This is the first visible reminder of what I’m walking into, and it shatters my poise. I dread being here, but feel guilt at not having come sooner. I’m afraid of what I’ll find when I get to the house, but feel an overriding responsibility for whatever it is. I’m having second thoughts about surprising Anne and not calling Margo. And seeing my father? That’s the worst. My relationship with him has always been iffy. And now? He may be angry to see me, or pleased that I’ve come. He may not recognize me at all.
Deep down, though, driving along these streets, I feel a touch of excitement. For all the emotional baggage this place brings, I loved it once. The Rhode Island shore and I have a past, and it isn’t all bad.
Take Gendy Scoops, I realize, smiling when I see the rambling white house with sea green awnings. “Gendy was an old lady,” I tell Joy, “but this looks rehabbed. Her kids must run it now. Or their kids. Summers, we hung out here.”
“Not in Bay Bluff?”
“Bay Bluff didn’t have an ice cream shop. Besides, everyone knew everyone in Bay Bluff, so if we didn’t want spies reporting to our parents, we came here.”
The bikes out front now have thick tires that make the ride over back roads easier. There are cars, too, and people eating ice cream under huge umbrellas that match the sea green of the awnings. The sky is a blanket of clouds with the occasional spot of blue, but the pavement is dry. Joy was right about that.
The final approach is lush with the rich green of oaks, the blue of hydrangeas that thrive in sea air, the fountains of ornamental grass that had become a landscaping mainstay. We pass the same three-way intersection that I remember, the same signs for Misquamicut and Watch Hill. Another several minutes in, and the houses start swelling in size.
“Crazy,” Joy murmurs when we pass a particularly grand one.
“That was there before, but the next one’s new.” I point ahead. “And that one.” These are expensive homes, with expensive cars parked in expensive circular drives. No overgrown shrubs here. All is as pruned as the salty air allows.
Bay Bluff is its own little peninsula halfway between Misquamicut and Watch Hill. A small, weatherworn sign with an arrow marks the turnoff, so that if you don’t know to look for it, you miss it. We used to joke that the arrow was flipping the bird to anyone who hadn’t been invited to town, but now I wonder if I’m welcome here myself. Is home always home? Why, then, does my mind see ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK in that arrow?
Tucking the warning away, I drive on past banks of mailboxes at dirt driveways that burrow off into the trees. Once the road has angled along the peninsula, we pass homes I remember—the Mahoneys, the Santangelos, the Wrights, all still here in some generational form, to judge from the names on mailboxes. These houses have been updated with gables, turrets, and glass, and, to a one, their cedar shakes are weathered a deliberately stylish gray.
“Beach,” Joy cries when houses give way to diagonal parking, not quite filled but almost, and beyond that sand and surf. “Put down your window,” she orders, straining against her seat belt to see out my side.
Slowing, I do it as much for her as for me, and the warm salt air billows in, as if it was just waiting for the invite. No matter how much beach air I’ve breathed in the last twenty years, this is different. It smells of time and fish and a gazillion grains of sand that have washed through kelp, cradled crustaceans, or human toes. And still, it fills me with an odd … purity. How to explain?
Rather than try, I leave my window down. The tide is out, reducing the thunder of surf to a tuneful roll as the waves spill like dominoes down the shore. We pass a grove of stunted trees and shrubs, and while the green is dulled here, wild beach roses more than compensate.
Then those are gone, too, and we reach the square, which is as close to a center of town as Bay Bluff can claim. Slowing down, I’m impressed in spite of myself. When I left, only a handful of shops skirted a central patch of scruffy grass, but there are more than a dozen shops now, and the patch of grass has become a deck of pebbles hosting a large bench, whiskey barrels filled with blood-orange lantana, and a pair of gaslights. When I left, the shops had a freestanding feel, but the square’s corners are now pergolas to the sea, and the gaps between shops have been filled. Awnings and signage are of a style. Sidewalks have been widened for picnic tables outside eateries—and those? I can’t see details from the car, and with another car behind me I have to keep rolling, but there are three separate clusters of tables, all comfortably filled this mid-afternoon.
For a place that supposedly doesn’t give a fig whether people come or not, it’s an inviting little secret. Actually, not so much a secret, to judge from the flock of visitors milling in a splash of T-shirts and shorts, flip-flops and hats.
Feeling an inkling of pride, I ask Joy, “What do you think?”
“I need food,” she declares, which translates into Stop here, stop now, and even though the voice of wisdom says we should go to the house first, I’ve been promising Joy we’d have lunch.
So I park in the lot just beyond the square—once dirt, now neat gravel—pull my ponytail through a ball cap and slip on large sunglasses. By the time I’ve grabbed my camera, Joy is at my door, brows raised. “Seriously, Mom? Sunglasses?”
“For the glare,” I say and climb out.
Glare? she might have echoed and added another seriously? Instead, humoring me, she reaches back into the car to snatch her own sunglasses from the console. They are identical to mine. We bought them last February in Jamaica, and while large and round is more her look than mine, they happen to offer the right amount of shade.
That quickly, she is gone off to explore. I close the door and, for an instant, leaving New York in the car, I can’t move. I’m hit by an unexpected moment, the balmy scent of my childhood is that strong around me. No, it isn’t the same at other beaches, and purity is a dodge. What’s different here is memory, which hugs me with myriad arms before I can think to raise my guard. Held in its grip, I remember the ripeness of sea-soaked bathing suits, the smell of fresh fish at the docks, the sweetness of full bellies in a delicate crust—and above it, the screech of gulls, the slap of a screen door, and always, muted or clear, the roll of the waves.
From the parking lot, I can’t see those waves over a string of dunes. But I do see things to save. Flipping the glasses to my head and the camera to my eye, I photograph the blur-of-color Joy makes as she strides past the Clam Shack’s weathered-gray siding. Distracted by that siding, I close in on its texture, then back away again to shoot shadows that sharpen as a cloud gives way to blue. Lowering the camera, I replace the shades, but as soon as I round the corner, there’s more photo bait. Glasses up, camera to eye, I take pictures of a family of four in blue BAY BLUFF T-shirts, newly bought, folds still fresh. I zoom in for close-ups of the town name, momentarily an ironic Bay Buff when the teenage boy wearing it reaches to scratch his back. Shifting focus, I spot three dogs sitting like a trio of old men on the bench in the center of the square.
Dogs are safer than seeing people I recognize, although there haven’t been any of the latter yet. There will be. That was the danger of stopping here first and the wisdom of ball cap, glasses, and camera. I haven’t changed much in twenty years. I still wear my hair long, it’s still light brown, and the ends still frizz in ocean air. I’m still five-six, still 125 pounds—okay, before breakfast and naked, but my point stands. Twenty years isn’t that long a time.