38
I’m not going to not let him go. It’s important that Cliffy try things and build his confidence, though Cliffy on a skateboard sounds like the fast track to a broken arm. But I thought I was going to crash and burn the first time I tried, and I didn’t. In fact, I am starting to understand the lightness that comes from focusing so hard on a single thing. Without all the distractions, it’s almost as if you could fly.
Iris isn’t really interested in skateboarding but brings a soccer ball. Greer comes under duress. She was still low before camp this morning, quieter than usual and epically preoccupied with her phone. I want to grab her and pull her back from this psychic ledge, but my efforts seem to backfire every time. So, when in doubt, fresh air.
Ethan meets us at the high school at three. He’s brought a small skateboard for Cliffy and one for himself. He’s trying to get Cliffy to be easy about it, but Cliffy seems scared. Ethan leans down and tells him something and Cliffy shakes his head. Ethan goes to his car and retrieves two baseball caps. When he’s back to Cliffy, he makes a big show of placing it on his own head and turning it around backward. This makes me smile so much that I have to put my hand over my face.
He hands the other hat to Cliffy, and Cliffy places it on his head and carefully swings it around. Ethan approves and they high-five. Soon Cliffy is standing on the board. Ethan holds his hand and gets him to bend his knees a little. Cliffy is concentrating so hard as Ethan starts to ride him around the parking lot slowly. They go back and forth, and I am mesmerized. Everything in my life has changed since the night he did this with me.
“This is so boring,” Iris says, abandoning her soccer ball and plopping down next to Greer and me on the blacktop. “Can we go canoeing?”
“Yes,” I say without really thinking. I do not want to be inside today.
Greer’s scrolling through her phone with a blank expression on her face. I know this expression because I’ve felt it on my own face. You scroll through the photos of all of your friends who are having better, more meaningful lives than yours until the only thing you remember about your own life is that you’re not living your best one. Instagram knows this because it sends me commercial breaks from this NumbScroll™ to suggest how I could get that best life. This usually strikes me as funny, or at least ironic, but it’s not funny when I see it on Greer’s face. There’s an emptiness there that makes me ache.
Ethan gets Cliffy to put his right foot down and push off a bit. It’s a slow start but he does it. Ethan picks him up off the board and spins him around. And the lesson is over.
“Is that it?” Iris asks.
“Yep, you’ve got to stop while it’s still fun.”
“It was fun,” Cliffy agrees, and falls into my lap.
“You were great,” I say, and smooth his sweaty hair off his forehead.
“Come on, Ali, your turn,” Ethan says, reaching out his hand to pull me up.
“Mom? You’re going to try?” Greer asks. It might be the first thing I’ve heard her say today, and I have an urge to be brave for her. To show her something that’s not on her phone. I get up without taking his hand. I don’t know how to touch him in a way that looks platonic.
“Sure,” I say. “Scooter’s given me a couple of lessons. I think I’ve got it.” I take Cliffy’s hat and put it on and turn it backward. He gives me a thumbs-up and Ethan hands me his board. They’re all watching me and I know that I could fall flat on my face, but I want to trust this thing, this piece of wood with wheels. I want to trust myself to stay in balance.
I push off with my left foot. The parking lot is flat so I only get as much speed as I try for. I lean a little and turn and feel the way I’ve controlled the board. Just a slight lean in, almost imperceptible, makes all the difference. I turn as I go, showing off now. Who’s more unstuck than me, I think. I make a sharp turn at the end of the lot but can’t quite stay on my board. I get back on, and I can feel how little is weighing me down. I imagine myself going up the half-pipe and turning in the air the way Ethan does. I imagine Greer dropping her phone to cheer. I skate back to them and Ethan and Cliffy are beaming. Greer rolls her eyes.
“Can we go canoeing now?” Iris asks. Before I can answer, she says, “Scooter, you can come too. My mom is so fast.”
“I’ve heard,” he says. “Let’s do it.” And he’s so comfortable. Like of course we should all go out in the canoe—it’s a beautiful day. He doesn’t know how loaded that canoe is in my head. Ethan in my canoe sounds absolutely perfect.
Linda has a big smile for my kids. “Two days in a row! What a fun surprise!”
“Cliffy was learning to skateboard and it was hot and boring so we came here,” says Iris.
“That’s pretty much it,” I say. “Linda, this is Ethan.”
Ethan reaches out his hand to shake. “Hi, Mrs. Bronstein.”
She pulls him into a hug. “Scooter Hogan. US history. I cannot believe it. I ask Frannie about you all the time, and she tells me about your life up in Devon. I can’t believe you’re all grown up.”
“I get that a lot,” he says, and hands Cliffy a set of oars.
The paddling is so easy. I can’t remember when it was this easy. My muscles are sore because yesterday was our Sunday ride, and this feels restorative rather than taxing. We are in a rhythm, and, as usual, Greer and Iris take it very seriously and Cliffy takes lots of breaks.
“Let’s stop at Pelican Island,” Ethan shouts. It’s just ahead of us, and it’s high tide, so it’s smaller than it was when we were there together.
Cliffy perks up and shouts, “Yes! Is that it?”
We slow down as we approach and Ethan jumps out to pull the canoe on shore. We get out without getting wet, and it feels like a luxury. “This would be fun in pirate costumes,” Ethan says to nobody in particular.
Cliffy jumps on this. “Can we do that next time? I like the big hat with the three corners.”
Iris is listening and I see her teetering between wanting to join in with abandon and thinking maybe this is babyish.
“I have that hat, and I now have a striped shirt with a stuffed parrot that sits right on the shoulder,” Ethan says like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “And a treasure chest full of stuff you guys might like.”
