Beach Girls Read online

  “Witches aren't beach girls,” Peggy said doubtfully.

  “Beach girls aren't witches,” Nell countered, and Peggy cocked her eyebrows in a thoughtful way.

  Just then Laurel came running over from the lifeguard chair, where she'd been talking to a bunch of her friends, and clapped her hands.

  “Okay, everyone into the water for one last thing—we're going to tread water for ten minutes! Find your partners!”

  Peggy grabbed Nell's hand, and together they ran into the water, diving under the first wave. Their bodies, hot from the sun, felt the saltwater shock, and they came up squealing. Nell thought of her mother holding Stevie's hand. Or Aunt Madeleine's . . . Peggy's gaze was directed over Nell's head, to the cottage on the hill—as if she, like Nell, was wondering what could be making a beach girl cry on such a beautiful day.

  AS BABIES, crows, blue jays, and starlings were insectivores. Their parents would catch mosquitoes and gnats, eat them, and regurgitate them. Their offspring would grow, eventually turning into omnivores, the goats of the avian world: birds that would eat anything. Stevie credited her editor for that bit of knowledge: Ariel Stone was a stickler for scientific details, and she loved emotional love stories. The combination made her a great editor—and had led her to push Stevie into writing Crow Totem.

  “Crows are intensely loyal,” she said to the baby, quoting from her own book, trying to get the bird to eat a crushed fly. “Did you know that?”

  The bird refused to budge, or open its beak. Tilly hovered outside the bedroom, scratching at the door. Stevie wondered how refined the bird's responses were, whether he registered the noises as direct threats upon his young life. She kept trying, until finally—perhaps trying to squawk—the bird opened his beak, and she shoved the fly in.

  “There you go,” she said. “Wasn't that good?”

  It must have been, because the baby opened wider, and she dropped in a pair of mosquitoes and another fly, snagged in a spiderweb by the back door. Country life, she thought . . . Trumpet vines, hummingbirds, spiderwebs, a motherless crow: nature at her back door, inspiration to do her work.

  “This is for you, Emma,” she said, giving the baby crow another dead fly.

  Emma would have laughed at that. “Thanks, Stevie,” she'd have said. “A dead fly.” She'd had a strange, dark sense of humor. Stevie spun back in time . . . the warm breeze brought it all to the fore.

  The air on their skin, driving in Stevie's convertible Hillman, on their way to pick up Maddie at the New London train station, coming back from visiting her aunt in Providence. Two sixteen-year-old girls, wearing wet bathing suits under T-shirts, damp hair blowing in the wind—nothing could have torn them away from the beach, except the arrival of their friend.

  Downtown New London had been different back then. Crumbling beauty and abject poverty had defined the old whaling town. Driving along Bank Street, they'd seen a homeless woman curled up in a doorway across from the Custom House.

  “We have to help her,” Stevie had said, pulling over. The woman had cracked skin and dirty clothes. Her hair was matted, unwashed. A shopping cart from Two Guys held her belongings.

  “And do what?” Emma had asked. “Pick her up and take her back to the beach?”

  “Yes, and feed her,” Stevie had said.

  The two friends had stared at each other, Emma realizing that Stevie was serious. Their families were very different. Stevie's father taught Stevie that all human beings were connected, and that art and poetry held them together. Emma's parents taught her that life was one big case of keeping up with the Joneses: you looked at your neighbors not to help them, but to judge how well you were doing in relation to them. Emma gently took Stevie's hand.

  “I love you,” she said. “But you are a crackpot.”

  “No, Em—we have to . . .”

  “Don't you know that there are ways . . . and there are ways? That's what charity is for. My mother taught me that . . .” Emma trailed off, the unspoken, unfinished, mournful part of the thought being that Stevie didn't have a mother to teach her. “Suburbia isn't built for people like her, not even passing through. Can't you imagine the beach ladies flipping out? No—we have to help her here, on her own turf.”

  “So we can just go back to the beach and forget her?”

  “Yes—and that's not mean, Stevie. We'll buy her some food, and she'll be better off. And then we'll go back home.”

