Beach Plum Island (24 page)

Mildred was still talking. “If only Suzanne hadn’t gotten pregnant, they might have just gone to prom and broken up after a few years like they were supposed to.”

Gigi flushed, imagining her father as a boy the same age as the one in the corner store, and Suzanne as a ponytailed girl with her dark tilted eyes laughing up at him. But this was the moment she had been waiting for, and she seized it. “What happened to the baby?”

“How should I know? Suzanne put it up for adoption, didn’t she? I’d heard there were some issues with the baby’s health, but I never saw the poor thing.”

“The baby was born blind,” Gigi said. “Peter. That was his name. Suzanne didn’t want to give him up, but they made her do it. She gave him to her aunt Finley.”

“Finley?” Mildred’s eyes popped wide open. The whites around her brown eyes were yellow and streaked red. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. Ava and Elaine and I went up to see her. Why not Finley?”

Mildred shuddered a little. “She lived in a different town, but I saw Finley a few times early on, when our families were forced together during holiday dinners and such. Finley wasn’t like most women. Never married, seldom socialized. She wore pants like a man, even flannel shirts and boots. I’m shocked to hear Suzanne thought that would be an appropriate home for a child, though I suppose she wasn’t in any position to be choosy.”

“Finley was trying to do what she could to help Suzanne, which is more than what most people did,” Gigi said flatly, feeling suddenly defensive on Finley’s behalf. “Anyway, Finley had to give the baby up, too, and then somebody else adopted him.”

“Just as well,” Mildred said. “I’m sorry to hear the child was bounced around, but what else could anyone expect? At least everything worked out in the end.”

Gigi felt her scalp sting with fury. “How can you say it all ‘worked out’? Nothing worked out! Dad was miserable! Suzanne practically killed herself! Nobody even knows where Peter is!”

Mildred drew her narrow torso up straighter in the chair and buttoned her sweater. “No need to yell. Yelling never helped anybody.”

“I’m sorry.” Gigi sighed. It seemed like she’d come here to do nothing but apologize. “I’m just upset. Dad really never talked to you about any of this?”

Mildred picked up her glass and sipped at the tea, then licked her lips as a shadow crossed her face. Her tongue was as pink and wet as a kitten’s, the only part of her that still looked young. “Now that you’re bringing all of this back to me, I do remember him mentioning it once. My first summer alone after my husband’s death, your father invited me to your house in Newburyport. I suppose he felt sorry for me. Anyway, Bob and I sat alone out on the patio after your mother left to put you to bed. You were only ten years old, a chubby little thing. That’s the one time we talked about the baby. Your father wanted to know if I had any information.”

Five
years ago
,
Gigi thought. That’s how long her father had been searching. Why hadn’t he told her sooner? She sat up straighter, feeling little wicker needles through her thin T-shirt. “Why didn’t he look for my brother before?”

“Bob said he’d tried to forget about the baby, like everyone kept telling him to do. He thought it would be better for everyone, since they’d already started another family.”

“What changed?”

“When he left Suzanne for your mother, Bob started thinking about it all again, he said, and worrying about that child being given away like a puppy nobody wanted. Those were your dad’s exact words: ‘like a puppy.’ He about cried when he said that. Your father didn’t know he was dying, not then. But he’d gotten his diagnosis and knew he might not have as much time left as he thought.”

“That’s so sad,” Gigi said.

“It is. I remember how Bob pointed to the sky over the fence. The reason we couldn’t see the stars, he said, is because there was too much atmospheric light. He told me that’s what he felt his whole life was like, like something blurry with brighter things beneath it. I think that’s why he was so intent on marrying your mother.”

“What do you mean?”

Mildred gave her a long look, the kind of look that makes you think somebody is behind you. Gigi wouldn’t let herself turn around. “When we were talking that night on the patio, your dad also told me why he got divorced,” she said. “You have to understand that he and I came from a long line of devout Catholics. In our family, you didn’t divorce. I suspect the same was true in Suzanne’s family, despite being French-Canadians. Marriage was a pact you made with God and the Church.”

