Beach Girls (5 page)

“What happened to her?”

“She died in a plane crash.”

“I'm very sorry,” he said, and seeing that she now did require his handkerchief, offered it again.

She blew her nose.

“A lovely call,” he said. “It's quite imprinted upon my heart.”

She laughed, returning the refolded linen square.

“And the discipline segment of your story?” he asked, then shook his head. “What a fool I am. Breaking into your tender narrative, for the sole purpose of driving you back on course. See what I mean by the curse of linear thought?”

“It's okay. What I was going to say is, my father took care of me from then on. Nothing ever got in the way of it. Not his teaching, not his poetry. He stopped publishing after she died—I think I took up too much of his time. He was passed over as department head—because he had to drive me to riding lessons and take me drawing in fields along the Farmington River.”

“He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was,” Stevie said. “And father.”

“You make the distinction? They're not one and the same?” he asked, with hunger in his eyes. “Is it possible to be one without the other? Wonderful man, wonderful father?”

“I think they're the same,” she said.

“Bloody hell, I was afraid you'd say that,” he said. “I've been the most appalling father to my son. Would I have stood seventy-two minutes on the pack ice with him, never mind seventy-two days? I would not.”

“I'm sure he'd forgive you.”

“Forgive me? He bloody worships me. The ground I've walked since the day I left his mother is molten gold to William. Is there any fairness to that?”

“Your boy loves his father. Sounds fair to me.”

The professor smiled. “Well, aren't you dear to say that? Very, very dear. Come now—I'll buy you a drink at the Landfall, and you can teach me the fine points of not thinking straight. What's your name?”

“Stevie Moore.”

“I'm Linus Mars. Please, come? I think you know things that I need to hear.”

“About your son?”

“About my heart.”

“Oh . . .”

She thought of Kevin, back in New York, four and a half hours away. He wouldn't eat until she got home and either fed him or bodily forced him to pick up the phone and order Chinese. On the other hand, he would probably have passed out long before she arrived. Her own heart had been pummeled by a marriage she had once desired with all her soul. Staring up at Linus's handsome, angular face, hooded hazel eyes, she felt the first stirrings of long-buried feeling.

Now, in the dark quiet of her house at Hubbard's Point, she let her brush move across the paper's rough surface. The baby wren stood alone.

Stevie wiped her brow. Nell's visit had stirred her up. Again she thought of Emma. Stevie, Madeleine, and Emma.

Hubbard's Point was cut off from the rest of Connecticut by a railroad trestle, passing over the road. Driving though the gate was like entering an enchanted realm where friends were as close as sisters. For three years, as they changed from girls to young women, they had lain on towels in the sun, soaking up warmth and promise, believing that life, and their friendship, would survive forever. They had promised to grow old together, to become just like the leathery old ladies who arranged their beach chairs in a sewing circle and wore their grandmotherly necklaces into the water.

How easily people give up on things
, Stevie thought, painting.
Why didn't I work harder to stay in touch?
As she feathered the small wren's wings, she thought of all the things she had done in life that the beach girls hadn't known about. She remembered how they had healed her first broken heart—a trip to Paradise Ice Cream for sundaes, a ritual burying of the maraschino cherries in the sand.

She could have used that ceremony many times since. Laying down her brush, she put the wren sketches aside for the night. Then, because she had promised Tilly she'd take her mousing, she opened the kitchen door and let the cat run into the night. Barefoot, she walked through the yard, to stand on the rock that faced the beach. She heard the waves and saw their sharp white edges rippling through the inky blackness.

One after another, the small waves of Long Island Sound touched the beach in steady rhythm. Stevie tried to catch her breath, get her heartbeat in synch with the waves. Tilly rustled through the underbrush. A nearly toothless cat, in search of prey. It made Stevie smile—it really did—to think of such hope in the face of dental reality.

“Go, Tilly,” Stevie said, still gazing down at the beach, at the place where she and her friends had spent so many happy days so long ago. She looked up at the stars and found one for Madeleine and one for Emma. “And one for Nell,” Stevie said, staring at one bright star, twinkling white-blue in night's endless black.

A WARM BREEZE
blew through the screens, and the sound of crickets and night birds was a lullaby. Nell lay in her bed, her stomach aching from eating too much lobster, and tried to be soothed by the sounds of nature. It didn't work.

“Ohhh!” she said.

“Go to sleep, Nell,” came her father's voice.

“I'm trying!” she said.

“Try harder.”

She stuck out her tongue. What kind of answer was that?
Try harder!
God, fathers didn't get it. Didn't they know that the harder you tried to sleep, the faster it slipped away? Nell's mother would have said. . . . Nell squinched her eyes extra tight, trying to remember what her mother would have said.

