Angels All Over Town Read online

  “I guess we should let you get settled,” Matt said, backing toward the door.

  “She’s settled!” Margo said. “Just put on your suit and let’s take a swim.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, but as glorious as the room was, I felt a chill after they left me to change. Matt was right: it was haunted. I felt my father’s spirit, but it was a spirit yet to come. I sensed it fleetingly, the way one whiffs honeysuckle on a drive through the country when only hayfields are visible out the window. My father would visit me in this room. I knew it for sure, but just as surely I knew it wouldn’t happen tonight. I felt that a visit had been promised, but it wasn’t imminent.

  Ten minutes later, dressed in my black tank suit and covered with sunscreen and one of John Luddington’s discarded white dress shirts, I met Margo on the inn’s wide, curved front porch.

  “Do you like your room?” she asked, lighting up a cigarette.

  “I love it,” I said, carefully avoiding my revelation.

  Leaning forward, her tone conspiratorial, she said, “Matt wanted you to have it. It is the most expensive room in the place.”

  “I know. I’d pay a lot for it.”

  She held up her hands and shook her head. “No—I didn’t mean that. Are you crazy?”

  “I know I’m not supposed to pay, you knucklehead. I’m just telling you I realize what a snazzy place it is.”

  “Good. Matt’s dying for you to like him. He does not want to be another Henk.”

  We both laughed. “‘Oh, Liebchen,’” I said, deepening my voice. “We both know there could only be one Henk.”

  “Thank God,” Margo said.

  Suddenly the implication of her words hit me: another Henk? Another brother-in-law? I glanced at her and knew that I was right. She was blushing madly. “Are you serious?” I asked, craning to see her ring finger, which was bare.

  She nodded. “Matt, we have to tell her!” she called.

  Matt poked his golden beard out the office window. It caught the sun. Margo walked across the porch to stand beside his protruding head. They both grinned. “I want you to know, Una,” Matt said, “you’re not losing a sister—you’re gaining an inn.”

  I hurried over to kiss them, and Matt climbed out the window to hug us. The three of us stood in a tight bunch, cooing and kissing. Both Matt and Margo were crying. “We’re planning a Christmas wedding. Here at the inn, maybe,” Margo said.

  “Yeah, it’s going to be great. We’ll probably have a polka band with at least one accordion, and think of the matchbooks! Our names are perfect—Mmmmatthew and Mmmmargaret,” Matt said, drawing out the m’s. He turned away and blew his nose on a blue bandana. “We’ll have a whole bunch of cocktail napkins and matchbooks printed up, and we can even use them here.”

  “We went to his old roommate’s wedding at the Château de Ville, and he still can’t get over it,” Margo said. She smiled like an imp—making excuses for her betrothed. She reminded me exactly of an affianced twelve-year-old.

  “I know—I can’t. I mean, why would someone want to make their wedding day into a really tacky occasion? With a fake waterfall and ushers with ruffly shirts?”

  “Oh, God, and the announcer,” Margo said, giggling, grabbing Matt’s arm. “Straight from Las Vegas—can you imagine an announcer at a wedding? Better than a game show.”

  It seemed hard to believe, but at twenty-nine, I had only been to two weddings. I thought about that fact, watching Margo and Matt giggle wildly at their memory. None of us Cavan girls had had much use for ceremonies. Weddings and funerals—they had seemed like crazy rites of passage whose importance eluded us. Take away the religious, and what is left? Bunting, banquets, moments of silence, tears shed by people you wish would leave you alone. Better to celebrate or grieve in private, with the people you really love. But I didn’t say anything as I listened to my sister and Matt tell me their plans for a Christmas wedding: the Cavan and Lincoln families and all their friends from Brown, Watch Hill, and the hotel trade in attendance; mistletoe and laurel roping everywhere; a pig roasted on a spit.

  When Matt went back to work, Margo and I headed down the path to the beach. It cut through a thorny grove of bayberry, wild roses, and beach plum. We emerged on a flat strand of beach stretching to a rocky headland at one end; we walked in the opposite direction, north, toward the open sand. Finally Margo dropped her towel, and without consulting each other, we stripped off our bathing suits. Swimming nude was a Cavan sister tradition; we did it whenever the beach was relatively deserted.

