Good Harbor (9 page)

When Terry turned the lights down for a moment and a red beam bisected the room, Kathleen
gasped. “The laser is used only for alignment,” Terry explained quickly. “I think
they should change it to blue or green, don’t you? The red is so, I don’t know — red.”

“Alarming,” said Kathleen.

“Scary, yeah,” said Terry, a pretty blonde with high cheekbones and four gold hoops
in each ear.

In the simulator room down another hall, Kathleen put on a hospital johnny. The room
was dim and cold, and she was mortified as her nipples hardened and stayed erect during
the endless measurements by John Marino, a young man who used to work construction
and knew Buddy from the store. John was muscular and quick, running in and out to
control-booth monitors and computers. “Sorry this is taking so long, Mrs. Levine,”
he said. “But we’ve got to get it perfect.” Kathleen admired the professional way
he arranged her arm and measured the contour of her breast without even seeming to
touch her.

Then she caught sight of her reflection in a mirrored panel on the door. “Oh, God,”
she whispered. Staring at the frightened, haggard, old woman, she thought, how else
would he touch me? Her breast looked mutilated, the scar still red and angry-looking.

The disease of old age. Where had she read that? I’m an old lady with cancer. She
squeezed her eyes tight. Marcy walked in just then and said, “Hang on, Kathleen. We’re
nearly done.”

But they weren’t. Rachel, a short, round brunette who wore her hair in braids, brought
in a tray with a small bottle of india ink and a box of individually wrapped needles.
She noticed Kathleen’s eyes widen and pointed to two small blue freckles on her thumb.
“This is what it looks like. I did it to myself so I’d know what it felt like, too.
It only pinches for a sec. Not even as much as a bee sting.”

Rachel and John took great care in locating the exact spots for the tattoo marks,
but Kathleen felt herself getting more and more agitated.

“Here we go,” said Rachel, swabbing the cold antiseptic on Kathleen’s breast. The
needle felt hot.

“Only three more,” Rachel said.

“Okay,” said Kathleen, her voice tight and high. Marcy held her left hand. They were
right. It didn’t hurt much at all, but the tears came anyway, down her cheeks, into
her ears. She held very still.

On the way home, Buddy tried to ask how she was feeling. Kathleen shook her head and
closed her eyes.

“Tired, huh?”

She nodded and leaned back into the headrest. An old word floated into her head:
Stigmata.

As they approached their driveway, Kathleen told Buddy to drop her off and go back
to the store, but he got out of the car, made her a cup of tea, and tucked her in
for a nap.

Kathleen got in bed to humor him, but as soon as he left, she dressed and went out
into the yard. Pulling a few weeds, she inhaled deeply and savored the smell of warm
soil layered on ocean air. Joyce had said something about how Tomaso’s smelled like
heaven, but this was pretty darned divine.

She went inside and picked up the phone. “None of us Tabachniks can answer you at
the moment,” said the machine. “Please wait for the beep and leave a message.”

“Hi, Joyce. It’s Kathleen. Let’s go for a walk at Good Harbor. Call me.”

JOYCE LISTENED TO
Kathleen’s message a few days later as Frank carried the cooler into the kitchen
and Nina stood in front of the open refrigerator. “There’s nothing to eat in this
house,” she said. “Who’s Kathleen?”

“Shut that door will you?” said Frank. “I’m going shopping in a minute. Mom and I
met her at the temple.”

“Where was I?”

“Sleeping over at Sylvie’s house,” he said.

Joyce picked up the receiver.

“You’re going to use the phone now?” Nina said, sounding incredulous. “I have to make
a call.”

“It’ll have to wait,” Joyce said, carrying the receiver into the living room. Nina
poked her head through the door and wordlessly registered her impatience, but Joyce
pretended not to understand.

“Sorry I couldn’t call sooner,” Joyce said. “When do you want to walk?”

“I could be there in fifteen minutes.”

Joyce grabbed the car keys and announced, “I’m meeting Kathleen for a little while.”

“You can’t go now,” Frank sputtered.

“Drop me off on your way to the store,” Joyce snapped. “Kathleen will drive me home
and Nina will be fine on her own for half an hour.”

In the car Frank asked, “Is Kathleen okay?”

“What kind of question is that? She’s got breast cancer, for God’s sake.”

“Well, yes, I know,” he said, embarrassed into a silence that lasted until they pulled
over beside the footbridge that led from the shore road, over the tidal river, and
onto Good Harbor beach. Joyce had the door open before the car came to a stop.

There was no sign of Kathleen yet, so Joyce leaned over the weathered wooden railing.
The river below was barely a trickle, making it hard to tell if the tide was coming
in or going out. I should have said good-bye to Frank, she thought. I should be nicer
to Frank. And Frank should be nicer to me. She hoped the long hours he was putting
into this company paid off in a big way.

Joyce reached her arms over her head to stretch, glad that Nina wasn’t nearby to tell
her to stop acting like a weirdo in public. Not that there was much of a crowd this
late in the afternoon. Most people were leaving, lugging chairs and coolers, going
home.

Four lifeguards went by, looking like a commercial for
Baywatch
, despite their ugly regulation-orange bathing suits. A handsome black kid with a
washboard stomach was wearing a pair of silver hoop earrings exactly like Joyce’s.
I can see them, she thought, but to them I might as well be one of those gulls. The
birds were busy cleaning up a mess of corn chips, screaming and flapping at each other.
“Oh, dry up,” Joyce said softly.

