Barefoot Girls (11 page)

Hannah was also sure that if she spent enough time in that house, that she’d figure out what the Barefooter’s secret was. The secret to their undying devotion to each other. The secret to how they lived like they did, always living life full throttle, always laughing together, so hard they sometimes peed their pants. Even now, as adults. She needed that secret, how to be more like the Barefooters, needed to find the carefree child she was convinced was buried somewhere inside of her. She couldn’t go on being so serious all the time. It made people shy away from her. Well, except for Daniel, but that was different. She wanted girlfriends, a whole gang of them just like the Barefooters.

Watching Mr. McGrath grow smaller as he crossed the lead, she decided he wasn’t a problem. She simply would stay on her end of the island. Parties! A burst of derisive laughter escaped her. Her, having parties! “Ha!” she barked.

She looked toward the small beach where the islander’s boats were locked up. She dreaded trying to figure out the outboard motor. Her mother had always taken care of that, had always been at ease in any type of boat, as if she had been born trimming a sail, sitting comfortably at the helm.

Other than being a passenger on a boat and lending a hand when instructed, Hannah was only used to taking orders from her mother or Daniel or whoever was the captain of that particular vessel. Now she would have to not only start the engine, she would have to drag the boat across the muddy beach to the water and, once successfully started, steer the boat to the dock without crashing into it.

She turned and headed back up the dock toward the parking lot. Unload first, that’s what she would do. After Mr. McGrath’s less than warm welcome, she needed to calm down. Doing something mindless and repetitive would do the trick.

Chapter 9

The worst was the beach, after all.

Loose and swampy from all of the recent rain, her clean white boat shoes sank deeply into the oozing black muck. She should have taken them off before trying to cross the beach to where their boat was locked up. She remembered, then, that her mother always took off her shoes first. But of course, she always took off her shoes as soon as they arrived at Captain’s, wouldn’t exit the car until they were flung into the back seat, where they would remain until they went back to Fairfield. Hannah, always complacently waiting on the dock for her mother to pull the boat around, wouldn’t have known about the practical aspect of this.

Once pushed off the beach and out on the water, ruined shoes off and in a corner of the boat, switching on the engine turned out to be fairly easy and straightforward: one-two-three. But when she steered the boat toward the dock, she kept overshooting it, flying by again and again, moving too fast to throw her loop of rope over a piling.

On the fourth approach, she slowed down so much she barely puttered up to the dock, and was finally able to tie up and load half of her stuff into the boat. She had jugs of drinking water and boxes of easily prepared foods like cans of ravioli and soup and tuna fish plus bread, peanut butter, and jelly. There were her clothes and all the layers she would need to stay warm. There were notepads and books and a favorite photo of Daniel in a wooden frame. She had brought her laptop that was bound to die after the first day, and which might be rechargeable if she could get Aunt Pam’s generator started.

Starting the generator, would she be able to do it? She had been bluffing back there with Mr. McGrath, acting as if living on the island with no heat, no electricity, and no running water in the colder months wasn’t a big deal. And if her mother was here, it wouldn’t be. It was Keeley’s island more than it was Hannah’s. Hannah was a guest; Keeley was a native. Why Hannah had never really fit in, never became a native herself despite a lifetime of summers on the island perplexed her. She put on an act for everyone, tried to act casual, cool. But she couldn’t lie to herself.

The boat packed, she untied the rope and pushed off from the dock before starting the engine and heading across the channel, a shallower section of water between the island and the causeway where crabs and clams were plentiful and there were plenty of very shallow areas for young children learning to swim. 

Hannah examined each house as she passed it, as she did every time she visited, welcoming the sight of the familiar homes. Each had its own personality: some neat and square and surrounded by mown marsh-grass lawns that were prickly and full of sand, some wild and colorful with lush growth hugging them.

Some, like the Barefooter house, had names. The Bottle House was owned by old Mrs. Logan, who had filled every window and shelf of her home with old salt-water-weathered glass bottles of every color. Although they were mostly blue, green, white or brown bottles, there was a bright red bottle in the front picture window, placed dead center like a beacon or a jewel.

There was Captain’s, a gray-shingled regal three-story with a widow’s walk that was added years after the Captain had passed away, but island children insisted on saying that his wife’s ghost could still be seen walking it on foggy days, searching for him. There was the Tunnel House, built in the seventies by an architect who built the strange futuristic house shaped like the top of a keyhole that had more structural problems than even the oldest house on the island. The Tunnel House had been up for sale for three years now with no takers in spite of the island’s recent surge in property values and popularity with people from the city. It sat empty on its grassy lot looking more bedraggled every day as it slowly fell apart, boards peeling off of the house and falling into the yard.

Hannah slowed the boat as she approached Aunt Pam’s dock. She would stay here at night and would keep all of her stuff here, but planned to spend her days at the Barefooter house. She had more luck with this dock, slowing down enough to slip a rope over one of the cleats and tie it clumsily, turning off the motor just before it continued to pull the boat past. Maybe she had to cut the motor first? She tried to remember, but she had never paid attention.

She unloaded everything on the dock and then went back for the second load, starting to finally relax a bit as she steered the boat across the water, turning her face up towards the weak yet warm sun that was sinking quickly. How had so much of the day flown by so fast? She hadn’t even gotten into Pam’s house yet, hadn’t even looked at the Barefooter house.

Just as she was nearing the community dock, her cell rang. Daniel’s ring. She started to reach for her purse, but accidentally started steering directly into the bank and struggled to right the direction of the boat.

The phone rang on, singing Al Green at her. He wasn’t supposed to call her. What was he doing?

