Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  “Mind you, Mac McCarthy’s about five foot six,” Colette added.

  “Line them all up, they look like little henchmen nesting dolls,” Skye said. Ben laughed, and she felt a familiar thrill at the sound.

  “Wait, though. How have you survived?” Ben asked. “You must have at least four inches on the guy.”

  “She’d be out, too, if she didn’t look like such a Girl Scout. I mean, seriously.” Colette gestured in Skye’s direction with an upturned hand. Ben leaned back and squinted, pretending to examine her critically.

  “I see what you mean. Green eyes, freckles, cute nose. Not very intimidating.”

  Cute nose? Skye decided she’d take it.

  “Ha! Little does he know, Skye’s mom wouldn’t let her join Girl Scouts,” Adriene said.

  Ben looked at her with a question in his eye.

  “Oh, you know, because of the fascism,” Skye said with a casual wave of her hand, as if the despotic nature of the Girl Scouts was common knowledge.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Ben said. Another laugh, another thrill.

  Petra delivered more drinks, and Adriene and her colleagues entertained them with stories from the U.S. attorney’s office. Adriene, who had decided she was not nearly nice enough to be a psychologist, had found that prosecuting drug crimes was a good outlet for her fascination with human behavior.

  To Skye’s relief, she and Ben steered clear of the subject of Haven Point. She didn’t want him to ask the “Have you seen anyone from…?” question. Skye had visited Gran on Haven Point a few times over the years—when work brought her to New England, and once after attending a wedding in Camden, but that was about it.

  The only person remotely connected to that world with whom she’d had any contact was Ryan Donnelly, whose family owned the property just beyond Haven Point Beach.

  Skye had met Ryan at a hearing on Capitol Hill. He worked for a congressman from Long Island, where she knew the Donnellys lived, and he had the Donnelly look—the jet-black hair and blue eyes. And while he didn’t have his grandfather’s build (amid the lean patrician men of Haven Point, Finn Donnelly stood out like a buffalo in a herd of deer), he definitely had the swagger.

  “Are you related to the Donnellys who have a house on Haven Point in Maine?” Skye found herself asking.

  “Well, not on Haven Point.” Ryan had laughed in response. “That place never quite knew what to do with my grandfather, so we never got past the gates.”

  “My grandmother has a house there, but I never got more than a baby toe in either,” Skye commiserated. They often joked about it when they ran into each other. Ryan was a social gadfly and a bit over the top, but he was amusing.

  It was a work night, so the evening wrapped up early, but before they said good-bye, Ben asked for her cell number and said he’d love to get together.

  “He’s still into you!” Adriene said, excited, as they trudged home through the snow to Adriene’s apartment.

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “You’re crazy as a Betsy bug,” Adriene said, using one of her favorite Colette-isms.

  To Skye’s surprise, Ben called her at work the very next day.

  “I remember you were a hockey player. Still have your skates?” he asked.

  “I’ve only worn them a few times since high school, but yeah, I still have them.”

  “The canal is frozen for the first time in years. What do you think?”

  “Sounds great,” Skye said. Her heart signaled agreement, fluttering as it had when she saw him the night before.

  After she and Ben made arrangements, Skye called Adriene.

  “Told you he’s into you!”

  “We’re going skating, Adriene. That’s like a friend thing. He’s probably lonely. He doesn’t know that many people in D.C.”

  “Skye, you kill me.” Adriene laughed. “Yeah, he’s soooo lonely. Well, I’m glad you’re doing the poor lonely boy a favor and going out with him.”

  Though Adriene had been right about Ben calling (and quickly, Skye noticed) she was less certain he was “into” her. She also found the whole idea of resurrecting some old summer fling vaguely ridiculous, like the plot of a cute Hallmark movie. Skye’s life was many things, but “cute” wasn’t one of them.

  Still, as the weekend got closer, she found herself eagerly anticipating seeing him again.

  Her skates were at her mom’s, so Friday after work, she picked up groceries and headed over there. She found Anne in the living room, wearing leggings and a tattered Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. The television was on, but Skye could tell she wasn’t paying attention. Her mom had never really watched TV.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, hon.” Anne looked up at her, managed a closed-mouth smile, and waited.

  This was their routine. Her mom would answer any question Skye posed. Have you seen your sponsor? Your therapist? Have you been eating? If Skye criticized, she did not defend herself.

  She just didn’t do much of anything. This is it, her attitude suggested. This is all I have now. Skye could not have imagined missing her mother’s bursts of stubbornness or impulsivity, but she would have given her right arm to see a little fight in her.

  Skye put the groceries away and straightened up the kitchen. The house had never been neat, but the mess had a more depressing quality now.

  When Skye was young, Anne occasionally tried to clean, but something invariably distracted her before she made any progress. She’d work on a painting, or notice a bird at the feeder and grab her camera, or go outside to talk to their sweet but senile neighbor Mrs. Bradley, who roamed around in a quilted housecoat, picking dandelions.

  What Skye had not appreciated back then was that the mess in their home was a living thing, with its own energy. All Skye saw now was lifeless neglect—no works in progress, no signs her mom took an interest in anything.

