The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (24 page)

“It's a bad curve,” Bay said, her blood feeling cold in her veins.

“Yes,” Danny said. “It is . . . Charlie got out of the car for some reason. She and Eliza had been fighting; she wanted to give Eliza time to cool off. Charlie hated upsets, and she would do anything to avoid them. Even walk away from the car, leave our daughter sitting there . . . That's what Eliza said right after the accident happened, but then she wouldn't speak at all. For a whole month afterward, she was in complete shock—”

“The poor girl,” Bay whispered.

“She saw it happen,” Dan said quietly. “She was sitting in the front seat of the car, watching her mother walk across the road. She was screaming, she said. Yelling at her mother, telling her to come back and not leave her alone. Charlie had her back to the car, crossing One fifty-six—there's nothing there for her to go to. No stores, no restaurants—everything is a mile back, in Silver Bay. Nothing but a field and woods, in the spot where Charlie was crossing. It all seems so aimless—just to avoid Eliza's emotions.”

“Oh, Dan.”

“A van hit her—heading out of Silver Bay—he never even stopped.”

Bay couldn't speak; she'd driven that stretch so often in the last months, even in the last week. She thought of the blind curve, of Charlie crossing the road, of Eliza sitting in the car and witnessing the whole thing.

“Eliza had a breakdown,” Dan said, his voice cracking. “She was a different girl before it happened. Always intense, but so happy and funny—just so cute and great, always wanting to joke around. In the weeks before the accident, she'd become a little reserved, maybe. As if she had something on her mind. I mentioned it to Charlie, and she said something about adolescence. But after the accident, Eliza just—went away.”

“Away?”

“Away from herself. Away from me. Deep inside.”

“But she told you what happened?”

“Yes—at first. She was hysterical, positive it was her fault, because she had gotten her mother upset. She saw the van, bearing down on Charlie as if he
wanted
to hit her, she said, and he just sped away . . .”

“Did they ever find the driver?”

“No,” Dan said. “At first she said the van was dark red, but then she thought maybe it was white and covered with blood. Then she thought maybe it was dark green, or navy blue or black . . .”

“How terrible for Eliza,” Bay said. “It's unthinkable, a child watching her mother killed. No wonder she's been so devastated.”

“She feels a pull to be with her mother.”

“Does she say that?”

“No. But she imagines she hears people calling her name, telling her that her mother wants her. She thinks they're coming in her bedroom window. ‘The evil people,' she calls them. She's psychologically very fragile; she always has this look of panic in her eyes. Panic, and constant, helpless longing—”

“Why would she call them evil, if they want to take her to her mother?”

“Her mind is wild. I can't figure it out.”

“You sent her to the hospital?”

“Yes. The first time she had to go, I thought I'd die. I know that sounds dramatic, but she's my baby. To see her starving herself, cutting her skin—it's terrible, unbelievable. That first time she went, I wanted to visit her every day. They told me to stay away, give her a chance to heal. Those were the hardest days of my life, wanting to see my daughter but knowing I had to let her get better without me.”

“But you got through them.”

“I did. She came home, and I thought, Thank God. This time I'll do everything right—I'll keep her spirits up, I'll stock the house with food she likes, I won't work such late hours so she won't ever feel alone . . .”

“But it didn't work?” Bay asked.

Dan shook his head. “No. My dream of being a perfect father was nicely dashed. I mean, forget it. The next time she went back to the hospital, I felt a little easier about leaving her. This last time, I was so relieved to take her there—I never want her to know how much.”

“Only because you want her to be safe and healthy,” Bay said. “You must be out of your mind with worry.”

“You have no idea,” he said. Danny had always had a huge capacity for love and concern, and Bay felt it almost as a palpable force between them. She clasped his hands in hers. And he pulled them both out of their chairs, so they could hold each other.

Standing in front of the fire, while the October wind blew down the chimney, swirling coals in the grate, Bay pressed herself into Dan's chest, feeling her heart beat against his. His arms were around her back, holding her so tight. He smelled like cedar and spice, and his blue cotton sweater was soft against her cheek, and she heard the smallest sound escape from her own lips:

“Help,” she heard herself murmur.

If Dan heard it, he gave no sign. He just held her in his arms, rocking her by the fire. Bay closed her eyes and held on to Danny Connolly, held on to this moment. She thought of that word, “help,” and how much she knew she needed it, how worried she was about the kids, especially Annie, how alone she felt every night.

Dan held her tighter, seemed to never want to let her go. He needed help as much as she did, the first love of her life, she thought. The boardwalk they had built was just down the road, on the beach, and Bay thought of the boards they had laid side by side, the nails they had driven in, the closeness they had shared so long, long ago and on the water that September night.

