Page 37 of On Fire Island

“Maybe you should go,” she managed. “I have”—sob—“to put”—sob—“Matty first.”

Gabe got down on the floor next to her and rubbed her back.

“Now?” he asked.

She curled her body into his, and I could see the pain release from her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, drying her tears on his shirt.

twenty-three

Dylan’s Birthday

On the morning of Dylan’s birthday, Matty met Dylan on the beach to begin their annual four-mile run and 182-step climb to the top of the Fire Island Lighthouse. Once there, the tradition continued with Dylan reading her yearly birthday letter from her mother. She received postcards from her mom from different places throughout the year—all saying very little, but on her birthday, she always got a long letter. It was usually a few pages of advice, mostly feminine stuff that her mother deemed age-appropriate, and it always contained a fresh hundred-dollar bill. Dylan never shared what it said with Matty and always did the same thing. She pocketed the money and tore the letter into a million little pieces, tossing them like confetti from the gallery platform of the lighthouse. It was the only time that she littered. Today she folded the letter up and put it back in her pocket.

When Dylan was about three, her mom literally ran off to join the circus. It was one of those things that if Ben had written it in one of his novels, I may have called it unbelievable and taken a blue pencil to it.

She wasn’t an acrobat, or a clown. In fact, she was neither flexible nor funny—she was a bookkeeper.

The story began a few years before when Dylan’s mother, Melissa, who originally hailed from a landlocked town in upstate New York, took a summer job at Rachel’s Restaurant & Bakery, a staple in town serving up cookies, cakes, and brownies. There she met Jake, a strong handsome guy who worked on the ferry dock and was exceedingly fond of Rachel’s world-famous crumb cake topped with mountains of sweet, but not too sweet, cinnamon crumble. He would eat it from the top down, which always made Melissa laugh. She soon fell in love with both Jake and Fire Island.

Jake, thrilled to find a girl who never wanted to leave, quickly married her. By the following summer, Dylan was born and Melissa was happy, at first. She still helped out at the bakery on some nights and was excited to spend the winter alone with Jake and their baby, but when the summer people left and the bakery and most everything else shut for the season, staying home all day with an infant proved too much for her. What she imagined as an adventure was in reality isolating and depressing, and by the time Jake returned home at night, Melissa was often in tears. She had suffered from seasonal affective disorder before—although she didn’t know the name for it. Add in the remote lifestyle and a sprinkling of postpartum symptoms and she was clinically depressed. At least that is what the shrink who Jake took her to off-island had said.

The doctor suggested she come weekly, and Jake would bring her, watching over Dylan in the waiting room while Melissa was inside. He was good at caring for the baby. It was easy to tend to her needs. Just follow a schedule: a bottle, a clean diaper, a bath—it didn’t feel much different from taking care of the ferries.Methodically checking off a list of tasks and then doing it all over again the next day.

Melissa was prescribed antidepressants, and by the time the summer people arrived, she seemed better. But as soon as they left again, and the season changed, her sadness came back. This time, it seemed worse. On some days, she couldn’t get out of bed, and Jake would strap Dylan into the BabyBjörn and take her to work with him, but it was hard. Melissa was always sad.

The doctor thought she needed something of her own and suggested she take an online class. She had always been good with numbers, so she enrolled in bookkeeping. At the end of the course, the teacher gave out a list of employment opportunities. Number three on the list caught her eye. A traveling circus with offices out of Long Island, close to the Bay Shore ferry terminal. Jake encouraged her to go for it, anything to see a smile on her face again.

Melissa applied and got the job, though there was a hitch. The office on Long Island was really just the circus owner’s house; the job was on the road. In the few days between getting the job and learning of this caveat, Melissa was happier than she had ever been. And so Jake was as well. When she learned of the travel requirement, she was heartbroken. They decided she would go for one season, and between him and his mom, who lived across the bay, they would manage—as long as she was back by May, when high-season kicked in on Fire Island. After that, she would have something great on her résumé and could find work closer to home. Maybe even with the ferry company, whose current bookkeeper was nearing retirement.

Two months in, she sent a postcard from Cawker City, Kansas—home of the world’s largest ball of twine. It said she had fallen in love with life on the road and would not be coming back.

“I’m not good for Dylan, anyway,” she wrote. “She is better off with you. Please tell her I will always love her.”

There was no word from her for years. In that time Jake became mom, dad, and teacher to Dylan. They spent their days playing in the surf, fishing off the bay and sanding boats. He taught her the difference between a stratus cloud and a cumulus, a new moon and a harvest moon, a piping plover and a sandpiper. So much of who she was now, and what she loved, came from being brought up by her dad. In the winters, when it snowed, Jake would pull her in a toboggan to the little yellow school bus that drove down the beach. In the summers, she would go to the local day camp, then ride the afternoon ferry boats, wiping down the benches and collecting tickets. And though she never wore a dress and her hair was usually a bit of a mess, she was a happy little girl with a happy childhood—filled with the security of her father’s love.

There was no divorce, and no formal custody agreement. They all just lived that way until her sixth birthday.

Now, Dylan and Matty walked the 182 steps down from the lighthouse and headed for the first town—Kismet—where they continued their annual tradition with a big breakfast at the Kismet Inn.

Matty broke the silence. “Wanna share pancakes and waffles? ’Cause I can’t decide.”

“Sure,” she said. Pancakes and waffles would usually get more of a rise out of her.

“Dyl, can I ask what the letter said?”

“Yeah, OK,” she answered, but fell back into silence.

Matty poked her and smiled. “What did the letter say?”

“Did I ever tell you about my sixth birthday?”

He shook his head, and I inched closer so as not to miss a word.

“My dad took off the whole day, and we went out on the boat. We docked at a waterside restaurant for lunch. I remember feeling so cool, being one of those people who arrive by boat, you know what I mean?”

We both did. There was a whole world of boat people on the Great South Bay. I had only gotten a taste of it a few times, but it seemed like a very fun alternate universe. They would gather their boats in groups around sandbars or on uninhabited islets and plop down beach chairs and drink beers. When visiting Fire Island they would dock for lunch or dinner at the local restaurants—just like Dylan was describing doing on the mainland.

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