But she had to answer it. It might be an emergency. She had never, not once, let it go to voicemail on purpose on him. She did it to everyone else, all the time, but never him.

She spun in her seat, shut off the engine, and grabbed at her purse, pulling the phone out as she lifted it up. “Hello?”

“Hey, you. I know you said you’d call, but it was getting late and I started to think about all those crazy Long Islanders and you on the same road. How’s it going?” Daniel said.

Immediately, Hannah felt guilty. Here he was worrying about her, and she couldn’t even wear his ring. She had taken it off as soon as she arrived and immediately felt like she could breathe easier. No one could see her here, after all. She’d zipped it up in one of the pockets in her purse, the purse that now sat at her feet.

She nudged her purse with her toe and said, “Okay. I’m just trying to figure stuff out. I feel like such an idiot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I guess I always just let my mom run things whenever I come here. I never really thought about it. I don’t know the first thing about boats and I practically grew up on the water. It took me three tries to even tie up!"

“Really? I always thought you were pretty good as my first mate. You tie a mean line.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, nodding. “I can follow orders. I just don’t know what to do when I’m by myself.”

“I could come out there now and teach you. I don’t have to fly until Monday. We could have the weekend out there,” he said casually, as if they hadn’t already gone over this.

“No. Please. I need this time.” I need you not to see my ringless finger. I need you to not know that I’m still having panic attacks whenever I see it. I keep it close, but it’s invisible. Plus my mom. I need to understand her, life, to “get it”.  Why am I so gape-mouthed and confused about everything? What is wrong with me?

“Okay, okay. Just thought I could help,” he said, his voice getting tight as it did when he started to get angry.

“And you would be helpful! I just..." She sighed.

“I know…I miss you,” he said, his voice softening.

“I miss you, too.” She noticed the boat was starting to drift backward towards Aunt Pam’s house, the tide grabbing it. “I have to go. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m pretty sure I’m being swept out to sea. The boat’s going the wrong direction.”

“You won’t be swept out to sea. You’ll be fine."

Hannah looked around. “The tide is taking me backwards. And I still have to get my stuff. And I haven’t even gone inside Pam’s house or unpacked. I have to go.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to you tonight.”

She felt like screaming. No! Alone! I need to be alone! Who was that old-time famous actress who said that?

“Do you mind if I just have a few days by myself?” she said.

“By yourself? You are!” The irritation was back in his voice. It had been waiting. Would this work? She had always wanted to be needed, wanted, craved just like her mother, who was always clung to by everyone. Popular was such a silly word, but it fit. Now Daniel felt that very way about her, Hannah, and it felt scary, wobbly, airless.

She forced herself to say what she needed to say. What she should have said from the beginning of this whole thing, the first panic attack, but was too scared to say, afraid she’d lose him.  “Daniel. I need to not talk to anyone, not even you. I need to just be alone. Really alone. You know how upset I’ve been. We’ve talked about it. I need to figure stuff out. I’ll call you next Wednesday, okay? And we’ll plan when you’re coming out. Okay?”

He didn’t say anything. The boat was going backwards even faster. Was the tide going out or coming in? Her mother would know just by looking at the water.  Maybe she
would
float out to sea.

He spoke finally. “I didn’t know, I thought…well, all right then. Call me. You know my schedule. You brought it, right?” He had written out his entire flight schedule for the month for her in his neat cursive writing, and it hadn’t just been for planning his time on the island. It had been so they could talk on the phone.

“Yes,” she said, her voice small.

“Okay,” he said. “I love you, Hannah.”

“Oh, Daniel. I love you, too. So much!”

“Good,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. The slight relief. “All right, have a good time. And call me if anything happens, I mean, if anything goes wrong.”

“I will,” she said, cradling the phone in both hands, while watching houses slide past on the shore as the boat floated along.

“Bye.”

“Bye!”  She said, trying to sound bright, telepathically tell him everything would be all right. Not because she knew that, but because she wanted that.  Don’t give up on me. Not yet.

She tucked her phone back into her purse, patted the zippered pocket holding her ring, and vowed to put it back on once she settled in at Pam’s. Then she switched on the motor, and steered the boat back toward the dock as best she could.

Chapter 10

Daniel stood at the window of his apartment in Manhattan, still holding his cell and looking downtown. He wanted to throw the phone out of the window, step on it and crush it into pieces under his foot. He was tired of talking to her on the phone, tired of being pushed away.

Why was he putting up with this shit?

He had even taken out his duffel bag and put it on his bed, certain that once she had been alone out there on the island for a little bit she would welcome his visit. It was just the weekend, for Christ’s sake!

But he knew why he was putting up with this. He also remembered too well what had happened at her little cottage in Greenwich, the ring coming off like it meant nothing. He was still in shock over that. The women he had dated over the years, they had all practically begged for a ring, rolling over like dogs. Meaningful looks and home-cooked meals and making nice with his parents. Trying to cozy up to his mother! His mother had loved that, saw it as her due and played mind games with them. I like you now. Now I hate you. Now I’m ignoring you.

He hadn’t introduced Hannah to his mother yet, didn’t want to scare Hannah off. He would wait until their wedding date was set, and besides, Hannah hadn’t even asked to meet his mother. The other girls, they couldn’t wait to play daughter-in-law and tried to get his mother to talk about grandchildren. Little did they know that the last thing his mother wanted was to be a grandmother.

It was funny that the very thing he loved about Hannah was the thing that was driving him nuts now: her contented introversion. He loved how happy she was by herself, writing, digging quietly in her garden, nestled in her favorite chair with a book. She didn’t play mind games or need to be the center of attention like his mother.