On the train I leaned forward and strained to see the landmark flagpole that marked the head of her road; the train’s speed blurred the trees, rocks, and bay into a wash of grayish blues and greens, and the flagpole never came into sight. My father’s ashes were in that bay. My mother had kept them under her bed, in a large can with a lid to be pried off like the top of a cocoa can, and she had scattered them, alone, one year after his death. I pictured her standing on the rocks, dipping her hand into the can, throwing dust into the sea. She had done it at night. I thought back ten, fifteen years, to the time when she and I would search for him. Perhaps if we were different, those sad, weird memories would bind us. Instead they divided; they proved that I knew the truth about him. She couldn’t pretend with me.
Some nights, alone in my apartment, I would think of my mother at my age. She seemed to long for my sort of life: artistic and alone. Yet she had married and borne three girls, all the while wishing for solitude. And watercolors. Now that she was alone, able to paint as much as she wanted, she could imagine a past that lived up to her hopes and expectations. The train rushed into a tunnel cut into a rocky hillside, and the bay was lost to my view.
Chapter 9
I
stepped off the train at Westerly into a brilliant, blustery September afternoon and Margo’s arms—all at once. We stood hugging on the splintery wood platform for a long time. Her hair, after a summer of sun and swimming in salt water, was a white halo. It hung loose to her slim shoulders, rippling in gentle waves. “Back together again,” she said into my neck. I am five inches taller than she is. The short hairs along her part fizzed up my nose.
“Where’s Matt?” I asked, looking around, scratching my itchy nose with the back of my hand.
She stepped away from me and hoisted my heaviest bag. I fought her for it. We both have streaks of machismo, but mine is more finely developed. I won the bag.
“Back at the inn. He was dying to come, but I wanted to see you alone, with my own two eyes, first.”
“That was a good idea.” I followed her to a rusty blue Land Rover. It had bright plastic decals on the window: the Audubon Society, a four-wheel-drive permit to go on some beach, a Brown University seal, and a long sticker saying “Let’s Go, Bruno!” I leaned back against the cracked leather seat, and we drove along the shore road.
“Don’t get your hopes up, but I’m trying to arrange a family reunion. I’ve asked Mom, Lily, and Henk to come for a long weekend.”
“When?”
“Anytime they can make it. They all seem to have previous commitments.”
The tone in Margo’s voice invited me to complain about my mother’s permanent isolation and Lily’s since marrying Henk, but I felt too blissful. I wanted to watch the road spin along the salt marshes and inlets and take deep breaths of salt air. In New York I used only the top third of my lungs, taking shallow, sooty breaths. Instead I asked Margo about her upcoming year.
“I’m going to live with Matt and do independent study. It’s an easy drive to Providence from here, for days when I have conferences with Professor Allen. Plus, there’s a lady with a Rodin collection.”
“Where?”
“In Watch Hill. She has a huge house with a glassed-in sculpture court. I’ve visited her a couple of times. She and her husband always have dinner at the inn now, and she tells everyone I’m doing my ‘report’ on Rodin. I’m getting my doctorate, and people still think I’m twelve.”
I smiled over at Margo, but fortunately she didn’t see me. Although she was twenty-five, you’d never know it. Her small stature, her pretty blond hair, her shaky way of doing things all make you think she’s quite young. She never used to drive. Lily always had. And now, watching Margo maneuver a four-wheel-drive vehicle along the road, I sensed trepidation disguised by bravado. Or perhaps I was just unwilling to believe in my youngest sister’s competence.
The turreted Ninigret Inn crowned the crest of a hill that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the town of Watch Hill on the other. Its silver shingles had been bleached by the east wind and salt spray; I imagined gales roaring up the bluff, along the promontory between the inn and the lighthouse. Nor’easters to rock its foundations. The inn could once have been a sea captain’s house. In the eighteenth century. The captain’s wife would wait here while her husband plied the coasts of Brazil, Jamaica, and Florida. She would wear rustling white garments and climb daily to the turret where she would scan the horizon for sails; although she would see many rising out of the waves, she would recognize her husband’s instantly. Then she would run (I see her: the sun on her pink face, her fizzy blond hair blowing in waves behind her, her rustling white dress held daintily above her bloomers by small pale hands) down to the dock. Her husband would step off his packet laden with palm fronds, copper, sperm oil, and pineapples. Then they would rush (now she is in his arms, her glowing face pressed into his blue coat) back up the hill to their house. I told this to Margo when she parked the Rover in the inn’s yard.
