Tides of the Heart (26 page)

All around her, clocks ticked. She shifted awkwardly on the stiff sofa; she could think better if only she had a big bag of Tostitos.

In the old days, she would have used sex to approach Richard’s father, to make him feel he was the hottest male in the universe. In the old days she would have flirted and strutted and made him pant, then enticed him into telling her everything she wanted to know.

The concept was intriguing, but when Ginny looked down at the bubble of her stomach under stretchy leggings,
she reminded herself it wasn’t as easy to flirt and strut when your gut was hanging out, and that the old days, like so many other things, were apparently long gone.

Still, she reasoned, Old Man Bradley was getting on, and probably hadn’t done it for many years. Besides, she thought, maybe a little action would revive her lost libido.

A slow smile crept across her face. Ginny stood up and decided to go and find Richard Bryant/Bradley, Senior, in this mausoleum of a house. Maybe the results would be as beneficial to herself as they would be to Jess.

He wasn’t in the house. He was in the backyard, sanding paint off a sailboat that was turned upside down on wooden horses.

“Nice day,” Ginny commented.

“Be nicer once we can get this baby back in the water.”

“I’m surprised you have time for sailing. This house must take a lot of work.”

“Have to make time for the finer things in life. The tourists are going to come anyway. Got to leave room for a little fun. Put that in your research paper.”

It took a brief moment for Ginny to realize what he was talking about. “My paper,” she said, “right. Well, if you don’t mind, there are a few other questions I’d like to ask.”

He sanded slowly, then scratched his chin.

She stepped closer to him, brushed her hair behind one ear, and gave her once-famous Ginny pose: one hip out, one leg propped against the other. “Please?” she asked, thinking she’d give anything not to feel quite so ridiculous.

“Well, I guess. Don’t ask me anything I don’t want to answer, though.” He eyed her empty hands. “You’re not going to take notes?”

“I have an excellent memory.”

“Okay, then. Shoot.” He returned to sanding.

She stood up straight and congratulated herself that she still had it, even though it didn’t feel as if she did. Her
thoughts turned back to Jess. “You mentioned your other daughter is a teacher,” she began boldly. “Did she leave the island to go to college?”

“Yep. Came back, though.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Because it’s home. It’s where she lives.”

“Is she your youngest?”

“Yep. She’ll be thirty this year.”

Thirty. Oh, shit
, Ginny thought,
it’s her. It’s really her.
She stopped herself from asking if her birthday was in November. Instead, she assumed her Ginny-pose again. “Well, tell me then. What does a thirty-year-old—or anyone, for that matter—do for excitement on this island?”

Mr. Bradley laughed. “Well, Melanie loves her teaching. And she’s married, too. Got a little girl who looks just like her.”

Ginny took a step back. She hadn’t expected that: a little girl, a little girl who was Jess’s granddaughter. Ginny winced when she thought of Jess’s reaction. More crying, she supposed. More of those
feelings.

“And Karin has her sea glass,” the old man continued. “I wish she had more.”

“Karin’s not married?”

“Nope.” He did not elaborate, but Ginny noticed he rubbed harder with the sandpaper.

“In L.A., teaching and collecting old glass aren’t considered terribly exciting.”

He chuckled. “Maybe that’s the problem with L.A. Folks here enjoy the simple life. Take tomorrow, for instance. Every year the folks of Tisbury get together for one big picnic. Our last hurrah before the tourists descend in masses.”

“A picnic? With all the people from the town?”
A town picnic
, she thought.
Hold me back, Lord, I cannot take much more excitement.

He set down his sandpaper and looked at Ginny. “Over at Tashmoo Pond. It’s tradition on the island, like most
everything else. Anyway, the inn is booked this weekend, but we have an inn-sitter come and take care of business. Wouldn’t miss the picnic for all the scallops in the sound.”

