Fast. The boat tore over the sea, roaring, bouncing, fighting the waves, reminding Ann of the saying that the only difference between men and boys was the size and price of their toys. She would have liked a slower ride, so she could examine the islands and experience the sea, but at least this way the noise and wind were too loud to hear Dinah.
Eagle Rock Island was crescent-shaped, the last barrier between the bay and the Atlantic. On the bay side, the air was warm and still, little waves lapping at the pebbly beach where they disembarked and unloaded their gear.
Patrick waved good-bye, winked at Ann, and promised to be back mid-afternoon to bring them home to camp.
A quick trip through long marshy grass carrying their gear—with Dinah commenting on every plant and animal As Good As It Got
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she saw, and curse her Kinsonu flora and fauna class—across to a spot Patrick recommended on the ocean side. There was a drop in temperature there, a steady wind and rolling break-ers that crashed and splashed into the ledges lining the coast, sending up fountains of white foaming spray.
The women from Cabin Four stood in a line facing open sea. The wind blew their hair straight back—okay, well it only ruffled Dinah’s—and made Ann’s eyes water. Ducks—no, not ducks. Too small for ducks, but Ann didn’t care enough to ask what they were—floated, perilously close to the rocks, doomed in seconds to be broken by the ledges. Somehow they managed to avoid being smashed. Up and down, riding out life calmly, right on the edge. She could take lessons from a duck . . . type . . . thing. Soon enough she’d be back with them, riding waves, in danger of being smashed.
“Who wants to explore?” She pulled hair out of her mouth, which the wind had whipped there when she turned.
She wasn’t eager to ride the waves anymore. The calm bay side of the island looked more and more appealing. Was this a substantial change? Or more depressive grief fallout? She kept hearing Patrick’s voice, saying she hadn’t been herself married to Paul.
“I was thinking of lying out. I brought a towel.” Dinah looked dubiously at the jagged ledges and the stony spread of beach.
“I’ll explore with you.” Cindy sounded about as excited as if Ann had suggested a stroll through radioactive thorn bushes.
Martha said nothing.
Well, this day would be super duper fun.
She broke formation and started off to her right, where 282 Isabel
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what she’d spontaneously dubbed the Stoned Beach ended in a steep slope up a forested hill. Halfway, she looked back, saw the others straggling after her, and was surprised to find herself glad she’d have their company. Well. Don’t tell us Ann had actually become human?
They made it all the way around the island, pushing through scratchy branches, negotiating tricky rocks. Along the way, many discoveries. Raspberry bushes, heavy with ripe berries, wild blueberries that seemed dusted with powdered sugar, hill cranberries, a beautiful ripe red against their green shiny leaves. A cave with a tidal pool lined with barnacles pushing out tiny feathery hands from the tops of their shell castles to catch whatever meal floated by. Brine shrimp wiggled across the bottom and a sea anemone that only Dinah could see for the first several minutes, which caused her to be smug and the rest of them to think she’d been making it up, stood pink bloblike at the back near the cave wall. Across from the cave, beds of mussels exposed by the low tide, so densely packed that you couldn’t step between them. And everywhere, fresh sea air and sunshine and unspoiled beauty. Ann was starting to think that her favorite color combination would always be dark green evergreens against a vivid blue sky.
And she wanted to leave here why? What was new to explore and discover in Framingham, where she’d grown up? A new flavor at Dunkin’ Donuts?
But this wasn’t life, her sane self argued. This was vacation. Adventure.
So . . . what, then, her new self argued back, life was supposed to be high-stress routine? Ugly? Unremarkable? She As Good As It Got
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wasn’t allowed to have beauty and richness and a sense of curiosity and peace and wonder in her daily life?
She thought of Clive, transfixed with her at the sight of the heron. He’d grown up here. This was his Framingham, and he’d come back to gaze and wonder and marvel all over again. The simple life.
But she wasn’t Clive. A few months gazing and wondering and marveling, and it would all be familiar here too, not to mention in winter the isolation would be horrendous. Plus she’d be creating a big black hole in her résumé.
