Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  Wren had been on her way downstairs to find a book she was writing a report on for school when she’d heard her father’s name. She sat down on the staircase, barely breathing as she listened. Beverly had been worrying aloud that perhaps talking about him would be harder on the girls.

  But Lindy had felt otherwise. “Mom, no matter what happens he’s still their father. What kind of message does it send to them if I silence anything to do with his memory? It’s like telling them that half of who they are isn’t worth mentioning.”

  Sitting on the stairwell and staring out at the rivulets of rain coming down the front windows, Wren let her mother’s words wash over her. They were as powerful as they were painful. It was true their father had done an awful thing, just as it was true he would always be a part of them in spite of it. And although she didn’t want to talk about him—not yet, anyway—it was a relief to know that she could when she was ready. And that her mother would listen.

  The first few months he was away, Caleb sent money. It was irregular, and often from a different return address. But it was never enough. Their mother would have to go back to work. She enrolled in the community college to update her teacher’s certification.

  Still, Wren was fortunate in her upbringing: it was a childhood strong on female influence and long on love, even if she did miss her father and their little cottage by the beach. It was also why she had not hesitated when it came to raising Lucy on her own. Not that she had intended to be a single mother, but as Lindy had ingrained in them, she could do this herself if she had to.

  Now, as she sat waiting in the Stop & Shop parking lot for the Cape community bus to arrive with her estranged father, she wondered about this decision. When Lucy was a baby it had seemed easier. She didn’t know any different than it being just the two of them, and Lucy seemed content with their little life in Chatham. There were sand dunes to climb and hermit crabs to collect, and Wren could show her all of the best spots to do both. She loved the diverse mix that the hardworking fishing community and the vacationing summer destination provided; there was balance in that, she felt. Yes, she had managed to carve out a nice little life for them in their cottage on Queen Anne, and there was something safe and solid about raising her only child in the very place she’d grown up.

  But as Lucy grew older, she began to notice that they were different. Other families had moms and dads, or in the case of a set of twins in Lucy’s kindergarten class, two dads.

  “Who is my dad?” she began asking in nursery school, when they drew pictures of their family. Then there was the father-daughter Daisy Scout dance at Valentine’s Day. Wren had panicked and sent Hank to the dance. Bless him, the man had shown up in a suit with a rose corsage for his little date, and Lindy clamored over both and snapped pictures of Lucy in her pink tulle dress. But none of this satisfied Lucy for long. Where did her daddy live? What was his favorite color? When would she see him?

  Wren had hot-footed it to an LCSW in town, who explained that honesty, in a developmental way, was the way go. “It’s kind of like the birds and bees talk,” the therapist had said. “Answer only what she asks. Don’t go overboard with details, as she may not be ready for them all.” She’d also recommended some children’s literature for talking points.

  After a quick stop at Where the Sidewalk Ends bookstore, she picked up some parenting books, and by that night she was tucked in with Lucy reading aloud. But the questions still came.

  Wren had been so sure they did not need James, but she was beginning to realize that that may have only been true for herself. Lindy had taught her girls that they could live without their father; but she’d also honored the fact that he was half of each of them, and she’d tread carefully to respect that half, always. This was something Wren had not done for Lucy. And as she sat waiting for Caleb Bailey’s bus, it occurred to her she may have made a terrible mistake. As a fatherless child, herself, she’d imposed the same fate on her daughter.

  Just then came the industrial hiss of bus brakes, jolting her back to the moment. He was here. She took a deep breath as the doors swung open. The driver exited first and went around to the luggage area on the side of the bus. Down came the passengers, and Wren could feel the thudding grow in her chest. A young woman with pink hair. An elderly couple who emerged blinking in the bright sun like lost birds. Wren studied the faces: a middle-aged man, a family of four, a group of college kids in baseball jerseys, who must’ve come in for the Chatham A’s league. Suddenly she went from the dread of what she was going to say to Caleb Bailey to the thought that maybe he had not come: a far worse thought. An old thought that turned her stomach sour in the way it had when she was eleven years old.

