Dream House (23 page)

As her mother leaned over and began picking up the pieces, she said, “It happens!”

In those two words, Ginny again felt the power of her mother's unpredictability; her expressions of love could be as blindsiding as her dark fury.

The room became soft again. Ginny slumped into it like a sigh and let go of her tears. She carried Pepe back to her cage, and the kids dispersed. While Winkie and Lyman were still outside, Ginny and her mother worked quickly to clean up the mess.

Soon both families were on the lawn twisting the limbs off lobsters and chomping down on Farmer Burnes's first summer corn. Their chins glistened with butter, and their teeth turned purple from the tiny sweet blueberries they'd waited for all year.

“Girls,” Winkie said, holding a muffin aloft and grinning at Ginny and Cassie, “your mother is the
best.
”

As they feasted, so did the mosquitoes. When the light grew dim, Ginny, Cassie, Betsy, Chris, and Nate huddled in the lilacs for what would be their last game of sardines.

Ginny slept late the next morning. In the kitchen she found her mother and father on their hands and knees, laying the new black-and- white linoleum in the closet—the last piece of the Project.

She gazed around the room, amazed by its shipshape fullness. With everything tucked away, it was serene and timeless, like a painting: glass lamps and small portraits on the muted tan walls, friendly antique pine furniture, a ceramic bowl of peaches and tomatoes, lilies blooming in pots where geraniums would winter later. But below its pretty surface was a complex machine, replete with cheap hardware that allowed for perfect efficiency. Doors jangled with spatulas, strainers, and bottle openers; there were racks and fasteners jerry-rigged from string and rubber bands to hold boxes, cans, the ironing board, and the vacuum cleaner attachments.

The kitchen was her mother's masterpiece! She had tamed it, squeezed out every ounce of its potential, and most important, regardless of what their lease said, she had made it
hers.

The new kitchen seemed to refresh the whole house and Ginny's outlook, too. The change, she decided, warranted a new name—
Gina
—that she would begin calling herself this very day and that would propel her more swiftly forward, away.

The structure of life I have described in buildings—the structure which I believe to be objective—is deeply and inextricably connected with the human person, and with the innermost nature of human feeling.

Christopher Alexander,
The Nature of Order

Chapter 9

On Friday, her second morning in Whit's Point, Gina awoke cranky, hot and sticky, filled with an ingrained imperative to be near the water.

Without stopping to see if Annie and Lester were around, she left Lily House and wandered down the lane behind Tobey's to the town dock, relishing the incremental change in the air coming off the water. She made her way along the wide, splintery dock past men dangling fishing lines and a group of shirtless adolescent boys, their eyes glazed with the boredom of small-town summer. Two boats were secured to the main float at the end of the dock; she was immediately drawn to the one with the square white mast, and, as she came closer, the familiar putty-colored deck and the hull's elegant shape. Could it be her family's old Hinckley, the sloop her parents had sold six years ago?

Intrigued, she took the ramp down to the float for a closer look; when she saw the tell-tale her mother had tied to the starboard stay, she had her answer. A head popped out of the companionway.

“Only a Californian,” the man called, “would be wearin' sunglasses at the dock at eight in the morning!”

Gina pulled off her sunglasses and squinted. It was Kit.

“Just teasin' ya, Gina Gilbert!” he laughed. “Good to see you back!”

“Hi!” She stood amazed, looking over the twenty-eight foot sloop she'd sailed for many years with her family.

Kit stood on deck and reached out his hand to her. “Welcome aboard!”

“Do you remember how I lusted after this boat?” he asked when she was settled in the cockpit. “I saw her advertised two years ago and bought her from the Rhode Island guy who bought it from your parents. Such a classic. Your parents took me out on her maybe ten years ago. Your mom really knew how to handle her. How'd your parents manage to have a yacht, anyhow?”

Gina smiled and shrugged, even though she remembered the acquisition of the
yacht
well. It had arrived just after her fourteenth birthday with as much excitement as a new baby.

She walked forward, scanning the boat-filled harbor. It was so unchanged it seemed impossible that twenty-eight years had passed since she and Kit were on the water together. Yet, she also felt how far she'd traveled from here. Did Kit, too, feel this lurch of time and distance? She hadn't read it in his casual manner. Maybe time was different when you lived in one place all your life; like a word seen always in context, you felt unalterable and known.

As Kit coiled a line, Gina stole glances. He'd grown more handsome with age; his face had filled out to a rugged squareness. She admired the sinewy arms that, as a girl, had rescued her on more than one occasion.

She walked back to the cockpit and leaned over the transom to see what name Kit had chosen for the boat. She was surprised to see he'd kept it
Homeward.

“So what've you been up to in life?” Kit asked, sinking onto the seat beside her. “I heard you went and became an Ivy Leaguer since I saw you last, huh?”

His teasing put her at ease. “I'm still me,” she said, “Even so, they granted me a master's degree.”

Kit laughed. “I remember your father throwin' his hands in the air. ‘Can you believe it? Our daughter at a place like that!'”

Gina smiled. It was true; her parents had been proud. But they often let their daughters know they felt left behind by them. What they never knew was how often Gina herself had felt like an outsider in her different milieus—too hayseed in some, too privileged in others, like here at the town dock.

“What sort of stuff do you design out in California?” Kit asked. When she told him, he laughed. “Houses! They're trouble!” he said.

He shook his head, and Gina sensed he had a story he was eager to tell. “How so?” she asked.

“I tried buildin' a house with the woman I'd been with for a few years, Janice, out on Bailey's Island Road,” he said. “She worked with Phelps and Sons—you know that company?” Gina shook her head no. “Well, anyhow, me and Janice liked everything the same—you know: the water, boats, buildin'. We were buildin' the house for ourselves, and like, we thought since we'd built a boat or two together, a house would be the same kinda deal.”

