Safe Harbor Page 3

  “Yeah.”

  He held up a finger, signaling her to wait, and then vanished into the kitchen to discard his apple. Once he rejoined her, they climbed the stairs to the second floor, entered the smallest bedroom, opened an inner door, and scaled the steep ladder-like steps behind it, first into the dusty unfinished attic with its dormer windows and cobwebbed corners, and from there up another ladder to the cupola.

  The cupola was a cramped square space, no more than six feet on each side, but Shelley and Kip fit in without crowding each other. They sat diagonally, their backs nestled into opposite corners and their legs extended across the tiny floor. Through the open windows a balmy wind blew, and in the distance Shelley could hear the eerie reverberation of the Pt. Judith ferry’s horn, announcing that it was about to pull out of Old Harbor for its last daily excursion to the mainland.

  Kip linked his hands behind his head and leaned back, watching Shelley patiently. She pulled the rubber band out of her hair and raked her fingers through the tawny waves. Then she lifted her face to him. “My dad’s not coming this weekend,” she said.

  Kip nodded, waiting, knowing she had more to say.

  “He called while my mom and I were having supper, and my mom talked to him and then she told me what he said. I was upset, Kip, so I called him back and tried to talk him into coming. Was that such a terrible thing to do?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, he acted like it was. So did my mother. My dad told me to grow up and my mom made jokes about how maybe my father was having an affair.”

  Kip cursed. “Do you think that’s what it’s about?” he asked, taking her concern as seriously as she did.

  “No.” She toyed with the rubber band, twisting it into figure-8 shapes and then letting it snap loose. “This is going to sound really crazy, Kip, but sometimes I think it’s something worse.”

  “Like what?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s not fair, Kip—this is supposed to be my happy time, the summer on Block Island. But...I mean, for my mom to even joke about such a thing...” The tears she’d been suppressing ever since her mother had relayed the news about her father’s phone call finally broke free. Shelley pressed her hands to her eyes and sobbed.

  She was scarcely aware of Kip shifting, reversing position, wedging himself next to her with his legs forming a bridge over hers. He arched his arm around her and pulled her against him, and she wept into the soft cotton of his shirt, into the firm strength of his shoulder. A girl ought to be able to cry on her mother’s shoulder, but Shelley couldn’t.

  She had Kip, though. Maybe that was even better.

  After a long while, she sniffled to a halt. Her shoulders rose and fell in a final shudder, and she pulled back from him and swabbed her damp cheeks with her palms. “Sorry about that,” she murmured hoarsely.

  He smiled. As the sky darkened the three-quarter moon grew brighter, reflecting off the lenses of his eyeglasses. “Sorry about what?”

  She recalled the first time they’d met, so long ago, when he’d dragged her through the dune grass to inspect the dead snake he’d discovered. His motivation had probably been to shake her up, but she’d been tough and courageous. She’d squatted down and stared the corpse straight in its lidless black eyes. No doubt Kip had been testing her, trying to find out whether she was a sissy. He’d found out she wasn’t.

  But here she was, falling apart, blubbering, her courage gone and her emotions overblown. Here she was, leaning on him and acting like a dumb girl.

  “I’m sorry I cried like that. I’m scared, Kip. I know there’s no reason to be, but—”

  “Maybe there is a reason to be,” he countered, twirling his fingers through her hair. She understood that he didn’t mean to alarm her, but rather wanted to reassure her that her reaction wasn’t as dopey as she seemed to think it was.

  “If my parents get a divorce I’ll die,” she declared.

  “No you won’t.”

  “But I love them both.”

  “Well, maybe...maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe your dad just has some problems to work out, and he wants to work them out by himself.”

  “Yeah—or with another woman.”

  “Maybe he just wants some time alone. I mean--every guy needs a little time to himself now and then.”

  “He has time to himself all week long,” she reminded Kip. “We’re here. He’s all alone in Westport.”

  “But he’s at work most of the time.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” she snapped.

  Kip groaned and socked her gently in the arm. “Girls,” he grunted, an all-encompassing complaint. “Of course I’m on your side, Shelley. I’m just trying to explain...”

