by Luanne Rice
Dar flipped on her signal, even though there was no traffic in either direction. She turned right just past a sign for Island Storage and then wound along a sandy road that led to rows of storage units.
“What’s this?” Delia asked. “I thought we agreed not to store any of Mom’s stuff.”
“Exactly,” Rory said. “Forget the side trip, and let’s go see Harrison.”
Dar drove in a looping zigzag, up a small hill. Narrow metal compartments lined the road, but as it climbed higher, the units became larger, built of concrete. Dar always got lost in here, but she spotted the satellite dish on top of one flat roof, aimed toward it, and found Harrison in a satin robe flopped like a beached whale on a hardware store folding webbed chaise longue.
“Welcome!” he said, clambering up.
“Holy fucking shit,” Rory said, getting out of the car. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Harrison welcomed her, and then Delia, pulling them into a huge Harrison-style hug.
The unit’s overhead garage door was open, and Delia peered inside. Dar watched her take it in: the four-poster bed; three vintage guitars and two fiddles, gifts from someone he’d done some work for, hanging on the wall; an antique partners desk intricately carved with dolphins and scallop shells; the gilded chairs that had once adorned the living room of his parents’ Beacon Hill apartment.
“Is this where you hide your family’s treasures?” Delia asked.
“Hell no,” Harrison said. “Didn’t Dar tell you? It’s where I live, baby.”
“You live in a storage unit,” Rory said in a flat voice.
“Yes!” Harrison said. “It costs a hundred dollars a month—fully tax deductible. Come on in.”
“I can’t believe it,” Rory said. “This can’t be real.”
“I’m rich in many, many ways,” he said in his deep baritone.
Dar trailed behind as Harrison showed her sisters his flat-screen TV, his computer, his small bathroom.
“How is this possible in a storage unit?” Delia asked.
“It’s industrial, baby,” he said. “Think loft space, Manhattan in the eighties. Light industry welcome. Electricity, running water. Satellite TV. I rent under the name of Thaxter Enterprises.”
“Which does what?”
“Sails, drinks, and romances the ladies,” he said.
Dar knew the first two were true, but it had been a while since Harrison had romanced anyone. He never complained, but she knew he had fallen far. He wasn’t Icarus, but his father had been—gambling the old money away, melting his wings at the Monaco and Las Vegas roulette tables, crashing to earth.
After his father’s sudden death, Harrison had been left with debts and the reality of his father’s bank taking possession of the Boston apartment and the summer place on Water Street in Edgartown. He didn’t advertise his financial situation; Dar was one of his few confidantes.
“But there’s no shower,” Delia said, looking into the bathroom.
“For that I go to the yacht club! Which is where I’m taking the McCarthy sisters for lunch right now. Just let me change.”
Rory rode with Harrison in his navy blue panel truck, and Dar and Delia followed. Delia was full of questions, including how he managed to afford the yacht club if he was living in a place worse than a trailer park, and Dar kept telling her to ask Harrison. They drove down Main Street in Edgartown, past sea captains’ white clapboard houses and the brick courthouse, boutiques and cafés.
Dar parked behind Harrison, who looked more jaunty than she’d seen him all winter, in chinos, a red polo shirt, and a dark green fleece she’d given him for Christmas. He clinked as he walked, pockets full of keys. When they got to the yacht club, Delia shook the gate, puzzled.
“It’s closed,” she said, disappointed. “I forgot—it closes for the winter, doesn’t it?”
“Reopens in May,” Harrison said, his tone jolly. “The commodore left the water on so I can shower.”
He used a key to unlock the gate, held it open for the sisters, and guided them onto the sun-drenched dock. They sat in a row, legs dangling over the harbor, just as they’d done as kids waiting for sailing lessons, and then regattas. Dar noticed Harrison snuggling close to Rory; it was an open secret, the fact he had always loved her.
“Guess we can’t have lunch if it’s closed,” Delia said.
Harrison reached into his fleece pockets and pulled out three half-pint bottles of Benedictine and Brandy. “Lunch!” he said. “Sorry, Dar.”
