A Simple Thing (3 page)

Chapter 3

Susannah 2011

The first thing Susannah noticed about Jim Pavalak was his eyes, which were a muted shade of mossy green exactly the same color as the waters in Lake Michigan in winter. The second thing she noticed was the way he listened, with his head cocked to one side as though he had all the time in the world. He didn't take his eyes off hers as he shook her hand, asked about the ferry ride, and welcomed her to the San Juans. To Susannah, used to the rapid-fire chatter and distracted gazes that characterized conversation on the East Coast, this was remarkable. The third thing she noticed was his absolute confidence behind the wheel of the boat. Her father had been the same way, so secure on the water that driving the boat was as natural as breathing. Jim's nonchalance—one hand resting on the wheel, his body turned sideways so he could look at Quinn while they chatted—reminded her so much of her father it unnerved her.

Jim met them at the ferry dock, and then they walked through the tiny town of Friday Harbor to the marina, under the canopy of broad, ancient oaks covered in bright gold leaves. The wheels of their suitcases rattled along the wooden planks of the dock. Sharp-eyed Quinn pointed out two sea otters bobbing in the water alongside them.

“So everyone's curious about why you picked Sounder,” Jim said over his shoulder, as he backed the boat out of its slip in the marina. He'd already asked Quinn about Otis the turtle, and had also tried to engage Katie, who had smiled at him but kept her white earbuds firmly in place, which annoyed Susannah no end.

“Why Sounder?” Susannah said. She looked out the window of the cabin at the soft swells of the gray-green water and gripped the edge of the seat beneath her with both hands. “I'm a Shackleton fan,” she said, turning back to Jim. “I love adventure stories about life under extreme conditions—you know, the Donner party or the survivors of plane crashes in the Andes or that guy in World War Two who survived all those days in a lifeboat and prisoner of war camp.”

Jim's eyebrows shot up. “And you think that's what life on Sounder is like?”

“No, of course not,” Susannah said. “But it's different, at least, different enough from what we're used to.”

She had first read about Sounder in a
New York Times
article years ago, and she had clipped the piece and saved it in a drawer in her desk, in a file called “Things I Like.” It made her think of the little island in the middle of the Fox River in northern Michigan, her longed-for escape. Then, when Katie started acting so crazy and Susannah began to think about taking Katie away—to her mother's in Michigan, or to her brother Jon's in Seattle—she remembered Sounder, the anti-Tilton.

“Hate to disappoint you,” Jim said, “but we get very little snow, and we have yet to eat the bodies of our neighbors during hard times.”

“Not even the fat ones?” Susannah said with a smile.

Jim laughed. “No, not even the fat ones.”

“But Sounder is different,” Susannah said. “No electricity, no television, no landline phones—so
unplugged
compared to the way we live.”

“It was more different before the Internet arrived,” Jim said. “And cell phones. A lot of islanders have satellite dishes now that give them a connection to both.”

“Yes!” Quinn said.

“Don't get too excited,” Jim said. “We lose the connection every time it rains. And it rains a lot.”

“What do you do on Halloween?” Quinn said. This was a particular concern of his, with Halloween just a week or two away. He thought eleven was probably the last year he'd go trick-or-treating, and now they were moving to an island with only seventy-five people, who lived in houses miles apart.

“Golf carts,” Jim said. “Lots of people on the island own electric golf carts, and the kids drive 'em around from house to house to trick-or-treat.”

“Really?” Quinn looked very happy. “But you don't have electricity. How do you charge them?”

“We have generators, and solar power.”

“Why does everyone have golf carts?”

“No gas,” Jim said. “To fill up a car with gas on Sounder, you have to drive a boat over to Orcas or Friday Harbor, which can take an hour or two, fill a portable tank with gas, haul that tank back in the boat for another hour or two, and then carry it up the dock to your car. Believe me, it makes you think long and hard about any driving you do. That's why we got the motorcycle. It gets sixty miles a gallon. The boys love it.”

Katie pulled the earbuds out of her ears. “How old are your boys?” she said.

Susannah noted that Katie had clearly been listening to the entire conversation.

“Fourteen,” Jim said. “Twins. Hood and Baker.”

“Like the mountains?” Quinn said.

“Yes. Lucky we didn't have a girl, eh? Or she'd be stuck with a name like Saint Helen.” He grinned at Katie.

“Or Shasta,” Quinn said. “That's in the Cascades, too.”

“Or Shasta,” Jim said, opening his eyes wide and nodding at Quinn to show he was impressed. “I like a young man who knows his mountains.”

“My dad's a geologist,” Quinn said.

“How can your boys drive a motorcycle when they're only fourteen?” Katie said. “Don't you have to be sixteen?”

Jim shrugged. “It's Sounder. Necessity trumps legality sometimes.” He paused. “There's no traffic. Kids here need to know how to drive young to help with farm work. Most learn as soon as their feet can touch the pedals.”

No traffic
. Susannah wanted to do a little dance of joy, right there in the boat. If she'd wanted a life as different from Tilton as possible, she was getting it. What could be more different than not spending six hours a day stuck inside a car in endless traffic? Although the idea of Katie riding a motorcycle, her arms wrapped around some teenage boy, gave her pause.

“You have a motorcycle,” Susannah said.

“Yes,” Jim said. “But it's actually out of commission right now. You can put your
Easy Rider
fears to rest.”

“You read my mind.”

Jim tilted his head in acknowledgment. “One of my many skills.”

