The Mermaid Collector (26 page)

“Who says?” Ruby declared as she painted purple stars across Tess’s forehead. “Don’t make it wrinkly, lovey. Try to keep it flat.” And Tess had tried, but fits of giggles had ensued. “Besides, we’ve only just got here, so we can do whatever we want,” said Ruby, planting a finishing kiss on Tess’s nose when she was done.

“Yeah,” agreed Tess, rushing to Buzz and leaping into his open arms in a small tornado of tulle and curled ribbon. He pulled her down with him into the couch, seeing a familiar clump of canvas on the floor by the TV.

“What’s the tent doing out?” he asked.

“Tessie and I are going camping.”

“In the cove!” Tess had squealed. “We’re going to sleep on the beach so we can hear the mermaids, like you said.”

“Now, hold on a minute,” said Buzz. “I never said anything about being able to hear them.…”

“Well, of course you can hear them!” said Tess. “They sing. Everybody knows that.”

He chuckled, letting her weave a piece of tinsel through his beard. “Everybody, huh?”

“Yup. We’re going to make a bonfire and roast marshmallows. Isn’t it great?”

Buzz gave Ruby a concerned look. “It gets cold as hell on the beach at night here, Rue.”

“That’s why we’re bringing the tent, Grump-a-lump,” Ruby teased, blowing him a kiss, her lips spotted with loose glitter. She crossed the room and joined them on the couch, snuggling up to Buzz just as Tess had done.

“Maybe I should come with you,” he said, putting his arms around them both.

“No boys,” said Tess firmly, playfully swatting his nose with a piece of her green tulle scarf.

“No boys, huh?” he asked.

“Nope. Mom’s been reading all about mermaids, and she read that if you hear mermaid song, you’ll leave her. Just like Linus Harris and all those other men did.”

“Aw, no chance. No mermaid could make me leave your mom, kiddo.” Buzz had leaned over to kiss Ruby then, finding her already turned to him. Tess had watched their embrace, feeling a warm sense of peace and belonging. She’d worried at first, concerned that Buzz would ruin what they had together, would come between them like a saw, cutting them in two.

Tess wasn’t sure why the memory of that first festival had returned to her now as she arrived at the cove and came down the driveway to the cottages, seeing the
property as busy as she’d expected. It was always a shock to see the cottages lived in after so many months of their sitting empty, such a joy to hear the sounds of voices blending from porches that were now full. But as soon as she stepped up the stairs to her own cottage, the delight faded. She’d left that morning with such hopes, such excitement for Tom Grace and the unexpected romance she’d found with him. Just hours later, it was gone.

No sooner had she crossed the room and gone to the sink for a glass of water than she heard Buzz arrive at her door. He rapped twice but didn’t wait for her to respond before he came in, winded from his advance.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been going nuts here. Everybody showed up all at once. I was counting on your help.”

“Sorry,” Tess said, shoving a glass under the tap and draining it.

“What’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve been dragged behind a boat.”

“Good guess.” She set down her glass and moved past him for the couch. She fell into it, grabbed a pillow from the end, and buried her face in it. Buzz came beside her, staring down at her, hands on his hips.

“What’s going on, Tessie?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbled through the pillow.

“Too bad.” He snatched the pillow and tossed it beside her. “I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s broken.”

Tess glared up at him. “You can’t fix this, Buzz.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you can’t.” She climbed to her feet, moving past him to the front door and stepping back outside. She hated when he got this way; he was always thinking he could change things, always thinking he could control every damn thing in the universe.

He followed her onto the porch. “Is this about Grace?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Tess could feel tears crawling up her throat. Across the driveway, guests moved in and out of their cottages; screen doors squealed and slammed. Someone was blasting the Chieftains. Someone was already grilling fish.

“I thought you said things were going well with him.”

“I thought so too.”

Buzz frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I changed my mind, okay?” Tess said.

“You did or
he
did?”

“What difference does it make?” she asked. “It’s over.”

“Since when?”

“Since just now.”

“And this is how you’re taking it?” Buzz folded his arms and stared at her. “You give that creep Hawthorne a hundred and one second chances, but you have one fight with Grace and you just give up?”

