Dockside

by Susan Wiggs

  Small families were so subdued, you could hear the clink of china and silver. You could hear mothers saying, “Don’t fidget, dear” or “Please pass the salt.”

  On the morning of the Bellamy wedding, a brilliant last-hurrah-of-summer day, Nina was working in the dining room of the inn. Unlike most kids who hated their crappy summer jobs at the car wash or municipal pool, Nina loved working at the Inn at Willow Lake. Though somewhat shabby, it was still genteel and peaceful. Nina loved welcoming guests, making them comfortable in their haven on the shores of idyllic Willow Lake.

  Today, though, she had to leave right after breakfast. Her mother had recruited her and Jenny to help with the wedding. After the ceremony, there would be a dinner at the main pavilion of Camp Kioga, and Nina’s mom was in charge of the food.

  She and Jenny rode in the Sky River Bakery van, along with the magnificent tiered wedding cake Mrs. Majesky had just finished with touches of gold leaf and silver nonpareil beads. Jenny was subdued, because her main reasons for visiting Camp Kioga—namely two of the boys who went to camp there—were gone for the summer. She knew she wouldn’t be seeing them until next year.

  Nina was subdued, too, and she had an upset stomach, but she didn’t attribute it to being lovesick, like Jenny. The sugary smell inside the van, combined with the winding road up to the camp, didn’t help. She wished she hadn’t skipped breakfast. Usually the staff at the inn was allowed to help themselves to breakfast, but this morning the idea of eating anything made her want to hurl. Plus, she had to pee really bad, and as soon as they got to the pavilion, she had to bolt for the ladies’ room.

  For the rest of the day, she kept too busy to focus on her upset stomach. At the last minute, Greg’s two sisters and his brother showed up, followed by some of Greg’s college buddies, and the gathering began to seem like an actual party. She and Jenny helped in the kitchen, and when the guests arrived for the reception, the girls kept the buffet tables filled with the feast prepared by Mrs. Romano. A band was playing and by sunset, the dancing began. Nina kept sneaking glances at Greg Bellamy, though he didn’t seem to notice her. He and Sophie—whoa, his wife—were all caught up in the festivities. According to gossip, the two of them had been college sweethearts. They’d broken up months ago, and then Sophie just showed up out of the blue with a new baby, and all of a sudden, they were madly in love again.

  No wonder Greg simply looked straight through Nina when she passed by with a platter of chicken cacciatore. He probably didn’t even remember that flower-scented summer night when he’d given her a ride home from the country club, when he’d said, “Maybe some day…I just might surprise you…”

  Embarrassingly enough, Nina had relived that night over and over—the night she’d lost her virginity to a West Point cadet. But the part she remembered most vividly, the part she replayed again and again in her head had less to do with Laurence Jeffries, and more with Greg Bellamy. Which was really dumb because he clearly didn’t think of her at all. He was totally immersed in Sophie and the little baby she’d brought to him.

  At one point during the evening, she found herself standing against the wall, trying to figure out how to adjust her bra without seeming too obvious. Maybe she was going through some developmental change, because all her bras felt too tight lately. She set her serving tray on a stand and tried, discreetly, to pull at the elastic through her blouse.

  “Is that for me?” someone asked.

  Nina came to attention like a soldier. Oh, crap. Greg Bellamy. “What?” she asked, then realized he was looking at the tray, not her. “Yes, sure.” She picked up the tray of champagne flutes.

  He looked directly at her, yet she was suddenly tongue-tied. What did you say to a guy who was completely, a zillion percent unavailable?

  “Uh, hi,” she said. Oh, brilliant, Nina.

  He barely glanced at her. “Hi,” he replied, then seemed to be at a loss. He helped himself to a champagne flute from the serving tray she held and drank it down without pausing.

  Wonderful, she thought. He didn’t even remember her. She was hired help, no more distinctive than wallpaper. Of course, that was the whole point—she, Jenny and the others working the wedding wore black trousers, sensible black shoes and crisp white shirts, hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail. Still, she thought, setting the tray on a rack for the busboy. Still.

