Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  In the end, loading the three of them up in the car and dragging them all to the little cottage on the town green every Saturday morning ended up being the greatest gift Lindy could have given her daughters.

  Now, sitting at the kitchen table with teacup in hand, Wren considered the last few hours. The dinner party had not ended well. Lindy refused to read the letter. She held it up in her hand, seated at the head of the table, staring at it. As if she could see through the paper folds and overlapped lines of handwriting to decipher it. It didn’t matter what it said, she claimed. She knew what it meant. He was coming back. All she wanted to know now was what that spelled for each of them. Her grace and calm extended only to her three children; she, herself, had no interest in ever seeing Caleb Bailey again. But what did the three of them want?

  Wren already knew these answers. Piper was determined to see him, and Wren couldn’t blame her. She’d been so young.

  Predictably, Shannon had maintained her post. Shannon was not pliable like Piper; when a door closed, it remained so. Wren imagined the hinges rusting off, the door handle falling away. The wood that remained petrified, turning what once was a doorway to a wall of stone. Even Caleb Bailey could not penetrate it.

  As for Wren, she held a middle ground not unlike her position as middle child. Like Shannon, there was anger that their father had not succeeded in finding treatment. It often felt like he had chosen alcohol over them. But over the years it had petered out, its concentration no longer as coppery on the tongue. Like Piper, she was curious. She wanted to see what this man looked like. Hear what he had to say to them all. She would listen. And that was the only promise she was capable of making right now.

  But there was one more reason behind Wren’s decision to let Caleb Bailey back into her life. There was the matter of Lucy. Lucy, who did not know this grandfather. And more importantly, Lucy, who did not know her own father. Wren, who’d once been so firm in her belief that Lucy did not need a father (just as she had survived without one herself), had questions of her own. She found herself thinking back to James more and more. A man she had pushed out of her mind just as certainly as she’d pushed him out of her life the summer she found out she was carrying his child. Perhaps in trying to be nothing like her father she had, in fact, become just like him. Because the truth was Caleb Bailey wasn’t the only one who had done something unforgivable. So had she, and to the person she once loved most: James.

  Wren had not cut James out of her life because he was a bad person. Quite the opposite, he had brought a peace and richness to her life during the time he was in it. He knew the lyrics to all of the songs of his namesake, James Taylor. He owned a slobbery sweet-natured yellow lab, Beatrice, who went everywhere with him and whom Wren couldn’t help but think summed up all the things she loved James for best: easygoing, gregarious, and always up for anything. James was a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of guy. Handy, good with tools, and happy to help anyone out. James had gone to Providence College, and she appreciated that he was as comfortable slipping on a dinner jacket for a four-course meal in the Stars dining room at Chatham Bars Inn as he was pulling on his rubber fishing coveralls and heading out on the boat for a twelve-hour day. He wore his thick dark hair cropped short. She loved that his blue eyes were framed between that and a couple days’ worth of stubble, which she sometimes scratched under his chin just as she did Beatrice. “Who’s a good dog?” she’d joke.

  Despite her determination to stay away from the pitfalls of falling in love, she’d fallen deeply. They met at the Hooker’s Ball one summer and not a day went by that they didn’t see each other after.

  But over the couple of years they were together, Wren learned that there was something inside James that longed for more beyond the cozy borders of their life together in Chatham. Like the distant spark he got in his eyes when he talked about the future. A spark that Wren recognized with dread from her childhood. It was independent of their love, something within him that she could not touch and therefore could not alter. What worried her was that it seemed to take him away from her.