Gigi thought of the small stone Episcopalian church she and her mother went to some Sundays, the building that smelled of lilies all year round. “What does this have to do with me?”

Mildred plucked at a yellow thread in the loose stitching along the front of her skirt. “Your father wanted me to understand why he’d chosen to divorce Suzanne and leave the Church. I suppose he was afraid I judged him harshly.”

“So why did he get divorced? Because he loved my mom so much, right?” Again, Gigi wanted to cover her mouth, talking that way about her own parents.

“He couldn’t bear the thought of losing another child. When your mother got pregnant, he saw no choice but to marry her and raise you.”

Gigi felt her tongue like cotton catching on the roof of her mouth, choking her: so she was the reason Dad had left them all—Ava, Suzanne, Elaine. Even, to some extent, Evan and Sam. Mildred’s face was still smooth and expressionless, her bloodless legs crossed tightly at the ankles. “I do apologize if that came as a shock. I was sure you’d worked all that out for yourself.”

“How would I?” Gigi was embarrassed by how young her voice sounded.

The older woman shrugged. “You know. Birth certificates, wedding dates, Google. I was under the impression that you young people knew everything these days, thanks to the Internet. I’m sorry to have upset you. But that’s what you came for, isn’t it? The truth?”

Gigi nodded, her vision clouding. Her father, all his life, had tried to do the right thing and failed. It was so sad.

On the other hand, maybe that’s what happened to everyone. Maybe, no matter what right thing you tried to do, your action would be the wrong thing for somebody else.

She owed her brother her very existence. Her mother might have thought about abortion. Her family and her friends were already freaked-out about her being with some old married dude; they’d probably told her to get rid of “the problem.”

Dad loved Mom—Gigi had never doubted that, watching them together—but he had married Mom to make sure she had the baby. The baby, Gigi. Mildred was right: he had most likely married her mother because he’d already lost one child and didn’t want to lose another.

Gigi bent over, put her head between her knees. “I feel sick,” she said.

“Well, it can’t possibly be the tea,” Mildred said briskly.

“Whatever.” Gigi pushed her head lower between her knees despite the sour taste in the back of her throat. She imagined vomiting those little twigs from the tea onto the fake green grass carpet, the sticks catching in her throat, choking her.

“It must be the heat,” Mildred was saying. “Come with me into the house where it’s cooler.”

“I don’t think I can walk.”

“Lie down here, then.”

Gigi heard a rustling sound, then felt Mildred’s knobby fingers clamp around her wrist and tug her out of the chair with a sudden and unexpectedly powerful jerk.

Mildred led her to a wicker couch on the shady side of the porch. Gigi hadn’t noticed it before because it had been covered with a tarp; the tarp was the sound she’d heard. Now it lay in a shiny blue puddle of plastic on the floor.

“Thanks.” Gigi lay down on the couch, curled with her knees pressed to her chest, her face against the musty cushions.

“Cramps?” Mildred suggested. “Is it that time of month?”

If only things were that easy, Gigi thought, remembering with a flash of envy her own innocent self two years ago, before Dad’s cancer came back and he started another round of chemo. She’d gotten her period for the first time and been stupid enough to be excited about it.

Mom had taken her out to lunch to celebrate, and Gigi thought that her life was finally beginning. She had happily imagined how she would transform overnight from a pudgy middle schooler into a woman, a woman who was thin and blond and beautiful like her mother. She would grow movie star boobs and find a boyfriend. She would win blue ribbons and trophies at horse shows. She wouldn’t be afraid of anything anymore.

Those were her pitiful concerns, her silly fantasies. Back then, Gigi had no way of knowing what she did now, that nobody escapes this sick feeling that comes with discovering, over and over again, that the people you love are not who you thought they were.

A
va worked in the studio until late afternoon, then brewed a strong cup of tea and drank it while staring at the phone. Still no word from Elaine, despite Ava’s repeated attempts to call and text to tell her about what the woman at the registry had told her, and to ask what she thought about going back to Maine to see if Peter’s original birth certificate remained on file, under their mother’s maiden name.

