A Week at the Shore

by Barbara Delinsky

  I wonder if we’ll get anything more now, then wonder if it matters. The more immediate question is whether he currently owns a gun.

  But I don’t want to think about that, either. Taking a deep, salty breath, I hold it in my lungs until it eases my upset.

  Walking to the spot where the sand is shiny and hard, I wiggle my toes as the water bubbles in, trickles out, advances again and retreats. A tiny voice in my head tells me to go back up to the house. But if there is a problem, Joy will come looking for me. And didn’t she want to get to know her grandfather? Besides, Anne is with them.

  Leaving the water’s edge, I walk several yards onto the dock and sit with my legs hanging over the side. My feet don’t quite touch the water, which means it’s low tide. When we were kids, this was a measure of our growth, much like a mark on the kitchen wall. Another measure? How quickly we could scramble up the bluff without using the stairs. There were always footholds. But no more, I realize, looking back. The rocks we used then now lie in a straggly line at its base.

  The bluff is eroding. The stairway seems to be holding the soil in place, but on either side of it, gravelly sediment flows over what used to be pure sand. The Sabathian side of the bluff, where plantings anchor the gravel, fares better.

  Beach maintenance. Another thing to consider.

  But not now. Now I simply listen. Though the breakwater gentles the surf, the greater ocean still resonates as it gathers, spills, and ebbs. I hear the soft ding of ships’ bells, a slightly different tone from each boat, in sync one minute, not so the next, and the percussive thump of the bumpers that hang between the boats and the dock. Combined this way, these sounds are unique. They are the lullaby of my childhood, the one that scores my Manhattan dreams, as pure here as the smell of the sea.

  A gust of wind whips at the loose ends of my hair. Grateful for my Bay Bluff sweatshirt, I start to pull up the hood. But that will hide too much of the shore experience, and in this instant, that is what I need. Instead, I pull its sleeves over my hands, press them against the dock, and focus on the horizon.

  Focus. Camera. Back in the car.

  But I veto that thought, too. For these few moments at least, I want nothing between myself and the sea. On a clear day, we could always see Block Island and, on an extra clear day, the tip of Long Island. Today a broken haze hovers over the ocean, allowing only cracks of sunlight to splinter through and gild the waves.

  Just shy of the horizon, I see two boats, one with sails, one not. Their paths approach, cross, and separate. I can’t hear them, not even the distant rumble of a motor, the breeze is that stiff. I do hear another sound, though—a faint jangle, land-based, and growing louder fast.

  Looking toward the Sabathian side, I see a dog coming at me on the run. It is medium-sized and powerfully built, though the power is strictly in its body. In comparison, its legs are spindly. It is shorthaired, so much the color of wet sand that it might have blended in, if the sand offered up anything as mean-looking as this.

  Time to go to the house, I sing to myself. But it’s too late. The dog is racing past the firepit, heading for me. It closes in even as I evaluate my odds of escape.

  It isn’t that I don’t like dogs. But this one doesn’t look friendly, and the last thing I want is to have to return to Urgent Care for stitches and a shot.

  Trapped, I hold very still. The dog stops at the end of the dock where it, too, holds still.

  Distracted by movement down the beach, I dare a glance there. The man approaching us is tall and as solid of body, if far, far more long-legged than the dog. He doesn’t run, clearly isn’t alarmed, or is simply testing me to see if I’ll blink. All I do, very carefully, is ignore the wild thudding of my heart and, very slowly, turn on my bottom so that I’m facing the threat.

  Stopping at the dog, he scrubs its head with his fingers. “Good guy,” he says.

  “Is that a pit bull?” I call in disbelief.

  “Could be,” he calls back in the deep voice that I know. I want to hear amusement. But no. It’s challenge.

  “Do you own it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why a pit bull? Because no one else wants him and he needs a home. Pit bulls are the most misunderstood dogs.”

  “Tell that to the mother whose three-year-old was mauled by one,” I say. A story to that effect had recently appeared on my Twitter feed. It wasn’t the first I had read.

