“Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley,” Teddy began, but, receiving a sharp look from Mrs. Brinkley, quickly modified his approach. “Ahem. Max and Vera, I give you . . .” He suddenly drew up short, realizing that despite our belabored introductions, he had already forgotten our names.
“Rose Baker and Odalie Lazare,” Odalie quickly supplied.
“Yes—Rose Baker and Odalie Lazare,” Teddy repeated, gesturing in turn to each of us. Apparently he had no trouble discerning which was which, as he made a gesture first to me and second to Odalie.
“Oh! I almost forgot,” Odalie added, smiling one of her most endearing smiles. “I suppose I should give you this.” She handed over the letter of introduction, which Max Brinkley took and lifted before his monocled eye. The corners of his mouth twitched while he read the words.
“Oh—yes, yes,” he grumbled amicably once he had reached the bottom of the letter. “As I always tell my wife, any friend of Pembroke’s is a friend of ours!” This statement seemed to tickle his funny bone, and he laughed aloud, a strangely low-timbred guffaw issuing from his thin frame. I detected we had just crossed over some invisible threshold. A mood of more relaxed welcome extended itself as though a train of dominoes were tumbling over. Vera laughed, Odalie laughed, Teddy laughed, and then I found myself joining suit, although still to this day I’m not certain I truly understood what was so funny. Mr. Brinkley folded up the letter roughly and stuffed it into an inside jacket pocket. “I hope you don’t mind—there’ll be others staying this weekend, too. A small party, in fact.”
“We don’t want to intrude, of course . . . ,” Odalie said, but there was a veneer to her voice, and I knew immediately her protest was insincere.
“Nonsense. It’s no intrusion at all. Besides, it’s clear Pembroke wants you to be well cared for, and perhaps even”—he paused and winked at Odalie—“chaperoned.” Odalie’s lips tightened into a thin, polite smile. Mrs. Brinkley frowned, ever so briefly, at the floor. “I’ll send Felton for your things,” Mr. Brinkley continued. “He can carry them up and show you to your room. Felton!”
Only a matter of minutes later, we found ourselves happily ensconced in a plush, sunlight-filled bedroom upstairs. Odalie sat at the vanity and moved a brush through her glossy bob while I pushed open a window and gazed at the shimmer and twinkle of the sea beyond, slightly dulled now by the angle of the late afternoon sun. I can only assume somewhere out there in the vast populous world there really was a Pembroke, although I wouldn’t go so far as to naively assume Odalie had ever made his acquaintance. As it was, I scarcely heard the name mentioned again, despite the fact it had served as the crucial turnkey to our seaside accommodations.
As I watched Odalie brush her hair and stare absently into the mirror, I realized she was not thinking of Pembroke, but rather someone else altogether. A distracted frown marred the lovely oval of her face. “Can you believe it! What ridiculous rubbish,” she grumbled to herself. “Newport folk ought to know they’re supposed to stay in Newport. Who ever heard of coming down here for the summer? It’s absolute nonsense!”
I was taken aback by the vehemence of her tone and looked at her in puzzlement, but she took no notice.
“We’ve got to keep an eye on that boy,” she murmured.
I wasn’t sure if she was addressing me or had forgotten I was still in the room.
“What?”
“Teddy.” She ran an absent finger over one smooth black eyebrow. “He’s trouble.” Her voice was full of the kind of deep thought and quiet calculation that forbids further prodding. There was a knock at the door, and Felton deposited our baggage in the room. I kept my questions to myself and set about unpacking our two suitcases.
O
ne got the sense the Brinkleys’ summer life kept a regular rhythm, and this rhythm consisted mostly of leisure sports in the mornings, garden parties in the afternoons, and tasteful feasts around the dinner hour, all followed by a waltz or two late into the more velvety hours of the night. If Mr. Brinkley had a profession, I’m not sure I could tell you what it was. One thing was certain: Whichever Brinkley had originally procured the family fortune had done his part at least two or three generations ago, as the Brinkleys currently in residence seemed to remain utterly unharassed by the so-called pressing matters of business. What’s more, their estate accommodated all of their favored activities, and I daresay they rarely—if ever—left the grounds at any point throughout the entire duration of the summer. Instead, they became the center around which a small universe of New York socialites revolved, and Odalie and I were only too happy to fall into orbit.
