Moon Shell Beach: A Novel (6 page)

Lexi hugged herself defensively. “We agreed we’d tell each other the important things here!”

Clare stamped her foot. “You’ll never forgive me for not telling you the
moment
after I first slept with Jesse, will you?”

Lexi kicked off her thongs and drew a design in the sand with her toe as she gathered her thoughts. After a moment, she said, “Clare, this isn’t about you and Jesse. This is about you and me. Our friendship. I thought it was special.”

“It
is.
” Clare held out her hands. “I love you, Lex, you know that. You’ll always be my best friend. And we always knew we’d fall in love—it’s part of growing up.”

“So, that’s why I asked you here to meet me. So I could tell you I’m going to marry Ed Hardin.”

Clare protested, “But Lexi, he’s a
horrible
man! What kind of woman have you become that you’d marry him? You know you
can’t
love him. So you’re marrying him for his money, and that makes you no better than a whore!”

Stung, Lexi shot back, “You should know. You’re sleeping with the town slut. Jesse can’t keep his trousers zipped, plus oh, right, he’s really going to be able to support you with his awesome band that never quite gets formed.”

“This isn’t about Jesse,” Clare said between clenched teeth. “It’s about you marrying Ed Hardin. He’s just an immoral, greedy, saga-sized
turd
!”

Lexi retorted, “And you’re just a provincial little peasant whose ambitions end at Jesse Gray’s ass!”

Clare bit her cheek to stop the tears. She took a deep breath and struggled for dignity. “Well, I’m so glad you invited me out here to our
special
place to have this conversation,” she said sardonically. Slapping bushes out of her way, she stormed along the path to her car.

Lexi held herself tightly for a long moment, then sank onto the sand and wept. Her parents were having financial troubles, her best friend hated her, she was alone—she was lost. You can only take what life offers you, Lexi thought. Clare wanted Jesse. Ed Hardin wanted her. She would marry him.

FIVE

2006

C
lare leaned against the bathroom door, watching Jesse shave. “Honestly, Jesse, I don’t want to do this.”

“Come on, babe. It’s disrespectful if you don’t show up.” Jesse made a face as he scraped the delicate skin between his mouth and nose.

Tony Kostner’s fishing boat had gone down in a storm on Georges Bank a week ago and Clare was trying to decide whether she was obligated to attend Tony’s memorial service. “Well, I never did
respect
Anthony,” Clare reminded him. “He was a drunk and an arrogant, bad-tempered lout.”

Jesse dipped his face toward the basin, splashing it with cold water. Grabbing a towel, he rubbed his face dry. “We went to school with him, Clare.” He scowled at her. “Anyway, this isn’t just about Tony. It’s about Georgeann.”

The name opened between them like a black bog, indistinct and dangerous. One step into it and they’d be mired, thrashing around through their past in a frantic attempt to get back to the surface, clear and free.

Jesse brushed past Clare, out of the bathroom. She closed her eyes and tried counting to ten. All of her life, every decision, every deed, seemed tied to her love for Jesse and his philandering.

For the past twelve years, Clare had based her whole life on the conviction that she and Jesse were meant for each other. It seemed right—until good-looking, easygoing, sweet-smiling Jesse once again confessed he’d sort of, kind of, had a
little
—oh, you couldn’t even call it a fling, he’d just made one more tiny, purely
meaningless
mistake—in the arms of yet another woman, in yet another woman’s bed. Laid-back Jesse, indeed.

Clare had broken off with Jesse every time. And sooner or later, the irresistible force that had drawn them together in high school brought them back together again.

At the end of last summer, when Clare’s mother, whom Jesse had adored, was dying, Jesse had proposed marriage to Clare. He’d sworn off other women once and for all. He wanted to get married, he wanted to have children with Clare, he was ready to settle down. Oh, and I can believe you this time
because
? Clare had retorted.
No, thanks.
She knew he was just trying to make her mother happy—that was one of the lovable things about Jesse, he was in his heart a truly sweet guy. Two months later, in front of her father, Jesse had proposed again. This time, she’d accepted.

She was sure Jesse hadn’t strayed since then. But the sight of one of Jesse’s former flings always stung, and Georgeann Kostner had been his last mistake. Jesse had been hired by the Kostners to renovate the space above their garage into a small rental apartment. Tony was always out fishing. Georgeann had brought mugs of hot coffee to Jesse, and stayed to talk, and one day she asked Jesse for help opening a stuck window in the bedroom, and then, as was often the case with Jesse, one thing led to another.