“I see,” she said, turning away. And then, an idea came. Another of her “Ginny specials”—an idea that might get them into trouble, but there was nothing much to lose. “Well,” she said, trying not to show her smile, “I’ll let you get back to your work. I’ll see you later.” She strutted off, feeling his eyes on her backside, feeling mighty happy that they were. Not only that, but she’d really scored. A picnic at Tashmoo Pond, wherever the hell that was. Chances are, the old man’s “daughter” Melanie would be there. And she’d probably even bring her little girl.

Ginny walked toward the house, rubbing her hands together, pleased that she still had it, the way to get what she needed from a man. She hoped that Jess had brought some old jeans and a sweatshirt to wear to Tashmoo Pond … something that hinted “townie” and didn’t have Ann Taylor or St. John knit oozing from every seam.

“We can’t just crash a picnic,” Jess had protested when Ginny told her of her plan.

“We won’t exactly ‘crash’ it. We’ll make Richard’s father think we were out exploring and just ‘happened’ to come across it.”

“I don’t know, Ginny …”

“Look, do you want to get on with this or would you rather spend the next week holed up in that room, waiting for your darling Richard to return?” She suggested that Melanie might be there; she did not tell her about the little girl, the granddaughter Jess did not know she had. Even Ginny knew it would not be fair to raise Jess’s hopes too high.

Yet finally she’d convinced Jess, and now the two of them stood on the roadside, dressed in jeans and “Vineyarders” sweatshirts that Ginny bought for them last night, peering down a grassy hill toward a small, duck-infested pond, where half a dozen rickety skiffs were rowed by kids in orange life vests, where picnic tables had been set close to the water’s edge, where people milled and others sat in lawn chairs and on blankets, where accordion players strolled and played, where chatter and laughter mingled
with aromas of sizzling charcoal grills. The islanders seemed to be enjoying their last hurrah.

“I feel like I’m watching someone else’s family reunion,” Jess said.

“Well, it could be yours. All we have to do is walk down the hill. Besides, that smell of hot dogs is mighty appealing. Maybe I can convince the old man to give us one or two.”

“I don’t know, Ginny …”

“Trust me, kid.”

She saw them. They were standing on the knoll, looking down into the crowd, and she saw them, big as life.

And then she saw them walking. Slowly. With determination. The fat one waddled down the hill, followed by the other.

Karin leaned against a tall oak tree and marveled at how easily things fell into place when one simply planted a small seed and let nature do what nature did.

No one stopped them. Jess stayed close behind Ginny, trying to mask her embarrassment, trying to act as if they both belonged there, which of course they did not. It was not the first time she’d followed Ginny’s lead; it was not the first time she’d stepped away from the so-predictable and into Ginny’s world. She wrapped her hands in the hem of her too-large sweatshirt and admitted it was fun, in a Ginny sort of way.

“Hello. Good morning,” she heard Ginny saying now as they passed among the people. “What a lovely day.”

An old woman behind a makeshift booth was handing out free ice cream. “Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?” Ginny asked Jess.

“Forget it!” Jess whispered. “You’re not going to get any.” Fun or not, she could only go so far. And she would
be content if this new adventure yielded only a glimpse of Melanie and nothing more.

“God, you’re such a priss. Just like always.”

“Just find Richard’s father. Let’s get this over with.”

They walked past a horse-pulled wagon that kids were piling onto. “Ride?” asked a young man.

Jess poked Ginny in the back.

“Maybe later,” Ginny replied, then turned around to Jess. “Let’s walk down to the water. Maybe he’s there.”

Jess ambled after Ginny, remembering when they had all gone to the state fair together, four very pregnant girls trying to have a good time—eating cotton candy and playing games of chance, and forgetting all their problems if only for one day. She wondered if it had been that long since she’d smelled hamburgers cooking on a grill; she wondered if it had been that long since she’d felt like such a kid.

They stopped beside some tall cattails. “I should have paid attention to what he wore at breakfast,” Ginny said. “We may never find him in this crowd.”

As soon as she spoke the words, Jess noticed Richard’s father, sitting at a picnic table, laughing with another man.