  “Explain what?”

  “He’s a guy. There’s no way you can understand everything that’s going on in his head.”

  “You are taking his side,” she accused, supremely annoyed.

  “I’m trying to talk you down, Shell.”

  “You’re a creep. And I can too understand everything that’s going on in his head. Same as your head. They’re both empty. What’s going on inside them is zilch.”

  Kip laughed. So did Shelley. Arguing with him felt good; they both knew where they stood and what the situation was. It wasn’t like arguing with her parents, where so much remained unspoken, unacknowledged.

  From four stories below came the wind-borne drone of a moped engine. Shelley and Kip scrambled to their knees in time to see a two-seater bounce up the driveway to the front porch. The engine died and the two passengers—Diana and a strapping young man with black hair and a thick mustache—climbed off.

  “That’s him?” Shelley whispered.

  “The love of her life,” Kip whispered back.

  Her personal woes momentarily forgotten, Shelley slipped into her spying mode. Spying on Diana was a summer tradition for Shelley and Kip, although this summer Shelley found herself spying on Diana less out of mischief than out of admiration. Diana was so pretty, so sophisticated. In her tank top and shorts, with her hair cut in an expertly styled shag and her eyes enhanced with tinted contacts and a subtle touch of make-up, with a narrow strap of braided leather circling one bare, slender ankle, she looked awfully cool.

  In less than two months she would be heading off to Middlebury College. Maybe she was moody and sulky and she took forever to get ready. But she knew things Shelley longed to know, things that had to do with life and love and being a woman. Spying on her with Kip was entertaining, but sometimes Shelley wished she could spend a little time at Diana’s feet, learning important things.

  “I think he’s kind of cute,” she assessed Diana’s boyfriend.

  Kip made a face. “He’s a nerd.”

  “He’s got a mustache. He must be old.”

  “I could grow a mustache if I wanted,” Kip said.

  Shelley glanced at him and wrinkled her nose. “Nah. It wouldn’t suit you. You’re too clean-cut.”

  He gave her another playful sock in the arm. “You’re a nerd.”

  “Shh.” She rose on her knees to watch as Diana and her date paused before the porch steps. He wrapped his arms around Diana’s shoulders, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. Their lips met in a kiss.

  After a prolonged minute, the porch light flickered off and on. Diana and the guy sprang apart. “My mother,” Kip murmured. “The guardian of virtue.”

  “What’s she going to do when Diana goes off to college?”

  “Pray a lot.” He and Shelley watched as Diana squeezed the guy’s hand in farewell and backed slowly up the stairs to the veranda, gazing dreamily at him as he climbed onto the moped and revved the motor. Not until he had vanished beyond the stone wall did she turn and enter the house.

  “Have you met him?” Shelley asked.

  “Who, Romeo?” Kip turned from the window and settled back onto the floor. Shelley sat as well, the tight quarters forcing her into the curve of Kip’s arm. “Not really. My mom inv
ited him over for a barbecue Saturday evening, so she and my dad can check him out. My dad’s going to be coming down with my grandmother, my Uncle Ned and Aunt Martha and their kids, so the guy will be just one face among many. Hey,” he said brightly, pulling back to look at her. “Maybe you and your mother can come, too.”

  Shelley shook her head. “To a Stroud family gathering? We wouldn’t fit in.”

  “Of course you would. It’s going to be a mob scene. And if your father isn’t coming to the island, what are you and your mother going to do all weekend, sit around and mope? Wouldn’t you rather come to our house and eat some charred meat and soggy pickles? It’ll be a good time.”

  “I don’t know,” Shelley hedged, although it did sound like a lot of fun. Much more fun than watching TV with her mother in their stuffy little cottage and wondering what Shelley’s father was up to back in Connecticut.

  “You’d get to meet Romeo,” Kip pointed out.

  Shelley was tempted. “Don’t you think you ought to ask your mother first?”

  “You know she’ll say it’s a great idea.”

  Of course she would. Kip’s mother wasn’t the sort to get hung up on two guests more or less at a barbecue. “Well...if it’s okay with my mother, then, sure, we’ll come.”

