Good Harbor (2 page)

Her heroine was Magnolia Dukes. The blue-black daughter of an African prince, Magnolia
survived her master’s various cruelties, learned to read, and triumphed in love with
Jordan LeMieux, the second son of a down-and-out white landowner. Magnolia was wild
and brave in ways that Joyce hadn’t planned. Frank confessed to being shocked by the
violence (especially the beheading), the vertiginous foreplay, the operatic orgasms.

Joyce took Frank’s discomfort as a good sign, which was confirmed by an enthusiastic
phone call from the first literary agent she tried. Mario Romano III, a local man,
new to the business, actually brought a copy of his birth certificate to their introductory
lunch, just to prove that his name was no figment of a genre-fevered imagination.
For Joyce, he suggested a
nom de romance
at that first meeting. “Any ideas?” he asked over salad in Harvard Square. She shrugged.

Mario, short, dark, and very handsome, offered a method reputedly used by drag queens
to concoct stage names: combine the name of your first pet with the street you lived
on as a kid.

“That would make me Cleo Lehigh,” said Joyce.

“Very nice,” Mario said. “Was Cleo a dog or a cat?”

“Parakeet.”

Mario nodded. “Nice to meet you, Cleo.” He raised his glass.

Within a few months, they had a modest but respectable offer, with an option for three
more Magnolia titles. And when Lifetime

TV bought the rights to produce a miniseries, Joyce’s Cape Ann fantasy shifted from
pipe dream to Plan A.

Frank, always cautious about their finances, wanted to put the entire windfall into
IRAs and bond funds. After months of arguing, he finally conceded that seaside real
estate would be a solid investment, too. There was no disagreement about where to
focus their search on Cape Ann; both preferred Gloucester to Rockport, which seemed
too Waspy for a family of Tabachniks. A remnant of Gloucester still fished for a living,
and the city smelled of it.

Which is how Joyce came to be standing in a ten-by-twelve-foot living room covered
in blue cornflower wallpaper, staring out at the neatly raked yard.

“Oh, shit,” she said, feeling her mood suddenly plummet.

What on earth had she done? Joyce and Frank hadn’t gone cycling for ten years. Nina
would never agree to a painting class with her mother; her daughter was a jock, not
an artist. And spending time alone here would only prove that Joyce couldn’t write
“serious” fiction.

She
was
a cliché, a bored and boring suburban baby boomer. With a statue of the Virgin Mary
in her front yard.

The five-foot-tall cement statue had nearly kept Joyce from looking at the house.
Frank said don’t be silly, but she wasn’t being silly. Just put off.

Joyce was not religious. When asked about her affiliation, she quoted her grandmother’s
line: “We’re lox-and-bagel Jews.” She and Frank lit a menorah for Hanukkah and ate
too much at their friends’ Passover seder, and that was pretty much the extent of
her family’s Judaism. Even so, that statue gave her the creeps. From the window, Joyce
had a great view of its modestly draped backside. “The Holy Mother’s tushy,” Joyce
whispered to herself.

A warm breeze wafted in through the windows, which gleamed spotless in the bright
sunlight. Joyce inhaled the ocean air. There was a sudden blast from a big ship in
the harbor.

Reminded of her great good fortune, Joyce looked up at the ceiling and said, “Okay,
God, I get it.”

BACK IN HER OLD
green Taurus, Kathleen looked down at the seat belt between her breasts. Why on earth
had she kept this appointment?

All that Catholic-school training dies hard, she thought. But crying and blurting
out her troubles to a stranger like that? She could imagine her grandmother’s reaction:
“Family business stays in the family.” The loud echo of Gran’s disapproval surprised
Kathleen. But then, she wasn’t herself.

She hadn’t been herself for a week, since the radiologist had used the word
cancer.
Five years ago, after the first needle biopsy, she’d been ready for that pronouncement.
In fact, she’d been so sure of a cancer diagnosis, she had reread her will before
the appointment. She had searched through the filing cabinet for the deeds to their
funeral plots — hers and Buddy’s.

But after that lump had turned out to be benign, she’d gone for her regular mammograms
without dread. That was stupid, she now realized. What had made her think she was
going to get away with it? Breast cancer had killed her sister; it was bound to get
her sooner or later.

When he’d delivered the bad news, Dr. Barlow had tried to be reassuring. “All we see
so far is DCIS,” he’d said. “Hopefully, the surgeon won’t find anything else.”

Back from the doctor’s office that afternoon, she called her sons in New York and
California. She left a message for her friend Jeanette, in Florida. But she waited
to tell Buddy until he got home. They sat at the kitchen table, and Kathleen watched
the lines on her husband’s face grow deeper.

Lying in bed that first night, Kathleen realized that she had already left the world
of small talk and gardening and current events. She was in the airless, out-of-time
place she knew from the long, murderous months of Pat’s breast cancer. She’d been
to that place with Danny, too, though it had been much quicker with her little boy.
It was only that one horrible week in the hospital. Not even a week.

In the morning, Buddy sat beside her as she called the surgeon, Dr. Cooperman. And
when she got home from school that afternoon, Jack was in the kitchen, a pot of soup
and a pan of frying onions on the stove. “Mom,” he said, and swept her into a hug.

“I didn’t add the dill,” Jack said. “Even though chicken soup is way better with dill,
I know you don’t like it.”

Kathleen ran a finger through his thick black hair, just like hers when she was young.
“Nice beard,” she said, passing her knuckles across the soft growth. “It makes you
look a little like my grand-dad, in that photo when he was just off the boat.”

Jack was her youngest, twenty-three years old, sous-chef at a three-star restaurant
in Manhattan. His framed diploma from Johnson & Wales hung over the kitchen table.

