Chapter 4
Keeley put down the book she was trying to read, a mystery from one of the many crowded built-in bookshelves that lined the walls of almost every room in Pam’s house, and lay back on the thick pillows plumped up behind her on the bed in Pam’s guest room. She couldn’t read novels; she could never focus that long on one thing. To have raised a daughter that not only read entire books in one sitting, but had even written one was incomprehensible to Keeley.
After Zo and Amy left later that afternoon, Keeley stayed on at Pam’s. Pam had been more than thrilled to have Keeley for the night plus Ben was away in Atlantic City working on a deal for a new casino on the boardwalk. Keeley hated being in that huge apartment with its high ceilings and glossy surfaces without him. She had redecorated it three times already and it still didn’t feel like home. It was too perfect and everything in it was too valuable and museum-quality. She liked to throw things around, ding up the furniture, leave piles. The fancy apartment with its ritzy Upper East Side address strongly discouraged that, its eyebrows raised in disdain.
Pam’s house felt more like home, more like the little cottage in Fairfield that she and Hannah had shared, more like Keeley’s house on Captain’s, the one before Ben, a bungalow that they’d moved into eventually after spending most of Hannah’s childhood summers staying in the cramped quarters of the Barefooter house. It was telling, their struggling along and making do while her mother still owned their old house on the island, a fairly spacious place with three bedrooms and a wrap-around porch. Instead, her mother rented it out to strangers up until her death, and even then she left it to her church, which sold it immediately. Her mother would have done anything to stop her daughter from staying there. Her mother never stayed there herself after Keeley’s father died, had never liked the island or island life. It was too rustic and sloppy-casual for her. She had hated the extra work the island required with its rainwater cisterns, its hand-pumped toilets you could only flush on a number two, and its seawater-damaged wood that required constant vigilance and basic carpentry skills.
Worse, her personality was all wrong for the island. She was snobbish and shy where most islanders were outspoken and easy-going. She disapproved of drinking alcohol, in spite of her husband’s love of whiskey, and the island’s social life revolved around each day’s five o’clock cocktail hour. She was also a painfully uncoordinated skinny little woman who avoided sports on an island where a person’s value was based on their athletic ability, fishing acumen, and the ability to out-sail your neighbor.
Thank God her mother had never known about the Barefooter house. That had been between her father and herself, a gift of enough money to help her and her friends buy it and fix it up. Her father had even helped them find out who owned the title to the derelict shack that she and her friends had turned into a playhouse as girls and later grew to think of as their own. The owners had inherited it from an uncle and sold it with just a little cajoling and assurances that it was worth nothing, that they were being overpaid for the wreck and it would be off their hands. And while it was true that the house was a wreck, the value of it was very high to the four young women. Keeley was grateful her mother had never known of the house, never known how important it was to her daughter. Margaret Lockwood O’Brien wasn’t about to let her useless excuse for a daughter have happiness when hers had been torn away from her.
Keeley thought of Hannah in the Barefooter house, sending her the key. She thought of the novel her daughter had written and that she had put down over and over again, never getting beyond the first two pages. The review. Those horrible words – lies.
“A neglected and often abandoned daughter of an alcoholic parent” The words still pulsed and burned in her mind, inescapable.
A flash came to her of her daughter’s little frightened face when she was four or so. In the house. She had left Hannah alone in the house.
No, no, that never happened.
Keeley shook her head and sat up. Too many Mean Greens. The little cozy attic room that she loved to curl up in suddenly felt tiny and airless. It was hot up here. Too hot.
Keeley climbed out of bed and stood up, swimming in the large flowered yellow cotton pajamas Pam had loaned to her, pajamas that fit Pam’s burly frame perfectly. Keeley tied the drawstring on the bottoms tighter, rolled up the legs so the pants wouldn’t trip her, and carefully tiptoed barefoot down the stairs, gasping a little and feeling the old anxiety galloping back. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard a soft snoring coming from Pam’s room and the chatty sound of a late-night talk-show coming from Jacob’s room next door, a sliver of blue light wedged under his door. She gasped again at the cooler air on the first floor, but the pressure on her chest was only growing, and she ran on tip-toes down the hall and through the living area toward the back of the house.