  “Good.” He gave her an affectionate hug, then hauled himself to his feet. “How about let’s go get some lemonade and bother Diana?”

  “Okay,” Shelley agreed as Kip grabbed her hand and hoisted her off the floor. Once again he had made her feel better. As they descended the ladder into the house, she could almost forget about the problems that had sent her crying into his arms.

  ***

  “DO I LOOK ALL RIGHT?” Shelley’s mother asked.

  Shelley turned from the mirror, where she’d been trying futilely to do something interesting with her exceptionally uninteresting hair. Her mother had on white jeans and an oversized blue silk blouse that gathered in a knot at one hip. From her ears dangled large gold hoops; her wrists were circled by gold bangles.

  “You look very classy,” Shelley said, meaning it. She didn’t add that the Strouds had too much class to worry about looking classy.

  Shelley’s mother had met Kip’s parents on a few occasions, and they’d exchanged small talk on the usual subjects—the names of house painters, the outrageous cost of electricity on the island, the most recent incident of vandalism at the lighthouse up at Sandy Point. They’d never actually socialized in a big way, though. When Shelley’s father was on the island the Ballards did family-type things: going out to dinner at the National Hotel, picnicking at Mohegan Bluffs or just hanging out at the house, being together. And when Shelley’s father wasn’t on the island, her mother felt peculiar about venturing out in public without him. “I’m a married woman,” her mother would claim. “I’m not used to traveling solo.”

  After much urging from Shelley, however, her mother had decided to attend a party without a proper escort. Three cheers for independence, Shelley had muttered under her breath when her mother finally accepted Kip’s invitation. Just because her mother had married her father at the age of twenty-one, just because she’d never had an outside job—let alone a career—or an identity apart from “Mary Ballard, wife and mother,” just because she’d never done anything solo didn’t mean she couldn’t go to the Strouds’.

  She was nervous, though, and because she was Shelley couldn’t be. Giving up on her hair, she tossed her brush onto the dresser and stepped into her sandals. She wore a polo shirt, khaki shorts and a thin gold chain about her neck—a birthday present from her father. The best thing she could say about her appearance was that, six weeks into the summer, she had acquired a dynamite tan.

  “Well, let’s go,” her mother said brightly. It was obvious that she was trying hard to be cheerful despite the absence of her husband.

  Downstairs, Shelley’s mother stopped in the kitchen to pick up her purse and a bottle of Zinfandel. When her mother had purchased the wine Shelley had tactfully reminded her that people at barbecues drank beer and soda, but her mother wouldn’t listen. “When someone invites you to dinner,” she explained, “it’s correct to bring a bottle of wine.”

  Her mother handed her the bottle once they were both seated in the car. Shelley recited the directions, and her mother drove. Her grip on the wheel wasn’t too tight, but Shelley could sense the anxiety in her mother’s slender arms, in her taut jaw, in her rigid posture as she squinted in the early-evening sunlight. As much as Shelley missed her father, she realized her mother missed him in different ways—not only because she wanted to see him and talk to him, but because she felt insecure and exposed without him.

  Shelley had always admired her parents’ marriage. Some of her classmates had divorced parents, and they seemed sad and confused about it. But until this summer, when strange, ominous undercurrents kept churning through her family, Shelley had considered her parents an ideal couple. George Ballard conquered the world and Mary Ballard organized the home front. George earned the money and Mary spent it wisely, not on trinkets and junk but on the sort of clothes, household furnishings and jewelry that would earn the family a respectable place in the world. Shelley’s parents strove hard; they looked good together; they complemented each other.

  It had always seemed to work so well—until this summer. Something was amiss, a gear out of alignment, a clamp broken, two pieces of metal rubbing together, creating friction, setting off sparks. For the first time in her life, Shelley found herself wondering whether being in such a tight, self-contained marriage was a good thing, after all.

  At least, she resolved, when she got married she would have her own career. None of this not-used-to-traveling-solo stuff for her. She would marry, of course—a strong, ethical, handsome man like her father, a man devoted to taking care of her, even if she would require less care than her mother. She would marry a wonderful guy and live happily ever after, but she would never let herself become dependent on him.

