On the way home, Kathleen closed her eyes and replayed the doctor’s accent. “Pahss.” What would it be like to be kissed by a man who spoke so beautifully? she wondered, and dozed until Buddy leaned over and whispered that they were home.
She revived a little, straightened up the kitchen, read the newspaper, did the exercises for her arm. But then everything drained out of her and she lay down on the couch.
Kathleen opened her eyes three hours later, feeling stiff, groggy, and sweaty. She must have been dreaming because her heart was pounding. Buddy had left a note on the kitchen table, saying he was sorry he’d been angry with her the other day, and that he’d be home early. Kathleen felt abandoned.
“I hate this,” she said out loud, disgusted by the sour smell of her body and the unfamiliar taste of self-pity in her mouth. “I refuse to live like this.”
She went to the computer, dialed into the library system, and searched for Final Exit. The subtitle, “The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance,” struck her as creepily funny, and she laughed out loud at the message line: “Copy lost.” That’s a good one, she thought. I guess someone used it and forgot to return it. Joyce would get a kick out of that.
But she didn’t mention it to Joyce when she called to ask about walking. Kathleen begged off: “I’m so tired, I just want to read and nap all day. I hope you don’t mind.”
From the chaise on the deck, Kathleen worked through the box of children’s books from the temple. She was appalled at the quality of the writing and illustrations from the 1960s, but also ashamed by how little she knew about some of the basic Jewish concepts they contained. She wrote the rabbi a note saying that nothing in the “collection” was worth keeping but added that she really wasn’t feeling up to meeting with Brigid.
With that out of the way, she turned on the television and watched old sitcoms. That night, Buddy sat with her while she watched news programs that seemed intent on terrifying their audiences: doctors made terrible mistakes without remorse; supermarkets sold spoiled meat and poison vitamins; the police were vicious.
Kathleen slept badly. When Joyce called the next day, Kathleen put her off again. In the evening, she watched a report about automobile manufacturers cutting corners on safety equipment; about teenage murderers; about how the Internet was a minefield of pornography and hate-mongers. The phone rang.
Buddy put his hand over the receiver and said it was some lady from a breast cancer support network. Would Kathleen like to talk? She shook her head.
“Are you sure, Kath?” Buddy asked.
She stood up and, without a word, walked past the TV and out the back door. Buddy followed and fell in beside her.
“I got a nice-sized striper today,” he said as they reached the end of the block and looked out at the water in the moonlight. He talked too quickly, about how one of his suppliers was going out of business, about how much Miguel, his assistant manager, liked the striper Buddy had caught for him and how his mother had fried it in spicy cornmeal. Kathleen knew Buddy was making an effort, but she couldn’t rouse herself to ask the questions that would have eased the conversation. She took his arm, and they walked back.
The following morning as the lights went down in the treatment room, Rachel said, “We’re half-done, Mrs. Levine.” The laser cut the room in half. Kathleen closed her eyes, but the red string of light remained before her.
I’m half-done and July is winding down, she thought. Is the summer going quickly or slowly?
“You all set, Mrs. Levine?” asked Rachel.
“Mrs. Levine is as set as she can be at the moment,” Kathleen said.
“Well, that’s honest,” said Terry. Rachel laughed softly behind her over the intercom. The machine hummed its fifteen-second song, and then it was time to go home.
That afternoon, Kathleen got a call from Jack. Hal phoned during dinner and said he’d be home for a visit soon: “Maybe by the beginning of August, if I can get it together.”
Kathleen thought about having her sons at home. Acting as if everything were fine would take a lot of effort.
“When did you call them?” she asked Buddy.
“What do you mean?” he said, turning away.
“Never mind.” She switched on the television.
JOYCE TRIED NOT to take Kathleen’s daily rejections too much to heart. She called an oncology nurse she’d once interviewed, who reassured her that severe fatigue in cancer patients was normal. So Joyce took to sending silly postcards and tried to be funny and entertaining on the phone, turning her thin scraps of news into low-key shtick: the latest offering to the Madonna of Forest Street was a bunch of sorry-looking orange-dyed carnations; the smelly boy who mowed the lawn for Joyce had hidden some Playboys in their garage. Joyce concluded their conversations with a progress report on her painting. “You’ve got to come and see my ethereal bathroom,” she said, hoping to sound intriguing, but Kathleen didn’t rise to the invitation.
“I could come over there,” Joyce offered.
“Let’s talk in the morning,” Kathleen said.
After she finished Nina’s room, Joyce painted the hallway and then her office. She worked slowly, meticulously. She spackled and sanded even the tiniest hairline cracks and primed the fresh plaster before painting it. In the bathroom, she sponge-painted a layer of white over the blue, suggesting clouds on sky. She got so skillful with the smaller brushes she didn’t even bother taping the windows and barely smudged the glass.
She was on a first-name basis with the hardware store clerk who had the starfish on his wrist. Ralph had a girlfriend, Linda, who brought him a peanut butter cookie every afternoon, but Joyce put on mascara and lipstick whenever she went in for joint compound or a new brush.