Why was she bothering? Elaine didn’t want anything to do with this. To be honest, Elaine seemed to want little to do with
her
these days. All their lives, they had seen each other every week, talked on the phone nearly every day. Now Ava felt both relieved and resentful about this yawning silence between them. Elaine was high maintenance, exhausting. But who else, besides her children, did Ava love unconditionally? Knowing that she was doing things to cause Elaine to pull away made Ava feel slightly queasy.

Ava folded laundry and scrubbed the bathrooms, trying to kill her caffeine buzz before returning to the studio. She was soon breathing hard from the exertion, which made her wonder if she needed to lie down for a few minutes. She threw herself down on the bed, a pillow over her face, which of course only led her to think about Simon with the kind of longing that made her resent her own crowded life: her brother, Elaine, Katy, Gigi, and even her sons stood between what she wanted with Simon and what she couldn’t have.

She had repeatedly explained the impossibility of their relationship to Simon, yet he had been calling and e-mailing daily, trying to change her mind. Three times, she’d left after dinner to meet him halfway between Beach Plum Island and Boston; they’d sat in his car and kissed until her mouth felt bruised. It had gotten to the point where even the boys, who noticed little about her life as long as she went through the motions of putting food in the kitchen and driving them here and there, had started asking where she was. She supposed mothers were like air: you only missed them when they were gone and left you gasping for oxygen.

Last night, for instance, she’d crept in at two o’clock in the morning, hoping the boys were asleep, but instead Sam and Evan were in the living room, watching some dreadful movie that sounded like the house was under attack.

“Whoa, Mom,” Sam had said, looking up from the screen as she tried to sneak in through the back door unnoticed. “Where were you? You’re keeping, like, zombie hours.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got to get out while the hunting’s good,” she’d said, never pausing in her ascent to the second floor, afraid the boys would notice her red face and rumpled clothing. “Otherwise all the warm bodies are gone.”

She’d told Simon last night that they couldn’t see each other again. Absolutely, positively, they had to stop. She felt sick about it, but what else could she do? She needed to feel things were on an even keel with the other people in her life before even daring to imagine a relationship with him. With anyone, for that matter.

Thinking about not seeing Simon and the various complications leading to that decision made her so tense, it felt like someone had slipped a dozen rubber bands over her head. She needed a walk to clear her thoughts. Ava stepped outside and slipped off her shoes, then walked fast toward the refuge beach, dodging a group of birders in their brimmed hats, telescopes set up in a line like artillery. The sky was a metallic blue dome over the sparkling water. Ava glanced down and spotted a sand dollar. The chalky white circle glowed against the sand and reminded her of taking walks with the boys when they first moved here after the divorce. Evan and Sam used to love dashing in and out of the water or climbing the rocky breakwater by the mouth of the Merrimack River to watch the fishing boats. She missed those easy days, that uncomplicated bond with her children before they became teenagers with secrets, men taller than she was.

Back at the house, her headache had eased enough that Ava went straight to the studio in her tank top and shorts, leaving the sweatshirt draped over one of the Adirondack chairs. She spent the next several hours using slab molds to create trays she fluted around the edges to match the teacups she’d made yesterday, with slight depressions to hold two or four cups, depending on the size of the tray.

They turned out just as she’d imagined—a rare thing in pottery. She couldn’t wait to glaze them; the effect would be as beautiful as it was utilitarian. She thought she might try that iridescent sand color on the trays. And the cups? With their wide mouths and fluted edges, the cups would look just like seashells with handles if she used the pearly blue glaze she loved. If you set a pair of those cups on a tray, it would be like holding shells on a small piece of beach in your hands.

Ava was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear anyone approaching until she was startled by the slam of the screen door to the studio. She glanced up to find Simon standing across the table from her, staring at her with eyes a shade darker than the blue glaze she’d been imagining on the cups. She blinked hard, thinking maybe she’d imagined him, conjured Simon out of her own longing.

