by Luanne Rice
Their grandmother had come down to Noank from Boston. Dar remembered that she never cried or even looked sad—as if her mission was to lift the mood of her family, get them back on the right track, heal the children’s sorrow, drinking endless cups of tea.
In Dar’s dreams and her drawings of Dulse, her grandmother wore a crown. Her father used to complain about the Noank cottage, saying it wasn’t the gift he so much minded, but the fact that his mother-in-law constantly reminded him from whom it had come—that he hadn’t bought and paid for it.
Dar’s dream spirit flew outside, down to the cove where she and her father had walked at night, to look up at the sky and learn about the stars. Lights glowed in town and the harbor, making the darkness hazy. He’d pointed out his favorite constellation, Orion, and she’d shown him hers, the Pleiades—sisters clustered together.
Waking suddenly before dawn, she forgot where she was and that she was solid, human, older than her father had been when he’d left. Andy slept beside her. She eased out of bed, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed a warm fleece blanket, and went outside to sit. Scup followed her, took a turn around the frostcoated yard, spread himself at her feet.
This was her discipline, morning and night. She sat on a low teak bench between the Hideaway and the beach path, watching the eastern sky lighten to lavender, bright stars swinging so low they seemed to brush the field and sea. It took time for her to settle, but finally she began to follow her breath, noticing as it went in and out. Soon she stopped noticing the cold and the sound of the waves breaking offshore.
Impermanence; all things must pass.
The need to accept the unacceptable had led her to this practice. She had been wild and sad, swinging back and forth, close to losing herself forever. She had done everything possible to numb herself, protect herself from the pain—drinking and taking refuge in her work, as if they could protect her from every loss, fear, and worry.
At first she’d wait until five to drink: a scotch while going over that day’s work. Then wine with dinner, liter bottles of white wine, so many she’d started to feel ashamed about putting them out for collection. Scotch became vodka because it tasted cleaner and she hoped it would help what had become murderous hangovers.
Midnight phone calls she wouldn’t remember; she’d wake in the morning and see her chicken-scratch handwriting on a pad beside the bed, unfamiliar area codes, illegibly doodled names. Once she’d hit redial, heard an old boyfriend’s voice, and hung up softly, feeling mortified.
A heavy snowstorm when she shouldn’t have been driving, arriving home after a Christmas party, tripping over a rock in the yard, waking up the next morning covered with snow. Left side of her face black and blue, temple cut with a line of frozen blood on her cheek, and instead of calling 911 she’d gone to the freezer for the Stoli, poured a tall glass and sat by the window staring at the whiteout.
But the worst part of drinking hadn’t been the injuries, dramatic near-misses, embarrassing phone calls. It had been the long, slow loss of herself. Dar had cut herself off from friends, family, and life the best she could. She drank to feel alive, and then she drank to feel numb. There was no middle ground. Her hand began to tremble as she drew. Worst of all, the stories disappeared. Dulse went underground, and between hangovers and blackouts, Dar couldn’t find her.
Sitting on the bench now, she wrapped the blanket tighter. With every breath she let her shoulders drop a little more. She found herself opening up, exposing her tender heart, feeling deep sadness. The contact was fresh and raw, but it was reality. For so long stillness had amplified her fears. She’d felt empty and alone, panicking and jumping up from the bench or cushion at the first painful feeling.
Two weeks after falling in the snow, she’d started going to Alcoholics Anonymous—a morning meeting at the hospital in Oak Bluffs. That was fifteen years ago. Andy had gotten sober there, too. Two people who needed solitude joining a group to save their own lives. Now Dar mixed it up, attending the early meeting less frequently. There were meetings all over the island, different times of day, whenever she felt like going.
When she was finished her meditation, the sky was deep blue. Standing, she stretched, and so did Scup. She went back inside the Hideaway to find Andy still asleep. She stared at him for a moment. They were both loners, had never tried to live together, but it thrilled her to see him in her bed.
