Safe Harbor (9 page)

Once their books had been checked out, Shelley
and Kip left the library. The rain had lightened to a drizzle, but
they both rode their bikes one-handed so they could use their left
hands to hold their books under the flaps of their raincoats. They
steered straight for Kip’s house.

As soon as they’d shed their wet outerwear and
shoes, they ascended to the cupola. Kip adjusted the windows so no
rain would come in, and there, in the cramped, gloomily lit room,
they read. They occupied diagonal corners, their legs stretched out
between them. Whenever one of them shifted, their knees
touched.

The first time
Kip’s knee bumped Shelley’s she flinched and glanced up. Kip was
immersed in the opening chapter of
To Kill
a Mockingbird
, intently perusing the page,
his brow furrowed in concentration. He appeared unaware that their
legs had brushed.

It took Shelley only a second to recover from
the contact. This wasn’t last night; they weren’t kissing, or
practicing kissing, or grading each other’s performance, or any of
it. They were merely friends, reading away a rainy
morning.

With a contented
sigh that was almost a laugh, Shelley lowered her eyes back to the
first page of
Metamorphosis
, which, she had
discovered with some horror, truly was about a man who turned into
a cockroach. Nothing—neither squeamishness nor skittishness—could
persuade her to leave the cupola right now. Nothing—not even the
possibility that her legs and Kip’s were going to bang each other
black-and-blue in the crowded space—could convince her that there
was anything she’d rather be doing right now.

Kissing Kip had been a revelation. Reading with
him as the rain drummed soothingly on the roof above them and his
legs stretched alongside hers, warm and strong, was just as
gratifying.

With another sigh, she relaxed into the corner
and read about how Gregor Samsa, a normal human being, woke up one
morning and found himself trapped inside the body of a
bug.

***

SHE WAS HAVING THEM every night, now—sensual
dreams, erotic dreams. Dreams of Kip.

One night she dreamed they were dancing. They
were at a school dance, one of those dorky Friday night events in
the gymnasium, with tacky crepe paper streamers dangling from the
basketball hoops and a half-dozen teachers standing around the
perimeter of the gym, looking bored as they chaperoned the
students. In the dream, Kip materialized out of a crowd of boys. He
was dressed in his Harvard T-shirt, jeans and mocs—she’d never seen
him in anything other than summer apparel, and she couldn’t picture
him in a jacket and tie. She was wearing the forest-green
wraparound dress she’d bought at Ann Taylor last Christmas, and the
high-heel black sandals that always killed her ankles—except, of
course, in the dream her ankles felt wonderful—and the gold choker
her father had given her for her birthday. Kip walked directly to
her and suddenly they were drifting across the dance floor, not
really dancing so much as hugging, holding each other. The flared
skirt of her dress swirled around her knees, and Kip’s arms
tightened around her waist, and his eyeglasses vanished as he bowed
to kiss her....

In another dream they were lying on a blanket
at their favorite secluded beach near Dorie’s Cove. Shelley had on
her string bikini, and as Kip kissed her he plucked open the bows
that held the swim suit together. She dreamed of him touching her
breasts—not groping and mauling her, the way the guys who had tried
to touch her back in “America” would do it, but gently, sweetly, so
that it didn’t seem like an assault or an act of conquest, but
rather like something he was doing only to please her.

She woke up from that dream gasping and
overheated, so embarrassed she almost refused to see Kip the next
day. But it was a gloriously sunny Friday morning, and she knew her
father wasn’t coming that weekend. If she vetoed Kip’s suggestion
that they go to the beach she would wind up hanging out at the
cottage with her mother, being depressed.

So she biked down to the beach near Dorie’s
Cove with Kip. She wore one of her one-piece suits, however, and
when she went into the water with him she gave him a stern look and
said, “Please don’t dunk me today.”

He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t grill
her on her prickly disposition, or inquire as to whether she had
her period. All he said was, “Okay.”

They swam together, not racing, not splashing,
just swimming, floating, enjoying the water until she stepped on a
broken shell. Its sharp edge sliced open her toe, and she let out a
scream.

Kip gathered her into his arms, carried her out
of the water, laid her down on the towel and swabbed her bleeding
toe with a towel. “I haven’t got any Band-aids,” he said, pressing
the towel tightly against the cut. “I’ll ride up to the house and
get a first aid kit.”

Pushing herself up into a sitting position, she
eased the towel away and examined her wound. It was a small cut,
very clean. “Don’t bother,” she said. “It’ll clot soon.”

Instead of
returning to the water, Kip remained on the blanket beside her. He
donned his sunglasses, rolled onto his back, and talked about how
good he considered
To Kill a
Mockingbird
. “I’d like to see the movie,
now that I’ve read the book.”

“It’s a great flick. Gregory Peck starred in
it. And you know who had played Boo Radley? Robert
Duvall.”

“No kidding?” Kip digested that fact, then
leaned across the blanket and pulled the towel away from her toe.
“Still bleeding,” he reported.

“Just slightly. I’ll live.”

Lying back down, he chuckled. “You know what I
like about you, Shell? You’re not a prima donna.”

“As compared to...?”

“Oh, Diana, for instance.” He rolled onto his
side and propped his head up with his hand. “You wouldn’t believe
the fight she had with Mark last night. We’re talking radioactive.
She used words I didn’t think she knew.”

“What did they fight about?” Shelley
asked.

“Mark told her he couldn’t afford to take her
out for dinner at Harborside Inn. Diana said if he really loved her
he’d take her out to fancy restaurants sometimes, instead of always
to Aldo’s for pizza. He works there, so I think he gets a
discount.”

“Well...after a while a person could get sick
of pizza,” Shelley pointed out, trying to be fair.

