Beach Plum Island

by Holly Robinson

  Gigi’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “Uncle Simon was still there?”

  “You knew,” Elaine said flatly.

  “She didn’t tell me. I only figured it out a couple of days ago,” Gigi said. “But I think they’ve been seeing each other a while. They were probably just afraid to tell us because they thought it would be awkward.”

  “It is awkward,” Elaine said sourly, rubbing her stiffening neck. Still, Ava had looked so happy. She’d never, ever seen Ava that happy with a man, not since high school with Mark, laughing and looking up at the guy like he was her own personal God. She turned to Gigi. “You don’t mind that Ava’s seeing your uncle?”

  Gigi looked surprised. “Well, it’s a little weird, I guess. But why would I mind? Uncle Simon is one of my favorite people and so is Ava. And it’s not like it’s incest or anything like that.”

  “Ew,” Elaine said.

  “I think it’s kind of cool,” Gigi said. “You should be happy for Ava. Simon’s really a nice guy even if he is superrich.”

  “I don’t actually mind the superrich part,” Elaine said. “Don’t forget that I’m the corporate sister. You two are the artsy tofu eaters.”

  “Whatever. But I’m glad Ava found somebody, especially since Sam’s applying to colleges this fall and Mark’s getting married.”

  “Mark’s getting married?” Elaine had started to stand; the shock of this news made her legs nearly buckle again. “When did that happen?”

  “Boy, you really have been out of it, I guess.”

  It should have been an insult, but Gigi hadn’t said it that way, so Elaine decided to just agree and try to stand up again before her whole aching body stiffened into this crouched position on the curb.

  “Here. Let me help you.” Gigi stood first and reached her hand down to Elaine.

  Elaine hesitated, then took it. What else could she do? “I’m really sorry,” she said again.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Gigi said. “I told you that.”

  “Not just for the crash.”

  “Oh. That’s okay.” They stood by the side of the road, looking at each other for a minute, then Gigi grinned. It was Dad’s grin, wide and flawless, with that dimple in the left cheek. “You might want to call somebody for your car.”

  “Then what?” Elaine said helplessly, turning to look at the wreck.

  “They’ll tow it and we’ll go have breakfast with Ava and Simon,” Gigi said.

  “I’m not ready to do that.”

  “I guess you could get a cab to the bus station and go home,” Gigi said. “Beach Plum Island doesn’t have a cab service, but there’s Port Taxi in Newburyport. Is that what you really want, though? To turn around without seeing Ava? You came all the way up here. Might as well get ’er done.”

  Where had she heard that phrase? Evan, Elaine realized. “I didn’t come up here expecting all this,” she said, gesturing at the car, at Gigi. “This was more than I bargained for.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s life, right?” Gigi said, and pulled the cell phone out of her pocket. “You’re noodling along and then you’re flat on your face. Come on. I’ll wait with you while they tow your car. Then we’ll walk to Ava’s. It’s only a mile.”

  It would be the longest mile of her life, Elaine thought, but maybe the most important journey. A great blue heron flew low across the marsh in front of them, its long legs dangling, the wings magnificent, glinting silver as it glided over the water. A bird that looked too primitive to survive, yet it did.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He wanted to see her alone, Peter had said. “Come to Cambridge and we’ll have dinner. Just the two of us. I’ll get takeout and we can sit on my porch. Charley took the baby over to her mother’s.”

  The boys had spent Wednesday night at their father’s, so Ava was planning to spend the night with Simon at his condo. She drove to Cambridge on the way, weaving through the warren of streets around Tufts University to Porter Square.

  Then her GPS led her even deeper through these oddly mixed neighborhoods of transitional housing, student ghettos, and young professionals, with the grander Victorians near Mass Ave occupied by professors, she imagined, or the business owners of the shops and bars and restaurants around the universities. It was like driving in one of those horrible Grand Theft Auto games the boys loved to play, with people jumping out in front of her in cop cars, on motorcycles, on foot, on skateboards, bikes, even a unicycle. She was shaking a little by the time she turned onto Peter’s street.

