Safe Harbor

by Judith Arnold

  Then, when he ran out of excuses to stay at the office, he had been returning to the co-op in Pacific Heights—their co-op, the co-op he and Amanda had bought together once they were both out of graduate school and could afford their first real home—and turning back into a zombie.

  He discovered he could perform his act of superficial sanity as well in Boston as in San Francisco: the professional look, the professional attitude, the productivity. After a few weeks in Chestnut Hill, he was able to make reasonably civilized talk with his parents over dinner, although he still couldn’t taste the food. When Diana flew up from Baltimore with the baby, he indulged in the simple pleasures of bouncing Victoria on his knee and tickling her round little belly. After a while, he could almost pass for a human being.

  “He’s getting better,” the family whispered among themselves. “He’s beginning to snap out of it.”

  Aunt Martha hosted a barbecue on Labor Day. Kip actually thought he could cope with a family gathering. He looked forward to seeing his cousin Becky—who was now a sophomore at Williams College, his alma mater—and his other cousins, and Diana’s husband Glenn, who had pulled strings and traded vacation days in order to accompany his wife and daughter to the party. Kip went to his aunt and uncle’s house determined to have fun, something he hadn’t done in too long a time.

  “Kip!” Aunt Martha charged into the driveway and smothered him an effusive bear hug the minute he climbed out of his car. “Kip! It’s so good to see you! You’re looking wonderful!”

  That was a lie; he looked like hell. He hugged her anyway.

  “Uncle Ned’ll get you something to drink,” she said, arching an arm around his waist and ushering him around the house to the back yard. “You come with me. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

  On the patio beside the pool, she presented him to the daughter of one of her neighbors. The woman was a bright, attractive architect in her late twenties, currently living near Harvard Square. She was single. Kip understood at once why this charming young woman had been invited.

  No. He couldn’t cope. He closed his eyes and the visions flashed through his brain, all three of them, Amanda alive, Amanda dead, Amanda staring down her own death.

  He couldn’t deal with this.

  His aunt had barely finished making the introductions when he mumbled, “Excuse me,” and stalked away. He hurried around the house to the driveway, climbed into his car, drove back to Chestnut Hill and shut himself up inside his room.

  “It isn’t healthy, Kip,” his mother shouted through the door a while later, when she and his father arrived home from the party.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “It’s been over a year.”

  “Thanks for keeping track.”

  “Diana thinks you should see a therapist—”

  “I saw a therapist in San Francisco. He said everyone heals at his own pace. Well, my pace happens to be real slow, Mom. I don’t think I need to have some therapist in Boston tell me that.”

  “I don’t think you need that, either,” his mother said, opening the door a crack and peeking in. “I also think maybe you don’t need your well-meaning relatives meddling in your life.”

  He gazed at her, surprised and grateful.

  “There’s always the house on Block Island,” she said.

  He studied her as she stood in the doorway. In her mid-fifties, she was still a hearty, youthful woman, her hair more gray than brown but her face relatively unlined and her eyes astute. “I thought you hadn’t been there for years,” he said.

  “We haven’t, except for a weekend now and then. We’ve rented it out summers. But this summer’s lease ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The tenants will be out by tomorrow. I can call the agent on the island just to make sure, but certainly by the end of the week the house should be empty. Why don’t you go there for a while?”

  He considered it.

  “You’d have the place to yourself, Kip. Some time alone, but within shouting distance if you needed us. Take a leave of absence from work. Harrison will survive without you. I’m worried that if you stick around here you may not survive at all.”

  The island. The house. Why not? He couldn’t possibly feel worse there than he did here.

  “You were always so happy on Block Island,” his mother reminded him. “Maybe if you went you’d be able to clear your head and unwind a little.”

  “Okay.” He rose, crossed the room and gave his mother a hug. “Thanks.”

  “We love you, Kip,” his mother whispered. “Maybe this is what you need.”

