North Haven

by Sarah Moriarty

  NINETEEN

  ANOTHER SUMMER

  Their mother takes the sheets off the bed. First the pillows shaken from their cases. She removes one blanket at a time, folds each carefully and lays them over the back of the rocking chair with the broken cane seat. She tugs the top sheet up and off, luffing like a sail. Clambering across the bed, she unhooks the banded corners of the fitted sheet, too well secured to come up with a simple yank. These sheets she rolls into a ball hand over hand, making a muff around her wrists. Then she lets it fall to the floor on top of the dead pillowcases. She lies down on her back on the bare mattress, striped ticking, like an engineer’s hat. The hard buttons dig into her shoulder blades, sink into the flesh of her rear and the backs of her arms. She lies perpendicular to the bed, her feet hang off the edge. She opens her legs and arms, stretches and becomes an X in the middle of the bed. She closes them and becomes a line pointing toward town. She opens and closes, an X for here, a line for there.

  Here, there.

  Should she stay here and let the thing grow, like the ocean between this island and her husband’s boat? Not a call from him, not a letter. She wonders if the All-American is with him. She wonders if that would make a difference, if he came back. Will he come back?

  There.

  In the town there is the ferry. On the ferry is the long hour of islands on the horizon, of porpoises chasing the boat, of chance after chance to change her mind, to take the boat back, the one that crosses their path at the midway point. Off the ferry there is the taxi ride to the hospital, to the doctor who will tell her it is a miracle at her age, though she has never felt old before, just a year out of her thirties. Is this when miracles start? Do I need them already?

  The doctor will ask her, “Is four really too many; with one about to go off to college, it’s like a trade-in, a newer model.” She hasn’t changed a diaper in ten years. After their littlest’s first day potty training she and her husband sat on the porch, watched the sun set down across the water, over the town, and toasted to no more diapers.

  Here.

  Maybe this will bring him back. Maybe it will keep him away.

  There.

  If I get rid of it, maybe he’ll never forgive me. She brings her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them. She wants to freeze time, make no decisions, hold everything as it is. Not just this thing inside her, but her oldest too, hold him home.

  He stays out longer and longer. He comes home and ignores her. At night he sits at the kitchen table, eating bowl after bowl of cereal, keeps the car keys in his pocket, says he’s going out again. She can’t force him to stay, all of seventeen. But still too young.

  She squeezes her legs tighter and rolls on her side. It is inside me like this, she thinks. She wonders if it can cry in there. Can eyes that don’t open squeeze out tears? She will have to write him, explain. She never understood the ship-to-shore. But where to send it? She doesn’t know which port, doesn’t even know his course. Has he told anyone? Is there someone to notice if his ship goes missing?

  They almost never made love on this bed, even when it was something they did, not on this bed. The ancient springs send a chorus of rusted squeaks through the house, just turning over seems to be an undoing, the bed giving a final death call. So they used to cover the floor with blankets, tell the curious children in the morning that they’d fallen asleep having a picnic.

  They had many picnics in this room. They had picnics in every room. They had quick picnics and slow, savoring picnics, even one unfortunate picnic in college that had bugs. They were healthy eaters. Outdoorsmen. The last time on their little screened porch, on these blankets now hung so neatly on the back of the rocker. The blankets had been laid for him, too sticky in bed that hot night. Such a rarity here; hot nights are the domain of the city. Here nights wear pants and long sleeves. But that night, after their littlest was brought up from the floor of the cove where she had drifted for the briefest moment, just long enough to make them think she might not surface, they sat together on their porch. And then they lay together. It wasn’t the purposeful smoothing of blankets onto the floor, a conscious decision, we do this now, this is the time. Instead it was a slow progression from chair to blanket, and then they drew together, dovetailing. First their feet, the soft curve of arches over each other, then calves, the tender back of a knee snug over a kneecap. Then hips, bellies, arms, chins, shoulders. And lips. The curve of his lower lip, like a drop of honey about to fall from his mouth. She bit it. And he her cheek, and they tore at each other. Clawed and tangled and tasted. A chair went over backward. He pulled her hair, and she took him into her with the hunger of a decade, even if it had only been six months. They chewed and licked and panted and cried. And then he had her face between his hands, and his lips on her face, cheeks, eyes, lips; he pressed his forehead against her neck, raised his head, looked her in the eyes.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. She had no answer, no words, barely any breath, his weight so deliciously heavy on her. With bent legs and curled toes it ended, finishing with a great expansive clarity, the height and freshness of a sky after rain, wet air that is about to dry. I am here.

