The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (18 page)

16

I
T WAS A WEEK LATER, JUST AS SCHOOL WAS STARTING
and
summer ending—not the calendar summer with its final segue into the autumnal equinox, but the real summer, the summer of the beach and crabbing and Good Humors and endless free time—when Annie finally got together with Eliza. Dan had driven her over to Black Hall so the girls could spend the day together.

Eliza was paler than ever.

That was the first thing Annie saw. The second thing was that she was also, impossibly, even skinnier. And the third thing was that she had fine scars, like the almost invisible tentacles of jellyfish, crisscrossing her forearms and the backs of her hands and the calves of her legs. Some scars were old and white and others were fresh and red. Billy was right: Eliza was a cutter.

“So, where were you?” Annie asked as the two girls walked down the sandy road toward the beach. Not to actually
go
to the beach, of course. They both hated the sun, and kept to the shade. But just for something to do, to get away from parental observation.

“Your mom's hand is still bandaged,” Eliza said, as if she hadn't heard.

“Yes, she cut it.”

“I know. My dad told me. He drove her to the clinic.”

“Just like he did when they were young and she got hurt helping him build the boardwalk.”

“He's a regular freaking knight in shining armor.” Eliza chuckled. “Is the boardwalk he built still here? I want to see it.”

“Where were you?” Annie asked again.

“My dad likes your mom,” Eliza said bluntly, once more dodging the question.

“She likes him, too. She loves her old friends.”

“But what if they really like each other? What if they end up falling in love with each other? What if we end up being stepsisters? You don't want to move out of your house and I don't want to move out of my house, so we'll all end up fighting and hating each other.”

“You're crazy,” Annie said, laughing. “They're just friends. That's all.”

“Bingo! You got it right!” Eliza said.

“That they're just friends?”

“No, that I'm crazy. That's where I was—in the bin.”

“‘The bin'?”

“The loony bin. The nuthouse,” Eliza said in a loud voice, even though they were passing people in their yards. She might just as easily be saying she'd been at school, at camp, on vacation. Annie swallowed hard, looking at Eliza to see if she was kidding. She wore a long slinky black dress with an artificial flower pinned to the bodice, and a floppy yellow hat.

“You're joking,” Annie said.

“Nope. I was at Banquo Hospital in Delmont, Massachusetts. My alma mater. I kind of have D.I.D. and P.T.S.D. and I've been there . . . a few times.”

“Why?” Annie asked.

“Because . . . sometimes I can't keep myself safe,” Eliza said.

Annie scrunched up her face. Now, that sounded crazy. How hard could it be, to keep herself “safe”?

“What do you mean?” Annie asked, but she found her eyes moving to the scars on Eliza's arms.

“Don't you ever do it?” Eliza asked, her eyes shining. “Hurt yourself?”

“On purpose? Why would I do that?”

“To let the real pain out!” Eliza said. “You know, you have so much
inside . . . like I do . . . doesn't the pressure ever build up so much you have to let it out?”

“By hurting myself?”

“Sticking yourself with pins, writing on your skin with a razor blade?” Eliza asked, as if it was the most normal, sensible solution in the world. “Putting your finger in a candle flame?” At that, she showed Annie the tip of her right index finger: dark and thickly callused, as if it had been passed through fire over and over.

“Eliza, you ARE weird,” Annie said.

“Actually, everyone else is,” Eliza said, shrugging huffily and walking ahead, a straight pencil line of a girl, so thin she could almost be taken for the shadow of a bare branch. When she turned around, she was grinning, as if she had something really great to say and couldn't keep it in another minute. She cupped the flower pinned to her chest.

“I love this,” she said. “It was my mother's. And she got it from
her
mother. Isn't it beautiful and old-fashioned?”

“It is,” Annie agreed.

“No one wears flowers pinned to their dresses anymore, right? Isn't it original, for someone our age?”

“Very.”

“They wouldn't let me have it at the hospital. Because of the pin,” Eliza said. “No sharps.”

“Sharps?”

“Pins, needles and thread, even the silver spiral on spiral-bound notebooks. No razors in the shower—all the girls there have the hairiest legs you've ever seen.”

“Gross!” Annie said.

