Safe Harbor

by Judith Arnold

  “What stuff?” Shelley asked, eyeing Kip with amused concern.

  He groaned. “You can imagine. A Nerf football, a set of construction trucks for the beach, a ridiculous outfit that looks expensive but doesn’t have a snap crotch, a Paddington Bear doll, a gingerbread cookie that’s almost as big as he is, an inflatable bowling set and a space shuttle.”

  “A whole space shuttle? I hope we have room for it in the back yard,” Shelley joked.

  Kip smiled, then turned back toward the car. “I’ll go get his things.”

  “What are all those boxes you’ve got in the back?” she asked.

  He headed toward the car, calling over his shoulder, “We’ll talk later.”

  She watched as he opened the hatchback and pulled Jamie’s overnight bag and a half-used package of diapers out, leaving the cartons untouched. Perhaps they contained pieces of an unassembled space shuttle, she thought wryly.

  Jamie was squirming in her arms, and she set him down. He skipped across the lawn to Kip. “I hep Daddy,” he said, yanking the diaper package out of Kip’s hand.

  Shelley grinned. When Jamie decided he wanted to “hep,” one was wise not to disagree.

  Her smile grew gentle as she watched Jamie and Kip stroll back across the front lawn to the veranda. Jamie might have inherited Shelley’s blond hair, but his square chin, high forehead and chocolate-brown eyes were very much his father’s. Seeing the way he gazed up at his father, with such reverence and love in his little face, spread a tremulous warmth deep into Shelley’s chest.

  Kip was a good father, better than she had dared to imagine he would be. When she thought about the enormous changes Jamie had wrought in her own life, they seemed paltry compared to the changes Kip had undergone. He had set up a satellite office for Harrison Shaw’s consulting firm in Providence so he could live nearer his son, and he’d abandoned his alleged dream apartment in Back Bay for a bland, boxy apartment no more than a half-hour’s drive from the ferry terminal in Pt. Judith. He had used the proceeds from the sale of his co-op in San Francisco to buy the house on Block Island from his parents, and he had insisted that Shelley move there. He wouldn’t have her living with a baby in that intolerably small flat on Spring Street, he’d sworn. His child needed space, a protected yard to run around in and a nursery to sleep in, trees to climb and a cupola for spying on neighbors and dreaming dreams.

  Shelley hadn’t argued. She had always adored the Stroud house, and it seemed like the perfect place to raise a child. Alice McCormick lived just down the road, and Shelley could run Jamie over each morning and pick him up each afternoon without going out of her way. In her late forties, Alice had raised two children of her own and was thus far proving to be a wonderful baby-sitter for Jamie.

  Another advantage of the Stroud house was that it offered Kip a convenient place to stay during his weekends on the island. He’d insisted that Shelley take the master bedroom for herself, and Diana’s old bedroom had been converted into a nursery for Jamie. Kip used his own bedroom during his visits.

  That was as it should be, Shelley told herself again and again. She and Kip were united by their love for Jamie, but they weren’t lovers. One night two years and nine months ago something extraordinary had happened, something irrational and inexplicable and probably wrong—except that it had led to Jamie.

  But it would never happen again. She and Kip were too sensible now. They were on top of things, in control.

  “How are your parents?” she asked, accompanying Kip and Jamie into the house.

  Before Kip could answer, Jamie dropped his diaper bag in the hall and darted into the kitchen, shouting, “Deuce! Deuce!”

  Shifting gears, Kip and Shelley chased after him. Kip pulled from Jamie’s suitcase one of his lidded toddler cups while Shelley removed a bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator. Their movements were perfectly coordinated. They had both gotten Jamie juice so many times they knew all the steps by heart.

  Once Jamie was belted into his high chair with his juice, Kip got around to answering Shelley. “My parents are fine,” he said. “They sent their regards.” He pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed the small red marks they left on the bridge of his nose. “You should have come,” he remarked, sounding not so much reproving as wistful.