“I’ve thought that exact thing myself,” Margo said, shielding her eyes as she looked up at the turret’s pointed roof. “Her name is Letitia and his is Nathaniel. She fixes him pancakes for his first meal back because he is so sick of fish.”
Inn guests sat in white slatted chairs spread around the grassy lawn. A hedge of wild roses ran along the property lines. The only trees were a few scrubby oaks and pines. Margo led me to the steps, then proceeded through a wide screen door into a shadowy foyer. The inn’s main public room contained some couches, a fireplace, and windows separated from each other by bookshelves. Shabby Persian rugs covered the tile floor. I loved the place on sight.
Ten seconds after the door slammed shut, Matt hurried down the steep staircase from the second floor. I knew instantly that it was he. Short and compact, he had a fuzzy brown-gold beard and friendly blue eyes. He wore a faded flannel shirt over jeans. His handshake was firm and earnest, and I judged him to be about twenty-six.
“Took you long enough to get here,” he said, continuing to shake my hand. The more I stared at his smile, the more intense it seemed.
“You can let go now,” Margo said dryly.
“No, these first meetings are the most important—they’re when the bonds crop up. Una and I have to have a good, solid bond.”
“I can tell this is an excellent bond,” I said, pulling my hand away; it hurt a little around the knuckles. Then I kissed Matt’s cheek.
“How was your trip?”
“Great. Relaxing. It’s nice to be here.”
“Wait till you see your room. You’re sleeping in the turret,” he said.
Margo looked lovestruck and proud as hell at his generosity. She grinned at me. “The turret room is great.”
“It’s also haunted,” Matt said.
Margo’s expression slid from pleasure to panic; I knew she was remembering that time, one year before, when I had told her about our father’s ghost in Newport. She shook her head and covered Matt’s hand with hers, as if he had just committed a really disastrous faux pas and she was taking hasty steps to correct it. “No, that’s just what we tell the tourists. For effect. There’s no ghost.”
“Margaret, just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” He smiled at me. “The previous owner swears the place is haunted.”
“Oh, when did you buy it?” I asked, changing the subject to convince Margo that I wasn’t hooked on the supernatural. That I wouldn’t hold a séance in the turret when my travel alarm struck midnight. The Witching Hour.
“Last year. This is my second summer here.”
“Matt spent a year at the Cornell Hotel School.”
“And then my grandmother died and left me a little money, and I foolishly squandered it on this tinderbox,” he said.
Margo rolled her eyes. “Matt’s father is a
broker
.”
“Real estate?” I asked eagerly.
“No—stocks and bonds. Solid stuff. The brawn of American profit making,” Matt said. Then he took the bag from Margo and started to lead me upstairs. What a letdown! I thought how nice it would have been if his father was in real estate, just as our father had been. It would have been a great thing for Matt and Margo. They could talk about their childhoods together and understand without explaining what their fathers’ business lives had been like. Knowing Margo and Lily for so long had taught me the value of being understood without having to explain.
Flanked by Matt and Margo, each laden down with my luggage like Sherpas on a Himalayan trek, we climbed four of the steepest flights I have ever encountered. The steps rose at nearly vertical pitch, like stepladders. I grasped the wood railing to haul myself up; dance class had not prepared me for such dizzying feats. By the time we reached the top, I was panting and trying not to show it.
“Prepare for the vista of your dreams,” Margo said.
“You ready for the notorious turret room?” Matt asked.
“She can handle it,” Margo said.
Then Matt flung open the door. The turret room was truly splendid. Circular, its ceiling was a cone, like a silo’s. Miraculously curved windows faced the glistening Atlantic.
“We put diamonds on the water for you,” Margo said, nodding toward the sunlight flashing on the waves.
“How divine,” I said, kissing her. The room was sparely furnished, with no pictures on the walls to detract from the view. A bed with a white chenille spread, a scarred wood bureau, two faded chintz armchairs, and a rickety table filled the round space. There was no rug on the painted wood floor, no curtains at the white frame windows. Of course, the room was the highest point on the promontory, and no one could see in.
“I guess we should let you get settled,” Matt said, backing toward the door.
“She’s settled!” Margo said. “Just put on your suit and let’s take a swim.”
“Wonderful,” I said, but as glorious as the room was, I felt a chill after they left me to change. Matt was right: it was haunted. I felt my father’s spirit, but it was a spirit yet to come. I sensed it fleetingly, the way one whiffs honeysuckle on a drive through the country when only hayfields are visible out the window. My father would visit me in this room. I knew it for sure, but just as surely I knew it wouldn’t happen tonight. I felt that a visit had been promised, but it wasn’t imminent.
