Seashell Season (29 page)

Chapter 82

I
invited Marion for lunch yesterday. Gemma and I hadn't seen her since the Fourth of July festivities, and I was feeling a little guilty about that. I made Marion's favorite lunch—a tuna melt with Swiss cheese and tomato on white bread (she would accept a cheap squishy bread, but I would not and so used a good loaf of toasting white)—bought a bag of cookies from Bread and Roses in Ogunquit, and set the table on the back deck with china plates and real glasses and cotton napkins. On her own initiative, Gemma picked a handful of daisies and a few stalks of Queen Anne's lace from the garden and arranged the simple, delicate flowers artfully in a small vase at the center of the table. She has an eye after all, I noticed, and I wondered if she had constructed flower arrangements before. Alan certainly wouldn't have taught her how to.

Marion arrived promptly at noon—she's a person who eats breakfast at six, lunch at noon, and dinner at five every day she can possibly manage it. Being retired now, this means almost every day of every week. I could tell immediately something was on her mind.

We sat at the table, and I served the hot sandwiches and lemonade. Gemma, as was usual, scarfed down her food in moments, but Marion, always a slow and deliberate eater, was even more so this afternoon.

“Is the sandwich okay?” I asked, knowing the food wasn't the issue.

Marion raised a ghost of a smile. “Fine, Verity. Thank you.”

I resisted encouraging a confidence. Asking Marion to share what was bothering her could and often did result in a very long litany of minor ailments, a good many of which, I suspect, are imaginary. Well, real enough to Marion. It turned out, there was no need for me to encourage Marion to speak.

“Alan's cousin hasn't called me since she and her husband have been in town,” she said with a sigh.

Gemma said nothing. What could she say? And the last thing I wanted was to make excuses for Ellen's social snobbery.

“Since they've been here in Yorktide,” Marion went on. “Well, there have been so many memories.”

That's when I began to get really nervous. The last thing I wanted was for Marion to start strolling down memory lane and reveal secrets I didn't want Gemma to know, not now, maybe never. But short of being rude, I didn't know how to stop her.

“Did you know, Gemma,” she went on, “that Alan's father, Albert, died when Alan was only just nineteen? It was a terrible loss for the both of us.”

“But you still wear your wedding ring,” Gemma said. “Unless you got married again?”

“Oh no. Albert was the only one for me.”

“Sorry. I mean, that was a long time ago. You must have been lonely a lot.”

I smiled at my daughter. She was revealing herself to be a far more perceptive person than I'd thought at first.

Marion went inexorably on. “Since shortly after our marriage,” she said, her voice a bit shaky, “Albert was intermittently institutionalized for mental exhaustion. That was the term we used.”

“Who's ‘we'?” Gemma asked. “The doctors?”

Marion didn't quite answer her question. “I never told Alan what was wrong with his father,” she went on, fiddling with the napkin in her lap and not meeting Gemma's eyes or mine. “I never told him where exactly his father was going when he went away. I told him that Daddy had a weak constitution and sometimes needed complete rest.”

“And he believed that?” Gemma asked, her tone harsh now and suspicious. My entire body was tense.

“He did believe that,” Marion said forcefully. “At least, he never questioned me, not even after his father's death. By then, I saw no reason to tell him the truth. And the rest of the family, well, they never had much use for Albert, so no one saw the point in interfering with my decision. But sometimes I think that maybe they should have. . . .”

“What do you mean?” Gemma demanded.

“Marion, I don't think—”

Marion ignored me and leaned forward across the table, finally looking her granddaughter in the eye. I don't think I'd ever seen her so intent and sure of her purpose. “No,” she said. “I think Gemma should know. There was some trouble with Alan and a few girlfriends before he met your mother.”

I didn't know why Marion was telling this to Gemma, unless it was to relieve a burden of guilt. And if that were the case, then Marion was acting selfishly. Again.

“What kind of trouble?” Gemma shot me a look, and I felt my heart sink.

“Nothing physical. Just—”

“Stalking,” I said when Marion seemed not able to go on. “There were restraining orders. Alan didn't take rejection lightly. He couldn't let go.”

Gemma said nothing for a few minutes. Neither did Marion nor I. And then Gemma spoke. “You know how the police realized Jim Armstrong was Alan Burns, don't you?” she said. “The fingerprints from his second arrest, the car theft. He told me he'd been arrested when he was young for throwing a baseball through someone's window—he said it was an accident—and that's why the prints were on file.”

Marion shook her head. “That never happened.”

“In fact,” I said, “he beat someone up pretty badly. Broken bones. A concussion.”