“I know. The first thing I did when I got home was say ‘Dad, you're getting me an electric shaver, or I'm out of here on the next tide.' ”

“Did he get it for you?” Annie asked, bending slightly and lifting Eliza's long skirt, to view her smooth legs. “Looks like he did.”

“Yeah. I love my dad,” Eliza said. “Even if he hates me.”

“There is no way he hates you.”

“You don't have the whole story yet,” Eliza said. “We might be best-friends-to-be, but we have a few secrets from each other still. Can't rush these things. I learned that in the bin, where we're all like drowning people in a lifeboat together, clinging to each other and best-friends-for-life . . . until we walk out the door and never see each other again. ‘Write me, call me, I'll never forget you!' But we do forget . . . Hey, is that my father's boardwalk?”

“Yes, it is,” Annie said.

Together they walked up the steps—in silence, with reverence—as if they were making a pilgrimage. To Notre Dame, Mecca, the Taj Mahal, St. Patrick's Cathedral: a sacred, holy place, the boardwalk at Hubbard's Point.

“Just imagine,” Eliza said, crouching down to brush the boards with her fingertips, “how long it must have taken my father to build this.”

“With my mom helping him,” Annie said.

With tiny steps, making sure her toes touched each and every board, Eliza began to walk the length of the span. As boardwalks went, Annie knew that this one wasn't very long. Just about fifty yards from end to end, with a blue-roofed pavilion in its center, to shade people from the sun.

On one side, the boardwalk gave onto the beach itself, the white strand easing down into the sea. On the other side, the boardwalk was lined with benches backed by a chest-high white fence designed to keep people from pitching into the boat basin, about fifteen feet below.

“What was here before my dad built the boardwalk?” Eliza asked.

“Well, there was always a boardwalk,” Annie said. “I think he actually replaced an old one that washed away in a hurricane.”

“Do you have a boat in there?” Eliza asked, still taking mincingly small steps as she gestured at the boat basin.

“No,” Annie said. “I wish I did. My dad's boat was too big to fit in there; he kept it at the marina in town. But my dad was going to hire your dad to build me a boat,” Annie said.

“I know. He told me.”

“I wish it had happened,” Annie said.

“There aren't many rowboats in there now,” Eliza said, checking out the boats.

“No,” Annie said. “It's pretty funny, actually. My mom said that when she was young, it was totally tidal—filled with water at high tide, but dry at low. The boats were all small and wooden, with a few Boston Whalers. There was an island in the middle, where the swans could build their nest . . .” Annie looked at the ugly corrugated steel forming the basin itself, recalling her mother's description of graceful stone walls. “A lot of the new people at the beach call this ‘the yacht basin' now.”

“New people,” Eliza said. “I'm guessing you and your family are ‘the old people.' ”

“Yep. Been here forever. That's why I wish we had a little boat to go in the boat basin,” she said sadly. “Because it would be so right . . .”

“And you could row me around.”

“Yes,” Annie said, smiling. “I could row you around.”

The two girls stared at the basin's still surface, as if they could both imagine the rowboat, as if they were already rocking on the water. Annie could feel the gentle motion, she could hear the peaceful waves.

“It's nice here,” Eliza said, looking around at the pretty cottages, at the boardwalk along the white beach.

“People fall in love here,” Annie said. “That's what everyone says. The air is filled with magic, or something.”

“I don't want to fall in love,” Eliza said. “Ever. It leads to pain.”

“Well, there are lots of different kinds of love,” Annie said. “And it's all here at Hubbard's Point. A lot of these cottages are owned by different family members. Sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, kids . . . and they all come back, year after year, to be together.”

“Really?” Eliza asked wistfully.

“Yep. People at the Point call them their ‘beloveds.' It doesn't matter whether you're married, or even related—you can love anyone. My mother's best friend, Tara—you met her—lives right across the creek from us. They've been best friends since they were young.”

“Our age?”

“Even younger,” Annie said. “And their grandmothers were best friends, too—they met on the boat from Ireland. My mother said they grabbed onto each other's hands and never let go.”

With that, she felt Eliza grab hold of her hand, look into her eyes. “Like that?” Eliza asked.

“Yes,” Annie said, nodding. “I think so.”

“Do you think best friends can last forever? Through anything?”