“Okay,” Iris says. “And an eye patch?”
“I have a bunch of those,” he says. And to me, “Good thing we’re so slow about throwing stuff out. I even have a Jolly Roger flag we could hang off the back of the canoe, to make it sort of foreboding.”
Cliffy hugs Ethan so spontaneously that I think I notice it before he does. “I’m going exploring,” Cliffy says, and leads Iris between the trees to see what may be lurking on the other side of the island.
Greer has taken her phone out and is taking a picture of Beechwood in the distance. I’m annoyed because I just want her to enjoy the new perspective and the sound of the water lapping up against the rocks from every angle. I don’t want her seeing this as another opportunity to gain footing with her friends.
“Can I see?” Ethan asks.
She looks surprised but says, “Sure.” She hands him her phone, and I nearly faint.
“It’s a good photo,” he says. “I like the way you kept the inn to the left so that it’s mostly the unbroken tree line.” He hands the phone back to her.
She looks at the photo again and almost smiles. “I’m going to go find Iris,” she says, and takes off behind the trees.
“What was that?” I ask.
“What?”
“Like, you just communicated with my daughter? She let you touch her phone and accepted a compliment. What kind of sorcery is this?”
He laughs. “I don’t think you realize how much time I spend with teenagers. I’ll give you pointers.” He takes a step toward me and I am afraid that if I take even one step toward him, I won’t be able to keep my hands to myself.
“Everything I say is wrong.”
He squeezes my hand and lets go. “It’s sort of a subtle thing, I guess. But you have to meet them where they are. I talk about skateboarding with kids so that eventually they’ll take my advice about other stuff. If she’s into social media, meet her there.”
This is right, of course. “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
“Just in little steps, I think. Teenagers need a little room.” He looks back at the shore, hands on hips. “I used to love looking at Beechwood from here because it made me feel like I left it. Like I could enjoy the town from a distance, when it wasn’t smothering me.”
I look at him and wonder what it would take for this place to stop smothering him.
“Anyway, this is definitely more fun with kids. And I guarantee the next time we do this, we’ll be in costume. Even Greer.”
“I’m in,” I say.
“And Iris feels like a natural on the water. Have you noticed that?”
“I have,” I say. “She’s strong.”
He turns back toward me and I can’t help but touch the front pocket of his shorts. “Do we have the day together tomorrow?” he asks. His voice is husky, as if it’s holding back an avalanche of emotions.
“Yes. Starting at nine. And it’s Tuesday, so the evening too,” I say. This morning, I actually sat down and made a grocery list for the entire week, went shopping, and picked up Greer’s contact lens prescription—all so that I would be able to spend more time the rest of the week with Ethan. It’s funny what you’ll do when properly motivated. “Do you want to come with me to Phyllis’s again?”
“Yes. In my perfect world, I would be with you all the time, no breaks,” he says.
I look up at him to see if he means it. He does.
Cliffy has liberated a dozen rocks from Pelican Island, and we paddle back to the boathouse. Iris is chanting, “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” which isn’t quite wholesome, but it’s happy.
When we are pulling the boat onto the shore, Ethan says to Greer, “Have you seen your mom’s Instagram account? Storage something?” I’m not sure, but he might have rolled his eyes.
“Do you mean ‘coat rack goals’?” she says, and laughs.
“What?” I say. “Was that lame?”
Ethan makes a yikes face and my kids laugh. “You could use some help, Ali.”
Greer lays her paddle in the canoe and looks at me with something close to interest. “Would you help me, Greer?” I ask. “I really don’t know what I’m doing, and half the time I don’t remember to post anyway.”
“Yes,” she says, and that’s it. She turns away and I’m not going to get any more, but Ethan is smiling to himself and I see what he’s done. He’s opened a door for me.
I lead the way as we carry the canoe up the beach, which is why I see Pete first. He’s walking through the dog park gate toward the boathouse when he looks up and sees us. We’re clearly both headed to the same place so I can’t act like I didn’t see him. I wave with my free arm and he walks over.
“Daddy!” Iris and Cliffy drop the tail end of the canoe and run over to him. Greer hangs back.
“We’re pirates!” Cliffy says.
“Well that’s fun,” says Pete, with his arms around each of them. “Bringing your lawyer in case there’s any trouble?” he asks me.
“Scooter was giving Cliffy a skateboarding lesson,” I say as if that explains everything. Naturally, if you give someone a skateboarding lesson the next step would be to usurp their father’s spot in the family boat.
Pete’s looking at the five of us, beyond windswept, like he’s about to take our photograph. “Skateboarding, huh?” And then to Cliffy, “How’d it go?”
“Good, once I got my hat on.” Cliffy smiles at Ethan. “And you should see Mom, she’s practically a pro.”
“On a skateboard?” Pete is incredulous.
“Yes, on a skateboard,” I say. “And I am getting quite good.” Pete is looking from Ethan to me, and I know that me skateboarding is pretty damning evidence of how much time we’ve been spending together. But it’s also evidence of Super Me—balanced, steady, and gleefully unstuck. “Quite good,” I repeat.
Pete gives me a long look. “Well, I got out of work early, so I was going to take a scull out for a while. Mix things up.”
Linda is visibly uncomfortable behind him. Apparently, Pete didn’t get the memo that he lost boating rights in the divorce. Apparently, Linda didn’t count on a Hogan showing up when she was handing an expensive piece of equipment over to someone who is not a guest of the inn. I wait for Ethan to react in some way, put Pete in his place. But he doesn’t say a word.
As Pete heads to the water in his single scull and we carry the big canoe into the boathouse, I think, This. This man is right in our canoe. I love this man.