Dream House (22 page)

“Mom!” she yelled.

There came a muffled “Oh, God!” from the house.

Like many of her parents' friends, the Wentworths were “summer people” who escaped the cities and suburbs of Massachusetts and points south to their rambling shingled house near the beach in Whit's Point. When summer people came into town to get groceries at Tobey's, they'd stop by the Gilberts' for a glass of iced tea or a cocktail, or both, depending on how long they stayed.

The Wentworths parked behind the house, and Ginny ran inside to put Pepe, who'd spent her days lately perched out of the fray on the living room window molding, back in her cage. Winkie Wentworth was phobic about birds. She was also a gossip, her mother always said, a lover of country clubs, alligator shirts, and all that other summer-people stuff Eleanor called “Joe College,” making it a mystery to Ginny why they were friends. Ginny had just closed Pepe's cage when Winkie pressed her nose against the screen door and “Yoo-hooed.”

“Come in! Come in!” Ginny's mother crowed, sweeping the Wentworths into the living room as if she'd been hoping all day they'd drop by. There were flecks of putty in her hair, and her denim wraparound skirt was askew. “Ginny . . .” she tossed over her shoulder. On cue, Ginny slid into the living room as her mother disappeared into the kitchen to rustle up some hors d'oeuvres.

Winkie wore a crisp sleeveless blouse, and when she hugged Ginny with her loose, brown arms, she squeezed out fumes of deodorant and the wine she'd had for lunch, probably at the tennis club. Her hard wicker handbag dug into Ginny's back.

Lyman Wentworth patted Ginny's head, crinkled his bumpy red face into a warm smile and said “Wow! Thirteen!” in a way that made Ginny think of her breasts.

She arranged a smile for the Wentworth kids. She'd known them—Betsy, seventeen, Nate, twelve, and Chris, ten—forever; every summer they'd used up whole cans of
OFF!
playing sardines after dinner. But in recent years, Betsy and Cassie had ditched Ginny and the boys—yup, there Cassie was already, beckoning Betsy upstairs to begin their evening of exclusivity.

But Ginny had news: this year, she was going to park herself in the living room with the adults. The boys saw her sit down on the floor in the corner and headed back outside.

Ron sauntered in from the kitchen. “Well hell-o! Look what the cat dragged in!” He clapped his hands. “What can I wet your whistle with?”

“The usual,” Lyman answered, and her father said, “Aye-aye Captain!” All the men in town who sailed were “captains,” even though in the Gilbert family, Eleanor had always been the captain.
Casa senza donna, barca senza timone.
A house without a woman, a boat without a rudder.

Lyman and Winkie followed Ron into the kitchen. “Hey, hey—you two have been getting your hands dirty!” Lyman exclaimed. “Wow! Did you get that landlord of yours—Mr. Pickle—to pay for the work?”

“Nope,” her father said. “But we finally got a check from the Bucklins for Mary's wedding. Eleanor marched right up their front steps and—”

“Winkie, take a
look
!” her mother broke in. “We even fit the g.d. vaccuum cleaner in. And
this
part was Ginny's brilliant idea!”

When the adults had regrouped in the living room, Winkie said, “What a
sh-hame
the landlord won't pay for French doors in here. I've always thought this room needed French doors and a fireplace. Though the room
is
a little small for a fireplace, I suppose . . . Speaking
of which, I dropped in on Annie and Lester yesterday. Honestly, that little place is an unholy mess! Stuff all over the place, dishes in the sink. I think those boys spend too much time alone. I do love Annie, but wouldn't you think she'd take a break from her violin long enough to raise her kids?”

“She better not!” Ginny's mother said. “She's the only one of us doing anything worthwhile! She's my hero!”

Everyone took a sip of their drinks. Winkie said, “I ran into Sid at Tobey's yesterday. He's got one more year at NYU. I asked him if he was staying at Lily House, and he laughed like it was a joke and said he was staying with that awful friend of his—what's his name? Anyway, boy, does Sid look like his father, Bill. Are the Holloways still supporting him?”