  It flickered when he was heading out on the boat each morning at the Chatham Fish Pier. When he talked about being out on the water, offshore and free from the land. His work intoxicated him on the good days, causing him to wonder aloud about traveling and fishing more distant waters for different catch. She tried to tell herself to ignore the nagging fear that came when this wanderlust surfaced. When the New England seasons changed and the fishing grew harder—the cold, the wind, the days of small catches—his zest for being out on the water dimmed somewhat. And during the harshest winter months, it halted. But that was where she came in, reminding him of their cozy life together in Chatham in the little apartment they eventually moved into together on Main Street over the storefronts. When it was quiet off season they could wander across the street to the Squire for French onion soup and pints of beer before dancing the rest of the night away in the tavern with the other locals, then stumbling across the street to their bed where they made love and fell asleep tangled together. They had everything they needed right there, she reminded him. The proximity to her family, who he genuinely liked, and their shared friends. Their work. The town that reminded him of his own childhood town, Westerly, Rhode Island. When she turned his face toward hers and reminded him of all of these things, his eyes would brighten, and she would feel him return to her again.

  About two years into their relationship, James began talking of moving to the Pacific Northwest. To work on the bigger commercial ships, the ones that went out for months at a time for catch like sockeye salmon and king crab. “The work would be hell, but there’s nothing like being out in open water like that,” he told her. “And the money, Wren! Think of it.”

  She tried to point out the differences. These were not day boats; he would be gone for months at a time. There were weather considerations. Bleak conditions. Dangers.

  “It’s not that different,” he’d argue. “Different catch and longer trips, sure. Sometimes harsher conditions, depending. But also more money!” He’d grabbed her hands in his, his expression alive in ways she’d not seen. It was alluring. And also terrifying. “Look, I’ve fished all of my adult life on the Cape. I’ve worked the different boats. I could do that out there, too.” Wren waited when James flew out to Washington and spent a week interviewing with ship captains. When he called to tell her he was offered a job on a commercial boat out of Gig Harbor, James’s voice boomed with new life. “You should see this place, babe. It’s the quintessential coastal town.” Wren didn’t say, “But we already live in that town.”

  James spoke fast. “I’ve already scouted out a few apartments, and I found one I think you’ll love. It’s small, but it’s down by the harbor and there’s this great little coffee shop around the corner. I’ll send you the links.”

  At first James’s enthusiasm was contagious. She allowed herself to picture the two of them moving out to Gig Harbor. When she was nine years old, Caleb had taken the family to Olympic National Park. It was one of those rare occasions the whole family had packed up and followed him on an assignment, and she remembered the striking landscape. At one point during the trip they’d taken a boat trip on the Puget Sound and she recalled thinking how different it was from the East Coast: the light, the color, the sharp contrast between land and sea. Unlike the low-lying East Coast dunes dotted with posh residences that rolled gently into the Atlantic, the Pacific was so dramatic. It seemed wilder out there, the contrasts more jagged, the terrain less touched. The effect left her feeling both awed and vulnerable.

  Listening to James, she tried to get on board. She tried to picture what kind of work she’d do, what kind of harbor town they’d live in. And then she imagined the reality of the long months while he was gone at sea. Living in a foggy, gray fishing village. Adjusting to life alone, his side of the bed cold for months at a time. And then there was the danger involved. Men got caught in lines or tangled in gear without warning. Hooks went through
hands. Lines wrapped around legs. In a breath a man could be whisked over the side and into the black arctic waters so fast that sometimes no one realized. There was so much that she knew could go wrong.

  But it was the not knowing that scared her most. Not knowing where he was out there in the middle of the dark sea, not being able to reach him with any regularity. Waiting for his boat to come in like some colonial whaling wife. Until the soft parts of her that missed his touch would harden, and she’d adjust to his absence. And just when she’d adjusted he’d come home, for a couple months. The reunion would be sweet and heady, and they’d not be able to get enough of each other. But then they’d have to learn how to coexist again. How to navigate their living space as well as their temperaments, relearning the rhythms of their moods until they became in sync with one another. And life would be good again. Except there would always be the next trip hanging over their heads. The countdown to the next stretch of time without. Until the days dwindled to his departure and they’d be raw and hungry for one another, tiptoeing around the looming separation. It would grow old, or it would cause her to. Wren was okay being on her own. What she was not okay with was letting someone in, and then letting someone go. Over and over.