  Shelley had given a great deal of thought to joining Kip and Jamie for their jaunt up to Chestnut Hill. She’d always been fond of the Strouds, and they’d generously extended an invitation to her for this barbecue—a birthday celebration for Jamie. Surely no one would claim that a child’s own mother didn’t belong at his birthday party.

  Yet Shelley would have felt out of place there. Not because of anything the Strouds might do—they always treated her with affection—but because of Kip, because Jamie’s birth had made things different between them. Because she wasn’t married to Kip and never would be, and she didn’t want to get used to being a part of his family.

  They’d done well together, puzzling out the complications of raising Jamie as two separate parents living on two separate land masses. It wasn’t that hard, actually. Both she and Kip shared the same priorities and based their decisions on the same criterion: what would be best for Jamie.

  Their methods of discipline and their levels of tolerance meshed. They were in basic agreement on Jamie’s diet, his sleep schedule, his selection of toys and his wardrobe. When Shelley had asked Kip if he wanted to name his son Samuel Brockett Stroud IV, Kip had said, “Absolutely not!” and Shelley had been secretly pleased. They’d named him after Kip’s maternal grandfather, James, instead.

  When Kip had reluctantly conceded that Shelley ought to have primary custody of Jamie, she’d been touched by his confidence in her and by the profound sacrifice he was making in letting Jamie remain with her on the island. In turn, she did everything within her power to make sure Kip got to spend all his weekends with Jamie, even if that meant that Kip would on occasion wind up sleeping just across the hall from her.

  The first time he’d asked if she would mind his staying at the house, she’d laughed at the absurdity of the question. Of course he would stay at the house. He owned the place, for heaven’s sake. He’d spent the best days of his youth in the house. He’d made love with Shelley in the house.

  “I’ll use my old bedroom, of course,” he’d said.

  Of course.

  If only she didn’t find him so damned attractive. If only each year hadn’t added an intriguing new layer of complexity to his appearance, a patina of experience and strength. If only he wasn’t so good with Jamie and so considerate of Shelley. If only they could feel as easy and natural with each other as they had before that one fateful night.

  But they couldn’t. Their relationship had metamorphosized. Like the Kafka parable Kip had once urged her to read, Shelley had found her life irrevocably altered after that night when need and desire had won over common sense.

  They couldn’t go back. It was too late. The friendship they’d once had was gone forever, and the new relationship that had taken its place was more cautious, more civil, more courteous. They could speak their hearts when it came to Jamie; they could open their souls when it came to him.

  But for each other, for themselves...they’d lost the ability to do it.

  We’ll talk later, he had said when she’d asked about the cartons filling the back of his car. And they would. They would talk about what time Jamie had gone to bed yesterday, and what time he’d awakened that morning, what he’d eaten, how he’d behaved, whether he’d sucked his thumb or tried to stuff dead leaves into his mouth or pestered Cousin Sally’s cat. They would talk about how many outfits he’d soiled and how many kisses he’d received. And maybe, if there was any time left before Kip had to catch the last ferry back to the mainland, they’d talk about the cartons he had brought to the island.

  But they wouldn’t talk about themselves. They wouldn’t talk about each other. They wouldn’t talk about the fact that, despite their promise to be friends always and forever, S
helley felt as if she and Kip were lost to each other.

  ***

  IT WAS THE WAY they hugged, Kip realized, the way Shelley gathered Jamie into her arms and pressed her mouth to the sweet, warm skin of his chubby neck. The way Jamie wrapped his arms around her and squealed and giggled and shouted, as if his love for her was too overwhelming to be expressed in a normal voice. The way her eyes lit up with sparks of silver, and her mouth slipped into a beautiful smile, and the two of them, mother and child, fused in some spiritual way...and he would feel left out, dying to be a part of it.

  He wondered how she would react to his proposition. He was apprehensive about asking. He shouldn’t be; he should be able to ask her anything, raise any subject, discuss any new development.

  But they couldn’t talk to each other the way they used to. Ever since Jamie had come along, it seemed as if Kip and Shelley couldn’t talk to each other about anything except their son.

  “Who wants to go to the beach?” he asked once Jamie was done guzzling his juice.