Ginny was all ears. So it was true, what Sid had snarled the night Fran died about Bill Holloway being his father and people lying to him. Why
had
everyone lied to him? The subject had appeared to be so explosive that Ginny hadn't dared to ask her mother. Winkie's appetite for gossip, she realized, might be her best shot at learning more. She slumped and looked at the floor, trying to make herself smaller.

“Oh, no, certainly not,” her mother said. “The Holloways cut Sid off when he turned twenty-one. That was the deal. But what do I know? I don't have anything to do with the Holloways
or
Sid.”

It was the first mean-sounding thing Ginny had heard her mother say in days; it was Winkie's fault, and now her mother threw a startled look at Ginny, as if just realizing she was in the room. “Gin,” she said, “how about getting out the Parcheesi for the boys? They loved playing it when they were here last year.”

Ginny stood. “They'd love that, dear,” Winkie said, giving her the once over. “You're so nice and slim.
Betsy's
really got to lose some weight. She's a slug on the tennis court. So will you be going to
Andrews like Cassie?”

Ginny remembered: her mother didn't disapprove of everything about summer people; Winkie was the reason her mother knew about boarding school. “I hope so,” she told Winkie. She slid into the hall and sat down on the stairs so she could keep eavesdropping.

“What a tragedy,” Winkie said. “Sid, I mean. And Fran. Why was she so terribly depressed, do you think? Was it losing Bill?”

“Bill?” Eleanor said much too loudly. “Oh, no, Bill and Fran
hardly
. . .”

She paused. It was curious, Ginny thought, how her mother didn't seem to approve of her much-admired “old friend Bill Holloway” when his name was linked with Fran's.

“Fran was depressed before Bill,” Eleanor continued. “She just never
did
anything. She had no interests, except bridge. She was always so self-centered—just imagine doing something so terrible like that to your family and friends.”

Ginny was scandalized that her mother would be as vicious about Fran when she was dead as she'd been when she was alive. No one had mentioned Fran's suicide in the three years since it had happened, and Ginny was glad. She didn't want to know how Fran had done it because she knew for the rest of her life she'd hold the ghastly image in her mind. But she'd learned something very important since Fran's suicide: her mother had made it clear, despite her recurring howl that she wished she were dead, that someone of her moral character would never kill herself.

“What was the last straw, do you think?” Libby asked. “Does anyone know what happened?”

“Now Winkie, come on,” Lyman said.

“No, no,” her mother said. “Well, of course Fran was probably in an uproar about what she was going to do once the Holloways stopped giving her and Sid handouts, and she announced to Sid that day that
Bill was his father. Ron,
there
! A mosquito on the wall behind you!”

Ginny heard the smack of a magazine against the wall. That was it then; the topic was dead. Ginny wondered: how could her mother pretend that the things she'd said to Fran that night had had nothing to do with her suicide? The hatefulness that day at Lily House had felt lethal and still sat like a stone in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, your kitchen is going to be just great,” Lyman said.

Winkie said, “But all the work you're putting into this house. Aren't you deathly afraid Hickle will kick you out one of these days? Why haven't you moved into Lily House? It's
your
house—you could be living there, instead of here, improving someone
else's
property.”

Ginny wished Winkie would just shut up.

“Uh-unh. Nope,” her mother said. “I'll never live at Lily House.”

“You haven't heard?” Her father chuckled. “Winkie, you mean to tell me you've been in town for twenty-four hours, and you haven't
heard
?”

A short silence. “We sold it,” her mother said. “To the New England Historical Society.”

Winkie gasped. “You
did
? Why on earth? What about Sid?”

“What
about
Sid?” her mother said. “The house belonged to me. He hasn't spoken to me in years. Why should he get a free vacation house in Maine?”

“You're so right, Ellie,” Winkie said. “Everyone says he's a mess anyway—a big drinker. At Tobey's he looked terrible. Have you heard the rumor that he might be a little, you know—”

“Let's not talk about Sid,” her mother said. “Fran just ruined him.”

