“I’m fine,” Clara says. “Thanks for all the carpooling. It was a huge help.”
“No problem.” Laurel is looking at Clara strangely. Too intensely. “Are you okay? I mean—really?”
Inwardly, Clara bristles. She isn’t ready for this—the way people in Southwest know all about each other’s comings and goings. They know who’s sick, who’s having problems meeting their mortgage payments, whose child needs remedial help at school. They pass each other’s houses in their cars, and they notice who stays up late at night, the blue flickering lights of television visible from the street.
“I just had to be in New York for a while,” she says. Hoping Laurel will leave it at that.
“Well, thank God you were able to get to the best doctors,” says Laurel.
Clara is watching Sam slice through the water in a graceful back-stroke. So determined, so purposeful. Sam has no idea Clara is here, and she won’t notice until practice is over—she’s in another world when she’s swimming.
But then Laurel’s words sink in.
“I’m sorry?” Clara turns to Laurel, whose dark curly hair has been made wild by the humidity, springing all around her soft, pretty face. In her sweat suit and sneakers, she could be mistaken for a high school kid.
“The specialist,” Laurel repeats. “In New York.”
Clara feels apprehensive—suddenly on guard—though she has no idea why.
“Sammy told Emily that you were sick,” Laurel falters. “That you needed to be away because—”
Clara looks at her, unable to hide her bewilderment.
“You mean you’re not—”
“No,” Clara says slowly. “I’m not sick.”
“She told the whole class,” says Laurel. “I was going to call Jonathan, but he’s so private, and I thought—”
Laurel breaks off. She looks down at her hands, embarrassed for Clara.
Oh, Sammy.
Clara’s stomach clenches. She can see it, of course, all too clearly. Sammy holding court with her friends as they stand by their open lockers. Flushed, eyes glittering. The tumble of words that seem to fall, on their own, from Sammy’s lips. The sweet, slightly sickening relief at having something—anything—to say about her mother.
“Shit,” Clara says, under her breath. She keeps her eyes on Sam. Doing the butterfly now. Ahead of the pack. Her small curved back rising and falling through the water like a dolphin’s.
“It’s okay.” Laurel tries to fix things, good mommy that she is. “Really—all our girls exaggerate sometimes.”
Clara tries to steady her heartbeat, quiet the thumping against her rib cage as she watches Sammy climb out on the far edge of the pool. Sam pulls off her bathing cap, her long dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her body glistening. She stands with a gaggle of her girlfriends, laughing at something, their heads bent together.
Sammy!
she wants to shout.
Over here!
She wants to wrap Sam in a towel. Wrap her around and around and around—
The shriek of the coach’s whistle, the splash of arms and legs scissoring through water, the high-pitched voices of the girls—it all becomes muffled, cottony.
Be still, Clara. This is a very slow exposure. Don’t move…That’s it, darling. That’s beautiful. Try not to breathe.
Clara digs her ragged fingernails into the fleshy part of her palms. Has that whispery voice—Ruth’s voice—been with her all along? Surrounding her throughout her whole adult life like a toxic gas, noxious and undetectable? Now she can’t seem to make any of it go away.
Stay absolutely still, sweetheart. The moon is in the perfect spot.
“Clara?”
Laurel’s voice seems to be coming from a far-off place.
“Clara, did you hear me?”
“What?” Clara shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I was just—”
“I was supposed to drive Sammy home,” Laurel says. “Did you come straight from the airport?”
“Yes, actually.” Clara feels a rush of gratitude. “I had planned to call Jonathan, but it would be incredibly helpful if you could give us a lift home.”
“No problem.”
The girls are starting to move toward the bleachers. Shivering, smooth arms covered with goose bumps. Any minute now, Sammy will see her. Any minute now, Sam will look over to the bleachers and—
Emily notices Clara first and points. Even from twenty yards away, Clara can see Emily saying,
Look, there’s your mother.
Sammy’s head jerks up. Her eyes quickly race over the dozen women standing there, towels in hand, until she lights on Clara. She stops absolutely still for a second—frozen in surprise—then defies the number one rule at the pool and sprints the rest of the way on the wet tile floor.