  Shelley shot him a bewildered look. Before she could question him, however, Jamie erupted in a cheer. “Beach! Let’s go beach!”

  Shelley set his cup on the dish rack and turned, sending Kip another perplexed look. He could guess what she was thinking: that he wasn’t even supposed to be on the island right now, let alone settling in for an afternoon’s entertainment. She deserved an explanation, but not now, not when Jamie was running around. Not when Kip needed a little time with the two of them to make sure he’d made the right decision.

  She shrugged. “Going to the beach sounds like more fun than weeding the flower beds. Come on upstairs, Jamie—let’s get you into a swimsuit.”

  Twenty minutes later found Shelley maneuvering the Blazer into a parking space near State Beach. She and Kip unloaded an umbrella, a blanket, some towels and a couple of beach chairs from the back. Proudly carrying two of his new toy trucks, Jamie scampered ahead through a break in the dune grass to the white sand beyond. By the time Shelley and Kip caught up to him he had planted his well-diapered bottom on the sand and was using the steam-shovel to load the dump truck with tide-smoothed pebbles and shells.

  “I guess this is as good a place as any,” Kip said, digging the base of the umbrella into the sand and keeping a furtive eye on Shelley.

  When she’d taken Jamie upstairs to change his clothes, she had changed her own, as well, replacing her gardening attire with a knee-length beach shirt and sandals. While Kip adjusted the umbrella she unfolded the chairs, then stepped out of her sandals and pulled the beach shirt off over her head.

  It wasn’t the first time Kip had seen her in a bathing suit. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seen her in one since Jamie’s birth. Even so, it was the first time he’d seen her in one since he’d reached certain conclusions about where his life was heading, and her appearance affected him more strongly than it should have. He admired her long, slim legs, her remarkably flat tummy, the mature roundness of her breasts. They were the one part of her that hadn’t returned to pre-pregnancy dimensions after she’d stopped nursing Jamie. They filled the upper portion of her one-piece suit, stretching the dark blue fabric taut, rising in enticing curves above the suit’s low-cut neckline.

  Shelley had cleavage. This shouldn’t have shocked Kip—and it didn’t, he swore to himself. It didn’t mean anything to him. Even if it did, he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  Lowering herself into one of the beach chairs, she glanced at him and caught him staring at her. Her smile was hesitant, tinged with curiosity.

  “You’ve been working on your tan,” he said, feeling compelled to explain himself.

  She looked at Jamie and said nothing. He noticed the slight movement of the bone in her neck as she swallowed.

  He must have been insane to think he could pull this off. With thighs like hers, and those fine, graceful shoulders, that small waist and those firm, full breasts, with all that warmth and love inside her, all that patience and independence...

  Two years and nine months had passed since he’d made love with her. Two years and nine months, and he hadn’t met a single woman who could make him forget that one incredible night. He had no right to want her. She was his friend—unless he gave in to his baser instincts and tried to seduce her. If he betrayed her trust that way, it would destroy whatever friendship they had.

  “So,” she said, her eyes still on Jamie as he plowed his toy vehicles through the sand, “How is Sally enjoying law school?”

  “Enjoying isn’t the word,” he replied, stripping down to his trunks and sinking into the other beach chair, a couple of feet to Shelley’s left. “She was pretty stressed out. I told her she ought to come down to the island and unwind.”

  As soon as the words were out he cast Shelley a quick look. He hadn’t even told her about his own plans. Would she resent his inviting his cousin to the house?

  Apparently not. “I’ve always liked Sally,” she said. “If she wants to come, it’s all right with me.”

  “She just moved into a new apartment with another woman from the law school. She said that between scrounging furniture and doing her summer clerkship she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to take any time off.” Why were they talking about Sally? Why wasn’t Kip telling Shelley about the cartons in the Saab and the cartons back in Providence?

  Why wasn’t he telling her how beautiful she looked?

  “Jamie!” she shouted as the little boy pushed his truck down toward the water’s edge. “Don’t go so far!”

  “Can I stay tonight?” Kip asked, attempting a casual tone.

