Good Harbor

“I was pregnant with Jack then. I didn’t know it yet. I knew in September, but not in August.”

Kathleen looked out toward the horizon. “Every year, from the middle of July there’s some part of me that’s waiting. I’m never fully aware of it, and after all these years, it still sneaks up on me. First, I wait for it to be August, then for it to be the eighth, then for the fourteenth. At some point I look at the calendar and I remember. Oh. I’m waiting for Danny to die.”

Joyce hadn’t taken her eyes off Kathleen’s face, which had relaxed a little after the tension of telling. She stood up, held her hand out to Joyce, and said, “Let’s walk.”

It was a noisy day at Good Harbor. The surf chuffed into shore, where crowds of children squealed and teased and laughed. Three little girls, up to their thighs in the water, held hands and leapt up shrieking whenever a wave slapped up onto their convex bellies. A young mother dunked her giggling baby’s feet into the waves. A group of three women chatted, their arms crossed over their stomachs while their boys roughhoused in the surf.

Joyce winced at all the mother-and-child tableaux, which now seemed like a series of coldhearted insults to Kathleen’s loss. “There are so few men here during the week,” Joyce said.

“There are more women even on weekends,” said Kathleen, pleased that Joyce, too, had noticed. “Why do you think that is?”

“More moms are home with kids? More moms take care of kids than dads?”

“Yes,” said Kathleen. “But you see lots of women without kids, too, walking and talking. You and I aren’t the only ones here without children to entertain. Why, do you suppose?”

“Women are smarter than men?”

“I’m not sure about that.” Kathleen shook her head. “Though we do seem to take advantage of the opportunity to talk. And this is such a perfect setting.”

The tide put an end to the beach just past the red motel. They turned and started back.

“Kathleen, I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but I have to ask you something. The story about Danny, and August, and all. Don’t you think that your symptoms, your fatigue, has something to do with him? How many years is it?”

Kathleen felt her throat tighten. It was twenty-five years, but she wouldn’t say that. Not even to Joyce. That would make it all a simple equation: Poor Kathleen; of course she’s suffering. After all, it’s twenty-five years. She wasn’t having any “Poor Kathleen.”

“It’s a lot of years.”

Joyce heard the hesitation in Kathleen’s answer and they walked most of the way back in silence. Below the mansion, children with nets squatted near the edge of the tidal river. One small girl wearing a yellow swimsuit sat on the wet sand with a red bucket between her legs.

Kathleen walked toward her. “What have you got there?”

“Fishies,” she said seriously.

Kathleen looked inside and nodded.

She must be about three, Joyce thought.

Kathleen leaned in and said, “You can catch little crabs around here, too.”

“Do they bite you?” asked the girl.

“Oh, no.”

It would have killed me to lose Nina at the age of three, Joyce thought. I would have walked into the ocean.

Kathleen said good-bye to the little girl, returned to Joyce, and answered her unspoken question. “Hal kept me alive. Cooking his meals, taking him to the playground. When I realized I was pregnant, I didn’t want a new baby. I only wanted Danny back. But then Jack was born, and he was the happiest, most joyful little guy. And I fell in love with him.”

Joyce nodded. “There is nothing I can say, is there?”

“No. There is nothing to say. But it’s good that you know.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

Kathleen dozed off almost as soon as they got into the car. Joyce pulled into Kathleen’s driveway slowly and kept the engine going.

Joyce watched her friend sleep and remembered Kathleen’s questions about Frank. She hadn’t known how to answer her. She didn’t have anything to say about Frank. She didn’t think about her husband from his morning phone call to his evening phone call. She went for hours without even wondering what Nina was up to. She thought only of Patrick. Patrick’s fingers, Patrick’s lips. She had dreams about him, dreams set in a boat on the ocean. The owl and the pussycat.

What could she say about Frank? She could have shared a couple of half-truths. It’s always nonstop when you work on a startup. He was probably even enjoying it, staying up all night, drinking beer, eating pizza. But the other times, he’d had Nina to come home to, and Joyce, too. She wasn’t home anymore.