  She opened the door and got out, shielding her eyes in the bright sun. No, there was no one who resembled her father. No tall men with broad shoulders. No red hair. Had he missed the bus? Changed his mind? At that thought, she strode toward the bus.

  The driver was still dragging all of the luggage out of its compartment as passengers encircled him, reuniting with their belongings. Others, like herself, had joined the small crowd of arrivals. There were greetings and hugs. The boys in baseball jerseys headed toward a red van parked nearby. Wren looked left and right. She waited while the driver pulled another suitcase out. “Excuse me?” she said, her voice cracking. “Do you have a Caleb Bailey on the bus?”

  He turned to her and ran a handkerchief across his brow. “Hang on, Miss. I’ll have to check my roster.” She waited for what seemed like forever as he lined up the last of the luggage. Finally he grabbed a clipboard and started flipping through its pages. “Who are you looking for?”

  Wren glanced up at the dark bus windows. It appeared empty, but she couldn’t be sure. “Caleb Bailey,” she said, uncertainly.

  “Here,” said a voice behind her. A voice that was softer and drier than she remembered, but as familiar as the smell of Lucy’s head, the sound of the surf at Ridgevale Beach, the salt in the Cape Cod air. She turned and looked up into the hazel eyes she had struggled all these years to evoke. “I’m right here,” he said, smiling softly.

  Something inside her gave. The laugh lines around his eyes were grooves now, and he wore a neat beard and mustache, still red but tinged with gray. He was thin, a ladder of the man she remembered, and yet he was also the same. The almond eyes. The easy smile. The large warm hands, one of which he extended to her now and rested on her shoulder. He squeezed it gently. “Wren.”

  She swiveled away from him, his hand sliding away from her shoulder, and feigned focus on the assemblage of remaining luggage. “How many bags did you bring?”

  If her father expected a different greeting, he did not push for it. But when she risked a backward glance she saw his eyes cloud sadly, if only a little. “I just brought one,” he said, reaching past her for a large green suitcase.

  Wren straightened. “All right then. Let’s go.”

  Fifteen

  Shannon

  She’d picked him out of the small group of passengers right away. There was no doubt in her mind when he appeared in the bus doorway, the last one to do so, that it was her father.

  Shannon sucked in her breath and squinted for a better look. Caleb Bailey had aged. Gone was the strong set of his shoulders, filled out from a lifetime of swimming in the Sound and outdoor living. Gone, too, was his crown of strawberry blond hair. It was still there, but it had faded in both thickness and pigment to a thin cap of sandy-colored down.

  Shannon had not planned to be there at all. But as the day of his arrival grew closer, something that had been nestled hard and deep within her resolve began to shift. It began one night at dinner when Reid asked her what she thought he looked like, and it took her by surprise. All this time she’d spent hating the father who’d left them—that broad-shouldered young man who’d driven away in a blue Chevy all those years ago. But Caleb Bailey was almost seventy now. He was old, and it was hard to keep hating someone whose appearance she couldn’t pin down.

  Dr
. Weber had been the one to posit the question most firmly. She’d gone to her usual session earlier that week, the focus of which she’d imagined would be George’s sailing lessons and the pressure she was feeling over the Ridgevale house listing. She’d been especially on edge lately, and she was eager to hear Dr. Weber’s thoughts on the matters. But he didn’t want to talk about any of those things. “Tell me,” he said, as soon as Shannon sunk into the upholstered recesses of his armchair by the window. She loved Dr. Weber’s office. It was such a calming place. “How are you managing your feelings about your estranged father?”

  Shannon blinked. She’d only mentioned to the doctor once that her father was coming back to town. He had not been a focus of their meetings, and honestly, she did not want to spend any one of her forty precious minutes on him. “There’s nothing to manage. As I mentioned last time, I don’t plan to see him.”

  Dr. Weber had cocked his head and looked back at her. When she thought she could not stand the silence for another moment he scribbled something on the yellow legal pad he always kept open on his lap. Shannon wondered what it was.

