A Week at the Shore Read online

  Besides, I do love driving, which is why I pay a huge monthly fee for my space. A car comes in handy when I’m photographing houses in Duchess County or Long Island, and on weekends, Joy and I take road trips to explore the art center in Cornwall, hike trails in Stony Brook, or kayak in Smithtown.

  Now we’re driving to Rhode Island. Not my choice. Well, yes, my choice, because I am the ultimate chooser in our family of two. But between my conscience and my daughter, there wasn’t much choice at all. It’s been ten days since Jack Sabathian’s call, and while there hasn’t been a second, the first one haunts me.

  “Whoa,” says Joy when we reach the accident. Morbid curiosity keeps her turning to look back as we move ahead. Finally, flopping forward, she says, “I’m not driving. Ever.” In my periphery, I see her glance at her phone, and not for the first time. She must have texted a friend before we left and is awaiting a reply.

  If history serves, she’s in for a wait. Joy is on the fringe of the texting group, for which I’m thrilled, though she is not. She once told me about being in the lunchroom and sitting alone with her sunflower-butter sandwich because she couldn’t stand the smell of the crap the others were eating. I figure she told them that. Both the school counselor, who loves Joy’s spunk, and Chrissie, who is a psychologist, claim that Joy is mature for her age and that the others will catch up. I worry about the harm done until that happens. It’s about self-esteem.

  Deliberately, I relax my hands on the wheel, but still my heart bleeds. Every child needs a best friend at her back. I had my sisters, Margo the fearless and Anne the ray of sun. Joy is a lonely only, sitting by herself in a lunchroom full of kids. And now a silent phone? This is why I agreed to a week, rather than a weekend, at the beach. Rhode Island will be a diversion.

  We’re listening to Ed Sheeran now. She had thumbed him in before dropping her phone, and I know there’s defiance in her choice. I can’t wait to go home, he sings in “Castle on the Hill,” which has been her anthem since we decided on this trip. Little does she know that while I’m okay with that line, the ones that follow grip me more. I was younger then, take me back to when I found my heart and broke it here. But she hasn’t a clue.

  Greenwich falls behind us, then Stamford. As Vivaldi rises through the speakers, Joy’s fingers play the notes. “Do you remember this highway from growing up?” she asks.

  We’re approaching Darien. “I do.”

  “Going to New York.”

  “And Philadelphia. And Washington.”

  “All five of you?”

  “Uh-huh. My father believed that our education needed theater and museums and history, so we’d take ‘culture trips,’ he called them.” The memory opens. “We were packed in a Jeep Wagoneer. It had wood on the sides, a really pretty car. The three of us were in back, me in the middle so those two didn’t fight. We didn’t have movies to distract us.”

  “What about music?”

  “Nope. Dad said that was for a concert hall. So we’d play games, like I Spy, or looking for license plates from different states. Margo was always testing him, laughing or singing, and we’d be giggling, so he’d end up yelling at us anyway. Mom would tell him we weren’t doing any harm, so he’d yell at her. It went downhill from there.”

  Joy considers that as we pass a horse trailer with two tails hanging out the back. She turns to follow, looking for horse eyes through the narrow slats. “So those trips weren’t fun?”

  “Actually, they were,” I recall. “It was backseat against front, three of us against Dad.”

  She thinks about that to a quieter Brahms as we pass Norwalk. Then, sounding unsure, like she’s only now considering what we might find when we arrive in Bay Bluff, she says, “But being old and all, he’s mellowed, right?”

  “Anne says he has,” I grant, though, that wasn’t my takeaway from Jack’s call. If Dad is worse—if he’s irrational, or, God forbid, does have a gun—

  But those are ifs, and Anne has said no to them all. If I seriously thought Joy was in danger, we wouldn’t be headed to see the man now.

  “I’m starved,” she announces. The avocado wrap we’d shared before leaving, which would have spoiled if left behind in the fridge—has clearly worn off. “How much longer?”

  “Ninety minutes, give or take. I can stop—”

  “No. I want to wait. You said Bay Bluff has great places to eat.”

  “It does.” I’ve Googled it. Of course I have. My favorite eatery is still there. “Great fried clams.”

  “Fried is bad.”

  “This fried is good. Trust me, babe.”

