That morning her breakfast had consisted of a scarcely touched cup of coffee, and she’d set about cleaning the house. “Don’t knock yourself out,” Kip had said. The house wasn’t that dirty, and anyway, no one expected a house with a two-year-old residing in it to be spotless.
“I’m not doing it for him,” Shelley had informed Kip, not having to identify whom she was referring to. Kip realized her housecleaning was therapeutic, a way to channel her tension into a productive activity, just as he’d caulked the windows and refinished the bannisters three years ago.
At eleven-thirty Kip reluctantly reminded her of the time. She’d cringed and her eyes had misted over with tears. “I’ve got to wash up,” she’d murmured, her voice tremulous. “I’m a mess. Kip...” She’d given him a plaintive look. “Would you pick my father up for me?”
She was only delaying the inevitable, but he’d granted her wish. “Sure. Do you want me to take Jamie along?”
“No, leave Jamie here. I want to be with him when he meets my father.”
Kip had given her a smile, intending to boost her spirits. She’d smiled back, but it was the saddest, most poignant smile Kip had ever seen. He’d wanted to envelop her in his arms, to whisper that he loved her, to assure her that no matter how awful the weekend was, she wouldn’t regret having allowed her father to come.
He couldn’t say that, though. Her father’s visit might prove to be a disastrous mistake. As for the other part, telling her he loved her... He doubted that was something she was in any mood to hear.
Even so, her father, bless his blighted soul, had forced Shelley to lean on Kip this weekend. He harbored a strange, probably groundless notion that the trauma of seeing her father might somehow cause an emotional meltdown inside her, burning away her defenses and freeing her to feel again. She might pass through hell and emerge stronger for it. She might acknowledge that through it all, Kip had been with her, behind her, beside her, wherever she needed him to be—and that when all was said and done, that was as good a definition of love as any.
He parked in the asphalt lot adjacent to the dock and got out. The sweltering heat of the past several days had abated and the sky was clear, adorned by just a few high, tufted clouds. Within a minute of his arrival, he heard the deep, resonant moan of the New London ferry’s horn. The slow-moving vessel glided around the stone breakwater and into the harbor.
Kip leaned back against the hood of his car, waiting and wondering whether he would recognize George Ballard. It had been so long since he’d seen the man.
The dock workers tied the ferry to its moorings and the passengers streamed off, some in cars, a few walking bicycles onto the island, many carrying suitcases or knapsacks. Kip searched their faces, pausing to examine every passenger older than middle age. A hale silver-haired man bounded off the boat, swinging a leather satchel; before Kip could approach him, the man hurried over to an attractive woman at the other side of the lot.
He turned back to the boat and felt a sharp twinge of deja vu as his gaze snagged on a tall, bony man with whispy gray hair and parchment-pale skin. The man walked with a hesitant gait, his trousers baggy enough to flutter in the breeze as he stepped off the boat. He carried an old suitcase in one hand; the other shielded his eyes as he surveyed the people in the dock area.
Kip noticed the man’s pale gray irises, the striking height of his forehead, the breadth of his shoulders beneath his cotton-knit polo shirt. He noticed the surprising fullness of the man’s lips, bracketed with deep creases that emphasized his hollow cheeks.
He pushed away from his car. “Mr. Ballard,” he said, extending his hand.
The man regarded him for a moment, his thin brows dipping in a frown. Then he gave Kip’s hand a shake. “You must be the Stroud boy. Kip, is it?”
“That’s right,” Kip said, smiling at the comprehension that no matter how old he was, Mr. Ballard would undoubtedly think of him as the “Stroud Boy” forever.
Shelley’s father glanced past Kip and his frown deepened. “She didn’t come?”
“She’s home with Jamie.”
The older man digested this news, his thoughts hidden behind an impassive expression.
“Let me take your bag,” Kip offered, easing it out of George Ballard’s grip. It was lighter than he had expected. He imagined that Mr. Ballard would be lighter than he looked, too. He had an aura of fragility about him, despite his height, his wide shoulders, long legs and large hands.
