Read The Birthdays for Free Online Page B

itch and run. He must have told her thirty times before that he couldn’t stand scented candles. The waves crashed predictablyoutside the walls. As she brushed her teeth, he lay in bed and, smoothing the sheets around him, was struck by the force of expectation. The moon was full, crickets chirped outside the windows, a warm breeze blew across his face. The world seemed to be aligning itself in expectation, and he told himself to relax, it was just another night. He’d made love to his wife before—he certainly knew what he was doing. The curtains billowed with the breeze and sank. Liz stepped out of the bathroom wearing her green flannel pajamas. She looked like a big child, a wing of hair poking out from the left side of her head. When they did make love it was no different than it ever was, though perhaps quicker, and afterward, they lay side by side on their backs and stared up at the shadows of moonlight in stripes across the waves, reflecting off the beams of their ceiling. Light twice removed from its source.
    The island was like another planet for Jake as a boy. His parents had taken them a couple of times before Hilary was born. He’d first swum in the ocean here, first seen a girl’s breasts (a big wave had tackled her and yanked off her bikini, leaving her tangled in strings of seaweed on the rocky beach, the poor thing); he’d first gotten poison ivy here; first eaten clams. Everything about the place was rugged and natural and raw. And quiet. A quiet so thick his thoughts and words seemed to hold much more significance here. Jake’s parents joked with each other in their bed, and deep under his blankets against the night cold, he heard them across the room of the bed and breakfast, whispering and laughing, then shushing each other lest they wake the boys. They were lighter and more affectionate here with each other, as well as with him and Daniel.
    After he and Liz married, they visited the island frequentlyand even discussed moving here. But eventually they decided against it. Their friends and jobs were in Portland, and he could certainly never work from home—the other partners wouldn’t agree to that. Plus life on the island would be too isolated, the frequent winter nor’easters oppressive. Normal people just didn’t live here year-round, not that he’d ever admit this thought to Liz. She idealized the islanders, those earthy men who fished for a living, the innkeepers and reclusive artists and aging hippies. But five years ago, when Jake and Liz were walking along the beach to their bed and breakfast, they spotted a FOR SALE sign in front of a run-down bungalow, its clapboards weathered gray. The house was empty and the walls rotted through in the back. Termites spilled from the side of the kitchen wall. One window was broken, the others etched in jagged cracks, but Jake had not been promoted yet and they couldn’t have afforded much more. The two sneaked around back, looking in at the bowed wood floors and stained walls, the fireplace filled with trash. The sun had just begun to set, and the light blinked at them from a small, dusty mirror on the wall. “Think what we could do with this place,” Liz said, and Jake admitted liking it too. Well, liking its location, really. The house was a complete dump, but Liz had always wanted to live by the water—it’d been her one big dream in life, she’d said. “We could fix it up slowly, just do it in little increments that we can afford. Think of what this land is probably worth. I mean, it’s right on the beach.” And though he had deep reservations about the condition of the place, about the dangers of storms and the possibilities of erosion, about the financial and logistical burdens of maintaining a second home, Jake sold off some stock, drained his retirement account and called it a birthday present to her. Shemelted with gratitude and excitement and the most palpable love when he first told her about it, and he knew then that he’d done