  The September sky was so clear, it left the water nearly colorless. Diving, I could see Margo’s slender legs, vertical, treading water. On land they had looked tan, but here they were pale. I passed beneath her, then came up for air. Unable to touch bottom, we faced the open ocean and trod water.

  “Now I feel purged,” I said, slightly breathless.

  “Purged of what?”

  “Of everything. Let’s see…New York—hot New York. Work. Lily.”

  Margo siphoned seawater into her mouth and squirted it out between her teeth. “I can’t believe you have to purge yourself of Lily.”

  “You’re absolutely right—how can I purge myself of someone I never even see? What did she say when you told her about getting married?”

  Margo’s head rested back on the water; she turned to look at me. “I haven’t told anyone yet. Only you. Matt only asked me last night.”

  “Really? Wow!” I said, thrilled to be the first to know.

  “I mean, we had talked marriage before, but he never actually proposed until last night. He wanted us to be able to officially tell you.”

  “That’s dear of him. I like him a lot.”

  “You never talk to Lily?” Margo asked.

  “Hardly ever. Once every couple of weeks.”

  A long pause. “Because she calls me fairly often. Every few days. I’ve been afraid to tell you.”

  I thought about it. Lily and I lived in the same city; we had the same area code and lived within each other’s calling area, yet we rarely spoke. “Maybe that’s because you’re at the inn during the day when she’s alone. I work then. She never calls at night, because Henk’s home.”

  “I think she feels safer talking to me. I haven’t seen Henk for ages—since before their wedding—and she can pretend with me. She makes their life sound idyllic. Apparently Henk loves tennis, so they play at Forest Hills. He just bought her a Renoir watercolor. Sometimes they take picnics to Central Park and lie on the grass and eat chicken wings. She makes it sound so wonderful.”

  “I’ve told you, Margo—it probably is.” I felt uncomfortable, as if I’d been caught spreading vicious, false rumors about the marriage of the century. A Renoir watercolor?

  “No, it’s not. Lily’s different. She’s always happy when I talk to her now, as if it’s a big act. She’s afraid to let anything real show—everything sounds rehearsed. She was never like that before, no matter how much in love she was. I think you’re right about her being brainwashed.” She paddled onto her back, and her small breasts bobbed like lobster buoys.

  “Why would she let it happen?” I had wanted to feel relief, having my suspicions supported by Margo, but instead I felt small and horrible. The suspicions were correct: the prognosis was bad.

  “Because of Dad.”

  “Dad? You’re crazy.”

  “No, I’m not. Lily has always wanted to be married—much more than you or I. I knew she’d wind up marrying the most dependable man around, with the biggest house, the most family heirlooms. You must admit—Henk is the exact opposite of Dad. Can you see Henk with Black Ass? Drinking his brains out in some dive?”

  “No—plus he is older, sort of a more stable father figure,” I said, eagerly joining in the analysis.

  “Not to mention a doctor. What could be safer than life with a doctor?”

  “True!”

  “One ray of hope: Lily always asks about the department at Brown. I think she misses art history.”


  “She has the Renoir, and she says she goes to museums,” I said doubtfully.

  “Una, that would be like you watching soaps instead of starring in one. We have to hang on to the possibility that Lily will break out of this someday—she’ll get tired of being dependent. She’ll resume being Lily.”

  “God, I hope so,” I said, feeling bleak.

  Trawlers, their outriggers fitted with nets and spread like wings, were heading back from Georges Bank. The pulse of their engines traveled across the water. Their nets made me think of Anne, Susan’s character in Hester’s Sister, of how she made fine nets and her sister made faulty ones.

  “If any of those fishermen have binocs,” Margo said, “they’ll think they’re seeing sirens of the sea. Mermaids.”

