by Nan Rossiter
“You’re welcome,” she said, blushing.
Later that day, when she was heading to her car, he’d called her name. “It is Piper, isn’t it?”
She’d nodded.
“I don’t know if you have time right now, but someone just called in a possible leatherback sighting and I could use a second set of eyes. Want to come along?”
Piper had jumped at the chance, and from that day on, she and Nat had been inseparable. Anytime there was an errand to run, a sighting to check, or a turtle to rescue, Piper had been by Nat’s side, learning the hands-on work she’d do—and love doing—for the rest of her life, and although she loved every minute she spent with Nat, too, she never told him. Nat, for his part, seemed innocently unaware of her feelings. It wasn’t until the end of that summer, when the staff went out for pizza together and Nat drove her back to her car, that she got up the courage to tell him how she felt. They were leaning against the hood of his truck, and she shyly told him she was going to miss him. Nat had put his arm around her, kissed the top of her head, and told her he was going to miss her, too, but then Piper had leaned up and softly kissed him. Nat had pulled away in surprise, but then he’d searched her eyes, and gently kissed her again.
“Are you sure about this?” he murmured when she pulled him against her, and she nodded, and on the last night before she headed back to Maine, the innocent friendship they’d shared all summer spiraled into intimacy.
“Now I’m really going to miss you,” Piper murmured, feeling his lingering heat between her legs.
He smiled. “I’m going to miss you, too, but you need to focus on your schoolwork and not think about me. I’ll still be here when you graduate.”
“That’s a long time from now.”
“Good things come to those who wait,” he teased.
“Maybe you could come to Maine.”
“I don’t have a reason to come to Maine.”
“You could give a talk.”
“That’s a nice thought, but I think we’d be asking for trouble.”
“We’re already asking for trouble. . . .”
“That’s what worries me, Pipe.”
Piper had smiled wistfully, and then he’d pulled her close, kissed the top of her head, and wondered how he’d let it happen.
When Piper reached the harbor at the end of Dyer Prince Road, she unclipped Chloe’s leash and the big golden raced ahead, loping through the dune grass like a porpoise. Piper followed her down the sandy path, and when she came to the beach, Chloe was standing on the water’s edge, waiting. “Okay,” Piper said and Chloe charged into the water.
Piper continued to run along the wet sand, and when she looked back, she saw Chloe, wet and sandy, racing after her. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she said, but Chloe raced past, knowing right where, in the tall grass, Piper had hidden a tennis ball. She got there first, picked it up, and pranced around triumphantly. “You beat me,” Piper said, laughing breathlessly, and Chloe dropped the ball at her feet and raced toward the water. Piper picked up the ball and threw it as far as she could, and the golden plowed through the shallows. Time and again, Piper threw the ball, and time and again, Chloe raced after it.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Time to head back,” and the big golden turned on a dime and raced past her. “You are so full of energy tonight. Maybe you should act your age before you hurt yourself,” she said, laughing as the blur of wet fur blasted past her again. Piper trotted along after her wet dog, looked up at the evening sky, blazing with orange and pink streaks, and smiled. “Thank You for everything,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 6
Birdie sat on the back deck of their old saltbox-style house in Orleans with her sprained ankle up on a chair, watching the birds fluttering back and forth between the scrub pine and the bird feeders. She noticed a flash of bright blue and sat up—an indigo bunting was on the feeder! Indigos were rare on Cape Cod, as were scarlet tanagers and orioles. Birdie opened her laptop, logged in, and entered the sighting—including the date and time—and leaned back to watch. The elusive indigo fluttered down to the birdbath, took a drink, and flew away.
