by Susan Wilson
Mattie Lou kept coming over and offering Grainger more to drink, a little more dessert? Normally Grainger ate, paid, and left, thirty minutes top to bottom. By now, an hour and a half had gone by. Grainger knew his out-of-character behavior was driving Mattie Lou nuts. She’d had a crush on him since high school. Even though she’d been married twice and had three or four kids, she still loved nothing better than to make flirty remarks that she seemed to reserve just for him.
“Another beer, or are you waiting for something else?” Mattie twitched an eyebrow at him.
“No, thanks. I’m okay.” He kept his voice low.
Grainger was waiting out his opponents. It was like a game Mack and he had played as kids: who can stay underwater longest? He felt a little underwater now, watching Kiley and Will. He knew he could go over to their table, perhaps even should. But a simple, “Hi, how’ve you been in the last eighteen years, and whose kid is this?” wasn’t possible. There was too much that would be forever unsaid if they reduced their reunion to a chance encounter in the Osprey’s Nest. Any conversation Kiley and he might have would be operatic in proportion.
Ten
The waitress coyly asked if they wanted change of the two twenties Kiley laid down on a thirty-two-dollar tab.
“No, we’re fine.”
“That’s a twenty percent tip, Mom.”
“I’m feeling generous.”
“Great, can I buy a car?”
“Not that generous. Besides, you won’t need one at school.”
“I could drive to school, save you having to take me.”
“In your dreams, pal.” Kiley shuddered at the idea of her child driving alone along the interstate. Falling prey to nut cases lurking in the rest stops who would steal his car, or do worse. She was going to have to get past wanting to protect him. On the other hand, Kiley refused to give in prematurely to the empty-nest syndrome which threatened. She would not think of the inevitable conclusion to this summer, imagine that very soon she’d be coming home to an empty house that would not fill as night drew in, and soccer or baseball or basketball practice was over. She would not give over to the thought that she would end up wandering from room to room in their small home in Southton, wondering where eighteen years had gone. No sports equipment carelessly tossed on the floor in the hallway, no dirty socks hanging improbably from the bedposts. No clutter of abandoned homework.
It was all so temporary—something a young girl couldn’t know. Young, unmarried, completely at sea, Kiley had thought that she would always be tired, always be wiping noses and diapering bottoms. What once seemed to take forever was now speeding to its conclusion; one minute Will was a baby, the next standing tall over her and chiding her for leaving too large a tip.
Kiley waited for Will to shrug on his backpack. The tavern door clanged open and a stout man came in, nodding greetings right and left.
“Mattie Lou, my love, how’s it goin’?” He dropped into a seat and scanned the room. “Hey, Grainger, you got a boat yet for the August Races?”
Did she imagine that the whole tavern grew quiet, or had the sound of her own breathing suddenly become deafening? Kiley looked to where the stout man’s question had been flung. Looking back at her, a stunned and somewhat guilty look on his face, was Grainger Egan. She knew immediately that he’d known all along that she and Will had been in the Osprey’s Nest.
“No, Pete. I don’t have a boat.”
“You’ll find one. No problem.”
“Doesn’t matter.” His eyes remained on Kiley, glancing to Will, then back to her. He stood up suddenly, stepping on the dog at his feet. He bent in apology, then straightened.
Kiley felt Will’s touch on her bare arm. “Mom?”
“Will, I’d like to introduce someone to you.” As if Will were a little boy, Kiley took his hand and strode over to where Grainger remained motionless, one hand on his dog’s collar.
“Will, this is Grainger Egan. We knew each other as children.” Kiley gripped Will’s fingers as if afraid he’d bolt.
“Grainger, this is Will Harris. My son.”
Will shook Grainger’s hand, but didn’t speak.
Grainger held Will’s hand longer than Kiley thought necessary. “Pleased to meet you, Will.”
Did she imagine Grainger’s voice was vaguely stagy, or was he as emotionally flummoxed as she was at this unexpected meeting? She swallowed hard, absolutely no words coming to mind that she could speak to this man who had lived forever in her mind as a boy. Then, she remembered. “Random is in your yard. My father wants to sell her.”
