Beach Girls (12 page)

The knowledge brought tears to Nell's eyes. If Peggy happened to turn around, Nell would say that it was the wind, that she'd gotten dust in her eyes. They rode the bike to the end of the road, turned around, and came back.

On the second pass, Nell saw that the sign was still there:

PLEASE GO AWAY

The sight of it made her bite her lip. She didn't want to go away. She wanted to climb the hill, knock on Stevie's door, have ginger ale with a slice of peach in the glass, and look at Stevie's and Aunt Aida's paintings and talk about her mother, Aunt Maddie, everything.

Just then, a beige car pulled slowly down the road. The driver must have been looking for an address, because he didn't see the bike—Peggy had to swerve to avoid the car. The move gave Nell butterflies in her stomach.

“Crazy Rhode Island driver!” Peggy said.

“Rhode Island?”

“Yep. With a sailboat ‘Ocean State' license plate.”

Nell didn't reply, thinking of how strange it was that a Rhode Island car would drive up Stevie's street just as she'd been daydreaming about her aunt. Aunt Madeleine and Uncle Chris had moved to Rhode Island. Providence. Nell knew, because her aunt still sent her cards. She wasn't to respond, but Aunt Maddie never stopped trying.

Peggy rode them toward the hill down to the beach.

“Get ready,” she called back to Nell. “Think we can handle the hill?”

“Hope so.”

“Hold on tight!”

“I'm holding on,” Nell said.

They started picking up speed. Nell gave a half-turn over her shoulder, for one last look at Stevie's shadow-blue house. She tried to see the car from Rhode Island, but Peggy was going too fast.

If only things were different, Nell thought. If only we could all be together.

She held on to the handlebars that couldn't steer, closed her eyes because Peggy was driving and it didn't matter anyway. She felt the wind rushing through her hair, and she wished and wished.

Chapter 10

STEVIE HAD TAKEN A WALK IN THE DARK
last night. Barefoot, she had gone up the road to Jack's house. Standing behind the privet hedge, she'd listened to crickets and smelled the salt wind. It stirred the leaves overhead.

The cottage windows were open. Stevie wanted to call through them: to ask Jack to come to the door, let her in. She wanted to ask him how Nell's visit to Dr. Galford had gone. Taking a step through the hedge, she paused.

They were sitting on the sofa. Golden light from a table light illuminated Nell's brown hair; Jack's head was bent close to hers, and the steady sound of his voice came through the open window.

“‘The field mouse ran for the fallen tree, scrambling into the hollow, as the owl dove through the darkness, talons open . . .'”

Stevie watched as Nell nestled under his arm, heard the expression in Jack's voice as he read from her book
Owl Night
. She saw Nell delight in being so close to her father, and she watched the way Jack looked down, to make sure she wasn't too scared. Stevie felt frozen, standing in the yard. She wanted to go inside more than she could remember wanting anything in a long, long time. Instead, she had just turned, walking home through the warm night.

Now, again, Stevie stood back and watched a different drama unfold, also involving Nell—standing at her kitchen window, waiting for Madeleine to arrive, she saw the bicycle-built-for-two go riding past. Just then she saw a beige car drive slowly down the street, saw the bicycle turn around in the cul-de-sac and come back, recognized Nell and her friend, and then held her breath as Madeleine climbed out of the beige car.

Her heart racing, she waited for Madeleine and Nell to see each other. They didn't, and Stevie didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. She opened the door and hurried down the hill.

“You made it!” she called.

“I can't believe this!” Madeleine said.

They hugged and hugged. Stevie grabbed Madeleine's bag, and they walked arm-in-arm up the stairs.

“This place is exactly the same,” Madeleine said, looking around. “As soon as I drove under the train trestle, I felt I'd entered Brigadoon or something!”

“The land time forgot,” Stevie said.

“The houses are still so small and quaint, the gardens are straight out of the Irish countryside, kids still ride their bikes down the middle of the street, as if they own it—just like we did! I practically mowed down a bicycle-built-for-two!”

Stevie held her breath, but Madeleine said nothing more on that subject. They went into the house, and Madeleine walked through, exclaiming with delight. “Oh my God! It's just the same! I can just see your father sitting at his desk over there”—she pointed at the mahogany keyhole desk in a corner of the living room. “We'd have to be so quiet when he was working . . . and I remember thinking how cool it was to have a father whose work was writing poetry!”

Stevie smiled. “I felt the same way,” she said.