  “If a dog is trained to fight, it fights,” he states. “If a child rushes it, it gets scared. When an animal, any animal, is threatened, it defends itself. I repeat. Misunderstood.” He has the gall to approach me on the dock, and I continue to hold still. Not that I think he’ll attack. John Sabathian is a pacifist. Physical abuse was never our problem. Our problem—my problem—is that my legs won’t work, because I don’t know what to do. Stay, leave, walk, run, listen, love, argue, reason, accuse? The past contained all that and more. But this isn’t the past.

  He comes close enough so that I have to tip my head up. His face is older, its lower third sporting a stylishly thin, half-scruff beard. Though his hair is shorter, hitting his nape rather than his shoulders, it is the same every-shade-of-chestnut-give-or-take that it was. The grooves between his brows have deepened, no surprise there. He was always a frowner. That said, he looks good.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” he says in a lower voice now that he is close.

  I try to think up something witty about command performances or wild accusations or for-old-time’s-sake corn, but nothing seems right. I simply say, “I didn’t either.”

  “Why did you?”

  “A gun can be lethal.” Like a pit bull, I think, with a pointed look at the dog. But the creature, which has followed Jack onto the dock, is looking up at him with adoration. Clearly, it doesn’t judge me to be a threat. It doesn’t even look my way when I maneuver my legs around and stand.

  Pulling a treat from his pocket, Jack rewards it for its docility. The dog sits and chews in a surprisingly well-mannered way, then closes its mouth, and turns placid eyes on me. I suppose it can’t help being jowly. Or having bloodshot eyes or ears that hang like limp lettuce.

  “Is this your only dog?” I ask, thinking that if he’s a vet, he may have a houseful.

  “Right now. They come and go.”

  “Get adopted?”

  “Or die. Some of my clients can’t deal when their pets get sick. I can.”

  “Are you a shelter?”

  “Just a vet. But the line between the two isn’t set in stone. I care about animals. I do what I can to make their lives better.”

  He sounds genuine enough, but I struggle to reconcile the past with this. He hadn’t been the most social sort. What was on his mind was on his tongue, no filter in sight. Joy is like that too often for comfort. That said, there is a case to be made that Jack was my model of how not to raise an only child. Consideration of others was never his strong suit.

  That he is now considerate of animals raises a curious point. “You didn’t have pets when we were kids.”

  “Your memory sucks. I had rabbits. You don’t remember my hutch? But no. You wouldn’t. You were afraid of me. You wouldn’t come close.”

  I half expect to see a mocking twitch at the corner of his mouth. But he is stating a fact. I do remember being afraid of him at first.

  Unafraid now, I say, “I meant cat or dog.”

  His mouth does twitch now, but with self-disdain. “My parents were overwhelmed with just me. They couldn’t have handled a house pet.”

  “You weren’t that bad.”

  “I was that bad.”

  “Mom!”

  My eyes fly to the bluff. Joy is running down the steps.

  “Walk, don’t run!” I shout and, given cause, jog down the dock and across the wet sand. I’m slightly breathless when we meet. “Everything okay?”

  Her curls have grown ten-fold, but her dark green eyes are bright. “Well, Papa forgot I was there and got obses
sed with a crossword puzzle, and Anne is racing around trying to clean up. I mean, Mom, like the place is a pigsty?” Her gaze shifts past me, voice guarded. “Who’s that?” When she sees the dog, she sidles closer to me, which says something about the look of this dog.

  Jack approaches us, nothing shy about the man. I’m thinking that I need to formally introduce them—am thinking, actually, that this is the last situation I want to be in and that I need to return to the house now—when Joy asks in a none-too-friendly tone, “Are you the guy who called on the phone?”

  He stares at her, then at me. I’m not sure if he’s wondering why she called me Mom, or, having moved beyond that, is asking, Do I need to answer this twerp?

  “This is my daughter, Joy,” I tell him. “Joy, Jack. Yes, he’s the one who called.”

  “Is that a pit bull?” she asks, even more accusatory than I had been minutes before.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re vicious.”

