The Lucky Ones (3 page)

A
ll the long drive back from the ocean the next day, the crotch of Cecile’s bathing suit was heavy against her, filled with the sand she had collected while riding the waves. The skin on her face felt scratchy and dry.

Lucy had insisted on keeping her beach ball clutched to her chest as she got into the backseat. It had dropped small clumps of wet sand that scratched Cecile’s thighs. Cecile wiped it off but more sand appeared. She had given up.

“It hurts to breathe,” Cecile said. She rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes. She took quick, shallow breaths to avoid feeling the tightness in her chest.

“You’re waterlogged,” her mother said from
behind the steering wheel. “I told you to come out earlier.”

“I’m waterlogged, too,” said Lucy. She had dug holes on the shore all day and run back up the beach, shrieking, as the rising tide filled them in. No water had touched her body higher than her knobby knees. Her suit was dry.

“You didn’t even swim,” Natalie said.

“I did too,” said Lucy. “Didn’t I, Jack?”

“I saw her,” Jack said to keep the peace. Jack was always the one to keep the peace.

“Then why is your suit dry?” Natalie said, and reached quickly over Cecile’s lap to run her finger meanly under the rim of Lucy’s suit where it circled her thigh.

“Natalie, please.” Their mother sighed when Lucy started to cry.

“Oh, all right, you baby,” said Natalie. “You swam.”

Lucy stuck her thumb in her mouth and quieted down. It was an aimless kind of bickering. They were all used to it. They rode in exhausted silence until they reached the bridge. When Cecile finally heard
the familiar sound of the tires on wood, she took a deep breath. The tightness was gone.

“Everyone in the shower,” their mother ordered when the car stopped in front of the house. “Don’t go into the house empty-handed!” she cried as the doors flew open. “Towel on the line, Jack!”

The first touch of the shower’s cool water on her hot skin made Cecile flinch. She looked down at the bathing suit imprinted on her body. Her first sunburn of the summer reminded her of the outfits she put on her paper dolls with tabs. The imprint of her bathing suit was startling against her red arms and legs, the lines between red and white as straight and clean as if drawn with a ruler. Turning slightly, she saw the straps running up over her shoulders, the scoop of its neck tracing a graceful curve on her chest. Oh, but it was going to sting in the middle of the night. She could already feel it.

She held her face under the stream of water. She washed her hair. Stepping out of the tub, she wrapped a thick towel around her body and tiptoed down the hall to her parents’ room. Lucy’s
high-pitched voice rose above the running water in the master bathroom. Her mother was giving Lucy a bath in her huge tub with lots of bubbles. The air smelled of strawberries.

If she’d been nine, or even ten, she would have gone into the bathroom to show Lucy and her mother the red paper doll wearing a white bathing suit. Instead, Cecile stood in front of the full-length mirror and let her towel slip to the floor. She turned around and craned her head to look at her back. The suit was perfect there, as well.

Walking across the soft carpet to her mother’s makeup table, she gazed at the array of pale green boxes, dark red lipstick tubes, and exotic jars in different shapes and sizes. Her mother’s moisturizer was in the dark pink jar. Cecile picked it up. Their mother had laughingly dabbed tiny drops of it on their noses and cheeks when Cecile and Natalie were little and wanted to know what it felt like. It even smelled expensive.

Cecile checked guiltily over her shoulder and then quickly poured a bit of the cool liquid into the
palm of her hand. Slowly she spread it over her face and neck. How luxurious and smooth it was! She poured more and recklessly slathered it over her chest and down her stomach. Her hand sliding across her skin felt sophisticated and daring.

The front door banged; deep male voices sounded in the front hall. Feeling as exposed as if she were standing naked on an empty stage when the curtain unexpectantly rose, Cecile dashed back across the room and wrapped the towel tightly around her. She rubbed her face vigorously with both hands. When the door opened, she turned toward it, innocent and welcoming.

“Oh. I thought it was your mother.” Her father strode across the room to his dresser. His tanned forearms looked muscular and strong; his dark hair was firmly slicked back, there wasn’t a strand out of place. “Did you have fun at the beach?” he asked as he took a fistful of change out of his pants pocket and dropped it into a silver dish.

“It was great.” Cecile inched her way toward the door. “Did you and Granddad win your game?”