“There he is,” she said. Immediately Jess regretted coming here. After all, this was not a state fair and they were no longer teenage girls.

But Ginny had followed her eyes to the table, and now it was too late. She marched forward.

“Mr. Bradley,” she said, tossing back her hair and strutting her Ginny strut. “So this is where you hang out on Memorial Day.”

“Ginny,” he said with some surprise, and quickly stood. “What are you girls doing down here?”

“We were drawn by the music,” Ginny said. “Don’t worry,” she added with a small smile, “we’re not staying.”

He stepped away from the table. “No? Not even if I cook you up a burger?”

“But this is a town picnic …” she protested, though not too much.

Richard’s father shook his head. “No problem,” he said, then added with a wink, “You’ll be my guests. Now what’ll it be? Burger with the works? How about some clam chowder? It’s nice and fresh.… Millie Johnson made it.…”

“Well …” Ginny feigned a thin protest once again. “If you insist.”

“I do. And I also insist you call me Dick.”

Dick
, Jess thought.
Leave it to Ginny to befriend one of those.

“If you stay,” Dick was saying, “maybe you’ll get some good material for your research.”

“Oh, believe me,” Ginny responded, “I’m sure I will. And since you insist, I’ll have a hamburger. With the works.” She turned to Jess. “Jess?”

Jess shifted her eyes back to the crowd, wondering if the youngest Bradley, Melanie, was among the group. “No thank you, I’m not hungry.”

“No burger?” Richard’s father—Dick—asked. “We’ve got plenty. With Richard and Melanie not here, I’ve brought enough to feed an army.”

If Jess were playing poker she’d have lost the hand for sure. She quickly turned her back, so Dick would not see the disappointment on her face.

“Your kids aren’t here?” she heard Ginny ask.

“Only Karin. Richard’s off-island, and Melanie’s home with my poor little granddaughter, Sarah.”

The air was filled with the sounds of laughing, squealing children, the chatter of adults, the clink of horseshoes on metal posts, and the off-key notes of accordions being played by men in overalls. The air was filled with sounds and yet they all seemed to have frozen—still and dead and hanging there, while the meaning of Dick Bradley’s words sank in.

Jess turned back. “Sarah?” she asked.

His face glowed as much as she supposed a seventy-year-old, weatherbeaten face could glow. “She’s a pistol, that
one. Broke her leg on the school playground. Poor little thing. She’s in a cast up to her hip.”

Jess’s cheeks were hot. Her heart began to ache, those butterflies from long ago returned to flutter in her stomach, in her arms and in her legs. “Sarah’s your granddaughter?” she asked.

Ginny elbowed Jess. “Well, that’s too bad,” she said. “If we stay on this island any longer, maybe we’ll get to meet the entire Bradley family.”

“How long are you staying, anyway?” The question did not come from Richard’s father. It came from Karin. Jess had not heard her approach, but she was standing there staring at them with curious, doubting eyes.

And suddenly Jess knew that Karin knew. The chill that ran through her was not from the chilly morning. It was not from the breeze that drifted off the water. It was from those eyes of Karin’s, those eyes that told her that she knew. She knew who Jess was. And she knew what Jess was doing there.

Why haven’t I heard from my mother?
The garbled voice on the telephone came sharply to her mind. And every instinct or intuition Jess ever had now told her that the voice had belonged to Karin. Karin had made the call; Karin had written the letter.

But why?

She stared at Karin; her mouth was dry, her eyelids could not blink. And then Jess heard Ginny answer, “We’re not sure how long we’re staying.”

“I need to know soon,” Karin said. “It’s Memorial Day weekend. I have to know when we can rent your rooms again.”

“We’ll let you know,” Ginny replied, then turned back to Dick. “Now where’s that burger? I’m starving.”

Jess pulled her eyes away, yet still felt Karin staring, her eyes moving from Jess to Ginny, then back to Jess again. Finally, silently, she left the group, walking toward the water,
walking along the shore, away from Jess and Ginny, away from the Memorial Day town picnic.