True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  “Quinn?” he called, coming around the big rock. The paint had almost faded, but there were big shark jaws painted on the rock's surface.

  He could hear her crying, and he followed the sound. She lay curled on her side, on the dry sand just above the high-tide line—shells, seaweed, and driftwood marking the gateway to the sea. Kneeling beside her, Michael looked into her eyes.

  “Qumn?”

  She covered her face, unable to speak. Michael gathered her onto his lap as if she were a child. She sobbed hard enough for both of them. Michael felt like crying himself; seeing his mother had affected him strangely. Although he had started off feeling angry about what she'd said—that stuff about Amanda—now he felt sad, sorry for her, and lonely. Trying to figure it out, he just rocked back and forth with Quinn in his arms.

  “I'm sorry I acted like that in front of your mother,” she whispered after a long while, when she could keep some control of her voice.

  “Don't be,” Michael said. “She was being a jerk.”

  “Your mother hates me, it's obvious.”

  “She doesn't, but it wouldn't matter if she did.”

  “I don't like being hated,” Quinn said. “A lot of people feel that way… it's because I'm so different. Your mother just wants to protect you…”

  Rocking her gently, Michael just listened as her voice merged with the sound of the waves.

  “When you came,” she said, gulping, “I expected you to ignore me. There are so many beautiful girls here—they wear shorts and bikinis and things, not kimonos or their father's old shorts. They use fingernail polish on their nails, not to paint numbers on their lobster buoys. They wear jewelry instead offish scales and rope bracelets. Like Amanda, I bet…”

  “Well, Amanda's not too keen on fish scales, that's for sure.”

  “Who is? Except me.”

  Michael smiled down at the top of her head.

  “I know I'm weird,” she whispered. “I can't help it. I think I told you once…”

  “You said you were a changeling.”

  “Yes. I'm intense and strange, and it got worse after my parents drowned. I look at Allie—so cute and normal—caring about things like lip gloss and the right color socks, and my head spins.”

  “Maybe she gets to be that way because you're the way you are,” Michael said.

  Quinn looked up with one eye, her head still buried in his lap.

  “Because you feel enough for both of you,” he whispered.

  “I do feel a lot,” Quinn said, her voice thin, stretching, as if to the sky. “When it first happened, I'd sit right here—in this same spot—and wait for the mermaid to come. I thought she was my mother… to this day, I think she was. I'd leave her white flowers, and I'd feel her singing to my broken heart.”

  “You had a broken heart?” Michael asked, the words piercing his whole body.

  “Yes. I did. I do.”

  They sat very still, holding each other as the tide came in, every wave a little closer, licking the bottoms of their bare feet.

  “Broken hearts never grow back together,” Quinn whispered. “They never really get fixed—don't let anyone tell you they do. But I believe that if you're lucky, you find the right things in life to let you live with one.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Hubbard's Point… the people, the lilies, the rocks and roses, the rabbits, the lobsters, Rumer, Winnie… you.”

  “Me,” Michael whispered, his throat aching.

  “When you came here this summer, and you liked me so much,” Quinn said, “I couldn't believe it. I thought it had to be a mistake. Like out of the blue I was going to get a message from God: Sorry, my mistake.”

  “You won't be getting that message.”

  “I just can't believe it,” she said, shivering in his arms. Now, reaching up, she gently traced his cheek with her fingertips. “Why do you like me when there's someone like Amanda?”

  He laughed. “You don't even know Amanda”

  “Sure I do,” Quinn said stubbornly. “She's like the perfect girls at school, I'll bet. Ashton or Megan or Isabella. The ones who look like models, who never eat, who get the best grades, whose mothers take them shopping every Saturday…”

  “I could be wrong,” Michael said, “but it sounds like you're making generalities. They might not be half as happy as you are.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because you know who you are,” Michael said. “I saw that in you the first day we met.”

  “What good is that?”

  “It's everything.”

  “Well, you know who you are,” Quinn said, tracing his face with her hand.

