Beach Girls (13 page)

IN BOSTON,
Jack sat in his office at Structural Associates, on the thirtieth floor, watching planes land at Logan Airport across the glittering blue harbor. Francesca walked in, closed the door behind her. She looked beautiful, stylish in a perfectly tailored Prada suit and black slingback heels. Her tan glowed, from the last two weekends visiting friends on Nantucket. She leaned against his desk.

“Hello, stranger,” she said.

“Hi, Francesca.”

“Let's see. I sent you postcards from Siasconset, and extremely tantalizing—if I do say so myself—photos of me aboard my friend's boyfriend's hundred-foot yacht, and invitations for you—and Nell—to hop a ferry and come see me, and you
ignore
me.”

“I'm not ignoring you . . .”

“All summer, you've made yourself scarce. You came to Boston from Atlanta months ago, and you've barely showed your face here since June. The boss doesn't mind that you're hardly in the office,” Francesca said. “I'm wondering whether he's figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“That you're leaving the firm.”

Jack stared down at the blueprints on his desk. They were for his most recent project, a new highway bridge in New Hampshire. Francesca had worked on it with him. He remembered how she had surprised him, kissing him on site, their first visit after construction began. He felt bad. Not because he was leaving the firm, and her, but because he didn't have any feelings about it at all.

“How did you hear?” he asked.

“I haven't heard—I've seen. Seen how you're never around. How the boss gives all the big stuff to Taylor. How I'm alone every weekend. When I thought we'd have lots of fun this summer.”

“It's not you, Francesca,” he said. Now his eyes fell on the Faneuil Hall Bookstore bag. Inside were more books he'd bought for Nell, both by Stevie Moore:
The Red Robin and the North Wind
and
Gull Island
. He didn't think anything could beat
Owl Night,
but he wanted to buy them all. He raised his gaze from the bag.

“No? Well, it feels as if it is. I spoke with Ivan Romanov, and he asked me whether I'd be coming to visit you in Inverness. You couldn't even tell me yourself!”

Jack stared at her. He had no excuse, no justification. She was a wonderful woman, a fine engineer, a great colleague. He had gone behind her back, taken a job with a client of their company. “I'm sorry if you think I've undercut you.”

“Undercut me? Excuse me, but you're an idiot. I didn't want the job—I knew Ivan was planning to put it out to headhunters—he floated it out there to me at the same time he did you. I just feel—betrayed. We're friends, Jack. I thought we might even be more than that.”

“I'm sorry.” Jack wanted to take her hand, because he had thought they might be more than that, too. When had his feelings changed?
When Nell met her
, he knew. . . .

“What was it?” she asked. “Trying to have a relationship while we worked together? Did I push too hard?”

“You were, you are, wonderful,” he said. “I told you—it's not you.”

“Then, what?”

“It's us—me and Nell,” he said. “We've been in a hurricane. That's what it feels like. A big storm that knocked our house out from around us. Nothing feels safe or right anymore. It's not fair for me to invite anyone else into the storm.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beautiful metaphor.”

“It's the best I can do.”

“Your child is so traumatized you can't date, so you uproot her from America and take her to Scotland? That makes sense.”

Jack thought of Stevie and what she had said about “geographics.” His gaze went back to the bag.

“My parents were divorced,” Francesca said. “Nell's a big girl now. She'll get over you dating. She really will. You don't have to protect—”

Jack felt ice in his veins. Francesca's words went straight through him. He thought of Emma in her hospital bed, Madeleine in hers, the huge hole in his and Nell's family. “Divorce?” he said. “Nell's parents aren't divorced. Her mother is dead. She was killed, suddenly, one beautiful Georgia day, driving home from the beach with my sister.”

“I don't mean to be insensitive. I get what you're saying. My point is, you're off base. A father starting to see other women is the same as far as a girl is concerned—it's going to suck no matter what.”

Jack shook his head hard. He knew that the exchange was just making it very easy for him—much easier than he deserved.

“No,
you
don't get it,” he said. “Nell comes first. Period. She's having a problem with us. She's not ready for this—for me seeing other people. Seeing you. I'm sorry, Francesca.”

She put her hand on the door and stared at Jack. “You should be,” she said.

