Sailing Lessons Read online

  It was nearly midnight. Shannon needed to get home; George would be up at six-thirty. There were breakfasts to be made and a family to mobilize for yet another long day ahead. The letter lay between them, no different than their unfinished conversation. Shannon picked it up.

  “Have we decided anything?”

  Wren nodded. “We tell Mom. Tomorrow.”

  “What about us? Do we have a consensus about him?”

  Piper didn’t hesitate. “I want to see him.”

  “I don’t,” Shannon said. “But you guys can do what you want.”

  This upset Piper. “Look, I know it’s hard for you guys, but it’s hard for me, too. I want to know why.”

  Shannon sighed. “Why he’s back or why he left?”

  “Both. I guess. But more than that, I want a chance to know him.”

  Shannon wouldn’t try to argue; Piper’s feelings were her own, and she was entitled to them. But what Piper lacked in understanding was the same thing that kept Shannon resisting this so-called reunion. “I don’t think you’ll get that from him,” she cautioned her little sister. “I don’t think seeing him again is going to get any of us closer to answers. Are you prepared for that?”

  Piper looked back at her with an intensity that belied her still repose. “I’m open, Shannon. I can’t say I’m prepared, but at least I’m open.”

  Shannon shook her head wearily. “Life isn’t all happy endings,” she muttered. “I don’t want you hanging your hat on a fairy tale that isn’t going to happen.”

  Piper stood. “I don’t have to listen to this, again.”

  Wren put her hand out and gently grabbed the edge of her sleeve. “Hey, wait. This isn’t personal.”

  Piper’s eyes were rimmed with tears. “Isn’t personal? It’s the most personal thing there is.”

  Shannon felt bad, but she couldn’t relent on this. All these years it had felt to her like the three of them against Caleb—against his memory, his leaving the family, and most of all, his absence. Of the three of them, Shannon had been the one to shoulder most of it. As the eldest, she’d had no choice.

  She turned to Wren, who had coaxed Piper to sit back down. “What about you?”

  Wren pulled her knees up to her chest. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to let him come back, but I’m also curious. Don’t you want to know what he did for all those years?”

  Shannon gazed at her sisters levelly. “Has it occurred to either one of you that he may have another family? Because after all this time, that’s certainly possible.”

  “He wouldn’t have,” Piper said. “No way.”

  “Why not? We weren’t his family.”

  “That’s not true. He was troubled. Like Mom said, he was haunted.”

  Shannon set the envelope back on the table. “He was an alcoholic.”

  “It’s a disease, Shannon. Not everyone can overcome it.”

  “Which is why Mom told him to go in the first place.”

  “No, Mom told him to get help.”

  “And did he?” She stared back at her sisters. “Last we heard he was somewhere down south passed out in a diner. Jesus, Mom couldn’t even locate him for six months to get the divorce. Hank had to use his newspaper contacts just to find him!”

  “Stop it.” Piper swiped at her eyes, her eyes trained on the table. Wren reached over and squeezed her arm.

  It hurt Shannon that she couldn’t do the same; somewhere inside she wanted to, but on the outside she was the realist. Someone had to be. “Piper, it’s the truth.”

  • • •

  In the days after the boat accident on Lighthouse Beach, the house had been eerily quiet, like the beach after the storm that day. Beverly swept up the two older girls, taking them to the library, and into town on errands—anything to keep them busy. Their parents wore a look of shocked distraction those first days, coming and going from the hospital like ghosts. Miraculously, aside from a concussion and the gash to her tiny forehead, their little sister had seemed to suffer no other effects. She was released two days later. Shannon remembered the homecoming. It was late afternoon, and Beverly had baked cookies with them to welcome Piper back. Despite the windy day, Shannon paced the porch watching for the car in the driveway. It should have been a celebration.