  He was waiting for her on the porch, sitting on one of the rockers. Ava couldn’t get over the shock of recognition as she walked up the flagstone path, some kind of internal compass that must make you gravitate toward people who looked and felt familiar. Maybe it was the same innate sense animals had that drove them into herds or flocks; even sheep could recognize faces.

  Whatever the reason, Peter was unmistakably family, just like Gigi and Elaine. They were connected by something other than pieces of paper, and that blood connection couldn’t be completely severed by distance or years apart.

  Peter heard her footsteps and stood up, called a greeting. He was dressed in a faded red T-shirt that suited his complexion, long plaid shorts, and sandals: a Cambridge professional’s weekend uniform. He didn’t use the cane to come down the steps to greet her; she supposed he must know his own home and yard well enough that it wasn’t necessary.

  As Ava approached him, she thought of his school, Thompson, and the years it must have taken those teachers and Peter’s family to undo the nearly feral upbringing he’d had with Aunt Finley. She felt sorry about that, but happy that somebody had turned him into a loving man with an open heart.

  They sat together on the creaky rocking chairs—Peter made a joke about how he liked furniture to make noise so he could find it—and peppered each other with questions. Ava told him everything she knew about their parents, how they’d met and what kept them apart, about their mother trying to keep him, running away from the nuns with him despite being only fifteen and frightened. About their father’s frustration at having his name omitted from the birth certificate and his determination to find Peter, a mission he’d passed on to his daughters.

  “I couldn’t have found you without Gigi,” Ava said. “She was pretty determined.”

  “Gigi’s pretty amazing,” Peter said happily.

  He told her more about his own upbringing. He’d been taken from Aunt Finley’s and placed in a foster home on a dairy farm. “My most lingering memory of that place is of how warm the milk was, when the other kids taught me how to drink it straight from an udder. Oh yeah, and how this one time a hissing goose chased me.”

  He had no idea what kind of beast was after him, Peter admitted with a laugh. “I only knew I was terrified. The goose chased me right into a pigsty because I couldn’t see where I was going. They had to spray me down with the hose in the cow barns afterward. That farmer had no problem letting me run wild in the farmyard with the other kids, which I suppose is why social services took me out of there. But that was the first place I remember being truly happy, because I was treated just like everybody else.”

  There had been three foster homes in four years, and Peter gave up thinking he’d ever be placed in a permanent home. Then, when he was eight years old, he was adopted. He’d spent the rest of his childhood in Eliot, Maine, in a classic New England Cape on the water, with two older sisters and a golden retriever. “It was everything a kid could hope to have,” he said simply. “People who love you, a dog to play with, and the smell of the sea.”

  His mother had encouraged him to apply for the Thompson School scholarship after his father died of a stroke; Peter hadn’t wanted to do it because he didn’t want to leave home. His uncle, the one blinded during his tour in Vietnam, had been adamant that he take it when the school called to say Peter had won the scholarship.

&nbs
p; “He told me I could live in a corner of the world, like I was doing now, and think I was happy, or I could live in the whole world and know where I belonged,” Peter said. After that, it had been easy to get into college, to pursue his dream of helping other people the way he’d been helped by others. “I specialize in working with families,” he said. “I’ve been trying to put families together my whole life, because I felt so lucky to find one of my own.”

  “Were you ever angry at our parents for giving you up?” Ava asked. “I would have been.”

  Peter shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. But that was all so long ago, and I was very busy being happy, after spending those first few years of my life in the dark. Quite literally, in the dark.”

  “So you do remember Aunt Finley’s house, where she kept you in that back bedroom.”

  “Not every minute,” he said. “She let me into the kitchen for meals, and sometimes I sat in the living room with her and listened to the television. She had this little harness and leash contraption. My wife says she’s seen other people use them with toddlers, so I suppose it wasn’t all that barbaric. It just seemed so to me at the time. All I wanted to do was run around outside, even if it meant falling down.”

