Beach Plum Island Page 5

  “Hey, those are pretty cool drawings.”

  It was like the voice inside her head was talking to her. Startled, Gigi slapped the sketchbook shut and scrambled to her feet.

  Ava stood on the beach behind her, looking as wild as Gigi felt: windblown tangled hair, feet tucked into scuffed sandals, torn blue jeans, a T-shirt stained with colored glazes. Even her bare arms were spotted with colors, as if Ava were some kind of exotic beach animal. Her green eyes were freaky, glowing like sea glass.

  “What are you doing here?” Gigi demanded.

  “I live here,” Ava said.

  “Not here.”

  “Close enough. Which you apparently already know, since you were snooping around my studio. What are you doing here?”

  Ava didn’t sound angry, only curious. Gigi sighed. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “You weren’t looking for a smoke?”

  Gigi felt her neck and face get hot. “I don’t really smoke. Only sometimes.”

  In truth, she’d started buying cigarettes in seventh grade, but her father had made her promise to quit after he got sick. He’d made her promise a lot of things, but this was something she could actually do for him. So she’d been smoking less and less, despite the fact that she loved how the nicotine got her blood racing and cleared her head.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ava said.

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “To ask what you were doing at my studio. I thought you might be looking for me.”

  “No way!” Gigi stared down at her bare feet in the sand. She’d painted her nails blue to match her hair, but most of the color had chipped off by now. Her toes looked diseased. “Why would I look for you? I don’t even know you.”

  “You could, though. I’d like that.”

  Ava’s tone was so warm that Gigi actually looked up and met her sister’s eyes, something she tried not to do with most adults. Grown-ups had all the power. She hated that.

  But Ava’s green eyes were soft and kind. She wasn’t very tall, but she gave the impression of being tall because of her posture. She carried her head high and her shoulders back. Gigi had shitty posture and hated that about herself. It was probably from her school backpack, which weighed as much as a car. She hated that, too. She hated pretty much everything and everybody right now. Everybody hated her, so why wouldn’t she hate them back?

  This thought made Gigi’s throat clog as if a whole sandstorm had blown into it. Her eyes were watering with the effort of trying to breathe. She couldn’t speak.

  Ava reached out and touched her arm, her fingers cool on Gigi’s sun-warmed skin. “Come on,” she said. “I have my bike, too. Let’s ride to my house and get some lunch. I’ll show you my pottery and you can show me your drawings.”

  Miserably, gratefully, Gigi followed her sister home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was a typical manic Monday for Elaine: problems with one of the printers, reviewing an admissions video, scheduling school visits for Tony next week. It was Tony’s college marketing company; he had started it ten years ago and managed it now with the joy, fury, and stalwart determination of the rugby player he’d been during college, where they’d met in a statistics class.

  Tony was gay, so Elaine had never been tempted to sleep with him, thank God. One less buried land mine of a mistake to sidestep. Five years after earning her MBA, she was working as the public relations director for a big software company west of Boston. She’d run into Tony at a class reunion and he had lured her into his company.

  “Look, honey,” he’d said, “the high-tech bubble has popped in Boston, but you can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting a college. And every college is scrabbling to create an online presence, since that’s the way kids shop for everything these days. Time to get digital, baby.”

  She’d been worried, at first, that she wouldn’t fit in, since she’d been in high tech for so long, but Elaine soon discovered that her skills transferred easily enough. And Tony was right: the colleges needed them desperately. Schools were all rushing the Internet gate and crying, “Save me!”

  Tony still went on the road every week to put in face time with clients, but really, their services sold themselves. Elaine loved being in a company where it was just her, Tony, and five account managers, plus two copywriters and the designers who worked in the adjoining office suite. The rest of what they did was easily jobbed out; you couldn’t throw a rock in Boston without hitting cafés jammed with hungry freelance writers and videographers, either.

  Of course, there were times like today when Elaine wished she’d never again have to hear precious education-marketing-speak like “individualized attention” and “experiential learning.” Like right now: the writer of the video script she had received this morning should be shot.

  She slashed her virtual red pen through the script and wrote, “This reads like you cut and pasted every other college’s catchphrase. We need something original. Don’t make me yawn.”

  She e-mailed the document back to the writer, then made herself another coffee. Elaine was taking the first fragrant sip of Hazelnut when the phone rang. It was Ava, who had left her three messages since the memorial service. She’d have to talk to her eventually; it might as well be now. She had eleven minutes until the afternoon staff meeting.

  “What?” she said.

  “You know what.” Ava’s voice was mild but firm. It was the same voice she’d been using with her boys since they were born, the voice of reason, that teacher’s tone that expected everyone to nicely use their words and take turns on the slide, even the bully and the crippled kid.

  “I am not apologizing,” Elaine said, and took another sip of coffee.

  “Oh, really?” Ava asked. “You don’t think your behavior on Saturday might warrant even a teeny little note to Katy, saying you’re sorry for behaving like a complete jerk? To mend fences, so we can hold our heads up here around the North Shore?”

