Nine Women (14 page)

“Good for her. What does the fellow do?”

“He’s retired of course.”

He was startled, as always. He never remembered that his older sisters had husbands past retirement age. “All right. What did he do?”

“Insurance. He lives in Indianapolis.”

“I hope he can afford her.” Alice had a passion for building in stone—houses, slopes, courtyards, hanging gardens in which nothing would grow.

“She says so.”

He opened the refrigerator again, considering.

It was always the same, this last day in the house, the same empty silent kitchen (empty kitchens saddened him, like a heart that wasn’t beating), the same party, with the group only slightly changed from year to year, and finally the same lobster dinner with his sisters.

“We never have lobster in the winter.”

“It wouldn’t taste the same,” she said. “It’s part of the summer.”

For a moment he saw Ellen Donovan and a large red lobster lounging together on the beach of next summer—he laughed out loud.

“What’s funny?”

“All the rules. How we only eat certain things in certain places.”

Katy got two unopened bottles of dry-roast peanuts and poured them into pottery bowls. “I’ll tell you something even funnier than that. Excepting your sisters and an occasional cousin, we won’t see a single one of these people until next summer.”

“Thank heavens. Could you stand seeing them all year long?” Again the quiet smile of Ellen Donovan floated across his memory, mocking his words. “I mean,” he said more to himself than to his wife, “there are summer friends, that’s all.”

They came early, not quite six o’clock, the Prices, and the Rasmussens, and the Abbotts, and Midge in floating floor-length pink, and the sisters: Elsie and Alice and Blanche. Down the road, horns muffled by the heavy trees, cars tooted greetings to each other as they drove toward the house.

They always came early to the last party of the summer, Katy remembered, and they always looked a little bit hurried and a little bit like people whose thoughts were far away. Like travelers changing planes, they couldn’t seem to sit down, they shifted from one foot to the other, drank too quickly, were elaborately polite to each other.

Marm Rasmussen, whose name was Kyle but who was called Marmalade because of his orange-yellow hair, brought an unopened half gallon of Scotch. He kissed Katy and put the bottle on the bar. “Hope you don’t mind, my dear, but I’d rather us drink it than have the locals get to it this winter.”

“We can use it, I’m sure,” Katy said. “There’s always somebody to drink Scotch.”

And Irene Rasmussen said cheerfully, “There’s not a drop of liquor left in our house, except that half bottle of vodka we always leave for the cleaning ladies to find.”

Marm poured his own Scotch, added a dash of water. “Do you remember when Jules built that liquor cellar, all the bottles ordered and numbered and properly racked, with granite walls like a prison. And he thought it was safe just because the door was triple-locked.”

A burst of laughter and Dan said, “I remember how sure he was that the lock was burglarproof.”

“It’s the locked door,” Elsie said, “I’ll have a daiquiri, please. They can’t stand a locked door and they’ve got the whole long winter to work on it.”

“Poor old Jules.”

“Stupid ass. More money than sense.”

“The locals had a great winter on the contents of that cellar.”

“You remember when Jules heard that the people who cleaned him out had been spiking the sacred Pouilly-Fumé with vodka. To give it more kick.”

“Pete heard that story over in Harrisport.”

Pete said, “I bloody well thought he’d have a stroke. I only told him because I thought it was kind of funny—after all, what’s money to him. But I thought he’d drop dead right there and then.”

“Maybe he thought the locals would use his crystal, getting the proper glass of course …”

“Poor Jules.”

“Jules is a consummate ass.”

“He’s not here, is he?”

“No, they went back early this year. He said he had to get to work.”

“What the hell does he have to do?”

“I think the summer ends just in time,” Thad Carson said. “Or he’d be an alcoholic,” his wife said. And Katy Wagner thought: They’ve made the same joke every Labor Day for the past twenty years that I remember and maybe even more.

“Here’s to my new house,” Thad said. “My God, the daiquiri is pink. I’m bleeding into it.”

“Strawberry daiquiri,” Jean Price said. “Everybody’s drinking them, Thad.”

“I’ll be damned. I don’t move in the right circles.”

Katy Wagner said, “I didn’t know you had a new house.”