She leaned down to kiss him, and he rolled over and pulled the covers back. He was long, weathered, with a sexy sideways grin, and he was hard. She stood by the bed, undoing her buttons, letting her clothes drop to the floor. He stared at her body, and she liked it.
He took her hand, pulled her into bed. He kissed her, one hand on the back of her head, then moved his mouth down her neck, shoulders, to her breasts. Her nipples tingled, and she could barely lie still. She eased her way down, took him in her mouth. He moaned, and she wanted to drive him crazy.
She felt him starting to come, and backed off. He was still on his back, so she climbed on top of him, so wet he slipped right inside her. He cupped her breasts in his rough hands, and she began to move in tight circles. She tried to slow down, but he wouldn’t let her, and she didn’t really want to. Arms thrown around his neck, she lowered her chest to his, moving her hips hard up and down. He made an aching sound and she did too as she felt everything inside her hot and melting.
She climbed under the covers and he wrapped them tight around her. They stared into each other’s eyes. Andy had lines in his face and around his green eyes. His brown hair was going gray, but he still reminded her of the boy she’d grown up with. They’d hung out every summer, but it wasn’t until five years ago that their friendship had become something more.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did that just ruin your meditation?”
“Made it better.”
“Last night you were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Words I couldn’t understand.”
The language of Dulse, Dar thought. They climbed out of bed, took a shower together. She wanted to make love again, and it was obvious he did, too. But they had to get going.
“Can I take you for a ride before your sisters are up?” he asked when they’d dried off and gotten dressed. “Show you the stone wall?”
“Yes,” she said, and they headed out.
He opened his truck door, and she and Scup climbed in. Andy drove out the driveway, tires crunching the frosty ground. He stopped at Alley’s Store to pick up coffees, and Dar checked to see whether Harrison had replied to her note—he hadn’t. Back in the truck, Andy headed down a private lane in West Tisbury.
Dar was silent. She needed to see Andy a lot, almost every night. But there were other times when she required solitude, when she had to go deep into herself, nature, and the memories that drove her work. On nights like that, she couldn’t be with him. He was the same way. He needed his life alone in his pine cabin. It made her sad sometimes, that they couldn’t give each other more.
He drove along, under a canopy of bare oak branches. The deeper woods were filled with tall pines. A vernal pool lay in a hollow, the still, dark water glistening with cold light.
Andy parked the truck, and Dar and Scup followed him down a path covered with pine needles and fallen leaves, taking care not to slip on the frosty surface. At the bottom was a rushing stream, icily coursing from a melting pond. They crossed the water, made their way up the opposite side, stood at the edge of a seemingly endless field.
“This was one of the original island farms,” he said. “That’s its millpond.”
“Where’s the house?” she asked.
“No house right now. Just a cellar hole and this pond. And the wall . . .”
“I suppose the new owner plans to fill the pond, maybe dig a swimming pool, and build a sprawling mansion bigger than the one he has in Greenwich.”
“No mansion,” Andy said. “He just wanted the wall repaired. Wait ti
ll you see.”
They climbed the hill opposite the pond, and there it was, massive and sturdy stones cut from granite, covered with silver-green lichens and glistening frost. It looked as if it had been there forever, sprung from the glacier that had formed the Vineyard.
“Which part did you repair?” Dar asked, examining closely.
“You can’t tell?” he asked. “Then I’ve done something good.”
“You have,” she said. “It looks entirely eighteenth century.”
“Earlier,” he said. “Sixteen hundreds.”
“Wow, Andy. I can’t tell the difference.”
Andy took that in with some pride. Then, steering her through the cracked wooden gate, he said, “This is what I really wanted to show you.”
She gazed down at a four-foot-diameter doughnut-shaped piece of granite. Kneeling down, she felt the rough surface.
“The millstone?” she asked.
“That’s right,” he said.
“What did they mill?”
