Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  “Sure,” Gran said. “Keep yourself covered, hands in your pockets. It’ll be buggy.”

  Skye had learned a lot about light at her mother’s knee, how an overcast sky could be a photographer’s friend, cutting glare and making colors more vibrant. The light, always spare and diffused here, was especially so today—greens and browns so saturated and vivid, they appeared unreal, like an animated movie.

  The tree canopy provided shelter from the rain, and the wind was barely audible. Only the tops of the trees shivered. As they passed through, Skye noticed an odd quality to the sound, though it took her a moment to put a finger on what it was.

  “Where are the birds, Gran?”

  “In hiding, mostly. When a storm is coming, they pick up infrasonic signals and changes in air pressure. Strong flyers get in front of the storm and let the winds carry them. Woodpeckers go in their holes. Some shore birds fly inland.”

  “And the rest?”

  “They hang on for dear life.”

  They emerged from the sanctuary into a stronger wind that buffeted them as they made their way back to the house. It was not unlike what they might experience on any stormy day on Haven Point, but there was something rousing in knowing it was a prelude.

  “An awakening wind,” Gran said as they hunched forward against it.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing, just a phrase I picked up somewhere,” she said obscurely.

  After breakfast, Gran got a book, and Skye fetched her laptop from upstairs. They turned their chairs to face the windows.

  It was cooler now, and the light waxed and waned with the passing of darker clouds. Before long, the wind grew louder. Rain pounded the side of the house. Skye laid a lightweight blanket over her legs.

  Finally, Gran put her book aside and sat up.

  “I think I’m ready now, Skye, to tell you this story.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  August 1970

  Haven Point

  MAREN

  Percy Stevens clapped his hands, and the din in the yacht club slowly ebbed.

  “Hello? Time to get going?” Percy said, calling the room to order. In his Canadian accent, commands sounded like kind requests.

  Maren glanced around the room one more time. Annie still hadn’t arrived. At seventeen, she was not obliged to inform her mother of her every move, but Maren had not seen her since midday and was growing uneasy.

  The room felt warm and close. They had opened the window flaps on the water side, but the breeze was too listless to help. Everything felt flat and insipid. Perhaps it was just the weather causing the malaise, but this summer, it was hard to tell. Oliver would arrive the following morning, and Maren hoped his presence would offer some improvement in what had been an odd, desultory season.

  Percy read through the announcements then started the crowd on the first song, “Abdul Abulbul Amir,” a nineteen-verse celebration of bloodthirst in the Crimean War.

  Then this bold Marmeluke drew his trusty skibouk,

  Singing, “Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!”

  Around the seventh verse, Maren sensed a change in the atmosphere in the room, a shifting in seats, eyes drawn to the yacht club entrance. She turned and saw the object of interest: Annie, picking through the crowd, Patrick Donnelly in tow.

  They crept all the way around the room before finally taking seats well inside the building. Maren, whose ability to read Annie was both blessing and curse, knew Annie’s little tour through the room had been gratuitous. She could have chosen seats near the door or walked around the outside to sit on the back porch with Charlie and his friends. But Annie was to rules as a kitten to a piece of string. While the sing-along was not technically closed, as a Haven Point family event, it might as well have been. To Maren’s recollection, no Donnelly had ever attended. Annie wanted as many people as possible to see her with Patrick.

  Once settled, Annie opened the songbook and began to sing. She held her chin up and tossed her mane of long blond hair over her shoulder, as if daring anyone to comment on her choice of guest. Harriet, who was seated opposite Maren, leaned over and whispered to her daughter, Polly, who nodded in her usual rote agreement.

  Annie insisted the only reason Maren’s generation disapproved of Patrick was because he was a Donnelly. While it was true that Finn and Mary Pat had never been accepted, despite the younger set intermingling, Patrick’s reputation as a bad influence was not entirely due to his surname. Maren was still trying to tease fact from wild rumor, but she had heard enough that summer to be concerned.