“The house and the boat. I’m sorry to hear that.” Grainger smiled a little, as if surprised he could speak so easily. “Call me, we’ll talk about it.”
Kiley took a little comfort with finding a safe topic. “All right. I will. Good night, then.” Kiley turned away from Grainger, Will on her heels, loping to catch up with her.
There had been long stretches when Kiley hadn’t given her past much thought. There was Will to nurture, school, then work. Friends, new memories of Christmases and vacations. She had packed her life full, wanting never to succumb to living in the past.
She’d even almost gotten married. A nice man, Ronald, who’d been smitten with her. He was quite a bit older, divorced with two teenagers, while she had a toddler, yet more than willing to be a father to Will. Ultimately she’d gently turned him down, for she just hadn’t loved him.
Maybe if Ronald had come into her life in her thirties instead of her twenties, she might have accepted him. She had been young enough still to want passion. She needed to believe that she had refused Ronald against his own merits, not because of some adolescent belief that marriage needed to be built on passion; not because of some ill-founded hope that someday she would be able to resolve the anger and grief of her past. Not once had she ever hoped that she and Grainger would meet and forgive.
Tonight she had seen the man Grainger had become, and, just for a moment, tasted of that impossible hope.
Their walk along the waterfront to the car was in complete silence. Will behaved as if the chance meeting was of no consequence, barely of interest. Kiley’s breath was still hollow in her ears, her heart still beating its excited tattoo. What else could she have said? What else should she have said? Her circling thoughts taunted her, and Kiley was glad Will had said nothing, except to ask if Grainger was the boy in the photo.
“Yeah, he is.”
Will hadn’t said another word, just slipped the earphones up over his ears and listened to one of his new CDs. Kiley was grateful for the reprieve, at the same time wondering why he was so little interested.
The warm evening air felt good after the air-conditioning, and the fresh breeze off the water helped clean the scent of cigarette smoke off their clothes and out of their hair. The fading sky was starless as yet, the air damp. Kiley could hear the raspy sound of music leaking from Will’s earphones. Music filling his head, sometimes with words and opinions she was uncomfortable with. Her music had offended her parents too, especially Michael Jackson, with his crotch-palming dancing. Every Saturday afternoon she’d watched a disco contest television show, later attempting the choreographed gymnastics in her bedroom. For years she’d taken ballet, but disco had seduced her for a time. All artfully ripped sweatshirts and leg warmers.
Walking down the street with her son plugged into a hiphop CD, Kiley wondered if anything ever really changed. Every generation had its style: jive, swing, acid rock, disco, break dancing, hip-hop. Generations of parents appalled, crying out, What will become of these kids!
Of course, the boys had mocked her passion for disco. Mack would strike the famous John Travolta pose from Saturday Night Fever. “How’s this, Kiley?”
“You’re an idiot.” She’d laugh, and do a few moves she’d learned from that television show. Flashdance remained her favorite movie, and she secretly imagined herself leaping effortlessly through the air into a roll, and then spinning, just to show the boys up. Just to
amaze them.
Then Grainger or Mack would go after her carefully arranged hair. Boy, how they hated that stiff fringe look. They’d take every opportunity to get her wet, either by tossing her into the harbor, or spraying her with a hose. By the end of the first week, she’d given it up, letting her hair relax into its natural straight curtain, held back by a barrette or french braided.
Little flashes of memory like that had sustained her for years, forever young, forever happy. Kiley shivered in the fresh breeze redolent of low water. Why was it that every memory came with a shadow memory? Like overlays on an overhead projector, every slide adding more to the whole picture. The sea air against her chilled skin felt exactly as it had long ago. In the harbor, boats bobbed at their moorings, halyards chiming against aluminum masts. Offshore, the running lights of a sailboat drew closer to the harbor, and the picture that began to build was that of their last summer. The summer of the boat, of Blithe Spirit. The summer they were eighteen.
