The Bay at Midnight

by Diane Chamberlain

  She nodded. “The baby’s father and I talked about it and we decided to have it.”

  “Who the hell is the baby’s father?” I asked, not angrily. Not with much emotion other than confusion. “Your mother said you haven’t even been out on a date in months.”

  “She’s right,” she said. “I haven’t, because I’m totally in love with…the baby’s father and he lives in Colorado. His name is Tanner Stroh.”

  “How do you know him?” Thoughts were zipping through my mind faster than I could capture them: how Julie would react to this news, my mother becoming a great-grandmother, Shannon’s music career. She was supposed to enter Oberlin in the fall!

  “I met him online when I was researching a paper on the Civil War,” she said. “He has a Web site that I went to. We started e-mailing. And we talk a lot on the phone.”

  I used to teach American history, and in spite of myself, I liked the fact that this guy from Colorado, of all places, had a Web site about the Civil War. I managed to stop myself from asking if the site was biased in favor of the North or South.

  “And apparently you’ve met in person,” I said, motioning toward her midriff.

  “He came here over his spring break,” she said, tugging one of the pieces of fringe completely free of the afghan. She grimaced, looked at me. “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” I moved my hand in a circular motion to keep her talking. “Where did he stay?”

  “He has some friends in Montclair.” Her lower lip suddenly began to tremble. “He’s awesome, Lucy,” she said, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune in meeting him. “You would love him,” she said. “I know you would.”

  I wasn’t at all sure about that. I wished she had told me earlier. Much earlier, so we could have had a reasonable conversation about her options. I felt a little betrayed by her. Shannon had always confided in me. I thought I knew everything about her.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this guy?” I asked, thinking of all the lunches and dinners we’d shared during the past six months or so when she’d obviously had this Tanner person on her mind and yet had said nothing.

  “I didn’t want to hear you say I was being stupid,” she said.

  “When have I ever told you you were being stupid?” I asked. “And why would I start now?”

  “You know…” She played with the loose piece of fringe in her hands. “Because he lives so far away and I met him on the Internet and everything.”

  I felt suspicious. “What’s the everything part?” I asked.

  “He’s twenty-seven,” she said, and stopped playing with the fringe as she waited for my reaction.

  I tried not to let the shock show on my face. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, but none of them would be helpful to her.

  “And what do you know about him?” I managed to keep my voice steady as I asked the question.

  She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived home, one of her dimples showing, and her eyes got the faraway look of a woman smitten.

  “He’s so amazing,” she said. “He’s in graduate school to get his Ph.D. in history. The Civil War was his undergraduate project. Now he’s working on something about the Holocaust. He’s totally gorgeous and brilliant. He wants to be a college professor,” she said, trying to win my heart. She knew I had a soft spot for anyone who teaches.

  “What did he say when you told him you were pregnant?” I didn’t trust this totally gorgeous, practically middle-aged future professor one bit. He lived two thousand miles away. He could be some sleazeball fabricating his credentials. But he did have that Web site. I would be sure to check it out.

  “He was really upset,” she said, “but mostly for me. I mean, he said he didn’t really want me to have an abortion, but he understood how having a baby would screw up my plans for college and everything, and he said that if that’s what I wanted, that’s what I should do.”

  “And what—”

  “I can’t do it, Lucy.” There was a plea in her voice, begging me to understand. “If it happened last year, I would have had an abortion. If it had happened before I was done with high school. But now…it would feel selfish of me to do it now. This is my baby.” She rested her hands over her barely there belly.

  “Oh, sweetie,” I said, aching for her. I thought of how hard the past few months must have been for her, keeping this secret from the people who cared most about her. I thought of her 4.2 grade point average and her responsibilities as president of her class. How on earth had she held it together so well? She was pretty amazing herself.

  “He’ll support me and the baby,” she said. “He wants me to move to Colorado and we’ll both get jobs and he’ll go to school part-time. Then, after the baby’s a little older, I can go to college.”

