Safety nets don’t ask questions or murmur empty platitudes. Safety nets don’t say anything at all. They’re simply there, holding you until you exhaust yourself. Then, maybe they wipe at your tears with their fingers—or Jack, with the heel of his hands. And still they say nothing until you, and only you, speak first.
A safety net doesn’t need apologies, still I feel the need to say, “I’m sorry. That was a poor show of defiance.”
“Are you kidding?” this safety net asks and turns back into smart-mouthed Jack. “Look where we are. Look what we’re doing. Look what we’re wearing.”
“Or not,” I say in a meek quip. “But crying?”
“Anne sobbed through the funeral. You did not. This is your time.”
I give him a yeah, right look, which may or may not have registered, since my eyes are still wet, so I say, “Crying for Tom? I’d like to take credit for that, but it’s so much more.” Hearing the words, I stop, look at Jack, see his curiosity. I owe him.
“It’s Paul,” I say very quietly.
He frowns. “Paul.”
“My father.”
“Paul?” His brows rise. “Paul?” He makes a face of utter disbelief. “That Paul?”
I feel an unexpected spark of protectiveness. “What’s wrong with it being him?”
“Uh, nothing—nothing,” Jack stammers, looking as muddled as I must have back at the cemetery with Paul. “It’s just—how?”
I tell the story quickly, sharing as much as I’m able, because, while Paul’s revelation isn’t as strange the second time around, it remains upending. I barely make it through the basics before the bottom line returns. Paul is only the final straw in a muddled haystack. “I come back for a week, and my life is turned upside down!”
“Or right side up,” Jack says.
* * *
While on mute, my phone has been busy. There are texts from Joy, from Chrissie, from Margo. There are three VMs from New York, one each from my Sotheby’s broker, my stylist for Saturday’s shoot, and the hair salon reminding me that I have an appointment for a cut next Tuesday.
I read Joy’s texts before I’m even dressed. She says she’s on the beach with her cousins and when will I be there? On my way, I text back, and quickly add Twenty minutes, to which she immediately replies, Bring Jack. He’ll die at who I’m with, to which I reply, Who are you with? to which she simply sends an angel emoji.
I read the texts from Chrissie while I’m in the bathroom, knowing I’ll feel like a fool if I start crying again. I don’t. But I ache. I’m sorry sorry sorry, she writes, you are the one person I never ever wanted to hurt. In a follow-up sent seconds after the first, she writes I can’t bear to lose both a sister and a friend. If we can’t be sisters, can we be friends? And a third text nearly on top of the second, I love you, Mal.
Not knowing what to say, I say nothing.
We’re back in the Tahoe when I open Margo’s texts. The first reads, You OK? I’m worried. The second reads, Anne told Bill. He wants wedding, she says no. And the third, Dan wants to stay to Sunday. Should we call Watch Hill or is crowded OK?
Jack squeezes my thigh, which his hand has not left since we both buckled in. “Anything good?”
I sigh. What the hell. My sister hates me anyway. And Jack doesn’t gossip. “Anne is pregnant. Only you don’t know that. She just told Bill, who wants to get married, and she’s resisting.”
“Why?” he asks halfway between curiosity and disbelief.
“Maybe,” I reply with no small amount of guilt, “because we thought Bill was a loser—well, until we got to know him. Face it. His past isn’t stellar.”
“Nor is mine.”
“You were never in prison. And okay, he got cleaned up and is on the other side of the bars, but there are those tattoos—and okay, I’m fine with them, too, but maybe Anne isn’t. Maybe she worries about the people he’s with all day long. Maybe she thinks Mom would be turning over in her grave.” With a jarring realization, I add a bleak, “Or Dad.”
Jack squeezes my hand to grant the sympathy of that. Despite what he knows now of Paul, he thinks the way I do. Tom Aldiss raised me. He is Dad.
But the subject is Anne. “Maybe she’s afraid of marriage,” he offers.
I’m startled. “Why?
“Same reason as you.”