Once we’d arrived and had been shown to our room, we dressed for dinner and reemerged just as the hot summer day finally stretched itself to the outermost end of its length. The final result was a bright, thin twilight. Coming downstairs, we made our way to the veranda and discovered four very long dining tables had been draped with pale blue tablecloths and set with white candles and white china. At the center of each table an enormous roasted pig rested on its belly, complete with a candied apple in its mouth. Place cards were laid out in front of each setting, and I thought I glimpsed the slight twitch of a frown on Odalie’s face as she observed Teddy’s name inscribed on the place card next to her own.
When Teddy came over to take his seat next to Odalie, he wore a vaguely embarrassed yet sly smile, and it occurred to me perhaps he had switched a few place cards from their original positions just prior to our arrival downstairs. There was nothing terribly shocking in this, and I hardly thought anything of it; men were always maneuvering to achieve a greater degree of proximity to Odalie. But what
was
surprising was that throughout the meal, Odalie kept her back to Teddy, refusing to make conversation with a polite but very stubborn twist of her posture. Even eye contact seemed a burden to her. I’d never witnessed anything like it. Odalie had always been one to hold court; she was kind to even the most lowly of her admirers (one never knew whose favors might come in handy). I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of grudge she could possibly harbor against a boy who was not even old enough yet to have racked up any serious social offenses. All we knew of him was that he had mistaken Odalie for a movie-star (a far cry from an insult), he hailed from Newport, and at one time he had attended Hotchkiss—hardly grounds for the thorough snubbing Odalie was giving him that night as she sat with her whole body twisted away from him, more raptly engaged with my own conversation than she had ever been in the history of our friendship.
After dinner, he pursued her to the canvas platform where couples had already begun to pair off and float about in light-footed, airy circles. I believe he thought he might get a chance to dance with her. But if this was the case, he sorely underestimated Odalie’s ability to fill up a dance card. She skillfully thwarted his advances at every turn, always remaining aloof but never being rude in any outright manner. So for the majority of the night, he stood off to one side of the platform and simply looked on, his hands stuffed awkwardly into the pockets of his high-waisted white suit jacket, the shifting tides of dancing couples swirling in eddies before him and the shifting tides of the actual sea ebbing and flowing at some distance in the darkness behind him. At one point, he crossed the veranda in my direction, and I may be mistaken but I believe he was coming to ask me to dance. Just prior to his arrival, though, Odalie was quite suddenly at my elbow. Her musical laugh filled the air as a string of gentlemen took turns bending at the waist and making a show of kissing her hand. I heard her making apologies about the hour being late. Seconds later I felt a light hand on my arm. Before I knew it we were upstairs in our room, turning down the bed and slipping into our nightgowns.
“Sorry to make us turn in early like a pair of sad old biddies,” Odalie murmured while lying in bed with her eyes already closed. “I just couldn’t have stood it a moment longer. If they’d have played a waltz I think I would’ve nodded off in some poor man’s arms.” She reached over to my side of the bed and squeezed my hand.
“I don’t mind,” I said, and realized it was the truth. Sometimes when she abandoned me at parties I came home early and went to bed—always alone—and I
did
mind that. But I never minded coming home early with Odalie at my side.
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING,
I awoke to find the bed next to me empty. Whatever Odalie was up to, she had not left a note to say. I rose, washed up, and went downstairs to take breakfast on the veranda. Feeling too shy to introduce myself to any of the Brinkleys’ other houseguests, I requested the butler bring me the morning edition and pretended to be extremely interested in the daily headlines. I pretended, that is, until one news item in particular very genuinely caught my eye.
