Beach Plum Island (22 page)

They did, too, a mega-riot of blooms in neon colors and supernatural sizes nodding their heavy heads over the stone walls. The grass was so green it looked enameled, and hummingbirds darted around the feeder of sugar water Mom always dyed pink. It was like being in a Disney cartoon; any minute now, the birds would start talking or the yard would fill with dancing bunnies.

Her mother, Gigi noticed, ate only a single pancake. Gigi wolfed down four to make up for it. Mom even poured her half a cup of coffee, though it was so diluted with milk, it was practically like drinking that sour-smelling shitty blue milk in little cartons they served at school. Nothing like the double-shot espressos Gigi bought for herself at Starbucks whenever she was with Gramma Dawn, who pretty much never said no to anything.

They talked about the pottery studio. Then Mom told her about sailing around Boston Harbor last week in Uncle Simon’s boat, and said he wanted to take Gigi out on the boat, too, and maybe even invite Ava, Evan, and Sam.

“Would that be too weird for you?” Mom asked.

Gigi put her fork down. “I think it might be weirder for you,” she said carefully.

Mom shrugged. “It would be fine. I like Ava.”

“What about Elaine?”

“She doesn’t bother me. Anyway, I doubt she’d come.” Mom turned her head away, fiddled with the elastic of her ponytail. “Elaine has her reasons to dislike us, you know.” Mom always said vague things like that, as if Gigi didn’t know that Mom was a home wrecker.

“Mom, she can’t hold that past stuff against us forever,” Gigi said. “She needs to stop being such a total bitch.”

“Honey, please don’t swear.”

“Seriously, Mom? I was being
nice
. Think how horrible Elaine was at Dad’s service. She treats Ava and me like crap, too.”

“And please don’t use
that
word, either,” Mom said. “Honestly, being in a band with those boys isn’t doing your manners any good at all.”

“Maybe not. But it’s doing
me
good.”

Startled, Mom gave Gigi a long look. “I’m glad,” she said. “I know how much your music means to you.”

And being in a family with Ava, Evan, and Sam,
Gigi nearly said, but didn’t. No need to rub that in. “You should come hear us play.”

“I might sometime.” Her mother smiled.

That smile gave Gigi the courage she needed to get going, knowing today was going to be a decent day for Mom. She cleared the table, trying not to rush or do anything to arouse her mother’s suspicions. “We should have breakfast more often,” she said. “I’ll try to save you more pancakes next time. Unless, of course, you make the mistake of putting chocolate chips in them. Then I can’t hold myself accountable for the consequences.”

This made Mom giggle, and after that, Gigi went into the house, where she hastily loaded the dishwasher before grabbing her backpack. She stuck her head back out the patio door just before leaving, relieved to find her mother pulling on gardening gloves and frowning at some insane-looking bush with flowers like yellow bells. Mom could be out here for hours.

“See you tonight, usual time,” Gigi called, then quickly let the door slam behind her and wheeled her bike out of the garage.

When she’d made it a safe distance from the house, she stopped to call Ava on her cell phone. “Pick up, pick up,” she muttered, but Ava’s voice mail kicked in. Shit. She’d hoped to do this with Ava.

On the other hand, she didn’t want to wait. Plus it would be cool to do something on her own, proving to Elaine that Gigi was just as much a part of Dad’s family as they were. She dropped her cell into her backpack and started biking to the bus station.

•   •   •

Elaine hadn’t been able to avoid confessing the whole tiresome debacle of her nightclub outing and mugging to Tony. They were sitting on a shady bench in the courtyard of the building next to their own, avoiding everyone else from their office while they shared a take-out salad gritty with unwashed lettuce.

After hearing about her teen muggers, Tony made her swear on the spot to stay sober “like for the next two hundred years,” he pleaded. “I’m worried about you. Promise you won’t turn into your mother.”