Plenty of comments ran through his head, but he stayed silent and let her have the last word. He was relieved when she walked out and closed the door behind her.

He leaned back in his chair. Looking around, he realized that this place had never felt right. He had come to Boston hoping to escape the grief and loneliness of Atlanta. Francesca had tried to be a good friend, but it wasn't enough. He opened his desk drawer, took out his and Nell's passports.

What would she think of Scotland? Suddenly he couldn't even imagine what he'd been thinking, making these plans. He pictured standing in Stevie's kitchen, talking about Dr. Galford. Nell had had two sessions since then. Suddenly she was sleeping a little better. Would they have to find a new doctor in Inverness? And who would Jack have to talk to, when he felt overwhelmed by everything Nell was going through?

At the beginning, Scotland had seemed like a good place to take a little girl. Jack's parents had traveled there with him and Madeleine when they were young. He remembered that they had bought Maddie a tartan kilt. Muted red-and-green plaid, it had a big silver thistle pin in front.

They had gone to the northwest highlands, seen the ancient, rounded mountains at the edge of the sea, taken a ferry out to the Isle of Harris to buy tweed. They'd returned to the mainland, staying in a hotel overlooking a sea loch. Their father had hired a gillie to take them salmon fishing on the river. He remembered the low mist, the green hills, the river winding its way into the loch.

“I'm not catching anything. I never catch anything,” Maddie said.

“Be patient,” their father said. Maddie caught her brother's eye, and he made a face and shrugged.

“Jack, if you catch a fish, I'll kill you,” she said.

“You'll get one before me,” he said. “I'll bet you.”

“Does the Loch Ness Monster live in there?” Maddie had asked, tugging Jack's hand. She was ten, and he was fourteen, wishing he was back in Hartford with his friends.

“No,” he'd told her, just to keep himself amused. “A worse monster lives in there. The River Creature.”

“What's that?”

“Trust me, Maddie—you don't want to know.”

“No, I do! I do want to know!”

Their father and Murdoch, the gillie, fished in earnest while Jack and Maddie held their rods and talked. Jack described the River Creature: long and slimy, like a snake, a white snake that lived in the deepest hole in the river. It liked to eat salmon, so when the fish were biting, the River Creature was right behind them—to spring out of the water and catch the fish
and
the fisherman.

“See?” Jack said. “We're lucky we're not catching anything.”

Madeleine had laughed—seeing right through him, knowing he was just trying to make her feel better. Now, holding his and Nell's passports, Jack hoped he could do the same thing for Nell.

He hoped he could take her to Scotland, chase her sorrow and worries away. He'd never forget how happy Madeleine had seemed on that trip. She had loved the heather, the bagpipes, even the streams of clear brown water tumbling over the peat. If Scotland could do that for his little sister, it might weave the same magic for Nell.

It had to.

He rolled up the blueprints, put them into the tube. Then he packed up his briefcase with a few travel documents and Stevie's books, and he left the office. He hoped he wouldn't run into Francesca on the way out, and he didn't. Saying goodbye to the receptionist, he got into the elevator and headed down to his car. Nell was safe at the beach with her friend Peggy and her family. He knew she'd be anxiously awaiting his return—she didn't like him gone for too long.

Most of all, he was glad to have new Stevie Moore books to read to her. He really loved
Owl Night
, but he couldn't bring himself to pick up the one about emperor penguins again. That book had come to remind him of the talk he and Stevie had had in her kitchen. When he'd had to hold himself back . . .

He had been reading the penguin book to Nell over and over, the nights just before those three incredible mornings, when he would go down to the beach to watch Stevie swim.

He missed those mornings, more than he could believe. The memory of seeing her silhouetted against the rising sun gave him goosebumps, even now. Watching her dive into the dark water, come up for air, swim all the way out to the rock. Why hadn't he just gone for it—swum out to meet her?

She had to have seen him there, yet she hadn't mentioned it when he'd dropped by her house. How did she feel about it? If she'd been upset or mad, wouldn't she have mentioned it to him?

The memory was like a hidden vice—something no one had to know about, the fact that he pined for those mornings, spying on Stevie. He felt it in his skin, his groin, every inch of his body. He told himself that he wasn't looking for a relationship—he and Nell were nowhere near ready for that. The fact that Nell liked her had nothing to do with anything. The fact that she understood losing a mother didn't really mean much; or that she'd reassured him about Nell needing help, needing to go back to see Dr. Galford. She had helped him through a hard time, but it didn't really count.

