Stay (12 page)

in the water. I couldn’t see the boat anywhere, and then I could,

and it seemed her arrival was very fast. She got larger and larger

and more in focus, and suddenly they were close enough that I

Stay

could see the faces of the individual passengers, and I could hear

Finn shout something and the others laugh, and the big sail came

down, tumbling into messy folds.

I watched everyone get off the boat and saw Finn return again

to coil the ropes. There was a familiarity to it that made it all feel

good, and so I got up, carrying my sandals by their straps, and

walked over.

“You going out again?” I shouted.

“Hey,” he said. His brother stood at the tip of the boat15*

smoking a cigarette, looking out. He turned when he heard my

voice. “Shy girl.”

“Clara,” I said.

“Finn,” he said, though his name had traveled through my

mind on a million different paths already. “My brother Jack.

Don’t mind him; he’s trying to quit.”

“Don’t mind him; he’s an idiot,” Jack said, blowing smoke

up into the air. You could tell they got along just fine, though.

They both were thin and fit and had unshaven scruff, but Jack’s

hair was longer and wilder and Finn had those sweet eyes. Finn

hopped off the boat. There he was, next to me, in his tight T-shirt

and loose jeans, black hair messed up from a windy, windy ride.

15 Called the bow. The back, called the stern. I knew this only in some vague way be-

fore, and might have failed the quiz if there had been one. The left is “port,” the right

is “starboard.” Sailing has its own language. Colorful, too. Bowsprits and breeches

buoys and battening down hatches, language from another time. Nothing like all the icy

tech words we have now—DOS and CD-ROM and CPUs—no romance. And then there’s

the jib sheet and the spinnaker, the luffing and the jibing, lively, cheery words. And of

course, the stays. The stays: the wire that supports the mast. Thin and hardly notice-

able, but the only thing keeping the mast from toppling.

* 89 *

Deb Caletti

“Come on out,” he said. He seemed shy himself. But not so

shy that he couldn’t say what he wanted. “It’s
fast.
It’s
fantastic
.”

His eyes danced.

I must have shivered. It was a little cold out there. “Scared?”

he said.

“No,” I said. “My father’s afraid, not me.”

“The whole ghost thing?” he asked.

“Ghost thing?”

“I thought maybe you were staying at the Captain Bishop

Inn. They love that stuff. Shove it at the folks that go there.

People eat it up. They make
pamphlets
, even. ” I shook my

head. I didn’t know what he meant. “Deception Pass? Used to

have a lot of sailing vessels. The big old ships . . . But—high

winds, narrow channel . . . The waters were,
are
, so treacher-

ous there that most of the ships sailed around the whole island

rather than go through that pass. They had to lose a few for

sailors to know that, though, right? So, supposedly, you know.

Old dead sailors haunting the waters. Captain Bishop’s young

widowed wife throwing herself off of the lighthouse in despair.

Blah blah blah.”

“Some TV show came out here and filmed the lighthouse and

now we have every bored, middle-aged kook who is hoping
to be

freaked out,” Jack said.

“I know the shows,” I said. “Old ship on choppy sea? Guy

with a pocket watch and a telescope? Filmy white images?”

“You got it,” Finn said.

“I didn’t even know,” I said. “My father just hates the water.”

“Ah,” Finn nodded. He shrugged his shoulders, to each his

* 90 *

Stay

own. “Anyway, you wouldn’t believe how many people ask about

the ships down under there. Number one question.”

“Tell me about the ships down under there,” I said.

He laughed. Someone called Jack’s name. It was the girl from

The Cove, yesterday’s hamburger place. She was waving at him

madly.

“Our sister,” Finn said.

“Pretend I never saw,” Jack said. “I’m not chasing that fuck-

ing seagull for her.”

“There’s this seagull . . .” Finn said. I nodded. I knew about

him. “She claims to hate that seagull, but I have my doubts. You

coming?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to—”

“Work at the lighthouse?” he grinned. “Did she hire you?”

“Starting on Monday,” I said. The brothers looked at each

other. Knowing glance. “What? Come on. Tell me.”

“Maybe you ought to start job hunting,” Finn said.

Jack cracked up. “She’ll fire you by . . .” He looked at his

brother. “I say Friday.”

“Monday,” Finn said. “She hates the weekend tourists more

than she hates the workers.”

“True,” Jack said. He thought. “Can I change my bet?”

I groaned. “Really? That bad?”

“She chased this one guy with her Jeep,” Finn said.

“Remember that?”

They both were chuckling away. I crossed my arms. “I’m prov-

ing you both wrong,” I said. I’d suddenly decided. I’d charm the

skin off that snake and show these guys. “I’m lasting the summer.”

* 91 *

Deb Caletti

“No fucking way,” Jack said. He’d finished his cigarette.

Turned his back on his sister, who had given up and gone back

into the shack. The seagull still sat on that table. He looked pretty

comfy.

“You last the summer and I’ll sail you over to Friday Harbor

and back. Private charter.”

“You idiot,” Jack said. “You gotta make that a bet you can
win
.

Jesus, I haven’t taught you anything.”

I was having so much fun there. I wondered about Finn

and Jack and their sister and their life in that place.
This
would

be their life during the summers. There would be no driving to

Neumo’s or out to eat in various parts of the city. No concerts or

shows or the pierced people at Total Vid or traffic or city buses.

No jobs at vintage music stores or comedy places. Just the beach

and water and this stingy salty air and working with your hands

until you were so tired that maybe you actually slept at night.

“How about next week?” I said. “After work? After I
don’t
get

fired? I’ll come out then,”

“That’s so great,” Finn said. “Cool.” He was grinning.

“Very cool.”

“Only if you promise to tell me all about the drowned sailors,”

I said.

