Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  “I take no credit for this,” Sandra said, leaning down to peer into the trap. “They’re pretty big, aren’t they?”

  “Did you know a one-pound lobster’s seven years old?” Kevin said, going into his trivia-wonk mode.

  “Did you know a female lobster can lay up to a hundred thousand eggs at a time?” Sandra asked.

  How did she do that? Mary Margaret wondered. She must have a lint trap for a brain.

  “Lobster for dinner,” said Dad. “I was hoping for this.”

  Kevin was already playing his favorite game of holding the lobsters by their backs, stomping around the deck and making monster noises while the dog barked. He was such an idiot, but Sandra and Dad acted like he was hilarious.

  Eventually, Kevin put a band around the crusher claw of each lobster so they wouldn’t attack each other, and dumped them both into a big white plastic bucket.

  “I’m cold,” Mary Margaret said suddenly, tossing her wet gloves into the locker. “I’m going inside.”

  “How about you help me steer, buddy?” her dad asked Kevin, bringing up the anchor.

  Sulking, Mary Margaret stood in the doorway of the stateroom she and Kevin shared when they stayed on the boat with their dad. The bunks were covered with Granny Malloy’s quilts and a few stuffed animals, old and worn from years of loving. An overwhelming sadness swept through her. Since the divorce, she’d perfected the art of flinging herself on the bed. She could actually hover, suspended for a split second, before slamming facedown into a wailing pancake of despair.

  Oh, she was tempted. But that would only make her look pathetic. Scowling, she went to the main saloon and flopped down in one of the cushioned chairs. Digging around her backpack, she took out the book she was reading. Then, to her horror, it dawned on her—she was reading a book by Sandy Babcock. She tried to hide it before Sandra saw, but she was too late. Sandra came in, slid the door shut and took off Dad’s hat.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Don’t know.” Mary Margaret held the book at arm’s length. “I just started reading this.” Actually, she was nearly through, and really liked the book. She hated that she liked the book. She didn’t want to like anything about Sandra Winslow.

  The fact was, this one was her favorite so far, the story of a girl named Carly who had no father. She didn’t even know who her father was. Carly’s mother lived with another woman. They were lesbians, and the kids in school made Carly’s life unbearable.

  Mary Margaret was fascinated by the way Carly’s feelings were described in the book—how scared she was sometimes; how embarrassed she got when people talked about her situation; how she was angry a lot of the time. How much she wanted to hate her mother’s roommate, but ended up liking her instead.

  Sandra was quiet as she fixed a pot of tea in the galley. When she came out, she had two mugs. “Your dad said you like cream and sugar.”

  Mary Margaret took a desultory sip of the tea, half wishing it didn’t taste so good. Setting aside the cup, she picked at her nail polish, chipping a big section off her thumbnail. Then, even though she didn’t want to speak to Sandra, she said, “I don’t understand how the girl in your story keeps going to school every day when the kids are so mean to her.”

  “It’s not very fun for her, is it?”

  “I don’t see why you’d want to write a book about a girl everybody hates.”

  “If everyone loved her, it would be a pretty dull story, and I wouldn’t be interested in telling it.” She cradled her hands around her mug as if to warm them. “People with perfect lives are boring.”

  “But doesn’t it get depressing to write about a girl going through all that?”

  “Would you rather read about a perfect girl with a perfect life?” Sandra smiled at Mary Margaret’s expression. “Trust me, that would be even more depressing.”

  “I hope her mom dumps the roommate and finds her real dad and marries him.”

  “Do you think that’s going to happen?”

  “That’s what would happen if I had written this book.”

  “That’s what’s fun about writing. You can make things turn out anyway you want. In my books, I always try to find the honest ending. The realistic one.”

  “You mean the depressing one.”

  “Sometimes. But there’s always hope in the end. At least, I like to think there is.”

  Mary Margaret opened to a random page. It flipped her out to think that the words printed on this page had been written by somebody who was right in this room with her. She frowned. “How’d you think up all these words and paragraphs?”

