Axis of Aaron (2 page)

“I’m definitely looking forward to the quiet,” he said.

Captain Jack nodded, apparently satisfied, then turned back to the wheel.

The boat was buzzing along at what was probably top speed, but they were far enough out that the shoreline passed slowly. As they moved farther north, clusters of cottages appeared looking like small dock-connected cities. Ebon wondered how they’d survived. In especially cold winters, ice sometimes crept up as high as the rocks past the beach. He seemed to remember his grandfather calling the dock cottages “touristy bullshit” and railing against the local taxes that went into their maintenance, essentially giving the people who owned them free repair. But although Ebon had heard all of the railing and ranting, he’d been a kid back then. And Pappy no longer had to worry; he and Grams had moved back across the bay to a spot on the mainland that was easier for their aging hands to maintain.
 

“Is that Fortford Circle right there?” Ebon pointed to where he thought he could make out some familiar buildings, but he barely remembered the home that he’d gone to once with Aimee’s friends. He hadn’t held onto that particular memory very tightly. He’d always liked it best when it was just him and Aimee, no hangers-on in tow.
 

“Ayuh, I think so.”
 

“And that’s Dick’s Marina.”
 

“Used to be,” the captain said. “I guess you
do
go back.”
 

“‘Go back?’”
 

“Dick’s hasn’t been open since maybe ’98 or ’99.”
 

Ebon nodded, thinking. Yes, he seemed to remember that. Dick’s Marina held no real significance to Ebon other than being an island feature, not unlike Redding Dock or Hobart Bridge. It had gone out of business before his final summer, but Ebon kept forgetting that, as if it had actually mattered.

He continued to scan, now feeling that something was, contrary to first impressions, different. He couldn’t put his finger on it. And then he did.
 

“Shouldn’t Aaron’s Party be around here?”
 

“The Party?” Captain Jack laughed. “Fella, they tore that place apart
years
ago. Guess it really has been a while for you.”
 

Ebon looked toward the out-jut of land ahead, now feeling strangely empty. If he remembered his geography correctly, Pinky Slip was nestled in the dish-shaped section of shoreline beyond, around a rocky outcropping. They’d dock before reaching the second out-jut that once housed the shoreline carnival and its giant Ferris wheel, but seeing even the first outcropping now, knowing the absence that was ahead, made his heart ache. Of all the island’s many mental anchor points, Aaron’s Party was heaviest for Ebon. He’d left Aaron for the final time still a virgin, but in a very real way he’d become a man on that spot — at the top of the big red wheel bedazzled in lights. The idea of its being gone hurt, as if someone had reached into his past and cut something out with a blade.

“When did they take it apart?” But that wasn’t the real question in his head, so he quickly added, “And
why?”
 

“Not sure on exactly when, but as to why? Wasn’t no percentage in it, I imagine. Downside of being where it was — on Aaron, I mean. Hotels don’t want to build without the traffic, and that’s good for the people who like it small and intimate. But no traffic means not so many tourists either.”
 

“But it was always packed!” As the boat steered around the point and began to enter the bay, Ebon found himself wanting to argue with the captain. It was as if he’d been at fault for the absence of Aaron’s Party — and could, given adequate persuasion, fix what had clearly been a colossal mistake.
 

“When were you here as a kid?” Captain Jack asked. “Seasonwise, I mean.”
 

“Summers.”
 

“Ayuh, same as everyone.” Ebon thought he detected a sour note, as if the captain were blaming Ebon and others just like him for being fair-weather friends. “Memorial Day to Labor Day, the Party was hopping. But they still had to maintain it for the other nine months too, I suppose, plus pay rent, and probably insurance, I dunno. Tough to run an island outside of the tropics. Summers, everywhere’s packed. But look around now. And hell, it’s not even mid-September yet.”
 