  Suddenly she wishes not to wash the sheets, not to have taken them from the bed. She wishes she could sleep in them every night until he is home again. The last of his smell is in these sheets. How can she think of drifting off without that smell? Even through the camphor and sea air she can smell it. But it is too late. The sheets lie crumpled on the floor. They have been removed; again she has made a step out of habit or expectation that does not match what she truly wants. What she wants comes late, a realization too late, a missed turn on the highway. That was it, wasn’t it, back there? Don’t go. I’m sorry.

  She gets up, not wanting to be here, or there. She gathers the linens in her arms and shoves an elbow in between the door and the jamb to unstick it, everything in this house sticks, squeaks. She can’t get the mothball smell out of the mattresses, the pillows. She uses two cases to try to diffuse it. When they first bought the place she tried everything. Burning sage, incense, candles, a fire in every fireplace, cedar sachets, scented shelf paper. But smoke cleared; candles melted, leaving gleaming white drip castles on the lips of wine bottles and smooth ponds in the centers of tables; mice built nests in the cedar, their babies born in the warmth and tidiness of a pouch with an embroidered shell; shelf paper yellowed, curled, in the closets with windows, of which there are three, went white like a photogram. She wishes she had thought to put leaves on them, creating a permanent shadow. The smell remains. The mice remain.

  During a heavy rain, the floor of the great room is pockmarked with buckets, washcloths wet at the bottom to muffle the drops, drippity dropping, the kids used to say. The whole roof needs replacing. She must have Remy find someone; if she tries they will give her the summer rate; Remy can get the local price. He is always the go-between, always this lobsterman vouching for them.

  Remy will know where he has gone. A wave of relief sweeps over her. Remy will watch his course, the weather, will have gassed up the boat, repaired the anchor, got the boys at the boat shop keeping an eye on things. Remy will know her husband’s next port.

  She walks down the long balcony, looks out the bay window in the great room at the empty mooring. Put into port, lie anchor soon, crave a haven with shops and other boats, need something, run low. A letter is coming. Down a few steps, up a few steps to the hallway and the kids’ rooms. She will write the letter while the clothes churn in the washer. She is about to nudge open Libby’s bedroom door, strip her bed too, when she hears a noise. With the girls off at sailing and her oldest never home anymore, she is alone in the house. She hears it again, a rustling and squeaking, this house, she thinks. Hinges, floorboards, steps, bedsprings, sashes, faucets, chairs, all a symphony of squeaks, whines, groans. The faucets, those are the whines she hates the most. Late at night, early in the morning, she wants only the soft sound of running water. She drops the linens in the doorway
and heads farther down the hall toward the sound. A window left open, a breeze kicking up, she guesses.

  Gwen is in her room with a local. They tied up the boat down on the beach, only visible from the porch. She was supposed be teaching him sailing, a year younger than she is. Instead, she has brought him here in their small sailboat. Her mother must be having a nap, she says. She takes off her shirt. The local fumbles with the bra clasp; finally she turns around, so he can see what he is doing. It is unhooked, and she turns to face him. He leaves it there, hanging limply from her shoulders, and she takes it off. His shirt goes on the floor, his pants, her pants. She is faster than he is, and she lies naked in the bed. Gwen feels as if the world is now made entirely of afternoon sun and an ocean, not this cold thing, but one warm enough to stay immersed in. She is swimming. Kisses are strokes, short splashing, broad, full, deep, and propelling them ever forward.

