Stay (5 page)

“Find the library. Bank. Grocery store. A job for you.”

I pushed my plate away. “God, no. Dad—”

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“If you think you’re going to laze around pondering the mis-

erable state of your life all summer, it’s not going to happen. Job,

and maybe those waylaid college applications, right? It’s for your

own good. Note that this is often what parents say when it is also

for
our
own good. I can’t work with a human weather system in

the next room.”

“There’s miles of beach,” I tried.

“Forget it.”

“Did you see how big that town was? What are the chances of

even finding a job?”

“Zero, if we don’t look. You’re not the depressed type, C. P.

When have you ever been the depressed type? We Oateses are

sturdy folks. There is an
after
you have to plan for, here. Bus is

leaving, ten minutes.” He shoved his chair back and stood. For

a minute I thought he might pound his chest like an alpha male

gorilla. It was puffed out like that, anyway. “God, the ocean is

energizing,” he said.

The library was the first stop, as it always was when my father was

in a new place. He visited libraries like other people did museums

or historic churches. The Bishop Rock Library was so tiny, it could

have fit into the children’s room of the Seattle branch. He bullshit-

ted with the librarian who followed him out with her eyes, I noticed.

I told you, women looked at him like that. He checked out a large,

hefty book on the history of revolvers (that thing weighed fifteen

pounds, I swear) as well as several novels, and I did the same.

“She said to check the taffy shop for jobs,” my father said

when we emerged and found ourselves back on the main street.

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Deb Caletti

“Did you know Bishop Rock taffy is world renowned?” He

smirked with a bit of superiority, but I could tell he liked this

small town. We walked down the sidewalk, past a tiny grocery and

a store selling souvenir T-shirts, and finally arrived at the candy

shop, which had a yellow striped awning and a sweet, buttery

smell oozing like sugar lava from the doorway. Dad stopped, but

only for a second. “Come on,” he said, and we walked past that

place. It was one of the good things about him—my father under-

stood the fine shadings of feeling, the sense you had in your gut

but didn’t have words for. The yellow awning and the bins of

sunny pastels and the matching yellow aprons and the optimism

of taffy were impossibly surreal and strange against the backdrop

of what had happened—think pop music in a funeral home, or

a brand new baby dressed all in black. I could never work there,

not then. Cheer and despair don’t like to sit that close together.

Across the street there was a small marina, a dock of parked

fishing boats and a small, dilapidated tug. There was a second dock

filled with sailboats and cruisers and motorboats. A huge sailboat

was moored at the very end, with a mast straight to the sky, and

you could see a guy on the deck, shading his eyes to look at another

guy, who was hanging way up in a harness on that mast.

“Look,” my father said.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Let’s go see it.”

“Dad . . .” I hated when he did this. He wasn’t just going to

go see it—he would talk to those guys. He
had
to talk to people.

All people, anywhere, people in movie lines and airports, chefs

and taxi drivers. He learned things, great, but it always felt a bit

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embarrassing. Did they even
want
to tell him their life stories, or

how a propeller worked, or how many miles they guessed they’d

driven that taxi over the years? “I’ve got to find a job, remember?”

I said. But he had already tossed our bag of books in the car and

was crossing the street, heading toward the marina and that gor-

geous sailboat.

I followed him. I could feel the dock moving under my feet.

The water sloshed below, and you could smell its salty green depths

and the deadness of seaweed washed ashore. There was a small hut

at the end of the dock, a ticket booth. The boat was a tour boat. A

majestic blue hull, with the name in script on the side.
Obsession
.

“
Obsession
, eh?” my father shouted to the guy on deck.

The guy turned. I was surprised to see he was not much older

than me. Eighteen, nineteen. He had cargo shorts on, no shirt.

Tousled black hair, the scruffy start of a beard, the kind of eyes

you’d call sweet. “It was named before the perfume,” he said.

“You folks want a ride?”

“I won’t step one foot on a boat,” my father said. He didn’t mind

looking at the water, he just wouldn’t get in it or on it. No way in

hell. I had no idea why. Childhood trauma, general fear, who knew.

“We’d make sure you didn’t fall in more than once,” the other

guy said from above, his legs dangling down. They had to be brothers.

They looked just alike, with that same dark hair and scruff, though

the one above us was older, leaner. Longer hair. Sunglasses that hung

from a leather lanyard around his neck, a pair of keys on it, too.

“She’s beautiful,” my father said. “Is she
your
obsession?”

“I guess you could say that,” the guy on deck said. “Tours are

an hour, hour and a half if we like you.” He looked at me when he

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Deb Caletti

said that. My stomach did a little flip, and I cursed it. So what if he

looked like that. “We go out past Possession Point. Got good wind.”

“Possession Point?” I said.

“Out there. That bit of beach that juts out?”

I nodded. Sure we knew it. It’s right where our house was.

“How fast does she go?” My father was still stuck on that boat.

“Oh, she’s gone twenty-five knots downwind with the spin-

naker up. Ten to twelve on a usual day.”

“Fast for a boat that big.”

“We race her in the off season. Crew of eight, ten guys.”

Dad shook his head. “How big? What, maybe fifty feet?”

“Seventy.”

Dad whistled. He was loving this, the short clip of guy talk.

He could edge right in and make it work. You’d never guess he

was the same person who could speak in loops and swirls that

were basically poetic. “The mast?”

“Ninety.”

Dad shook his head with appropriate appreciation. I did the

same, though numbers were as hazy and hard to grasp for me as

ideas were for other people. Ninety, okay. It was tall. Really tall.