“And?”

“Not even close. Houses have those things called foundations, ya know? Once that concrete's poured into the ground, people kinda freak out. But boats . . .”

“Boats are like the anti-house. They're all about impermanence and escape.”

Kit bounced his eyebrows up and down at her. “To you, professor, maybe. Not to me—I'm not an escaper type. Anyways, since
you're an architect, I think you'll appreciate this story. So, one day Janice and I are layin' floor joists, and out of the blue she says, ‘What if this house turns out to be too small?' ‘For what?' I asked, and she wouldn't answer. So I said, ‘If it's too small, we'll sell it. We don't have to love the house for the rest of our lives just because we built it.' She got all mad. ‘How can you say that?' she said. She didn't speak to me for the rest of the day.”

Kit stood and went forward to adjust a fender.

When he sat down again, Gina said, “Maybe Janice wasn't talking about the house. Maybe she was talking about having a family?” She assumed she was observing the obvious.

Kit drew in his chin. “Maybe. She was always thinkin' ahead, or about something more. It's my mantra to take one day at a time. Janice knew that. She left before we'd even framed the roof.”

Even as a kid, Kit had seemed wise, Gina remembered. Now though, she felt drawn into something more deeply than she wanted to be.

“Janice is already with someone else,” Kit said.

“How about you?”

Kit gazed out to sea. “I kind of like being on my own,” he said, turning back to her. “I finished the house—it's awesome.”

“You live there?”

“Nope! I live right here, seven months of the year. You're sittin' in my livin' room.”

Gina gazed around at the waterlogged boat cushions that lined the varnished cockpit, the paint peeling around the engine gear and fathometer. She thought of the hours spent here with her family, semi-reclined, toes flirting with the cold brass winch, sometimes pleasantly dazed, often half-listening, and other times bored by the protracted exposure to water, sky, sun.

Kit handed her a bottle of Orangina and opened one for himself. As he raised it to his lips, she noticed half his pinky finger was missing.

“Wasn't it hard to give up the house after working so hard on it?” she asked.

“Nah. I wasn't attached. Do you get attached to the houses you design?”

“Not usually. But I'm only with them once a week during construction, not day after day.”

“I love buildin', but it's just a job. I sold the house, bought
Homeward,
and nevah looked back.”

Gina didn't quite believe him; this boat—Kit's world—seemed tiny. “What's it been like, living in Whit's Point all your life?”

“Hmm. Well . . . it's not like I can compare it to anything else. It's home.” He spread his arms as if he meant the whole harbor, the islands, the sea beyond. “Everything I love is here. Why would I live anywhere else?”

It was what her mother and father had always said about Whit's Point. Words she wished
she
could say.

“But I mean . . . a person can feel at home anywhere, right?” Kit said, and Gina thought: he's reassuring me, as always. “Home isn't necessarily just the place you grew up, or the place you live now—it's more like . . . any place that stays alive inside you no matter where you are.”

“I guess that's true,” Gina said, though right now this notion made her feel all the more conflicted.

“So who ended up with your folks' place, anyway? I know those Yankee people were after it. It would be a crime if someone put up a McMansion there. You checkin' into that? That why you're here?”

“No.” Gina felt her defenses rising. “Sid Banton bought the house. There's nothing I can do about whatever he wants to do. It wasn't
even our house to begin with.” She paused, reaching for things to say. “I'm designing, or trying to design, a house for my family north of San Francisco.”

Kit's eyes shifted to the horizon. “Ca-li-fornia,” he said, in a way that reminded her of how she—and everyone else in Maine, as far as she could tell—had envisioned the golden state they'd never seen: a playground of endless sun-drenched beaches, plastic people in expensive, spotless cars. “California,” Kit said again, as if seeing a mirage. “It
can't
be more beautiful than here!”

Gina smiled. “It's just different,” she said, realizing how far from California she felt now. She shifted her gaze to the west, where billowy white and gray clouds were gathering in the hazy sky. Often during a heat wave, they'd sit there all day like that, threatening.

“So how do you feel about Sid owning your place?” Kit asked. “I saw him at the hardware store last week. Haven't seen him in maybe ten years. Barely recognized him. You in touch with him?”

Gina felt her body tighten. “No. Have you seen him in the last couple of days?” she said, trying to sound casual.

“Naw. Boy, he's burned some bridges. Made enough money in New York to buy and sell a few different houses ‘round town.” He laughed. “I don't know him, but people have always said he's a kinda wheeler-dealer with a drinkin' problem.”

This, Gina realized, was why she lived in a big city and not a small town. “So, do people in Whit's Point talk about how messed up the Bantons were?”

Kit smiled. “Relax. First of all, there's nothing special about the Bantons' craziness. Every family's nuts, right? Besides, they don't have to talk to me about the Bantons. I was there. Remember?”

Remember
was exactly what Gina didn't want to do. But remember she did: Kit
was
there, always. He'd been fun and reliable as a playmate and had grown up to be a kind young man with a crush on
her. Gina shrank inwardly, recalling how, when she was seventeen, she'd abruptly ended their friendship.

“Gosh, didn't mean to bum ya out,” Kit said, as if reading her thoughts. “All that seems like a long time ago to me. I thought it would to you, too. Hey! Doug! How ya doin'?” Kit smiled and waved to a man in rubber boots coming down the ramp. Turning back to Gina, he said, “Your mom wasn't so bad. I mean, she was always pretty snobby about me and my family when I was a kid. But as soon as she got
Homeward
and started runnin' into me at the dock, we totally bonded. Maybe she shoulda lived on a boat. She was a water person, like me. I think she'd be really happy to know you and I are sittin' here together now.”