Ebon looked at the shore with new eyes. He’d always arrived on the ferry, coming in to West Dock near the island’s south end. Only once before had he seen the shore from the bay, so nothing had seemed strange. But now that he really looked he could see how the beaches were mostly empty, many of the cottages under the just-now-coloring trees boarded and closed for the winter. Bright-orange snow fence had been strung across some of the beaches. On the island’s ocean side, where beach gave way to jagged cliffs, there would be less snow fence, but almost every house would be boarded. Ebon had never spent a winter, spring, or fall anywhere near Aaron, but thinking of it now, he imagined winter wind could be brutal.
Would be
brutal, he amended, considering he planned to stay.

“Aaron loses something like 90 percent of its summertime population once the ferry hits the weekends-only schedule,” said Captain Jack. He was steering them toward a small set of docks at the foot of a long, rickety staircase winding down from a beachless rise. “I imagine it must lose more once the boat stops running entirely, what for the ice near shore. The island couldn’t support a proper grocery store, you know. There was one for a while, but same as the Party, it did its business in summer and couldn’t survive September to May. The co-op is all that manages, but that’s mainly because it has government crutches. Everything’s more expensive on an island. You ever ponied up the price of an ice cream at Coney’s?” The captain laughed. “Ayuh, you gotta pay a premium for ice cream that needs to survive a long ferry ride without melting. You know what survives just fine, though, through all four seasons with a tidy profit?”
 

Ebon turned from the approaching slip to face the man in yellow.
 

“The liquor store,” he said.
 

Ebon could connect the remaining dots on his own, but found himself wishing Jack would continue anyway. Despite the motor — now throttling down, entering the no-wake zone — the place seemed too quiet. The air felt crisper than it had even at top speed, and for the first time Ebon realized that he had never worn long pants or long-sleeve shirts when stepping onto Aaron’s shores. The air smelled like autumn already. It should have been a refreshing scent, but wasn’t. To Ebon, who’d always known Aaron as a green place of warm sun and hot sand, it smelled more like endings and decay.
 

He could see a lone person descending the weathered staircase from the bluff, now the size of his thumbnail on an arm held straight out. For the first time, Ebon’s guilt rolled his excitement over and pinned it down, suddenly dominant.
 

Was this a mistake?
he wondered.
 

You couldn’t go home again, or turn back the years. Time changed everything, and Ebon was no longer the awkward kid he’d once been. All this time he’d been looking forward to seeing Aimee again, but he’d been focusing on how she might have changed and forgotten the many ways in which he definitely had. He’d barely begun puberty when last she’d seen him. Yes, they’d “seen” each other online after Aimee had found him on LiveLyfe, but casual snapshots weren’t the same as in-person impressions. Aimee might think any number of unflattering things about Adult Ebon. She might find him too quiet when he wasn’t speaking or too mumbly when he was. She might not like the lips he thought were too large, the eyebrows he found too bushy. Sixteen years was an eternity, even without the fragile balance lent to cherished memories. They’d had three beautiful summers together and many messages since. He might be about to break what they had, polluting a pristine past with an inferior present.
 

As the boat throttled down, Ebon thought of Aimee as she’d been at seventeen — fully blossomed into a young woman from the child he’d first met, her smile the same, her wavy sandy-blonde hair always riffling in Aaron’s ever-present breeze. Her smell, when they’d kissed those few times, had always been pleasantly infused with salt. As he’d seen Aimee in her online photos, few things had changed now that she was in her midthirties. She barely looked twenty — far younger, in fact, than Holly had looked at the end. Aimee had somehow remained vibrant and young. Ebon, however, had aged — a lifetime with another woman come and gone in the interim.
 

She’d stayed on the island, weathering those off seasons in her home on the opposite side of Aaron from her father’s place. Ebon, never a resident, had gone and never returned. He could have come back once he’d turned eighteen, but by then the past had turned sepia, safely sealed in yesterday’s capsule. You didn’t reopen old boxes until time and souls were ready. If you did, you risked disturbing their delicate contents.

