Accidental Happiness (10 page)

8

Gina

I
wasn’t in the mood to take Georgie for a walk, so I made her pee on the grass near the Ship’s Store and then settled back, still restless, on the boat for the night.

“We’ll go for a long walk tomorrow,” I told the dog. “I promise.” She didn’t look convinced.

I poured myself a cognac, set out to put sheets on the quarter-berth cushions for Reese. “
DOG-MAA
.” That was just flaky enough for her.

On the one hand, the thought of Reese living in the same town seemed like something I’d dreamed. One of those weird, passing fears that vents itself at night, then meets relief the next morning. But then I remembered the strange comfort of sharing my story with someone else who knew Ben. Someone who felt a loss similar to mine. I wondered what relationship would eventually evolve between us.

“Hey.” I heard Lane call from outside before she stepped onto my boat. It seemed everybody had gotten a little skittish about boarding my vessel without decent warning.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Where’s Angel?”

“Reese brought her things over and is getting her tucked in before going to take a shower. Angel’s asking for a stuffed alligator. Did she leave it here before we went to dinner?”

“I don’t know,” I told her, pulling an extra pillow from under the portside berth and stuffing it into a pillowcase. “I don’t remember an alligator. Sorry.”

Lane stood there, leaning against the corner that was my kitchen, looked as if she wanted to say something.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Lane shook her head, the light strands of ash-blond gray shifting color as she moved. “It’s not really my place to say, but . . .”

“Come on. Something’s on your mind,” I said. “Just say whatever it is.”

“You’re not real keen on Angel, are you?” she asked, moving out of my way as I bent to spread a light blanket on the makeshift bed.

I finished with the blanket, sat down at the front of the quarter berth. Her direct stab at the topic took me off guard. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve got a few issues here.”

“I know. But I think it’s more than that.” She was relentless.

“More?”
I did my best to sound indignant. “More than unexplained paternity questions?”

“You wouldn’t blame the kid for that. You’re making an effort with Reese, for God’s sakes. There’s something else going on.”

I bought time with my cognac, took a sip, saw my distorted reflection, liquid features in the amber surface inside the glass.

“You’re right.” I didn’t look up at her. “But I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “But for Angel’s sake, if you could try to get to know her . . .”

My instinct ran to the defensive stance. “She’s not exactly fuzzy and sweet when it comes to me either.”

“I’ll talk to her. She’ll take a lot of cues from you, though. Just try.”

I nodded. It was all I could manage.

“There’s something else,” she said. This time she was the one hedging her words. “What do you think is going on with those two?”

“Damned if I know,” I said, setting my drink on the navigation table. Lane sat opposite me. “I asked Reese about Angel, about her father.”

“And?”

“She said she doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t know?” Lane’s face took a rare cynical turn.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I believe it or not either, but that’s what she told me.”

“Did you ask her how she happened to
not know
?”

“Not yet, but I’d say playing bedroom hopscotch would be one way to cause a little confusion.” I sounded judgmental, hated myself the second the sentence came out of my mouth. I’d had a few moments in strange beds myself since Benjamin died. Pain will lead you to various avenues of self-medication if you let it, and no telling what pain Reese had been through.

“I don’t know what the story is.” I ended the subject. “You said there was something else?”

“Yeah. I need to get back to Angel, but I just wanted to tell you about something unusual she said.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Angel. Just now.”

I picked up my glass, noticed I was fidgeting, tried to will myself into calm.

“I was telling her,” Lane went on, “that for her birthday, we’d take my boat to the island for the picnic. You know, I talked about it at the restaurant too. Anyway, I was brushing her hair and she was getting a little sleepy, I think. This was before Reese came in.”

“Yeah? What did she say?”

“I talked about the island, made it into kind of a bedtime story.”

“And?”

“And she asked me if it was the same island with the salty pond in the middle.”

I felt gooseflesh up my arm. My heartbeat ran high, toward the middle of my throat. “How did she know?” I took a sip of my drink, felt shaky as I lowered it from my mouth. The cognac burned warm into my chest.

“I asked her when she had seen the pond.”

I waited, still barely able to breathe.

“Her lids were closing. I thought she was asleep already, but then she kind of opened her eyes a little and said that she’d gone once. ‘On the blue boat,’ she said. ‘Gina’s boat?’ I asked her, and she opened her eyes wider, more awake. She wouldn’t answer. Reese walked in about that time and Angel got really agitated, looked upset. I think she realized she’d said something she wasn’t supposed to.”

“She said she went on my boat to the island?”

I felt invaded somehow. Looking around the cabin of what had become my home, I sensed a violation.

“That’s what she said, but she could have been really confused. She’s not even eight years old yet. She could have been playing make-believe, telling a story. Especially if her mom’s talked about the island.”

“But the salt pond,” I said.

“The pond too,” Lane said, standing up to go. “Reese said she grew up around here, so she would have been out there before. I don’t know. I didn’t want to bring it up until we were alone. You can ask her about it tonight.”

“Maybe they’ve even come out here before,” I said, more to myself than to Lane. “Slept on the boat like they were trying to do the other night. God, maybe Reese was just crazy enough to take it out to the island. I don’t know.”

I thought of Angel, toes deep in the sandy mud bank of the pond. When Benjamin and I would go there, I felt as if the place belonged to us. No one else was ever there. For brief moments the two of us owned the pond. Everything. The marsh, birds, little fish . . . I had to stop. It brought too much of him back, thinking of the place. And I resented the hell out of Angel’s image inside that memory.

“Like I said, you should bring it up with Reese. See if you can get a straight answer out of her.”

