Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  “What?” George would say, then blow his nose. “Lucy, stop talking for a minute. Please.”

  All around them their mothers and grandmother were doing the same. Hank felt for the kid.

  The day before had been a solemn one, and Hank had thought more than once that they should cancel his birthday dinner. But Lindy had insisted. “We need to celebrate,” she told him that night, as she fixed his tie for him in their foyer.

  “But is it too soon?”

  Lindy ran her hand down the red-and-white stripes of the tie, and looked up at him, a flicker in her green eyes. “It’s not Tuscany. But it’s your day. And that I will always celebrate.”

  Hank would oblige, even if he still felt moved by the previous day, the day they’d bid goodbye to Caleb.

  It was an early morning, well before the sun rose, as the whole family gathered in the dark. Shannon and Reid and their kids. Wren and Lucy. Piper, Lindy, Hank. They had all gathered together at the Chatham Fish Pier, just as Caleb Bailey had asked.

  Wren’s friend Tony, a young fisherman that James used to work with, had agreed to take them out on his lobster boat. He stood at the stern, hand out, and helped them each aboard. Within moments they were motoring away from the docks across Chatham Harbor, huddled together in the cold morning air.

  As the pink glow of dawn crested over Nauset Beach to the east, Hank went to stand in the wheelhouse, leaving the women to themselves. The sight of Wren standing at the stern with the urn in her hands brought unexpected tears to his eyes. He was not sure of his place there that morning. And yet they each had wanted him to come.

  They continued south in the harbor, passing Chatham Lighthouse and edging around South Beach. Soon the channel opened up and Nantucket Sound stretched before them. By then the sun had risen, and the Sound glowed like embers. They hugged the shore, past Stage Harbor Lighthouse and Harding Beach. Just off of Ridgevale Tony poked his head out of the wheelhouse. “Is here good?” he shouted.

  Wren gave him the thumbs-up, and Tony idled a bit before killing the engine. It was time.

  “Okay,” Wren said, and they made their way to the starboard side of the trawler. The wind was light, the waters calm. Hank was grateful that the sea seemed to be cooperating.

  The children, who moments ago had been excitedly pointing out sights on the shore huddled by the adults, now unsure of how to behave or conduct themselves. Lucy glanced uncertainly at her mother, and Hank felt for all of them. Caleb had come into their lives for such a short time, and he wondered what sense they could make of saying goodbye so soon.

  The three Bailey girls stood together, Wren in the center. Piper went first. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “For coming home and coming back to us. If only for a while.” She reached into the urn and grabbed a handful of ashes, holding them in her hand. Hank had worried about Piper. She had returned home at loose ends, her life blowing about her like tattered ribbons. She’d welcomed Caleb back with childlike earnestness, her hunger for connection visceral. Hank had feared for her the most, but to all of their surprise, she’d borne Caleb’s loss the best. She’d spent every day she was not at the shop with him, going out on the water during his last days. It was a childhood summer she’d never had, and Hank hoped it would be enough.

  Shannon went next, and Hank’s composure began to crumble then. She reached into the urn in one fell motion and retrieved a handful of ash, clutching it against her chest. Shannon, who was so strong and so stubborn, like her mother. Yet as passionate and intense as her father. She was the one who had always seemed so immune to the strains of life, staying the course no matter the weather or the conditions. When she broke down, it came as such a surprise to him, but in a small way as a relief. She finally showed her humanity, acknowledged her limitations. And though she had a distance still to go, Hank had no doubt with her family at hand she would make it. Storm after storm. Mile after nautical mile.

  Wren was last, and she held the urn aloft and faced them all, her chin trembling. “We started our lives with our father. A man who loved us and left us, I now realize, because of that love. He thought it was best, and though we cannot get that time back, I like to think that when he finally came home to us, he gave each of us a piece of ourselves back.” She paused, her cheeks wet with tears, her voice strained with effort. Piper was crying openly. Shannon kept her eyes trained on the skyline. Wren turned to each of them. “Ready?”

  Hank wrapped an arm around Lindy as they watched the girls turn and release the ashes over the side of the boat. Arms outstretched, they let their father go on the wind. The children pressed over the railing, watching in silence. Lucy waved goodbye. Lindy shuddered, just once, and Hank pulled her tight.

  Caleb Bailey’s ashes floated away from the boat in a sparkling gray cloud, like the mist coming off of the Sound and the waters that lapped at the trawler.

  • • •

  Now, as Hank sat in the formal dining room with his family dressed up and gathered around for his birthday, it hit him. This was his family. Caleb Bailey’s return this summer was something he had dreaded. Whether he feared that the man would cause them hurt, or worse, could somehow take them away from him, he realized how ridiculous those notions were. Sure, he had wanted to hit the guy when he walked up their porch steps that first night. Hank had spent the better part of twenty years listening and reaching out and standing in and trying and failing and making a fool of himself in the whole, hard, deep way he had come to love these girls. Caleb’s stepping aside had given that to him, for right or wrong, better or worse. They had made the best of the worst of situations, and they had loved. Oh, how they had loved. In the end, Hank was not only thankful to Caleb. He actually liked the guy a little. And he would spend the rest of his life holding on to each hand around this table.

