Dead In The Hamptons (10 page)

An hour later, pleasantly exhausted, Barbara lay on her back in the sun, a thick towel under her and a smaller one rolled behind her neck, with the big log as a headboard. The other three lay beside her, equally relaxed.

“Like a row of salt sticks baking in the oven,” she murmured. “God, it feels so good to be naked.”

“I told you,” Karen said. “Anyone need more sun block? Some of that skin hasn’t seen daylight in a long time.”

“After twenty years with Jimmy,” Barbara said, “I couldn’t possibly forget. He’d be many times dead without it.”

“You’re more olive toned, though,” Stephanie said.

“Yeah, and hopelessly codependent. I used to put the sun block on me to encourage him to do it.”

“I had a skin cancer scare a couple of years back,” Stephanie said. “So now I’m careful. But it’s not like I spend the whole summer at the nude beach. I’ve let go so many addictions, I gotta let myself have a little pleasure once in a while.”

“Me, I’m so pink and white you could use me to decorate a nursery,” Jeannette said. “I slathered myself with the stuff, but maybe I should put on my muumuu.”

“No!” The other three spoke in unison.

“You said you’d try it for an hour if nobody else showed up on the beach.”

“Admit it feels good.”

“And no lying.”

“I hate people seeing my body,” Jeannette said. “I’ve been ashamed of being fat since I was a kid, and that means a lot of years.”

Barbara hesitated between assuring her she wasn’t fat and asking how old she was. The first would be a codependent lie. She would have guessed Jeannette’s age as close to her own, but maybe she was older. She had no wrinkles, but her eyes looked tired.

“I’m forty-five,” Jeannette announced, “and sometimes I feel every minute.”

“I was a fat kid,” Stephanie said.

Three pairs of eyes flew open.

“You’re kidding,” Barbara said. “I can’t believe you ever had a weight problem.”

“Believe it. I ate constantly. I used to steal food all the time. My brothers called me The Blob. Then when I hit puberty, I became anorexic.”

“They say you can’t be too rich or too thin,” Barbara said.

“They also say an alcoholic should just say no and try a little willpower,” Karen said. “Wrong!”

“I know anorexia is an eating disorder,” Barbara said, “but I don’t get it.”

“I got teased so much, I hated them all,” Stephanie said. “I decided to starve until they’d have to admit I was thin enough. If I was perfect, they’d have to leave me alone.”

“Fuck-you starving,” Jeannette said. “Like fuck-you eating.”

“Sounds like you’ve gone through it yourself,” Stephanie said.

“Starving, no,” Jeannette said. “But I could write a book on binges. Crunchy is fuck-you eating, and sugar is poor-me eating. I’m better at poor-me, which is probably why I look like a blimp.”

“You don’t!” Barbara sat up. “I think your body is goddessy.”

“Yeah, right,” Jeannette said. “Tell it to my mirror.”

Stephanie rolled from her back onto her stomach. Raising her upper body onto her elbows, she shook sand from the top half of her towel.

“One reason I chose our house is because everybody is into food. I thought I wouldn’t be able to starve. My period is still touch and go, and I worry about ever being able to have children.”

“I’m starting to get hot flashes,” Jeannette remarked.

“I never thought I’d get this old without having a baby,” Barbara said.

“How old are you?” Karen asked.

“Going on forty— biological clock age, though it feels more like a time bomb.”

“So why don’t you?” Stephanie asked.

“Same reason Jimmy and I don’t get married. Fear.”

“Fear of relapse?”

“Not so much, after almost twenty years in recovery. It’s hard to imagine it. But he could still pass on alcoholic genes.”

“Lewis and I got married on our tenth sober anniversary,” Karen said. “We met in rehab and went straight into AA together afterwards. But you keep saying ‘one day at a time’ and wondering how long it’ll last.”

“Doesn’t Jimmy want kids?” Jeannette asked.

“He’s not sure,” Barbara said. “I think he’d make a fabulous dad. But he’s an ACOA. I think he’s scared of perpetuating the alcoholic family, even if he doesn’t drink.”

“Lewis doesn’t want kids for the same reason,” Karen said.

“And you’re reconciled to that?” Jeannette asked.

Karen hesitated.

“Not exactly,” she said finally. “It took me a long time to, well, embrace monogamy. Lewis got a vasectomy, but I need to know I have options.”

