Colony (53 page)

“I’m thinking about a birthday party for our son, nothing more and nothing less,” I said. “I called to see if you might not slip away and come for it. You’re back in Boston that weekend, before you go to Canada. I’ve got your schedule right here. You could drive over just for that night, if nothing else. Peter, you must. You’re the only missing piece. You really must.”

“I think it’s a ghastly idea, Maude,” he said. “Probably the worst thing you could do, under the circumstances. Spare us all and cancel the goddamned thing.”

“Under the circumstances, Peter,” I said, “it’s the only thing I can do.”

He was silent, and then he said, “Things are bad there.”

“They have been. Gretchen, of course. They’re looking better, though. And this will cinch it for good and all. But you’ve got to be here. That’s vital.”

“This could blow up in all our faces, sky high,” he said urgently. “What if nobody comes, or only a few? What kind of game are you playing, Maude?”

“A game for mortal stakes,” I said softly.

“ ‘Only where love and need are one,’ ” Peter said after a moment, and I could hear the smile in his voice, “ ‘And the work is play for mortal stakes,/Is the deed ever really done/For Heaven and the Future’s sakes.’ ”

“Robert Frost couldn’t have said it better,” I said.

“So you think the deed has to be done for Heaven and the Future’s sakes.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I’ll try to come,” Peter said. “I can’t promise, but I will try.”

“Try very hard, darling,” I said, and hung up.

That weekend I took Mike Willis and Darcy, in her stroller, down to the yacht club. It was late afternoon, and the fleet was straggling in after the Saturday regatta, and much of the colony had gathered on the porch to see them in and have tea. That had not changed since Mother Hannah’s day.

It was a glorious blue-edged day, warmer than most, even nearing August, and the porch and steps were crowded. My heart began to pound as I rounded the last curve in the lane and came into view with the dark little boy at my side and Darcy bobbing and crowing in her stroller. Her hair blazed in the sun, and there were pink-bronze roses in her cheeks.

I had, on a whim, put her into a blue T-shirt and white trousers, miniatures of what I wore myself. I took a deep breath. I had seen none of these people since before the storm last September. It was a gauntlet of sorts and I knew it, even if woven of my oldest friends. And I knew Gretchen Winslow would be among them. Well, that could not be put off any longer. Get it done.

There was silence, and then a few tentative smiles broke out, and a soft murmur, and Dierdre Kennedy called from one of the rockers, where she sat with the female elders of the colony, “Well, look who’s here! We’ve missed you, Maude, dear. Bring that baby here and let’s have a look.

We’ve all been dying to meet her.”

Bless you, Dierdre, I said to myself, and lifted Darcy out of the stroller and took Mike’s hand and went up the steps to the group of rockers. More smiles and a flutter of greetings followed me, and hands reached out to pat Darcy, and my breath eased

a little. Then it quickened. Gretchen Winslow sat in the last chair in the group, years younger than any of the other occupants but looking as regally at ease as if she owned the entire club by sheer force of being, and there was in her splendid water-green eyes the look of a lioness crouched for the kill.

There was no mistake about that.

“Hello, Gretchen,” I said. “And Dierdre, and Erica, and all the Stallingses. This is Darcy, Happy’s little girl. She’s spending the summer with us; we bribed her mother and father liberally. Can you say hello, Darcy?”

“’Lo!” Darcy shrieked, and everybody laughed, Gretchen loudest of all.

“And who’s your handsome boyfriend, Darcy?” she said, looking at Mike Willis out of the long eyes. “That’s a Willis, or I miss my guess. Keeping it in the family, sweetie?”

I looked at her. She smiled into my face. Beautiful; she was still simply so beautiful. And as dangerous to me and mine as a madwoman. There had scarcely been time for replies to begin coming in to my invitations, but I knew Gretchen would have heard about the party. I was going to begin paying for that today, and so were those close to me. Micah had said there were no bounds on her tongue this summer. He had been right.

“We hope so,” I said, grateful that dark glasses shielded my eyes. “Every time I look at Mike I wish parents still arranged marriages.”

“Oh, but they do—at least, if they’re lucky,” Gretchen said, and there was just the smallest murmur on the porch. The old ladies present would remember perfectly how discontented Mother Hannah had been at her son’s choice of a bride.

