Beach Girls (9 page)

Twenty yards off, she crossed the footbridge in silence. She looked barely human coming through the dark, more like an apparition. He saw her leap onto the sand, and then run down the hard part of the beach, below the tide line. She stopped, just even with where he was sitting, and looked up and down the beach. For a moment, he thought she had seen him. He held his breath.

But she turned toward the Sound. She seemed to gaze out, out, toward the east, greeting the day. She opened her arms wide, as if she wanted to embrace every single thing. The sight moved Jack in a way he hadn't felt in too long to remember. He strained to see through the darkness, and he saw her drop her robe on the sand.

Her bare skin was pale in the starlight. He saw the curve of her breasts and hips, and he drew in a slow breath. He sat on the edge of his seat, as if something was about to happen, something almost unbearable. She dove into the water—straight in, without having to stop and get used to the cold.

He watched her head, her strong strokes, as she swam straight out. Venus hung in the west, illuminating her wake. Jack craned his neck, to keep her in his sight. He felt incredibly guilty and disloyal, thinking this way. But he was rocked by a surge of passion, and he wanted only to run down to the water's edge, dive in, swim out fast, meet Stevie in the waves.

He momentarily lost sight of her—panic came up—where was she? Had she gone under? He scanned the water around the raft, about fifty yards offshore, and the big rock just beyond.

She didn't need saving: she had bypassed the raft, swum straight to the huge rock. Jack remembered going out there as a boy. It was massive, granite, a great place to pretend to be shipwrecked. Mussels and barnacles covered its surface; lobster pots washed up in storms, their lines snagged on its jagged outcroppings.

Jack watched as she hauled herself out of the sea, climbed to the top of the rock. She was nude and beautiful, and black water turned silver streaming off her body. Again, she opened her arms, as if to hold an invisible lover, and then she dove back in. She came steadily toward shore. Could she see him? Jack's pulse raced. He was torn in half—knowing he had to stay hidden, wanting to stand up so she'd see him.

But he didn't move. She swam before dawn for privacy. This was her beach. He knew that right down to his bones. She owned the white sand, the deep blue sea, the granite, quartz, moonstones, and sea glass, the mystical seaweed: she possessed this place. All those people who came during sunny daylight hours and set up their blankets and chairs and umbrellas were missing the secret magic.

Stevie had it. Backing silently away, Jack could almost believe she had called down the thunderstorm, cooled off the night. He wanted to wait, to see her body again, closer this time, silvered with sea water. He was in a trance. Part of him wanted to taste the salt on her skin—he knew it was wrong, didn't know where it was coming from. Still, the desire to watch her was so strong, he felt it pulling him down, down—to the tide's edge.

He turned instead, to give her back the beach.

Quickly, hoping she hadn't seen him, he grabbed his shoes and ran back up the sandy road to the house where his daughter lay sleeping.

STEVIE SAW JACK
on the boardwalk just as she was finishing her swim. Her heart caught and lurched—was he waiting for her? Had he seen her undress? How could she get out of the water if he was standing there? She watched him hesitate, as if deciding whether to walk toward her. Instead he backed away, grabbed his shoes from the boardwalk, trotted up the road.

The beach was hers again, as it was every day at this time. She wanted to feel the serenity, a connection with the earth's rhythms and mystery, that she always felt—but instead she felt almost wild.

Seeing him there, that split second before he'd turned away, she had sensed his yearning. She could read it in his posture. She knew it by heart, because she felt it herself. Since childhood, since her mother had gone, Stevie had felt a sense of helpless longing; she satisfied it in all sorts of ways. She had fallen in love too hard and too wrong, traveled far and wide to escape herself, reached for stars that were really just cheap lights.

Stevie's longing was deep and eternal; she knew she'd be searching for love until she found it. And on good days, she knew she had found it already: in nature, her early morning swims, Tilly, her birds, the secrets and intimacy of New York City. She hoped that the man would find it in something he already had and could never lose: the love of his daughter.

She wondered who had been staying with Nell while he'd come down to the beach. Maybe he had a girlfriend. Or maybe he didn't. . . .

In any case, nothing quite explained the stirring she felt as she wrapped the robe around her bare shoulders, ran barefoot through the sand and across the wooden bridge, up the stone stairs. Every sensation was a bolt to her heart. She took a quick outside shower, making sure to grab a few bugs from the early morning cobwebs in the dew-laden grass: “fairy tablecloths,” she had called them as a child.