  The tempo varies, they slow, they stare; there in the afternoon light of her small tower of a room, a rookery, a beacon, the gray shingles of the walls, like mirrors, maybe it is she, and not the sun, that shines. Maybe her light is spreading out over the sea and bouncing back, maybe her fire will ignite the whole sky. The tempo speeds, mouths move to places they’ve never been. And she is ready, she has prepared. She produces a small, gleaming square from a shoebox beneath her bed; she hands it to him. But this breaks the rhythm, and he seems confused by it. Together they figure it out, rolling and unrolling. But then, they can’t figure it out. What seemed so easy now is challenging, and there is a maze of movements and spaces that they can’t navigate. He flags, fades, he doesn’t want to stay, to keep trying. They have an hour, and it has only been twenty minutes.

  He stands at the foot of the bed; he puts his briefs back on. He can’t, they can’t, she thinks; it isn’t as easy as she has been expecting. And now he has his pants in his hand. She doesn’t understand; isn’t this what boys want? This is what I want. Is this not what I should want? she thinks. He has one leg in his pants, he knocks a book off the windowsill, he’s about to say something. The door opens, her mother, in the spotlight of the sun stands and doesn’t see, and then does.

  “Dear God, close the door.”

  She does. Now there is nothing left to say. He knows how to sail, he says, he can get the boat back. She knew he had taken the lesson only to get close to her; now she’s shown too much, and he has seen everything, and she has found out nothing about what is on the other side of afternoon sun and nakedness. And her mother, now she has seen, and knows what Gwen is trying to discover. For the first time in five weeks, she is glad her father has gone. She knows he is not just cruising, he is running, just like this local boy will be, blazing across the thoroughfare, leaning hard into the wind.

  Her mother stands on the other side of the closed door with her hand still on the knob. Their Gwen is fifteen, and she has learned what beds are for; she is ruined now, gone too, like her brother. She has lost them both. Never again will she be the one they love most. At least she has her littlest for a few more years, before this shadow falls on her too.

  She drops her hand abruptly from the knob, not wanting to run into the boy as he leaves. She hurries down the back stairs, forgets the sheets in a knot on the hallway floor. She goes to the kitchen first, but then decides he will come through here. Then she nips quick through the china closet and dining room, must avoid him if he has the nerve to come down the main stairs. She runs into the rug room and sits in the chair by the fire, the one spot that can’t been seen from the dining room or the front door, in case he leaves by boat. Had there been a boat at the dock? She hears the back door slam; he must have biked, or God, driven, what if he drives?

  Her husband would’ve taken the boy by the scruff of the neck, down to the Whaler; “Men can only really talk in boats,” he used to say. Now she knows what that means. She feels sick. Sick at too many things, and she laughs at what her husband would say to this boy who has taken something from their daughter.

  “Well, now you have to marry her.” A straight face, just to see how long the poor kid could take it, to watch him grip the edges of the boat, looking for a way out, for some alternative. Then he’d make the boy scrub barnacles off the rocks in front of the house, and if the boy asked why, her husband would say, “Snails too,” and in answer to the boy’s questioning look her husband would respond, “Keep going and you’ll be musseling these rocks.” At lowest tide the lower edges of the rocks shine blue and black, sharp as ravens’ wings. Often she has stood precariously on those rocks in rubber boots, shorts, and a bra, with a cultivator and leather gloves. She’d pull and toss, pull and toss. Off the rock and into the bucket. Her husband would’ve made a good dinner off that boy’s big mouth, if he were here. If she hadn’t run away from the boy. If she hadn’t chased away the man.

  Gwen, clothed, comes downstairs ready to face her mother, or at least knowing it can’t be avoided. Gwen looks out the front door first to the wide-open porch, its sun and shadow. She isn’t there, or in the kitchen. She has to, of all things, call her name, “Mom.” Her mother sits in the rug room. Gwen sits down in a wicker chair, so much wicker in one house, she thinks, as it creaks under her. Her mother looks into the cold ashes of the fireplace. And Gwen looks at the oar hung above the mantel. It is small, three feet at most. She often wonders what it was for, a canoe? Maybe a toy, do they make toy oars? Her mother sighs. She can’t just say, all her yelling with their father, and she can’t just say. Always sighs. This is why he leaves, always disappointment and no chance of redemption. Gwen refuses to be the first to speak. She will not apologize, no matter how many sighs make her feel queasy and dirty and wrong.

