A Week at the Shore

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Will you tell him that?” She is indignant now. “Will you convince him that his mind is failing and he needs help? Will you take him there?”

  “Yes.”

  Anne barks out a laugh. “And you seriously think he’ll agree to it?” Pulling free, she stands. As she looks down at me, her drawn-back dark hair with its burgundy streak seems too stark, her jaw too tight. I barely have time to brace myself, when she says, “See, that’s what I hate, Mallory. You don’t see him every day, like haven’t spent any significant time with him in twenty years, but suddenly you’re an expert?”

  Put that way, I feel totally wrong—both for having abandoned Anne and for disagreeing with what she’s chosen to do on her own. But there’s a flip side. Gently, sensibly, pleadingly, I say, “No, I’m not an expert, and you’re right, I haven’t spent enough time with him to know much. But because I don’t see him every day, I can see the change since I saw him last.”

  “Since you saw him last.” She rolls her eyes and sighs, though she is anything but relaxed. “So he’s three years older. So he forgets things. So he doesn’t want to go places. So he’s sometimes depressed, because he actually loved Mom and she’s gone, and he actually loved Margo, and he actually loved you, and all he’s got now is me. So I try to make things easier for him, and if that means overlooking small stuff, I do. I don’t care if he sits reading in his chair for hours. I don’t care if he’s turning pages just for the heck of it. That doesn’t mean he’s sick.”

  Put that way, it doesn’t. Unless he isn’t reading at all, because the words make no sense. Unless he’s depressed because he knows his mind is rotting. Unless he doesn’t want to go places because he fears he’ll meet friends whose names he can’t remember.

  “And besides,” Anne says, “do you think I haven’t thought of these things? Do you think I haven’t searched the web to compare him with other people his age? Do you think I haven’t read and reread the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease? I’m not stupid, Mallory. I know the possibilities. I just refuse to assume the worst because other people think they know better—”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do, but how can you? How can anyone? It’s impossible to diagnose Alzheimer’s for sure until a person is dead, and—here’s a flash—Dad isn’t dead. He’s still living, and he may live for a long time. Am I supposed to treat him like he has one foot in the grave? I refuse to do that. I’m living here with him, trying to keep up his spirits, trying to make his life easy and pleasant, even fun. So if you suddenly think you have all the answers, let’s hear them.”

  She juts out her chin, rounds her eyes in demand, and stands there, waiting.

  I hold up my hands, half-afraid to speak. I always think of Anne as young, because she acts it and dresses it and is just that little bit younger than me. But there’s something weary in her now. Something wary. The Anne staring at me is someone new.

  “Why did you come?” she finally asks. “If it’s because you want to see whether I’m taking care of things, you can head back to New York in the morning. Everything’s fine here.” She turns to leave, then swivels back. “And anyway, how long are you staying?”

  “Joy wants to stay the week. Actually,” I try to make a joke of it, “she wants to stay the whole summer.”

  Anne looks horrified. “The whole summer? You can’t do that.”

  “No. I can’t.” But her tone annoys me. It is everything I’ve always dreaded about this place, the sense of not belonging. Annoys me? Infuriates me. This is as much my house as Anne’s. Technically, I can stay as long as I want. “Part of the reason I’m here,” I tell her, doing my best to sound conciliatory while I make my point, “is because you made me feel guilty when we talked on the phone. I can’t stay here long—I have to be back at work a week from tomorrow—but I thought you’d want my help, even for a little while.”

  “Not if it comes with strings.”

  “Like my forcing you to do what you don’t want to do? Have I ever done that?”

  “Not in words.” Accusatory eyes finish the sentence.

  I should have hedged and apologized and reassured her. But not in words rubs me the wrong way, too. Not in words is what I most detest about this place. Not in words is all that I didn’t understand about why I am who I am. My parents didn’t discuss things. As a parent now, I do. As an adult now, I do. And Anne’s accusation is wrong.

  Perhaps unwisely, but unable to hold it in, I say, “That’s your insecurity speaking.”