She thought of what her father had once told her: “Stevie, there are two ways to look at the world. You can either believe that there's no magic anywhere on earth, or you can believe that there's magic in every little thing.”

Going inside to feed her thriving crow, thinking of how she had felt to know Jack was watching her swim, she really had no choice but to believe in the second.

“WANT TO SING
‘Lemon Tree'?” Nell asked during recreation break two days later. “My aunt taught it to me.”

Peggy chuckled. “My mother and Tara sing that song. They take turns playing the guitar. It's really pretty.”

“I'll bet Stevie sings it, too,” Nell said. She liked saying her name:
Stevie.
“Stevie gave me a book she wrote. She has an aunt who inspired her to be an artist!”

“A weird, witchy artist!”

“Would a witch sing ‘Lemon Tree'?” Nell teased.

“Maybe she likes to turn kids into lemons!” Peggy teased back. They had just come out of the water, and they sat on Nell's towel with Peggy's wrapped around their shoulders.

The group sat in a circle, so Laurel could tell them a real-life story about how some of the cottages were almost a hundred years old, and how, long before they were built, the Eastern Woodland Indians used to hunt and fish on these rocky points, and how, later, the Black Hall artists used to come here to paint. “Use your imaginations,” she told the kids. “Think about the beach in a new way.”

Nell loved the assignment. She and Peggy decided to explore the beach—and in doing so, Nell knew she was visiting places her mother, her aunt, and Stevie had gone before. They stopped at Foley's Store, to look in the drawer for love notes, and they went to the Point, where they sat on the rocks watching someone fish from a rowboat, and they cut through more backyards than Nell could count to look at secret gardens and hidden birdbaths.

A few days later they lay in the sand—no towels—at Little Beach, another secret place they'd reached through a path in the woods. They had collected the best sea glass Nell had ever found anywhere, including two rare blue pieces. Staring at the sky, Nell thought of Aunt Aida's painting in Stevie's room. Peggy told her about school in Black Hall, and Nell told Peggy about moving up to Boston from Atlanta.

“That's why you have that pretty accent?” Peggy asked.

“Yes. I'm a Southerner.”

“I'm a New Englander.”

“I like the way you talk,” Nell said. “You sound like my mother. She was from the North. My father, too.”

“Um, you don't have to tell me, but how . . . well, what happened to her?”

The question made Nell sit up. Her chest deflated fast, fast, and her shoulders caved around her heart. She shook her head—she could never talk about it.

“I'll tell you,” Peggy said, hiking up to sit beside her. “What happened to my dad. It was bad. I'm only telling you 'cause I want you to know it isn't just your mom . . . other parents die, too.”

“I dream about it at night,” Nell whispered. “My mother being gone. I miss her all the time. And I think, if she's gone, then I could be gone too. As if I were never here. And I get afraid to fall asleep. I make my father hold me till I get so tired I can't keep my eyes open. I think if he holds tight enough, I won't go away.” A feeling of her mother's touch came over her—the light way her fingers trailed down the back of Nell's head when she brushed her hair. It was so gentle, almost like the summer breeze. Her father tried, but his hand was so heavy. . . .

“I used to make my mother take me to the bridge where my father's car . . .”

Nell's eyes flew open. “Car accident?”

“Um, sort of,” Peggy said, turning red. “He, well, he was killed. And his car went into a creek.”

“My mother had a car accident too,” Nell said.

“Really?” Peggy asked, her mouth dropping open.

“She lived after it. She did . . . I thought she was going to be okay. I wanted her to be. . . .”

“How did hers happen?”

Nell huddled up, arms around her knees, making herself very small. She didn't like to talk about it. But something in Peggy made her want to tell the story, find words for how her mother had died. Yet the sudden change of feelings confused her so much, she couldn't speak. Peggy just sat there, no expression on her face at all, waiting. Finally, Nell was ready.

“She and my aunt were driving home,” Nell said. “It was my aunt's birthday. She and my mom went away for the weekend.” She swallowed. The words seemed to scratch her throat coming out, as if each one had claws. “It was my mom's first time away from me.”

“Ever?”

Nell nodded. “My aunt flew down, and she rented a special birthday car. A sports car. Pretty and red . . . They drove to St. Simons Island. I used to love St. Simons Island . . . it was our favorite Georgia beach. . . .”