  “You’ll need to see a doctor.” This is what her mother says. This is where she begins. Practical. Gwen is not sure that this is better than yelling, than questions, than outrage. Is this what she expects of me? Did she already know?

  “You’ll need to have tests,” she continues, “begin a prescription, and you should ask the boy, I’m afraid I don’t know his name, for any history or pertinent information.”

  Is this desire? Is this what my mother thinks sex is? A questionnaire, a form to be filled out in a waiting room. What if it is? What if sex is boys backing out of rooms with their shirts in their hands? She needs to find the answer. She needs to find a source beyond her mother, whose hands tremble in her lap, who, in these last few weeks, attacks the ringing phone only to be disappointed. What will the local boy tell his friends? What can she tell hers? There is nothing, and so they must try again. There must be more to this thing. Her mother continues: Pill. Blood test. Pap smear. Contraception. Conception. Infection. Medication. Infatuation. Graduation. How soon can she see him again? Tomorrow? Can they try again tomorrow?

  Their father returned two days ago, their mother’s letter in his hand like a plane ticket, a boarding pass. And they were sent to the Shaws’ for the weekend. Kicked out of their own home, they felt resentful and confused. Libby, only ten now, will not be the youngest much longer. They have gathered, and this is what will come. Their parents sit together at the same end of the dinner table, the end closer to the front door and the large window that looks onto the porch. The sun is setting, pouring its light over the steps and the porch, through the picture window with its arched pane, lighting up the backs of their parents’ heads, making their ears glow red. Their children, ten, fifteen, and seventeen, squirm and squint, all orange and pink. The thick oak table shines black with a century of elbows. Libby can’t sit still; she is too excited to have her father home again. She wants to jump up and run a lap around the table and stand between the two of them, so close, and hold them both. She sits up tall and reaches her arms out along the wooden tabletop, the table’s edge pressing into her armpits. Her father reaches for her hand and squeezes it. She squeezes back. She moves her hand, wraps her fingers around his wrist. She sits up from her seat, leans over the table, and kisses the top of her father’s hand. She will kiss it better. He pats the top of her head, p
ulls his shirt cuff down.

  Gwen sits next to her and Tom across from them. The two of them sit back and low; Tom has one knee up on the table, pushing his chair back, tipping, balancing on two legs. Libby knows it is things like this that made her father leave, his tipping chair. She knows that Tom has been out of the house most days, and most nights that their father’s going seems to be because of that, that and a neighbor’s dead cat. Of this last part she is sure. She saw the ruptured thing before her father wrapped it in a towel, before he shooed her back to the house. She saw Tom stand by the side of the driveway and cry. She had never seen him cry before. And her father had a look she didn’t understand, and then two months later he was gone.

  Sit up straight, she thinks, she begs him. Don’t chase our father away again. Don’t put the dessert spoons where the soupspoons go. She has been spending early mornings, when everyone is still asleep, sorting through the silverware, putting each piece of cutlery in its proper felt-lined drawer. She knows that her mother likes this order, and that Tom doesn’t seem to notice, and then her mother yells at her father, though it is Tom putting the flatware away. He is always doing things his own way, not the way of the house. Her parents cannot bear more mistakes, she thinks, or accidents or carelessness. She fans out her fingers wide, like she is holding the table up with the power of her little knuckles. My hands work hard, my hands do good, my fingers have picked wax from this table, this whole spot is clear of it, though still a bit sticky, she thinks. She will ask her mother how to get rid of the stickiness.

  They begin.

  “We wanted to talk to you all together, to get a few things out in the open.”

  Here Tom’s chair hits the floor with a thud. He will ruin this if he is not careful, thinks Libby.

  “While I was away,” her father says, “your mother and I had a chance to think about things. And we’ve talked, and we want things to change.”