  Setting down her mug, Sandra rummaged around in a big tote bag and took out a dog-eared spiral notebook with an old-fashioned pen clipped to it. She opened the note-book to reveal page after page of cramped handwriting in turquoise ink. She showed Mary Margaret the pen, twirling it in her fingers. “That’s a good question. Sometimes I think all the words and paragraphs are up inside this pen. And when I write, they just come out.”

  Mary Margaret’s eyes widened. “I need to borrow that pen.”

  Sandra laughed. She had a nice laugh, and the silence that followed was a little more comfortable.

  “So that’s your next book?”

  “Yep. Eventually I’ll type it all up.”

  “So there’s only that one copy? What if something happens to it?” Mary Margaret shuddered, thinking about the scene in Little Women when Amy burned Jo’s manuscript. Never mind Beth dying; that was the scene that made Mary Margaret cry.

  “Can you keep a secret?” asked Sandra. “I don’t want people to know how weird I am.”

  Mary Margaret sat forward. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, every night before I go to bed, I put the note-book in the freezer.”

  “The freezer?”

  “So if the house burns down, the book won’t be destroyed.”

  Weird times ten, thought Mary Margaret. “No wonder you don’t want me to tell.”

  Sandra put away the pen and notebook and sat drinking her tea, watching the scenery go by out the window.

  “I asked my dad if you were his girlfriend,” Mary Margaret said, her mouth forgetting to clear things with her brain.

  Sandra made a whooshing sound, as if she couldn’t quite get the words out. “Who . . . who . . .” She cleared her throat, tried again. “And what did he say?”

  So pathetic. She reminded Mary Margaret of a sixth-grade girl trying to find out if a certain boy liked her. Mary Margaret knew she had a chance to lie. She could say Dad had told her he didn’t like Sandra at all. Mary Margaret could make her believe it, too. She could say he was only hanging out with Sandra because he needed that contract to work on her house. “What do you think he said?”

  Once again, Sandra made that funny, breathy sound with her mouth, like she had to sneeze or something. Her face turned red, and the cords of her throat stood out.

  “Are you okay?” Mary Margaret asked.

  Sandra lowered her head and nodded. She stopped making the noise and took a few deep breaths. “Sorry about that,” she said in her normal voice.

  “Do you have, like, asthma or something?”

  “Or something.” A worried look must have crossed Mary Margaret’s face because Sandra said, “I’m not sick. I have a stutter. Do you know what that is?”

  Mary Margaret nodded, amazed. A stutter. Of course she knew what a stutter was. It was the most horrible of all speech impediments. The most noticeable. The easiest to make fun of. When she was in third grade, a boy named Peter had a stutter. Kids used to follow him around, chanting “Peter Peter P-p-pumpkin Eater,” exaggerating the stutter until Peter started to cry. Mary Margaret tried to remember if she’d joined in the teasing.

  “It doesn’t happen too much anymore,” Sandra said. “It was a pretty big problem when I was younger.”

  Mary Margaret kept thinking about Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, and she could imagine just how big that problem had been. “So you’re oka
y now.”

  “Most of the time. Sometimes I slip up and struggle with it, like I did a minute ago. When I get stressed out or nervous, I can get into trouble.”

  Mary Margaret felt sort of bad for making her nervous. It was weird, having an adult be so open about something as deathly humiliating as this. Most people would never admit to a kid that they were nervous. “How did you quit stuttering?”

  “I never actually quit, just gained control. It took years of hard work and practice—mostly with my mom, and later with my—with other professionals. I had speech therapy and counseling. Growing older and gaining confidence helped. And I have a few strategies.”

  “What kind of strategies?”

  “There’s this thing I do with my diaphragm. And I use a lot of substitutions. For example, I can never pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello.’ That’s one of my worst problem words.”

  Fascination tightened Mary Margaret’s stomach, the way it did when she watched nature shows about snakes on the Learning Channel. “So what do you say?”