“And they had an accident?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you mad at your aunt when you see her?” Peggy asked.

“I don't see her,” Nell said.

“Because you hate her for what happened?”

“No . . .” Nell grabbed a handful of sand and let it run out through her fingers onto her knee. The grains stuck in the fine blonde hairs, trickled down her skin. She did it again and again. The funny thing was, her throat felt as if the sand was in
there
. As if she had swallowed a whole lot of sand, and it was making it very hard to swallow. “I love my aunt,” she said.

“Then why don't you see her?”

“My father will never forgive her,” Nell said. “For what happened.” The two friends were silent then. Nell held the pieces of sea glass she had collected, feeling them with her thumb.

Her mother had once told her that sea glass took a long time to make. You had to throw back the pieces that weren't ready—that were too sharp or shiny, not yet tumbled smooth by the sea. Closing her eyes once more, she thought of her mother, her aunt, and Stevie. She wondered whether they had ever sat in this spot. She wondered whether her sea glass had been here then, whether maybe one of them had picked it up, thrown it back into the waves because it wasn't ready.

It would be nice to think that she had, Nell thought. Oh, it would be so nice. . . .

Chapter 8

THE NEXT THREE MORNINGS WERE DARK
and clear, and each time Stevie crossed the footbridge on her way to swim, she glanced at the boardwalk and saw Jack waiting. Daylight began to infuse the sky before actual sunrise. While Stevie swam—in a bathing suit now—she saw the stars fade so that only the brightest planets were left. They cast a passionate spell, somewhere between romance and Eros. Stevie felt crazy and confused. As if knowing, and not wanting to leave her alone in that state, Jack would wait until she'd safely emerge from the sea, and then he'd turn to go home.

On the fourth morning, she woke up earlier than usual. The air was muggy again, hazy and thick. She heard the Wickland Shoal foghorn, off in the distance. She imagined Jack hearing it, too. They were connected by strange mysteries—they'd barely had a conversation, but she could hardly wait to see him. The sheets felt sensuous on her body, reminded her of the brush of the sea. Her thighs ached, and her nipples stung. The sensations were wild, made her think of making love with a man she barely knew.

That day she skipped her swim.

Tilly lay on top of the bureau, already awake, green eyes glowing. The gaze seemed to accuse Stevie of cowardice. “I know,” Stevie said. She got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, refrained from looking out the window to see whether Jack was on the boardwalk. She fed her cat and the bird, and instead of going down to the beach, she climbed into her car and drove out of Hubbard's Point.

She sped along the Shore Road, through the marshes and past the Lovecraft Wildlife Preserve. The air was heavy, thick and white. Egrets fishing the shallow coves, pale sentries, raised their heads as she passed. Stevie imagined the birds telegraphing her approach to the castle, its ivy-covered stone tower and ruined crenellated parapet just visible above the tree line. She pulled through the stone gates, touched the horn as she passed the fieldstone gatehouse where Henry lived, then turned up the steep driveway—smooth pavement giving way to a dirt-and-gravel track. When she reached the top, she smelled coffee.

It was only six
A
.
M
., and fog hung in wisps in the pine trees. Stevie took a deep breath, listening to the low foghorn—Wickland Shoal. Although the castle compound was high on Lovecraft Hill, it overlooked the mouth of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, and water sounds carried as if they were just feet, and not half a mile, away.

Stevie's aunt and mentor, Aida Moore Von Lichen, lived and painted here. She was seventy-nine, going on thirty, with more life and verve than most people a quarter her age. Born in Ireland, just like her beloved brother Johnny, Aida was an abstract expressionist of great repute. She had come of age in New York with the Cedar Tavern crowd, as artistic as her brother was literary.

Aunt Aida owned the castle—a folly built in the 1920s by her much-older second husband, Van Von Lichen, the heir to a ball-bearing fortune and, more famously, a Shakespearian actor known for playing Iago and Falstaff. Uncle Van had died twenty years ago, having run through the bulk of his once considerable inheritance. Lacking a desire for grandeur, and, in any case, the money to sustain it, Aunt Aida had let the castle fall to bat-and-mouse-infested ruin, and she lived instead in a small wooden outbuilding with no inside plumbing. She drew her water from an old white pump with wrought-iron curlicues. An ardent environmentalist, she loved her simple life. Summers in Black Hall, winters in the Everglades. Her stepson, Henry, recently retired from the Navy, was spending the summer in the castle gatehouse.

