Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  Now it lay in pieces.

  Why had she hidden it? Dana wondered. Did she think she’d be in trouble? Should she be in trouble? Asking herself these questions, Dana thought about how badly suited she was for full-time, on-the-job aunthood. She didn’t know the first thing about child psychology or parenting techniques. What was she supposed to say to a kid who had broken her mother’s eighth-grade masterpiece and hidden the pieces in the closet?

  This might be just one real-life moment too many, Dana thought.

  She was worn out from Allie’s swimming lessons. Not from watching her niece, who was poetry in motion, intrepid about putting her face in the water. But from three days—so far—of standing around with the other kids’ mothers, talking about window boxes and mixed doubles and the women’s club.

  She had scoured the group, looking for old friends, but she hadn’t recognized a soul. Instead, she had stood there, longing for the France of beauty and solitude, of melodic language and artistic history, feeling the absence of her close friends, Isabel and Colette. And in spite of herself, she missed Jonathan.

  From swimming lessons they had walked around the boat basin to tennis lessons. More standing around, some of the same mothers. Dana wasn’t used to this. Everyone was friendly; although no one mentioned Lily, Dana could feel their sympathy and curiosity. But Dana felt herself edging away so she wouldn’t have to talk.

  She was used to the isolation of painting in her studio—except for Monique, posing, and Jonathan, painting at his easel—and she felt nervous, trying to think of the next thing to say. Isabel always left Dana alone until she was ready to call her, when she had finished working; Colette sometimes dropped by, but she’d wait in the garden for Dana to emerge from her studio.

  On the other hand, picturing Allie swinging that racket with all her might, biting the tip of her pink tongue with total concentration, made Dana smile with pride. Allie was a force-ten child, throwing herself into everything she did, just like a tiny hurricane, just like her big sister. They both had the potential to be world-class sailors.

  A tennis racket lay on the floor under Quinn’s bed. Leaning it against the wall, Dana felt pleasantly surprised and happy. She hadn’t thought Quinn was very interested in sports these days. She had given up sailing, for which she was a natural. Maybe they could have a game of Canadian doubles, Dana on one side of the net and her nieces on the other, just as her mother had done with Dana and Lily.

  The laundry basket full, Dana paused in the upstairs hall. A small square, each of the house’s four bedrooms led off it. An old church lectern holding the family’s big Webster’s dictionary stood against one wall, the linen closet cut into the one adjoining. Directly opposite were four paintings by Lily.

  Leaning closer to examine them, Dana could see they were of the four seasons. Watercolors of Hubbard’s Point in winter, spring, summer, and fall. The paintings were small, unfinished-looking, more like studies than works in themselves. No larger than four by six inches, they were framed in driftwood.

  There wasn’t a house in sight. Dana had to smile. Her sister had painted the Point before any houses were built on it. That was Lily: She loved nature so much. She was a total preservationist: She wanted the places she loved to stay the same, and she wanted the people she loved to stay the same too.

  Dana remembered the urge to paint, and she tried to feel it. Her work wasn’t little watercolors but huge, soaring canvases. Four by six feet, big enough to contain all the emotions she was feeling on any given day. Deep sea, blue water. She could see her studio, remembered when the muses used to come for her. They spoke French, and they told her to pick up her brushes and paint the water across the sea.

  For a while, she had even seen Monique as her muse. She had met the small Vietnamese woman through an artist friend in town. New to Normandy, she had come to be near artists. Twenty-five, working at odd jobs, she was trying to earn enough money to enroll in art school. Dana, with a soft spot for people on their own and far from home, had hired her as an assistant first, a model later.

  What did an artist known for vast seascapes need with a model? Well, Dana’s strong suit had never been the human figure. Life-drawing classes had been her nemesis at RISD. She could paint the sea in her sleep. Water was her medium, and sometimes it felt to Dana that she had entered it herself, was painting it from the bottom of the ocean.