  Tears burned my eyes. We’d all thought Shannon’s future was so neatly mapped out for her. She’d gotten into a prestigious and competitive music program. She was talented enough to have a wonderful career ahead of her with a good symphony orchestra. Now I pictured her living a marginal existence in Colorado with a man she barely knew and a baby to take care of.

  “You’re majorly upset with me,” she said.

  “I’m upset, you’re right. It’s too much too quick for me to absorb.”

  “I know,” she said. “I should have told you about him long ago.”

  “You knew I’d give you flak.”

  She nodded.

  “Only because I love you and worry about you.”

  She nodded again, swallowing hard, the tremor returning to her lower lip.

  I sat upright on the chair, pressing my palms together in the lap of my long skirt. My braid fell over my shoulder as I leaned toward her. “I’m trying to absorb what this means for you,” I said. “For your future.”

  “You know how much I love kids,” she said. “I’d planned to be a cellist first and a mom later. I’m just going to reverse the order. I mean, if I had to, like, choose between the two things, I would choose being a mother.”

  Was that true? Shannon had wanted to be a cellist in a symphony orchestra ever since Julie and Glen took her to her first New York Philharmonic concert when she was five years old. Had the adults in her life, anxious to encourage that dream, ignored her more ordinary ambitions, or was Shannon just kidding herself?

  “You always said you had a calling to play the cello,” I said.

  “I still love it,” she said. “I still want to play and I still want to go to school…eventually. I just can’t do it now. You didn’t go to college right away. Is that so terrible?”

  “Of course not,” I said. I wanted to ask if this Tanner guy planned to marry her. I wanted to ask how she planned to take care of a baby and “eventually” go to school. But those questions would not be helpful. Not yet. Instead, I continued listening to her, trying to be as nonjudgmental as possible. She would get enough of that elsewhere.

  “How long do you think you can keep this from your mother?” I asked. “Is that why you want to live with your dad? You think he won’t notice?”

  “I don’t know what to do, exactly.” She stretched the piece of fringe taut between her hands, then dropped it in her lap. “Tanner really can’t have me move in with him until September, because he’s living with some other people right now and there wouldn’t be room for me.”

  I hated him. Selfish bastard. I wondered if one of the “other people” was his wife, but I kept my mouth carefully sealed shut.

  “So…” She looked at me helplessly. “What should I do? I thought maybe I should live with you, since you know about it, and I just wouldn’t—”

  “Uh-uh.” I shook my head back and forth. “You have to tell your parents, Shannon.You have to.You know that, don’t you?”

  “Mom will go totally ballistic.”

  “Yes, she will.” Julie would have a fit. A baby out of wedlock. Thwarted college plans after she’d driven Shannon all over the eastern half of the country to audition at
the schools she’d wanted to attend. A promising future now in doubt. And above all, the worry that something might go wrong. Julie had been waiting seventeen years for something terrible to happen to Shannon. Perhaps this was it.

  “Yes, she will,” I repeated. “But you still have to tell her.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Julie

  1962

  I thought that getting my period on our third full day at the shore was the worst thing that could happen to me. We were getting ready to go to our local beach, sometimes known as the “Baby Beach” because it was on the bay rather than the ocean and the water was gentle enough for toddlers. I loved swimming in the bay. I was hoping I could find some kids my age there to play with. I was already feeling lonely and had to admit that I missed the friendship Ethan used to provide. There were no other kids my age on our street. Lucy was useless because she was so afraid of everything and Isabel wanted nothing to do with me. In front of her

  friends, she treated me as though I was an embarrassment to her. Lucy was in the living room, watching The Edge of Night with Grandma while she blew up her Flintstones tube. Isabel was getting the beach umbrella from the garage and I was gathering towels from different corners of the house, when I suddenly got that ache low in my belly that had become all too familiar to me in just a few months’ time. I went upstairs to the attic and into the tiny curtained bathroom, pulled down my bathing suit and saw the spot. I wanted to cry, but I tried to be stoic. These were the days before slender plastic-encased tampons or stick-on pads. I pulled out the sanitary belt I had quickly come to loathe and affixed the bulky napkin to it, all the while cursing the fact that I’d been born female. Then I put on my shorts and a top, did my duty gathering the towels, marched downstairs and stood in the middle of the kitchen, the towels, some folded, some not, a bundle in my arms.