• • •
Mack bought the boat. A thirteen-foot Beetle Cat, mastless, missing her centerboard, coated in barnacles and algae, and, most disheartening of all, with a six-inch round hole punched in her starboard side. The hole was above the waterline, but was still a complicated addition to the list of tasks to get her seaworthy.
“Okay, so she’s a project. No big deal, we have all summer.” Mack was mildly defensive as Grainger and Kiley stood speechless, looking at the “surprise” he had promised them. The small sailboat was on blocks in Mack’s backyard. “I want to get her in the water in time for the August Races.”
“You’ll be lucky to get her in in time for Labor Day.” Kiley shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “Not to rain on your parade or anything.”
Grainger walked all around the boat, touching the rough surface of her barnacle-encrusted hull, sticking his fingers into the hole. “No, I think we can do it. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be fun.”
“Good thing it’s going to be fun, because this is going to cost a fortune to rehab.” Mack leaned against the hull. “Lucky I got her for almost nothing.”
“Oh, I thought the guy paid you to take her.” Kiley poked a teasing finger into Mack’s side.
“Funny, Blithe.” Mack took her poking finger and made her poke herself.
“Well, it’s worth a try. After all, there are money prizes for the August Races.” Kiley saw the look of delight on Mack’s face as his best friends validated his dream. “She might pay for herself.”
“Hey, we’ll scrounge. I know people at the boatyard.” Grainger’s job as youth sailing instructor often involved errand running for the Yacht Club members.
“Yeah, and my dad has lots of stuff. I’ll bet he has a hundred gallons of leftover marine paint in the cellar.” Released from Mack’s grip, Kiley did a back flip on the spikey grass of Mack’s backyard. “So, what are you going to name her?”
Mack reached over and plucked a blade of grass out of Kiley’s hair. “I’m naming her for you.”
“Me?”
“Blithe Spirit.”
Kiley blushed with pleasure at the odd compliment. She laughed, then landed another perfect flip. Could life get any sweeter?
She had never heard the adage it was bad luck to change a boat’s name.
Eleven
Will was awake before his alarm went off. Crows were making a ruckus in the big oak trees that bordered the backyard. The thin sound of light rain sizzled on the roof, plainly audible in the second-floor bedroom. Nothing lay between Will and the sky but a plank wood ceiling and asphalt roof shingles. He rolled back over, feeling something like relief that matters had been taken out of his hands. His mother still didn’t know about the sailing lessons. When neither he nor Grainger said anything about having met before, it seemed too weird to suddenly confess that they had. He’d made up some story about wanting to begin running before school started, hinting at maybe joining the cross-country team, to cover his out-of-character early rising.
Lying there, resuming the troubling thoughts from his hours of sleeplessness, Will felt a mocking cowardice. Did he have the cojones to confront his origins? Once known, the facts of his conception might end up plaguing him more than his ignorance of them. Maybe he should just trust his mother’s judgment in keeping these facts from him. Maybe he really was better off not knowing anything about how he had come to be.
With this weather, he could roll over and go back to sleep, and leave the sleeping dogs to lie. He opened his eyes again. Grainger hadn’t said if these lessons were weather dependent. He’d better plan to go. He really didn’t want to piss Grainger off first thing, asssuming the lessons continued. What was a little rain to a sailor? Anyway, it would probably quit in an hour.
He heard his mother’s alarm go off and waited for her knock on his door. When nothing happened, Will assumed that she must have heard the rain too, and decided he’d abandon his running till later. He swung his feet to the floor and yanked open a drawer to pull out his bathing suit and a clean T-shirt. He was surprised to find that he was shaking a little with a blend of excitement and dread. Sort of like the first day of school.
