Beach Girls Read online

  “She'd probably be bored with us,” Emma had said. “Two happily married ladies, no turmoil or torment . . .”

  “Looks like an interesting story,” Jack had said, flipping through. “And the pictures are great.”

  “Maybe so, but not for our daughter. Nice thought, buying her the book, Maddie—but I think I'll donate it to the library.”

  “Okay,” Madeleine had said. She remembered shooting Jack a little look—Emma had signed on to her mother's way of romanticizing life, wanting everything to look and, if possible, be perfect.

  Back then, Madeleine and Jack and their families took turns having Christmas at each other's house. That year they were in Atlanta, enjoying Emma's evergreen-and-white-lighted fantasy of the season. Gorgeous decorations, a never-ending loop of carols, cookies for the whole neighborhood, the fattest goose from the best butcher on Peachtree Road.

  Leaning forward, in that one swift glance, Madeleine and her brother had a private chuckle—they loved Emma enough to indulge her in banning Nell from reading Stevie Moore's too-true book about swans, and in so many other things.

  Madeleine had avoided really looking at the reality of her brother's marriage—he kept it from her. And Emma had just held her unhappiness inside, trying out new ways of finding comfort.

  The irony was, within a couple of years, Emma's search for perfection had led her to get very involved in her church. She joined committees, got swept up in a group of lay volunteers. Madeleine had watched with amazement as Emma seemed to decide her life was frivolous and changed direction in midstream. When Nell was seven, Emma decided not to decorate at all: to save the money she would have spent on a tree and wreaths and lights, donate it to charity instead. Jack was upset because Nell was so disappointed. Madeleine secretly remembered Emma, Stevie, and the homeless woman in New London; she wondered whether somehow Emma was doing penance for taking that ten dollars.

  Or had Emma really wanted to do good works—to volunteer somewhere that mattered, change the world a little? She couldn't possibly have known that her last choice would destroy her family.

  All of that, and more, had been present in Madeleine's initial reaction to Stevie's invitation: trepidation, happy memories, excitement, curiosity, and a need to tell someone the whole story. But now, driving south, crossing the Rhode Island–Connecticut border, getting closer to Hubbard's Point, she wasn't feeling so positive.

  Stevie's drawing of three girls . . . Stevie, Madeleine, and Emma. Beach girls swoon by the light of the moon. Maddie couldn't help thinking of Emma's proclamation of long ago: the days are for us, the nights are for them. . . .

  Emma. Driving along, Madeleine couldn't help glancing into the empty seat beside her. She missed her sister-in-law terribly. After the accident, in the hospital for rehab on her injured shoulder and arm, Madeleine had met other patients who had survived bad wrecks. One woman who had lost her right arm told Maddie about “phantom limb.”

  “Sometimes I'll be sitting there, and I feel my right arm itching, and I'll go to scratch it. The itch is so real! Or I'll go to pick up a pen—I'm so used to writing with that hand—and be amazed when I can't do it. It's exactly as if I have a phantom arm.”

  Now, driving past Mystic Seaport, Madeleine knew she was suffering from “phantom Emma syndrome.” It seemed impossible that she wasn't here—riding alongside, talking away, changing the radio station from Madeleine's favorite oldies rock to Emma's ever-elegant classical music.

  And one syndrome begot others. Madeleine now experienced phantom-Jack syndrome, phantom-Nell syndrome. She missed her brother and niece so terribly. It got harder, not easier.

  What was she doing, going back to Hubbard's Point, the place where she and Jack had first met Emma? Stevie might have happy thoughts of the three teenage girls, but to Madeleine, the strongest Hubbard's Point memories had to do with how her family came there together.

  It was going to be very difficult, trying to explain that to a woman who, apparently, got married the way some people changed shoes. Stevie was probably great in her own way, but Madeleine couldn't expect her to understand what she was going through. She glanced at her face in the rearview mirror: this last nightmare year really showed. She'd put on weight, and she'd gotten into the habit of drinking a little more than she should—to forget the things she couldn't stand to remember.

  Madeleine hoped that Stevie's free-spiritedness extended to liking to drink. She had brought along two bottles of champagne—Mumm Cordon Rouge. They had to toast the July full moon in style!

