Beach Girls Read online

  “You're sweating,” she said.

  “No kidding. I just played one-on-one.”

  “Who won?”

  He laughed in spite of himself. She seemed completely sure of herself—she had more confidence than most girls his own age—she was, in fact, in the same league as Ruth Ann.

  “I did,” he said.

  “Hmm,” she said. “I didn't know math majors could play ball.”

  Was that as double-entendre as it sounded? Jack's head spun; he didn't want to let on that he had made wrong assumptions about her, too: he'd noticed her looks, not her brains, and he'd been surprised to hear she was aiming for the Seven Sisters. He'd finished using her towel. She took it from him, then stood on her tiptoes and wiped his brow.

  “You missed a spot,” she said.

  His knees had practically given out when she'd passed the towel across his skin, pressing her breasts against his chest. She was Madeleine's friend, he already had a girlfriend . . . the reasons he shouldn't be feeling what he felt were legion and severe.

  Ruth Ann was gorgeous, athletic. She had been the head cheerleader at South, Jack's old high school. Jack could see her now: the way she always did her hair, put on lipstick, wore a sarong to match her bathing suit. All his friends thought she was hot and he was lucky. He told himself that as he stood on the boardwalk. Young Emma must not know the effect she had on men. It couldn't be intentional.

  A few mornings later Jack was at the cottage, sit-ting at the kitchen table drinking OJ and reading the Hartford Courant's sports page. A knock sounded at the door, and it was Emma—coming to pick up Maddie. She wore a yellow alligator shirt, tight cutoffs, and huge movie-star sunglasses, and she grinned when she saw him.

  “Played basketball lately?” she asked.

  “Every day.”

  “And you didn't come to me, to dry off?” she asked.

  “Nope. I used my girlfriend's towel,” he said, trying to ignore the shaking in his bones.

  “How is little ‘Pith' Ann?” Emma asked, the invisible quotation marks around the name both wicked and seductive.

  “Ruth Ann,” he corrected.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Watch what you say, little girl.”

  “I'm not a little girl, and you know it.”

  “You're my sister's friend. Let's leave it at that, okay?”

  “Okay with me if it's okay with you,” she said, giving him a smile that set his skin on fire. What was she—a professional Lolita?

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Same age as your sister. Half a year older, actually.”

  “Seventeen?”

  “Nearly eighteen.”

  “Why'd you call Ruth Ann that?”

  “Because she's a little fluff—exquisite to look at, but dumb as the day is long.”

  Jack's mouth dropped—okay, so she was nearly eighteen. Somewhere along the line he'd forgotten to notice that Maddie—and her friends—were growing up. But what was she doing, putting down Ruth Ann—his girlfriend and the most popular girl at South Catholic?

  “She doesn't seem your type at all,” Emma said, taking a step closer, pulling her sunglasses down her nose, looking right into his eyes. “I would have thought you were too smart to fall for a girl like her. Pine Manor? Really!”

  “Just because you're going to Wellesley . . .”

  “A-ha! You were paying attention!”

  “Why do you want to go there?”

  “Because I want a brilliant career and because I want to date boys at MIT,” she said, smiling wickedly. “What are you doing going out with a girl who's going to finishing school, better known as ‘Pine Mattress'? That's not enough for a smart, smart boy like you.”

  “What would you know about it?”

  “I've grown up watching you, Jack Kilvert,” Emma whispered. “I know more about it than you do. . . .”

  Jack had wanted to kiss Emma right there. He had fallen in love with her three days before—the minute she'd handed him her towel. He'd fought the feelings for seventy-two hours, and he'd continue to battle them for another few days. He and Ruth Ann had been going steady. But Emma was right—Ruth Ann wasn't enough for him. He'd felt guilty by how bored he felt talking to her. He tried to tell himself that her beauty would be enough to make any man happy—and that what he had with her would be enough for just about anyone. Why not for him?

  And then, along came Emma . . .

  She had the most brilliant way of twisting his heart by flattering and putting him down, all at the same time. The practice had never failed. She'd won him over by making him want, more than anything in the world, to make her believe the best about him.

  The crazy thing was, Emma had more in common with Ruth Ann than he was sharp enough to see. So much, in those early days, had to do with the outsides of things. They looked like such a good couple, they forgot to actually become one. Their hearts were completely alien to each other. Jack had never guessed what Emma really wanted, the importance of what—eventually—would steal her from him and Nell.

  Had she ever really loved him? Or had she just wanted to prove to herself that she could get him?

  Now, alone in the night with their daughter, he was racked by the storm inside him, a storm that put the lightning bolts and thunder cracks outside to shame: to make up for it, he rocked his little girl as gently as he could. “It's okay, Nell,” he said. “Everything's fine. . . .”

  The words sounded so feeble. Could Nell feel his heart crashing against his ribs? If she had any idea of the thoughts in his head, the words he'd like to scream at her mother for leaving them like this, she'd never rest again.

  The storm trailed away across Long Island Sound, leaving peace and cool, clean air behind it. The humidity had broken. More amazing, Nell was sound asleep. Her breath was as steady as it used to be when she was tiny and Emma was there. She didn't even flinch when Jack lay her down in her bed.