  “Finley was sad about how everything ended up.”

  “Huh,” Peter said, his face clouding. “If you say so.”

  Ava reached into her bag and pulled out the little stuffed dog she’d taken from Peter’s bedroom and mended. “Hold out your hands,” she said. When he did, laughing a little, she placed the dog between them. “This is from your room at Aunt Finley’s. She’d kept it, all those years, right on your bed.”

  Peter’s face was open, naked with vulnerability despite the shadow of a beard on his strong jaw. He closed his eyes and concentrated on moving his hands over the dog. “It can’t be mine,” he said softly. “Mine had only one eye.”

  Ava swallowed hard. So he did remember. “I fixed it,” she said.

  His eyes flew open, the irises dark. He reached for her with one hand; it crept up her arm, her shoulder, her face. Ava held her breath as Peter moved his fingers lightly over her mouth, her nose, her eyes and hair. “Why?” he whispered.

  “Because I knew we’d find you. I wanted to give it to you so you’d know that your family never forgot about you,” she said, and leaned into him then, gathering her brother into her arms.

  • • •

  Elaine had just gotten home from work when the doorbell rang. Had to be a mistake. Nobody ever rang her doorbell after work, unless she’d ordered takeout or convinced Gabe to come over. They’d taken it slow, seeing each other only once last week and again at the beginning of this week, both times for just a few hours. Nothing she did or said had convinced Gabe to sleep with her, which was frustrating, but in a way also exhilarating. And maybe, too, a relief. He wasn’t with her just to sleep with her. Gabe was with her. And kissing him made the waiting sweeter.

  Last week, Gabe had helped her sort through finding another car in a hurry, convincing her that a Toyota Prius was just the thing for the city. She’d resisted. “Not my style,” she’d said. “That’s a total do-gooder’s car. Next thing you know, I’d be wearing T-shirts with slogans.”

  “Who’s the one working the suicide prevention hotline?” Gabe had argued. “Besides, wouldn’t a smart businesswoman want a car that’s less likely to be broken into than a BMW, more fuel efficient, and easy to park, especially if she’s trekking up to Beach Plum Island every weekend?”

  “Not every weekend,” Elaine said. “Not unless you come with me.”

  He hadn’t, yet. But Gabe had promised that he would come with her to Ava’s tomorrow, to hear Gigi sing at a birthday party for Peter. It would be an ordeal. Elaine still couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea of Ava being with Simon, of all people, despite the fact that Simon had been so gracious, dealing with the police after the car accident and then leaving her alone with Ava to apologize and cry and, well, to basically leak all over the place while Evan and Sam crept around the house like visitors at a zoo where some exotic animal was dying. Or giving birth.

  Okay, yes, that was a better metaphor: last weekend, she’d given birth to yet another Elaine, a different, better sister to Ava and Gigi, she hoped. Someone who could make amends and accept what came her way with more grace and less fury. Jesus, it was hard, though. She still wasn’t sure she was ready for this big meet-and-greet birthday party tomorrow. The idea of it made her feel nauseous with fear. By now, Elaine had heard the stories Ava and Gigi had told about how they’d tracked down Peter, gone to his office, his house. The guy would have to know that she was the one holdout, the family member who hadn’t wanted to look for him.

  The door buzzed again. Some people had no manners. Elaine stomped over to the intercom, pressed the button, and shouted, “What!” into the speaker.

  There was a brief—and she imagined panicked—silence. Then a man’s gentle voice. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Barrett, but I’m here to collect for the Seva Foundation. I was told you might want to make a donation.”

  “You were told wrong,” Elaine said icily, her thumb firmly pressed on the button. “Who gave you this address? Don’t you know soliciting is prohibited in this neighborhood?”

  “Oh. My apologies.” The man sounded genuinely contrite. “I was given this address by a Miss Ava Barrett. She seemed sure you might have something for our organization. We provide eye care services to people in need. I can come back another time if this isn’t convenient.”