Birdie sighed. “Maybe he’ll come back.” She refilled her wine glass and thought about the conversation she’d had with Dr. Sanders that afternoon. She couldn’t believe, at this stage of his life, he would start looking for a woman to marry. He was seventy years old, for heaven’s sake, and through two-thirds of those years, every single woman in town had tried to get him to go out, but he’d never accepted any of their invitations. She shook her head. He’d also been out of line to imply that she drank too much. She didn’t drink nearly as much as some people in their circle, and she could stop anytime she wanted. The only problem she had was that she didn’t want to stop. She looked forward to having a glass of wine at the end of the day—it was her way of celebrating, and there was always something to celebrate—a gorgeous sunset, a good book, a thunderstorm, a rare bird sighting, the first snow, finishing her Christmas shopping. The reasons were endless—that’s how life was. And having a bad day was also a good reason—a glass of wine helped her get over whatever was bothering her.
She took another sip. Even though John denied it, she’d bet anything David had said something to him when they were playing golf that morning. She could just hear her husband: I’m worried about Birdie. She didn’t just trip on that rug . . . she had a few too many drinks and took a looper! David never said anything to her, though. He didn’t have to—she knew what he was thinking. She could feel his eyes watching her whenever she poured a glass of wine, and she knew he kept track of the bottles in the recycling bin. She shook her head. Those two should just worry about themselves. After all, they were the ones who went to the clubhouse for a martini lunch every time they played golf—and that was in the middle of the day! And what about the time David backed into the lamppost? Too many gin and tonics at the Mitchells’ clambake, that’s what happened! At least she stuck to wine; none of that hard stuff for her—“headache in a bottle” she called it—and she’d never backed into anything. She knew when she’d had enough, and she knew when she shouldn’t drive. She took another sip and watched a female cardinal flutter from the feeder to a branch where a juvenile was waiting. The female landed right next to him and promptly dropped a seed into his open beak. Birdie smiled sadly. “I would’ve been a good mother, too,” she murmured, looking heavenward. “If You’d only given me the chance.”
David opened the screen door and an old black Lab with a snow-white face moseyed out and rested her head on Birdie’s lap. “Hello, Bailey,” Birdie said, stroking the dog’s velvety ears and looking into her cloudy chocolate-brown eyes. “How was your day?” Bailey—who was named after the famous ornithologist Florence Merriam Bailey—wiggled her arthritic hind end and Birdie smiled. “No matter how much it hurts, you’ll never stop wagging that old tail of yours, will you?” The old Lab licked her hand and then wandered over to a sunny spot, dropped into it like a sack of bones, and proceeded to watch the birds—her name suited her!
David noticed a prescription bottle on the table next to the wine bottle and picked it up. “I thought you weren’t supposed to mix alcohol and Vicodin.”
“It’s no big deal,” Birdie said, waving him off. “I’m sure the combination will only dull the pain more—which is just what I need.”
He looked at the date on the bottle and frowned. “This is from 2010. Did John say you should take this?”
“Motrin wasn’t helping and this was in the cabinet.”
David shook his head and sighed. “Shall I heat up dinner then?”
“Yes, there’s leftover chicken in the fridge . . . and rice pilaf.”
“The lemon chicken we had last night?”
“Yes. And asparagus, too.”
“Do you want a salad?”
“If you feel like making one.”
David slid the screen door closed and Birdie listened as he puttered around in the kitchen, warming up their supper. It was
nice to be able to relax and let him make dinner for a change. She was lucky to have a good husband—a husband who didn’t cheat, like Frank; or die, like Jim; Nat was a different story—she couldn’t figure out why he and Piper had never married. Nonetheless, even though her sisters had all been blessed with children—even unmarried Piper had sweet Elias—she’d been blessed with a good and faithful man, and Lord knew, a man like that was hard to find. She took another sip of her wine. Yes, having David—even with all his faults—was definitely a reason to celebrate!
CHAPTER 7
Remy looked out the kitchen window and whispered, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”
“What does that mean?” she’d asked Jim one time when they’d been coming back from a sunset sail.
“It’s old weather lore,” he’d explained. “When there’s a red sky in the evening, it’s because the sun’s rays are streaming through a high concentration of dust particles—which is indicative of a high pressure front and stable conditions . . . aka good weather; but when there’s a red sky in the morning, it means either the good weather has passed and a low is moving in or that the sunlight is streaming through a high concentration of water vapor. Either way, it means a storm is possible.”
