41.
Pauline
When Billy comes home from hauling, Pauline is sitting in the easy chair in the living room, looking over the small east-facing vegetable garden. You can’t see the water from their house the way you can from Ships View. The trees lean too thickly toward each other here, and even if they didn’t the distance is too great; you’d only catch a glimpse at best. That’s okay. It’s enough to know sometimes that the water is there. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in your face.
“Darlin’?”
She starts when she hears his voice. He’ll know something is up, finding her idle like this. She’s never idle, unless she’s sleeping, and sometimes not even then. Billy always says she sleeps like she wants it to be done so she can get up and cross it off her to-do list.
“It’s Marilyn,” she says. She’ll keep her voice steady, because she’s already cried her tears. She prefers to do that in private. Shegot the news when she was at the Fitzgeralds’ and all she did was swallow hard and keep on working, folding dish towels into perfect rectangles and stacking them in the drawer. Then once she got home she got her crying done. She continues looking out at the vegetable garden, which still has some life in it. There are the broccoli and cauliflower still to come in, the big tomatoes. The radishes too. Pauline has always loved a radish straight from the ground. “She’s gone,” she says. “I called Nicole already, let her know. She wants to come up for the funeral. Says Hazel wants to come too, but I suspect that has more to do with Matty Fitzgerald than with Marilyn. Too close to the start of school though. Nicole won’t hear of it.”
“Oh, Pauline.” The best part about Billy is that he doesn’t say anything after that, he doesn’t try to find the right words, because there aren’t any, and he has sense enough to know it. He sits on the arm of the easy chair and she takes in his familiar smell—the soap he uses to wash the smell of bait off his hands, maybe some oil from the boat, the brine and salt of the ocean itself. Sometimes, when she goes a long while without looking at Billy directly or looking in the mirror herself, she believes they’re still the earlier version of themselves, eighteen, smooth skinned, crazy for each other, their hearts and souls without a blemish on them.
Billy puts his rough hand over her rough hand—his calluses come from traps mended and pulled, ropes wound and unwound; hers from potatoes scrubbed and carrots peeled and dishes and dishes and dishes. She reaches around with her other hand to lay it on top of his.
Let them have all the secrets in the world over at Ships View. Not that they are as secretive as they think; Pauline’s known for years about the love child—she knew exactly who that was in the garden that day in July. You’re invisible when you work in someone’s kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you’re not watching and listening. She’s been waiting for this drama to unfold for years. But never mind any of that: leave the drama to them, those with energy for it. Pauline’s got what she needs right here, and she knows it. How lucky she is to have him, and to love him, and to be loved by him too: this man beside her, this man whose heart is as big as the sky.
42.
Louisa
She finds her mother in her cross-stitch station. The Owls Head Lighthouse piece is almost complete. Louisa sits next to Annie on the wicker bench to get a closer look, moving over the basket of thread and needles. It’s not just the lighthouse itself on the fabric but also the former keepers’ house with its red roof and red door and the set of stairs leading up to the door. The two pines stand tall and proud to the left of the lighthouse.
“It’s so pretty, Mom,” Louisa says. “Really.”
Annie holds the cross-stitch out in front of her and turns it this way and that. “I think it will be,” she says. “When I’m done.” She puts down the fabric and rubs her eyes. “I feel like I’ve been working on this one forever.” The light coming in the window, its angle so specific and unwavering, shows the fines lines around Annie’s mouth and the deeper furrow in her forehead. “We haven’t even been to the lighthouse this summer,” she says. “There’s still so much to do.”
“I know,” says Louisa, thinking about her secret trip there when she found out about Kristie. She thinks about all of the anger she had with her that day, a tight little ball of it, pulsing like a heart. “There’s still time, though. Summer isn’t over.” (Almost, though, it is.)
“I forgot to tell you!” says Annie, suddenly brightening. “You and Steven have a reservation tonight at Primo. Seven o’clock. I gave them my credit card when I called. It’s my treat.” Annie isso happyto have Steven here. The kids are too. Later he’s going to take them into town for a pirate ship tour as part of the Lobster Festival, further cementing his father-of-the-year status. He’s also promised to take Abigail to see the Oreo cows, to paddle Claire across the harbor in the double kayak, and to make sure Matty eats at Wasses at least three times before they go home. But because she was already ensconced in the Pink Room, with the single beds, and Steven fell asleep reading to Claire in the girls’ room the first night, some of their marital issues remain... untended to. Is that okay for now? She thinks so. But she’s not positive.
“Are you sure? Primo is so expensive, Mom!”
“I’m sure. You two have a lot to talk about, and you don’t need an audience. You know the walls here have ears.”
It’s true. Theydohave a lot to talk about, and theydon’tneed an audience. And the walls here definitely have ears. Yet still Louisa hesitates. It still feels so wobbly between her and her mother, and the money thing feels wobbly too. “I don’t know—” she says. She chews at her ravaged thumbnail. Primo feels like an extravagance. “Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“For heaven’s sake, Louisa, it’s a dinner, not a house—it’s not going to make or break my bank account. Put on a dress, do your hair, have a lovely meal. I hear the menu at Primo is fabulous this summer. Well, of course, it’s fabulous every summer.”
Annie’s gaze is pointed toward the Samoset. Louisa wonders if she’s thinking of her own wedding there, all those years ago. Annie puts her cross-stitch into the basket, along with the extra threadand the tiny magnifying glasses she attaches to her glasses, and she folds her hands in her lap, and she turns her head to look at Louisa.
Louisa reaches over and takes one of Annie’s hands. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m really sorry. About everything you’re going through.”
“I know,” says Annie, squeezing Louisa’s hand back. “I’m sorry for you too, of course.” She pauses. “Do you want to know the craziest part? It’s too soon. To me, it feels too soon. I’ve loved your father for—how many years? A thousand. A million. And I’m not ready to not have him here to love anymore. I’m just not ready. And sometimes I’m mad at him, and sometimes I’m frustrated, and sometimes I want to scream, wake up! Get up anddosomething, won’t you? Get up and be yourself. Stop torturing me like this. But most of the time, it all just seems too soon.”
Before Louisa can respond the screen door slides open, and suddenly the room is full of children. Wet, and yelling, and laughing, and punching.
“Ow,” says Abigail, rubbing her arm. “Claire, you hit me.”
“Sorry,” says Claire. “I got too excited.”
“Everybody in the car,” says Steven. “Lobster Festival time.”
Louisa wants to tell him not to fill up on ice cream because they have a seven o’clock reservation at Primo; she wants to tell him that she’s happy he’s here and she’s still mad at him but she’s alsonotmad at him; she wants to tell him to drive carefully in the summer traffic because everything, her whole life, her whole heart, is about to climb in the minivan with him and suddenly that seems like the scariest thing in the world.
But she just says, “Have fun, you guys,” and rubs the top of Abigail’s wet hair.
Louisa has been to Primo only once, years ago. That’s where Steven took her when he proposed to her. Primo was just a few years old then, and it was a big deal to have a farm-to-table restaurant with a James Beard-award-winning chef in a little coastal town.Annie is setting up make-your-own pizzas for the children; Pauline is taking a few days off. Her beloved cousin died. Claire is over the moon about the pizzas.
