A Week at the Shore Read online

  “I mean in New York. After my father showed up at your house. Why did you call me and not Margo or Anne?”

  “Because you’re the only one in the family with brains.”

  “That’s not true.” Margo is the intellect of the family, and Anne is running a successful restaurant.

  “The only one with common sense.”

  “They have it.”

  “Not when it comes to your parents.”

  “And I do?” I make a guttural sound. “That’s rich.” When it comes to my parents, I’m raw emotion in an airtight jar.

  “Well, you’re the only one I trust,” he states in the deep voice that I’d loved once.

  And okay. Yes. Maybe that’s what I need to hear. Maybe I need to know that a little of the past remains for him, too. If I say it, of course, he may deny it, or start in on my father again. So I just nod and lower my arms around my legs, folding my body in two.

  “Cold?” he asks.

  I shake my head, and focus on the waves. Their rhythm is a lullaby—sweet, soothing, elementary—that takes me back in the best of ways. And I’m definitely back there when I feel Jack’s foot brush mine, warmth in the night chill as he shifts his legs. Was it accident or intention? I don’t know. But I don’t move, barely breathe. That one glancing touch brings so many memories that I’m momentarily engulfed.

  “Your father knows.”

  Pop. The bubble bursts. Convinced that I imagined his touch, I turn my head so that my cheek rests on my thigh. His face is in profile—the nose that is too sharp for beauty but so reflects his manner as to be laughable—his bearded jaw, chin, and upper lip—the protrusion of his brow that tells of a frown.

  He turns to me, fully rational and in control. “He knows what happened that night. If we assume my mother’s dead, he’s the only witness left. That’s another reason I called you. He’s losing it. Someone needs to get the truth out of him before it’s gone.”

  So. His major concern when he called me in New York wasn’t the gun. The gun was an excuse. His worry is that the way things are going, my father’s mind will shrivel up and crush everything inside, just take it right away. He’s thinking Alzheimer’s, too, I know he is. And I want to discuss this with him. But we’re already in agreement here. He wants answers about his mother; I want answers about mine.

  I try to think how to approach my father. “It’s a sensitive topic.”

  “It needs to be done.”

  “Anne is protective.”

  “Anne is overprotective.”

  Which means I need to work directly with Dad. “He puts up a wall when I’m around. I’m walking on eggshells.”

  “It’s just asking questions.”

  “He doesn’t like questions, especially intrusive ones.”

  “Would you rather he take it all to the grave?”

  “Of course not.” I want to know whether my father loved my mother, whether he loved me, and if not, why not, and he’s the only one who can say. “I just have to figure out the best way to do it.”

  “Time’s running out,” Jack warns.

  “I know.”

  “So do it. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  It isn’t why I’ve come. I’ve come for Joy. At least, that was the premise. But seeing Dad again, seeing this place, even being here on the beach where so many watershed moments occurred, I feel a deeper calling. Yes, it’s about retrieving the past.

  “Mallory,” he says in the forceful way he always had.

  “I will.”

  * * *

  I want to say I am resolved to act, but all I can think of as I walk back to the house is that confronting my father won’t be fun. I remind myself that I’m an adult now, a mother, and a professional. When it comes to this man, though, I’m still a child. And suddenly into that childhood moment comes a memory. It’s a recurring dream that I put behind me when I left Bay Bluff and haven’t allowed in for years. In it, my mother goes off somewhere, leaving us three alone with Dad, who keeps doubling his normal size. Margo and Anne don’t seem to see it, despite my yelling and pointing and jumping up and down. They’re not afraid. But I am. I don’t want my father to see me and attack. So I make myself invisible by becoming a butterfly—no, an ant—no, an owl, emerging only at night when everyone else is asleep.

  Coming so soon after thinking myself an owl, I’m wide-awake when I reach the house. Anne’s car is back, but since she isn’t downstairs, I assume she’s in bed. I’m sorry for that. I would have liked to ease the awkwardness between us. We used to talk after dates. Not that I’ve been on a date. But she had. A date? A party? A sleeping-with sans sleep? Whatever, I want to know more about Billy Houseman.