Tiptoeing down the back stairs to the kitchen, he hoped that his mother would stay in bed. She seemed so tired lately. She wouldn’t talk about it, but Will knew that readying the house for sale was emotionally hard on her. Little objects kept showing up on the kitchen table as if she had been sitting there examining them, weighing their significance, debating whether to keep them or let them go with the house. Did they have enough weight to be added to the growing collection of the Museum-in-the-Making? Or were they unimportant and destined to remain in the house for the new owners? This morning, a blue glass jar sat dead center on the small drop-leaf kitchen table. An ordinary, if authentically antique, jar that once held some salve or ointment. Why his mother had left it here, Will couldn’t imagine. It was too wide in the mouth to make a successful vase, and the big chip on the lip spoiled it for antique value. He slid the object to the other side of the table and poured a bowl of cereal.
Will still hadn’t told his mother about breaking up with Lori. With her, you just had to find the right time. Last night, she’d suddenly remembered that she’d picked up a letter from Lori for him. She had always been respectful of his privacy, requisite parental advice about protection and/or abstinence notwithstanding, and didn’t ask him about the letter. He had taken it from her hand without looking at her. One glance in his mother’s eyes and he’d have been pinned to the wall like a butterfly on cork, while she elicited the whole sorry story out of him. He’d stuffed it into one of the capacious pockets of his cargo pants and muttered something about reading it later.
The truth was, he just wasn’t ready to tell her about Lori. Even though he was still hurting from Lori’s dismissal, a residual defensiveness came up when he imagined his mother’s satisfied statement: “Well, I never liked her anyway…” He just didn’t want to hear it. He’d dropped Lori’s letter onto his bureau without reading it.
Will did a few stretches on the front porch. The rain was like a beaded curtain sluicing off the porch roof, each drop a fat individual. Maybe he should just call Grainger and cancel.
“Rain before seven, clear by eleven. It’ll probably stop by noon. Why don’t you wait till then?” Kiley opened the screen door and came out, her arms crossed against the damp air. “I’ll make French toast.”
“It won’t kill me, and if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it.” Will wished suddenly that he could admit to what he was really doing. He needed confirmation that Grainger had once been a good friend. No, he needed evidence that Grainger was more than a friend. He hadn’t been blind to the tension between the two of them in the tavern, like adversaries on neutral ground. Will bent to retie his running shoe. “Maybe I can outrun the rain.”
“I’ll have the water hot for tea when you get back.”
“Thanks, but you should go back to bed.”
“Can’t. The real estate a
gent is coming by early.”
Will stood up and impulsively bent to peck her cheek. “It’ll be all right.”
“I know.” His mother turned away as she sighed. “I know.”
Will leapt off the porch without touching the steps and set off at a mild jog.
The rain thickened as Will jogged down the hill toward the village. Still early, only minimal traffic moved past him, twice dousing him with tire splatter. As he jogged along the beach road, Will contemplated a quick dip to clean off the dirt, but it was taking him much longer to get to Egan’s Boat Works than he had expected. Despite all the wind sprints and miles run for sports training, Will had never been an effective runner. He knew he pumped too hard and breathed too deeply, failed to pace himself adequately. Never once had he found the magic high so many of the track team members had told him about. He’d rather feel the hard smack of a baseball against the sweet spot of his bat than get a runner’s high. Finally his lungs demanded he ease up, and Will settled into a jog barely better than a walk. No point in arriving on Grainger’s doorstep and collapsing. Will smiled at the image of himself falling into Grainger’s arms, with his last breath asking the unaskable question: Dad? The smile ran from his face. A photograph was hardly proof of paternity, a stilted introduction, no evidence. With sudden clarity, Will realized that it was only his mother he could ask that question, pointing to the last photograph: Is this guy my father, or this one? He should just turn around and go back and…what? Forget this whole stupid idea?
It was too late, he was nearly there. The peninsula of Hawke’s Cove, its shape likened to Jimmy Durante’s nose by some, was scalloped by inlets and smaller coves, some edged by houses, others like this one, mostly private. Grainger’s boatyard was on the inside of Maiden Cove, a good-sized deepwater cove with easy access to the main road. A sign declaring “Egan’s Boat Works” pointed down a gravel driveway, and Will walked the remaining distance to the boathouse.