Suddenly the water swelled and the waves grew choppy and rough. The comforting shape of San Juan Island to their left had disappeared, and they were in a wide, open channel. Jim put both hands on the wheel.

“Governor's Channel,” he said. “Deepest waters in the San Juans. The currents can be a little crazy here.”

Susannah tried to choke down her fear. More than thirty years had passed since she had last been on a boat, other than the ferry she had just ridden to get here. But that was the other purpose of this adventure, wasn't it? She wasn't running away. She was running straight into her own darkest fears.

Susannah had tried to explain this to Matt, as they'd talked about what to do after that horrible night at the hospital. Zach, the
seventeen-year-old
Katie had been dating behind their backs, had taken her to a party and plied her with rum and Cokes until she passed out. It was only the quick thinking of Katie's friend Annie—who arrived late at the party and found Katie sprawled on the sofa in a dark corner with Zach—that had saved her from God knows what with Zach, and had likely saved her life. Annie had texted her own mom, who immediately called Susannah, who raced over there with Matt.

A few days later, Annie's mom called with more news. Zach had a Web site, and had been taking bets from other high school boys on whether or not he could get girls to give up their virginity to him. He handicapped them all and posted odds on the Web site. Katie was listed with odds of two to one he'd have sex with her by November 1.

Susannah and Matt talked about legal action, but they lived in a small town. Susannah had already heard the things being said about Katie, about her own parenting. She didn't want to be the subject of endless gossip as the case dragged through the courts and was written up in the local paper. Her urge to leave was intuitive, reflexive.

“I've got to get her out of here,” she said to Matt. “Zach—”

“The little fucker,” Matt said, his lips clenched. For a moment Susannah saw him as the boy he'd been at twelve, enraged, struggling for control. Then he had shivered, shaken his head hard, and started planning what to do next, in his rational Matt-like way. “Running away isn't the answer,” he said.

Susannah was folding laundry as they talked. “It's not just Zach—it's Katie. What makes her decide to go out with a guy like Zach, or go to that party knowing no adults would be there? We have to get her away from here, at least for a while.”

“But she's going to be Katie no matter where she is,” Matt said.

“There are more temptations here.” Susannah could remember the softness of the T-shirt she held in her hands. “And
problems
. It's Quinn, too.” She didn't have to explain. Quinn's isolation pained Matt, who had also been set apart as a boy—the kid with cheap clothes, the kid who ate free school lunch, the kid who couldn't play sports because he had to work. But being different had hardened Matt; it hadn't done that for his son.

“We don't know if that fight he got into at the bus stop was the first, or the tenth. Sure, that's the first time there's been
physical
evidence he's being bullied, but . . .” Susannah's voice trailed off. “And Katie—”

Matt looked at her. “It's almost as if you wanted this,” he said. “So you'd have a reason to leave.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said. He picked up one of Quinn's baseballs from the coffee table and stared at it, turning it over and over in his hands.

But she knew. Their struggles with both kids this past year had revealed gaps in their marriage she never would have imagined, like snapping open the shade to let in a sudden harsh light, exposing flaws in something that had seemed young and lovely in the half dark. With each fresh crisis, Susannah felt herself spin more and more out of control, desperate to restore the neat, careful life she had built for her family. And Matt, the practical problem solver with the scientific mind, didn't understand.

Over the past six months Matt had worked more and more hours, so Susannah was often left alone to deal with making all the phone calls to track down Katie when she didn't come home on time, or talking Quinn through the unlikeliness of getting hepatitis from a school cafeteria sandwich. At least once a week she and Katie would get in shouting matches, and Katie would start calling her the kind of names her father used to call her: Idiot. Stupid. Jerk. And no matter how much she tried to remind herself that she was the adult, Katie's rage called up something visceral in her that she couldn't face.

She wanted Matt to come home and protect her; Matt wanted to come home to a peaceful, happy home. They were like two pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit together.

“I need to try this,” she said to Matt.

“I guess you do,” he said. He didn't look at her.

“Not just for Katie and Quinn,” she said, reaching out to put a hand on his knee. “For me. Going away for a while. Being on the water again. Maybe it's what I need to finally get over it.”

It.
She didn't need to elaborate. For thirty-three years she had lived with what happened the day of the accident. She knew—in the complex equation of her father's drinking, her mother's failure to protect them, the vagaries of wind and water and wake—who was to blame. Yet still she hadn't been able to set foot on a boat, forgive her mother, control her hypervigilance over her own children. It was exhausting.

Finally Matt—the only person other than her father and brother who knew
exactly
what had happened that day—looked at her with those blue, blue eyes, the color of the ice in glaciers, and said, “Maybe you
should
go.”

She'd found Betty's ad the next day, and called before she lost her courage. But the image of Matt standing alone in the airport, waving at them as they disappeared through security, haunted her.

Jim slowed the engine as the swells grew. “Bit rough today,” he said.

Susannah felt fear rise in her with the waves.
Don't think about it.

“How long have you lived on Sounder?” Susannah asked.

“Most of my life,” Jim said. “I tried some other places. I worked in California for a while. I even spent a year in graduate school in North Carolina. But the mist on the Smoky Mountains reminded me of Puget Sound, so I ended up hitchhiking home.”

“What did you go to graduate school for?” Katie said.

“Law. I didn't like that, either.”

“Law is boring,” Katie said.

“What do you like?” Jim said.

“Writing.”

“Ah, an author. You'll be in good company on Sounder. We have several writers. What kind of writing do you do?”

Katie shrugged. “Stories. Poems. A journal.”