  Resigned for now to failure in that, I take my laptop from the kitchen and turn on a small lamp in the living room. After moving just enough books aside so that I can curl into a corner of the sofa, I pull up Margo’s latest column. She typically writes about family issues in response to correspondence from readers. Too often to be coincidental, I see our family in her words.

  This one is a case in point. It is a poignant piece about the prospect of Father’s Day when one has no father to toast, and while the focus is on fathers who have died, I can easily guess she’s thinking of us. She talks about sadness, about the emptiness of the chair at the head of the table and the clothes gathering dust in the closet. She talks about celebrating the man a father once was and doing something to make him proud. Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept, she advises—and at first read, it sounds preposterous. A dead person is dead, right? When she launches into honoring memories by living the best of who that person was, though, I see where she’s headed. She isn’t thinking of Dad. She’s thinking of Mom. Having been to Margo’s house multiple times, I’ve seen how she keeps fresh peonies, year round, in a clear vase on her kitchen island. Mom did that, though where either of them found peonies in the middle of winter was anyone’s guess.

  I’m not there yet with regard to Mom. With regard to Dad, though? Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept.

  I cannot accept that I’ll never know the truths I seek. And while my solution is less honorable than Margo’s, she isn’t here, is she? That means I can avoid confrontation by becoming a snoop.

  * * *

  When I wake up Saturday morning, Joy is gone. A note lies on the pillow. Taking Papa down the hill for breakfast. Come when you wake up.

  I will. First, though, I’m hunting for a gun.

  Chapter 8

  Feeling like a thief, I work quickly and with an ear out for anyone who might return. Since Dad spends most of his time in the living room, that’s where I start. But there’s no gun under a cushion, behind a book, or in a drawer. I blouse out the floor-to-ceiling drapes, hung so long ago by Mom, and find traces of dust that the vacuum missed but no gun, not even cleverly tucked into a wide hem. At the front hall closet, I grope through hats, scarves, and gloves above, in coat pockets and sleeves mid-level, and rubbers and boots below. The dining room, too, is a bust; neither the silver drawer nor any of the linen drawers hold a gun. I’m checking the last of my mother’s decorative vases when my phone vibrates.

  Seeing Chrissie’s name, I feel an immediate lift. Chrissie Perez is one of those friends who doesn’t go ultra-far back in my life but whose friendship goes deep. We met seven years ago, sweating on adjacent stair climbers at the gym, and just … clicked. In the years since, Joy and I have been to her place for more Sunday brunches than I can count. Chrissie, her husband, and her three-year-old son are as close to family as we get in New York.

  “Chrissie,” I breathe in relief.

  “Just wondering how you’re doing.”

  “Funny you should ask,” I sing, tucking the phone between my shoulder and ear. “As we speak, I’m looking for a gun.”

  “The gun?”

  “Yup. Our dining room always had a slew of vases. None are transparent, which makes them plausible hiding places. My mother
used to fill every one with flowers from the garden.” I peer into a trio of squat ones, all empty. “When there were no flowers, it would be greens, and when there were no greens, it would be sticks. Even the sticks were stunning. They were in the tallest vases.” Plunging my arm into one of those tall ones, I sweep my fingers around its hollow base. “She was an artist.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “She said she wasn’t, which is why I got her camera equipment. And after that there was the whole accounting thing, which was practical and methodical and worked so well for her that I forgot about the flowers.” Retrieving my hand from the last vase, I look around. “There’s no gun in this room. Lots of memories”—for which I have no time, so I head for the kitchen—“but no gun.”

  “What about the kitchen?” Chrissie asks. We do think alike. “Lots of places to hide something there.”

  “Too many,” I decide, casting a discouraged look around. “I don’t have long, and there are too many cabinets and drawers to check quickly. Besides, between Anne and the housekeeper, would he risk hiding anything here?”

  “What about his bedroom? That would be the obvious place.”

