Safe Harbor

by Judith Arnold

  “If you’d like to spend Saturday at my house—”

  “Thanks, but no.” While she was disappointed by her father’s inability to come to the island, she was no longer devastated by it.

  “Really, it’s no problem,” Kip insisted. “I don’t think we’ve got any plans—although I’m sure my father will think of some horrible chore for me, like painting the porch railings or something.”

  “And you want me there to help you,” Shelley joked.

  “Of course not. I’m just saying—”

  “I’ll be fine this weekend,” Shelley told him. “I don’t want to impose on your family.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about my family,” Kip said, his light tone failing to disguise the seriousness of his words. “I was thinking about me. I’d like you to come.”

  She twisted her head to look at him. He was staring at her; she could feel the force of his gaze right through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. For a charged moment she thought he was going to kiss her.

  What he did was reach out and tuck a damp strand of her hair behind her ear. It was something he’d done a million times before, but this time...this time his touch was different. This time it seemed very personal.

  “Maybe,” she murmured. “Maybe I could stop by for a little while.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  That night, the dream was about his hand on her cheek, lifting a lock of her hair and brushing behind her ear. She dreamed of his fingertips running along her cheekbone to her temple, and down to the nape of her neck. She dreamed of him molding his palm to the back of her head and pulling her toward him on the blanket, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her...pulling her...

  Her eyes flew open. In the vague twilight that filtered through her curtains she made out the shadowy figure of her mother looming over her, pulling her into a sitting position. “Wake up,” her mother demanded. “Wake up, Shelley.”

  “What?” Shelley mumbled, furious with her mother for having interrupted such a delicious dream.

  “You have to wake up.”

  She considered reminding her mother of what she’d said the other day—that it was vacation and Shelley could sleep late if she wanted to—but she was too groggy to string together so many words. “Why?” was all she could manage.

  Her mother let go of her shoulders and turned away. Slowly, much too slowly, Shelley realized that something was wrong.

  “Mom?”

  Her mother walked to the door and reached into the hallway. When she turned back she was holding a suitcase. “We’re going home,” she said.

  Shelley stared. Her eyes focused on the shadowy shape of her mother, on the large tweed suitcase. The murky light seeping through her curtains began to intensify, washing over her mother’s face. Shelley noticed that her mother’s hair was uncharacteristically messy, her lips pinched, her cheeks wet.

  “Mom?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  “But--”

  “Don’t ask,” her mother said rapidly. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. I got a phone call. There’s trouble at home. We’ve got to go.”

  “Is it Dad?”

  “Yes. Pack your stuff—as much as you can, everything you can fit in. And get dressed. I’ll be in to help you in a while.”

  Dazed, Shelley remained on the bed for several minutes after her mother departed. They had to go. There was trouble at home, trouble with Dad.

  Oh, God. This was it. Life as she knew it was about to end.

  She picked up her watch from the night table, tilted its face until the weak light from the window fell upon it, and squinted at the numerals: 5:38. She shivered uncontrollably, her teeth chattering. Her father was in trouble. He was leaving the family. He was sick. He had a lover. He’d hurt himself.

  I don’t know what the hell is going on. Don’t ask.

  Shelley experienced a brutal insight into what the hero of Metamorphosis must have felt like when he woke up and found out he’d turned into a cockroach. Shelley might as well have turned into an insect herself. Her universe had transformed. Nothing would ever be the same again. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she knew.

  She had to phone Kip. She had to see him.

  With a sudden burst of energy, she shoved back the top sheet and sprang out of bed. Without bothering to turn on the light, she yanked off her nightgown and rummaged in her dresser for something to wear: long pants, because the early mornings on the island could be chilly, and her Yale shirt. She felt through the drawer and heard the rustle of paper. Between two shirts she located the letter her father had written. She pulled it out, slid the stationery from the envelope and unfolded it. Disjointed words and phrases leaped out at her: I think you can handle it...I know you’re mad at me...You’re a smart, mature young lady...I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me...

  I love you, Shelley.

  She stifled the urge to cry. If Kip were with her she could fall apart, but he wasn’t.

  She had to talk to him.

  She dressed quickly, then left her bedroom for her parents room across the hall. “I need to make a call,” she said, ignoring the open suitcases on her mother’s bed, the piles of clothing, linens and toiletries scattered about.

  “Don’t be silly. It’s too early to call anyone.”

  “I’ve got to talk to Kip.”

  “Absolutely not,” her mother said, grabbing her wrist for emphasis. “His whole family is sleeping right now, Shelley. You can’t call people at this hour.”

  “Someone called you.”

  “Dad called me. He’s my husband. It’s different.”

  “I want to talk to Kip!”

  “Not now,” her mother said gruffly, forcing her back toward the door. “Go pack. Maybe there’ll be time to call him later.” Her mother didn’t release her arm until she was in the hall.

  Shelley took a deep breath. Her wrist hurt. Her toe hurt where she’d cut it yesterday. Her head hurt, her heart, her soul.

  She packed chaotically, tossing articles into the suitcase in no particular order. Her shorts. Her box of earrings. Her beach towel. Her suntan lotion. Her dresses. Her pillowcase. Her mascara. Her sandals—and then she pulled them out and slipped them onto her feet. Her string bikini. Her barrettes. The letter from her father.

