* * *
She’s sitting on his cot, looking up at him. “I had this whole plan,” she says, holding up the tape: The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead. “Music and everything. I didn’t really want to come out here and clean. It’s actually pretty tidy in here—did your dad have a secret dusting habit, but in one room only?” She puts the tape down. “What I was really thinking was that we would come out here, and I would put on some Smiths, and I would . . .” She turns her head sideways, lowers her voice. “Well, to be honest, I’m trying to seduce you.”
“Seduce me? Here?” He can’t help it; he starts to laugh.
“The inn didn’t feel right. Too full of ghosts. Oh God, I’m so embarrassed.”
“No. Don’t be. Please.” He takes the tape, looks at it, remembers that it used to be his, that he lent it to her and she never gave it back and he didn’t care because he would have given her anything, even his favorite tape. He puts it in his old boom box, presses play. Johnny Marr’s guitar and Morrissey’s voice fill the room. “You know, I actually really would like to be seduced by you—it’s all I’ve been able to think about, trying to find a way to . . . But this is the worst place you could have picked. This place is full of ghosts, too.” The music is taking him back in time. He loves her more because she is here with him in the present, but also because she is his past.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget it. This was stupid.”
“Listen, it’s not—my dad’s ashes are in a coffee can in the kitchen. I brought them out here because I didn’t know what to do with them. I can’t really—it’s not really conducive to—oh, Christ. Sorry.”
He steps toward the bed, leans down, kisses her. He wants her. Bad. And he’s not going to give up this chance because of Jonah. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” He sees her face: doubt in her eyes. “I promise,” he says, trying to smile and make her smile in return. “I’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, he gets the coffee can. He puts on his jacket and boots and opens the door. There’s a small pile of bricks on the side porch. He picks one up and opens the lid of the can. He puts the brick on top of the ashes and closes the lid.
He leaves the cabin and walks to the riverbank, steps off the island and walks several paces out. During the walk over with Mae, he saw a few of the flags for the ice holes the fisherman would have left early that morning. He hopes the holes haven’t frozen over already. He finds one and looks down into it. He sees the slushy water a few feet below the surface, and he feels relieved. He thinks, This is it, now you’ll really be free. He stands still for a moment, and then he drops the can into the hole and waits, fearing that it might float, even with the brick. It doesn’t. It disappears. He imagines a muskie down there, snapping at the tin in confused rage as it sinks, chasing the irresistible metallic shine of the can all the way down to the bottom. He imagines the lid popping open and the ashes floating away with the currents, off in all directions.
He turns and walks back to the island. Outside the cabin he takes off his gloves and rubs snow over his hands to clean them.
Mae is still sitting on his bed. She says, “I thought about maybe being naked when you came in, you know, kind of Sharon Stone–ish because I remember you loved that scene. But . . . it’s cold in here. And I’m not really Sharon Stone.”
“You’re way sexier than Sharon Stone, or anyone else.”
She’s lifting her shirt over her head now. She’s not wearing a bra, she’s wearing a lacy camisole instead, and he can see her nipples through it, the pert shape of her small breasts. Her hair is down, cascading over her shoulders. How is it possible that this is happening, that he’s this lucky? Even here, even in this place, he feels like the luckiest man in the world. And now she’s in his arms. “Mae . . .”
He tries to be slow, he tries to be gentle—but she’s not. She pulls him against her, bites his lower lip. He’s nervous, self-conscious. It’s so bright, what does she see? He’s older now. Crow’s-feet, stubble, is she still attracted to him? “I love you,” she whispers. “I want you.” He cups the back of her head, slides the camisole over her head, kisses her breasts, then her mouth again. He loves the way she smells. Her hair like fruit, like flowers, and her skin like coconut oil, like suntan lotion, like summers long past. “What’s that perfume?” he whispers.
“Dollar-store lotion . . .” He laughs into her hair, traverses her body with his lips and his hands. He loses himself, finds himself, but most important, finds her.