  Numbness was really the only way to go.

  PEGGY'S AUNT TARA had a bicycle-built-for-two. After recreation and lunch, Nell and Peggy went over to ride it. Peggy's mother was looking after Nell while her father went to Boston on business; she was there, too. Nell watched the two older women showing the girls how it was done, riding the long blue bike up and down the quiet street behind the seawall.

  “One of you gets to steer,” Tara called. “The one in front. The other rides in back, and has to completely give up control.”

  “Which is the hardest thing in the world to do,” said Peggy's mother, riding behind, laughing. “Giving up control . . .”

  “What?” Peggy asked. “Will you two speak English?”

  Nell watched the two women and thought of her mother and aunt. They had acted the same way: laughing, joking, saying things that made sense to no one but them. Grown-up women with young-girl secrets. The funny thing was, instead of feeling left out, Nell had felt safe and secure seeing and hearing them together. She felt that way now, watching the women laugh and have fun.

  They were wearing matching straw hats with daisies in the headbands. Mrs. McCabe had on a Black Hall High School T-shirt, and cutoff shorts, and Tara wore a black shirt with FBI in yellow letters over her bathing suit. Tara rode the bike down the middle of the road, weaving in and out, as if it was an invisible obstacle course. Peggy's mother took her bare feet off the pedals and held them up in the air, saying, “Wheeeeee!”

  “Mom, you're being totally embarrassing,” Peggy said.

  “She can't help herself,” Tara said, stopping the bright blue bike in front of the girls. “It's completely hopeless.”

  “You're just jealous because I have such a great voice,” Mrs. McCabe said.

  “Wheeee!” Tara said, even louder, even though they had stopped. “Wheeeeeeee!”

  “My God, you are both demented,” Peggy said, but she laughed. Nell tried to, but she was too busy remembering her aunt teasing her mother for having such a perfect house: always clean, never any dust, nothing out of place, garden like something out of a magazine. Something else that reminded her of home: the way Tara's and Peggy's mother's gardens were so beautiful and cared for.

  “Nell's not embarrassed by us, are you, Nell?” Mrs. McCabe asked.

  Nell shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Thank you. Now,” Tara said, “who wants to drive?”

  “That'd be me,” Peggy said.

  “Okay with you, Nell?” Mrs. McCabe asked. “You think it's easy to sit in back, but I'm telling you, it's not. You have handlebars, but you can't steer.”

  “That's okay,” Nell said.

  Tara showed Peggy the handbrake and made sure her seat was the right height, and Mrs. McCabe adjusted Nell's seat and helped her climb on. Her arm felt so strong and sure, and for a few seconds Nell remembered what it was to have a mother.

  The girls went up and down Tara's road a couple of times, then biked along the seawall and boardwalk, around the boat basin, up the road that bordered the marsh. They passed Foley's Store and cut through the old cemetery, past Nell's cottage, up toward the Point. It was as if Peggy could read Nell's mind. . . .

  Peggy had to half stand, riding the bike up the small hill to Stevie's dead-end street; Nell pedaled with all her might, to help. Tall trees shaded the pavement, and a fresh breeze blew off the water. Peggy was pointing to the left, saying something about how there'd be a full moon that night,
that maybe they could watch it rise.

  But Nell was staring up to the right: at Stevie's house. It sat in the shadow of oak and pine trees; in this light, the white shingles looked blue. She wondered if that's how it had looked when her mother and Aunt Madeleine used to visit, when it used to really be blue.

  She thought of the baby crow, wondered whether it had learned to fly yet. She wondered whether Stevie ever thought about her. Whether she wondered why Nell hadn't come back to visit.

  Nell knew that the reason her father didn't want her going over to Stevie's wasn't because of her writing schedule. It was because Nell had had a meltdown, let the cat out of the bag about missing Aunt Madeleine. Nell knew that her father was definite about not wanting her to see her aunt, and he didn't want Stevie stirring things up and making them worse.

  The knowledge brought tears to Nell's eyes. If Peggy happened to turn around, Nell would say that it was the wind, that she'd gotten dust in her eyes. They rode the bike to the end of the road, turned around, and came back.