  Stevie remembered feeling sick. People like her: had Emma really said that? Yet Emma's desire to help seemed real. She patted her pockets for money. Stevie looked through her purse. They had six-fifty between them.

  So when they'd gotten to the graceful brick train station, sixteen-year-old Emma had picked out a pair of Coast Guard Academy cadets. The young men were standing on the siding, dressed in their white uniforms, waiting for the train. Their trousers were so clean, so sharply pressed; their shoes shined to a high polish. Overhead, pigeons cooed in the eaves. Ferry whistles sounded, and seagulls screeched from the dock pilings. Across the Thames River, just-built nuclear submarines lurked in the open bays of Electric Boat.

  Emma's hair was messed up from driving in the open car. Her skin was tan, gleaming. She wore a gold necklace and bracelet. Her damp T-shirt clung to her body, and Stevie saw the men notice her even before she approached them.

  “Hello,” she said to the cadets.

  “Hi,” they both said at once.

  “We're raising money,” she said. “My friend and I.”

  The young men looked at the two girls, fresh from the beach, and tried not to laugh.

  “For a really good cause,” Emma said. “There's a hungry lady, and we want to buy her some food. My friend will cry if you don't help. She honestly will.”

  It took the cadets exactly thirty seconds to open their wallets. Stevie watched in amazement. She saw how Emma smiled with the strangest combination of flirtation and humility, how she had kissed them both on the cheek when they'd handed her the money, how she thanked them for keeping the coast safe for everyone.

  “Easiest thing I ever did,” Emma said, walking back to Stevie.

  The men had given her ten dollars each.

  After Madeleine arrived, Stevie drove back to Bank Street. They went to the granite Custom House, and looked for the woman. Her cart was still there, parked in the alley, but she was gone. They drove down the street slowly, looking for her.

  “We have to find her,” Stevie said.

  “She's all right,” Emma said. “She probably got hot from lying in the sun and went to find some shade.”

  “We have to give her the money,” Stevie said.

  “She's survived without our help all these years,” Emma said. The words were harsh, but her voice was gentle. Stevie knew that Emma was trying to make her feel better, even when Emma turned toward the backseat and told Maddie how Stevie wanted to save the world by bringing street people back to Hubbard's Point.

  They had waited for fifteen or twenty minutes. Emma was impatient; Stevie could tell by the way she kept flipping around the radio dial, trying to find good songs. The woman didn't come back. Stevie folded up the two tens and stuck them into a tattered blanket on the top of the loaded shopping cart.

  Emma got out of the car and took one back.

  “This is to feed us,” she said. “You can't take care of others and forget about yourself.”

  “Emma—”

  “I begged for that woman's food,” she said. “I'm a beggar now—my mother would totally kill me if she knew. So you have to let me treat you and Maddie to an ice cream.”

  “You've never been hungry in your life. You wear gold jewelry to the beach.”

  “Stevie, you need someone to tell you it's okay to be happy. It really is. We love you, Maddie and I. You want to save every person, every lost bird. Well, your friends are here to save you—how about that? Come on—let's get back to the beach, okay?”

  The top was down, the sun was shining; Maddie was so glad to be back from se
eing her aunt, and she wanted to hear everything that had happened at the beach in her absence. They had stopped at Paradise for sundaes, and when they'd buried their cherries in the sand, they'd done it in honor of the homeless woman. Stevie had felt guilty for wasting food. Her sundae tasted like sawdust. When Emma saw her put the dish down, she leaned over and fed Stevie with her own spoon.

  “There, little birdy,” she said, gazing into Stevie's eyes, making sure she included a big taste of whipped cream as she put the plastic spoon into her mouth. “Enjoy the summer day.”

  “But . . .”

  “Enjoy the summer day,” Emma had repeated, with something dark in her eyes that Stevie had taken to mean that this was a lesson she had to learn. Why should happiness be so hard? Did girls who still had their mothers feel it much easier? Yet she couldn't block out the picture of Emma taking that ten-dollar bill from the shopping cart. . . .

  Those memories were in Stevie's mind as she fed the baby crow.

