Stay

by Deb Caletti

  He was at his desk in his office when I went in. He was tapping the end of a pen against a stack of manuscript pages. He didn’t keep regular hours.

  “Clara Pea,” he said. “You enjoy the raw fish? Man created fire to cook raw things, remember.”

  I was holding that leaf. I was spinning it in a circle by its stem. “I think I’m falling in love,” I said.

  He set his pen down, took his glasses off, leaned back in his chair. “Ah.”

  “I didn’t meet Shakti and everyone for sushi,” I said. It was time to tell him about Christian, but I also needed some of those leftovers, that was for sure.

  “I see. Well, wonderful. Tell me he’s nothing like Mr. Dick. I mean Ricks.”

  “Nothing like,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Fabulous,” he said.

  And it was. But if fate is a shape-shifter, then love is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It’s your best day, and then your worst. It’s your most hope and then your most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed—a boat upon the water on the most gorgeous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.

  Chapter 6

  The smell of coffee woke me, and so did those seagulls, insisting on whatever seagulls insist on. The coffee meant that my father was likely working. His best ideas, he said, came just after he was shot through with the glorious speeding train of caffeine.

  I got up and saw that I was right. Dad had set up his laptop on the kitchen table, which had windows all around it in a half circle. He was surrounded by dunes and gray sky and yellow beach grass. His eyes were on that screen like he was watching a movie, which I guess he was, right there in his own head. He didn’t notice me in there at all until I opened the refrigerator door.

  “You want some coffee, C.P.?”

  “You know I don’t drink that stuff.” To me, coffee tasted like cigarettes, with a dash of milk and sugar.

  He handed me his cup to be refilled but kept his eyes on the screen. I looked at the cup. Toronto Film Festival.

  “Hey, did you see?” I asked. I waved the cup around. “More evidence that the guy’s in the film business?”

  But Dad didn’t answer. “What’s that French word for ‘boredom’? Why can’t I think of it?”

  I took out a box of cereal, the milk. This was the culinary decline that happened when Dad was working. “No idea.”

  “Ennui.” He typed.

  “‘Bored’ sounds more boring,” I said, but Dad didn’t want to play. There was only the tip tip tip of his laptop keys.

  I ate my cereal in silence. The spoon clanked against the side of the bowl in the quiet. The whole day could be like this. If I stayed here, I would hear each wave roll in and out and each footstep of mine and each breath. I would turn pages in my book and hear too loudly each papery flutter. I could feel the wide emptiness of where we were. Sea upon sea upon sea, endless beach upon beach, minutes dragging with nothing to do but mourn the miserable state of my life. Dad had been right.

  I got ready, and then I swiped the keys off of the kitchen counter. “Going to the lighthouse in search of human beings,” I said.

  “Great,” Dad said. He looked up. He actually saw me. He smiled. The smile was more about the writing going well, probably, than anything else, but that was okay. “You don’t want to be too alone out here. Take some money. Buy some lunch.”

  “I’ll get you some taffy.”

  “Perfect.”

  I got lost going to the lighthouse and had to loop back around twice to find it. They obviously didn’t believe in signs around there. Finally, the right road. I could tell someone was home this time. There was a Jeep out front with the top off. I parked the Saab in the gravel lot, got out. The clouds hadn’t cleared yet, and the sky was smeary white, fog whipping around fast like a pissed off ghost. It was cold. You couldn’t see the top of the lighthouse. It was missing, vanished in fog.

  I turned the knob of the front door and walked in to a hallway with an old wood floor. It smelled like old wood in there, too, the mustiness and echo of age. A room to the right held the gift shop. I could see a cash register with rows of gift cards in front and shelves of carved miniature lighthouses and sweatshirts and jars of local foods. To the left was a large room decorated with sepia prints of the Pigeon Head Point of long ago and glass cases that held objects—museum stuff, from what I could tell. Telescopes and maps and who knew what. Antique objects for people to stroll by and gaze at on rainy days when the beach gave a visitor nothing else to do. My father would have read every tiny, typed card. There was a long stairway in front of me, chained off. The lighthouse keeper must live up there.