  What I need I can’t have, he thought as the ferry carried him closer and closer to a destination he wasn’t sure he wanted to reach. What I need is gone. What I need is Amanda.

  The fog streaked his eyeglasses with water, and he removed them. Pulling a handkerchief from the hip pocket of his khaki trousers, he wiped the round lenses clean, then dried the gold frame and slid the glasses back on.

  The island loomed ahead. The ferry droned its horn as it passed the first of the stone breakwaters into Old Harbor. Kip gazed at the shop fronts and Victorian hotels lining Water Street, their outlines gradually clarifying through the swirling fog. As the boat drew closer to shore he was able to make out the people strolling along the street and swarming around the pier. They moved so slowly, he thought. Much more slowly than the hustling business people he encountered in Boston every day.

  This was a good idea, after all. Coming here was the right thing to do.

  If he told himself that enough times, he might start to believe it.

  The ferry sounded one final, mournful blast of its horn as it inched up to the dock. Kip pushed away from the railing and merged with the other passengers as they filed down the narrow stairway to the bottom deck. His Saab was positioned to be the first car off the boat. He climbed in, started the engine, and shifted into gear as soon as one of the ferry workers signaled him that it was safe to disembark.

  A decade had passed since he’d last been on the island, yet little had changed. A few stores had new names, a few building façades wore a fresh coat of paint, but the ambiance was the same: shops, boutiques, ice-cream parlors, everything tidy and unpretentious. The book store, the art gallery, the brick-inlaid sidewalks. The flower boxes. The Surf Hotel, the National, the alley leading to Aldo’s. The Seaside Market.

  Kip maneuvered into a parking space near the market, shut off the engine and got out of the car. He had been breathing in the briny sea air ever since he’d boarded the ferry at Pt. Judith over an hour ago, but now, for the first time, it struck him that he was truly on Block Island, separated from his family not only by sixty miles of highway but by twelve miles of sea. He felt more removed from them now than he had when he’d been three thousand miles away in San Francisco.

  He entered the Seaside Market. He wasn’t consciously expecting to recognize any of its customers or clerks, but he still found it jarring that every face in the store was unknown to him.

  Not that it mattered. He hadn’t come here to socialize, to renew old acquaintances. He lifted a basket from the stack near the cashier and wandered up and down the aisles, pulling items at random from the crowded shelves: corn flakes, a bag of apples, a bottle of orange juice, coffee, a loaf of bread, milk, peanut-butter. It didn’t really matter what he tossed into the basket; he wouldn’t taste any of it when he ate it.

  At the rear of the store were shelves of liquor, and there Kip paused. He could slap together a sandwich for dinner and munch on corn flakes for breakfast, but a whole lot of hours stretched between dinner and breakfast, hours he would spend alternately trying to ward off sleep and yielding to its torments. He needed something to get through those hours, ammunition to fight off the demons.

  He chose a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. A big one, the largest one the store had in stock.

  He paid for his purchases and carried the bags back out to the Saab. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would go to the bigger grocery store
over on Ocean Avenue and buy some real food. For tonight, peanut-butter, apples and bourbon would do just fine.

  He started the car, pulled out of the space, and cruised toward High Street. The last couple of summers he’d spent on the island he’d had his driver’s license, but driving on the narrow island roads still felt peculiar to him, almost sacrilegious.

  He wondered if he would find his ten-speed bicycle down in the basement of his parents’ house. If he did, it would undoubtedly need an overhaul—a complete cleaning, a lube job, air in the tires, the works.

  Great therapy, he thought sardonically. And after he was done overhauling his bike, he could weave some baskets.

  Spotting an unfamiliar store up the road, he slowed the car. He’d left the shopping area when he’d turned off Water Street. But here, amid bungalows and cottages, a pharmacy had sprung up.

  Block Island had never had a pharmacy before. At long last, someone had finally realized that people on the island sometimes needed medicine.

