Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (24 page)

“Like my mother,” Harriet says, pushing Beatrice out of her way to climb into the car. She rolls down her window and looks up at me, eyes brimming with tears.

Beatrice takes my arm and pulls me aside. “She’ll be okay. Just give her a few days to cool off and then call us.” She pauses. “Oh, no, wait. I forgot. We’re leaving on Monday.”

This is news to me. “Where are you going?”

“Didn’t Harriet tell you?”

I shake my head.

“San Francisco,” Beatrice says. “I’m taking Harriet home to meet my family.” She squeezes my hand. “Better wait till we get back.”

“When?”

“Labor Day.”

Harriet drives off and I see Anna’s small hand waving out the window like a tiny white flag. I wave back. How long before I see her again? Two weeks? Two months? Harriet’s blue Subaru bounces twice, swerves to avoid the giant pothole at the foot of my neighbor’s driveway, and disappears around the bend in a cloud of dust and I’m left standing in my front yard with no wish to go inside and face the other half of my problem.

Whatever you do, don’t come unglued.

My legs tremble. I wobble up the porch steps and fold myself into the rope swing that Colin bought in Maine and hung up for me, and I spin around in it till I’m dizzy with indecision.

What should I do? Take the ostrich approach and pretend nothing’s wrong, or be honest and make an issue of it? What would the old Jill have done? Tackled him head-on, that’s what. But this new, softer Jill is a bit foreign to me. I haven’t quite gotten used to living inside her skin. I don’t know how to react, what to say. I’m scared to open my mouth because, like an adolescent boy on the verge of manhood, I don’t know what’ll come out. And if I don’t like what comes out, then what?

Back to square one.

It’s worse than pulling petals off a daisy. I’m screwed no matter which way I turn.

The screen door creaks open and Colin steps onto the porch. He’s obviously had a shower because his hair is slicked back, but why is he wearing a shirt and a tie and a pair of well-pressed slacks? Did we have plans to go out tonight that I, in my current crisis mode, have forgotten about?

“What’s with the fancy dress?” I say.

Colin tucks his cell phone into his pocket. “I need to go home.”

I stop swinging. “Home?”

“To England.”

“Like, right now? This very minute?”

“There’s a train to Boston at five thirty. I’m booked on the eleven o’clock flight from Logan to Heathrow,” Colin says, looking at his watch. “Will you drive me to the station?”

He turns away and I unfold my legs, trying to escape from the swing, but my big toe is stuck in the mesh. I yank it free and tear off a strip of nail. Christ! That smarts. I grab my foot and squeeze hard to keep the pain at bay. The screen door creaks again. Colin’s maneuvering his suitcase onto the porch. He leans it against the wall and bends to adjust the strap that holds his carry-on bag to the handle.

My God, he’s packed already. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Problem at the lodge,” he says, straightening.

“What sort of problem?”

“Something’s come up.”

“Can’t it wait until Monday?”

Colin shakes his head.

I study his face, searching for clues, but he’s like a book I’ve opened at random. I can read the words and understand the phrases but they don’t make sense because I’ve just landed in the middle of a puzzle, much like poor Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole.

“Then let Shelby and her sister cope with it,” I say.

He hesitates. “They can’t.”

Letting go of my sore foot, I lurch out of my rope nest and feel like screaming. Not because my toe is on fire, but because I’ve bloody well coped. I’ve spent a lifetime coping because that’s what you do when there’s nobody else to pick up the pieces, and when I think about women like Shelby and Diana who fall apart because a guest complained or the bartender quit or, heaven forbid, the florist delivered the wrong flowers, I get seriously mad.

“Come on, Colin,” I say. “What’s gone so horribly wrong it can’t wait a few more days?”

He grips the porch railing and stares at my front lawn that he mowed, just this morning, into rows of neat, diagonal stripes. Sweat beads up and glistens on his forehead. He’s flushed, partly from the shower, but mostly from too much sun. I should’ve gotten to him sooner with the sunscreen. I limp toward him and reach up to stroke his cheek. He grasps my wrist.

“Hadn’t you better get changed?”

My bathing suit’s covered with sand. It chafes the tops of my legs. “Are you leaving because of what happened just now? Because if so, then we need—”

“Of course I am.” Colin drops my hand. “That’s why I have to get back and get it sorted.”

