The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

laughed. Tane braced her. As a retreating wave whooshed her back, he reached out and scooped her into his arms.

He raised a handful of water and spilled it over Barbara’s face, washing back her hair. He kissed her parted lips, and seawater tingled her tongue. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder, smooth and slippery with water. He stroked her back and molded his chest to hers, turning them into one body floating and shifting with the waves, their lips and arms locked.

Every inch of her skin thrilled with aliveness. She wanted to chase this joy to its pitch, to completely surrender to rapture. She felt Tane harden against her. An insistent throbbing pulsed deep inside her. She reached for him; she wanted to embrace this part of him.

Then she heard the cry: “Barbara, Barbara.”

It was her mother, splashing through the waves toward her, her face gaping with alarm.

Barbara let go of Tane. He stood and dove away from her.

Still, her mother came, hollering at her, wildly swinging her arms.

Her mother—who only ever held her back, who’d driven her father away. The father she must now live without the rest of her life.

Her mother held her captive, smothered her with her demands.

She felt naked and helpless. A sickening sludge of emotions washed over her—mortification, rage, despair. The blood drained from her arms and legs.

This is my life now, she thought. This and nothing more. I can’t go on like this.

She turned away from her mother, plunged into the open sea, and swam for the dark depths of the ocean.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

HELEN

Tahiti, March 1929

Helen jerked awake and looked around the hut. She’d fallen asleep on the bed. Barbara wasn’t back. She ran to the window. A cryptic moon and sweep of stars marked the midnight sky. Where could Barbara be? Might she do something foolish—like sail off on that proa? Had her father said something to distress her?

She couldn’t help herself. She needed to know what was in that letter. She lit a candle and searched through Barbara’s things—her cloth sack, her stack of papers, her books. And there it was, tucked in her dictionary, a birthday card, and a letter.

February 2, 1929

Dear Barbara,

I’ve finally got up the gumption to write to you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of the necessity of this letter. Or of how difficult it would be to compose it. There were many times I wished to take up pen and simply write to you of the moon’s blue shadows on forest snow or the glassy icicles dripping from the house eaves. But your mother claims that “empty” words will be of no use to you and that I must give you some real sense of where things stand with our family.

Your mother tells me my absence deeply saddens you, and I hope you know I, too, have lamented all these months apart. The thing that has kept me from writing is the fear of hurting you even more and forcing you into the fray of conflict between your mother and me. But I see it can’t be helped, for you are in the fray, simply by membership in our forlorn family, and so I imagine I can’t make it much worse than it already is.

You deserve nothing less than the truth from me. I’ve always thought there should be complete honesty between us, even when you were a youngster just divining the meanings of words. From early on, I regarded you as your own person, and I won’t retreat from that now, especially now that you’re fifteen and no longer a child.

The situation between your mother and me is, simply put, irreparable. I cannot fathom a return to the marriage that was, for many years, a shriveled-up approximation of what marriage can and ought to be. You can’t know this. And I take it as a tribute to the devotion your mother and I showed you that, even at the time, you didn’t know it. The truth is I only stayed in the marriage out of misguided chivalry. And out of love for you and Sabra. You two became the greatest joys of my life. But, I’m sorry to say, that wasn’t enough to sustain me through the abiding nightmare the marriage became. A man needs a woman who regards him with a modicum of respect and approbation. And I didn’t have that for more years than I’d like to admit. But I’ve found it now, and it’s so precious that I refuse to turn away from it.

I will insist on divorce from your mother. There’s no other choice for me. Your mother will see the sense of it soon enough, for she cannot inhabit this ridiculous self-imposed purgatory indefinitely. Let me assure you that I’ll do my best to provide for you, her, and Sabra. And I do wish for you to be a part of my life, though that depends on whether your mother will allow you to visit me in my present circumstances.

I’ve left New York for less expensive housing in Maine. But I’m happy with the support of a woman who loves me completely for who I am: luckless; sharp-elbowed and freighted with worries. I’m doing that which I’ve craved deeply—I’m writing a novel. I foresee a part for you in it, and I hope you’ll read it someday and be proud of your father.

When I came across this picture of us all pink with excitement to hike up Little Haystack, where we marveled at frost feathers and snow glistening on distant peaks, I recalled the joy we shared on that hike. I can only hope that you, too, cherish this and all our other adventures.

Love always,

Daddy

My God, this was how he “reassured” her—reminding her of their joy-filled times and telling her he’s abandoning the family? Barbara must be reeling.

She rushed out into the night, to the beach, toward the place the feast was taking place. Her feet slipped and slid in the