Good Harbor

“Call me later?”

“Okay.” Joyce slammed down the phone and got in the car.

Joyce was furious at Frank for the way he had walked out on their conversation the previous night. His problem with Nina’s sexual development was probably a textbook case, but if they couldn’t talk about Nina anymore, what the hell could they talk about? They used to talk about music. When they’d first met, they used to go to jazz clubs. They hadn’t done that in a dog’s age.

She reached the house in thirty-five minutes. That’s a stupid record, she thought, a little frightened by what she’d just done.

The house was stuffy and sad-looking, the living room still empty but for the beanbag. Joyce cranked open the windows as she dialed Kathleen, who picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Kathleen, it’s Joyce. I’m here for the week. Want to take a walk?”

“How soon can you get there?”

It was high tide, which meant Good Harbor was reduced to a dark, wet skirt of sand up near the dunes. From her perch in the center of the footbridge, Joyce watched the morning fog evaporate in wisps over the flooded plain. A parade of women passed by, bearing umbrellas, chairs, coolers, towels, plastic buckets, canvas bags, plastic bags, paper bags. Children ran ahead, heedless of their mothers’ voices, rising like birdcalls: “Be careful!” “Wait for me!”

A girl who looked to be no more than sixteen yelled, “Joey, come back here,” as a skinny four-year-old with a pierced ear raced by. She put down her beach bags and chair to light a cigarette. She rolled her eyes at Joyce and hollered, “Joey, I’m gonna kill you.”

Kathleen arrived, wearing a wide-brim straw hat and a long-sleeved man’s white shirt over white, drawstring cotton pants.

“You look very elegant,” said Joyce.

“Thank you.” Kathleen patted Joyce’s hand on the railing.

“Can I ask about the treatment?” Joyce said tentatively as they set out.

“You can ask.” Kathleen shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. It’s not terrible, it’s, oh, I don’t know.” She paused. “Strange. Painless. And it’s very fast. I get there, they zap me” — she used the word pointedly — “and then I go home.

“There are no side effects from the radiation itself. Nothing. Sometimes I wonder if the machine is even switched on. Of course, they say you don’t really notice anything until it’s almost over, and I’ve just started. Then my skin could get red, like having a sunburn, and maybe peel. And who knows what else.”

“Yikes.”

“My biggest problem is that I’m not sleeping well. But they say that’s nothing to do with the treatment. It’s the worry. And that’s all there is to it.” Then Kathleen abruptly changed the subject. “So Nina’s off with her friend for the week, right? Talk to me about life among the living.”

Joyce tried not to flinch.

“Sorry,” said Kathleen. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. Say what you want.”

“No, really, I’m sorry.”

They walked for a while without talking. Kathleen kept her face turned to the water. Finally Joyce said, “Nina’s team lost the big game last night. She was heartbroken. I was heartbroken. Frank was heartbroken. But the dirty little secret is that I’m relieved that soccer is over for the year, which makes me feel like a total shit. Here my daughter is shattered, and I’m thrilled that I don’t have to watch another game until next fall.

“I wish I felt differently, but this is just something I can’t get enthused about.”

“It’s a hard age.”

“I suppose. But I keep telling myself that she’s doing well in school, and she has friends and all.”

“I meant it’s a hard age for parents,” Kathleen said. “I remember when Hal was fourteen or fifteen, and one summer all he wanted to do was watch television. I said, ‘Why can’t you go for a bike ride or read a book, like you used to.’ And he said, ‘Mom, it’s never going to be the way it was before.’

“It was as if he’d thrown a bucket of cold water on me. All of a sudden I saw the hair on his legs, and not that invisible baby down, either. A man’s hair. It took me months to get over that.”

“But I feel like I’m screwing up our whole relationship,” Joyce said. “I blow up at her for no reason, and I’m such a nag. Clean up your dishes, get your shoes off the floor, do your homework, brush your teeth, put on deodorant, get off the phone, take a shower, pick up your room. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. She starts crying, and I know I ought to be quiet, but I don’t stop.

“And Frank seems totally unwilling to admit that she’s growing up. He gets on her case about schoolwork or talking back to him, and then I get furious at him for picking on her, and we fight about that.”