“How’s Lois?” Kathleen asked, trying not to show how curious she was. She had never
met his live-in girlfriend; only spoken to her on the phone.

Jack stirred the onions. “She’s great. She sends her best. Her show opens next week,
though I don’t suppose you’ll be coming down to see it — now.” The word hung in the
air, and he looked stricken.

Jack would need her reassurance as much as Buddy did. She was going to have to keep
her guys propped up, all the way through her surgery and “follow-up treatment,” whatever
that meant. Dr. Barlow said the surgeon would explain.

The kitchen clock presided over the silence until the phone rang. “Mom? Did you get
my messages?” asked Hal without preliminaries, as usual.

“No, honey, I just got back to the house. Jack’s here.”

“Tell him hi. I surfed the Net for a while last night,” Hal said. “I’ve got six Web
sites for you to visit and I’ve E-mailed a list of books and magazine articles you
should read. Whatever happens, you should get second opinions.” Hal had taken premed
courses for three years, and even though he’d switched his major to English and worked
as a technical writer for software companies, he still entertained thoughts of himself
as a doctor. So did his mother.

“I’m planning to,” said Kathleen. “I’d really like to get into Boston to see Jane
Truman, the one who wrote that book, you know?”

“Yeah?” he said, impressed. “That would be great! Her name’s all over the bulletin
boards and chat rooms.”

Kathleen promised to log on and read Hal’s messages later that night. “Dr. Barlow
thinks it’s the ductal carcinoma in situ.”

“Yeah, I read about it. Some people consider DCIS not really cancer at all, but a
kind of precancer.”

Kathleen frowned. Was that supposed to cheer her up?

“Sorry I’m so far away,” he said.

“This is still a guilt-free zone,” Kathleen said, reading from the cross-stitched
sampler she had put above the kitchen sink twenty years ago. She noticed that the
frame needed dusting.

Buddy’s voice broke into her momentary trance. “Where’s my son, the dishwasher?” he
called from the door.

Kathleen said good-bye to Hal as Buddy Levine tramped into the kitchen and reached
out to hug Jack. Buddy was six feet, a few inches taller than his son, and apart from
a slight paunch, in very good trim. He still had a full head of hair, and the toothy
smile that remained the working capital of Levine Electric: A Cape Ann Tradition Since
1930.

“You knew he was coming, and you didn’t tell me?” Kathleen said, poking her husband
gently. “You sneak.”

“Why ruin his surprise?” Buddy said, and hugged her. She looked up into his face.
Years of fishing had baked Buddy’s face to leather, but he was still a handsome man.
They were both lucky in their looks, Kathleen knew. Her eyes were even bluer now that
her hair — the chin-length bob unchanged through years of family photos — had gone
white.

They sat at the dinner table for a long time that evening. Kathleen and Buddy praised
Jack’s meal of elegantly presented comfort food — chicken soup, meat loaf and mashed
potatoes, apple pie. Bite by bite they oohed and aahed, and laughed, as they always
did, about the way he’d overcome the unlucky marriage of Irish cooking and Jewish
cooking.

Kathleen was reminded of how easy it was with just the three of them. When both her
sons were at the table, one could get sulky while the other took center stage. She
stared into her wineglass, wondering if they’d ever outgrow that. She caught Buddy’s
and Jack’s anxious eyes on her and stood up to clear the table. “I wasn’t even thinking
about it,” she said, surprising herself with the sharpness in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sinking back in her chair. “I guess I’m kind of tired.”

Jack moved his chair closer to hers and took her hand. “It’s okay, Mom.” They all
sighed in unison, then laughed at themselves for being such peas in a pod.

Jack left for New York early the next morning, and Buddy decided not to go into the
store, even though Saturday was a busy day. He and Kathleen took their coffee cups
out to the deck and read the papers, bundled up in wool sweaters. All day they reached
for each other — a hand on the shoulder on the way to the bathroom, a kiss on the
cheek over the kitchen sink.

On Sunday, Buddy suggested a walk at Good Harbor. As they crossed the wooden footbridge
at the southern edge of the beach, Kathleen reminded herself to look. This place was
so familiar to her that she sometimes walked halfway across before lifting her eyes
to see the day’s singular display of cloud and surf.

Not even a mile from end to end at low tide, the graceful sweep of Good Harbor was
her elixir, her secret potion. When she dreamed about Good Harbor, she woke up refreshed.
Today the water was flat as a pond out to the horizon, but Kathleen had seen plenty
of angry seas with six-foot swells here, too.

She and Pat had walked the length of Good Harbor thousands of times, back and forth,
sometimes six lengths at a go, talking nonstop. Buddy called it “chewing the fat.”
“You two get all the flavor out?” he’d ask when they would finally sit down for a
picnic with him and the boys.

The sisters had remained close, even after Pat had entered the convent and Kathleen
had started her marriage and family. A Jewish family at that. They called each other
every week, and when Pat came to visit, they never stopped talking.

Buddy took her hand as they started down toward the water’s edge. Kathleen hadn’t
talked to anyone like that since Pat died. She’d gotten pretty close to Jeanette before
she’d moved to Boca Raton — finally convinced by a bad winter, a broken hip, and an
insistent daughter. But while she and Jeanette had had some good chats at Good Harbor,
they were nothing like Kathleen’s talks with Pat.

Kathleen missed Pat so much.

Buddy gave her hand a squeeze. He’s good company, Kathleen thought, squeezing back.
A wonderful listener, but somehow, her husband didn’t know how to keep a conversation
flowing or how to direct it forward, or whatever it was that had worked with Pat.
Whatever it was that seemed to work so effortlessly between all the women around them,
walking and talking on the beach. As usual, pairs of women outnumbered the man-woman
couples.