Judging by the scene Bruce had stumbled onto at Oscar’s, Barbara thought, Karen hadn’t embraced monogamy yet. She rolled onto her side and raised herself on an elbow, turning away from Karen to hide her telltale face. They were all being very candid in this nudie women’s group. Why wouldn’t Karen admit she still had the occasional fling?

“I did get pregnant once,” Karen said. “I had an abortion.”

“Did the guy know?” Stephanie asked.

“Did Lewis find out?” Jeannette asked.

“Yes and no,” Karen said. “I wouldn’t have told Lewis unless I was ready to leave him. I thought I might be, but in the end I wasn’t.”

“Were you in love with the guy?” Stephanie asked.

“Was he in love with you?” Jeannette asked.

“Yes and no,” Karen said.

Barbara wondered if the guy in question was Oscar. In her opinion, Oscar was in love only with Oscar. The veneer of geniality hid either a ruthless sexual predator or a sexual compulsive. This group had more than its share of charismatic narcissists. Oscar, Clea. Phil was equally self-centered, if not charismatic.

“So the guy didn’t want the baby?” Stephanie asked.

“Actually, he did,” Karen said. “He didn’t care about me— not enough. But he was in recovery too. He reacted to being an ACOA the opposite way from Lewis.”

“He didn’t have a dysfunctional family?”

“Of course he did,” Karen said. “But instead of not wanting to risk it, he wanted a do-over. He wanted us to have the baby, break the pattern, and do it right.” She got to her feet, brushed sand off her legs, and marched down toward the inviting surf.

Barbara rolled over onto her stomach and arranged a towel in a kind of sun roof, held off the back of her head by her shoes stuck upright into the sand. Suppose the guy who wanted a baby had been Oscar. Had he made the same offer to Clea? Clea was a lot younger than the rest of them. Had she wanted children? And even if she had, would she have wanted to raise a kid with Oscar?

“If we’re having the meeting,” Shep said, “let’s have the meeting.”

We all lay sprawled or propped on wicker furniture or cushions on Oscar’s back upstairs deck. It faced west, away from the ocean but toward a spectacular fiery sunset. We were all stuffed with alder-smoked salmon and strawberry shortcake.

Barbara and I shared a piece of furniture that didn’t exactly swing or rock but jounced pleasantly. Jimmy sat on a giant cushion at Barbara’s feet, his head against her knees.

“We need to move the chairs.” Lewis took off his Docksiders, shook sand out of them, and put them on again. He was inches too long for the wicker chaise longue. His legs were tanned and covered with golden hair that glinted almost red in the waning light.

“Are we doing it out here?” Barbara asked. “I don’t think this rocker moves.”

“Neither does this,” Cindy said. She and Corky were perched on a teak chest topped with the kind of cushions you sit on in boats. “What have you got in here, Oscar? Rocks?”

“Rope. Fishing tackle. An anchor you could use for that boat I hear you’re working on.”

“Really? That’d be great!”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “When I signed up for the maiden voyage of this ship, I thought we weren’t going anywhere I couldn’t wade home.”

“Too late, sailor. You’ve got an unbreakable contract.” Cindy bared her incisors at me. Her eyes twinkled. I was getting addicted to that wolfish grin of hers.

“You can anchor in shallow water,” Oscar said. “You might want to fish for fluke. I can show you on a chart.”

“Come on, guys! Service!” Shep said. That’s program speak for “cut the cackle and let’s hold hands and say the Serenity Prayer.” I’d never done it out in the open like this. I looked left and right and over my shoulder. Dunes screened us from the houses on either side. Oscar’s property, which must be worth millions, was deep. The occasional car passing on the road could barely be heard. And twilight was falling on the beach. Most people who couldn’t get enough of looking at water shifted to the bay side at the end of the day anyway. If they wanted sunset over the ocean, they should move to California.

In the end, everybody except Oscar took a hand in rearranging the chairs. They didn’t quite form a circle. But everybody could see everybody else, more or less, without getting a neck spasm. We started with the Serenity Prayer. Then we went around the circle with names and labels.

“Hi, I’m Bruce, I’m an alcoholic.” I didn’t even grimace when I said it any more.

Not everyone in this hybrid meeting was lucky enough to be a drunk.

“Hi, I’m Barbara, recovering in Al-Anon.”

“Stewie, gratefully recovering in AA, ACOA, SCA, DA, and various other programs.”

