. Her hair dark as seaweed danced up from her head. Her hands were white and limp at the wrists, dead fish.

  “When you came out of the water you were unconscious. You weren’t breathing.”

  He remembered dropping the sandwich into the tide pool as he stepped fast from rock to rock. He ran the length of the whale rock too in two strides. And then he dove.

  Before his feet left the rock he was aware that his father was wading in fast from the beach, the water parting around his waist like a launching ship. Tom didn’t feel the cold until his arm was around her, until he had to pull them both to the surface. The urge to gasp was hard to control; he pulled her heavy against the cold, against the dark of the cove floor. She did not move, not deep in the water and not at the surface. Swim, he told himself. You swim, she lives, you breathe, she lives.

  Her hair hung over her face, a terrifying veil. He held her to his chest with one arm and used the other to pull toward shore. When he could touch the bottom his father grabbed her knees, and they held her high above them, out of the water, carrying her up, less drag. On the beach they laid her down, his father stepping to her side.

  “I can do it,” Tom had said. “I know how.” He didn’t think of the failure at life guarding, he thought only, water out, air in, water out, air in.

  She had already gone blue at the lips. So fast. He rubbed the hair away from her mouth and nose, rough and quick. He tasted salt on her lips. The water was hot as she coughed it up, pouring over his hands as he leaned her to one side. She started crying at once, maybe before she was completely conscious.

  Their father squatted in front of her, and she rolled toward him, and he gathered her up in a towel. Tom had looked for his mother then; she was on the deck of the Misdemeanor, anchored just outside the cove, must have rowed past him as he swam. She had the ship-to-shore in hand, trying to get the Coast Guard, the sound of clicking and st
atic came across the water. He waved at her. She had waved back, nodding her head. Gwen had watched the whole thing from a driftwood log on the beach, silent, tears running down her face. Libby had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the beached dinghy wrapped in a towel staring out at the whale rock.

  “We almost lost you that day,” said Tom.

  “I didn’t realize it was so bad.” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Did Dad have to do CPR?”

  “No. I did. I brought you out. I did CPR.” His eyes burned and his stomach went tight. “I was closer, I got to you first.”

  She reached out and held his hand for a moment.

  “I don’t want you up here without me,” he said. I need to be able to get to you.

  She smiled. “We’ll figure it out. There are no rules. We’ll work it out together. We’ll still be together.”

  She squeezed his hand, then tucked her hair behind her ears, looking at him like it was her birthday, all warmth and humility. Then she moved back to sit in the bow. She pulled on the anchor line to check it, shifted the life jackets beneath the bench.

  “You know, Patricia,” she began—he nodded, still catching his breath, happy to talk about something else. “She and I aren’t just friends.”

  Libby clasped and unclasped her hands, alternating the weave of her fingers.

  “We’re thinking about next steps,” she continued. At first he registered only his relief that they were done talking about the house. He didn’t want to talk about where that money would go. He didn’t want to talk about how terrifying it had been to see her half dead on the beach. She must have read this on his face.

  “And we are really happy together. We’ve been friends a long time, and then it just grew into something more, you know?”