Or did it?

No, desire seemed safer than anything that might lead to a real relationship. This thing he felt for Stevie was pure desire.

It was, in spite of the fact that his daughter loved her.

If only Stevie hadn't been so insistent about Madeleine—to the point of inviting her to visit Hubbard's Point. Jack's stomach flipped, wondering when that would happen. He just wanted to be left out of it. That was one subject closed to Jack forever. As far as he was concerned, he used to have a sister. The little girl he loved so much—in Scotland, at school in Hartford, playing tennis at the beach—was gone.

Nell couldn't understand why he wouldn't see or talk to Madeleine—and Jack prayed she never would. If that moment ever arrived, she'd be grateful to him for keeping them apart.

He got into the car, pulled into Boston traffic for the long ride back to the beach.

The great thing about longing, about fantasy, about the picture in his mind of Stevie climbing out of the water, silver drops streaming from her lean, lithe body, was that reason had nothing to do with it.

Chapter 11

THE FIRST BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE TASTED
so good going down, Madeleine could hardly wait to open the second one. It wasn't much fun to drink alone—especially while Stevie just nursed her ginger ale. Madeleine pretended not to notice.

“Tell me all about you,” Madeleine said. “Do you live here all year round?”

“No,” Stevie said. “I spend the winters in New York City, come out here at the end of May.”

“I guess that's the beauty of being an artist—flexibility. I work in the Brown development office, raising money.”

“Providence is a great city. I went to school there, RISD. It's where I met my first husband.”

Madeleine hadn't wanted to ask about the husband situation, but she was glad Stevie had brought it up. She sipped her champagne.

“Kevin was so bright and talented,” Stevie said. “We fell in love the first week of freshman year. He had such raw talent . . . no one could do with a line what he could. Just so simple, and spare . . . he cut away all the bullshit. RISD can be so progressive, avant-garde . . .”

“The graduate show is certainly eye-opening,” Madeleine said.

Stevie nodded. “It is. It's wild and wonderful. But Kevin did work that was almost classical. He loved the figure; he worked in charcoal and paper. His best work reminded me of Picasso. Not cubism, but line . . .”

“And you got married?”

“Yes. While we were still in college. We eloped . . .”

“I remember you wrote to tell me. I think that was the last I heard from you.”

Stevie sighed. “That's probably true. I was on such a quest—”

“What kind of quest?”

“To find art and love.”

Madeleine laughed. “I thought you'd found both.”

Stevie shook her head. “I was born with both. Most people are, I think. But then we spend our lives complicating things. My parents loved me so much. I was—I don't want to say spoiled by it—affected, I guess. I had such high expectations. To think that life could always,
would
always, be that way. Even after my mother died, my father was—”

“Everything to you. I remember.”

“He was. He loved me so much. Always put me first, made me feel as if I could do anything. He raised me to be really independent, to believe in myself, but to question everything. He'd tell me, ‘Stevie, artists look at what
is,
what they can see, and they draw it. Poets never trust the surface. They learn to look beneath, and to trust what they
can't
see.'”

“What they can't see . . .” Madeleine said.

“I looked at Kevin and saw a handsome, brilliant artist. It wasn't until years later, married to him, that I looked beneath . . . I saw a troubled man who envied everyone. He was so bitter. Any time one of our classmates had a show, he'd make comments about selling out, pandering to collectors. He hated them. And then I started doing children's books. . . .”

“And became very successful,” Madeleine added.

“And that made him start to hate me, too. It was so hard to live with,” Stevie said, looking out over the sea, tension in her eyes. “I found Tilly—she was a kitten, a little New York street cat born in the alley behind our building. She was such a comfort to me—my husband was so closed off, he barely talked to me. We never slept together. But I had Tilly.”

“Unconditional love.”

“Yes. That's it. I kept thinking of my father's words . . . I still wasn't looking inward—below the surface. I knew how happy love had made me when I was young, and I knew that loving a cat wasn't enough, so I became almost frantic about finding it. I went to a lecture in Woods Hole, and that's when I met Linus.”