  “I'm getting to,” he said. “I didn't use to. But I used to try….”

  “Like how?”

  “Well, like wanting a scar,” Michael said, spinning into the past. “My dad has some—from falling out of trees, crashing off the roof, training exercises, stuff like that. I thought if I could have one, it would make me more like him.”

  “You don't need a scar for that,” Quinn whispered.

  “Yeah, but I used to think I did. I thought it had to be a mark, a grade—something to prove I was rough and tough like him. I thought he'd like me more.”

  “You thought he didn't like you?”

  Michael shrugged. “Kind of, I guess. This summer, I see it differently.”

  “How?”

  “Well, he was pretty unhappy himself. Their marriage wasn't so good. My mom's drinking, and the way she always blames him—”

  “But it's not his fault,” Quinn said.

  “No.”

  “It's probably not hers either.”

  Michael looked into her face, waiting.

  “Even though she wants you to go back to Amanda,” she whispered, smiling.

  “There's no chance of that.” Michael played with her hair for a while, leaning over to kiss her.

  “She doesn't like it here, does she?” Quinn asked.

  Michael shook his head. “She said we'd never come back to Hubbard's Point—and we almost never did. Even though we kept the house till they got divorced, we started taking summer vacations other places… Hawaii once, a ranch in Montana, the Oregon coast, Europe… Aunt Rumer would sometimes come out to be with us. I remember missing her, and Blue.”

  “Her horse…”

  “Yeah. She brought me a stuffed horse that reminded me of him. I named him Blue… but one night I went to sleep, and when I woke up, he was gone.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Michael closed his eyes, playing with her hair some more. “I know what happened. My mother took him away.”

  “Why?”

  “The same reason she wants me with Amanda,” Michael whispered. “Because that's the way she knows… the closer I get to here… Hubbard's Point… the farther away it feels to her.”

  “But this is her home. Just like it's Rumer's and your dad's.”

  Michael shook his head. “No, it's not like that for her,” he said. “I don't know why, but it never was. She couldn't wait to get away, never wanted us to come back. She doesn't even want me here now.”

  “But I'm glad you are.”

  Holding her even tighter, Michael kissed her head, her ear, the side of her face. “You and I are meant to be together.”

  “Maybe your mother will try to make us break up.”

  “No one can make us,” Michael said fiercely, holding Quinn tightly to his chest as the cool white tops of the waves touched their feet, their ankles, coming higher. Their rings of copper wire glinted in the sun. The rocks around them were silver—bare, bald rock as white as clouds against the bright blue sky behind them.

  He touched her face, kissed her cheek. She smelled warm and sweet. The waves lapped their feet. They were on a boat together, just the two of them, steering a magical course. Michael didn't know where they'd end up. But he'd gotten the idea from watching his father and Aunt Rumer that an early shipwreck could ruin entire live
s.

  So with his eyes open, Michael just pulled Quinn closer, kissing her lips, knowing he'd never look away from the horizon or let go of the wheel, no matter what happened.

  The Clarissa surfed the Gulf Stream home, and Sixtus Larkin and Malachy Condon were having the time of their lives. By night, bioluminescence streaked along the hull—sea fire created by their speed through the plankton-rich waves. By day, humpback whales and bottlenose dolphins swam just out of sight, revealing themselves just enough to tantalize Malachy into dropping his hydrophone over the side or grabbing his video camera for a scant chance at capturing on film a glossy black back, a sharp dorsal fin.

  “You're trying to get yourself a show on the Discovery Channel,” Sixtus said, hand on the tiller.

  “The hell I am,” Malachy said. “I'm too goddamned serious a scholar to bother with such nonsense.”

  “Nope,” Sixtus said. “You're after your own show. ‘Malachy the Whale Tracker’… something like that. Like the guy who hunts down poisonous snakes, or the one who travels the world's reefs in search of great white sharks.”

