It was a relief when they arrived at the airport. She stood next to her father while he returned the rental car and bought tickets for the next flight to Boston. At this time of year, planes flew often between the island and the mainland. They were lucky. They had to wait only fifteen minutes before boarding a JetBlue. During the flight, Ari simply leaned back and closed her eyes for the forty-five-minute trip. The rumbling of the plane was familiar, even comforting, and she didn’t have to make conversation with her father.
After they landed, they caught a taxi to the Cruise Atlantic pier on Boston Harbor. The ship was small compared to the towering luxury fleets at the far end of the harbor. Ari and her father got to the boat just as it was anchoring in its slip. Passengers waved from the upper decks to the small crowd waiting near the dock.
“I’m excited,” Ari told her father. “It sort of feels like Christmas.”
“We’ll see,” her father said, adding wryly, “It might be more like Halloween.”
After that, they waited silently as dozens of passengers disembarked. Ari didn’t see her mother, and as more and more people came down the ramp and greeted one another, hugging and laughing, Ari worried. For all they knew, her mother had stayed in Canada, traveling through all the enormous provinces with her new lover.
Suddenly, there she was. Alicia wore a blue summer dress and a wide straw hat with a blue ribbon. She looked rested and happy. Cliff was at her side, talking to her.
Behind her mother came a rather professorial sort, wearing tortoiseshell glasses, a rumpled linen sports coat, and a slightly raffish straw fedora. As Ari watched, the man leaned forward and said something to Alicia and Cliff and they all laughed.
Then Alicia caught sight of her husband and daughter waiting onshore. She stopped, surprised, causing the line of passengers behind her to also stop, bumping into each other. Ari waved and waved, and her father did, too. An extremely familiar look came over Alicia’s face—Ari called it her mother’s “Good grief, what now?” expression.
Cliff spotted Ari and her father and waved. Quickly, he looked away, scanning the dock. He spotted someone and broke into a wide smile, a happier smile than Ari had ever seen on her uncle’s face.
Her mother and uncle continued down the ramp and quickly were lost in the crowd.
“She might ignore me,” Ari’s father said. “But she would never ignore you.”
Her father’s words made Ari feel sympathy for him, while at the same time she said, “If I were my mother, I’d slap you.”
“Yes, you’re right. I deserve that.”
The crowd was thinning out. Ari spotted her uncle walking in the opposite direction. A pretty woman was waiting for him, and Cliff swept her up in his arms and kissed her for a long time. If Ari hadn’t been waiting for her mother, she would have dashed down the pier and forced her uncle to introduce her to the woman.
She caught sight of a straw fedora headed in the opposite direction. Was her mother going off with the professor fellow? Ari’s heart sank. Would her mother do that? Would she simply walk away from them?
A cluster of chattering women came toward Ari and her father, parting around them as if they were telephone posts, and then there was Alicia.
“This is a surprise,” Alicia said. Her cheeks were very red.
“MOM,” Ari cried, hugging her. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“Alicia,” Phillip said. He had tears in his eyes. “You look so beautiful. I’m sorry I never told you how beautiful you are.”
Alicia looked at her husband with such sorrow in her eyes that Ari had to look away.
“That is what you’re sorry for?” she asked. “You’ve been lying to me all summer. Are you going to keep lying now? Because if you are, I am leaving you. And I warn you, I have someplace to go.”
“I’m going to take a little stroll up and down the pier,” Ari said. She hurried away, hoping to give her parents some privacy for this discussion. Her uncle and his woman friend were no longer in sight.
As she walked, she remembered all the times in the past four years when she had learned that Peter was sleeping with someone else. The first time it happened, during their freshman year, she was confused more than upset. When Peter came to her full of apology, she quickly made up with him but soon was beginning to wonder if she was only agreeing to be with Peter because it was what she was used to. It wasn’t so much a matter of forgiving as it was of habit.
During her four years of college, she met quite a few handsome or interesting or charismatic guys. Actually, it was college, and they were all around, everywhere. Now that she thought about it, a sort of strange balancing had existed in her relationship with Peter. It was as if his being with another woman made it possible for her to have a relationship with another man. And this was only natural, everyone said. But Ari had concentrated on her studies. She did go out with other men, but she never was serious with anyone but Peter.
Here, now, leaning against a pole on the long pier of Boston Harbor, Ari realized she had never in her life felt anything like what she felt for Beck. Whatever she’d had with Peter had been a matter of familiarity, the deep ease and freedom of a normal and reliable environment when so much of their lives was difficult and challenging.
They had been good friends. They had been kind lovers. Ari thought she would always be fond of the memory of Peter while at the same time she didn’t care