  But Dana wanted to perfect her figure work too. She needed to draw from real life. Monique had been willing. She would undress as she walked into the studio, flinging herself onto the sofa or plastering her body against the wall. She could hold a backbend for half an hour, other poses even longer.

  Her dark chocolate eyes were steady and knowing, as if she were older than her years, had seen sights Dana could only imagine. But she was sweet as well; she would bring Dana flowers she’d picked on the way. She brewed tea for them to drink. Once she had brought Dana pictures of friends she’d made in Paris—two smiling, vibrant girls with blond hair.

  “One Swedish, the other American,” Monique had said. “Far from home, like me.”

  “Vietnam …”

  “No,” she had laughed. “My parents immigrated long time ago. They have a restaurant there.”

  “Are they still in Paris?”

  “No, Lyons. But both places—Paris and Lyons—are over for me. I’m here now.”

  “Do you miss your family in Lyons?”

  Monique had cringed then. “Don’t talk about that, Dana. Home is far away, and I am here. Life is not good back there, so I think about the future, not the past. Always the future. What will make me happy, you know?”

  “Mmm,” Dana had said, sketching faster to catch the troubling spirit pouring off the young woman’s body. Dana felt protective toward her, the way she sometimes felt about Lily, as if Monique were a younger sister. At the same time, it was tense and exciting, and in some way Dana knew Monique had just dared to express the things Dana only touched on—Monique was a freer spirit than Dana ever wanted to be. Watching her bend her nude body, writhing like a mermaid in a deep bay, Dana fought a sudden uneasiness.

  Jonathan would walk into the studio to watch. He and Dana had been living together for six months by the time Monique came along. Their commitment was new, but Jon had convinced her it was unbreakable. Dana—new to that kind of love—had allowed herself to trust him.

  Of course he would stare at the model: He was an artist too. He would sketch Monique as she posed on the bed, his crayon smudging the tilt of her breasts and the rise of her buttocks, the smooth length of her honey-brown legs.

  “She’s nothing compared to you,” Jon would whisper into Dana’s ear as she painted the younger woman’s body draped in seaweed, swimming through the sea.

  “Are you sure?” Dana would ask, and his kisses would reassure her.

  “He loves you so much,” Monique said one day when she was getting dressed. “I hope I have a boyfriend who loves me like that someday.”

  “You will. You’re very beautiful, Monique.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Don’t you know that?”

  Monique shrugged, smiling shyly. But Dana had had the feeling that she did know exactly how lovely she was, that for her, compliments were just another sort of payment, almost as important as the francs she received for posing.

  After Lily’s death, when Dana had stopped painting, there had been no need for Monique to come around anymore. She had asked Dana if she could clean her house, sweep up her studio, run errands in town—anything to earn a little more money. Honfleur wasn’t Paris—there weren’t as many jobs. But until she decided to move on, she needed to support herself.

  Dana had told her she could stay in the studio. In return, she would do the housework. In retrospect, Dana saw how dumb she had been. She had turned herself into a fool.

  In grief, her painting had dried up. In many other ways, so had she. Unable to paint or think, she had wanted only to sleep and be held. After so many years of being a
lone, unwilling to settle down with anyone—even Philip—she had found herself wanting only to be wrapped in Jonathan’s arms. As if he were a safety net, as if he could hold her and never let her drop, keep her from feeling Lily’s death, she had wanted to feel his body against hers. Painting—all forms of art—seemed gone forever.

  “I’ve lost it, Lily,” she whispered now, saying the words out loud for the first time in the old house, leaning against the linen closet. “I can’t do it anymore.”

  Not in this place anyway. Not where the memory of Lily was so strong. Perhaps she could in France. When she went back there, settled back into her studio with Jon gone and Monique banished, maybe Dana would discover that the block had been dissolved, that she’d feel like painting again.

  Summer, she thought, staring at Lily’s paintings. One season. That’s how long she would give this new life. She could make it through one season here at the Point: swimming lessons, the other mothers, broken lamps, trips to the Laundromat. No sailing at all.