He knelt down beside her, foraged around the wheel, held up a few petrified kernels of corn. “Big cornfield here, once stretching halfway back to Alley’s. Of course, the property’s been cut up half a dozen times. The untouched part right here is five acres.”
He held her hand as they both got up. They heard Scup foraging through fallen oak leaves.
“Thanks for showing me all this,” she said. “Especially now.”
“I figured you needed to know there’s still some parts of the island left untouched. Or almost so,” he said, glancing at the wall and millstone.
He drove her back, dropped her in the farmhouse driveway. She kissed him for a long time, holding tight, wishing they could go back to the Hideaway. Instead she jumped out of the truck, and she and Scup ran toward the house.
CHAPTER FOUR
Delia stood at the kitchen sink, sipping coffee. She and Rory had stayed up late in their pajamas, talking by the fire. They’d remembered late nights long ago, parties that could last till dawn.
At Christmas and New Year’s, the guests would gather round the big fireplace in the living room; hot July nights they’d spill out into the yard, drinking Tilly McCarthy’s signature summer cocktail, Moët & Chandon mixed with fresh peach juice. Happy, lively times.
Delia peered out the kitchen window, glimpsed a white truck through the hedge. It pulled into the driveway, and Delia saw Dar kiss Andy and come toward the house.
“Good morning,” she said, kissing Dar as she walked in. “Didn’t Andy want to come in?”
“He had to get to work.”
Dar poured herself coffee. Was it wrong of Delia to want Dar to have someone in her life? Not that everything with Jim ran smoothly, far from it, but it helped knowing someone was there, the person you loved and cared about, the one who loved you back.
“Are you okay?” Delia asked.
“Yes,” Dar said.
Delia wondered. Was she really? Was it possible? They’d all been raised to think that marriage and children were the way. Their father leaving had done a good job of slicing Dar to pieces. Rory and Delia had been stronger, or somehow better able to seal it off. Practicality helped. Delia took out her checklist and years of their mother’s bank statements, ready to get down to business.
“Are we ready for this?” Delia asked.
Dar shook her head.
“It has to be done. I’ve looked through every account, watched the balance fall as her health care bills piled up.”
“I know, I was here,” Dar said.
Delia felt hot, but she took a deep breath. Each sister had helped in her own way, but it was true: Dar had been present the whole time.
“Sorry,” Dar said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just remember how hard it was to write the checks every month, seeing her money drain away. I was afraid it would run out before her heart stopped. We were lucky to be able to keep her at home till the end.”
“I know how much it meant to her,” Delia said. “Between you and the private duty nurses . . . She was lucky, Dar, wasn’t she? To be able to stay here? To have had the means? Grandmother made so much possible, when you think about it.”
“Yes,” Dar said. “The other world.” That’s what they used to call it, their grandmother’s big houses and proper ways.
“You know what I was remembering?” Delia asked. “Mom’s parties. They were so wild and wonderful.”
Dar leaned against the counter, arms folded. She wore skinny jeans and a long black sweater, and even though her dark hair was still damp, to Delia she looked raffishly elegant.
“Those parties were Mom’s way of whistling in the dark,” Dar said. “She never had them before Dad left, but afterwards she surrounded herself with as many people as she could, pulling her friends close so she could forget . . .”
Delia knew this was Dar’s sacred territory. “Don’t you think she forgot him long ago? They were separated by the time he left.”
“No,” Dar said. “She hoped he’d come back. I know she did.”
You did, Delia wanted to say. For Delia and Rory, survival had meant accepting that their father wasn’t coming home. He’d crossed the Atlantic—that much of the mystery had been solved.
Nearly a month after leaving the Vineyard, he’d called from the very edge of West Kerry, Ireland, where he’d sculled into an outermost harbor, rudder damaged and sails torn to shreds in a wild gale. One phone call home, one minute each for his wife, Rory, and Delia. Five minutes for Dar. And they never heard from him again. He’d made it to Ireland with still a fair way to sail to get around the treacherous coast to Cork, and that was all they knew.
