Dockside

by Susan Wiggs

  She wondered if genetics had anything to do with her predicament. She was upholding a family tradition. She’d been born out of wedlock. Her parents had married, but look how that had worked out. Daisy wasn’t going to make that mistake. It wasn’t genetics, she concluded. It was her own dumb choices.

  She listened to the clothes dryer in the utility room, tossing around a load of washing, its rhythm oddly soothing. She smoothed her hand over the mound of her belly. The good news was, she was getting so big that pretty soon, she wouldn’t even be able to see her swollen ankles. Talk about feeling lucky.

  Restless, she put away the pregnancy book—did she really need that image in her head of the mucus plug?—and went to the screened window facing the lake. She thought about the uncountable ways her life had changed since she’d visited Willow Lake last summer. Back then, she’d been in full-on rebellion mode, furious at her parents over the divorce and determined to make them pay. Her stupidity had backfired, which in retrospect was no surprise. She was the one bearing the consequences now.

  Her mom had begged her to move to The Hague. She’d promised the best care to be found for Daisy and the baby, as much support as she could offer. Daisy had refused; her anger at her mother ran too deep. So here she was, in this beautiful place, with her future hanging in the balance. It was pretty surreal, living at the owner’s residence of the old inn. It was like a mansion in a movie, with all the grounds and outbuildings. From the window of the house, Daisy spotted her dad with Nina Romano on the deck of the boathouse on the opposite end of the property. They appeared to be having some kind of intense conversation.

  Sonnet, Nina’s daughter, was Daisy’s first and best friend here in Avalon. As for Nina, she had always been a bit of a mystery. Now that Sonnet was headed off to college, Daisy expected to see her slow down, maybe write a memoir or take up a hobby. Instead, Nina was plunging right straight into something new. A business, with Daisy’s dad.

  Daisy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She admired Nina, and it was somewhat reassuring to know Nina, too, had been a young single mom and everything had worked out okay for her. Daisy liked Nina, but at the same time, felt intimidated by her. Nina was the single mom everyone admired—hard-working, determined, and so successful that she’d been written up in a magazine, as the youngest town mayor in the state. There was something about Nina that made Daisy feel inadequate.

  When it came to her dad, Daisy didn’t exactly feel inadequate, but helpless. As in, she didn’t know how to help him. He seemed to spend every day hurting and lost, which most people didn’t realize because he did such a good job covering it up. Daisy knew he was totally consumed by guilt about the divorce. He blamed himself for letting his marriage fail. He’d been so busy with work and launching his own firm that he’d blown off his family. Now he was trying to make a new start—small town, family business, the whole bit. But he was still sad all the time. Still hurting and really, really lonely. He was the youngest of the four Bellamys, and, according to Daisy’s grandmother, the happy-go-lucky one. Maybe that was the reason he hated being by himself.

  Daisy often thought about going it alone with the baby, as so many single mothers did these days. A part of her yearned for independence. Then she would remember how lonely her dad was, and the idea of leaving him just seemed cruel.

  A knock at the door distracted her. Probably one of the workmen. With all the refurbishing going on at the main inn, there were workers all over the place, measuring and fixing things, asking questions and sometimes even checking something with Daisy, as though she had the answer. Didn’t they know she was clueless about everything? She wasn’t even sure she’d loaded the dryer correctly.

  Her flip-flops slapping against her heels, she went and opened the door.

  “Hey, Daisy.”

  She stood there, frozen, staring at her visitor. It was Julian Gastineaux, a guy she’d met last summer. Back when she was just a high school girl. That felt like a lifetime ago. She’d changed so much, she was surprised he recognized her.

  Julian was pretty much the hottest guy ever to draw breath. A year later, this was still the case. He was tall and slim, African-American on his father’s side, with his Caucasian mother’s light eyes and a smile all his own, the kind of smile that made a girl hear some kind of theme song in her head.