The memory wouldn't come. Nell used to be able to fill in the blanks with her mother's words, but suddenly there were none. None! She tried to conjure up her mother's voice, and that wouldn't come, either!

“Ohhh!” she cried out louder. Suddenly her stomachache was much worse. “Daddy!”

He came into the small room. She saw his tall silhouette in the doorway. Then he sat down on the edge of her bed. The house was small, and it smelled musty. The curtains were ugly. Nell hated it here. Her stomach ached. She missed her mother. Seeing Stevie was both too little and too much. All of these feelings swirled through her mind, cutting her with tiny knives, making her cry and cry.

“It's okay, Nell,” her father said, putting his arms around her.

It's not, it's never going to be okay again,
she wanted to say, but she was sobbing too hard to get the words out.

“Maybe you shouldn't have finished your lobster,” he said. “It was pretty big.”

Nell remembered the scene at the restaurant: her father and Francesca talking about some bridge they were building, the table so festive and covered with lobsters and clams and corn on the cob, and Nell just rolling up her sleeves and dipping the pink lobster meat into melted butter, feeling fuller and fuller, and Francesca smiling and stifling a laugh as she said, “Someone's eyes are bigger than her stomach.”

“She's gone,” her father said now.

“I know,” Nell cried. She closed her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She had heard Francesca saying goodbye a short while ago. She had to drive all the way back to Boston, and Nell could just tell she wanted to be invited to stay over.

“Don't worry about her, Nell,” he said.

“Mary Donovan's father married his girlfriend,” Nell wept.

“I'm not Mary Donovan's father.”

“Mommy loved lobster.”

“I know.”

“She told me the beach girls used to go lobstering together.”

“Maybe they did. I don't know.”

“Can we ask Aunt Maddie?”

Silence. Her father's hand felt heavy on her head. Nell waited for him to say something, even though she knew he never would. Every time she asked him about Aunt Maddie, he just stopped talking till her question went away. Thinking of how her mother and aunt used to laugh together made Nell's stomach shrink and hurt so much that she just held herself with her own arms, rolling toward the wall so her father wouldn't see her face.

Chapter 4

IT TOOK THREE DAYS TO CONVINCE NELL
that she should sign up for beach recreation: it would be fun, she'd improve her swimming, and Jack would be waiting for her on the boardwalk every single day when she was finished. Maybe physical exercise would tire her out, help her to sleep. Jack had Dr. Galford on speed dial, but he didn't want to call. He wanted his daughter to have a quiet, fun, psychiatrist-free summer vacation.

So they trooped down to the end of the beach, Nell doing an excellent imitation of a sullen prisoner. She stood behind Jack as he introduced her to Laurel Thompson, the enthusiastic recreation teacher. Bright, blonde, seventeen, she leaned around Jack to smile at Nell. Nell obliged by retreating around Jack's other leg.

“Hi, Nell.”

“She's not sure about this,” Jack said.

“Oh, that's okay,” the teacher said. Tall and thin, she flashed a smile straight at Nell. “Lots of kids aren't too sure at first. But you can be my helper today, Nell.”

“Hear that, Nell?” Jack asked, hoping Nell would be swayed. He didn't hold out much hope, watching her dig her bare feet into the wet sand. “Nell?”

“Nnnnn,” she said.

“We'll have fun!” Laurel said.

“I'll meet you at twelve noon,” Jack said, placing his hand on his daughter's head. Her brown hair felt warm in the sun. “On the boardwalk.”

“Dad,” Nell said as other kids her age began to gather round, “I'm not staying.”

“Hi, Nell!” said a freckled girl with red hair and a huge smile. “Remember me? You stood on my towel a few days ago! I'm Peggy.”

Nell nodded. “I remember.”

Jack's heart was beating fast, waiting for a smile or a frown or some sign from his daughter that this was going to be okay, that he could leave her here with a new friend.

Peggy grabbed her hand. “You're going to be my partner in the relay race. We're together, okay, Laurel?”

“Excellent, Peggy, Nell. Come on, everyone—line up on the hard sand, right here.”

Still holding Peggy's hand, Nell gave her father one last look. It wasn't quite a smile, but almost. He saw her mother in her eyes. When Emma had been dying, unconscious in her hospital bed, Jack had held her face between his hands and begged her to haunt him. She did just that, every day, in the body of their daughter.

Leaving Nell to the Hubbard's Point Recreation Program, Jack walked back along the beach, vaguely aiming toward the house where his wife's best friend had lived. He stared up at the cottages along the rock ledge, half hidden by pine trees. He tried to remember which one it was. Nell had found it.