  She doesn’t argue, mainly because she is checking her phone again, which she hides behind a show of changing the station. Her hand is quickly tapping the beat of Maroon 5 on her thigh.

  The rain has let up, but the sky remains thick. “So,” she invites, “what did Margo say?” When I’m silent, I feel her stare. “You didn’t call her?”

  “I decided not to. I didn’t want to argue with her. You want to go, and that’s that. Besides, it’s not like we’ll be there long.” One week. I’m booked for a job in the city the Saturday after this one.

  “She’ll be angry if she finds out. Won’t Anne tell her?”

  I hesitate several seconds too long.

  “Oh, no, Mom. You didn’t tell her either? We agreed that you’d call.”

  “I made an executive decision not to,” I say in my most executive tone. “If she knows we’re coming, she’ll rush to fix the house or search for a gun. If we really want to know what’s happening there, we have to surprise her.” Besides, once I called her, I would be committed. But right up until the minute we left, I wanted the option of changing my mind—which I’ve done a dozen times in the last few days. It’s about those memories.

  And here comes another, triggered by nothing more than a sign to Westport. Mom wanted to stop there. When Dad refused, they argued. After Elizabeth’s disappearance, when their marriage crumbled, we realized that he’d had a lover there.

  Disconcerted by how quickly the angst returns, I focus on the music—Sheeran again, “Perfect” this time. I tell Joy about a friend who lived in Fairfield, an innocent enough memory. But by the time we pass Bridgeport, I’m back on the Aldiss family road trip. This time it’s my needing a bathroom and Daddy refusing to stop. Then, as we approach New Haven, I remember being rejected from Yale and Daddy blaming it on my portfolio, since, he claimed, photography wasn’t “real art.” Coming up on New London, where I did go to college, I remember the stomach cramps I used to have heading home for vacation. I’m not feeling full-out cramps now, just small knots of apprehension.

  Another hunger complaint comes from Joy as we pass Mystic. It’s after two, and I would have been hungry myself had it not been for those knots, but when I offer to stop, she says, “It’s only twenty minutes more, Mom,” like I was the one who had complained, like I’d been complaining for the last hour. Hunger is her version of Are we there yet?

  We are closing in. Leaving I-95, we’re on Route 234, a.k.a. Pequot Trail, which is a name I used to love, though now it brings us closer to the last place I want to be. Pawcatuck slows us down, same old for a Friday afternoon in June, but too soon we cross into Rhode Island, pass under the railroad bridge, and find ourselves in downtown Westerly.

  Turn back! cries my scared little self. But it’s too late. Way too late.

  Muscle memory takes over then, well, of a sort. I know these roads like the back of my hand; know which ones to take to skirt the worst of the downtown traffic and, after that, which ones lead to the sea. Little has changed in the years I’ve been gone, a fact that eases me in an odd kind of way. I see the same modest houses, the same gas station and hair salon. What used to be a strip mall has become a shopping center with a supermarket, a CVS, and Urgent Care, but the languor of seaside New England remains.

  Joy turns off the radio and watches it all with the same awe she might show the Grand Canyon, which amuses me. This is no Grand Canyon. We a
re in understated Yankee territory here, a stiff backbone in the most unassuming of homes. Wood siding is uniformly on a gray scale, green lawns are neatly mowed, and while the occasional shrub patch has been left wild by a mutinous owner, the rest are neatly trimmed. Even the ancient maples and oaks, whose Puritanical primness hides motel cottages from prying eyes, are limbed with lavish green leaves in a way that suggests Old World wealth.

  We pass a small independent pharmacy, a florist with purple petunias cascading from hooks on the porch, a cemetery stretching so far that my sisters and I always believed strangers came here from miles away just to be buried near the sea. I’m thinking that it’s really very sweet—when we hit the BAY BLUFF ANIMAL HOSPITAL, and my qualms return. There are no names on the signpost, no John Sabathian DVM or some such. But it has to be his, doesn’t it? How many vets are there in a small shore town?

  This is the first visible reminder of what I’m walking into, and it shatters my poise. I dread being here, but feel guilt at not having come sooner. I’m afraid of what I’ll find when I get to the house, but feel an overriding responsibility for whatever it is. I’m having second thoughts about surprising Anne and not calling Margo. And seeing my father? That’s the worst. My relationship with him has always been iffy. And now? He may be angry to see me, or pleased that I’ve come. He may not recognize me at all.

