Beach Girls (3 page)

Stevie really didn't know how she would survive without Tilly. The cat had been Stevie's constant companion through everything. Tilly had gotten her through more lonely nights than she could ever count. Sighing with love for her cat, she saw the hummingbirds suddenly dart away. Looking toward the stairs, she saw a child running up the hill.

“Tilly, don't schools teach kids to read anymore?” Stevie asked, wondering whether maybe her nemeses, the young boys next door, had stolen her sign again.

The cat, spying the approaching stranger, sprang up on top of the refrigerator to hide in a wicker bread basket. Stevie stood up. She brushed cat hair off her black T-shirt and slacks. This child seemed hell-bent on something, so Stevie grabbed her panama hat and put it on, preparing to look stern and imposing, a split second before she saw the child fall on the rocks.

Stevie ran outside. The girl was crumpled up on the ground, trying to pick herself up. Her knees and big toe were bleeding. Stevie hesitated for just a moment, just long enough for the girl to look up at her. Her green eyes were cavernous, flooded with pain, and the sight of them sent a current of unexpected, unfamiliar emotion through Stevie.

“Are you okay?” she asked, but before she could even crouch down, the girl nodded her head vigorously, and tears flew out of her eyes.

“It's you, it's you,” the girl said, her voice thin and reedy.

“You're a reader,” Stevie said, assuming the child had made a pilgrimage to meet the person who'd written
Owl Night
or
Summer of the Swans
or
Seahawk;
but just then, the girl looked past her and through her, as if she was seeing a ghost.

“My mother knew you,” the girl said, in a southern accent.

“Your mother?”

“Emma Lincoln,” the girl said. “That was her name before she married my father.”

“Oh, my,” Stevie said softly. The name came from the distant past. Memories swept in, clear and bright as sunshine, all the way back to earliest childhood, girls who had learned to swim together. “How is Emma?” she asked.

“She died,” the girl said.

Oh, the sky changed color. It really did. It lost several shades of blue as the words sunk in. How could such a thing have happened, and Stevie not have known? A breeze moved the leaves overhead with a rush; Stevie stared into the little girl's eyes, and she swore she saw Emma right there.

Stevie reached out her hand, and the girl took it with a scraped, sweaty palm. “You'd better come inside,” Stevie said. And they went into the house.

Chapter 2

AFTER STEVIE CLEANED OFF THE GIRL'S
hands and knees and gave her Band-Aids, she made tea, because that's what her mother would have done. She set out Blue Willow china cups and saucers, the sugar bowl with tiny brown sugar cubes, and a plate of lemon drop cookies. Then she and the girl—whose name was Nell—went to sit at the table in front of the stone fireplace.

“Your mother and I used to have tea parties right here,” Stevie said.

“When your house was blue?” Nell asked.

“Yes.”

The child's gaze was avid, taking everything in: the wicker chairs, faded green loveseat—arms and back clawed by Tilly and her sisters—bird illustrations from some of Stevie's books, her collections of feathers, shells, birds' nests, and bones. Stevie watched Nell's face and knew the child was wondering where her mother had sat, what objects her eyes had seen. Stevie had done the same at Nell's age, visiting places where her mother had once been.

The two sipped their tea for a while. Stevie wanted to find the right words, to comfort the child. She wanted to ask what had happened to Emma. But she felt constrained, afraid she would say something wrong. Her own mother had died when she was young, and she remembered a world of adults who meant well but just seemed to make everything worse.

Besides, Stevie was a hermit. She wrote and painted, mostly in silence. It hadn't always been that way; there had been much love, and men, and the men's children. But now it was her and Tilly, and for a long time, that had been enough. So, she held her teacup and waited for Nell to speak. It took a few minutes, during which time they listened to sounds of early summer coming through the open windows: small waves breaking on the beach, finches singing in the privet, a squirrel chattering in the hollow oak.

Nell finished her cookie, politely wiped her fingers and mouth on the pink linen napkin, and looked up. She was about nine, very thin, with shoulder-length brown hair held back from her face by flower barrettes, and enormous green eyes.

“My mother said you were her best friend.”

“Oh, yes. We were best, best friends.”

“With Madeleine?”

“Maddie Kilvert!” Stevie said, laughing. “Yes, the three of us were inseparable. Emma—your mother—and I knew each other first. Her family had a cottage here as long as my family—since we were very young. But then Maddie came along . . . that's when we really got close. The three of us, for three summers . . .” As she said it, the words came flooding back: “‘Three summers, with the length of three long winters . . .'” Seeing Nell's expression of peace as she closed her eyes to listen, Stevie knew she had heard the words before. “Did your mother tell you we borrowed that line from Wordsworth?”