  Especially if they spent the night guzzling bourbon.

  He steered into the small lot beside the shingled building and yanked on the parking brake. As enthusiastic as he was about drinking himself into a stupor tonight, he had enough foresight to want to have a hangover remedy on hand when he woke up tomorrow.

  He climbed onto the porch of the shingled building. Inside he was confronted by the usual drug-store merchandise: racks of paperback novels, heavily discounted beach toys, over-the-counter medications, shampoos, toothpaste, a vast array of videos for rent. He roamed up and down the aisles until he located the aspirin.

  Selecting a large bottle, he returned to the front of the store and discovered there was no cashier posted near the door. He wandered back to the rear of the store, where an elevated counter marked the pharmacy section. Behind it was a glassed-in area of metal shelves lined with mysterious medical-looking boxes and vials. One end of the counter held a computerized cash register.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  “Be right out,” a woman’s voice responded. After a moment he spotted a white-coated figure emerging from behind one of the metal shelves, carrying a clipboard and a pen. She stopped and jotted something onto a sheet of paper attached to the clipboard, then scanned the shelf in front of her and jotted another note.

  Kip glanced over his shoulder at the rack behind him, checking to see if there was anything else he ought to buy while he was there. He had packed toothpaste and a toothbrush, shampoo, soap and shaving gear. If he wanted books he would go to the library or see what the summer tenants might have left lying around at the house.

  He heard the woman’s footsteps as she strode around the glass barrier to the counter. Reaching for his wallet, he turned back to make his purchase.

  Shelley.

  No, of course not. He must be mistaken. The woman nearing the counter couldn’t possibly be...

  Yet the hair that gently brushed past her shoulders was the same dark blond shade as Shelley Ballard’s had been. Her eyes were the same expressive gray. Her lips were as full and soft, her height as statuesque. Her forehead was as high as Shelley’s had been, her fingers as long and graceful. He could almost see those fingers tossing a Frisbee with brutal accuracy.

  She couldn’t be Shelley. Shelley had vanished without a trace—was it twelve years ago? This pharmacist might be tall and athletically built, her body trim in a skirt and blouse beneath her open white lab coat, her eyes clear and direct as she scrutinized him—but she couldn’t possibly be Shelley.

  She frowned slightly. “Kip?” she murmured.

  In Shelley’s voice.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “It’s you?”

  “Oh, God. Shelley.”

  The bottle of aspirin slipped unnoticed from his hand and dropped onto the counter. His attention was riveted to the woman darting around the counter, her arms outstretched, her face radiating a delight so contagious Kip felt a strange, wholly unexpected surge of joy. He extended his arms and she threw herself into them.

  “Shelley,” he whispered, hugging her hard.

  She hugged him with equal force. “This is incredible. Kip, I can’t believe it’s you! I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. It’s me,” he said.

  She stepped back and beamed at him. For a pregnant minute they simply stared at each other, absorbed each other.

  “You look good,” she said.

  “I look like shit,” he argued.

  She chuckled. “Okay. You look a little haggard. But—I mean, God, Kip, you’ve grown up.”

  “So have you.”

  “On you it looks good.”

  “On you, too,” he said, giving her a sweeping assessment. Her legs were still long, her calves sleek below the hem of her skirt. Her hips were still compact, her waist slender, her bosom nicely proportioned. Her face had matured in a remarkable way. There was nothing specific he could identify as a sign of aging—no crow’s feet or frown lines—but he sensed a wisdom about her he’d never discerned when they were kids. Her eyes were older, somehow. They’d seen more of life, and they intrigued him as they never had before.

  “I like your new eyeglasses,” she said.

  “New?” He let out a laugh. The glasses he had on were four years old.

  “You’ve turned into a yuppie,” she added, appraising his hand-knit sweater and tailored slacks.