  I was trying to remember her name. Sounded like it belonged to a Mafia crime family. Started with an S ? I pictured some old lady in stretchy pants. Someone who wouldn’t mind selling snow globes with seagulls in them for the rest of her remaining life. A little dog came barreling down the steps. He was white, with a black spot on his back and cute, folded over ears. He was barking like he hadn’t seen me in years.

  “Well, hi,” I said.

  He was jumping up on me, a little circus dog on his hind legs. You couldn’t look at him and not want to laugh. “Funny one,” I said to him.

  “Roger!” a woman called. A moment later, she appeared on the stairwell. She wasn’t what I imagined at all. At all. She was maybe only thirty—black hair falling in long, loose curls down her back, deep black eyes, thick brows. She wore jeans and a white shirt, a denim jacket with the cuffs rolled up. “Roger, you are a naughty, naughty boy. Why are you always jump on the guest? You must not do that, Roger.”

  She had an accent. An accent that made me think of another accent.* Italian, though. Her name came to me all at once. Sylvie Genovese. She scooped up Roger the dog. She put him on her shoulder and held him there with one hand. He seemed to like it up there. He seemed used to it. He was smiling.

  “Ms. Genovese?”

  “Mrs. ”

  “I’m Clara Oates? I’m inquiring about the job?” She was the kind of person who made you put question marks after the things you said. And made you use words like inquiring . Imposing. And not because she was old and shriveled like I’d imagined, but because she was strong and beautiful.

  “You will fill out an application, then.” She walked past me, into the gift shop. Roger’s little behind rode high on her shoulder. When she got to the counter, she set him back on the floor with one hand. He had calmed down now and only sniffed my sandal.

  “All right.”

  “I need a few hours in the mornings and no more. I like to go out fishing and such then. Sometimes a tour bus stops . . .” She waved her hand to indicate what a nuisance it all was.

  “That’s fine,” I said. She slid the paper across to me. Slapped down a pen.

  “Only for the summer,” she said.

  “We’re only here for the summer.”

  “We?”

  “My father and I.”

  She fussed around the shop while I filled out the form. I could feel her watching me. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to work there. It seemed as empty and isolated as home. Lonely here or lonely there, though I guess lonely here meant being paid. But then I stopped at the end of the form. I didn’t know why we hadn’t thought of it before. References.

  “It asks for references . . .” I said. My voice sounded loud in there.

  “Is it a problem?” She shoved her hands down into her jean pockets and looked at me in challenge.

  “I worked at a bookstore every summer for three years.”

  “Put it down on the paper,” she said.

  “You can’t call them,” I said. I didn’t know why I was telling her this. I should have just gotten out of there. I should have told Dad his mistake, made a new plan. I could read through the classics. Write some journal. Whatever.

  She was back behind the counter. She held a pen in her hand. She was tapping th
e end just like Dad always did. “I can’t call them.”

  “No.”

  “And why not I can’t call them?”

  “My old boyfriend got a job there,” I said. “He can’t know where I am.”

  She looked at me for a long time. Her eyes were a deep black, but suddenly kind. “Yes,” she said. She thought. “I see. You need to be away from him. They will speak to him, you think.”

  “He finds out things,” I said.

  “You cannot trust anyone,” she said.

  “That’s how it feels.”

  She nodded as if we suddenly understood each other. “Come back on Monday,” she said. “I will teach you what you need to know. The people who come—they like a small tour sometimes. I will tell you exactly how do you do. They ask questions. I will give you a history book.” She bent under the counter. “Damn it, where is it? No. Shit. One moment. Here it is.” She straightened. Handed me a thin book. It looked well used. Water had spilled on it once—the pages were bunched and wavy. Bishop Rock: History or Legend? “Read the chapter on Pigeon Head. Head of a pigeon?” She made her eyes wide at the ridiculousness, held her hands out as if there was nothing to be done about it. “It is crazy.”