“We did, no thanks to me. I had a rotten day. Four over par.” Her father undid the clasp on his heavy watch and dropped it on the dresser next to the dish. “Where’s your mother?” he said.

“In the bathroom with Lucy.”

He gave Cecile a quick, appraising glance. “Looks like someone got a lot of sun.”

“I did.”

“Andrew! Is that Cecile I hear with you?”

When her father opened the bathroom door, Cecile reluctantly went and stood beside him. The air in the bathroom was steamy and thick. Mrs. Thompson was kneeling by the side of the tub with Lucy in front of her. Lucy had a paper-doll bathing suit, too, but her arms and legs were brown. She had both hands on her mother’s shoulders to steady herself as she stepped carefully into the white under-pants her mother was holding open.

“I thought I heard you two,” Mrs. Thompson said. “How was your game?”

“Your father saved my hide.”

“You’ve saved his often enough.”

Their formal voices were almost as bad as their silence. How dare they keep this up? Cecile was in an agony to get away.

“You’re just the person I wanted to see, Cecile,” her mother said.

“She was admiring herself in front of the mirror,” said Mr. Thompson.

“I was not!” Cecile wrapped her towel more tightly around her. Why hadn’t she worn her robe? “I was looking for Mom,” she said. “I don’t do silly things like that.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Her father reached out to ruffle her hair, but Cecile stepped skittishly back. “Don’t,” she said in a low voice. She felt she would cry if he touched her. She hated him.

“Leave her alone, Andrew,” her mother said.

“I was teasing her, for God’s sake. Am I not allowed to tease my daughter, either? Is that part of my sentence?”

“I guess it is.” Her mother flashed him a brittle smile.

They looked at each other the way only the two of them could—it felt almost like hate. Cecile’s stomach churned. Their silence bore down on her shoulders; her neck ached.

Her father abruptly spun on his heels and walked toward the closet. “Then I guess you’re not interested in the message King asked me to give you,” he said to Cecile as he opened the door.

Why punish her? It was so unfair. “What?” Cecile cried. “What did he say?”

“The
Rammer
’s coming in. King said you’d been asking.”

Cecile could have melted onto the carpet with relief. Escape!

“Great! Thanks!” she said, and headed for the door.

“Cecile, wait!” her mother called. “Take Lucy with you.”

“But it’s coming in now,” Cecile wailed. “Lucy’s too slow!”

“Take me! Take me!” Lucy cried from the bathroom.

“Mom…”

“You heard your mother.” Her father sat on the edge of their bed and crossed one leg over his knee. He leaned down to untie his shoe. “What’s the big rush? You’ve seen it come in a million times.”

I just want to
go,
Cecile wanted to cry. I don’t want to
wait.

But Lucy was keeping up her lament in the bathroom. Cecile never should have come in here in the first place. “Oh, all right,” she said ungraciously, “but make her hurry.”

The
Rammer
was berthed by the time she reached the dock. Cecile trailed behind as Lucy ran eagerly down the steps. The
Rammer
sat massive and important, its hosed decks gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Ropes had been neatly coiled, fishing poles put away.

Her mother had told Cecile to keep Lucy out of the water. She walked along the edge of the sand behind Lucy now, watching the cabin cruiser as it rocked rhythmically against the pilings. She felt empty and clean; she thought she’d drift up into the
sky like a balloon if it weren’t for the heavy, contented tiredness in her arms and legs to hold her down. Her footprints shimmered with life for a second before they melted back into the sand. Tiny waves lapped soothingly at the sunburned tops of her feet.

There was a shout of laughter from the
Rammer
’s deck. Cecile saw a tall, white-haired man sitting in a deck chair under the awning. He smiled broadly at something another man was saying, then leaned back contentedly and gave another shout of laughter. Suddenly, as if on an invisible lift, a boy rose smoothly from the cabin below and came onto the deck carrying a tray. He handed a tall glass to the laughing man and a shorter glass to the other man. He placed a small bowl on the table between them.

A shiver of excitement ran the length of Cecile’s body.

The boy was a crew member. She could tell by the easy way he stood moving with the rocking of the boat, the tray dangling at his side as he waited to execute any other requests the two men might make.
He was tan and thin; his dark hair reached almost to his shoulders. Calf muscles stood out on his long legs; his khaki shorts hung from his hips.

