The Bay at Midnight (11 page)

I shook my head.
You can trust me with your life
, I wanted to say to him, but I kept the melodramatics to myself. “I won’t say anything,” I promised, crossing my heart. I pictured myself inside the confessional booth, the smell of incense in the air. If I withheld information like that from my parents, did that constitute a lie? I wondered.

Ned slipped his sunglasses on again and glanced out at the water to be sure everyone was all right. “How come you and Ethan don’t pal around together anymore?” he asked, then smiled at me again. “Don’t answer that,” he said. “He’s a dufus this summer, I know.”

I wanted to defend Ethan but found I couldn’t. I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

“You tell Izzy I’ll see her later, okay?” He looked toward the car and waved again.

“Okay,” I said, knowing I’d been dismissed. It had been an incredible conversation, though. We had secrets. We’d talked almost like adults.

I walked back to the car and got in. It smelled of the hot rubber of the tubes.

“What did you talk about for so long?” Isabel sounded suspicious as she turned the key in the ignition.

“About how I saw you get into Ned’s boat in the marina.” I looked out the car window toward the lifeguard stand, nonchalant as you please.

Isabel didn’t speak, and when I looked over at her, I saw that her knuckles had gone white on the steering wheel. “And what did he say?” she asked, her voice tight.

“He asked me not to tell anyone, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

Her grip on the steering wheel relaxed. “Thank you,” she said. Then she held the pack of Marlboros out to me. “Have another cigarette.”

My mother, Isabel and I tossed our inner tubes into the canal, then quickly jumped in after them, laughing as we struggled to climb aboard.

“I’m glad no one’s taking a picture of this,” Isabel said as she struggled to hoist herself onto her oversized tube. Mom and I had already managed to get into position on our tubes, our bottoms, forearms and calves in the cool water.

“Bye!” Mom lifted her arm in a wave to Grandpop, Grandma and Lucy where they stood in our backyard, calling out their wishes for a good trip. The current was swift and our journey was effortless. We used our hands as paddles, staying close to the bulkhead to avoid being run over. Some of the colored fishermen on the other side of the canal waved to us, as did people passing by in their boats. We’d rise and fall on the wakes of the yachts and motorboats. It was glorious.

When we reached the bay, we rolled onto our stomachs and began paddling for real, steering ourselves along the coastline toward our little beach. I spotted Grandpop and Lucy waiting for us on the pier, Lucy holding on tight to my grandfather’s hand. I
was impressed that he’d been able to get her out on the pier at all. I wished that my father had been at the shore so that he too could have floated on the tubes. Maybe, I thought, we could do it again on a weekend when he was with us. But we never did.

Lying in bed that night, I felt as though I was still floating toward the bay. What a great feeling it had been to flow with the current! An idea began to form in my head. If the current had been in the direction of the bay this morning, it would be going in that direction again tonight. What if I quietly took the boat out of our dock and let it float down to the bay? No one would know, because the current would carry me and I wouldn’t need to start the motor and wake anyone up. Once I was in the bay, I could start the motor and cruise around for a while. Getting back could be a problem, because I doubted I could stay out there long enough for the current to change direction, but it was only the starting of the engine that would be noisy. Coming back, the boat would just make a gentle putt-putt sound as I pulled into the dock and no one would be any the wiser.

I couldn’t believe the sheer elegance of my plan! I would be grounded for life if I was caught, but the risk seemed worth the adventure. As I climbed softly down the creaky stairs, I knew I’d have one more thing to confess on Saturday night, but just then, I didn’t care.

Our little runabout had no light, so I got the flashlight from the kitchen drawer, along with a mosquito coil and a book of matches, then walked onto the porch. As I started to open the screen door, I suddenly remembered that it was Isabel’s turn to sleep on the porch bed and I caught my breath. The half-moon was not very bright, but there was enough light that she could probably see me if she were awake. I peered toward the far end
of the porch and saw that she was lying on her side under the covers, facing the opposite direction. I was safe.