  Deep down, though, driving along these streets, I feel a touch of excitement. For all the emotional baggage this place brings, I loved it once. The Rhode Island shore and I have a past, and it isn’t all bad.

  Take Gendy Scoops, I realize, smiling when I see the rambling white house with sea green awnings. “Gendy was an old lady,” I tell Joy, “but this looks rehabbed. Her kids must run it now. Or their kids. Summers, we hung out here.”

  “Not in Bay Bluff?”

  “Bay Bluff didn’t have an ice cream shop. Besides, everyone knew everyone in Bay Bluff, so if we didn’t want spies reporting to our parents, we came here.”

  The bikes out front now have thick tires that make the ride over back roads easier. There are cars, too, and people eating ice cream under huge umbrellas that match the sea green of the awnings. The sky is a blanket of clouds with the occasional spot of blue, but the pavement is dry. Joy was right about that.

  The final approach is lush with the rich green of oaks, the blue of hydrangeas that thrive in sea air, the fountains of ornamental grass that had become a landscaping mainstay. We pass the same three-way intersection that I remember, the same signs for Misquamicut and Watch Hill. Another several minutes in, and the houses start swelling in size.

  “Crazy,” Joy murmurs when we pass a particularly grand one.

  “That was there before, but the next one’s new.” I point ahead. “And that one.” These are expensive homes, with expensive cars parked in expensive circular drives. No overgrown shrubs here. All is as pruned as the salty air allows.

  Bay Bluff is its own little peninsula halfway between Misquamicut and Watch Hill. A small, weatherworn sign with an arrow marks the turnoff, so that if you don’t know to look for it, you miss it. We used to joke that the arrow was flipping the bird to anyone who hadn’t been invited to town, but now I wonder if I’m welcome here myself. Is home always home? Why, then, does my mind see ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK in that arrow?

  Tucking the warning away, I drive on past banks of mailboxes at dirt driveways that burrow off into the trees. Once the road has angled along the peninsula, we pass homes I remember—the Mahoneys, the Santangelos, the Wrights, all still here in some generational form, to judge from the names on mailboxes. These houses have been updated with gables, turrets, and glass, and, to a one, their cedar shakes are weathered a deliberately stylish gray.

  “Beach,” Joy cries when houses give way to diagonal parking, not quite filled but almost, and beyond that sand and surf. “Put down your window,” she orders, straining against her seat belt to see out my side.

  Slowing, I do it as much for her as for me, and the warm salt air billows in, as if it was just waiting for the invite. No matter how much beach air I’ve breathed in the last twenty years, this is different. It smells of time and fish and a gazillion grains of sand that have washed through kelp, cradled crustaceans, or human toes. And still, it fills me with an odd … purity. How to explain?

  Rather than try, I leave my window down. The tide is out, reducing the thunder of surf to a tuneful roll as the waves spill like dominoes down the shore. We pass a grove of stunted trees and shrubs, and while the green is dulled here, wild beach roses more than compensate.

  Then those are gone, too, and we reach the square, which is as close to a center of town as Bay Bluff can claim. Slowing down, I’m impressed in spite of myself. When I left, only a handful of shops skirted a central patch of scruffy grass, but there are more than a dozen shops now, and the patch of grass has become a deck of pebbles hosting a large bench, whiskey barrels filled with blood-orange lantana, and a pair of gaslights. When I left, the shops had a freestanding feel, but the square’s corners are now pergolas to the sea, and the gaps between shops have been filled. Awnings and signage are of a style. Sidewalks have been widened for picnic tables outside eateries—and those? I can’t see details from the car, and with another car behind me I have to keep rolling, but there are three separate clusters of tables, all comfortably filled this mid-afternoon.

  For a place that supposedly doesn’t give a fig whether people come or not, it’s an inviting little secret. Actually, not so much a secret, to judge from the flock of visitors milling in a splash of T-shirts and shorts, flip-flops and hats.

  Feeling an inkling of pride, I ask Joy, “What do you think?”

