The Beach House (25 page)

Not that she didn’t enjoy it once they had started, but she was never the instigator, never the one who leaned over and started stroking his thigh, or snuggled up to him, reaching down to rub his stomach, reaching lower, and lower.

She was someone, she decided at some point during her marriage, who didn’t have a high libido. She had forgotten about the times when she was single, the flings she had, the relationships where the excitement, the thrill, the sheer lust were enough to drive her crazy.

She had forgotten what it felt like, to look at another person and feel a flash of heat, imagine what it would be like to caress their stomach, bury your nose into their neck just to smell them, feel their strong hands around your waist, lifting you up, turning you over.

She had forgotten.

Now she remembers.

Bee swings up to the front door in a crunch of gravel, and gets out of the car, her face frantic with worry.

"What is it?” Nan is on her knees pulling weeds out of the gravel. “Are the girls okay?”

“Yes.” Bee’s voice is breathless. “It’s my dad. I need to see Daniel. Is he here?”

“I’ll go and get him.” Nan gets up quickly and lays a hand on Bee’s arm as she passes her, a quick reassuring squeeze. Whatever is wrong, Nan knows that it will pass. One of the other joys of getting older, she has realized: you become more accepting, of both the good and the bad.

Daniel had said it hadn’t gone well when he had told Bee the truth, and however much she likes Daniel, and she does, she feels for Bee, knows what it is like to suddenly be a single mother, to have the rug pulled out from under your feet when you think that everything in your life is perfect.

And there is more than that. There is something about Bee that touches her heart. She doesn’t know what it is, and this is a woman she has barely spoken to, but there is something about her eyes, the sadness, that is so familiar to Nan it is almost painful.

“What is it?” Daniel comes rushing out, his reluctance forgotten once Nan told him there was something wrong. He hasn’t seen Bee in two days, but was planning on having the girls the next day, and was already dreading seeing her, dreading the force of her anger, her bitterness and fury.

“My dad,” Bee says, and finally she allows herself to crumple, and Daniel steps forward and takes her in his arms, resting his chin on her head as he has always done, rubbing her back in a gesture at once so familiar and now so alien. He doesn’t know if he is supposed to be doing this, but he doesn’t know what else to do, and this is Bee. His wife of six years, the mother of his children. A woman he loves. A woman he may always love, just not in the way she has always wanted.

“What is it?” Daniel says when her tears have subsided and she seems to realize where she is, pulling abruptly away and wiping her wet cheeks.

“He’s had a fall. The hospital called this morning. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness.”

“Oh God.” Daniels eyes widen. “Is he going to be okay?”

“They don’t know. I have to go, though. The girls are playing with the next-door neighbors at the house and I don’t want them to hear there’s anything wrong with Poppa, but there’s a flight to La Guardia this afternoon. Can you take the girls?”

“Of course.” Daniel doesn’t hesitate. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Bee shakes her head. “I’ll phone when I get there. I’ll drop the girls back here in about an hour.”

“Fine. And Bee, I’m sorry. I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

Bee doesn’t say anything. She turns and walks back to her car, and Daniel wants to reach out to her, make it better, but there’s nothing he can do.

Bee is shaking so hard she has to pull over at the side of the dirt track from Nan’s house. She buries her head in her hands and lets the proper crying start. “Why me?” she screams out to the silence of the empty road. “Why is this happening to
me
?”

For Bee is not used to not being in control of her life. Bee is, has always been, the golden girl. Good things happen to Bee, not things like this. Not her husband leaving her and announcing he is gay. Not her father falling and there being no one other than Bee who could possibly look after him.

And her father is not old, for God’s sake. It’s not like he’s a frail old man who is destined to be ill. He may be seventy, but he is the healthiest, fittest seventy-year-old she has ever seen, looks years younger, everyone has always said so.