Afraid of marriage? Me? Who has managed a good job, a great condo, and single motherhood without a husband, thank you? I remember the discussion we had, Jack and me, about power and control. I don’t want to think Jack is right.
“I’m not afraid. Uh-uh. Oh, no. Don’t turn this around on me, Jack. I told you why I haven’t married, and it has everything to do with not finding the right guy. That’s not scared; it’s smart. As for Anne, Bill is the right guy. He loves her.”
“I love you,” Jack says mildly, just part of the argument.
“And I love you, but that is for another discussion.” Determined, I change the subject. “The immediate issue is Margo’s family. They’re staying through the week. She’s looking for vacancies in Watch Hill. Any suggestions?” He wouldn’t know about vacancies, but he would know about the best places to stay. Margo wouldn’t step foot inside a place like The Swan. The thought makes me smile.
“What’s wrong with the house?” he asks.
“Nothing, but you saw the size of the boys. Both of them are approaching six feet, and the guest room bed is a very old double. All those legs?” I give a doubting sputter.
“That’s a nice problem to have,” Jack says with something akin to envy. He might have liked a brother, might have liked a big family having to crowd into a house. “A first-world problem. Can’t they squeeze in for a few nights?”
“Not Margo’s boys.”
“So use my house.”
“For Margo’s boys?” I ask in surprise. Jack doesn’t know them, barely knows Margo after all this time. He doesn’t owe her any favors.
But, of course, he would be doing the favor for me. What he says next, though, turns that around.
“For you and Joy,” he says, like it’s a no-brainer, like I should have been thinking this myself. “You and Joy stay with me. Then Margo and her family can be with Anne.” When I stare at him in alarm, he shrugs. “I have room.”
“You have dreams.”
“Those, too, but think about it, Mal. Joy would love it. She kept Guy with her the whole time she was at the clinic. He’s dying to sleep with her.”
“He told you that?”
“Very clearly.”
“I’m not sleeping with Guy.”
The look he gives me now says that I’m daft. “Why would you? Guy sleeps with Joy, you sleep with me.”
“Uh-huh. With Joy in the next room?”
“Down the hall.”
“Like we were quiet just now?”
“That’s just it,” he says with a crooked grin and a whisper of conspiratorial excitement. “Think of the fun we’d have trying not to scream. Is that a turn-on, or what?” He is incorrigible.
I clear my throat. “I’m not ready for her to see that.”
“See what?” he asks, all innocence as he turns at the tri-road onto the one for Bay Bluff. “She doesn’t have to watch us.”
“You know what I mean, Jack. She’s only thirteen.”
“Which is old enough to know what happens between a man and a woman.”
“It’s a different thing when the woman is your mother and she is in bed with a man in the next room.”
“Down the hall.”
“Seriously, Jack.”
“Seriously, Mal.”
There’s so much more to this, but I’m distracted by his mockery. When it is lighthearted, as his is now, it is fun. We know each other so well that it works.
“Will you consider it at least?” he asks.
“When?” I ask in frustration, because there is so much more to it that I need to think. Our staying with Jack goes beyond who sleeps in what room. It makes a statement not only to Joy, b
ut to Margo and Anne. I have to weigh the pros and cons. “Margo needs an answer.”
“No sweat,” says Jack. “You have three minutes.”
* * *
We arrive back at the house looking unsuspiciously messed thanks to the breeze that sweeps us up the minute we leave the Tahoe. Given that there are no strange cars in the drive, meaning mourners who might be inside, my first thought is to change out of this godawful funeral dress and into beach clothes. Actually, that’s my second thought. My first is seeing what Joy is up to. On the beach? With her cousins and … someone else?
Crossing to the edge of the drive, I take off my shoes at the spot where grass begins, continue barefoot to the top of the beach stairs, and start down. Joy and her cousins are on towels closer to Jack’s house than ours. I’m puzzled by that until I see who she’s with.
“Fuck,” I hear as Jack sees the same thing. Passing me on the stairs, he trots the rest of the way down and takes the sand in long strides.
