The Lucky Ones
Authors: Stephanie Greene
Stephanie Greene
FOR R.W.C.
Things would be better when they got to Gull Island.
“So! The Heathens have arrived!” King Herbert called in a…
Cecile was the first one awake. She stretched her arms…
All the long drive back from the ocean the next…
“Beep, beep! Coming through.”
They had to come down sooner or later. Cecile climbed…
Lucy went first, clutching the bag of bread crumbs Sheba…
“Model walk,” Natalie commanded.
“We’re not going anywhere until you take off those shoes,”…
“Mrs. Cahoon said Jenny can’t go until she’s a teenager,” Cecile…
Some of the boys she’d danced with had had hot,…
“Don’t tell me you turned into a teenager after one…
The movie she was watching ended. Cecile got up from…
The morning air was crisp and clear, the blue sky…
Cecile leaned against the sill of the bathroom window brushing…
T
hey were two little girls, six and eight. They were sisters.
“Not like that,” said the older girl. She clutched her arm more tightly around her sister’s neck to hold their two bodies close together. “I put my foot down first and say ‘ooh!’” She stomped her bare foot on the gravel driveway for emphasis. “Then you put your foot down and say ‘ah!’” She slapped her little sister’s leg. “Go on, do it.”
The younger girl stomped her bare foot on the gravel and said, “Ah!”
“Right,” said the older girl. “Now wrap your arm around me the way I’ve got mine around you.” The little girl did it. Their two heads pressed together, one blonde and straight, the other dark and curly.
“Okay,” said the older girl. “First me, then you. Then me, then you, right?”
“Right.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“One…two…three…go! Ooh!” said the older girl, taking a step.
“Ah!” said the younger obediently, stomping hard.
“Ooh!”
“Ah!”
“Ooh! Ah! Ooh, ah, ooh, ah, ooh, ah, ooh, ah!”
A seagull flying overhead, looking down, would have seen a strange two-headed, two-armed, four-legged creature hotfooting its way along the gravel driveway that led from the dock to the huge white house sitting under the elms. A giggling two-headed creature that staggered and stumbled from side to side until it reached the stone pillars at the head of the driveway, then suddenly broke apart as the two little girls collapsed on the lawn. They rolled onto their
backs and planted the soles of their hot feet in the cool grass to soothe them, laughing up at the sky.
Later that night, when the clouds that had been banking on the horizon all afternoon delivered one of the rare storms the Island witnessed during July, Cecile, the younger sister, would scramble across the bedroom floor to her sister’s bed at the first clap of thunder. Sleepily, Natalie would lift a corner of her blanket so Cecile could slip under, where she curled up against her sister’s body and fell fast asleep. Happy as bear cubs in their cave, they were.
T
hings would be better when they got to Gull Island. Her parents couldn’t possibly stay as icy to each other as they had been since their argument about Harry a few nights ago. And Natalie would stop sulking about the party she hadn’t been allowed to go to once she claimed the canopy bed in the bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall at Granddad’s. No, before that, even. When they got to the bridge.
No one was ever in a bad mood on Gull Island, Cecile told herself confidently, squashed in the middle of the back seat of the Thompson’s pink station wagon as it sped along the flat highway toward the eastern end of Long Island. There was a harmony among them there that didn’t exist in any
other place. Let her mother and father do their endless rounds of country-club dances and dinner parties and golf. The rules that governed the children’s lives at home—from meals to washing to bedtime—would grow wonderfully lax. For one whole month, Cecile could go to the dock whenever she wanted, or lie on the beach, or go clamming or swimming—the whole island would be hers. She could smell the lavender soap in their bathroom in Granddad’s house now, and the sheets on her bed that smelled like the fresh out-of-doors because Sheba hung them on the line in the drying yard all day.
Cecile could hardly wait to see Sheba. She wished they could eat in the kitchen with Sheba every night. Silly formal dining room with its silly rules. She’d help Sheba pick fresh flowers every day and make potpourri again from the petals of the roses in Granddad’s garden. She wasn’t going to worry about Harry, or her parents, or Natalie; she absolutely wasn’t. Imagine a father being jealous of his own son, the way Natalie said their father was. Natalie seemed to hate everyone in their family these
days. Cecile wasn’t going to think about it.
If only the air in the car didn’t feel so strained. She was going to explode into a million pieces if they didn’t get there soon, and it would serve Natalie right. Horrible Natalie, who’d held herself pressed against the door for the entire ride so her skin wouldn’t touch Cecile’s, as if Cecile’s skin was contaminated. Natalie didn’t like it when anyone touched her, really, but Cecile knew she hated it most when it was her. The only times Natalie had looked at her for the entire ride was when their thighs had touched; then she shot Cecile a look of malice as she rubbed her perfect, tanned skin.
“Harry’s not here, so I’m the oldest,” Natalie had said, claiming a window the minute they got in the car. She’d refused to move, forcing Cecile to crawl over her without arguing. In the Thompson family pecking order, the oldest always got the window.
Jack got the other window even though he was the second youngest; he got carsick and needed air. A few years ago, when they’d been on their way home from church, Jack had announced he was going to be sick.