  Once the girls were used to her, she could start again, easing them with her to France, to her studio. Painting had always been her lifeline, getting her through everything. Breakups, disappointments, her father’s death … she had never expected it to fail her when she needed it most.

  Just then, the telephone rang. She started to answer, then changed her mind. It was probably one of the mothers asking Dana if she wanted to join the women’s club. Or if she could take turns driving the kids to miniature golf, for ice cream, for pony rides. She knew she wasn’t up to dealing with any of that, so she let the answering machine pick up.

  “Hi, everyone, it’s Sam. Guess our machines are talking to each other. It was good to get your message and sure, I’d love to come. To answer your question, I eat everything, and I can get there by seven. Hope that’s not too late, but I have to analyze some dolphin data and fire it off to Bimini. See you tonight, and thanks a lot for inviting me.”

  Dana listened. When he had hung up, she played the message back again. Sam Trevor was coming for dinner. He ate everything. He’d be there by seven.

  And Dana hadn’t invited him. Staring at Lily’s paintings of the four seasons, she zeroed in on summer and mentally counted the days till its end. Stalking through the house, planning to confront the girls, she found a note on the refrigerator in Quinn’s handwriting: We’re crabbing on the rocks.

  The rocks were just across the street, through her neighbor’s yard. The more she thought about someone mysteriously inviting Sam without first asking permission, the madder she got. But then she pictured Sam: smiling, friendly, kind enough to drive them to the airport and back. Dana knew she could use a friend, and a part of her wanted to see him. But when she opened the kitchen door to run over and find the girls, she saw Marnie McCray Campbell coming up the hill.

  Dana had known Marnie since birth. Three years younger than Dana, one year younger than Lily, Marnie had been their lifelong friend. Her grandparents had built her cottage, and her mother and Dana’s mother had been close friends growing up. Then they had daughters—Marnie had two sisters, each of whom had daughters themselves. Two doors down were their close friends the Larkin sisters—Rumer and Elizabeth.

  “It’s a colony of sisters,” Dana’s grandmother had said long ago, watching so many little girls play in her yard.

  All Dana knew now was that she’d never been happier to see anyone in her life. She walked through the kitchen door and held out her arms. Marnie ran straight into them, and for a few seconds it was like holding a younger sister.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” Marnie said.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” Dana said into her hair. She shivered, feeling all the years melt together. She was six years old all over again. Lily was just inside, Marnie’s sisters, Lizzie and Charlotte, were waiting down the hill. Their fathers were fishing, their mothers were waiting to take them to the beach.

  “No, you can’t?” Marnie asked in a tender voice.

  Dana shook her head, pulling herself together.

  “No, of course not. Because I usually spend summers on the Riviera,” Marnie cracked.

  Dana laughed. Marnie, like Lily, was very funny. They had never failed to make their older sisters laugh.

  “Well, I know that,” Dana said.

  “We got down late last night,” Marnie said. “I looked up the hill and didn’t see lights on, or I would’ve stopped by then. I’m so happy you’re here.”

  “We were supposed to be in France,” Dana said, watching Marnie’s face to see whether their mothers had talked and passed the news on to her.

  Marnie nodded. “I heard. The mother figures were very concerned. You know, the language barrier, the girls being so far away, you know the whole story …”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I told them you know what you’re doing. Lily wouldn’t have entrusted her daughters to you if you didn’t.”

  “Lily,” Dana said. At the first mention of her sister’s name from this old friend, she welled up and so did Marnie.

  “I miss her so much,” Marnie said.

  “Me too. I keep thinking she’ll come home.”

  “I looked down at the rocks just now and saw Quinn and Allie crabbing, and for two seconds I thought, where’s Lily? If the girls are there, she can’t be far away.”

  “But I’m here instead.”

  “Consolation prize,” Marnie said, hugging Dana again.