Leave it to Nell: she was a magnet for any little detail about her mother. Back before Emma's death, Nell would hound her aunt for stories, memories, secrets, favorite songs. Madeleine had even taught Nell the harmony Emma used to sing for “Lemon Tree.” Nell sang the song every chance she got—in the bathtub, in the car, just waiting for an adult woman's voice to pitch in out of nowhere.

Maybe that was her motive for stopping in on Stevie Moore. Jack had certainly never mentioned her to Nell before—he probably wouldn't even have remembered her name. She was one of his kid sister's friends—none of whom he'd paid any attention to except Emma.

Jack's chest was tight; he turned around to make sure he didn't have a shadow—Nell wasn't following him. Good. He'd needed to find something for her to do for a few hours every day. He had plans to make, and with Nell constantly around, he couldn't get anything done.

He checked his watch: nine-twenty. That gave him nearly three hours of free time. He had plenty of time to take a walk first, before getting down to business. He crossed the footbridge over the creek, headed up the stone steps into the woods.

“HEY
—don't drop it!”

“I'm not dropping it—you're the one with butterfingers.”

“Will you two shut up and carry the ladder? Jeez—do I have to tell you how to do everything?”

“What if she puts a spell on us?”

“You're an idiot—she's not a real witch.”

“She's a good witch, like that one in a bubble on
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“Why, 'cause she likes birds? Well, birds have gross scaly claws, and beaks that peck out your eyes. Hear that, Billy? We're gonna call you Bird Boy. Just like the witch is Bird Woman. She's weird. My mom says she never hangs out with normal people.”

“She never hangs out with anyone. She sleeps all day and does spells all night.”

“Nah,” said Billy McCabe, whose mother had read Stevie's books to him and his sisters when he was little. He carried the doughnut box, with the young bird bumping around inside. “She's good.”

“Bull crap! She's like that witch in the stupid jerky movie where the camera kids got chomped.”

“Chomped? Witches don't chomp. Sharks chomp.”

“The Jaws Witch Project.”

“You're fucked up.”

“Oh—big cool Jeremy, saying ‘fucked.'”

“You say it.”

“I'm twelve.”

“Yeah, well, I'm eleven.”

The boys tromped through the backyards, carrying the tools of their trade: a ladder, a camera, and a candle. They had named their summer club WHA: Witch Hunters Anonymous. Billy carried a box that was
not
part of the expedition: a baby crow they'd found under a bush. The mother must have been teaching it to fly, and it fell out of the nest. Billy had rescued it, which delayed the whole expedition. When they finished spying, he'd drop the bird off at the veterinarian's house—Rumer Larkin lived just two houses away from Stevie Moore.

They cut through the property of the old hunting lodge, looked both ways, and ran over to the side of the white shingled house. The land sloped steeply down toward the beach—getting the ladder steady was tricky. Jeremy Spring propped one leg on the earth, Rafe Morgan evened it out with flat rocks under the other, and the ladder's top crashed against the house with a rude thump. The other boys scrambled into bushes. They all held their breaths, waiting for an angry face in the window—Billy crouched under a shaggy yew, holding the box. This had to be a mistake—their mothers would kill them if they got caught. And what did they even hope to see going on inside?

“Let's forget it,” he said, watching the windows.

“We've come too far,” Rafe said.

“What are we even going to see?”

“She does her magic in the nude,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah.”

“That's what I heard!”

Two boys held the ladder's base, while Jeremy and Eugene Tyrone jostled for first up. Eugene won. He scrambled up. Because the house was built into the rock ledge, this side of the house had quite a drop-off. The boys had no idea what the windows looked into—her living room, bedroom, magic room, or torture chamber. They all stared up at Eugene for a clue to what he was seeing.

“Hey! What's she doing?”

“Report in!”

Jeremy gave the ladder's base a slight shake. Eugene slashed his left hand through the air, telling them to be quiet. Everyone stood still, heads back. It wasn't fair that Eugene was taking so much time. A scrawny oak, stunted by storm winds, grew alongside the house, and Rafe and Jeremy began trying to climb up for a look at what Eugene was viewing.

“Can you see her?” Rafe asked.

Eugene nodded. He didn't speak. He was frowning. Now he shook his head, as if he was seeing something he didn't like, and started to climb down.

“Is she el-nude-o?”

“Is she chopping the tails off salamanders?”

“Can you see her collection of shrunken heads? That's what she does to kids who look in her windows,” Billy said. Everyone else had been whispering, but he spoke in a normal voice. Rafe grabbed a handful of green acorns off a branch to pelt him with—his windup was fierce, and the nuts felt like gunfire. Billy dropped the doughnut box, the bird fell out, and as Billy lunged to catch him, he bumped into the ladder. It weaved slightly, and then fell with a crash to the ground.

