Summer of the Gypsy Moths (15 page)

T
hat afternoon, Mrs. Sandpiper called me to babysit.

“Daniel has a ball game in Wareham, and it's just too hot to make Katie sit in the stands all afternoon,” she said when I got there. “She's a little minnow this week. Take her to Mill River Beach and she'll be happy.”

“Oh,” I said. “The thing is, I'm not a lifeguard.”

“That's okay. We were there this morning. She only flops around in the shallows. It's so hot.” Mrs. Sandpiper pooched her mouth in the mirror and slicked on some coral lipstick. At her waist, Katie mimicked the pooching, and Mrs. Sandpiper dabbed a spot of lipstick on her lips.
I had to close my eyes—sometimes when I saw mothers and daughters, it felt like I was being stung by a hot, bright light.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe we could stay here?”

Katie raised her eyebrows and hung her painted mouth open in shock that I could even consider not going to the beach.

“It'll be fine,” Mrs. Sandpiper said. “Katie, you're not to go out over your knees, you got that?” She stroked a lipstick line across each of Katie's little knees. “That's the mark, okay? You do what Stella tells you.”

Katie nodded so hard her fountain-head flopped over. So I said okay to the beach and told myself there was nothing to worry about. Katie and I waved good-bye to her family, then packed up and hiked down to the beach.

I walked her all the way down to the last jetty, taking our time even though the air was like steam and the cool water called. “How about we make a sand castle?” I suggested. Katie ignored me and headed straight for the water. I caught her hand. “Look,” I said, pointing to a line of birds tottering on their toothpick legs along the water's edge. “Sandpipers. Those are the birds your cottage is named after.” I swept my palm upward, where the sky was full of birds. “Those big ones are gulls. And the smaller ones are terns. Like the other cottages. I wonder if we can
find some plovers….”

Katie couldn't be distracted with birds. She tugged on my hand.

“And look,” I tried. “Way down there, to the west. The sky looks dark there, like it might be raining. We shouldn't stay too long, in case Daniel's game gets canceled.”

Katie tugged harder. She wasn't going to buy anything I offered. I dumped our stuff and let her drag me into the water. And her mother was right—all Katie wanted to do was splash around in the shallows.

After a while, I plunked myself down near her and leaned back on my elbows to watch. Each time one of the tiny waves slapped me on the belly, I laughed at the cold splash, but I still wished we weren't here. Weeks ago, when Angel was yelling about my rules, she said I must have a hundred rules about swimming. And she was right. Always face the waves—that way you know what's coming. Never swim at night—jellyfish and other dangers are hard to see in the dark. Never swim alone. Never swim on an outgoing tide. The ocean was unpredictable. It helped to have some rules.

In front of me, Katie draped a hank of seaweed over her head and laughed so hard she fell over backward. I jumped to my feet, but she was up and laughing in a second. Four years old, that kid had no fear. She was like Angel that way.
So different from me.

And that's when I felt the alarm bells at the back of my neck. I stood up and looked around. Katie was dogpaddling in a circle in front of me. A dozen kids were splashing around in the waist-high water. Families all around me were reading and eating and dozing. Everyone was fine. It was a sunny day at the beach, and everyone was fine.

The alarm bells shrilled louder. It didn't make sense. No one had left me.

I took a few steps up the beach, but there was nothing to see. I walked back to the water. “Katie,” I called. “Come in.”

A woman walking the shore in a red suit stopped. She waved to a little boy in the water, then looked at me.

“Katie! Come out of the water. Now.”

Katie stood up and cocked her head at me, trying to decide if I was serious.

“What is it?” the woman asked.

“Do you have all your kids?” I asked. I didn't care how foolish I sounded.

The woman just stared at me. I turned back to Katie. “Hurry up, Kate.”

Other parents rose and came to the shoreline, alert to something in my voice. “Bring them in,” I told them.

“What?” the woman in the red suit asked.

She was at least a foot taller than I was, but somehow it felt like I was looking into her eyes on a level. “I don't know,” I said. “But I'm never wrong when I get this feeling. Bring them in.”