  When her parents pulled in, the first thing Shannon noticed was that Lindy was in the driver’s seat. Her father always drove. The next was the look on their faces. Both remained in the car, staring past her as she ran down the steps to greet them. It was Piper who got out first. She was still in her purple pajamas, and she hopped out holding a large stuffed dog. “I got a poodle!” she cried. Only then did Shannon’s parents come to life, following her up the steps. Their mother fussed over Piper, ushering her inside. “Quick, you don’t want to get cold. Oh, smell that! I think Grandma baked some goodies.”

  Shannon remained outside on the porch with her father. “Hey, kiddo. Did you hold the fort down?”

  His face was drawn, seemingly aged. Shannon knew they probably hadn’t slept in days.

  “We baked cookies. Chocolate chip,” she told him.

  “Did you, now? Let’s go in and have some.” But once inside, her father headed up the stairs instead of following her to the kitchen.

  Later, when they sat down for spaghetti and meatballs—Piper’s favorite—their father didn’t come down. Lindy waited until they’d eaten, her own plate untouched, before telling them the news. “Daddy is going to be away for a while. On a long trip.”

  “But you all just got home!” Wren said. “Where is work sending him now?”

  Shannon looked to her mother; she sensed this trip was different.

  Their mother cleared her throat. “It’s not for work. Daddy is not feeling well, and he needs to go away for a little while to get better.”

  “Where?” Wren wanted to know.

  The look in their mother’s eyes scared Shannon. This was different than the look she’d had coming and going from the hospital. “He’s going to stay at a center outside Boston. It’s kind of like a sleepaway camp for grownups.”

  “You mean rehab,” Shannon said.

  Lindy turned sharply.

  “For how long?” Wren asked.

  Her mother’s eyes remained on Shannon, watery with apology. “Thirty days.”

  “But that’s so long!” Wren protested.

  Piper, who had spaghetti sauce stained across her lips, glanced between her two older sisters, gauging their expressions before deciding how she should respond to this news.

  “I know, honey, but it’s important. It’ll go by fast. And we can visit.”

  Shannon didn’t want to talk about visits. She wanted answers. “Is it because of the accident?” She glanced at Piper, but her little sister was now focused on her pasta.

  “No, honey. It’s because of the drinking that led to the accident. It’s a sickness, honey. And Daddy needs help.”

  Their father left the next morning. Shannon sat in her bedroom window watching him stow his duffel bag onto the backseat of the car. Her mother would drive him to the center and be home by dinner. Shannon could not reconcile the strained calm that had stretched across their otherwise ordinary morning as he prepared to go. They’d eaten breakfast. Her parents had showered and dressed. It was not like the bitter end in a movie: there was no loud confrontation, no splintering of fine china against a kitchen wall. How she wished there had been. As she watched her father standing in the driveway below, something leaden settled within her that morning. A good smashing of plates might have helped dislodge it.

  When they had hugged him goodbye, her father’s grip left a mark on her arm. But Shannon didn’t say a thing. There were tears in his eyes when she looked up at him. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I’ll write you, okay? And I’ll be home before you know it.”

  That was the plan. But the plan changed. Their father had lasted two weeks in the rehab center outside of Boston. A beautiful brick building with lush gardens that their mother desc
ribed to them as being like a mansion. But Shannon would never know. Caleb Bailey didn’t last long enough for his family to visit.

  • • •

  Piper set her glass down and ran a hand through her long hair. “So what about forgiveness? What about second chances?”

  Shannon pointed at Piper but looked at Wren. “See that?”

  “See what?” Wren looked between them.

  Shannon jabbed her finger at her youngest sister. “That. That look of hope. That’s what scares me the most.” She glanced around the table at her sisters. “We can’t get those years back. This doesn’t change what he did.”

  “But it could change what we have,” Piper said. “Don’t you want your kids to know their grandpa?”

  Shannon scoffed. “Don’t bring my kids into this, Pipe. Don’t you dare.”

  But she kept going. “This is about more than us. A lot has happened since Dad left.”

  Shannon screwed up her nose. “Jesus. How can you even call him that?”