  “That’s the driveway over there,” Shelley said, gesturing toward the opening in the stone wall. She’d pointed out the Stroud place to her parents before, but she didn’t blame her mother for not remembering. There were so many pretty stone walls on the island, so many tangled hedges of rose and honeysuckle, so many charming Victorian houses crowned with cupolas.

  The sounds of laughter and conversation wafted through the car’s open windows as Shelley’s mother steered up the driveway, braking to a halt behind a mud-spattered Jeep. Outside the car, her mother took the bottle of wine from Shelley and they started around the house to the emerald stretch of lawn at the rear. There they came upon a crowd of some twenty people: older folks seated on lawn chairs, sipping beer and iced tea; two youngsters playing badminton with profound ineptitude, a cocker spaniel streaking through the yard, gleefully terrorizing chipmunks and squirrels, a toddler roaming across the grass on fat, wobbly legs; a girl of about eight standing beneath a crab-apple tree, hollering to someone hidden in the branches above her. Beneath another shade tree Diana and her boyfriend stood, holding hands and watching the chaos with wary amusement. On the patio, Mrs. Stroud was arranging bottles of ketchup and mustard at the center of a long table, which was covered with a festive red-checked table cloth and several citronella candles. Mr. Stroud held court over a huge barbecue grill, armed with elbow-high hot mitts and long-handled utensils and sporting an apron with the words “Treat Me Right Or I’ll Burn Yours” printed across it.

  Shelley’s father wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an apron like that. On Mr. Stroud, though, it looked cute. A tall, robust man with a full head of silver hair and a pleasantly lined face, he was the kind of person who could wear the silliest things and not look silly. That, Shelley believed, was true class.

  Mrs. Stroud finished setting up the condiments and turned. Spotting Shelley and her mother, she beamed, waved and hurried over. “Hi! Shelley, and—Mary, is it? I’m so glad you could come!”

  Shelley’s mother relaxed a little
bit. “It was so nice of you to invite us. Here, this is for you.” She handed Mrs. Stroud the wine.

  “Oh, my, you shouldn’t have! Well, thank you so much!” Mrs. Stroud cupped her hand around Shelley’s mother’s elbow and ushered her away, chattering enthusiastically.

  Shelley let out a long breath. This was going to be fine. Her mother was going to enjoy herself. They both were going to survive this weekend without her father. They were going to prove to themselves—and to him, too—that they didn’t need him to have a good time.

  Reassured that her mother was all right, Shelley searched the yard for Kip. She recognized his bare feet dangling from the branches of the crab-apple tree.

  He jumped down to the grass below with the gracefulness of a trained acrobat. He had on a kitsch Hawaiian print shirt, cut-offs and his new sunglasses, and he was holding a Frisbee. Like his parents, he seemed utterly at ease about himself and his appearance. Shelley envied his confidence.

  She approached him as he and the girl emerged from the tree’s shade. “Now listen,” he instructed the girl, “you’ve got to throw the Frisbee level or it’s going to go up in the tree again. Can you do that?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Because the next time it gets stuck in a tree, you’re going to have to get it. Hi, Shelley.” Kip grinned at her. “This is my cousin Becky. Wanna play Frisbee with us?”

  “Sure.” She circled the yard with her gaze. “Are all these other people your cousins, too?” she asked.

  “Some of them. Sally—the baby—and Michael—the kid whose shoelace my mother’s tying—are.”

  “And so is the dog,” Becky declared solemnly.

  “Hey, the dog may be your brother, but he’s not my cousin,” Kip teased. “The gray-haired lady chugging beer straight from the bottle is my grandmother, and those kids stuffing their faces with potato chips are the Sussmans--they’ve got a summer place up near Grove Point. Their mother is that lady pouring lemonade, and their father is the one demonstrating golf swings to my Uncle Ned. And last but not least...” He shot a swift, sidelong glance at Diana and her boyfriend. “There’s the man in the spotlight.”