Lidia Barros didn’t give Ruth an address for the house, just vague directions: “Walk toward the water and you’ll see it on the left. If you reach the boat-rental office, you’ve gone too far.”
Ruth turned into the alley leading to the dock and passed an aluminum-sided building on her right and a few buildings on her left along with a GMC pickup truck and boats on lifts awaiting repair. The water spread out before her, reflecting the bright sun. She allowed herself a minute to just soak in the view. It struck her that the last time she had visited the dock, it had been for an ill-conceived boat ride that was derailed by her shark phobia. She never would have imagined that just a few short weeks later, she would be back as a guest of the family who owned the place.
Lost in thought, Ruth walked toward the water until she had, in fact, reached the boat-rental office and gone too far. She turned around and spotted a three-story house of unfinished wooden clapboards. The bottom floor seemed to be a workshop, and a wooden staircase led to a second-story deck. A wooden sign in the shape of an anchor announced the address, and the railing was strung with ropes and a few decorative buoys. Ruth climbed the stairs and found a set of sliding glass doors. At her feet, a welcome mat decorated with the image of a red lobster.
Before she could ring the bell, Lidia appeared. “Welcome!” she said, sliding open the doors. Ruth followed her inside to the kitchen, a real cook’s kitchen with a butcher-block island, a farmhouse sink, and a ceiling rack filled with pots and pans.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I missed the front door.”
“Everyone misses the front,” Lidia said breezily. “I can’t remember the last time we used it. Besides, we all end up in here anyway.” She wore a plain V-neck T-shirt and denim shorts and her thick hair was pulled back in a clip. Ruth marveled at her absolutely makeup-free face—not even a hint of mascara.
Ruth felt overdressed in her linen pants and button-down shirt. She hadn’t adjusted to the casualness of the town.
She handed Lidia the loaves of banana and zucchini bread she’d picked up from Connie’s Bakery on her way. She’d learned about the place the night of Rachel and Luke’s dinner; Elise and Fern had brought an incredible mixed-berry pie and told her it was from Connie’s. It took Ruth a few minutes to figure out it was a bakery and not just another friend.
Lidia directed her to take a seat at the wooden kitchen table. It was covered with floral-patterned oilcloth. “I just put the coffee on,” Lidia said, setting out cream and a bowl of sugar.
Lidia sliced up the banana bread and they settled in with their coffee just as the glass doors slid open again. Marco, dressed in all-weather rubbery overalls and high boots, poked his head in. “Is Jaci in here?”
“No, I haven’t seen her.”
“Damn it,” he said.
“Marco, please. There’s no need for that.”
“Really? I think there is. She was supposed to meet me on the dock twenty minutes ago for low tide. I have to get out to the flats. It’s going to take me twice as long to finish without her, and I have a meeting at five.” He nodded at Ruth. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Cooperman. I didn’t know you were here,” he said. “I actually need to talk to you about something.”
“Talk to me?” What could he possibly have to talk to her about? Clearly, Lidia wondered the same thing because she said, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I don’t have time to get into it.”
“Well, now that you’ve made us both curious, I suggest you at least get into some of it,” Lidia said, hands on her hips, switching from amiable hostess to firm mother mode in the blink of an eye.
Marco glanced at the water behind him as if torn between the low tide and not angering his mother. When he turned back to Ruth, she knew his mother had won out over Mother Nature.
“I want to know if I can borrow your backyard occasionally to hang seaweed out to dry.”
“Marco!” Lidia said. “That’s an imposition. What are you thinking?” She turned to Ruth. “I’m sorry. Sometimes my children still think that house belongs to their cousin.”
“Ma, I don’t think that at all. If anything, I was confused about whether or not Elise and Fern had moved back in for the summer. I talked to them about using the yard and they told me to check with Ruth.”
Hang seaweed? Ruth had no idea what this meant, but she could hardly say no since she was sitting at her new friend’s kitchen table and this was clearly important to her son. “Of course. No problem,” Ruth said.