  On the second pass, Nell saw that the sign was still there:

  PLEASE GO AWAY

  The sight of it made her bite her lip. She didn't want to go away. She wanted to climb the hill, knock on Stevie's door, have ginger ale with a slice of peach in the glass, and look at Stevie's and Aunt Aida's paintings and talk about her mother, Aunt Maddie, everything.

  Just then, a beige car pulled slowly down the road. The driver must have been looking for an address, because he didn't see the bike—Peggy had to swerve to avoid the car. The move gave Nell butterflies in her stomach.

  “Crazy Rhode Island driver!” Peggy said.

  “Rhode Island?”

  “Yep. With a sailboat ‘Ocean State' license plate.”

  Nell didn't reply, thinking of how strange it was that a Rhode Island car would drive up Stevie's street just as she'd been daydreaming about her aunt. Aunt Madeleine and Uncle Chris had moved to Rhode Island. Providence. Nell knew, because her aunt still sent her cards. She wasn't to respond, but Aunt Maddie never stopped trying.

  Peggy rode them toward the hill down to the beach.

  “Get ready,” she called back to Nell. “Think we can handle the hill?”

  “Hope so.”

  “Hold on tight!”

  “I'm holding on,” Nell said.

  They started picking up speed. Nell gave a half-turn over her shoulder, for one last look at Stevie's shadow-blue house. She tried to see the car from Rhode Island, but Peggy was going too fast.

  If only things were different, Nell thought. If only we could all be together.

  She held on to the handlebars that couldn't steer, closed her eyes because Peggy was driving and it didn't matter anyway. She felt the wind rushing through her hair, and she wished and wished.

  Chapter 10

  STEVIE HAD TAKEN A WALK IN THE DARK last night. Barefoot, she had gone up the road to Jack's house. Standing behind the privet hedge, she'd listened to crickets and smelled the salt wind. It stirred the leaves overhead.

  The cottage windows were open. Stevie wanted to call through them: to ask Jack to come to the door, let her in. She wanted to ask him how Nell's visit to Dr. Galford had gone. Taking a step through the hedge, she paused.

  They were sitting on the sofa. Golden light from a table light illuminated Nell's brown hair; Jack's head was bent close to hers, and the steady sound of his voice came through the open window.

  “‘The field mouse ran for the fallen tree, scrambling into the hollow, as the owl dove through the darkness, talons open . . .'”

  Stevie watched as Nell nestled under his arm, heard the expression in Jack's voice as he read from her book Owl Night. She saw Nell delight in being so close to her father, and she watched the way Jack looked down, to make sure she wasn't too scared. Stevie felt frozen, standing in the yard. She wanted to go inside more than she could remember wanting anything in a long, long time. Instead, she had just turned, walking home through the warm night.

  Now, again, Stevie stood back and watched a different drama unfold, also involving Nell—standing at her kitchen window, waiting for Madeleine to arrive, she saw the bicycle-built-for-two go riding past. Just then she saw a beige car drive slowly down the street, saw the bicycle turn around in the cul-de-sac and come back, recognized Nell and her friend, and then held her breath as Madeleine climbed out of the beige car.

  Her heart racing, she waited for Madeleine and Nell to see each other. They didn't, and Stevie didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. She opened the door and hurried down the hill.

  “You made it!” she called.

  “I can't believe this!” Madeleine said.

  They hugged and hugged. Stevie grabbed Madeleine's bag, and they walked arm-in-arm up the stairs.

  “This place is exactly the same,” Madeleine said, looking around. “As soon as I drove under the train trestle, I felt I'd entered Brigadoon or something!”

  “The land time forgot,” Stevie said.

  “The houses are still so small and quaint, the gardens are straight out of the Irish countryside, kids still ride their bikes down the middle of the street, as if they own it—just like we did! I practically mowed down a bicycle-built-for-two!”

  Stevie held her breath, but Madeleine said nothing more on that subject. They went into the house, and Madeleine walked through, exclaiming with delight. “Oh my God! It's just the same! I can just see your father sitting at his desk over there”—she pointed at the mahogany keyhole desk in a corner of the living room. “We'd have to be so quiet when he was working . . . and I remember thinking how cool it was to have a father whose work was writing poetry!”