  Daisy heard it now, a delightful twinkling of acoustic guitar that stirred her from her frozen state. She couldn’t help but smile back, and just for a second, she felt like her old self again—young, flirty, carefree, like any other girl her age.

  “Julian,” she said, lifting up on tiptoe to give him a hug. And of course, that shattered the illusion of normalcy because in between them was a belly the size of a Volkswagen. Yet she was way beyond feeling self-conscious about her pregnancy. She’d found that people either accepted her, or not, and there wasn’t anything she could do to change anyone’s attitude. “Come on in,” she said, stepping back and holding open the door. “I knew you were coming for your brother’s wedding, but I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

  “Connor gave me a job again this summer. I need to save up for college.”

  “He must’ve prepared you for me,” she said, “because you’re being totally cool.”

  “Yeah, he told me. And I’m always cool, you know that.”

  It was true. If he hadn’t figured out how to take things in stride, Julian probably would have imploded a long time ago. His background couldn’t be more different from hers; a lot of it was a dark nightmare. He’d been raised by his dad, a professor at Tulane—a rocket scientist, in fact. When Julian was a boy, his dad had been killed. Julian had to go live with his mom—she was also Connor Davis’s mom—an aspiring actress who took the concept of neglect to new depths. She made Daisy’s mother look like Mary Poppins.

  The surprising thing about Julian was that he wasn’t totally destroyed by his situation the way most kids would be. He sailed through school, acing all his classes seemingly without effort. If there was anything odd about him, any personal flaw, it was his craving for taking physical risks. While lots of kids in his situation drifted beyond the fringe, his drug of choice was adrenaline. Anything involving dangerous heights and speed appealed to him. As Daisy recalled, his most exultant moment last summer had occurred when he scaled the most difficult rock climb in the Shawangunks, up the river in New Paltz.

  His life was radically different from Daisy’s. Before moving to Avalon, she had attended a Manhattan school so exclusive that people were known to put their unborn children on the admissions waiting lists. Julian, by contrast, had bounced around in his mother’s wake, finishing high school in Chino, California, where he probably would have ended up working at some crappy job and surfing on the weekends, except Julian had an ace in the hole—his brother Connor, who believed in him. Thanks to her dad, Daisy was learning what a powerful thing that was—to have just one person who totally believed in you and trusted you. It made you feel as if you could do anything.

  “So you’re going to be the best man,” she said.

  He spread his arms like a showman. “That’s what they tell me.”

  No kidding, she thought. Those shoulders. Those cheekbones. The theme song tingled in her ears again. “You know, if somebody had predicted last summer that my cousin and your brother would be getting married, I would’ve thought they were insane.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  Olivia was the quintessential Manhattanite and Connor a small-town working man. But together, they made the perfect couple.

  “I suppose you could say stranger things have happened,” she said.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  There was no need to explain what it was—not just the elephant in the room, but something even bigger than that. She sank down on the sofa, pulled her shapeless jersey shirt down over her belly. Since she’d revealed her condition last winter to her father in tearful defiance, she’d done plenty of talking—to her family, to her co-workers a
t the Sky River Bakery where she used to have an after-school job, to teachers, counselors and doctors. She had talked until she was exhausted, and certain things didn’t change. She was still pregnant, still confused, still indecisive.

  “It’s pretty much what it looks like,” she said. “I screwed up. I can’t even say it was an accident.”

  Feeling flustered, she grabbed a shirt she’d been mending for Max. Somehow, her brother had managed to lose three of the buttons, so she had to sew on all new ones. Keeping her hands busy helped her organize her thoughts. She was terrible at sewing, and the thread kept knotting up, but she doggedly kept at it.

  “It’s a boy, by the way,” she said. “Due right around the time of the wedding. I’m a bridesmaid, but Olivia’s prepared for me not to make it that day. If, you know, he decides to come early.”

  Julian nodded, steepled his fingers together. “That’s pretty outrageous.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “I think I do. It happened to a lot of girls at my school. There was a day care center right on campus.” Julian cleared his throat. “Uh, so, are you…with the baby’s father?”