“Hey, Lulu,” Henry called to Stevie as he hiked up the hill. Fifty and movie-star handsome, he
looked
like he belonged on the grounds of a ruined castle.

“Hey, Commander,” she called back.

He had nicknamed her Lulu for her dark-haired and messy-love-lifed resemblance to the Hollywood silent-screen femme fatale Louise Brooks. She called him Commander because that was his rank at the time of his retirement.

“You're out early,” he said.

“I've got a lot on my mind,” she said.

Henry raised his eyebrows. “Oh no,” he said. Very tall and powerfully built, he had silver hair, sun-struck blue eyes, and wind-weathered ruddy skin from nearly thirty years of standing on the bridge of various naval vessels.

“What?” she asked.

“Who's the lucky man?”

“I'm not in love.”

“Lulu, you're always in love. That's your blessing and curse.”

“More curse,” she said, giving a small laugh. She turned away to hide the blush in her cheeks.

They walked over to a rounded boulder at the edge of what Aunt Aida called “the pine barrens”—a forest of white pines and cedars stretching all the way to Mount Lamentation. Developers were always offering her tons of money to sell the land, but she swore she'd die penniless before giving in.

Henry lit a cigarette and handed it to Stevie. She blew three perfect smoke rings, and then gave it back to him.

“You bring out the bad habits in me,” she said.

“Someone has to, and you have so few left. Now that you're sober, I've lost my drinking buddy,” he said. They laughed and shared the cigarette, watching fog clear from the mouth of the river. The foghorn continued, even though the Sound was now visible, flat-calm and silver-blue, already dotted with boats trailing the scratched lines of white wakes. Across the Sound, Orient Point was a thick pencil smudge.

“You're not going to tell me?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You've had it rough, kid,” he said. “You've given so much and gotten so little.”

Cocking her head, she looked up at him. “Really? I feel as if I've hurt everyone I've ever loved.”

“That, too,” he said. Although Henry had never married, he had had a long relationship with a woman in Newport. She had broken up with him last year, and although he did his best to act like a stoic sailor, he was really heartbroken. “Love's a bitch for all concerned.”

“Except when it isn't,” she said. She closed her eyes, wondering what that even meant. She had never stopped hoping. In spite of all her missed connections and thwarted starts, she had always expected to find lasting, thriving, nurturing love. The desire for it was so strong, it still brought tears to her eyes, and again she thought of her friend on the boardwalk.

“Press on regardless,” he said, falling back into Navy-speak as he so often did. It was oddly comforting, and Stevie smiled.

“Really?” she asked.

He nodded. “I admire you,” he said.

“For getting divorced three times?”

“For getting
married
three times,” he said. “You are the bravest girl in the world. I should have had the balls you have. All Doreen ever wanted was a ring, and I was too chickenshit to give it to her.”

“Oh, Commander,” she said. “Marriage isn't any guarantee. . . . I'm living proof.”

“You're a force of nature, is what you are,” he said. “I've sailed frigates and aircraft carriers through hurricanes that didn't have half the power you have.”

“Get out,” she said, watching boat traffic in the water below, listening to birds in the trees all around.

“All those years aboard
Cushing
,” he said, “I used to read two things. Shakespeare, because . . . well, you can imagine. And the
Odyssey
.”

“Makes sense for a man on a voyage.”

“You know what you are, Lulu? You're a new character in the
Odyssey
.” He searched for the name. “Luocious,” he said, pronouncing it
Lu-oh-shus
. “You're a siren who lures men onto the rocks . . . but it's always your boat that gets wrecked.”

She looked away, because it felt so true. “Is Aida up?” she asked, kissing his cheek and then pressing herself up from the rock.

“Of course,” he said. “Sometimes I think she never sleeps.”

“See you later, Henry.”

He saluted, watching her go.

Stevie let herself into the house. Aida was already painting. She stretched her own canvases, and this one was a six-by-six-foot square, almost as big as the north-facing picture window. Stevie stood back and assessed the work, the latest in her
Beach Series
: the top half was pale gray, the bottom half dark blue. The line where they met resembled a horizon.

“How are you, dear?” Aida asked without turning around.

“In need of a wise aunt,” Stevie said.

Aida laughed. “And you came here?”

