Annie climbed into the backseat of Ellen’s car, but when Julia tried to settle Vanessa there, she refused to go. Both hands held Julia’s neck now. Small sounds of protest came from the child’s throat.
Wanting to make the leave-taking as easy on the three of them as possible, Julia offered to drive Vanessa to the dock. The little girl played with the long end of the seat belt the whole way, weaving it here and there, twisting it and tying it in ways that took Julia long minutes to undo when they arrived, but the extra time allowed Ellen to drive the car with its trailer onto the waiting ferry, before returning for Vanessa.
Vanessa wasn’t going. Winding both arms and both legs around Julia now, she started to cry. Ellen tried prying her limbs free. Julia did the same. The more they tried, the harder Vanessa held on and the louder she cried.
The waterfront was crowded with people. The deck of the Harbor Grill held Sunday brunchers; tourists who had come in on the ferry were just beginning to wander toward Main Street; lobstermen were spending their enforced Sunday off by doing work on their boats. Vanessa’s cries were shrill enough to draw eyes right and left, but what was there to do? Julia crooned soft words of encouragement to the child until her own throat closed up, at which point she was relegated to stroking the little girl’s warm hair as she struggled to pass her to Ellen. Vanessa’s mouth was open in screams of protest; large tears streamed down her cheeks. She climbed Julia’s body with startling strength. Julia’s heart positively ached.
In the end, a small child was no match for two healthy adults. They managed to transfer her, twisting and fighting, to Ellen’s arms, and Ellen managed to get her aboard the ferry with Annie moments before the ramp was drawn up, and still Vanessa held out her arms to Julia, screeching now, “Nononooo!”
It was when Nononooo! turned to Mamamama! with little hands opening and closing, trying to grasp what she desperately wanted but was surely losing, that Julia pressed a hand to her mouth and began to cry softly herself. Once started, the tears wouldn’t stop—not when the ferry pulled away, nor when its engine drowned out the sound of the child’s screams, reducing her to a mimed image of hysteria, nor even when Ellen carried her to the front of the vessel and out of Julia’s sight.
Sobbing quietly, Julia watched until the ferry was out of the harbor, on open ocean and gone. She moved her hand from her mouth to her heart, hugged herself with the other arm, and still she felt bereft. She pressed her lips together in an attempt to regain control; when that didn’t work, she simply took sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. Crossing to a bench at the shore end of the dock, she sank down—and all the while, quietly, she wept.
“Mom?” Molly asked, coming down to the bench beside Julia.
Julia kept her eyes on the sea and her fingers hard against her lips.
“Did you know them?”
“Enough,” Julia managed, but couldn’t say more. She didn’t know where the tears had come from and why they refused to stop. She wasn’t Vanessa’s mother. She had spent a total of three, maybe four hours with the child.
Vanessa’s tears were more understandable. From the very first, the little girl had gravitated to Julia. Too young to understand what had happened to her own parents, she had sensed a maternal something and gone for it.
Julia’s tears, though? She wasn’t a novice at separation. With Molly her only child, she had felt it more keenly than most, but she had learned to accept what had to be. Molly had to go to kindergarten. She had to sleep over at the houses of friends, had to eventually spend the summer away at camp. These experiences were as crucial to her education as schoolwork, and there was that, too. Molly had to go off to college. Julia missed her terribly. But she knew that all these things were in Molly’s best interest.
“What can I do?” Molly whispered now.
Nothing, Julia said with the shake of her head.
“I was just stopping by at the Grill, but I’m not working until tonight. Want me to drive you home?”
Julia shook her head. She couldn’t leave the harbor yet.
Her daughter sat for a minute. Then, sounding embarrassed, she asked, “Are you going to just… sit here?”
That embarrassment hit Julia the wrong way. Wiping tears from her cheeks, she looked at Molly through her dark glasses and said brokenly, “Yes. I’m going to just sit here.” The words were barely out when new tears began to fall.