  “Yes,” I say, holding the phone to my ear as I zip up the stairs. Halfway down the hall, though, I stop. “I can’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s his room.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “No. It’s his room. The judge’s room. Searching there would be a violation.”

  “Mal. He’s your dad. And you’re looking for a murder weapon.”

  “Potential,” I correct and, resolved, start forward, only to stop after a step. “If I find the gun elsewhere, I won’t have to search his room at all. And besides, isn’t the attic a more likely place to hide a gun? He was up there yesterday. He probably goes there a lot. Reading Lawyer’s Diaries could be his cover.”

  Still with the phone to my ear, I enter the guest room and pull down the hatch. The stuffiness hits me when I’m barely halfway up the ladder, and this is familiar. Memorial Day to Labor Day, the attic absorbed enough daytime sun to retain heat through the night.

  “You okay?” Chrissie asks softly.

  I sigh. “Just remembering.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “No,” I say, then, “Yes.” I could tell her about my father mistaking Joy for Margo, about Anne’s annoyance with me, about seeing Jack Sabathian. Chrissie would be able to place it all, I’ve told her that much. She’s a good listener. So am I, which is why I know about the growing pains in her marriage, her struggle to have a baby, and her mother’s resistance to her biracial husband and child. We give mutual therapy, Chrissie and I.

  But the attic is mine. I need both hands and speakerphone won’t do. “Can we talk another time?” I ask.

  “Of course. I’m here.”

  “Dante and Kian good?”

  “We’re good. Call whenever.”

  “Thanks, Chrissie.”

  After pocketing the phone, I gather the books from yesterday and return them to the shelving that holds the others. They fit neatly into their slots—1996, 1997, 1998. And yes, I wonder why he was looking at those. Of course, I wonder. But there’s so much else here, too. Standing back, I study the collection as a whole. It’s an impressive one, spanning forty years. Some lawyers would burn outdated diaries after a time. Not Dad. He kept every one.

  Where to start? Well, here is 2000, looking no different from the others—same faded blue leather, same worn spine. This was the year Elizabeth disappeared. I wonder if he mentions it inside, if he gives a clue to something he hasn’t shared with the world. Slipping the book from its slot, I weigh the spine in my palm. I’m breaking a rule. But the cause justifies the means, right?

  Quick, before I lose my nerve, I open to the center pages, where summer would be. The entries are sparse, but I remind myself that this makes sense. He was a judge by this time, so there would be none of the notes about client meetings or the billing records he kept in private practice. The notes of a judge relate to cases being heard, motions to read and rule on, meetings with lawyers in chambers. But this was summer. Big cases weren’t tried in the summer. Everyone—jurors, judges, clerks—resented being confined. A skeletal staff remained, and Dad was often on call.

  But he was also home a lot. And that was a slippery slope. It would begin with us out of school and Dad planted on the porch reading a law journal, a newly-submitted brief, or the biography of one historical figure or another. Occasionally he joined us on the beach and actually seemed to enjoy it. He taught me how to swim. I do remember that, rather a tough-love kind of throw-her-into-the-water experience, but he did the same with my sisters, and he did reward us with smiles when we got it right. He had us picking up surf clams. He led us to hidden rocks where blue mussels clung, and set us to harvesting enough for dinner. He taught us to recognize the color of a rip tide and how to swim at an angle to escape it—taught us the difference between a rip current and the less dangerous undertow. And he was animated, totally into what he said.

  These memories are good ones. I can complain all I want about his authoritarianism, but we did have fun. Because he liked doing these things. This explained why we lived at the shore. Tom Aldiss had grown up vacationing on Cape Cod and had dreamed of becoming successful enough to buy a shore place himself, which he had. He took pride in our house. And the boat? His escape. Rarely did a day pass when he wasn’t out on the ocean. Fog, wind, rough surf—he handled it all with the skill of a man who had learned as a boy.