  She jerks back. “Insecurity? I am not insecure. I know who I am and what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with, which also means I can date who I want.” The last is a clear reference to Billy Houseman. “I’m not a child, so if you think you can treat me like Joy, you can turn right around and drive back to New York tonight. Don’t even bother to unpack. You can get dinner on the road.”

  I barely have time to stand before she storms out.

  What to do? I don’t belong here. Anne’s outburst validates my having stayed away for so long.

  That said, alone in this barren bedroom, I feel a great emptiness. Anne is my little sister. In all those years we lived here together, we never went at each other this way. Granted, what happened twenty years ago fractured us. Granted, my life is light years removed from Anne’s. I’m a different person now. Apparently, she is, too. She resents me. Deeply.

  What to do? She is angry. She doesn’t mean what she said—well, maybe she does mean the words, but certainly not the hatred I felt receiving them. And if I take her advice and leave tonight? My father won’t know the difference. He’ll forget I was here. I’ve seen the house, and it’s not falling down, as Jack implied, and he has seen me, too. I came, I saw, I checked off that box.

  But is Dad a murderer? Is he a danger to Anne or Jack or some other innocent in town?

  What to do? I’m still standing in the guest bedroom, not knowing where my steps should lead, when I hear faint strains of the piano drifting up the stairs, around the turret, and along the hall. Crossing to the door, I lean against the jamb and listen to Joy, who is tentative at first, then more confident. She is playing by heart—no, no prodigy, but she does have an ear for music. I recognize Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” though there is a slight deviation in the usual rhythm. Joy is being Joy, either simply feeling the music or knowing that I need soothing. I listen, breathe deeply and feel calmer.

  We’ll stay here, of course. She would be crushed if I dragged her away from something she has just discovered and so badly wants. She has just as much a right to this place as I do, and if Anne doesn’t like it, that’s her problem.

  Actually, it’s my problem. By the time dinner is done, I realize that. I try to make conversation with Dad—ask how his wrist feels, whether he’s read anything good, whether he’ll take me to Sunny Side Up for breakfast tomorrow—but he answers each with a yes or a no. When nothing follows, I try to make conversation with Anne—ask whether she hires more help for the summer, mention that I saw Deanna Smith and Joey DiMinico and a blonde-haired woman, girl actually, who looked so much like Elizabeth MacKay that I got the chills. Dad doesn’t react to the Elizabeth mention, and my sister simply says that her name is Lily and that she works at the shop.

  “Lily?” I ask, startled. I realize that this must be the woman Dad stares at. “Short for Elizabeth?” The coincidence would be too much.

  “Short for Amelia,” Anne states. “Amelia Ackerman from Boise, Idaho.” Her stare tells me that she knows what I’m thinking and am wrong.

  On the plus side, Anne has served the steak presliced for all of us, so that Dad can easily handle it without using his left hand. I have to give her points for foresight.

  And they both do talk to Joy, even my father, who asks surprisingly good questions. How long have you studied the piano? Where do you go to school? What’s your favorite subject? They’re sensible questions, the kind any grandparent might ask, to which Anne looks smug. Me? I’m relieved to hear him this way. I do
n’t want him to have Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t want him to have dementia, period.

  Then, abruptly and wordlessly, he stands and leaves the table. We’ve barely finished our steak. Fresh-from-the-oven brownies are cooling on the stove for dessert.

  Joy watches him go with a look of alarm, before glancing at me, then at Anne. “Was it something I said?”

  “No, hon, he’s just tired,” Anne explains. “He gets like that sometimes.”

  “The way he just picked up and left, that was weird,” Joy says.

  My sister snickers. “Not with my father. He engages and disengages at will. He was always that way,” she says, shooting me a look that dares me to disagree.

  I can’t. Yes, Dad always did what he wanted when he wanted, to hell with social norms. We assumed it was just an authoritative personality doing its own thing. In this instance, though, it could be that the effort to be “normal” has exhausted him, which happens to those with Alzheimer’s, I’ve read.

