The Ocean Between Us

PART 2

Point of Embarkation

POE: Point of Embarkation: to make a start, to engage, enlist, or invest in an enterprise.

CHAPTER 5

Nine months earlier

In the cramped, overheated dressing room of a self-consciously hip boutique called Wild Grrl, Katie Bennett’s head popped through the neck opening of a green Free People sweater. “How about this one, Mom?”

Grace helped her adjust the sweater, smoothing her hand down the textured mohair knit. Moving to Washington State from Texas over the summer meant the kids needed sweaters and jackets. As she turned Katie square into the mirror, she sneaked a glance at the tag dangling from the armpit—$64.99. Great. “It’s a good color on you,” she said. “Too bad it doesn’t even cover your navel.”

Katie turned this way and that, lifting a mop of straight brown hair off her neck and contemplating her reflection with the hypersensitive, overcritical eye of a fourteen-year-old girl. Grace wanted to tell her daughter she would look beautiful in a gunnysack, but Katie would argue with her. Katie always argued, and she usually won.

As Grace sorted through the other outfits they’d selected, she glimpsed the back of a woman in the unforgiving three-way dressing-room mirror. Neglected hair, a double-wide backside, jiggly upper arms. Then Grace straightened up and lifted her arm over her head.

The pudgy woman did the same.

She put her arm down.

So did the woman in the mirror.

She twitched her hips from side to side.

So did—

“Mom, what are you doing?” Katie asked.

“Contemplating suicide.” Grace laughed to make sure Katie knew she was kidding. She shuddered at the back view of herself in the unflattering fluorescent light. It shouldn’t be such a shock. She knew she’d been getting a little wide in the beam but had managed to avoid taking a hard look in the mirror. Whose hips were those, and why were they so large? How did she get to this state? At some point—she had no idea when—gravity must have kicked in. With no prior warning, she’d turned into a not-very-attractive stranger. But there she was, in living color, the dumpy, middle-aged suburban housewife she never thought she’d become.

“Is something wrong?” Katie prodded.

Grace sighed and picked up her purse. “No, sweetie. I don’t know what I was thinking when I put on these khaki shorts.”

“You look fine,” Katie stated.

The kids didn’t need for Grace to look like anything but Mom, and she’d done a damned good job of that. When Steve did a good job, he got a medal or pin of commendation. While she got…She wondered why no one ever gave women medals for motherhood.

“I’m the one in trouble, Mom. Nothing’s right.” With a long-suffering sigh, Katie peeled off the green sweater and tossed it to Grace.

“What about the hip-hugger jeans?” Grace suggested. “They were cute on you.”

Katie slipped a T-shirt over her head. “In order to wear hip-huggers, you have to actually have hips.”

Grace patted her arm. “Trust me, you’ll get them. The Lord will provide.” She avoided her reflection as Katie finished dressing.

Katie didn’t seem to notice her uncharacteristic silence as they went to find Emma. She was in another dressing room, where she’d put aside a stack of selections to show her mother. As blond and willowy as a prima ballerina, eighteen-year-old Emma never experienced the uncertainties that tortured her younger sister. At the moment, Emma was modeling a jersey skirt and sweater, her natural good looks magically transforming a discount outfit into a Marc Jacobs original.

Grace smiled at her older daughter. “I see you narrowed your choices down to, what, a few dozen?”

“Two skirts and three tops, and I’ll kick in for half,” Emma said. She worked as a lifeguard at the Island County Aquatics Center. It turned out to be the perfect place to meet people. After living here just two months, she had plenty of friends.

“Deal,” Grace agreed. A little extravagance was justified, she supposed. The Navy Exchange provided the basics, but the start of the school year, in a brand-new town, called for some serious retail therapy. Back-to-school shopping usually appealed to Grace. She took a peculiar comfort in the familiar rituals of summer’s end, in getting registered for school, joining the PTA, signing permission forms for sports and extracurriculars. She liked organizing their backpacks and binders, spiral-bound notebooks and bradded folders; she liked putting things in their proper place. Stowing ordnance, Steve called it.

Shouldering her bulging purse, she stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot where she was. She felt unmoored, disoriented. She had started over so many times in so many new places that she actually had to think for a second before remembering which town this was.