Molly straightened, then slumped, then swiveled on her bottom to face forward, and it hit Julia that her daughter didn’t know what to do. She had never seen Julia like this. She didn’t know what Julia needed— remarkably, didn’t think to put an arm around Julia’s shoulder or even a hand on her hand as Julia had done so many times when the tables were turned. But that was it—the tables had always been turned. Julia was the giver of comfort, not the recipient. Molly had no idea how to handle this new turn of events—and that was one more reason for Julia to cry. If children learned from the example their parents set, either Molly was failing the test, or Julia had failed it on the teaching end.
“Well, then,” Molly said unsurely, “if you want to stay here, I’ll leave. I’ll be hanging around the Grill. If you change your mind and want me to do something, come in and get me, okay?”
Julia nodded, but she didn’t watch Molly walk away. Rather, she put her elbows on her thighs, pressed her quivering mouth to laced fingers, and closed her eyes. All she had to do was to picture Vanessa Walsh reaching out so futilely, and she began crying again. There was loss here, but it didn’t stop with Vanessa. Julia cried for the failure of her marriage, for wasted years of heartache and hope. She cried for her life in New York, because, though it was all she really knew, she didn’t want it anymore.
“Hey,” came a low male voice. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know whose hand was holding her knee. She covered it with one of her own. His warmth was a balm.
“That was a rough good-bye,” he said.
She nodded and wiped at her cheeks. “It just hit me,” she murmured nasally. “I don’t know why.”
“Sure you do,” he said in that same low voice. “You’re sensitive, and you’re smart. You know what that little girl’s lost.”
She sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“Need a tissue?” he asked and, as though summoning a waiter, raised his voice. “Tissue!” Seconds later, he gave her a fresh one.
She blotted her eyes and blew her nose—all one-handed, because somewhere along the way his hand on her knee had turned up and their fingers had linked, and she wasn’t breaking that contact. She didn’t care if people saw; she needed a friend, and he was there.
So was his dog, sitting quietly, facing Julia on her left as Noah was on her right. “Lucas is staring again,” she whispered.
Noah whispered back, “He’s never seen anyone as beautiful before.”
“Beautiful? Omigod. I’m a mess.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
Julia took some solace in that. Never one for public displays, she figured that anyone else passing by must think her a head case. But she wasn’t ready to leave.
“It’s more than just Vanessa,” she said, her chin in her palm, her face inches from his. “It’s every frightening little thing. We think a child is worse off because she doesn’t understand the extent of what’s happening, but an adult does understand, and that makes it worse. Plus, an adult has the responsibility of acting—planning—moving—doing.” She met Noah’s gaze. “I’d love to sit back and let someone else take responsibility for my life.”
“Right now?” He smiled. “Okay. Are you hungry?”
“No,” she said, then changed that to “Yes.” Coming off a crying jag, she shouldn’t have felt like eating, but there was a definite hole in her stomach. She assumed part of it, at least, was from hunger.
“Are you a vegetarian?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then we’re golden.” He raised his voice again, this time along with
a finger aimed at the food cart near the line of parked cars. “Four hot, Alfie—mustard and relish—and two cold.”
Julia downed every last bit of two hot dogs with mustard and relish, and a tall glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. She couldn’t remember when she’d had a better lunch. She couldn’t remember when she’d had a more companionable one, though neither she nor Noah said much. It was enough that he was with her there on the bench, watching the life of the harbor for an hour that Sunday.
Molly was livid. Julia could see it the instant she pulled up at Zoe’s stone farmhouse and spotted her daughter on the front steps. She had barely climbed from the SUV when Molly rose, then stood stiffly still, grasping the railing behind her. Between the look on her face and the shortness of her hair—still startling to Julia—she was clearly a rebel with a cause.
Julia tried a smile as she approached the steps. “I thought you were hanging around the harbor until it was time for work.”