Elaine glanced around to make sure they were alone before she slapped him. Not across the face or anything, just a single stinging whack of her hand on the top of his knee. “That was a rotten thing to say! Take that back!”

“Ow! Why? You know I’m right.” Tony rubbed his knee.

“Oh my God.” Elaine allowed herself to sag on the bench. “Of course I know. I’m not in a coma.”

“Then act like you’re awake! I mean, it’s not like you have to start going to AA meetings in one of those dreadful moldy church basements. But think about a little detox program in the country, maybe. Or, I don’t know, at least start mixing water with your booze.”

“Okay. I’ll do something. I don’t know what. But something.”

Tony patted her hand. “That’s my girl. Meanwhile, how are you going to thank that nice guy who rescued you?”

Elaine snorted. “I rescued myself, remember? I’m the one who got those little thugs to give back my phone. Anyway, why do you care whether I call Gabe or not?”

Tony’s face grew serious. “You owe that guy. Not a blow job or anything, but at least lunch. And truthfully I’d say dinner. Ask yourself this: who
didn’t
take advantage of you when you were swimming in vodka?”

“For the record, my nice Irish dance puppy didn’t. And it was wine, not vodka,” Elaine reminded him.

“Fine, whatever. But if
you
won’t thank him, honey, give me his number and I’ll do it. I owe that guy at least a Trader Joe’s certificate for keeping my best friend alive.”

“Oh, please! I wouldn’t have
died
. You keep forgetting that the muggers had already taken what they wanted by the time Gabe rode in on his white charger. Or, to be more accurate, in his battered yellow taxi.”

Tony’s dark eyes darkened even more. “You’ve had too many close calls lately. Remember the conference last year in San Francisco?”

“I remember.” Elaine had tried hard to forget that blurry episode entirely, but couldn’t completely erase the image of herself falling off a cable car after they’d been dancing at one of the clubs in the Marina. Mostly she blamed her ridiculous shoes for that, but she also had to admit that martinis were involved. Like, buckets of martinis.

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been wearing pants instead of that tight leather skirt you insisted on buying me,” she grumbled, and made herself sit upright. Good posture always made you feel less like a loser. “I admit I’ve done stupid things. I’m also willing to acknowledge that I self-medicate. But please spare me the shrinky-dink session. You don’t have to tell me why I’m behaving badly: I get that it’s because I’m lonely. So what? Working that crisis hotline has taught me that everybody is lonely. Life is all about making it from one day to the next without mud in your eye. Or maybe even
with
mud in your eye and up your ass, too.”

“Oh my.” Tony put a forefinger to his head and pretended to pull the trigger. “Let’s just off ourselves now and escape this tiresome hamster wheel of torture.”

“Ha-ha.”

Tony lowered his hand and plucked another lettuce leaf out of the plastic container. “Look, the fix is obvious,” he said, chewing. “You just need somebody to come home to at night. You’re smart, attractive, and funny when you’re not being too snarky. There’s somebody out there for you. A lid for every pot, yadda yadda. Stop wasting time by wading around in the kiddie pool. Jump in the deep end and look for a real man.”

“I cannot believe that you, of all people, are trying to tell me that life is better as a couple. You’ve been shacked up, what, a whole three months? I do
not
need a man in my life. I can barely even water my plants.”

Tony stared at her with pity in his long-lashed eyes. “Oh really? Then what
do
you need? A special six-foot invisible rabbit? A rescue dog? Whatever you need, honey, it’s time to get real about finding it. Meanwhile, pay your dues. Call that guy.”

Absurdly, Elaine thought of Tommy, Gabe’s huge ginger cat with the broken halting purr, and longed to be holding him on her lap this minute. Maybe adopting a cat wasn’t such a terrible idea. You didn’t even have to walk a cat.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll call Gabe and treat him to whatever if it’ll get you off my back.”

Tony held out his phone.

“What’s that for?”

“I want you to make that call.”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now!” Tony said. “Call the Angel Gabriel and invite him to a meal. Tonight.”