“Not always, or many of us would have different surnames, wouldn’t we?” I smiled at Gretchen, and

her smooth coffee-tan face darkened. The old women would remember, too, that Gretchen had set her cap publicly for Peter all the years before me.

I turned to Dierdre Kennedy and hugged her, and she reached out her arms for Darcy. Darcy went into them, gurgling and smiling.

“What a darling she is!” Dierdre said. “It’s really so good to have you back, Maude. When is Peter coming? We’re all so thrilled about his book.”

“
Be
-dar!” Darcy crowed, and everyone laughed.

“Yes, darling, Peter,” I said. “Granddaddy. He’s coming next weekend, as a matter of fact, Dierdre. And looking forward to seeing everybody,”

I did not need to look at Gretchen to know that she understood precisely where Peter would see everyone. The party throbbed in the air between us like a sunspot.

“You know,” Frances Stallings said, tilting her head at Darcy, “she is the absolute image of you, Maude. Not the coloring but everything else: the shape of her face, and the smile, and that compact little body. It’s uncanny.”

“Isn’t it,” Gretchen Winslow said.

I knew what was coming, and that it would be bad. I tensed my muscles, waiting.

“And isn’t it a shame about Elizabeth’s baby,” she murmured. “If it had lived, Peter would have had a perfect little miniature Chambliss to take around with him, just like Maude has a Gascoigne. A matched set of look-alike grandchildren, as it were.”

This time there was no gasp, only silence. It was far beyond the pale; even Gretchen seemed to know that. She opened her mouth to speak further and then did not. She looked away from me and down.

Help me, Mother Hannah, I said silently, entirely spontaneously, and then I leaned down slightly, so she would have to meet my eyes, and said, “You

might as well give it up, Gretchen. Peter didn’t marry you when he could have, and he hasn’t gone to bed with you any time since then—and boy, could he have!—and he isn’t going to, any time in the future. If I were you I’d cut my losses and get out of the game.”

And I smiled, and took Darcy back from Dierdre Kennedy, and went down the steps and put her in her stroller, and we went back up the lane toward home, Mike Willis capering ahead of us. Behind me, just as we turned the curve that would hide us, I heard, as distinctly as I heard it every summer day in Retreat from the little tennis court, the soft pattering of applause.

I knew then there would be no refusals to Petie’s birthday party.

“And there aren’t, not a single one,” I said to Peter at midweek on the phone. I would not, I decided, tell him about the ugliness with Gretchen. I knew there would be no more of it—not, at least, that would be likely to touch us. “Everybody’s coming. I even asked those strange people from Los Angeles who’re renting Braebonnie this summer, and
they’re
coming. Everybody says they’re actors, Peter; isn’t that wonderful? Just what we need in Retreat. It’s going to be the party of the century.”

“I’m glad, love,” Peter said. “Then you really don’t need me, do you? Maude, just the thought of it makes me gag—”

“More than ever I need you, Peter,” I said urgently. “You just don’t know; it’s imperative that you be here. There’s no choice. I can’t understand what bothers you about it now; everybody’s coming, don’t you see, it means that everything’s all behind us, the prodigal son is forgiven, we can go on like we always have.”

“Can’t you see it’s a total charade, Maude?” Peter said.

“That’s what bothers me about it. It’s a lie. Petie’s not the prodigal son—”

I cut him off in desperation. I would hear no more of this.

“Darling, that’s just a figure of speech. I meant—all right, Peter, I didn’t want to tell you, but if that’s what it takes to get you here, I will. Someone would anyway, sooner or later.”

And I told him about the incident at the yacht club the weekend before. All of it, from start to finish. When I was done there was a long silence on the line, so long I took a breath to speak, but then he did.

“God damn Gretchen to hell,” he said. “All right. I see.

You’re right, I don’t have any choice. I’ll drive up from Boston that afternoon, but I’m going to be late getting there.

Martin’s got some kind of lunch thing for me that I can’t cancel.”

“Oh, darling…thank you! It’ll be wonderful, you’ll see.

Nobody will ever mention that business with Gretchen; that’s over. And simply everybody’s asked about you. Darcy asks three times a day.”

“Give her a kiss for me,” he said. “I miss her. I miss you, too. Maude—”

“What, love?”

“Do you remember Wappoo Creek? Do you remember

what we sang that night?”