“From a famous poet, she told me. To describe how long the winters were without her best friends, the beach girls.”

“Beach girls!” Stevie said, delighted as another great old memory tumbled out of cold storage. “That's what we called ourselves. Because we were always happiest with our tootsies in salt water . . . we could hardly stand the winters, apart from each other. Our phone bills were massive. I used to intercept the mail, before my father could see the bills I'd run up talking to Emma and Maddie. One month I had to sell my clothes!”

“What?”

“I did! I sold two brand-new sweaters and a pair of boots to the lady I babysat for, to give my father money to pay my share of the phone bill. Thank God there wasn't three-way calling back then, or it would have been total financial ruin.”

“You all lived far apart from each other?”

Stevie nodded. “Well, it seemed that way at the time. During the winters I lived in New Britain, Maddie lived in Hartford, and your mom lived in New Haven. But then summer would finally get here, and we'd all be in our rightful place—right here, at Hubbard's Point.”

“Aunt Maddie lives in Rhode Island now,” Nell said.

“Your aunt . . .” Stevie paused, putting it together. “Your mother married Jack!”

Nell nodded. “You didn't know?”

Stevie held back a sigh. How to explain a crazy chiaroscuro life, all its layers and lapses and messiness and separations—the losing-touchness of it all—to this sweet nine-year-old child? “No,” she said. “Once the beach girls got to college, we sort of went our separate ways. And lost touch with each other.”

“Mom didn't lose touch with Aunt Maddie,” Nell said. “They saw each other a lot, because she married Aunt Maddie's brother. Was he like the beach girls' brother? The ‘beach boy'?”

Stevie laughed. “It didn't work that way, Nell. It was just us—we were closed to the rest of the world. Besides, he was four years older, which, back then, made him ancient. I do remember, though, the summer before we all went to college, your mother started going out with him.”

“They fell in love here,” Nell said.

Stevie nodded, although her face remained inscrutable. “Hubbard's Point has always been the place to fall in love.”

“Dad said they used to kiss under the boardwalk, and at Little Beach, and behind that blue house.” Nell pointed out the front window, at Stevens' Hideaway, the sprawling place at the end of the beach.

Stevie smiled, remembering several key kisses of her own in that exact spot. But not wanting to burst the parents'-singular-romance bubble of a young girl, she kept them to herself.

“Blue houses,” Nell said. “That's how I found you, you know. My mother always said you lived in a blue house.”

“She didn't tell you my name?”

“I think she did,” Nell said. “But Stevie is a boy's name. I guess I couldn't keep it straight. Why'd your parents call you that?”

“It reminded them of where I came from,” Stevie said after a long moment, deciding that Emma's daughter didn't need to hear the story of how she was conceived in a hotel on St. Stephen's Green in Dublin.

“What made you paint your house not-blue?” Nell asked.

“Let me see your knees. . . .” Stevie said suddenly. “You really skinned them.”

“They're fine,” Nell said, staring. Her accent made
fine
come out “fahn.”

“Where do you live now?” Stevie asked, happier when she was the one asking the questions.

“Atlanta's our real home, but my father transferred to the Boston office, so we're there temporarily. And he's taking the summer off, sort of. I mean, he's working, but he doesn't have to go to the office so much.”

A silence rose, and Stevie felt Nell's steady gaze on her. It wasn't so bad. But then Stevie noticed Nell wasn't looking away, and she began to feel enclosed.

“The reason I painted my house,” Stevie said, just so the child would stop staring, “was that it had always been blue. Always, from the time I was born. And I started to think . . . maybe if I changed my house color, I would change . . . some things I didn't like. About . . . life. Does that make any sense at all?”

Nell nodded gravely, and Stevie saw her gaze shift down, to Stevie's left hand.

“You're looking for the engagement rings,” Stevie said. “I know. All the kids do.”

“Did you lose them all in the water?”

Stevie tried to smile. “Just one,” she said. “And I didn't lose it.”

“Didn't lose it?”

“I threw it in,” Stevie said.

“But you look for it every morning!”

Stevie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I walk the beach every morning looking for sandpipers to draw. And because I like to swim before the sun comes up. And walk with my feet in the water.”

“Your tootsies,” Nell said with a grin.

Stevie nodded. The child's smile gave her a lump in her throat and sent a powerful sting right into her eyes.

“Why do you go down to the beach before the sun's all the way up?”

“Because there's no one else there,” Stevie said. “I'm a hermit.”

“Is that a special kind of witch?”

Stevie smiled. “Sort of,” she said.

A quiet breeze blew, and in the distance a motorboat started up. Stevie saw Tilly slink into the room, making herself invisible. The old cat sat statue-still in the corner, beside a Gothic-style birdhouse, watching her mistress and the stranger.

