The Ocean Between Us

In the cramped, overheated dressing room of a self-consciously hip boutique called Wild Grrl, Katie Bennett’s head popped through the neck opening of a green Free People sweater. “How about this one, Mom?”

Grace helped her adjust the sweater, smoothing her hand down the textured mohair knit. Moving to Washington State from Texas over the summer meant the kids needed sweaters and jackets. As she turned Katie square into the mirror, she sneaked a glance at the tag dangling from the armpit—$64.99. Great. “It’s a good color on you,” she said. “Too bad it doesn’t even cover your navel.”

Katie turned this way and that, lifting a mop of straight brown hair off her neck and contemplating her reflection with the hypersensitive, overcritical eye of a fourteen-year-old girl. Grace wanted to tell her daughter she would look beautiful in a gunnysack, but Katie would argue with her. Katie always argued, and she usually won.

As Grace sorted through the other outfits they’d selected, she glimpsed the back of a woman in the unforgiving three-way dressing-room mirror. Neglected hair, a double-wide backside, jiggly upper arms. Then Grace straightened up and lifted her arm over her head.

The pudgy woman did the same.

She put her arm down.

So did the woman in the mirror.

She twitched her hips from side to side.

So did—

“Mom, what are you doing?” Katie asked.

“Contemplating suicide.” Grace laughed to make sure Katie knew she was kidding. She shuddered at the back view of herself in the unflattering fluorescent light. It shouldn’t be such a shock. She knew she’d been getting a little wide in the beam but had managed to avoid taking a hard look in the mirror. Whose hips were those, and why were they so large? How did she get to this state? At some point—she had no idea when—gravity must have kicked in. With no prior warning, she’d turned into a not-very-attractive stranger. But there she was, in living color, the dumpy, middle-aged suburban housewife she never thought she’d become.

“Is something wrong?” Katie prodded.

Grace sighed and picked up her purse. “No, sweetie. I don’t know what I was thinking when I put on these khaki shorts.”

“You look fine,” Katie stated.

The kids didn’t need for Grace to look like anything but Mom, and she’d done a damned good job of that. When Steve did a good job, he got a medal or pin of commendation. While she got…She wondered why no one ever gave women medals for motherhood.

“I’m the one in trouble, Mom. Nothing’s right.” With a long-suffering sigh, Katie peeled off the green sweater and tossed it to Grace.

“What about the hip-hugger jeans?” Grace suggested. “They were cute on you.”

Katie slipped a T-shirt over her head. “In order to wear hip-huggers, you have to actually have hips.”

Grace patted her arm. “Trust me, you’ll get them. The Lord will provide.” She avoided her reflection as Katie finished dressing.

Katie didn’t seem to notice her uncharacteristic silence as they went to find Emma. She was in another dressing room, where she’d put aside a stack of selections to show her mother. As blond and willowy as a prima ballerina, eighteen-year-old Emma never experienced the uncertainties that tortured her younger sister. At the moment, Emma was modeling a jersey skirt and sweater, her natural good looks magically transforming a discount outfit into a Marc Jacobs original.

Grace smiled at her older daughter. “I see you narrowed your choices down to, what, a few dozen?”

“Two skirts and three tops, and I’ll kick in for half,” Emma said. She worked as a lifeguard at the Island County Aquatics Center. It turned out to be the perfect place to meet people. After living here just two months, she had plenty of friends.

“Deal,” Grace agreed. A little extravagance was justified, she supposed. The Navy Exchange provided the basics, but the start of the school year, in a brand-new town, called for some serious retail therapy. Back-to-school shopping usually appealed to Grace. She took a peculiar comfort in the familiar rituals of summer’s end, in getting registered for school, joining the PTA, signing permission forms for sports and extracurriculars. She liked organizing their backpacks and binders, spiral-bound notebooks and bradded folders; she liked putting things in their proper place. Stowing ordnance, Steve called it.

Shouldering her bulging purse, she stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot where she was. She felt unmoored, disoriented. She had started over so many times in so many new places that she actually had to think for a second before remembering which town this was.

With Emma at the wheel of their aging station wagon, they headed down the road to a huge Rite Aid. This was Katie’s indulgence. Rather than getting school supplies at the Navy Exchange, she craved the variety available at the big drugstore. Under the bluish glare of fluorescent lights, the back-to-school aisle was jammed with harried mothers and restless kids. Emma wandered over to the makeup section, leaving Grace to pick out the basic necessities. Neither of the twins had ever been picky about their school supplies.

On the other hand, Katie took the task seriously and was presently weighing the merits of disposable versus refillable mechanical pencils. Waiting at the end of the aisle, Grace held her tongue, resisting the temptation to prod. But Katie had a sixth sense; she glanced over at Grace. “I just need a few more things.”

“No problem.” Angling the cart to one side, Grace selected a four-pack of glue from a display rack. She held the package briefly to her face, shut her eyes and inhaled. “I love the smell of glue sticks in the morning.”

“Very funny, Mom.” Katie opted for the refillable pencils, tossing them into the cart. Of Grace’s three kids, Katie was the only one who would actually keep the pencils long enough to refill. Then she added a chisel-tipped highlighter pen, a pack of index cards and a D-ring binder. “Okay, I’m all set.”