  A group of Greg’s college friends surrounded him and started teasing him about being the first of their number to get married. “Here’s to you, buddy,” a red-faced frat boy said, “may you boldly go where none of us has gone before.”

  “Yeah, right into the arms of the little woman,” another guy said. “Hear that? It’s the sound of the trap slamming shut and the key turning.”

  They all laughed as though this was something hilarious. As though teasing him about being trapped like a rat was a good thing to do at his wedding reception. She saw him slam back three more flutes of champagne, one right after another. She was no expert on newlyweds, but she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to drink themselves into oblivion on their wedding day, because it tended to affect the wedding night. After his fourth glass of champagne, he stalked away, his body language exuding anger. He appeared to be heading for the restroom at the top of the stairs. Instead, at a side door, he paused and looked around, then slipped out.

  Now Nina was on a mission. What was this guy up to? She edged over to the door and saw that it gave access to an outside stairway leading down to an enclosed walkway and the dock. She stepped out, unseen, and saw him stop on the walkway, which was lined with a display of painted oars and other memorabilia the campers had made over the summer. As she watched, Greg drew back his fist and slammed it into the wall. The Sheetrock gave way with a dull cracking sound. He uttered a swear word even her brothers refused to say, and a cloud of gypsum powder erupted around him.

  Nina didn’t hesitate. She skimmed down the steps and hurried over to him just as he was drawing back his fist for another blow. “Hey,” she said in a stage whisper. “Hey, cut it out.”

  He whirled toward her, his rage seeming to lash out through the darkness. Nina didn’t flinch. She was a Romano. She had brothers. A pissed-off guy didn’t intimidate her. “I said, cut that out.”

  To her surprise, his shoulders slumped as the fight went out of him. “Who the hell’re you?” he muttered, trying to peer at her in the darkness.

  She bit back a sarcastic remark. Of course he wouldn’t recognize her, not here in the dark, under these circumstances. She took a linen towel from the waistband of her pants. “You need to straighten up, pal. Hold out your hand.”

  She took it gently in her own, trying not to feel his warm strength, or to hear the despair in the ragged breaths he took. “Be still, okay?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  She gingerly dabbed away the blood where the skin had broken. “Not the smartest thing to do on your wedding night,” she said.

  “This is not supposed to be my wedding night.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before.” She cleaned up his hand, then lightly brushed the plaster dust from his sleeve.

  “Before what? Jesus, she shows up out of nowhere with a baby. What the hell else could I do?”

  “Did you really just ask me that? Please tell me you didn’t ask me that.”

  He shoved his splayed hand through his hair. “I do love her. I have to. I love them both.” He was muttering under his breath now, as though trying to convince himself that he’d done the right thing. “They’re my life, now. Maybe not the life I’d imagined, but so the hell what?”

  “Fine, so here’s what you can do.” She took his arm and towed him toward the stairs. “You can quit whining. You can man up and be with the girl you just married. That’s what you can do.”

  He stopped and held himself very stiff. For a moment, she thought he was going to balk. Then he looked at her, his face unreadable in the darkness. “Nina.” He chuckled without humor at her gasp of surprise. �
�I do know who you are. I’ve filed you under ‘no longer an option.’”

  He was drunk, she reminded herself. He wouldn’t remember this conversation. “Go on,” she urged. “Get a cup of coffee. Go back to your wedding.”

  She stood in the darkness and watched him head back to the party. Although he took the stairs two at a time, full of purpose, she realized he probably understood that tonight would not be the hardest night of his marriage. Far from it. Tonight was just the beginning, and that was likely the reason he’d freaked out. He was trapped, neatly and completely. She’d heard people talk about such things before, girls getting pregnant in order to hedge their bets. Had the bride gotten pregnant on purpose, in order to marry a Bellamy? Nina had no idea. If she had, she was in for a rude awakening, maybe not tomorrow, but one day.