  “Nell?” he said out loud, to test her. She snored quietly and didn't stir.

  Jack knew exhaustion when he saw it. She had tired herself out. Outside, the sky was clear. He checked his watch: five-thirty. He was wrapped so tight, he thought he might explode. Although the heat was gone, he was burning up. If he hurried, he could run down for a quick swim. The beach was less than a minute away.

  Tying on his running shoes, he checked on Nell once more: out cold. He slipped out silently, closing the door behind him. He began to jog down the winding road, but it turned into a sprint. He raced against the feelings inside. His feet pounded, loud in his ears. The beach was asleep. Overhead, the stars blazed in the dark blue sky. He wanted to shout and wail, wake up the world. Wake up Emma.

  When he got to the boardwalk—the place he had first met his wife—he slowed down. His chest hurt, and he slapped his hand over his heart. What if he died right now? It would be so easy, the pain would stop, the confusion of hating Emma, resenting her for leaving him with Nell and no idea how to do it all. But the idea of abandoning Nell made him straighten up, shake his head to clear the bad thoughts.

  A layer of gray hung in the east, lightening the sky with approaching dawn. The stars were white globes, with the morning star shining brightest of all. Jack sat on the boardwalk bench to take off his shoes. Then he saw Stevie.

  Twenty yards off, she crossed the footbridge in silence. She looked barely human coming through the dark, more like an apparition. He saw her leap onto the sand, and then run down the hard part of the beach, below the tide line. She stopped, just even with where he was sitting, and looked up and down the beach. For a moment, he thought she had seen him. He held his breath.

  But she turned toward the Sound. She seemed to gaze out, out, toward the east, greeting the day. She opened her arms wide, as if she wanted to embrace every single thing. The sight moved Jack in a way he hadn't felt in too long to remember. He strained to see through the darkness, and he saw her drop her robe on the sand.

  Her bare skin was pale in the starlight. He saw the
curve of her breasts and hips, and he drew in a slow breath. He sat on the edge of his seat, as if something was about to happen, something almost unbearable. She dove into the water—straight in, without having to stop and get used to the cold.

  He watched her head, her strong strokes, as she swam straight out. Venus hung in the west, illuminating her wake. Jack craned his neck, to keep her in his sight. He felt incredibly guilty and disloyal, thinking this way. But he was rocked by a surge of passion, and he wanted only to run down to the water's edge, dive in, swim out fast, meet Stevie in the waves.

  He momentarily lost sight of her—panic came up—where was she? Had she gone under? He scanned the water around the raft, about fifty yards offshore, and the big rock just beyond.

  She didn't need saving: she had bypassed the raft, swum straight to the huge rock. Jack remembered going out there as a boy. It was massive, granite, a great place to pretend to be shipwrecked. Mussels and barnacles covered its surface; lobster pots washed up in storms, their lines snagged on its jagged outcroppings.

  Jack watched as she hauled herself out of the sea, climbed to the top of the rock. She was nude and beautiful, and black water turned silver streaming off her body. Again, she opened her arms, as if to hold an invisible lover, and then she dove back in. She came steadily toward shore. Could she see him? Jack's pulse raced. He was torn in half—knowing he had to stay hidden, wanting to stand up so she'd see him.

  But he didn't move. She swam before dawn for privacy. This was her beach. He knew that right down to his bones. She owned the white sand, the deep blue sea, the granite, quartz, moonstones, and sea glass, the mystical seaweed: she possessed this place. All those people who came during sunny daylight hours and set up their blankets and chairs and umbrellas were missing the secret magic.

  Stevie had it. Backing silently away, Jack could almost believe she had called down the thunderstorm, cooled off the night. He wanted to wait, to see her body again, closer this time, silvered with sea water. He was in a trance. Part of him wanted to taste the salt on her skin—he knew it was wrong, didn't know where it was coming from. Still, the desire to watch her was so strong, he felt it pulling him down, down—to the tide's edge.

  He turned instead, to give her back the beach.

  Quickly, hoping she hadn't seen him, he grabbed his shoes and ran back up the sandy road to the house where his daughter lay sleeping.

  STEVIE SAW JACK on the boardwalk just as she was finishing her swim. Her heart caught and lurched—was he waiting for her? Had he seen her undress? How could she get out of the water if he was standing there? She watched him hesitate, as if deciding whether to walk toward her. Instead he backed away, grabbed his shoes from the boardwalk, trotted up the road.

  The beach was hers again, as it was every day at this time. She wanted to feel the serenity, a connection with the earth's rhythms and mystery, that she always felt—but instead she felt almost wild.

  Seeing him there, that split second before he'd turned away, she had sensed his yearning. She could read it in his posture. She knew it by heart, because she felt it herself. Since childhood, since her mother had gone, Stevie had felt a sense of helpless longing; she satisfied it in all sorts of ways. She had fallen in love too hard and too wrong, traveled far and wide to escape herself, reached for stars that were really just cheap lights.

