“Alright.” Libby waved the mail over her head and walked down the small hill to the ferry landing.
The ferry bumped and jockeyed its way into the landing. Libby watched the passengers head below for their bags and heard the whoosh of car ignitions. The ramp was lowered, and as the cars clunked their way ashore the ferry bobbed ever lighter. Once the cars were off, the passengers came next in small, red-cheeked groups. The hour at sea had done them good.
Gwen stepped off the ferry first. Libby felt her chest contract for a moment. At thirty-six, Gwen looked just like their mother had when Danny was a baby. Beauty swelled over her. Her hair had grown darker; what was once sandy had become chestnut and then deeper, like wet earth, the same color as their father’s. Gwen had grown it long and kept it tucked behind her ears, as their mother had. This summer there was a different flavor to her. Libby noticed it right away. Like a song she couldn’t place. There was something slippery and new about her sister.
“What have you been drinking?” said Libby as she hugged her. “You look great.”
“I’m on a frappé diet at the moment, calcium.”
“And I’ve been wasting my time on soft serve, bummer. Where are the Y chromosomes?” The two of them turned to look back at the ferry. Danny and Tom were each pulling a small handcart stacked with coolers and duffel bags. Libby walked down the ramp and took the cart from Danny and hugged him. He sort of leaned against her, his arms by his sides. Still acting like a sullen teenager even when he was almost done with college. Still her baby brother.
“How was the drive?” Libby noticed the three of them exchanged a look.
“Long,” said Tom. He took the cart from Libby.
Libby looked at Gwen, who opened her eyes wide, which meant, I’ll tell you later.
On the town dock Tom and Libby made a small luggage brigade, passing coolers and duffels from the dock into the boat. Gwen sat in the stern. Danny hadn’t even gotten into the boat. He still wobbled around on the planks of the float as if he were surfing.
“That’s everything,” said Tom. Libby started the engine. Danny stepped into the boat and pushed them away from the float. The smell of diesel came up strong as the water bubbled behind them. Tom pulled in the bumpers.
Libby steered them across the wakes of other boats, weaving between buoys. She loved this part, picking them up, the ride to the house, the first expectant moments of their visit. Later, she would miss being alone, sitting on the porch in quiet, listening for the soft purr of motors on the water.
From out in the thoroughfare that ran between the two islands, the house seemed disguised at first, like a gray boulder alone on a point standing guard over the busy waterway. But as she drew the boat closer, the house, as always, revealed itself. Its two halves, each with their covered porches and peaked roofs, were connected by a column of bay windows. A long, low side wing wended its way through the pines, windows and chimneys peeking out from behind treetops. As with all the old houses here, the front of the house faced the water, reminding her always that it was meant to be approached by boat, like an undiscovered continent.
Libby pulled up to their mooring and let the boat idle in place. Danny sidled passed the cabin roof to the bow. Down on all fours, Danny slapped the water repeatedly with the boat hook, trying to fish out the mooring line. His brown hair flapped long in his face with his effort.
“Dan, stop smacking,” shouted Tom, leaning over the side. “Slice at it. Pick it out of the water.”
It begins, Libby thought, before we even set foot on the island. Tom, always acting like the authority on any given subject. True, the line was nearly impossible to see, obscured by the mooring and the bow, but did being two years shy of forty give him some specialized degree? They were all old now, all of them over thirty, except Danny. Danny, still with youth in his cheeks, still savoring the legality of drinking, still red-eyed over their mother. He didn’t need this.
Tom braced his thighs tight against the rail and leaned further, pantomiming with both hands, one as a rigid hook, the other as a limp line.
“He can handle it, Tom,” Libby chided. “Don’t backseat drive.” Her eyes on the water, she watched for a shift in wind. She had to keep them from being blown back toward the float, while keeping the bow steady for Danny’s slippery hands.
Gwen sat with her feet propped up on a pile of life jackets, her arms resting open and wide along the back of the seat. Like she’s sitting in the back of a water taxi, thought Libby. Libby saw Gwen as all Riviera and Grand Canal, and herself as rocky coastlines, channels marked with rusting nuns. Now, with the glinting sun, the water shone like the Adriatic, the scrubbed evergreens like the parasol pines of the Italian coast, but stronger, taller, more timeless, almost prehistoric. It was a place where a divine hand touched earth, where gods could mingle with mortals. Libby would not have been surprised to see a swan stand at the edge of the woods or drift past their float with an eye on her older sister. She was sure that Gwen had the power to draw gods down from their mountains.
Libby, who had never missed a summer here, was not the object of any swan’s gaze. She was just a mortal living at the edge of something, which seemed about right to her. Someone needed to tend the track, to keep this world from disappearing into so much mist.
“You could’ve just dropped me with the bags on the float,” Gwen said to Libby. “I don’t think we all ought to squeeze into the dinghy.” Libby ignored her.
“G, just pull Little Devil in. Dan’s got it now.” Libby turned off the engine and locked the cabin door.
Gwen took off her sunglasses, folded them, and hooked them on her shirt, lenses on the inside. Over her lifetime Gwen had dropped a dozen pairs overboard. As a little girl, Libby had wondered how things like glasses became more important than toys. Watching her sister stand teary at the edges of boats and floats, staring into the green water as each pair drifted out of sight, had taught Libby to avoid sunglasses altogether.
With the boat moored, each of them stepped or slid from the stern into the Little Devil. Shaped like a large bathtub, the dinghy was named for its notorious tendency to dump its passengers into the sea. Gwen sat in the bow, a hand trailing in the water, while Libby did the rowing, and Tom and Danny sat side by side in the stern. Danny stared back toward town as if he’d forgotten something. Tom looked over Libby’s head, hands pressed together, fingers pointing toward the house. If Libby drifted off course, Tom’s hands shifted. He was the compass needle, and the house was north.
“I can navigate the forty feet between the mooring and the float, Tom,” said Libby.
“You want to strain your neck turning around every other stroke? Fine.” Tom let his hands hang between his knees.