She worked alone. Her customers were the employees of the Preservation Project: the blacksmith, the gift shop cashiers, the costumed docents who took tourists through the twelve historic houses; and the tourists themselves, bringing their fascination with all things old.
One day she looked up from the cucumber and tomato sandwich she was making to see Kit, like an apparition from the modern world, his long hair, beard, and denim shirt powdered with dust. She hadn’t seen him in three years and felt a confusing surge of excitement she knew she’d have to suppress or she’d scare him off.
“Well, hey,” he said, his smile shy. “How long have you been workin’ here?”
Suddenly self-conscious in her girly dress, Gina folded her arms across her stomach. When she told him just a week he said, “Cool. Can you make me a ham and Swiss on rye, please? That would be great.”
Gina moved from the refrigerator to the bread to the cutting board, feeling Kit’s eyes on her. “So what do you do here?” she asked when he’d paid her for the sandwich.
“I’m the boat builder—in the shop by the Governor Goodwin house. Come check it out sometime.”
During the next week, Kit came in for his ham and Swiss at lunch-time and sometimes a cookie in the late afternoon, ordering trancelike, watching her get his order together in a way that made her reluctant to say anything that might break the spell he seemed to be under. She fantasized that he’d become captivated by the lilac-scented innocence of the scene in which she played, so harmoniously enhanced by every detail: the smaller-than-life scale of the doors, the divided pane windows, the delicate stencils along the top of the wall, the vase of wildflowers on the counter, and the bit of lace that brushed her cheek when she leaned over the cutting board. What was he seeing when he looked at her? A child he once knew? A seductress? She couldn’t guess; there were many days when she felt every bit as innocent, as colonial, as the cream, pink, and blue dress she wore. Still, on other days, she felt she was somehow tricking him; that Kit, like herself, was seeing not Gina, but something he could no longer have.
Cassie was in love. “Shacking up!” Eleanor shrieked at Ron when they returned from their surprise visit to Cassie. They’d driven three hours to her apartment and knocked on her door at ten in the morning. Dropping in was Eleanor’s habit with friends and family; she wouldn’t consider calling ahead—for fear, Gina suspected, of being turned down. She’d ambushed Cassie a few other times, but this time, Wes, Cassie’s boyfriend of two years, had answered the door in his boxers.
Gina walked to Tobey’s Market to call Cassie on the pay phone. “The morality police!” Cassie grumbled. “You should’ve seen her face—it was like I’d stabbed her through the heart!”
Gina decided not to share that her mother had been crying on and off ever since, and cracked, “Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk free!”
“I’ve never felt this way about someone before,” Cassie said. “Wes is so wonderful.” Won-der-ful unfurled like a lazy wave; it was the first time in her life Gina had heard the sound of real, swooning love, and for some reason, it made her want to cry.
There was a pause she would always remember: the smell of the Juicy Fruit gum stuck to the telephone infusing her sense of loss. It reminded her of when her family had gone swimming at Lake Winnepesaukee, and for the first time Cassie was allowed to swim beyond the necklace of buoys that separated safe from dangerous. After that day, she never again swam inside the buoys with Gina. Gina had worried; would she be safe without her big sister?
Cassie was in love now, and even though she’d left home a long time ago, she’d formed a new kind of bond that could take her even further away. In her mind, Gina too had traveled far from Whit’s Point, but her body still got driven to Maine and parked high and dry every year about the same time that the boats in town got released from their cradles back into the water.
“That’s so neat, Cass.” She wanted badly to sound happy for her, since no one else at home was.
Gina said goodbye to Cassie and walked home along Pickering Road’s narrow sidewalk feeling tall and out of scale next to the small houses that sat practically on the street Their blank windows seemed to stare as she slipped by. I’ll get used to it, she told herself; it was always like this at the beginning of summer: the dissociation, the self-consciousness that came from being recognized, but not really known. After a few more weeks, she’d feel the warm moist air, the cool grass, and salty water welcoming her back into the landscape, and she would belong.
