A Week at the Shore

by Barbara Delinsky

  “I agree,” says Jack, but he takes my words differently. “Five days isn’t enough. I want years. You’ve been missing from my life, Mallory.”

  Sliding my hand down his throat to his chest, which is warm with texture and broad under my palm, I beg, “Slow? Please?”

  * * *

  He tries. Really, he does. Jack’s version of slow is simply not talking about it. But he’s there even when he isn’t, hovering in the back of my mind. When Margo and I muster the courage to enter Dad’s room, spot Mom’s dressing table, and remember the way she let us play there, I share Jack’s memories of Elizabeth and feel all the worse for his loss. Just at the moment when Joy and her cousins are trying to decide how to spend the afternoon, Jack comes from work like a knight in shining armor, collects the three, and drives them back to the clinic to help socialize a litter of King Charles Spaniel pups. Dan and Margo insist on discussing Jack’s obvious devotion, and when I call Paul for advice on what to do with Dad’s books, he asks if Jack is behaving.

  On the plus side, the truce with my sisters holds. Anne is better being at work than not, although she is subdued, clearly grieving. She also looks exhausted, which may have to do with the baby, or with Bill, or simply with having us all here.

  Naturally, Jack is with us for dinner. We’ve decided to purge the fridge by eating whatever friends brought that is still fresh, and the extra mouth helps. Naturally, he hangs around afterward. Naturally, he walks Joy and me back to his house when the others begin to yawn. Naturally, we feel like a family of three.

  It would be cruel, if it weren’t so nice. Same with our lovemaking that night. Though I sense a desperation in his stamina, he doesn’t ask if I’ll stay.

  * * *

  Joy does. By Friday morning, she is mentioning it more and more. We’re having a late breakfast at Sunny Side Up—Margo, the boys, and me. Joy is serving, but each time she stops at our table, she ups the ante. If she isn’t sneaking extra donut holes to her cousins, she’s telling them how awesome the town beach is or how cool it would be if all of them had red BAY BLUFF hoodies—and, Mom, would that be the craziest photo ev-ver? Finally, I wander into the kitchen to see how Anne is doing and casually raise the issue. When she lights up at the prospect of having Joy stay on, I’m sunk.

  I can’t stay, myself. Aside from the fact that two people have cleared their Saturdays to assist me, I owe it to this particular broker.

  She’s my top referral source, I explain when Jack oh-so-tactfully asks if I’ve made a decision. I don’t want to lose her.

  Say it’s a family emergency.

  She’s a businesswoman. She wouldn’t understand.

  Try her.

  I don’t reply other than to say, Taking the kids into Waverley. Anything special we should see?

  Wilcox Park. And bookstore.

  Though the bookstore is new since I left, I remember the park. It proves to be an amazing photo trove for both statues and kids, and the bookstore—well, Joy and I are likely in higher heaven than Margo’s crew, but we know how to wreak the most damage in the shortest time. We are at the checkout counter with our arms full, when Jack texts.

  Will Joy stay with me?

  Margo wants her with her.

  Until when?

  Next week.

  You’ll come back for her?

  Yes.

  And stay a while?

  Depends on work.

  Stay a while.

  I need time.

  I’ve given you time.

  Time is not a day or two or three.

  Neither is love. It’s forever.

  I let this text go, too. For one thing, when it arrives, my sisters and I are in the office of Dad’s lawyer. The will is a formality, but we figure we ought to hear it while the three of us are here.

  For another, I don’t know what to say. He’s right. And yes, I love him. But the logistics of making it work are daunting.

  * * *

  He’s with us again at dinner. Anne is more civil toward him now, though I don’t know whether she’s getting used to him or simply knows that once I leave he won’t be around. I’ve already transferred Joy’s things back to our house and put my own in the car, all but my camera. It’s still in action, capturing the kids watering the new plants on the bluff, Margo modeling her own red Bay Bluff hoodie, and Anne baking humongous peanut butter cookies.

  We’re having Thai tonight. Bill and Dan pick it up, leaving Jack with us at the house, for which I’m grateful. I’m acutely aware that the clock is ticking, that even aside from leaving Jack, I’m leaving Joy overnight for the first time in her life. I’m also aware that by the time I return, Margo and her family will be gone, to which end she keeps shooting me soulful looks.