“No problem,” she said, watching them all unscrew the caps and clink.
“To all the good times,” Rory said, staring into Harrison’s eyes.
“Yes,” Dar said, but Delia bowed her head.
“I’ll have none of that!” Harrison said, jostling her. “No sadness on my dock. So our parents spent all the money, taxes ate up my house and are about to eat up yours, but so what? The sunshine is free, the harbor is free—well, except for moorings. Don’t let the taxman get you down! Rent the unit next to me. The beaches don’t care if you live on the waterfront or you live on the light industrial way. Summer is coming.”
“But how do you afford your ‘home’ and your club?” Delia pressed.
“Man with a van, baby,” he said. “I still specialize in delivering rare instruments. Surprising number of collectors here on the island. Just last week I had a vintage Martin guitar, 000-45, tiny little thing worth a fat six figures, on the seat beside me.”
“Did you strum it?” Rory asked. “Come on, I know you did.”
“Hell yeah! Sounded about as sweet as a guitar can sound. Even though I can’t play.”
“Who bought it?” Delia asked.
“A guy in DC, big house off Embassy Row. Works for the government by day, gigs at the Hawk and Dove by night.”
“So cool, love,” Rory said. “This is genius. Getting drunk together like the old days. Before lunch, no less, on the day before we have to start packing.”
“Look,” Dar said, pointing overhead. A pair of snowy egrets flew low to the water, on their way to Chappaquiddick. They raised up to clear the On Time, the small ferry plying the channel between Edgartown and Chappy, then disappeared behind scrub pines.
“Dad,” Rory said, setting her bottle down.
“Do you remember?” Dar asked.
“I remember your dad,” Harrison said. “He was the coolest. Knew more about boats than anyone.”
“He’d tell us stories about egrets,” Dar said. She fell silent, wondering if her sisters had the same memories. He would sit on the porch steps, staring out at the salt pond. At the edge of the sparkling water were shorebirds, and his favorites were the lanky, gawky blue herons and snowy egrets.
He’d make up stories about egrets who fell in love for life, migrated down dangerous air currents to the West Indies, returning to the same pond every summer. He said they recognized the McCarthys, and their offspring did, and they would never forget—the snowy egrets of Chilmark Pond and the McCarthy family were connected by love and history forever.
“Why would he tell us stories like that,” Delia said quietly, “and then just sail off?”
“He meant to return,” Rory said. “With his Holy Grail, or whatever.”
“His ‘birthright,’ ” Delia said.
“What good was it to him if he bottomed out on a shoal?” Rory asked.
“Your father was a great sailor,” Harrison said, gulping half his bottle, putting his arm around Rory. “Here’s to Michael McCarthy, no matter where he may be!”
“Cheers to him,” Rory said.
“I still remember sailing with him,” Harrison said.
Dar felt herself levitating. She saw the scene as Dulse would, and when she returned home, she would write and illustrate it verbatim. The boy of privilege who lived in a storage unit; three sisters haunted by the father who had sailed away and never returned.
Two more egrets flew across the harbor, this time toward Katama. As in Dar’s life, eg
rets played a strong role in her graphic novels. They were known as messengers, all-knowing spirits, pure of heart, with long white necks, bright eyes, and black bills and legs.
Dulse sometimes flew on their backs, letting the strong white birds fly her over low hills covered with silver sage and purple heather, into caves lining sea lochs, searching for fishing nets caught on the craggy rocks. Dulse pulled the nets into the sunlight, combed through them for fish bones, whale baleen, iridescent jingle shells, mother-of-pearl, anything that sparkled. Luminosity, whether in the sky or waves or objects delivered by the sea, always delivered a message to Dulse from her father.
“Dar, are you awake?”
She opened her eyes, saw her sisters and Harrison gazing at her.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Harrison said. “Absolutely nothing. We’re drinking in the sun, and we’re together. Life is good. Isn’t it?”
