Beach Plum Island Page 2
Gigi went through the rest of the day in a coma. She hated riding camp, where her stupid instructor was always yelling things like “Heels down, back straight, post on the diagonal!” in that nasal voice of hers.
The only decent part about camp was being alone with the horses in the barn. Gigi loved the way the animals flickered their ears in some secret horse Morse code, and how their muzzles felt like velvet, the nostrils coin-sized and damp against her palm as they searched for carrot nubs. The horses sought out her company, snorting when they saw her and hanging their heads over the stalls to nod hello when she called their names.
When she rode in the riding ring during lessons, though, Gigi lost her connection to them. She hated forcing the metal bit into their soft trusting mouths, imagining how that steel bar would feel tugging at the corners of her own mouth while some moron slapped her with a crop to make her jump over a stupid striped piece of wood, when she’d rather roll in a dusty paddock or nibble on grass.
At least Mom wasn’t teaching here this summer. Before Dad got sick, Mom was a royal pain, practically living at the barn and always checking in with the other instructors to find out how Gigi’s posting trot was coming along or whatever. Such a drag, having a mom who was hotter than you, as too many boys had told Gigi, and a former Junior Olympian, too, one of those fearless riders who could command show jumpers to hurdle seven-foot brick walls like they were wading through puddles.
Mom wanted to turn her into a “real” horsewoman, but all Gigi wanted was to watch the horses cantering in the pastures, tails high and flowing like fountains. She enjoyed riding the trails, too, and discovering hidden groves of ferns deep in the woods, or tall trees with violets making bruised carpets around the trunks.
Dad had understood this. He had loved the same things about horses she did. He’d tried to argue with her mother, saying, “The girl just wants to bop around on a horse. Why force her into the show ring if she doesn’t want to be there, Katherine?” But Mom always won. Dad had trouble saying no to anything she wanted.
Thinking about Dad now made Gigi huddle in the tack room, where she pretended to be searching for a currycomb in one of the boxes. She was crying and her nose was running; she wiped her face with one hand and then rubbed her hand on her jeans. She was supposed to curry her horse after each ride; this was another part of camp she enjoyed, unlike the other girls, who were always ready to rush out of the barn and go to the beach or whatever. She wasn’t like them, these country-club girls with the swinging hair, the girls who magically knew which phone apps were cool and what jeans to wear.
Her father hadn’t ever really belonged here at the club, either. Not because Dad was too old—lots of women at the club were married to men older than they were, just like her mom—but because of more mysterious reasons. Gigi hadn’t completely worked these out yet, but she thought they might have something to do with Dad not being Ivy League or having “real money,” as Gramma Dawn called it.
Whatever. It didn’t matter what anybody else thought of Dad. Gigi had adored him. They went trail riding together. They had fierce checkers matches and tennis games, and she had loved going into her father’s study after dinner while he read the paper and Gigi did her homework. She loved to lie on the sofa in his office with her head on his knee, comforted by the sound of her father’s ticking watch near her ear.
Her father told her things even Mom didn’t know. “Your mother is a delicate flower,” Dad always said. “You and me, we’re tough as weeds. People can cut us down, but we’ll always come back stronger.”
At the end, he hadn’t acted like a father. He was more like a friend. Dad listened to her talk instead of always telling her what to do. He gave her books he’d loved as a kid and they shared a secret obsession: rock music. Sometimes he’d get out his old CDs and they’d sing to the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, the Who and Pink Floyd. “Timeless classics,” he called them. “Like us.”
Gigi found the currycomb but stayed bent over, her hand in the tack box, rummaging for nothing, while the other girls passed, giggling on their way out of the barn. Her father had been her best friend, and now he was gone. But she knew some of his secrets, secrets so big that it felt like her skin might split wide open trying to keep them inside.