  “Bad men, they are,” Malachy said, biting harder on his pipe stem. “Stirring up the public to loathe and revile the species… no, Sixtus—I am simply doing my small part, feeding the river of knowledge about cetaceans. As a teacher, surely you understand the value of that. Enough drops in the bucket fill the bucket…”

  “You're right, Mai. And I respect you for it.”

  “Besides, Lucinda thinks knowledge is sexy.”

  “Well, she would. She's a librarian. Think she'll be pleasantly surprised when you show up in Hawthorne?”

  “Hell, I hope so. I'm not given to much impetuosity these days, but when a fellow Hibernian offers me a ride south on his Herreshoff, I figure I'd better go along with him. Besides, I haven't seen my Lucinda in a good month.” He smoked his pipe for a while as Sixtus steered their way. The Clarissa sliced through the water, waves peeling off her sharp and lovely bow.

  Sixtus gazed ahead at the sun making a path along the open sea. With all the wide open blue, he was steering straight along the golden waves as if they were calling him home. He thought about dreams, how all his adult life he had wanted to sail solo transatlantic—man versus nature. He had taught Moby Dick to more classes than he could remember; he had always wanted to go in search of spiritual riches, family knowledge, and the white whale himself.

  “Do you ever think, Malachy,” he asked, “about how alone we are?”

  Malachy, sitting to leeward so he could be closer to the waves and the creatures swimming within them, trailed his fingers in the swiftly passing water and nodded. “Every day. Isn't that what this is all about?”

  “This?”

  “Your quest? This trip?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  “You're testing yourself, Sixtus,” Malachy said. “Seeing the limits of what you can take.”

  “Into the abyss, as it were,” Sixtus said, “I got to thinking about Zeb. About all those trips to the stars, into the sky, alone in his space suit with the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. Sometimes it's easier to see the mistakes of the younger generation than it is to see our own.”

  He pictured Zeb, trying to make up for lost time with Michael, spending the summer at Hubbard's Point trying to establish a footing here on earth instead of off searching the stars for his dreams. He hoped Zeb had taken him good and seriously, that he was looking after Rumer. And that she was looking after him.

  “And what did the younger generation's mistakes teach you this time?”

  “That everyone needs an eye to look into.”

  “An eye?” Malachy said, cocking a bushy white eyebrow.

  “Sure. Even Ahab—out at sea, staring into the nothingness, he found Moby Dick. He found a white whale, and by chasing him till the moment of his own death, he found a way to not be alone—an eye to look into.”

  “You are a goddamned teacher, aren't you?”

  “Sorry to say, it's a quality that dies hard.”

  “Okay. I'll humor you. Say I have Lucinda as my eye to look into. Ahab has Moby Dick. How about you?”

  Sixtus held the tiller, squinting into the sunlight ahead.

  “You got to thinking about Ireland, didn't you? Staring into the eyes of strangers. Nurses, aides, the occasional podiatrist… maybe the doctor would look in once in a while. That's what you were thinking, weren't you?”

  “Yup.”

  “And those aren't the eyes you want to look into, are they?”

  “They're not.”

  “So tell me, Sixtus: Who are they?”

  Sixtus swallowed, peering into the golden light dancing ahead on the waves. As a child he had had his brother and mother and, through this trip to Nova Scotia, he had just regained them. As a young man, he had found Clarissa, and she had given him two daughters— he still had them. But mainly—as much as any of it—he had Hubbard's Point. Rumer, Quinn, les Dames de la Roche, and—for as long as they stayed this summer— Zeb and his grandson, Michael.

  “My friends and family,” he said huskily. “At Hubbard's Point.”

  “Glad you figured that out before you stuck yourself in Shady Acres, or whatever Irish rest home you'd have discovered over there.”

  “Guilt's a weird thing.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Yes. I feel guilty for having a daughter who cares about me. Cares enough to let me stick around.”

  “You never stop to figure she might like her father, do you? Sure, you're old and annoying, but we all are.”

  “I'm the luckiest man in the world.”