“I’m Ted. Addict and alcoholic.”

Clea’s last-but-one boyfriend had fair skin, a peeling nose, and a baby face on top of a beanpole body. I noticed he and Phil sat as far from each other as they could on the crowded deck.

Oscar volunteered to qualify— tell his story.

Barbara put her lips to my ear. I smelled strawberries as she whispered, “Principles before personalities.”

One definition of anonymity. Or as my sponsor once put it, “You can get something out of anyone’s experience, strength, and hope, even if you think they’re an asshole.”

All AA stories are the same, even when they’re different. Oscar had been clean and sober for longer than Jimmy. Before that, he’d partied with the rich and famous. He’d done his share of stupid shit. Stumbled into the closet instead of the bathroom in the middle of the night and peed on his shoes. Dropped acid and set off the alarms in an art museum. That won him an unwilling grin from me. Jimmy, still propped up against Barbara’s shins, reached up and grabbed me by the ear, pulling me down so he could whisper.

“See? I told you if you listen long enough you’ll hear your story.”

He released my ear. I grabbed him by the hair to whisper back.

“And here I thought we’d done something original.”

“Hallucinogens and grandiosity— horse and carriage.”

Then Barbara shushed us and we shut up.

When Oscar finished, they went around the circle so everyone could share. I passed. Playing it safe. Stewie talked about how he missed Clea and cried a little. Phil said how pissed off he was at the police for picking on him. Everybody listened to both of them in respectful silence, the way they do in meetings. I hoped Cindy would drop a clue or two about her outside life, but she didn’t. She was pretty funny about how badly she’d screwed up while she was drinking. Ted said he was still in shock from Clea’s death and wished he could have been here before she died. He and Phil kind of sizzled at each other, like electric wire in water. But neither broke the no-crosstalk rule. I thought we were home free. Then Barbara raised her hand. I have to hand it to her; she’s good at weaving recovery jargon into whatever damn thing she wants to say.

“I need to talk about Clea,” she said. “The police think it was an accident. I keep telling myself ‘Let go and let God,’ but I can’t turn it over. I have a disease of not minding my own business. I know that. But is it so terrible to want more closure?” She might as well have said, “I plan to snoop.”

I looked at Jimmy. He had slumped over with his elbow propped on his knee and two fingers held to the furrow between his eyebrows, as if identifying the location of the headache the woman he loved could be.

I slapped a supportive hand on his shoulder.

“Oy veyzmir,” he murmured.

When the meeting ended, they brought out coffee, fruit, and a couple of Mrs. Dowling’s pies. Everybody stood up to shake out the kinks and started milling around. We got Barbara in a corner, out of earshot of the others.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jimmy’s voice was strained with the effort not to screech. “Hi, I’m Barbara, I’m nosy, and my inner T-shirt says ‘Tethered Goat’.”

“I was just sharing,” Barbara protested. “So I stirred the pot a little.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“If it really was an accident, nothing. If it wasn’t, you don’t want a murderer running around getting away with it, do you?”

“Shoot me now, Jesus,” Jimmy breathed. “If someone comes after you, who do you think will have to jump into the line of fire?”

Barbara waxed indignant, not a stretch for her.

“I don’t need protecting! I can fight my own battles, thank you! Only there won’t be any battles. You’re just projecting.”

It occurred to me that I was superfluous to this conversation. I cleared my throat, jerked a thumb at the other end of the deck, decided they’d already forgotten me, and fled.

I found Cindy perched on a rail with her feet propped against a big planter filled with marigolds and petunias. She held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands.

“You never quite mingle, do you,” I greeted her. “You’re always a little apart. Are you one of those terminal loners they talk about?”

“I’m not alone, I’m with you. Have a perch.” She shifted her butt along the rail and made room for my feet on the rim of the planter. “You didn’t share.”

“I still have trouble baring my soul in meetings,” I said. “I didn’t feel up to it tonight. Or playing the clown either.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Yeah, that’s my defense.”

“What’s your friend Barbara up to?”

“Nothing much.”

“Bullshit. She still thinks it’s murder, doesn’t she?” She clamped a small hand on my jaw and swiveled my head around so I had to meet her eyes. I breathed a little harder. “How about you?”

I shrugged as her palm slid away from my face, scraping across my sandpapery cheek. I mostly didn’t bother shaving out here. I caught up in the city whenever I went in to do a few days’ work.