  “I know,” I said. It was hard to believe. “Anyway, thank you. I’ll read it.” I knelt down and petted Roger. He was sitting so nicely and staring up at me. “He’s so sweet.”

  “A little fiend,” she said. But you could tell he was her baby. “True, he has some fine qualities, yes. He does not bore you with his religion beliefs. He does not speak on and on about the pain of his childhood.”

  I looked down at Roger. He looked so simple. He stood and wagged, as if he knew he was being discussed. He made me smile.

  “Thank you,” I said again. I wasn’t completely sure I should be grateful. I started to head out. Something occurred to me. “Does it work? Is it a working lighthouse?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Standing there looking so pretty is not enough.”

  “And do you run it?” I was thinking of Mr. Genovese, I guess.

  “Well, I am the keeper, yes?” she said. “I am the one here to make certain that the boats do not crash into the rocks.”

  I went back to the car. I got in and shut the door, but then I realized how early it still was. Dad wouldn’t be out of his trance until later in the afternoon. I got back out of the car again, hoping she wasn’t watching me. In and out—Sylvie Genovese wasn’t the kind of person to be indecisive. I walked over to the lighthouse and looked up at it. The fog had moved on, and now it stood in all its glory. It couldn’t just stand there and look pretty, but it was pretty. Beautiful and protective.

  I walked to the edge of the bluff where my father and I had stood the day before. I noticed a trail I hadn’t seen then, which wound down to the beach. It was steep, and I had on crappy sandals for steep, but I decided to go down there anyway. I did that embarrassing edging walk you do down slippery slopes, that sideways maneuver that involves clutching at clumps of grass, and then finally I was down. The beach curved left for miles, but to my right it ended not long after the lighthouse. The rocks gathered and then gathered more until passing would be impossible unless the tide was way out. I saw a motorboat up near the lighthouse cliff that must have been Sylvie’s.

  I went left. Took off my sandals, because that was an unbreakable Beach Rule, no matter how cold it was. I rolled up my jeans. I walked in the soft, thick sand closer to land, moved past the beach layer where all of the scary stuff collected, then headed down to the hard, wet ground closest to the water. I could walk forever there; I could even walk all the way back to the beach house if I wanted. I could see Possession Point, our house tiny but visible in the distance. I picked up a stick and dragged it behind me. I tried out the water and found it freezing. I collected a few shells, rinsed them off, and put them in my pocket. I walked past a few houses, imagining that I could choose which one was mine. Modern, with huge glass windows? Small but charming? The houses were spread out here, your own bit of the endless beach and the endless sea, and it was obvious these people lived a life that was aware of both of these elements. A statue made from driftwood decorated one deck, a string of floats likely washed ashore lined another railing. A rowboat was pulled up tight to one small house, its oars stuck up in the sand.

  And then I was at that shack I had seen from the shore before. Maybe people just stored their boats there, or their garden tools, or their whatevers. It was smaller than a one-car garage, made out of shingles and planks weathered gray. Maybe no one actually lived there. Wait—it had a chimney, though. An even smaller building stood off to the side. Wait—no. Was it an outhouse? Did people have those anymore? Because it looked like one of those outhouses you saw in the hillbilly movies.

  You pictured a guy with no teeth. But then again, it had a certain charm. It had to, or it wouldn’t have kept me there so long, looking at it. I started noticing things. Firewood stacked up. An apple tree? Could that be, there on the beach? Did this beach just grow unlikely things? I saw plants in yellow pots on the windowsill inside. A pair of orange gardening clogs.

  “You’re not the tax assessor,” a woman said.

  I startled. She came up from behind me, a woman with gray hair cut just under her chin and a face with deep wrinkles and a stern mouth. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with short sleeves. She was small, but her arms were roped with muscles. She carried two tin buckets, one overflowing with what looked like weeds.

