After meeting with Patrick, I didn’t know where to go or where to spend the night.
The last place I wanted to go was home. I had Brandon with Elena, which I could do for a day or two; her daughter Sarah was fifteen and happy to help out. And they always liked having Remi around. I didn’t want to create a sense of alarm.
It dawned on me that the safest place for me to go was to my father’s boatyard on Long Beach Island.
The island was a tiny five-block-wide strip of land that separated the borough of Queens from the Atlantic Ocean. The yard was kind of a mom-and-pop type of operation; my dad had bought it ten years ago after he retired from teaching biology for thirty years, and when my mother, a math teacher, retired two years later, she worked there too. It was situated on the northern shore of the islet that looked out at Island Park, Queens, which explained why they suffered only minimal damage from the storm, while much of the rest of the narrow island was underwater. There was a room in the back of the office where my dad had spent many a night. Riding out storms. Catching naps in the spring and summer when the business was 24/7. He’d been trying to sell the place for two years. The boat business had fallen apart and the thing had eaten up most of their pensions, the part that I hadn’t eaten up already.
I drove there after dark. My folks were in Sarasota, where they had a condo and spent the winter, even though this year they remained up north into January, after Sandy, getting the place back together. They did have a yard manager, Artie, who even in winter still came in most days. But the place was usually deserted after dark.
No one knew about it. No one would connect me to here. I figured this had to be the safest place for me to be.
I took Atlantic Avenue from the Belt and crossed over on Long Beach Avenue. Just to be sure, I made sure no one was following me. After Sandy, I’d pitched in as much as time would allow, bringing Brandon down on weekends, helping to clear away the fallen trees and a thousand branches, sifting through scattered tools and supplies, and raising machines that were under a foot of water. The houses along the beach were still a mangled mess. Four months later, the building department still hadn’t determined by how much more they needed to be raised, so construction was at a standstill. There were only a few lights on anywhere near the yard.
The yard was blocked off by a wire gate that opened with a security code, 6-15-75, my parents’ wedding day. My aunt and uncle actually. There was no one around; only the sallow light from a single streetlamp barely illuminated the old sign, PARADISE MARINA AND SALES. I drove my car through and the gates automatically closed behind me. I felt I’d left all bad things outside when I heard the wire gate close.
The place was dark. The pavement was a little rutted and in need of repair. Everything here was. What little light there was came from a couple of time-set spots that went on at dark, one of which blinked intermittently. I drove up to the office, a shingled cabin with a front porch that abutted a large maintenance shed that housed our supplies, spare engine parts, forklifts, with a couple of bays where they could put boats they were working on up on blocks. Eight or ten of the larger boats had been shrink-wrapped against the elements and were up on blocks outside.
I parked on the side of the office and went up the steps. I knew where we always kept a spare key, in a jar underneath a loose floorboard at the end of the porch. It was there. Thank God, because it was freezing. I took it out of the jar and shivered as I shoved it in the lock. The front door opened.
Brrrr … It was cold as shit inside too. I flicked on the light. There were a bunch of files and boat catalogues piled on my father’s desk. A computer on my mom’s desk, where she handled the books. They’d always sold a few boats each spring. Not large ones—this was Queens, not the Hamptons. But the business had changed, like every other, to lower-cost online sales and Dad had gotten stuck with a couple of thirty-five-foot Hatterases whose finance charges were larger than his house payments. And if the economy’s falling apart and the shifting state of the boat business hadn’t made him question his decision to get into this line of work, their declining finances did. It made me feel good, looking at the hardscrabble way they lived and conducted business, to know I’d made them current on their notes.
I put on some heat and opened the door to the maintenance shed and flicked on the overhead halogen lights. There was one boat up on blocks—a wood-hulled trawler which it looked like Artie was in the midst of painting. I breathed in the familiar marine smell, which is somewhere between gasoline, the bay, and paint. It was cold as shit in here as well. I shut off the lights and went into the room in back of the main office, where there was a cot and a small kitchen, and a bathroom off it. I found an electric space heater and plugged it in. I immediately felt some warmth. I put on some coffee and turned on the radio to 1010 WINS.
I sat on the squeaky single spring bed. Welcome to Paradise, I thought.
I took out my phone and called Brandon at Elena’s. “How’s he doing?” I asked when she picked up.
“Heez doing fine, missus. Heez playing with Sarah. Heez almost ready for bed. You want to talk to heem now?”
“Yes. Thanks, Elena. Thanks so much for doing this. And listen, you know where Dr. Goodwin is?” Brandon’s neurologist. “In White Plains …”
“Yes, Miz B. I know.”
“He has an appointment tomorrow at four. After school.”
“No problem, missus. I will take him there.”
“I really appreciate this, Elena.” I hadn’t told her why, or where I was, of course. Only that I had to stay in the city for a night. Maybe two. And for her not to go back to the house. I didn’t want to alarm her, so I told her there was some work being done there. I gave her the next two days off.
Brandon came on. He didn’t exactly sound enthused to hear from me.
“Hullo.”
“Hey, tiger!” I tried to sound upbeat. “How you doing there?”
“Fine, Mommy. Where are you?”
“I’m just away for a night. Maybe two. On business. You like staying with Elena, don’t you? And Sarah.”
“I thought you weren’t in business anymore.”
“Well, I’m trying to get back in. You know that. Someone needs to pay the bills. Unless you want to. So how was school today?’
“I can’t play FLOW,” he said. “I left my iPad at the house. Elena wouldn’t go back and get it.”
“I think we should leave it for a while, Brandon. You’ll be fine. It’s almost time for bed anyway. How’s Remi doing?”
“Are we going to go back home tomorrow, Mommy?”
“I don’t know, Brandon. Soon. Go to bed, okay? I love you, sport. And listen to Elena …”
“I want my iPad, Mommy …”
“Play on Sarah’s computer. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, honey. Bye.”
“Bye.”
He hung up and I sat there on the cot with the phone to my ear, feeling like there was something I needed to say to him, about how much I loved him, and what I was doing for him, wondering how someone whose trajectory in life had always gone upward, me, was sitting alone in the cold, sparse room, believing against all that I knew to be true that I was safe.