Annie thought back to the mess Tara had made with her mother and Mrs. Renwick, one of the people her father had stolen from. The whole thing had sort of blown up.

And her mother had been so humiliated, she had managed to bang her head and cut her hand while trying to get away without making Mrs. Renwick even more upset. Although her mother could have been really mad at Tara for it, she just kind of laughed and said she'd figure out a way to get her back, after she strangled her.

“Yes,” Annie said. “I do.”

“Then, if I never let go of your hand,” Eliza said, “do you think we can be like the beloved grandmothers? And have little white houses together here at Hubbard's Point?”

“The beloved grannies,” Annie said, smiling at the thought. “I think we could!”

“And in a hundred years,” Eliza said, “our granddaughters will be standing right here in this same spot, talking about rowboats and imagining how their families got here. And it will be from this very second—where we decided to be best friends.”

“Forever,” Annie said.

“Forever,” Eliza said. And with that, another generation of Hubbard's Point beloveds was born.

17

M
OM, WHAT
'
S D.I.D?
”
ANNIE ASKED JUST BEFORE
she was leaving for school the next Monday.

“That's how you spell ‘did,' ” Billy called from the breakfast table. “As in, ‘Did you know I really really don't want to go to school?' ”

Annie ignored him with such impressive equanimity that Bay had to smile.

“Seriously, Mom. What do the letters D-I-D stand for?”

“I'm not sure, honey.”

“Then, what's P.T.S.D.?”

“I think that's ‘post-traumatic stress disorder,' ” Bay said. “People who've been through trauma sometimes suffer from it.”

“Like Vietnam vets,” Billy said. “I saw it in the movies. Why? You know someone who's been to war?”

“Not that kind of war,” Annie said softly. “I wonder what D.I.D. is, though. I'm going to look it up at the school library.”

“It's great to hear you wanting to learn something new,” Bay said, knowing that the questions had to do with Eliza.

Annie's eyes met her mother's. “She's my best friend,” Annie said. “I want to know everything about her.”

Bay hugged her just as the bus pulled up outside and the phone rang. Kissing all three kids good-bye, she answered the phone, pulling it with her as she waved at them from the door.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Bay.”

“Dan! Hi,” she said, Annie's questions fresh in her mind.

“Last time I checked, your hand was healing nicely. You were almost ready to grab a hammer again.”

Bay smiled. “Almost,” she said, flexing her palm, looking down at the bandage. “How are you?”

“I'm great. Listen, I'm almost finished restoring an old catboat, and I wondered whether you'd like to come out for a sail.”

“A sail?” Bay asked.

“The sea trial,” he laughed. “Where I make sure she's seaworthy. You know, I figured it would remind you of walking the boardwalk for the first time, checking to make sure all the boards were secure.”

“Sure,” Bay said, looking out the kitchen door at the black car driving past. Joe Holmes had taken the surveillance off her family, but she was pretty sure he still patrolled once in a while. What other unmarked black car with two guys in suits would go sliding through Hubbard's Point?

“When would you like to go?” Dan asked.

“Well, I need to make some job search calls today,” she said, “and if I get something, I'll have to start right away . . .”

“Keeping that in mind, what about trying for Saturday?” Dan asked. “The weather's supposed to be mild, and maybe we'll have some better wind than today. Late afternoon? Five or so?”

“Sounds good,” Bay said. “See you then.”

She held on to the phone, glancing down at the classifieds covering her kitchen table. Across the marsh Tara's house gleamed in the sunlight, her hollyhocks and morning glories waving in the breeze. Bay dialed the number.

“Hi,” Bay said.

“Hi. I saw the bus. Are they off?”

“Yep—it's just me and the classifieds. Though Danny just called to ask me to go sailing.”

“Really? That's great, Bay. The classifieds, though . . . I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“But I feel it is,” Tara said. “I should have known better. It's just that I know you separately, you and Augusta, and I love and adore you, and like and respect her, and her gardens need help, and I know that Sean hurt you both, and I just thought—”

“I know. Please, Tara—don't,” Bay said quickly, to stop the apology, and because she still couldn't stand thinking about how distraught Mrs. Renwick had been.

“See? You're still upset,” Tara said. “I knew it.”

