Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  The kids didn’t help. The more she grew to really know them, the worse it got. They were no longer nameless beings that trotted through her imagination with chapter books tucked neatly under their arms. They were complex but mostly lovable beings. Like Thatcher, whose parents were going through a volatile divorce, or Rich who had Asperger’s. And shy Haley who barely peeked out from under her row of thick blonde bangs and still read at a first-grade level.

  Piper left work thinking about those kids every day. They infiltrated her car ride home and her sleep at night. Sitting at the bar with friends for Friday night happy hour she found her mind wandering back to them, wondering if things were okay that night at Thatcher’s house. Or if Rich had made it home unscathed by the sixth-grade bully on the bus. Piper had not expected her insides to shift in the way that they did. Her carefree equilibrium was gone. As was her time. The correcting of student work and planning of lessons at home each night. The required professional development workshops outside of school hours. Forget those lavish summer vacation weeks that friends in other career fields loved to wag their fingers at—those were mental-health days largely filled with curriculum work. As for the day-to-day grind, Piper had learned the hard way that once the classroom door shut, you were in a sort of child-induced incarceration. The students were both your jailers and your cellmates. No phone calls, no emails, no grabbing a cup of coffee. At least not until the bell rang for lunch, some three hours later! She couldn’t even leave the classroom if she had to pee. No, teaching was not a good match for her. There had to be something else. But she had to find it soon; she was living off her student loans, which at this point had grown into an amount akin to a mortgage payment, only with no house to show for it.

  When she finally turned the key to her apartment two hours later, her nerves were shot. Piper threw her tote on the sagging couch in the tiny living area and glanced around. It was Monday: her roommates were at work and the only sound in the apartment was the hum of the air-conditioning unit in the window. The fridge was empty, save for a bottle of wine (not hers) and some yogurt (also not hers). She pulled the tub of Greek yogurt out and stood at the counter eating. She needed groceries, which made her wonder idly about her dwindling bank-account balance. Hank had given her a one-hundred-dollar bill before she left, tucking it in her palm when she said goodbye. “Don’t tell your mother,” he’d said with a wink. “Treat yourself.” If only he knew that she was already a month behind on her share of the electric bill and gas.

  She reached for her purse and it was then she saw the rectangular pink candy box. Yesterday, on the way to their mother’s for dinner, she’d visited the Candy Manor with Wren and Lucy. Wren had wanted to pick up some chocolate fudge, a family favorite. The moment Piper stepped through the shop’s pink door she’d been hit by the smell of sugar. It was intoxicating. Behind the old-fashioned glass counter, a woman stood at a large copper pot with an equally large wooden spoon. “Look!” Lucy had cried, tugging Piper by the wrist. “She’s making fudge.”

  Piper had witnessed this countless times during her own childhood, but it never failed to mesmerize her. The pink store teemed with confections, glittering sugar-covered lollipops, and display cases of handmade chocolates and truffles. There was an entire wall of jelly bean bins. Piper had purchased some coconut clusters that she and Lucy had devoured in the car. And one other delectable thing: a box of chocolate covered cherries. Derek’s favorite. She’d completely forgotten about it until now.

  She checked her watch. Derek’s Intro to English Lit lecture would be ending in half an hour. If she caught the Green Line on Commonwealth, she might make it. Smiling, she grabbed her phone. She’d figure out groceries later.

  An hour later, Piper leaned against the wall outside Professor Jenkins’s door jiggling the pink box of chocolate-covered cherries. Jenkins was one door down from Derek. The department secretary’s desk was stationed in the hallway within sight, and Piper didn’t want to raise eyebrows.

  “Be discreet,” Derek had warned when they first got together. It was his only request of her, and as such, she remained determined to prove herself. But it was getting harder.

  She was about to give up when she heard voices coming down the hall. It was Derek. And someone else. Piper let her eyes travel over the brunette’s face briefly, before feigning disinterest. She was dressed preppy, like him (therefore, decidedly not his type), and was talking about an assignment. Piper was pleased to see Derek was having trouble listening.

  But her rib cage fluttered when he noticed her. Showing up like this was something they had agreed she would not do.

  The two stopped outside his office door as Derek unlocked it, but his eyes were already on Piper. “My apologies, Miss Bailey—it seems I forgot our appointment.”

  Piper lifted one shoulder, ignoring the brunette’s curious gaze. “No problem. I can wait.”

  “As you were saying, Margaret . . .” He held the door for the student, leaving it ajar.

  A few moments and several questions later, Margaret exited the office holding a book. Piper peered over her shoulder to better see the cover: Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas Novice, she thought.

  “I think you’ll find that helpful,” Derek said, following her to the threshold.

  He watched her walk down the hall before turning to Piper. She struggled to read his expression. “Come in.” There was no joy in his tone, and Piper deflated.

  “I’m sorry,” she began, as soon as she was inside. This time Derek closed the door. “Are you mad that I . . .”

  Before she could finish Derek was upon her, his lips against hers, his arms encircling her waist before she could get the words out. Piper inhaled sharply as he pushed her against the edge of his desk.