  Patrick, she noticed, did not join in the singing. She suspected he did not want to look foolish. He had settled on a posture of vague cultural interest, as if he was at a lecture or listening to a string quartet. I am merely an observer, his expression suggested, not meant to sing.

  Annie and Patrick slipped out the porch door after the sing-along, before Maren could reach them. At home, she tried to read a book in bed while she waited for Annie to return, but she struggled to concentrate.

  She had tried to convince herself Oliver’s arrival would help things, but a niggling sense told her the opposite was likely true. Whatever was going on between Annie and Patrick seemed to be picking up steam, and Oliver would not like it.

  At eleven o’clock, thirty minutes past Annie’s curfew, Maren heard the door slam, then the sound of Annie trotting up the stairs and turning on the 8-track in her room. Even Annie’s sullenness couldn’t squelch her bouncing vigor. She was still a perpetual motion machine.

  Maren climbed out of bed, crossed the hall, and knocked on Annie’s door. It was best to pick one battle at a time with her daughter. Tonight, by necessity, it would be the music filling the hallway. The issue of the missed curfew would have to wait.

  “What?” Annie sounded annoyed.

  “Please open the door.”

  Annie opened it just wide enough for Maren to see her sneer. Maren consoled herself that at least Annie didn’t appear impaired in any way. The whispering about Patrick had included mentions of excessive drinking, even drugs.

  “You know the walls aren’t thick enough for you to listen to music that loud, especially at this hour.”

  “Fine,” Annie said with an exasperated sigh. She turned on her heels, lowered the volume, and looked at Maren, eyebrows raised, as if to say, Satisfied?

  Before that summer, the only arguments they’d had about music had been over volume. While “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” were not Maren’s cup of tea, at least they weren’t unpleasant.

  Maren laid Annie’s new taste in music, which she fervently hoped was temporary, at Patrick’s feet. She recognized the ugly, discordant song Annie was listening to now. Patrick had been on the porch at Fourwinds a few days earlier, strumming this very tune on his guitar, while Annie gazed up at him as if he were some kind of oracle. Annie proudly informed her mother the song was called “War Pigs” by a new band named Black Sabbath.

  When Maren returned to her room, she could still hear traces of the angry, bass-heavy strains. She wondered, not for the first time, what had happened that summer. Where had all the sweetness gone?

  * * *

  Late the following afternoon, Oliver and Maren were in the kitchen together, the rain having interrupted his tennis game and her walk.

  “What’s this about Annie bringing that Donnelly boy to the sing-along?” Oliver asked.

  “Patrick, you mean?” Maren tried to sound nonchalant. She had hoped for a chance to talk to him before the reports about Annie and Patrick reached his ears, but she was not surprised he had already heard. Gossip was an Olympic-level sport on Haven Point.

  “Yes. Frank Lawrence mentioned it at tennis. He seemed to think I should be concerned.”

  “She’s been spending time with him lately.”

  “Frank says the kid is bad news, all kinds of wild parties and a lot of drinking.”

  “Patrick wouldn’t be my first choice for Annie,” Maren
said with a sigh. “But we need to be careful, Oliver.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said as he opened the newspaper.

  Fifteen minutes later, Annie and Charlie came in the kitchen door, both also driven home by the rain. Annie looked irritated. A wise navigator of her humor would know to exchange pleasantries before discussing anything important. Her moods these days were like the great storm clouds that rolled over Haven Point. They caused their mayhem, but they always moved on.

  Oliver, who was not a wise navigator when it came to Annie, launched in immediately.

  “What is with you and that Patrick Donnelly, Annie?” he asked, putting down his newspaper.

  “What do you mean?” Annie looked at her father, her eyes flashing. Maren suspected she relished this fight.

  “I understand you brought him to the sing-along last night.”

  “There’s no law against him coming to the sing-along.”

  “Maybe not, but you had to know it would get people talking.”

  “People bring houseguests,” Charlie piped in. “What’s different about Patrick? He was Annie’s guest.”

  “Yeah!” Annie shot Charlie an approving look. “I don’t care if people talk. What’s your problem with Patrick anyway?”

