The Beach House (7 page)

“What do you think the girls are doing?” Daniel says, and Bee laughs.

“Are we going to spend the entire time talking about the girls?”

“Isn’t it crazy? Our first trip in years without them, and I miss them so much.”

“Stella was very upset, but they’ll be fine. My dad will spoil them rotten.” Bee smiles. “He was so excited to have them, and it turns out he really does know Nantucket well. He’s given me a list of places we have to visit.”

She glances down at Daniel’s suitcase. “Why is it I can come away with nothing, and you seem to have packed your entire wardrobe?” she says, attempting a laugh which doesn’t quite conceal the irritation behind the comment.

“Because I haven’t been to Nantucket before and I have no idea quite what to wear. I’ve got ‘preppy’ covered with polo shirts and pink and green, and ‘old Yankee’ with seersucker and flip-flops. I just wasn’t sure and I hate getting things wrong.”

“I’ve got three T-shirts, a black jersey dress in case we go out and two pairs of shorts,” Bee says. “I could have packed in a backpack. I’m the girl, I’m supposed to be the one who brings the trunk for the weekend, not you.”

Daniel shrugs and tries to laugh at himself. “You know I’m an old woman,” he says eventually.

“Yes, you are.” Bee looks at him with affection in her eyes. “That’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

“I know,” he says, and he knows he ought to say “I love you too”—the words are on the tip of his tongue, and he tries to say them, he looks at her knowing she’s waiting to hear those words— but instead he finds himself rubbing her knee affectionately before standing up. “I’m going to get a newspaper,” he says abruptly. "Shall I get you a
People
?” And he turns and walks toward Hudson News before it gets anymore difficult.

Daniel has never been able to say “I love you” with ease. He wasn’t brought up like that, he often tells Bee, although that isn’t quite true. His father was cold and distant, but his mother had always showered him with love, and he had always and easily told her he loved her.

Bee was also an only child, and the apple of her parents’ eye. Both of them told her that she was the most precious child in the world, and that no one could possibly love a child more than they loved her, and she believed them. She grew up in a world of safety, security and outward expressions of love, and believed her parents to have a perfect marriage until her mother left her father after she went to college.

“I am tired of the secrets,” her mother once said, and Bee had asked what she meant, but her mother had just shaken her head wearily and said she didn’t want to talk about it, and Bee hadn’t wanted to push. She had hoped, for years afterward, that they would get back together, even though she was an adult, even though it shouldn’t have made any difference to her, but despite the divorce being amicable, friendly even, her mother always said it was an impossible situation.

Bee had tried to talk to her father about it but he hadn’t said much. Not that this was unusual; her father was often quiet, pensive, lost in another world, except when he was playing with Bee, when he was fully engaged, wholly attentive and brimming over with love for her.

Bee had always assumed that when she got married, her husband would treat her in much the same way as her father had, and she doesn’t understand, has never understood, why she has ended up in a marriage with a man who seems incapable of truly loving.

But Bee is not ready to give up. Not yet. Her force of will is so strong she is convinced she can change things, and convinced she will turn Daniel into the man she knows he really is, the man she knows he can be.

Jessica settles back into her car seat and watches her father, who looks over at her from time to time and smiles, reaching out to squeeze her knee as he drives.

She loves him so much it sometimes hurts. He is, without question, the best daddy of all time, and even though she didn’t appreciate him so much when he and Mom lived together, since he’s been gone she feels she has truly come to understand him, and as her attachment to him has grown, so has her dislike of her mother.

It started as ambivalence. Even when her parents were still together her mother was starting to annoy her. Constantly nagging Jessica to tidy her room, or do her homework, or change her clothes, her hair. And then she forced her dad to leave, thereby ruining her life. What was ambivalence has turned very rapidly to hate.

Sure, there are times when they get on. Sometimes her mom will take her for a manicure, which is always fun—then they’re kind of like girlfriends, although it only lasts for a short time, and then her mom always ends up trying too hard and Jessica wants to scream at her.