  Suddenly the open ocean seemed terrible. I imagined the trawlers’ catches: marlin, tiger sharks, monkfish, conger eels, manta rays. Dangers lurked in the deep. Long ago I had loved to look through books on marine life and frighten myself with images of gigantic sharks; strange, sightless creatures that exploded when brought above a certain depth; electric fish that flashed red and zapped their prey. Without saying anything, I swam toward shore and Margo followed.

  On the beach we wrapped ourselves in towels and sat on the pebbly sand. The outgoing tide had sliced a bight parallel to the land in the wet sand. Water tore through it like a river. “That swim made me thirsty,” I said.

  “‘Bring me glass of water, Sylvie, Bring me glass of water now…’” Margo sang.

  When we were little we would watch a program called Sing, Children, Sing on educational TV. The folk greats like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie would sing their songs, and Margo and I would sing them back. A few years later, when Margo was really twelve instead of still looking like it, my parents had been distracted by some trouble or other, and had not been able to attend her spring concert. I was the only person from her family there. Her class had sung “Bring me glass of water, Sylvie,” and hearing it reminded me of my parental attitude toward her. Overhead the sky was still brilliant blue. I lay down on my towel and put a small pebble into my mouth. Somewhere I had read that sucking a pebble is one way to stave off thirst.

  “Does Matt’s family come from Rhode Island?”

  “No, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both of his parents are still alive.”

  “Does he have any sisters or brothers?”

  “One sister, two brothers. He’s the oldest.”

  After a while we walked back to the inn. We walked into a lattice-enclosed shower. A soggy wooden pallet served as the floor. Margo turned on a faucet, and tepid water came out of the spout. Through the latticework I could see guests heading back from the beach. “Do they have to use this shower too?” I asked.

  “No, they get hot water inside. But Matt doesn’t like too much sand going down the drain. So the family has to take their showers here.” She soaped her hair. She sounded like a good wife already: responsible, not dependent.

  Chapter 10

  The next night, Margo and Matt had planned a cookout on the beach. All the inn’s guests were invited. At seven Matt and two of the college boys who worked for the inn dragged brambles and driftwood to a pit they had dug in the sand. Then they left me and Margo to set fire to it. Without planning to, Margo and I had dressed like twins: white jeans and blue sweaters. Only hers was turquoise and mine was navy. I stood on the beach drinking a beer, watching Margo strike matches that the wind would blow out. She shifted her body various ways to shelter the matchbox, but the wind sailed around her every time.

  “For someone who smokes, you’re not very good at that,” I said.

  “Little help?” she asked, both eyebrows lifted.

  I cupped my hands into an airtight windblock, and the match was struck. Margo flung it into the mass of dry vegetation; it caught the edge of some brown leaves, and the pile went up in flames. Wind blew blazing twigs down the beach. They burned for a while, then turned to ash in the damp sand. Margo poked the fire with the iron claws of a long-handled clamming rake, creating a hot core of embers.

  The sun was settling into a bank of bruise-colored clouds, spreading violet light on the beach. Silhouetted against the sunset, the inn itself looked purple, its windows glowing orange with lamplight. The effect was unnatural, like a Maxfield Parrish painting. Wind whipped my hair around my head. Margo and I tended the fire without speaking, and I felt a sense of deep satisfaction. The only sounds were the fire cackling like a witch, the breakers rolling in, the wind soaring along the promontory. I was standing on a beach with a sister, with cozy shelter a short distance away.

  Matt and the college boys led the guests down from the hotel. They carried a tape player playing Keith Jarrett and coolers filled with food and beer. The procession approached, looking strange and righteous: the townspeople coming to get the witches. Then, when they were close enough to be heard over the wind, their voices were friendly. Matt gave out beers while Margo and I inspected the foil-wrapped packages: bluefish covered with a mustard-mayonnaise-dill sauce, sweet corn, red potatoes. Margo placed everything on the fire. Then she and I stood with Matt, watching an orange moon rise over Block Island.

  “Hey, did I tell you I have an audition with Emile Balfour?” I asked, knowing that I hadn’t.

  “You’re kidding!” Margo said, squealing out the word “kidding.”

  “That is fantastic,” Matt said. “Who the hell is Emile Balfour?”

