Beach Plum Island Page 14

  The rest of the living room furniture consisted of a sagging brown tweed couch and a coffee table with so many water rings on its surface, it looked like a deliberate helix design. There was a wooden lamp, its base carved like an owl, and magazines were stacked all over the floor and on top of every horizontal surface, even the TV. Navigating the living room was like walking through a miniature city of paper skyscrapers. Glancing down, Elaine made out the date on one National Geographic: 1969. Finley probably had every issue dating back decades; she could put this collection on eBay and pay her rent for a year.

  In this dim light, and despite her rough brown complexion, her great-aunt didn’t appear to have aged much since the last time Elaine had seen her eight or ten years ago. She was still stout and her pewter hair looked like she’d cut it herself around a cereal bowl. Despite this, she had surprisingly feminine features: a pretty upturned nose, a doll’s pert mouth, and small ears that gleamed like pink seashells through the strands of her sparse gray hair.

  Finley had been eating her supper, the remains of which were on a folding table next to the recliner: a half-empty bowl of soup and a sleeve of saltines. “I could get you some water,” she offered. “There’s always water.”

  “Oh, don’t bother. We’re fine,” Ava said. “We just popped in to say hi because it’s been so long since we’ve heard from you.”

  “Last I checked, I’m still here.” Finley’s face wrinkled into a smile. “I read the obits every morning just to make sure I’m not listed.” When Gigi giggled, Finley gave her a rheumy look. “Who are you again?”

  “Gigi works for me and plays with my sons in a band,” Ava answered smoothly. “Do you remember Evan and Sam?”

  “Not likely,” Finley said with a dismissive snort. “Haven’t seen them or you since that memorial service for your mother. The little one was in that sling contraption you carried on your back. Bigger ’n’ you by now, I expect.”

  “Oh yes. They’re both tall like my husband,” Ava said.

  “Don’t remember him, either, except he was losing his hair,” Finley said. “I don’t know how you stood it. Some women think a bald man is sexy, but I never did.”

  “We’re divorced now,” Ava said.

  Finley nodded. “Well, that’s too bad, but at least you don’t have to look at him anymore. I’m sure he didn’t grow more hair as he got older.” She swiveled her gray head owlishly in Elaine’s direction. “And you? How you been keeping? Still working in Boston?”

  “Yes.”

  “A miracle you haven’t been shot, from what I see on the news. Gangs and drugs everywhere you go. Bombs, too. What kind of job do you have?”

  “I’m in marketing.” Elaine had forgotten Finley’s shotgun approach to conversation; it was as if the woman had studied how conversations were supposed to go, but never quite practiced the techniques enough to master them.

  “My. Marketing what?”

  “Colleges.”

  “College, ha!” Finley laughed, showing the pink gums where several teeth were missing. “Only billionaires can afford them now. Even the state university! And why send your kid to college anyway? To listen to a bunch of liberal professors talk like Commies about global warming? No, thank you.”

  “College costs are definitely on the rise,” Elaine said, scrambling to stay on neutral ground.

  Finley stabbed her cigarette butt into the pile of ash on a chipped flowered saucer. “Married yet? Kids?”

  “No.” Elaine shifted her weight. She was suffocating in here, breathing smoke, sweating, the ceiling pressed too close to her head. Did her mother die in the room right above this one? She’d never thought to ask where in the upstairs apartment they’d found her.

  “Good on you. You’re a smart one. Men marry you just so’s they can control you.” Finley narrowed her cloudy eyes at Gigi. “Make a note of that, girl. When it comes to men, you can never be too quick or too careful.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Gigi sat up a little straighter on the couch.

  Finley smacked her lips. “Well. Somebody’s brought you up right, I see.”

  That was enough banter, Elaine decided. Time to get what they needed and get out. Finley was smart; she’d have to know they hadn’t driven four hours to see her on a whim. “We actually came here to ask you something,” she said.