It takes a moment for this to sink in, but when it finally does I realize he doesn’t have a clue. He has no idea my friends are hurt and that the reason I’ve been sitting out here, stewing, is because I don’t know how to handle the confusion I feel. He obviously thinks I was referring to his problem back at the lodge, not mine, which has just driven off in a fury.

I let out a small sigh. I’ve been handed a reprieve, a bit of breathing room which is a relief because I don’t feel up to dealing with this right now. Not with Colin shifting from one foot to the other, anxious to take off. Issues this complex, this fraught with emotional liability, require lengthy discussions and copious amounts of patience and we don’t have time for either at the moment. It’ll have to wait till we get to New Zealand. I’ll see about a ticket on Monday. Probably way beyond my means, but I’m sure Colin will help pay for it.

“Then I’ll drive you to the airport.”

He glances toward my car. “I’d rather take the train.”

I catch my breath.

“That Volvo’s ready to give out. It’ll never make it to Boston and back,” Colin says. “So why don’t you put on some clothes and take me to the station. Once everything’s sorted I’ll give you a call.”

“When?”

He frowns. “Tomorrow afternoon. Okay?”

I sigh. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“So am I.”

Sands Point

August 2011

Amtrak’s five thirty to Boston pulls into the station as Colin and I race onto the platform. Breathless, he bends and kisses my cheek. My lips search for his, but a kid carrying a duffle bag bumps into us and we never connect. Colin’s mouth grazes my hair. He turns, reaches for the handle of his suitcase, pulls it away.

Wheels groan, hydraulics hiss, and the train grinds to a laborious halt. Doors slide open. People alight and hurry off to waiting cars, waiting loved ones. Colin steps on board, hesitates, then looks over his shoulder and flashes me a crooked smile.

“Bye, Jill.”

I put a hand to my lips. Another kiss. But he’s gone. Swallowed up by passengers and luggage, herded inside by a zealous conductor who keeps checking his watch.

A whistle blows.

The train jerks as if impatient to be off. Doors swish close.

Scuttling along the platform, I peer in windows, hoping to catch sight of him as he edges down the aisle, lifts his bag into the overhead rack, or settles into a seat, but all I see are reflections of myself, wide-eyed and anxious, with a mop of salt-stiffened hair and Colin’s pink shirt hanging to my knees.

The station master raises his hand, looks up and down the platform, and tells me to step back. He signals the engineer.

“All aboard.”

Expelling a huge sigh, the train shunts forward and gathers speed, and as I stand on the platform and watch it shrink to the size of a toy, I curse myself for not insisting that Colin tell me, precisely, what the problem is that’s hauled him back to England in such a terrible hurry.

I look down at my toe. It’s bleeding.

Unable to face my empty house, I grab a towel from the porch and head for the beach. Waves roll up the sun-drenched sand, whipped by a skittish wind that turns their tips into froth. I paddle beyond the surf and swim in long, lazy circles until my arms and legs refuse to work any more. Limp with exhaustion, I flip onto my back, close my eyes, and drift with the current.

In the distance, something rumbles.

Thunder?

Without warning, a roar blasts through me. Waves chop and churn, and I’m being sucked under, caught in the wake of a speed boat racing too close to the beach. I surface, spluttering and choking, and if I could get that guy’s registration I’d nail his balls to the wall.

I punch a hole in the air with my fist.

Thoughtless git.

Head down, I trudge out of the water and bump into my neighbor, standing in the shallows with Molly thrashing around his legs, pretending she knows how to swim. No sign of the dogs.

“You almost lost it back there,” Tom says.

If he mentions the other night, I’ll throttle him.

“Hold still a minute,” he says.

I freeze. “Why?”

“This.”

Something slithers off my back. I shudder and turn around. Tom holds up a strip of bilious green kelp.

“Lasagna!” Molly cries.

“No, Princess. It’s seaweed,” Tom says, dropping it back in the water. Molly grabs it.

“Actually,” I say, “its botanical name is
laminaria longicarpa
.”

Tom Grainger looks at me.

“And,” I go blathering on, “sea urchins thrive on it.”