  At that, she laughed. “You can’t know how absurd that would be. He’s a guy from my old school in the city. Logan O’Donnell. The last time I saw him, he was dancing on a table after snorting about a thousand dollars worth of cocaine.”

  “So what does he think of—” Julian made a nonverbal gesture “—all this?”

  “I haven’t told him yet. I will, though,” Daisy assured him. What she didn’t tell Julian was that Logan had kind of freaked out after that weekend. Every time he saw her, he was all, “I seriously love you, let’s stay together,” but she figured that was what any guy said when he was trying to get laid. She told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, blocked him from IMing, e-mailing and texting her.

  According to her friends back in the city, Logan’s folks had sent him to a very private, very expensive therapeutic boarding school for the remainder of his senior year to deal with his drug problem.

  She finished sewing on the buttons. They were crooked, but at least they were attached. “It’s just that, before I tell Logan what happened, I need to get everything in order.” Get control of everything, she silently amended. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. “See, I don’t really want anything from him. But one day, the baby will want to know. I’ve decided to write him a letter. My mom says I should get it notarized and send it registered, so he’ll know it’s from me and I’ll know he’s got it. I haven’t written it yet, though. It’s hard to know what to say.”

  “Don’t rush it,” Julian said. “It’ll come.”

  His laid-back attitude made her smile. Thank goodness he wasn’t like some of the girls Daisy hung out with who thought she was crazy not to try to get Logan to pay her a fortune in child support, which was the last thing she wanted. Daisy suspected that would never cross Julian’s mind. This was what she liked—well, one of the many things she liked—about him. He was easygoing, completely nonjudgmental, and he got her. Even sitting here, feeling as though she’d been pregnant for eleven years, she didn’t have to pretend.

  She heard the clothes dryer turn off and went to empty it, talking the whole time. Methodically folding towels and clothes, she filled him in on the rest of her life. She’d graduated from Avalon High and recently stopped working at the bakery in order to focus on getting ready for the baby. She was still pursuing her passion for photography, and in fact, she was in charge of all the artwork for the brochures and Web site for the Inn at Willow Lake.

  “What about you?” she asked Julian, setting the towels in a lopsided tower. Folding laundry was one of the few domestic chores she had mastered.

  “I’ve been accepted into the Air Force ROTC in college. Then I’ll go into pilot training and eventually, TPS—Test Pilot School.”

  “I’ve heard that’s pretty much the most dangerous thing there is,” she said.

  “Only if I’m not careful. I’m going to be careful.”

  “And it’s going to be hard,” she said.

  He looked at her pointedly, his gaze unabashedly outlining her stomach. “Not as hard as that. Being scared isn’t always a bad thing. Makes you careful. I guess with a little baby, that’s about the most important thing.”

  “Maybe it is,” she said, “but jeez. I’ve never taken care of anything in my life. Not a dog or a hamster. Not a philodendron or an African violet.”

  He looked at the pile of folded laundry, the shirt she’d just mended. “Right.”

  “I still haven’t closed the door on all my options,” she said faintly, her voice a breath of confession. “Once the baby comes, that is. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to give the baby away. Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be so horrible.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to think that.”

  Daisy had spent many hours imagining different lives for herself. She could be this young single mom, devoting her life to raising her child, much like Nina Romano had. Or she could give the baby to a family that desperately wanted him. After that, she’d resume her life, going to school or work, whatever she wanted.

  “I wish I could figure out the right thing to do,” she said to Julian.

  “There’s more than one right thing,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother would have given me up for adoption if my father hadn’t stepped up to raise me. Sometimes I think about what my life would’ve been like if I’d had two regular parents.”

