Safe Harbor (5 page)

The sounds of laughter and conversation wafted
through the car’s open windows as Shelley’s mother steered up the
driveway, braking to a halt behind a mud-spattered Jeep. Outside
the car, her mother took the bottle of wine from Shelley and they
started around the house to the emerald stretch of lawn at the
rear. There they came upon a crowd of some twenty people: older
folks seated on lawn chairs, sipping beer and iced tea; two
youngsters playing badminton with profound ineptitude, a cocker
spaniel streaking through the yard, gleefully terrorizing chipmunks
and squirrels, a toddler roaming across the grass on fat, wobbly
legs; a girl of about eight standing beneath a crab-apple tree,
hollering to someone hidden in the branches above her. Beneath
another shade tree Diana and her boyfriend stood, holding hands and
watching the chaos with wary amusement. On the patio, Mrs. Stroud
was arranging bottles of ketchup and mustard at the center of a
long table, which was covered with a festive red-checked table
cloth and several citronella candles. Mr. Stroud held court over a
huge barbecue grill, armed with elbow-high hot mitts and
long-handled utensils and sporting an apron with the words “Treat
Me Right Or I’ll Burn Yours” printed across it.

Shelley’s father wouldn’t be caught dead
wearing an apron like that. On Mr. Stroud, though, it looked cute.
A tall, robust man with a full head of silver hair and a pleasantly
lined face, he was the kind of person who could wear the silliest
things and not look silly. That, Shelley believed, was true
class.

Mrs. Stroud finished setting up the condiments
and turned. Spotting Shelley and her mother, she beamed, waved and
hurried over. “Hi! Shelley, and—Mary, is it? I’m so glad you could
come!”

Shelley’s mother relaxed a little bit. “It was
so nice of you to invite us. Here, this is for you.” She handed
Mrs. Stroud the wine.

“Oh, my, you shouldn’t have! Well, thank you so
much!” Mrs. Stroud cupped her hand around Shelley’s mother’s elbow
and ushered her away, chattering enthusiastically.

Shelley let out a long breath. This was going
to be fine. Her mother was going to enjoy herself. They both were
going to survive this weekend without her father. They were going
to prove to themselves—and to him, too—that they didn’t need him to
have a good time.

Reassured that her mother was all right,
Shelley searched the yard for Kip. She recognized his bare feet
dangling from the branches of the crab-apple tree.

He jumped down to the grass below with the
gracefulness of a trained acrobat. He had on a kitsch Hawaiian
print shirt, cut-offs and his new sunglasses, and he was holding a
Frisbee. Like his parents, he seemed utterly at ease about himself
and his appearance. Shelley envied his confidence.

She approached him as he and the girl emerged
from the tree’s shade. “Now listen,” he instructed the girl,
“you’ve got to throw the Frisbee level or it’s going to go up in
the tree again. Can you do that?”

The girl shrugged.

“Because the next time it gets stuck in a tree,
you’re going to have to get it. Hi, Shelley.” Kip grinned at her.
“This is my cousin Becky. Wanna play Frisbee with us?”

“Sure.” She circled the yard with her gaze.
“Are all these other people your cousins, too?” she
asked.

“Some of them. Sally—the baby—and Michael—the
kid whose shoelace my mother’s tying—are.”

“And so is the dog,” Becky declared
solemnly.

“Hey, the dog may be your brother, but he’s not
my cousin,” Kip teased. “The gray-haired lady chugging beer
straight from the bottle is my grandmother, and those kids stuffing
their faces with potato chips are the Sussmans--they’ve got a
summer place up near Grove Point. Their mother is that lady pouring
lemonade, and their father is the one demonstrating golf swings to
my Uncle Ned. And last but not least...” He shot a swift, sidelong
glance at Diana and her boyfriend. “There’s the man in the
spotlight.”

“He looks like the man in the shadows,” Shelley
observed.

