The Bay At Midnight Part 8

I pointed to the only free corner of the full-size bed."May I sit?"

She shrugged. "Sure."

I watched her carefully wrap a towel around her printer. I was in need of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. I wondered if all parents felt that way when their children were leaving. It seemed monumental. A time for a good talk. To say all the things we thought about but never said to one another. I gave it a try.

"I'll miss you," I said.

"I'll still be around, Mom." She had finished with the computer and now was working on the middle drawer of her dresser. "I'm just taking one suitcase and my CDs and computer and my cello. It's not like I'm going off to school already."

"There's something I have to ask you," I said.

She didn't respond. She folded a pair of shorts, smoothing them into her suitcase, running her hands over them as though it was important to get out every invisible crease. Her long hair swung forward, cutting me off from her face.

"We've never really talked about this," I said, readying myself for a conversation two years overdue. "But I need to know. Do you blame me for the divorce?"

She glanced up at me then, stepping back from her suitcase before reaching into her dresser again, this time for a stack of T-s.h.i.+rts. "Of course not," she said, dumping the s.h.i.+rts on her bed.

"Do you blame your dad then?"

"I think it was a mutual thing."

"What do you think happened?" I often wondered if she knew, if she had somehow put two and two together and guessed about Glen's affair.

She shrugged. "I figured it wasn't any of my business," she said.

"Honey, I just want to make sure you...you know, that you don't think it had anything to do with you. That it was your fault in any way."

"I know that," she said, some irritation creeping into her voice. "I think Dad just p.i.s.sed you off and you p.i.s.sed him off, that's all."

That puzzled me, because I didn't think I'd ever complained about her father to her.

"What do you think he did that upset me?" I asked.

She put her hands on her hips and looked at me in genuine annoyance. "Mom, I'm trying to pack," she said. "I have to take my stuff over to Dad's and be ready to work at the day-care center by noon."

"I'd like to understand, though," I persisted. I couldn't seem to shut up. "I want to make sure that-"

"I think Dad was a slob and that got to you," she said. "And I think you're afraid of...the world and that got to him."

"I'm not afraid of the world," I said, wounded.

"Mother, you're a hermit," she said, grabbing one of the T-s.h.i.+rts and stuffing it unfolded into the suitcase. "Face it.You sit in your little cubbyhole of an office all day long, hanging around with people who don't exist."

"That is really unfair." I felt both defensive and misunderstood. The only thing I truly feared, other than something terrible happening to someone I love, was water. Not water in my bathtub, or even in a swimming pool. But the thought of swimming in the open water of a bay or the ocean or a lake was enough to start my heart racing. And I had to admit, I hadn't been in a boat since the night Isabel died. But I was not not afraid of the world. afraid of the world.

"I fly regularly," I said to Shannon. "I go on book tours-which are stressful, to say the least-for weeks at a time. I speak in front of huge audiences. I try new foods." My voice was rising. "I walk through Westfield in the dark. I teach memoir writing at the nursing home. I do volunteer work at the hospital. So please don't tell me that I'm a hermit and that my fears are keeping me locked up in my office, or whatever it was you said."

"You're right, I'm sorry." Her tone told me she was only saying it to end the conversation.

I ran my hand over the T-s.h.i.+rt on the top of the pile on her bed, recognizing it as one I'd sent her from Seattle when I was touring there. "The only thing I'm really afraid of is losing you," I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.

She looked at me, a few bras hanging from her fingers. "Do you know what a burden that is?" she asked. "I feel like every single thing I do, I not only have to take my own well-being into account, but yours, too."

I stared down at the T-s.h.i.+rt, knowing she was right, maybe fully understanding for the first time how difficult it was to be my daughter. I was uncertain what to say next.

"I'm done packing," she said, closing the flap on her suitcase and running the zipper around it. "I'm going to carry this stuff down to my car."

"I'll help you," I said, standing up. "But I want to continue this conversation some time. Not now, though. We should probably put it on the shelf for now. I don't want you to move out with either of us angry at the other."

"I didn't want to talk about it in the first place," she said, lifting her suitcase from the bed to the floor.

"I love you," I said. "I hope it's good for you, staying with Dad for the summer."

I helped her load the computer and suitcase into her little Honda, and once she'd gone, I went into my office. It was true that I usually felt safe and secure in that room with my "people who don't really exist." But I hadn't felt happy in there for the past few days. I still had a blank white computer screen beneath the words Chapter Four Chapter Four, and I had no idea how to fill it. There were times when my characters seemed unimportant and a ridiculous waste of my time. This morning was one of them.