  “Yes, I know that is your plan. But I wonder if you’ve considered something beyond that.”

  Shannon glanced at the wall clock, then back at her doctor. She really wanted to move on to her work concerns. Bitsy was driving her crazy as of late. “Have I considered . . . ?”

  The doctor smiled. “You’ve mentioned some undesirable things that could happen if you do see your father. Wasted energy. Exposing yourself to old hurts. Conflict.”

  Shannon nodded impatiently.

  “Those are understandable, of course. But I wonder about something. Have you considered what will happen if you don’t?”

  The question had stayed with her all week. No, she had not wondered what might happen if she didn’t see him. Because that was exactly how her life was now. She hadn’t seen Caleb Bailey in years. And she was perfectly fine as it was.

  But when the eve of her father’s return came in a cool and starry late June night, Shannon found herself pacing the upstairs of her Stage Harbor home in her bathrobe. Maybe she should call Wren in the morning and offer to go with her. It didn’t matter that Wren said she could handle this alone. Wren was tough, but she wasn’t steel.

  By three a.m. Shannon gave in and went to the small drawer in her bathroom vanity. There she retrieved her orange prescription bottle. She’d split an Ativan in half and chased it with the half-drained vodka tonic on her bedside table—no big deal—it was just melted ice at that point. When the alarm went off at seven for Reid, she’d lain in bed feeling like there was sand beneath her eyelids. Morning light blasted the room. She would not call Wren, she decided. But she could also not stay away. And so here she was, parked halfway across the lot in her sunglasses and a baseball hat, watching for her estranged father like some kind of stalker.

  When he emerged, she knew him immediately. “There he is!” Shannon wanted to shout to her sister who was off to the side talking to the driver. What was she doing? Shannon had to fight the urge to get out of her car and push them toward one another.

  At that moment the minivan parked in front of her beeped, and a woman rolled her shopping cart up to it directly in her line of vision. “Shit.” Shannon strained to see past her tailgate as she slowly loaded groceries into the back. Desperate, she rolled down her window and stuck her head out, craning her neck.

  She could tell the moment Caleb Bailey recognized Wren. Something in his posture gave just a little, and Shannon felt herself exhale. When he walked up to Wren, Shannon could not help herself any longer. “Turn around!” she shouted out the car window. They were too far away to hear, but the woman by the minivan startled. She dropped a grocery bag, its contents rolling across the pavement. “What the hell?” she cried, glaring at Shannon.

  Shannon was about to get out and help, but the nasty snarl on the woman’s face caused her to instead roll up her window. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she mouthed through the glass. Why were people so tightly wound these days?

  Shaken, she returned her attention to the scene unfolding by the bus. Wren was standing ramrod straight. Shannon knew what it meant. It was the same way she’d stood in the high school cafeteria as a freshman, eyes darting uncertainly around in search of a place to sit. And even though she didn’t want to, something protective had come over her, and Shannon had elbowed a friend aside and waved her little sister over. The same feeling rose up in her now as Shannon watched them. She watched her father reach for Wren, his arm hesitating in the air between them before it settled softly on her shoulder. Shannon was genuinely surprised when Wren did not hug him, and more so when she turned away. So she wasn’t the only daughter who harbored angry feelings.

  They headed for her Jeep, shoulder to shoulder but apart. There was something familiar about the way they moved, and Shannon leaned forward to get a better look. There it was: the same purposeful bounce to their gait. Shannon had known her sister’s peculiar gait all her life. It had allowed her to pick Wren out of a crowd on the soccer field or walking up Main Street. She’d never realized she’d gotten it from their father.

  As she watched the two climb into the Jeep, Shannon slid lower in her seat, feeling suddenly like some kind of voyeur. She stayed there until the Jeep exited the parking lot and veered left to Chatham village. She remained until it was out of sight.

  Something was in her eye, and she reached behind her sunglasses to try to wipe it away. She realized it was tears.