  “Because he’s still our dad!”

  “I can’t do this.” Shannon pushed her chair back and stood. “I have worried my whole life that this day would never come. It’s all we’ve waited for and all I’ve wanted since I was a little girl.”

  “Shan, please. Sit. We can talk through this, all of us,” Wren pleaded.

  The kitchen began to spin and Shannon gripped the edge of the kitchen table to slow it. “That day is finally here. Twenty-three years have passed, but you know what? It turns out I’m not ready for this. I don’t think I ever will be.”

  Piper stood, too. “Shannon, just hear us out. For once in your life let someone else have a say.”

  “Enlighten me, Piper. I’m dying to hear what you know that the rest of us don’t. Because you were what—three years old—when he took off?”

  Shannon hated the look that washed over Piper’s face because she knew she was responsible for it. It was a look that should have been reserved for their father, not for the sister who had practically raised her in his absence. They were siblings linked by a man they could not feel more differently about. How was it that his absence had spelled hardship for Shannon, yet Piper seemed to fill in all the missing gaps with a man part hero, part mystery. It was a fictitious history that needed correcting.

  Shannon leaned in. “I’ll tell you what I know. While you were busy being three years old, I was cooking your dinner and giving you baths because Mom had to go back to school at night so she could support us. Not to mention every weekend I spent my free time doing both your laundry while my friends went out to parties. Remember that?” Shannon raised her voice. “Who do you think taught you to ride your bike? And who patched up your knee when you rode it into Willy McEwan’s mailbox? It wasn’t Dad!”

  Piper burst into tears.

  “Shannon,” Wren begged. “Lucy’s sleeping.”

  At the mention of her niece’s name Shannon stopped. The axis of the kitchen seemed to tilt suddenly toward her. The faces around the table jerked into sharp focus. “Oh God.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled for her purse on the back of her chair. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “No, let’s just calm down. We need to sit a moment with this.”

  But Shannon was already moving for the door. “I’ve said too much. I need to go home.”

  Piper did not follow, but Wren did. “Shannon, please.”

  She halted in the doorway. Wren came up behind her and leaned her head against Shannon’s shoulder. “I didn’t want this to happen,” Wren whispered.

  Shannon turned and pecked her cheek quickly. “It’s what always happens when Caleb Bailey is involved.” She pushed the screen door open and hurried out into the cloudless night.

  Seven

  Hank

  The antique desk drawer squeaked in protest as he coaxed it open. It was the way of things living by the sea, he thought; salt air was not kind. The shingled sides of houses grayed before giving over to silver. Doorjambs swelled, causing screen doors to stick. Wooden boats weathered, their hulls warping and splintering over time. Hank had become used to this, to the way his neatly combed hair did not lie flat at its part on a humid day. To the way the air in the house had weight on a foggy morning. The sea was everywhere: in their towels hanging over the porch railings and in the cool recesses of the slippers that they slid their feet into in the morning. It was on their skin and even in their blood, as Lindy liked to say. It was a sensation he’d tolerated at first, and if pressed, would admit he had come to love.

  The desk drawer gave way with a rough jerk, and he riffled through it. Hank liked order. It was something hard to come by in the house, especially in the earlier years. His den was the one space that was truly his own. Whenever Hank tired of tripping over the rain boots kicked off carelessly by the front door, or climbing up the staircase whose treads were crowded with stacks of books and errant dolls, or even the refrigerator, whose door could not be opened without disrupting the finger-painted artwork and spelling tests that were precariously affixed to its front by magnets, his den was a refuge from the detritus of children and animals. The girls had dubbed it the Tiger Room when they were younger because if they interrupted his quietude and banged on the door, he would growl playfully from the other side. Piper, especially, loved the game. A turn of the doorknob elicited a roar. A dared peek through the crack might provoke a chase that would send Piper dashing for her mother, a look of delighted horror on her face. Though the girls had grown and moved out, the room still served its purpose as an escape. Against one wall there was the large rolltop desk that held his ledger and computer, and adjacent to it a wall of tall windows overlooking the front lawn and quiet neighborhood street. A leather recliner sat in the far corner. Today he was not escaping. He was looking for something.