“Give up?” Tess whirled around to face him, the accusation cutting deep. “You’re a fine one to lecture me about
giving up. You mean the way you gave up on Mom the minute things got too tough?”

“That’s not true, Tessie,” Buzz said, his voice softening. “You know that’s not true.”

“I know you pushed her until she couldn’t take it anymore.”

“I didn’t push her. I was trying to help her.”

“By telling her she had to take pills or you’d leave her? Some help!”

“She couldn’t manage her depression by herself, Tessie. What was I supposed to do?”

“That’s how you want to remember it.” Tess marched back into the cottage.

“You want to talk memories?” Buzz followed her inside, slamming the door behind them, ready to have it out once and for all. “Okay, let’s talk about memories,” he said. “Let’s talk about the time your mother thought it would be fun to take that old canoe out, and I had to get Bill Cotswold’s boat to bring you both back in, shivering like a pair of newborn pups. You remember that one?”

“Leave me alone,” Tess whispered.

“Or how about the time she took you out of school and hitchhiked with you to Boston because she’d had a dream about the Swan Boats, and I had to come get you two in the middle of the night at South Station? You call that giving up, huh?”

Tess wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to sing
loudly like a taunted child. She wanted to slug him and break every dish in the cabinet. Instead, she just began to weep, big salty tears that ran straight into her mouth.

“Why couldn’t you just let her live her life?” she said. “She and I were doing okay before you came along. We were fine!”

“No, you weren’t, Tessie. Oh baby, no you weren’t.” Buzz reached for her, but Tess stepped away.

God, she still didn’t get it, he thought. From the time she’d poked her head out from behind that row of paintings, sunglasses as big as saucers, teeth and gums coated with chocolate, and told him that her mother’s paintings were going to be worth a million dollars someday so he had better buy one now before she got too famous. That was how long he’d loved her—from that instant.

Would she never understand that?

Buzz walked to the door, feeling like a cat toy banged around the floor, in and out, back and forth. They couldn’t seem to make up their minds, he and Tess. Fix it or break it even more. But then, he hadn’t been much of a mender lately. Beverly’s crying rush from the restaurant came back to him, making him feel even worse, if that was possible. He’d gone over twice to check up on her, but she hadn’t answered her door. What had come over everyone?

Goddamn festival. Once upon a time he’d enjoyed it. Now all it did was bring him grief and remind him of things he couldn’t change. He’d be glad to see it end. There was nothing mystical in a set of wind chimes, no mer-maids
to call you into the surf in the middle of the night. Linus Harris was just a crackpot who’d taken in too much mercury and caused three other men—and his own wife—to perish for his delusions. Buzz was tired of being the only one who saw those men for the selfish fools they were. It was Lydia who was the real tragedy, Lydia who’d been left to pick up the pieces, Lydia who’d decided, poor thing, that she couldn’t.

THERE
HAD
BEEN SOMEONE ELSE
once in Beverly’s life.

His name was Barry Harmon and she’d met him through the PTA, the year after she’d started seeing Frank. Like her, Barry had been widowed; he even had two boys, his a few years older than hers. He was an orthodontist with a timeshare in Naples. He’d taken her to dinner and, over a shared plate of calamari, told her that she reminded him of Kim Novak. He’d given her a magnolia bonsai.

Beverly hadn’t thought about Barry Harmon in a very long time.

But she did now. As she watched Buzz march back up the lawn to his trailer from her cottage window, it seemed the choices she’d made in the years she’d known Frank were all she could think about. She’d watched Buzz and Tess’s fight from the back window of the cottage, then heard a good deal of what she couldn’t see when they’d moved inside, her heart breaking. That was what it was to
be a parent; she understood that listening to Buzz. It meant putting your children above everyone else and turning away the love of your life if needed to protect them. She’d never done that; she had never believed that she should. She’d made loving Frank her focus, and that choice had cost her sons dearly. How many weekends had she dragged them away from their friends, from sport commitments, from school events, simply because Frank had rented them all a house on Lake Michigan, or surprised them with tickets to the Field Museum and a pair of rooms at the Sheraton? Or was it more than that? Maybe, just maybe, she’d never given her children the time they were due, never been truly comfortable as their mother, and Frank’s invitation had merely been the excuse she’d wanted to slip free of motherhood.