“Well, that was the plan,” Molly said with disdain, “then you kept sitting there with him and people were commenting, and I couldn’t bear it a minute longer.”
“People were commenting?” Julia asked. “Commenting about what?”
“About what is going on between you two,” Molly said, giving each word due weight. “About the fact that Noah hasn’t been interested in anyone for ages. About the fact that you’re wearing a wedding band, and if he’s interested in you, he’s playing with fire. They were asking me if you and Dad were separated.”
“Whoa. Noah and I were sitting on a bench,” Julia argued quietly. “Sitting on a bench.”
“He wasn’t sitting. He was kneeling down in front of you, close as could be. You were holding hands. Your heads were together. Anyone watching would have reached the same conclusion.”
“I was crying, Molly. I was upset. Didn’t those people see what happened with Vanessa Walsh?”
“That was beside the point,” Molly said.
Julia didn’t think so at all. “It tore me apart to see her screeching that way—brought everything back, everything to do with the accident. I was upset, and I was crying. Noah held my hand—the way you might have,” she said with a dare in her voice. She remembered the hurt she had felt that for all their closeness, Molly hadn’t been able to reach out. “That’s how people give comfort to those they know and like and care about.”
“But you’re married to someone else.”
“Molly, listen to me,” Julia said with more force now. Zoe had come to the screen door, but Julia kept her eyes on her daughter. “Noah Prine is a friend. I have no intention of poisoning that just because some people have small minds. I don’t want you to be one of those people. Please, Molly. Support me here. Give me the benefit of the doubt.”
To her credit, Molly looked torn. “It’s just that you’re acting so strange. You’re staying here, even when you know that Dad’s doing things he shouldn’t in New York. You haven’t even called him.”
Julia might have said that she had, that they had talked while Molly was at work. The girl would never know if it was true or not.
But Julia wasn’t a liar. “We’ve emailed. I’ve sent him pictures.”
“He doesn’t need pictures,” Molly cried. “He needs you.”
Solemn, Julia asked, “What about what I need? Isn’t it important that I need this time away? I know it’s upsetting to you, and it’s upsetting to me, too. But I need this time, Molly. I need this time.”
A car approached. Julia had no sooner heard its engine when Molly’s eyes flew past her. A dusty red wagon came up the drive and pulled in beside Julia’s car.
“That’s our taxi,” Zoe said, coming out onto the porch. “Who…?” She stopped talking when the back door opened and a man climbed out. Not as tall as he had been in his heyday, nor as slim, he wore a tieless business shirt and pressed slacks. His thinning gray hair showed its share of scalp, his oval face its share of doubt.
“Omigod,” Julia cried. “Dad!” She started forward, heart pounding as she searched the backseat for her mother. Janet wasn’t there, but her disappointment was short-lived. The idea that her father had come through for her after all was enough to warm her heart.
Jogging to the car, she gave him a hug. “You should have told us you were coming,” she scolded when she drew back. “I’d have picked you up.”
“I didn’t know it myself until I got here. It was a last-minute thing.” He held up a hand, clearly agitated. “I’ve been patient. I sat back and followed her lead, but when she goes on and on about Zoe, and on and on about you—a man can only take so much. I kept telling her to listen to herself. Had she done that, she wouldn’t have been pleased. But she doesn’t listen. She simply says what she feels and assumes that it’s the only correct way to view things, and, quite honestly, I’ve had it.”
Julia felt something turn inside. “What do you mean?”
“Know when the last time was we took a vacation? If you do, refresh my memory, because the only times we go away are when she can tie it into work. It’s not much of a vacation for me, when she’s at meetings half the time. I think it’s wonderful that she’s so successful; she’s done good things—I can’t deny her that. Finally, though, I have to look at my own life. I need a break.”
Julia could certainly identify with that. “A break from?”
“Work. Baltimore. And, yes, your mother. She hasn’t been much fun to be with lately.”