With Emma at the wheel of their aging station wagon, they headed down the road to a huge Rite Aid. This was Katie’s indulgence. Rather than getting school supplies at the Navy Exchange, she craved the variety available at the big drugstore. Under the bluish glare of fluorescent lights, the back-to-school aisle was jammed with harried mothers and restless kids. Emma wandered over to the makeup section, leaving Grace to pick out the basic necessities. Neither of the twins had ever been picky about their school supplies.

On the other hand, Katie took the task seriously and was presently weighing the merits of disposable versus refillable mechanical pencils. Waiting at the end of the aisle, Grace held her tongue, resisting the temptation to prod. But Katie had a sixth sense; she glanced over at Grace. “I just need a few more things.”

“No problem.” Angling the cart to one side, Grace selected a four-pack of glue from a display rack. She held the package briefly to her face, shut her eyes and inhaled. “I love the smell of glue sticks in the morning.”

“Very funny, Mom.” Katie opted for the refillable pencils, tossing them into the cart. Of Grace’s three kids, Katie was the only one who would actually keep the pencils long enough to refill. Then she added a chisel-tipped highlighter pen, a pack of index cards and a D-ring binder. “Okay, I’m all set.”

Katie was a moving violation of the laws of birth order. She overachieved like a firstborn, worried like a middle child and, only when she didn’t think anyone was looking, still played like the baby of the family. And like the baby, she was adored by everyone—except by herself.

They headed toward the checkout stand. Emma stood at the magazine display, flipping through Cosmo. Katie tilted her head sideways to read the shout lines. “Nine Ways to Drive Him Wild In Bed,” she read aloud. “You know, if that stuff worked, we would have world peace, I bet.”

“Let’s go,” said Grace, taking the magazine from Emma and sticking it back in the rack. Grace was no prude, and she wasn’t naive enough to think a parent could hold back the urges of nature, yet she felt a little dart of resentment at these women’s magazines and the glossy, seductive promises they made.

The two-for-seventy-nine-cents filler paper and multi-packs of ballpoint pens that seemed so cheap in the ad circular somehow managed to multiply to a hundred dollars’ worth of school supplies. Grace handed over a well-worn credit card, knowing the balance would make her wince when it came in the mail.

Glancing across to the adjacent checkout stand, she spied a young mother carefully counting out change while her two little kids swarmed the gumball machine by the exit. She was Navy, of course. After nineteen years as a Navy wife, Grace could spot one a mile away. They possessed a peculiar forbearance, and a deep strength as well. They were a special breed of women—and lately, the occasional man—to which Grace belonged. A sorority of itinerant householders.

The woman looked up, and for two seconds their gazes held. Grace offered a smile, and the woman smiled back, then resumed counting out her money.

She sent Emma and Katie out to the car with their bloated cart while she stopped at the ATM machine by the door. As she waited for the machine to cough up the cash, her gaze wandered to the community bulletin board above the drinking fountain. Yellow handwritten cards and published brochures offered everything from dog-sitting services to weatherproofing. Garage sales abounded, as they did in every Navy town. When it was time to move, you lightened your load.

There were items on the bulletin board from Welcome Wagon, Mary Kay, the usual suspects. A glossy, tri-fold brochure caught her eye, mainly because it shouted the word free. She took one out of the rack. One free month of unlimited classes.

The flyer was for the Totally New Totally You fitness studio down on Water Street, owned and operated by Lauren Stanton, IFA Certified.

She stuffed the brochure into her purse among ferry schedules, receipts, change-of-address forms and the kids’ health records. With much greater care, she folded the bills and receipt from the ATM into her wallet. She was almost afraid to look at the bottom line.

In the parking lot, a gray-and-white seagull cried out and flew aloft, drawing her gaze upward. The sky was almost unnaturally blue, arching over a distant mountain range topped in snow, even in August. The fathomless blue of Puget Sound surrounded misty, forested islands with interesting names like Camano and Orcas. And Whidbey, of course. This was far and away the prettiest place they’d ever lived, even more dramatic than the vol-cano-scape of Sigonella, on Sicily. The weather here was on the cool side, unseasonably cool, locals said, and evenings warranted a sweater or light jacket.