  “Emile Balfour is the movie director every actor in the world wants to work with,” Margo said. “He is fantastically innovative, right, Una?”

  “Right.”

  “He did The Listener.”

  “Oh, now I know who you mean,” Matt said, nodding slowly. “All his movies open with rain falling on the windshield of a car, driving through the night, the wipers going, a voice saying, ‘The rain, the rain. I must find shelter from the rain.’ Only the words are in French, and you have to read the subtitles. That guy?”

  Margo and I laughed. Matt shrugged and looked up at the stars, which were very bright except when the lighthouse’s beam arced over our heads. “I love movies, but I can never remember who directed or acted in them. Is that offensive?” He looked at me. “I mean, if you’re the star of a great movie, don’t you want people to know your name?”

  “I guess that’s nice,” I said, thinking of course I do.

  “Of course she does!” Margo said. “You want to be recognized for your work, don’t you? Wouldn’t you be pissed off if someone thought your inn was owned by Hilton?”

  Matt hugged her. “Hilton doesn’t own little inns, baby.”

  “You get the drift, though.”

  “All I know is that I love certain movies, and I don’t stop to notice who starred in them. The whole thing has to work together, I guess. I don’t know one director from the other…it’s best when you don’t notice the separate elements. Like certain foods.”

  “Wait, you always say you should be able to distinguish flavors in everything you eat. You said that about bouillabaisse, just last week,” Margo said.

  “Well, a sauce, then. You want a roux to taste like a roux, not a mixture of butter and flour. You never want to taste the flour.”

  “Oh, God,” Margo said, scoffing like Henk. “You’re so confused.” Then she and Matt excused themselves to check on the bluefish.

  I glanced around. There were three couples plus the college boys. I stood there, trying to decide whether or not to mingle. A tall man headed down the path from the inn and stood, in silhouette, looking around. Then he walked over to me. His hair appeared black in the night, and his eyes were wide, startled-looking.

  “I just had a nap, and when I woke up, everyone was down here,” he said, sounding abstracted.

  “Yes, it’s a beach party.”

  “For the Ninigret Inn, right? I hate to crash a party unless I’m sure I won’t get kicked out.”

  “Actually, if you’re staying at the inn, you’re invited. I believe that�
��s official.”

  “Oh, you’re from the back office?”

  “No. I’m Una Cavan. Pretty soon I’ll be related to the inn by marriage.”

  “Uh.” He let my inane comment go by with a lack of concentration peculiar to people who have recently awakened from sleeping late in the day. Then he drifted toward the fire, where people were starting to fill their plates. Matt brought me my dinner and showed me the best place to sit: on a smooth log he told me had been embedded in the sand since washing ashore in a winter gale. Then he went back to Margo, who was dishing out bluefish.

  After a few minutes the man returned. He held his dinner plate and two beers, one of which he handed to me. “I’m Sam Chamberlain,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

  “No,” I said, making room on the log.

  “You’re staying at the inn?”

  “My sister helps run it. She’s marrying the owner.”

  “You’re Margo’s sister?” he peered at me in the dark. Up close he looked thirty-five. His hazel eyes were curious, more gold than green.

  “I’m Margo’s oldest sister,” I said, amused to know that the inn’s guests knew her by name. Library research on Rodin seemed a more appropriate profession for her. I couldn’t see her as one of those jolly innkeepers who say they got into the business because they “like working with people” (Margo is shy), who like standing behind the front desk, watching the guests trail back from day trips (Margo has no time for small talk), who make pies and hand out free slices to the guests (Margo hates to cook). I was still smiling when Matt and Margo came along. They sat on the sand, facing us.

  “Glad you could join us, my good man,” Matt said to Sam.

  “Good deal—a nighttime picnic,” Sam said.

  I tilted my head back and tried to identify the constellations overhead. The Milky Way was prominent, and I found the Big Dipper. Noting my interest, Margo said, “You should have been here August twelfth when the Perseid meteor shower was in full swing. It was wild! Matt and I sat on the beach and watched them fall into the ocean.”