“I guess I am, a little,” Bay said. “But not at you. You were trying to help. Anyway, I'm going to get busy. Maybe I'll try some of the garden centers and see if they're looking for help. Being a gardener was your idea—I have you to thank for that.”

“Thanks for nothing, after what happened,” Tara said. “I'm going to make it up to you. I swear, I am. With God as my witness . . .”

“Tara, it's okay,” Bay said. “Stop, okay? I'll see you later.”

She hung up and looked out the window. There was Tara standing in
her
kitchen window. They raised hands in a small wave. How often they had reached out to each other like this over the years . . .

Bay thought of the time their two grannies, both about eighty, had decided to take a trip back to Ireland. They were widows by then, and they hadn't set foot on Irish soil since they'd first come to America. Bay and Tara were sixteen; they had just gotten their driver's licenses. Tara's mother had told her she could drive their grandmothers to the airport limo in New Haven—but when they got there, all it took was one look between the girls to know they were taking them all the way to New York.

Bay remembered Tara driving to Bridgeport, then switching so Bay could drive the rest of the way. She recalled the thrill and tension of driving into the morass of New York traffic.

Relying solely on Tara's navigation and map-reading—through the Bronx, over the Whitestone Bridge, onto the truck-and-yellow-taxi-studded Van Wyck Expressway—Bay managed to get them to the Aer Lingus terminal at JFK airport. And Bay and Tara had stood at the International Departures concourse, waving at their two grandmothers, holding hands as they walked onto the ramp to their plane.

She had been grounded for coming home four hours later than planned and for the next week she had waved through the window as Tara—whose mother was less strict than Bay's—walked or rode her bike past the cottage every chance she got.

And Bay remembered waving to Tara from the podium at her college graduation, from the back of Sean's motorcycle, the summer he had a BMW, from the altar at each of her children's christenings, and, embarrassed, from the deck of the
Aldebaran
, the first time he brought it over to Hubbard's Point, to moor off the beach so everyone would see.

Life had a way of gaining meaning when she could share it with Tara. Mulling over the details of their days, observations and overheard bits of conversation, turning their hearts inside out.

Their friendship was old and burnished; Bay couldn't imagine anything that would breech it. She and Tara were the Irish Sisterhood, heirs to their grandmothers.

What good was a sisterhood without sisters?

TARA HUNG UP THE PHONE.

No matter what Bay said, Tara was determined to make it up to her.

Hopping on her bike, Tara rode through beach roads. She stopped along the way, picking a bouquet of asters, goldenrod, and Queen Anne's lace, wildflowers to hand to Bay along with a poem she had spent a few sleepless nights composing.

The poem was short in length, full in meaning, punchy yet lyrical, heartfelt to the very tips of her toes.

She'd been browsing in Andy's Used Records yesterday, looking for a way to say with music the sentiments she had so far been too upset to articulate to Bay's face. But she had run smack into Joe Holmes at the “British Invasion” rack and had attempted to slink out of the aisle like a criminal on the FBI's top ten wanted list.

“Miss O'Toole?” he had called after her, dropping his
Let it Bleed
on the floor in a suave crime-fighting move.

Tara tried to ignore him, but he followed her into the parking lot. Evading the FBI in a town as small as Black Hall was guaranteed to be a losing proposition, so she turned to face him.

“Why are you still here?” she asked.

“Oh, tying up loose ends.”

“Well. I certainly wish you'd tie them up and solve this case.”

His eyes widened, and Tara couldn't believe she'd said that. He was very cute, in a geeky, federal agent sort of way—short brown hair, worry lines around his eyes, a bulge under his jacket that had to be a Glock 9, or something of that nature.

“I'm sorry for being rude,” she said. “But my friend has had about as much as she can take.”

“I know. And I'm very sorry about that. But I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that I have a case to investigate, and I still have lots of unanswered questions.”

“Well, have you talked to the women Sean was seeing? I believe the most recent one was Lindsey Beale, a banker who lives in Westerly, I think,” Tara said, wanting to be helpful, but also hoping to remind him that Sean's bad behavior had taken him east of Black Hall, and enjoying the idea of Lindsey's sharing in some of Bay's current misery. Maybe he should concentrate his efforts in Rhode Island. . . .

“Generally I ask the questions,” Agent Holmes said, half-smiling. “But yes. I have.”