He had to be about Harry’s age. Harry wore his shorts like that, too. Maybe he played soccer like Harry; he looked strong. It was strange, how seeing a boy her own brother’s age should make her feel so excited, so oddly out of breath. Something fluttered nervously in the pit of her stomach. She felt herself staring.

“Lucy,” she cried, shaking herself out of her trance. “Come here! Hurry!”

Cecile looked frantically for something—anything—to capture her sister’s attention as Lucy ran toward her with tiny steps, as quick and eager as a tern.

Cecile grabbed Lucy’s net and, brittle and self-conscious as a starlet, pranced along the edge of the water sending up a spray of sunlit droplets, like something out of a movie. Not knowing why she did so, she hunted crabs more eagerly, cried out over each one more loudly. She held her net, heavy with
catch, higher in the air so that anyone on the
Rammer
might see and be curious.

Crouching to empty her booty into Lucy’s bucket, she wondered what she might look like to someone on the boat. Oh, why wasn’t her skin less pink, why didn’t her hair lie more smoothly on her head? She was painfully aware of the boy as she stood up.

Maybe she would appear older with Lucy at her side, Cecile thought, and tried to take Lucy’s hand. But Lucy would have none of it.

“Nonononono!” Lucy cried, twisting and turning like a fish on a line. Cecile dropped her hand.

“All right!” she whispered. “Be quiet.”

When the slatted doors on the cabanas slammed shut, Cecile spun around. Two women came out with their skin glistening, their hair sleek. They had to be with the men on the
Rammer
.

“I’ll get us another net,” Cecile said to Lucy quickly, and ran up the stairs into the boathouse. When she came back out, the women were leaning on the railing, looking at the bay. They turned to her and smiled.

“What do you hope to catch with that?” the woman with red hair asked. Even though she’d taken a shower, she looked hot. Her neck and shoulders were an angry red.

“Minnows swimming along the shore, mostly,” said Cecile. Then, hurriedly, “It’s for my little sister.”

“Do you children live here?” the other woman asked. She was taller than the redhead, and blond. Her skin was a dark, even tan like Natalie’s. Skin like that never burns, Cecile thought. Her finger went up to touch the tiny blisters on the bridge of her nose. Natalie never got blisters, either.

“Our grandfather does,” she said.

“What, in the big house?”

Cecile nodded.

“Is that your brother?” The redhead nodded toward Jack, fishing on the float.

“Yes.”

“How many more of you are there?”

“Two.”

“My goodness,” said the blonde. “Aren’t you the lucky ones?”

The women moved down the dock, calling to the men to help them aboard. Cecile went back to Lucy, who was squatting down, working industriously to dig a hole even as it filled with water. “Lucy,” Cecile said coaxingly, “let’s go see if Jack caught anything.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Mom said you’re not supposed to get wet.” Cecile grabbed Lucy’s hand to pull her up and said impatiently, “Come on.”

“Let me go!” Lucy shouted, planting her heels in the sand, refusing to budge.

“Fine.” Cecile let go. Lucy fell back and landed on her bottom, her face registering the shock.

“Baby,” Cecile said. “Serves you right.”

At the sound of an outboard motor, Cecile looked up. The boy was pulling away in the dinghy that had been tied to the back of the
Rammer
. He steered it expertly out toward the sea grass in a smooth arc, sending up a bright wall of water behind him. He lifted a hand to Jack as he went past the float. Jack raised his hand back and stood watching as the dinghy disappeared.

“Go ahead, get your feet wet,” Cecile said as Lucy stubbornly got to her feet and brushed at the wet circle on the back of her sundress. “See if I care.” Cecile went back to the deck and sat on a bench. Leaning her arms on the railing, she stared, unseeing, at the bay.

He would have waved to her, too, if she’d been on the float. He would at least have seen her.

Natalie appeared on the stairs a few minutes later. She’d blown her hair dry and she held her head carefully so as not to disturb its smooth straightness as she came down the steps. Good thing there wasn’t a breeze off the water or Natalie would go right back to the house; Cecile was dying to talk to her.

“God, Cecile,” Natalie said, frowning at her fastidiously. “You look like a lobster.”