Remy smiled. Jim, the science professor, had always been good at explaining things. Since that night Remy had discovered, to her surprise, the same weather lore was in the Bible. She’d stumbled across it in the book of Matthew: Jesus replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast . . . ’ ” She couldn’t believe the lore went back that far, but then again, most of the disciples had been fishermen, so they must’ve kept an eye on the weather.
She filled a glass with cold water, squeezed a slice of lemon into it, reached for her book, and stepped out onto the screened-in porch to settle into her favorite chair. A moment later, Edison—the handsome gray tomcat with snow-white boots that had appeared on her doorstep one snowy November evening ten years earlier—hopped up on her lap, pressed his nose against hers, and promptly curled up on. Remy stroked his soft fur. She’d come to believe that Edison watched and waited for her to sit down, because every time she did, he appeared. “Where’ve you been hiding?” she asked, but he just purred. His exploits were a well-kept secret.
Remy opened her book and started to read, but almost immediately, her thoughts began to stray. Why was she having so much trouble concentrating lately? She used to devour books—three in a week, at least! Recently, though, she’d had trouble getting through one page without dozing off, and if she did make it through a page, she often had no idea what she’d read. And if she had a glass of wine—which she rarely did anymore—there was no point in reading at all, because she’d be asleep before she even opened the book. She didn’t know how Birdie and Sailor did it. They could drink a whole bottle of wine and stay up late reading—or in Sailor’s case, working.
She looked down at the page. She’d always loved Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s timeless meditation on the stages of a woman’s life, but this time, she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the lovely words. She ran her hand lightly over the page—maybe it was because she’d read the book so many times, or maybe it was because her tired old brain didn’t work as well as it once had. Maybe she was actually developing early-onset Alzheimer’s—it couldn’t be regular Alzheimer’s because she was only sixty-five—but she’d certainly become more forgetful lately. She had to write everything down. In fact, she had lists all over the house, and if she went to the store and forgot her list, she might as well turn around and go home. And then there was the clutter that was accumulating in the spare bedroom—she didn’t know how it had happened. She’d always prided herself on keeping a tidy house, but that room was an embarrassment—so much so she had to keep the door closed. Heaven forbid her kids ever saw it. They would think she was losing it!
Remy looked at the darkening sky and sighed. She’d read somewhere—she couldn’t remember where—that clutter was another symptom of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Heaven help her if she had Alzheimer’s! What would happen to her? Would any of her children—Payton or Eliza or Sam—take her in? They were so busy with their own families and she definitely didn’t want to burden them . . . but she didn’t want to be in a nursing home, either. She hated nursing homes; when Birdie had insisted on putting their mom in one, Remy had been against it. As far as she was concerned, nursing homes were a miserable, lonely, end-of-life existence.
“Oh, dear God, don’t let me have Alzheimer’s,” she whispered, “or be a burden to my children. Just let me die in my sleep . . . on the port side of my own bed!”
Her cell phone started to play “In the Mood” and she picked it up and looked at the screen. It only showed a number. “Hello?” she said quizzically. “I’m sorry. Who did you say?” she asked, frowning, and then her face lit up. “Oh, Sam! I was just thinking about you. . . . Yes, I know, I need to put your name in my phone.... I just can’t seem to figure out how.... Yes, I know you showed me. . . . Maybe you could show me again the next time you’re here.... Yes, everything’s fine. It’s so good to hear your voice!”