  “They’re misunderstood,” he repeats. His voice doesn’t gentle because she’s a child. I remember this about Jack. He was always quick to argue, and once riled, he didn’t back down from a fight. Rather like a pit bull, I think. But, really, what do I know about pit bulls, or Jack Sabathian after twenty long years?

  “Will he bite me?” Joy asks.

  “If you pick up a stick and come at him, he might.”

  “What if I try to pet him?”

  “Go ahead. Just put your hand out so he can see you mean no harm.”

  She does that, inching it closer to the dog. I want to pull her back, but don’t want to teach her fear, and if Jack is watching, she’ll be safe. A vet wouldn’t stand by and let a mad dog bite a child, not even a vet with an ax to grind.

  The dog barely looks at her hand but continues to stare into her eyes.

  “Poor thing,” she says. “He’s so ugly.”

  “Joy,” I protest. She’s right. But I’ve taught her not to be mean.

  That said, she is the type of child whose big heart bleeds as much for ugliness as for the rape of natural resources. Still holding out her hand, she moves closer. The dog sniffs it and waits. Very lightly, she strokes its head. When she looks back at me with wide eyes and a smile, I feel a spray of pride.

  Eyes returning to the dog, she continues to pet it. “Don’t pit bulls have stand-up ears?”

  “Some do,” Jack says, gentling now. Animals are clearly his thing. “Some are gray. Some are black. Some are brown with white markings. They’re all different, like people.”

  “Why does he look so sad?”

  This dog’s eyes are indeed soulful. I’m touched by that myself.

  “Maybe because he’s used to being pre-judged. Maybe because he’s used to being abused.”

  She gasps. “Was he?”

  “Oh yeah. He was beaten and abandoned, then turned in to a shelter that would have euthanized him if the humane society hadn’t rescued him.”

  “What kind of shelter would euthanize a poor, abused dog?” Joy asks with disdain.

  “The kind that sees an abused pet as damaged goods. Or that has too many other abused dogs, too many intractable dogs, too many dogs, period. Rescue operations go on all the time. They bring animals to parts of the country like this. We’re bigger with spay and neuter here than in some parts of the country, so we have fewer unwanted litters and therefore more room in shelters for adoptable pets.”

  Her hand has moved to the dog’s chin. “What’s his name?”

  “Guy.”

  As in, Good Guy, I realize, and am thinking that’s an awful name for a dog, when Joy says, “That’s an awful name for a dog.” I don’t look at her. I know the kind of face she’s making, have seen it often enough when she finds something distasteful. “It’s what everybody calls everybody. If he’s a survivor, he needs something special like … like Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix,” Jack repeats. He is making a face, too. I can hear it, though I don’t look at him. My eyes are glued on the dog. Abused pets can turn in an instant.

  But Jack doesn’t yield. “Phoenix is no good. He wouldn’t answer to that.”

  Joy has seen as many muzzled dogs on the streets of New York as I have, but she clearly doesn’t feel threatened, either by this one or by Jack. “Then Griffin. Or Jagger.”

  “He knows Guy.”

  “Or Knox. You know, like the fort? I can’t believe he would have been killed,” she says as she cups the dog’s chin. “He’s so sweet.”

  “Shows the power of ignorance,” Jack resumes, and I hear renewed purpose, even relief to be on safer ground again. “People make assumptions that are just plain wrong.”

  I look up at that, because it’s clearly addressed to me, but before I can fully take in what he’s said, he has refocused on Joy.

  “Maybe they just don’t know the truth,” she says.

  “Or don’t want to know.”

  “How could someone not want to know that cruelty is bad?”

  “They don’t define it that way,” I put in, playing devil’s advocate. “They don’t call it cruelty. They call it discipline. Or punishment.”

  “Which is a lie,” Jack says, and his voice is tight again. “Some people just can’t be honest. They can’t see that they’re being driven by anger. Or revenge.” He holds my gaze now, and I know we’re not talking about dogs. Last time he and I talked face-to-face, there had been anger on both sides. His mother was gone. We didn’t know if she was dead, involuntarily missing, or willfully absent. All we knew was that my father was driving the boat from which she disappeared. The police investigation was done; the district attorney deemed the incident an accident. My father was cleared, but Elizabeth MacKay remained gone.

