by Susan Wilson
“Mom, who taught you how to sail?”
The question seemed to surprise his mother; she studied her plate for a moment. “Pop did. Although I was never that good at it, and he never let me race with him.”
“Did you sail with anyone else? Or did you only sail with him?”
“The Yacht Club sponsored races for kids.” She pushed her meat loaf around on her plate, then looked up at Will. “Why?”
“I was thinking about taking sailing lessons.” If she would just smile and say, I have a friend who could teach you, he could avoid pretending. “I mean, while I’m here and all.”
“If you’re serious, we can look into lessons at the club. And maybe we could charter a day sailer from the Yacht Club. I’ll check tomorrow if you want, though we’ll have to do it after I get the house…” For a moment she looked excited, just like she always did when they planned some fun outing.
“What about Pop’s boat?” Will watched the tension build in his mother’s face, supplanting the pleasure.
“It’s in dry dock, and besides, it’s way too big.” She turned her face away from him.
Will took a big bite of his cheeseburger, wishing he had just shut up. It seemed like everything he did or said lately created this pained expression on his mother’s face. “That’s okay, I was just toying with the idea. Call it a whim.”
Kiley reached across the table and touched his hand. “I wish I did have the time to teach you. It would be fun, although I’m not sure I could still tell a halyard from a turnbuckle, or port from starboard. Which reminds me of a joke.”
“What?”
“Did you hear the one about the captain who had a wooden box in his cabin?”
Will shook his head.
“Well, the crew was mystified. Every single night the old captain would go to his cabin, open this locked box, and look inside. Finally, the old guy dies and the crew can’t keep back their curiosity anymore. The first mate runs to the locked wooden box and pries it open. Inside lies a single slip of paper.” Kiley paused for dramatic effect. “ ‘Port is left, starboard is right.’ ”
Will laughed with the sound of a person not quite getting the joke, more pleased to see the tension begin to fade away from his mother’s face.
“I suppose you have to be a sailor to really appreciate that one.”
Will felt a flicker of inspiration. “So who told you that joke?”
His mother was smiling, but kept her eyes on her plate. “I don’t remember. A friend, I suppose.”
The bell above the door jangled again, and Kiley’s eyes went to it, as if she were expecting someone. Will finished his cheeseburger, hesitating to ask anything else of her.
He’d put the photo in his back pocket, hoping he’d have an opportunity to bring it out and get a flow of conversation going, like he’d done with the picture of when they were ten. In hesitating, he’d missed his best opportunity tonight. He should have pulled the picture out and, pointing to the faces in the snapshot, asked, “Is this the friend who told you that lame joke? Or this one?” But he didn’t. He couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t about jokes.
Will knew instinctively that his mother wouldn’t like the idea of him taking lessons from a man she had so clearly excised from her life, and, by extension, his. If—Will’s train of thought lurched onto a dead-end branch line—if Grainger was his father, surely the circumstances of his conception had been traumatic. Why else had Grainger been eliminated from his life so effectively? Will shoved the last of his french fries in his mouth. He’d known for years that his mother’s reluctance to tell him the truth was not a sign of true and absent love, but of adversity. The french fries were suddenly tasteless in his mouth as his gut contracted. What if he was trying to befriend a man who had done harm to his mother? Will swallowed the fries. There was only one way to find out: he needed to keep at this quest and not balk at the first obstacle, no matter how scary. He’d started this undertaking to find out what Grainger knew, and he would, by God, get some satisfaction. If this guy had abused his mother, he’d pay for it.
Which brought to mind a slight problem. His lesson was at seven-thirty, and he’d have to come up with some reason he was up so early on Tuesday morning. No way his mother wouldn’t suspect something if he was up three hours early for no reason, and then took off for the morning.
She worried about his movements so much since that stupid night when he and D.C. and Mike got caught with the weed. It wasn’t like he was a habitual user, a slacker who thought only about getting high. And it really wasn’t like him to keep things from her. But that night, the pot was available, and he needed to be a little wild.