  “News flash. There’s no such thing as a regular parent, genius.” Daisy’s counselor had urged her to explore the option, to educate herself. She learned that adoptive families tended to offer a wonderful future to the children who came into their lives. One phone call, and meetings could be set up with couples, and singles, of every sort—young, mature, straight, gay, wealthy, modest…There was no end to the families who wanted to open their hearts and their homes to a newborn.

  “Yeah, my dad wasn’t perfect, but I wouldn’t have traded him for the world,” Julian said.

  Daisy felt the bittersweet sentiment radiating from him. Somehow, he’d made peace with his loss. “And speaking of that, Mr. Brainiac, where are you planning on going to college?”

  “Cornell. I start in the fall.”

  Her heart lifted. “Ithaca isn’t that far from here.”

  “That was definitely a consideration,” he admitted. “My brother and I were separated, growing up. I’ll finally get to see more of Connor.” He paused, looked straight at her. “And you.”

  She blushed. It was funny how she could still want to flirt when she was as big as a house. Then she forced herself to be realistic. “Cornell’s like, the hardest school there is. You’re going to be really busy, hitting the books.” There was also the matter of about five thousand eligible, nonpregnant female students, but Daisy figured he’d find that out on his own.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “What about me? Hello. Gestating here.”

  “There’s no law that says you can’t have a kid and do other stuff, too.”

  She motioned him over to the computer and started a slide show of her images. “I’m taking an online photography class.”

  Julian watched the screen appreciatively as the images floated past. “These are good.”

  Daisy had always liked photography. As a little girl, she had captured everything with her point-and-shoot—family members, flowers and trees, people and scenery of the Upper East Side neighborhood where she’d grown up. As she got older, she experimented with different styles and methods. She tended to capture the small but significant details most people overlooked. In Daisy’s pictures, a rusty hinge on a barn door told a whole story. She could show an entire season in a raft of autumn leaves floating on the water, a world of pain in her father’s face as he bent over his drafting table, working on a design, or the story of her brother’s hopes and dreams in the way his grubby hands gripped a baseball bat.

  S
he got out her camera now, inspired to take some shots of Julian. He’d always been a good sport about being her subject. She focused on the sharp lines of his profile, and then a slim-fingered hand resting on the back of the chair as he leaned toward the computer screen. He exuded a peculiar athleticism, a kinetic energy, even when he was at rest. She’d probably never tell him so, but he took her breath away. How could one guy be so beautiful and so damaged at the same time?

  The slide show was on random mode, and images from the previous winter came up. She had done a whole series of images of Sonnet Romano. Julian didn’t really react, yet through the lens of her camera, Daisy could see the change in him. Sonnet was super-cute. And biracial like Julian, too.

  “My best friend,” Daisy explained to him. “She’s spending the summer with her father, but she’ll be here for the wedding. I can’t wait for you to meet her. You’ll probably fall totally in love with her. Everybody does.”

  He sat down, leaned back in the chair. “I’m not everybody. Who’s this?” He clicked Pause, freezing the slide show at a starkly beautiful shot of a young man in the snow. It was one of Daisy’s best images. The subject had the sort of wintry, Nordic features of a character in an illustrated fairy tale—straight, white-blond hair, sculpted features, eyes of sea-glass blue. He stood in a snow-covered park with bare trees inked in the background. A translucent ribbon of smoke from an unseen cigarette formed an imperfect halo over his head.

  “His name is Zach,” she said. “Zach Alger. Another friend I made when we moved here.” There was so much more she could say, but didn’t, because she’d probably start crying. Unlike Sonnet, Zach had not moved on to bigger and better things after graduation.

  “Where is he now? Will I meet him?” Julian asked.

  She shook her head. “He kind of…got into some trouble and moved away. I think he’s working up at the racetrack at Saratoga.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “It’s complicated. And it’s not Zach’s fault. His father had this online gambling thing going, and Zach was the only one who knew. He took some money to cover his dad’s debts. Now the dad is in prison and Zach’s on his own. It’s amazing, what a kid will do for a parent. I’d never make my kid do something like that for me.”