Katie was a moving violation of the laws of birth order. She overachieved like a firstborn, worried like a middle child and, only when she didn’t think anyone was looking, still played like the baby of the family. And like the baby, she was adored by everyone—except by herself.

They headed toward the checkout stand. Emma stood at the magazine display, flipping through Cosmo. Katie tilted her head sideways to read the shout lines. “Nine Ways to Drive Him Wild In Bed,” she read aloud. “You know, if that stuff worked, we would have world peace, I bet.”

“Let’s go,” said Grace, taking the magazine from Emma and sticking it back in the rack. Grace was no prude, and she wasn’t naive enough to think a parent could hold back the urges of nature, yet she felt a little dart of resentment at these women’s magazines and the glossy, seductive promises they made.

The two-for-seventy-nine-cents filler paper and multi-packs of ballpoint pens that seemed so cheap in the ad circular somehow managed to multiply to a hundred dollars’ worth of school supplies. Grace handed over a well-worn credit card, knowing the balance would make her wince when it came in the mail.

Glancing across to the adjacent checkout stand, she spied a young mother carefully counting out change while her two little kids swarmed the gumball machine by the exit. She was Navy, of course. After nineteen years as a Navy wife, Grace could spot one a mile away. They possessed a peculiar forbearance, and a deep strength as well. They were a special breed of women—and lately, the occasional man—to which Grace belonged. A sorority of itinerant householders.

The woman looked up, and for two seconds their gazes held. Grace offered a smile, and the woman smiled back, then resumed counting out her money.

She sent Emma and Katie out to the car with their bloated cart while she stopped at the ATM machine by the door. As she waited for the machine to cough up the cash, her gaze wandered to the community bulletin board above the drinking fountain. Yellow handwritten cards and published brochures offered everything from dog-sitting services to weatherproofing. Garage sales abounded, as they did in every Navy town. When it was time to move, you lightened your load.

There were items on the bulletin board from Welcome Wagon, Mary Kay, the usual suspects. A glossy, tri-fold brochure caught her eye, mainly because it shouted the word free. She took one out of the rack. One free month of unlimited classes.

The flyer was for the Totally New Totally You fitness studio down on Water Street, owned and operated by Lauren Stanton, IFA Certified.

She stuffed the brochure into her purse among ferry schedules, receipts, change-of-address forms and the kids’ health records. With much greater care, she folded the bills and receipt from the ATM into her wallet. She was almost afraid to look at the bottom line.

In the parking lot, a gray-and-white seagull cried out and flew aloft, drawing her gaze upward. The sky was almost unnaturally blue, arching over a distant mountain range topped in snow, even in August. The fathomless blue of Puget Sound surrounded misty, forested islands with interesting names like Camano and Orcas. And Whidbey, of course. This was far and away the prettiest place they’d ever lived, even more dramatic than the vol-cano-scape of Sigonella, on Sicily. The weather here was on the cool side, unseasonably cool, locals said, and evenings warranted a sweater or light jacket.

Grace turned her face up to the dazzling sky. This was so different from other places she knew. She had been to coast-hugging barrier islands connected by causeways to the mainland—Galveston, Coronado, Padre near Corpus Christi. Sigonella was an arid rock. But Whidbey Island had its own sort of magic. Forty-five miles of rolling hills surrounded by cold blue water, Whidbey was a world unto itself, with its air of serenity and ageless beauty. Accessible only by car ferry or by a dizzying arched steel bridge spanning Deception Pass at the north end, it commanded the heart of Puget Sound.

She was going to like it here. No, she was going to love it here. That really wasn’t the problem. In a couple of years, she was going to have to leave. That was the problem.

Exasperated with her own thoughts, she dug for her keys, which were strung on the silver anchor key chain Steve had given her the first time he went to sea, long ago.

At the car, the girls were talking to a big-shouldered boy with a neck as wide as his head. Or rather, Emma was talking while the boy hung on her every word and Katie leaned against the shopping cart, trying to act nonchalant. The boy wore a purple football jersey and a gold stud in one earlobe. He looked like every high school girl’s fantasy—and he looked familiar.

“Mom, this is Cory Crowther,” said Katie.

Grace smiled at him. “Hi, Cory. I remember you from your dad’s change-of-command ceremony.” Earlier in the summer, Cory’s father, Mason Crowther, had taken command of Carrier Air Wing 22. Mason was one rung on the ladder higher than Steve, his Deputy CAG. In a year, Steve would be eligible to take command from Crowther.

“Yes, ma’am. I remember you, too.”

“But you disappeared on us,” she added.

He sent her a grin worthy of a toothpaste ad. “Went to football camp, ma’am.”

“I bet your mother missed you,” Grace said. Allison Crowther played a key but undefined role as the CAG’s wife. Grace realized her comment embarrassed Cory, so she said, “All set?” to her daughters. She pulled the cart around to the back of the car. Maybe he’d offer to help.

“Nice to see you, ma’am. I’d better be going,” he said. “Practice.”