Beach Plum Island (34 page)

“I understand,” Peter said, and Ava thought, from the grave expression on his face, that Peter was probably used to hearing people say they weren’t ready for changes in their life. It’s what he did for a living, after all.

“She’s a good person,” Ava said. “She’s just going through a hard time since Dad died.”

“Are the three of you close, now that our dad is gone?” Peter asked.

Gigi met Ava’s eyes, giving her permission to speak the truth. But what was the truth? “We’re family,” Ava said finally. “We look out for each other. That’s why we’re here. Dad wanted us to find you and tell you he made a mistake by not looking for you once Mom told him about the pregnancy. If things had been left up to him, he never would have given you up in the first place. He always regretted losing you.”

Peter lowered his head. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“It’s true,” Ava said.

“And even if it weren’t for Dad, we’d feel like that,” Gigi added. “We hope you’re glad we found you, too.”

Peter turned his head in Gigi’s direction. “I am,” he said. “Unbelievably glad.”

S
ix days sober now. Five days, so far, of wretched AA meetings. Elaine had called in sick with the flu even though it was August, the entire city was shut down, and she was owed about three weeks of vacation.

Now it was Sunday. Tony had returned from his golf trip to North Carolina and he’d be back in the office on Monday; she had to tell him the truth before then. Alcoholics Anonymous was all about asking for help, getting on your knees, telling the truth, making amends, staying sober one day at a time, etc. Great advice if you could follow it. Which she totally could. Maybe.

Her AA sponsor, Greta, said it was probably too soon to try making amends, since that was step eight and she’d just started her
personal journey
—Christ, the worst phrase ever, one she’d banned from college admissions materials the first week she started with Tony’s company—but Elaine was in no mood to wait. She’d take her sobriety vows seriously, but some things she had to do on her own terms, her own schedule.

Elaine called Tony early to see if he was going to the usual spin class; when he said he was, she said she’d meet him there. Then she asked if he’d go with her to the pool at the North End. She’d chosen that spot because it was one of her happiest memories of the summer.

“You’re so pale,” Tony said when they emerged from their respective bathhouses in their swimsuits and met on the concrete walkway around the pool. “Are you sure you feel well enough to be here?”

Elaine had caked on concealer and makeup to cover the black eye. She’d hit her head hard on something when she fell in the pub bathroom, fracturing her skull. The bruising on her head had caused blood to pool down her face and gather around her eye until she looked like a battered wife. The weird thing was that nobody asked what happened to her, not in restaurants, coffee shops, or gas stations. No wonder women didn’t like to admit being victims of domestic violence: they felt invisible. The bruising had gone from green to blue to deep plum and then violet and yellow, which is what it was now beneath the makeup.

“I’m sober,” she said.

Tony laughed. “Yeah, you should be, sweetie, after that killer workout this morning. Sweated every drop of alcohol right out of you, I bet.” Then he saw her expression and reached for her hand. “Tell me,” he said.

Elaine related everything that had happened while he was away: the failed date with Gabe, Ava getting even closer to Gigi as the two of them looked for their brother, and Elaine’s own irrational rage and sorrow. And drinking. Drinking more than she ever had in her life, even during their party years at Tufts.

“I screwed up,” she said. “Big-time.”

Elaine told him about drinking vodka and cranberry juice in the car—not the first time—and about her night at the pub drinking martinis with the twin Irishmen, which had led to her being sick in the bathroom and falling. She’d made the call and been taken to the hospital by the woman who came to her rescue, Greta, who was now her AA sponsor.

“And yes, before you ask me, the ugly rumors are true: those meetings really are held in awful church basements,” she said.

“I know,” Tony said quietly.

“
What?
Who told you about me?”

“Nobody, you ninny.” They were sitting on the edge of the pool, their legs dangling in the lukewarm water.

“How did you know I’d joined AA, then?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” Tony said. “It’s not like anything you did made Fox News or caused people in the office to say you were a falling-down drunk. I just know about the church basements because George is in AA. He’s been sober for ten years.” Tony said this with pride.

Elaine was stunned. “George? Your George, who loves to cook four-course meals and wear Armani? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tony shrugged. “Not my dirty laundry to air, honey. But I’m sure George would be okay with you knowing this, given the circumstances.” He smiled and feathered his fingers across her cheekbone, just below her black eye. “You’re very brave, both of you.”

Elaine wanted to cry; she was so grateful that Tony hadn’t made her feel like more of a loser than she already was. Instead she kissed him and pulled him into the water. After their swim, they ate ice cream at the snack bar, moaning about the hour of spin class they’d have to do tomorrow to work it off.