“He’s probably busy tonight.”

“You never know until you ask. Besides, it’s a Monday,” Tony pointed out. “Nobody ever makes plans for Mondays.”

“Sometimes, having your best friend also be your boss is a real problem,” Elaine said with a sigh as she dug her phone out of her purse. “I can’t even sue you for harassment or bullying or whatever.”

Before leaving Gabe’s apartment, Elaine had put his number into her contacts list at his insistence; she dialed it now while Tony kept his eyes fixed on her.

Gabe picked up on the first ring. “Hi!” he said brightly, as if he’d been expecting her to call at this exact appointed time.

“Hey. This is Elaine. Sorry to bother you.” Again, she wondered what the man did for a living, that he was at home on Mondays.

“You’re not bothering me. It’s nice to hear your voice again so soon. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Elaine hesitated, wondering what Gabe had been expecting her to do. Drop off the face of the planet, probably. That was certainly her plan where he was concerned.

Tony was watching her closely; now he made a motion like he was tearing into a giant sandwich, nearly making her spit with laughter.

Elaine bit her lip to keep a straight face and said, “I know this is short notice—”

“No, it’s not,” Gabe said immediately. “It’s perfect timing.”

She rolled her eyes at Tony. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”

This time, Tony acted out the entire dogs-sharing-spaghetti scene from
Lady and the Tramp
, making Elaine mime a gagging motion in return.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Gabe. “I’m sure I’ll want to do it.”

This guy made Pollyanna look like a nihilist. Elaine hoped to hell he didn’t think she was calling because she was interested. Though, in reality, why would this man want a relationship with her? Gabe had only seen her at her absolute worst. She was lucky he even took her calls. Not that she cared, of course, but she hated giving someone a bad impression.

“I was going to suggest dinner tonight,” she said. “But it’s such short notice, I’m sure you have other plans.”

“Absolutely not. I’d love to,” Gabe said.

They arranged to meet in Harvard Square in front of the newsstand. Elaine hung up and tucked the phone back into her purse. “Satisfied?” she asked Tony.

“I will be if you keep that date,” he said. “Why Harvard Square?” They started walking back to the office, back to an afternoon of brainstorming ideas for how to make a certain college client look good to prospective families despite the fact that its provost had just made national news for embezzling money from the alumni fund.

Elaine shrugged. “I thought he’d feel comfortable in Cambridge. Gabe’s kind of a hippie. In fact, I’ve been thinking of fixing him up with Ava. He’s definitely her type.”

“I thought you said Ava’s busy and probably seeing somebody.”

“Yeah, well. Whoever he is, he couldn’t be nicer than Gabe.”

Tony patted her shoulder. “Then the person who needs Gabe is you.”

T
he bus to Portsmouth took half an hour and went straight north on Route 95 from Newburyport. Gigi felt self-conscious at first, being the only teenager on the bus, but the other passengers ignored her, their noses in iPads and phones and newspapers. Soon she settled back on the cushioned leather seat, enjoying the air-conditioning and exhilarated by the idea that nobody else had a clue where she was.

Her ecstasy rapidly faded, though, as she realized that the downside about being alone was the lack of distraction from your memories. Being on the bus reminded Gigi of the first time she’d ever ridden city buses. It was in San Francisco on that trip to California, their last family vacation before Dad had his first surgery, when Mildred came and stayed at the house.

They chose California because Dad had never been there. It always surprised Gigi that Mom had traveled so many more places than her father, since Dad was practically Gramma Dawn’s age. On the other hand, Mom’s family had money, while Dad had worked his way through college and already had two kids—no, make that three—by the time he graduated.

They’d flown from Boston to Los Angeles, where they’d taken a tour of Universal Studios and gone on all the rides. Dad had screamed like a little girl on that crazy Jurassic Park water ride, making Mom laugh. Dad had also made a huge deal out of getting his picture taken with any employee dressed like a movie character, even the guys on stilts with the Transformer costumes.