Three weeks after she’d started her job, lonely and heady with Kit’s daily dose of admiration, Gina surprised herself one day after work by walking right up to him while he was sanding a boat bottom. “Hi,” she said.
Kit looked up, startled. She smiled. She’d taken out her barrettes so her hair could drift around her face, and she was carrying her shoes. Kit scanned her as if she might not be the same girl he’d only seen behind a counter. “Hi,” he said.
“Are you almost done for the day? I’m going to walk over to the wharf to look at the schooner, and I was wondering if you’d like to . . .”
“Oh,” Kit said.
He surveyed the shop. There were tools and sawdust everywhere; clearly, he wasn’t ready to close up. But she could feel his wanting to go, could feel he wouldn’t say no.
“Sure,” he said. “I can just come back after to clean up.”
She smiled and brushed her hand down her dress, smoothing it against her body.
Kit locked the barn door, and as they traversed the grounds of the Preservation Project, Gina realized that she’d premeditated only the invitation and had no idea what should come next. She was glad that without the counter between them, Kit seemed more relaxed and chatty. He’d recently run into her parents at the town dock and admired their new boat, Homeward. “Did you see them movin’ those houses?” he asked.
“It was kind of strange,” Gina said, remembering the three historic houses that had been relocated to the Preservation Project from another part of town. “They looked so undignified stacked on those truck beds. I mean, the idea of just up and moving a house from the place it’s been standing for a few hundred years. Like moving an old tree. Or a famous ruin. It almost seems sacrilegious.”
Kit said, “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I guess because I’m a builder, I just think of the buildings in terms of their construction, not as something with roots in a place.”
A builder. “So, where do you go to college?” she asked.
Kit laughed and Gina, realizing her error, flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m a full-time boatwright.” He told her about the rowing shells he and his father made that were sleek and fast—nothing like the traditional wood dories he built at the Preservation Project.
They crossed the street, and halfway down the old wood wharf where the historic schooner was docked, a sharp pain pierced the ball of Gina’s foot. Kit took her hand and led her to a bench along the wharf’s railing where she hitched up her dress and crossed her foot over her knee so they could examine it. “Piece of glass in there,” Kit said. He was leaning so close she could smell the sweetness of the sawdust in his hair. He stood and searched his pockets. “Rats. Tell you what—if you can sort of hop back to the shop with me, I’ve got some tweezers there.” He wrapped his arm firmly around her waist—a necessary and natural gesture, but one that made her feel cared for in a way she’d never been before. “Go ahead and lean on me,” he said.
Back at the shop, he pulled a chair close to hers and held her foot in his lap. The old barn—filled with the fragrance of wood and varnish and decorated with antique tools—transported Gina back to all the special places she’d spent time with Kit when they were younger. Now, it felt romantic to be entrusting her foot to him. In seconds, he’d removed the piece of glass. He dabbed first aid cream on the wound and put on a Band-Aid.
“Ah . . . what a relief! Thank you!” Gina laughed and kicked her repaired foot in the air. When
she looked at Kit again, his eyes were sparkling.
“You’re lovely,” he said. His eyes held hers long enough that she had to look away. “Well. I guess I better get this place cleaned up, and we should both get home.”
The encounter with Kit took on magic in the following days; every time he walked out of the sandwich shop, Gina remembered the very lovely way he’d said lovely and the way it had made her feel . . . well, lovely. Certainly, lovely was not the kind of word favored by Mark, who described her breasts as “boobalicious.” So she said yes when Kit asked if she’d like to go out rowing with him the next Saturday, and the following one, too.
Their outings on the water provided vital respite from her parents. The third time Gina was leaving the house to go rowing with Kit, her mother said, “What’s all this about?”
“What?” Gina said.
“Why are you spending so much time with Kit?”