They had brought separate cars to the pool because Elaine had one more thing to do today. She drove to Gabe’s house in the South End and parked down the street from his brownstone, admiring the flowers blooming in the tidy postage stamp lawns in front of the buildings.

Outside his door, though, she began to lose her resolve. Maybe Greta was right and it was too soon to make amends with everyone on her list. Another, cynical voice inside her head demanded why she even cared what this guy thought of her. It wasn’t like she planned to date him.

Plus—and this was the smallest, most insignificant concern, but couldn’t be ignored—did she really want anyone other than Tony or hospital orderlies seeing her without makeup, especially with a black eye? She’d come straight from the pool and had barely combed her hair, which still hung straight and wet and cold on her shoulders.

In the window, there was a movement behind the curtain. Elaine nearly jumped out of her skin, thinking it was Gabe watching her spy on his house. Then she realized it was the psycho kitty, Tommy, parting the curtains with his big round head. He looked like the Cheshire cat, sitting like that between the curtains with just his head showing. She imagined his grin and nearly waved to him.

Then the door opened and Gabe stepped outside. He wore the same cotton bathrobe she’d borrowed the night of the mugging and he was blinking at her in the bright sunlight. It took her a minute to realize he wasn’t wearing his glasses, which must be why he was squinting like that.

“Oh!” he said. “I thought you were the woman who delivers the
Times
. I called them to say the paper hadn’t arrived.”

“I didn’t steal it. I promise.”

Gabe came down the steps and padded toward her on the sidewalk on bare feet. He fished his black glasses out of one pocket of the robe and put them on. “Wow.” He peered at her eye. “What did you do to yourself?”

“You should see the other guy,” Elaine said, hating the wobble in her voice.

Gabe didn’t laugh. “You’d better come in. Looks like you could use a cup of coffee.”

Coffee was just what she needed, even if Gabe had probably suggested it because he’d jumped to the conclusion that she’d been out carousing last night. Elaine followed him meekly up the sidewalk. She had gone through spin class and swimming at the pool on nothing more than a peach yogurt and that ice cream sandwich. Her head felt stuffed with cotton and her pores were oozing chlorine at a time of day when they should have been oozing caffeine.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this,” she said as they made their way down the cool dim hallway to the kitchen.

“Who’s barging? I invited you in,” Gabe said with a waggle of his fingers over one shoulder. “I’m barely out of bed. Looks like you’ve been running or something.”

“Spin class, then swimming.” Again, she heard the unspoken accusation and felt the questions he wasn’t asking, saw them written in the tension across his shoulders. “Gabe, I was home and in bed at nine o’clock last night. And all I had to drink was water.”

He went to the cupboard, took out a pair of mugs without looking at her. “Why? Who died?”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

“No? Well, neither are you.” He turned around, and for the first time Elaine saw how angry Gabe was. His brown eyes were fierce, sparking gold behind the thick frames of his glasses, and his shoulders were squared, his bare feet centered beneath him. He looked like he could pick up the refrigerator next to him and toss it out a window.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered, and sank into one of the kitchen chairs, her head in her hands. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You pissed me off, that’s what you did,” Gabe said. “I didn’t realize how much until I saw you just now. I thought I’d written you off as one more crazy I can’t save, like pretty much every damaged woman I dated in high school and college. That’s me, the sappy Jew, always attracted to girls who need saving. Not your fault, me and my do-gooder habits. I expect to get my heart stomped on, that’s my MO, and, well, somebody’s gotta be the schmuck in every relationship. But for some reason—silly me—I really thought we were developing a friendship. And then you turned on me because I was
honest
. Because I was trying to
help
you. Well, screw you!”

Elaine lifted her head and stared at him. “Whoa,” she said, genuinely impressed. “Nice rant. Maybe you’re way less nice than I thought. Good job. I really feel like crap now.”

For a minute, she thought Gabe might hurl the coffeepot at the wall. Instead, he glowered at her but set the coffee down carefully on the counter. Then he brought the mugs to the table and put those down, too.

He pulled out the chair next to hers with one foot and sat down, wrapping the robe around his legs. He was staring at her the whole time, his dark eyes gradually lightening to warm hazel, and then he was smiling and rubbing his eyes under the glasses, shaking his head. “Jesus,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here, Elaine?”

“I came to apologize.” She reached over and touched his hand to make him look at her. “I came to say you were right. I was drinking and it was screwing up my life. I ended up at Mass General last weekend with alcohol poisoning.”