“Great, thanks! More on that later. I have to run.” He kissed his mother on the cheek. “See, Ma? No one’s upset. Except with Jaci. If you see her, tell her I’m seriously pissed.”
“Marco! Your language.”
“Okay, tell her I’m very angry.” He winked at Ruth and left.
Lidia shook her head. “Thirty years old and he’s still this big, unwieldy puppy.” The adoration in her voice was unmistakable. “I just hope you’re not put out.”
“Oh, no. It’s fine,” Ruth said.
“That house was in the Barros family for generations and for a while after the Douglases moved in, we forgot we couldn’t just drop in. My sister-in-law Bianca—you met her the other night at the party—is still furious about her daughter selling it. She didn’t learn about the sale until it was too late for her to stop it.”
“Well, as we’ve been saying, there’s not much we can do about the attitudes or decisions of our adult children.”
“Oh, she’s not angry at her daughter. She’s angry at Fern and Elise for buying it. It’s completely irrational.” Lidia sighed. “Enough about my crazy family. How are you adjusting to life here full-time?”
“I love it,” Ruth said. “I have to admit, there was something slightly impulsive about my move. But I needed a change, and this was it.”
“Had you spent a lot of time here before your move?”
“Just one summer. Years ago.” A lifetime ago.
“Sometimes, with P’town, that’s all it takes. At least, from what I’ve heard. I’ve never had the chance to experience this place as a newcomer, and as much as I love being a townie, a part of me would love to see it through fresh eyes.”
Ruth nodded. “When I came here last year, exploring the idea of the move, I wondered if I would still feel as strongly about it or if I’d show up and realize it was just the rosy glow of nostalgia that drew me back. But as soon as I stepped foot on Commercial, I felt happy.”
“I do think that for many people, this place is a cure-all.”
Ruth nodded, but the truth was, as much happiness as she experienced waking up in Provincetown every morning, she still missed the sense of purpose she’d felt running her own company. She hated the idea of being irrelevant, and more than that, she had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought that her legacy was being erased. Two days earlier she’d read in the Wall Street Journal that the conglomerate that had bought her out was consolidating some of their holdings, folding major brands into one another. Her company wasn’t mentioned specifically, but if that happened, the discontinuation of Cherry Hill nail polish would be just the beginning.
“Do you want to sit outside?” Lidia said. “Manny was working on a boat earlier and it was loud, but it sounds like he’s finished.”
Ruth grabbed her mug and followed Lidia onto the deck, where two wooden chairs on either side of a small round table offered an expansive view of Provincetown Harbor.
The ground below was a flurry of activity. To their right, Manny stood talking animatedly to a man next to a motorboat elevated on a metal rack. Ahead, half a dozen people were lined up at the office waiting for tours or rentals, and men on the dock were busy launching boats into the water or assisting with arrivals.
“I guess it’s never a dull moment around here,” Ruth said.
“Yes, this boatyard is quite an operation. It’s changed over the years. It started with my father-in-law with boat repair, and he also built fishing boats. Then Manny began renting out moorings to people, and the mooring field has been a big part of the business. And, of course, the boat rentals—kayaks, pontoons. Last year we started seal-watching tours.”
She wondered if Lidia ever felt a lack of privacy, but before she could ask, Lidia said, “It can be challenging to live in such a public space, but at the same time, we have parties and it feels like the whole town is sharing in the fun. My favorite day of the year is the Fourth of July. Oh, you should plan on coming, and bring your daughter. You’ve celebrated the Fourth of July here before, right?”
Ruth nodded. “Just once. A very long time ago.”
In her mind, that first summer was divided into a distinct before and after. Before the night at the Fine Arts Work Center, she had been satisfied with the simple delights of walking on the pier or eating an ice cream cone to the sound of a street musician. But after the play at the Fine Arts Work Center, all Ruth thought about was Ben Cooperman.