Kip chuckled. “He can run, but he can’t hide.”
He turned to Diana and her boyfriend and beckoned them with a wave.
“How about it, guys? Wanna join us for a game of
Frisbee?”

Diana shook her head, but after a quick
conference her boyfriend said, “Count me in,” and jogged across the
lawn to them.

“Shelley, Mark. Mark, Shelley,” Kip said
briskly, presenting them to each other. “Come on, spread out,
everyone. We’ve got to turn Becky into a champ before my father
burns the hot dogs.”

They began tossing the plastic disc around.
Naturally, Kip and Mark showed off, making dramatic catches when
ordinary ones would do, flinging the disc behind their backs and
catching it between their legs. Becky’s tosses were wobbly, and
more often than not they veered off course, but she managed to
avoid the tree branches.

Shelley had always been a decent athlete. While
not as flamboyant as Kip and Mark, she threw with an efficient,
accurate snap of her wrist, and she wasn’t afraid to chase down an
errant toss.

Within a few minutes she was sweating. She
shouted words of encouragement at Becky and derisive remarks at the
two male hot-shots. Occasionally her vision would snag on Diana,
seated by herself under a tree, watching the game. Diana appeared
cool and composed, not a single glossy hair out of place, not a
hint of perspiration on her brow. Her hands were clean, her
fingernails polished. She looked fabulous.

Back home in Westport, Shelley probably would
have sat out the game, too. She would have been concerned about her
appearance, her demeanor. She would have wanted any boys present to
understand that she was a girl, a breed quite different from them,
someone they should desire from a carefully cultivated distance.
She would not compete athletically with boys, or yell playful
insults at them, or sprint and leap. She would never, never sweat
in front of them.

But here, the only boy she really cared about
was Kip, and there was no point in acting like a girl with him. He
hadn’t even noticed her female attributes when she’d had on her
string bikini. To him she was just another guy, a pal, someone to
elbow out of the way when they raced each other to catch one of
Becky’s wild tosses. Acting ladylike around him would be a
waste.

Seated primly on the sidelines, Diana looked
infinitely more attractive than Shelley. But darting around the
lawn, laughing and panting and playing with all her might, Shelley
was having infinitely more fun.

Chapter Three

DEAR SHELLEY,

I know you’re mad at me, and I
don’t know if writing this letter will help. I wish I could explain
things in a way you’d understand, but I’m not sure that’s
possible.

I can’t always be with you, even
when I want to be. But you’re growing up, and accepting that fact
is part of becoming an adult. Even though I’m your father, I have a
life separate from you, and sometimes it makes demands on me that I
must act on, whether I want to or not. This is a hard lesson, but
you’re a smart, mature young lady and I think you can handle
it.

I will again be unable to come to
the island this weekend. There are too many pressing matters here
in Connecticut. But I’m glad you’re spending your summer on the
island, and I hope you’re enjoying it “to the max,” as you might
say.

I love you, Shelley. I know you’re
disappointed that I’ve missed these weekends with you, but I hope
you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Be good--Love, Dad

Shelley reread the letter again and again. Her
father’s handwriting was atrocious, a slanting, aggressive scrawl.
But she deciphered every scribble, every loop and slash; she let
every word imprint itself in her heart. It was such a rare thing
for her father to send her a letter. That he had, that he’d taken
the time to write and beg her forgiveness, gratified her as nothing
else could—short of seeing him.

He claimed she was smart and mature, able to
accept disappointment, able to forgive. Because he viewed her with
such respect, she felt compelled her to live up to his praise. She
would stop resenting him, stop pleading with him. She would be the
daughter he loved.

“What did he write?” her mother asked. She had
already skimmed her own mail and was now looking across the kitchen
table to Shelley, who clung to the single sheet of stationery on
which her father had penned his brief letter.

“Nothing,” Shelley said automatically. This was
between her and her father. If he’d wanted her mother to know, he
would have sent her a copy of the letter.

Still, Shelley realized that being secretive
would only feed her mother’s curiosity, so she added, “Just that
he’s sorry he can’t come to the island every weekend.”