  He pulled away, cupping her face. “What were you thinking?” But his voice was tender.

  “I just got back,” was all she could say. Proximity to him always had an effect on her, and her body arched involuntarily toward his. She closed her eyes. “Did you miss me?”

  “You never told me any details. I didn’t know when you’d be back.”

  She smiled, tipping her head back. He had missed her.

  “It’s not like you tried to reach me.”

  He kissed a trail down the side of her neck, whispering as he went. “I wanted to, but the weekend was crazy. My in-laws were visiting, and the kids had a birthday party.” He reached her collarbone and his lips lingered.

  Piper tugged at the collar of her shirt, and Derek’s mouth followed. She groaned, her hands traveling across his back and down his spine.

  It was always like this with Derek. Unlike any other boy or man she’d known, his hands had a way of reading her body, responding to every shift and breath. Piper relented, and as she did she felt the coiled spring within her loosen and give. When Derek lifted her up she wrapped her legs around his waist. But there were things she wanted to ask him, things she needed to say. “Derek, I went home to the Cape. Remember how we talked about going away together?”

  He nuzzled her cheek. “I don’t care where you went, as long as you’re back.”

  As he lifted her up the roiling questions in her mind faltered in their haste, and her worries flickered and snuffed out like a candle. “I’m back,” she said.

  Afterward, as they lay together on the small leather couch in his office, Piper felt the rush of satisfaction give way to the creeping return of questions. It was a constant push and pull. She didn’t want to ruin these private moments, rare as they were. But there were things they needed to discuss. Like what they were doing. Where this thing between them was going.

  Piper watched as Derek buttoned his shirt and smoothed his hair. “I’ve got my mother’s seventy-fifth birthday this week,” he said. “What do you think I should get her?”

  She smiled to herself as she gathered her things. She liked hearing the ordinary details of his life, of being asked to weigh in on things like his mother’s birthday. “She liked the art print you bought for their
anniversary, right?” They’d picked it out together at a small gallery while walking around the South End one rainy afternoon, a gold-leaf framed watercolor of a meadow of violets. It was a rare outing for them, and Piper knew it was only because it was New Year’s Day and the city streets were empty for the holiday. And because his wife and kids were still in upstate Vermont at her parents’ place, having extended their Christmas visit.

  He turned to her. “You remembered that?”

  She wanted to say, “Are you kidding? It was one of the best afternoons of my life.” They’d had Irish coffees and scones at a bakery, strolled through the streets holding hands beneath the safety of their umbrella, and gone back to her place to make love. Her roommates had both gone home for the break, and it was the longest uninterrupted stretch of time they’d had together. Derek had insisted she stay in bed and had made a dinner of fried eggs and green peppers on the hot plate in her tiny apartment kitchen. Instead, she said, “Yeah, wasn’t it that little gallery on Tremont?”

  He held her gaze, a slow smile spreading across his face. Piper wasn’t sure if he was pleased by the memory, or the fact she remembered that his mother liked watercolors, but the way he looked at her made her insides flip-flop. “I don’t know what it is about you, Piper Bailey. But you always surprise me.”

  He was happy, and she decided to run with it. “So, the summer classes are over at the end of the month, right?” It was a lame question to an answer she already knew; the four-week course ended the last week of June.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And I seem to recall the mention of a little getaway. Just the two of us?”

  “Pipe.” She loved this. He was the only person outside her family who ever called her that. “You know I’d love to do that, but I just don’t see how we can. We can’t even go to a restaurant together here in the city.” He buckled his belt and sat down beside her.

  “We’ve talked about this. It’s just the Cape.”

  Derek laughed. “Just the Cape? That’s the summer extension of Boston. Everyone from the university heads out to the Cape. You know that.”

  “Not everyone. Besides, Chatham is my hometown; there are places I can take you that are off the beaten path. Places we could actually be together.” She’d planned the trip one thousand times in her mind. It was what they’d spent the winter talking about when lying together during a stolen hour in her apartment bedroom. It was what had sustained her, the promise that they would find some meaningful time together, and soon. That time was here.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to look at my calendar. Melody is talking about going to Nantucket for a couple weeks . . .”

  Melody. Derek’s wife.

  Piper sat up and tugged her shirt over her head, feeling suddenly exposed. “Don’t worry about it,” she said quietly. Hillary and Claire had warned her this would happen—they’d told Piper not to expect anything from him. “Has he shown any signs of leaving her?” they’d ask. And Piper would always have to shake her head no.

  Piper had never planned to get involved with a married man. It was so cliché. But having spent every Tuesday and Thursday listening to him lecture, watching the way he sat on the edge of his desk, ran his hand roughly through his hair when an idea excited him, it did something to her. After the poem recitation in his office, she knew it wasn’t just her. It started innocently with a coffee in the student center to discuss a paper she’d written. Which led to a discussion about where he’d gone to school (University of Colorado at Boulder) and his major and the music scene and his favorite band. The Samples, did she know them? She did not. But she went home that night and downloaded the album, No Room, and listened to it until the sun rose. After the next class, she lingered in the doorway. “My favorite track is ‘When it’s Raining.’ ”

  Derek lifted one eyebrow. “Try ‘Outpost.’ ‘Did you ever look so nice.’ ”

  A week later they went to see a band downtown, though not together. She went with Claire and a couple girlfriends. Derek met them there. They danced and laughed and drank too many beers in cheap plastic cups. He was careful; he went home alone. But only after a furtive kiss in a dark corner by the ladies’ room.