  Sixteen

  Hank

  Lindy was beside herself. “He’s been through a lot. He’s going to need a lot of help,” she told Hank as she darted around the house that morning.

  On the Cape there were what they called beach days and what they called town days. A beach day was of the hot and humid variety, necessitating an escape to the cold surf and salty breeze. A town day was a softer sun-filled day that allowed you to stroll comfortably down Main Street, a gentle breeze rolling along the sidewalk reminding you that you were still at the shore, but you could take a break from the sand and hit the shops or go out to eat. Today was the deliciously rare combination of both, and Hank had risen hoping they could go for a bike ride and enjoy it. He’d been mistaken.

  “I know that, honey,” he tried to assure her. “We’ll make him as comfortable as we can.” He set the newspaper down on the kitchen island and watched her bustle between the sink and the fridge, stopping to scoop up the breakfast dishes with a flurry. “What time do we pick him up?”

  “In ten minutes.” She stopped and faced him. “Can you drive? I’m too nervous.”

  Hank was just grateful she was talking about Bowser and not her ex-husband, who was also due in town that day. Bowser had had his hip surgery two days earlier and had been recovering at the animal hospital since. They were releasing him this morning.

  Hank had gone to the hardware store and picked up a wide sheath of plywood to put over the top of the two back steps so Bowser could get down to the grass to relieve himself. Lindy had set up water bowls and made up dog beds all over the house. Bowser would not be allowed to use the stairs for the rest of the summer, so she’d set up a rest area in the screened-in porch. “He likes the salt air,” she’d said. Hank nodded. She set another up in the kitchen. “You know how he likes to be a part of everything,” she explained, as she dragged it to the corner by the sink, then changed her mind and relocated it by the fridge. “Pack animal mentality.” Hank nodded again.

  However, when he rounded the corner to the living room and tripped over yet another bed (“I ran to Big Lots and got a few more. Don’t worry—they were inexpensive!”), he was not as accommodating. “Lindy,” he said. “We’ll likely have grandkids coming and going all week, what with Caleb’s return. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to open a canine convalescent home at the same time.”

  She’d appeared in the doorway, arms crossed. “It’s going to be a trying week,” she’d allowed. “I’m just tryi
ng to make him comfortable.”

  What Hank had wanted to say, at that point, was, “How about me?”

  When he’d first met Lindy, he’d known Caleb only through the factual wreckage she slowly entrusted him with. And through the memories of the girls, sometimes wistful, sometimes pained. Initially he’d pegged the man as a coward. A selfish individual. A fool in the greatest sense. What kind of man walks away from four remarkable young women?

  But then, after marrying Lindy and moving to Chatham full-time, he came to know Caleb Bailey through the town’s eyes. He knew him from his work, acclaimed work that was displayed proudly in the downtown storefront windows and galleries. His bestselling print to the summertime crowd: a sailboat moored off Monomoy Island. And one Hank had to admit was powerful: a Nigerian boy seated on a stoop holding a red clay pot hung in one of the gallery windows. He knew Caleb Bailey in the framed aerial photograph hanging in the entry of the bank, a reminder he didn’t particularly enjoy seeing every time he went in to cash a check or make a deposit, but one he grew used to over the years, so that these days he would come and go without even noticing it when he walked past. In the early years there were the conversations at cocktail parties or informal gatherings among Lindy’s friends who, eventually, also became his. Caleb’s departure was still a curiosity in the small community and worrisome among her friends. Brilliant was a word often used by those in the know. Talented. Charming. Especially by the women. But there were other words. Hank was never sure if they tacked these on for his benefit, out of deference to his new station in life as husband and stepfather. But they fleshed out the man who, up to that point, was largely myth and memory. Impulsive. Restless. Alcoholic. And the one that meshed most with what the Bailey girls had shared to that point: wanderlust. Having never met the man, Hank couldn’t say for sure if any were accurate. But he trusted that they were, given the credibility of the people who uttered them in these intimate gatherings over martinis and crudités. History spoke volumes, and Caleb Bailey had left more than just a history behind. He’d left behind his greatest works.