Frank called every morning and every evening, with a new addition to his litany of work-related excuses. After a week, she stopped asking him whether he was coming up and he never asked her to drive down. She was mad at him, but also back into a comfortable routine. She got up before eight and walked through the house, running her hands over yesterday’s project, studying her brushwork, planning the next task.
Joyce didn’t even bother turning on the computer. She wrote postcards to Kathleen and letters to Nina, who sent back a series of breathless notes. She was having an awesome time. The kids were awesome. She needed socks. Could Joyce please send frosting-in-a-can? She’d been chosen cocaptain of a coed soccer team. Could they send extra money for candy at the canteen?
Joyce’s days became more and more stripped down. Frank called. She called Kathleen. She wrote to Nina. She painted, and by four in the afternoon she could recite the day’s top stories, verbatim, with the announcer on National Public Radio. She bought prepared dinners at the supermarket and ate them while she read the newspapers and drank two glasses of wine. She kept her mind off Frank, the way she kept her tongue off the chipped filling in her right rear molar.
She fell asleep after the eleven-o’clock news and dreamed of painting enormous walls in a palace by the ocean. “I’m like a nun, or something,” she thought, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.
“Me and my BVM.”
One afternoon, she managed to get herself to Good Harbor but walked only partway across the beach. It felt too lonely without Kathleen.
After five days alone, she drove home to Belmont, feeling a little like a thief as she unlocked the door to her own house. She left the rooms dim behind drawn blinds as she looked through the mail. Only a few things required her attention. Frank paid the bills and threw away the junk. She stuffed the last of her underwear into a plastic bag. She lay down on Nina’s bed and inhaled the lingering scent of strawberry shampoo.
Joyce walked from room to room. Frank kept a clean house without her. There were no dishes in the sink, and the bed was made; only the overflowing hamper testified to his bachelor life. She closed the door behind her without even listening to the messages on the phone machine. Nina’s camp had both numbers, and Frank told her about anything that really nee
ded her attention.
On her second trip to Belmont a few days later, Joyce felt less like a thief and more like a ghost. The outside of the refrigerator had been cleared of last season’s soccer notices. The inside was empty except for a collection of Chinese take-out containers. She started to write Frank a note: “Hi. I was here,” but stopped. What did she want to say?
“Where are you? Don’t you think it’s strange that we haven’t seen each other for two weeks? Should we make a date for a movie — or with a lawyer?”
She crumpled the paper and stuffed it into her pocket. She left the radio off on the drive back to Gloucester and wondered whether they really were heading toward divorce. She wished she could talk this through with Kathleen, but she was too exhausted by her treatment. Joyce needed a walk; this didn’t seem like something she could bring up on the phone, especially since they hadn’t talked about their husbands yet.
Maybe she should stop over there, Joyce thought as she drove over the bridge, or maybe that would be pushing it. Kathleen was battling cancer, after all; how could Joyce whine about her marriage? Joyce went home.
That night, a loud crash startled her awake with a jolt that had her sitting up in bed before she could even open her eyes. Trembling, she saw the digital clock click 4:24. Goddamned raccoons.
She lay down. The darkness was not quite solid anymore, but it would be hours before she could start painting.
A bird trilled outside, too early for the sun. Maybe it was singing in its sleep, she thought, pressing her palms over her eyes. Maybe birds dream of singing and sing in their dreams.
She stood up, remembering Kathleen’s story about Halibut Point at sunrise. She pulled on a sweatshirt, pants, and sneakers, reheated the remains of yesterday’s coffee, and headed out to the car.
The quiet was so thick, she could almost smell it. Joyce stopped before opening the door and held her breath. The Madonna’s veil gleamed in the streetlight. The perfect mother, she thought, and walked over toward the statue. Not me. I get all pissy because Nina doesn’t want to go to the movies with me. She put a finger to Mary’s lips. What do you know, anyway, Miss Mary? Boys are easier. Everybody says so.
Joyce reached the main road without seeing a single car. Yawning, sipping her coffee, she drove under the speed limit, until a pickup truck roared up behind, and then passed her. Music blared through the open windows, and she could feel the bass from the truck’s radio vibrate in her chest.
“Asshole!” Joyce yelled, her heart pounding. She straightened up and paid closer attention to the road all the way into Rockport center, which seemed completely asleep, except for the sudden smell of frying potatoes.
I’ll come back for breakfast, Joyce thought. I’ll sit at the counter and chat with the waitress and tell Kathleen about that, too.
Starting up the hill past Rowe Point, Joyce pushed down on the gas pedal, racing past churches turned into private homes, past inns and modest Capes and granite walls, past condos, a ramshackle hotel, houses she’d coveted for years.
Do I even know where I’m going? she wondered, then spotted the small brown State Park sign. She winced as the brakes squeaked and the tires squealed into the silence. But, hey, here she was, pulling up beside the padlocked parking lot. Or maybe I should go home.
Joyce was, she knew, a fundamentally timid person. She talked a brave game, but even as a teenager she had been afraid to take risks. In college, she’d never dropped acid or even once gotten stupid drunk. The idea of hitchhiking through Europe with her roommates had been too scary, the dangers much too vivid.
She talked herself into stepping over the chain at the entrance to the park. What would the headline say? Middle-Aged Woman Caught Trespassing.