• • •
It was a simple graveside ceremony. The polished wooden box containing the ashes was supported on a wrought iron stand that to Ava looked suspiciously like one of the plant stands from her father’s office at the bank. The Episcopalian minister was a pudding-faced man whose belly strained his black shirt. He spoke about their father’s devotion to his work; to his daughters Ava and Elaine; and to his second family, Katy and Gigi.
“Robert Barrett was a man who clearly loved his community and the women in his life,” the minister said. “He had found a way to be happy in a world where happiness is a choice, not a guarantee. His illness may have defeated his body, but his spirit was whole and joyful.”
There was more, of course, but Ava stopped paying attention. She was distracted by a cardinal, a scarlet teardrop caught on a branch of the pine tree shading the grave, and by the minister’s implication that it was a good idea for Dad to divorce their mother, Suzanne, and start his life over with Katy.
Was it? Was her father’s spirit “whole and joyful” at the end of his life? She hoped so.
Truthfully, she had expected her parents to splinter sooner than they did. As a teenager, she had even pleaded with them to separate; she was so sick of the constant bickering. But they’d stayed locked in a well-choreographed battle that alternated periods of icy silence with fiery arguments.
Then Bob had done the impossible: he had set himself free of his scripted, methodical life by taking horseback-riding lessons, something he later told Ava he’d always wanted to try as a boy. Six months later, he was living with Katy, his young blond riding instructor.
As the minister said the final prayer, Ava bowed her head and tried to take her mind off the hot fist of sun on her neck. Her sons towered on either side of her, both wearing cast-off suits from her ex-husband that didn’t quite fit, reminding her of knobby-kneed giraffes itching to nose through trees or canter through the cemetery. Anything but stand still.
Evan and Sam were blonder than she was, but both had their father’s dark eyes. They were sixteen and seventeen years old, nearly inseparable. Most people thought they were twins until Sam shot up a good two inches last year. Her sons shared clothes, video games, food, and even, once, disastrously, a girlfriend. Their easy camaraderie always surprised Ava, since she and Elaine had such a contentious relationship despite being five years apart.
Ava glanced over at her sister. She half expected Elaine to be texting during the ceremony, but her head was bowed and her eyes were squeezed shut. Elaine was as dark-haired and angular as their mother had been. Like their mother, too, Elaine was the sort of woman who looked elegant even in sweats and a T-shirt because of her sharply planed features, long legs, and creamy complexion. As promised, she hadn’t worn black to the service, but a broad-brimmed straw hat and a teal sleeveless sheath that showed off her toned arms. She looked like the First Lady of some small European country.
Katy stood next to the minister, dressed in a severe black dress and short black veil, her straight blond hair done up in a French twist that only made her look younger and more vulnerable. The rest of the crowd was made up of Katy’s friends and family. They were amiable, horsey-looking people with strong chins and good manners. It still amazed Ava that Dad had considered these people his family. But here it was, yet more evidence that she’d hardly known him toward the end of his life.
The only person who looked as out of place here as she and Elaine did was her half sister. Ava wouldn’t have guessed who it was if Gigi hadn’t been standing next to Katy. The last time she’d seen her, Gigi was a blond, doughy middle schooler with a precocious vocabulary. Now she was skinny and sullen-look
ing, taller than her mother. She looked like a punk superhero, with her short hair dyed marine blue, heavy black eyeliner, and defiant piercings in her nose, lip, and eyebrow. Her earrings looked like fish lures, bright blue feathers that dangled to her shoulders, and Gigi wore black in her own way: combat boots, ripped fishnets, and a sleeveless black dress that hung from her narrow shoulders like a cape.
Ava was startled out of her reverie by the sudden movements of her sons, who abruptly began jogging toward the car. The service was over. She hurried to catch up, wishing she’d worn a different pair of shoes. She wasn’t used to heels and she was so wobbly from the heat that the sidewalk felt like it was wriggling beneath her.
Evan and Sam played a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD in the car, arguing over whether the old guitarist or the new one was better. Ava was so used to their heated debates that she knew this wasn’t fighting, just the way boys talked.