In Los Angeles, they’d also rented fat-tired bikes to ride on Venice Beach and seen the fossils at La Brea Tar Pits, where Gigi freaked at the sight of hundreds of wolf skulls lined up in a yellow case, imagining the sloths and mastodons trapped in the tar, terrified, as wolves circled them and started pulling flesh from bone. Then they’d driven north in a rented red convertible to see surfers and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. Dad kept acting like a little kid or maybe a demented old person, crawling into the caves beneath the redwood trunks and begging Mom to take his picture. He and Gigi agreed on how they definitely would have built houses in the trunks of those giant trees, if they’d been the original explorers mapping the land.

Dad would have been happy doing that, riding a horse with a rifle slung over his shoulder and nothing to eat but beef jerky or whatever. He should have been a rock musician or an adventurer, but he never got a chance to do what he really loved in life. “Don’t spend your whole life waiting for someday to come,” he’d told Gigi on that trip. “You never know when you’re going to run out of time.”

Gigi felt her eyes burn and pressed her face against the window. She hadn’t known, until Dad died, that a human body could produce this many tears. Sometimes she tried to squeeze her eyelids shut to seal in the water, but it never worked.

She was beginning to think that the death of somebody you loved was like throwing rocks in a pond. Piles and piles of rocks: the ripples kept on spreading, disrupting the smooth surface of your life long after you’d lost track of where, exactly, the rocks went into the water.

At least today she felt like she was actually doing something that would have made Dad happy. Gigi climbed down the bus steps in Portsmouth, blinking in the bright sun and feeling the heat of it slap her face. She was having an adventure and keeping her promise to him.

There were other people her age at the bus station, teenagers in raggedy jeans and T-shirts and bandannas, one of them carrying a guitar. The bus station was right off the highway; the college kids offered her weed and, shrugging when she said no, showed her the trolley stop and helped her find a schedule.

It was a touristy sort of trolley, no glass in the windows and painted bright green. This, too, made her think of that trip to California, of how Dad had insisted on standing on the running board of the cable car in San Francisco and leaning as far back as he could while they clanged up and down the hills. Mom did it with him, too, leaning her head back so that her hair, longer then, flowed like water down her back.

“Mom! Dad! That’s dangerous and the conductor said don’t do it!” Gigi was glued to her seat and clinging to the trolley pole. “Sit down!”

“Sit? We can’t sit! This has been on my bucket list since I was a kid!” Dad yelled back, grinning like he’d won the lottery or something.

Gigi hadn’t known then what he meant by a “bucket list” and had pictured her father carrying an actual black rubber bucket sloshing water, like the buckets at the barn.

Now, as a group of hefty sunburned girls in UNH T-shirts boarded the trolley, Gigi remembered that her dad’s cousin Mildred had taught at the University of New Hampshire. Dad had bragged about Mildred getting a master’s degree in nutrition, saying Mildred was the only person in his family besides him to go to college. Dad hadn’t gone straight through, of course. He’d paid for his degree himself, taking one or two evening classes a semester at a local college to finish his accounting degree.

Gigi couldn’t imagine not going to college right after high school. Everybody she knew—okay, a ridiculously small sample size, her mom’s family and the kids at her school, but still—went to college right after high school. Otherwise, what were your options? McDonald’s, or building houses. Fixing cars, maybe. Or music, but even Gigi knew you probably couldn’t count on music to pay your rent, no matter how good you were. You still needed a stupid job.

The Portsmouth trolley wheezed into the brick city center and stopped across from a white church that looked like a blown-up version of the one Mom always put in the Christmas village. There were outdoor cafés crowded with people and dogs, small shops, and sidewalks jammed with people. There were college kids and men in navy uniforms, and tourists puzzling over maps and their cell phones. Some of the tourists were sunbaked a shiny red; they looked like they’d fallen into the same pots of boiling water used to cook the lobsters they were probably fantasizing about eating for lunch. “Cockroaches of the sea,” Dad called them.