“Yeah, well, I can put that one in line behind all the other questions I’ve got for her.”

“I better get back over there,” Lane said, starting up through the companionway. Before she got to the top, she stopped, turned back to me. “Like I said, try not to blame Angel for any of this. I know it’s hard not to, but whatever Reese has done, she’s just been along for the ride.”

Lane could read me too well. I felt both comforted and disturbed by how close inside my brain she could get sometimes.

“You’re right,” I said as she headed out into the cockpit. “I’ll do my best.” It came out vague, noncommittal. But it was all I had to offer.

I finished one cognac, had the impulse to pour another one, and decided to let it ride for the night. I was drinking too much lately, even before Reese’s blunt arrival. I needed something else to anesthetize myself. Mindless sex hadn’t exactly done the trick. Booze didn’t seem to be much better. My last hope was the religion thing. Maybe that was the ticket. Ben’s mother had dragged me to Mt. Sinai, a little church near her vacation cottage on Sullivan’s Island. To my surprise, I’d gone back on my own after she left, and not just to visit the grave. Something about it, the place, the people; the songs, the words . . . All of it together felt like lotion on sunburn. I hadn’t been there in a week or two, but I thought it might be time to try it again.

It took so much effort to reinvent my world without Ben, and these new problems—they didn’t help at all. Only after Benjamin was gone did I realize how much I’d counted on him to decide who I was. Together, we’d been a step ahead of the world. Without him, I’d fallen so far behind.

“What’s taking Reese so long?” I said out loud to myself. Georgie looked up. Her eyes looked clear, nearly human, and I half expected her to answer me.

Half dozing and listening for Reese’s return, I thought of the last time Benjamin had taken me to the island, one morning a month or so before he died. A day more like fall than spring. The winds were high, with more bite than usual, and the sun had come out strong.

“Let’s take the boat out,” he said without any preface. His tone was light, free of the serious overtones, the ragged edges that had begun to dominate our conversations. “We can anchor and grill out, take the whole day.”

It was a Thursday, and I had a piece for
Coastal Living
due before the beginning of the week. We’d had yet another discussion the night before about having a child, but he showed no lingering signs of baggage over the argument.

“I’ve got to work,” I told him, already mentally recalculating my schedule.

He had just come out of the shower, and I was sitting down to work at the computer, still in my plaid bathrobe.

“Yeah, me too,” he grinned. “That’s the best part.”

He wore nothing but a white towel, low around his waist.

“That’s why we say, what the hell, and take off. I can play catch-up tomorrow. So can you. Look at it out there! It won’t be like that after today. We’ve got rain the rest of the week. And Genes?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to have a good time. I know I’ve been hard to be with lately. This whole thing about children. It’s been wearing on us. I want to forget everything but us for a change. We deserve it.”

Branches moved outside the window. Fast air rattled the new leaves, as strong sun brought out the details of the day.

“Come on. Just look. That’s what you’re writing about, isn’t it? How fucking gorgeous it is here. How
this
is the kind of place where you take off on an impulse and go sailing.”

Distant across the marsh, I could just make out the ocean, tiny white caps marking the surface.

“It’s rough out there, Ben.” I was already saving my article, preparing to shut it down. I was sunk the minute he had the idea. “I hate it when you do this to me.”

“Do what?”

He walked to his dresser, dropped the towel, and rooted in the drawer for some boxers. His lean frame was a kinetic wonder. Every movement he made suggested a force against time and space, and nothing he did ever seemed passive.

“You’re a bad influence,” I said, getting up and putting my arms up around his neck. I locked my fingers as if to steady his motion. For small moments I could hold him still. “If I’m late and they cancel the article, it’s your fault,” I told him. Drops of water from his hair fell light on my hands.

“You’re too damn talented for that,” he said. I felt his breath on my hair, his hands slipping inside my robe. “They need you, and so do I. The difference is, they can wait.” His voice registered low as he said this, and I imagined he had more on the agenda at anchor than just grilling dinner.

“Okay. Get dressed.” I pulled away gently. “If you can put some ice in the cooler, I’ll change clothes and pull together the food.”

He watched me walk away from him, stared without a hint of apology as I dressed, then went to get the ice.

As I rummaged through the fridge to gather what might be a meal, I thought of his eyes on me. Wondered, not for the first time, why he loved me. I knew my strengths. I was pretty, I was smart. But I wasn’t extraordinary, not in my own assessment, at least. I wondered if I would always feel a light step behind him. He gave so much, but asked for even more.

“Ready, Genes?” he called out from the garage.

“Coming!” I shouted back. And for a brief second before the feeling passed, I’d felt as if I might cry.

Reese brought back ice-cream sandwiches from the Ship’s Store. Her hair, brown but a shade darker than mine, was still drenched from the shower. It hung loose and curly, left wet stains on the shoulders of her T-shirt. Even in ordinary clothes she looked foreign to me.

“The kid working at the store gave me these when I went in to buy toothpaste on my way back.” She bent over slightly to put her toiletries away and I saw a small tattoo, a tiny blue flower, at the small of her back. It almost looked like a bruise.

“Oh, Charlie. He’s a flirt,” I said. “He’s some relation to Derek, the security guy who’s been working nights for about six months now.” I tried to make my reference to Derek sound casual. “Best I can tell, our friend Charlie’s looking at a world of hurt when he gets caught sleeping with somebody’s wife.”

“Well,” Reese said, “you’re nobody’s wife. Why don’t you go for it? They’re both cute as can be.”

I thought of Derek, with me in the very space where I stood talking to Reese. I looked away from her as the hot rush took over my cheeks.