Small Plates (12 page)

I knew it would take Arnold a while to get here. Cynthia was back and I could tell she was hesitating. Trying to decide whether she should come on over. I walked back and thanked her. Told her to stay where she was. She said she'd been just about to go home and I told her that was fine. I looked at her pictures again and complimented her. We stood for a minute staring at the water. The beach faces Eggemoggin Reach and across to the mainland. It was so clear you could see Mount Desert Island in the distance. The sky was as blue as a robin's egg and filled with puffy white clouds. A few sailboats made their way down toward Camden.

It was a perfect Maine day.

The funeral was a sad affair. I knew Myra's parents would be cut up, but in her own quiet way she'd been popular with the whole island, and everybody turned out. Brian looked like someone half-dead himself. Didn't cry. Just sat in the front row of the church, his eyes locked on the coffin. Saw him shake his head a few times. He was holding his mother-in-law's hand. She wasn't crying either, but Jim Gordon made up for both of them. Tears just ran down his face, making puddles in his neck until Mother passed him some Kleenex. We were in the front row too on account of my finding her and because I'm Jim's cousin.

Then life went back to normal for most people. There was an article and an obit in our paper and one of those fool guest opinions about the importance of wearing life jackets. Thought that could have waited and told the editor when I saw him at the post office.

“Someone sends me something, have to print it. That's freedom of the press.”

“That's bullshit,” I told him. I can get a little ornery.

Mother noticed that I was sort of quiet and I imagine she must have thought it was because of the hot spell we'd been having. Tuesday she asked me if I'd drop off a casserole she'd made at Brian's before I went to the Odd Fellows meeting that night. It wasn't much out of my way and I said I didn't mind. Although, to my way of thinking, Brian probably had enough casseroles to last him until Christmas by now, because this is what the women on this island do. Casseroles and pies.

I took Hector to the beach. Cynthia wasn't there, but the mothers had come early and the kids were running in and out of the water. Hector joined them and they had a fine old time. On the way home I stopped at The Clamshell and talked to Jean for a while. Mother and I weeded the garden. Corn was looking good. Then I took a rest. Doctor's orders.

It was about five o'clock when I pulled into Brian's. There was another car there, one of those BMWs. You see them here in the summertime. See them more and more.

It was Cynthia's car and she was sitting at the kitchen table. There was a casserole in front of her. It looked a little fancier than the tuna one Mother had made, but not by much. They were drinking beer. Cynthia had poured hers into a glass. Brian offered me one, but I said no.

“What did you use to weigh her down?” I asked and pulled up a chair.

Brian stood up, knocking Cynthia's beer over. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Myra. What did you use to keep her from coming to the surface and floating away before Cynthia could swim out and drag her to shore? You must have tied her to a trap. By her feet, I expect, when she was busy baiting. Then pitched her over.”

Cynthia started to cry. “I knew something like this would happen!”

“Shut up!” Brian yelled and slapped her. She looked stunned and ran for the door. The trailer, in Myra's absence, was a mess, and Cynthia tripped over a pile of pot buoys Brian had been painting. I helped her up and told her she had better just sit down.

“I'm hoping you didn't plan this out before you married the poor girl. I'm hoping she had a few happy days.”

Brian crushed his beer can, threw it, and reached for another.

“Keep talking, you crazy old coot,” he sneered. “Even if one word of this was true, you couldn't prove a thing.”

I smiled and decided to have a beer after all.

“You couldn't take the chance that she wouldn't be found. Knew I'd be coming along later with Hector as usual and if I didn't, there was Cynthia here. Except it was better to have someone else. Someone who wasn't tied into the whole business. Assume you had a good policy on her and those insurance people are most probably dragging their heels as it is. No body and you might have had to wait until you're gray-haired like me. Plus how long in the state of Maine before you two could get married? Before Myra'd be legally dead? Six, seven years? Something like that.”

Arnold, from the doorway, supplied the answer: “Seven years.”

Then he read them their rights and Brian started in swearing. Arnold's a big man and I'm no runt, so there wasn't any more than that. Cynthia sat with her mouth shut tight in one thin line. The mark from Brian's hand was tattooed deep red right across her cheek.