She felt it again, right now.

His heartbeat racing against her skin told her that Dan did, too.

UNDER THE LIGHT OF A MILLION STARS, WITH THE HELP OF
two flashlights, Annie and Eliza took the path through the woods. Everything was different at night than it had been during the day: The forest glowed with eyes. Deer, raccoons . . . sounds in the woods—cracking sticks and leaves:
The evil people were back.
Bats etched the air above, darting after mosquitoes and swirling in macabre figure eights.

“‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,' ” Eliza said.

Annie looked over her shoulder, startled by the line in her father's favorite poem, shivering from Eliza's revelation from before. “‘But I have promises to keep,'” Annie continued.

“‘And miles to go before I sleep.' ”

“‘And miles to go before I sleep.' ”

They had reached the beach clearing, and now the thick trees gave way to a vault of stars. Overhead, the hunter brandished a blazing sword, while storied constellations danced with white and blue fire. Annie remembered the noises she had heard that afternoon, tried to push the fears from her mind. The girls' feet crunched on the sand, and their flashlight beams swept the beach ahead.

“I hear them,” Eliza whispered, almost inaudibly, taking Annie's hand.

“I thought maybe I was imagining it,” Annie whispered back.

“No. You really hear them, too? I'm glad—I'm not being crazy.”

“Maybe it's boys, like my dad and his friends used to do to my mother and Tara.”

“Do you think?” Eliza asked, breathless. “I hope so. No—it's someone else, Annie. Real people, not imaginary trolls. We've got to run back to your house. Oh, God . . .”

“Can we make it?” Annie asked, frozen with terror as she heard someone whisper. The voice was very soft, and she tried to make out words, but they got lost in the sea wind and the sound of her own heart beating fast. Eliza squeezed her hand tight, starting to tug her back toward the path.

But just then a voice got louder—it seemed to swing around, come from the cove. Were they surrounded? Almost blind with terror, Annie gasped.

“Did you hear that?” she asked Eliza.

“Look—” Eliza said, hopefully, pointing overhead as a V of migrating geese flew across the sky, honking loudly.

Annie stood still, her heart racing, wanting to believe that they had made the noises she had heard. But after the geese were gone, and the beach was again silent, she knew that coming here was a bad idea.

“Come on, Eliza,” she said firmly, grabbing her hand, “Let's go home.”

Eliza didn't argue. As if she felt the same fear, she ran ahead down the dark path, toward home.

23

W
ITH RAIN SOAKING THE SHORELINE EVERY DAY
for a week, Bay took advantage of the softened earth to transplant some plants and bushes at Firefly Hill. The rain pelted down as she dug up clumps of stonecrop to place in front of a huge stand of black-eyed Susans, to hide the bare lower stems, and she transplanted sweet williams to a border that needed more color. Because Augusta loved herbs, Bay focused on the concentric circles of mint and sage, cutting back the tallest plants to ensure they made it through the winter.

High winds had brought down the leaves, and Bay raked them into great piles for Augusta's lawn service to pick up. Every day her hands felt rougher, more callused. She had blisters on her palms from gripping the wooden handles of her gardening tools, and her feet were raw from being wet inside her rubber boots.

One afternoon, just before Halloween, she hauled the frame lights out from summer storage in the shed behind Augusta's house. Head down into the driving rain, she fought the wind as she tried to cover several Cyrethea bushes.

“Need some help?”

Glancing up, feeling the wind trying to twist the frames from her grasp, she saw Dan coming across the backyard. Shocked but happily surprised, she shouted over the wind, “Sure! Can you tie that side to those stakes?”

He lashed the simple pine frame to the iron peg she'd already pounded into the wet ground. Bay did the same to her side, remembering how her grandmother had always said the roots of Cyrethea bushes needed to be protected from winter wet.

“How did you find me?” she shouted above the wind.

“Billy told me you were working,” he shouted back.

“And you came by just to help me?”

“I came to take you out to dinner.”

“What?”

“Come on, Galway. Dry off—you're having a burger with me.”

“The kids—”

“Annie and Eliza are making pizza for Billy and Pegeen. There's really no excuse—you're not getting out of this, okay?”

Her hands were numb from the cold, her face was stinging from the rain, her clothes were soaked through, and she tingled all over with the excitement of seeing him. “Okay,” she said.

She dropped her car at home, and made sure all the kids were fine—they barely spoke to her, busily decorating their pizzas to look like jack-o'-lanterns—and changed into dry jeans.

Dan drove her to the Crawford Inn in Hawthorne, an old tavern that had been in business since before the Revolutionary War. White-shingled with green shutters and a long front porch, it had seven chimneys and a sleigh out front. Legend had it that General John Samuel Johnson had used the sleigh to sneak past the British one Christmas Eve, on his way to deliver gifts to his betrothed, Diana Field Atwood, across the iced-over river in Black Hall.