  “I need food,” she declares, which translates into Stop here, stop now, and even though the voice of wisdom says we should go to the house first, I’ve been promising Joy we’d have lunch.

  So I park in the lot just beyond the square—once dirt, now neat gravel—pull my ponytail through a ball cap and slip on large sunglasses. By the time I’ve grabbed my camera, Joy is at my door, brows raised. “Seriously, Mom? Sunglasses?”

  “For the glare,” I say and climb out.

  Glare? she might have echoed and added another seriously? Instead, humoring me, she reaches back into the car to snatch her own sunglasses from the console. They are identical to mine. We bought them last February in Jamaica, and while large and round is more her look than mine, they happen to offer the right amount of shade.

  That quickly, she is gone off to explore. I close the door and, for an instant, leaving New York in the car, I can’t move. I’m hit by an unexpected moment, the balmy scent of my childhood is that strong around me. No, it isn’t the same at other beaches, and purity is a dodge. What’s different here is memory, which hugs me with myriad arms before I can think to raise my guard. Held in its grip, I remember the ripeness of sea-soaked bathing suits, the smell of fresh fish at the docks, the sweetness of full bellies in a delicate crust—and above it, the screech of gulls, the slap of a screen door, and always, muted or clear, the roll of the waves.

  From the parking lot, I can’t see those waves over a string of dunes. But I do see things to save. Flipping the glasses to my head and the camera to my eye, I photograph the blur-of-color Joy makes as she strides past the Clam Shack’s weathered-gray siding. Distracted by that siding, I close in on its texture, then back away again to shoot shadows that sharpen as a cloud gives way to blue. Lowering the camera, I replace the shades, but as soon as I round the corner, there’s more photo bait. Glasses up, camera to eye, I take pictures of a family of four in blue BAY BLUFF T-shirts, newly bought, folds still fresh. I zoom in for close-ups of the town name, momentarily an ironic Bay Buff when the teenage boy wearing it reaches to scratch his back. Shifting focus, I spot three dogs sitting like a trio of old men on the bench in the center of the square.

  Dogs are safer than seeing people I recognize, although there haven’t been any of the latter yet. There will be. That was the danger of stopping he
re first and the wisdom of ball cap, glasses, and camera. I haven’t changed much in twenty years. I still wear my hair long, it’s still light brown, and the ends still frizz in ocean air. I’m still five-six, still 125 pounds—okay, before breakfast and naked, but my point stands. Twenty years isn’t that long a time.

  Uh-oh, and yup, there’s the first. Deana Smith is a descendant of the granite quarrying Smiths whose historic importance is Westerly lore. Classmates like me added envy to the lore; Deanna had such a handle on guys, grades, and looks that it wasn’t fair. My camera follows her down the sidewalk until she disappears under the SMITH REAL ESTATE sign, which explains her skirt and blouse, formal for Bay Bluff, but make sense if she’s a realtor. Likewise, Deana herself. She was the kind of outgoing that would make for a successful broker—knew everyone and everything, and would definitely recognize me. If she does, she’ll tell whomever she meets, which won’t be good.

  But she hasn’t seen me. I’m under a ball cap and behind camera and glasses, am I not?

  Not chancing that she might look out her front window and find a camera aimed her way, I quickly shift focus all the way to the corner, where—whoa—a camera is focused on me. I don’t move. Turning and running would be a sure sign of guilt. Besides, do I actually know whether this guy, who is tall and narrow in loose shorts and a baggy tee, is looking at me, rather than at the parking lot behind me? Does he actually know that I’m focused on him rather than on the periwinkle-covered pergola or the ocean beyond?

  I squeeze the shutter release. When he continues to keep his camera aimed at me, it becomes a contest. I’m not quite sure where my defiance is from, but I feel something proprietary for Bay Bluff. This is my town. He is the outsider.

  Zooming in, I take another shot. Then, lowering my camera, I simply stare at him. I’m afraid he took a picture of that, too.

  I’m used to people taking pictures of people. What better place for street photography than New York, where faces are nameless and diverse? The same can’t be said for Bay Bluff. I’m starting to wonder about that when he lowers his camera and studies the screen on the back. He looks to be barely thirty, which makes him younger than me, but no way is he thinking MILF thoughts. I don’t radiate sexuality. Never have.