Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  For all the complaining Shannon did in private moments about her in-laws, from where Wren stood, Shannon’s kids had it all. Happily married parents. Siblings. Two sets of grandparents. Cousins on both sides. Wren knew families came in all shapes and configurations, certainly more so these days than when she had been growing up. Wren wasn’t divorced. There had been no upheaval, no grim division of parents and houses and toys. Neither had there been death, like one of the little girls in Lucy’s class whose father had suffered a heart attack that year. But still—Lucy’s family unit was different than the other kids in her kindergarten, and the more she became aware of it, the more Wren began to question her decision.

  Lucy scraped the last forkful of peas across the plate and popped them into her mouth. “Brownie time?”

  Wren had meant to tell her mother about the envelope when she popped over that afternoon. But when she arrived Lucy had been sprawled on the couch with a book, and Lindy had seized upon the rare opportunity of her grandchild sitting still and scooped her onto her lap. The sight of the two snuggled and reading aloud together was one that caused Wren to pause in the doorway, envelope in hand; Lucy had enough. They were enough. She would not interrupt this moment with overdue words from the past.

  Now, as she cleared the dinner plates, listening as Lucy told her about the tiny fairy hole she’d found in the base of a tree outside, she eyed the envelope across the room. It was right where she’d left it, tucked between two of her grandmother’s candlesticks on the fireplace mantel. She still needed to decide how to best share its contents with the rest of the family.

  Last night she’d tried, but to no avail. As soon as Lucy was in bed she’d picked up the phone to call her sisters. But even before the first ring Wren already guessed that Shannon would be unreachable, probably at some Tiger Mom–endorsed lesson or other with the kids: chess, cello, or some kind of sailing thing at the club. What would Caleb Bailey have thought of that? As for Piper, her Boston days and nights were not anchored by family routine or suburban life; on any given night she could be engaged in some enviable pursuit that could not be had in their small Cape community, like going clubbing with her girlfriends in the North End or savoring a slow Chianti-sodden dinner in Little Italy on a date.

  She’d left Shannon a voice message. “It’s me. I know your evenings are busy, but give me a call when the kids are in bed.” Next she’d fired a text to Piper, and tried to put the envelope out of her mind until one of them got back to her.

  Wren put two large brownies on a plate and followed Lucy out to the front porch. Down the road the hum of a lawnmower rose up over the rooftops. It was her favorite time of year; the lazy promise of summer loomed in the longer hours, and she could spend her evenings on the porch watching Lucy ride her bike. Wren sat in one of the two Adirondack chairs and popped a brownie into her mouth. “Oh, Luce! Come try one of these. Grandma outdid herself.”

  Lucy climbed the porch steps, the dog on her heels. “Mom. He feels left out.”

  Wren glanced at Badger. He was staring at Lucy’s plate, his big brown eyes wide with hope and a convincing degree of pitiable want. “Dogs can’t have chocolate.”

  “But he wants something.” Lucy hopped up and ran back into the house. A moment later she appeared at the door, holding a bag of deli meat Wren had just bought at the market. “Salami!”

  “No, Luce. That’s for your school lunch.”

  “But he loves salami! Just one piece? Please?”

  Badger dragged his gaze from the package of salami to Wren and thumped his tail against the floorboards. “Good grief, you two are a pair. Just one piece.”

  • • •

  Her phone rang, startling her. It was Piper. “Okay, okay, I got your messages. Where’s the fire?”

  “No fire. I was wondering when you were next planning to come home?”

  Piper let out a long breath in her ear. “Funny you should ask. I was actually thinking of getting out of here this weekend.”

  Wren knew what that meant. Except when it came to her nieces and nephew, Piper did not come home when she was invited. Piper came home when she was on the run. Curious as Wren was, it would have to wait.

  “How about tonight?” Wren braced herself. Even with her little sister’s admission that she was Cape-bound, it usually took days. And several changes of heart. If she ever actually came home at all.