She thought about him during her morning beach walks with her mother. She thought about him while she was standing in line for a lobster roll at lunch. But mostly, she thought about him when she was tucked into her twin bed under the sloped ceiling of her second-floor bedroom at the rental house. Staring into the darkness, she replayed over and over the moment when he shook her hand. Then she took it further. In her fantasy, everyone had cleared out of the building. The room with the makeshift bar was dark. He didn’t stop at holding her hand.
It was the vividness and repetition of this reverie that made her blush when she ran into him the morning of the Fourth of July on Commercial Street, just a few feet from the bookstore. He spotted her first, initiated the conversation. She’d been fantasizing about him so much, she had almost forgotten he was a real person. In just a few days he had taken on a mythical quality. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she might run into him again or that she could have sought him out if she’d chosen. Looking back on it now, she decided that that more than anything showed how young and innocent she had been.
He’d called her by name, and when she remarked on his remembering it, he said, “Hard to forget. Old Testament. Your parents weren’t messing around with that name.”
“Neither were yours,” she told him. “Benjamin?”
“Please—just Ben.”
He was on his way to the pier. A bunch of people were sailing to Long Point to see the lighthouse. “You should come,” he said.
There were two problems with this: one, Ruth was nervous out on the water because of her fear of sharks. Two, Ruth was supposed to meet her parents back at the house by six for dinner and then fireworks. Would a boat trip fit into that time frame? Looking at Ben, she decided it was worth risking being late for dinner. And death by shark.
During the short walk to the wharf, she learned he was from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, not even an hour from where she lived back in Philly. That they should have spent their entire lives so close to each other only to meet on the tip of Cape Cod, seven hours from home, made their connection seem all the more magical to her. In the fall, he would begin his sophomore year at Penn. She told him she was starting Northwestern at the end of August.
She didn’t want to think about all of that. She wanted only that day, with the cloudless sky and the temperature hovering somewhere in the high seventies and the harbor filled with boats, one of which—a sailboat that could fit half a dozen people—was waiting to transport their group across the harbor. Ben Cooperman held out his hand to help her climb aboard.
Ruth had never been on a sailboat, didn’t realize there was a motor that could also propel them efficiently through the water. She had been on a boat only once before, a small motorboat in the bay at the Jersey Shore. The vista in front of her, where Cape Cod Bay met the Atlantic, made her previous trip on the water seem like wading in a small pond. This felt like they were at the edge of the world.
The motor created a hum that made talking more trouble than it was worth. Still, the captain, a stocky, deeply tanned guy who seemed barely older than herself and Ben, pointed out landmarks and shared trivia. On the ledge beside her, Ben Cooperman moved closer. She leaned over the side, looking at the white spray of water along the boat’s edge, acutely aware of the feeling of his body against her and wanting to turn to see him but not trusting herself, because she knew the look on her face would give away every thought she’d had about him in the past four days.
After ten or fifteen minutes, they dropped anchor a few dozen yards away from Long Point, a hundred-and-fifty-acre peninsula that housed only a lighthouse and a mound of earth that marked the spot of a former Civil War battery. The captain and his first mate readied a dinghy to transport them in groups of two onto land. When it was their turn to leave the sailboat, Ben touched her arm.
“How much interest do you have in that lighthouse?”
Her heart began to beat fast. Her nonanswer was her answer.
“I think we’re going to stay aboard, if that’s okay with you,” Ben told the captain. “We’re really into the water more than the sightseeing.”
“I don’t want you trying to move this boat or swimming ashore. You’re okay just to hang tight until we get back? It’ll be about an hour.”
Ben assured him they would be fine. The captain showed them where jugs of water were stored in the cabin belowdecks. That brief conversation left Ruth alone long enough for her to ask herself the fundamental question: Is this what I want? And the answer was intense and deep and resounding: Yes.