“I used to wonder why, with this incredible view”—she pointed at the windows, overlooking the rock hillside, beach, and sapphire blue cove below—“he arranged his desk so it was facing the wall. And I asked him, and he said, ‘Because poetry requires a different kind of view, one where you look
inside
.'”

“I remember.”

“Is that true for you, too?” Madeleine asked. “You've done so well, Stevie. I'm always so proud to see your books. Do you need an interior view, too?”

“The opposite!” Stevie laughed. “Come on upstairs—I'll show you your room and my studio!”

Up they went. Stevie gave Madeleine the guest room, where her mother's mother used to sleep. It faced east, and because the house was on a point jutting out into the Sound, blue water was visible through the trees on that side of the house, too. Next, they went into Stevie's room.

“This is incredible,” Madeleine said, looking around at the bedroom/studio. It extended the width of the house, with big picture windows overlooking the beach. Because it was up so high, the aerie had an incredible view looking southwest over the Sound. A stark picture, very modern and striking, hung on one wall. A black bird perched in a cage. Bookcases lined the interior wall. “I don't remember your room being so big, when we were young.”

“It wasn't,” Stevie said. “After my father died, and I decided to keep the house, I knocked out a wall and made one long room out of two.”

“You paint here. . . .” Madeleine said, standing before Stevie's easel, looking at the paintings.

“Yes,” Stevie said. “I like to fall out of bed, directly into work. I guess . . . I use my dreams for inspiration.” She blushed. Watching Madeleine gaze at the painting of two ruby-throated hummingbirds, mates drawing nectar from red flowers, Stevie wondered what her friend would think if she knew that Stevie's recent dreams had all been of Jack?

“These are beautiful,” Madeleine said. “Is this your next book?”

“It is,” Stevie said. She stared at her own work: the brilliant green birds, symbolic to her of hope and perseverance. She thought of how the story had changed since its inception at the beginning of the summer. It had once been about two birds and their long migration from New England to Costa Rica; now it was about one summer in the life of a pair nesting and raising a chick—inspired by Stevie's dreams, and by meeting Nell. The constant, in both stories, was the flowering red trumpet vine that attracted and fed the tiny birds.

“I feel so honored to see it in progress,” Madeleine said. “To think that my old friend would turn out to be such a well-known artist!”

“It's nice of you to say that,” Stevie said, smiling.

“Everyone at Hubbard's Point must be so proud.”

“The local kids all call me a witch.”

“You're kidding!”

“I've become this generation's resident eccentric—just like old Hecate. Remember her?”

“Yes, of course. Is she still here? And Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Mayhew—do they still have their cottages? And does your aunt still live in that bizarre castle? Oh, and all the cute boys that we all liked. I need the rundown on everyone. That was really our raison d'être back then—the beach and boys.”

“Let's go outside and have some iced tea—I'll fill you in on the whole story,” Stevie said. She walked downstairs ahead of Madeleine, feeling slightly guilty. She had a secret agenda that her friend knew nothing about. Seeing Madeleine felt unspeakably poignant—she seemed so vulnerable. She wore a flowing black jacket, even though it was eighty degrees out, to hide the weight she'd gained. Madeleine's eyes were bruised with sadness—she didn't know that Stevie already knew why.

Stevie opened the side door, settled Madeleine in a teak chair beneath the white market umbrella, and went into the kitchen to assemble a tray. When she returned to the terrace, Madeleine put a finger to her lips, pointed at the trumpet vine. The resident hummingbirds—four of them—were darting in and out of the tubular flowers.

Stevie served the iced tea and sugar cookies, and the old friends sat there in silence, watching the birds. Their green feathers were iridescent in the sunlight, their wings a blur. Finally, when they left, Madeleine spoke.

“Emma would love this,” she said.

Stevie clutched her glass, wondering what to say.

“She died,” Madeleine said. “In a car accident, a year ago.”

“I'm so sorry,” Stevie said. If Madeleine wondered why she didn't sound surprised, she didn't show it.

“She married my brother, Jack. You know they met right here, at the beach.” Madeleine gazed down the hill.

“Yes,” Stevie said, trying to breathe, picturing Jack and Nell sitting alone on the sofa last night.

“They met right there, on the boardwalk,” Madeleine said. She pointed at the blue pavilion, a roof built over the boardwalk just for shade. “They went out all through her college and his grad school. Jack went to MIT, became an engineer. Emma went to Wellesley. When she graduated, they got married and moved to Atlanta. She never really worked, but she became a crackerjack volunteer. If you needed something done, and had no money, Emma was the one you called.”

“Really?” Stevie asked, trying to see Emma in that role.