They all smiled, answer enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning a fog bank rolled in from the east, melting the last frost and coating cobwebs with silver drops of water, making the house and everything in it damp and chilly. Today was packing day. Coffee percolated, the teakettle whistled, and Dar lit the woodstove.
Delia, Dar, and Rory’s children hauled the boxes from various hiding places. Sylvia and Obadiah were in charge of putting the moving-company boxes together with heavy-duty tape. Jenny sat on the kitchen floor with Vanessa, tearing newspaper into smaller squares, perfect for wrapping the smallest items.
“We should separate boxes and write our names on them,” Delia said. “So we know who’s getting what.”
“I would like the duck decoys,” Obadiah said quietly.
“I think your grandmother would want that,” Dar said.
“Where’s your mother, anyway?” Delia asked Obadiah.
“Uh, talking to Dad on the phone,” he said.
“She found something really incriminating in his e-mail!” Jenny said.
“What do you mean?” Dar asked.
“Rory hacks into his e-mail,” Delia said.
“What did she find?” Obadiah asked.
“That he and A-L-Y-S were having an affair even before he moved out,” Jenny said, her whole body shivering with a sob. “I can’t stand saying her name, so I spell it!”
“Oh, honey,” Dar said, hugging her.
“It’s terrible,” Jenny wept.
“What is terrible?” Rory asked, tearing into the room.
“Nothing,” Obadiah said quickly, as if wanting to protect her.
“No secrets. Tell me.”
“You have secrets!” Jenny said, her voice rising toward hysteria.
“Aunt Dar said I could have the duck decoys!” Obadiah cried out, making such a heartbreakingly desperate attempt to change the subject he began to shake.
“Your father probably has plenty of duck decoys,” Rory said. “In his parents’ house just a mile from here. I’m sure he’d let you use them.”
Obadiah turned as if she’d slapped him, sensitive to his parents’ breakup and the tensions of his mother and aunts. Jenny sobbed as her brother ran from the kitchen. Then Rory exhaled hard and went after him.
Dar stoked the woodstove, trying to warm the room. Everyone’s grief was heavier than fog. Her heart cracked, one more window in an old house being broken. She looked around, reading the room as a cautionary love story—the old oak and maple furniture, the paintings, drawings the girls had done when they were little, shells collected on beach walks, stored in old glass milk bottles. Their mother and grandmother had thrown away nothing.
For Dulse, man-made objects meant nothing. She foraged the beach and woods for shells and pebbles. Iridescence poured from the sky, through silver-edged clouds, turning shell and bone into treasure, and she absorbed her lost father’s love through her fragile skin.
Looking around the kitchen, Dar knew that “things” mattered. Sea glass, channeled whelks, and driftwood gathered on family walks were just as important as other family heirlooms. She took a deep breath; they had to start somewhere. She reached for a small pewter dory on a mahogany shelf above her grandmother’s spoon collection, then held the boat up. “Who would like this?”
No one spoke. Dar supposed they all harbored secret wishes, their own private desires for a piece of this paradise. Rory walked in, arm around Obadiah. Both mother’s and son’s blue eyes were bereft. I hate myself, Rory mouthed silently to her sisters.
“Here’s an idea,” Delia said. “What if we took pieces of masking tape, wrote our names on them, and put them on whatever we want?”
“What if two people want the same thing?” Jenny asked.
“We’ll duel,” Delia said.
“We could play darts and the winner gets it,” Rory said.
Everyone approved the masking tape idea. As they spread throughout the big old farmhouse, Dar put James Taylor on the kitchen stereo and turned on all the house speakers. She was still holding the small dory; it felt warm in her hand. Her father had left it here; he’d once told her it came from his grandfather’s boat shed in Cork. She wrote her name on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on.
The third day of packing, Rory went to her old room and looked around. The brass bed, the patchwork quilt, the chest of drawers she and Dar had painted with mermaids and whales, one of her grandmother’s handmade rugs braided from their cast-off wool skirts and jackets, a framed watercolor her mother had done of Rory and her sisters playing on the beach. She sat down heavily. Being in this house made her feel even more tied to Jonathan.