Kip tossed the bag into the back of the car, then opened the passenger door. Before sitting, Shelley’s father gave the harbor a slow perusal. Kip recalled his own return to the island after so many years away. He wondered if, like him, Mr. Ballard was tallying up the changes, feeling the weight of his years, measuring the passage of time in the newly named shops and freshly planted flower boxes.
Once they were both in the car, Kip revved the engine and drove out of the lot. Shelley’s father continued to gaze out the window. “Did you have a good trip?” Kip asked.
“It was all right,” Mr. Ballard said.
The traffic on Water Street was heavy, cars creeping along while bike and motor-scooter riders wove in and out around them. “I bet it feels strange to be back,” Kip hazarded.
Shelley’s father gave him a sharp look. “Everything feels strange to me these days.”
“I’m sorry about your illness, Mr. Ballard.”
“It’s cancer, and you can call it that,” he snapped. Subsiding in his bucket seat, he added, “And you can call me George.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Shelley’s father folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Kip. “What I want is for you to be able to call me Dad. I don’t understand this situation, Kip. You get my daughter pregnant, you live with her, but you don’t marry her.”
Kip refrained from informing George that he had asked Shelley to marry him several times, and that she had turned him down. He didn’t want to cause friction between Shelley and her father before they had even seen each other.
Besides, Kip couldn’t fault Shelley for having declined his proposals so many times. She had too little faith in love to believe Kip could commit himself fully to her when he had once been so deeply attached to another woman. He had asked Shelley to marry him because it had been the right thing to do—and sometimes, ironically, doing something merely because it was the “right thing” was wrong.
“Shelley and I have worked things out between us,” he said vaguely. He would do whatever was necessary to avoid quarreling with George. The key to surviving the weekend was to keep things calm and civil.
“I know what she’s afraid of,” George muttered, staring forward, his high brow creased with lines. “She thinks if she does anything like her mother and I did, she’ll suffer the same consequences. Honest to God, Kip—if I could undo one thing of it, if I could teach her anything...”
Kip ground his teeth together. Less than five minutes since George had set foot on the island, and he was already subjecting Kip to a lecture about marrying Shelley and some chest-thumping repentance for his own sins. “Listen,” Kip said carefully. “You’ve come here to meet your grandson, not to rehash the past. I’ve got to warn you, George—Jamie is a terrific kid. You’re going to like him. You’re going to have a good time with him. Let’s focus on that, okay?”
George eyed him speculatively, a grudging respect shining in his gray eyes. “I don’t remember you being such a wise-ass,” he remarked, his tone implying that this was a compliment.
“Oh, I’ve been a wise-ass all my life,” Kip insisted with a grin.
They reached the lushly overgrown stone wall marking the beginning of Kip’s property, and he turned onto the driveway, coasting to a stop near the front porch. He hadn’t expected Shelley and Jamie to be waiting eagerly on the front porch, jumping up and down with excitement over their guest’s arrival. But he hadn’t expected the house to look deserted, either.
Sighing, praying that he would be able to h
elp Shelley through this ordeal, he climbed out of the car. A mild breeze swept across the yard, carrying with it the trilling commentary of several blue jays perched on a high branch of the red maple. He moved to the rear of the car, lifted the hatchback, and pulled out George’s suitcase. Slamming the hatchback shut, he glanced at the empty-looking house again, searching the windows for a sign of Shelley.
Abruptly he realized where she would be. Craning his neck, he spotted two shadowy figures in the open window of the cupola, one small and mobile and one tall and still. Through the screen he heard a gleeful yell: “They here, Mommy! They here!”
***
SHE HAD BEEN WORKING HERSELF into a state for so many days, stockpiling her rage, preparing herself to hate him, girding to protect her precious son from him. That morning, she’d scrubbed the house from top to bottom with brutal efficiency. Then she’d freshened up, brushing her hair and changing into a clean blouse and a pair of shorts. After she’d fed Jamie his lunch she’d brought him up to the cupola. She figured she was as ready to see her father as she’d ever be.