  Skye did a quick check of some old hiding places but didn’t find any alcohol. She got her hockey skates from the basement and returned to the living room.

  “I’m off, Mom. Do you need anything?”

  Her mom gave another half smile and shook her head, a hint of apology in her eyes.

  Skye left, almost wishing she had found some bottles. It would force them past the inertia, at least.

  * * *

  The previous March, Gran had called Skye in Chicago to say that her mom had been found at one o’clock in the morning, passed out on a bench in Meridian Hill Park.

  “How did she end up there in the middle of the night?” Skye had asked. Her mom loved Meridian Hill Park, which had been a gathering place for civil rights activists in the 1960s. When Skye was little, Anne sometimes took her there on Sundays to watch the weekly drum circle and wander among the people juggling, meditating, playing soccer, or picnicking.

  “I gather she had been at a cocktail bar on U Street,” Gran said.

  “A bar?” Everything about this was bizarre. Skye’s mom was not a barfly. “Who was she with?”

  “We’re not sure. Flora thinks some new artist friends.”

  Anne, who never checked the weather, had been duped by one of D.C.’s teaser March days, when spring-like daytime temperatures plummet to freezing at night. She evidently wandered out of the bar and ended up in the park. Fortunately, a good Samaritan found her and called 911. She was admitted to the hospital and treated for exposure.

  Gran, who was still listed as her emergency contact, had gotten her out of the hospital and into another rehab facility. She was there for six weeks.

  She was supposedly sober when she got out, but otherwise seemed no better for the ordeal. Skye grew increasingly alarmed by the persistent gray listlessness she heard in her mother’s voice, but when she started talking about moving home, Gran tried to discourage her.

  “You have your life, Skye. I think you should live it.”

  It was when her mom did not return to work after her leave of absence expired that Skye’s already amped-up anxiety went into the stratospher
e. She gave notice at work, packed up her apartment, and arranged to move into Adriene’s apartment in D.C.’s Penn Quarter. (Adriene was delighted to have a roommate her own age, after having a series of younger cousins foisted upon her.)

  Skye abandoned her normally meticulous career planning and took the first job she could find, on the communications staff in Congressman Vernon’s office.

  After she moved home, she quickly saw why Gran had tried to dissuade her. Nothing could penetrate her mother’s gloom. It was maddening to watch her do nothing to arrest her decline.

  So, Skye did the only thing she could: She slipped into her old role as Imposer of Order on Chaos—she put food in the pantry, paid the bills, called the lawn guy to mow the grass.

  And through it all, she tried not to let her resentment show.

  * * *

  Skye often ran on the towpath, originally built to accommodate the mules that pulled barges up and down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had skated there. The afternoon was chilly and cloudy, but after she and Ben put on their skates and headed down the canal, she felt invigorated.

  Around the first bend, they came across a group of boys who had cleared out a big rectangle to play hockey.

  “You look like you could use a couple of players,” Ben said to one of them.

  Skye raised an eyebrow. The boys could not have been more than fourteen.

  “You got sticks?” the kid asked.

  “I do. They’re in my car.”

  Skye shot him a questioning look.

  “Just happen to have them there,” he said.

  “I guess you never know when a hockey emergency will arise.”

  “Well, yeah!” Ben gestured at the game in progress. “Hockey emergency, right here.”

  Ten minutes later, Skye found herself in a rousing pickup game. She had played right wing in high school, but this was definitely more of a free-for-all. Within ten minutes, they had their coats off; within twenty, their sweaters, too.

  Ben was pretty good, though Skye noticed he was setting up his teammates to score. As the only girl, however, Skye felt no need to lower her level of play. She even managed to score a goal on a breakaway.

  When it started getting dark, they headed back to Ben’s car. She directed him to a casual burger place near Skye and Adriene’s apartment where their disheveled appearance would not matter. They chatted about Ben’s brothers and about his clerkship, and she told him more about her infamous boss.

  “He has that H. L. Mencken quote on his wall, ‘Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.’”

  “And not because he likes pirates?” Ben asked.

  “No. It’s pretty much his motto. Bit of a bunker mentality in that place. Most days I feel like I’ve infiltrated a doomsday cult,” Skye said in a light tone that belied how much anxiety the job caused her. “A day is a light-year in politics, though, so I’m learning a lot.”

  After dinner, Ben drove her home. When he pulled up in front of her apartment building, he put the car in Park.

  “So, um, Skye…” He paused, ran his fingers through his hair, then looked at her. “Are you dating anyone?”

  “I am not,” she said.

  “Good to hear.” He smiled.

  “And you?”

  “I am not.” He quirked an eyebrow.

  More than once, through all the laughter and easy banter that afternoon, Skye’s mind had flashed back to her time with Ben on Haven Point. It was not the specific memories (though some of those had come back, too), but more an echo of how she had felt—that wonderful sense of reprieve, of taking a break from her real life. It had made her aware of a powerful longing she had to push the Pause button again.

  She and Ben still felt like make-believe, but there was no denying the reality of the attraction, and this seemed like too good a moment to waste. She looked him directly in the eye, smiled slightly, and let the silence hang between them.

