“No, that’s fine,” Sarah said as Nathan lifted his head and caught my eyes in an unspoken question. I clenched my hands and stood, the evening looking much darker after staring into the fire. Nathan said good night to Sarah and rose, following me as I ambled toward the beach.
“I won’t be long, Sarah,” I promised.
“Oh, take your time. It’s not even nine yet.”
Nathan and I walked over the small ridge, angling toward the far corner of the cove where his house was. He kept in step with me but gave me a conspicuously wide berth. “What’s going on tonight?” he asked, his words wary, but gentle. “What is your ‘tide in the affairs of men’?”
“Little told me to do something … but I was wondering what you thought.” His guarded face couldn’t completely hide his curiosity so I told him about my father’s call and Little’s idea as we stepped carefully over the dark beach. The sky still held some last vestiges of daylight and the thin moon hung misty and yellow over the waves. There was just enough light to walk safely if we squinted and kept a careful watch on our feet. Nathan didn’t speak, but his posture stayed open and calm, even if his distance baffled me. “So I think I need to do it. I know you’re mad at my mother, but if she comes and you meet her I think you’ll see that she’s a good person. I think you’d like her.”
Nathan stopped several steps in front of me and turned, his face a silhouette against the moonlight. “I’m not mad at your mother. I don’t even know her.”
I noticed how much taller he was than I. “Nathan, I saw the way you …”
“I know I snapped that night,” he ran his hand over his head and grabbed the back of his neck. “I was mad – in the abstract. When she was just some stranger who hated Sarah. It’s easy to hate someone you know you’ll never meet.”
“So you’re not mad anymore?” I took a small step closer to see if he would retreat. He didn’t move, but his face reminded me of Chester when Charlie came too close.
“Honestly?” He asked, a plaintive tone to the word.
“Honestly.” I truly meant it. I wouldn’t hold any answer against him.
“I’m still a little mad, but I know I shouldn’t be. Everyone has their reasons.”
“Fair enough. But, just so you know, I don’t think she did everything right, either. That’s why I’m here.”
“If you think she would be fair to Sarah, then you should probably get her here. But if she’d only come to tear Sarah apart then I think you should leave it alone.”
I’m sure he read the uncertainty in my eyes. I had no idea what she’d do. He took a deep breath and turned his head away. For a long moment he said nothing and then he stepped over to a small path that cut through the thick trees on his side of the cove. “My house is this way. You want to see Claude, right?”
“No,” I admitted. “I was just embarrassed to tell Sarah that I wanted to talk to you alone. I can go back now.” I was grateful for the shadows that hid my blushing face. The only downside was that the darkness hid his face, as well, and I could not analyze his expression.
“Well, if you come and say hi to Claude then you won’t have to think of yourself as a liar.” A spark of humor jumped into his last word.
“Maybe it would save
you
from thinking I was a liar,” I bantered back.
To my surprise he laughed out loud. “Not likely!” He entered the path and as I followed him the trees seemed to swallow us whole, like walking into the belly of a beast.
“Why not?” I asked, trying to hold onto his light mood to ward off my terror of the tree branches brushing my shoulders in the dark. Ghosts and spiders competed for my worst fear.
“Because you always say what you’re thinking – eventually.”
“I know you think that about me – Little even thinks that – but you both have me wrong.” I dodged the black shadow of a limb hanging down close to my face and cringed.
“We’ll see,” he said. Luckily, the short path ended and released us from the darkness of the forest. We escaped into an open yard where a light burned above the screen door on the back of a shake shingle house. I was grateful to be out of the clutches of the pines. I agreed with Robert Frost that the woods are ‘dark and deep’, but I couldn’t feel the ‘lovely’ part at the moment.
Claudia never took me into her house before because she was always trying to avoid the little girls. We spent all of our time on the beach or at Sarah’s. I studied the small, gray home from roof to rock beds. “I feel like homes need real introductions here,” I said, brushing my hands together. “Are you going to tell me her name? Or is this one a he?”
I could see Nathan’s smile in the glow of the lights, but it was a joyless, bitter thing. “The house is called Boulder Bend,” his words crawled out of his clamped jaw and his hands flexed, “but everyone around here just calls it Bastardo Bend.”
