That was something she’d been feeling lately a lot more than usual, and for that she blamed Phineas Tarbox. A ridiculous name, Phineas Tarbox. An actual Boston Brahmin, the real deal. His office was on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay, not far from Judith’s home. Judith was Eliza’s mother-in-law. In fact, Phineas had been recommended by Judith, of course, like many things in their lives were. Judith was the unseen conductor of their orchestra, always calmly moving her baton.
It was after their visit to Phineas Tarbox that Eliza felt something dark, almost sinister, creep into her marriage. An unwelcome guest. It wasn’t just that Rob was busy and distracted with a big work project, often too tired at the end of the day to do anything but fall into bed, although that was true, or that the girls gobbled up time and energy from both of them, which was also true, and expected. It was something more. It was that sometimes she looked at him, this man she’d been married to for so many years, this man whose body was so familiar to her that she’d recognize even the crease of his elbow if shown a photograph of only that, and she saw a stranger.
“Eliza!” said Sheila. “Wake up, that’s your phone that’s been ringing this whole time.”
“What? Oh. Oh geez, sorry.” Eliza scanned the pool again, located Evie, who was following Zoe around like a pup tracking its mother, and dug in her mammoth pool bag for her phone. A Maine area code. Only her father called her from Maine, and this wasn’t his number on the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Eliza?”
“This is Eliza.” The voice on the other end was familiar in a way that seemed thrice removed from her ordinary life.
“Liza, it’s Russell.”
Something somersaulted—one of her organs. Could organs somersault? Many years ago, Eliza had completed two years of medical school at Boston University, so she knew that they couldn’t. Not that you really needed the medical training to know that.
“Russell Perkins?” She had to get up from her lounge chair and walk away to shield herself from the other women, who had fallen silent, sensing from Eliza’s tone, both voice and skin, that something dramatic was about to happen. Or, maybe, had already happened.
“That’s the one,” said Russell Perkins, Eliza Barnes’s first love, her knight in shining armor, the Bruce Springsteen to her Mary. Zillions of memories flooded her: a pickup truck, a barn in winter, half of her clothes off, new desire. A nearly deserted island in summer, the inside of a car, a room in Bangor. She was sixteen again, seventeen, eighteen, all in a matter of seconds.
She glanced back at the women, who had returned to their conversation but were stealing occasional tastefully curious glances at Eliza, glances that said both We are here for you if you need us and Are we missing something good?
“Listen, Liza, you might want to get yourself up to Little Harbor just as quick as you can.”
Ohmygod, thought Eliza. Her legs almost gave out and she had to lean against the fence that enclosed the pool. It was happening. Her dad was gone. He’d been pulled overboard by a trap. He’d had a heart attack, or a stroke, or a fight that went wrong. He’d rolled his truck over on the way home from the bar. It was bound to happen, each of those evil creatures was waiting in the wings to lay their pronged teeth into Charlie Sargent’s skin. Hazards of the job, of the lifestyle, the pay grade.
All those years they spent together, just the two of them, leaning on each other. All those chicken cutlet dinners she’d prepared, and now he was gone. She was officially an orphan.
Could you be a thirty-seven-year-old orphan?
“Liza?”
She croaked out something that tried to be a word but didn’t make it.
“Your dad hit his head on the boat this morning, the Coast Guard had to go out and bring him back in. Val took him to the emergency room, his arm was hurt too.”
“He called the Coast Guard?” Her dad would never call the Coast Guard, not unless it was a very serious emergency. She italicized the words in her mind because that’s the way her dad always said them to her. You take care of things yourself unless it’s a very serious emergency, Eliza.
“He won’t let anyone help him. He’d never tell you himself that he needs you, so I’m telling you. He needs you.”
Eliza recalculated. She wasn’t a thirty-seven-year-old orphan. She wasn’t an orphan at all. But her dad needed her. She turned back toward the lounge chairs. She could see that Sheila Rackley was finally completing her story and that it had been a doozy. Deirdre had her hand over her mouth, and her narrow, bronzed shoulders were shaking with laughter. Even Catherine Cooper, who was a tough audience, was smiling.
“Liza?” said Russell, and her stomach twisted again in that unsettling way. Nobody else called her Liza.
“Okay,” she said. She cleared her throat. She turned toward the pool and saw Zoe standing at the edge of the diving board. She felt the same urge she always felt, to call out Don’t jump! because bad things could happen on diving boards and she wanted to protect her children from every possible danger. She fought the same impulse each time she watched them buckle themselves into the backseat of a friend’s car and wave at her nonchalantly. Don’t go! she always wanted to say. Stay here with me, where you’ll be safe! The world was full of untold menaces.
Zoe executed a perfect swan dive, which had been honed by hours of practice and the assistance of a personal dive coach. Eliza knew that was ridiculous. Yet because of the coaching the dive was gorgeous. Eliza kept her eyes on the water until Zoe’s head popped up (because you never knew) and felt the odd combination of pride and wonderment she often felt watching her daughters. It was almost envy, although she’d never say that out loud, because that was embarrassing. The things they knew how to do, the professional instruction they’d received in their young lives! Skiing, tennis, sailing—pastimes that had been so far off Eliza’s radar when she was a child that she had thought only kids in movies engaged in them.
“Okay,” she said again. “Okay, I’ll get up there as soon as I can. I just have to figure out a couple of things, make some arrangements for Zoe and Evie. For my daughters.”
When Eliza was Zoe’s age all she knew how to do was row a skiff from the wharf to her dad’s boat, the Joanie B, named after Eliza’s mother, and how to use the gauge to measure the lobsters, and how to V-notch the pregnant females. She could also crack a lobster like nobody’s business, pull every scrap of meat out, wasting not even a fraction of an ounce. Not exactly a useful skill set in Barton, although once, admittedly, at a midsummer yacht club clambake she’d had one too many gin and tonics and had made the rounds with her double-jaw lobster crackers, allowing herself to be timed by Deirdre’s husband, Brock. (In her defense, the gin and tonics at the club were very strong.)
“Okay? Thank you for calling, Russell. Thank you, really.” Her organs did that strange gymnastics again.