Outside, I untethered the runabout, then descended the ladder and slipped into the boat. I used the oars to push out of the dock, cringing at the sloshing sound of the water against the bulkhead. Once in the canal, I had to use the oars to keep the boat going straight—the current kept trying to turn it sideways—and I felt the tiniest bit of panic over not being able to control it. But soon I was sailing easily with the current and within minutes, I was in the open water of the bay, by myself. I could see lights along the shore, though not too many. It was, after all, nearly midnight and most of the houses were dark. The half-moon offered a rippled, shadowy view of the water, and I felt infused with joy and a sense of peace. My plan had been to start the motor once I was in the bay, but now that I was floating comfortably, I didn’t feel like disturbing the silence. I was curious to see where the current would take me.

I felt a mosquito bite my shoulder before remembering the coil. I lit it and put it near me in the bottom of the boat, and as I was lifting my head from that task, our little neighborhood beach came into view. It always looked so small and perfect from the water, a smooth, pale crescent of sand. Then I heard laughter, and my eyes were drawn to the platform in the deep water. Two figures were standing on the platform. I stared at them, using the oar to move a little closer. I saw the girl’s long dark hair, the boy’s broad back, and I covered my mouth with my hand.

It couldn’t possibly be Ned and Isabel, I thought. I remembered seeing Isabel asleep on the porch…but I also remembered how I stuffed a bedspread beneath my covers to trick Lucy into thinking I was still in bed. Isabel had apparently tried the same
ruse, because now she was most definitely on the platform with Ned Chapman. I nearly forgot to breathe as I watched them. My sister had on one of her two-piece bathing suits. From that distance, I could not tell its color. They were standing up, and I saw them come together. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I imagined Ned was kissing her. When he drew away from her, he took her bathing suit top with him and I saw the faint glow of moonlight on Isabel’s bare breasts.

Oh my God.
My hands shook as I bent over to pull the cord to start the motor. I had to yank it three times; my hand seemed out of my control. The motor finally came to life with a metallic roar. I imagined Ned and Isabel looking out to the bay in surprise. Maybe my sister would duck down to cover herself up as I sped away from them, into the night, praying hard that they had not realized I was the person watching them.

I ran a large arc through the bay water and back into the canal. I slowed the motor to a gentle sputter as I carefully steered the runabout into our dock. I cut the motor, tossed the half-spent mosquito coil into the canal, climbed out of the boat and tied it to the dock.

I was still trembling as I opened the screen door to the porch. The fake Isabel had not moved in her porch bed and my arrival did not seem to have awakened anyone. I put the flashlight back in the kitchen and climbed the rickety stairs to the attic. Lucy’s breathing was soft and regular. I tiptoed past her bed and into my curtained bedroom. I did not let myself think about what I had witnessed until I was under my covers.

One sentence kept clanging in my brain: Were Isabel and Ned going all the way? I did not even know the term “making love.” I knew the basic elements of intercourse, but I did not know
exactly how it was done. I let my imagination take me back to that platform, myself in Isabel’s place. My breasts, somehow larger and fuller, were bare, as hers had been. Ned’s hands were on them. He took off the rest of my bathing suit, then lay me down on the damp wood of the platform and kissed me tenderly. He took off his own bathing suit, and I spread my legs and invited him in, and somehow he was able to fit his penis inside me, penetrating that brick wall. That seemed an impossibility to me, but people did it somehow and Ned would know how. He would shoot sperm inside me and tell me he loved me. My body ached to be in Isabel’s place on the platform, moonlight on my breasts, going all the way with my lover.

I sneaked the boat out to the bay several more times that July. I only took it out once in August, and that had been a mistake.

Lucy

I
was in the basement of the Methodist Church in Westfield getting ready for my band to perform at a Coffee with Conscience concert. I stood next to the pillar near the small stage, watching the place fill up. This would be the ZydaChicks last concert of the season, and we always liked to end the year locally, performing for our supporters in Westfield. Proceeds for the Coffee with Conscience concert would go to charity, which was the way we liked to operate. Our music was the feel-good variety, a happy fusion of zydeco, folk, and rhythm and blues, and only three of the five of us were “chicks,” a fact that always required me to provide a long explanation somewhere midway through our performance.