  “Usually ‘Yes, hello.’ Or ‘This is Sandra.’ My therapist and I had to figure out where the problems were likely to come up, and how I could talk my way around them.”

  Mary Margaret was fascinated. It was like interviewing someone who had survived a plane crash or a tornado. It made her seem unique and strong. “Is that why you became a writer, because you didn’t like to talk?”

  “I’m sure it’s a big part of it. I had plenty to say, but the stuttering blocked me from saying it. So I got into the habit of putting my thoughts and feelings on paper. You’re pretty smart to make that connection.”

  “I’d like to write, someday,” Mary Margaret said. The wish just popped out. As soon as it did, she wanted to reel the words back in, clap a hand over her mouth. It was the second-most private of all her yearnings, and she had confessed it to this person she wasn’t even supposed to like. What was the matter with her?

  “Why not today?” Sandra asked.

  Mary Margaret shrugged uncomfortably. “I never know what to say. Or why I’m writing it down in the first place.”

  “Tell you what.” She dug around in the totebag again. “Take this notebook—I always carry a spare.” She passed it to Mary Margaret. “You can write anything in it you want.”

  The notebook felt unexpectedly weighty in Mary Margaret’s hands. She opened it, smoothed her hands over the vast blank pages. “I wouldn’t know what to write.”

  “Trust me, it’ll come to you. When I don’t know what to write, I make a list.”

  “A list of Ten Things.” Mary Margaret remembered the notes stuck to her refrigerator.

  Sandra paged through her own writings. “Ten Famous People I ‘d Love to Meet. . . Ten Signs of Agoraphobia . . .” Her face reddened.

  “Ten Ways to Get Out of P.E. Class,” Mary Margaret said.

  “Exactly. You can share your writing with someone, like a letter, or keep it to yourself. Up to you. You might enjoy it. If you’re lucky, you’ll discover that you hate it.” She grinned and winked. “Writers like to pretend they’re deeply tortured at all times, but really, writing’s great fun. I think, in my case, it kept me from going bonkers.”

  “It did?”

  “Well, that and some intensive speech therapy.”

  Talking to Sandra wasn’t like talking to a grown-up, but a regular person. Maybe that was why the next thing popped out: “I haven’t started my period yet.”

  She wanted to die, completely die.

  But Sandra didn’t laugh or get embarrassed or anything. She said, “I bet a lot of your friends have started.”

  “All of them, I swear. Every single one.”

  “You probably feel as though they belong to some secret club you can’t be part of.”

  “Yes.” How had she known?

  “Trust me, I know the feeling. Mary Margaret, your time will come. So far, no healthy, normal girl has escaped. It’s one of those things that happens in its own time. I know that doesn’t help, though.”

  But it did, sort of, the same way it seemed to help when Sandra admitted the stuttering. “My mom says I should be grateful, because getting your period is a pain.”

  “Your mom’s right.”

  “I guess.” She handed back the pen. “My mom and I fight a lot, sometimes. “ As soon as she said the words, she wished she could reel them back in. She shouldn’t be talking about her mom behind her back.

  Sandra simply nodded. “I used to argue with my mom, too. Still do, sometimes, but we always forgive each other.” She hesitated, then said, “She and my dad split up a few weeks ago.”

  Mary Margaret was stunned. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you totally hate it?”

  “I completely, totally hate it.”

  The connection between them strengthened. Then Mary Margaret asked, “How would you feel if your dad had a girlfriend?”

  “It would drive me crazy. I’m supposed to say that it’s his life, and his happiness, but that’s a lie. I want them to be together.” She sighed. “But it’s not up to me.”

  They sat together in silence until Sandra buckled on her life jacket. “I think I’ll go outside and see the sights.”

  “Me, too.”

  The sun was high when they stepped out on deck. Zeke balanced his front paws on the big locker, sniffing the air while the wind ran through his curly, dirty fur. Mary Margaret patted him on the head, and he squirmed and wagged his tail. “Did you know he’s a real poodle?”

  “I’ve heard that rumor.”