After, he traces her collarbone with his fingers, kisses her more gently. She turns and curves herself against his chest and he inhales the scent of her hair again. The music is still playing. Morrissey is now singing about the boy with the thorn in his side. That’s not him anymore.
* * *
On the way home from the grocery store a few days later, Gabe sees an old red-and-white Chris-Craft at the end of a driveway with a For Sale sign taped to the windshield. He stops walking, puts down his bags, peeks inside. The interior was probably white once but is now yellowed and cracked. Gabe hears a cough behind him. A gray-haired man with a beard is watching him and smoking a pipe. He puffs out a cloud of smoke and says, “Still runs. Motor’s still good. Just needs a little work on the interior. Nothing you can’t handle. If you pay cash, you can take her home now.”
“If she doesn’t run, can I bring her back?”
“Sure, whatever.” The man shrugs, smiles. “But I’m telling you, she does.”
“I don’t have anything to tow her with. Can you bring her to Summers’ Inn for me, and I’ll give you an extra fifty for the delivery?”
“No charge. You used to detail this boat for me at the marina when you were a kid, do you remember that?”
Gabe has to look more closely at the man. He remembers his face, and then, suddenly, this boat.
“It’s good to see you back in town,” the man says. “Happy to sell this boat to you. You always took such good care of her.”
Gabe smiles to himself as he walks home, to the inn. People remember him as more than what he had thought of himself for so many years. He isn’t just Jonah Broadbent’s useless, abused son. He left the good parts of himself here, too, not just the bad. And now he’s back to claim them. He can’t wait to tell Mae about the boat.
Life doesn’t stop just because you’re on vacation. Make a to-do list you can tackle when you get home.
Mae pads down the hall in her moccasin slippers; she slept late. She can hear Gabe typing in the kitchen. He’s working on a freelance project, as he does most mornings now. It’s for a magazine: graphics to go with the stories. Mae hovered around him for the first few days and it discomfited her, this aimlessness and dependence, so strong in part because of how worried she is about the whereabouts of her grandfather—and how frustrated she is that he’s taken to leaving messages on the sly, using his password to the call-answering service so he can inform them that he is fine, just driving around, they shouldn’t worry—and no other details, no way to reach him, no way to tell him she’s sorry, or ask him to come home, tell him that three weeks are enough, enough now, that she needs him back.
She has been unsettled by something else, too, by the way it feels the roles between her and Gabe have reversed. He takes care of her now. And what does she have to offer him, aside from memories of a young girl he fell in love with?
To distract herself from all this, she has created for herself the task of going through boxes upstairs in the attic, sorting her grandmother’s things. “It’s been almost a month since the funeral,” she said to Gabe. “These things need to be done.” It’s pointless, though: Lilly kept everything organized and George had been in the navy and took pride in always keeping everything “shipshape.” You have to be systematic when you live in an inn, Lilly would say. Clutter could never be in view—and couldn’t be out of view either, waiting to tumble out and take over at the end of the season. Every box Mae has opened has been filled with exactly what it said it would contain, in Lill
y’s bold, boxy letters. “Invoices.” “Mae/School.” “Extra napkins.”
She kisses Gabe good morning and pours herself a coffee. There’s a podcast on; he likes to listen to them while he works. She brings the milk to the table and sits, tries to listen, too, even though she’s come in in the middle and feels lost.
“The river is starting to thaw already,” she observes. “Early this year.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve noticed. Maybe when it’s thawed completely we can get out on the boat.”
“The boat. Maybe.” Every time he mentions it, she feels a wave of nausea. Now that she’s lost so many people to it, she can hardly look at the river.
“Any plans for today?”