I rushed out and took Katie by the wrist. “Justin,” I heard the woman in the red suit call. “Come in now, honey.” The other parents started calling in their kids nervously.

And suddenly I understood why I felt someone was missing: The sky was empty of birds. I scanned the horizon. The wall of clouds in the west had gathered itself into a ball, blacker and much closer now. And rolling—tumbling over itself, it was coming so fast, like a bowling ball hurled down the curve of the coast. “Look. There.” I pointed to it, and just as I did, a thread of lightning sizzled down from the thunderheads and danced a second on the sea.

I got Katie to the towels and dried her off, counting to the first muffled clap of thunder. The storm was about three miles away. Parents were running into the water now, grabbing their kids, splashing back to shore.

I tugged Katie's T-shirt and sneakers on, stuffed everything else into the beach bag. The sky grew darker suddenly, and a cool wind gusted up, chopping into the water, which had turned the color of steel. Around us, the other families were gathering themselves, hurrying.

I glanced up and saw another silver bolt snake through
the sky, jagged as broken glass. The crack of thunder followed right away—this storm meant business. “Hurry up, kidlet.” I took Katie's hand and pulled her along as fast as her little legs could go.

Halfway to the parking lot, it began to rain—fat, cold drops that seemed to be in a hurry to get to the ground before the big show. The wind picked up against us. The rain was pelting down so hard now that each drop sent shots of sand spattering our calves.

“It's biting me!” Katie cried.

“Faster, Katie, hurry.”

At the parking lot, families who had been at the nearer jetties were already piling into cars and peeling out. I hurried Katie up the road, the rain sheeting down now so that it was hard to see. We ducked into the woods, where the rain poured off the leaves in drenching curtains and the trees shook with each thunderclap. The pine needles and sand made a slippery muck and Katie kept falling, so I scooped her into my arms and scrambled up the path behind the cottages.

In the clearing, the air around us felt like a solid living thing, glimmering a sick yellow through the rain. It suddenly split in two right above us with a crack so loud, I thought my rib cage had exploded. A pine branch crashed to the ground behind us. Katie screamed and dug her
fingers into my neck, and I flat-out raced across the yard to Sandpiper. And only as I pulled out the key did I recognize it from every illustration of Ben Franklin discovering electricity the hard way. I dropped Katie, opened the door, and threw the key down, then grabbed her again and tumbled with her to the couch.

I got Katie into dry clothes, and we watched the storm. It was over quickly, racing away as fast as it had come in. Afterward, Katie wouldn't leave my side. A branch had broken a windowpane in the kitchen, and she sat on her hands on the counter, perfectly still, while I pulled out the shards of glass and taped in a square of cardboard I'd cut from a Wheaties box. Even though the sun came out, she didn't want to go outside, so we settled on the couch with grilled cheese sandwiches and played Candy Land, her hand curled in mine.

“She was the first one! Nobody else saw it!” Katie told her parents over and over when they got home.

Katie's mother couldn't stop thanking me. “We heard about the storm and raced home as fast as we could. We were so afraid you were stuck at the beach.” When she paid me, she gave me an extra twenty. “It doesn't begin to thank you,” she said. “I really can't thank you enough for being so responsible. I'm sure you make your family very proud.”

 

It was like a different day—the sun was low and the air was cool now, and so clear that on the horizon I could see a humped shape that must be Nantucket. I walked across the yard, covered now with branches and leaves, wishing I wasn't so mad at Angel—I wanted to tell someone about my day.

No. I wanted to tell
Angel
about it.

When I got inside, the living room was dark. At first I thought the storm had knocked out the power, but no, it was just that the shades were down. I closed the door behind me, and Angel stepped out of the shadows.

“Happy birthday to you,” she sang. Her face was beaming in the light of twelve wooden matches planted in the frosting of a cake. “I made it yesterday when you were at the beach. Mrs. Plover picked up the stuff at the store for me,” Angel said in a rush. “It's just a mix and the frosting's canned, so I thought, Hey, that's easy, I can handle it. But look—it's all crooked and saggy. That's why I took your Heloise folder. I'm sorry. I was looking for a hint to fix it, but I couldn't tell you, because it would ruin the surprise.”