  “Thanks.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I thought that missing Lily would be the hardest part, and mostly it is. But the girls are giving me a run for my money. Especially Quinn.”

  “I love her Bob Marley look.”

  “Her hair.” Dana smiled. “I was just on my way over to your rocks to grill the daylights out of her. Seems she and/or her sister, but I’m betting it’s Quinn, called to invite someone for dinner tonight without my permission. And he’s coming!”

  “Who is he?”

  Dana shook her head. “Someone she hardly knows. The fact is, Quinn barely speaks to me, but she picks up the phone … she must have rifled through my bag to get his number.”

  “But who is he?”

  Looking her square in the eye, Dana tried to see what Marnie was getting at. “He’s an ex–sailing student of mine and Lily’s. He’s an oceanographer at Yale now, and through a bizarre set of circumstances, he drove me and the girls down to the airport and back last Thursday.”

  “Ah,” Marnie said, as if that explained everything.

  “What?”

  “A connection to their mother.”

  “She has me. I’m Lily’s sister.”

  “Too close,” Marnie said.

  The oak leaves rustled overhead as a warm sea breeze blew up the hill. Dana sat down right where she stood, on the top step of the long stone stairway. Way back in 1938 her grandfather had set three pennies in the mortar, and the copper had thinned and turned green. Dana stared at them as if she could make the dates and Lincoln’s worn face come into focus. Marnie hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t known, but suddenly everything seemed clearer.

  “What happened here?” Dana whispered. “In this house?”

  Marnie didn’t reply, but she sat down beside her.

  “Something’s wrong. Was Lily unhappy?”

  Marnie didn’t reply. She stared at the pennies herself, frowning and uncomfortable.

  “Quinn said something the other day about me being happier than Lily.”

  “Maybe she thinks that because you’re so glamorous. You live in France, you paint all the time… .”

  “Glamorous.” Dana shook her head. “Turpentine instead of perfume. If she only knew. But back to Lily.”

  “I don’t know much more than you do, Dana. Lily seemed happy. She was a wonderful mother, she and Mark seemed to love each other. I’d see them at the beach or on the rocks. He bought that big boat… .”

  “Why didn’t she launch Mermaid?”

&nb
sp; “I think because they spent so much time on Sundance. The girls already knew how to sail small boats—they were great at it. Lily said Quinn had the potential to sail in the Olympics. She thought it would be good for them to spend some time on the water in a bigger boat. Besides, I think sailing helped her forget that stuff in his job. Really, that’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Dana looked up in surprise. “What stuff?”

  Marnie opened her mouth, then caught herself. She wasn’t a gossip, and Dana knew it. Had Mark had financial problems? Was that what her mother had hinted about, what Quinn perceived as her mother’s unhappiness?

  “Nothing, Dana. Lily said something to me once in passing, and I’m just a big, stupid blabbermouth.”

  “What was it—the eternal conflict?”

  Marnie looked puzzled.

  “Between Mark being a developer and Lily being a dyed-in-the-wool preservationist.”

  Laughing, Marnie nodded. “I know. Lily wanted to save every habitat there was—not just for endangered species but for every bird, mouse, moose, moth, minnow, pigeon, seagull. She really did have to look the other way when Mark got going on some of his projects.”

  “Mark was very conscientious,” Dana said. “He paid attention, for Lily. So, was that the problem?”

  “I suppose it was. In a way—he was doing a project she wasn’t crazy about. I don’t think it caused that much tension, but it did upset her a little. Anyway, Lily knew how excited Mark was about the new boat, and she wanted him to be happy.”

  Dana found herself absently weeding the garden by the stairs. Thoughts whirled through her head about the boat, money, real estate development, Lily’s happiness and Mark’s happiness, whether Lily thought it was the same thing, whether it actually was. What did Dana know about marriage? She pushed down a thought of Jon. But the suppressed emotions made her chest hurt, so she pulled more weeds and changed the subject.