“You’ll be fine as soon as we get home,” their mother had said firmly, as if her voice could make even Jack’s stomach behave. Jack promptly threw up. It splattered Natalie’s dress and Cecile’s shoes.
No one had disputed his right to a window seat ever since, which meant that for the past three hours, Cecile had been stuck in the middle with Lucy. As usual, she would have said, if anyone had been willing to listen. When the children abruptly rocked and swayed for about the hundredth time as Mr. Thompson swerved to pass the car ahead of theirs, Cecile longed to rest her head against the glass the way Natalie was doing.
Really, it wasn’t fair. Ever since Natalie had turned fourteen, she’d been all pins and needles; Cecile was her favorite pincushion. It had hurt her feelings terribly at first. The day last winter when Natalie had stormed into Cecile’s room without notice and knocked everything off her dresser with one sweep of a furious arm, Cecile had run in tears to her mother.
It wasn’t because of her, Cecile’s mother
explained, or even anything Cecile had done, really. It was because Cecile and Natalie were too close in age. “You’re nipping at her heels” was how her mother put it, but, “She nips at mine, too,” Cecile sniffed.
“It’s not the same. You’re not in as big a rush as Natalie.”
“Where’s she rushing to?” Cecile asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
It added insult to injury, to have her mother sound so amused. It did nothing to soothe Cecile’s hurt feelings, either, to be patted on the head as if she were a puppy and to have her mother put an end to the conversation by saying, “I count on you to be in a good mood.”
Cecile had had to take what consolation she could from knowing her mother counted on her. But it was hard work being in a good mood all the time, especially when Natalie never even tried. The worse Natalie acted, the more she got away with. Maybe she wouldn’t bother trying to be so good from now on, Cecile thought mutinously as she attempted to
stretch her long legs in the limited space in front of her. It looked a lot easier to be bad.
When Mr. Thompson swerved right again, Natalie turned to her and said, “Your skin touched mine,” and pulled her thigh away from Cecile’s with both hands.
“I can’t help it,” Cecile said. “I don’t have any room.”
“You disgust me,” said Natalie.
“You disgust me, too.”
Quick and cool as a cat, Natalie reached out and scratched her. Cecile covered the two angry red lines that sprang up on her thigh and cried, “Mom! Natalie scratched me!”
“Knock it off,” her father said testily, eyes straight ahead. She could have been bleeding to death, for all he cared.
“Girls?” Her mother reached back to cover Cecile’s hands with one of her own and gave them a tiny shake of her head. Natalie sighed loudly and pressed her forehead against the window again. “When’s the dance at the club this year?” Natalie
asked sulkily, as if she might just allow the right answer to lure her out of her bad mood.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Granddad.” Mrs. Thompson patted Cecile’s hand and smiled at her encouragingly. “Let Lucy rest her head on your shoulder, there’s a good girl,” she said before she turned back around. “And do something about your hair.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Cecile asked as Lucy’s sleepy head fell against her arm.
“It’s a mess, as usual,” Natalie muttered into the glass.
“It’s not as if anyone can see me,” Cecile protested, but she pulled off her hair band and put it back on, sweeping her unruly hair off her forehead. For now, she thought, looking at the back of her mother’s sleek head. She’d like to see her mother or Natalie tame hair as wild as hers. Them, with their straight hair that did whatever they wanted it to.
Oh, why couldn’t they get there? Cecile rubbed her thigh to soothe the sting as she looked at the land that was flattening out around them. The
stunted trees were bleached white, their profiles worn short by the wind. The pale blue sky looked taut and flat all the way to the horizon, like a sheet stretched tight to cover the corners of a bed.
Lucy stuck her wet, wrinkled thumb back into her mouth and curled her finger over the bridge of her nose. She sucked contentedly for a while until her eyelids slowly drifted closed again and her thumb slid wetly from the corner of her mouth. Her head rested damp and heavy against Cecile’s arm.
“Pow, pow, pow,” Jack said softly. He moved the plastic army men on his lap in a silent reenactment of advance and retreat. He made the kneeling soldier holding a rifle leap up onto the car door, said, “powpowpow” again under his breath, and sent the tall soldier with the tin cap somersaulting off his knee onto the floor.
“How’re you doing, Jack?” their mother asked.
“Okay.” Jack kept his eyes on the pitched battle. He hated it when people fussed at him. At eight, he had the calm, grave demeanor of a person much older. Their father had nicknamed him “the Judge.”
It meant that if Jack didn’t think something was good, it probably wasn’t. The children all agreed it was a good name for him.
“We’re almost there,” Cecile told him.
“I already know that,” said Jack.
Then, miraculously, the way it seemed to happen every year at the exact moment when Cecile felt she couldn’t last another second, the monotonous highway ended; three speeding lanes became one. Like carnival bumper cars when the power’s turned off, the cars slowed to a sedate crawl, calmly waiting their turn to merge onto the one narrow lane that signaled the end of the trip.