“It was an unprovoked attack,” Marion went on more steadily than I would have given her credit for. “Alan thought the man was interested in his ex-girlfriend.”

“The victim was hospitalized for almost a week,” I told my daughter.

Gemma shook her head and let out a bark of laughter. “I always thought Dad was a total passive-aggressive, when he wasn't just being annoying. He actually hit someone?”

“He has—at least, he had—a temper.”

“I know that,” Gemma said. “He gets pissed off all the time at someone from work or the guy behind the counter at the drugstore or someone he thinks is going to cut him off on the road even though the guy doesn't. It all seemed random to me. Stupid, like when he'd get fired for starting an argument, but . . . I guess I never pictured him actually getting violent.”

“At least he never hit a woman,” Marion said.

Gemma looked at her grandmother as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Does it even matter?” she asked. “Look at what else he's done!”

Marion had no answer to that, and as decently as I could, I suggested it was time for coffee. Thankfully, Marion declined, and a little while later I walked her out to her car.

“Don't be mad at me,” she said, opening the driver's-side door. Her face was crumpled with emotion. “I had to do it.”

I didn't bother to ask her why she had to tell the truth and why now. The point was that she had.

“I'm not mad,” I said, truthfully. “Just—tired.”

When she'd driven off, I went back out to the deck. Gemma was still sitting at the table, frowning.

“Did you know about Alan's past when you hooked up with him?” she asked as soon as I'd sat.

We've come this far,
I thought.
Why keep the rest a secret now?

“No.”

“But Marion knew.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you two fell out? Because when you found out about Dad, it was already too late?”

“Yes, it was. She never told me anything about Alan's problems. That it was a pattern likely to repeat itself. She thought I was different. She thought I could save him, keep him in line.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

Gemma looked furious. “If Alan had known that his father had mental problems, he might have been on the lookout for his own and maybe even gotten some help!”

I thought it unlikely, as someone with mental instabilities might be the very last to realize there was a problem, but I didn't say so.

“Why did they ever have a kid in the first place if Albert was a nutjob?”

“I don't know the answer to that,” I said. “It's all in the past. Look, Marion is a weak woman. I've had to accept that fact and learn to forgive her for what she did to me. Keeping me in the dark. Putting me at risk.”

“And me!”

“Marion is an enabler,” I went on calmly. “She probably learned how to be at a very young age, and there's no changing her now. Besides, what's done is done. I know more than most people how hard it is to let go of anger and grudges and old hurts, but sometimes it's necessary for survival.”

Gemma half laughed. “So does this mean I'm a nut case too?”

“Of course it doesn't. Gemma, come on. You're one of the most eminently sane people I've ever met.”

“I need to go think about this,” she said. Suddenly she sounded defeated. Drained.

My heart broke. I watched her go inside the house, and slowly got to my feet to clear away the lunch things. No one, I noticed, had touched the cookies.

Maybe I should have pressed Marion as to why she felt it necessary to tell Gemma about her grandfather's mental illness now. To tell her at all. To tell her about her father's troubled past with women. The need to confess is a strange and very powerful thing and sometimes can't be resisted, even when the confessor knows she might further hurt the one to whom she's confessing.

Chapter 83

W
hen Marion had gone home and Verity and I had talked some more about the bombshell my grandmother dropped smack in the middle of our lunch, I went off to my room, needing to think things through.

I feel bad for the young woman my mother once was. I feel angry with my father for being such a jerk-off. I feel angry with Marion for being such a wimp.

Sure, I always knew Dad was a bit off, a bit quirky, but he was never as bad as the fathers of some of the kids I went to school with—outright drunks or addicts or wife-beaters—so I didn't really care. Dad might be off-balance, but he's also nice, mostly. I mean, he doesn't use foul language. If he sees old people having trouble reaching something on a shelf at the grocery store, he gets it for them.

But he steals, things and people. And he beats people up. And he stalks them. Like stalking is any better than hitting someone in the face? To me, it sounds way more dangerous and totally creepy.

No wonder Ellen pokes fun of Marion and calls her pathetic. I almost can't blame her, though it makes me really uncomfortable when she says critical stuff about Dad. He
is
still my father, even if it's turning out he's not a very good one.

I wonder how much of your life is predestined before birth. I mean, Verity says I'm eminently sane—her words. I don't know about that, but she says that if I haven't cracked up already, after the crazy shit I've been through, I'm not going to start cracking up now. I hope she's right.

Did Dad even have a choice in becoming the guy he became? Yes. Of course he had a choice! He's not insane!

