Good Harbor

No one seemed to notice. One of Marcy’s daughters had chicken pox, so she was out of the office. When Joyce called, Kathleen said she was feeling a little unsteady on her feet, but even Joyce didn’t seem concerned. She’d thought Joyce might guess that something was wrong.

Kathleen sat under the awning on the deck and tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. She ended up in the cool of the den, dozing in front of the television. She didn’t answer the phone unless she heard Buddy on the answering machine. She listened to a message from Rabbi Hertz, and one from that young woman, Brigid.

She stayed out of the car. Buddy ran the errands and did the grocery shopping. He came home after work to find her asleep on the couch. He sat on the chair beside her, leaned his head on his hand, and worried. Hal and Jack had called him at the store to find out what was wrong with their mother: she sounded weird when they spoke to her on the phone. Buddy told them that Kathleen was just tired. That’s what she kept telling him.

She woke up and saw the look on Buddy’s face and said it again. “I’ll be okay. It’s the radiation. They all say I’ll be fine.” Then she made up another story about walking at Good Harbor with Joyce.

JOYCE FELT ELECTRIFIED and breathless. She woke before six and walked to the end of Rocky Neck in the wispy stillness. Back home, she turned on the computer, wrote a poem about the sunrise, and deleted it. When Frank called, she was sitting on the kitchen floor, staring at the purple swatch she’d painted.

“I’m trying that eggplant color,” she told him, coughing to clear her throat.

“Are you okay?”

“I think it’s just the fumes getting to me. But I think I’m almost ready to get serious about the book now that the painting is nearly done.”

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“Great.”

Joyce said nothing.

“Well, then, I won’t keep you.”

“You’re not,” said Joyce, instantly annoyed at him for ending the conversation so abruptly. “Things okay at work?”

“Yeah, crazy.” She could imagine him shrugging.

“Well, I have to get going. I should call Kathleen.”

“You’re a good friend,” said Frank. “Talk to you later.”

As soon as she hung up, Joyce got into the shower. Washing away my lies, she thought. Not that I’ve lied to anyone. Yet.

In the car, she switched the radio from NPR to a heavy metal rock station and turned up the volume. It was noise but it drowned out her misgivings and it seemed to sharpen her senses.

Patrick kissed her absently when she sat down at the counter for lunch. He wasn’t nearly as talkative as he’d been the day before. He hadn’t shaved either. “I had a long night,” he explained. “Double shift. I didn’t get off till just now.” He smoked one cigarette after another and only smiled as Joyce tried to make conversation, which wasn’t easy. She couldn’t very well talk about her family, so she told him the story of the statue in her yard, from Ricky’s near-fatal accident to Theresa’s recent devotions.

After the waitress delivered their sandwiches, they chewed in silence, and Joyce began to think that this would be their last meeting. But Patrick asked her if she had time for a quick walk at Plum Cove before he went home and crashed. They walked silently past chatting mothers and playing children on the small, rocky beach.

Patrick leaned against Joyce on the way back to the cars, brushing his hand against hers. “I’ve been so lonesome here,” he said. “You’re a good egg to put up with me, Joycey.”

She squeezed his hand and lifted her mouth to be kissed. He obliged. He got into her car and took her face between his hands, kissing her. For ten minutes, he kissed her, then moved his lips to her ear and said, “Tomorrow, Joycey, would you come visit me in my poor little room?”

“Yes.”

“Noon again?”

“Yes.”

He wrote down the address.

Joyce turned up the volume on her radio even louder and kept it there, turning it down only for her daily phone call to Kathleen, who said no again. When Frank called, she let the machine pick up. “Looks like a great beach day,” he said. “I hope you’re having a good one.”

It was a long one, which she filled with ceilings, her least favorite job.

In the morning, she took a bath instead of a shower. She filed her nails and finally left the house early, arriving in Rockport an hour before she was supposed to be there, which turned out to be a good thing since she couldn’t find Patrick’s apartment. She located the sub shop he mentioned, but there was no door at the address he’d given her. Finally, she walked around to the parking lot behind the storefront, where he was waiting, on the wooden stoop, smoking.

Joyce followed him up a flight of stairs that opened into a dim kitchen with empty spaces where there should have been a refrigerator and a stove. They walked past a line of hollow-core doors, each of them padlocked from the outside. “Who lives here?” she asked.