  Stevie smiled. “I felt the same way,” she said.

  “I used to wonder why, with this incredible view”—she pointed at the windows, overlooking the rock hillside, beach, and sapphire blue cove below—“he arranged his desk so it was facing the wall. And I asked him, and he said, ‘Because poetry requires a different kind of view, one where you look inside.'”

  “I remember.”

  “Is that true for you, too?” Madeleine asked. “You've done so well, Stevie. I'm always so proud to see your books. Do you need an interior view, too?”

  “The opposite!” Stevie laughed. “Come on upstairs—I'll show you your room and my studio!”

  Up they went. Stevie gave Madeleine the guest room, where her mother's mother used to sleep. It faced east, and because the house was on a point jutting out into the Sound, blue water was visible through the trees on that side of the house, too. Next, they went into Stevie's room.

  “This is incredible,” Madeleine said, looking around at the bedroom/studio. It extended the width of the house, with big picture windows overlooking the beach. Because it was up so high, the aerie had an incredible view looking southwest over the Sound. A stark picture, very modern and striking, hung on one wall. A black bird perched in a cage. Bookcases lined the interior wall. “I don't remember your room being so big, when we were young.”

  “It wasn't,” Stevie said. “After my father died, and I decided to keep the house, I knocked out a wall and made one long room out of two.”

  “You paint here. . . .” Madeleine said, standing before Stevie's easel, looking at the paintings.

  “Yes,” Stevie said. “I like to fall out of bed, directly into work. I guess . . . I use my dreams for inspiration.” She blushed. Watching Madeleine gaze at the painting of two ruby-throated hummingbirds, mates drawing nectar from red flowers, Stevie wondered what her friend would think if she knew that Stevie's recent dreams had all been of Jack?

  “These are beautiful,” Madeleine said. “Is this your next book?”

  “It is,” Stevie said. She stared at her own work: the brilliant green birds, symbolic to her of hope and perseverance. She thought of how the story had changed since its inception at the beginning of the summer. It had once been about two birds and their long migration from New England to Costa Rica; now it was about one summe
r in the life of a pair nesting and raising a chick—inspired by Stevie's dreams, and by meeting Nell. The constant, in both stories, was the flowering red trumpet vine that attracted and fed the tiny birds.

  “I feel so honored to see it in progress,” Madeleine said. “To think that my old friend would turn out to be such a well-known artist!”

  “It's nice of you to say that,” Stevie said, smiling.

  “Everyone at Hubbard's Point must be so proud.”

  “The local kids all call me a witch.”

  “You're kidding!”

  “I've become this generation's resident eccentric—just like old Hecate. Remember her?”

  “Yes, of course. Is she still here? And Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Mayhew—do they still have their cottages? And does your aunt still live in that bizarre castle? Oh, and all the cute boys that we all liked. I need the rundown on everyone. That was really our raison d'être back then—the beach and boys.”

  “Let's go outside and have some iced tea—I'll fill you in on the whole story,” Stevie said. She walked downstairs ahead of Madeleine, feeling slightly guilty. She had a secret agenda that her friend knew nothing about. Seeing Madeleine felt unspeakably poignant—she seemed so vulnerable. She wore a flowing black jacket, even though it was eighty degrees out, to hide the weight she'd gained. Madeleine's eyes were bruised with sadness—she didn't know that Stevie already knew why.

  Stevie opened the side door, settled Madeleine in a teak chair beneath the white market umbrella, and went into the kitchen to assemble a tray. When she returned to the terrace, Madeleine put a finger to her lips, pointed at the trumpet vine. The resident hummingbirds—four of them—were darting in and out of the tubular flowers.

  Stevie served the iced tea and sugar cookies, and the old friends sat there in silence, watching the birds. Their green feathers were iridescent in the sunlight, their wings a blur. Finally, when they left, Madeleine spoke.

  “Emma would love this,” she said.

  Stevie clutched her glass, wondering what to say.

  “She died,” Madeleine said. “In a car accident, a year ago.”