Page 88 of One Night on the Island

I push my phone into my pocket and head down towards the welcome lights of Otter Lodge. A brand spanking new year. Anticipation rather than fear bubbles behind my ribcage for what lies in the unshaped months ahead. The Pioneer won’t sail without me, because I am the pioneer.

Mack

17 January

Boston

I AM THEIR FOREST

‘Make a wish, Leo,’ Susie says, the huge birthday cake ablaze in her hands. Thirteen candles. The world has a brand-new teenager. How the hell do I have a teenage son? I think back to my own teen years and feel a very real fear. I was pretty rebellious back then, hard work for my mom, I realize now. Will Leo constantly push the boundaries too? Maybe, maybe not. He has a lot more people around him to lean on than I did.

‘Might be easier if you take the mask off, kid,’ I say. He’s pretty darn pleased with his new baseball gear, couldn’t wait to take photos of himself head-to-toe in the latest Sox uniform and catcher’s equipment.

‘I can blow between the bars,’ he laughs, his chest heaving as he sucks down a deep breath and blasts out the candles in one go.

‘Good job,’ Susie says, placing the cake down on the table as Leo heads off to grab a knife.

‘Think he’s planning to eat between the bars too?’ I say.

‘You know it,’ Susie says, removing the chocolate-encrusted candles from the cake.

‘Mom, Dad!’

Nate skids across to the window, warp speed as usual. ‘Grandpa’s here!’

Susie glances at me and frowns. Her parents are up in Maine visiting Marie’s sister. I shrug, assuming Nate’s mistaken, when the doorbell rings. I glance out of the window as I get up, but I don’t recognize the slick black SUV on the street outside.

‘I’ll get it,’ I say, a bad feeling grumbling low in my gut as Nate bounces around me along the hallway. I swing the door wide, braced for the chill wind and bad news.

‘Hello, son.’

My father, unannounced as usual. ‘Dad. This is a surprise.’

He adjusts his scarf. ‘In the area on business. Thought I’d drop over and say happy birthday to this guy.’ He’s all smiles and humour as he cuffs Nate’s shoulder.

‘Wrong kid,’ I say.

‘Just testing.’ Dad laughs, shrugging his mistake away.

‘There’s cake,’ Nate says. ‘Leo’s eating it with his catcher’s mask on.’

‘This I need to see.’ Dad grins, stepping in from the cold. I hold in my sigh as I move aside to grant him access, hating that I don’t feel as if I have any option.

‘Susie,’ he says in that convivial, ‘long time no see’ voice he’s so good at as he unbuttons his long wool coat and unwinds his scarf. Always a sharp dresser, my father, an eye for a well-cut suit and the ladies, my mother once said.

‘Alvin,’ Susie says, her smile guarded as her eyes flicker over his shoulder towards me. I shrug, nonplussed. ‘You’re just in time for cake.’

I watch him as he laughs and charms the boys, a card with money for Leo, a bill from his wallet for Nate’s piggybank. They sit either side of him, pale against his West Coast tan, basking in his praise.

‘The Red Sox, huh?’ he says, nodding at Leo’s uniform. ‘My team. You’re a chip off the old block, kid.’

‘Me too, Grandpa,’ Nate says, lifting his sweater to show my father his favourite Sox T-shirt. I watch them tumble over themselves to impress him, and it’s as much as I can do not to shove him back into his expensive coat and send him on his way. My kids don’t need to try to impress him.

‘You guys should all come out to California in the summer,’ he says, as the boys barrel out of the room at the sight of the neighbours’ kids in the street. ‘They would love the beaches.’

‘We have beaches,’ I say.

Susie looks as if her face is aching from fake-smiling her way through the last half-hour. It speaks volumes about how little my father’s in touch that he doesn’t know about our marital problems, and volumes about my relationship with him that I’ve tried to skip over it since he walked in the door.

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