“Humph. Good,” Tara said, finding herself uncomfortably diverted by the agent's crooked half-smile. Sort of an Elvis-y thing, half lust and half evil. Or maybe half lust-and-evil together, and the other half sarcasm. Tara wasn't sure. She was very good at flirting, but when she really liked someone, she sometimes found herself groping for words.

“Miss O'Toole,” he said. “I know we took up a lot of your time at the beginning of this investigation, but a few things have come to light, and I was wondering . . .”

“Whether you could interrogate me again? Go ahead. Ask away.”

Agent Holmes flinched slightly. Once again, she had knocked the man off balance. Had he been planning to haul her into the FBI office? She checked her watch. Even though she had nowhere pressing to go, she didn't want him to think that she was a woman without a destination.

“Fine,” he said. And then he'd asked her a series of questions about offshore bank accounts, a safety-deposit box, and a silver cup. Tara listened, not really able to offer anything helpful.

“Sorry,” she said. “The kids had silver baby cups . . . they used to drink their juice from them sometimes. Bay's mother gave them each one when they were born. And Sean had a bunch of trophy-type cups, from basketball seasons gone by . . .”

“This cup is very old,” he said. “More like a goblet, no handles . . . would you take a look at it? It's in the office.”

“Sure,” Tara said.

Agent Holmes led her across the parking lot, toward a curtained storefront between the record store and coffee shop. Tara's pulse increased—not only because she was about to enter an FBI office, but because Agent Holmes had a really terrific, playful, and coconspiratorial smile. He almost made her think he
needed
her to solve this case. “I wish you could tell me why he did it,” Agent Holmes said, reaching into his pocket for his keys.

“Why Sean did it?” Tara asked. “I wish you could tell me the same thing.”

“Were there signs?”

“We ask ourselves that,” Tara said, staring east, toward the beach. Even here in town, the air smelled like salt. “Did we ever know him at all?”

“You knew him a long time,” he said. “Hard for a con man to fool everyone his whole life.”

“Well, maybe it wasn't his whole life. But do people really . . . go bad?” Tara asked. “Like just out of the blue?”

“Depends on how you define ‘bad,' ” the agent said, unlocking the door. Tara followed him inside and was surprised to see the place looking like a small, one-man insurance agency: fax machine, copier, computer, phone, piles of papers, McDonald's wrappers in the trash.

“What do you mean?” Tara asked, breathing in his aftershave—spicy, with hints of lemon and cinnamon—as he leaned across her to hit the overhead lights.

“Well, the FBI has a fairly broad definition of ‘bad.' But the average person's definition is even broader. When a man starts cheating on his wife, for example; it might be morally wrong, therefore ‘bad,' but not necessarily criminal.”

“So, you're asking me when Sean started misbehaving?” Tara asked. “Or when he became a criminal? And does one lead to the other?”

“Hard to say,” the agent said. “Sometimes, but not always.”

“Well, Sean was always wild. A basketball star and powerboat guy who loved to drink beer and party. She was such a classic good girl, and opposites attract. Right?”

“Seems that way,” Joe said, making Tara blush.

“Well, anyway, it was one thing when we were kids. But it was another when he started running around, going to the casino.”

“Was that a change in behavior—going to the casino, I mean?”

“The casinos weren't always here. When we were growing up, eastern Connecticut was a bucolic little haven. Seaports on the shoreline, farms and cows inland. Lots of stone walls. But suddenly it's become Vegas in the Nutmeg State. I don't think anyone who grew up here saw it coming.”

“Did Sean get into going right away?”

“No—in fact, he used to gripe that the casinos would make it harder for him to get to his boat. The traffic would be worse, and he'd be stuck inching along on I-Ninety-five. He'd say that that part of the state was depressed, that his bank was always foreclosing on homes and farms out that way. And it was immoral, for the casinos to even exist—taking money from out-of-work people who couldn't even afford to feed their families.”

“But he started eventually . . .”

“Yes. A lot of people who stayed away at first—boycotting them, in effect—were curious. Sean took Bay to see a show there, his first time. Carly Simon, a few years ago. I went with them, with a date, and we all stayed to gamble. It was a novelty, but I never wanted to do it again.”