At first it was Mr. Vitalli’s photograph that stopped me cold, a teacup of coffee poised halfway between the table and my mouth. His pale, piercing gaze was as hollow and chilling as ever—although I noticed the egotistical curl of his lips drooped somewhat now, and his mustache looked badly groomed.
VITALLI FOUND GUILTY, MAY FACE ELECTRIC CHAIR
, the headline over his photograph read.
So
, I thought.
There is justice in the world after all.
And the electric chair! I suppose if there was ever a time I should have felt remorse for the helping hand I lent to Lady Justice, this would’ve been it. But instead I felt nothing save a deep sense of satisfaction that the jury had finally found their way to the truth. I tore out the article (
Representing himself, Mr. Vitalli failed to prove confession was falsified,
a line read) and tidily folded it up to take with me. I slipped it into my purse and hoped to show it to Odalie when she finally rematerialized.
I returned to my room to wait, but by eleven-thirty the day had already grown quite sunny and hot, and I had become restless. Guests who stayed with the Brinkleys were invited to engage in a variety of outdoor activities. The accoutrements they provided were numerous: There were tennis rackets and tennis whites for those who wanted to venture onto the court; there were nine-irons and cleats for amateur golfers who wanted to improve their drives and putts; there were badminton sets and croquet mallets and colored balls, and also little leatherette cases of heavy leaden balls coated in shiny silver the butler assured me were required for a lawn game played by the French and called
pétanque
. Having grown up with a very thin introduction to most of these sports (and none at all in the cases of golf and
pétanque
), I decided instead of trying my hand at any of the games, I would take a simple swim at the beach. Taking a swim was something I could do alone, thus relieving the burden of having to awkwardly introduce myself to other guests (something I was loath to do without Odalie).
It was already balmy outside, but in the cool of my bedroom I shivered as I shimmied into the knit fabric of the bathing suit Odalie had picked out from Lord & Taylor earlier that month. After acquiring a towel from the butler (who raised an eyebrow at the length of leg peeking out from under the hemline of my suit), I set out in the general direction of the water.
There were two beaches to choose from. The Brinkleys’ property spanned a swath of land that stretched from the Sound all the way to the open sea. I suppose a more romantic individual would’ve chosen the whiter sand and salty spray of the thundering Atlantic, but as I have already confessed a hundred times, I am a rather practical-minded person. I opted for the slightly murkier but much stiller waters of the Sound. When I got there I saw I had the beach to myself, save for the occasional motor-boat out for a pleasure cruise, whizzing by as voices of sun-burned hilarity carried in crisp ripples over the water. Some distance offshore a swimmers’ raft bobbed softly, permanently anchored by some underwater means against the Sound’s gentle currents.
By then the heat was rising from the sand in dusty, steamy drafts, and I was more than happy to ease myself waist-deep into the water. If I possess one unladylike quality of which I am shamelessly proud, it is how I’m actually quite a strapping swimmer. There has always been an inherent brute force to my strokes. Lots of girls can swim, especially all those fast, tomboyish girls who are popping up everywhere nowadays, but not so many years ago it used to be only the very rural or the very rich who knew how to swim. When the nuns arranged for me to attend the Bedford Academy, I gained some rather unexpected privileges, and having been properly taught my swimming strokes was one of them. They’d taken us on a handful of school excursions to a ladies-only beach, where we’d sloshed about in the waves, weighted down by the long, bloomer-style bathing costumes they made us wear, each of us waiting her turn to have her swimming stroke evaluated by the same gruff, broad-shouldered, freckle-faced female swimming instructor who was hired especially for the task once a year.