  “Grampa, look!” Lucy cried.

  The servers approached the table with a huge cake, the most beautiful white iced cake Hank had ever seen. Never mind it was ablaze with the years of his life. As they set it down in the center of the table, the children crowded in and their parents tugged them back. Hank laughed. As they sang “Happy Birthday” to him in a loud, out-of-tune chorus, Hank looked around at each face illuminated in the glow of the candles. These were his people. This family was his.

  Hank had come to realize something that summer. They were all flawed, the whole lot of them. Each unique in the ways they carried those flaws. Some fractured along the way, small chips trailing their wake. Some withstood the concussions, one after the other, seemingly impenetrable until they cracked in one ominous split down the center. What mattered was not what broke you, or how you fell to pieces. Because at some point in life, everyone did. What mattered was who you surrounded yourself with when it came to picking up the pieces. It reminded him of something his mother used to tell him when he was a little boy and he was scared: Sometimes bad things happen to good people. When it does, look for the helpers. There are helpers all around, and they will come. They always do.

  “Make a wish!” George shouted.

  Hank looked up at their faces. They were waiting and watching. Laughing and scolding. Wiggling in their seats. Reaching for the cake to run a finger through the frosting. Smiling patiently. All of it reflected back at him. What more he could possibly wish for?

  Forty-Four

  Piper

  The traffic off the Cape was still bad, and she honked her horn when a truck cut her off just before the Sagamore. It had been one week since she started her new job, and her heart thundered in her chest when she thought about going back. She was still not sure this was the right choice for her.

  It would’ve been so easy to stay on the Cape. Her bedroom at her mom’s was still set up, and Lindy said she could come back any time. To visit. And there was Wren’s shop, the Fisherman’s Daughter, where she could help out any time. The job had been good for her, the money not great, but it had been a lifesaver during a rough time, and it had been a safe and beautiful space to exist in. A place that she loved
working, and she was good at it, but in the end it was a place she came to realize would drive her crazy if she stayed another week more. “Are you sure?” Wren had asked, when she gave her leave. Of course, Piper knew her sister was secretly relieved. Having her there was more of a favor than a help to Wren. But Piper had practically run that store on her own that summer, as Wren popped in and out with Lucy and their father, so overwhelmed by all of it that Piper was glad she’d been able to help out in the end. It was usually them who helped her. It felt good to have it go the other way for once.

  Derek had come by, one last time, before his vacation ended. She’d ignored his messages, as much as her fingers ached to text back. Okay. Come by. I miss you. But seeing his family had changed everything for her. And she realized she did not love Derek as much as she loved the idea of him. They could never be together. And if they were, it would mean his leaving his family. Piper would never be truly happy with him knowing that. More importantly, she would never be happy with herself. When Derek found her in the shop that last day, Wren had been the one working. Piper wasn’t slated to come in until later that afternoon. When she did, Wren pulled her aside. “Someone came by looking for you.”

  She’d known right away.

  “Listen, Piper. You’re a big girl. But you deserve better.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing. I told him you’d be here at two. What you say to him then, well, that’s up to you.”

  Derek did come back, looking chastened, and sad, but when they stood together on the small back porch behind the shop he reached for her.

  “We can’t,” Piper said. “What we have isn’t real. Or right.” Then she added, “For me.”

  She’d kissed him quickly once more, a brief kiss. And when she pulled away she realized that the yearning wasn’t there. The pull not as strong. It would take a long time to get over him, but somehow, she would have to. She wanted more.

  By early July, Piper understood what she’d been fearing. Her father had indeed come back to say goodbye. If she’d known that in June, when he first returned, the realization might have undone her. She was so lost then, so full of holes. But being home had filled some of them, slowly at first, then more noticeably. It had been a hard, raw summer. But there was beauty in the hard stuff. It was the stuff you used to spackle the holes, one by one. And when you missed a spot, your sisters could point it out to you. Oh, boy could they. But they could also reach the places you couldn’t.

  They’d sent their dad home on a plane. His friend Alice had flown up to meet him, and on the last night they had a dinner party at Lindy’s. One of their Sunday Something-Rather Dinner parties. Everyone brought some hodgepodge dish to contribute. There had been fried fish from the pier and garden vegetables from Lindy’s backyard. Wren showed up with hot dogs—she’d been too busy at the store. Shannon made a cold pesto pasta. Her dad had not been able to eat any of it, except for a little fish he picked at. “I want to remember this taste,” he told her. They were sitting on the steps, as they had done so often that summer. The kids were playing in the yard, and there was a squabble between them about whose turn it was. Piper and Caleb had watched, waiting for them to figure it out. But they didn’t. So Piper intervened. She’d suggested another game, a game of catch the crab. “I don’t know that game,” George had said. “You don’t?” The girls didn’t either. So she taught them.

  After, when she came back to the steps her father asked her, “You remembered.”

  “Sure, I used to play it with Shannon and Wren. When we were little.”