The scent of coffee was thick in the air as I watched some of my old Westfield neighbors slip into their seats at the round ta
bles. I saw a few of my Plainfield friends walk in, and best of all, several of my ESL students showed up. Three boys, two girls, all Hispanic. The kids spotted me standing next to the pillar and waved, grinning. It touched me to see them there. They looked out of place, a little uncomfortable, but sporting their usual “don’t mess with me” bravado. Two of my former lovers were there, as well, and I was glad to see that they took seats at tables on opposite ends of the room. I made a mental note to be careful after the concert. Most of my previous boyfriends knew about each other and were cool about it, but those two had a rather hostile relationship. I would have to greet each of them individually.

Finally, just minutes before we were to go onstage, I spotted Julie and Shannon entering the room. I knew that Julie had picked Shannon up at Glen’s and I wondered how that had gone. I’d gotten a ride to the church from one of my band members, and Julie was going to take me home. I was hoping the three of us could stop off someplace for dessert. I wanted to try to facilitate a discussion between mother and daughter. I knew Shannon hadn’t told Julie about her pregnancy yet, and she wasn’t going to get any skinnier.

Julie looked a bit tense from where I stood, but then I saw her laugh as she exchanged a few words with a woman she must have known. The laughter made her look pretty and ten years younger, and I was relieved to see it.

My gaze dropped to Shannon’s midriff. She was doing an excellent job of hiding her pregnancy. She had on a loose white peasant blouse, a gift I’d given her years ago when I’d returned from a trip to Guadalajara. I’d never seen her wear it before, but it was perfect as camouflage. Loose and airy, the blouse drew the eye up
to the elaborate embroidery at the neckline. Shannon was not smiling, and I wondered if she ever smiled these days. Her life had taken quite a serious turn. Maybe she smiled when she talked to her twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend, Travis. Or Taylor. Or Tanner. Whatever his name was, I did not trust him.

The house was packed and too warm by the time we took the stage, and I blocked everything but the music from my mind. I can’t say that our performance was seamless. Something happened at the end of every season: We tended to get too cocky. We didn’t practice enough and then we screwed up in the middle of an old song we should have been able to play in our sleep. I doubted that the audience knew or cared, though. They were drinking iced coffee, tapping their toes, and some of our most devoted fans sang along. A lot of people were on their feet and the energy in the room was high. I loved it when an audience responded that way.

Afterward I chatted with my students and some of my friends—neither ex-beau hung around, which was a blessing—and then met Julie and Shannon by the front door.

“Great concert,” Julie said. She took my violin case from my hand as though she knew I’d appreciate a break from it.

“You just need a cellist,” Shannon teased me. It was her contention that every band on earth could be improved through the addition of a cello.

I gave her a one-armed hug. “How about we get some ice cream?” I said, as we walked outside into the warm night air.

“I need to go straight home,” Shannon said, then caught herself. “I mean, straight to Dad’s.” She’d been living with her father for four days, and I’d been glad that she’d agreed to go out with Julie tonight. Apparently, though, she wanted to make a short evening of it.

“Oh, come on, Shannon,” I said, my arm still around her shoulders. “Just for a while.”

“I’m expecting an important phone call,” she said, giving me a look that told me who the important call was from, just in case I hadn’t guessed.

“You can call them back,” Julie said. “Lucy’s probably starved.”

“It’s true, I am,” I said. “You know I don’t like to eat before a concert.”

If I hadn’t piped up, Shannon probably would have argued with her mother over stopping for dessert, but once I’d made my case, she gave in.

“Westfield Diner?” Julie asked as she opened her car door.

“Sure,” I said. “You want the front, Shannon?” I motioned to the passenger door of the car.