CHAPTER 8
Sailor poured the last of the bottle into her glass and looked up at the wispy streaks of purple drifting across the coral sky. “You sure know how to paint a sunset, Lord,” she murmured. “We muggle artists can’t even begin to compete!” She took a sip of her wine, realized “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was drifting from inside the house, and followed the sound to her studio. She picked up her phone, looked at the screen, and promptly turned it off. She had nothing to say to Frank, and she certainly didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
As she walked back through the cottage, she plugged in the lamps she’d brought from home—two floor lamps in the living room and a small lamp on the bedroom floor next to one of the kids’ old sleeping bags, her accommodations until her bed arrived. She’d always hated gloomy, dark rooms; although she’d never been officially diagnosed, she was convinced she suffered from seasonal affective disorder, and she was equally certain that being an artist didn’t help either. Everyone knew artists tended to be more sensitive. Look at all the artists, writers, and performers who’d fallen into the grips of substance abuse—it was because they all felt life too keenly.
Now that she was up and moving, Sailor could feel the effects of gravity on her bladder. She hurried to the bathroom—the old storage tank definitely wasn’t the iron vault it had once been! Back in college, she could drink her friends under the table and still not need to go, but now, if she laughed or coughed without crossing her legs, she sprang a leak. It was a good thing she worked from home because there was no way she was going to wear panty liners or, heaven help her, diapers!
Sailor would never forget the time she’d had to help her mom after they’d first moved her into the nursing home; it was before the damn dementia—as she called it—had completely robbed her of every bodily sensation, so she still knew, and was able to signal when she needed to go. Sailor had called the nurse, but she’d been slow in coming, and finally, sensing it was urgent, she’d wheeled her mom into the bathroom, helped her stand up, pulled her pajama bottoms down, and realized she was wearing a diaper—no wonder the nurse hadn’t been in a hurry! “Oh, Mom,” she’d murmured in dismay. “Is this what it all comes to?” She pulled the bulky diaper down, felt its heavy weight, and realized it was already too late.
Martha had stood, hunched over and staring straight ahead while Sailor pulled off the wet diaper and slipped on a fresh one from a package in the corner. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I’m so sorry all this is happening to you.” If her mom couldn’t feel humiliation, she could certainly feel it for her.
“Damn it, God!” she’d railed as she drove home. “Why did You have to make getting old suck so much? Why can’t people get old with their digni
ty still intact? Is it too much to ask? It’s pretty poor planning on Your part! I don’t think You thought the ‘getting old’ stage through very well!” And when she finally got home, she called her youngest daughter and told her what had happened. “If I ever get like that, Merry, just shoot me!”
Meredith had laughed. “Oh, Mom, that’s not gonna happen to you.”
Now Sailor sighed—it already was happening.
She reached for the toilet paper, realized there wasn’t any, and shared her favorite expletive with the silence. “I guess it’s drip-dry today,” she mumbled, pulling up her underwear and shorts in one swift motion. A moment later, she opened the box on the counter labeled TOILETRIES and realized she’d stuck a half a roll in the box—just in case. She shook her head, slipped it onto the holder, and made a mental note to buy more.
She finished unpacking the box—her soap, shampoo, facial cream, toothpaste, and toothbrush—and stood in front of the mirror, studying her reflection, trying to decide if it was the mirror or the lighting that was more forgiving than the one at home. She touched her short salt-and-pepper hair and then lightly traced the wrinkles around her eyes. “I shouldn’t have smiled so much in life,” she said to her reflection. “All those fake, forced smiles at parties and reunions . . . and now, I’m paying the price.” She turned her head. “I’m just one big wrinkle! Maybe that’s why our vision gets worse with age,” she mused, “so we can’t see our wrinkles!” She shook her head. “So You do have a plan,” she said in a voice edged with sarcasm, “a flawed plan, but a plan nonetheless.”
She turned off the light and went into her studio. “Ah, where to begin?” She reached for the glass she’d left on the drawing table, took a sip, put it on the bookcase, and set to work securing her lamp to her drawing table. The black “combo” lamp, as it was called, had an incandescent and a fluorescent bulb that, when on at the same time, illuminated her work surface with light that was similar to pure northern light, but after she tightened the clamp, slid the arm into its sleeve, crawled under the table, plugged it in, crawled back out, and pressed both switches, only the incandescent came on. She shook her head in dismay. “Geez Louise! If it’s not one damn thing, it’s another!”