True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  “See? Maybe he likes you.”

  “Hah. You didn't hear him! Bashing Halsey's backhand, cracking up every time he double-faulted. Didn't you see him nailing winners at me every shot? He practically knocked my head off! That was to show off for you.”

  “I wasn't sure,” Rumer said, although she had hoped.

  “He loves you—and not like a sister. Trust me. I was playing right next to him, and I saw the bulge in his shorts.”

  “Stop.”

  “You've never noticed?” Elizabeth asked, starting to slur her words. “When you're on the boat together, and he's in his swim trunks? Last week, when we all went over to Orient Point, you dove down to get that conch shell from the bottom, and Zeb turned into a flagpole.”

  “Maybe it wasn't me… there were other girls on board,” Rumer said, embarrassed.

  “Yeah, Lily and Dana Underfill !, me—all with our boyfriends. No, you were the one—you had on that blue bikini… it's probably the first time he's ever really seen your boobs. Really, Rumer, when you dove down, you were hanging out—”

  “I didn't mean to,” Rumer said quickly.

  “Well, you should do it more often. You sure got Zeb's attention—gave him a huge boner, dear heart. Sometimes I'm jealous,” Elizabeth had confessed, sipping from her flask.

  “Boys always look at you,” Rumer said.

  “So what? I'm talking about your connection with Zeb. I don't have that with anyone. They might fall in love with me, but they don't last.”

  You shouldn't give it so easily, Rumer had wanted to say. “When you drink, you stop caring what happens,” she said instead, “and boys take advantage of you.”

  “No one takes advantage of me, get that straight right now,” Elizabeth called, her voice booming as she tripped over a gnarly oak tree root. Mrs. Mayhew glanced outside, concerned, but Elizabeth just pulled Rumer away, out of sight. “Back to our vow…”

  “To stay away from each other's boyfriends?” Rumer asked.

  “Yesh… to make sure even you don't take advantage of me,” Elizabeth laughed, slugging from her flask again. “Because I always come out on top. Always, always. Never forget that, little shishter…”

  “I never will,” Rumer said, linking arms with Elizabeth and taking the vow.

  But Elizabeth had been the one to break it, Rumer thought now. It had happened so long ago… maybe none of it had been real. The promise, the broken promise, the love, the poisonous hatred that had followed, nearly destroying Rumer in the process. She thought of what she had said to Mathilda back at the office: “Men are like tigers. They don't change their stripes.”

  But that wasn't true: Zeb had changed his stripes. He had gone from being the person Rumer trusted most in the world to someone she didn't even know. He had broken their amazing connection, thrown it away.

  Her father was still working on his boat; she heard the rasp, rasp of sandpaper just beneath the music of wind in the trees and waves on the shore. Standing still, her feet rooted to the ground, Rumer looked fifty yards down the road and saw Zeb's car. The sight of it made her pulse pound, a drumbeat in her ears.

  After a decade of knowing he was thousands of miles away—in California, or up in the sky—he was finally here.

  The tiger who had changed his stripes.

  ZEB MAYHEW couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned in the creaky old bed, smelling the Atlantic salt tang through the open windows and knowing Rumer was just up the street. It was like that childhood game: The more you try not to think of something, the more impossible it was. He kept telling himself to stay away, to let her be, but his mind was on fire.

  Lessons learned the hard way… Winnie's words rang in his head.

  He did it—he'd blown it. Put a stake through the heart of the gentle girl he had once loved. He had come home to set things right, to the place where he'd always been able to see the stars. He didn't dare hope she'd actually be his friend again, much less love him again, but he wanted, somehow, to make things okay. More than anything, Zeb wanted to see if Rumer could forgive him.

  What did she used to say? That they were connected by a magical thread. It ran straight from her heart to his.

  All he ever had to do was grab on, feel his way to her. He thought of how often he had done that. He remembered touching her heart as he'd kissed her lips so tenderly, the two of them learning their way together.