  It was like that for a while. Attending events separately, but finding seats next to each other where Derek would run his hands up and down her skirt during the show, causing her skin to buzz until the stage began to blur before her eyes and it was all she could do to make it to the intermission, where they’d make out in an alley pressed against the side of a cold brick building. Until he’d pull away, with a look of remorse and sadness that made him look younger and truer than she felt she had ever been.

  “I can’t,” he’d say, lifting up his palms in surrender.

  She’d cup his face in her hands and press her forehead to his. “It’s okay,” she’d whisper. “We don’t have to.” As if she could impart a moral pass to either of them for having come to their senses in time.

  But it grew old. Later when the same act repeated itself, she’d hang onto his shirt, crying, “It’s just us. It’s you and me, Derek.” As if they could occupy this fervent sliver of space and time. Like it was something they could harness between them, and any obligations outside of the two of them did not exist. To that point, their relationship had been clandestine and furtive, and it seemed like enough. They talked, endlessly and about everything. There were late nights sitting in dark out-of-town pubs talking politics and childhoods and their favorite Middle Eastern restaurants in the city. Derek made her feel safe. And savored. He always shared a cab home with her, delivering her to her apartment where he waited until she closed the lobby door safely behind her. He asked about her courses in the education department, and the other professors. “Watch out for Delaney,” he warned. “He’ll take one look at you and be done.” She’d delighted in the jealousy that sparked in his eye, and the feeling that she was his, in some small way.

  But the trouble was, she had fallen in love. She had not told him this; she did not dare. But the words pressed at the corners of her mouth each time she saw him, especially when they parted. The truth was, she needed more. Their secret relationship was not enough. It made her feel lonely, and, worse, cheap.

  Piper dressed quickly. “Maybe we should just take a break for the summer.” She did not want that, in fact she feared it might actually kill her, but she could not face a summer without seeing him either.

  Derek reached for her. “Honey, please. I want all this as much as you do. Just give me some time.”

  She resisted, but the look in his eyes and that boyish flop of dark hair that fell across his forehead got her. “Do you?”

  He nodded emphatically.

  “Then make it happen this time. By the end of the month, let’s have a date on the calendar.” It was a bold move for her, this ultimatum. But if she weren’t mistaken, it didn’t cause annoyance to flush his cheeks. If anything, he was looking at her with what she might go so far as to call respect.

  He pulled her close. “I promise.”

  When she left his office, Piper kept her eyes trained on the carpeted floor as she passed the assistant’s desk. It was when she got to the stairwell she realized with regret that she’d forgotten to give Derek the chocolate-covered cherries. When she found them at the bottom of her purse, the pretty pink box was crumpled, the bow crushed.

  Ten

  Wren

  What was it about middle children? Wren stood in the mirror studying her reflection. She was thirty-four years old, and a single mother, something she prided herself in, but had begun to doubt. Until now, she’d taken the safe route of career choice managing other businesses’ money working as a bookkeeper. Compared to her sisters, Wren wasn’t just the middle child in the family: she was also the middle achiever. Shannon had created the perfect family nest, something she painstakingly crafted like a flawless little fortress, copper whale weathervane and all. As for Piper, who routinely overdrafted checks and whose only profession thus far was as a debt-rid
den student, at least when she screwed up, she did so royally. That took commitment. Despite their very different tracks, both of her sisters leaned into the wind. What did that say about Wren?

  Wren was not a risk-taker. Unlike Piper who seemed to thrive in precariousness, who even cultivated it, Wren did not like change. Shannon may have been the sister that others might call the safest; after all she, too, had stayed in Chatham. She’d long operated on sensibility: marrying her college sweetheart, working at his agency, starting a family. But even within the confines of those “safe” choices, Shannon pushed the envelope. She pushed herself. She didn’t just have kids, she had the most well-rounded high-achieving kids: chess players, sailors, cellists, debate team! Her house was not just a house. Five thousand square feet, exclusive Stage Harbor neighborhood, direct waterfront. Shannon didn’t just live in Chatham, Shannon was leading Chatham. Fund-raisers. Boards. Committees. Wren was exhausted just trying to list them all.

  Which is what finally led her to open the Fisherman’s Daughter. Wren created a business plan and ran the numbers. She figured she could survive at least a year trying to break even. And then perhaps another year after that. If her business plan tanked, she could always go back to bookkeeping. There was plenty of business in town, and as a local she had contacts up and down the Cape. The Fisherman’s Daughter was no longer just a dream; it was brick and mortar and fingers crossed behind her back. If it went under, Wren could live with that. What she couldn’t live with was straddling the fence any longer.