Her mother pursed her lips, as if she didn’t
quite believe Shelley. Rising from the table, she crossed to the
sink and busied herself fixing hamburger patties for their
dinner.

Shelley scowled at her mother’s back for a
minute, then carried her letter upstairs to her bedroom under the
eaves. Stretched out on her bed, she read the letter one more time.
She had told her mother the truth about what it said—an abridged
version, maybe, but essentially the truth. What mattered most to
Shelley, though, were the personal nuances, the father-daughter
stuff, the parts she hadn’t told her mother: I love you, Shelley.
You’re growing up. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive
me.

“I forgive you,” she whispered, folding the
letter carefully along its original creases and slipping it back
inside the envelope. She hid the letter in the middle drawer of her
dresser, tucked between two folded shirts. Then she smiled at her
reflection in the mirror and went back downstairs to help her
mother fix dinner.

An hour later, the dishes done and the table
wiped, Shelley told her mother she was going to Kip’s house.
Ensconced in the parlor with her usual props—a magazine and a glass
of sherry—her mother nodded without looking up.

Terrific, Shelley thought sourly as she
pocketed her house key and left the house. Her mother was angry
with her. She’d simmered all through supper, picking at her food,
responding to Shelley’s conversational gambits with terse answers.
When Shelley finally said, “What’s the matter, Mom?” her mother had
grumbled about how tragic it was when girls couldn’t trust their
own mothers.

Shelley trusted her mother. It was just that...
Climbing onto her bike, she sighed. The letter was between her
father and her. He’d written it to her. No matter how much she
trusted her mother, she didn’t have to share her mail with
her.

The last time she’d been to Kip’s house,
Saturday evening, the place had been swarming with guests. Tonight,
except for the single light in an upstairs window, it appeared
vacant. The air was still and mild, fragrant with the scent of
mowed grass. Evening mist was beginning to rise off the water and
drift across the land, giving the world a delicate soft
focus.

Shelley parked her bike by the front veranda,
climbed the steps, and knocked on the door. Kip’s voice drifted
down to her from the illuminated second-floor window: “Who’s
there?”

She walked to the far edge of the veranda and
craned her neck. She saw his back-lit silhouette in the window.
“Me,” she shouted up. “Shelley.”

“Oh—hi! Hang on, I’ll be right
down.”

He vanished from the window. Ten seconds later,
he was opening the door to her. “Come on in,” he said.

“Where is everybody?” she asked as she entered
the house. Its silence unnerved her. Whenever Mrs. Stroud was home
she had the stereo on, playing one of her classical music
tapes.

“The Rosses invited my mother over to see the
slides they took of their sailboat trip to Nantucket. They invited
me, too,” he admitted, then jabbed his finger toward the back of
his mouth to indicate that he found the idea nauseating. “I forced
myself to say no.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Shelley said with a
grin. “Where’s Diana?”

“Where else? With Romeo.”

“His name is Mark,” Shelley declared, “and I
think he’s very nice.”

“Oh, great. Now you’re in love with him,
too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shelley retorted. “I
just thought that, considering how embarrassing Saturday might have
been for him, he held up pretty well.”

“Embarrassing?” Kip exclaimed, leading Shelley
up the stairs. “What was embarrassing about it?”

“Oh, come on. There he was, being evaluated by
not just your parents but you, your grandmother, your aunt and
uncle, friends from Grove Point—”

“Hey, if he wants to date Diana he’s got to pay
the price.”

They had reached Kip’s bedroom. In summers
past, Shelley had spent many rainy afternoons in this room. It was
almost as large as the entire two-bedroom second floor of the
Ballard cottage, and perfectly adequate for hanging out in. But
although it was already the third week of July, this was the first
time she’d been inside Kip’s bedroom that summer.

She wasn’t sure why that was. Part of her
suspected it was because this summer she and Kip were fifteen, and
that made everything different. Boys’ bedrooms suddenly took on a
new meaning.