Which wasn’t very ready at all.
“We’re going to have company,” Shelley told Jamie as he scampered in circles around the tiny roof-top room. “Daddy went to pick up our company at the ferry.”
“We have company,” Jamie said. “We have chips!” Given the casual nature of life on Block Island, Shelley’s entertaining generally extended to serving beer and potato chips whenever someone dropped by.
“Maybe later,” she said.
“I hear car! I hear Daddy car!”
Shelley also heard the hum of an engine growing louder as the car neared the house. Glancing out the window, she spotted the Saab pulling to a halt in the driveway. Kip climbed out. Then, from the passenger side...her father.
He looked dreadfully old and frail, moving in small, stiff steps across the lawn. Even from her distance four stories above him she could see the sparseness of his hair, the pastiness of his complexion. When a gust of wind flattened his shirt against his chest she could almost count his ribs through the fabric.
He’s dying, she thought. That man ruined my childhood and destroyed my idealism, and now he’s dying.
Jamie was already wrestling with the trapdoor latch, and Shelley nudged him aside and lifted the door. She preceded him down the ladder steps, guiding his sandaled feet on each step so he wouldn’t fall. Reaching the attic, he scampered ahead, scooting down the attic stairs, past Kip’s unpacked cartons in the small bedroom, along the hallway, down the stairs to the first floor. The front door opened as Shelley descended the last few steps. The moment her father stepped across the threshold Jamie fell back shyly, pressing his back against her legs and staring up at the stranger looming in the entry.
Shelley lifted her gaze from her tow-headed son to her father. It was a struggle not to wince at his haggard appearance, at the sepulchral pallor of his complexion, the pockets of shadow under his eyes and the gauntness of his cheeks. His eyes, once alert and radiant, seemed flat and rheumy to her, and the bone in his neck bulged beneath his papery skin. Deep lines grooved the sides of his mouth and spanned his forehead.
She could ascribe his physical decline to his cancer, and then she would feel sorry for him. She chose, instead, to ascribe it to the years he’d spent in prison. He’d brought this deterioration on himself for having betrayed his wife, his employers, the federal government—and his daughter.
His eyes met hers for a moment, searching for something. Affection? Absolution? Welcome? Whatever he was looking for, he apparently didn’t find it, because he didn’t address Shelley, didn’t thank her for allowing him to come, didn’t apologize, didn’t even say hello.
He squatted down in front of Jamie and smiled. “Hey, there—you must be Jamie,” he said in a surprisingly gentle voice. It was more gravelly than she’d remembered, but sweeter than the voice she’d heard on the telephone a few days ago. He used to speak sweetly to her, hadn’t he? Once upon a time, when she was a naïve little girl, she was pretty sure he used to speak in a sweet voice to her.
She clung to the newel post behind her to keep from shivering. Holding her breath, she waited to hear what Jamie would say. He only gaped at the balding, skeletal man hunkering down in front of him.
“Do you know who I am?” Shelley’s father asked.
“You company,” Jamie said.
Her father’s smile widened. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“This is your grandfather,” Kip said when it seemed obvious that Shelley wasn’t going to introduce him.
Jamie looked bewildered. “My Gramma Grampa in Chester Hill.”
“Chestnut Hill,” Kip corrected, moving to Jamie and placing his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder, easing him away from Shelley’s legs. “That’s your other Grampa. You’ve got that Grampa and Gramma, and then you’ve got your other grandmother in Texas, right? And this is your other grandfather.”
Jamie twisted to give Shelley a quizzical look. It took every ounce of strength in her body to nod in confirmation.
Turning back to Shelley’s father, Jamie tilted his head and appraised the stranger. “You my other grampa.”
“How about if you called me something different, say, Granddad?” he suggested. “That way you won’t get confused.”
“Granddad,” Jamie said.
“I’ve got some surprises for you in my suitcase. Do you like surprises?”
“Soo-pri!” Jamie whooped. Shelley’s father had spoken the magic word; he had won Jamie’s eternal devotion. “Mommy! Company bring soo-pri!” Unable to contain himself, he pranced into the living room and out again, clapping his hands and shrieking for joy.