“Linus?”

“My second husband. I left Kevin for him. By then, Kevin was lost in the bottle. I'm not sure he even noticed.”

Madeleine sipped her champagne.
Lost in the bottle
did not refer to her. She sipped again.

“Linus was an ornithologist. He was English, so bright and interesting. He had a son from his first marriage—I loved being a stepmother. I really thought I had found it all. He was used to carrying different species of birds in and out of England, knew all the inspectors—somehow we beat the quarantine they had for pets. He told me not to worry about Tilly, that the inspectors would look the other way. And they did.”

“Grounds enough to love the man!”

Stevie laughed. “Exactly. We lived in Oxford, in a stone house across from a medieval church. His son lived in London, but would come to us on weekends and holidays. My painting flowed—it was during that time that I sold the movie rights to
Red Robin
. . . I wanted to have a baby. . . .”

“You did?” Madeleine asked. “I wanted to, too. . . .”

“But you didn't?”

Madeleine shook her head. “No. I couldn't get pregnant. We tried for years, and even did two rounds of in vitro. But it didn't happen. It was okay, because I had . . .” She trailed off, unable to say “Nell.” Stevie waited for her to finish her thought, but Madeleine just shrugged and smiled. “I had Chris.”

“I did get pregnant,” Stevie said. Her voice sounded calm, but her cheeks turned bright pink.

“You have a child?”

“No. I miscarried. . . .”

“Oh, Stevie. I'm sorry.”

Stevie closed her eyes. “I never knew how terrible that could be. Before, when I'd heard about women it happened to, I'd think, ‘They can try again.' ‘It's not like losing a real baby.' But it is like that. It
is
a real baby.”

“How far along were you?”

“Three months. I had just told my father and aunt. It was a girl.”

“A girl . . .” Like Nell. “What happened?”

“I was very upset. I wanted us to name her, have a funeral. Linus refused. He thought I was being ridiculous. He was so scientific, clinical about it. He talked about how ‘it' must have been sick, probably wouldn't have lived on ‘its' own, and he started explaining Darwin to me, natural selection and survival of the fittest. I told him that
she
deserved better than that. I named her Clare, after my mother. I had a private funeral for her. And then I left Linus.”

“How sad,” Madeleine said. “That he couldn't understand what you needed.”

“It was,” Stevie said.

They sat quietly for a few minutes. Madeleine thought about the pain of losing a little girl. She thought about Nell and knew that Stevie was thinking about Clare.

“And it was sad that I couldn't understand what I needed. I really didn't know myself at all,” Stevie said.

“What do you mean?”

“Emma used to tease me—saying that I always needed to be connected. She was right. I was convinced that I needed a man to make me okay. I looked at Kevin, at Linus, and saw what I needed to see. I married them expecting—needing—them to give me things they weren't capable of. I had seen my parents' marriage, and I wanted life to be like that. Wonderful couple who were really,
really
soul mates, a child to love . . . The old clock thing, you know?”

“Oh, all too well.”

“I moved back to New York—by freighter. Tilly and I in our own cabin. We sailed out of Southampton. By the time we reached the Azores—”

“You jumped ship?”

“Nope. Fell in love with the captain.”

Madeleine laughed, and so did Stevie. “Don't tell me . . .”

“It was a long voyage. Freighters aren't like cruise ships. They don't go directly from one port to the next. It's more like one port to another, by way of a long circle, halfway around the world. Months go by. I had signed on wanting time at sea, to think and figure things out.”

“Maybe a little too much time at sea?”

“Yes. With a lot too much aquavit. It was a Swedish vessel, and they were very big on broiled salmon, smoked salmon, cured salmon, and salmon roe . . . all served with large quantities of aquavit. Also, champagne was served every time we left port—and we made a lot of ports.”

“Is that when you gave up drinking?”

“Yes, but not quite soon enough,” Stevie said. “I was out at sea, steaming to the Azores, Tenerife, Cape Town, Rio, Miami, with a lot of water in between, and a lot of time for thinking. I was a two-time divorcée, I was looking down the barrel at thirty-seven—”

“You wanted a baby.”

“Yep.”

“So you married the captain.”

“At least he didn't perform his own ceremony,” Stevie said, and laughed lightly. “The first mate did.”