“It’s about time,” Natalie said. She promptly rolled down her window and stuck her face into the wind, her hair flying out behind her like the ears of a dog. Cecile grabbed the back of the front seat and pulled herself forward. Lucy fell sideways onto the seat, gave a startled squeak, and sat up. Her sweaty cheek was creased with sleep lines.
“There’s the Lobster Hut,” Jack called as they drove past a two-storied gray clapboard building
that ran along a canal, with its row of bright nautical flags flapping cheerfully on its deck as if waving hello.
“Our road is next,” Cecile announced.
This was the part of the trip she loved the most: when her father turned left onto Shore Road, separating their car from all the other cars that still had miles to crawl along the crowded highway to reach houses and motels scattered along the lanes that branched off to either side of the highway. Roads leading to the right meant the ocean, to the left meant the Sound.
Every year, Cecile imagined how their station wagon must look to the children in the other cars who had so much farther to go. How envious they must feel to see the lucky Thompsons, who’d be on the dock with their feet in the water before they even reached their destination. She could have been a famous person in a limousine for how it made her feel.
“Are we at Granddad’s island yet?” Lucy asked sleepily.
“Not quite, sweetie.” Their mother reached back
to wipe Lucy’s curly, damp hair off her forehead. Lucy rested her hot cheek against her mother’s hand. “Almost,” her mother said.
“It’s not Granddad’s island,” said Cecile.
“It might as well be his.” Natalie pulled her head back in to add her two cents. “He has the biggest house.”
“He doesn’t own the whole island,” Cecile said.
“Who cares? Everyone thinks it’s his,” Natalie said, rolling her window up as if suddenly aware of the potential effects of her impulsive behavior on her appearance. Frowning, she gathered her hair in one hand and pulled a few stray ends out of the corner of her mouth as she secured it with a clip.
But Cecile was scrupulously honest. “It’s not,” she said firmly.
“He could afford to buy it easily, couldn’t he, Mom?” Natalie said. “He’s rich enough.”
“Natalie, please.” Their mother hated it when they used the word rich. She said it was common.
“He could,” Natalie mouthed to Cecile.
“He doesn’t,” Cecile mouthed back.
“The total distance from the highway to the bridge is five point two miles,” Jack said. “I clocked it last year.”
“Yuck,” Natalie said in a superior voice as she looked out the window. “Even more of those ugly houses than last year.”
They were sailing past a development, its clusters of houses spreading slowly across the flat potato fields, more destructive than locusts. Then, as surely as if they’d passed through an invisible gate, the landscape changed. Messy civilization was left behind as the car rounded a long lazy curve and burst into a clearing.
The vastness of the sky was dazzling; the white-capped bay spread out beneath it as sparkly and welcoming as a smile. The road was level with the water now; wild beach-plum bushes separated it from the bay. Golf carts and golfers dotted the smooth green to the left, but only Mr. Thompson saw. The rest of them had their eyes trained on the Island.
It rose gently out of the water like the back of a turtle floating peaceful and serene. Cecile saw the
railings on the bridge over the inlet and the flag at the top of the tall white pole in front of Granddad’s house. It hung limp above the trees.
“We’re here!” she cried as her father slowed the car and turned onto the crushed-shell driveway. “We’re here!”
“Dad!” Jack shouted, frantically stuffing his little men into their plastic bag. “Stop! You have to stop here.”
“I thought maybe you were too old this year,” their father teased, but he braked to a stop before the bridge so Jack could jump out, with Lucy close behind him. Cecile was about to follow when she saw Natalie hesitate. To leap out would be childish, according to her new standards. It would be far more mature to stay in the car.
If Natalie rode over the bridge, it would ruin everything.
Then Jack called, “Look! A crayfish!” and Natalie slammed her door the same time as Cecile slammed hers. They ran to the railing and hung over it, side by side, peering into the water below.
“Somebody take Lucy’s hand!” their mother called as the car continued slowly up the drive, but the new order was already asserting itself. None of them paid attention.
“If she falls in, we’ll fish her out,” said Jack. “Look.”
Lucy squatted down and crammed her face against the slats. Cecile and Natalie lifted their feet off the bridge and balanced on the railing like human seesaws as clumps of seaweed and reeds and bits of grass flew out from under them, heading for the bay on the swiftly moving tide.
“The tide’s going out,” Cecile announced.
“The hermit crabs will be out at the dock,” said Natalie.
Their eyes met. The shared memory of scrambling on wet sand around the pilings at the dock while tiny crabs scurried for the safety of their holes passed between them. Cecile was the first to push back off the railing.
“I claim the red bucket,” she said, picking up her pace.
“Blue bucket,” said Natalie, moving ahead.
“I’ll use the net,” called Jack.
“Come on, Lucy!” the three older children shouted together. And then they were running, hair flying and legs churning as they raced past the low scrub that covered the Island, past the road that went off to the right, to the caretaker’s cottage, and around the corner until they saw their grandfather’s house with the deep front porch and the circular driveway with the rose bushes and their car parked in the shade under the porte cochere.
The trunk was open. Their father’s arms were full of suitcases; more were piled behind the car. But still they ran. Even when Sheba came out onto the porch in her pale gray uniform and they could hear their grandfather’s deep voice calling to them, they ran.