I went out to the pickup and came back with the framed picture I'd borrowed from Jean. It was one of Cynthia's, signed and dated on the back. One of the ones I'd seen propped against the log on the beach. I held it up, so they could both have a good look. There was the Reach, the clouds, the sky—and the
My Myra,
Brian's bright-yellow-and-turquoise lobster boat, dead center.

“Myra must have wondered why you were stopping. She'd have known like everybody else you don't have any traps in that part of the Reach.”

T
he Wyndhams were an ideal match. Everybody said so. Normally this would not mean much—a convenient phrase—but in this case, it happened to be true.

Felicity Wyndham was sitting in a large wicker chair. She'd covered its overstuffed cushions with a crisp blue-and-white windowpane check that matched the blue stripe of the paper that lined the walls not covered with bookshelves. The room, a small library and her favorite, was in the front of the house—a large Victorian in Ridgewood, New Jersey. She'd placed the chair directly in front of the bow window that faced the lawn across the porch.

The snow was finally melting. Soon she would take a walk and see if the snowdrops were up. Meanwhile, it was heaven to sit in the sunshine that streamed through the glass, its warm rays streaking across her face making her feel even lazier than she had when she'd dropped into it to take a break. Being pregnant had produced a pleasant lethargy once her mercifully brief bout of morning sickness had passed. She put her hand across her stomach, feeling the bump that she still found hard to believe was a human being.

A boy. Their son. She hadn't wanted to know the sex, but Geoff had convinced her that knowing would mean an even closer bonding. Besides, her doctor knew. It wasn't one of the universe's secrets. Yet that's exactly how the whole pregnancy had struck her from the beginning. Miraculously secret or secretly miraculous? Both? She smiled to herself. No name for the baby so far. More fun to toss suggestions around. Geoff was open to all; adamantly opposed only to “Brendan.” No reason, he said, just didn't like the name. Still, Felicity suspected it must have belonged to someone in his past. She'd nixed “Patricia”—“Patty”—recalling the mean girl who had bullied her so relentlessly in second grade for no reason Felicity could fathom then or now.

A slight kick, a flutter. Not enough yet to make her wince. But enough to make her feel an intense well-being she had never experienced before. A kind of floating—floating on a warm sea with no thoughts at all save one. She'd lined one of those French baby baskets with leftover fabric from the chair and imagined herself sitting in this same spot, watching their child sleep as the seasons changed outside the window.

Geoff had given her free rein with the house. He'd spotted it during their search, online, and then called the Realtor, arranging to see it that very day. She'd known it was perfect even before she walked through the front door. A wisteria vine in full bloom shaded one half of the porch and climbed high up the side of the house. There were old-fashioned flower beds—hydrangea with flowers as large as bowling balls, roses, lilies. Ridgewood was only twenty miles from Manhattan, close enough for an easy commute to Geoff's office, but it felt many more miles away. The house had been built in 1900, and Felicity liked to think about the families who had lived here, the children who had run up and down the stairs—formal ones in the front, the servants' stairs in the back. Another child would go up and down them in the not-too-distant future.

Decorating the house had been a labor of love. She'd wanted to stay true to the period, but not make it feel as if they were living in a museum. Before her marriage, she had been an interior designer and enjoyed mixing periods—a Midcentury Modern accent like a George Nelson clock in an otherwise Arts and Crafts interior. She'd done the same with the Victoriana here: bright, contemporary fabrics paired with walls painted in the dark reds, ochers, and greens of the period. Eastlake meets Marimekko, she'd told Geoff. He'd told her she was a genius. That he was a lucky man.