I had written and deleted four paragraphs when the phone rang. It was Ethan.

"I took the letter to the police department yesterday," he said.

"Oh, that's good, Ethan." I got up from my office chair and carried the phone to the love seat where I could get comfortable. I was surprised and pleased that he'd taken care of the matter so quickly. "What did they say?"

"Just what we expected," he said. "They're reopening the case. I stopped at the grocery store after I dropped off the letter, and by the time I got home, there was already a message on my voice mail telling me they want to search Ned's house."

I felt a flicker of guilt. I'd persuaded Ethan to take the letter to the police and already the Chapmans' privacy was being invaded, while I sat in a house that would never be encroached on in any way.

"What could they possibly find at Ned's house forty-some years after the fact?" I asked, although I knew the answer the moment the question left my lips: DNA.

"Who knows?" Ethan said. "A journal, maybe, though I know-or at least, I don't think-he ever kept one. Letters. Keepsakes. But the truth is, and I told them this, Abby and I already went through everything. We threw out sacks and sacks of stuff that seemed unimportant and it's too late to recover any of that, I'm sure. We put anything valuable in boxes that I was just going to keep in storage along with his furniture, until I have the time to go through them and see what I want to sell and what I want to hold on to. The boxes are all there at his house, and the cops plan to take them apart and go through everything."

"I think," I said carefully, "they'll probably look for DNA."

He was quiet. "How would that help them after all this time?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "If they kept anything from the scene, maybe." I knew that, these days, they bagged victim's hands, allowing any DNA material that might have belonged to the suspect to fall into the bags, but I didn't know if that had been done as early as 1962.

"But Isabel was in the-" He stopped himself, I knew, for my benefit.

"In the water," I finished the sentence for him. "I know. I don't really know how that would affect the collection of evidence." I didn't want to talk about this, more for his sake than my own.

"Are you upset?" I asked.

"Not with you," he said. "I know you and I are hoping for different outcomes, though, and I guess I'm...I'm just worried."

"That they'll learn it was Ned?"

"No, because I know it couldn't have been," he said, a stubborn edge to his soft voice. "I'm worried they might somehow put evidence together that would come-incorrectly-to that conclusion, though. I mean, I don't understand how they'd collect the suspect's DNA from your sister after all this time, but she was always with Ned, so it's certainly possible they'd find his DNA on her."

Or in her, I thought but did not say.

"And as I mentioned before, I'm worried about my father having to be dragged into this."

"I know," I said, "and I'm sorry this is so hard. But let's not borrow trouble. One step at a time."

"Right," he said. "You know one good thing that has come out of this?"

"What's that?"

"I enjoyed seeing you again, Julie," he said. "Even though it wasn't an easy conversation, it was a treat having lunch with you."

I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of excitement run through my body. "It was," I agreed.

"I was remembering things about you," he said. "Are you still a terrific swimmer?"

"Actually, I don't swim at all anymore," I said. "I lost interest after that summer."

"Really?" he asked. "You were so good. I was remembering the time you and I raced across the ca.n.a.l," he said. I laughed. I'd forgotten. We'd only been about ten the last summer we were truly friends. We'd known enough to wait for the slack tide and we were both strong swimmers for kids our age, but we got in a lot of trouble.

"I wasn't allowed near the water for a week," I said.

"I had to vacuum the entire house," Ethan said.

"I don't think I ever swam in the ca.n.a.l again," I said. "I swam in our dock all the time when the boat wasn't in it, but not the ca.n.a.l."

"Ah, that's not true," Ethan said.

"What do you mean?"

"I remember watching you float down the ca.n.a.l in an inner tube."

It took me a moment to place the memory, but then it came into my mind all at once. "I'd forgotten," I said, laughing, although the memory carried with it both joy and sadness since Isabel had been so much a part of it, and though Ethan and I reminisced about several other shared experiences before getting off the phone, it was that memory which stayed with me for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER 11.

Julie.

1962.

It was a weekday in Bay Head Sh.o.r.es, which meant that our father was home in Westfield. We had finished eating breakfast and Grandpop was already out in the garage working on some project, while Grandma was starting to clear the table in spite of our mother's admonishment to relax a while. I started to stand up to help Grandma, but Mom told me to stay where I was and I sat down again. She shook a cigarette from her pack of Kents and lit it, blowing a puff of smoke into the air above the cluttered table.

"I have an idea for something we could do today, girls," she said to the three of us.

"What?" Lucy sounded suspicious. Whatever it was, I could tell she was prepared to say she didn't want to do it.

"Look at the current," Mom said, and I turned my head to peer through the screen at the ca.n.a.l. The current was moving slowly in the direction of the bay.

