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 Ni
na. 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.”