  She pulled that out, too, and stuffed it into her purse.

  There was still plenty of room in the suitcase. She threw in blouses, slacks, her rain coat, her paperbacks. She set aside the Kafka book from the library. “Mom?” she called into the other room. “What about my library book?’

  “Forget it.”

  “I can’t forget it. They’ll fine me if I don’t return it on time.”

  “Shelley.” Her mother sounded so tense, so frantic, Shelley felt guilty for bothering her about something as trivial as a library book. “We’ll stick it in the book drop on our way to the ferry,” her mother said.

  Shelley folded her sheets, tossed them into the suitcase and shuddered. Seeing the naked mattress forced her to acknowledge that she was truly leaving the island, that this wasn’t just a jaunt to “America,” that she might not be coming back.

  She concentrated on the mechanics of packing to prevent herself from thinking about the implications of it. Her hand mirror. Her seashell collection. Her wrap-around Indian-print skirt. The nail enamel she’d never used because her nails never grew long enough to polish. Her address book. Her sweat shirts. The hinged velvet box containing her gold choker...

  She lifted the box back out of the suitcase, opened it, and fastened the necklace around her throat.

  Glimpsing her reflection in the mirror, she smothered another sob. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted everything to stay the same—even if her father didn’t come to the island every weekend. She wanted her life the way it had been before this morning. She wanted to go back to yesterday, to the day she’d spent on the beach with Kip, when he’d pressed the towel against her injured toe, when he’d curled a
lock of her hair behind her ear.

  It was nearly six o’clock. She could call him now.

  Her mother had left the master bedroom, and Shelley noticed that the upstairs telephone had already been unplugged and packed. She raced down the stairs and found her mother in the kitchen, yanking canned foods and utensils out of the cabinets and throwing them willy-nilly into cartons.

  “I’m calling Kip,” Shelley said, moving to the wall phone.

  “You can call him later. There’s too much to do right now. See those cartons? They’re full. Fold down the flaps and carry them out to the car, okay?”

  “You packed the coffee maker,” Shelley noticed with a dismay that seemed wildly out of proportion. “I wanted a cup.”

  “I’ll buy you some coffee in Old Harbor if we’ve got time before the first ferry. Please start loading the cartons.”

  Shelley hoisted one of the cartons off the table and staggered outside with it. The air in the front yard was dense with mist, the grass slick with dew. Pale pink blades of light cut through the trees from the east, heralding the dawn of a perfect beach day.

  No. No day would ever be perfect again. Not after this.

  Setting the heavy carton down in the back of her mother’s Volvo wagon, Shelley pressed her fisted hands to her eyes. She didn’t want to see a gorgeous sunrise. She didn’t want to think about the islanders asleep in their beds as the morning fog burned away. Everyone else in the world would be awakening into a day filled with promise. Everyone else but Shelley and her parents.

  For the next twenty minutes she lugged cartons back and forth from the kitchen to the car. She demanded that her mother leave room for her bicycle, and they spent ten more minutes shifting the cartons around to open a narrow space for the bike. Then they went back upstairs for their suitcases. Her mother tossed some extra linens into Shelley’s suitcase, and they stormed through the bathroom like looters on a spree, grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

  By seven-fifteen, the car was packed. Shelley wondered whether her mother was going to close the house completely, the way she usually did on Labor Day, draping cloths over the furniture and latching the shutters against the island’s winter storms. She didn’t do more than lock the front and back doors, and Shelley wished she could interpret that to mean they would be coming back before the end of the summer.

  But she couldn’t convince herself.

  They drove down the quiet, winding lane toward Old Harbor. At Shelley’s insistence her mother veered in at the library driveway so Shelley could drop her book into the overnight slot, and then they traveled the final blocks to the ferry dock.

  Her mother purchased tickets, paid the transport fee for the car and handed the ignition key to one of the ferry workers. She and Shelley stood aside as he turned the car around and backed it onto the ferry. Viewing the mass of cartons and bags and her bike through the rear window caused Shelley’s eyes to fill.

  She wanted to scream, curse, hit things, demand that someone prove to her that this was just a creepy nightmare, her punishment for having enjoyed so many sinfully passionate dreams during the last several nights.

  But she was already awake. This was real. And when she turned, teary-eyed, to her mother, she saw that her mother had cupped her hands to her face and was crying.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Shelley said, her voice sounding distant and totally unpersuasive to herself.

  “Of course it is,” her mother responded, sounding just as false.

  Shelley glanced at the pay phone near the ferry office. Maybe she could call Kip now.

  But she couldn’t leave her mother. The woman was falling apart, weeping shamelessly, right there in front of the ferry workers and the other passengers standing in line to board the boat.

  You’re growing up, her father had written to Shelley. And suddenly she felt terribly old.

  She put her arm around her mother’s quaking shoulders. Pulling the ferry tickets from her mother’s clenched hand, Shelley handed them to the ticket taker and led her mother across the paved dock to the boat. She guided her mother upstairs to the passenger deck and they took seats on a bench. Her mother hid her face against Shelley’s shoulder and sobbed.