“Do you believe that story?” Bay asked, sitting across from Dan by a roaring fire, the heat in her face coming more from his closeness than the flames. “About the general and his true love?”

“Sure I do,” Dan said. “Don't you?”

Bay sipped her beer, watching the piano and banjo players getting ready.

“I used to,” she said. “When I was young. Back when I believed people did things like that—crossed rivers for love.”

“You don't anymore?”

She shook her head slowly.

“I loved being married,” she said. “At first. I thought it was so amazing. Your best friend under the same roof, always there if you wanted to tell them a good story or joke, or if you needed your back scratched . . . or if you were scared of the dark . . .”

“Going through life together,” Dan said.

“Having kids—didn't that seem outrageous? You were this little unit, just the two of you, and suddenly there were three?”

“And she looked like the best of her mother . . .” Dan said.

“And her father,” said Bay, remembering how Annie had had Sean's twinkle in her eyes.

“And you were more in love with each other,” Dan said, “because of this mysterious addition. It's like, instead of having to spread your love out more, it was actually more concentrated—for each other.”

“Yes,” Bay said, so eager to hear more, because Dan got it exactly; he was summing up her life.

“It must have been even more intense for you,” Dan said. “Because after Annie, you had two more.”

Bay nodded; some of the fizz went out of her chest, and she had another sip of beer. “Sean loved having a son,” she said. “He really wanted a boy. I'd never tell Annie, but he'd wanted one right from the beginning. Did you?”

Dan shook his head. “I wanted Eliza. Just Eliza. Whatever she was would've been fine.”

“That's what my dad used to say,” Bay said. “My mother said he'd always get so mad if someone asked if he wished I'd been a boy. But
Sean . . .”

“Yes?”

“Sean was very happy to have Annie, even happier when Billy was born. He thought our family was perfect then—a girl and a boy. He wanted to stop.”

“But you had Pegeen.”

Bay nodded. She flexed her fingers. They had been so cold, they were just starting to get back to normal. “Yes, I had Pegeen. We weren't expecting her, and . . .”

Dan waited.

Bay couldn't bring herself to tell him that Sean hadn't wanted a third baby. He hadn't at all, and it had been the source of many fights, the turning point in their relationship: the minute it, literally, went from bad to worse.

“Sean was always very weight-conscious—for me, thank you very much! He thought the third pregnancy was . . . a mistake. That it might be ‘bad for my health.' ”

“Was it?” Dan asked.

Bay laughed. “No. I had lost the weight so easily after Annie, but it was really hard after Billy. You know, two kids, and Sean's career taking off at the bank, and, well, it was a lot harder to get out there and go swimming or running. And then I had Pegeen, and I gained more weight with her than with either of the other two. Did Charlie gain a lot with Eliza?”

“Sixty pounds, I think,” Dan said. “I kept giving her ice cream. She liked butternut ice cream.”

“It's easier to lose after the first one,” Bay said, repeating herself, remembering how terrible things had been after Pegeen's birth. How Sean had made her feel fat and ugly, how he had stopped wanting to make love to her. “I tried, though.”

“What difference does it make?” Dan asked. “It's all for the good of the baby, right? It comes off eventually. The point is, you had your family.”

Bay nodded. She finished her beer as the banjo began to play “When the Saints Come Marching In.” It was loud and raucous, and everyone in the tavern was singing along except for her and Dan. She really wanted to join in their spirit, but she was remembering that awful year after Pegeen was born.

“Her name,” Dan said, “is so pretty.”

Bay nodded, smiling now. “I played Pegeen in
Playboy of the Western World
in college. It's a wonderful play. Do you know it?”

Dan nodded. “Synge. Getting in touch with my Irish roots, I went to the Aran Isles once.”

“I remember,” Bay said. She'd been thrilled when he sent her a letter from there.

“Right after my summer at Hubbard's Point,” he continued, “I decided to travel for six months before getting down to real life. Have you ever been?”

“No,” Bay said. “I've always thought I'd like to go.”

“Why did you name your daughter after that character?” Dan asked. “As pretty a name as it is, why that one? And not Margaret, or Maggie, or another ‘Peg' type name?”

Bay didn't reply. The music got louder, more good-time and raucous. The waitress brought their food, and Dan ordered two more beers. The burgers were rare and delicious, and because the music was so loud, Bay just ate her food and didn't even try to talk. Neither did Dan. It was enough to be sitting there, together.

When the banjo player broke a string and had to replace it, Dan said, “The Aran Isles are in Galway Bay, you know.”

“They are?” Bay asked, her neck tingling.