They’d hung out together in groups one whole summer, but they’d fallen in love at a beach bonfire, far out on the acres of private dunes and pristine beach known as Squibnocket Associates. There were only one hundred member families, and Jonathan’s and Rory’s were two of them.
Kids clustered around the fire, including Harrison, Delia, and a bunch of friends. The moon had risen, spilling silver over the waves, onto Nomans Land, the island just offshore. Rory stood on the tide line, ankle deep in frothy water.
She felt Jonathan before she saw him. He stood so close, his breath on her neck like a warm breeze.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Nomans Land,” she said.
“The navy used it for bombing practice,” he said.
“As if I didn’t know. I live right down the beach.”
“I know where you live,” he said. He put his arm around her waist and led her away, as if from danger. They walked a hundred yards, bare feet in the effervescent white wash, far enough from the group that the fire’s crackle was lost in the sound of waves. Glancing back once, she saw the glow. A few minutes later, Jonathan eased her down onto the hard sand.
He held her face in his hands, stared deeply into her eyes. She laughed nervously as if they were playing at being older than they were, but he didn’t even smile. He pushed the hair back from her face, caressed her cheek, lowered his mouth to hers.
The kiss was so hot, she nearly cried out. He reached under her embroidered cotton top, and she felt his hand on her breast. Second base, and he was turning her inside out, nerve endings sizzling. The waves washed up to their knees, tide coming in. Next thing she knew, they were doused with salt water, laughing.
“Oops,” he said.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” she said.
They crawled up the beach, fumbled with each other’s shorts. Jonathan wasn’t wearing underwear, and she was startled, fascinated, and slightly grossed out.
“Is this your first time?” he asked, lying on top of her, his scalding hot erection pressed against her belly.
She nodded, wondering whether it was his first time too, holding back the question because she knew somehow it wasn’t.
“You’re more beautiful than any girl on the island.”
“What a line,” she said.
“You don’t believe me?”
She didn’t respond, and
he kissed her lips. He pushed himself inside her, and she thought she would split in half. But then it started to feel good in a sparkly-creepy way, and she bit her lip until she tasted blood. The chilly sea breeze blew across their soaked bodies, but his chest was hot as he held her tight.
From that moment on, Rory was in love. They stayed together through his graduations from Deerfield and Trinity, hers from Fitch High School and Connecticut College, with a major in marine biology.
He cheated on her. At the end of that very first summer, with a nanny for a family in West Chop. In prep school, with a Miss Porter’s girl who’d gone to Deerfield for a dance. At Trinity, with his pretty art history teaching assistant. Rory knew.
She had a way of figuring it all out. He’d sound different on the phone, look sheepish when they saw each other, touch her tentatively as if expecting to be slapped down.
She’d go through his pockets, wallet, datebook, address book. When she’d find a new girl’s name written in, or tickets to a play or movie he hadn’t told her about, or a cocktail napkin with a stupid haiku written on it, she’d hate him. She’d confront him, and she’d cry—and he’d soothe her, saying the girl had come on to him, he’d tried to resist, it meant nothing.
She broke up with him “for good” the October after college graduation. She couldn’t bear the worry and piercing sense of betrayal. They’d get together for brief interludes, but her lack of trust was strong, and he felt constantly scrutinized and attacked. Three summers later they broke up again “for good.”
Loneliness for him made Rory feel desperate, as if she’d be alone forever. It was the worst feeling, as if she were hollow, as if she didn’t even exist without someone to love her.
That’s the state she’d been in when she met Alex, a Brazilian fisherman on a boat at Menemsha, where she had gone to make notes on the fishery, hoping to get into a graduate program at Scripps. Alexander Fortuna was very tall, lean, tan, serious. He appeared brooding, but when he looked at Rory, his black eyes were so sexy, his smile so bright. He planned to use his fishing money for med school, to become a surgeon. He’d already graduated from UMass-Dartmouth, the first member of his family to get a college degree.