  Her thoughts of Emma turned to Nell and Jack. The man's eyes looked bruised—as if he had been beaten up. She stroked the bird's ruffled black back. If she could save its life, help it to live, somehow she'd be honoring Emma and the daughter she'd left behind.

  Or maybe there was another, better way.

  Chapter 6

  WHEN NELL AND HER FATHER WALKED home from their noontime meeting at the boardwalk, they found a note stuck in their screen door. Nell saw the drawing of two birds and cried out, “It's from Stevie!”

  Her father read the message: “You are cordially invited to dinner with me and Tilly, tonight, six o'clock.” It was signed “SM,” with a cat sitting on top of the letters.

  “Can we go, can we go?” Nell asked.

  “I have a lot of work,” her father said.

  “Work, work, work!” she said, her hands on her hips, feeling a tidal wave of frustration. “What kind of vacation is this? I know—I'll bet Francesca is bringing papers down, and you have to have dinner with her.”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I told her to fax them.” He gave a slow smile that meant Nell was going to get her way.

  “Well?” Nell grinned. “Then we really have no excuse! We're goin' to Stevie's!”

  AND THEY DID. At six o'clock sharp they walked up Stevie's hill. Nell wore her best yellow sundress with white daisies embroidered around the hem. Her father was wearing chinos and a blue shirt, and Nell had seen him smoothing his too-long hair behind his ears the way he did when he wanted to look nice and realized he should have gotten a haircut. Nell held a bouquet of wildflowers she had picked at the end of the beach. Her father carried a bottle of wine.

  They knocked on the screen door. Tilly was sitting right inside, and she gave an evil, toothless hiss. Nell jumped, then giggled.

  “You must be Tilly,” her father said.

  “Right you are,” Stevie said, letting them in. She looked really pretty, with her dark hair combed and shiny, one smooth bird's-wing curl on each cheek. Her eyes were made up, and she wore a white shirt over blue jeans. Nell beamed, wishing Peggy could see Stevie now: she looked so beautiful and bright.

  “We brought you flowers!” Nell said, handing her the bouquet. “We picked them at the end of the beach! Did you used to go there with Mom and Aunt Maddie? Did you pick flowers there, too?”

  “Nell, slow down!” her dad said.

  But Stevie was wonderful. She knew that Nell was giving her much more than a few stalks of aster, beach heather, and Queen Anne's lace: she knew that Nell was giving her the chance to remember her two best friends. She crouched down, looked Nell right in the eyes, and nodded. “That's exactly where we used to go to pick flowers,” she said.

  Nell shot her father a smile and a look of triumph.

  Stevie stood up, looking at the bottle in Nell's father's hand. “Would you mind opening that while I put these in water?” she asked. “You look like maybe you could use a glass.”

  JACK WAS GLAD for something to do. Stevie handed him a corkscrew and pointed at a shelf filled with glasses. He couldn't find two alike. They were all different heights and sizes—some with stems, some short and round, some clear crystal, others colored glass. Engineers and architects tended to like things in order, matched, symmetrical. Stevie, her house, and her glasses threw him off balance. He wound up choosing two, with different length stems. She asked him to pour her a ginger ale.

  Nell also had ginger ale. Jack watched her face as Stevie garnished all three drinks with slices of fresh peach: his daughter smiled so wide, you'd think it was her birthday. They all went into the living room, with a great view of the beach. Stevie put out cheese and crackers; she sat in a wicker rocker, while Jack and Nell squeezed together in a faded-chintz loveseat. The old cat curled up on the arm beside Stevie.

  “How's the bird?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, he's great,” Stevie said. “Eating every bug in the place.”

  “I heard about the bird,” Nell said. “From my best friend's brother.”

  “You have a best friend already?” Stevie asked. Jack watched her smile. She had a great, warm smile that lit up her whole face.

  “I do!” Nell said, so eager to talk that she bounced on the loveseat and nearly upset the cheese and crackers. Jack touched her arm to steady her, struck by her enthusiasm. “Her name is Peggy McCabe!”

  “Oh, Bay's daughter,” Stevie said. “Her brother Billy paid me a visit this morning.”