  Shelley remained composed. Someone had to be an adult, and clearly it wasn’t going to be her mother. You’re growing up, she told herself. You’re coming of age.

  Sunlight spread across the surface of the water in the harbor, splintering on the tips of the waves. Below her the ferry’s engine rumbled and churned. The boat slid slowly, inexorably out of its slip and the island receded, retreated, vanished from sight.

  Her mother fell still, her head heavy on Shelley’s shoulder. Shelley continued to stare at the water, ignoring the mews of the seagulls circling overhead, the chatter of passengers sharing the bench with them, the lulling motions of the ferry as it moved through the calm waters of the sound, the shouted greetings of the crew of a trawler passing them in its journey south.

  She simply stared, seeing nothing, refusing to think about the fate that awaited her on the mainland. Except for one thing: she would call Kip. The minute they got home, the very instant they entered the house, she would call him.

  That was the only part of her future she cared about, the only part she could look forward to, the only part still within her control. She promised herself that she would call him. She clung to that promise, embraced it, depended on it to keep her sane and steady through the long trip home.

  It was a promise she would not keep.

  PART TWO

  KIP

  Chapter Five

  Kip leaned against the railing, watching the slate-gray water churn and foam below him as the ferry cut across the wind-whipped sound to the island. The sky was the same malevolent gray color as the sea, the clouds low and oppressive. Although it was only the second week in September, the wind was wintry, slicing through his sweater and shirt and sending a chill deep into him.

  He wondered when he had last closed his eyes.

  He supposed he must have blinked once in a while during the past thirteen months. If he hadn’t he would have gone blind. Probably he closed his eyes when he slept, too, although sleep had been his nemesis for a long time. He fought it, resisted it, wrestled with it; only after a furious nightly battle did he surrender to it, at which point his eyelids slid shut and he saw Amanda.

  She was permanently imprinted on the insides of his lids, permanently branded into the blackest part of his soul. If he focused only on what existed outside himself, on the cold metal railing around which his hands were curled, on the persistent rocking of the ferry, on the thrumming of the engine, the uniform gray of water and sky, the gulls hovering and swooping for fish just a few feet from the boat, he could fend her off. For a while, at least.

  When he closed his eyes and saw her, she invariably appeared in one of three incarnations. In the first she was alive and beautiful, her skin creamy, her light brown eyes shining with laughter, her Cupid’s-bow lips curving naturally into a smile. Her cheekbones were delicate, angling up and outward, and her hair was a luscious cascade of black curls. She was waving at him, stepping into the crosswalk to join him in Union Square, where he had been waiting for her that warm evening.

  It agonized him to see her so dynamic and spirited and happy.

  The second vision was worse, however. In it she was lying on Geary Street, her head resting against the curb and her body extended out into the road. Above her left eyebrow her forehead was concave, her complexion lurid, gray and yellow and purplish-blue. Blood trickled out of her nostrils.

  The worst vision was the third one, in which she stood in the middle of the crosswalk, frozen in place as she gaped at the SUV racing heedlessly down Geary Street, not slowing for the red light. Not stopping for the twenty-six-year-old woman in the tailored white suit and green shell blouse, the nylons and black pumps, the earrings Kip had given her for Christmas and the ring he had given her when he’d given her his heart. Not stopping for t
he woman with the wild black curls.

  If only she had been heedless as well, perhaps Kip might have been able to endure it. If only she hadn’t known, in that split-second before the bumper of the SUV lifted her off her feet, flung her into the air like a rag doll and sent her flying halfway down the block, where she landed against the curb, suddenly motionless, suddenly silent... If only she hadn’t known that what she was witnessing when she saw the SUV was her own death bearing down on her...

  The cold wind stung his face, but he resolutely kept his eyes open. If he didn’t, he might see her the third way, the way she’d looked an instant before the impact, when she’d realized what was about to happen to her.

  Coming to the island was a stupid idea. He should have thought it through, but he’d been so numb for so long he’d forgotten how to think rationally. Now here he was, an hour out of Pt. Judith, without a clue as to why he’d agreed to come or what the hell he would do when he arrived or how in God’s name spending some time on the island was going to change anything in his crazy, meaningless life.

  When his mother had flown out to San Francisco four months ago and realized what a zombie he’d become, she’d packed him up and brought him back to Boston. He hadn’t had the will to argue with her, so he’d let her take charge of his life. He could be a zombie as easily in his parents’ house in Chestnut Hill as he could in his own San Francisco co-op.

  His father arranged a job for him with an associate in Boston, and that was fine, too. One thing Kip could do was work. In the months preceding his move back east he had been putting in ten- and twelve-hour days at his office in the Financial District, functioning with astonishing efficiency and earning his company loads of money. He had been meeting with clients and advising them on investment strategies, running their figures through his computer, devising new financial plans for them and taking them out for expensive lunches at elegant restaurants, although he couldn’t recall tasting anything he’d eaten during those gourmet luncheons. He had been expert at matching his shirts to his suits, knotting his ties and pairing his socks. None of this took any real thought, and he’d been conducting his days and his career with an eerie normality.