  Her eyes remained on Jamie until he’d U-turned his dump truck and made his meandering way back along the beach to their umbrella. “Of course,” she said, so automatically Kip knew she couldn’t have given the request any thought.

  “Listen, Shelley, I—”

  “Jamie!” she cried out. He had abandoned his truck and was chasing a frisky dog across the sand. Rolling her eyes, Shelley hoisted herself out of the chair and started after him.

  He watched her jog along the beach, loose-limbed and agile, her taut hips shifting and her breasts rising and falling rhytmically as she ran. Maybe it would be better if he saw her daily. Enough exposure and he might develop a healthy resistance to her.

  Either that, or he’d make a pass at her and she’d cut him down. For all he knew, she might have dozens of boyfriends. She might date during the week, or on weekends when Jamie was visiting Kip on the mainland. She didn’t want any sort of serious relationship with a man. She didn’t trust them. Maybe she just fooled around...

  A soft groan escaped him at the thought of her fooling around. He wasn’t jealous, though—he didn’t want to fool around with Shelley. He wanted to be close to her, that was all. He wanted to be as close as they’d been as children, as close as they’d been as teenagers. As close as they’d been in the days before Jamie was conceived, and that night.

  That close.

  He wanted to be able to look at her sometimes, and think of her not as Jamie’s mother but as a woman. He wanted to be able to think of her as a lover and not feel guilty about it afterward. He wanted to dream about her and smile.

  But there she was, swooping down on Jamie and heaving him off the sand, perching him on her hip and sauntering back toward the umbrella, dusting the sand from his fingers and lecturing him on the dangers of chasing dogs he didn’t know.

  There she was, being a mother. And Kip felt guilty.

  ***

  THEY CONSUMED A LIGHT SUPPER of sandwiches and soup. Shelley hadn’t planned on making dinner, since she’d expected to be dining out at a restaurant in Old Harbor with Kip and Jamie, as they usually did when he brought Jamie back to the island after a weekend on the mainland. But she couldn’t imagine trying to eat a full meal. The longer Kip put off explaining the cartons and his decision to spend a Sunday night on the island, the more anxious she got.

  After dinner, he cleaned up the kitchen while she g
ave Jamie a bath. Together they tucked their son into bed. Whenever Kip spent a weekend at the house they collaborated on getting Jamie into bed, but on a Sunday night it felt strange having Kip beside her, arranging Jamie’s lightweight blanket and then raising the side of the crib. Kip seemed larger, for some reason, a potent presence in the nursery. Shelley felt the warmth of his body as he leaned over the rail to run his fingers through Jamie’s hair. She smelled the soapy fragrance that lingered on his skin after his shower. Her awareness of him was visceral, and it troubled her.

  Once Jamie had stopped shifting and squirming, they tiptoed out of the nursery. Kip took her elbow and led her into the tiny bedroom and up the ladder-stairs to the attic. He gestured her ahead of him, then followed her up.

  A gentle breeze wafted through the open windows of the cupola, carrying in the fresh, clean smell of roses and the sea. “Leave the trap-door open,” she said when he started to close it behind them. “I want to be able to hear Jamie if he calls.”

  Kip eyed her respectfully. “I wouldn’t have thought of that. I guess...” He didn’t finish the thought.

  Expectation mingled with a sense of foreboding inside her. She settled in her corner, drew her legs up toward her chest, closed her arms around her shins and rested her chin on her knees. Kip sat diagonally opposite her and stretched his legs out across the floor, skirting the open trapdoor as well as he could. There was something unsettling in the way he occupied so much of the floor, and the way she folded herself up into such a defensive posture.

  Something was about to change in their delicately balanced situation. She knew it, and she braced herself for the worst.

  He turned his eyes toward the ceiling and ran his hand through his hair. Through the window came the distant mewing of a gull. After a long, tense minute, Kip offered Shelley a hopeful smile and said, “I want to live here.”

  Without thinking, she nodded. Somehow, she had already known that this was what the cartons were all about.

  It would be awkward having him so close, knowing he was under her roof but miles from her emotionally. But what could she do? It wasn’t really her roof, after all. It was his. She couldn’t deny Kip a place in his own house.