  “One of the hooligans?” Jack asked.

  “The what?” Nell asked.

  Stevie laughed. “They do it every year—a whole different age group. The story got started, so long ago now, that I'm a witch. I guess it's a rite of passage for Hubbard's Point boys to look in my windows and try to catch me—I don't know—stirring a cauldron, I guess.”

  “They're just dumb,” Nell said. “They don't know you.”

  “Thank you, Nell,” she said.

  “Can we see the bird?”

  “Nell—” Jack warned.

  “Sure,” Stevie said. “Do you want to come, Jack?”

  Her smile was radiant. He did want to go. But even more, he wanted Nell to have a minute with her—that was obviously what Nell wanted. “That's okay,” he said. “I'll keep Tilly company.”

  Nell gave him an approving look and tore up the stairs after Stevie. Jack sipped his wine and tried to figure out why he felt so uncomfortable. This wasn't a date or anything. It was dinner with an old friend of his wife's. That's all. He didn't even know Stevie—he was doing this for Nell.

  Jack didn't want Nell getting hurt. He was sure Stevie wouldn't intentionally do anything, but he felt protective anyway. Nell was one way with company, another way when she went to bed at night. Her mother's death had left her totally traumatized, and Jack knew that she was latching onto Stevie because she was a link to Emma. But he had to admit, it felt good to see her so happy.

  Their voices drifted down from upstairs—he loved hearing Nell laughing. He heard the bird chirping, Nell's voice trying to imitate the sound. After a few minutes, they came back down—Nell holding Stevie's hand.

  “Dad! You should see her studio! She has an easel in her bedroom! There are paints all over, and paintings and drawings of all these birds, and Dad—there's one of me! I'm a baby wren in it.”

  “Wow,” Jack said, watching his daughter's face glowing. He felt a knife edge—worrying that she was counting on too much from a woman they barely knew.

  “I inspired her,” Nell said. “Mommy and I did. . . .”

  “Really?” Jack said. He raised his eyes to meet Stevie's. Behind her smile, he saw the sadness he'd spotted that morning, looking like a lost soul in her too-big bathrobe. He had a distant almost-forgotten memory of Emma reading one of her books—about swans, he thought. She had disapproved of the way Stevie depicted violence in the bird world.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Her mother died when she was little, too,” Nell said.

  “Oh,” Jack said, and sipped his wine because
he was momentarily tongue-tied. How was it that women and girls could get so much said so quickly? Had Stevie managed to tell Nell that upstairs, just now? How had she done it without anyone crying? Both Stevie and Nell were gleaming—he hadn't seen Nell happier in . . . he couldn't remember how long.

  “I'm sorry,” Jack said, finally.

  “She was okay,” Nell said. “She had a great dad, too. He was like you.”

  “He was,” Stevie said, nodding.

  “She's going to give me a book about emperor penguins,” Nell said. “She wrote it! It was about her father and her, but it could also be about you and me!”

  “Wow,” Jack said, for the second time in two minutes. They had really gotten a lot said on that visit upstairs. He looked up at Stevie and saw her violet eyes looking incredibly dramatic in the light coming through the west-facing windows. Again, he recalled Emma's disapproval of her books.

  He reached for his wine, knocking it over.

  WITHOUT KIDS of her own, Stevie was never too sure what to serve for dinner. She had a beloved aunt, her father's sister Aida, who had married a man with a very young son. Raising Henry, Aida had learned that she could never go wrong with steak, salad, mashed potatoes, and chocolate cake for dessert. So, hoping for the best, Stevie served Aunt Aida's menu.

  “I love mashed potatoes,” Nell said. “Dad, how come we never have them except on Thanksgiving?”

  “I don't know,” Jack said. “I guess because I thought you liked frozen fries.”

  “Is the steak done enough?” Stevie asked.

  “It's good,” Nell said.

  “Great,” Jack said.

  The sun was setting, casting a golden glow throughout the room. Stevie loved this time of day, and often used this last hour of light to do her best work. Having friends for dinner felt unfamiliar. It had been so long . . .