He must have come from his office in Boston. He was wearing a charcoal suit over a shirt so white that it gleamed, and an expensive-looking green tie patterned with silver leaves. He looked both like a stranger and like a man she’d known all her life.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ava said, thinking,
I want you.

“I couldn’t help it,” Simon said. “I was having lunch with a client and I couldn’t make myself go back to the office without seeing you.”

“Why?” Ava stared at him, her hands dripping cold sludge. She shouldn’t see him. This was impossible. Yet, now that Simon was here, she wanted to hold him and never let him go.

“Why do you think?” Simon laughed, a rough sound as gritty as clay. “Ava, you’re driving me crazy. I have to know the truth. Did you really mean what you said last night, that you can’t see me anymore? That I shouldn’t call you? Is that what you honestly need? Say the word, and I will leave you alone. But I need to hear it in broad daylight.”

She sighed. “You know it’s not what I want. But it’s the best thing—the
only
thing—we can do right now. What would your sister think if she knew about us? Or Elaine? And I can’t even imagine how confused Gigi would feel about us.”

Simon’s face had paled, but his eyes, slate blue and shining with pain, stayed on hers. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It would be hard on everyone.”

“Then you should leave,” Ava said.

He continued to stand on the opposite side of the table, his hands loose at his sides, looking at her. “The day we walked on the beach, that very first day?” he said. “I couldn’t look at the ocean. I felt like I was drowning in your eyes. It scared me, that pull. And now that I know you better, I feel it even more. But all I want to do is keep drowning. I need to be with you, Ava. What do you need?”

Ava saw him then, really saw Simon in a way she never had before. Just as she sometimes stood on the beach in the fog, and the fog would suddenly lift enough for her to take in the sharper details of the landscape, she looked into Simon’s face and became fully aware of him. He stood almost within reach, warm and solid and yearning. Yearning for her, just as she longed for him.

She felt a sharp pain beneath her rib cage. “Everything is too complicated. I don’t know what I need.”

“Yes, you do. You need me,” Simon said. “Just a little.” He began walking slowly around the table, coming toward her.

Ava held up her hands. “Don’t touch me. You’ll get clay on your suit.”

He laughed. “That’s the reason you don’t want me to touch you? Hell, I’d gladly
wear
a clay suit if you’d let me hold you a minute, Ava.” He closed the gap between them.

Ava let Simon pull her close, but kept her arms folded between them. Pressed against her breasts, her arms were a flesh-and-bone shield that served only to make her want him more.

“We can’t do this,” Ava said. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“I know,” he murmured into her hair, then tipped her head up and kissed her.

His mouth was warm on hers. For a moment, Ava forgot everything—the clay on her hands and arms, the studio around her, the sound of the surf beyond, her brother and sisters and sons—as she gave herself over to the feel of Simon’s soft lips and muscular body pressed against her own, anchoring her, giving her a reason to be right here, right now, fully in the moment. Embraced, embracing.

•   •   •

“So where’s your cause of the day?” Elaine asked when Gabe met her by the newsstand in Harvard Square. He was dressed in a black V-neck T-shirt and plaid shorts. Still in sandals, though at least he hadn’t paired them with socks.

“Right here.” Gabe turned around. On the back of his T-shirt was a shield with words in white cursive letters printed inside it:
A Cure Is Our Battle Cry
.

“What is it?” she asked, squinting to read the letters. “Cancer?”

He nodded.

“Well, that covers just about everybody,” Elaine said as they began walking toward the sushi place above Staples. She could never remember the name of the restaurant, but it would be just the thing for tonight. The decor was casual, the prices were cheap, the sushi was decent, and they could be in and out in under an hour.

She had planned on stopping off at one of the pubs to grab a drink by herself once she and Gabe said good-bye, but seeing him brought back her memories of that Boston fiasco. Maybe this would be a good night to stick to tea and go home early. That way she could prove to Gabe—and to Tony—that she wasn’t a complete head case.