  “I can get in the car in five.”

  Wren sat up. “Five minutes? Really?”

  “But I’m not staying with Mom! Too many questions.”

  “Okay, what about . . . ?”

  “And don’t even suggest Shannon’s house. That place is a crypt. God forbid I drop a crumb on her snow-white furniture or smudge her stainless-steel everything.”

  Wren was not going to push her good fortune. “Lucy can sleep with me tonight. I’ll run upstairs and put fresh sheets on her bed for you.”

  Piper brightened. “If you insist. See you in two hours.”

  Shannon picked up on the first ring, like clockwork. “Hey, sorry I missed you last night. I was at the board of ed. meeting. Did you hear what the administration is planning for the new language arts curriculum? I know Lucy is only in kindergarten, but you really need to stay abreast of these school changes . . .”

  “You need to come over,” Wren interrupted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. There’s something I want to share with you. Something important.”

  Wren could feel her sister’s worry coming through the line like the crackling of a bad connection. Shannon had always been like this: a coiled spring.

  “What then—is it Lucy? Mom?”

  Lucy whizzed by on the sidewalk on her bike. “No, everyone’s fine. It’s no big thing. Listen, is Reid home tonight to watch the kids?”

  “Wrenny. If this is a no-kids visit, it’s not no big thing.”

  She had her there. Shannon was always toting at least two of her three children to Wren’s house to play with the dog or snuggle with the chickens, things they did not and would not ever do at their own pet-hair-and-feather-free house.

  Wren glanced at her watch. It would take Piper about an hour and a half more to drive down. “How’s eight o’clock?”

  “I’m not even going to look for my car keys until you tell me what this is about.”

  They both knew perfectly well Shannon’s keys were in the Waterford bowl she kept by the front door. And she was far too nosy not to come, at this point.

  But Wren relented. This was not going to be easy. “It’s a family thing. I called Piper, too.”

  There was a beat of silence before Shannon let out her breath. “Jesus. It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Just come when you can. And bring the gin.”

  Six

  Shannon

  Piper hated to be left out of any family theatrics, a grievous act she was forever accusing the rest of them of committing against her. But there were some things Piper did not know that Shannon and Wren needed to discuss first. The older Bailey sisters may have only had a few years on her in age, but with those years came an experience so concentrated that it often felt to Shannon that she’d led a completely different childhood than her youngest sister. Piper’s memory of Caleb Bailey was short—colored by the rose-tinged innocence of early childhood—and as such it was often more of a disservice to her. It was not her fault that her memory did not stretch as far down the road of their shared childhood as her sisters’ did; arguably, it could be said that it acted as a shield for her, protecting her from what the rest of them had endured. In that vein the other Bailey women did not have the heart to correct Piper when she misspoke about Caleb; her memories were not wrong so much as they were incomplete. Shannon sometimes wondered if it was their job to fill in some of the holes. After all, Piper was not a child any more. She had always possessed an appetite for truths, the more dramatic the better; perhaps it was time to mete some out.

  For her part, as the eldest Bailey girl, Sh
annon often wished she knew less than she did. Their grandmother Beverly liked to say, “Memory has weight. We carry it around with us in our baskets.” It had sounded lovely to her ears as a kid, this bountiful collection: a bushel of fruit, a bouquet of flowers. But as she grew, it took on new meaning. There were days Shannon wished to set her basket of memories down; days she wished to abandon it altogether.

  Although Shannon was not certain of what awaited her at Wren’s house, the anticipation had caused a prickling that ran up and down her limbs like a current. Because of this, she found herself racing out the door in her threadbare yoga pants and hair pulled up in a messy knot, a look appropriated only within the shadowy confines of the family den with a late-night Lifetime movie on demand. But she didn’t care; she needed to beat Piper to Wren’s house. She’d called Reid to come straight home from the office, waited until she saw his headlights turn into the driveway and had left the girls with George in the bathtub and a pot of spaghetti simmering on the Viking. Now, she walked through Wren’s door without knocking and set the brown bag on the butcher-block island. “Does Mom know?”