Grace turned her face up to the dazzling sky. This was so different from other places she knew. She had been to coast-hugging barrier islands connected by causeways to the mainland—Galveston, Coronado, Padre near Corpus Christi. Sigonella was an arid rock. But Whidbey Island had its own sort of magic. Forty-five miles of rolling hills surrounded by cold blue water, Whidbey was a world unto itself, with its air of serenity and ageless beauty. Accessible only by car ferry or by a dizzying arched steel bridge spanning Deception Pass at the north end, it commanded the heart of Puget Sound.

She was going to like it here. No, she was going to love it here. That really wasn’t the problem. In a couple of years, she was going to have to leave. That was the problem.

Exasperated with her own thoughts, she dug for her keys, which were strung on the silver anchor key chain Steve had given her the first time he went to sea, long ago.

At the car, the girls were talking to a big-shouldered boy with a neck as wide as his head. Or rather, Emma was talking while the boy hung on her every word and Katie leaned against the shopping cart, trying to act nonchalant. The boy wore a purple football jersey and a gold stud in one earlobe. He looked like every high school girl’s fantasy—and he looked familiar.

“Mom, this is Cory Crowther,” said Katie.

Grace smiled at him. “Hi, Cory. I remember you from your dad’s change-of-command ceremony.” Earlier in the summer, Cory’s father, Mason Crowther, had taken command of Carrier Air Wing 22. Mason was one rung on the ladder higher than Steve, his Deputy CAG. In a year, Steve would be eligible to take command from Crowther.

“Yes, ma’am. I remember you, too.”

“But you disappeared on us,” she added.

He sent her a grin worthy of a toothpaste ad. “Went to football camp, ma’am.”

“I bet your mother missed you,” Grace said. Allison Crowther played a key but undefined role as the CAG’s wife. Grace realized her comment embarrassed Cory, so she said, “All set?” to her daughters. She pulled the cart around to the back of the car. Maybe he’d offer to help.

“Nice to see you, ma’am. I’d better be going,” he said. “Practice.”

So much for gallantry, thought Grace. She kept silent, though. Moving so frequently was hard on the kids, and she didn’t want to sabotage any potential friendships.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and wheeled backward, unable to take his eyes off Emma. “See you around.”

“See you,” said Emma.

“Bye, Cory,” Katie said, her eagerness adorable to Grace but unappreciated by the boy. “Good luck at practice.”

He grinned again and took off, heading for a shiny Dodge Ram pickup truck. Navy blue, of course. An array of squadron insignia decorated the rear window and bumper.

Katie sagged dramatically against the station wagon. “Good luck at practice,” she mimicked herself. “God, I’m a hopeless dork.”

Emma ruffled her hair. “You’re not used to football gods yet.”

“Don’t ever get used to football gods,” Grace said. “They’re nothing but trouble.”

“Was Dad a football god?”

“He didn’t play football,” Grace said. But he was a god.

“What did he play?” Katie asked.

“He didn’t. He was already an officer when we met.”

Grace opened the back of the car, and the three of them loaded the bags. She was tempted by a tube of Pringles sticking out of a sack, but quickly reminded herself of the nightmare in the mirror. She was going to have to take it easy on the Pringles.

“I’ll drive,” said Emma, folding her lithe form behind the steering wheel.

“You always drive,” Katie said, out of sorts over the Cory encounter.

“It’ll be your turn before you know it,” said Emma. “Get in and buckle up. We’re taking the scenic route.”

They drove through Oak Harbor, a town that took its beautiful setting for granted. A blight of strip centers and prefabricated housing flanked the main road through town. But at the foot of the clustered buildings, and above their rooftops, the view was crafted by the hand of God—an intensely blue seascape, alive with white-winged sailboats, cargo ships with containers stacked like Lego blocks, ferries shuttling tourists and commuters back and forth to the San Juan Islands or the mainland. A forest fringe of slender evergreens swept up to a white mountain range.

When they’d first arrived here, Emma and Katie would occasionally burst into “The Sound of Music” when the mood struck them. Her silly, funny girls. Watching her two daughters together gave Grace an unexpected pang.