  My mother was wrapping the last of the bologna sandwiches in waxed paper when she looked at me.

  “Why did you change out of your bathing suit?” she asked.

  “I’m not going,” I said. “I got my stupid friend.”

  For a moment, she looked confused. Then she understood. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She walked over to hug me, but she was smiling, which made me doubt her sympathy. “Come to the beach anyway.”

  “Everyone will ask why I’m not in my bathing suit,” I whined.

  She shrugged as if that was no big deal. “If they do, just say you don’t feel like swimming today,” she said.

  Isabel came into the room at that moment, bopping her head to the Four Seasons singing “Sherry” on the transistor radio she was carrying.

  “Umbrella’s in the car,” she said to our mother.

  “Turn that down, please,” Mom said.

  I nearly cringed, expecting Isabel to balk at the request. She and Mom were arguing night and day, usually about curfew and the clothes Isabel wanted to wear, and I was getting tired of it. But Isabel just flicked the little round dial on her radio, lowering the volume, and she never stopped moving to the music. I liked watching her. I knew she was sexy. I knew that was the word boys used to describe her. She was wearing a hot-pink twopiece bathing suit, the bottom barely covering her navel. Her skin was a soft olive tone that would darken to a rich tan in just a few days on the beach. I couldn’t wait to be her age.

  Isabel suddenly stopped bouncing around the kitchen and stared at me. “Why aren’t you ready to go, Jules?” she asked.

  “I am ready to go,” I said.

  “Oh.” Isabel nodded. She looked genuinely sympathetic. “You got the curse.”

  “It’s so embarrassing.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry for you. I’ll teach you how to use a tampon.”

  “No, you won’t.” Mom opened the cupboard and took out the little plastic badges we needed to wear on our bathing suits in order to use the private beach. “She’s too young.”

  It didn’t matter whether Isabel taught me to use a tampon or not. The fact that she’d given me her attention and had made the offer were all that mattered.

  “That’s my towel,” Isabel said, abruptly pulling one of the towels from the bundle in my arm, making several others fall out of the pile.

  “What’s the big deal?” I said, frustrated as I picked up the towels from the floor.

  “No big deal,” she said, sending me a signal with her eyes that said Shut up!

  I thought I understood. The towel she’d taken was one I’d never seen before. It was very soft and huge and it had a giraffe on it. I was sure it was a gift from Ned.

  We piled into the hot car for the two-minute drive to our beach. Lucy had to put a towel beneath her legs because she thought the car seat might burn her. She already had her tube around her waist, as if she was afraid she might drown in the heat, and I helped her pin her badge to the strap of her bathing suit.

  Given that it was the middle of the week, our beach was not at all crowded, and that disappointed me. We walked from the crushed-shell parking lot across the hot sand toward the water, and I didn’t see another kid who looked like she—or he—was my age. Then I finally spotted one. He was lying on his stomach at the water’s edge near the sea grass, poking at a pile of seaweed with a stick. Ethan. What a spaz, I thought. How had I ever been friends with him?

  We reached a spot on the sand that my mother declared to be perfect. Isabel set down her radio and giraffe towel and pushed the umbrella stand into the sand, then opened it. Mom and I spread one of our two blankets out on the sand beneath it, not far from where the bay water lapped softly at the beach, and Lucy instantly sat down on it, the tube still glued to her body. She sat cross-legged, opened her book and began to read.

  “You can lay that blanket down right next to this one,” Mom said to Isabel.