“Mommy!”
Sammy runs straight into her, dripping wet bathing suit and all. She wraps her arms around Clara’s waist and holds tight. Some of Sam’s friends have already stopped hugging their mothers in public. They’re too cool for school, these girls. Clara sees them sometimes at drop-off, shrugging off any gesture of affection, any acknowledgment of parenthood. They pretend they hardly know their mothers. And the mothers, smiling their brave, wavering smiles—
not me,
Clara thinks.
Not yet. Not today.
“I didn’t know you were coming!”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Clara’s voice catches in her throat. Sammy’s face opens up to her like a flower. How could she have left this precious girl for more than two weeks? What could possibly have justified it?
Tell me everything, darling. Tell me about your life in—where is it again? Northern Maine? How do you stand living in such a place? Is there culture there?
Clara pushes Ruth away, mentally shoves her so hard that she goes careening off the planet. Limbs flailing. Mouth cartoonishly open into a scream.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
“Hi, Clara,” says Emily, sidling up next to Sam. Is it Clara’s imagination, or is Emily looking at her funny? The girl is staring at her; she’s sure of it.
“What’s the matter, Emily?” asks Clara, a bit too sharply. She gives a quick, sidelong glance at Sam.
“Mom, let’s go,” says Sam, her voice thin and reedy. Anxious to get out of here. To avoid being caught in her big lie—and how big is it, anyway? How elaborate? Did she give Clara a particular disease? A number of months to live? Clara feels a wild surge of protectiveness toward Sam. If the other kids at school find out that Sammy has lied, she’ll have a hard time getting past it.
Sam pulls a huge navy-and-white Yale sweatshirt—one of Jonathan’s—over her head, then shimmies out of her Speedo, crouching down to remove the waterlogged bathing suit from around her ankles. She yanks up her jeans and stuffs her bare feet into her fleece-lined snow boots. Then she stands there expectantly, holding her knapsack.
“Laurel and Emily are giving us a ride home, sweetheart.”
Sam’s face falls. Clara sees the anxiety marching across it. Clara’s not used to seeing Sammy this way, tense and self-protective.
Amid the goodbyes and see-you-tomorrows, the social dance of nine-year-old girls who spend almost every waking hour together, Sam and Clara follow Emily and Laurel out of the building and through the parking lot to Laurel’s truck. The girls have recently graduated from their booster seats—Sammy weighing in at just over sixty pounds—and they climb into the backseat, strapping themselves in with their seat belts.
Laurel throws the truck into reverse and pulls out of the parking lot of the Bar Harbor Y with the ease of someone who does it nearly every day.
“Thanks for the ride,” Clara says. She looks out the window. In the two and a half weeks since she’s been gone, the thin crust of snow and ice that covered the island—coating the lawns, the docks, the edges of the streets—has all seeped away, leaving in its wake a dirty, grungy brown. The icicles that hung from every windowsill and gutter have melted, taking with them chips of paint, shingles from rooftops. The town looks like a sad old lady with sagging skin and missing teeth. It’s mud season, the time of year when the year-rounders go a little crazy.
“It’s not out of our way at all,” says Laurel.
This isn’t strictly true—Laurel and her family live ten minutes inland from Clara’s house—but Clara lets it go. This neighborliness is a fact of life on the island, an unwritten code. It has taken Clara forever to get used to it, but in recent years—especially as Sam has gotten older—she’s grown to appreciate it. Carpooling and sleepovers, the ease with which people help each other out, the casseroles delivered to doorsteps when there’s an illness, a death, a new baby.
“So what have I missed?” Clara asks Laurel as they turn onto Eagle Lake Road, past the multicolored Christmas lights still strung along the roof and windows of the Perettis’ house.
“Oh, not a whole hell of a lot,” Laurel says.
“Mommy?” Emily pipes up from the backseat.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Can Sam sleep over this weekend?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Em. Sammy’s mother has been away for a long time—she probably wants her all to herself.”
Laurel keeps her eyes on the road. Slows to a rolling stop at the intersection of Sound Drive and Route
102
, concentrating—Clara thinks this—probably more than she needs to. Carefully avoiding eye contact. Avoiding any possibility of intensity or discomfort.