  But right now, that’s neither here nor there. As I load the dishwasher, while beside me, not three feet away, a silent Anne cuts into the brownie pan, I’m thinking that this week could be tough. Between my father and her, I’m invisible.

  Okay. So this week isn’t about me. It isn’t even about whether Dad shot Elizabeth. This week is about Joy.

  Still, how not to take it personally, given my history here? I don’t need, don’t want to be the center of attention, but I can only ask so many questions about Anne, about Dad, about Bay Bluff, before silence sets in. Back in New York, Joy has plenty to say at my slightest suggestion, has plenty to initiate herself, and when silence settles there, it’s a comfortable one. This one is not. Aren’t they curious about my life? Do they care at all that I’m here?

  The brownies are yummy, as I knew they would be. Anne always knew her way around a kitchen, even when we were kids. And the vanilla ice cream she scoops on top, quickly melting on the brownie’s warmth? I have two helpings, I am that desperate to show Anne that I appreciate her efforts. But it isn’t until I tell her Joy and I will finish cleaning up, that she brightens. Tossing the dish towel aside with a flourish, she announces that she’s going out, tells us—me—not to wait up, and breezes out the back door.

  Joy stares after her, before turning baffled eyes on me. “Did she even tell Papa she was leaving?”

  Of course not. Doing that would have ruined the drama of her exit. Take care of everything here, her flourish said. Everything.

  Feeling newly responsible, I go looking for my father. He is asleep in his chair, head back, mouth open. I watch him for a minute, seeing so much older a man than the one in my memories that I feel a great sadness.

  But he needs to be in bed. “Daddy,” I whisper, gently shaking his arm.

  He comes awake with a jolt, looks around, then straight at me with piercing, if faded blue eyes. He knows just where he is. I’m the only thing out of place. “Mallory?” he asks, curious.

  He knows my face. And curious is better than disappointed. My heart leaps. “It is me.”

  He considers that with a frown, studying me for so long I have to fight not to squirm like a frightened child. Then his eyes clear and sadden.

  In a voice that is filled with regret, he says, “It was guilt.”

  I wait for more. Terrified that he’ll leave it there, I gently coax, “What was?”

  “Why she left. We had an agreement. Neither of us would tell.”

  My heart beats faster. “Tell what?”

  “What she did. Why she did it. We made a pact. I wouldn’t tell about her, if she didn’t tell about me. Many couples do that. They have to, to survive. When there are children involved, and reputations…” His gaze clouds and, like his voice, drifts away.

  Agreement. Pact. Children. The words reverberate, fading in and out. He’s talking about Elizabeth, of course. Or is he? My rational mind has a second rational interpretation, but it’s so abhorrent that I chalk it up to fear. I need more. I feel more. There’s a memory here, but I can’t touch it.

  “Dad,” I whisper. His eyes fly to mine. “Do you know where she went?”

  He looks back at me. “Who?” he asks, as though just now joining the discussion.

  And for several beats, I can’t answer. There’s something about that memory. Try as I might, though, I get nowhere. All that’s left is common sense in the here and now.

  “Elizabeth,” I say.

  “Elizabeth,” he repeats and is suddenly back. “How would I know that? I’ve told you time and again. She was on the boat one minute and off it the next. Why are you bringing up Elizabeth?”

  I swallow. “Well, you mentioned her, so I thought…”

  “Thought what?” he barks.

  The man with answers is gone. Whether willfully or beyond his control, the moment of confession is lost. Releasing a breath, I say as gently as I can, “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  He scowls at his watch. “I never go to bed this early.”

  “You were just sleeping—”

  “I was not. I’m not old, and I’m not sick.” He flicks me away. “Go. Now. I have reading to do before morning.”

  Backing off, I rejoin Joy at the archway and take her hand. “We’ll be outside,” I call his way. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “What would I need?” my father shouts. “I have everything I need, and if I need something, I can get it myself. I’m perfectly capable of doing that, you know. A broken wrist doesn’t make me infirm.”