  He remembered that time in the dark, across the marsh, with his sleeping bag and the lantern, their secret time together, when he'd learned what it was to fall in love with his best friend. He had wanted her so badly, but he had respected her too much to do anything more than hold her and kiss her all night. He had thought there would be plenty of time for them to get to the rest of it, but he had wrecked it all.

  “Shit,” he said out loud.

  Hubbard's Point felt familiar right down to his bones. He had the sense that if he walked outside blindfolded, he could find his way around every rock, every tree. If he went outside, he knew he would see her. Although it was late, all the neighbors’ house lights out and everyone in bed, Zeb's instincts told him to get moving—he couldn't waste another minute.

  The summer air was heavy. It was the middle of the night. A layer of fog drifted in from the east, across the sea to the water's edge. Winnie's cottage was built directly above the rocks—rocks where Zeb and Rumer had spent entire summer days crabbing. Elizabeth had always been above such activities—”Crustaceans and seaweed aren't my things,” she'd say, watching Rumer and Zeb head down with buckets and bait.

  Slipping outside, Zeb walked barefoot across the grass. He glanced up, toward Rumer's house. Then, instead of turning left, he went right, to the ledge. The rocks felt warm from the day's sun. He edged his way down to the water and checked on the tide: dead high. The small waves lapped his feet and ankles, luring him in. Glancing around to make sure he was alone, he tugged off his shorts and T-shirt and dived into the cove.

  The water was June cold and sent a shot straight to his heart. It stripped the years away—age by age, he went back in time until he was fifteen. He could almost feel Rumer swimming beside him, her leg brushing his as she kicked by. Swimming along the Point, he felt the pure joy of being there. Nothing forgave like saltwater: It washed all the sins of life away, scrubbed a person clean. Life was one big promise just waiting to be taken. The stars were his territory; all he had to do was get there. Nothing could ever fall apart.

  Turning onto his back, looking up, he saw only haze. Momentarily deterred, he stopped. There was one place—one foolproof place—where he could see stars. He knew it like he knew his own name. Kicking to shore, he shook off the saltwater and pulled his clothes onto his wet body, back on his original mission.

  He cut through the yards just as he'd done as a kid. People here didn't care about property lines; the parcels of land blurred together, separated by raggedy lines of privet and bamboo. Generations of kids had made holes in the hedges to ease their passage. Zeb knew every one, and he made his way across the street, up Hecate's hill, through the privet hedge into his old yard.

  The darkest land on Hubbard's Point, it was as tangled and overgrown as ever. Animals scooted into the brush at his approach. He heard the grass move and branches rattle. Glancing next door at the Larkins’ house, he felt Rumer's presence—as if that magical tie had never been broken—and knew she was home.

  Through the window he saw his ex-father-in-law Sixtus was up late, sailing charts spread out on the dining room table. His back looked crooked, hunched over; his hands were old and gnarled. The strange thing was, Zeb still felt fifteen: None of the bad years had ever happened. He was just a Point boy with none of the disappointments and failures of manhood to hold him down, none of Sixtus's disapproval to contend with. He could almost forget that he had fallen from the sky.

  Peering at his old house, Zeb knew a hundred ways to break in. He could have loosened the pane of glass in the kitchen door—pried up the molding with a stick— to reach in and undo
the latch. He could remove a rickety panel of lattice on the south side and sneak up the basement stairs. Or he could bypass the house entirely, climb up the stepped chimney onto the roof….

  “The key's still there.”

  Her voice had a knife edge in it. At the sound, Zeb turned around. His heart thudded, stuck somewhere between the dreams of his youth and the reality of his life. Rumer stood in the darkness, her white shirt glowing like mist.

  “Rumer,” he said.

  “I heard you were here,” she said.

  “We got here earlier today,” he said.

  “News travels fast,” she said, and he winced at her tone.

  He nodded; he could see her fairly clearly in the light from her father's lamp, shining through the windows next door. Her hair was pale as a field of wheat— silver and gold.

  He moved, as if to give her a brotherly hug, but she took a small, definite step back. The fact was, she couldn't stand him. As close as they stood, he could see anger and unfamiliar hardness in her blue eyes.