“As if it were yesterday,” I said, laughing.

He sang softly, over the wire from a long way away. “It’s three o’clock in the morning…we’ve danced the whole night through….”

“It doesn’t sound a bit better now than it did then,” I said.

“It doesn’t at that, does it? It’s been stuck in my mind lately; I’ve been singing it for days,” he said.

“Well,” I replied, “put the top down and sing it all the way up here Saturday, and hurry up!”

“I will. Listen, Maude. If anything else happens—anything unpleasant—call Micah. Will you do that? You can depend on Micah.”

“I don’t need to call Micah,” I said, puzzled. “I can take care of Darcy and myself. Don’t you see? That’s what that sad, silly scene at the yacht club was all about. I can take care of things.”

“I know you can,” Peter said. “I know you can. But I want you to promise me, anyway, about Micah.”

“Then I promise,” I said. “Get here soon, darling. I need hugs.”

“I love you, Maude.”

“Me too.”

It rained the day of the party, but an hour before time for it to start the rain stopped and a spectacular sunset broke through the storm clouds over the bay. The entire bulk of Islesboro and the Camden Hills flamed with it. Over it all hung the white ghost of a new moon. I went outside in my wrapper, face still unmade, to watch it. Micah and Tina stood beside me; they had come early for a quiet drink and to help me with last-minute details. There did not seem to be many; from the very beginning, this party had taken on its own charmed life. The flowers I ordered were the prettiest I had ever seen; the hors d’oeuvres Tina and I spent the week making looked festively elegant; the Japanese lanterns that were a Liberty party tradition looked magical in the sunset and fading storm light; Darcy had been an angel all day and was having her supper with Beth and Mike in the upstairs nursery without so much as a whimper.

“Remember when you said that a sunset like that meant the devil was burning trash?” I said to Micah, and he nodded.

He looked fine in his gray slacks and dark blue blazer, indistinguishable from any of the men who would come this night, as Tina, in her pastel linen and cashmere cardigan, did from the women. As, now, they were.

“And you said this kind of sunset sometimes brought the northern lights,” I went on. “Wouldn’t that be perfect? Just the right finishing touch, a grace note.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Micah said, and we went into Liberty, and I ran upstairs to dress. I heard Micah greet Petie and Sarah and smiled. They would remember this night.

I was just coming down the stairs when a knock sounded at the door, tentative, soft. At the same moment a howl from the nursery announced the end of angelity.

“Get that, will you, Petie?” I called. “It’ll be the boys from the inn with the shrimp; it’s too early for anybody else yet.

I’ll see what’s going on up here.”

I started back up, and then I heard Petie say, “Mama?”

I turned slowly and came back down the stairs, staring at him. Petie had not called me Mama for years. I stopped. His face was oddly fragmented; it looked as if it might fall away, feature by feature. Behind him stood the new sheriff, the one who had stopped Peter and me those times, when the Austin Healy was new. Last summer. I could not remember his name.

“Mama,” Petie said again, and took a step toward me. I stepped back. I began to shake my head, back and forth, back and forth.

“Mama. Dad, it’s about Daddy….”

I took another step back, staring, shaking my head. Petie came on toward me with his awful face.

“He…the car went off Caterpillar Hill,” Petie said, and began to cry. I stepped back again. I felt as if there was nothing in the world but space, cold and limitless, behind me. Here it was, then: the precipice.

“That can’t be right,” I said, shaking my head. Stepping back.

Hands caught my shoulders then, and held them

hard, and I felt a body behind me, a body that held me still as I tried to step back once more. Micah. I stood still in his grasp.

“I’m so goddamned sorry, Miz Chambliss,” the new sheriff said, his voice trembling. “Some folks from over to Penobscot was parked at the overlook, watchin’ the sunset, and the car just come straight up the top and veered off and…went on over. They called me from Bagaduce Lunch; we got a car right on down there. We…the car was at the bottom, not far from where those woods around Walker’s Pond start. We found some papers with his name on ’em in the glove com-partment, but we haven’t found—we haven’t found Mr.

Chambliss yet. We got backup comin’ in from Brooksville and Castine, though….”

“Go back and look, then,” I said. “Do it now. He could be hurt; you might not hear him call.”

“Ma’am, he…the top was down,” the sheriff said. “It’s a drop of a thousand feet there at the overlook.”