  “By any scientific definition available,” Malachy said with utter seriousness, “along with the empirical evidence at hand, I would say that that is most definitely so. With yours truly running a very close second.”

  “Amen, brother,” Sixtus said as they cleared the elbow of Cape Cod and turned right toward home.

  DESPITE HER RESOLVE, with Elizabeth nearby, Rumer wasn't sure how to be around Zeb. It made her act shy and feel foolish, more becoming to a young girl than a seasoned woman. But whatever they had started was gaining force, and the sudden distance between them only made it feel more powerful. They were all supposed to get together that night, at Rumer's house, to celebrate Michael's birthday. Rumer was dreading it.

  “How is it, having Elizabeth home?” Mathilda asked as they were scrubbing for early morning surgery on an aged Jack Russell terrier.

  “Difficult,” Rumer said, scouring her wrists and forearms.

  “Were you always known as the Larkin girls? My sisters and I were always known as the Metcalf girls. Isn't it a shame that we spent half our childhoods wanting to claw each other's eyes out for borrowing clothes without asking?”

  “Strange you should mention that,” Rumer said, drying her hands. “Elizabeth told me I don't pay enough attention to boundaries. Boundaries.” She pronounced the word as if it were in a foreign language.

  “Well, who's the one who ignored the boundary line first? Weren't you in love with Zeb your whole life? And didn't your sister walk right in and take what she wanted?”

  Rumer put the stethoscope against Danny's—the patient's—chest. His breathing was shallow, his heart strong. His owners, the Robinsons, had loved the terrier as if he were their own child since first getting him sixteen years earlier. Rumer took a deep breath and picked up the scalpel.

  “Yes,” Rumer said. “She did. But it feels so low, fighting with a sister over a man.”

  “It's not low at all,” Mattie said, looking her in the eye. “It's only your life. If it takes a fight to find happiness, then isn't that worth it? You're wise, Rumer. When it comes to pets and pet owners, you're the doctor. When it comes to me, you're my guru and guide. But when it comes to you…”

  “I can't see my way clear,” Rumer said, taking a deep, even breath.

  Rumer smiled, and then turned her full attention to Danny. She consulted the X rays again, then made the incision. Pla
ying with his owners, Danny had swallowed a golf ball. It had lodged in the upper end of his large bowel, causing him much distress. To make matters worse, the golf ball had been chewed first, and the inner core of rubber string was coming unraveled.

  As she worked, Rumer thought of the nobility of life, the ignominy of swallowing a golf ball. She thought of the difference between being a movie star and being a veterinarian. Although one was more glamorous, the other got to give a family back its dog. Rumer knew what was important, and she knew that there was more than one way of being pinched from the inside. Fighting with her sister over a man wasn't so low; as Mattie had said, it was only Rumer's life.

  She closed up Danny's incision and made surgical notes in his record. She still had to make calls about new stables for Blue, and that night she was hosting Michael's birthday party. She had thought about canceling, backing out, just so she wouldn't have to see Zeb and Elizabeth in the same room together.

  She hoped it wouldn't come to a fight, but if it did, she was ready. She still hadn't heard from her father, and it was making her crazy. It wouldn't take much to push her to the edge, and this time she wouldn't back down.

  Rumer set the old oak table with her mother's Blue Willow china. She and Quinn polished the silver and washed the crystal till it sparkled.

  “His mother hates me,” Quinn said. “I don't think I should be here.”

  “Michael invited you,” Rumer replied.

  “He doesn't have to,” Quinn said. “I can see him later….”

  “It's his eighteenth-birthday dinner,” Rumer said, sliding her arm around Quinn and squeezing. “How do you think he'd feel if you weren't here? Don't worry about his mother. Leave her to me.”

  “Were you and she like me and Allie?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, we were,” Rumer said, and the question made her sad because it brought back such vivid memories of being close to her sister as children and how much she had missed that connection, felt its loss.

  “She's very different from you,” Quinn said, looking worried.