Shelley’s father opened his suitcase and pulled out several clumsily gift-wrapped packages. Jamie flopped down on the hardwood floor and tore the wrapping to shreds.
Kip inched closer to Shelley and discreetly slipped his arm around her. His touch seemed to drain her of what little energy she had left; her body went limp against him. Watching Jamie rhapsodize over his presents—a plastic dump truck and a clown doll that beeped when its stomach was squeezed—was almost unbearable. This felon, this cruel, selfish, deceitful man who had broken his vows and abdicated his responsibilities, who stood for everything Shelley abhorred, had won over her son with five dollars’ worth of toys.
“Are you hungry, George?” Kip asked, covering for Shelley’s lapse in manners.
Her father glanced up from his position on the floor next to Jamie. “No, thanks. I’d just like to spend some time with Jamie.”
“Maybe we could go to the beach. Would you like that?”
“Beach!” Jamie bellowed. “Let’s go beach!”
Shelley closed her eyes and swallowed. “I don’t feel too well,” she whispered.
Kip peered at her, his eyes shimmering, his arm snug around her quaking shoulders. “I could take your father and Jamie down to the beach for a while,” he suggested. “If you really aren’t up to it—”
She almost wished she could ask her father to take Jamie and let Kip stay home with her. She wanted to bury herself in his embrace, draw strength from him, let him shelter her from this agony. She wanted to lose herself with him, the way she’d lost herself one fog-shrouded September night, when his love had carried her far away from reality, from venal parents and lost wives and all the pain she and Kip had ever suffered.
But she couldn’t abandon her son to her father. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she mumbled. “Please take them to the beach. I’ll...I’ll just rest a while.”
“Sure.” He gave her a comforting squeeze and then released her. “Come on,” he said brightly to the others. “Let’s get some stuff together and go to the beach.”
Shelley watched as the men in her life joined forces to prepare for their outing. Hanging onto the newel post as if it were a crutch, she observed them, three generations, three men who had inhabited her heart in their own individual ways. One she had loved with all her heart, and now hated beyo
nd measure. One she loved now and would love always.
One was Kip, and as difficult as it was to have her father back in her life, trying to figure out her relationship with Kip was even more difficult. As he lifted her father’s bag and ushered him and Jamie up the stairs, she almost cried out, “Don’t go, don’t leave me!”
She had sworn to herself that she would never become dependent on a man. But today, as she watched Kip vanish upstairs with her father and her son, she comprehended that she had broken that vow. She was utterly dependent on him—and the realization frightened her to her soul.
***
HE TOOK THEM to Scotch Beach. Some twenty or so other people were enjoying the sunny afternoon there—a mob by Block Island standards, but really not much of a crowd. Kip had brought along a beach umbrella, several beach chairs, a blanket, towels and a tote full of toys. Taking Jamie at the beach was a lot more complicated than taking Shelley to the beach used to be. So much more equipment was involved.
Before they’d driven to the beach, George had wanted to wash up from his long trip. He hadn’t changed his clothes, though. Once they’d reached the beach he had pulled his shoes off and rolled up his trousers, revealing calves so pale and spindly Kip understood why he chose not to wear a swim suit.
Kip lounged in one of the beach chairs while George and Jamie played in the damp sand near the water’s edge, building a sand castle and trying out the new toy dump truck. The sun was high, the water placid. He gazed at the white sand, the stalky reeds of grass climbing the dunes, the clear line of the horizon and the deep blue-green of the waves rolling toward the shore in a gentle rhythm. Scotch Beach wasn’t as pretty as the secret cove Kip and Shelley favored, but it was special in its own way.
It was here that he had first met Shelley, over two decades ago. They had circled each other, sized each other up, and tramped through the grass together to examine a dead snake. They had been so fearless back then.
Jamie trudged across the sand to Kip. George followed, lugging the toys. As soon as Jamie reached the shade of the umbrella he tore off his sun hat and let out a whimper. “Dirsty,” he said.
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