There are people who can think on their feet and react to impossible scenarios, but I am not one of them. “What?”
“I guess someone thought it sounded better in Italian. Lends it a little class, don’t you think?” Nathan’s teeth clenched, his eyes challenging me as if I had invented the derogatory name.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Don’t what?”
“Get mad at me. You don’t have to do that.”
His face screwed up in frustration. “You wouldn’t be mad if people said that about your family?” He trudged to the house with me in his wake.
“I would! I just wouldn’t be mad at someone who
didn’t
say it.” His hunched shoulders relaxed and he slowed down. I continued, “You need to have a modicum of perspective. People are stupid.” My lips pressed together in thought and my voice changed from soothing to curious, “What does modicum mean?”
At last his face relaxed as he rolled his eyes, snapped open the screen door and stepped into a small, clean kitchen. “Claude,” he called.
“Not here,” Judith’s voice came from another room. Darcy’s heavy footfalls pounded over our heads and I heard her say ‘Nathan’s home!’
“Where is she?” He asked, crossing the room. Darcy surprised me by popping out behind me from a tiny staircase that I hadn’t noticed beside the broom cupboard.
“Jennifer’s here!” She yelled, drowning out Judith’s reply.
“Hey Strawberry Shortstuff. You scared me. You have secret passages around here or what?” Darcy gave me an enthusiastic hug and I watched Nathan shake his head and walk into the living room. I unlatched Darcy from my waist and looked at her, swimming in one of Nathan’s t-shirts that fell over her shoulder and tripped her feet. “Nice P.J.s, Darce.” Hester stepped off the staircase, her blue nightgown tattered, but pretty. I grinned at her, “Hi, Hester.”
“Hi,” she said with a shy smile.
“What are you doing here?” Darcy asked, her orange curls springing up and down.
“I came to ask Claude what modicum means, but it looks like she’s not here.” I took a chance to look around more carefully. The house baffled me. I had pictured Judith a careless housekeeper, overwhelmed with four children and a job, but everything was spotless. Old, with the look of hand-me-downs, but spotless.
“It means a little bit,” Hester’s said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Why were you wondering?”
I turned my eyes from the refrigerator magnets arranged by size to Hester. “How did you know that?”
“It’s just Latin. Modicus. Moderate.” She shrugged.
“Do they teach Latin in Maine?” I asked, knowing full well they didn’t. “How do you know Latin?”
“Nathan helps me with it. I can’t speak it. I just know some of the words.”
Nathan chose that moment to reappear and I turned my astonished face to him. “You know
Latin
?”
He rolled his eyes again and turned to Hester. “Hess, did Claude tell you who she was going out with? Did you see who picked her up?”
“It was Will,” she said, her face strained.
Nathan swore. “Hess, did you tell Mom it was Will?”
“I did! But she was already gone by then.”
“What am I missing? Who’s Will?” I interrupted.
“A loser,” Nathan spat in contempt. “A loser that she likes. He’s eighteen. I swear …” He didn’t finish his oath. He just looked at Darcy and told her to get in bed.
“No, you said a bad word and I want to play with Jennifer,” Darcy pouted.
“I’m about to say another one and Jennifer is leaving.” He grabbed Darcy’s shoulder in a gentle grip and pushed her toward the stairs. “March. Go. Mom will come read you a story. Hester will lay with you.” Hester nodded and waved to me as she went up the stairs.
“I’ll walk you home,” Nathan said, too preoccupied to look at me when he spoke.
“I just walked
you
home,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, well, chivalry and all that,” he mumbled. “It’s darker now. Let’s take the road instead of the path.”
“Good.” I said in relief. “I don’t like the woods at night.”
He led the way into the living room where Judith sat knitting in front of the television. She raised her head and said hello, without slowing her hands.
“Hi, Judith,” I said. “No one told me you knit. What are you making?”
“A blanket. I give them to the hospital for the little kids.”
“Really?” I asked, unable to conceal my shock. I never took her for a philanthropist. Just like the kitchen, the living room felt old, but immaculate. The carpet was worn and stained, but vacuumed. Little girl shoes lined up in a tidy row beside the front door and toys were neatly collected in wicker baskets.