He took a sharp breath. “Why didn’t you call me? I put my number in your phone for a reason.”

Elaine shrugged. “I had to call somebody else. Somebody disconnected from me and my family. Now I’m in AA. End of story.” She smiled. “Or the beginning, I hope.”

“Just tell me who gave this to you.” Gabe touched her face, his finger cool on her warm cheek.

She shivered a little but didn’t pull away. “I did,” she said. “I blacked out and fell. I had a lump on my head the size of an orange. This is the residual bleeding under the skin, apparently. I didn’t even hit my face.”

“You were lucky you weren’t concussed.”

“It would have been hard to tell if I was, the condition I was in,” Elaine said. “It scared me, though, so it was a good thing it happened.”

“I wish it hadn’t come to that.”

“Me, too. But things go the way they do, right? And all we can do is get back up again.” Elaine sipped her coffee. “Got any toast?”

He laughed and stood up to make some. The cat came in and jumped onto her lap, purring in his broken way, and Elaine stroked him until his fur crackled. She ate two pieces of wheat toast with strawberry jam, and then Gabe made cheese omelets and she ate one of those, too, and had two more cups of coffee. She told him about Ava leaving a phone message for her last night, saying they had news about Peter.

“I couldn’t tell from her voice whether it was good news or bad,” Elaine said. She loaded their dishes into the dishwasher and began scrubbing the egg pan.

“What are you hoping for?”

Gabe reached above her to put away the glasses she’d washed, and she smelled his skin, spicy and warm. It was a comforting scent; Elaine wanted to lean her head back against his chest and rest there, smelling him.

“I hope he had a happy life,” she said slowly. “I feel sorry for the guy. But I hope he’s so happy that he only wants minimal contact with us. You know, like occasional holidays. That would be enough for me, and it would make Ava and Gigi happy.”

“You sound very mature.”

Elaine could hear a smile in Gabe’s voice. He was still behind her, rustling around in a closet now, it sounded like. She finished washing the pan and did the spatula, then wiped the counters clean. “I’m trying to be less of a spoiled drunken dimwit,” she said.

“Sounds like a reasonable plan. Think you’ll succeed?”

He was standing very close to her now, doing nothing. Elaine laid the sponge down and slowly turned around to face him. Gabe was only a foot away, holding a bag of cat food in one hand, his dark corkscrew curls in a tangle.

“I don’t know. Do you?” she asked.

“I hope so.” Slowly, Gabe stepped toward her. He cupped her chin in one hand and tipped her face up to the light, peering at her eye. “Have you put ice on that?”

“It’s too late now,” she said.

“It’s never too late to try again,” he said, and kissed her.

It should have been an awkward kiss, with him in his robe and bare feet and holding the bag of cat food, and her smelling of swimming pool and ice cream and coffee. It should have been the kind of tame, passing-ships kiss that married people have, a kiss that acknowledges imperfection as well as passion, the kind of kiss that happens long after two people have disappointed each other and then forgiven each other, too, so many times that they feel safe.

It was a kiss in a kitchen, for one thing, a kiss with a hungry cat meowing in the background, a kiss taken and given without makeup or showering or combing, a kiss that lasted, Elaine would think later, much longer than it should have, but not nearly long enough. Because she had never been kissed like that before, and she would never get tired of it. That much she knew.

•   •   •

Sarah had come to band practice and now she was sitting at Ava’s kitchen table, her head resting on her arms. Something must have happened between her and Sam.

Gigi wanted to ignore her—she barely knew Sarah—but here they were, the only two in the kitchen, and the only girls in the house other than Ava, who mostly stayed upstairs or out in her studio while the band was playing, “giving them space,” as she always said, when really Gigi knew Ava was in and out of the house enough to spot anything skeezy going down.

Neal hadn’t come tonight. He’d taken a job as a busboy at Panera, working there as well as the barn now so he could put away money for college. He and Sarah had a single mom who worked ten-hour shifts at the hospital as a nurse, so they were on their own a lot. Gigi couldn’t imagine this; she’d always had so many adults in her life.

And now Peter, too, who she was getting to know through e-mail, mostly. He told her he had a speech recognition program for his computer and he could also type in Braille, which she thought was cool. He was coming to Beach Plum Island this weekend; Gigi and Ava were planning a birthday party for him with Charley’s help. They had a baby girl; Gigi would get to meet her this weekend, too. The baby was asleep that night they’d found Peter.