“Back’s fine,” she muttered, barely loud enough to hear, and I knew she was either sullen or scared, expecting me to bring up her situation over ice-cream sundaes, which was indeed my plan.

We settled into one of the booths at the diner, Shannon sitting next to me, the slight swelling of her belly hidden from her mother’s eyes by the table.

“How’s work?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Good,” she said, studiously avoiding my eyes as she checked out the dessert menu.

“Are you still playing the cello at the hospital?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I went yesterday. I saw Nana there.”

“Cool,” I said. We were all hospital volunteers. I was a translator for Spanish-speaking patients, Mom worked in the gift shop, Julie visited patients, often reading to them or just keeping them company, and Shannon played the cello in the hallways outside patient rooms. We had a long culture of volunteerism in my family.

“What should I do with your mail, honey?” Julie asked. “You’ll probably be getting a lot of it from Oberlin over the summer.”

Here was Shannon’s chance to tell her mother, I thought. I squeezed her knee beneath the table, but she pulled her leg away from my hand and I sensed her annoyance. I knew right then that the talk I wanted the two of them to have wasn’t going to happen tonight.

“Just stick it in a grocery bag for me, please,” Shannon said, not looking at either of us. “I’ll pick it up when I come by.”

“Okay.” Julie turned her menu over to look at the desserts. “And if it looks important, I’ll let you know.You’ll probably find out who your roommate’s going to be in a few weeks. I think you should try to get in touch with the girl during the summer to see what she’ll be bringing to the room and all of that.”

Shut up, Julie
, I thought.

“Uh-huh.” Shannon studied the menu as if she didn’t know it by heart.

Julie and I ordered sundaes and Shannon, a small bowl of chocolate ice cream. Then Julie excused herself to go to the rest room.

I shifted away from Shannon on the bench so that I could look at her.

“How are you doing, really?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”

“Living with your dad is going okay?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I might as well still be living with Mom,” she said. “She calls me, like, ten times a day.”

“Why don’t you tell her about the baby now?” I asked. “With me here? I can help soften the blow.”

“Don’t
push
me, Lucy,” she said. “Let me do this on my own timetable, all right?”

“What
is
your timetable?” I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“I don’t know.” She spoke slowly, teeth gritted.

“All right.” I gave up. “Sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said, as if I’d been holding her down on the ground and had finally released her.

“Can you give me…what’s his name? Tanner?”

She nodded and looked at me, curious to know what I was asking.

“Can you give me his Web site address?”

“Why?”

“So I can check it out,” I said, then added, “from the perspective of a former history teacher.”

“Are you going to write to him or something?” She looked suspicious.

I shook my head. “No.”

She hesitated. “You swear you won’t?”

“You have my word. I just want to…you know, get to know this person who’s so important in your life. I mean,” I added quickly, “get to know him by seeing his Web site, that’s all.” I thought I sounded guilty, as if I
did
have plans to try to reach him—which I did not—but Shannon tore off a piece of her napkin, pulled a pen from her pocketbook, wrote down the address and handed it to me. I slipped it in my jeans pocket.

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s a cool site,” she said, that glowy look coming into her face again. “He knows everything about computers.”

Julie returned to the table and sat down again.

“Who knows everything about computers?” she asked. “Dad?”

“No,” Shannon said. “Just a friend.”

The waitress took our orders

“Any news from Ethan?” I asked.

“Who’s Ethan?” Shannon asked.

“Ethan Chapman,” Julie said. “Remember I told you about the visit I had from his daughter? How she—”

“That letter?” Shannon interrupted her.

“Yes,” Julie said. “Ethan took it to the police. They searched Ned’s—Ethan’s brother’s—house, but didn’t find anything. Or at least, they didn’t tell Ethan that they found anything.” Although what she’d said was not particularly good news, Julie was smiling. Something was going on. I swore I saw a little spark in her eyes when she said the name “Ethan.” I was sure now that she had a thing for him.