  She’d done it as a child with her own father, and she’d seen the toll it took on Lindy. More than once she’d wave goodbye to her father in the driveway and return tearfully to the kitchen to find her mother dry-eyed and subdued, washing a pot in the sink with grim, purposeful strokes. It was how her mother handled it, but it made her distant each time he left. As much as she tried to keep it from her daughters, it was always a few weeks before Lindy softened and came back to them as herself. No, Wren would not sign herself up for that kind of partnership.

  The problem was Wren loved James on a cellular level. Her body responded to his touch, even in the rare moments she did not want it to. She bent to the sound of his voice, his breath in her ear. The way his eyes crinkled with laughter at something she said. She could not imagine life without him, just as she could not imagine asking him to stop doing what he loved. Who was she to ask him to set aside these desires to move out west and find a crew? To someday work his own boat. He would do it for her, she knew, but it would change him. Just as it would change her to follow him out there and spend her life always having to say goodbye. She wrestled with this notion all throughout their relationship. Until the morning she found out she was expecting Lucy. What began as a burst of love for what they’d created together filled her with dread. This was not the life she wanted for her child.

  When James returned home to pack for their move out west, Wren steeled herself and broke a small part of the news: she didn’t think she could move with him. She needed time to think. James was floored. “But this is what we want! How can you just let it go? How can you let us go?”

  “Baby, it’s what you want.”

  “I can’t give everything up I’ve worked for,” he said. It tore her apart. She stood in the doorway watching him empty his side of their shared closet into an old brown suitcase. James left the watercolor of Chatham Harbor that hung over their bed. “You can bring this out when you come,” he said. “When you’re ready.” When he couldn’t find his leather slippers it was she who crawled under the bed to retrieve them. “Wrenny. Please. Just give it a try. Come for the summer and stay till Christmas. If you hate it, we can rethink.”

  She wanted to believe him, and she knew his words were sincere. But she also knew the look in his eyes: the same look her father had when he slung his camera bag over his shoulder and packed the car. James couldn’t stay in Chatham, and she couldn’t make him. They’d resent one another if she tried. It would be the end of them, either way.

  Now, as the rain pelted her dark windows, Wren left her mug of tea untouched and went to the desk in the living room. In the drawer was the pack of monogrammed letterhead that Shannon had given her for Christmas. Too formal. She paged through a stack of blank cards. That didn’t feel right either. Thinking better of it, she put all of it back in the drawer. Instead, she went to the notebook she kept in the kitchen for jotting down grocery and to-do lists. She tore a page out, grabbed the first pen she could find, and sat down.

  Without greetings or niceties, she scrawled what came to her mind first. The irony was not lost on her: it was the one question they’d been wondering all these years.

  Hi Dad,

  When will you be coming back?

  Wren

  Nine

  Piper

  The Mid-Cape Highway was a snail trail. Piper rolled down the windows of her Prius in the hopes of a remnant of salt air. But all she got were the fumes of the hulking Suburban in front of her. The car had Connecticut plates, a luggage container on top, and a rack of bikes strapped to its tailgate. It figured. Vacationers. She peered up at the merry row of stick-figure family decals across its rear window: a father, a mother (what happened to ladies first?), three kids, a baby, a dog. By the look of it they all appeared to be crammed in there. Piper shuddered. This she did not yearn for.

  She glanced at her phone on the passenger seat. Derek had not left any new messages. Before leaving Boston, she’d texted him to say that she was going away for a couple nights, purposely leaving out her destination. She imagined his surprise over her impromptu getaway: Where did she go? Who was she with? She promised herself she wouldn’t contact him further until she heard from him. To her dismay his only reply was a stupid thumbs-up emoji. What did that even mean?

  It reminded her of an article she’d read in GQ magazine about grown men who used emojis. Some of her girlfriends said they’d never date a man who did. It was a death sentence. She had to agree, there was something emasculating about it. But the sad truth was she’d be clicking her heels together if Derek sent her a heart.

