Blue Wide Sky

by Inglath Cooper

  Ben has tried to get me to agree to sell a number of times, but it wasn’t something I could ever consider beyond an initial admission to practicality.

  My attachment to this place is a cord to the past, and I have never conceded to cutting it.

  Standing here before the mirror I had used to brush my teeth and wash my face as a boy, I am grateful that something inside me had never let me do it.

  Being here is the first thing that has felt right to me in a very long time.

  Downstairs, I make coffee in a retro pot, watching the brown liquid bubble up through the glass knob on its top. The coffee is good, and I sit down at the walnut kitchen table my mother had refinished after finding it at a flea market. She loved to hunt through the local sales when we were boys, dragging Ben and me along with her on a Saturday morning when we wanted to be out on the lake fishing or skiing. It was the last thing we wanted to do, but I came to appreciate her eye for a good piece, a pine pie safe, a cherry bookcase, a set of ladder-back chairs.

  Each of those finds still has their place in this house, and it is like having some small piece of her in each room.

  Pulling into the driveway last night, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss for my mother and my father. They’ve both been gone now for more than ten years, their deaths separate and unrelated, his in an early morning car accident on the way to work, hers to a stroke one summer afternoon when she’d been weeding in her garden.

  I miss who they had been here, carefree and determined to put the responsibilities of regular life behind them for the duration of a visit. I know now how hard it had been to do that, and I’m grateful they’d carved out this escape for themselves and for Ben and me.

  I finish two cups of coffee, and feeling more like myself, set about opening up the house. I raise the windows on the first floor, breathing in the spring air and the scent I instantly remember as unique to this lake, some combination of white pine and fishing boats, just-mowed grass and mountain laurel.

  The day has dawned perfectly. I step out onto the front porch and its wide-open view of the lake at the edge of the yard.

  Our main house was in Washington, DC, but my parents had purchased this place as a summer home when larger lots could be bought here for nearly bargain prices. The house and surrounding land total thirty acres, and since I had recently heard the going price for a three-quarter acre building lot, I can only imagine the property’s current market value.

  The view from here is a wide-water one that stretches out to meet the foot of Smith Mountain in the distance. In my adult life, I’ve been fortunate enough to see a good number of beautiful places, but none outdo this one.

  Boats are already buzzing about, three fishing boats, a pontoon and a MasterCraft with an early morning skier cutting back and forth across the wake.

  I head for the dock, itching suddenly to get out on the water. Our old boat hangs in its slip, a wooden Chris-Craft that my father had taken extraordinary pride in. I turn on the lift switch, and the boat begins to lower. The key is in the same place where we always kept it, beneath a storage trunk inside the dock house.

  I grab some rags and a bottle of Windex and then start to unsnap the boat’s cover, pulling it off to find the interior surprisingly clean. I touch up a few areas the birds have gotten access to, and then start the boat. It complains a bit at first, but then sputters to life, the engine’s ch-ch-ch sound making me remember how proud my dad was of this boat and the pleased way he would smile when it started right up.

  “Pay for quality, you get quality,” I’d heard him say more times than I could count. I have to admit, in this case, it is true, considering the boat’s age.

  I back out of the slip and then glide from the cove, letting the engine warm up before I accelerate across the water, the wind whipping at my hair, the cool, clean air rejuvenating.

  I check the gas gauge, see that it says half a tank and open up the boat, one channel marker to the next, taking in both the familiar and no longer familiar at all. The developments are the new thing, clusters of expensive houses having replaced most of the farms I remember as a boy.

  Some of the original houses are still here, but they are few and far between. I feel a pang of regret for all the change, even as I acknowledge its inevitability. I drive all the way to the end of the Roanoke River and then swing back, eyeing the gas gauge and its already dramatic drop. Fuel economy isn’t this boat’s selling point.

  I never even consider looking for a place other than Hayden’s Marina, driving straight there as if this has been part of my agenda all along. I guess on some level it has, even if it’s gone unacknowledged until now.

  What’s the likelihood that she would still be there anyway? True, the name on the road-front sign had been the same, but a lot of times, even when businesses are sold, the new owners keep the old name because of its recognition factor.

  I realize I am arguing myself into a corner. I’ll get the gas and be on my way, regardless of who’s there or who’s running the place. But even as I pull up to the pump, my heart has started a heavy thumping, and my hands begin to sweat.

  A teenage boy comes out to help me tie up the boat. “Hey man, how’s it goin’?” he asks.

  “Good,” I say. “Fill her up?”

  “Sure thing. Cafe’s got some good food if you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks. I’m okay.”

  He pops off the gas cap and begins filling the tank. I step out onto the dock, running a hand across the back of my neck.

  The bones of the place are the same, but major renovation has been done since I was last here. The cafe area has been expanded, and there’s a sunroom seating area to one end that looks cheerful and inviting. The same is true of the outdoor tables, at least those that have a fresh coat of paint, the others waiting their turn.

  A young girl in a wheelchair rolls out of the cafe. I step forward to hold the door open for her while she maneuvers through.