She has stirred the milk into her coffee and is putting it back in the fridge. Her face is suddenly hot and she stays in front of the open fridge door for a moment before replacing the milk and turning back to him. “Lots of plans. I should get back to the attic. There’s so much to do. Good luck with your project, honey.” She winces as she heads for the swinging kitchen door. Honey? It doesn’t feel natural to call him that. Domestic bliss doesn’t seem to suit her anymore, not since those moments in New York, when the life she had been building fell apart. Now she just keeps waiting for someone to pull the rug out.
Back in the attic, the dust makes her sneeze, but still she keeps digging. She’s found a box of memorabilia from when her mother was a baby: a tiny sleeper, a porcelain box labeled “Teeth” that she decides not to open, a baptismal candle, report cards, school photos. But not what she’s looking for: none of Virginia’s old journals, if she ever kept any; no letters between her and Mae’s father, and there must have been those. Mae knows her parents’ relationship wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was disastrous in the end. But Virginia and Chase had loved each other. No matter what else had happened, it had been true love. Hadn’t it?
“Not even a wedding photo?” she says aloud, exasperated. But then she realizes, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, that this is her own fault. Lilly gave Mae the small wedding album years ago—and Mae left it at Peter’s apartment with all her other things. It’s probably in a New York garbage dump now.
She stands and wipes her dusty hands on her knees, leaves open boxes and scattered contents behind when she goes back downstairs. Gabe is on the phone when she peeks her head into the kitchen. “I’m going to Viv’s,” she mouths, and he nods, blows her a kiss.
There’s warmth in the breeze and Mae can feel the melted river water in it, the promise of spring. She looks toward the boathouse and imagines being out on the river with Gabe. Water droplets spraying her arms, wind in her air, sun in her eyes. And there’s a child in this unbidden reverie, a child in the boat with them, with messy hair and an orange life jacket and a smile that’s somehow familiar. Mae starts to walk faster.
“Do you want tea today?” Viv asks her when she’s inside her kitchen.
Mae shakes her head. “I have a question,” she says as Viv fills the kettle anyway.
“Why didn’t my grandmother save any of my mother’s things?”
Vivian is fussing with the teapot. “Your mother wasn’t the sentimental type. Neither was your grandmother. Maybe there just wasn’t anything to save.”
“But there had to have been—letters from when my dad was back home with his family after they met, before he ran away to be with her. He was home without her for months. They must have written to each other.”
“They must have, you’re right.”
Mae is frustrated. Viv knows everything, she was Lilly’s confidante. And Mae is on the outside, even now. “Do you think she would have actually thrown my mother’s things away, her letters, her pictures?”
Viv pours hot water into the kettle. “That’s possible.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe it hurt her to see them. People do things like that. I threw out my first wedding album before I knew better.”
Peter, suddenly, his face in her mind. Mae doesn’t have photo albums, but there’s a phone full of pictures, ready to drag her back into the past if she ever turns it on again. She has contemplated throwing it into the river, the one place she knows you can truly lose something in forever. “It’s hard not to want to.”
“I know. But eventually, you have to focus on the future. You seem to have one, with Gabe.”
Mae smiles; it’s involuntary. The sound of his name does it every time, even with all her fears. And Viv is the only person she talks to these days, other than Gabe—the only person she can talk about Gabe to. “He bought a boat,” she says. “That means, I think, that he wants to stay for a while. Maybe forever.”
“Boats aren’t forever.”
“I know that. I just—I think he was trying to tell me that, by buying it, but in truth it just upset me. I don’t ever want to go in a boat, or out on the river, again.”
“You might not feel that way forever.”
“But I might.”
“And he should be able to read your mind?”
She smiles again. “Yeah. He should.”
Viv smiles, too. “Do you want to stay? Forever, or at least for a while?”
This line of questioning is making her nervous. It reminds Mae of the way she felt at the police station. Backed into a corner, unsure of the truth. But this is Viv, who doesn’t want anything from her, who doesn’t have an ulterior motive. “I don’t know,” she answers, over the sound in her ears of her rapidly beating heart. “He’s started working again on his freelance stuff. He can do it from anywhere, says he’ll only have to go to the city once in a while for meetings. And being here indefinitely seems to be the subtext. I heard him on the phone a few days ago giving up his apartment.”