“Dar . . .”
“It’s okay,” Dar said.
“All right, then,” Delia said, tapping her pad. “Let’s get down to this. It’s waterfront property. The reassessments were brutal.”
“Mom never anticipated how high they’d be.”
“Do you think she knew before she died that we’d have to sell?”
“She dreaded it,” Dar said. “But she was too weak to really deal; she wanted to believe we’d be able to keep this place forever.”
Glancing at the accounts, a thought crossed Delia’s mind: if they sold Daggett’s Way, there would be money left over. She could use her share to help ease her family’s financial strain, give Pete whatever he needed to get him back on the right track. Money didn’t matter to her a bit, except for how it might help fix her family.
“I’m up,” Rory announced, heading straight for the coffeepot. “Have you figured it all out without me? Good, let’s go to the beach!”
“Good morning,” Delia said.
“Sleep well?” Dar asked.
“Yes. I only called Jonathan once.”
“Why’d you call him at all?” Delia asked.
Rory held the mug between her hands, blowing on the hot coffee. “Well, it’s not as if the gallery is doing well in this economy, but I was thinking maybe we still had a painting of our own worth selling, to raise tax money. We don’t.”
“But it was a good excuse to call him,” Dar said.
“Forget it, okay? What are we going to do about the money?”
“It’s bad, you guys,” Delia said, staring at the checkbook. “No matter how we figure it, there’s not enough here. I guess we could talk to the tax assessor, try to work out a payment plan.”
“With what?” Rory asked.
“I know,” Dar said. “That’s the problem.”
“Look, it’s not going to get solved this minute.”
“It’s not going to be solved at all,” Delia said. “I’m just facing facts.”
“Delia,” Dar said.
“Stay calm, everybody,” Rory said. “We need a break. What are we going to do today?”
“I thought we’d go see Harrison,” Dar said.
“Oh, yeah,” Rory said, and they all started to smile. “The day’s shaping up already.”
They left the kids home. Sylvia was fine wi
th babysitting and taking a break from the adults. Dar took the long way, driving through Chilmark to Menemsha, out past the Coast Guard station and fish markets to the end of the road. A trawler chugged out of the harbor.
Across the white-capped bight was Lobsterville, a long, narrow sand spit where her family had picnicked on warm summer nights, waiting to watch the sun set and the moon rise. Dar and her sisters stared across the water at the broken, tilting pilings, remains of the dock from which their father had left.
“Now it’s time to be happy,” Rory said. “Don’t forget—happy. No melancholic silences until the witching hour.”
“I’m in sheer bliss,” Delia said.
Dar glanced in the rearview mirror to see if she was being sarcastic. Rory, sitting beside her up front, lit a cigarette and blew out smoke rings.
Delia made a show of opening the back windows so the car was suddenly filled with chilly salt air. Dar had quit smoking at twenty, but it had been an early bond with Rory—that plus piercing each other’s ears, numbing the lobes and outer edges with ice cubes, taking slugs of whiskey to kill the pain, and using a thick sewing needle to do the deed, then hanging tiny gold hoops bought in Oak Bluffs in each hole.
Dar made a U-turn at the dead end, drove back through Menemsha and Chilmark, through wooded back roads that led toward Oak Bluffs. The air smelled of bright pine and earthy oak. This was another land, removed from the beach, and from the towns. Nearly deserted except for the occasional cabin tucked back in the woods—one of which belonged to Andy—it felt remote and spooky.
“I can’t see Harrison living back here,” Rory said.
“Tell me he’s bought forty acres, planning to build a replica of his parents’ house in Edgartown,” Delia said.
“Not quite,” Dar said.
“He looked the same as ever at Mom’s funeral,” Rory said.
Dar pictured how he’d looked that day. Blue blazer, white shirt, yacht club tie, khakis, Top-Siders, heavier than ever, wiping away tears, mourning his “other mother.”