She loved listening to her sons because they were insatiably curious about subjects that might never cross her mind: “Mom, did you know that more people die every year from having vending machines fall on them than from shark attacks?” “Did you know that lobsters pee out of their heads?” She just wished they didn’t always devolve into farting and belching when she was trapped in the car with them.
The circular driveway of Katy’s house was jammed with gleaming Mercedes sedans in various colors and styles. Some member of Katy’s family must own a dealership. Elaine had parked her red BMW right in the middle of them, where it stuck out like a clown’s nose. Ava chose to leave her green Honda on the street and walk up the driveway instead.
As always, it was odd to approach the house that had once been their childhood home, an elegant three-story white Federalist, square-shouldered and stern looking with its flat roof and rows of tiny windows, up the formal front walk instead of just letting herself in through the side porch as she had done throughout her childhood.
At the front door, Ava had to force herself to ring the bell, because her impulse was to fling it open as if she might surprise her own mother inside. This thought made her so queasy with grief, she had to steady herself on the wrought iron railing.
Katy’s mother greeted her. Dawn Talbot was in her sixties, a delicate woman with Katy’s gray eyes and fine, even features. The few times they’d met at awkward family parties, Ava had always thought she was beautiful, but now Dawn’s fair skin was lined and papery, her features startlingly asymmetrical. Her quizzical expression seemed permanently stitched into place, like a scarecrow someone had put together in a hurry.
As they lightly embraced, Ava remembered that Dawn had suffered a stroke last year and was still recovering. This didn’t seem like the right time to say anything about it; Dawn was exclaiming over how much Sam and Evan had grown and how handsome they were. Ava was relieved to see that the boys shook hands gracefully and weren’t horsing around in the hallway. She wondered, not for the first time, what Dawn had thought about her daughter marrying a man so much older. It must have been a horrible shock. As a mother, she must have imagined this very scene: Katy nursing a sick old man and ending up a widow and single mother in her thirties.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss, dear,” Dawn said. “Such a tragedy for everyone.”
“Thank you,” Ava said. “Please accept my condolences as well. I know my father loved being part of your family.”
“He will certainly be missed,” Dawn said, bowing her head.
Dawn sounded sincere. On the other hand, this woman was clearly accustomed to navigating social situations—she was already ushering the waiter toward Ava with his tray of wineglasses—so sincerity would be a natural stance for her to assume.
Above Dawn’s shoulder, Ava caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the gilt-edged mirror hanging over the hall table. Her face was pale, her green eyes enormous, her lipstick too dark. Her hair was an afterthought, carelessly arranged around her shoulders like a shawl in loose tawny curls. She was a mess. Everything about her was coming undone.
She declined the wine and walked down the hallway with her sons so close behind her that one of them stepped on her heel. The hall had been redecorated since she was last here. The bird wallpaper her mother had put up was gone; now the walls were pale blue and the trim was stark white.
Ava swallowed past a hard lump in her throat and continued down the hall. Most of the family was gathered out back. Katy had created an impressive garden here, separated by stone knee walls and crushed gravel paths. There were perennial beds, a cutting garden, and several elaborate twig arbors; everything had been obsessively trimmed and pruned, with bark mulch raked up to the neck of every stem. Not a weed or wandering border in sight.
Evan and Sam darted ahead, probably intent on finding food to fill their hollow legs. Most of the crowd had retreated to the shady corners of the lawn. Ava didn’t have the stomach to smile and mingle. She looked for Elaine and found her with a glass of white wine in her hand and a defiant look in her eyes. Her sister was standing alone in the hot sun next to a Japanese garden with a little stone footbridge.
“So. Was it as good for you as it was for me?” Elaine asked.
Ava laughed, then swallowed the laughter as a few people glanced their way. Of course they would; Katy’s family and friends must all be wondering about them, these two daughters of Bob’s, both older than their own stepmother. It wouldn’t do to create a scene, but she could see in Elaine’s eyes that her sister had every intention of making one.