Ten minutes later, dressed in my black tank suit and covered with sunscreen and one of John Luddington’s discarded white dress shirts, I met Margo on the inn’s wide, curved front porch.
“Do you like your room?” she asked, lighting up a cigarette.
“I love it,” I said, carefully avoiding my revelation.
Leaning forward, her tone conspiratorial, she said, “Matt wanted you to have it. It is the most expensive room in the place.”
“I know. I’d pay a lot for it.”
She held up her hands and shook her head. “No—I didn’t mean that. Are you crazy?”
“I know I’m not supposed to pay, you knucklehead. I’m just telling you I realize what a snazzy place it is.”
“Good. Matt’s dying for you to like him. He does not want to be another Henk.”
We both laughed. “‘Oh,
Liebchen
,’” I said, deepening my voice. “We both know there could only be
one
Henk.”
“Thank God,” Margo said.
Suddenly the implication of her words hit me: another Henk? Another brother-in-law? I glanced at her and knew that I was right. She was blushing madly. “Are you serious?” I asked, craning to see her ring finger, which was bare.
She nodded. “Matt, we have to tell her!” she called.
Matt poked his golden beard out the office window. It caught the sun. Margo walked across the porch to stand beside his protruding head. They both grinned. “I want you to know, Una,” Matt said, “you’re not losing a sister—you’re gaining an inn.”
I hurried over to kiss them, and Matt climbed out the window to hug us. The three of us stood in a tight bunch, cooing and kissing. Both Matt and Margo were crying. “We’re planning a Christmas wedding. Here at the inn, maybe,” Margo said.
“Yeah, it’s going to be great. We’ll probably have a polka band with at least one accordion, and think of the matchbooks! Our names are perfect—Mmmmatthew and Mmmmargaret,” Matt said, drawing out the m’s. He turned away and blew his nose on a blue bandana. “We’ll have a whole bunch of cocktail napkins and matchbooks printed up, and we can even use them here.”
“We went to his old roommate’s wedding at the Château de Ville, and he still can’t get over it,” Margo said. She smiled like an imp—making excuses for her betrothed. She reminded me exactly of an affianced twelve-year-old.
“I know—I can’t. I mean, why would someone want to make their wedding day into a really tacky occasion? With a fake waterfall and ushers with ruffly shirts?”
“Oh, God, and the announcer,” Margo said, giggling, grabbing Matt’s arm. “Straight from Las Vegas—can you imagine an announcer at a wedding? Better than a game show.”
It seemed hard to believe, but at twenty-nine, I had only been to two weddings. I thought about that fact, watching Margo and Matt giggle wildly at their memory. None of us Cavan girls had had much use for ceremonies. Weddings and funerals—they had seemed like crazy rites of passage whose importance eluded us. Take away the religious, and what is left? Bunting, banquets, moments of silence, tears shed by people you wish would leave you alone. Better to celebrate or grieve in private, with the people you really love. But I didn’t say anything as I listened to my sister and Matt tell me their plans for a Christmas wedding: the Cavan and Lincoln families and all their friends from Brown, Watch Hill, and the hotel trade in attendance; mistletoe and laurel roping everywhere; a pig roasted on a spit.
When Matt went back to work, Margo and I headed down the path to the beach. It cut through a thorny grove of bayberry, wild roses, and beach plum. We emerged on a flat strand of beach stretching to a rocky headland at one end; we walked in the opposite direction, north, toward the open sand. Finally Margo dropped her towel, and without consulting each other, we stripped off our bathing suits. Swimming nude was a Cavan sister tradition; we did it whenever the beach was relatively deserted.
The September sky was so clear, it left the water nearly colorless. Diving, I could see Margo’s slender legs, vertical, treading water. On land they had looked tan, but here they were pale. I passed beneath her, then came up for air. Unable to touch bottom, we faced the open ocean and trod water.
“Now I feel purged,” I said, slightly breathless.
“Purged of what?”
“Of everything. Let’s see…New York—
hot
New York. Work. Lily.”
Margo siphoned seawater into her mouth and squirted it out between her teeth. “I can’t believe you have to purge yourself of Lily.”
“You’re absolutely right—how can I purge myself of someone I never even see? What did she say when you told her about getting married?”
Margo’s head rested back on the water; she turned to look at me. “I haven’t told anyone yet. Only you. Matt only asked me last night.”
“Really? Wow!” I said, thrilled to be the first to know.
“I mean, we had
talked
marriage before, but he never actually proposed until last night. He wanted us to be able to officially tell you.”
“That’s dear of him. I like him a lot.”