  “I’ve been hearing things,” Oliver said knowingly.

  “It’s disgusting how uptight this place is about the Donnellys.” Annie scowled. “Of course, everyone gossips about him.”

  “As I understand it, he’s been having big parties with a lot of drinking and drugs. I don’t want you to be a part of that.”

  “I know what this is about. He’s a Donnelly, so you’ll believe anything you hear about him.”

  “You might consider, Annie, that where there’s smoke, there’s often fire,” Oliver said, his tone now weary, as if the conversation was beginning to bore him.

  “You might consider, Dad, that you’re just a big snob!” Annie shouted. She stormed from the room. Oliver shook his head and opened his newspaper.

  Maren sighed. If Oliver would only show the smallest willingness to entertain Annie’s perspective, perhaps concede that some of the treatment of the Donnellys was unfair, it would help. But she had little hope of that outcome.

  She suspected Oliver didn’t actually feel that strongly about Patrick or his family (not yet, at least). His patrician manners were deeply ingrained, and Maren was certain he considered them vulgar. As a rule, though, Oliver was rather oblivious to pedigree. At home, while they still socialized with the “cave dwellers,” those members of Washington society who considered Oliver one of their own, they had many friends from disparate backgrounds outside that circle.

  This was just another round of Oliver versus Annie, with both combatants staking out their usual corners. And as Oliver learned more, Maren knew it would only get worse.

  * * *

  That evening, Oliver and Maren were to attend a party at Woody Van Sant’s house. When they came downstairs, they found Annie by the front door, shoving bottles of paint into a canvas bag. She had brushed her thick blond hair to silky perfection and was wearing her most flattering low-slung jeans.

  “Where are you headed?” Maren asked.

  “Jilly’s. We’re working on sets for the Sea Stars.” As the children’s drama counselor that summer, Annie’s duties included directing a production for the younger children.

  “I don’t want you over at that Donnelly house,” Oliver said.

  “I told you, I’m going to Jilly’s!” Annie snapped, affronted, then marched out the door.

  Annie was not accustomed to scrutiny of her comings and goings on Haven Point. Maren and Oliver had loosely adhered to the “Freedom with Safety” creed, by which kids were allowed a longer leash on Haven Point. The families all knew one another, and kids didn’t drive anywhere, so it was hard to get in much trouble.

  Maren had wondered through the years if parents might be too sanguine, but the question had been purely academic when it came to Billy, who was naturally cautious. Even without Patrick Donnelly in the picture, Maren expected they would have had reason to tighten the reins on Annie. Now, unfortunately, Annie would just see any restriction as proof of what she already suspected: that her father was unreasonably opposed to the Donnellys.

  * * *

  Woody Van Sant’s house had become something of a bachelor pad since his divorce. Three years earlier, in one of Haven Point’s epic scandals, Woody’s wife Sarah had left him for Chip Thorndike, a fellow Haven Pointer. Once past his initial devastation, Woody forced himself into the dating world and found he’d done so at a fortuitous time. When his kids were with Sarah, he’d hosted one woman after another on Haven Point, many little older than his teenage daughter.

  Woody extended the cliché by purchasing a speedboat—not a teak Chris-Craft (the only acceptable sort), but a huge cigarette boat that looked like something from a James Bond film. The mustache he had grown also ran afoul of Haven Point taste. It was not of the timeless walrus-like variety, but an awful, skinny thing that made him look like a cartoon villain.

  Worst of all, he had begun to dress fashionably. Tonight, he wore bell bottoms and a thick belt with a large brass buckle, shirt unbuttoned nearly to his navel. Woody’s date was a blonde with bloodshot eyes, who had brought along a few friends, a messy lot who flopped vaguely around the party, talking only amongst themselves.

  Haven Pointers had been wearing the same cotton ducks, floral skirts, espadrilles, and sailing shirts since the 1930s. Next to them, Woody and his girls looked like actors brought in to lend an authentic tone to a costume party.