And she was a lucky woman. Felicity got up and walked closer to the window. A year ago she was struggling to make ends meet. The downturn in the economy had meant a sharp decline in her business. There had been no reduction in her rent, however. She had been thinking about moving out of her West Side apartment to someplace more affordable—although no place in the city was, and forget about Brooklyn these days!—when Geoff walked into her life. Things hadn't been going all that well in the romance department either. Predictably Felicity and her college boyfriend had broken up a month after graduation, and then she went through a series of relationships that she'd known weren't going to work. Even so, each time she'd hung on too long in the belief that things would change. Suddenly she was twenty-six, turning heads with her long legs, slim figure, blond hair from her mother's Scandinavian heritage, and big brown eyes, her skin slightly tan as well from her Tuscan grandparents. But no Prince Charming or Happily Ever After in sight. That is until the benefit cocktail party one of her loyal clients gave for City Harvest, inviting Felicity and suggesting she bring cards, as everyone would adore what she had done to the apartment.

Geoff Wyndham, whose coloring so closely matched Felicity's they could have been siblings, but thank goodness weren't, she later reflected, was a venture capitalist in his early thirties who had made a great deal of money and was making more. He had an office in Manhattan and one in San Francisco. He was ready to settle down if he could only meet the right woman. By the end of the evening over a late dinner at Jean-Georges, he told Felicity he was pretty sure he had.

Flowers arrived. Small gifts, thoughtful ones—a new CD she'd mentioned was out, hummingbird cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, a William Morris scarf and umbrella from the Metropolitan Museum after she'd told Geoff of her lifelong love of the designs. They took a vacation to Anguilla, missing a huge snowstorm that crippled the East Coast. He proposed in the airport as they sat waiting for the next possible flight out. An emerald-cut diamond ring from Cartier had been in his pocket; he'd been waiting for the right moment, and that one—that sitting in a crowded airport lounge with people milling about, most of them angry—was it. He realized he didn't want to be anywhere else or with anyone else. Ever. She said yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Felicity's parents had married late and she had been a bit of a surprise. Her father had died when she was still in high school, a chronic heart condition, and then her mother the year after college—a cancer so swift Felicity had barely time to get to Ohio and say good-bye. Geoff had no siblings either and only his father was alive—remarried, living in Florida, interested in golf, the ponies, the new wife a little, Geoff not at all. So Felicity and Geoff tied the knot in Manhattan at City Hall.

The client who had given the fortuitous party and Geoff's college roommate who happened to be in town from Chicago stood up with them. Afterward, they all had a riotous lunch with much wine nearby at City Hall Restaurant, because Geoff said it was too apt a name to pass up, and besides, he wanted oysters plus a Delmonico steak.

A few hours later the newlyweds caught a night flight to Paris. Each was eager to show the other “their” Paris, but Geoff's turned out to be far different from Felicity's—even now the memory of walking into the suite at the George V took her breath away. And the Michelin three-star meals! Still, Geoff had loved the bistro—amazingly still there on the Île Saint-Louis—that she had discovered one spring break and always came back to on her too-infrequent visits to Paris since.

Geoff had had to go to the West Coast almost as soon as they returned, but they'd already found the house, and she was busy moving. He had been up front about the amount of traveling he had to do, but while she missed him when he was away, Felicity had always been content to be on her own and never more so than now when she was truly nesting. He'd be back from this current trip in two days. She pictured him when she opened the door, the smile that would light up his face—and she could almost feel his embrace. The sex had been a revelation from the start, even better now than when they had just been getting to know what each other liked. She flushed at the thought. Two days was beginning to feel like a long time.

Get going, she chided herself. Take your walk, or finish dusting the books. Felicity and Geoff's combined library had revealed their eclectic tastes, and the arrangement on the shelves revealed what Geoff called his “slight OCDness.” He arranged books alphabetically within fiction and nonfiction, with further categories for art, biography, and so forth. He had described himself to her early on as a would-be librarian. She'd been excited to discover that a passion for books was just another of the things they had in common.

Felicity disliked disorder as well. Her designs had always focused on de-cluttering a space. She'd assigned herself the job of dusting the books while Geoff was on this trip. She knew she wouldn't be doing it once the baby arrived. She'd finished the nonfiction, including the coffee table books, which were stacked on the broad bottom shelves. She was up to the
D
's in fiction. She'd dust to
M,
then go outdoors. Dante, Danticat, Delafield, Dickens.