After a few weeks, Clare heard the gossip from a friend who had heard it from a friend who had seen Jesse’s truck parked in front of the Kostners’ house for exceptionally long lunch hours. Clare had confronted Jesse. Jesse had confessed and pleaded for forgiveness. It wasn’t that he’d found Georgeann so irresistible, he swore, it wasn’t that he cared for her in even the smallest way; it was just that the woman had come on to him so strongly, and she had been so needy, and he had been so weak.

After Jesse’s affair with Georgeann, Clare had told Jesse she was through with him, this time
forever.
She’d packed up his possessions and dumped them in the bed of his truck. She’d gotten Caller ID and refused to pick up the phone when his number came up. She refused to open the door when he knocked.

And she had her own affair, with Jesse’s best friend, the painfully shy Amos. When he found out, Jesse had given Amos a black eye. Clare had been surprised at how guilty she’d felt when she heard about that. She thought she’d be
pleased
by Jesse’s jealousy. Instead she felt sad for both Jesse and Amos.

Then her mother had gotten ill, and Jesse had come around to visit her, and she and Jesse had grown close again, and now here they were, engaged. Here they were, and she was convinced Jesse was through with wandering. She believed he would keep his promise to her, she trusted him when he said he loved her and wanted to live the rest of his life with her, but she still couldn’t find a good reason in her heart or mind to attend this memorial service.

She followed Jesse into the bedroom and shut the door so her father wouldn’t hear them arguing. “I doubt Georgeann would even want me to come.”

Jesse gawked. “Are you nuts? You think she’s going to come on to me at her husband’s memorial service?”

“No. No, I didn’t mean that. I just meant that Georgeann and I were never close. And she’s got to know that I never cared for Tony.”

Jesse grabbed his white shirt and yanked it on, buttoning up the front and the cuffs. Jesse looked really good in a white shirt. “His parents will be there, too, and his brother and sister. You like Rena.”

Clare conceded the point. “I do like Rena. But it’s not like we’re close. She won’t notice if I’m there are not.”

“Sure she will. Come on, Clare, this isn’t just about Tony, it’s about the community. We’ve lost one of ours. Whether we respected him or not, he is still one of ours. It’s like…like…like how we all take care of Lillian O’Malley. We don’t say, oh, the dumb broad took too many drugs and broke her brain and can’t walk across the street without getting lost. If anyone sees her wandering around, we take the time to cajole her into our car and we drive her home, we take the time to do that, even though on this island time is money. Tony was a dumb grunt in high school, I admit that, and he never did get much smarter, but he was a fisherman, he was an island son, and you’re an island daughter, and it’s just not
right
for you not to attend this service.”

Clare looked at Jesse, who had slipped on the trousers to his best and only dark suit and was now working on a tie. His newly washed hair gleamed like the sun. He was beautiful. And he was right, too, about Tony and the island community, and this was one of the reasons she loved Jesse, because he was such a profound part of the island, and the island, land and people, were part of him.

“You’re right, Jesse. I should go. I will go. Give me a moment, I’ll find my black dress.”

The Congregational church
was crowded to standing-room only. As Clare sat next to Jesse in the last row, a deep welling of pain told her the real reason she’d wanted to avoid this service. It reminded her of being seated in the first row, next to her father, at the memorial service for her mother.

During the days just after her mother’s death, Clare had felt almost coddled by a blanket of exhaustion and relief. Her mother’s death had been short but hard, and Clare was grateful simply to have her mother lifted away from her pain. Clare’s father, dumbfounded by the sudden illness and death of the woman he adored, became confused and lethargic. Clare had had to do everything, make all the arrangements, patiently accept the sympathies and consolations of the town.

Now she was able to settle into a reflective mood. It was almost Christmas. The year was drawing toward its final days. Night inked out the sky before five o’clock, and plunging temperatures and rising winds drove people into the refuge of their homes. Her shop did little business. Just before Christmas, there would be a sudden explosion of customers needing stocking stuffers and a few grand luxury boxes of truffles, but until then, Clare found herself often alone for hours in Sweet Hart’s. There was always something she could do, but recently she found herself just leaning on her counter, remembering.

Ellen Hart had not been particularly maternal. She loved her husband and daughter, but the early years of nurturing a baby and raising a child had been difficult for her. Around the time Clare turned nine, Ellen had her studio built, and with each passing week she escaped more and more completely into her art. Somehow the three of them bumbled along together, and while Clare never starved, she seldom sat down to the dinner table with both her parents, and after a while, if the house needed cleaning, it was Clare who cleaned it. Clare didn’t resent her mother. No one could resent Ellen, who was lovely in a wistful way, with her long brown and white hair floating around her shoulders as she drifted out to the studio in her jeans, painter’s smock, and bedroom slippers. When she focused, she was charming. Jesse could usually get Ellen’s attention. He could make Ellen light up the way most women did around him, and when Ellen let her head fall back as she laughed, she was enchanting.