  “I never go north except to see you on Beach Plum Island,” Elaine pointed out. “Which, may I remind you, is an island and has a river running between it and Newburyport. I never need to see those people again.”

  “I do my grocery shopping in Newburyport,” Ava pointed out. “My dentist and mechanic are both in Newburyport. I sell my pottery through galleries in Newburyport! Look, this is the big-girl thing to do, Elaine, and you know it. Apologize! Get it over with and give your conscience a break. I know you must feel bad about it.”

  Elaine was silent, lining up the pens on her desk. She liked to keep the black ones to the left of her desk blotter and the red ones to the right; she couldn’t hear herself think if they were out of order. She hated having Ava remind her of the memorial service, because it brought back the sight of Katy’s pale, ravaged face. Elaine hated it even more that Ava was right: she did regret what she’d done.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Elaine said. “Fine. I’ll write to her. I am sorry about the way I acted, actually. Katy did seem pretty flattened.”

  “She was. Gigi, too.”

  Elaine frowned, trying to recall Gigi at the funeral. “Was she the kid with that awful blue hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “God, I didn’t even recognize her.”

  “I think she’s really hurting,” Ava said. “I’m worried about her.”

  “Why?”

  There was a brief silence. Elaine tried to imagine what Ava was doing. Folding laundry, probably. Ava always folded laundry while she talked on the phone, and often kept her cell phone on top of a full basket of clothes, where it sank into the cotton vortex as Ava piled more clean laundry into the basket without emptying it first. Elaine didn’t understand why Ava didn’t make those great big hulking kids of hers do their own laundry. But that was her sister for you, always the enabler.

  “Gigi came to see me today,” Ava said.

&
nbsp; “You’re kidding!” Elaine set down her coffee mug.

  “Well, not to see me, exactly, but to see where I lived. I caught her snooping around the studio.”

  “Be careful. That kid has ‘pyro’ written all over her.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Gigi left as soon as I tried to talk to her. I had to follow her to the other end of the island and invite her back.”

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Elaine felt outraged. She’d like to think she was angry on Ava’s behalf, because Ava always did too much for other people. But, if she was truthful, she’d have to admit she was irritated by the very idea of her father’s other family circling anywhere near her own.

  “I feel sorry for her,” Ava said. “Gigi really seems distressed. Not just about Dad, but about life. She’s only fifteen but she looks like she’s carrying the whole world on her shoulders. It also seems like Katy doesn’t know where Gigi is half the time.”

  “Did our mother know where we were when we were fifteen?”

  “That’s my point,” Ava said. “When I asked Gigi about her mother, she said Katy isn’t leaving the house or taking showers, and she’s hardly eating. Remember how depressed Mom was after her own parents and brother died? And look how she spiraled out of control after Dad left.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Elaine glanced at the clock. “Okay, I’ll write Katy a note. You feed the kid and talk her off the ledge. Listen, I have to go.”

  “Wait! I need to tell you something else.”

  “Make it fast. Some of us are actually working today.”

  “Remember how Dad said that weird thing to me before he died? About us having a brother?”

  “Yes. I also remember reminding you that Dad was hopped up on drugs.”

  “I know, but what if he really was trying to tell me something? I had that same dream again last night. You know, the one about the kid in the locked room. What if those two things are connected and that was our brother? Maybe it’s not a dream at all, but an actual memory.”

  “You’ve been sniffing too many glazes.” Elaine ran a hand through her hair. “Ava, we didn’t have a brother. Dad might have been able to play that card close to his chest, but Mom for sure would have let it all come howling out.”

  “I guess. It’s just that Dad sounded so clear and determined. Really focused. I’ve been worrying about it.”

  “Don’t waste your energy. Dad was delusional, out of his mind on morphine. Or maybe he did have another child with somebody else, long ago. How would we know? And what does it matter at this point? Look, I really have to go. I’ll come up this weekend.”

  “That would be great. Thanks for writing to Katy.”

  Elaine hung up and shot another look at the clock. Three minutes to get her act together and be ready with that presentation on the ad campaign for Pineville College.

  She was never, ever late to meetings. She liked to set a good example. Today, though, Elaine wished someone else would run the meeting while she sat back with her eyes half-closed, zoning out.

  Just enough time to zip into the restroom, pee, and check her makeup. Elaine grabbed her purse and headed for the bathroom, not the one closest to the elevators and most often used, but the farthest, quieter bathroom down by the supply closet.

  Someone else entered the bathroom after she’d closed the stall door. Thankfully whoever it was turned the faucet on full blast. Elaine finished her business and headed for the double sink, keeping her head down to avoid conversation. Nothing worse than having your employees hear you peeing. At least she hadn’t done anything more embarrassing than that in here.

  Then she realized something odd: the faucet was on, but nobody stood at the other sink. Elaine rinsed her own hands, then turned off both faucets and looked in the mirror. In the far corner of the bathroom, next to the bucket and mop, a woman was huddled on the floor, her face pressed against the knees of her black slacks.