“So it would appear,” Tom says. He retrieves the kelp before Molly sinks her teeth into it.

Where’s that damn zipper when I need it?

I snatch Colin’s shirt and my towel off the beach and march back to my cottage with the feeling that, somehow, Tom Grainger has one-upped me.

I drink half the bottle of wine I’d been saving for my last night with Colin and fall into bed, restless and unable to sleep. Finally, I doze off and wake four hours later, sheets knotted around my ankles, my quilt a puddle on the floor with Zachary, fast asleep, on top. It’s still dark, for Christ’s sake.

What the hell woke me up?

Colin.

Is he home yet? I squint at my clock till the numbers swim into focus. Five thirty. Twelve hours since I put him on the train. He ought to be landing right about now. Another two hours, three at the most, and he’ll be back at the lodge dealing with whatever it is that neither Shelby nor Diana can cope with.

He said he’d call late afternoon. His time or mine?

I forgot to ask.

Zachary jumps up and treads about on my legs, looking for a place to settle. I rescue my quilt, rearrange the sheets, and sink into a dreamless sleep, arms wrapped around my cat and it’s almost ten when I open my eyes again. If things had gone according to plan, Colin and I would’ve just finished taking a shower together and I’d be wandering into the kitchen to fix breakfast, and then he’d drift down to join me and maybe we’d take our coffee onto the patio and afterward we’d stroll along the beach, holding hands, and I’d look with mild pity at those solitary women who have no one to walk with, except their dogs, and feel rather smug because I’m no longer one of them.

After skimming the Sunday paper, I kill time in my office sorting through bank statements and unopened bills, not daring to look at the numbers. I’ll cope with my debt tomorrow.

Keep busy. Keep moving.

I finish my submission for Archibald. Everything’s ready to go. I address manila envelopes to the first ten editors on my list and fill them with manuscript, sample illustrations, and a query letter that took me almost as long to write as the story did. I’ll drop this lot at the post office on my way to the bank.

At six o’clock, when Colin still hasn’t called, or faxed, I ring his cell phone and leave a message on his voice mail. Suppose he doesn’t check it? I shoot off an e-mail—
thinking about you and hoping everything’s all right
—and have an overwhelming urge to get out of my house. Away from the phone and the waiting.

But what if he calls?

He’ll leave a message.

What if he doesn’t?

Stuffing the cordless phone in my pocket, I follow my well worn path to the beach. I kick at seaweed and scuff my bare feet through loose clumps of sand. The sky is overcast, filled with a threat of thunder and a peculiar, gray-gold light that sets fire to the dunes. Squadrons of insects attack my legs. Slapping them off, I walk as far as the rocks and peer in the tide pool. No sign of Anna’s hermit crab.

Come on phone, ring. Dammit, why don’t you ring?

Could I be out of its range? This phone is brand new. State-of-the-art digital technology and guaranteed up to five-hundred yards. I pull it from my pocket and check for incoming calls, but the message window is blank. I slouch back to my house.

The wind picks up and makes a weary pass through the willows alongside my patio. Narrow leaves, still quite green and probably surprised at finding themselves on the ground in the middle of August, drift into corners. I stack chairs, lower the umbrella, and haul cushions onto the back porch. No point leaving them outside with a storm on the way. Then I pull two buckets from the shed and take them upstairs. If it rains hard enough, the roof will undoubtedly leak.

My stomach grumbles and reminds me I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Opening the fridge, I contemplate the leftovers, but this isn’t the time for sensible eating, so I fish around in the cupboard and exhume that package of stale ladyfingers. I finish them off, scattering crumbs on the floor, and stare at the phone. How the hell does an instrument that’s designed for human communication have the gall to remain so stubbornly, persistently silent?

Is something wrong with the lines? I check to make sure they’re okay—they are. Maybe there’s a problem with the ones in England—the international operator assures me there isn’t.

So why hasn’t he called?

Iris O’Reilly, the assistant manager, is chatting with a teller when I race through the rain and into the bank at nine thirty the next morning. Her bracelets glitter as she waves me into her office, her purple dress sweeps the ground. She closes the door and offers me a seat. The chairs are new, as are the carpet and drapes. Those burst pipes must’ve wrecked everything. Even the wallpaper’s been replaced.