“Retiring, love. The doctor said you can’t take it with you and you’ll be going mighty fast if you don’t get out of that business. So I got a pretty little house on a pretty little Florida key with lots of birds to watch.”

“Imagine that.” Katy Wagner never thought somehow of these people as living anywhere at all during the winter. It was as if they went into storage or hibernation and only emerged after Memorial Day to begin making summer arrangements.

More people came. They crowded through the doors, jabbering. The Johnsons drove their dune buggy along the beach and scrambled up the cliff, bringing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a wicker basket carefully packed with crackers and cans of pâté.

“Did you see any of the Tyke Races this summer? Those kids are good.”

“I was the committee boat for all the juveniles first week of August.”

“Vaughn’s boy—a Sunfish, you know—broke his mast. Remember that? Snapped it right off a couple feet above the board. So he jerry-rigged a sail and finished the race anyway.”

“And Vaughn said: Little sucker’s only ten. Wait till he grows up and see how many masts he loses.”

“Helen’s going back to work. Oh, yes, she is, that’s why they left early.”

“Rosalie’s daughter married that Iranian.”

“It wasn’t an Iranian, Cissy, it was a Lebanese.”

“What’s the difference anyway. She’s going to live there, can you imagine. Rosalie is just beside herself. First Harold drops dead and then this marriage thing.”

Well, well, Katy Wagner thought. This time I don’t even know who they’re talking about. And I thought I knew everybody on this part of the coast.

She started to check the supplies at the bar, found her way blocked by the crowd. Never mind, she thought, the glasses seem to have ice in them, so somebody brought along an extra bag or two. They’re doing all right without me.

She went outside, to the open deck. Directly below was the beach, its shingle rattling with each wave. Ahead was the open Atlantic, endlessly eastward, empty to Spain. The sun was down now and the water had the soft unreal glow of September dusk. Gray, she thought, like a pigeon. Or a maid’s uniform—and she burst out laughing at her own image.

My God, she thought, I am the total housewife.

She pulled a dead flower from the leggy end-of-season geraniums and launched it on the wind toward the beach. It landed on the largest granite boulder, a wispy bit of red against the eternal gray.

“Do you always laugh at yourself?”

She turned, feeling guilty to have been caught. “Only by the end of the summer, I think. It’s just a touch of cabin fever.”

She did not know him. She did not even remember meeting him. He would be somebody’s guest, the typical last-week-of-vacation visitor with sunburned cheeks and ears. He was middle height, middle sized, large eyes behind fashionable glasses, and close-cropped curly gray-blond hair that grew low on his forehead like a sheep’s.

She stifled her giggles. I really am getting cabin fever, she thought.

He held out his hand. “Somebody pointed you out as mine hostess. I’m Simon Forster. We haven’t met so that’s why you’re having trouble remembering me.”

“Welcome to the last day of summer.”

“Everyone leaves tomorrow?”

“This group of houses is all family and we leave, I know. Most people do.”

“Leaving only the local people.”

“And a few retirees.”

He glanced down the beach. “It must be bleak.”

“I wouldn’t try it.” He had nice blue eyes, she thought, and there was something very Irish in his broad face.

“You haven’t got a drink,” he said. “Wouldn’t you like one?”

“I’m going right now.”

People were standing in the kitchen, opening and closing the refrigerator. They were hungry, though they didn’t quite realize it. They would have one more drink and then they would start for home. It was the same every year.

Katy found a jar of Tang and mixed herself a glass of orange juice. There seemed to be no ice left, but the water from the faucet was freezing cold. She added bitters and bourbon from a bottle half hidden by an empty box of Triscuits. There were also some small bottles of ready-mixed drinks: Amaretto Sour. Whoever had brought that?

The Pattersons kissed her good-bye and wished her a good winter. The Rasmussens left. Then the Prices and their grandson. They had been drinking heavily, their skins smelled of alcohol when they hugged her.

The area around the bar was almost empty now. There was a quarter bottle of gin left, and a large salami.

Suddenly there was a rush to the porches, a lot of pointing and asking for binoculars. (They are packed away, she thought, in our suitcases, ready to leave tomorrow.) There was a large, a very large three-masted ship sailing past, quite close to shore. A wide red stripe across the bow identified it as Coast Guard. She squinted to see the name and thought she made out the word
Eagle.