STEVIE DIDN'T KNOW
what had gotten into her. She sat at her easel, staring at her paper, unable to paint. She was wearing what an old lover had called her “Welcome to the Black Hole of the Universe” garment: an old cream satin dressing gown imprinted with dark blue Chinese characters reputed to have been worn backstage by Joan Morgana, a rising young Metropolitan Opera star, suffering through a disastrous affair with a famous tenor, who had committed suicide shortly after a performance of
Madame Butterfly
. Moved by the dark love story, shortly after her split from Linus, Stevie had bought the gown at the Opera Thrift Store on East Twenty-third Street.

Sitting at her easel, she was trying to concentrate on her painting when she heard a thump. She ignored it. Several days had passed since Nell's visit. She had spent two of them drawing wrens, and now she was back to hummingbirds. The trumpet vine on the house's north side was a magnet for them. She had been watching a pair for weeks—the female a subdued green, the male blazing emerald with a ruby throat.

But all she could think about was Emma—and Nell. She sipped from her teacup—chipped, with blue roses, one of her grandmother's mismatched bone-china collection—and remembered how she and the beach girls would have “tea parties” with them. They would make lemonade and drink it from the cups. This one had been Emma's favorite. The thought made her eyes brim with tears.

Suddenly she heard a scraping noise that sent Tilly flying off the back of the sofa, running for cover. A voice: “Whooooooaaaaa,
stop!
” And then metal clattering against rock. Stevie had heard that sound before. She sighed and hoped that no one was badly hurt. Drying her eyes, she tugged her robe around her and ran to the window.

The ladder lay on its side. The boys had scattered—she saw them peering out of bushes and from behind rocks. One was still shinnying down the oak tree. Yet another was chasing a young crow on the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man running through her yard. He jumped over the low boxwood hedge, displaying truly impressive college-football form. Alarmed by the chaos, she ran barefoot downstairs, out the kitchen door, and toward the group.

“Are you okay?” the man asked, leaning over a boy who was holding his wrist.

“I'm fine,” the boy said. “I kind of jammed it.”

“You'd better get it checked out,” the man said.

“You shouldn't put ladders against people's houses,” she said darkly. “You never know what might happen.” Her tone was dark, and two of the boys ran away. One stayed where he was, on all fours, trying to lure something out from under a thatch of honeysuckle vines.

“What have you got there?” she asked.

“Back up, Billy,” one of his friends called. “She's going to turn you into a snake!”

Stevie tried not to react. Sometimes the kids' teasing made her laugh, but today it made her feel apart, different, and spurned, and it forced tears back into her eyes. The freckled boy didn't move; he just concentrated on trying to reach the bird.

“A baby crow. He fell out of the nest or something. He was squawking like crazy before, but now he's just so quiet . . . I tried to feed him, but he wouldn't eat. So I decided to take him to the
vet. . . .”

“Come on, Billy—leave the bird,” his friends said.

“I can't!”

“Go, all of you,” Stevie said. “Go home now, and I won't turn you into reptiles. I'll take care of the bird.”

The boy looked up at her, concern in his brown eyes. Then he nodded, taking off with his friends. Stevie got down on her knees, studying the small crow hidden in shadow. He cringed against the stone foundation, his neck feathers ruffed like a collar.

“Do you need some help?” the man asked.

“I don't think so,” Stevie said coolly. “Are you the father of one of those boys?”

“No—I was just walking by, and I saw a ladder fall over, and I figured someone might be hurt.”

Stevie peered at him. He looked somewhat familiar—like a beach kid from the past. Tall, dark, longish almost-black hair, wearing sunglasses, a white dress shirt, and khaki shorts with too many pockets. One of her complaints about Hubbard's Point was how people seemed concerned with everyone else's business. The community was small and insular. Nothing like the wide-open anonymity of New York City . . . Whoever he was, he'd be spreading the news about kids peeking into her windows, spying on “the witch.”

Stevie lay down on her side, reaching into the vegetation, to try to get the bird. Her fingers brushed feathers.

“Let me,” the man said. “My arms are longer.” Without waiting for a response, he knelt down, closed his hand around the bird, and held it out for Stevie.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You're welcome.”

Stevie's hands enclosed the small crow; she wanted to get inside. She was already thinking of how she could nurse it back to health, keep it safe from Tilly. But the man didn't move. Maybe she
was
a witch: he stared down at her, and suddenly she knew that she knew him. The shape of his face, the curve of his mouth—he had to be Nell's father.

“Jack?” she asked.

“Yes—hi, Stevie.”

“I hear you met my daughter.”

“I did,” she said. “She's wonderful. Jack—I'm so sorry—”