“And
I’ll
tell you about what happened the first time Finn

heard about the drowned sailors.” Jack put his hands on Finn’s

shoulders.

“Shut up, idiot,” Finn warned.

“It was the middle of the night . . .”

“God damn it, Jack.” Finn lunged for his brother and missed.

* 92 *

Stay

“Awake all night, scared shitless.” Finn lunged again, and this

time he caught Jack by the waist and then tucked him under one

arm, his knuckles against his scalp. I’d forgotten how physical

guys could be. Jack and Finn did not have careful movements and

clean hands. They didn’t seem like they would flinch when they

heard loud noises like Christian did. They didn’t seem sensitive,

in all ways that sensitive made a person require careful handling.

“Our father’s white T-shirt in the kitchen, okay, okay!” Jack

pleaded. Finn let go. Jack was laughing and so was I.

“I was
seven
,” Finn said.

“You never heard anyone of any age scream like that,” Jack said.

“You rat bastard,” Finn said. “Your breath smells like a fucking

ash tray
.” But he wasn’t really bothered. I waited for it, thinking

there might be that moment where you saw his hurt or humilia-

tion or shame. When you live for a while with a sensitive person,

you are always anticipating. You’re two steps ahead, knowing what

the reaction will be to that comment or that film moment or that

song. You start trying to steer you both clear of any of the places

he could fall into and stay. After that night at the concert I tried to

keep my eyes from wandering accidentally somewhere that might

upset him. Movies with cheating girlfriends made him sullen, and

so I would read the reviews before we chose one, suggesting safe

plots with exploding buses and car crashes. His friend, Evan, was

teasing him about his “girlie silky hair” once, just giving him a bad

time, and you could see how hurt he got. Really hurt. More than

friend-kidding-around hurt. You anticipate, and when you do that

for a long while, it’s hard to shake. You get edgy. Like men back

from the war who jump when a car backfires.

* 93 *

Deb Caletti

But Jack’s story just rolled right off of Finn. He didn’t care. I

realized he had a confidence that meant he could take jokes and

small blows to the ego without it destroying him. I guess it was

the sturdiness of confidence. And that was the first thing I really

liked about Finn Bishop.

“I got a surprise for you tonight, Clara Bella,” my father said that

late afternoon. He was sitting out on the deck, an open book on

his knee. The tide was inching in. You could see where his foot-

steps had been a way off, now half covered.

“Why does that worry me?” I said. “Except there’s not much

to do out here but the fried clam special at Butch’s Harbor Bar.

That guy Butch gets around. There’s a flyer in every window.

Actually, it sounds kind of good.”

“I’m not telling,” my father said. He looked pleased with

himself. You could tell he hadn’t showered all day—his hair was

unwashed and his beard was growing, and he had the same shorts

on he’d been wearing for the past four days. Hopefully, wherever

we were going, he wasn’t going out like that. “Better dress warm.”

I factored that through the Potential Disaster department of

my brain, and all the alarms went off. I was thinking sunset sail

with Finn Bishop, me and my dad. I was thinking Dad was going

for some bold move (he liked bold moves), face your fear and do

it anyway, fear is the biggest bullshitter romantic night for three

merged with book research and intrusive questions. “We’re not

sailing with the Bishop brothers,” I said.

His eyebrows shot up. He smiled. “Glad to hear you’re mak-

ing friends, C. P.”

* 94 *

Stay

“No comment.”

“Rightly so. No, you know you couldn’t get me to go on that

thing. Something else. Come on. Let’s get out of here in, say,

twenty minutes?”

When we met back up, Dad was showered, wearing jeans

and a white shirt with the tails out, a bottle of wine tucked under

one arm. We got in the car and drove toward the lighthouse and

parked.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Come on. You’ll love this old broad.”

“She’s weird, Dad. I got the creeps.”

“That was your own deal. Had nothing to do with her.”

We inched our way down the steep trail. “How’d you even get

a hold of her? Does she even have
electricity
?”

“I sent her an e-mail. I was guessing she’d be as addicted to

it as she ever was. She goes to the Captain Whidbey Inn every

morning and uses their computer. I wasn’t expecting to hear back

from her so soon.”

“Lucky us,” I said. Dad was ahead of me. He did the sideways

dance down. “Don’t break your ankle or anything. I’d never get

you out of here.”

“You forget I played football.”

“One lousy season.”

He landed there nicely on his feet. I decided I’d better shut

my mouth, because it was me who was slipping and skittering.

The lighthouse stood above us, and the keeper’s house (with

Sylvie Genovese inside, I was guessing, due to the Jeep out

front) was lit and cozy on that cliff. She was probably watch-

* 95 *

Deb Caletti

ing, ready to fire me for my lack of climbing skills. My mood,

high and happy after the docks that day, was also slipping.

Part of me wanted my own bed in my own room back home,

my friends, my life, or rather, my old-old life. But I was here,

sliding down some cliff, my just washed hair already turning

stringy from salt air, my “surprise” a dinner with a crazy lady

who lived in a shack with an outhouse. We’d better not stay

late, because I couldn’t hold it that long, and there was no way

I was peeing in that place.

“I’m in a baked potato mood,” Dad said. “Butter. You know,

Pea, I love butter. I really do love it. My heart even swells a little

when I think of it. Wonder what we’ll have. Where is her place

anyway?”

I landed. Dad was taking off his sandals, and I did too. So

much for showering. So much for Butch’s Harbor Bar. I wouldn’t

have minded it. Red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloths with

cigarette burns in them sounded kind of nice right then. Hot

fried clams served in paper rectangle boats, I imagined. A

Budweiser sign in back of the bar with a waterfall that looked like

it was moving. “Believe me, you’ll know her house when you see