  “You came to visit your old house,” she said.

  “Yes. I hear it's been sold again…”

  “The sign came down last week.” She eased backward in the grass. “You're here before the new owners—”

  “I went for a swim,” he said, “and the rocks were covered with fog. I wanted to see the stars, and I knew there was one sure way—”

  She nodded, understanding. Their one sure way of communicating had to do with stars and nature, and no matter how she felt about him, she would help him with this.

  “You still have a chance,” she said. “The house is between owners—the old ones have gone, and the new ones haven't fallen in love with it yet. Like I said, the key is still in the same place. I checked the other day when I let one of the rabbits go…”

  “Still taking care of rabbits in the yards?” he asked, shaking his head as amusement came over him.

  “Yes, I still am,” she said. “It's my profession now.”

  “Call it whatever you want,” he said. “But we both know it's your passion.”

  The truth of who they were, who they had always been, hung between them in the summer air. A light breeze blew up the hill from the beach, making Zeb shiver in his wet clothes. He stared across the space at Rumer. She looked like a young girl standing there, and as the wind picked up slightly, he realized how much he wanted to take her in his arms and make everything okay between them.

  “Michael's with you?” she asked.

  “Yes. Sleeping down the street. Catching up on his rest—tired himself out, not talking the whole way cross-country.”

  “It's the age,” she said. “I've seen an entire classroom filled with mute boys…”

  “No more classrooms for Michael. Didn't your sister tell you? He decided to drop out.”

  From Rumer's neutral expression, Zeb couldn't tell whether she knew or not. Did she and Elizabeth ever speak? He wasn't sure. The bond between the sisters had always mystified him. Marrying Elizabeth, he had actually felt more, not less distant from the two of them.

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Rumer said.

  “Well, creativity runs in the family, right? Zee made it to Broadway without going to college—she says too formal an education kills the left brain. Stomps the artist to death. She supports him totally.”

  “Deciding not to go to college is one thing,” Rumer said sharply. “If he discovers that's what he really wants. But not finishing high school…”

  Mist lay heavy, even on the hill. Looking up, Zeb couldn't see through the veil to the stars. He knew if he could climb up to the roof, the sky would be his: The constellations would tell their story and help him make sense of his life. He almost wished it were September already, that he was into the adventure of getting his new lab up and running. Looking at Rumer, he knew their thread was broken forever. Suddenly his spirit felt much too heavy to climb the stairs or the chimney or the vines growing up the side of his old house.

  “You want to go up?” Rumer asked, following his gaze.

  “No,” he said. “It's not my place. It doesn't belong to me anymore.”

  The beam of Wickland Rock Light passed over their heads, held down by the light mist. Rumer stood still, watching it go. Her eyes were steady, blue as the daylight sky. Zeb considered the phenomenon of being able to see stars in daylight, straight through the clear blue, yet being unable to see them tonight, in the very place where he had learned to love them so much.

  “It is your place, Zeb,” Rumer said in a husky voice. “It's always been, and it always will be. No matter what else has happened.”

  Zeb made no attempt to move or speak. Rumer stared at him, seeming to get a message he hadn't intended to send. He felt her dismiss him: She had moved on, and she wasn't going to waste much time going back. Starting to walk away, she turned again.

  “Will you and Michael come for dinner tomorrow night? Give Dad and me a chance to see him before the wedding.”

  “Sure, Rumer. Thanks—”

  “It'll be good to see Michael.”

  Without looking back, she walked away. Had she meant to sound so scathing—good to see Michael but not Zeb? He watched her walk through the tall grass, fireflies blinking around her knees, into the house next door. Down the hill, Sixtus's beautiful old Herreshoff sat in her cradle behind the garage, sleek in the shadows. Zeb stood there for another minute, in his own yard, thinking of everything she had said.

  She'd been wrong about one thing.

