The quiet was so thick, she could almost smell it. Joyce stopped before opening the door and held her breath. The Madonna’s veil gleamed in the streetlight. The perfect mother, she thought, and walked over toward the statue. Not me. I get all pissy because Nina doesn’t want to go to the movies with me. She put a finger to Mary’s lips. What do you know, anyway, Miss Mary? Boys are easier. Everybody says so.
Joyce reached the main road without seeing a single car. Yawning, sipping her coffee, she drove under the speed limit, until a pickup truck roared up behind, and then passed her. Music blared through the open windows, and she could feel the bass from the truck’s radio vibrate in her chest.
“Asshole!” Joyce yelled, her heart pounding. She straightened up and paid closer attention to the road all the way into Rockport center, which seemed completely asleep, except for the sudden smell of frying potatoes.
I’ll come back for breakfast, Joyce thought. I’ll sit at the counter and chat with the waitress and tell Kathleen about that, too.
Starting up the hill past Rowe Point, Joyce pushed down on the gas pedal, racing past churches turned into private homes, past inns and modest Capes and granite walls, past condos, a ramshackle hotel, houses she’d coveted for years.
Do I even know where I’m going? she wondered, then spotted the small brown State Park sign. She winced as the brakes squeaked and the tires squealed into the silence. But, hey, here she was, pulling up beside the padlocked parking lot. Or maybe I should go home.
Joyce was, she knew, a fundamentally timid person. She talked a brave game, but even as a teenager she had been afraid to take risks. In college, she’d never dropped acid or even once gotten stupid drunk. The idea of hitchhiking through Europe with her roommates had been too scary, the dangers much too vivid.
She talked herself into stepping over the chain at the entrance to the park. What would the headline say? Middle-Aged Woman Caught Trespassing.
She walked slowly, squinting at the ground to avoid roots and ruts. A flashlight would have been a good idea, but she could manage. The air under the trees was green and loamy. Little rustling sounds in the bushes startled her. Mice, she supposed.
What if it’s overcast and a rotten day for a sunrise?
What if there’s a rapist on the beach?
What if she just relaxed and kept walking?
The forest ended abruptly and the sky opened over a low landscape of scrub and sand. The sharp salt breeze hit her face and cleared her head, and now she could hear the ocean.
Gravel scattered as she followed a narrow path through beach roses and poison ivy. A huge mountain of granite slag rose on her left, ten stories of rubble from long-abandoned quarries.
You did it, Joyce congratulated herself, and started out across the black-and-white moonscape of slabs and boulders. She placed one cautious foot at a time, careful of crevasses that cut down to dark, wet pools below. At least it was easier than climbing Salt Island.
And it was just as magnificent as Kathleen had said. Every time Joyce walked a few yards or moved her head, the shape of the world changed altogether. The random architecture of crags and croppings, smoothed by water and time, framed a perfectly flat ocean, barely distinguishable, in this light, from the sky.
It must be unbelievable in a storm, Joyce thought. But this horizon was flat and empty. Not a gull, not a cormorant, not even a lobster pot in view.
It was empty, but not silent. She listened to the endless wet smooch and sigh of the tide breathing beneath her, breaking through to slap against the infinite in-and-out of the shoreline. Seawater smacked and sucked between stone, on stone, breaking stone into sand, eventually. Forever and ever.
The light was stronger now, but still colorless. The day was dawning in the clouds. What kind of painting could you make out of all this gray? she wondered, scanning the coast as far as she could see. It was all gray light, gray water, mottled-gray rock. And me in gray sweatpants and gray sweatshirt and gray funk.
Joyce felt as if she were at the end of the earth. She reached up, arched her back, and stretched, with her hands reaching wide above her head. She sighed, turned, and saw him.
A hundred feet away, on a cliff that hung over the water at a seventy-degree angle. He was barefoot, wearing cutoff jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt. He stood very still, a cigarette in his mouth.
Joyce was so startled it took her a moment to be afraid. Should she walk away? Had he seen her? What was he doing out here? What was she doing out here?
He watched her take notice of him and flicked his cigarette into the sea. He raised his arm and waved in a big, goofy, side-to-side motion, as if he were hailing an ocean liner.
“Halloo,” he called.
Probably not a murderer, she thought, and waved back.
He started toward her. She looked around, hoping to see someone else, but there was no one. In a moment, he was at her side.
“Not a maniac, are yeh?” he said to her, a beautiful smile showing small, crooked teeth.
“Not me. My friend Kathleen recommended the view at sunrise, and I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’ve a sister named Kathleen.” He was Irish.
“The raccoons woke me up. I couldn’t fall asleep again.”