No wonder she’d felt so undone being here, so anxious. It had nothing to do with hurt. It had everything to do with guilt. She realized now that she was every bit as accountable as Frank. Just like he’d done, she’d lied to people she’d claimed to love, lied to herself. And as for thinking that she’d been denied a choice in how Frank had kept her out of his life at the end, how he’d kept her out of it really for the entirety of their fifteen-year affair, Beverly couldn’t have been more wrong. It had been her choice to get into that taxi, her choice to take those phone calls and flowers, to miss her sons’ ball games; it had been her choice to turn down Barry Harmon when he’d asked her out on a second date.

The people who’d been without a choice were her sons; Joan and Buzz and Tess; and maybe even those brothers in the keeper’s house, whoever they were—Beverly wasn’t even sure she cared to know anymore. It wasn’t important.

That was how swift and startling it was, her shame, her apology. She’d come here, believing she was entitled to her truths, but she was so wrong. She had a right to her mourning, but she had no right to her anger.

But there were those who did, she thought as she lowered the curtain, her eyes fixing on the spots of paint scattered on either side of the frame. As she joined them with her index finger, she saw at once they weren’t nearly as random as she had first thought; rather, they comprised a map of sorts, points of starlight so that someone might always find their bearings under any sky.

She’d been a fool—blessed and so ungrateful.

Some mothers and their children didn’t get enough time.

TOM SAT ON THE BACK
porch, staring out into the night.

Dean had a child.

A child
.

Dean, who couldn’t take care of himself, had allowed another human being—a child and her mother—to come into the world to depend on him. Dean knew nothing about raising a child. Tom himself had barely done more than hold a baby before.

He thought about all the things a baby needed, then a child; how little he and Dean had, how little they could expect. He thought about the guests in those colorful cottages down at the cove, carefree people lost in the celebration, deliriously happy and unaware.

But most of all, he thought about Tess.

Even in the thickness of the mess Dean had delivered to them, Tom still managed to find space to miss her. He’d hurt her, and he hadn’t meant to. Any chance they might have had to get closer was gone now. But maybe it was best this way. Even now, Tom had no idea how he might explain to her that seventeen years earlier he’d caused a disaster that he could never correct but had vowed to spend the rest of his life trying. How could he have faced her with that confession? Those eyes of hers had undone him that first day in her woodshop. The grassy smell of fresh basswood he had sworn had attached itself permanently to his skin.

Was she missing him too? he wondered. The fierce and irrational attraction he felt for her had been so certain to him—he’d thought she’d felt the same. He glanced up at the roof of black, the pinpricks of light, trying to recall the constellations she’d shown him. They’d been so clear when her fingers had directed his eyes. Now it was all a scattering of spots, unbound and unjoined.

What did it matter? In another few months, leaves would brown and crisp and fall, leaving stark, wiry branches. And he would convince himself to look forward
to chilly autumn nights, cold gray days that offered no hint of joy, early dusks and wind so frigid people had to keep their heads down to protect their skin, eyes down too, not meeting their neighbors’. He’d try for a teaching job, take whatever he could. Snow would fall, maybe so much sometimes that he wouldn’t be able to leave the house at all. Yes, he would embrace that isolation, that numbness of cold, the way he used to in Chicago—the only way he knew how.

IT HAD ALL STARTED BECAUSE
Ruby couldn’t find a pen to draw Cassiopeia. She and Tess had been sitting in their cottage, the one called Pink, one unusually warm November night, and Ruby had decided then and there that it was the night Tess would finally learn the stars.

Unbelievably, they’d had the windows open for three days straight—unheard of most Novembers in Maine (or so Buzz had claimed) when evening temperatures could easily dance toward frost. Best of all, they’d been able to shake off their heavy sweaters for a while, moving around in bare feet and bare arms.