  Totally unfazed, Joy is with Jeff, doing a jigsaw puzzle in the sunroom. She feels no qualms about my leaving, is actually excited.

  Then there’s Jack. He doesn’t make a show of checking his watch, but the few times he does, his eyes turn a vulnerable gray. In them, I read fear of abandonment, and I’m hopelessly torn. It takes a concerted effort to think of my life in New York.

  * * *

  I’m doing that a short time later with something akin to desperation. Leaving Joy is easy; we’ll be in touch the whole time, and she does need this separation. What is it they say, a mother raises her children to let them go? Besides, she’s with family.

  Jack is alone.

  My eyes are glued to the rearview as I drive forward, etching an image on my brain that is as indelible as one my camera might make. He stands apart from the others, as if my departure breaks his link with my family. Tall, singular, and apart, he is helplessness personified. I feel the same watching him. How easy it would be to step on the brake and put the car in reverse? Hell, I wouldn’t even have to back up. If I stopped, he would run forward, I know he would.

  But my life waits, my life waits, my life waits. So, I tip down over the crest of the road, erase that heart-rending sight, and drive on.

  Tourism is winding down at the square. Beyond it, I pass the stretch of beach with its salty houses, lush hydrangeas, and Mahoneys, Santangelos, and Wrights. I pass the banks of mailboxes at dirt driveways that burrow off into the trees. Once I’m through the three-way intersection, I see Gendy’s, then fiddle with the tripometer to avoid seeing Jack’s clinic. When it, too, falls behind, I tell myself it’s for the best. Only, the best feels like shit and, coming up on the left, The Hideaway is as emotionally potent as the other. Pushing on past Urgent Care, I turn onto Route 1 heading south and I tell myself that I’m safer, even more so after I’ve driven around downtown Westerly, through Pawcatuck, and onto Pequot Trail.

  When I finally hit the highway, I give myself a mental high five. I-95 is neutral ground. Exits stream past my window—90, then 89 and 88. There are no choices here. It’s straight highway driving, only modestly busy at this hour. Cueing Pandora to a soothing Mozart, I take a few long, slow, deep breaths. At the Exit 87 mark, twenty-eight minutes have passed since I left the bluff, but the hollow in the pit of my stomach remains.

  Ignoring it, I drive on. By the time I pass Exit 86, I’m thirty-two minutes away from Jack and still hurting. Desperate for a distraction, I call Chrissie.

  Chapter 30

  The speakerphone comes to life after a single ring. “Mallory,” she says with a loud sigh, sounding infinitely relieved, like she’s had the phone in her hand all this time, waiting for my call, and is only now allowing herself to breathe.

  Not sure what I feel myself, I stick with a simple, “Hey.”

  Several awkward beats pass. Signs for Exit 84 are headlight-lit in the encroaching dusk. Groton is behind and New London ahead, while Bay Bluff is farther away with each turn of the wheels.

  Cautiously, Chrissie asks, “Where are you?”

  “Driving back to New York. You?”

  “Here already. Hey, Joy,” she calls out, assuming my daughter is in the passenger’s seat.

  “She’s back in Bay Bluff,”
I say, but I don’t want to think about Joy either. “When did you leave?”

  “Wednesday night.” Her voice wavers. “There was no point staying.”

  My first thought is that she’s talking about our tattered friendship. Then I recall the other piece, which I’ve been too mired in self-pity to see. Of course, it would be absurd to think she’s been in Bay Bluff with her mother all this time. “Lina?”

  “Lina.”

  I remember the woman’s hard stare last Saturday, when she was looking for her husband in my face. That was bad enough. Recalling the scene at the cemetery, I can’t begin to imagine what Chrissie must have felt when Lina hissed at her—her own daughter, whom she hadn’t seen in years. “She’s tough.”

  “You have no idea,” Chrissie drawls. Neither of us laughs, but the mood softens a bit.