“I’m starving.” Dinah paused breathlessly, teetered on her wedge espadrilles and had to grab at a nearby branch. “Feels like forever since I ate breakfast. Or maybe it was the sight of all those raspberries and mussels. I also saw several seaside growing plants that were edible. One of them tastes like—”
“Luckily we brought a picnic.” Ann lifted the hair off the back of her neck. She was looking forward to getting back to a resting point herself. A couple of glasses of wine and a nice nap in the sun, and she’d count this a pretty good day. Easy living, in fact.
“Lunch sounds good. I think I’m getting a blister.” Cindy gazed so mournfully at her pink tennis shoes that Ann actually missed her ditzy happiness.
“There must be Band-Aids in the first aid kit.” Martha sighed one of her vast sighs and ambled through a stand of birches, trunks glowing papery white in the sunlight.
The women followed silently—apart from Dinah’s usual mumbled conversation with herself—until they came to the spot where they’d set down their gear.
Ann grinned and moved forward, eager to unveil her 284 Isabel
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secret. Wine would get their moods up, relax them, get some fun silly chatter going, and maybe they could all forget their troubles for a little while.
“Look what I brought.” She dragged the bottles out of her bag and out of the towel she’d wrapped them in, held them up triumphantly. “Are we going to have fun, or what?”
“Is that a chardonnay from California? That was my husband Tom’s favorite wine. I could barely buy it fast enough.
But I don’t drink wine. Now if it was gin, I’d dive right in, though any drinking at lunch makes me gassy.”
Ann rolled her eyes. Fine. Just as well. They certainly didn’t need Dinah to get any more talkative. “Martha? Cindy? How about it?”
“Oh. Um. I don’t really drink that much.” Cindy smiled apologetically. “It will just put me to sleep.”
Martha shook her head. “No thank you.”
For crying out loud. Her last day here, and she was stuck with a bunch of party poopers. She’d hoped after all they’d been through they could at least have some fun now. But maybe she was being sentimental. These weren’t really her friends, they’d all just been stuck together by chance.
Her friends back home would drink with her. Except they all had jobs and husbands or lovers—sometimes both—or kids, and they’d brag or complain about them the whole time. Back home she’d be Unemployed Ann Without Paul.
God how depressing.
To Clive, she was just Ann. She could share the afternoon wine with him after he got back from fishing. Or she could go lobstering with him, and they could share the bottle when they returned, or skip it and drink coffee, sitting in the lean-As Good As It Got
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to, watching the sea. They could talk about their day, he could tease her when she got self-righteous, they could figure out together what they wanted and where they were going.
A simpler life. A new Ann. Forgoing the wind and waves for sun and steady warmth.
She’d only be running away from life if she defined life the way she always had—the way Paul had, a grueling pace chasing financial success. Beauty and relaxation didn’t have to belong only to snatched expensive vacations. If she took what Clive offered, she could have it all.
Ann put the wine back in the bag. She was going to stay.
Martha glanced at the other three women, waiting with her to be picked up on the bay side of the island where Patrick had dropped them off. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon lying in the sun, throwing rocks in the water, and watching the tide creeping in. Now, in various states of the fidgets, they waited. Patrick was nearly an hour late, and they were sunburned, tired and ready to go back to Kinsonu—and tomorrow, home. Cindy would go back to her cheating, neglectful husband; Dinah would doubtless sign up on Match.com the second she walked in her door; Ann would restart her sophisticated life and high-powered career. And Martha would go back to sitting in her apartment, only with nothing to wait for now, nothing even to dream about.
“We were supposed to talk today about what camp had done for us, and how we’ve changed. We didn’t do that.”
Cindy sounded anxious, afraid of disappointing the teacher.
“Who cares.” Predictably, this came from Ann.
“Well, I feel I’ve really changed. Very deeply. Spiritually.”
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Dinah jiggled pebbles in her hand so they clacked together appealingly. “After I get back, I’m going to enter a convent and take a vow of silence.”
If the ocean weren’t sending waves rolling over the stones, a pin could have been heard dropping.
“I’m kidding, for heaven’s sake.” Dinah shook her head.