“He reminded me of the time Mom and Izzy and I floated to the bay on inner tubes,” Julie said to me. “Do you remember that?”

“To the bay from where?” I asked.

“From the bungalow,” Julie said. “You were there when we jumped into the canal and there with Grandpop when he came to the bay to pick us up.”

I shook my head. I must have been a space cadet when I was eight. I remembered so little.

“You
floated on an inner tube?” Shannon looked at her mother in amazement.

“Yep,” Julie said. She leaned back as the waitress set our ice cream in front of us.

“I totally cannot picture you doing that,” Shannon said, lifting her spoon. “You’re scared to death of the water.”

“I wasn’t then,” Julie said with a shrug.

“Your mother did everything,” I said. “She was adventure girl. I was the chickenshit.”

“That would be cool,” Shannon said. “Floating down a canal on a tube.”

Shannon had never seen the canal and had only been down the shore a couple of times with friends, as far as I knew. Certainly Julie had never taken her.

“It’s probably not legal to do that now,” Julie said.

“It probably wasn’t even legal then,” I added.

We finished our ice cream, then drove to Glen’s town house. He waved from the front door when Shannon got out of the car, and I waved back. I didn’t know if Julie acknowledged him at all. I didn’t think they talked anymore. They’d been able to communicate about Shannon, though. They’d coordinated trips to colleges and actually went together to parent-teacher conferences, but I thought their relationship was truly over now. Most—although not all—of the pain and animosity seemed to have shifted to indifference, and I was glad of that. I knew from my own broken relationships just how comforting indifference could be.

“I bet she’s getting zero supervision over here,” Julie said as she pulled away from the curb.

The horse was long out of the barn as far as supervision was concerned, and I ignored her comment. “So,” I said, instead. “Do I detect some real interest in Ethan Chapman now?”

She might have blushed. I wasn’t sure. “It was good to talk with him,” she said. “He has the nicest voice.”

“So, he looks great,” I said. “He has an amazing body. Nice voice. Is good to talk with. What more do you want?”

“I don’t
want
anything,” she said. “If he weren’t Ethan Chapman, I might be interested,” she admitted. “But I certainly don’t want someone who lives in Bay Head Shores and is almost surely
the brother of my sister’s murderer.” She was vehement and had a good point. I decided to change the subject.

“I remembered something when you were talking about floating on the canal,” I said.

“What?”

“I remembered Dad going over to the other side of the canal to get you when you were fishing with the Lewis family.”

“Oh,” she said, letting her breath out. “He was not pleased with me.”

“He was hard on you sometimes, you know?” I said. “I learned from watching you. I learned not to make waves around him.”

“He was never hard on Izzy, though,” Julie said. It was not the first time she’d said something like that.

“Did that bother you?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I think I just had a way of doing things he couldn’t tolerate. Like hanging out with the Lewises.” She suddenly grew very quiet as she pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment house.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I’m tired.” She smiled at me. “It was a great concert. I love watching you. You have so much fun up there.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I felt worried about her. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She looked at her hands where they rested on the steering wheel. “You just got me thinking about George,” she said.

I touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry I brought it up,” I said.

She shrugged. “It’s just that…if I’d never gone over there to begin with, George would never have gone to prison.”

“Oh, Julie,” I said, leaning over to give her a hug. “I wish Ethan
and his daughter had just dealt with that letter on their own and never let you know about it.”

She smiled gamely as I pulled away from her. “I’m okay,” she reassured me. “Honest.”

I opened my car door, then looked back at her.

“With regard to Ethan…” I began.

She waited, eyebrows raised, to hear what I was going to say.

“Grab some joy, Julie,” I said. “Grab it.”

Before going to bed, I spent an hour on Tanner Stroh’s Civil War Web site. It was undeniably excellent, a scholarly site overflowing with information and so little bias that I wasn’t able to tell if I would agree with his politics or not. By the time I turned off the computer, I had one overriding thought in my mind: maybe Shannon had actually found herself a winner.