And that guy was hanging up there like it was nothing.

“If you change your mind . . .” the guy above shouted. He

took out his wallet from his back pocket as he dangled there. A

business card fluttered down and landed in the water. A seagull

paddled over to see if it was something he could eat.

“Moron,” the guy on the deck shouted up. He took out his

own wallet, handed my father a card, and then another to me.

Finn Bishop
, it said.
Sailor
.

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“Bishop?” my father said.

“The old dead captain was some sort of relation, though my

mother always gets the story screwed up.”

“Pleasure meeting you guys,” Dad said.

“You too.” He paused for a second. Grinned. “Hope you’ll

come for a sail sometime,” he said to me.

My stomach flipped again, making its point. I looked down,

smiled in spite of myself, and then we waved and crossed back

over the dock. I was blushing, but I hoped Dad didn’t see. Oh,

Jesus. I didn’t need to worry about Dad, though—he was in his

own world, as usual. He turned back around and shouted. “You

guys know where someone could get work?” He crooked his

thumb my way.

“Dad, for God’s sake,” I hissed. Shit, he could be so embar-

rassing. I know parental embarrassment usually stops some-

where at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reason.

I tugged at his arm, waved my hand at the guy to indicate he

should just ignore him. Too late; the guy was already shouting

back.

“Try the lighthouse. Sylvie Genovese. She’s always firing

someone.”

“Thanks.” Dad waved his arm again.

We had a humiliating and lengthy wait at a dont walk sign,

with not a car in sight for miles. Dad was a priss about jaywalk-

ing.6* Finally, we were back on the other side of the street, and

6 Or maybe he just liked to stare down what he’d testily call the “grammatical error

sanctioned by the state.” There is, of course, no apostrophe in the dont walk sign.

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Deb Caletti

then at our car. “Great. Always firing someone. Makes the taffy

place sound like a haven,” I said.

“Come on, you could charm the skin off a snake,” he said.

We got back into Dad’s Saab. I may have slammed my door.

My good mood was shriveling right up. Some combination of

shame and humiliation in front of really cute guys mixed with

the oddness of where we were and why and the caffeine from the

morning’s coffee wearing off.

But maybe it was something else. “Possession Point, Dad?

Jesus.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “How was I supposed to know?”

“Obsession? Possession? Deception Point? You’re telling me

it’s all an
accident
? How many places could we have gone?”

“Swear to God, Pea,” he held up his hand. “I’d have to be a

sick bastard to knowingly put us in a house on Possession Point.”

He started up the car. I couldn’t believe it; he started to laugh.

“Dad!”

“You gotta admit, it’s kind of funny.” His shoulders were

moving up and down. Having himself a good old moment of

hilarity.

“It’s not funny at all.”

Which of course made him laugh harder.

I was mad. I tried not to smile. “Okay, it’s a little funny,” I said.

“Holy Christ, fate’s got a fucking sick sense of humor,” he

chuckled.

We headed out to the lighthouse, a drive that took us across a

windswept road out to a high, rocky cliff that dropped down to

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the beach. The lighthouse was pure white, and the way its col-

umn stood against the sky made it seem proud and lonely and

important. The keeper’s house was white, too—two stories with

red trim and a steep sloping red roof and narrow rectangular win-

dows. A big old sip-lemonade porch sprawled a welcome in front.

There was a small garden around its perimeter, with bright green

grass and flower baskets. I had gotten twisted around as to where

we were after that winding drive, but when we stepped out of the

car, I realized we weren’t that far from our house—I could see the

jut of land that was Possession Point not far from the cliff where

we stood. From that height, I could see that we weren’t entirely

alone out there either, at that lighthouse. A few gray shingled

houses dotted the beach, as did a small single shack that looked

like it could be done in by a strong wind.

“Clara!” Dad called from where he stood in front of a large

white sign. “Clara, Bell come and see this.”

I jogged over, because it was a place that made you feel like

running. It was like one of those adventure places—an old mili-

tary fort or a red barn in a pasture, where you felt eight years old

again. You wanted to climb and make discoveries and play pirates

of the Caribbean.

He was grinning wide. He pointed at the sign. “Another

meaningful word! Honey!”

“Don’t even joke,” I said. I looked. pigeon head point light-

house. “Very funny,” I said.

“Very sca-ry . . .” He was so pleased with himself. “Pi-geons!

Oooh-eee!”

I ignored him. “They’ve sure got a lot of ‘Points’ here,” I said.

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Deb Caletti

He started to read aloud. “ ‘Pigeon Head Point is an elevated

area on the western edge of Bishop Rock, with eighty-foot bluffs that

drop into the inlet. The first Pigeon Point Head Lighthouse (also

known as the Red Bluff Lighthouse), was built in 1860, and . . .’ ”

I walked to the keeper’s house. Dad was the kind of person

who read every word on every plaque in every museum, zoo, or

historical site. He couldn’t be like us regular people, who only

read the first line or two. This meant that going with him to those

places was a lengthy and painful process. In fact, he was still read-

ing aloud right then for my benefit, but I pretended I couldn’t hear.

There was a sign on the door of the keeper’s house. Visitor

hours. The place should have been open, but it didn’t look like

anyone was there. And another sign in the widow, handwritten:

pigeon head point lighthouse and gift shop now accepting

employment applications. inquire within. The sign looked yel-

lowed, as if “now accepting” was a permanent condition. I cupped

my hands against the glass and tried to look inside.

“No one home?” Dad said.