“Don’t,” Ava said.
“Don’t what?” Elaine widened her brown eyes and signaled to a waiter to bring her another glass of wine.
When the waiter, hardly older than Sam, scurried across the hot stone patio to her, Elaine grabbed two glasses. She downed one of them fast enough to tap the retreating boy on his bony shoulder and return the glass to him. With her sweetest smile, she quickly plucked another glass off the tray and said, “Come back soon. I’ll be waiting for you right here.”
The boy smiled at her, dazzled, then retreated to the kitchen.
“Please don’t,” Ava repeated.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing or saying!”
Elaine swirled the wine in her glass. “Katy should have at least bought something better for us to imbibe on this somber occasion than such a pedestrian chardonnay, don’t you think?”
“I’m guessing her mother planned the party,” Ava said, fascinated but alarmed by the shifting emotions passing like shadows across her sister’s pale face.
“Me, too.” Elaine took another swallow. “Wow, coming back to this house is a shock, isn’t it? I was thinking about our last Christmas here with Mom, before she freaked out and hoofed it back to Maine. I remember I was stressed about some online class I was taking.”
Ava smiled. “You were always stressed. You still are.”
“So true. Type A plus, that’s moi. Anyway, that sorry little Christmas, I remember getting royally pissed off because Mom gave us clothes she’d bought at Salvation Army.”
Ava squinted into the sunlight. The heat was making it difficult to think. “That’s right. Mom gave me this awful pink sweatshirt with kittens on it. It didn’t make any sense. Mom must have gotten half of everything. I always wondered what she did with it all.”
“Who knows?” Elaine waved a hand. “Mom never was a details person. Anyway, the other thing I remember about that Christmas was our leftover tree.”
Ava laughed. “God, that’s right. The man at the gas station felt so sorry for us when you told him our mom couldn’t afford a tree, he just gave you one, right?”
“Yes,” Elaine said. “And we spent hours collecting seashells on the beach and making ornaments out of them with paint and glitter, remember? Then we drilled holes in them and hung them all over the tree with bread ties. Mom always saved those stupid bread ties.”
“Because Dad drove her crazy,” Elaine said, and swallowed the rest of her wine. She signaled to another waiter, a girl this time, and plucked a fresh glass of wine off the tray. “These people probably don’t have any idea what sort of man he really was.”
“Stop it,” Ava said. “Mom was the way she was. So was Dad. Lots of marriages don’t make it. Mom and Dad did the best they could. Don’t torture yourself about the past. Or Katy,” she added, following Elaine’s dark gaze, focused now on Katy’s slight figure in the shade. “Let’s say our good-byes and go. We’ve done what we came to do.”
“Maybe you have, but I haven’t.” Elaine crossed the patio to the buffet table and picked up a fork. She clinked the fork on the wineglass so hard that Ava was afraid it might shatter. When everyone was staring at her, she said, “I’d like to propose a toast to my dear old dad.”
“Elaine, no,” Ava hissed, wishing she could disappear behind one of the pine trees.
“Our father was a mystery man,” Elaine said loudly, raising her glass. “He married our mother right out of high school and worked hard all his life, climbing the ladder of success so fast, we never really knew which rung he was on until he’d reached the top. He was so high up we couldn’t see him anymore. Meanwhile, our mother kept house and tried to keep up with us, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.”
Elaine was swaying a little. “You must truly be something special, Katy, to coax our father home every night. You must have cast some kind of magic spell to make him take off weekends and go riding with you, to get him to Gigi’s birthday parties and all those holiday dinners. So I propose a toast not only to our father, the mystery man, but also to you, Katy. May you prosper now in what was once our family’s almost happy home.”
Elaine lifted her empty glass. “Salud!” she cried, and then she was crying for real, her face splotched with red. She dropped the wineglass, shattering it on the patio, and ran for the garden gate, her straw hat flying off behind her.