  He reached over, took the side of her face in his hand and gently pulled her toward him, matching her gaze, then closed his eyes and kissed her, gentle and undemanding.

  She melted into the sensation. It had been so long since anyone had kissed her like that.

  Has anyone else ever kissed me like that?

  She resisted the temptation to invite him upstairs, and he was too much the gentleman to presume, so she said good night.

  As she rode the elevator up to her apartment, she shook her head a little, as if to bring herself back to reality. By the time she reached the apartment, where Adriene was waiting up for her, she felt like she had her feet back on the ground.

  “So? How was it?” Adriene asked.

  “Fun,” Skye said, hoping the residual heat she felt in her cheeks did not give her away.

  Adriene threw up her hands in exasperation. “Come on. You have to give me more than that.”

  “Okay, it was really fun,” Skye said, unable to repress a smile. “I know it’s not going anywhere, but we had a great time.”

  “Why are you talking yourself out of him already?”

  “I’m not talking myself out of him. He’s just not my type.”

  Adriene snorted. “Well, thank God for that. Your type is weird. I swear, it’s been a parade of severe personality disorders since college.”

  “You just want to be able to say you were there when it all began,” Skye teased, hoping to steer the conversation away from Adriene’s assessment of her love life, which was indisputably accurate.

  “No, no, no,” she corrected, wagging her index finger. “I want to be able to say, I orchestrated the entire thing. Don’t forget my sacrifice, making out with that friend of his, Phillip Buckley Brooks Brothers the Fourth, or whatever his name was.”

  “You were a conniving little somebody back then,” Skye acknowledged, laughing.

  “What do you mean I was a conniving little somebody?” Adriene said indignantly. “I’m still a conniving little somebody.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Ben called to see if she’d like to get breakfast at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. They met in the market building, picked up croissants and coffee, then went outside. It was chilly but sunny, so they sat on a bench, people-watched, and chatted about nothing in particular.

  When they got into a good-natured dispute about overtime shootouts in hockey (Skye, ever the lover of certainty, liked that shootouts eliminated tie games, while Ben thought they were just skills competitions), Ben held out a clenched fist.

  “I know how we can settle this,” he said. “Rock, paper, scissors.”

  “I thought you didn’t like shootouts,” Skye teased.

  “Only in certain circumstances.”

  “Things will be interesting in your courtroom someday.”

  “I will keep the wheels of justice moving,” Ben said with a grin.

  Afterward, they wandered toward the Capitol Building and sat on the steps of the Supreme Court.

  “So, Skye, I don’t want to seem weird or stalkerish,” Ben said with an awkward little laugh she found endearing, “but I read something you wrote a while back. I thought it was really funny. It was about the McMansion neighborhood.”

  “Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was a few years ago.” She’d written the piece for The Weather Vain, an online humor magazine. It was a satirical account of a homeowners’ association arguing over applicants for the “neighborhood oddball” they planned to hire to add authenticity to the glossy new development. I realize the woman with the parrot has a mysterious past, but the old man is grizzled and he limps!

  “Where’d you get the idea?” Ben asked.

  “A running joke with Adriene. She always ragged on her old neighborhood. She said it was a bunch of huge, no-soul houses, and they had no town characters like we have in the city. I said they should have hired one, and, well … you know Adriene. It devolved from there.”

  Ben laughed. “We
ll, it was great. Have you written anything recently?”

  “Floor speeches and press releases.” Skye smiled. “I’ll get back to it, though.”

  Ben didn’t seem to be judging her, but the conversation still reminded Skye how much she had lost sight of what she had once wanted.

  In college, Skye took every comedy-writing course available to undergrads and wrote for the sketch troupe. For a while after she graduated, she managed to continue creative writing as a sideline. She took the Second City comedy-writing class at night and wrote some pieces like the one Ben mentioned. At work, her diligence, competence (and, she had to admit, instinct to please) were always well rewarded. The flip side, though, was an ever-increasing workload, which eventually left little time for anything else.

  She knew she didn’t want to be a freelance writer. As the daughter of an artist, she was far too familiar with the chaos of that kind of life. She thought she had found a happy medium as a working writer. But now she wasn’t really writing, and she definitely wasn’t happy.

  Skye remembered that summer on Haven Point, when she and Ben had sat on the cliff, spilling their dreams into the night air as the moon rose over the water. It was hard not to notice that while her life had gone completely sideways, Ben’s was right on track.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  August 1955

  Haven Point

  MAREN

  Pauline was missing. Again. Maren would gladly have left her to her fate, indeed would have relished leaving her to her fate, but the Ladies Auxiliary meeting would start soon. It would not do for every woman on Haven Point to be across the causeway and out of reach if Pauline turned up drunk somewhere.

  Maren arrived at the beach club, the last stop on her tour of spots where Pauline (or evidence of her drinking, at least) had been found through the years. The beach cabanas had neither windows nor ceilings, but surfboards stored over the top of the Demarest cabana provided some shelter, and there was space enough to unfold a beach chair. It was as good a place as any for one of Pauline’s benders, as evidenced by the empty gin bottles Maren had found there on more than one occasion.