I tried to remember the few girlfriends Dad had over the years, aside from that one Patty I told Verity about. The one who'd told me that one day I, too, would have to leave the nest—the prison—Alan had constructed around me. And I found I couldn't remember much about any of them. None had stuck around for long. Had they all seen pretty quickly that Dad was a dangerous guy, and run off before he could gain possession of them? Had they all been smart, smarter and more experienced than my mother had been back then? No use. I'll never know what happened to those women. For all I know, one or more of the times Dad and I had to move in a hurry was because some father or boyfriend or maybe even the police were after him for having harassed a daughter or a girlfriend.

I sighed and turned onto my side. The couch isn't really wide enough for me to sleep on my side without opening it out, but it's okay for when I'm just lying here, thinking.

Like thinking that Dad had to have had a good reason for doing what he did, for taking me away from my mother. Wait, what I mean is, I have to believe
he
believed he had a good reason, even if that reason was something as stupid as revenge. Because if I don't believe that, what am I left with? The naked fact that my father is deranged, that he was always deranged, and that he was predestined to go off the edge at some point in his life—taking me, it turned out, with him. The naked fact that I grew up in the care of someone who should have been in a freakin' straightjacket. Huh. I wonder if Dad's defense team is going to try to have him declared unfit for trial.

I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen, where Verity's laptop lives. She wasn't there; I heard her upstairs. I checked the e-mail account she had set up for me back when I first got here. There was a message from Tom; I'd given him my address in my last note. It was just chitchat, like how he and Valerie were feeling fine and how he hoped I was enjoying the summer and that sometimes he missed Maine but not in the winters. I wrote back and told him about meeting my father's cousin and her husband, but said nothing about my kind of complicated feelings about them and all their money. And I said nothing about what Marion had told me about my father. Tom probably knows all that by now anyway. And if he doesn't, it must be because Verity doesn't want him to know. And it's not my secret to tell.

I heard Verity coming down the stairs then, and I closed the laptop.

Chapter 84

A
nother text from Ellen. I read it—
Great seeing u today
—but didn't reply. In fact, I turned off my phone and put it on the little table by my bed. My couch, whatever. I don't mind her texting me as long as she doesn't expect me to always answer right away. I mean, I have a life.

Even if I'm not sure where that life is going.

Ellen and I went to the Ogunquit Playhouse the other night to see
The Sound of Music
. I'd never been to a play other than the ones at some of the schools I went to, and I have to say it was kind of exciting to be sitting in the second row, close enough to see all the heavy makeup the actors were wearing and to see the scuff marks their shoes made on the wooden stage. One actor spit with practically every word he spoke! (I was glad we weren't sitting in the front row.) The show itself seemed kind of silly and seriously old-fashioned to me, but Ellen seemed to like it a lot, along with everyone else in the theater. The applause at the end was long and loud, and as we walked back up the aisle toward the exit, I heard lots of comments like, “That was fantastic!” and “That was as good as Broadway!”

Afterward Ellen took me to this nice restaurant for “a nightcap.” I'd never heard that expression before, but it was obvious what it meant when she ordered a brandy. I had a cappuccino. It came with one of those Italian cookies called biscotti. It was probably the most adult and sophisticated night I've ever spent, and I didn't hate it like I thought I might.

When we were having our nightcaps, Ellen said: “I'm guessing Alan never took you to the theater. He never did have any appreciation for the performing arts.” And then she raised her eyebrow like she does. “Then again, he does seem to have acting talent, constructing the role of Jim Armstrong and playing it so well for all those years.”

I don't like it when Ellen says something critical or dismissive about my father, but I said nothing in his defense. Honestly, after learning about his past, the restraining orders, the attack on that innocent guy, I don't feel very much like being his knight in shining armor.

I wonder if Ellen and Richard know about Alan's early crimes. I'm certainly not going to be the one to tell them.

Anyway, now there's something even more important to think about than what happened in the past. Now I'm supposed to be thinking about my future.

Here's what happened.

Ellen took me to lunch again today at M.C. Perkins Cove. (That place is not cheap. She and Richard must have a serious amount of cash to be spending all the money they're spending on me.) When the waiter brought our lunch—Ellen always has a salad, and I always go for some kind of sandwich—Ellen asked me if I'd seen the local high school yet.

“Yeah,” I told her. “Verity took me there earlier in the summer. We had a tour.”

“And what did you think?”

I shrugged. “It was all right.”

“But you weren't impressed.”

“No, not really.” I thought: Why do I need to be impressed? It's only a high school. You go to classes and you come home and then, if you're not stupid, you graduate.

Ellen took a sip of her Prosecco and then said: “How would you like to go to a really good school?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Verity said we can't afford a private school.”

