Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass

Author:Julia Glass [Glass, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

I wake to Pearl’s face, inches from mine. “Wherever are we?” she whispers. “What is this place?”

Something is tickling my chin. When I sit up abruptly, nearly conking heads with her, I see that she’s holding a tiny white feather, probably leaked from one of our ancient pillows. As I lean back against the wall, she hands me a cup of coffee. She’s wearing my long heavy sweater over her clothes. Someone’s clearly sent it through a dryer, because it’s warm to the touch.

“Your dad is making pancakes,” she says, still whispering. “He said he’s skipping work. I don’t know him, but he’s looking…purposeful.”

I ask her what time it is; ten, she tells me.

“Oh God, what now?” I say.

“Vacation, I suppose. Thanks to your dad, I’ve phoned in a family emergency that gives me a couple of days off from school, but yes, what was the plan? I can’t recall for the life of me.”

Now I smell the pancakes, and I realize I’m famished. I have to eat before I can think. I brought us here to escape, to run away, but from what, precisely? Not like I hadn’t seen the place I chose to live sprout explosions before.

I get up and pull on my jeans, which have also been sent through the dryer. They feel wonderful, but the shirt I’m wearing is thin and I’m still cold. All I have—minus the sweater poached by Pearl—is one of the quilts, which I drape over my shoulders. Somewhere, I shed a rain shell.

Dad’s apartment is surprisingly bright by day, even a gray day, which makes it more pleasant and yet, with its worn-out floors and details revealed, also drearier than it seemed in the middle of the night.

Mrs. T appears to have left, her blankets folded neatly on one arm of the couch. (Is my old English teacher now my father’s confidante? This is a mind-bender.)

“You gave me such a scare, not calling,” says Dad. He’s flipping pancakes.

Excuses useless, I tell him I’m sorry, but he’s smiling at Pearl now, urging her to sit down; no, no help required. Please! All he wants is to feed us, to get us whatever we need. Anything at all. I take a good look at him while he can’t look back. He’s lost weight—not a bad thing—but is he grayer, too?

Three placemats lie on the small table I recognize from our upstairs porch. I mourn a little at the loss of that view: over my mother’s garden, the distant harbor, bright stripes between a neighbor’s trees. I wonder if I care more about losing that view, that house, than I am willing to admit. Vigil Harbor is a town toward which I claim to feel no nostalgia, no pull. I’ve always sworn I will not be your typical hometown revenant. I’m gone for good.

Once the three of us are seated, my father says to Pearl, “I’m glad you came along. I miss meeting my son’s friends.”

“My sad-sack fellow artistes, he means.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Pearl.

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