Beach Plum Island (10 page)

During dinner, Gigi and Evan had surprised her again by asking Sam if Gigi could try singing with the band.

“I don’t know about that,” Sam said. He had appointed himself the band’s unofficial manager, creating a Facebook page and posting YouTube videos.

“But we need a singer, dude,” Evan said. “You’re the one who said so.”

“Yeah, but I meant a
good
singer.” Sam didn’t say this unkindly; he took his role as older brother seriously and was always kind to Evan. But he was honest. If Gigi didn’t cut it, Ava knew Sam wouldn’t let her sing with them.

“She’s got a great voice,” Evan had argued. “She really does.”

Ava had to pinch herself, hearing Evan, typically so unsure of himself, stand up to Sam. Sam wasn’t only a year older; he was also more popular at school than Evan, a better student, and a double varsity athlete who played soccer and lacrosse.

Sam must have been as surprised as she was, because after a stunned silence, he’d agreed. “Okay, dude. Let her try out for the band. But she has to wait until Les is here. He gets a vote, too.”

Les, an acne-scarred kid with braces, had been a drummer since elementary school and was already attending summer classes at Berklee College of Music. He was definitely the highest authority on music in Ava’s household. When he arrived, the band assembled and Gigi sang.

To Ava’s astonishment, Gigi didn’t just sing. She became another person altogether. She wailed and growled and soared, whether they tried her with Aerosmith or the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. Where in the world had a girl that age learned to sing those songs with such authority, such emotional resonance?

Then it dawned on her: their father had taught her, of course. Knowing this had made Ava’s knees feel as if they had come unbolted.

Since that impromptu audition, Gigi had been staying at Ava’s almost every day after finishing in the pottery studio, waiting for the boys to come home from their summer jobs so they could practice. Katy had agreed to this; amazingly, Gigi had even managed to talk her grandmother into picking her up in the evenings because Katy was still taking antidepressants and reluctant to drive.

Gradually, some of the other kids in the neighborhood had started coming around. Word spread fast that it wasn’t just three boys fooling around on instruments and doing whatever, but a live band with a singer worth listening to, a girl with pink and orange hair who could rattle the windows with her voice.

It was a productive morning. Ava threw forty-five mugs in three hours. The boys had come and gone, telling her they’d had cereal and were riding their bikes to work. It was heavenly to be alone.

The studio was so warm from the kiln that Ava pulled off her sweatshirt and worked in her tank top and jeans as she finished trimming the last mugs. She was straightening up to stretch her back when the screen door slapped open. Simon Talbot stood in the doorway. Silhouetted in the rectangle of bright sunlight streaming behind him through the screen door, his hair was a pale halo and she couldn’t make out his expression. Then he approached the wheel and she saw him in more detail.

Simon’s blue eyes were heavily creased at the corners; his nose was more prominent than graceful; and he had a small, moon-shaped scar on one cheek. He was dressed in khaki shorts, a navy polo shirt, and worn moccasins. He was very tan, his skin nearly the same golden brown as his khakis, his hair a shade lighter, wheat-colored and too long over his eyes.

“Hey,” he said. “Can you talk?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

Simon flashed a quick smile. “I came to thank you for looking after Katy and letting me know the situation.”

“And what is the situation now?” she couldn’t help asking. Simon had such a funny, clipped, almost British way of speaking, as if he were acting out his lines. She supposed that came from living in Hong Kong. Or maybe he was shy, she thought, as he ducked his head to hide his eyes.

“Things aren’t as dire as last month, thanks to you,” he said. “My mother and I are taking turns dropping in on Katy. And we all really appreciate what you’re doing for Gigi. I hope she’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all. Gigi’s fun to have around.”

Simon looked up, smiling again. “She is, right? That girl floors me.”

“Me, too. Have you heard her sing?”

He nodded. “She’s been singing since she could talk. And now she tells me she’s in a band with your sons?”

“That’s right. They’re calling themselves ‘the Misfit Toys.’”

To her surprise, Simon didn’t laugh at the name, but said, “Good for her. Gigi must get her talent from your side of the family. None of us can carry a tune.”