Joy and the boys, all wearing sunglasses, are sprawled on beach towels in states of careless relaxation. When my daughter spots us, she scrambles to her feet. To her credit, a coil of leash is thick around her wrist, and her hand is on Guy’s sandy head, letting him know he is safe.
Now she wants Jack to know. Smiling proudly, she holds up her wrist.
He slows, which actually makes me more nervous. The fact that he doesn’t want his pit bull alarmed by even him speaks to the danger of the beast. Not that wilted-ear, wrinkle-skinned, woe-eyed Guy looks terribly dangerous. He actually looks comfortable with Joy and content in the afternoon sun.
“How did he get here?” Jack asks. His anger is muted, but it is anger.
Joy loses the smile. “I brought him. He was whining. He had to pee.”
“He’s trained to hold it in.”
“But he’s been stuck inside since, what, nine o’clock this morning?”
“So you let him out? Joy.”
“Well, the back door was unlocked,” she argues and holds up her free hand in a what-do-you-expect gesture. “I thought for sure it’d be locked and figured you’d have a key hidden somewhere, only I couldn’t find it. Guy knew I was there and started to bark, so I tried the door just in case, and, just like that, it opened.”
“Just like that,” Jack repeats.
I say nothing. He is trying to figure how to handle her. I want to see how it plays out.
“Should I not have?” Joy asks. Her eyes are hidden by the sunglasses, but her voice is innocence personified. “Should I have left him alone and uncomfortable?”
“He didn’t have to pee.”
“He peed the instant I let him out. Has he never had an accident while you’ve been away? Never? Ever?”
Jack scowls.
“So why should he suffer?” Joy goes on. “He knows me. He knows I won’t hurt him. He wanted to be down here with me, and with Teddy and Jeff, and I know how to introduce him to new people.”
“She was careful,” Jeff says. At sixteen, he has the voice and body of a man.
“We took it slow,” says his fourteen-year-old brother, not quite as mannish but almost.
Joy preens under their praise. But she quickly turns back to Jack. “Don’t be angry,” she pleads. “I understand that you don’t want him to attack a stranger, though I honestly don’t think Teddy and Jeff would sue you, since we’re all friends. But, like, I wouldn’t have let Guy attack them. I put the leash on him before I let him out, and it hasn’t come off once, and anyway, I didn’t need to worry at all, because you have done the best job training him. If my cousins ever had a doubt about owning a pit bull, they don’t anymore.” Her head tips toward Jeff. “Am I right?”
“Totally,” says Jeff.
“Teddy?”
“Mom might not agree, but I do.”
Grinning, she faces Jack again.
I’m thinking that my daughter has manipulated him into a corner, when he turns to me in frustration. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“No,” I reply with a smile. I’m about to say something like, You handled that well, which wouldn’t have been the smartest thing for me to do, when, in a perfectly-timed distraction, my phone rings.
Paul Schuster, says the screen, and something tightens in the pit of my stomach. Where unfinished business is concerned, Paul is right up there. I need to tell my sisters about him. I need to tell Joy.
But not now. Until I come to terms myself with who he is—with who I am—Paul is off-limits to the others.
I hold up a palm to my daughter, warning her to respect Jack. Then I point to the phone and head away from the group on the sand.
Chapter 27
Slowed by indecision, I stare at the screen as I walk through the sand toward the stairs. I’m certainly calmer than I was at the cemetery, but Paul’s confession remains hard to grasp. Having made tough decisions about my own child, I understand that he did what he thought was right. And then there’s the matter of a co-parent. I had the advantage of making decisions myself; Paul did not. My mother had a say. I could be angry at her, but she is dead. And Dad is dead. And here we are, just Paul and me.
I don’t know what my relationship with him is supposed to be. Don’t know where it is headed. Don’t even know what name to use when I think of him.
After a last few seconds of hesitancy, I click in with a simple, “Hey.”
Silence greets me, and for a split second, I wonder if I’m too late. But no, he hasn’t hung up. I can sense him on the line.