  Those summer days, he took us on boat trips, and on road trips like the ones I described to Joy. I remember Mom cooking chili, which he loved, using tomatoes from the garden—actually from the greenhouse nook of the potting shed, which was as much hers as the boat was his. He loved grilled steak, so she grilled steak. And made clam chowder from the clams we gathered. And boiled lobster.

  These memories, too, are good. Sure, we chafed in the backseat of the car, and quickly learned that if we didn’t have a destination, spending hours on the boat while Dad stood tall at the helm with his ball cap clipped to his collar so that it wouldn’t blow into the sea, was boring as hell. Still, when he was happy, we were happy. Even Mom. She didn’t have to make clam chowder from scratch, when she could as easily have bought homemade in town. But she did it for him. That was proof of love. Wasn’t it?

  Then Dad grew antsy. At its onset, he would walk around with his hands in his pockets, never quite able to settle down. When it worsened, he would find fault with Monopoly, shout snide answers to Trivial Pursuit from across the room, pontificate on the superiority of William Faulkner to whatever we were reading, and if we were on the beach doing nothing at all, he would complain about that.

  Margo likened him to a caged bear. I remember that image clear as day. I didn’t entirely agree with it—even at his worst, Dad was more disciplined than a bear. I did agree, though, that he seemed to dislike his life.

  Not that he would write about that in a Lawyer’s Diary. The page of Aldiss-MacKay is blank, as is the entire week that followed. On the pages for the week after that, his sprawling script refers to a national meeting of judges—Dallas, it says, though I don’t see any sign that he actually went.

  The investigation was in full swing by that time, and with his being on top of the detectives and the detectives being on top of him and the local press watching it all, he hadn’t gone far. But I see no reference to any of that. It’s like he saw this diary as his legacy, and didn’t want it tainted by even the slightest untoward scrawl.

  Did that make him guilty of a crime? Of course not. Closing the diary, I return it to its slot and glance at the ones he’d been holding when he fell. Those may tell more. But more of what? I don’t know what I’m looking for, which makes the search absurd.

  Whatever, there is no gun in these books. Determined, I quickly search behind other bookshelves and between stacks of files. I run a palm over brown folders with the label of Dad�
�s law firm on the front, but all is smooth and flat. I feel through Dad’s old suits, hanging on a metal rack, but find nothing resembling a gun in any pocket.

  There are other boxes. Mom was organized. She used to label cartons for us to fill—ANNE’S SCHOOL PAPERS, MALLORY’S PHOTOGRAPHS—and though Margo took her own things when she left, ours remain.

  The stuffiness is starting to get to me. I’m also thinking I ought to head into town. But how to resist MALLORY’S PHOTOGRAPHS? Just for a second?

  Pulling the top flap free of the opposite corner under which it’s wedged, I pull it open. The faintly vinegar-y smell takes me right back. It’s from the fixer I used to print pictures, lodged as deeply in my memory as in these prints. When I used a darkroom, in those days before digital, my hands chronically carried this smell.

  The carton is packed with photos. The top one is of the ocean, yet another view at another time, this one with the golden light of the sun gilding the scalloped waves, or so my mind’s eye sees in this black-and-white shot. There are others of the beach—a spiral whelk, a knot of seaweed, a piece of sea glass. Shots of Jack are tucked in at the side, and while I sift through the others, I leave him be for now.

  A camera is the keeper of memories, Mom used to say. And there she is, smiling at me as she flips burgers on the back porch. She loves me there. I know she does. For that alone, my eyes cling to her face. Joy resembles her so much that it’s frightening. No. It’s wondrous. But the issue of resemblance passes quickly, because this is my mother’s face. Sure, I have shots of her taken in the years after we left. I’m a photographer, for goodness sake. But a shot of Mom at Margo’s place in Chicago or mine in New York isn’t the same as one from my growing up years in Bay Bluff. That face is the one I remember. I haven’t seen it in twenty years. Back here now in Bay Bluff for the first time, I miss her more than ever.

  I don’t recall the moment when I took that picture, don’t recall whether Dad was around or not. He used to wave my camera away, like it was a beach fly, so I’m guessing he was off somewhere else when this picture was shot.