Good Harbor
Joyce strained to memorize the colors, the specific shape of rock, roof, breaker, and beak, bathed in this light.
She faced the mansion on the bluff, a boxy Yankee castle that inspired fantasies of wealth in everyone who walked Good Harbor. Funny how it was not so grand from here, swallowed by the tree-covered hills above and behind. Next time she would bring binoculars.
Kathleen, meanwhile, stood perfectly still, facing straight out to the sea. She soaked up the late sun’s warmth. She savored her own breath, in and out, slowing down, after the climb.
Joyce watched a solitary woman walking the beach, a long, beige caftan fluttering at her ankles. Joyce looked over at Kathleen, now facing up, studying the overhead sky.
“What color would you call that?” Kathleen asked. “Cerulean?”
“It’s nearly purple, isn’t it? So rich, you know? Almost” — Joyce searched for a word — “chocolate.”
Kathleen laughed. “Blue chocolate? That doesn’t sound very appetizing.”
“Oh, no? Blue is the color of heaven, where you have as much chocolate and sex as you want. In fact, I’ve never understood how anyone could have a favorite color other than blue.”
“Then I won’t tell you that mine is the color of the sand at Good Harbor.”
“I forgive you.”
“There is only one place I love as much as this,” Kathleen said. “Halibut Point.”
“Never been.”
“In all these years?” Kathleen reproached her. “You’ve got to go. It’s wonderful. Very different from this. All rocks and crags — no sand. Magnificent. I used to take my boys. One day every summer, just before dawn, no warning at all, I’d roust them out of bed. They’d fall asleep in the car, and I’d bribe them awake with cookies and a thermos of hot chocolate. We’d walk out to the biggest, farthest-out rock we could find, and the minute we saw the sun, we all cock-a-doodle-doo-ed like roosters.” Kathleen cupped her mouth and crowed.
The boys on the rocks below looked up.
Kathleen crowed again. Joyce waved at the boys.
“Did Buddy go with you?”
“No. He took the boys fishing without me, so Halibut Point was my little adventure with them. I told Buddy we were going out for a sunrise breakfast, which we did. We went to the diner in Lanesville. Hal always got buttermilk pancakes and Jack had French toast.
“You have to go for the sunrise sometime, Joyce. It’s just . . . well” — Kathleen reached out to the view and held it between her hands — “as good as this.”
“You talked me into it. But I don’t think I’ll be able to drag Nina along.”
“Hal stopped coming the year he turned fourteen. But Jack went until he graduated from high school. The last year we went, he drove, and when he got there, he opened the door for me.” Kathleen smiled at the memory. “Very gallant.”
A sleek powerboat skimmed across the horizon, bouncing lightly on the water. The engine’s sharp whine sounded a tinny note above the splash of the hull, cutting across the waves.
Joyce lay back on a flat rock, which held the warmth of the sun and the acrid smell of birds. “Should we be getting back?” she asked, her eyes closed.
“There’s no rush for the tide, if that’s what you mean.” Kathleen looked over her shoulder toward the center of the island. “There used to be a kind of pond in the rocks. It must still be there. The boys and I used to visit it.”
“Let’s go see.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll follow you anywhere,” said Joyce.
“You’re good for my ego.”
Joyce smiled. “About a year ago, I met an interesting woman at a PTO meeting. We really hit it off, chatting in the driveway afterwards. But when I asked her if she wanted to have coffee, she said no, she already had more friends than she had time for. Imagine that.”
“It’s been a long time since I made a new friend. But I think that’s mostly my own fault,” Kathleen said. “I’m so private. I don’t . . . what’s the word? . . . disclose. Especially if something’s wrong. It was drilled into me that y
ou don’t put your business out where anyone else can see. It makes for a lonely life. My grandmother used to say the Irish are a lonely people. She said it with a kind of pride.