  Hank examined the contents of the drawer. A box of blue Paper Mate pens, his favorite kind. A lone black stapler. A bundle of rubber bands neatly contained with a twist tie. A tin of thumbtacks, a worn pink eraser. He reached far into the back for what he wanted. The letter he pulled from the desk drawer was postmarked October 9, 1996. The Boston Globe address was printed on the return address portion of the envelope.

  Hank supposed he could be accused of being sentimental, though he preferred practical. Which is exactly how he thought of his life, to this day. It was neatly divided into two parts: his old life, including childhood, school, and early career days—and the Bailey women years. In that first section, Hank worked as a journalist living in the Boston metro area. He’d started out writing for smaller papers, taking on what he considered the mundane assignments of early reporting. There were city budget meetings, public works projects, crime reports. Most of it he likened to covering the weather, for it was always changing but the selection didn’t much vary.

  As he worked his way up, Hank did his best to infuse a sense of voice into his pieces. One of his first editors, a sarcastic fellow who doled out assignments like punishments, did not appreciate Hank’s personal inflections. “Stick to the news, Henry. The readers want to know what the vote was, not what color pants you wore to the polls.” His next job at the Providence Journal was different. He worked under a woman who’d been hired as editor in chief the same year he came on the scene. The paper was floundering; she was the lynchpin brought in to keep it afloat. Hank couldn’t say that she appreciated his writing any more than his previous editors, but she’d been tasked with the challenge to shake things up, something not well received by a staff long hitched together and loyal to their former boss. In him she recognized both a newcomer and a fresh perspective. She was the first editor who allowed him to pitch ideas for op-eds. And it was like a light went on.

  Readers responded to Hank’s voice. They liked his level approach, the occasional injections of humor. He tried to stay politically neutral, but he had opinions, and they came through in the text. Within six months he was heading his own column, a weekly that ran in the Sunday paper. Letters poured in. He
’d developed an actual readership. CBS News Corp picked up some of his articles and ran them in their local sister papers. He was being quoted. He was a name.

  In 1995 he received what he’d long wished for: an offer from the Globe. They were looking for someone to spearhead a new op-ed idea they had to invigorate the paper. National news outfits were experiencing the decline with the tech industry balloon, and Hank was well aware that he was in what some insisted was a dying industry. But he loved to hold a book in hand, and he believed in print on paper. And besides, news didn’t stop, even if its mode of delivery changed. He accepted the new position with gusto, moved into a downtown apartment with a view of the Boston Harbor, and considered himself on his way. Two months into his new job he met Lindy.

  Now, he removed the letter from its worn envelope. The text was brief, but he had no need to read it. He’d long ago memorized it. “We are genuinely sorry to receive your resignation letter, but we wish you all the best in your new life.”

  He’d been on the job only a year when he asked Lindy to marry him. “But the paper!” she’d said. “You love your job. What will you do without it?”

  There was no comparing the Globe with the scant local papers out on the sleepy elbow of the Cape. But as much as he did not like to think of leaving the Globe, what was impossible to imagine was living without Lindy and the girls. There was no question: it was easier to move one middle-aged bachelor to the coast than it was to uproot a family of four, who’d already endured enough upheaval as it was. In his mind it was the right thing to do. In his heart it was the only thing to do.

  He folded the letter and set it on the desk. The same desk that had been in his old Boston apartment overlooking the harbor before being packed up, contents and all, and moved it to its current location in this den where little girls once knocked at the door and the doorjambs still swelled with salt air. No, Hank was not a sentimental man. But there were some things that needed hanging on to. This was one of them.

  There was a knock at the door. Lindy poked her head in. “Hi, honey. Everyone’s expected shortly. Want to start the grill?”