“We can’t, either. I mean, other than my dad. He loved to sing.” Ava had to swallow around the hard lump in her throat. “Dad used to play his music—rock and roll, mostly—whenever our mother wasn’t around. He taught us his favorite songs. Gigi must have learned them the same way.”

“That’s a nice legacy.”

“Yes.” Ava nervously lifted the bat off the wheel and carried it over to the other bats of mugs she’d made that morning and stored on open metal shelves. She switched on a portable fan to dry them faster.

“Did you make all these?” Simon came over to stand beside her.

“Everything but those.” She pointed to Gigi’s shelf, filled with about two dozen hand-built jars of all shapes and sizes. “Those are Gigi’s. She wants to try the potter’s wheel. I’ll probably teach her how to use it this week.”

“No wonder she loves hanging out here.” Simon walked around the shelves, examining the pieces in more detail. “How long did it take to make all these mugs?”

“About three hours.”

“My God. You’re like a little factory.”

“It’s not hard. Throwing pots is like dancing or playing the piano. Once you learn a shape, it’s locked in your muscle memory. Your body just goes through the steps. No matter how perfectly you make something on the wheel, though, the kiln can be unpredictable. Which reminds me: I’d better check mine.”

She crossed the studio to the separate room housing the gas kiln. She had finished the kiln room in a double layer of fire-resistant Sheetrock. For most of her bisque firings, she actually used a pair of electric kilns that she could set and forget, she explained to Simon, “but I get better results with glazes using this gas-fired kiln.”

“Fascinating,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at the kiln. He was looking at her.

Ava was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of her clay-damp jeans and skimpy tank top as she checked the temperature cones through the kiln window. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“It’s Saturday,” Simon reminded her. “I was in Newburyport visiting Katy. Anyway, I have my own company and make my own hours.”

“What kind of company?”

“We develop and support software for different manufacturing companies.”

She was surprised. Simon looked nothing like any engineer or computer scientist she’d ever known; she would have guessed he was in finance or marketing. Or maybe one of those adventurers with his own TV show. “Do you live near here?”

“I have a condo on one of the wharves near Faneuil Hall, overlooking Boston Harbor. I paid through the nose for a waterfront view. But I wanted a place convenient to work. My office is near South Station.”

Ava nodded, wondering whether he was married. She glanced at his left hand. No ring. “Sounds like a nice place.”

He shrugged. “I’m still not sure I did the right thing. I wanted a place on the water so I could own a sailboat. But having a boat is like a second job. I hardly have time to care for it, much less sail it. The other problem is that the condo has one wall that’s all windows, and there’s this spiral staircase leading up to my bedroom. Sometimes I get vertigo coming downstairs, like I could plunge through the windows and plummet right into the water. I’ve only been there a year, but I’m already thinking I’ll have to sell.”

Ava was having trouble keeping up with this outpouring of information. The men in her life—Mark and Jack, admittedly a small sample size—tended to talk in single syllables. Why was Simon telling her all this? “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing. Maybe you could find someone to share your boat and half of the expenses.”

“Not a bad idea,” he said, and pointed to the shelves of finished pottery. “These are beautiful.”

“Thanks. Those are some of the pieces I’m taking up to a gallery in Portsmouth next week.”

Simon picked up a lamp glazed in a midnight blue and a pitcher finished in her signature Shino glaze, a warm reddish brown. The texture on the pitcher was rough; she’d scratched the finished pot with a comb and dripped white glaze over the brown rim.

“I like both of these a lot,” Simon said. “Could I buy them from you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “They hardly go together.”

He laughed. “Well, I don’t have much in my place other than a few sticks of furniture, so it doesn’t really matter. They don’t even have to live in the same room.” He glanced down at the objects in his hands. “How do you decide what to make?”

“I think I go more by instinct than any rational decision-making.”

“Yet you must make choices with every piece about size, texture, and glaze. Do you do that ahead of time, or as you go?”

Ava considered this. “I don’t know. When I first created that pitcher, I was thinking about the fields in Prince Edward Island, Canada, where my mom’s family is from, and how the wind used to mix the snow and dirt in swirls, like little red and white tornadoes. I think most of the pottery I make is a way of trying to re-create landscapes. We all carry our inner landscapes, don’t you think? Our memories can’t help but inform the objects we create.”