  Nevertheless, Woody was still one of their own, so a crowd had gathered to eat his horrible appetizers and drink his Sambuca. They could wait patiently until he got past this phase and returned to his former good sense and taste.

  Maren spotted Georgie in the living room and left Oliver talking to Woody in the narrow entryway.

  “Kitty looks good,” Georgie said, when Maren approached. She nodded toward Chip’s ex-wife, Kitty Thorndike. There had been tension between Kitty and Woody when they discovered what their spouses had been up to, but they’d ended up friends.

  “She always did look good,” Maren said.

  “True. Kitty is certainly prettier,” Georgie acknowledged. “That Sarah always was a sickly little chicken of a woman.”

  If attractiveness drove extramarital affairs, Chip’s would have been inexplicable. He had left buxom Kitty for Sarah Van Sant, who had the body of a ten-year-old. Of course, as Maren knew, things were not always so straightforward.

  “I don’t know why they didn’t just swap,” Georgie said thoughtfully.

  “Georgie, really … swap?” Maren laughed.

  “I’m sure there’s swapping going on,” Georgie persisted.

  “On Haven Point? I doubt it.”

  “Okay, maybe not here,” Georgie said. She lowered her voice to a whisper, and leaned in to share what she obviously considered a fascinating tidbit. “But there’s supposedly a key pitching society on Peaks Island.”

  “A what?”

  “My friend’s daughter works at the hotel. She said a group gathers on the beach at night. The men put their keys in a basket and the women pick a set as they leave. They go home with whoever’s keys they grabbed.”

  “Oh, come on, Georgie. I’ve heard of that, but I don’t believe it. People are willing to go home with anyone? No one is too repulsive?”

  “That’s what everyone in these groups have in common in the first place, that they’re swingers.” She uttered the word with relish.

  “It sounds like a myth to me.”

  “That’s not all. She closed the bar late one night and walked by the pool on her way out. A bunch of people were going off the diving board in their birthday suits, one after the other. They all did little dances as they jumped.” Georgie bent her arms at the elbows, and shook her hips slightly to demonstrate. Maren nearly spit out her soda at the charade.

  “Fortunately, we d
on’t have to worry about that here,” Georgie said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

  “Ugh. A bunch of naked Haven Pointers.” Maren shuddered at the thought.

  “No, I was talking about swimming pools,” Georgie said. Pools were considered so gauche on Haven Point, not even the Donnellys had one.

  While the more exotic trends might not have hit Haven Point, the Thorndike and Van Sant divorces were part of an epidemic. Whispers of indiscretions were loud and frequent enough that even Maren had heard them. A couple of summers earlier, Orwit Ballantine was in Phippsburg and saw Margeaux Peabody slipping out of the Red Lion in the middle of the day. .

  “Hey, Margeaux, you meetin’ your lover?” he’d yelled. Poor Orry was only joking, but Margeaux burst into tears, and cried, “How did you know?’”

  “Has Oliver heard about Annie and Patrick?” Georgie asked.

  “Yes. They had a great row, of course.”

  “That Patrick’s turned out to be a shady character, hasn’t he?”

  “I always thought he was a little oily, but it wasn’t of much consequence until this summer. Annie seems completely in his thrall, and Oliver’s reaction is sure to fuel the fire.”

  Patrick had been a great lothario in recent years. Every year he had a new girlfriend on his arm, sometimes more than one a summer, each submissive and devoted.

  Through all that time, Annie had scarcely turned his head. If he had tried to fashion a way to fix Annie’s interest, he couldn’t have played it any better. Boys at home fell over themselves trying to get Annie’s attention. Patrick’s neglect was novel. When he arrived in July with no girl in tow, he barely had to snap his fingers to get Annie by his side.

  Maren used to think Patrick’s blithe attitude toward Annie might be good for her, that she could stand to be brought down a peg. This felt different, though, more perilous. She feared it would end in a hard lesson. It was not just that Patrick did not seem to care what Annie thought. He didn’t seem to care what anyone thought.