She raised her eyes to the horizon and took a breath. She loved this slice of the
coast, from Salt Island to the granite fortress of the Bass Rocks. Something about
the way the beach held the sky unlocked her. It inspired her to ponder the direction
of her life and set her to wondering whether she believed in God — or Something. She
often thought about her father at Good Harbor — he had loved the ocean, especially
when there was a strong wind and a loud surf.

A late sun worshiper wearing a bikini and two-inch platform sandals clopped past on
the bridge’s weathered wooden boards. Joyce glanced over her shoulder. She smiled
at herself and how easily she could be distracted from cosmic ruminations. That lady
was sixty-five if she was a day, but at least she looked okay in a skimpy bathing
suit. The same could not be said of the truly elephantine women Joyce had seen out
here, parading around in next to nothing. Were they oblivious or intentionally outrageous?
She didn’t know whether to avert her eyes or applaud.

People-watching at the beach was one of Joyce’s great pleasures. Endless questions
and stories occurred to her. How did sixty-something couples, holding hands and bumping
shoulders, manage to keep the spark alive? Or were they newlyweds who had found each
other after burying longtime spouses they had come to loathe? Were the lesbian couples
in matching khaki shorts local girls or tourists from the Midwest? Was the man in
black socks and sandals a recent immigrant from a landlocked country, or a clumsy
spy?

Joyce also considered herself a connoisseur of T-shirts. Like a bird-watcher, she
kept a list of oddball favorites: “When the going gets tough, the tough get duct tape.”
“What are you looking at?” “She Who Must Be Obeyed.”

And tattoos. Once the sole property of veterans, they’d been taken up by macho boys
and nubile girls, and an unpredictable assortment of middle-aged men and women. But
from now on, they would all make her think of Kathleen’s tattoos. The brand of One-in-Eight.

Joyce hugged her own shoulders until she felt her joints grumble pleasantly. She was
free. Yesterday she had shipped the last of her magazine assignments. Mario had left
a message asking about the Magnolia sequel, but she hadn’t returned his call. She
wanted to try a serious novel. She wanted to give it the summer, at least.

Frank would be at the supermarket by now, buying food for the weekend and staples
for the rest of the summer. It was their first time in the house, all three of them,
the first spring weekend without a soccer tournament. On the way up, Frank had cleared
his throat and announced in a brave voice that he was going to be an assistant coach
for Nina’s team next season.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” he had said over his shoulder to Nina, trying to head off
her inevitable snit, “I won’t be telling you what to do. I think my main job is going
to be putting together the schedule. Tom says that it’s so complicated, they need
a spreadsheet. That’s where I come in.”

Nina scowled, put on her Walkman, and started singing along to the unheard lament
of a woman in love. The summer before, she had sung their silly family car song. “We
all went to the barber, to look sharp for Good Harbor. We don’t turn to the starboard
till we get to Good Harbor.” She went on and on until Joyce, worn-out, had snapped,
“That’s enough!”

This year they had had to bribe Nina with a promise of new CDs to get her to come
at all.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Kathleen, suddenly at Joyce’s side.

“I was thinking about Nina. I’m so glad you called.”

“And I’m glad you could get away today. Want to walk? It’s doctor’s orders.”

“Smart doctor.”

“I don’t want to talk about my treatment,” Kathleen said, trying to sound casual rather
than brittle. “It hasn’t started yet anyway. I just went to get measured and marked.”

“The tattoos, right? Did it suck?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about that either. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

They left their shoes next to the green trash barrels at the end of the bridge and
headed over the tidal plain to the water’s edge. The last tide had sculpted the beach
into a wavy pattern made of tiny crenellated dunes; each one held a scrap of blue
sky reflected in warm water.

A pair of gulls swooped overhead and skimmed the shoreline until they found a spot
to their liking and started strutting, on the lookout, as always, for food.

“Is the tide coming in or going out?” asked Joyce.

“Going out,” Kathleen said.

“It’s such an undramatic difference at this point. You have to be really tuned in
to know it.”

Kathleen laughed and said the only reason she knew was because Buddy had told her.
She turned the talk to Joyce. What was new? How was the house? Was she writing? What
was for supper?

“I have no idea what we’re eating,” Joyce said. “I’m going to paint the kitchen a
very strange color. I’m not writing at all. But I do have tidings of strange goings-on
with my Virgin Mary.”

“Your what?”

“I didn’t tell you about her yet?’’

Joyce described the statue: her surprising height, the detailed pleats in the veil,
the way her hands stretched out as if she were inviting the flowers to grow. Frank
had been too busy to come up and get rid of it. This was his first time in Gloucester
since the weekend they’d met at temple.

In the meantime, her Virgin had spawned a mystery. “A few weeks ago, she sprouted
a crown of plastic flowers on her head. Then someone left a pot of marigolds at her
feet. So I figured I’d better try to move her myself. I rooted around a little, but
the cement goes way down, much further than I could dig with a trowel. We’re going
to have to hire someone to take her out.

“Today, I found a bunch of lilacs lying next to her. Now I’m wondering if we’ve got
a local shrine on our hands.”

Joyce felt shy about asking her neighbors what to do with the statue. She couldn’t
even get up the nerve to ask the two guys who lived next door, even though they always
smiled and said hi when they walked their golden retriever.

“So how do I deep-six the Mother of God without pissing off the whole block or starting
a pogrom?”

Kathleen laughed. The sound pleased Joyce immensely.