  Ava! That figured. Ava was probably going to pour her money—what little she had—into charities for blind people to make up for whatever had happened to Peter in his pitiful life. Well, Elaine supposed she could do this much for her sister. Then she could tell the guy to go away and put her on their “do not call” list with a clear conscience.

  “All right. Just a minute. I’ll be right down,” Elaine said.

  She slipped her feet into moccasins, threw a sweater on over her tank top, then grabbed a handful of dollar bills out of her purse and went downstairs. She peered through the spy hole first, of course—God, all she needed was another mugging—and saw that the caller was, indeed, a handsome guy with a cane and dark glasses, which immediately made her feel contrite.

  How the hell did a blind guy have the nerve and ability to navigate strange streets at night and ring other people’s doorbells?

  Wait, scratch that: it wouldn’t matter to a blind guy if it was day or night. Duh. But shouldn’t he at least have a companion, the way the Jehovah’s Witnesses always did, in case things turned ugly?

  Elaine opened the door, expecting to see an envelope or a folder in the man’s hand for the money, but he wasn’t carrying anything. “I’m here,” she said, then realized this was unnecessary. Of course he must have heard the door open.

  The man removed his glasses. “Hello, Elaine.”

  She stumbled back into the doorway, literally blown backward by the shock of seeing her own tilted brown eyes and Ava’s broad cheekbones melded together in the face of this handsome dark-haired man on her front step.

  “Peter,” she whispered.

  He grinned, and the smile transformed his face so that she no longer saw the separate features or the ghosts of family members, but just the face of a good-looking man in his forties with deep smile lines and a strong jaw. A man who was dressed like an academic, in a tweed jacket over a black T-shirt and khakis, but who stood like a soldier, straight and square.

  “If I didn’t think you’d fall off that step, I’d hit you,” she said. “Jesus, what the hell kind of stupid stunt is this to pull?”

  Peter laughed. “A stunt that worked, thank God. I didn’t think you’d see me otherwise.”

  That word, “see,” had a whole other meaning here, Elaine supposed, but she was too muzzy-headed with shock to contemplate the enormity of the moment, only the small things:
a car driving slowly down her street, the sound of a dog barking in the distance, the hissing light rain that had started to fall, and the frantic flutter of her own heartbeat trapped behind her rib cage.

  “I’m getting wet,” Peter said mildly. “Mind if I come in?”

  “Can you do stairs?” Elaine asked, and could have kicked herself. He wasn’t crippled. Her brother had a PhD, for God’s sake. In psychology! He was a therapist of some kind and had probably already read her emotions like an open book.

  But Peter didn’t seem to think the question was stupid. He simply asked, “Do you have a railing? Otherwise, you can just tell me what floor you’re on and how many stairs.”

  “No railing. Second floor, twenty-one stairs,” Elaine answered automatically, because she had counted them back when she was still drinking and trying to make it upstairs without falling. “Is it better for you to go ahead of me or behind me?”

  “Well, if you go ahead of me, I can hear your footsteps and know when you’ve reached the landing,” Peter said. “But the obvious advantage of going ahead of you is that if I fall, you get to catch me.”

  The joke took her by surprise. She laughed, snorted, really, and said, “I think I’ll precede you, then, thank you,” and turned around to lead the way up the stairs, listening closely to make sure he wasn’t fumbling or falling behind her.

  She was glad she’d had the cleaning team into her apartment this week. Of course Peter couldn’t see dust, but she imagined he must be sensitive to whatever was underfoot, and to smells as well. She’d microwaved leftover Chinese for dinner; the kitchen smelled of ginger, though, so that wasn’t too bad.

  Once they were upstairs, Elaine realized she should guide Peter to a chair, because otherwise how would he know where they were? Before she could speak, though, he was tapping with his cane, delicate pecking motions. He reminded her of the great blue herons on Beach Plum Island, with his height, his thin strong frame, and the determined jut of his chin on his neck.