They were nearly grown, whether she was ready or not. Looking at Emma’s face was like watching one of those time-lapse photographs of a flower opening. She could see her turn from a tender-faced baby into a young woman whose beauty seemed to be made equally of strength and fragility. Meanwhile, Katie grew tall and thin, and became smarter and more inquisitive every year. Grace couldn’t believe how quickly time had passed, how soon they would be leaving her.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” she said.

“I wish we lived closer to the water,” Katie said, never wanting to make the mistake of being in complete agreement with her mother. “The base isn’t pretty at all.”

“Bases aren’t supposed to be pretty,” Grace said.

“When I leave home, I’m going to live in one place and never, ever budge,” Katie declared.

“Not me,” said Emma. “I’m going to live everywhere.”

“Just don’t forget to write,” said Grace. She was tempted to broach the topic of college, but decided to wait. It was hard to resist pushing, though. Emma had barely touched the stack of glossy catalogs and brochures that flooded the mailbox all summer.

“I want to live there,” Grace said, speaking out before she’d fully formed the thought. She gestured at a house on the water side of the road, with a fussed-over garden and painted gingerbread trim. Like a stately tall ship, it commanded a view of the shipping lanes and mountains. It was a restored Victorian, the kind built by fishermen from Maine who’d relocated to Whidbey a hundred years ago.

“How about this one?” asked Emma. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled off the road and parked on the gravel shoulder in the shade of a huge cedar. The driveway was marked with a realtor’s tent sign and a bouquet of balloons imprinted with Open House.

Automatically Grace checked her watch. By habit she was a schedule person, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon they were in no hurry.

Visiting open houses was a hobby she’d fallen into years ago. Emma and Katie shared her fascination. There was a sort of vicarious pleasure in stepping into someone else’s world. It was a guilty thrill. Walking through other people’s homes made Grace feel as though she was visiting a foreign country with customs and habits she barely understood. She loved to study the gardens with perennials, displays of family photographs showing generations growing up in the same place. She was intrigued by the permanence of their way of life, and she studied it like an anthropologist researching a different culture.

She wondered what it would be like to live in a place where you could plant a garden and still be around to see how it turned out.

This was definitely a girl thing. Steve and Brian couldn’t stand open houses. But for Grace and her daughters, the fantasy began as soon as they stepped onto the driveway of crushed rock and shells.

The house was a disappointment, an ugly stepsister to the Victorian masterpiece down the road. Despite an impressive arbor of old roses, the garden was an uninspired mix of perennials, rhododendrons and low, leafy shrubs. Worse, someone had tried to give the place a nautical flavor by heaping driftwood in a self-conscious arrangement, creating a rope fence. A wooden seagull was perched atop the post next to the front gate. Over the door arched a driftwood sign: Welcome Aboard.

The girls walked in through the open front door, heading for a hall table laden with bakery cookies, a coffee urn, a pitcher of lemonade and some real estate flyers.

Grace hesitated before she entered the house. Unbidden, a quiet stirring occurred deep inside her. It was just a strange day, she thought, beginning with the shock of meeting her real self in the dressing-room mirror.

She could feel the fresh sea breeze rippling across the yard and stirring the tops of the trees. Murmurs of conversation drifted through the house as little knots of people inspected the unnaturally clean rooms. Her awareness of everything heightened, and for some reason, she held her breath the way she used to in church each Sunday morning, just before genuflecting.

In the blink of an eye, the peculiar moment passed. She stepped over the threshold into a stranger’s house. The spongy gray carpet beneath her feet had seen better days, and the walls were an oppressive putty color. Sometime in the distant past, a smoker used to live here. Bowls of potpourri barely masked a cindery hotel room odor. But still, the plain-Jane house cast an odd and mesmerizing spell on her.

Grace smiled and greeted the listing agent, accepting an information sheet on the house. She was a looky-loo and never pretended to be otherwise. An experienced agent could see that a mile off.

Grace strolled through an outdated kitchen with harvest-gold appliances, oversize vegetables on the wallpaper, phony redbrick linoleum on the floor and Formica countertops with the classic boomerang pattern, faded in places from scrubbing. The study was the only modern segment of the house that she could see. It contained a well-designed workstation and a state-of-the-art Mac computer surrounded by scanners, printers and devices Grace couldn’t identify. Clearly, this was the domain of a computer whiz.