“Well,” Nell said, folding her napkin. “I'm very glad I met you.”

“And I'm very glad I met you,” Stevie said.

They stood up, facing each other. Stevie had many more questions she wanted to ask about Emma, about what had happened, but she remembered from her own experience the value of delicacy in such matters. Together they walked through the house, to the kitchen door. Tilly followed.

“Oh, a cat!” Nell said, spotting her. She made a move to pet Tilly and was met with a hiss and the whisk of a tail. “Oooh—sorry!”

“She's a bit crotchety,” Stevie said. “She's old.”

“I understand,” Nell said. She gazed around the kitchen, noticing all the sketches and watercolors of birds, squirrels, rabbits, field mice. “Are those from your books?”

“Some from books I haven't written yet.” Stevie paused. “Did your mom ever read my books to you?”

“No. I don't know why she didn't,” Nell said, apologetically. “Your pictures are really nice.”

“Thank you,” Stevie said, wondering herself why her old friend hadn't shown her daughter her work. She opened the door to let Nell out, but suddenly the child turned with a fierce expression on her face.

“The reason we went to Boston is a lot like the reason you painted your house not-blue,” Nell said.

“It is?”

Nell nodded. “It's because everything in Atlanta is so the-same. The same as it was when Mom was alive. The kitchen smells like her cooking; the yard looks like her planting. She sat in the chairs. Her shoes are in the closet. The . . . the hairbrush she brushed my hair with is there.”

Nell squeezed her eyes shut tight. Stevie knew she was feeling the touch of her mother's hand on her head. The pain on her face was wild and alive. It passed over to Stevie, who wished she could take it away, but knew she could not. Nell said with a whisper, “She died one year ago.”

“I'm so sorry, Nell.”

“It's too hard to live where she lived. So we had to leave.”

“Sometimes that helps,” Stevie said, gazing steadily at the child, her heart pierced with memories of losing her own mother, of the winter her father had taken a sabbatical in Paris, and the summer they couldn't bear Hubbard's Point and went to Newport instead. They had always, eventually, returned.

“Will we ever go back?” Nell asked suddenly. She lurched forward, as if she wanted to grasp Stevie's hand. She gazed into Stevie's eyes, as if wanting her to be an oracle, to have the answers.

Stevie wanted to say the right thing—for Emma. She wanted to grab this moment, be wise and kind, help her dear friend's child through this terrible moment. A film of tears separated them, and when Stevie blinked, they went rolling down her cheeks. Awash in grief for the loss of a friend she hadn't seen in over twenty-five years, she could barely speak.

“Leaving a place doesn't have to be forever,” she said finally. “Sometimes it's the best thing you can do, and then, all of a sudden, you'll find it's time to go home.”

“Time to go home,” Nell said, grabbing onto the words.

“Meanwhile,” Stevie said, “your aunt can come to visit with you and your father while you're here. Hubbard's Point isn't far from Rhode Island—”

“She can't come,” Nell said so sharply that Stevie was taken aback. She cast around for something comfortable to say.

“Well, I think you're a very smart girl, leaving Atlanta for a while. Sometimes it's a very good idea to go away,” Stevie said. “I find that when I stay in the same place too long, I forget where I put myself.” They both smiled at the strange turn of phrase.

“Like now?” Nell asked.

“Now?”

Nell's brown head remained cocked as a great smile came to her lips. She stood right there in Stevie's kitchen door, looking as pleased with herself as a small brown wren.

“You've forgotten that you need to go to the beach more,” Nell said. “Not just before the sun comes up! My goodness, it's dark then! You need sun and waves and hot sand under your feet!”

“I do, do I?”

Nell nodded vigorously, earnestly, with such heart that Stevie was more reminded of a small brown wren than ever, and Nell said, “You do! Hot sand!”

Then Nell thanked her, and they said goodbye, shook hands, and Nell started down the hill. Watching her go, Stevie felt a series of pangs that could not immediately be identified. All she knew was that “goodbye” felt like a very precarious word to end on.

“And just why do I need hot sand?” she called.

“Because you're a beach girl!” Nell called, shooting Stevie a wicked, wonderful grin that instantly put Stevie in mind of Emma—the image sent a shiver through her body, down to her knees. Stevie watched the girl make her way down the hill. Tilly came to stand with her by the open door.

Nell waved once. And then she was gone.

“WHERE WERE YOU?”
Jack asked the minute Nell walked into the cottage. It was small and functional, set up for rentals. Standard-issue duck-covered sofa, two armchairs facing a big TV, Formica table and four chairs, framed generic seascapes.

“We were about to call out the National Guard,” Francesca said.

“That would be a big waste of the taxpayers' money,” Nell said.