  He smiled. “I taught them that game,” he said. It was a small thing, and yet it connected Piper to her father in a way she had not known she needed but did. The dots of her childhood connected, from her older sisters who had always held so much more memory than she’d had, to their father. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t taught her himself. The game came from him.

  “You’re awfully good with kids,” he said, struggling to stand up. She rose with him and helped him up the steps. “Too bad you don’t think the teaching gig is for you.”

  She’d made a call the next day, her stomach in her throat. The districts she’d applied to had all filled their teaching positions long ago. But a few days later she got a call from a Brockton elementary school. A first-grade teacher had retired at the last minute, and there was an opening. Would she be available to interview? Two days later, she made the trip. By the week’s end she had an offer. Before she could change her mind, she said yes.

  Standing before her class that first day was everything she feared. These little people were all depending on her. She who could not pick a major or stick with a job or choose a partner or keep an apartment. All these little feet whose shoelaces came undone, whose hands struggled with penmanship, whose lips tripped over pronunciations as they learned to read. It was perhaps the neediest age she could have possibly taught. And while she felt sick to her stomach walking through her classroom door each day, it got easier. She needed them, too, she was learning. And if she didn’t know all the answers, they’d figure them out together.

  Her phone dinged on her seat, and she tried to ignore it. On the other side of the bridge the turnaround at Buzzards Bay was clogged. She checked it while sitting in traffic. It was Adam. Let me know when you’re back in town. She’d reached out to him a few times, but he hadn’t responded. It served her right, she knew. But then, one night, they bumped into each other again after Labor Day weekend. Work was good. He’d been seeing someone over the summer, he said. “Oh, that’s great,” she lied. She told him about her new job. Her tiny studio that had mice in the wall but one big window with good light. “A new start? Good for you,” he’d said.

  Two weeks later he’d called. They’d been talking a little here and there since. At first Piper was anxious to see him. She didn’t know how to do this thing—the wading in slowly, the taking your time and getting to know a person. It went against everything she’d done up to this point. But Adam was a good guy, and she had not been so good to him. Going slowly was all he seemed willing to offer her, but she reminded herself that he had reached out to her. Talk would have to be enough for now, Piper thought. It might even be good for her. But she sure hoped to keep the conversation going.

  Forty-Five

  Shannon

  Everett Banks had not made her job easy. It was nearly impossible to sell a house that the owner refused to show. There were times he was vacationing with his family, and he didn’t want to be disturbed. There were occasions when he turned down perfectly good offers—she’d had two!—because something the buyer had requested annoyed him or the way the buyer had worded something offended him. He was temperamental and difficult, and at one point when he said she couldn’t show the house because he was in town, she asked him point-blank, “Do you really want to sell this house?”

  He’d flinched, as if she’d slapped him. If Bitsy knew Shannon had spoken this way to an important client she’d have taken the listing out from under her and reassigned it. But Everett seemed amused. Delighted, even. “Just get them in and out of here quick,” he’d said. “And don’t let them track in sand like the last time.”

  The client was the woman from London who’d first called at the beginning of the summer. She was a business analyst, single, and in her forties, and Shannon couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d use the massive place all alone. But Shannon also liked that about her. This was her second showing, and clients didn’t fly in for an afternoon for a second showing if they weren’t close to pulling the trigger.

  The showing went well. But she did not make an offer that day, as Shannon had thought she would. “I’ll call you this evening,” she told Shannon. “I’ll have a number by then.”

  One thing she’d learned was to not get her hopes up. Good offers were refused. Good deals were broken. She wanted this to work out, and she had a gut feeling it just might, but until she got the call she tried to be patient.

  As she went throug
h the house locking up, she went to the rear sliders overlooking the back deck. The weather was poor, not raining but gray and brisk, the scent of colder seasons in the air. It was not an inviting day to walk out the back to the beach, but Shannon found herself sliding the door ajar and stepping outside anyway. She wrapped her arms around herself as a blast of wind met her. Down on the beach, there was real surf. The water came in and out in large, lumbering waves, and the sight of it was disquieting. Nevertheless, she found herself removing her boots, then her socks, and leaving them on the wood decking.

  The sand was cold beneath her bare feet, the beach grass sharp, as she followed the path toward the sound of the water. But she kept going. The dunes were beautiful in the green-gray light, the beach grass blowing sideways left, then right. As she emerged from between the dunes, the roaring of the surf intensified, and the beach opened before her. Shannon paused. It was so like that day. The waves. The silver sky. The wind. She shuddered.

  Keeping her father away had been necessary, if hard. For too many years she’d fought the hole of his absence, trying in vain to fill it with everything else. Her work. Her house. Her own children and husband. And yet she diminished her joy in all of those things by using them as fillers, seeing them as walls she could raise to surround herself with, rather than doors and windows that let light in. Finally, when she could raise the barriers no more, she crumbled. And so too did the walls. All of her hard work and all of those years fell away around her. It didn’t matter what she’d attained or achieved or accrued—at the foundation of it all was hurt. And until she fixed it, she could not build a life atop it. Going back to her father was for her as much as it was for him.