“Keith, is that a schooner or a barquentine?”

“How the hell would I know. I can tell a ketch from a yawl and that’s about it.”

“Somebody call the Coast Guard and ask them what their training ship is.”

“So pretty.”

“The old ships really had something.”

“How’d you like to work those sails in a storm, Dan?”

“Those boys are too young to know better.”

“I wouldn’t set foot on that thing.”

They lined the porch, all looking out to sea, their backs toward Katy. She saw a neatly spread pattern of summer people. Bright dresses sharp against deep saltwater tans, skin crinkling slightly with age and exposure, sun-streaked sun-dried hair smoothed neatly, held in place by setting lotions and hair spray. Attracted by the scent, insects floated over their heads in a shifting small cloud, like a halo. And the men—some thin, some portly, most wearing tan slacks and navy blazers, one or two with madras jackets, so outdated now. Only Marcos was different, coatless, wearing a white guayabera and black bow tie.

The fading daylight gleamed on the heavily starched tucks and pleats. He was no longer watching the ship, he was talking, waving his arms enthusiastically, using the mixture of Spanish and Oxford English he so often affected. He looked, Katy thought, very handsome and distinctive and just a bit ridiculous. Like his name: McPherson Sebastian Marcos. His father had been very eccentric—he’d spent the last twenty years of his life building a monstrous Gothic palace in Easterly Cove. When he died, his son demolished the whole thing, leveled the ground, filled the various cellar holes, and built on the exact same spot a small modern house, three rooms of glass and steel. He lived alone, he did not even keep a dog.

He shifted his position slightly, saw Katy watching him, and waved with a flash of smile. Then he went back to his conversation.

Katy returned the smile. He was a dear man. They had had a very satisfactory affair two summers ago—or was it three, she wondered—but neither wanted to continue. Love was part of that summer and only that one summer. Like fog or rain or chill—each summer had a different character, each could be remembered with fondness and pleasure.

Simon Forster, the man with hair like sheep’s wool, said to Katy, “We seem to have emptied your bar.”

“Yes,” she said, “we expected that.”

“The Stanfords told me it was an annual ritual. I’m staying with them, did I mention that? I live in L.A.”

“Los Angeles?”

“Correction, Los Angeles. What I wanted to say was this: we’re on our way to dinner and could you and Dan join us?”

She shook her head. “We always have our final dinner of the summer—the last supper Dan calls it—with his sisters and their families.”

“I am sorry,” he said.

“Perhaps we’ll see you next year.” His eyes weren’t really blue, she thought, but green with yellow and black streaks, like a fancy marble. “Perhaps you’ll come back, or take a house for the summer.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “My family’s pretty thoroughly West Coast. And we usually take winter vacations.”

“We never do. Dan goes gunning in the fall, for sea ducks. And fishing in the late spring, but those are hardly more than a week each time. We still take the old-fashioned long summer vacation.”

The last people were leaving now. All together in a group like children on an excursion, they hugged and kissed everyone in reach as they went.

She saw Simon Forster’s woolly head move down the steep path and disappear in the crowd.

I like him, she thought. I wonder what he does for a living and if his wife was here.

From the parking area there was the sound of cars starting. A shout. “Watch the wall.” Gears sticking. “You haven’t got the clutch in! Put the clutch all the way in.” Laughter. “Not that way, there’s sand that way.” Another rasp of gears. Somebody was whistling, clear and perfect: Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary. “If you’re going to drive, Keith, I’m going to walk.” … “It’s four-wheel drive, love, but you don’t need it here.” … “Good-bye, people.” One by one the cars moved out. “Good-bye, good-bye.” … “See you next year.” … “Next year.”

After a final wave to the settling dust, Katy filled a tray with dirty glasses and carried them into the kitchen. Then, crouching, she rummaged through the detergents and cleansers under the sink to find a bottle of Laphroaig. She held it up triumphantly. “Half full.”

Dan, who was slightly drunk, squinted at her and bowed deeply. “A miracle. How did that get in there?”

“I hid it this afternoon.”

“Katherine, you are a clever clever woman.”

The faint smell of party still lingered on the porch. They sat in comfortable silence. The ocean had lost all light now, and the sky was almost black, a star or two showing faintly.