The dinghy motored off, leaving her alone with Ben in a way she had never felt alone with anyone before. She could see the slice of land in front of her, and she knew Provincetown was behind her. But she felt very far from solid ground.
She shielded her face with her hand to look at him, and he opened his knapsack and handed her a Phillies baseball hat. “You’re going to burn,” he said.
“I wasn’t exactly planning on a day out at sea when I left the house,” she said, putting it on her head.
“I admire your spontaneity,” he said, sitting back on the ledge. He patted the space next to him and she sat, feeling jumpy inside.
“So…” she said to fill what felt like awkward silence.
“Ruth, I’ve been thinking about you since the other night,” he said. She looked at him. His eyes were gold and brown and green, more dazzling than the sun-dappled blue water surrounding them.
“Really?” she said as if she hadn’t experienced the very same thing. She’d already followed him onto the boat. She’d already stayed behind with him. She was entitled to hold something back.
He nodded. “After you left I realized I didn’t know your last name or whether you were here for a day or a week or a month, and I felt stupid. But I knew if you were around I’d see you again because that’s the way it is here. And P’town didn’t let me down.” He reached for her hand. The day really was so hot and bright.
“I think I need water,” she said.
“I’ll get it.” He jumped up. Fetching water required walking down a narrow but short flight of stairs. Ruth hadn’t meant for him to leave; she could have gotten it herself. But he was already halfway down the steps when she said, “I can do it.”
She followed him, ducking her head and holding on to the narrow metal railing. She felt the boat sway and she wondered if there was any way it could just drift away from shore. Her imagination began to run wild and she imagined herself and Ben Cooperman in some sort of Gilligan’s Island situation.
“One water, coming right up,” he said, pouring from a jug into a clear plastic cup. The name of the boat, Amphitrite, was printed on it in blue lettering. She said the name aloud.
“Goddess of the sea, wife of Poseidon,” he said, handing her the cup.
She looked up at him, wanting him to kiss her more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. He didn’t. So she did what any self-respecting, crushing-hard teenager would do: she reached her arms around his neck and kissed him.
They kissed and kissed, eventually folding themselves together on a plush, curved bench against one side of the cabin. When their clothes came off, rushed, fumbling, wordlessly, she felt embraced not just by this man but by the bended arm of the Cape. She knew, afloat in the spot that felt like the tip of the world, that she would return to land a changed woman.
Ruth smiled at Lidia Barros, thinking how hard it was to actually make new friends late in life. There was so much that could never be fully explained, whole incarnations of the self that had come and gone. A friend at that stage could know only a two-dimensional version of you, and that’s what made old friends—even old husbands—so precious. They knew you in all your dimensions. For a time, Ruth believed that the only version of herself that mattered was the current one. She’d been so willing at times to shed her skin, to become better, better, better. But what if the best version of herself had been behind her all these years?
“I should get home,” Ruth said, standing up. “My daughter’s back went out and she’s housebound.”
“Oh, what a shame! In this glorious weather too.”
“I’ve been encouraging her to at least sit in the yard and get some fresh air.”
“Please, just leave that mug and plate. I’ll take care of it,” Lidia said as Ruth tried to clean up.
They both turned at the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs. Tito appeared, carrying a large cooler. “I’m here to unload some stripers, if you’re interested,” he said. “Ruth! Surprised to see you this close to the water.”
“Very funny.” Ruth smiled.
“Thanks, Tito. Just put them on the counter in there. I’ll be inside in a minute. Ruth is just leaving.”
Tito walked past them and opened the sliding door. Halfway in, halfway out, he turned to Ruth. “I meant what I said the other night about getting out on the boat. You going to take me up on that offer?”
She remembered what he’d said at the party: It would be a shame for you to spend time in this town and not experience the best part of it. Well, she had experienced the best part of it. She thought maybe the best, in many ways, was behind her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to move forward.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”