  The line of traffic resumed its slow roll. It was almost as bad as a Saturday when all the vacation rentals let out and both sides of the highway filled with renters funneling on and off the Cape. Piper was neither of those—she was a true-blue Cape Codder, but only because of her family’s preceeding generations that had lived in Chatham year round. Even her childhood friends who’d grown up on the Cape and gone to the same schools were still considered wash-ashores if their family history didn’t extend beyond at least three generations of Cape residents. Real Cape Codders were fiercely protective of their stomping ground.

  Of them all, her mother had been most sorry to see her leaving that morning. “But you just got here.”

  “I know, but I have to get back. I’ve got an interview.” It was a lie. But she did have to go.

  There was no way Lindy was about to let Piper out of her sight once she arrived for Sunday dinner, and so she’d spent the night in her old bedroom. It wasn’t so bad. After the others had left, she and her mother stood on either side of the bed and made it together. There was something to be said for climbing into your childhood bed, she realized later, sliding beneath the crisp sheets and delighting in the brush of cold cotton against her bare legs. Dinners cooked at home always tasted better. Beds made by your mother always felt snugger. This she could not argue.

  When she’d awakened, the first light dappling the honey floorboards in her bedroom, she’d experienced one of those moments you feel only as a child. The ones where you are not quite sure how old you are, or what day it is, but you know you are safe and sound and the world feels right, if just for a breath. She’d stretched lazily, willing the feeling to stay, trying to trick her mind to fall back to slumber, to block out the pressing worries that crowded the foot of her bed in wait: rent money, finding a job, Derek. Heading back to Boston had actually been hard. Lindy handed her a bagged lunch like she was still a schoolgirl, and stood on the porch steps hugging her goodbye.

  “Good luck at your interview, honey. Promise to call me tonight and tell me how it went?” The pride in Lindy’s eyes stung.

  “Thanks, Mom. I’m sure the interview will be fine,” Piper had lied.

  There had been an int
erview scheduled for that Monday afternoon, but Piper had called the school secretary before her drive down Friday afternoon and canceled it.

  “Would you like to reschedule?” the secretary had asked. After all, Piper’s résumé and application had landed her in the top ten candidates of a pool she knew was well into the hundreds. A rather desirable pool to be in, as everyone knew there were more applicants than positions available in the metro area. Piper should have leapt at the chance.

  Without hesitation, Piper had replied, “No, I do not wish to reschedule.” The truth was she had no intention of going to that interview, or any other.

  She’d lied to them all the night before at dinner. She knew it was crazy: Who completed a master’s degree in education and suddenly decided teaching was no longer for her? She could just imagine the look on her sisters’ faces if they knew the truth. What she could not imagine was herself, closing the classroom door and standing up in front of twenty-five kids every day, and the tick of the wall clock blurring into the backdrop of children’s voices. It was a paralyzing thought.

  Piper liked kids. And she had loved going back to school. Her master’s degree had allowed her to study across the board: science, art, psychology. For a girl who was notorious among her family for being indecisive, the degree was an all-you-can-eat buffet of liberal arts course work. But with her student teaching completed, what had seemed like a good idea was in fact a terrible one. How could she possibly be responsible for the education of all those small beings in her charge? To teach them to read? To problem-solve? To be good little people, period. Unlike Hillary, who had completed applications en masse all spring and was now fielding job offers, who could not wait to set up her very own classroom and hang up the WELCOME! sign on the first day of school, Piper was rendered sick by the thought. Those kids would depend on her. Their parents would demand things of her. Her colleagues would expect things from her. She knew because she’d suffered it all during her student-teaching internship in Arlington. The school had matched her with a lovely veteran teacher, Mary McAllister, in a fourth-grade classroom—Piper’s first choice. The children had welcomed her eagerly, and the staff could not have been more accommodating during her twelve-week internship. But with each after-school meeting they had, each lesson plan they reviewed, and with each book Mary pulled from her shelf and placed in Piper’s hands, she felt the walls close in.