They’d all been to Lori Amandie’s party. Lori was his girlfriend all senior year, and when she brought him outside to the back porch that night, he expected she just wanted a little private time. Instead, she said, “We need to back off a little, Will. We’re heading in two different directions, and I don’t want to hold you to a commitment you might regret.”
“You mean that you might regret.” He was hurt. He felt like he really loved this bright, pretty girl. From the first time she’d appeared in his government class, breathlessly explaining her lateness by some silly excuse the teacher had happily swallowed, Will had had no doubt that he wanted to be with her. Now he felt as if he’d just been some sort of practice boy, someone to sit with at lunch, an assurance of a busy weekend, protection against the overtures of less desirable boys. A guarantee of a worthy escort to the Senior Ball, but not worth restricting her social life at Purdue.
Will had stared off into the darkness. “Fine. Whatever.” He’d left Lori on the back steps, her face charmingly puzzled, as if surprised that he was unhappy with her. Apparently in her deluded view, he should have been glad for the parole. For the first time, Will understood what the poet said about there being in every relationship the lover and the beloved. He’d smacked his open palm against the porch post and gone to find D.C.
He meant to go home, to get into bed before his mother could notice the beer on his breath. He wanted nothing more than to bury his head in his pillow and let the unmanly tears make their silent way out, to burst this suppurating blister of feeling. Instead D.C. winked at him, oblivious to the anger on Will’s face, and put his hand in the deep pocket of his baggy green pants, showing Will just the edge of the plastic zipper bag. It seemed the perfect retaliation. Lori was madly anti-drug, president of the high school’s chapter of Teens Against Drugs. Screw her.
Will nodded and the three of them got into Mike’s car to find a secluded place to enjoy the dope. All year long his friends had made fun of him because of his loyal prohibition against smoking, calling him “wuss” and “whipped.” Though his pals kidded him, they’d respected him for his acceding to Lori’s wishes. Even now, the invitation to smoke had been made out of politeness rather than any expectation that Will would say yes. The surprise on D.C.’s face made Will scowl and refuse any explanation for his about-face. Soon enough, they’d figure it out. Figure out that he’d been dumped.
But he still couldn’t tell his mother that, even though he knew in some way it might comfort her and make her less worried. Kiley hadn’t cared for Lori, which made Lori’s rejection all the harder. For some stupid reason, Will dreaded his mother would bad-mouth his ex-girlfriend. He wasn’t ready to hear, “You’re probably better off without her,” which is exactly what he’d been trying to tell himself. But it wasn’t Lori’s fault he’d smoked the dope; it was his own misguided rebellion.
He kept his eyes on his empty plate, afraid to make eye contact with his mother, because she would see that he had something on his mind. She almost always knew. It was like his brain was visible to her. A tightness to his smile or hollowness in his voice, and she’d jump on him. “What’s the matter, honey?” It was a miracle that, distracted as she had been with the legal ramifications of his smoking the dope, she’d evidently chalked up his glumness to that too. Not to a breakup with his girlfriend. She didn’t me
ntion Lori, even in passing. Will supposed she thought, out of sight, out of mind.
Kiley put down her knife and fork. “Pop asked me to see about selling the boat.”
His mother’s voice yanked him out of his reverie and Will glanced up. The same degree of tension edged her jaw as when Nana and Pop had asked her to take care of the house, as it had when he’d asked about the boat just now.
Will shrugged. “Just tell him, ‘one overwhelming project at a time.’ ”
“That’s what I said.”
“Good for you.”
At his mother’s laugh, Will was suddenly glad that he’d asked to come to this hole-in-the-wall tavern for dinner. She was still smiling, although now she seemed distracted, looking up at every face that came through the door. If he felt a little devious, not telling her that he knew where the boat was and with whom, Will stifled it.