“That certainly does seem like something. But . . . you have reservations. It makes you nervous.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself. Even the boat, even if I get over it—I have no money to contribute to fixing it up, but he seems to want it to be something we share. It’s embarrassing. He keeps calling it ‘ours’ but it’s not, it’s his. And if we stay here together, what do I do, get a job at the Dollar Barn? I have an MBA. It feels like we’re playing house, pretending, and eventually reality is going to set in and it’s all going to be over.” She’s afraid of the truth, she realizes, afraid that saying all this aloud will somehow seal her fate.
“Start a business, then. You have an MBA, you just said it. Do something with it.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Isn’t it? Seems to me you’re sitting on a business right now, one that—with a bit of work, granted, but still—could be up and running again in no time. Tourism is booming. And you’ve got a prime spot.”
“I’ve got nothing. It’s not mine, and who knows what Grandpa wants to do with it? Plus, the place is falling apart. Those repairs would take money and”—she looks up at Viv and wonders if Lilly got the chance to tell her friend about the mess with Peter, about the lost money, before she died. She lets the sentence trail off
“This might not be what you want to hear,” Viv says. “But it doesn’t matter what George wants. He’s at the end of his life. Easy now, don’t look so shocked, I’m not saying he’s going to die imminently, but he’s not going to be starting down any new paths or helping to breathe new life into that old inn when he gets back here. It’s you who’s going to have to be taking care of him, and if doing something like starting up the business again is going to give you the means to do that, then why not? Find a way.”
“It’s a risk.”
“Are you sure about that? A heritage inn with plenty of space in an established tourist town doesn’t seem like a risk at all.”
“I don’t know the first thing about running an inn.”
“You could learn.”
“Maybe I don’t want to run an inn.”
“Fine, then, don’t. Get your grandfather’s permission to sell the place, and do something else with the money, something that makes more
sense for you.”
“I can’t just sell it out from under him.”
“He can’t stay away forever. Look, you’ve had a bad run, a bad relationship. And, all right, at the moment you don’t have a lot going for you. Which is why it’s especially important for you to start thinking about your own best interests, instead of other people’s.”
“You sound like a therapist.”
“Therapist, actress. They’re very similar.”
Mae laughs. “How so?”
But Viv’s expression is serious. “In order to act like another person, you have to observe them until you know, really know, what it might feel like to be them.”
From Viv’s kitchen window, Mae has a direct view of Island 51, just like at home. “Does this apply to anyone?” she asks, gazing out at the broken-down shack. “Even someone like Jonah Broadbent? Would you ever want to imagine what it might be like to be someone like that?” She’s been thinking of Jonah more and more as she gets closer and closer to Gabe and bears witness to the scars that he still lives with, scars inflicted by his father. In bed one morning, while he was still asleep, she saw another cigarette burn on his back, faint but still there, one he must have hidden from her when they were kids, and she couldn’t stop her silent tears.
“Especially someone like him. Jonah’s father was a monster. Micah. These biblical names.” She pauses. “And Gabriel, the angel. I wonder if his mother did that on purpose. Maybe he was supposed to save them.”
“Did you know her?”
Viv shakes her head. “No. She wasn’t around too long, and kept to herself, out on that island with Jonah until she was gone one day. But I did know Jonah’s mother somewhat. I know that Jonah’s father almost killed her once. Concussed her so badly she was never the same. Everyone knew she hadn’t really fallen down the stairs, but no one did anything because you didn’t back then in this town. I regret it. I think a lot of people do. But what does it matter?” Viv shakes her head. “I’m so glad your grandparents finally stepped in when it came to Gabe, to stop that cycle of hurt people hurting other people. I’ve seen it happen too many times.”
Things to Do When It's Raining Page 15