Jessica knows her dad would never leave her, and the only reason he left is because of her mom. And how does she know this? Why, her dad told her, of course. He said, quite clearly, that he would never have left Jessica, that he loved her more than anything and that this wasn’t his choice to live in a small apartment in a different, less expensive neighborhood. He’d give anything, he said, to move back into their home, to be a family again, but it was her mother who had told him to leave, who was driving this.

Jessica wasn’t particularly surprised to hear that. She knew her father loved her too much to leave, knew it had to be something to do with her mother.

“I hate you!” she screamed at her mother soon after her dad left, daring to say those words out loud for the first time. “You’ve ruined my life and I hate you!” She ran up to her room, expecting her mother to come racing up the stairs after her to punish her, or shout at her, or something. But there was silence.

Jessica sobbed loudly into her pillow, then stopped after a while because no one was coming up to see if she was okay. She tiptoed to her door, cracked it open very gently, and heard her mother crying quietly downstairs.

Good. She felt a glimmer of remorse, quickly covered up by a smug sense of satisfaction. Her mother deserved to feel the pain that Jessica felt every second of every day since her mother had thrown her father out. There was nothing that he could have done that would have justified that, and so Jessica continues to blame her mother, trying to figure out how she can get to live with her dad full time.

“Can we go to Four Brothers?” Jessica asks, the amusement arcade having become one of her favorite places. When they had been living together, she had rarely been allowed to go there, only as a special treat once in a while, and once there her parents had never paid her that much attention. Like every other place they had gone to when they were a whole family, they had gone with other people, friends, so the grown-ups could hang out together and the kids could go off and do their own thing.

Jessica doesn’t ever remember her dad playing arcade games with her, for example. Doesn’t remember her parents sitting at the diner and talking to her as if she were an equal. She remembers them going out a lot at night while she stayed home with a babysitter, remembers them going away for weekends while she went to her grandma’s.

Now her dad does everything with her. Jessica is not old enough to understand about guilt, but she is old enough to reap the benefits, and old enough to know how to manipulate so she always gets what she wants.

“Daddy?” she will say breathlessly as they stand outside Kool Klothes, the coolest store in town that her parents always said was horribly overpriced and ridiculously trendy. “Who shops in there?” her mother used to say, glancing disdainfully through the window at the sequinned tiny T-shirts and low-slung studded denim skirts.

“Can I?” And she has learned that as long as she shows enough excitement and a wide-eyed gratitude, as if to say she can’t believe how lucky she is, he will buy her whatever she wants.

A curious mix of adult and little girl, at thirteen she has curves, breasts, a budding interest in boys, but the divorce has brought about a regression, and she now attaches herself to her father like a limpet, curling herself around him when he stands, sitting on his lap and leaning into him, sucking her thumb while he sits on the sofa to watch television.

She has developed a new routine when she is with her father. She reaches out her arms to him at bedtime and he lifts her up and carries her upstairs to bed, lying down behind her and stroking her back until she falls asleep. I am so lucky, she thinks, as she lies there—the only time in her life she feels absolutely safe and secure. I love my dad and he loves me, and no one can take that away from me.

“So? Can we?”

“Can we what?” Richard seems distracted.

“Dad!”
she whines, rolling her eyes. “I just asked you if we could go to Four Brothers.”

“Maybe later, sweetheart,” he says. “I thought we could go to Belucci’s for lunch today.”

Jessica’s face falls. “Why Belucci’s?” she says. “We always go to the diner.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He smiles at her indulgently. “But today I want you to meet a friend of mine, and I thought we could go somewhere nice, somewhere special.”

Jessica’s heart skips and she narrows her eyes. “What kind of friend?”

“Her name is Carrie and she’s really nice.”

Jessica feels as if she can’t breathe, but she tries to make her voice sound normal. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No, darling.” Richard laughs. “She’s just a new friend of mine who I’m hanging out with and I thought you’d like her.”

“You swear she’s not a girlfriend?”

“Jessica! I would tell you if she was my girlfriend.”

“So how do you know her?”