In the quiet moments since her mother’s death, Clare was visited by memories of earlier years, when she was a little girl, when her mother’s attentions were more fully engaged on her family. On rainy days, her mother dressed Clare up in one of her romantic filmy negligees or satin robes, put ballet music on the stereo, and danced, swooping, around the house with Clare, and then the rain would disappear, and the walls of the house would melt, and Clare would be with a Fairy Queen, and she would be the Fairy Princess, and they would be waltzing among the clouds.

One year, when Clare was seven or perhaps eight, a girl in their class gave a Halloween party. Clare wanted to be a mermaid, and her artistic mother had concocted a costume from turquoise satin with a tail that trailed behind her like a shining blue arrow. A small slit on the side made it possible for her to walk in tiny steps, like a mermaid would have to take. In her curly brown hair glittered a tiara her mother had made by gluing shells and sparkles on a headband. Clare wished she could wear the tiara every moment of her life.

The day before the party, Clare had invited Lexi over to play, and unable to contain the thrill of having such a fabulous costume, she’d tried it on for Lexi. Lexi reacted with wonder, circling Clare slowly, gently touching her long blue tail, and then Lexi had sat right down on the floor and cried. Her parents were both busy in their store. They had no time to create an outfit for Lexi, and had ordered her a generic princess gown that was ugly, too large, and exactly like the one Spring Macmillan said she had.

Clare’s mother had been in the hallway at that moment. She’d swept into the room to announce that she would make Lexi her very own singular mermaid costume. Clare was delighted to see her friend’s excitement, but worried, too. She didn’t want Lexi to have a costume like hers. It would diminish the originality of her own.

But Ellen constructed Lexi’s costume from a one-piece emerald bathing suit, draped with scarves of sea green, foam white, and blue that fell to Lexi’s ankles, where they were gathered around into a frothy tail. Ellen sat the two girls down at the kitchen table with slender silk ribbons of green and blue and glued tiny silver and gold shells to the end of each ribbon. She phoned Lexi’s mother to ask if Lexi could spend the night, and Saturday, just before the party, she braided the ribbons into Lexi’s shoulder-length white-blond hair. She drove the girls to the party, and Clare would never forget the thrill of entering the room with Lexi at her side, both of them mermaids, extraordinary, glamorous, creatures from another world. At the very bottom of her heart, Clare was especially pleased that she was the one with the glittering, shell-studded tiara. Her costume was just a little bit better.

The congregation rose now to sing a hymn. As Clare rose with the others, she wondered whether Lexi even knew that Ellen had died. Clare had received no letter of condolence, and that seemed a little odd. Wouldn’t Lexi’s parents have told Lexi about Clare’s mother’s death?

Perhaps Lexi hadn’t written a note of condolence because Clare had never answered any of Lexi’s earlier letters. It had been ten years since she and Lexi had had their bitter, name-calling argument. For a few years after that, Lexi had written brief notes to Clare. And Clare hadn’t answered. Lexi’s letters had seemed like a kind of bragging.
Here I am in Paris, here I am in Rome.
During those years Clare had gotten a college degree in business, attended a culinary college for two years, worked three jobs every summer to save money, and started Sweet Hart’s. She’d had no time to spend on regrets and memories, and what free time she did have she’d spent with Jesse. Loving Jesse—and hating him, whenever she found out he was sleeping with someone else. Now she had agreed to marry Jesse. She’d managed to forgive Jesse for all his philandering. Couldn’t she forgive Lexi for an argument that had been every bit as much Clare’s fault?

The truth was, she missed Lexi, and yet it was possible that the Lexi she missed didn’t even exist anymore. Lexi lived in New York with a wealthy, important man. Lexi’s brother, Adam, had left the island, too, to work with a veterinary practice outside Boston. Their parents were both retired now, so Clare never ran into them. She scanned the rows in front of her, but didn’t spot the Laneys, although she might not recognize them from the back.

If they had come, and if they were at the reception after the service, she might ask them how Lexi was doing. In the past ten years, she’d never spoken to them about Lexi. Perhaps they might tell Lexi that Clare had asked after her. It might be seen as an overture for reconciliation, and Clare was stunned at how much the thought appealed to her.