  Taking warmth from that, I watch Exit 84 come and go. I’m sorry, my dovish self wants to say, sorry that you had to confront her because of me. Only, I wasn’t the one who caused their rift. It happened before Chrissie and I ever met. She didn’t talk about her mother often, I realize, but thinking back on the times she did, I recall little things she told me the woman had said. They weren’t pretty.

  “How can a mother be like that?” I ask. “It’s not like she has four other daughters.”

  “If she did,” says Chrissie, “I’d be off the hook. Since I’m the only one, she expects me to be her clone. My daring to deviate is a cardinal offense. She wrote me out of her life.”

  She had said this of her mother before, but having now seen the woman in the flesh, not to mention in my family’s employ, I am particularly aggrieved. “Because your husband is Hispanic?”

  “Because he isn’t Italian or Catholic or from Rhode Island. Because I choose to live in New York. Because she assumes I’m crazy rich and not insisting she live with me, which is ridiculous given her distaste for my husband, my child, and New York, but that’s how looney she is.”

  If anyone can deal with looneys, it’s Chrissie. “You couldn’t talk her down on Wednesday?”

  “Hell, no. She’s as bullheaded as ever. She says—get this—that I publicly humiliated her. Like anyone recognized me before she approached?”

  “I’m sorry, Chrissie. Is she any better to Danny?” He left home, too, which is an interesting fact in this new light.

  “Danny is male. The rules are different. Whatever he decides to do is considered upward mobility. I’m the one who’s supposed to preserve the heritage. I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of my mother the way she took care of hers. She considers me a traitor for not doing it.”

  Not even Jack being put on his mother’s back burner seems as bad as Chrissie being shoved into the fire. I’m thinking about the miracle of her having such a happy marriage and raising such a normal child in spite of all that, when a car veers in front of me from the left lane and takes the Exit 83 off-ramp.

  I’m in New London now, thirty-seven minutes gone from Bay Bluff.

  “Do you?” Chrissie asks. “Think me a traitor?”

  Her meekness returns me to the discussion—and yes, I did think her a traitor at first. Now that things have calmed down and I’ve put Lina’s face to Chrissie’s heartache, I see her side of the Bay Bluff issue. She regrets not being forthright seven years ago. I know that. She certainly regrets the way things played out this week. Can I seriously hold a grudge? We’re all flawed, aren’t we—all brilliant in hindsight.

  We love the things we love for what they are, Robert Frost wrote, and I do love Chrissie Perez. Hell, at some subconscious level I must be accepting her for what she is, if here I am, rushing to call her when I need a friend.

  She adds a mournful, “I really wanted us to be sisters.”

  I have to smile at that. Everything she said about clicking with me is mutual. Maybe there’s a Bay Bluff gene swimming in our blood? “It would have been nice.”

  The line is silent for a spell, but it’s a comfortable break.

  Then comes a quiet, “Do you know for sure we’re not?” It’s her last ditch effort to make it so.

  I’m forty minutes from Bay Bluff, approaching Exit 82 and Waterford, and, just like that, I’m close enough to Chrissie again to say, “I do. It’s Paul.”

  She gasps—and, just like that, is as indignant as my BFF Chrissie could be when she feels I’d been wronged. “Where’s he been?”

  I make a sympathetic sound, half laugh, half grunt. “Same place you were, believing silence was the best way to go.”

  “Ouch,” she whispers.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “You did, and you’re right. But out of the goodness of our hearts. By the way, I don’t remember him from Bay Bluff.”

  “He’ll visit in New York. You’ll meet him.” Forgiveness is easy once it’s done. Of all the sins of omission I’ve learned of this week, Chrissie’s is the simplest and most innocent. It feels so good to connect with her again. Besides, I want to know what she thinks of Paul.

  “And Jack?” she asks. “Who adores you, by the way.”

  Jack. Who wanted me to stay. Who begged me to stay but whom I just left. Whose face I see reflected in each exit sign I pass. Whose name alone twists at my heart.

  Trying to make light of it, I tease, “And you saw this in, what, ten seconds?”

  “Ten minutes, and he was looking at you like you hung the moon.”