“Have you left her?” Molly asked, joining them, a horrified look on her face. When she angled that look at Julia, it held an accusatory edge.
“I’m here, and she’s there,” George said belligerently. “She needs time alone to think about the effect she has on people, and I need a vacation.” He produced a thin smile. “I thought, what better place to be than with my daughter and granddaughter.” To Julia, he said, “You always know the right things to say in situations like these.”
Slowly and painfully, Julia absorbed the fact that her father hadn’t come to comfort her at all. Quite the opposite. He had come so that she could comfort him. And why not? She had certainly done it enough in the past. Give her time, Dad, she’ll calm down. She’s so used to solving problems that when she can’t, she gets frustrated and says things she doesn’t mean. How about I take a train down and meet you for dinner, and Mom will be in a better mood by the time she gets home.
Her mother never went to Julia with problems. Her father was something else. He wouldn’t think of seeing a counselor, when Julia played the role so well.
Right now, though, she wasn’t up for being a marriage counselor. She didn’t want to deal with her parents’ problems. She had far more pressing problems of her own.
Wary, she asked, “You’re staying on Big Sawyer? For how long?”
He shrugged. “How long are you staying? I’ll stay that long.”
A day or two, she could have handled. Maybe even three. But an indefinite stay, with him tied to her own plans? The thought of it was enough to crowd her chest, making her want to gasp for air. What was unfolding here was not what she’d had in mind when she had planned her own trip. None of it was what she’d had in mind.
Fighting a rising panic, she was searching for words when Molly asked George, “Where will you stay? Mom and I are in Zoe’s guest rooms.” She paused, then offered a reluctant, “We could always double up.”
“I’ll stay in town,” George said, with Molly quickly shaking her head.
“There are no places, unless you rent a house, and my boss was just saying everything decent is booked. Next weekend’s the Fourth. From now to Labor Day, forget it.”
George was undaunted. “Then Zoe’ll make a call and find a friend with a spare bedroom. I’ll get something.”
Julia was still struggling with the larger picture—her father coming and going with his problems with her mother, Molly coming and going with her problems with Julia, and Julia feeling hemmed in by the detritus of her life—not to mention Zoe, who would have feelings
about George being around, and whom would Zoe confide in? Julia, of course.
Suddenly, there was only one choice. “Stay here,” Julia told her father. “Take my room. I’ll find another place to stay.”
Molly turned on her. “Where?”
Julia didn’t care where. She only knew that she wanted out. “I could stay at the Walsh place,” she said. “Ellen left several beds. I could also stay at Tony Hammel’s photo camp. There are possibilities.”
Zoe joined them, protesting, “But you were here first.”
George added, “I never intended to displace you.”
“Things have grown crowded here,” Julia said. “I need time alone. I’ll be back to help with the rabbits, Zoe. I want to do that. But this is my vacation. I need space.”
“What about us?” Molly cried. “We came here to be with you.”
Julia felt a moment’s guilt—but only because that was what she had been conditioned to feel. Taking a breath, she let the moment pass and eyed her daughter levelly. “Would you have come here if the job in Paris had worked out? I doubt it, and I’d have been the first to tell you not to come.” She turned to her father. “Would you have come here if you and Mom hadn’t argued? Honestly?” Of course he wouldn’t have come.
“But we were arguing about you,” he reasoned.
Again, there was a moment’s guilt, but this, too, passed. She wasn’t a little girl, and she didn’t need to be taught the meaning of responsibility; she was an adult who had more than paid her family dues.
Feeling remarkably resolute, even emboldened, she said, “If that’s supposed to make me feel guilty, so that I’ll turn around and do what will make all of you feel best, I’m sorry. It doesn’t. And I won’t. I’ve carried the weight of family responsibilities for more years than I care to count.” She paused but didn’t try to fight back the indignation that rose in her. “I deal with everyone else’s problems. Who deals with mine?”
The Summer I Dared: A Novel Page 21