  None of your business, Nina scolded herself. She couldn’t believe how out of sorts she was feeling, yet she wasn’t quite able to put her finger on the cause. Standing there in the darkness of a beautiful autumn night, she felt a sudden rise of queasiness. The smells of the lake and the drying leaves and exhaust from the parking lot mingled in a particularly unpleasant way.

  Almost too late, Nina realized she was about to puke. She looked wildly around. The restrooms were just inside the door. She lunged for the stairs and made it, just barely. The ladies’ room was empty, a small mercy, she thought as she lost the meager contents of her stomach.

  Instead of feeling better, she was plagued by a fresh wave of nausea. She blotted her face with tissue, then leaned against the stall door, letting the metal chill her sweating forehead, waiting to make sure she wasn’t going to puke again. Fatigue rolled over her in a wave. Lately, it seemed, she was constantly tired.

  She heard the door to the outer lounge open and close. “So how crazy is this,” said someone. “Here I am, taking a break from my wedding reception to nurse my baby.”

  “It’s not crazy at all, Sophie,” said someone else. “It’s a blessing.”

  Nina made extra noise coming out of the stall so they would know they weren’t alone. Sophie, the bride, and her best friend Miranda, were seated in the adjacent lounge, which was furnished simply with rustic benches and a mirrored vanity.

  Nina turned on the water at the sink extra hard to make certain they knew she wasn’t eavesdropping on purpose. Nevertheless, she overheard a snippet…“…nobody. Just the help.”

  Yeah, that’s me, Nina thought bitterly, waiting for the water to warm up. Nobody. Just the help. The help, who had been on her feet for like five hours waiting on Sophie and her friends.

  She knew the kind of people these girls were—society nobs who treated drivers and housekeepers like nonentities, pieces of furniture you could say anything in front of. She and her friends had that fake-earnest, West Coast way of acting like your best friend while not really giving a shit about you. Greg Bellamy could have her, and good riddance.

  In the mirror over the sink she could see their reflection through the doorway to the lounge. Sophie had peeled down the bodice of her wedding dress and was holding a little pink-wrapped bundle to her breast.

  “I think it’s incredible,” Miranda said in admiration. “You’ve got it all—the guy, the baby and everything.”

  “Remind me of how incredible it is at two in the morning, when I have to do a night feeding,” Sophie said.

  Poor little rich girl, Nina thought, rinsing out her mouth at the sink. Cry me a river.

  Miranda lowered her voice, but still Nina could hear. “All right, so spill. Did you plan this?”

  Nina had been about to leave. Now she grabbed a paper towel and dampened it, taking her time as she blotted her face. She couldn’t help herself; she strained her ears to hear.

  “What do you take me for?” Sophie asked. “Hester Prynne? I didn’t even realize I was pregnant for weeks and weeks. I just felt sick and nauseous and constantly tired. I thought maybe I had a bug, or maybe an allergy to Japanese cuisine, and couldn’t keep any food down. Then I was worried that I had a bladder infection because I had to pee all the time. Pregnancy never even crossed my mind. Finally the thing that tipped me off was that my boobs changed. Got, you know, bigger and…kind of sore and tender.”

  Nina’s hand trembled as she brought it to her chest, felt the elastic of her bra binding her. Was she different, there? Sore? She kept thinking she’d just slept wrong.

  “That was when I started trying to remember if I’d missed a period,” Sophie confessed to her friend. “Turns out I’d missed, like, two….”

  Nina dropped her hand and stood frozen, the warm water pouring over her fingers. She was trying to remember, too. Ohmygod, she thought. Oh god oh god oh god.

  Nina never spoke to Greg again. She assumed he had forgotten her. He’d never really known her in the first place, and probably wouldn’t recognize her if he tripped over her.

  And as for Nina, she had neither the time nor the emotional energy to spare for someone who occupied such a minor part of her life. Her life changed on the day of the Bellamy wedding, though it had nothing to do with the Bellamys. Or the wedding. That was the day Nina realized she was pregnant. In a state of horrified shock, she had denied it for as long as she could, hiding it from everyone but herself.