As the only child of divorced parents, Bee has always known, has always assumed, that at some point the roles would be reversed and she would have to look after her parents. Not her mother so much—her mother remarried ten years ago and Fred adores her, and even if he were to go first, her mother would be okay. But her father has never found anyone since he divorced Bee’s mother. He has seemed to withdraw more and more the older he has become, and Bee has had to step into a parental role, phoning him every day, making sure he is okay, inviting him to their house for all the holidays, even, on occasion, trying to introduce him to nice women she has met.

But this she isn’t ready for. Not yet. He isn’t supposed to have falls, or serious illnesses, or anything serious for years. He’s her father, for heaven’s sake. He’s the one who’s supposed to be looking after her, particularly now, when her entire life is falling apart.

Why is this happening to her now?

Bee screams and howls, the wind carrying her anguish away, and when the rage has finally dissipated she breathes slowly and deeply, then turns the engine back on. “I can do this,” she tells herself, driving down the road past all the new construction, the builders looking at her curiously, her eyes clearly red and raw from crying. “I can do this,” she says, and by the time she turns onto the main road, she knows she can.

Lizzie and Stella are already at home at Windermere. Nan comes out, barely able to contain her excitement at having the two little girls stay, and takes them both by the hand.

“I’ve got trunks full of wonderful dress-up clothes,” she tells them, leaning down so she is on their level. “Sparkly gowns and velvet capes.”

“Do you have fairy dresses?” Lizzie asks.

“Most definitely,” Nan assures her. “And somewhere I should even have genuine fairy tiaras. Did you know that a few little girls who have stayed here have even seen real fairies in the garden?”

“No!” Lizzie’s eyes widen as she looks at Nan. “Real ones? What do they look like?”

“Oh they’re quite beautiful,” Nan says. “But they only come if you build houses for them.”

“Houses? What kind of houses? How do you build a fairy house?”

“You have to use only natural things, like shells from the beach, and twigs, and grass to tie things together. You have to make them a roof so they don’t get wet, and a bed to sleep on, and then they’ll come back. I haven’t had fairies in this garden for a while, but no one has built them a house.”

“Can we build them a house?” Stella asks.

“Well, I suppose we could,” Nan says, and the girls leap up and down with joy.

Michael watches Nan from the doorway with a smile. It is astonishing, really, how she has come to life, surrounded by people. Of course when he was a child here, Windermere was always filled with people, with laughter, with life. But after his father died everything seemed to shut down, and he never would have thought it possible for the house to recapture some of the glamour of days gone by.

The window frames are still rotting in places, numerous shingles are missing on the roof, there is clearly an extraordinary amount of work needed to restore Windermere to its former glory, but the house feels again like the house he grew up in, like a house that contains both history and happiness.

Michael was concerned when he first heard Nan was opening up her house to strangers, concerned when she told him about their financial situation, not that he was surprised.

He is apprehensive about telling her his true thoughts, that he thinks she should sell. He loves Windermere, would hate to leave it, but while renting rooms out for a summer may bring her a sense of security, there’s no way it’s going to save the house.

While the house does look better than it has done in years, the improvements are so clearly superficial. A coat of paint may temporarily hide the wood rotting away underneath, but it won’t hide it for very long. You can seal the cracks in the windows, oil the hinges, patch things up for a while, but here on Nantucket he’s not sure the house will survive another winter.

The money isn’t in the house, Michael knows that, but in the land, and the small amount of research he has done leads him to believe the right developer will pay a fortune for their land.

If it were up to him, he would sell today. Install Nan in a gorgeous cottage, one that is newly built, that needs little money for maintenance, can still give her a garden, an ocean view. He loves this house but he is not sentimental about it, not in the way that Nan is, which is why he hasn’t talked to her about it, not properly.

She will not leave. Perhaps at some point, perhaps when she realizes there is no other way . . . Until that time, until she realizes that a few hundred dollars a week will go almost nowhere, Michael will let her believe that everything will be fine, will let her hold on to her fantasy awhile longer.