“Lily House was costing us an arm and a leg to keep up,” her father said. “You should have seen—”

“But why on earth would you sell it to the historical people?” Winkie interrupted. “You couldn't have gotten a very good deal from them. Pickering House went for—”

“Winkie, do you need a refill?” Lyman cut in.

“Stay for dinner!” her mother said, and Ginny's spirits sank even lower. “We'll get some lobbies—it's your first summer weekend here!”

Nate and Chris appeared at the screen door laughing and stepped inside, smelling of grass. “Wanna play Parcheesi?” Ginny asked, leading the boys into the piano room.

Soon, her father was dispatched to fetch lobsters and corn on the cob. “Chickens, Ron, not the one-and-a-quarter pounders,” her mother yelled as he went out the door.

Ginny pulled the Parcheesi box from the cabinet and stretched out on her stomach while Nate and Chris set up the game on the floor. After an argument, they finally settled on playing by rules they'd invented. Joni Mitchell's “Blue” poured through the floor of Cassie's room, its mournful tones clashing with the adults' escalating merriment in the living room. Ginny grew crankier by the minute; so often, it seemed, she was merely a witness in this house, on the edge of everyone else's game, trying to understand the rules, trying to understand.

Chris's brown eyes fixed on Ginny. “By the way,” he said, “when you lie like that, I can see down your shirt. All . . . the . . . way.”

Ginny leapt up, dizzy from the blood leaving her head. Pepe, who had been relocated to the piano room because of the remodel, was making anxious triangles in her cage, hopping from perch to swing to other perch, then back to the first perch, as if in commiseration. Ginny reached out and opened her cage door.

Pepe hopped to the opening and paused before going airborne, beelining for the living room.

“Oh, my God!” Winkie shrieked. “Someone do something about that
bird
!”

Ginny filled with regret as Pepe fluttered back into the piano
room, grazing the doorjamb before perching on the window molding. The finch's little black-and-white body throbbed. Ginny shooed her off the molding in the direction of her cage, but she flew straight through the living room. Ginny followed her into the kitchen where she careened recklessly around the room, her radar failing her.

In the living room, everyone was trying to calm down Winkie. Lyman said, “Honey, for Pete's sake, let's go outside if you're going to carry on.”

The crowd moved out of the living room to the front yard, letting the screen door bang behind them and sending Pepe into another panic. She circled the kitchen and attempted to land on the cage's hanger, but it was at an awkward angle for her feet. Finally, she settled on the picture molding above the kitchen table. Ginny felt frantic herself now. With one foot on the chair and the other on the table, she was able to move very slowly toward Pepe and gather her in her cupped hands. She felt the relief of a mission accomplished but then, just as suddenly, felt her footing fumble. Her weight came down on the table and a thunderous crash was loosed on the kitchen. A moment after the whole room had seemed to turn sideways, Pepe was still safe within her hands, and Ginny was staring incredulously at the ruin: slices of china in a heap on the floor—red, blue, white, and gold, delicate Chinese scenes—like a heap of fanciful tortilla chips.

She surveyed the table: only half the dishes were still on it. The screen door slammed, her heart pounded, her knees shook. For a moment she wished she could make herself faint like that strange sixth- grader at school. The crash had attracted the kids, and they gathered, gaping, outside the kitchen door. They parted to let Eleanor through. The room filled with steam from boiling pots awaiting lobsters and corn; Pepe's breast pulsed against Ginny's palm as she
concentrated hard on the space between her and her mother and the broken dishes.

“Ginny, honey, are you okay?” her mother said. “Better get Pepe back in her cage.” She put her hand on Ginny's back, and Ginny felt it reaching through to hold her heart. When she looked at her mother, there was no sign of the mask she wore to be friendly to people like Winkie whom she didn't like or the mask she wore to hide terrible secrets or shout horrible things. Ginny saw a face full of compassion—the one she remembered above her when she lay winded below the tree she'd fallen from, the one after the violin recital at which she'd blanked on her music.
This
was her mother's real face. Wasn't it?