Tuesday he would be able to observe close at hand this man who had once been a part of his mother’s life. He would watch closely to see if any answers would be revealed; look for some mannerism or movement or preference or dislike that would bond them together not in coincidence, but by blood. Will wiped a film of prickly sweat from his neck. Despite the air-conditioning, he felt feverish with excitement. Something like how he imagined the Olympic snowboarders he’d watched last year must have felt as they stood at the top of the half-pipe. He could only imagine what they were thinking: Am I good enough? Knowing that the next minute would be life altering, whatever the answer might be to that single burning question.
Emotionally, Will felt as if he, too, stood at the top of an icy drop, board waxed, training completed. Only his burning question wasn’t whether he was good enough, but more deeply primal.
Who am I?
Nine
From across the dimly lit room, Grainger Egan had seen Kiley Harris come into the tavern, already murky as the hard cores came in after work and filled it with the sour smell of spilt beer and cigar smoke. He was in his usual corner, behind the fake timbers that looked like they held the place up. Grainger liked the little two-person table because he could sit there alone and be invisible. Too many of his customers believed he wanted nothing more than to talk shop with them, when all he wanted was Mattie Lou Silva’s meat loaf and a beer. The Nest was a good place for a man smelling of creosote and oakum, too tired to go home and shower before eating. Pilot was welcome and waited underneath Grainger’s table for the accidental spill that might make his day. Grainger could feel the dog’s chin resting on his boots, a weight that some days he thought kept him held to the earth.
Kiley Harris made the bells on the tavern door ring with an arrhythmic chaos, matched by the beating of Grainger’s heart as his eyes adjusted to the recognition his brain had already made. She looked uncertain as to whether she should stay or bolt. She scanned the room quickly right to left, looking for someone. For one shocked moment, Grainger thought she was looking for him.
From his vantage point behind the timber, he could see that she didn’t look a lot different. No taller, no thicker, no thinner. She wore a sleeveless black top, nicely showing off her square shoulders; her hair, once very long, just touched them. In the dim light of the tavern, it looked as blond as ever. The same dimness betrayed no hardening around her mouth, or lines of undue wear. She was as recognizable to him as if the time between them had been a month, not a lifetime.
No, there was a difference. As she walked to a table, he could see that her way of moving had slowed. She was deliberate in picking up the menu, didn’t slap it down as she used to as a girl. She sipped her water, didn’t gulp it as once she did, as though every glass of water was sweet and her thirst was desperate. Kiley moved without the girlish blitheness that had informed their concept of her.
She said something to Mattie Lou, and he realized she was expecting someone; no doubt the boy. In a moment, Will would come in and see him sitting there. The boy clearly knew something or had guessed that there was some connection between them, and had made up the ploy of wanting a sailing lesson from him to cover his curiosity. Would Will, either with calculation or innocence, introduce his mother to his sailing instructor? What sort of awkward hell would that be?
Kiley sat at the middle table in the center of the room with her profile to Grainger, and he thought he might just be able to slip out of the tavern unnoticed when Will clanged open the door and came in with that lope of tall young men. He threw himself into the chair next to his mother, his back to Grainger; facing the door and closing off escape. Instinctively Grainger leaned back against the wall so that the timber was even more obscuring: He didn’t want to face Kiley Harris here, in a reunion neither one of them was prepared for. Not yet.
So he was trapped, then. Trapped by circumstance and by stubbornness. Pilot sighed at his feet, and when Mattie Lou came to clear his plate, Grainer ordered another beer.
Sitting in the Osprey’s Nest, drinking a lukewarm beer, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the woman sitting twenty feet away, sipping a glass of wine in a place where no one drank wine. Kiley and Will spoke to each other in between long pauses, short bursts of conversation spiced with a little laughter. Now that she had her son beside her, Kiley was more animated, her gestures and mannerisms striking him hard with their familiarity. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
There was no intensive dialogue as he imagined might take place between mother and son. Despite his own rough upbringing, he knew that parents and children did speak to one another. Mack’s parents spoke to him and sometimes their voices were the only kind adult words he heard in a week. Mrs. MacKenzie would scold, then joke. Even with him, her half-fostered son, she’d tease and then ask about homework.