Once she unlocked the sliding glass door to the deck and rolled it back, she took large gulps of cool salt air as if drinking it. Oh, good.
Flash – a little figure alone by the road, cars rushing by, a brown-haired girl who was crying. Was that Hannah?
No!
Keeley pulled the sliding door shut behind her and ran across the deck to where the stairs went down to the sand. Then she was running on the beach that was studded with little rocks that hurt Keeley’s now-tender feet, feet that used to be like moccasins when she was young, they were so hard and leathery from being barefoot all the time. Even a full month of being barefoot in August every year never brought back that toughness.
She ran down to the waterline and let the small cool waves roll over her stinging feet, gasping back sobs. She had done something to Hannah.
Had she?
Keeley looked up at the stars that were faded from encroaching light pollution, not brilliant like they were at Captain’s when she was a young woman lying in a rowboat padded with blankets in the arms of the only man she had loved with everything in her, without reserve. The stars were going away. What would she wish on now?
Sobbing softly, she spoke in the breaths she was able to fit in between the wrenching pains that gripped her chest, “God. Please help. Help us. Help Hannah. I’m sorry. I didn’t. Didn’t mean to. Hurt her. Did I? Did I hurt her? God, please. If I did. Please help us.”
Wiping at her eyes and wet face, she looked around. She didn’t see anyone. She would do what they always did back on Captain’s when things were horrible. “Blackest night, blackest water, wash it away,” she chanted in a wavering voice just as the Barefooters used to chant together, climbing naked one by one into the water of the Bay at midnight.
Midnight was part of the spell. It wasn’t midnight now, but it was dark and she couldn’t breathe all the way, her breath kept catching halfway and her chest felt like it was being crushed.
She took off her borrowed pajamas, dropped them on the beach, and walked into the dark water chanting, her sobs slowly abating. “Blackest night, blackest water, wash everything away.”
Waves washed over her muscular runner’s thighs, pushing back at her. Then the water washed over her pubic area before rising over her waist. At last, her head went under the waves of waters still mildly warmed by the summer’s heat, ears filling with water. The gently moving water rinsed her tears from her face and the pressure on her chest finally eased. She heard the familiar high trilling sound she always heard under the water, the songs of mermaids - the mermaids the Barefoot Girls used to be.
Heading back to Manhattan the next day, her stomach swollen with the enormous and decadently rich waffles-and-whipped-cream breakfast Pam had fed her once she returned from driving Jacob to school, Keeley felt better. The morning sunshine banished the doubts and fears that had gripped her the night before and made her feel silly. Of course, she had been the mother she had always dreamed of being, the best mother she could possibly be to Hannah. Much of that was thanks to her three friends who were like pillars to her, the structure she rested upon. Each summer on Captain’s had been the fuel she needed to get through the rest of the year. She had done it, raised Hannah well, in spite of everything. Raising Hannah without the benefit of a husband or even a supportive family was one of Keeley’s greatest accomplishments.
She would do the right thing, yet again. Send Hannah the keys to her heart: Captain’s. Let her get her head on straight there. Let some time pass and maybe, just maybe, Keeley could forgive her.
Keeley sent the packet of keys wrapped in tissue paper in a padded FedEx envelope to her daughter’s house with a hastily scribbled note that read:
Hannah,
Enclosed please find the keys to Captain’s. This was your Barefooter Aunts’ doing and you should be wildly grateful.
I’ve included the key to the gate, the one for the lock for our boat, a key for Pam’s house so you have a decent bed to sleep in, and one, most importantly, to the Barefooter house and all our treasures.
Pam and Zo are willing to talk to you if you want to call them. However, do not pester them to death! Amy is rightfully angry with you and you know how I feel. Do not think that this gift means that I’ve forgiven you.
This gift is from all of us because we will not idly stand by and watch you throw away true love. Daniel loves you and you love him. Do you understand how rare and special that is? How do we “know how to love” as you said? We don’t. We do the only thing we can: we do our best. You will love Daniel the only way you can and it will be great because it’s real, not because it’s perfect.
Love,
Mom
P.S. A condition of these keys is that Daniel must visit at least a quarter of the time you’re there on the island. This is not optional.