Finally, tentatively, he says, “Are you all right?”
Am I all right? Of course, I’m not alright. I have a slew of challenges lying in wait.
But that’s the big picture. The small one—the one involving just Paul and me—has changed in this very instant. It feels more defined now that we’re on the phone, as if the hardest thing was reconnecting after I walked away. The fact that he has called me, rather than the other way around, feels like caring. It feels like a cushion that will make things a little more comfortable as we work out what’s to come.
“I’m fine,” I say with a sigh. Having reached the beach stairs, I lean against the wood rail. Paul is, after all, the answer to a question that has haunted me for so long. Not the answer I expected. Still, an answer. “I just needed a little time.” I gulp in a breath. “About the things I said—”
“I understand your shock,” he interrupts. “I understand your disappointment, even your anger.” His voice gentles. “But I don’t want to lose you, Mallory. I’ve waited a long time to tell you all this.”
I swallow and say, “Yes.” I don’t say, You might have told me sooner, because that is water over the dam. A peacemaker doesn’t rehash the past but tries to move on.
It strikes me that if all of what Paul has said is true with regard to his relationship with both my mother and my father, he may be a peacemaker as well. That doesn’t forgive him the deception, simply softens it.
“You’ll have questions about your mother and me.”
I do. But face-to-face seems better than the phone. “Where are you?”
“Look up.”
There he is, standing on the bluff a short distance from the stairs. His suit jacket is gone, sleeves rolled in a way that suggests he is ready to work on what exists between us. And with that thought, I’m intimidated all over again. Yes, intimidated. I may not have identified it as such at the cemetery, but this man played a major role in creating me, which is an intimidating idea in and of itself. Add the fact that I can’t seem to break the lock of our eyes, and I definitely feel … lesser.
I need moral support. And why not Jack? He has questions for this man, too. If Paul is willing to answer them, if he trusts me enough to trust Jack and give us answers we both need, he will have passed a test of sorts.
“Be right up,” I say, but the instant I break the phone connection with him, I head back across the sand, open Margo’s text, and reply, You all take the house. Joy and I will stay at Jack’s.
The man himself is still talking with the three on the sand, but he is on his haunches now, scrubbing his dog’s chest. When he glances my way, I wave him over. He says something to Joy before leaving, and since Guy is still wrapped around her wrist, I assume he has okayed it. By way of confirmation, she sends me a thumbs-up.
Jack reaches me with his head vaguely cocked. I can’t see his eyes through his sunglasses, but the crease between them is shallow. He is curious is all.
“Paul’s up there on the bluff,” I say with the tiniest hitch of my head behind and up. “Let’s ask him about Elizabeth.”
He glances at Paul, then returns to me with a disbelieving snicker. “Now? Don’t you want to talk about the other?”
“I need time to take it in. This will buy me a little. Please, Jack? He owes me this.” My phone dings. It’s Margo.
That’s a statement, she texts. Where are you?
Right outside, I type back. Talking with Paul. But don’t book rooms.
As soon as I send off the text, I show the screen to Jack. He has to lift his glasses to read it, and his eyes quickly brighten. “Yes?”
Nodding, I pocket the phone, slip my fingers through his and draw him along with me. Paul meets us at the top of the stairs. He studies first Jack, then me.
“I told him,” I say quietly. There’s no need to elaborate. The only subject between us, really, is the fact of who Paul is. “Jack is the only one who knew my doubts all these years.”
“You’re that close?” Paul asks, his gaze drifting between us again.
I can’t read his expression—don’t know if he approves or disapproves and why either should matter. Feeling a thread of my earlier pique, I raise my chin in defiance, but the effect is diluted when the sea breeze whips my hair across my mouth. Gathering it in my free hand, I hold it to my neck.
Before I can speak, Jack says in a typically male, typically Jack declaration, “We’re that close. We share everything.” In a gesture of directness, he shifts his sunglasses to the top of his head.
A Week at the Shore Page 33