  By the short gray curls and thick-soled black shoes, Elaine recognized their newest copywriter. She was a former journalist Tony had hired when another one of the small daily suburban newspapers shuttered its doors. Of course Tony called her a “content provider,” not a copywriter, given the online nature of their work. What was her name? Joy? Jane? Some plain doughnut name that went with the woman’s plain, round face.

  The woman hadn’t made any sort of impression on Elaine in the month since she’d been hired, other than the few times Elaine had passed her in the hall and overheard her talking on her cell to one of her kids at home. Elaine hadn’t said anything; she knew working mothers had it tough. She’d seen Ava go crazy whenever one of her kids was sick and she had to miss work, and summers weren’t easy when the boys were small. Elaine sympathized. But she also didn’t want kids compromising the workplace by taking their parents’ attention off the jobs at hand. If she saw this woman doing it again, she’d have to speak to her.

  Elaine rubbed her hands beneath the dryer, trying to decide what to do. She didn’t have time to play nursemaid, but she could feel Tony’s conscience guiding her. He always made it his business to find out why an employee was unhappy. “Are you all right?” she finally asked, turning around and leaning her back against the sink.

  The woman shrugged but didn’t lift her head. “I will be. I just need a minute.”

  Elaine hesitated. She’d done her duty; perhaps the woman would recover better if left alone. That was certainly Elaine’s preference. She hated anyone seeing her out of control. On the other hand, this was her employee and something was nagging at her about this woman’s name. What was it?

  Then she remembered: Joan Toledo. And that led her to realize this was the same writer—sorry, Tony, “content provider”—whom she’d e-mailed that harsh critique to an hour ago. Her stomach dropped. It was because of her, probably, that the woman was sobbing in the bathroom.

  “You’re Joan, aren’t you?” she said.

  The woman raised her head and, with a sigh, pushed herself up to a standing position, brushing off the back of her slacks. She was fifty if she was a day. The kids at home couldn’t be young. “Yes. Joan Toledo. Go ahead.”

  Elaine frowned. “Go ahead with what?”

  “With firing me.” Joan scrubbed at her face with both hands. This had the unhappy effect of turning her cheeks brick red and leaving a trail of mascara. “It won’t be the first time. I know the drill.”

  “Well, you’re obviously asking for it, acting like this,” Elaine said.

  Good. That made Joan lift her chin and narrow her brown eyes. “Yeah? Am I? And what would you do, if you had two kids in college and a husband out of work?”

  “I’d probably drink myself to death,” Elaine said truthfully.

  Joan gave her a startled look, then laughed. “Well, that’s one thing I haven’t tried, anyway.”

  Elaine grinned. “Then you’re a better woman than I am. Seriously, why were you crying? Was it because I critiqued your copy?”

  Joan pulled a tissue out of her pocketbook and blew her nose. The sound trumpeted off the bathroom walls. “You didn’t just critique it. You shredded it. Then you ran it over with your car!” Joan blew her nose again. “I’m crying because you were right. It was awful copy. I suck at this job.”

  “Right now you do. But you’ve only been here a month,” Elaine pointed out. “We usually let people suck at least six months before we fire them. Tony’s a marshmallow that way. And I’m betting you can rewrite that copy. You were a journalist. You’ve got skills.”

  Joan snorted. “Skills nobody wants.”

  “What do you mean?” Elaine demanded. “Marketing writers are essential in the business world. We depend on people who can string together literate sentences and make old ideas sound fresh. It’s like being a plumber or an electrician. You’ve got a trade, girlfriend, and it’s a useful one. Now get out of that corner, wash your face, and go
to work. Give me a new draft by four o’clock. I’ll help you whip it into shape.”

  Joan looked shy now, and suddenly seemed younger. She stepped out of the corner and joined Elaine at the sink. “I like your lipstick,” she said suddenly.

  “War paint,” Elaine said. She opened her purse, fished out a tube. “Here. I always carry a few spares. Take one.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Elaine gave her a frank look. If anyone needed color, it was this woman. “Lipstick is the best way to let the world know you’re on top of your game.”

  “Ha. As if.”

  “Pretending to be in charge is half the battle.”

  Joan gave her a thoughtful look, then held out her hand. “All right. Thank you.”

  “Sure,” Elaine said. “I’ll see you in the conference room.” She left Joan examining herself in the mirror, the lipstick in her hand, hearing the sharp staccato sounds of her own heels on the tiled floor.

  • • •

  Ava parked behind Port Pleasures, her friend Caroline’s gallery in Newburyport, and lugged her boxes into the store. Caroline was barking shipping orders into her phone, but greeted Ava with a hug and gestured for her to set the boxes on a worktable in the back room.

  Caroline’s gallery specialized in crafts by local artists. Ava paused to admire a hand-carved cherry sleigh bed. A woven carpet in rich reds was laid out beside it and the bed was covered in a patchwork quilt in cool greens and blues.

  Ava had a sudden urge to fling herself onto the bed and burrow under the quilt. She’d been tired down to her bones since the memorial service. She thought fleetingly of Katy, wondering how she was coping, and hoped her call to Elaine yesterday had done some good. She wondered, too, where Gigi was. She had invited her to the studio today, but the girl had been noncommittal, evasive.