“Oh, Angel…thank you!” I stared between Angel's face, grinning with pride, and the cake she'd made, feeling stupid because I couldn't come up with the words I
really wanted to say. “Thank you,” I said again. “Thank you, Angel!”

Angel pulled me into the kitchen and sat me at the table. She had set it with Louise's good china and silver, and a vase of roses and daylilies. She filled two crystal wineglasses with water and cut two big slices of cake. Her smile fell. “It's all soupy inside. I messed it up—it's not cooked enough….”

“No, it's good that way. I hate dry cake. And it's not your fault. Louise's oven is out of whack—it runs cool,” I lied. “I should have told you.”

Angel's face relaxed, and we ate the cake. And it was good—really good—like cake with batter in it.

“Angel,” I said, as we sat at the table licking the last frosting off our forks, “you're always acting so tough, like you don't care. About George, about Louise, about me. But then you do these things….” I raised my hands to the cake and the flowers. “You're such a Yankee!”

Angel put her fork down, wary. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Before I could answer, the phone rang. We both jumped.

Angel snatched it up. “No, we're fine. Yep, we have power.” She mouthed “George” at me and flicked some pretend sweat from her forehead.

“Tell him a kitchen window broke in Sandpiper. We
need a pane of glass.”

Angel did, and then she listened some more. “No, you just missed her. Ah…them. You just missed her and her boyfriend.” Whatever the response was made her squeeze her eyes shut, as though it hurt to hear it. “Well, how about you just mail it, okay?…No…Well, okay, see you soon.”

She hung up and swore. “He's on his way over. Some papers that won't wait.” Angel spread her hands.

“We'd better clean up.”

She looked around the kitchen. Her gaze rested on the fancy china and wineglasses on the table. “Or not….”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, maybe he's not in love with her. But we still need him to believe in Louise's boyfriend.” Angel ran out the back door, and I heard her clang open the recycling bin.

She came back again carrying an empty wine bottle. She placed it on the table next to the glasses, then dashed upstairs and came down with a can of hairspray and a tube of Louise's lipstick. Hairspray clouded the kitchen. “Best I could do. No perfume.” Then she smeared some lipstick on and pressed one of the glasses to her mouth a couple of times. She held the glass up and nodded. “Okay, now for the last touch.”

Angel left one more time, and came back with the cigar that had been in Mr. Gull's suit jacket. She lit a match to
one end, ran the other under the faucet, then laid the cigar on one of the cake plates. “What a slob. I don't know what Louise sees in him. Okay, does it look like they've had a romantic evening?”

“Let's hope so,” I said. “Because George just pulled in.”

From the minute he walked in, it was clear he wasn't in any mood to hear about Louise's romance. He dropped a letter onto the table. “You girls give her this and have her call me as soon as she gets in.”

“She might be out pretty late.” Angel picked up a wineglass and studied it. “It's amazing she left this much lipstick on here, with the amount of kissing they were doing.”

George tapped the letter. “The Board of Appeals says they never got our petition. They sent the paperwork a month ago, and she was supposed to have it in last week. The Zoning Committee meets on the twenty-fifth. This isn't like her.”

“She's been pretty confused lately…,” Angel tried. “What with her boyfriend turning up after all these years.”

“Pretty confused? Something's going on with her. Something's not right.” He picked up the letter again and flipped it back down. “I'll be back Saturday. No need to mow, it's been so hot, but I'll come for the trash and I'll fix that window. You tell her I'm going to need those forms by then.”

George left, and Angel and I stood at the open door, watching his taillights flicker away.

Once we found the forms George's letter was referring to in the mail basket, it wasn't actually that hard: square footage of the cottages, distance to the wetlands, number of bathrooms, annual rental income. I did the math while Angel practiced Louise's handwriting; then she filled in the numbers I gave her.

“Why are you bothering to figure it all out?” she asked. “All that matters is that it's filled in, so George doesn't freak out.”