The lobsters, not the tourists.

Gigi could smell the river from here and used that to orient herself with the map on her phone. A blue line showed her how to walk to Cousin Mildred’s house on the river, just a few blocks south of downtown. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe fifteen minutes, and it took her alongside a pretty park. The river beyond it lay like a flat slate ribbon, and was wide enough for navy ships to be docked along the opposite bank. There was a decent breeze.

Still, Gigi arrived at her destination drenched in sweat and doubt. Her underarms and thighs were sticky with sweat. Even her feet felt sunburned, despite her neon green sneakers.

Why hadn’t she asked Mom or Ava to drive her here? What if Cousin Mildred had died since sending that birthday card, or had gone senile? She was older than Dad and people didn’t live forever. Obviously.

She ignored the tears that started to dampen her face again—by now, the salty moisture felt like her second skin—and studied the house. This neighborhood looked like the kind where the moms played tennis and drank pretty umbrella drinks and the dads willingly coached soccer on weekends. Mildred’s house was tall and narrow, reminding her of a doll’s house with its fancy cream trim. Or a postcard of a house, the shrubs trimmed into neat round balls on either side of the door and a copper-capped varnished picket fence dripping with scarlet roses that would make Mom jealous the same way other people craved good hair.

Gigi unwrapped a piece of gum and chewed it hard, sucking down mint juices to calm her nerves, then spit the little gray wad into its square of chalky paper and tucked it into her pocket. She had taken out her nose and eyebrow rings before leaving home, not wanting to terrify Dad’s cousin; now she wished she’d left them in. She felt vulnerable without her armor, tingling and nervous, as if a thousand bees had landed on her skin.

There was no doorbell and nobody came to the door when she rapped her knuckles against it. Gigi knocked a second time, putting serious muscle into flipping the brass ring hanging through the door knocker lion’s nose. The wooden door was shiny, varnished a warm henna; it smelled like forest, hot and earthy.

She was about to give up, already tugging the wrinkled damp bus schedule out of her pocket to study it, when the door finally opened. Gigi was bathed in a whoosh of cool lemon-scented air that made her blink. An old woman stood in the doorway and squinted in Gigi’s general direction. Her words rustled together like expensive wrapping paper. “Yes? May I help you?”

Gigi’s memory of what Cousin Mildred had looked like so many years ago was vague, yet she experienced a sharp jolt of recognition. Mildred was skinny and bent like a twig, but otherwise looked exactly like Dad would have looked if he’d made it to seventy and been a scrawny woman instead of a bulky man. “I’m Gigi.”

“Speak up, child. Nobody likes a mumbler.”

“I’m Gigi, your cousin Bob’s daughter.” She had rehearsed this. Her words came out like she was a robot imitating human speech. “You send me birthday cards. I live in Newburyport.”

Cousin Mildred folded her arms and stared as if she were memorizing Gigi’s face for a test. She didn’t say a word. Maybe the woman had gone mental. Gigi decided to stare back and wait her out.

Mildred’s own face was long and ended in a square jaw with one of those butt dents in it. Her belly was soft and round above the elastic waistband of her white slacks. Her hair, like Dad’s, had gone white and was surprisingly long for an old woman’s, unraveling in a feathery fountain spray from the top of her head. Behind the wire-frame glasses worn low on her nose, Mildred’s eyes, too, were Dad’s, that same warm honey brown with gold sparks.

Finally Mildred said, “Speak up. You’re not a Girl Scout, are you?” She glanced past Gigi as if there might be a whole troop of girls swarming the sidewalk behind her. “This is the wrong time of year for cookies.”

How could anyone mistake her—with her kohl eyeliner and magenta-tipped hair—for a Girl Scout? Gigi wondered if Mildred was blind, too, like Peter. No. Mildred was squinting at her. You wouldn’t squint in bright light if you were blind, would you?