“How resourceful.”

“Well, sort of. It was also, luckily, illegal. By the time we docked in Manhattan, I knew I was in trouble, and in deep. My father met the ship, and he got me a lawyer who would have gotten me an annulment—if the marriage had been lawful.”

“What did the captain do?”

Stevie stared down at the beach. “He was angry. But in the short time I spent with him, after our ‘I do's,' I saw that he was always angry. Through the aquavit, I had mistaken it for passionate intensity. I realized what it was when he kicked Tilly.”

“He kicked your cat?”

“Tried to. But I dove to protect her, and he caught my chin instead.”

“Bastard.”

Stevie nodded and sighed. Madeleine reached over to squeeze her hand. They sat there for a few minutes, and Madeleine felt grateful for her life with Chris. A seagull flew past the terrace, coasting on an updraft from the beach. The women watched it fly by so effortlessly, not even flapping its wings. Tilly sat inside the screen door, tracking it with fierce eyes.

“It's the last time.”

“The last time what?”

“That I'm getting married.”

“You don't know that. Someone wonderful might come along. Someone like Chris.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, he's smart, funny, a great friend . . . he has his own insurance agency, and he's very good at it. He really cares about his clients—he sees them through all life's passages. Getting married, buying houses, having kids, taking care of sick parents, dying. . . . He really gets involved.”

“How did you meet?”

“Jack bought insurance from him. Way back, when he and Emma were first together. They liked him so much, they set us up.”

“That's a good way—introduced by people who know and love you.”

“Yes,” Madeleine said. “It was.” She sat still, amazed how comfortable she felt, slipping into the old friendship. Stevie had always been so easy to talk to. She remembered how, sometimes, Emma would be busy with her mother, or doing errands, and Madeleine would savor the chance to have Stevie to herself.

“What are you thinking?”

“Oh, of Emma,” Madeleine said.

“It's as if she's here,” Stevie said. “I can feel her with us now.”

“I was just remembering,” Maddie said, her voice shaking, “of how she tended to take things over. When she wanted something, she got it.”

“She really stood up for herself,” Stevie said.

Emma had had a possessive streak—of friends, and later, of Jack and Nell. How could she have decided to throw them away? The thought made Madeleine want to refill her glass, but after Stevie's words about her own drinking, she held back.

“What do you say we take a walk?” Stevie said after a while.

“I'd love to look around, see what's changed and what's the same,” Madeleine said, relieved to move, to hopefully get away from her own dark thoughts.

The day was clear, the sky bright blue. Madeleine was glad to stretch her legs. It kept her from thinking about the champagne. As they wandered slowly up and down the winding roads of Hubbard's Point, Stevie seemed very vigilant, as if she was hoping—or fearing—to see someone. They strolled down past the tennis court, into the beach parking lot.

“I remember playing here,” Madeleine said.

“Really?” Stevie said. “I don't remember that we played much tennis—we were always on the beach.”

“Not with you and Emma,” Madeleine said. “With my brother. Jack was always so patient with me—I was four years younger, but he'd stand right there and hit to me . . .”

Maddie stared at the baseline, and she swore she could see her brother right there—six-three, with that long dark hair he always forgot to cut, now turning gray. How would he look today? It had been a full year. Would he still wear those dark-rimmed sunglasses? Would his hair be much grayer? Would grief have etched his face with lines, as it had hers?

The two friends walked all the way through the sandy parking lot to the boardwalk. Stevie kicked off her sandals, and Madeleine followed suit. They walked across the sand—and it was so hot, they had to run down to the water's edge just to cool off the soles of their feet.

“I look at children that age and think of me and Emma,” Stevie said, glancing at two toddlers at the water's edge. “We met the very first summer of our lives.”

“Way before I came along.”

“Yes, but we were never as close as we were when you joined in.”

“Remember when we went to Little Beach, and Emma found that stick and drew the circle?”

“And we swore we'd be bonded for life . . .”

“By the power vested by the full moon . . .”

They looked at each other and knew what they had to do: they didn't even speak, but set off for Little Beach. The walk was long and hot. Madeleine's dress stuck to her body, but she didn't care. She felt like a girl again, traveling back through time. Stevie held her hand, pulling her up the steep part of the hidden path.