  “Ah. Not purely a social call, then. Figured as much.” Finley lit another cigarette and continued squinting in their direction, her eyes so hazy and blue with cataracts that Elaine wondered how clearly she could see. “You never did think much of Maine. Just like your dad, the pair of you, thinking you’re too good for us all. He left this state behind him as soon as he could and never looked back. Took your mother with him and ruined her life.”

  Elaine swallowed hard and felt Ava’s thigh muscle tense up against hers. “We’re sorry we haven’t had time to visit lately,” Ava said, “but we’ve both been busy with work. It’s hard to get away.”

  Finley waved a hand. “No excuses necessary,” she said. “You know I’m not much for visiting anyhow. Ask what you came to ask and be quick about it. It’s nearly bedtime.” She stared fixedly at the muted television, where a woman was openmouthed in horror at the sight of her son’s stained jeans, reminding Elaine of her blouse.

  Ava glanced at her, waiting for a cue. On the other side of her, Elaine could feel Gigi jittering; she wanted to put a hand on the girl’s knobby knee to stop her foot from bouncing, but couldn’t bring herself to actually touch her.

  Elaine couldn’t speak. Her brain was overloaded with memories, the circuits fried. She looked back helplessly at Ava.

  “Well,” Ava said, “first I want to ask whether you got that card I sent, saying Dad died.”

  “Sure I did,” Finley said, with a quick sideways shift of her eyes.

  Elaine followed her great-aunt’s glance to an old pine table in the corner. There was a basket on top of it, overflowing with mail. Ava’s card was probably buried in there someplace and maybe even unopened, if Finley couldn’t see well enough to read anymore. Not that Finley would have cared about Dad being gone anyway; she probably would have danced a jig, hearing the news. Or at least bought a fresh pack of smokes to celebrate.

  “The thing is,” Ava went on, “just before Dad died, he told us we have a brother. He said Mom had the baby before I was born.”

  “He did not say that.” Finley jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray, though it was still long and white.

  “He did,” Ava said gently. “Dad said they had to give the baby up. A little boy. I heard they gave him to you.”

  It was a bold stab in the dark, Elaine knew. She was prepared for their great-aunt to be as mystified as they were, or to deny it all and shoo them out the door.

  But Finley’s face crumpled like a damp paper bag, her eyes nearly disappearing in the folds of her skin. “I told Marie it was too much,” she whispered.

  Jesus, Elaine thought with a horrified shiver. So the rumor was true. Her mother had another child, gave him up, and kept it from them all this time! From her, even though she’d been living here, alone with her mother, for an entire wretched year! She felt her own face crumple like Finley’s, feeling hurt and betrayed.

  Ava heaved herself up off the sagging couch to kneel on the floor between stacks of Ladies’ Home Journals. She awkwardly embraced Finley around the old woman’s thick waist. “I know it must have been difficult,” she said softly. “Tell us about it. It’s okay to talk now. Everything happened so long ago. It wasn’t your fault. We know that.”

  Did they really know that? Elaine was nearly holding her breath now; beside her, Gigi had gone completely still.

  “Your mother, she was such a beautiful girl. Pretty as this one.” Finley lifted a finger and pointed right at Elaine. “Dark and thin, quick as a fairy. Her parents treated her like a princess. They brought her up in the Catholic
Church, bought her nice clothes, made sure she knew her manners. Then she started over at the high school and all that went out the window. Just about killed my sister with what she did.” Finley looked longingly at her pack of cigarettes but didn’t light another one.

  “Our parents fell in love,” Elaine said. She felt like somebody had to speak up on her mother’s behalf. “Mom wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. Dad was her whole life, she said, from the first minute she saw him.”

  Finley was nodding, staring into her lap, her gnarled fingers twisted together. “That was true. Once Suzanne met Bob, you couldn’t talk a grain of sense into that girl. Your grandparents didn’t see the trouble coming, but I did. Then, when it was too late, your mother didn’t want to tell them she was in a family way. She was a good girl and knew it would break their hearts.”