I gazed at the swimmers’ raft bobbing. A small diving tower had been erected on the raft, and from the top a tiny orange flag fluttered in the breeze as though giving a wave of encouragement. I estimated it was only a couple hundred yards away and decided to swim to it. With a push and a gasp as the water enveloped my chest and neck, I was off, paddling happily along. I tipped my face into the water and attempted an earnest crawl stroke. I have always found swimming to be an exhilarating activity: the peculiar way one is obliged to move in the water, the reaching and stretching, the feeling of pulling air into one’s lungs in great heaving gulps, the way the world simultaneously seems to fill up with both sound and its total absence. And there is almost always a moment of oddly invigorating panic, even if one is a very strong swimmer, during which one doubts the endurance of one’s lungs and the strength of one’s own muscles. It had been a long time since I’d been in the water, and I had one such moment just before I reached the raft. I felt fear awaken each inch of my body like a jolt of electricity, and when I finally pulled myself onto the wooden planks of the swimmers’ raft, my limbs thoroughly turned to jelly and every nerve within me trembled with exhilaration—all of which quickly turned to exhaustion. I heaved myself atop the raft and lay there like a dead person staring emptily into the sky.
I have no idea how long I lay faceup like that on the raft. Enough time passed for the heaving of my chest to gradually subside, for my hair to begin to dry against my scalp in matted clumps, and for the world to become quite still and peaceful. The bobbing of the raft was hypnotic, like resting in a cradle. And then I slowly became cognizant of the fact the tempo of the bobbing was increasing. I turned my head to look toward the shore and realized another swimmer was approaching the raft. Glistening ripples spread in widening rings from his body as he paddled and kicked his way forward. He paused, briefly, in the middle of a crawl stroke and lifted his head from the water. There was a blur of a smile, and then a bright “Ahoy there!” sounded.
I sat up. I realized I was looking at Teddy, the very same young man who’d facilitated our introduction the previous afternoon and pursued Odalie all evening in vain. His face disappeared back into the water, and the windmill of his arms resumed. Finally Teddy reached the raft and found his way to the ladder. I had not anticipated running into him in this fashion. I must have frowned at him involuntarily as I watched him climb the ladder and grin with clumsy exhaustion, for he seemed to catch on to my displeasure.
“I would ask you if you mind the intrusion, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped,” he said in his prematurely deep bass of a voice, panting and trying to catch his breath. “I’ve got to have a break. It’s a bit more of a swim than I’d realized. Guess it’s no use changing your mind halfway out, eh?” He plopped down and laid his dripping body on the planks of the raft, eventually collapsing into the selfsame horizontal and heaving posture I’d been in only moments earlier. Once supine, he turned his head and squinted up into the sun to look at me. “Boy oh boy, you must be a swell swimmer.” There was genuine admiration in his voice, and I felt myself involuntarily bristle with pride.
“Well, I enjoy it fine, I guess,” I said very quietly, refusing to smile. I made a gesture to stand and go but balked, dithering between the ladder and the tower. I had originally hoped to dive from the tower, but now had reservations about doing it in front of an audience.
“Oh, wait—don’t go,” Teddy said, catching on to my intent. I looked at him and saw the earnest raised eyebrows and down-turned mouth of an innocent young boy. I don’t know why I was in such a rush to get away from him. Odalie had yet to reveal the origins of her aversion to the young man. He had after all, I reasoned, eased our introduction to the Brinkleys and spared us from potentially appearing like gate-crashers. “Please stay,” he said to me now. “I’d like the company.” I hesitated, and he saw it. “And besides,” he added, “swimming back is going to be rough. I may need a strong life-guard to rescue me and tow me back to shore.” His panting had fully subsided by that time, and I could see this claim wasn’t true, but I found myself lingering about on the raft anyway.
I leaned back on my hands and crossed my legs in front of me, then tugged at the hemline of my bathing suit in a futile attempt to cover myself up a little more. Several seconds of awkward silence ensued, punctuated only by the dripping of water that trickled off Teddy’s hair into the small puddle that had pooled on the planks beneath him. I mentally ticked off the facts I knew about him, with the notion of selecting the one that might best facilitate some small talk.
“So—you’re from Newport?”
Bizarrely, this question appeared to strike a nerve. Teddy shaded his eyes and gave me a very serious look, as though suddenly reevaluating me. “Yes. Do you know much about . . . the town?”