On the golf course, I always turned off my phone, but I could still sense the alerts, the messages, piling up. Like a child tugging on your hand, insistent. Some vacations, I spend half the time on the phone, being that guy everyone hates.
This same time last year, Dad and I had played Sankaty as a twosome; John stayed home with Sydney. Then the chorus in my pocket began. Ping ping ping. We were on the fifth hole nearest the lighthouse, and I told my dad I had to take a walk and answer some of these texts. Dad had frowned and said that he’d wait for me by the lighthouse. I hadn’t gone more than a few steps when I thought to glance back. Why I turned back, I don’t know.
Still, I didn’t run. Last summer, we didn’t know anything. Didn’t even know he had cancer yet. It was late in the afternoon, and the sky had that liquid quality that made everything look better than it actually was. My father stood at the base of the lighthouse, dug in his golf bag, pulled out a tool that glinted in the light.
“Dad!” I called, but he didn’t turn. “What are you doing?”
“They were supposed to leave it open for me!”
“What? Who?”
“The guy I tipped.”
“Who, Dad?”
He gripped the wire cutters, snapped the chain link in two, neatly.
“Jesus, Dad, you can’t—”
“Sure I can,” he said and winked. “The amount of dues I pay? You bet I can. Plus your mother is the head of the membership committee. She won’t vote her own husband off!”
He opened the door and went in, started up the stairs, then turned back.
“Well, are you going to stand there or come up and enjoy the view?”
We climbed up. Afterward, I would wonder what else he kept in his golf bag—zip ties, knives, if my father was some kind of country club criminal. But that was later. I followed him to the top, to the highest point on the bluff, and looked across the streaky turquoise sky. Did he see something coming? Whitecaps, sails, seals? He looked the same way he had on our childhood jaunts up to Altar Rock or Gibbs Pond, the shimmering blue pond tucked deep in the moors, a place for islanders, mountain bikers, hikers, not tourists. How he used to marvel at being able to see in all directions, without having to see people. How proud he was that no one else could see what he saw.
I hadn’t told anyone about that incident at the lighthouse, but now my mother’s concerns rattled in my head. Before I loaded my father’s worn golf bag into the Jeep, I rooted around in the pockets, looking for tools and sharp objects, but all I found was an extra crumpled glove.
The day started out fine. John missed a putt by a half inch, and we all stomped on the green, trying to get it to roll in, then laughed at our collective inability to do so. Dad wasn’t agitated when he lost his ball in the rough two shots in a row. That would have set another person off, but he was jolly. And no one was upset when I stepped away to take a phone call from Matt Whitaker. I’d left him a message, saying it was important. He said he’d do a little digging and get back to me as soon as he knew anything.
The foursome behind us was Kip Moore and his three sons-in-law. Kip asked us if we knew anything about our neighbors, who were up for membership vote. Brownstein was the name, he said with an arched eyebrow. John and I exchanged glances.
“Never met the man,” I said evenly.
“But he lives behind you.”
“He’s never on-island.”
“Hmm,” he said. “They prefer members who will use the club, play an active role.”
I shrugged.
“And of course they prefer them to be Episcopalian, but you can’t say that out loud anymore, can you? God damn political correctness, right?”
I nodded. I knew better than to get into a debate with someone my father’s age about religion, Ronald Reagan, or Fox News.
We urged Dad to play a little faster, since the Moores kept coming up behind us, and they were too polite to play through. And then, well, we let him drive the cart. Seemed harmless enough until he chased a bird, pulled the wheel too sharply, tipped it over. Afterward, he made a big scene at lunch, and we had to drag him out of there. We walked over to the beach club and tried to explain to Caroline, but she lost her shit.
Did you not hear Mom when she said do not let him drive the Jeep under any circumstances?
I’d said, A golf cart is not a car! Any fool can drive a golf cart!
Everyone could hear us screaming in the parking lot, the Warner kids, making asses of themselves while their father sat on the club steps and ate clam chowder out of a paper cup.
Because that was what it was all about: soup. We all had Bloody Marys, and when Dad asked what the soup of the day was, Arturo said they had no soup. And that’s when things went completely off the rails.
How could you not have soup? Did you run out? No? You just decided not to make any? Where’s the manager? Where’s Bobby? Bobby’s not here? The assistant manager then, what’s his name? Mark? Well, let me talk to Mark. Let me talk to Mark about making me, a dues-paying lifelong member of Sankaty, a cup of goddamned soup!
“Well,” Caroline said as my father slurped the last drips of his soup. “You two better sit in the back with him. Sydney will ride up front with me.”
“Oh, we can walk,” I said.
“What?”
“We’ll walk back to the club.”
“Wait a minute—this isn’t just about the soup, is it?” she said. “You came here to dump him on me? And you’re going back to the fucking golf course?”
I blinked. My sister, the part-time crew coach, could have been a lawyer, a private investigator, the head of the fucking FBI. She was wasting her life when she could have been out berating people for a living.
“No, honey, not ex—” John started.
“What if he grabs the wheel, Tom? What if he unbuckles his seat belt and grabs the wheel and kills me and his granddaughter while you are fucking golfing?”
“Caroline, he is not going to do that.”
“How do you know?”
“Fine, I’ll go back with you.”
“No, you will not.”
“I won’t?”
There was hope in my voice. That was another mistake I made. She heard it, of course, because my sister is a lioness who hears, smells, senses prey all around her.
“No,” she said. “You are going to take him home. You. Alone. And my family will take the bus when we’re done swimming.”
“And what if he grabs my wheel, Caroline? That’s okay?”
“Yes,” she said between gritted teeth. “Because you have the least to lose.”