  Jack was angry at me for being an Aldiss. I was angry at him for blaming me for that.

  So I understand anger. But the idea of revenge appalls me. “Revenge for what?”

  His eyes are dark and do not blink. “Things that go wrong with their own lives.”

  “Revenge on a dog?” asks Joy.

  He darts her a quick glance before returning to me, like he’s right back where we were twenty years ago, just the two of us. “Sometimes people dream things up. They come up with bizarre theories to excuse their own failure.”

  “Failure in what?” I asked more sharply than I should have with Joy right there, but I didn’t see failure in my father. He had been frantic when he returned to shore that night. He had sped to the dock and barely tied the boat before he was out and running along the shore, searching for Elizabeth. He was shouting for the rest of us to come, desperate to get as many people looking as possible. He had been so upset that, of course, my mother and sister had assumed the wrong thing.

  “Failure in life,” he accuses. “Failure in love.”

  Joy is looking back and forth, confused.”What is he talking about, Mom?”

  I suck in a deep breath, needing a moment and trying to make it look casual. I can’t believe how quickly this has surfaced. But then, I’m not the one living in Elizabeth MacKay’s house with the detritus of the life she left behind. She was troubled. We all knew that. It was one of the few memories on which we agreed.

  Chapter 5

  Jack Sabathian has his mind set. I can see it in the lines between his eyes, which could as well be carved in stone. I won’t win this argument. The best I can do is to extricate my daughter and me from what will only grow more contentious the longer we stay.

  That said, I might have glanced at my watch in feigned surprise and made a polite excuse about needing to see to my father or help Anne or unpack. But I refuse to feign anything in front of this man—refuse to be the apologist, especially since it was my peaceful reunion with the water that he disturbed.

  Instead, I sing a definitive, “Oooo-kay, this is going nowhere.” Grabbing a handful of Joy’s sweatshirt, I pull her toward the stairs.

  We’ve barely taken two steps, though, when she pulls free and turns back. “You’re a vet, right?” she asks Jack, just
to let him know she knows, because she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Can I work for you?”

  “Joy!” I cry, beside her again. “Let’s go.” I hook an arm in hers, but she won’t budge, simply turns wounded green eyes on me.

  “I’m serious, Mom? If I was in New York, I’d be working at the shelter. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference—es,” I say in a low, close voice that I hope stresses my own seriousness, since I am very much so. Seeing this man on the beach—fighting a tangle of memories—is exactly why I haven’t been here for twenty years. Well, one of the reasons. The rest are up at the house. I came down here first, actually stopped at the square first to superimpose good thoughts on bad. And look what happened. I agreed to this trip because my daughter wanted it, but she needs to be a little sensitive to my needs. “The differences,” I say, “are that we came here to spend time together on the beach and to spend time with your grandfather and your aunt, and we’re only here for a week, and he isn’t a shelter.”

  “What kind of work?” comes Jack’s low voice.

  “Thanks, but she’s not interested,” I say without looking his way. My eyes are on Joy, trying to drill in all that I can’t say.

  But the ocean must be drowning it out—either that, or stubbornness has turned her momentarily deaf, because my daughter doesn’t hear a word I’m not saying. “I am interested,” she insists and, breaking eye contact with me, tells Jack, “I’ll do anything you need done? I can play with animals or feed them or change their water or scoop their poop—and I don’t want pay, this is totally volunteer.”

  “Joy—”

  “Volunteer, Mom,” she assures me, “so it can be two hours a day for the next five days. I mean, you’ll be busy cleaning Papa’s house, trust me, there are piles of things everywhere and someone has to go through them, and just now? When I tried to move one book, one book off the sofa so he could sit, he told me not to touch anything and went to the only uncluttered chair in the place. So there’s lots of sorting out to do, which takes someone who knows what’s good and what isn’t and who can deal with Papa—and can I really do that?”