“I’m Gigi,” she repeated. “Your cousin once removed.” She had worked this much out on the bus. “Your cousin Bob’s youngest daughter. Remember? You send me birthday cards every year.”

“Of course I do. I’m not senile, you know.”

“No, I don’t. How would I know?” Gigi snapped back, then was immediately sorry. You shouldn’t lose it with old people. That was like a Golden Rule or something.

But Mildred seemed to take no offense. Her face remained as expressionless as before. “You are correct,” she said. “I send you birthday cards with money and you send me thank-you notes, which shows that at the very least your parents have taught you some manners. Unlike some,” she added. “But there is no way you could know anything about me.”

Mildred didn’t apologize for this lack of contact. She only peered more intently into Gigi’s face. “You have your father’s nose, so you must be who you say you are. Might as well come inside. I apologize for keeping you waiting, but you can’t be too careful these days. It’s a terrible world. Well, you understand that, I’m sure. You’re in school. I’m sure you’re aware that you could be gunned down right in your own classroom.” She stepped back and gestured for Gigi to enter the door with a little bow, as if Mildred were her own butler.

“You do know my dad’s dead, right?” said Gigi, trying to blink away images of black-clad gunmen prowling the halls of her school.

“Yes, I’d heard your father passed. Ava sent me a card. I have been remiss in not writing back.”

That was it. Nothing like, “What a shame,” or, “I was sorry to hear that,” or even, “My prayers are with you and your family.” Which, when you thought about it, weren’t especially useful phrases, just what Gigi was used to hearing.

She hurried to keep up with the old lady, who was a good foot taller than she was and didn’t seem inclined to wait for anyone. Gigi hadn’t known what to expect of this visit, since her father’s parents were long dead and she’d never met anyone else in his family except Ava and Elaine. But she certainly wasn’t prepared for this weird combo of doom and gloom overlaid with the royal duchess act.

What was it about small towns in Maine, she wondered, that old women like Finley and Mildred never saw their families and believed the world was about to be overrun by zombies or Communists or masked gunmen? At least her father had escaped that place.

She racewalked behind Mildred along the dim hallway, Mildred’s square-heeled shoes hammering on the wood floors, and through a kitchen with dark pine cabinets. Finley’s house was a treasure trove of secrets with its stacks of magazines and papers, the photographs stuffed into drawers, the cluttered little kitchen, but Mildred’s house was devoid of personality. The counters were clear and the floors gleamed. The only pictures on the walls were landscapes in uncertain pastels. There wasn’t a family photograph in sight. The stark contrast between Finley’s house and Mildred’s made Gigi wonder if money and education led people to tuck their personal effects out of sight, the same way Mom always said that a properly dressed man tucks in his shirt, even when wearing jeans.

They continued out the back door to a screened porch with those wicker chairs that looked comfortable but never were. Beyond the porch lay the only indication that a real person lived here: a small square yard crowded with animal statues. Around one bed of red and white flowers, Gigi counted fifteen stone rabbits in varying sizes. The ghostly white statue of a deer peered at her from behind a bush with a puzzled expression.

A large jar of murky brown liquid sweated on a wicker side table; sticks and leaves were floating in it. Gigi stopped to peer into the jar, wondering if Mildred was raising tadpoles. She and her father had done that every summer for years.

“My own special sun tea recipe,” Mildred said, watching Gigi. “You’ll have to try it.”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, but you must!” For the first time, Mildred’s stony face became animated, her skinny silver eyebrows twitching like the threads that held them in place were coming loose. “My sun tea is famous. Everyone at UNH used to absolutely
beg
me to bring it to parties. The trick is to add lemongrass and mint straight from the garden.” She pointed to the twigs and leaves. “Some say bacteria grows in sun tea, but I’m seventy years old this month and healthier than most ten-year-olds. You’ll love it.”