  “Thanks,” she says and gives me a shy smile.

  “You’re welcome,” I say, the odd thought that she might be Gabby’s child hitting me, but I quickly dismiss it. She looks nothing like Gabby. I glance around to see if there are any parents waiting for her. I don’t see anyone except for the boy pumping my gas.

  “Hey, Kat,” he calls out to her, “how about throwing me that towel from my chair?”

  “Only if you agree to eat a dish of Myrtle’s collard greens.”

  “For what?” he shoots back.

  “Because she thinks nobody liked her dish today.”

  “Hate to say it, but I’m gonna be one of them.”

  “Collards and what?” I ask.

  The girl looks at me. “Grits.”

  “Interesting,” I say. “I’ll try some.”

  Her smile is instant and genuinely pleased. She picks up the boy’s towel and throws it to him with the comeback, “There are a few gentlemen left around here.”

  She then waves me inside the cafe. I look at the boy and shrug in apology, but he just grins as if he’s used to it.

  I hold the door for her again, while this time, she wheels back inside the cafe. The place is surprisingly appealing with walls the color of butterscotch. But it’s the smells that I’m sure keep the customers coming back. I can’t decide which are more predominant, roasted garlic and rosemary or butter and hot biscuits.

  My stomach does an unexpected rumble just as the girl calls out to a woman in the kitchen. “Myrtle, you got an order of the grits and collards left back there?”

  “Or two,” she says, with enough rancor that I’m uncertain exactly what it is these two have going.

  “Good, we have a customer asking for it.”

  Myrtle perks up instantly. She peers around the corner to look at me. “You saw it on the board outside then?”

  I start to say something, but the girl answers, “Of course he did. How else would he know?”

  Myrtle smiles at me, and I can see she’s more than aware that she’s being hoodwinke
d. “How else indeed?” she asks. “Would you like that for here or to go, sir?”

  “To go is fine,” I answer.

  The door swings open, and I glance over my shoulder just as Gabby Hayden walks in.

  I’ve read plenty of books, watched plenty of movies that depict this very moment, where two people who had once loved each other come face to face for the first time in many years. And I have to say, I don’t think any of them depicted it in a way that I could ever have understood before this moment.

  My chest is suddenly so tight, air can’t find its way into my lungs. My head feels as if all the blood has rushed up and is threatening to pound its way out. I’m sure it only takes a second or two to register any of this, but a day’s worth of hours could have passed for all I know before I finally manage a strangled sounding, “Gabby.”

  “Sam.” She lets the door go in surprise, and it clatters shut, breaking the awkward silence that has settled over the cafe.

  “You two know each other?” Myrtle offers up from the kitchen. “Shoulda told me, Gabby, you’d met someone with such fine tastes.”

  “He’s ordering Myrtle’s grits and collards, Mama,” the young girl explains.

  I register the word Mama and realize Gabby is this girl’s mother after all.

  Gabby looks from one of us to the other, as if she’s sure she’s walked into some kind of reality warp, and none of this could be happening.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It sounds good.”

  “Kat, could you give Timmy a hand at the pumps?” she says to the girl. “He’s gotten the on/off lever stuck again.”

  “Sure,” Kat says, and then looking at me, “Thanks for coming in.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say.

  Some of the pressure seems to leave the room with her retreat. Myrtle puts a to-go container on the counter and just as quietly disappears from view.

  Gabby and I stare at each other, words completely elusive.

  “How are you?” I finally manage.

  Judging from her expression, the question is as lame as I thought it to be. “Fine,” she says. “And you?”

  “Good,” I answer, and then wonder what she would say if I told her the truth.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, running a hand through her hair, still long and silky, still that beautiful shade of blonde.

  “I’m spending some time at my parents’ old place.”

  “Ah,” she says, as if that explains everything when I am sure she is wondering why now, after all this time?

  “I’ve been out on the lake. Just needed to fill the tank.” I reach for the to-go container. “Mine and the boat’s.”

  Her smile is tepid, and I wonder how I could have managed such an asinine comment. She steps to the register and waves a receipt at me. “This is for your gas. I’ll add on the special.” She bangs a few keys on the register and says an amount.

  I hand her my credit card, and we wait in silence for the machine to rule accept or reject. Its ding is positive, and she hands me back the card.

  “Nothing to sign,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks for coming in,” she adds, and with that she walks through the cafe to the kitchen and is gone.

  I stand, shocked I guess, by the dismissal. But then what had I expected? Tearful admissions of how glad she is to see me, remorseful apologies for all the letters she had sent back to me, unopened. Any of that would have been ridiculous, considering, but still, I have a hard time making my feet move. Maybe it’s pride that finally forces me to do so, carrying my plastic container of collards and grits with me to the boat where the dock boy — Timmy — is waiting with a wide grin.

  “Thanks for taking that hit, sir,” he says, glancing at the box in my hands.

  “Can’t be that bad,” I say.