  Or so she thought. One morning in autumn, her mother shooed everyone off to school early. As Nina gathered her things in her backpack, the house seemed almost preternaturally quiet. She could actually hear a radio playing; it was set to her father’s beloved NPR morning news.

  Frowning, Nina went to the window and looked out across the leaf-strewn yard. “Hey, Pop left without me,” she said. One of the few—very few—perks of having a dad who was a teacher was that they didn’t have to take a bus to school. She and her older brothers and sisters caught a ride with their dad.

  “I told them to go on ahead,” Ma said.

  For the first time, Nina noticed that her mother was wearing something other than her usual mom clothes—jeans and a sweatshirt, slip-on sneakers. This morning, Ma had on a skirt and sweater set, and low-heeled pumps.

  Nina felt a curl of inner dread. Something—besides the obvious—wasn’t right. “What’s going on?”

  Leaning forward into the hall mirror, Ma put on lipstick and closed her pocketbook with a decisive snap. “I called the school and said you’d be coming in late today. I’m taking you to the doctor.”

  “I’m not sick,” Nina blurted out.

  Ma only nodded. It was funny, how she was a naturally quiet woman. It was easy to mistake her for loud, because she was always yelling. Not by choice, though. She yelled simply because it was the only way to be heard. She much preferred to speak softly.

  “I know you’re not sick,” she said. Very, very quietly. “We’re going to Dr. Osborne.”

  Oh. Dr. Osborne was a women’s doctor.

  Nina hugged her backpack against her chest. “Ma—”

  “It’s time,” her mother said. “Probably past time.”

  Nina didn’t know what else to say. In a very small corner of her mind, she felt an eddy of relief. At last, her secret was out. She’d contemplated telling Jenny or one of her sisters, but she could never find the words. Fear and guilt sealed her lips and fused her jaw. Now her mother was forcing the issue.

  Marching in front of her mother like a prisoner of war, she went to the car and got in. Like everything else that belonged to the Romanos, the car was shabby and outdated and practical rather than stylish—a Ford Taurus. Nina sometimes wondered if her mother ever fantasized about owning an Alfa Romeo or even a Cadillac, something with just a bit of style. Today, though, such thoughts failed to distract her.

  They rode in silence for a while. Nina looked out the window at the scenery going by, trying with all her might to let the world outside push through her nervousness and terror. Avalon was at its most beautiful in the fall, when autumn was flaming its last hurrah. The sugar maples painted the hills with burning pink and orange and amber. People raked leaves into piles in front
of their neat clapboard houses. The shops of Main Street had mums and asters in the window boxes. She knew everyone in town, all the family-owned businesses—Zuzu’s Petals Boutique, the Camelot Bookstore, the Majeskys’ Sky River Bakery, Palmquist Jewelry. And everyone knew the Romano family. Her dad was the most popular teacher at the high school, winning “Teacher of the Year” more frequently than anyone else on the faculty. Once, he’d won for the whole state. They were known as a “good” family with “nice” kids. In a town like this, that designation meant something. So many kids got caught stealing beer through the back door of Wegmans, smashing mailboxes along River Road or climbing the water tower. Not the Romanos. Everyone admired the relatively well-behaved Romano kids.

  They weren’t exactly altar boys and Girl Scouts, but they stayed in school, played sports and held down after-school jobs. You’d never find one of them being escorted home in the back of a squad car. It was well-known around town that the Romanos would never have a big, fancy house or new car or a vacation to Florida. They’d never attend private college or join a country club. But that had never seemed important, because as a family, they had something money couldn’t buy—“good” kids who were the envy of everyone in town.

  Until now. Until Nina had managed to get herself in a fix so bad that even her mother was mad at her.

  She twisted her hands in her lap and gave up trying to concentrate on the world outside. “I’m sorry, Ma,” she said.

  Her mother kept her eyes on the road. “We’ll figure this out.”

  That made Nina feel worse than ever. She wanted to hear, “I forgive you,” but that wasn’t what Ma had said. “We’ll figure this out” sounded difficult and painful.

  When you were in high school and having a baby, that was pretty much all you could expect—for it to be difficult and painful.