“The issue isn’t cuisine. It’s how much money
Mark’s spending on her. She thinks he’s not spending enough. She
can be a real bitch sometimes.”

Shelley lifted the towel away from her toe. The
gash had stopped oozing and was beginning to scab. Tossing the
towel aside, she stretched out next to Kip. She was glad they never
fought about stuff like that.

If they were dating, maybe they would. Once you
started dating, you had to obey all sorts of unwritten rules and
contracts: if the guy spent X amount of money on you, you had to
let him go a certain distance sexually. And vice versa—if you let a
guy go a certain distance, he was obligated to spend X amount of
money on you.

She wondered why it had to be that way.
Feminists were always saying it was all right for girls to ask guys
out and pay for the date—and sure, that sounded great in theory.
But if the girl spent all that money, was she supposed to paw the
guy afterwards? What if she didn’t want to paw the guy?

It was so much simpler being friends. Sometimes
Kip paid for things and sometimes Shelley did, and they were
equals. When Kip touched her, he touched her as a friend. As far as
Shelley’s desires... She kept them to herself and saved them for
her dreams, where they wouldn’t get her into trouble.

“Your father’s not coming this weekend, is he,”
Kip remarked.

Shelley sighed. Her toe had stopped stinging
and started throbbing. She rolled onto her stomach and rested her
chin on her folded arms. “Nope.”

“If you’d like to spend Saturday at my
house—”

“Thanks, but no.” While she was disappointed by
her father’s inability to come to the island, she was no longer
devastated by it.

“Really, it’s no problem,” Kip insisted. “I
don’t think we’ve got any plans—although I’m sure my father will
think of some horrible chore for me, like painting the porch
railings or something.”

“And you want me there to help you,” Shelley
joked.

“Of course not. I’m just saying—”

“I’ll be fine this weekend,” Shelley told him.
“I don’t want to impose on your family.”

“I wasn’t thinking about my family,” Kip said,
his light tone failing to disguise the seriousness of his words. “I
was thinking about me. I’d like you to come.”

She twisted her head to look at him. He was
staring at her; she could feel the force of his gaze right through
the dark lenses of his sunglasses. For a charged moment she thought
he was going to kiss her.

What he did was reach out and tuck a damp
strand of her hair behind her ear. It was something he’d done a
million times before, but this time...this time his touch was
different. This time it seemed very personal.

“Maybe,” she murmured. “Maybe I could stop by
for a little while.”

He smiled. “Good.”

That night, the dream was about his hand on her
cheek, lifting a lock of her hair and brushing behind her ear. She
dreamed of his fingertips running along her cheekbone to her
temple, and down to the nape of her neck. She dreamed of him
molding his palm to the back of her head and pulling her toward him
on the blanket, taking her by the shoulders and pulling
her...pulling her...

Her eyes flew open. In the vague twilight that
filtered through her curtains she made out the shadowy figure of
her mother looming over her, pulling her into a sitting position.
“Wake up,” her mother demanded. “Wake up, Shelley.”

“What?” Shelley mumbled, furious with her
mother for having interrupted such a delicious dream.

“You have to wake up.”

She considered reminding her mother of what
she’d said the other day—that it was vacation and Shelley could
sleep late if she wanted to—but she was too groggy to string
together so many words. “Why?” was all she could manage.

Her mother let go of her shoulders and turned
away. Slowly, much too slowly, Shelley realized that something was
wrong.

“Mom?”

Her mother walked to the door and reached into
the hallway. When she turned back she was holding a suitcase.
“We’re going home,” she said.

Shelley stared. Her eyes focused on the shadowy
shape of her mother, on the large tweed suitcase. The murky light
seeping through her curtains began to intensify, washing over her
mother’s face. Shelley noticed that her mother’s hair was
uncharacteristically messy, her lips pinched, her cheeks
wet.

“Mom?”

“Just do as I say.”

“But--”

“Don’t ask,” her mother said rapidly. “I don’t
know what the hell is going on. I got a phone call. There’s trouble
at home. We’ve got to go.”

“Is it Dad?”

“Yes. Pack your stuff—as much as you can,
everything you can fit in. And get dressed. I’ll be in to help you
in a while.”

Dazed, Shelley remained on the bed for several
minutes after her mother departed. They had to go. There was
trouble at home, trouble with Dad.

Oh, God. This was it. Life as she knew it was
about to end.

She picked up her watch from the night table,
tilted its face until the weak light from the window fell upon it,
and squinted at the numerals: 5:38. She shivered uncontrollably,
her teeth chattering. Her father was in trouble. He was leaving the
family. He was sick. He had a lover. He’d hurt himself.

I don’t know what the hell is going
on. Don’t ask.

Shelley
experienced a brutal insight into what the hero of
Metamorphosis
must have
felt like when he woke up and found out he’d turned into a
cockroach. Shelley might as well have turned into an insect
herself. Her universe had transformed. Nothing would ever be the
same again. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she
knew.

She had to phone Kip. She had to see
him.

With a sudden
burst of energy, she shoved back the top sheet and sprang out of
bed. Without bothering to turn on the light, she yanked off her
nightgown and rummaged in her dresser for something to wear: long
pants, because the early mornings on the island could be chilly,
and her Yale shirt. She felt through the drawer and heard the
rustle of paper. Between two shirts she located the letter her
father had written. She pulled it out, slid the stationery from the
envelope and unfolded it. Disjointed words and phrases leaped out
at her:
I think you can handle it...I know
you’re mad at me...You’re a smart, mature young lady...I hope you
can find it in your heart to forgive me...

I love you, Shelley.

She stifled the urge to cry. If Kip were with
her she could fall apart, but he wasn’t.