  “I’m just not a collards kind of guy,” he confesses, still grinning. He hustles over to untie the rope from the stern, and then jogs to the front for the other.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “No problem!”

  He’s about to push the boat away from the dock, when Gabby calls out, “Timmy, wait.”

  He glances up and says, “Yes, ma’am?”

  She jumps onto the boat and says to him, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” And then to me, “Drive.”

  Neither Timmy nor I say a word in response. He steps back, and I ease the boat forward out of the cove.

  She says nothing until we are far enough away from the marina that no one can hear. She then points at an inlet several hundred yards away and says, “There, please.”

  I still say nothing, just steer the boat in the direction she has indicated for me to go. We’re there in two minutes, and I cut the engine far enough out from the shore that we won’t immediately float in.

  When I turn around, she is standing at the back of the boat with her hands on her hips, glaring at me with near fury on her face. “Seriously??!!”

  I don’t know what to say to this, so I choose continued silence, which seems to suit her because she picks up with, “All these years . . . all this time . . . and you just pop in for grits and collards?”

  It is a ridiculous image, and if I weren’t witnessing firsthand the fire in her eyes, I would have laughed. As it is, I say, “Actually, that part was an afterthought.”

  She stares at me as if I have become something completely unrecognizable to her. “Okay, clearly, I made a mistake in getting on this boat.”

  I watch in amazement as she steps onto the wood platform just above the motor and makes a neat dive into the lake.

  “Gabby!” I call out. “What are you doing?”

  She doesn’t look back, doesn’t answer at all, just swims in swift, clean strokes in the direction of the marina. I can’t believe she is actually doing this. Not sure what to do, I crank the motor and pull up ahead of her. “Get in, Gabby. Please. Just let me take you back.”

  “Go away,” she yells, swimming fast and hard, her anger defining each stroke.

  I idle alongside her. “And let you get run over by another boat? I’ll take you back to the dock. That’s all. Gabby, come on. I mean it.”

  An enormous speedboat roars down the lake straight toward us, its engines wide open. Gabby stops swimming, glances at the boat, then at me, and hesitates as if she can’t decide which is the lesser of two evils.

  I am the reluctantly chosen winner. I lean out and offer her a hand up the ladder, but she ignores it and climbs in, her shorts and T-shirt soaked and clinging. I stare and then catching myself, swing away to the steering wheel. “I’d offer you a towel, but I don’t have one.”

  “Just take me to the marina,” she says, pressing her lips together.

  But I point the boat back toward the inlet and return to the spot where we had stopped a few minutes ago.

  “Are you kidding?” she cries in a voice that is now more exasperated than angry. “I want to go back!”

  “And I’ll take you, if you will listen for just a moment.”

  “What could you possibly have to say that I would want to hear?”

  “I’m sorry for showing up like I did. Honestly, I couldn’t really imagine that you would be here. That I would see you.”

  I guess there’s enough vulnerability revealed in the admission that she is clearly unsure where to go with it. “You wouldn’t understand this is a place I actually want to be,” she says.

  “I do understand it. I just didn’t think luck would ever allow us to cross paths.”

  “So that’s what you were relying on? Luck?”

  I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you meant, Sam,” she says.

  “What I meant is that I was hoping you would be.”

  “Why?” she asks, shaking her head. “After all this time, why?”

  It is not a question I can answer fully. Not here. Not like this. “There are things I want to tell you about what happened after I left here. Things—”
>
  “What could you possibly have to say,” she interrupts, furious again, “that would matter in the least? That would make even an ounce of difference?”

  “It matters to me, Gabby.”

  “And why should I care about that?”

  “If you’ll just give me a chance to—”

  “To what? Absolve your guilt? Make yourself feel better finally? I don’t think I owe you any such thing, Sam.”

  “You don’t,” I agree.

  “Then take me back,” she says, and this time I can tell that she means it. I start the engine, turning the boat around and letting it pick up speed until we reach the no-wake zone of the marina where we float to the dock under a painful silence.

  Timmy catches the boat as we swing in, and Gabby is off before he can offer her a hand. She storms across the dock and disappears around the building without once looking back. It’s as if she’s rehearsed the action before so that there is no temptation to give in to a glance over her shoulder.

  And as I pull out into the cove, I think that here is where we are different.

  I look back.

  If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

  ~ Kahlil Gibran

  Gabby

  I should know better.

  But running is the only thing I can think to do that has any shot at pounding this anger out of me.

  It feels as if I am literally on fire with it, the heat in my veins acting as fuel for my sprint down old Smith Mountain Road.

  There are no cars in sight, and it’s a good thing, since the look on my face would probably cause them to think there’s a mad woman on the loose.

  I keep this up for nearly a mile, until my heart is throbbing so hard I take pity on it and slow my pace. I can barely pull air into my lungs, and my chest hurts as if a small elephant is sitting on it.

  I finally concede to a walk, dragging in breaths, and it’s only then that the tears start. It’s as if a faucet inside me has been turned on, and a waterfall of sobs erupts up and out.