Gina read her mother’s disapproval and seized the opportunity to provoke her. “He’s really great,” she said.
“I’m sure. Has he gone to college yet?”
“Nope. Didn’t need to, to build boats.”
“Well, don’t take his interest in you too seriously.”
Furious, Gina decided that from here on out, she’d make sure to torture her mother by announcing her “dates” with Kit.
Kit was an attentive listener, and she took full advantage, freely complaining to him about her home life. He was kind, never forgetting to stow cookies and an extra sweater for her, just in case. She felt a natural ease with him—a familiarity deep in her bones. But she had to admit to herself that although his obvious crush on her felt exciting, she wasn’t attracted to Kit. It was possible that he was “too nice,” the words she and her friends used to describe boys who weren’t sexy to them. While masquerading for her mother, she’d have to be careful not to stoke his romantic interest. Besides, she had a boyfriend.
Sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed wrapped in a blanket, Gina read Mark’s letter for the second time. It is not really horniness at all, he’d written, in response to a letter she’d sent to him about not wanting to feel pressured into having sex all the time.
Mark as you see him now, is the product of a great deal of hurt, abused trust, and self-hatred. Mark’s social life, especially the last few years since he left his nerd scene in Manhattan and tried to make it in WASP-ville, Connecticut, was nightmarish . . .
Gina was riveted by these worldly revelations. What was “WASP”? After describing several cycles of self-loathing and cockiness, Mark came to his conclusion, which was that he felt most loved
. . . when my head is buried in your neck and my hands in your jeans; yes, behind the tree, in the car, under the table. P.S. As for loving you for your body, have you looked in the mirror lately? You gotta know, honey, there’s some hungry men out there, and some of us still wear retainers at night.
A snorting bull illustrated the P.S.
Ugh! He was infuriating! He could talk circles around her, seducing her with his vulnerability, scaring her with his effrontery.
She missed him.
She folded the letter, stuffed it into the envelope, and hid it with her journal in the bottom drawer, under Cassie’s Miss Andrews Academy Award, which she had dubbed “the good girl award.”
On the day that Mark was to arrive, Gina felt gorgeous. She’d acquired a deep tan and her long hair was sun-streaked from her days at the beach. She put on her light blue halter top and looked in the mirror—yep, she was looking good and felt strong, more than ready to take on Mark.
At five o’clock she put down the top on their recently purchased secondhand Mustang and climbed into the driver’s seat. The car smelled warm and leathery. She’d only had her learner’s permit for a week and already loved to drive. She cocked the rearview mirror to check her face as her father sat down next to her—oh, if she could just save forever this perfect moment of anticipation, this feeling of omnipotence and today’s zitless face that looked at her from the mirror! She drove slowly and carefully to the Trailways station, savoring her excitement. When they pulled in, Mark bounced down the bus steps wearing jeans, a denim jacket, and carrying a backpack, looking even sexier than she’d remembered him. He fingered his dark shoulder-length hair behind his ear as he surveyed the parking lot.
“Mark!” Gina called.
“How goes it?” Her father said when Mark shook his hand. Ron climbed into the backseat, and Mark sat down next to Gina. His clothes smelled deliciously of detergent and cigarette smoke. As he leaned over to give her a little kiss near her ear, he put his hand on her knee and quickly slid it up to the top of her thigh, nestling it between her legs. Unnerved, with one eye on her father in the rearview mirror, Gina pushed his hand away.
On the way home, twice she nearly turned left into oncoming traffic.
“God, you’re lookin’ good, Gina Lo-La.” After Gina’s mother had greeted Mark and gone inside, Mark slipped his hands around Gina’s waist. “Have you missed me?”
“Yeah.”
A little breeze brushed her bare back and made her shiver. Mark rubbed her breasts with both hands. “Ooh, I’ve missed my friends,” he cooed.