“Hey, Sammy,” Clara says. Knowing better. “Tell me what’s been going on at school.”
“Nothing.”
This is always the hard part. Getting the dribs and drabs, the pieces of the puzzle of a nine-year-old girl’s life. Sometimes Sam volunteers a lot. Other times, she talks in monosyllables. The thing is, Clara isn’t sure how far to push.
“Oh, come on. Something must be going on!”
She sounds like an annoying mother, and she knows it.
“I
told
you.” Sam’s voice raises, and Laurel’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly, a ripple across her brow.
“Nothing.”
“Fine,” Clara says softly. Sammy never speaks to her like this. Especially not in front of other people. “Never mind.”
They fall into silence, the mothers and daughters. After a few minutes, Laurel bends forward and fiddles with the radio dial. The local weather report crackles through the truck’s old speakers.
Well, folks, looks like we have some snow headed our way. Boston already has…
The broadcast fades into static, so Laurel switches it off.
“Really?” Clara asks. “How much are they guessing?”
“Not much,” says Laurel. “A couple of inches overnight.”
Clara thinks about Jonathan; he’s probably spent the day in his workroom. Whole days, as he solders twenty-four-carat gold around semiprecious stones, as he cuts slices of watermelon tourmalines and dangles them from the most delicate wires strung with seed pearls. His eyes covered with goggles. His head filled with his favorite lotech music from his iPod. At the end of such a day, he emerges as if from a long involved dream. Blinking his way back into reality—sweet, spent, emptied out.
As for reality, Clara is just trying to hold on. Reality feels a bit out of her grasp at the moment—her daughter is unfamiliar to her, whispering and giggling in the backseat. Suddenly the sharer and keeper of secrets. She lowers her sun visor and tries to get a glimpse of Sam in the mirror. Is it possible that Sam’s face has changed in the past few weeks? She appears less girlish. The bones of her face are more prominent, angular.
And Jonathan—Clara knows she should have told Jonathan she was coming home. She should have said it on the phone last night—it was stupid, really—but he’s been so angry at her. His voice had nothing left for her—no sympathy, none of his usual gentleness. She thought it would be better if she simply showed up. Back home for good.
“So, I noticed that Jonathan redid his windows,” Laurel changes the subject.
“Yeah? Are they good?”
“His windows are always gorgeous. It’s like an underwater reef—and all the jewelry is coral.”
“There are pearls too,” Sammy pipes up from the backseat.
Clara swivels around. “Did you help Daddy with the windows?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “It’s pretty cool. We tried to make it look like a shipwreck.”
Even though Jonathan’s business caters almost entirely to the summer crowd, he takes great care with his windows this time of year. It’s his little contribution, his attempt to inject some beauty into the dismal gray stretch of mud season. For the regular folk on the island, his stuff is too expensive even for special occasions. Jonathan has tried to produce some less pricey lines: silver and copper pieces imported from Bali. But those haven’t sold well. Year-rounders don’t tend to have extra money for luxuries, and if they do they buy a new tricycle for their kid or upgrade their snowblower. Fancy jewelry—well, that’s for the people who drive across the causeway on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, their Range Rovers packed with tennis rackets and golf clubs, titanium bicycles hanging from a rack, wheels lazily spinning in the breeze.
“Here we are.” Laurel slows to a stop in front of their house. Clara hears the click of Sammy unbuckling her seat belt, the rustling of papers as she gathers her books. And Clara—Clara sits still for a minute, gripping the handle. She takes a deep breath. She is surprised by the beauty, the solidity of her own house standing tall and proud in the blue-gray dusk. The wide front porch—painted with a fresh coat of white last summer—its wicker furniture pushed to the side and protected by heavy green tarps. The boxwoods on either side of the steps to the porch, wrapped in burlap for the winter months. The yellow light pouring from the tall windows of the living room.
Home.
The caw of seagulls as she opens the truck’s door.
Home.
The brackish smell of the harbor.
Home.
Her heart seems to beat the word over and over again.