  Ava asked what year the baby was born, but Finley shook her head. “I don’t rightly remember. It was just a couple of years before they eloped and then you came along.”

  Elaine tried to calculate the year: 1970 or 1971, probably. “I don’t understand why getting pregnant was such a big deal. The women’s movement was well under way by then.”

  “Not here,” Finley said. “Nowhere close to here, anyway. Feminists would’ve been run out of Maine. Back then everybody was sure feminists must be lesbians. Lesbians weren’t welcome anywhere, except maybe California and New York City.”

  Elaine understood, suddenly: Finley was gay. All these years, and she’d never guessed. Had she been with other women? She must have tried, judging from the bitterness in her voice.

  “What about abortions?” Ava was asking. “They weren’t legal then, but women had them.”

  “Not in Maine,” Finley repeated. “Besides which, our family was proper lace-curtain Catholic, so that wouldn’t have been a solution even if it hadn’t been too late for that by the time your mother faced the music and told them. She should have told someone sooner, of course, but Suzanne knew she was going to bring shame on her family. Especially after your grandfather worked his fingers to the bone making a success of that Pontiac dealership and getting himself into the chamber of commerce. Suzanne hid the pregnancy for as long as she could, pinning her skirts and eating a lot, pretending she was just gaining weight. I knew, though. The poor thing looked like a marshmallow on toothpicks by the time she told my sister.”

  Elaine didn’t ask why Finley had kept quiet. She knew the answer would be complicated: Finley didn’t get along with Marie, their grandmother, for reasons that probably went as far back as them sharing a bedroom growing up in Prince Edward Island.

  “Where did she have the baby?” Gigi asked.

  The girl was like a bloodhound, going straight for the facts, Elaine thought with grudging respect. If there was a brother to be found, this girl would find him. Elaine still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  “Not anywhere close to here. My sister Marie, she was broken in half by the whole scandal,” Finley said. “She was convinced that having a bastard child was the biggest sin there was, short of murder, and sometimes she acted like even that might not be as bad. She kept up the lie about there being no baby and sent Suzanne away.”

  “Where?” Ava asked.

  “To a Catholic home for unwed mothers over in Bangor.” Finley sighed. “Not a nice part of Bangor, either. Marie and I drove your poor mother over there at night, making her lie down on the floor so nobody could see she was pregnant. Suzanne had dropped out of school by then to keep people from talking, saying she was ill, but of course there was some talk.”

  They left her in Bangor, Finley went on, her voice a determined rasp, expecting Suzanne to deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, then come home and return to school like nothing had happened. She’d get on with her life and go to college, knowing she’d done the right thing for her family and for the baby, too.

  “Your mother wasn’t supposed to see the baby after she delivered,” Finley said. “That’s the thing that went all wrong: one of the nurses brought the child to her. Suzanne told me later that it was like he knew her already. The baby stopped crying right away when she held him. He turned his head to nuzzle her breast, and that did it.”

  “What do you mean?” Elaine asked. “Did what?”

  “Sealed the deal. Suzanne told me later that she couldn’t even imagine giving her little boy away once she’d held him in her arms, so she came home with him instead of going back to the nuns and signing him over.” Finley shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it when your grandmother called to tell me she was back in her father’s house with that baby. Then again, what else could the poor girl do? She had no money, no place to go. The rest of the family was all in Canada. Your father had no idea where she was, or even that she was pregnant. Her parents had made her break up with him and wouldn’t let her talk to him, even though he camped out in his car in front of their house until the police chief had to chase him off.”

  Marie wanted Suzanne back in school and convinced her the best thing would be to have Finley care for the child. Finley lived half an hour away, in another small town entirely; bringing up the baby there would keep him in the family while preserving Suzanne’s reputation. She had given Finley money every month so she could quit her job at the paper mill and stay home. Marie, Finley, and Suzanne didn’t tell anyone where the baby was, not even Suzanne’s father, and certainly not Bob, who might have made trouble.