One set of lookers was in the corner snickering over a collage made of seashells, which framed a chalkboard. Ignoring them, Grace passed through to the front room, and there, finally, she understood the magic of this place. The living room was oriented like the prow of a ship, with sliding doors leading out to a deck. The windows were covered by heavy pleated drapes, though someone had had the sense to thrust them wide apart. The view made Grace forget every unfortunate aspect of the little house on the bluff. It was a view that encompassed the length of Puget Sound, from the uneven teeth of the snowcapped Cascades to the dimpled blue peak of Mount Baker. The Sound was at its liveliest, as though every schooner and ferryboat, every barge and pleasure boat, put out to sea just for her viewing pleasure.

The girls were out on the deck, eating cookies. Grace pantomimed “five minutes” and headed for the stairs. The two bedrooms at the top of the landing were poky and nondescript. But the master bedroom commanded the same view as the living room downstairs.

Standing in this place, Grace felt a painful tightness around the heart. It was the sense of wanting something she could not possibly have.

She was about to leave when she became aware of a murmuring voice.

“But I thought the shipper wouldn’t schedule me until the house sold,” said a woman’s tense voice. “I can’t possibly be ready before then.” A pause. “I understand, but—” Another pause. “And what’s the charge for that? I see. Well, it’s not in my budget. I don’t know…”

Grace waited until she heard the bleep of the phone, followed by a shaky sigh she could relate to. Then she approached the woman, whose lower right leg was in a walking cast. She was an older lady whose pleasant face was trembling and swollen with unshed tears of frustration.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” said Grace. “Sounds as though your shipper is trying to move up the date on you.”

The woman nodded glumly. “Yes. It’s horrible. I had an offer on the house, but the loan fell through, so it’s back on the market again. Now the shipper wants to stick to the original schedule or charge me a huge extra fee.” She shook her head. “You know, I can design and launch a Web site, but dealing with a moving company is totally beyond me. My name’s Marcia Dunmire,” she said. “I’m a digital engineer.”

“Grace Bennett. I’m a Navy wife.”

“Oh. Then you’ve done this a few times before.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy, but maybe I can help. Do you have a copy of your contract?”

“Right here.” The pinched expression eased from Marcia’s face. “I’d be grateful if you’d look it over. I’ve never used a moving company before, ever.” She handed Grace a carbonless copy that looked very familiar.

“Some shippers move dates around if they have space in a truck that’s ready to go. And unfortunately, some agents try to tag you with extra charges and kill fees.” Grace glanced over the information. The estimated weight was grossly inflated—40,000 pounds. In reality, the contents of this house amounted to no more than 20,000 pounds. The inequity didn’t surprise Grace but set her teeth on edge.

Paging through the boilerplate sections of the contract, she found what she was looking for. “You’re okay,” she said. “They can’t charge you for rescheduling so long as you ship within sixty days. I’ve been a relocation ombudsman for the Navy for years. I could make a call for you, if you like.”

Marcia handed her the phone. “Be my guest. I’d love some help.”

Grace hit Redial. She and Marcia moved aside as a young couple came to the master bedroom. Like Grace, they were instantly drawn to the view from the wide front window. Go away, she wanted to tell them. This is my house. The clarity—and the absurdity—of the thought startled her.

“Yes,” she said when she finally got past the receptionist. “Terry, is it? Hi, Terry. It’s Grace Bennett of…Executive Relocators.” She tossed out the name from a well of fantasy inside her, claimed Marcia as a client and plunged in. It took no effort at all. When Grace discussed business, a certain confidence came over her. She stood up straighter, spoke with authority.

“Thanks for the info, Terry,” she said. “Then I guess I’m confused. According to Mrs. Dunmire’s contract, she has sixty days to reschedule. Yes, yes, of course.” From the corner of her eye, she saw the girls come in. When they spotted her with contract in hand, phone to her ear and the older lady watching with hands clasped in hope, they rolled their eyes and went somewhere else. They were used to seeing their mother in ombudsman mode.

“Let me check with my client on that, Terry.” She pressed the mute button on the phone. “He says you didn’t say you’d ship within sixty days.”