“I spent most of my time on Inishmore,” Dan said. “Got the ferry from a dock in Galway town.”

“Was it beautiful there?”

“It reminded me of Hubbard's Point,” he said. “With a lot of rocks, and clear cold water, and pine and oak trees. Riding that ferry, I thought of the Connecticut shore. I thought of you.”

“Me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Because it was Galway Bay.”

Bay looked down at the table. It was highly varnished, glowing in the firelight. Her heart was beating fast, and suddenly she was afraid to look up. She gripped her hands in her lap, and she remembered how he had held her, shocked by how much she wanted it again.

“I've sometimes wondered whether that's the reason I went to Inishmore,” he said. “So I'd have the chance to sail through Galway Bay. With all the rest of Ireland to visit, and my relatives coming from Dublin and Kerry . . . I wanted you to have a letter from Ireland . . . from
that
part of Ireland.”

“You were pulled to the Aran Isles, by the ghost of John Millington Synge,” Bay said.

“Not because I wanted to visit your bay, Galway?”

She shook her head, her pulse racing.

“No,” she said. “Synge persuaded you.”

“Did he persuade you to name your youngest child ‘Pegeen'?”

Suddenly Bay felt hot, light-headed. The fire was too strong, or they were sitting too close. The music was too loud, the crowd too boisterous. She wanted to get some air, and Dan knew. He called for the check, put cash down on the table. The band struck up “Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” as Bay and Dan left the room.

“What's wrong?” Dan asked, walking her to his truck.

Emotion filled her chest. She and Sean had gone to the Crawford Tavern all the time when they were young. They had loved the music and beer, the free popcorn, the sleigh outside. Once, Sean had pulled her into the sleigh, pulled his coat over both of them, and kissed her passionately while people walked up and down Hawthorne's Main Street.

“I don't believe that sleigh crossed any frozen river,” she said suddenly as they walked past. “I don't believe it's even very old, or that there was any great love affair between General Johnson and Diana whatever-her-name-was.”

“You don't?”

“No. I don't believe anyone ever loved someone that much—to take the risk of going right past the enemy camp just to deliver Christmas presents.”

Dan was silent. He opened his truck door and let her in. She watched him come around the truck, and she shivered in the damp cold. Rain slicked the streets, and fallen wet leaves blew down the curb.

“He did,” Dan said quietly, starting up his truck.

“How do you know?”

“Because Diana whatever-her-name-was was Eliza's great-great-grandmother,” Dan said. “And their child, the first Eliza, married the first Obadiah Day.”

“Really? Charlie came from that kind of family?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “As blueblood as you can get.”

“And the story is true? The general risked his life to bring her a Christmas present?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “A silver cup, made by one of the top silversmiths in New England. A man by the name of Paul Revere. Commissioned just for her.”

“What happened to the cup?” Bay asked.

“It belongs to Eliza,” Dan said. “It should be in a museum, and I keep thinking we should donate it to one.”

“I can't believe it's true,” Bay whispered. Her heart felt so precarious, as if she was standing right at the edge of a very steep cliff and with one false move she might fall off. She looked away from Danny, pressing her forehead against the cold glass. If love like that between the general and the first Eliza was possible, what had happened to her and Sean?

“Tell me about Pegeen's name,” Danny said, and suddenly she felt him take her hand, hold it from across the seat.

“It's Irish,” she whispered.

“It means something to you,” he said. “Annie and Billy—Anne and William. Those names are good and strong, but they're one way, and Pegeen is another. Tell me, Bay.”

“It was because of how I felt inside,” she said, needing that cold glass against her skin, just to keep her grounded and still, to keep her from flying apart. “Everything had changed with Sean after I got pregnant that third time and I needed a powerful name for my new baby. . . . Billy was born . . . he had his son, and he loved him so much, but it was as if he didn't need me anymore.”

“But he did, he had to . . .”

Bay shook her head, still not looking at Danny. The memories were so deep and eviscerating.

“He stopped wanting me,” she said. “He needed me to mother the kids, but he didn't want me. He thought I was fat, boring, as if my only interests were milk and diapers. When he wanted to have fun he'd go looking for a friend. The guys at first, kids we'd grown up with, who had kids of their own. Sean would grab one of them, and they'd go out for a boat ride . . .”

“While you were pregnant?”

“Yes. I told myself it was because I was so huge. After the baby was born, I told myself I'd lose weight. I'd take it all off, get my body back to the way it used to be, never gain weight again. I'd see the way he'd turn away when I got undressed; how he wouldn't sleep near me in bed.” The details were so painfully intimate, but the rain thrummed on Dan's truck roof, and Bay couldn't have stopped the words if she'd wanted to. They needed to come out, and she let them.