  Wren was standing in the kitchen as if she’d been waiting for her. Shannon pulled the bottle of gin from the bag and retrieved two limes from the fruit bowl. “That’s why we’re here tonight.”

  • • •

  They clinked their glasses together across the kitchen table. Between them was the envelope. Wren pushed it across the wooden surface to her sister.

  “You should probably take another sip before you read it.” Shannon ignored this and pulled the letter from its sleeve. “I’ll go check on Lucy,” Wren added, leaving her for a moment.

  When she came back downstairs, Shannon’s glass was drained. The letter lay open before her.

  “What is he thinking?”

  Wren sat back down and studied her sister’s expression. “I don’t know.”

  “What the hell could he possibly be thinking?” she repeated. Her voice was hard. She went to the island and began slicing another lime into sharp sections.

  Wren reached for the letter as if the answer might be there. She’d read it so many times she knew it by heart. “I think he just wants to see us.”

  “No. No, he doesn’t. He wants something.” She pointed the paring knife at Wren. “You don’t let twenty-three years go by with no word. Not one Christmas, not one graduation. Jesus, Wren—he wasn’t here for the birth of a single grandchild. You don’t skip all that and suddenly show up out of the blue, unless you want something.” Since she realized that Caleb Bailey was not coming home, Shannon had made a decision: her father was as good as dead to her.

  Wren was not about to defend Caleb Bailey. Twenty-three years of silence was indefensible. “The question is, how do we answer him?”

  Shannon snorted. “We don’t. After all this time, we don’t owe him anything.” She mixed herself another drink and submerged two wedges of lime into her glass.

  There was a sudden squeak from the front door followed by the slap of it closing. Piper appeared in the kitchen doorway, her hair askew, cheeks flushed.

  “Pipe!” Wren jumped out of her seat.

  But Piper held up both hands. She glanced between her two older sisters. “What’s going on?”

  • • •

  They’d used up all the limes. Wren was on her second gin and tonic. Shannon had stopped after three, and was leaning back in her chair, her expression fixed. Piper had already moved on to the Grey Goose in the back of the fridge.

  “He wants to come home.” Piper said. There was an element of girlish hope in her tone.

  Shannon threw Wren a look. “The question is, do we let him?”

  “We don’t own the Cape, Shannon,” Piper said. “It’s not like we can shut down the Sagamore Bridge and refuse him entry.”

  “Careful, Piper. Just because someone wants to come back into your life doesn’t mean you have to let them. We’ve done just fine without him. And what about Mom? What would this do to her?”

  “Or to Hank?” Wren added. Since she’d opened the letter, Hank was one of the first people she’d thought of. Hank had been good to them. More importantly, he’d been good for Lindy.

  Piper threw up her hands. “Then we don’t tell her.”

  “You can’t be serious. After all Mom’s gone through and sacrificed for us?”

  Wren agreed. “She’d see it as a betrayal.”

  Piper doubled down. “It’s not a betrayal if you’re protecting her. Maybe keeping them separate is for the best. I don’t want Mom or Hank to be hurt by any of this either. Maybe we could meet up with him first and see how it goes?”

  Wren shook her head. “No, it’d be lying to her. Besides, Lindy knows everything we do.”

  “That’s because you two never left the Cape. What do you expect when you stay in your mother’s backyard?”

  “Hey now,” Shannon said.

  Piper sipped her vodka. “What? Am I wrong about this?”

  “Both of you, please.” Wren put her face in her hands. This was the reason she’d hedged before calling her sisters. The two could barely agree on trivial matters.

  Shannon pushed the envelope away from her. “I say we throw this away.”

  Piper swept it up. “This may be the last we ever hear from him! You can’t throw it out.”