  It wasn't his place anymore; it wasn't at all—he had left it behind. The wedding was Saturday, a day and a half away. That left all of summer spreading before him like a strange landscape. The way he felt right now, he could drive away and never look back. His lab was waiting in California; he could get the jump on setting up his team. He had brought books and charts with him to start researching, but maybe this was the wrong place. Zeb looked up again just to check one more time. No stars.

  He heard the door close quietly behind her. The sound made by the click of the lock did something to his heart—squeezed it hard. It sounded familiar: Living here so long ago, he had heard that sound a million times. Turning away, he looked at the other house—the green cottage where his family had once lived.

  He thought of all the nights his father had come through the door, grouchy after hitting traffic on the highway from Kennedy Airport. His mother had counseled Zeb to leave his father alone, let him unwind and relax a little before bothering him with the worries on Zeb's mind.

  Zeb remembered that the only person his father had ever seemed happy to see was Elizabeth.

  “Hi, Mr. Mayhew,” she'd say, dimpling and swinging on their light pole.

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  “How was your flight?”

  “Long. Really long. What I need is a swim and a drink, and then I'll be okay. What I don't need is a long list of everything that went wrong here at home while I was flying to Brussels and back.”

  “Well, I'm glad to see you,” she'd say. “Nothing's wrong with me!”

  “You can say that again,” Zeb's father would say. “You're a regular movie star, you know that? Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Just you, Mr. Mayhew!”

  “Well, when you get famous, you have to tell everyone the old man next door discovered you first.”

  “You're not old…”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No, really. I think Mrs. Mayhew's the luckiest woman at the Point. Being married to a pilot!”

  From their hidden perch on the roof, Zeb and Rumer would be listening, and Zeb would pretend to gag.

  “Listen to her butter him up,” he'd say. “Why's she wasting her time?”

  “She's trying to soften him up for you and your mother,” Rumer giggled, hardly able to contain herself, so amused by her amazing sister's guile. “She's practicing using her female wiles on him.”

  “Well, he sure thinks she has them,” Zeb said. “He's practically following he
r inside.”

  “She doesn't mean anything bad,” Rumer said. “I'm not sure she can stop herself though.”

  “She's pretty,” Zeb said. “That's for sure.”

  Had Rumer been jealous to hear him say that? Zeb wasn't sure now. He remembered how she had tilted her head, as if thinking it over, then nodding—in total agreement. “She's beautiful,” Rumer had whispered.

  And she was. Even now Zeb couldn't deny the beauty of his ex-wife. She and Rumer were so different as girls. Rumer was small and thin, a tomboy with freckles and straight hair the color of cattails. Elizabeth was lush, gorgeous, with large breasts, wide hips, and full lips.

  The thing was, Zeb had never wanted anyone but Rumer. Her plainness had seemed more beautiful to him than anything in nature. It was simple, unadorned, and yet somehow perfect. Elizabeth had always seemed too: too everything. Too loud, too sexual, too ambitious, too outrageous. But once she had turned her sights on something she wanted, she'd dial up the volume so high, it was impossible to ignore.

  When his time came, Zeb hadn't even tried. His father had had a crush on her—Zeb had always been sure, and he'd sensed his mother's dislike for Elizabeth at an early age. Maybe it was a Freudian thing—after loving Rumer, he'd let himself fall for the sister his father preferred. And if that wasn't disgusting enough, Zeb thought, he'd also let himself fall for the same line.

  He remembered it now, standing in the yard between their two childhood homes. Twenty years ago… he and Rumer had gotten very close the summer before. They had come together, letting their bodies nearly catch up with what their minds had always known: that they loved each other.

  By spring, they were insane for each other. A winter apart at their respective colleges had made them crazy, and Zeb knew he'd do anything to have her. He'd cooked up a great plan.

  Vernal equinox, first day of spring. Lots of things to observe in the field: migrating birds, bloodroot and tril-lium, snakes emerging from hibernation, spring constellations. He'd pitch his tent in the hidden lowlands behind the Indian Grave—the most private spot near Hubbard's Point. No one would find them. They'd have all the privacy and time they needed, and in the midst of new spring they'd make love.