  “No,” I said.

  “Not much other reason to stare, other than to assess value.”

  “Just curiosity,” I said.

  “It’s a curious place, isn’t it?”

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “I do. It’s my full-time home now, if you can believe it. I had an apartment in New York, which I finally gave up last year. Would you believe that either? We used to come here in the summers. But now it’s just me.”

  “New York,” I said. “Wow.”

  “You’re thinking how different it is there from here. Which is the point. There, you get what you need only with much effort. You can’t collect your grittle and snips for dinner, right off of your own land.” She held up the bucket. I wondered if maybe she was crazy.

  “Well, thank you for letting me look,” I said.

  “Annabelle Aurora,” she said. She set down the buckets, held out a hand.

  “Clara Oates,” I said. We shook.

  “Summer visitor,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You can come by for dinner sometime. Bring your father.”

  I swear to God, my heart stopped. She’d shocked me, that was for sure. While I was used to being connected to my father in our own city, I hadn’t expected this sudden knowledge by some unknown old lady with an outhouse on a beach. It seemed as likely she’d know my father as I’d know hers.

  “Tell him I have muscles,” she said.

  I was sure she was crazy then. She had muscles, all right. As tiny as she was, she looked like she could kick your ass to the ground if you crossed her. But then she tapped one of the buckets with the tip of her shoe. I saw inside—a mound of curved black shells. Mussels.

  “I will. Thanks,” I said.

  I got the hell out of there. It had taken me a long time to get down that trail, but it took me no time at all to get back up. It was stupid, but my heart was beating fast. She’d spooked me. I remembered that feeling, possible danger, how it made you both clumsy and focused in your need to flee. My hand shook as I tried to fit the car key in the lock. I got inside and locked the doors around me and I sat there and calmed down. It was so stupid, because somewhere inside I knew I had nothing to fear from some old woman who lived in a shack.

  See, though? This was where I was now. An old woman, a branch scraping on glass, wind in trees that was only wind, anything at all had the ability to fling me to that place where I was so frightened, so, so frightened, and where his hand was around my ankle at the top of those s
tairs. It was about that hand. It was about car lights in my rearview mirror. It was about not knowing what might happen next. It was not about an old lady with orange gardening clogs.

  And that was part of why we were here, I knew. Another part. So that a tree branch and the wind and strange old ladies could become only themselves again.

  I bought Dad the funniest colors of taffy. The pink ones with blue stripes. Yellow with green. Purple. The really gross colors. Our mystery host with his fine taste would never think to have those colors in the smooth wood bowl on his dining table. Perfect.

  I was lying to myself, though, I knew. I didn’t come back to town for taffy. I came back to circle around the idea of Finn Bishop.

  I knew, because I brushed my hair and checked how I looked before I got out of the car, and you didn’t do that for the ladies at the taffy place. After I came out of the shop, I stopped at the food booth right by the docks. The Cove. I looked up at the menu posted on the wall behind the counter.

  “Variations on a cheeseburger,” the girl behind the counter said. She was a little older than me, I guessed. Long brown hair tied back, eyes that didn’t take shit. Either it was just my day, or the ocean made people tough around here.

  “I’ll have a cheeseburger,” I said.

  “Good choice. Fries?”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “You gotta have fries. They’re fantastic. On the house. Don’t feed them to the seagulls, though, okay? They come around and make my life a living hell. Cove combo two,” she said to the cook in the back. “Look at him.” She pointed to one of the picnic tables set out front. A seagull stood on it, plucking at something under his wing.

  “He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere,” I said.

  “Gulliver. That’s what I call him. I can’t get rid of the guy. He’s like a stray dog. He tries to follow me home.”

  I laughed. In a few minutes my lunch was ready, and I took the bag and carried it to the grass that overlooked the marina. Obsession was not moored there, but I looked out over the water. I could see it not far off, and I ate slowly and watched it move in. The girl was right. The fries were fantastic.