Look at how happy she is now, with the little girls looking adoringly up at her as she leads them inside to find the sparkly, glittery clothes in the dress-up trunks she had been saving for . . . what? Granddaughters?

Michael sighs. Life isn’t running the course he had expected it to. He thought he was perfectly happy, safe, secure in his job, in his life in New York City, and now here he is, back home, on a hiatus from his life.

Look at the others living here at Windermere. Daff who thought her marriage was fine until her husband had an affair, who loves her daughter but doesn’t have her daughter. Daniel who has spent his entire life living a lie.

His mother may be living in something of a fantasy world, but at least she is happy. At least she knows what she needs to be happy: her house, her family, being surrounded by people she enjoys.

It is time, he thinks, that he figures out exactly what
he
needs to be happy, and exactly where he ought to be going next. Lost in thought, he turns and goes inside to get a pen and piece of paper from the kitchen, and opening the phone book he starts to jot down the addresses of all the jewelry stores on the island.

It’s time to take the next step.

Bee lays her head against the backseat of the town car and closes her eyes. She is exhausted in a way she didn’t know possible, emotionally drained, like a rag doll that has lost all its stuffing.

After all the pain, the anger, the anguish and fear of the last few weeks, all that is left is numbness. She closes her eyes and fantasizes about sleep. About going to bed for weeks, cocooning herself in a soft, dark, warm bed, not waking up at all until things are back to normal. But even she doesn’t know what normal is anymore. It’s not as if she can fantasize about Daniel coming home, not now. There isn’t any hope left at all, just a desire to close her eyes and sleep and sleep and sleep.

Bee knocks gently on the hospital door then pushes it open when she doesn’t hear anything.

Her dad is lying in bed, eyes closed, tubes running into his arms. He looks utterly familiar and so different at the same time, the same father she has always known and loved, but old, lying here so frail and weak, helpless as a child.

“Dad?” She chokes back a tear and leans over him, almost jumping as he opens his eyes.

“Bee!” He smiles, and raises his arms, and she lies on his chest, squeezing him tightly.

“Ouch!” he says. “Not too tight.”

“Sorry, Dad.” She wipes her eyes. “Oh Dad, I was so worried. I thought you were unconscious.”

“I was, but then I was just sleeping. I’m glad you’re here, Beezy.”

Bee is relieved that, up close, he still smells like Dad, still smells like home, and in the safety of the crook of his neck she feels the tears well up again. For a moment she fights the desire to curl up in the safety of his embrace, like a little girl whose daddy can rescue her from everything.

She blinks back the tears and forces a smile. “Thanks for dragging me away from the beach.”

“I figured you’d have forgotten about me,” he says. “Throwing myself down the stairs was the only way I could think of to get you to remember your old dad.”

Bee grins, her first genuine smile in what feels like weeks.

“Well, I’m here now. Happy?”

“Better now that I’m seeing you,” he says, his eyes softening.

“What happened?” she asks. “Do you remember?”

“No idea,” he says. “I don’t remember a thing, but the pain is excruciating.”

“Do they think you need a hip replacement?”

“I’m having another x-ray this afternoon. I’ve been completely out of it. Maybe you can sit down with the doctors and find out.”

“Of course,” Bee says. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“It’s me.” Bee paces in the waiting room as she calls Daniel’s cell phone. She never knows what to say these days. When they were together she never had to introduce herself, and now saying, “It’s Bee,” sounds too formal, ridiculous when just a few weeks ago no introduction was necessary.

“I know,” Daniel says. “How’s your dad?”

“He’s going to be okay,” she says. “We’re waiting for the results of an x-ray, but the worst-case scenario is a hip replacement and then recuperation, but given that he fell down a flight of stairs, it could have been so much worse.”

“Thank God,” Daniel says, and he is relieved. He likes Evan, has always considered himself lucky to have in-laws he got on with, considered part of his family. One of the hardest things about separating with Bee is, he now realizes, separating from her family, knowing that they will never look at him in the same light again, will never again welcome him into their arms as the son they always wanted but never had.