The night was rapidly cooling; good thing she’d brought the black cardigan she kept in her office. She slipped the sweater on over her sleeveless white blouse. She was wearing black pants; in this outfit, she felt like a choir girl, sober and upright in black and white. Her only real concession to fashion was a pair of pink platform sandals with straps that wrapped around her ankles. She felt like a gladiator when she wore them, which made up for the choir girl top half.

They talked about the stores and restaurants in Harvard Square, some of them places they’d both first discovered as college students. Gabe had grown up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Boston University two years before Elaine left Tufts to care for her mother, a fact she mentioned but glossed over.

It was amazing how much Harvard Square had changed yet remained the same, they agreed, with its mix of preppy undergrads, homeless people, pot smokers in wishful dreadlocks, and out-of-tune buskers with instruments that ranged from guitars to didgeridoos.

Her sandals weren’t ideally suited to the hallowed, pitted sidewalks of Harvard Square. Twice Elaine pitched forward and had to grab Gabe’s arm. He finally looped his arm around her waist. “How much pregame time did you do tonight?”

She jabbed him with an elbow. “Relax. I’ve had nothing to drink all day but coffee. These are just really dumb shoes.”

“Ah.” Gabe glanced down at her feet. “But they’re pink. That must make up for them being so dumb.” They had gotten on the escalator; at the top of it he stopped and stared at the restaurant window. “This place? Really?”

“What’s wrong with sushi?” she demanded. Elaine had brought dates here before; in her experience, most men didn’t care about dinner, only what might happen afterward. Dinner was merely foreplay.

“Sushi’s not really a meal,” Gabe said. “Three hours after having sushi, I want to eat again because I’ve had nothing but cold balls of rice and fish. I’m still hungry, but it’s too late because I’ve already spent too much money.”

“I’m paying,” she pointed out. “You won’t have spent any money at all.”

He gave her a look. “That’s hardly the point. Also, this particular sushi palace feels like a high school cafeteria. I’m too old to eat at an orange plastic table with green plastic chairs. If I wanted to do that, I’d work in a day care center.”

Elaine stepped away from him and glared. “My, my. Somebody took his snarky pills today. Fine, Mr. Picky. Where do you want to go?”

“Just because I don’t like a place doesn’t mean I’m picky. Though I do admit to being something of a foodie,” Gabe added. “Meals are more than just fuel for me. Dinner, especially, should count as a daily ritual, now that we’ve experienced the downfall of religion as a cornerstone of Western civilization.”

“Good God.
Fine.
Just quit yammering and choose someplace else,” Elaine said. She’d had only salad for lunch and didn’t want to think about food as ritual. For her, food was mostly a temptation she battled every day, with every fiber of her being. The minute she caved and was forced into elastic-waist pants, the uniform of her generation, her life might as well be over. “Look, just to be clear, this is not a date,” she added. “I only wanted to take you out to a nice dinner to say thank you for the other night,” she said. “Sorry you’re so insulted.”

Gabe gave her arm a squeeze. “I’m not! I’m delighted that you called, despite being somewhat despondent that you don’t see me as date potential. Even so, is a cheap college sushi bar really your idea of a nice thank-you? I mean, honestly?”

Honestly, Elaine was beginning to wish she could summon a cab, go home, take off these stupid shoes, and gorge on wine and cashews for dinner. But that would hardly pay off her debt to this man.

“Look, I just picked this place because I know it,” she said. “I hardly ever come to Harvard Square anymore. So why don’t you take us someplace else, but it’ll still be my treat.”

“What if it’s too expensive?”

“I make good money! Probably more than you do, judging from your wardrobe. If you really wanted me to take you someplace decent, then you should have dressed accordingly!”

“What? This is my formal T-shirt!” Gabe tried to look wounded. This act might have been convincing—his brown eyes were sorrowful and long-lashed, like the eyes of those greyhounds PETA used in their commercials to shut down the Wonderland Dog Track—except then he started to laugh, a snorting that he tried to smother with one hand. In a few seconds he was doubled over, laughing so hard that he started to wheeze.