  “He’s got papers and everything. But my dad never gives him a bath. I bet he’d look awesome with a poodle haircut.”

  “Maybe we could bathe him sometime.”

  “Okay. Could we—” Mary Margaret stopped talking.

  Sandra stumbled back against the stern rail and was hanging on with both hands. Her face went completely white as she stared at a tall, arched highway bridge up ahead.

  “Are you okay?” Mary Margaret asked. When Sandra didn’t answer, Mary Margaret yelled, “Hey, Dad, I think Sandra’s going to be sick!”

  He cut the engine immediately. He and Kevin came out of the pilothouse. Bracing both arms on the ladder, he jumped down and asked her, “Are you all right?”

  Sandra breathed hard and fast, not the way she did when she stuttered, but in a different, panicky way. “That bridge,” she said. “The b-bridge up ahead. It’s the Sequonset Bridge, isn’t it?”

  Dad started to say shit but he didn’t say it all the way. “Sandy, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think.”

  Mary Margaret was confused. Why were they so upset about a bridge?

  Dad put his arm around Sandra.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I have to drive across the bridge a lot. But I’ve never seen it from this perspective.”

  “What happened?” Kevin asked.

  “Don’t be nosy,” Dad said.

  Sandra sent him an unreadable look, then turned to Kevin. “About a year ago, I had a bad accident on the bridge. The car I was driving went over it, into the water. My husband was with me, and he was killed in the crash.”

  “Whoa,” Kevin said under his breath. Mary Margaret rarely agreed with her brother, but she did now. Whoa. Then she couldn’t help herself. She grabbed Sandra’s hand and squeezed it hard.

  “Mary Margaret, how about you steer for a while,” Dad said. “We should be heading back to port pretty soon, anyway.”

  She restarted the engine and turned west, then south, watching their position in the GPS. Her dad kept his arm around Sandra, and she leaned against him, looking tired. Mary Margaret thought about the accident on the bridge. How weird to think that Sandra had been involved in such a horrible thing.

  “Hey, Dad,” Kevin said. “Show us some places where you used to play when you were our age.” He seemed desperate to put the bridge behind him, and hearing about when their dad was little was one of Kevin’s favorite thing
s. Since Dad had moved back to Paradise, he kept remembering funny stories to tell them.

  “See that little cove?” Dad pointed at the shore, where it was fringed with bracken between jutting rocks. “My friends and I used to have a hideout there. It’s an old abandoned boathouse.”

  “Can we go see it?” Kevin asked, bouncing up and down. “Can we, Dad? Please.”

  Dad glanced down at Sandra, who nodded. “I guess we have time,” he said. “It could be gone now. It’s been years.”

  They anchored the boat and lowered the dory. All four of them crammed in, and Zeke leaped into Sandra’s lap. Mary Margaret and Kevin each took an oar and rowed to shore. Stirred by the waves, the loose rocks on the beach made a sound like beads poured out of a bag. Dad showed them where to tie up. The boathouse was still standing, its roof sagging and covered with green moss, abandoned and gloomy as a haunted mansion.

  “This is so cool,” Mary Margaret said, trying to picture her dad as a kid, messing around in this very spot.

  “It’s still in good shape,” her dad said. “It’s a pretty protected cove.”

  The boat ramp had collapsed, and the storm cloth covering the opening hung down, torn and tattered and green with slime.

  “Can we get out and look around?” Kevin asked.

  “Sure. If you don’t mind getting your feet wet.”

  Mary Margaret and Kevin both stripped off their shoes and socks and rolled up their pant legs.

  “Geez! It’s freezing! “ Kevin howled as he stepped into the water. He wasn’t kidding. Mary Margaret felt her feet turning blue as she staggered up the beach. Zeke barked his head off, finally hit the water with a splat and scrambled up to shore. He immediately shook off, lifted his leg, then started running around, sniffing like crazy.

  “Come on, Dad,” Kevin hollered, stuffing his feet back into his sneakers. “Come on, Sandra!”