"I met her through friends, and I promise you, you’ll like her.”

“Why?” Jessica starts to pout. “I don’t want to meet her. I don’t care if she’s nice, this is supposed to be Daddy-daughter time, not Daddy-daughter-and new friend time. I don’t want to meet her. I want to go to Four Brothers.” Her voice starts to pitch higher and Richard looks at her, unsure for a moment of what to do, what to say, then he decides to be firm.

“Sweetheart, we have a plan to meet my friend, and then afterward maybe we’ll go to Four Brothers. We’ll still have Daddy- daughter time, I promise.”

“No, Daddy!” Her voice becomes a scream. “I don’t want anyone else to join us. That’s not fair, Daddy! You’re ruining our time together! I hardly ever see you anymore and when we do we get to do our special things together and it’s not fair that there’s someone else joining us. That’s not fair, Daddy, and I’m not going! ” Tears are now streaming down her face as she thumps her fists on her knees in a fairly accurate interpretation of a three-year -old’s tantrum.

Richard is horrified. This is the first time he has changed their plans since the divorce, and really, what’s the big deal? He’s been seeing Carrie for a few weeks now, and she’s great. He knows Jessica will love her, because everyone loves her. It’s the first time he has thought that he might be able to see a future with one of the many women he has dated since his initial separation from Daff just over a year ago, and he had this vision of the three of them having a wonderful lunch, Jessica charming Carrie with her cuteness and the funny impersonations she always does for him, and Carrie charming Jessica with her warmth and humor.

“Jessica, stop this!” He pulls the car over to the side of the road as Jessica dissolves into full-blown sobbing. “We’re going and that’s the end of it. I suggest you pull yourself together right now.”

“I hate you!” she starts shrieking through her sobs. “I hate you and I’m glad you don’t live with us anymore!”

And Richard shakes his head, utterly helpless. He has no idea what to do.

Nan strides up the dirt driveway, narrowly avoiding a small bulldozer that’s shifting a pile of earth from one side to the other.

“Good morning,” she calls out to the men standing around, most of whom just smile in return, until she calls out jauntily,
“Buenos días.”

“Buenos días, señora!”
they say in return, parting to let her through. They are not sure who she is, but surely she belongs here, perhaps she is someone who is interested in buying this house? Perhaps a realtor coming to inspect the property? It is, after all, nearly finished.

Nan steps gingerly along the plank leading up to the front entrance—the stone steps are not quite ready—and then pushes the front door open, striding through the enormous living room to the French doors at the back.

“Good God,” she says to herself, turning and looking up at the twelve-foot-high coffered ceiling, the sweeping staircase, the elaborately paneled walls. “Who in the hell needs a house like this in Nantucket?”

She takes her time. Walks down the corridor to the kitchen, gasps at the size of the kitchen, the Viking eight-burner stove, the Sub-Zero fridge and the marble countertops.

“But where’s the pantry?” she mutters, opening doors and walking around. “How do you have a kitchen this size and no pantry? Where are you supposed to put the food?” She directs these questions to a Guatemalan plumber who’s lying on the floor tightening something under the sink. He doesn’t understand but smiles widely and nods.

“Ridiculous,” she says, continuing her journey. Up the stairs to the bedrooms—the master bedroom having walk-in closets that are each larger than her bedroom in her house—and then downstairs to the basement.

A fully equipped gym, a steam room that easily accommodates ten, a massage room fitted out with professional massage table. A pool room and bar, and then through to a twelve-seat movie theater, complete with leather reclining seats and a full-sized old-fashioned popcorn machine in the foyer.

“Hello? Can I help you?” A large man walks into the movie theater as Nan is trying out one of the reclining seats.

“I don’t know,” Nan says. “Can you? Do you know how to make these go all the way back?”

“I do,” he says. “You push on the arms.”

Nan pushes on the arms and goes flying backward until she’s lying prostrate. She starts to giggle. “Oh well done.” She thanks him. “I think I may have to have a nap. It’s terribly comfortable. You ought to try it.”