  “I’m afraid so.” He continued to study her eyes, wondering what exactly they had seen, where she had been for the past dozen years, why she had left him without saying good-bye so many summers ago. Wondering whether it was Shelley herself or merely the shock of seeing her that sent his mood soaring.

  What made her look good to him had less to do with her inherent beauty than with his memory of everything she’d once been—his companion, his critic, his sounding board and sparring partner, his ally. His friend. Gazing into her bright eyes he saw not only their intelligence but the trust he’d once had in her, the affinity they’d shared, the honesty that had never, never abandoned them in their friendship.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, realizing at once that that was a inane thing to say.

  “I work here.”

  “On the island?”

  “Here in the pharmacy. I’m the pharmacist.” As if to prove it, she pointed to the name tag pinned to the breast pocket of her jacket: Shelley Ballard, Pharmacist.

  He shook his head. “Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have predicted that you’d wind up a pharmacist. You were supposed to be...an English teacher, right?” Just before she’d dropped out of his life she had loaded him up with all those novels from the library, he recalled. Excellent novels. She’d known what she was doing when she’d recommended them.

  “Well...” Her smile took on a certain poignancy. “Things worked out differently. But tell me, are you staying long? I guess your folks’ house is empty now, isn’t it? Jean Sanderson usually closes things up right after Labor Day.”

  Kip frowned. “Who?”

  “Jean Sanderson. She’s a realtor here. She oversees a lot of summer rentals, including your parents’ house.” Shelley grinned. “I’m a year-rounder now, Kip. I don’t know the summer people anymore, but I know the islanders.”

  “How long have you been living here?”

  “Three years,” she told him. “Jean says your folks have been to the house a few times in the past several years, but I’ve never seen them. Since I’m working and all... You haven’t been on the island recently, have you? If you were here and I missed you I’d die.”

  A quiet laugh filled his throat. In their youth she had always been threatening to die over some minor embarrassment or mishap. “No,” he assured her, the urge to laugh fading as his heart filled with an aching nostalgia for those simple days, when all he knew of death was Shelley’s melodramatic declarations. “I was living out in California until a few months ago.”

  “California! Oh, how exciting! I’ve never been to California.”
<
br />   Lord. This was really Shelley. He was actually standing two feet from her, talking to her, gazing at her, inhaling her faint honey-sweet fragrance. “Why are you here?” he asked, regretting at once the accusing undertone in his voice. More gently, he said, “I mean here, on Block Island? Back then, Shelley, you just—one day you just disappeared, and...” He realized he was stammering and shut up.

  Her smile expanded and at the same time grew pensive. “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  She glanced away. “I’ve got to work. I’m taking inventory. When you’ve got to order everything from the mainland it can get tense if the stocks dwindle.”

  “Maybe we could have dinner tonight,” he suggested.

  She brightened. “That would be great. Where should we go?”

  “Anywhere. You decide.”

  “I close up here around five-thirty. We could meet at a restaurant at six, or...do you want me to pick you up? Or you can pick me up. Whatever is easiest for you.”

  “I’ll pick you up. Where do you live?”

  “A few blocks from here, on Spring Street. I’ve got an apartment in a two-family house. Let me write down the address.” She pulled a blank receipt from a pad on the counter and scribbled her address and telephone number. Then she tore the sheet from the pad and pressed it into Kip’s hand. “This is fantastic, Kip. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, too,” he said.

  She clasped his hands in hers. “Six o’clock, then,” she confirmed. Her hands felt slim in his, cool and smooth. Abruptly she arched her eyebrows and looked down at his left hand. Her thumb rested against his ring finger--against the plain gold band circling it. “You’re married!” she exclaimed clapping her hands together in jubilation. “Oh, Kip, how wonderful! You’re married! Why didn’t you say something? Is your wife here with you? Oh, please—bring her along for dinner. I want to meet her...” She tapered off, her exuberance draining away as she gazed into his face and saw the stark sorrow he knew couldn’t hide.