Grainger bought her Mother’s Day cards. The first time he did that, she wept, so sorry for the boy with the absent mother, never believing that he had wanted to do it for her, rather than out of some misplaced wish he could give it to his own mother. Grainger was never able to successfully express that, in her dependable kindness, Mrs. MacKenzie was more important to him than his deserting parent. He found those Hallmark cards addressed to “someone who has been like a mother to me.” Saccharine, perhaps, but genuine. Grainger wished she’d invite him to call her Mom, but some delicacy prevented her from making that suggestion. Grainger couldn’t remember ever calling her by name.
His mother’s desertion had corrupted his love for her, and he never sentimentalized his memories of her. Where he had previously seen her as his father’s victim, afterward he saw his mother as free. She had abandoned her son to Rollie Egan, freed herself and left Grainger as hostage. Once Grainger had given up childish hope, he’d never deluded himself that she had some plan to come to his rescue. He never expected an apology or an excuse. She had saved herself and that was clear, even to a boy of ten. Later Grainger told himself that if he’d had the wherewithal, he would have done the same thing. So he shut her away, forbidding her betrayal to hurt. Grainger did not fault her, neither did he defend her.
In the same way, Grainger had come to look at Kiley with different eyes. There could be no return to their old friendship. She had cost him the only happiness he had ever known as a boy, his safe haven. She had trampled on his feelings, and Mack’s. Even now, a lifetime away from all that happened, the sight of Kiley Harris pained Grainger to the point of physical hurt. His chest felt tight and he realized he was breathing very shallowly as he hid from this woman who had wrecked his life, the same way wreckers had once lured ships onto the rocks to plunder them.
As Grainger nursed his unwanted second beer, he recalled the last summer Kiley had come to Hawke’s Cove. He and Mack had walked to her house to greet her return, excited that their pal was back. On this sweet-smelling late June night, walking along the bluff with a gibbous moon glimmering a path on the calm ocean, Grainger had an odd, almost physical, sense of knowing peace. He was perfectly happy in that moment, and grateful to have recognized it, however transient it might be. Life would never be better. In the fall, Mack and Kiley
would head to college and he would be in the Army. But right now he had his best friend by his side, and his other best friend a few moments away.
Sometimes he was glad he’d had that one pure moment of clarity, that he’d recognized it for what it was: an incipient nostalgia that graced every movement that night. This was the last summer of their youth and they knew it. Sometimes he wished it had never happened, that he had never known what such peace felt like; and therefore, would never have longed after it.
Grainger and Mack had paused before going up the steps to the front door of Kiley’s house. They looked up at the light coming from Kiley’s bedroom window. Music spilled out, too faint to identify more than its relentless disco beat. A shadow crossed the window, and that shadow quickly transformed itself into Kiley, golden in the soft bedroom light, dancing to that barely audible music. Silently, they watched Kiley’s private dance. Her arms rose over her head and then fell in graceful arcs as she turned, her dance half ballet and half Flashdance. As she passed in front of the lamp, its light shone through her thin nightdress and her silhouette betrayed the marvelous changes the winter had brought to her.
Grainger was grateful for the darkness, which hid the amazement in his eyes. He heard Mack’s breath released in a soft whistle. And just like that, everything changed.
Pilot was getting restless at Grainger’s feet. He stood up and shook, then came out from under the table—a forbidden maneuver until beckoned—and looked up at his master as if to say, “Time’s up buddy, it’s walk time.” When Grainger didn’t react, he returned to his former position with his chin on Grainger’s boots, but not without first heaving a great sigh of disappointment.