Stevie gave her a hug. Her aunt was tall, like her father. She wore a red bandana over short curly white hair, and a smock on top of denim overalls. Her nails were short and chipped, caked with oil paint.

“There's coffee on the stove,” Aida said.

“Thanks.” Stevie refilled her aunt's
Cushing
mug—a tribute to her stepson's last vessel. Then she filled one for herself. The two women sat down at the old pine table, sipping their coffee. The cottage windows were wide open, and the salt-and-pine-scented breeze blew through.

“What brings you here so early?” Aida asked.

“I'm trying to figure some things out,” Stevie said. “I had two visitors last week. They've both . . . gotten under my skin.”

“Hmm,” her aunt said, staring at her painting.

“One is a little girl, Nell. She's the daughter of an old, dear friend of mine . . . Emma. She told me that Emma died.”

“Oh dear,” Aida said, looking directly at Stevie.

“I know. I can hardly believe it—it seems like we were just swimming together, lying on the sand, planning to have wonderful lives . . .”

“So young . . . too soon,” Aida murmured.

“It's awful. She died in a car crash—and our other friend, Emma's sister-in-law Madeleine, was driving.”

“How terrible for Madeleine!”

“I know,” Stevie said. “I can't even imagine.”

She and her aunt just sat in silence for a minute. Stevie stared over at the new painting, at the pale rectangles. Were they sea and sky or sand and sea? She didn't know, and it didn't really matter: the feeling of beach washed over her, calming her.

“Emma did have a wonderful life, it seems,” Stevie said. “Her daughter is just like her—so smart and sweet, curious about life. She wanted to meet me, because I was her mother's friend, and she just marched up the hill and introduced herself.”

“
That
took courage,” Aunt Aida said, deadpan.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that
sign
, for one thing. It puts the fear of God into all who approach. But, of course, that's the point, isn't it?”

Stevie didn't reply at first. She knew she pushed people away—and it worked. Kept her safe, free from making any more mistakes, from getting hurt, from hurting others. “Well,” she said finally, “Nell made it past the sign. And I invited her and her father over for dinner last week.”

“That was good of you.”

“It went well—except toward the end, I mentioned getting together with Madeleine, and that didn't go over at all. Jack—Nell's father—wants nothing to do with her. And she's his sister!”

Aunt Aida tilted her head, as if that made sense. Stevie stared at her.

“She's his sister—how can he just write her off like that?”

“You're an only child, dear.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Aunt Aida took a deep breath, stared at her seascape as if for strength, then looked directly into Stevie's eyes. “I always wished that your parents had had another child. Always thought that you needed a sibling. I wanted you to have what Johnny and I had. And what your mother had. Then you would understand about Madeleine and . . . what was his name? Jack. That's it.”

“Well, I don't have a sibling, so you have to tell me, Aunt Aida.”

She sighed. “Siblings are each other's world—when they're young. For me, it was The World According to Johnny. The sun rose and set on him. We had the same family, same house, same music . . . we walked each other to school.”

“Jack was four years older than Maddie.”

“Johnny was three years older than I . . .”

Stevie listened.

“Age isn't so important. It's the
feeling
that is. You grow up counting on each other. You never want to let each other down. So when something big happens, it's cataclysmic. It might be easier to write each other off than actually ever talk about it. Or
deal
with it.”

Stevie pictured how angry Jack had gotten when Stevie had started talking about Madeleine. He had looked so upset—not just furious, now that she thought about it, but hurt. As if the breach had taken something away from him.

“Did that ever happen with you and Dad?” Stevie asked.

Her aunt didn't reply. Instead, she stood up, got the coffeepot, and refilled their mugs. Then she sat down again. “You could call Madeleine yourself,” she said.

“I know,” Stevie said. Having this talk with Aida solidified the thought she'd already had. “I plan to.”

“Good,” Aunt Aida said.

Again they fell silent, sipping the hot coffee. Stevie couldn't stop looking at her aunt's painting. It seemed so open and free—with a feel of the bigness of sea, sky, and beach. The series captured the beach's changing colors and moods. Stevie felt disturbed about her morning swims, about how much she looked forward to the silent connection with her old friend's husband. She had made so many mistakes in love—and in the last few years, barricaded herself off from the world. She pictured the sign in her yard, and she thought of Henry's words, about boats being wrecked on the rocks of love.