  “That’s being dramatic. But I left him. Again. He may be hurt enough to get over me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  A car speeds by at what has to be eighty-five, its driver desperate to get somewhere or other. So am I, but I follow the rules of the road. I’m desperate to restore order to the life I’ve made for Joy and me in the city. After a week at the shore, though, that city life looks different, feels different, may never be the same.

  Exit 81 flies by. I’m another few minutes closer to Manhattan, another few minutes farther from home.

  Home. Such an interesting word. Is it where you park your body? Your family? Your heart?

  “Mal?”

  “It’s a tricky situation.”

  “Does it have to be?” she asks, so much like Paul’s Don’t overthink it that I do wonder if I’m the problem here. But she persists. “It was a difficult week for you, but weren’t there good parts?”

  Jack, I think. Anne and Margo, I think. Jack, I think. I think Joy on our beach, moments of lucidity with Dad. Again, I think Jack.

  Chrissie thinks bigger. “Broad view.”

  Zooming out, I consider. “Reconciling past and present. Figuring out who I am.”

  “Did you?”

  I’m about to say yes. But the word won’t come. Instead, I blinker left to pass a Camry going under the speed limit, then blinker back into the middle lane. Having passed Waterford, I’m nearly in East Lyme.

  “There’s still Jack,” I admit and glance at the clock. Forty-five minutes have passed since I left. I wonder what he’s doing.

  I’m picturing him wandering the beach with Guy. Or reading in that godawful sterile living room. Or … or staring at the unmade bed in his room and thinking of me?

  As therapists do, Chrissie has let these minutes pass in silence. Finally, gently, she says, “What about him?”

  “It’s hard to describe.”

  “Try.”

  “He was so a part of my life once upon a time. Then not.” Just thinking about it, I feel a spreading hole. “Then again this week. It’s like we picked up where we left off before…” She knows enough of my history to finish the sentence. “I mean, it was different. We’re different now. Maybe more realistic. Definitely more mature.”

  She waits. Then, “And?”

  “And nothing. In some ways, it’s better than ever with him and, in others, ten times more complicated.”

  “Since when have you been afraid of complicated?”

  “Since Jack,” I say with a derisive laugh.

  “Because you love him?”
/>   “Yes, but isn’t it possible to love someone and not be able to make the logistics work?”

  “Love isn’t about logistics.”

  “It can be,” I argue, but my best friend sees it differently.

  “What if he is who you are?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask, not because I haven’t heard, but because the question is huge.

  “You went down there looking for answers. What if he’s one?”

  “Oh, Chrissie, I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head in a way of slow doubt. I’m not sure whether I don’t believe it, or whether I simply don’t want to.

  Suddenly, though, the doubt lifts like fog at the shore, because it makes sense. I do believe it. I want to. I don’t want Jack and me to be done. He is so far and above any other man I’ve ever met, and no, I don’t need a man. But here I am, looking at the clock every two minutes, feelings more lonely with each exit I pass.

  Jack Sabathian is part of who I am.

  The certainty of it sinks in as I drive south on a darkening highway, back toward a life that I’ve successfully shaped and fully control, but that still won’t be whole. And suddenly, half-whole isn’t enough.

  “Uh, Chrissie,” I say with abrupt urgency, “I think I need to go back, have to turn around at the next exit—where the hell is the next exit?” I’ve barely said it when it appears. Blinkering right, I take the off-ramp, drive under the highway to the opposite on-ramp, and head back to Bay Bluff.

  * * *

  What took me fifty minutes southbound seems to be taking forever on the round trip. The northbound exits are more spread out, I swear they are. I don’t listen to music or take deep breaths, because trying to relax is futile. Same with going the speed limit, though I do stay within ten over.

  I’m gripping the wheel as hard as I can in an effort to keep my mind off what I’m doing. Futile effort there, too. Because it’s crazy. I’m crazy, heading in the wrong direction when I have to work tomorrow morning. But little images keep slipping through my mind—dream thoughts, like our driving back to New York together, his watching me at work, our walking around the city, eating at places where I’ve always wanted to eat, sleeping in my bed, waking up together. I have no idea where Joy is through all this or, for that matter, Guy. Still, the dream wisps come.