"What about it?" Isabel asked. She was holding a lock of her hair in front of her face, probably scrutinizing it for split ends.

"Well," Mom said, "after we've digested our breakfast a bit, how about we take the big inner tubes and ride the current all the way from our house to the bay."

"Keen!" I said. It was an extraordinary idea.

"You've got to be kidding," Isabel said, but I knew she was intrigued. It was hard to get Isabel interested in any sort of family activity, and I was impressed that my mother had managed to come up with something exciting enough to draw in her oldest daughter.

Grandma laughed, sitting down at the table again, her ch.o.r.es forgotten. "I remember when you and Ross used to do that," she said to my mother. She rolled the r r in "Ross" in a way that made the name sound very pretty. I was surprised by what she'd said, though. So was Isabel. in "Ross" in a way that made the name sound very pretty. I was surprised by what she'd said, though. So was Isabel.

"You and Mr. Chapman Mr. Chapman floated on tubes to the bay?" she asked, incredulous. floated on tubes to the bay?" she asked, incredulous.

"When we were kids," Mom said.

I always forgot that my mother had spent her childhood summers in our bungalow. Her father-our Grandpop-had built the house himself in the late twenties, and the Chapmans had moved in next door shortly after that. Mr. Chapman and our mother had been friends when they were kids, the way Ethan and I used to be.

"We were probably about fifteen," my mother continued. "Once we floated all the way to the river."

"Tsk," Grandma clucked. "Do you remember how furious I was when I realized what you did?"

Mom smiled at her, turning her head to exhale a stream of smoke over her shoulder and away from the table. "I survived," she said.

"Well, I'm not going," Lucy announced, but this was no surprise and no one paid her much attention.

"The ca.n.a.l was different then," Grandma said. "There was no bulkhead, so you could walk right into it from the yard. And of course there weren't so many boats."

"Gosh." I turned to look at the water again, imagining it lapping at our sandy backyard. I wished it was still like that.

"The tubes are a little soft," Isabel said.

We had four of the giant black inner tubes in the garage. Ethan and I used to float on them in the dock, our arms and legs dangling over the sides. This year, though, I hadn't even bothered with the tubes. It was no fun playing in the dock alone. My loneliness was mounting, day by day. I made up stories about the rooster man, but I had no friends to scare with those spooky tales. I didn't dare tell them to Lucy and make her more paranoid than she already was.

"Why don't you and Julie take the tubes to the gas station and fill them up?" Mom said, stubbing out her cigarette in the big clamsh.e.l.l ashtray on the table. "By the time you get back, the current should be perfect for our adventure."

After we helped clean up from breakfast, Isabel and I went out to the garage, gathered up the four fat tubes and loaded them in the car. Isabel turned the key in the ignition, then adjusted the dial on the radio until she found "Johnny Angel," and we both sang along with it. I liked having that bond with my sister. I watched her bare arms turn the steering wheel as we backed out of the driveway. Her skin was smooth and dark, and my arms seemed pale and flabby by comparison. Isabel thought her tan was mediocre that summer because she had to work three days a week at Abramowitz's Department Store in town and couldn't lie out on the beach every day. She was stealing from the store; I was sure of it. She would come home with new clothes once or twice a week.Yesterday, she'd brought home two new bras, and when she was out with Mitzi and Pam, I tried one of them on, stuffing the pointy cups with toilet paper to see how I would look with real b.r.e.a.s.t.s, only to discover that I looked kind of ridiculous. I also tried to practice using one of her tampons so I'd be ready the next time I got my "friend." The tampon in its cardboard tube was huge and had been impossible to get it in. It was like trying to push a Magic Marker against a brick wall. I felt scared, wondering if there was something wrong with me and I would never be able to go all the way with my husband or have babies.

"I've got dibs on the biggest one," Isabel said, referring to the inner tubes.

"I don't care," I said. I knew the one she meant. It was fatter and wider and supported you so well it made you feel like you were floating on a cloud. But I wasn't going to fight her for it.

As we turned onto Rue Mirador, Isabel pulled a pack of Marlboros from the pocketbook on her lap, shook one partway out of the package and wrapped her lips around it to pull it the rest of the way out. She pushed the cigarette lighter into the dashboard, waiting for it to heat up.

I was stunned. "Did Mom give you permission to smoke?" I asked.

"She smokes herself, so what can she say?" Isabel asked. She held the pack toward me. "Want one?"

I hesitated, then took one of the cigarettes, digging it out of the pack with my fingers in a graceless manner. I put it to my lips.