“I used to tease her, saying she'd developed a social conscience in order to pay back that woman with the shopping cart in New London . . . she turned out to be very good at raising money.”

“That shouldn't surprise me at all,” Stevie said, thinking back. “I remember that day, when she got the money in the first place—all she had to do was smile at those young Coasties! She came toward me, holding the two tens . . . that devilish smile on her face. She said ‘easiest thing I ever did,' and we laughed so hard.”

They both smiled, thinking of Emma's smile and the way she could get boys to do what she wanted.

“I lost track of you both,” Stevie said. “We were inseparable for those summers, and I never imagined we wouldn't stay in touch forever. But life got crazy. . . .”

“We all watched you,” Madeleine said. “You were our famous friend. I remember when Disney did a movie of your book on robins in the orchard.”

“It was supposed to be set here in Connecticut, but they filmed it on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State.”

“We watched it, hoping to see you.”

“I was an extra,” Stevie said. “I was a beekeeper, with netting over my face. If you blinked, you'd miss me. Did you and Emma watch it?”

“Not Emma,” Madeleine said, and something about the way she said it made Stevie's stomach flip. “My husband, Chris, and I.”

“I wish Emma were here,” Stevie said.

Madeleine nodded. “I miss her every day. Driving down from Providence, it seemed unbelievable to me that she wasn't with me. Two of us . . . just doesn't seem right. We were always three.”

“Down there,” Stevie said, staring down at the beach. It seemed a million miles away, all the happy people, families with kids, girlfriends with towels close together, blankets and umbrellas covering the sand. Stevie looked at Madeleine's pale skin, and her own, and thought of how far away the beach seemed to two girls who once had practically lived on it.

“Emma would have none of this,” Madeleine said. “Sitting up here in street clothes. She'd be in her bathing suit already, slathering our shoulders with sunscreen.”

“Maybe we should follow her lead—?”

“No way,” Madeleine said. “I'm perfectly happy on your terrace, watching all those skinny people having fun.”

“The calorically challenged,” Stevie said.

“You should talk. Look, let's get down to business. Is the sun above the yardarm? Well, it is somewhere. I brought champagne—I stuck it in the fridge as I walked by. Let's pop the cork and toast to the good old days.”

Stevie went into the kitchen and took one of Madeleine's bottles from the refrigerator. She filled a glass of ginger ale for herself, grabbed a champagne flute from the back of the shelf, and returned to the terrace.

“These were wedding presents, and the first time I used them,” Stevie said, placing the flute on the teak table, “was after my second wedding. It was here, on this very terrace. You are sitting in the exact spot where I said ‘I do.'”

“You were married at your childhood home—how romantic!”

“That's one way to put it,” Stevie said darkly. She undid the foil, took the wire cage from the cork, and expertly opened the bottle without causing a pop—just a gentle cascading hiss, the way Linus had taught her. She poured.

“What's this? You're not joining me?” Madeleine asked.

“I'm joining you,” Stevie said. “It's just that I've had my lifetime quota of champagne. Ginger ale works better for me now.”

“Well, that's no fun,” Madeleine said, frowning. But she lifted her glass anyway. “Here's to you, Emma—wherever you are!”

“To the beach girls!” Stevie said. They sipped their drinks. Madeleine downed half of hers at once. Stevie remembered drinking that way; she could almost feel the sudden, yet fleeting, relief Madeleine would be feeling right now.

“Beach girls,” Madeleine said, delighted by the phrase. “Remember, it was like a sorority. Just the three of us.”

“‘Beach girls now, beach girls tomorrow, beach girls till the end of time,'” Stevie said. She looked down the hill. The sands were so white, and the Sound was so blue—as if the calm bay between the headlands was a mirror held to the sky. She watched as Madeleine filled her glass again.

“Here's to,” Madeleine began, then stopped. She gazed into the distance, as if trying to come up with a suitable next toast. “Here's to . . . what?”

Stevie's spine tingled as she sat very still, the next toast right there on the tip of her tongue.
It's not time
, she told herself.
You have to wait
. As hard as it was, she did. And Madeleine made the next toast herself: “Here's to being together again!”

“Together again,” Stevie murmured.

They clinked glasses. Madeleine happily sipped her drink and didn't even seem to notice that Stevie's gaze was trained down toward the beach, on a cottage behind the seawall at the edge of the silver-green marsh. A house with a beautiful garden, and with two women in straw hats standing out in the middle of the road—Bay McCabe and Tara O'Toole, greeting two girls on a bicycle-built-for-two.