“Darcy needs a story. And if Claude isn’t home by ten she’s in trouble,” Nathan said as he opened the door.
“I know,” Judith said, her silver knitting needles flashed as she worked. I stepped outside, taking a last glance at Judith, her features softened in the glow of the T.V. as she bent over the soft heap of green yarn. It was the first time I thought she looked pretty.
“So do you do the housekeeping, too?” I asked Nathan after he shut the door.
“Huh?”
“Sarah said you take care of a lot of stuff around here. The house is spotless.”
His eyes swept to the dark ground. “That’s all Judith. She’s a neat freak.”
“Really?” I realized how unflattering my voice sounded only after I said it.
“It’s something easy. You can put a house together with just a little work. A couple hours to perfection. It’s about the only thing in life that she thinks she does well.” I stole a glance at his face, trying to see if he agreed with her or not. It was impossible to tell. “If the house is messy when she gets stressed about something else …” He sucked in a breath and let it out in a loud, dejected puff. “I came home once when she was having a bad day. She was throwing all the dirty dishes in the garbage. She couldn’t clean them fast enough. She probably would have burned the laundry next if I hadn’t calmed her down. I got her to organize the spice rack and that gave me time to finish cleaning the rest of the house. Crisis averted.”
I didn’t notice until he stopped talking that I had drawn closer while he spoke, his words pulling me to his side. “You do so much,” I whispered.
He shrugged and picked up his pace. The road was wide and easy to follow, even without streetlights. “Sorry I asked,” I apologized when I saw how upset it made him.
“I don’t care about that,” he replied. “I’m just ticked off about Claude.”
“Is she okay?” I asked, nervous to push a sensitive subject.
His jaw clenched, “That girl! She is doing her best to be everything she hates.”
“What do you mean?”
“Running around with kids who have no bigger aspirations than putting a new engine in their daddy’s boat. She isn’t like that. She doesn’t belong here. She certainly doesn’t belong with one of those …” Nathan couldn’t find an adequate word to describe Claude’s friends so he just smacked his fist into his hand. “I swear I could take him out in one punch. One false move and I’ll do it.”
“I didn’t take you for the violent type,” I said. “Sullen, moody, sure, but violent?” Then he turned his scowling face to me and I saw it, the pent up power and frustration. I wouldn’t bet against him in a fight. I must have looked alarmed because his shoulders suddenly slumped.
“I’m not violent,” he said. “Not if I can help it. Not unless it’s really necessary. Didn’t Sarah tell you why I left school?”
“No. I thought it was because you’re smart.”
A short, joyless laugh. “That sounds better. I finished the work, but Sarah pulled me out early because of the fights.”
“You fought in school? Like fist fights?”
“Yeah, well, shoulder fights aren’t that popular now-a-days,” he let his sarcastic eyes smile at me for a moment before he grew more serious. “Most seventh grade boys don’t really respond to philosophy and debates.” Shelter Cove came into view, glowing white at the top of the sloping street.
“What did they do to earn your wrath?” I asked, wishing we had much farther to walk. “Did they make fun of you for being smarter than them?”
“Like I’d care if they said something about me. I wouldn’t waste a punch for something that stupid.” His voice dropped along with his tough demeanor. “They started talking about Judith. Then they started on Claude. Trust me, it was necessary.”
“What did they say?”
“Can’t you make an educated guess? Pretty girl with a mom who isn’t exactly monogamous. Just put it all together.”
“Oh.” How I wish I always knew the right things to say.
“And now after all that, after I thought I scared them off, what does she do? Goes running into their filthy arms! Can you believe that? I can’t believe that! Maybe you should take her back to Nebraska with you.”
“Sorry, but teenagers don’t change much when you cross state lines. Maine and Nebraska really aren’t that different. I’m sure she’s not doing anything stupid.”
“Are you?” he looked down at me, a speculative frown on his face. “Do you know people like that? What they’re like?” Nathan stopped in the driveway and I halted beside him. I had a feeling that he was actually asking me,
“Are you like that?”
“I don’t know what you mean by “like that” but probably not. I mostly hang out with my best friend, Cleo, and I’m pretty sure you’ve never met anyone like her.”
“I’m listening,” he said.