  “Isn’t that what he did to us?” The ire had gone out of Shannon’s voice, and she felt suddenly drained. “I have a family now, a family I can’t even imagine leaving. It was awful what he did to all of us then, but, if it’s possible, it seems even more awful to me now.” Images ran through her mind; a warm hand in the sleeve of yellow rain slicker that reached for her own. Raindrops on waves, as they approached the dinghy with their fishing rods. The gray roll of fog unfolding over the water’s edge, encompassing them both. She winced.

  Piper did not share these memories. It was something they never talked about, a sort of silent agreement Shannon didn’t recall any of them making. Piper knew the story about the ill-fated decision to take the Beetle out on a stormy day. She knew it resulted in the small jagged scar on her forehead, something she’d grown up with, no different than the freckles on her nose. At some point, she’d bumped her head. Soon after her father had left, Shannon was glad she did not remember more. These things Piper did not recall were the very things Shannon had spent the better part of twenty-three years trying to forget.

  “I say we tell Mom together at Sunday dinner.” Wren turned to Piper. “Does she even know you’re here?”

  Piper lifted one shoulder. “I was going to call her in the morning.”

  Shannon scrutinized her little sister. Her expression was so void of the weight that pressed against her own temples daily. Piper had only herself to worry about, only herself to care for. And yet the rest of women in the family—whose plates were so full—spent much of their time and energy on her.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Shannon asked her.

  “Same as you. Wren called.”

  “No, no you don’t. None of us can ever get you to come home unless someone is being born or buried. What gives?”

  Piper feigned incredulity. “Not true.”

  For the first time that night, Wren smiled. “It is, actually.” She glanced at Shannon, and the two burst out laughing. “It’s so true.”

  “Spill,” Shannon said.

  Piper stared at the table. “I came because Wren said it was important. But if you must know, I was thinking of coming home before I got her message. Things are a little crazy back in Boston. I needed a break.”

  “You graduated, right?”

  “You know I graduated. You didn’t come,” Piper reminded her.

  Shannon scowled. “We’ve been over this; Avery and Winnie had a tennis match in Orleans. We couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Piper shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “You’ve sent out job applications, right?” Wren was treading carefully. She’d learned not to ask too much. Piper was like a c
at, slinking in and out of Chatham as she pleased. But if you crowded her, she’d slip out the door and race back to Boston before you could think to try to catch her.

  “Yes, I’ve sent out applications. Many of them, if you must know.”

  Shannon cocked her head. “Then who is he?”

  From the look on her little sister’s face, she knew she had her. Piper could not lie. Rather, she lied all the time, but not well. Her sisters were too well versed in the averted gaze, the nervous laugh, for it to have any effect on them anymore. Her hands fluttered when she fabricated, just like now as she hurried to the sink to fill her empty glass with water.

  “Piper.” Wren wasn’t letting her off the hook either.

  She set the glass down and turned to face them. “You guys remember Adam? I told you about him awhile back.”

  “From BU? The guy who lived across the hall in your dorm?” Wren asked.

  The Bailey women had piled into Lindy’s car and visited Piper the fall before, and were pleasantly surprised when Piper brought Adam out to dinner on their last night. They’d all liked him quite a lot. Which meant that shortly after the family crossed the Sagamore Bridge on their way home, Adam’s fate was sealed.

  “Well, we sort of ran into each other again.”

  Shannon smacked the table. “Knew it.”

  “Are you guys back together?” Wren asked hopefully.

  Piper shook her head. “There’s someone else I’ve sort of been seeing. His name’s Derek. He’s different.” She felt herself blush.

  “Oh, oh.”

  “He’s a little older, though not by much. He’s cultured and funny. And we both love going to see the same obscure bands and wandering around the city.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Shannon asked.

  “He’s sort of coming out of a relationship. So he’s not really available. Yet.”

  From the change of tone in her voice, Shannon could see this was sensitive territory for her little sister. Which was unusual for Piper. She decided to drop it. “Well, at least you’ve got options. And excitement. Unlike the rest of us.”