“Honestly. Don’t you have a sense of humor? Me, in a place with no men? ”
Three bursts of relieved laughter, then Dinah’s cackle overall.
“But seriously, I don’t know that I learned anything, really, but I did have a wonderful time, and it was great to meet you three and so many other nice women. I took a lot of great classes, I improved my tennis, got divine massages . . . Really, it was so relaxing. I feel ready to go home and dive right back into the man pool.”
“Wow. Lucky guys.”
“Oh, you’re just a sweetie, Ann.” Dinah smacked Ann’s leg playfully, as usual not registering her sarcasm. “I’ll always be grateful to this place. And who knows, maybe I’ll be back here at camp again someday if my next marriage tanks.”
Ann groaned and even Cindy rolled her eyes. Martha thought it was pretty ironic that Dinah would probably always be the happiest of the three of them. Maybe loving deeply made happiness harder to achieve. What would her own life have been like without Eldon to love, to hope and wait for? Would she have married someone else? Would that have made her happier?
She had so much love stored up to give that Eldon never had the chance to get.
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A boat motor made all four of their necks crane to the north, until she came into sight from around the edge of the island. Not Kinsonu’s
Stronglady.
A lobster boat.
Three necks relaxed. Ann stared a few beats longer, hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, then hers relaxed too.
Cindy tossed a pebble, which clattered down a slight incline toward the water, hit an obstacle and stopped. The waves swished in and out, in farther, out less, tide rising toward them. No breeze on the side of the island. The warmth was uncomfortable.
Waiting . . . Waiting . . .
“I’m glad to be going back home. I guess.” Cindy rested her head on her hand, elbow propped on her knee, looking de-spondent. “I mean I really liked it here, and I did change, but a lot of the adventures turned out differently than I thought.
At least home is exactly what I know it is.”
“What if a different life could be much better?”
Cindy glanced at Ann in a way Martha was pretty sure she wouldn’t have two weeks ago. “How are
you
planning to change your life, Ann? Going back to your parents and trying to find the same kind of job?”
“Actually . . . ” Ann picked up a pebble and threw it hard.
It traveled impressively far and landed with a soft thunk in the green water. “I’m staying here.”
“At camp? ”
“With the guy I went lobstering with. He’s asked me to stay with him for a while.” She held up a hand to stop the obvious questions, but Martha noticed her blushing. “Platoni-cally. We’re both drifting at the moment, so it made sense to join forces.”
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Martha was pretty sure also that two weeks ago Ann would not have even considered such an offer, nor admitted that she was drifting.
“What about you, Martha?” Cindy turned to her, and Martha couldn’t help thinking of how her eyes sparkled with energy and friendly warmth on the first day they met, and how dull they were now. “What’s going to be different for you?”
Ann cleared her throat, and Cindy clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I know how much he meant to you.”
“It’s okay.” Martha’s breath came faster. She felt sweat beading on her temple. “I think . . . I’d made him into a fantasy. A little. Maybe.”
Two weeks ago she definitely wouldn’t have said that. Or even admitted it to herself.
“What will you do now? You want to come manhunting with me?” Dinah rubbed her hands together. “Looks like we’re the only swinging singles left.”
“I don’t think I need a man. Not for a while.” Martha wiped her forehead with a tissue she had stuffed in her pocket in case she broke down over Eldon while they were on the island. She was embarrassed to be the only one sweating so obviously.
“So what will you do?” Cindy’s brow was wrinkled in concern.
Martha waited for the answer to come to her, waited for something to make sense while they all sat here and waited for Patrick.
And then Martha was damn sick and tired of waiting. So many weeks now she’d been waiting for Eldon to wake up and start living, when it was
she
who had needed to wake up and start living, for far longer than that.
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No more. When she got back to Vermont, she was going to call libraries and volunteer to tell stories to kids, call nurs-ing homes and volunteer to tell stories to the elderly. Maybe enroll at the University of Vermont for courses in creative writing. She’d even go see the shrink Betsy recommended.
She didn’t have erotomania, but it couldn’t hurt to work a few things out.
Mostly, she was not going to spend any more time waiting.