She walked slowly, squinting at the ground to avoid roots and ruts. A flashlight would have been a good idea, but she could manage. The air under the trees was green and loamy. Little rustling sounds in the bushes startled her. Mice, she supposed.
What if it’s overcast and a rotten day for a sunrise?
What if there’s a rapist on the beach?
What if she just relaxed and kept walking?
The forest ended abruptly and the sky opened over a low landscape of scrub and sand. The sharp salt breeze hit her face and cleared her head, and now she could hear the ocean.
Gravel scattered as she followed a narrow path through beach roses and poison ivy. A huge mountain of granite slag rose on her left, ten stories of rubble from long-abandoned quarries.
You did it, Joyce congratulated herself, and started out across the black-and-white moonscape of slabs and boulders. She placed one cautious foot at a time, careful of crevasses that cut down to dark, wet pools below. At least it was easier than climbing Salt Island.
And it was just as magnificent as Kathleen had said. Every time Joyce walked a few yards or moved her head, the shape of the world changed altogether. The random architecture of crags and croppings, smoothed by water and time, framed a perfectly flat ocean, barely distinguishable, in this light, from the sky.
It must be unbelievable in a storm, Joyce thought. But this horizon was flat and empty. Not a gull, not a cormorant, not even a lobster pot in view.
It was empty, but not silent. She listened to the endless wet smooch and sigh of the tide breathing beneath her, breaking through to slap against the infinite in-and-out of the shoreline. Seawater smacked and sucked between stone, on stone, breaking stone into sand, eventually. Forever and ever.
The light was stronger now, but still colorless. The day was dawning in the clouds. What kind of painting could you make out of all this gray? she wondered, scanning the coast as far as she could see. It was all gray light, gray water, mottled-gray rock. And me in gray sweatpants and gray sweatshirt and gray funk.
Joyce felt as if she were at the end of the earth. She reached up, arched her back, and stretched, with her hands reaching wide above her head. She sighed, turned, and saw him.
A hundred feet away, on a cliff that hung over the water at a seventy-degree angle. He was barefoot, wearing cutoff jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt. He stood very still, a cigarette in his mouth.
Joyce was so startled it took her a moment to be afraid. Should she walk away? Had he seen her? What was he doing out here? What was she doing out here?
He watched her take notice of him and flicked his cigarette into the sea. He raised his arm and waved in a big, goofy, side-to-side motion, as if he were hailing an ocean liner.
“Halloo,” he called.
Probably not a murderer, she thought, and waved back.
He started toward her. She looked around, hoping to see someone else, but there was no one. In a moment, he was at her side.
“Not a maniac, are yeh?” he said to her, a beautiful smile showing small, crooked teeth.
“Not me. My friend Kathleen recommended the view at sunrise, and I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’ve a sister named Kathleen.” He was Irish.
“The raccoons woke me up. I couldn’t fall asleep again.”
“What about your husband?”
“He’s in the city during the week.”
“Poor fella.”
Joyce shrugged. “Do you come here often?” She winced at the cliché.
“First time,” he said, smiling again. “It’s a grand view. Reminds me of home.”
“Ireland?”
“Yeh.”
Black hair pulled into a scant ponytail at his neck; he was fair-skinned, smooth at the knuckles and wrists. In his thirties, Joyce thought, but she couldn’t tell if he was four years younger than her or ten.
“Any other questions?” he said.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked, horrified again at the suddenly maternal tone of her voice. What was wrong with her?
“You must have a little one at home.”
“Well, I have a twelve-year-old daughter. She’s at summer camp.” So now he knew she was on her own.
“You miss her.”
“Yes.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Never married her.”
And now Joyce knew that he was on his own.
A gull appeared. Together, they watched it trace the horizon. The black-and-white scene had turned sepia. Low clouds on the horizon turned out to be a fog bank, which was filtering toward them, shrouding the water, and exhaling mist into their faces.
“A mysterious morning, isn’t it?” he said, and shivered. “And I am a bit chilled. Shouldn’t have left my shoes in the truck. I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Sorry. I didn’t bring any.” Joyce clapped her hand over her mouth. He must think I’m an idiot.
He laughed. “Would you join me for a cup? There’s a lovely diner down the road a bit.”
“Sure.” Joyce wondered what her hair looked like as they started back.
She paused to negotiate a three-foot gap between two boulders, and he reached out a hand to help her across. He held on for an extra split second after she jumped over. Joyce let him break the hold.
As she got into the car to follow him to the diner in Lanesville, she thought about turning left instead of right. She could tell Kathleen about meeting a handsome Irish stranger at dawn at Halibut Point, flirting a little, and disappearing into the morning. That would be a good story and a good place to end it. The man might be a sicko who lured women to their death.
But Joyce didn’t really think he was dangerous. He had a sweet smile, and the way he looked at her was . . . It was like water in the desert. His hand was soft. She wanted to know his name. And it was just a cup of coffee in a public place. It would make an even better story.
The diner was a cheerful-looking hole-in-the-wall she’d passed a thousand times, always meaning to stop. It might have been the same place Kathleen had taken her boys.
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