“But Richard and I can.”

Now I thought: So?

“We have an offer for you, Gemma,” Ellen went on, resting her fork against her plate. “We'd like you to attend a very good private school in Massachusetts. It's called Greyson Academy. They have an excellent website you might want to explore. It will tell you everything you need to know. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Richard and I want to pay for your education. We want to pay for you to go to Greyson.”

My very first thought was: She's got to be kidding. I mean, I thought she was playing some sort of mean and stupid joke, dangling riches in front of the poor girl but holding them just out of grasp. But then I saw from the look on her face that she was totally serious.

“Have you talked to Verity about this?” I asked.

“Not yet. Richard and I thought you should be the one to tell her, after you've thought some about the offer. And ask me any questions you need to, Gemma. You need to be fully informed in order to make a good decision.”

“Where would I live?” I asked, envisioning a dorm room that slept twenty kids, like one of those old-fashioned dorm rooms you see in movies about penitentiaries and boarding schools where they starve and beat the students and where the older, bigger kids sexually assault the little kids. If that was the case, forget about it.

“You would live with us,” Ellen said. “We have a lovely guest room with its own bathroom. As soon as you learn to drive, you'll have use of one of our cars. We belong to a very nice country club, and we'll get you a membership, of course. You could take tennis lessons if you like, or Richard could take you out on the golf course. He plays every Saturday morning. We're close to Boston, which is a lovely city. You'll enjoy getting to know it. And we usually go away to someplace warm and sunny around Christmas. You could come with us, of course.”

“Like where?” I asked, wondering why I was bothering to ask these questions, as if I really cared about the answers. I mean, me at a country club? Was this woman high?

“Well, we've gone to Aruba and Puerto Rico, but our favorite place to spend the holiday season is Hawaii.”

“Oh,” I said. And I remembered how a long time ago I'd seen some pictures in a magazine of places in Hawaii, boiling volcanoes and black sand, and I'd thought,
I'd like to go there one day. It looks so cool.
Well, hot but you know what I mean.

Ellen picked up her fork again and speared a bit of lettuce. “We're planning a trip to Paris next spring,” she said, “and we'll make sure the dates coincide with your spring break so we three can go together. We'll have to get you a passport, of course, but that's no worry. By the way, lots of the Greyson students go abroad during the breaks.” Ellen smiled. “I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into one or two of your classmates in the City of Lights.”

I thought suddenly of one of the art books in Verity's studio, one that has pictures of the
Mona Lisa
and this really huge stone sphinx and a statue called the
Venus de Milo,
all in a museum called The Louvre. The Louvre was in Paris.

“I don't . . . I don't know what to say,” I told her.
And why
, I thought,
aren't you just saying no? The whole idea is outrageous
.

Ellen laughed. “Of course this must seem so sudden to you and well, it is a bit sudden! Why don't you give it some serious thought? Sleep on it. And talk to Verity, of course. She'll have a few questions that Richard and I will be happy to answer, questions about an allowance for you, which of course we'll provide, and other practical matters. The Greyson semester starts right after Labor Day and I've spoken to the administration about allowing us to get you registered as late as the end of the month.”

The end of the month is only weeks away.

I said nothing more after that. Ellen, maybe sensing I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, changed the subject. She told me about a dog they once had and how they were thinking of getting another one and how careful you had to be about breeders. I didn't really listen.

Ellen dropped me off at the bungalow after lunch. “Call me anytime,” she said as I got out of her car.

Mrs. Pascoe was watering some flowers in a bed that runs along the front of her house. She waved. I wasn't really in the mood to chat with her, not when I was still trying to process Ellen's insane offer, but I went over anyway.

“Hello, Gemma!” She smiled widely, and I noticed there was some lipstick on her teeth. Bright pink. I don't know how women wear lipstick. I don't know why. The farthest I'll go with makeup is some tinted lip balm. Verity doesn't wear much makeup, and Annie wears none that I can see. Cathy is another story.

“Hi, Mrs. Pascoe,” I said. “Your flowers are looking nice.”

Mrs. Pascoe then launched into a story of how she learned to love flowers when she was a little girl, and how her grandfather worked as a gardener on some big estate and would take her to work with him sometimes and . . .

I kind of zoned out after that. Finally she let me go, and I went into my house.

She's not a bad old thing, Mrs. Pascoe. And it occurs to me I have no idea if the Pascoes ever had kids and if they have grandkids. I haven't seen anyone visit them since I got here to Yorktide, but then again, it's not like I've been home every single minute of every single day. Verity probably knows if Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe have family somewhere. Not that it matters. I'm just curious.