“For some of us, that information might fit on postcards.”

She smiled. “Postcards can be great art. Anyway, you can have that lamp and the pitcher. You don’t need to pay me.”

“Thank you. That’s very generous.”

To her surprise, Simon was blushing. The pink flush started below the open buttons of his shirt collar, where his skin was dusted with freckles. She had a sudden impulse to touch him at the base of his throat, to feel his pulse beating beneath her fingertips.

“Want to take a walk?” he asked. “I thought maybe I’d explore the beach a bit. I’ve never actually been on Beach Plum Island. It would be nice to have company.”

Ava hesitated. What if Simon could guess by her expression that she’d been thinking of touching him? Him,
Katy’s brother
? My God. That would drive Elaine completely around the bend. Katy and her mother probably wouldn’t like it one bit, either.

Well, Simon was asking her on a walk, not a date. No big deal. And a walk would certainly help loosen her back.

“Sure,” she said. “Let me just run inside and change.”

He waited in the kitchen while she dashed upstairs, stripped off her damp clothes, washed her face and hands, and rummaged through a basket of clean laundry. She dressed in a green T-shirt and a pair of Sam’s board shorts, then ran a comb through her hair. Her hair was as disobedient as ever. Well, never mind. Whatever she did with her hair, the wind would undo in seconds.

Downstairs, she found Simon seated on one of the rickety wooden kitchen chairs, his legs sprawled in a way that reminded her of Sam and Evan, of how her boys always stretched to occupy every inch of space in a room. “Great kitchen,” he said.

Ava followed his gaze around the room, taking in the yellow cupboards and cream walls, the broken bits of pottery she’d transformed into a colorful mosaic behind the stove, the African violets and geraniums growing in pots she’d made, and the pile of shoes by the door. The pile expanded day by day, making her suspect that some of the teenagers who were friends with Evan and Sam routinely forgot their shoes and walked home barefoot. Their mothers must be wondering where all those shoes were.

“I love this room, too,” she said. “I spend most of my time here when I’m not at the studio. A habit left over from when I worked for a caterer, I guess. That’s the first job I took when Mark and I split up, before I started teaching. I moved here with the boys and he kept our house in Newburyport. The oven was always on when I was catering, so the kitchen was the warmest room in the house. Money was tight back then.”

“Not now?”

Ava studied Simon’s long, serious face and remembered the granite counters and tony restaurant appliances in Katy’s kitchen, and what he’d told her about his condo on the wharf. She must look completely impoverished to the Talbot family. “No,” she said. “We’re doing fine now.”

“Good.”

Simon’s blue eyes were ringed in a darker blue, almost slate. He was studying her face so intently that Ava wondered whether there was glaze on her cheek. Probably. There usually was.

“It must be difficult,” he said, “being on your own with two boys.”

“I’m lucky. My boys are easy and I love my work.” Ava felt the heat rising in her neck and face. She didn’t need anyone’s pity. “What about you? Married? Kids?”

“Divorced. Almost ten years now.” He shifted, making the chair creak. “One son. Brook is seventeen and will start his last year of boarding school this fall in Connecticut. He’s spending the summer coaching hockey at a camp in Vermont.”

“Did you see him much before he went away to school?”

Simon looked confused. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“Custody arrangements. I assume he lived with his mother.”

“Oh. No. He lived with me after his mother and I split up.”

Simon was frowning, probably offended by her assumption. She couldn’t blame him. Still, it was unusual for a judge to grant full custody to a father, especially if the father traveled like Simon did. His ex must have been unhinged. Either that or Simon had a great lawyer.

“You must miss him,” Ava said.

He nodded. “I wanted Brook to live with me through high school, but he really wanted to go away. Boarding school allowed him to stay in this country while I was working abroad. It was the right choice. It kills me that he’s applying to colleges in California, though.”

“I bet.” Ava couldn’t unleash her mind in that direction. She hated the thought of Evan and Sam leaving home, moving on in their lives without her.