  “The baby was tiny, born a month early, and he had problems right from the start. Cried like somebody was sticking him with pins. Colic, I suppose. Later of course we realized he was blind as a mole,” Finley said. “Even so, he walked early and was always trying to climb things, feeling his way around this house. I was sure he’d kill himself. I was all alone, and he was too much! I tried my best. I did! But I ended up giving him away, too.” She doubled over in the recliner, her head nearly pressed to her knees.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Ava said, and sprang to her feet.

  Stunned, Elaine could only stare at Finley as she rocked and rocked with her chubby arms wrapped tight around her knees, looking like an abandoned child herself.

  • • •

  Her aunt’s kitchen was even filthier than the living room. Those crusted dishes in the sink had probably been there for weeks, and the floor was so sticky that Ava’s sandals adhered to the linoleum. For one awful, absurd moment, she remembered Mark putting sticky paper down for mice in their house, and how she’d found a frantic mouse trapped on it, its poor little foot nearly torn off after a night of trying to chew itself free.

  Ava rummaged through the dusty cupboards for tea bags. She found an old stash in a plastic bag, probably filched from a restaurant, and set a saucepan of water on the stove. While she waited for it to boil, she went deeper into the house to find the bathroom, desperate to pee.

  It was here, at the end of the long dim hallway, that the memory came rushing back. Definitely a memory now and not a dream: She had walked down this hallway and reached up to open the door to the farthest room on the right. The child had come shooting out of the room, clawing at her and making weird high-pitched squeaks, babbling a few words.

  What had he said to her? The words came back now, like gravel flung at her face: “You home now, I come out!” Then, after clutching her neck and feeling her face, the boy had sprung back as if burned and then, absurdly, he’d laughed. “Who you?” he’d cried. “Who you?”

  Ava remembered now how terrified she’d been, hearing the other child’s manic, panicky giggling, a sound that occasionally repeated itself in her dreams. She’d been sure the boy was laughing at her.

  She hesitated, hand raised, then pushed open the same door. She flinched as the door creaked and then yawned open.

  Ava felt around inside the room for a light switch, found it, and flicked it up. The ceiling light was an old fixture, probably original to the house, a pink glass ball etched
with flowers. The bell of it was speckled black with dead insects. The room was empty but for a small white dresser and a single bed with a surprisingly elegant maple frame, the top of the headboard carved with flowers and fruit. The bed was covered with a striped Hudson’s Bay wool blanket, white with orange and blue stripes. A one-eyed stuffed dog sat on the pillow. Otherwise, the room was free of clutter; not a single toy or magazine marred the bare hardwood floor. It smelled musty in here, as if the room had been closed up for a long time.

  When would she have opened this door and found her brother? She was around three, so that must have been forty years ago. Peter would have been four and a half.

  She shut off the light, closed the door again, and shuddered as she spotted a hook on the outside of it and an eye screwed into the frame. Finley must have kept Peter locked inside this room whenever she needed a rest or couldn’t control him, figuring at least that way he’d be safe.

  What was wrong with him? Why had he been born blind, and what other disabilities did he suffer?

  Was he scared or delighted that night, when the bedroom door had suddenly, unexpectedly opened? Had he been kept in this room, a shameful secret stowed away, for hours at a time? That seemed likely, especially since he was too young, still, for school.

  If that were the case, Peter never would have met someone his own size. What other child would he have seen? Yet he would have recognized her as a child. Children always knew other children. She’d seen that in her own boys, delighted by the sight of their own kind even as babies and toddlers. No wonder Peter had grabbed her and started babbling, trying to touch her face and hair. He must have been so shocked when she wasn’t Finley, but someone who felt entirely different—someone who felt a lot like him. No wonder his reaction had been hysteria.