According to her online profile, Aimee had stayed true to her scattered artistic interests, still involved in a hundred creative projects but offering no evidence of a single one finished. Ebon had sold out his childhood interests, moved into the heart of the city, and begun making deals. If he’d become an entrepreneur or even a generic businessman, that might not have felt like a betrayal, but he’d become an agent. Instead of advancing his own desires, Ebon had spent his career pushing the longings of others for around seventy hours a week. What would Aimee think of that? They’d been idealists together, once upon a time. Now he was a cog in a machine, while she remained free.
 

The boat drew closer. Captain Jack remained blessedly quiet. Aimee had reached the bottom of the steps and was already halfway down the main dock. Ebon watched her, now able to see the color and length of her hair, her slim and almost spare body, and her aging air as she leaned against a weathered wooden pylon. Even from the remaining distance, Ebon could see how she stood with her legs crossed at the ankles as she’d always done.
I’m a Pisces,
she’d told him once, rolling her pale-green eyes with trademark condescension.
We stand like this because it makes our legs look like a tail fin
.
 

Ebon found himself wanting to shave. He wanted to suck in his gut. He wanted to duck below, into the tiny ship’s head, and attempt to thin out his eyebrows in the mirror. But at the same time, he didn’t want to do any of those things because he was here to start new and forget, and nothing more. At least not yet.
 

The boat pulled behind the breakwater. The captain lined up then throttled briefly back to arrest his forward momentum, leaving them to drift slowly toward the pilings. He reached past Ebon and grabbed a blue-striped line that had one end already secured to a cleat at the boat’s side. Aimee had come forward to greet them, but she’d barely looked over before Jack tossed her the line. A moment later the boat was secured temporarily in place, the single bow line run through the dock cleat and then looped back and cinched as if Aimee greeted nautical visitors all the time. But then again, Ebon told himself, she’d grown up on an island. She’d spent her childhood only a handful of yards from a staircase to the ocean, with a father who’d kept a boat of his own in this very slip.
 

It was a little emasculating to stand by while Captain Jack and Aimee shored them up for the few seconds it took Ebon to disembark. He did it with averted eyes, feeling like cargo: a damsel that two hearty seafarers needed to handle because he couldn’t handle himself.
 

His feet found the dock, and the feeling vanished, replaced by a powerful wash of bittersweet nostalgia. He looked briefly over at Aimee. She tossed him a smile before untying the line, giving the fishing boat a shove, and throwing the line back aboard. Ebon waved goodbye, his business with the sea dog done and paid in full. The engine throttled up, and a few seconds later they were alone.
 

They’d stood side-by-side for maybe two minutes during the docking and sending off, but only once Jack’s wake was cutting water from the inlet did Aimee turn fully toward him. She
did
look different. Still beautiful, but older than she’d seemed online. There were a few bits of not-unattractive gray in her hair and tiny lines at the corners of her eyes as she smiled. He was momentarily disarmed (how could the online photos have been so different?), but the sensation evaporated as she wrapped her long arms around him.
 

She pulled away and assessed him, old light in her changed face. Ebon felt himself swept back in time, having caught a whiff of that salt scent on her skin. Time had passed, but she was still captivating. Ebon felt his heart respond, then guilt rise to meet it.
 

“Who would have thought we’d ever have our fourth summer?” Aimee’s smile stretched from cheek to cheek as if trying to escape her face.

Ebon looked around, realizing he was actually going to talk about the weather.
 

“I think summer is over,” he said, unsure how else to respond. Then, hating himself a little, he added, “But still, it’s such a beautiful day.”
 

“You don’t think you’ll stay with me until it’s summer again?”
 

For some reason, the words
with me
clanged deep inside. Of course he was staying with her; that had been the plan from the beginning. He was supposed to keep his hands busy refurbishing so his mind would have something to do besides dwell on the recent past. Still, it stirred his insides because the invitation had been open ended. They could, if they wanted, plaster and paint her father’s cottage forever. Maybe they could even repair more than walls. They could see what else, beyond a mere building, could be made young again.