Gina pulled away from him as her mother popped out of the screen door holding a Coke for Mark. “Virginia, why don’t you get the stuff to set the table out here. It’s such a gorgeous evening. Paper plates.”
Gina went inside to get silverware, napkins, and the flimsy paper plates that always soaked through before you were halfway done with a lobster. When she returned, Mark and her parents were standing with their toes against the garden, their focus cast over the hill, out to sea.
“With a southwesterly wind like this, we can get to the Isles of Maine in less than two hours,” her mother was saying.
“No kidding,” Mark said. “So Eleanor, have you always been a sailor?”
“Oh, yes. We’d take the train up from Long Island for the summer at Lily House—my family’s house. I was the only girl around here who sailed in those days, and my old friend Bill Holloway and I . . . we usually won all the Sunday races.”
“A good sailor, this Bill?” Mark said. He shifted to glance at Gina, and she smiled. She loved his sly command of her mother. She set four places at the table, then stretched out in the hammock, just within earshot.
“Oh, yehhhhhs!” Her mother said in that breathy Hollywood way. “Bill was my best friend. He went to Yale and then was a lieutenant in the Air Force—his plane was shot down in the Korean War. But anyway, on my twenty-first birthday, Bill rowed me blindfolded out to Miller’s Island—that’s the one there, with the lighthouse. It was the most beautiful day. We had a fire on the rocks and baked lobster and potatoes . . . isn’t it funny, I remember he’d forgotten a flashlight. But we didn’t care . . .”
Bill Holloway’s name always came up when Eleanor was talking about sailing, but the older Gina got, the more starry-eyed her mother’s references to him became. Gina had tried to ignore this disturbing lapse, but now she heard something clear as a bell in her mother’s story: unrequited love. It was disgusting! Bill Holloway had been her sister Fran’s fiancé and Sid’s father! Gina checked Mark’s expression; he appeared to be amused by it all.
“Anyway,” Eleanor went on, “the tide went out, and we had to haul the boat halfway across the island to get it back in the water. It was very late . . . my sister Fran was furious when I got home . . .”
Gina watched a mountainous white cloud float in front of the sun, making the world dimmer for a minute.
“You have to watch the tide here,” Eleanor said. “The current in the river will suck you all the way up to the naval prison. Our girls figured that out the hard way.” She paused and flapped her arms. “What a day! It would have been nice to get out on the water, but Ron just wants to putter, I guess.” Her mother laughed as if it were just a little joke, but Gina bristled at her deteriorating tone. “I’ve been trying to get him to take the storm windows off for two mo
nths, so what’s he doing on the most beautiful day in July?” Eleanor gestured to the two windows propped up against the house. “Oh, this house is a dump! But isn’t it marvelous? It’s the best piece of property on the cove, the one with the real view straight out the harbor. I wanted to live in this house the very first time I laid eyes on it.”
Right now, in fact, Gina thought her mother looked as if she were stoned on the view.
“I hope at least Ron’s putting the lobsters in. I still can’t stand doing that, you know, even after all these years!”
When Eleanor had gone into the house, Mark flung himself on top of Gina in the hammock and buried his face in her hair. “She’s all right,” he said. “Not so bad. Who’s this Bill guy? She clearly had the hots for that dude.”
“The guy she wishes she’d married, I’m pretty sure,” she said.
“So, Mark, have you given any thought to where you might apply to college in the fall?” Eleanor asked when they’d sat down for dinner.
The little patch of flat grass at the edge of the hill facing the cove was their makeshift patio where they put their table. A real patio was on her mother’s “if this house were mine” list. There were only three plastic chairs with the table, so Ron had brought out a wood one for Mark. Gina shifted her seat a little so she could have a better view of the cove. It was a gentle evening; a layer of stratus clouds took the sharpness out of the blue sky and even though the breeze had died down, the mosquitoes hadn’t yet found them. With the question about college, Gina became hopeful that the conversation might advance beyond her mother’s past.
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