  Absurdly, his outburst works for me. My father was always moody, quick to anger, a stickler for what he sees as fact. But I have my daughter with me now. She is my fact. Leaving the man and my little bits of memory behind, I continue onto the deeply-shadowed porch.

  “Is he always like that?” Joy asks when the screen door slaps shut.

  “No. He’s angry.”

  “Because we’re here?”

  “Because we haven’t been here before. And because he probably does not have reading to do. And because he can’t remember things he wants to, and he knows that his life is narrowing in. Getting older can be beautiful or not.” I tug her down beside me on the steps and drawl, “Aren’t you glad we’re here?”

  A pair of geese pass overhead, honking in laughter.

  Joy isn’t laughing. “I am. We don’t get this in New York.” She is staring out across the darkening heather toward the ocean. “I can’t imagine seeing this every day. It must have been awesome.” The dying sun is edging the horizon’s clouds an orangey pink. Closer to shore, the surf has settled into a gentle gather-and-break. Sage is in the air, carried in from the bluff on the breeze.

  I need my camera.

  No. Some experiences are better experienced in the flesh. Some memories are better formed firsthand, and sitting here arm to arm, hip to hip with my daughter as the sun sets is one.

  “So much can change,” I whisper, since speaking louder seems sacrilegious, “but this stays the same.”

  Joy’s mind has wandered. “Papa likes the piano. He came in while I was playing, just stood there listening—I mean, right at the end of the keyboard, and he was staring at my hands, like he’d never seen hands before and wanted to see what they could do? So naturally, I got nervous. My fingers started to stutter.”

  I smile. “I thought you did that on purpose. It sounded like improv.”

  “Nuh-uh. Just mess up. Why does he have a piano? I mean, like, who plays?”

  “No one. But hope dies hard. He thought learning to play was a must for girls, so he bought a piano. None of us took the bait.”

  “He didn’t make you?”

  “Oh, he tried. But after a few weeks of our practicing while he was home, he caved. Now you’ve come along to play his piano the way it should be played. I’d say his wait was worth it.”

  She leans into me and says with a pout, “You say that because you love me.”

  “I say it because it’s true.” And because I do know she loves hearing it.<
br />
  “So who said things like that to you when you were growing up here?”

  “Uh … my mother?” When Joy slides me a you-don’t-sound-sure look, I say with greater conviction, “My mother.”

  Seeming satisfied with that, she rests her head on my shoulder. The purpling sky soothes. “This is so nice,” she says, and it is. My daughter keeps me in the present, which is where I want to be.

  Then, upstairs in my bedroom, she falls asleep, and my grip on the present wavers. While she breathes deeply, her warmth pressed to my arm, I lie awake thinking of this room, this house, the people my family had been back then. I hear flutters in the attic—bats we kids knew, just knew—and my eyes fix on the ceiling, waiting for something to break through and whip around in the dark. When nothing does, just as nothing did then, I close my eyes again and listen to the ocean in real time, rather than dreams. It is as beautiful, as soothing as I remember.

  After a while, I hear my father’s footsteps on the stairs. Slipping from bed, I creep to the door and put my ear to the wood. It occurs to me to go out there and see if he needs help with his cast. But I can’t begin to imagine helping this man undress. He was never a touchy-feely guy. If he held my hand when I was a child, it was to lead me somewhere, not to impart warmth. He never dressed me, never tied a ribbon in my hair. I don’t recall whether he ever actually hugged me.

  His door closes. Quietly I return to the bed and am about to climb in, when I pause. Changing my mind, I go to the window. The heather is a dark blur, the Sabathian house even darker. Memories of this knock at the door of my mind, good ones right up until the end. So many nights I stood watch at this spot, eyes glued to the second floor window, wondering if Jack was awake and would signal. Standing here now, I have a clear vision of his Maglite’s burst—three-one-one, repeated twice in quick succession.

  It is a minute before I realize that I’m not imagining it.

  Chapter 7