  Isabel looked toward the lifeguard stand and I followed her gaze. It took me only a moment to realize that Ned Chapman was the lifeguard. No wonder he was already so tan. He wore sunglasses and had white zinc oxide on his nose. His blond hair looked even lighter than it had a couple of days ago. The hairs on his bare legs glittered in the sunlight, and I felt that new bellytightening sensation I would get each time I saw him. I’d feel that way for twenty minutes or so, then lose myself in the comfort of Nancy Drew and her safe and improbable mysteries. The unfamiliar desire that was mounting in me, in combination with my impetuous nature and need for excitement, scared the daylights out of me, and Nancy offered great relief.

  As if he knew I was thinking about him, Ned looked over at us and waved. I waved back, even though I knew it was not me he was greeting.

  “Can I go over to where Mitzi and Pam are?” Isabel asked.

  “May I please,” Mom said.

  “May I please?”

  “Of course. Do you want a glass of lemonade before you go?”

  “No, thanks.” Isabel was already on her way, her radio and towel in her arms, and I wondered if our mother realized Ned was over there. I watched my sister’s long legs as she strode through the sand to where the throng of teenagers were tanning themselves, radios blaring, around the lifeguard stand. God, I wanted to be Isabel! I wanted to know how to use a tampon and have those long legs and fully formed breasts. I wanted boys’ heads to turn when I walked past them, the way their heads were turning toward Isabel now. I watched the group of kids greet her. Pamela Durant sat up, tugging at a strap of her bathing suit top that had slipped down her shoulder. She grinned at Isabel, patting the blanket next to her, and Isabel sat down. It was an attractive group of teenagers. There were about ten of them, all long limbs and breasts and bare chests, wavy hair shining in the sunlight and bodies glistening with iodine-tinted baby oil. Most of them were smoking, but I didn’t think Izzy had ever had a cigarette.

  I knew a few of Isabel’s friends because she’d belonged to this group for the past couple of years. Mitzi Caruso was the nicest of the girls, but also the shyest and the least attractive. She had black hair that stayed frizzy all summer long and she was on the chubby side. Pamela D
urant was gorgeous, maybe even prettier than my sister. She wore her light blond hair in a long ponytail on the side of her head, and she reminded me of Cricket, that character Connie Stevens played on Hawaiian Eye. The only other boy I knew was Bruno Walker, Ned’s best friend. His real name was Bruce, but only the adults called him that, and he wore his black hair in a ducktail. He had green eyes and pouty lips and his body was big and muscular. I’d heard Isabel and Pam talking one time about how he looked like Elvis Presley. They said he was wild: He rode on the hood of some kid’s car once and he drank too much. He was good-looking, but he didn’t interest me the way Ned did.

  I saw Ned glance in our direction from his perch on the lifeguard stand, then jump down to the sand and walk the few steps to where Isabel was sitting. He put his hand on her shoulder, and my belly started turning flip-flops again as he leaned down to whisper something in her ear. She laughed, reaching up to give a playful tug on the black whistle hanging around his neck.

  You’re supposed to be guarding the water, I said to myself. I lay down on the blanket on my stomach, turning my head away from them and closing my eyes. I was jealous, pure and simple.

  I knew something about Isabel and Ned no one else did, something I could hold over my sister if I ever had that need. The day before, she and I had been reading on the porch while Mom sketched something at her easel. It looked as if she was getting ready to paint the rooster man’s shack on the other side of the canal. I wondered if she knew who lived there, but I didn’t dare tell her about my visit with him. Isabel suddenly looked up from her book.

  “Can I go for a ride in Ned’s boat today?” she asked.

  I waited for Mom to come back with her usual May I please, but instead she simply looked across the canal as though deep in thought. Then she nodded. “If either Ethan or Julie goes with you, then yes, you can go.”

  I was thrilled! I couldn’t wait for a ride in the Chapmans’ Boston Whaler. I hoped we could ski. But Isabel was having none of it.

  “Really, Mother,” she said, closing her book and getting to her feet, “that’s ridiculous.”