  Stevie's longing was deep and eternal; she knew she'd be searching for love until she found it. And on good days, she knew she had found it already: in nature, her early morning swims, Tilly, her birds, the secrets and intimacy of New York City. She hoped that the man would find it in something he already had and could never lose: the love of his daughter.

  She wondered who had been staying with Nell while he'd come down to the beach. Maybe he had a girlfriend. Or maybe he didn't. . . .

  In any case, nothing quite explained the stirring she felt as she wrapped the robe around her bare shoulders, ran barefoot through the sand and across the wooden bridge, up the stone stairs. Every sensation was a bolt to her heart. She took a quick outside shower, making sure to grab a few bugs from the early morning cobwebs in the dew-laden grass: “fairy tablecloths,” she had called them as a child.

  She thought of what her father had once told her: “Stevie, there are two ways to look at the world. You can either believe that there's no magic anywhere on earth, or you can believe that there's magic in every little thing.”

  Going inside to feed her thriving crow, thinking of how she had felt to know Jack was watching her swim, she really had no choice but to believe in the second.

  “WANT TO SING ‘Lemon Tree'?” Nell asked during recreation break two days later. “My aunt taught it to me.”

  Peggy chuckled. “My mother and Tara sing that song. They take turns playing the guitar. It's really pretty.”

  “I'll bet Stevie sings it, too,” Nell said. She liked saying her name: Stevie. “Stevie gave me a book she wrote. She has an aunt who inspired her to be an artist!”

  “A weird, witchy artist!”

  “Would a witch sing ‘Lemon Tree'?” Nell teased.

  “Maybe she likes to turn kids into lemons!” Peggy teased back. They had just come out of the water, and they sat on Nell's towel with Peggy's wrapped around their shoulders.

  The group sat in a circle, so Laurel could tell them a real-life story about how some of the cottages were almost a hundred years old, and how, long before they were built, the Eastern Woodland Indians used to hunt and fish on these rocky points, and how, later, the Black Hall artists used to come here to paint. “Use your imaginations,” she told the kids. “Think about the beach in a new way.”

  Nell loved the assignment. She and Peggy decided to explore the beach—and in doing so, Nell knew she was visiting places her mother, her aunt, and Stevie had gone before. They stopped at Foley's Store, to look in the drawer for love notes, and they went to the Point, where they sat on the rocks watching someone fish from a rowboat, and they cut through more backyards than Nell could count to look at secret gardens and hidden birdbaths.

  A few days later they lay in the sand—no towels—at Little Beach, another secret place they'd reached through a path in the woods. They had collected the best sea glass Nell had ever found anywhere, including two rare blue pieces. Staring at the sky, Nell thought of Aunt Aida's painting in Stevie's room. Peggy told her about school in Black Hall, and Nell told Peggy about moving up to Boston from Atlanta.

  “That's why you have that pretty accent?” Peggy asked.

  “Yes. I'm a Southerner.”

  “I'm a New Englander.”

  “I like the way you talk,” Nell said. “You sound like my mother. She was from the North. My father, too.”

  “Um, you don't have to tell me, but how . . . well, what happened to her?”

  The question made Nell sit up. Her chest deflated fast, fast, and her shoulders caved around her heart. She shook her head—she could never talk about it.

  “I'll tell you,” Peggy said, hiking up to sit beside her. “What happened to my dad. It was bad. I'm only telling you 'cause I want you to know it isn't just your mom . . . other parents die, too.”

  “I dream about it at night,” Nell whispered. “My mother being gone. I miss her all the time. And I think, if she's gone, then I could be gone too. As if I were never here. And I get afraid to fall asleep. I make my father hold me till I get so tired I can't keep my eyes open. I think if he holds tight enough, I won't go away.” A feeling of her mother's touch came over her—the light way her fingers trailed down the back of Nell's head when she brushed her hair. It was so gentle, almost like the summer breeze. Her father tried, but his hand was so heavy. . . .

  “I used to make my mother take me to the bridge where my father's car . . .”

  Nell's eyes flew open. “Car accident?”

  “Um, sort of,” Peggy said, turning red. “He, well, he was killed. And his car went into a creek.”

  “My mother had a car accident too,” Nell said.


  “Really?” Peggy asked, her mouth dropping open.

  “She lived after it. She did . . . I thought she was going to be okay. I wanted her to be. . . .”

  “How did hers happen?”

  Nell huddled up, arms around her knees, making herself very small. She didn't like to talk about it. But something in Peggy made her want to tell the story, find words for how her mother had died. Yet the sudden change of feelings confused her so much, she couldn't speak. Peggy just sat there, no expression on her face at all, waiting. Finally, Nell was ready.

  “She and my aunt were driving home,” Nell said. “It was my aunt's birthday. She and my mom went away for the weekend.” She swallowed. The words seemed to scratch her throat coming out, as if each one had claws. “It was my mom's first time away from me.”

  “Ever?”

  Nell nodded. “My aunt flew down, and she rented a special birthday car. A sports car. Pretty and red . . . They drove to St. Simons Island. I used to love St. Simons Island . . . it was our favorite Georgia beach. . . .”

  “And they had an accident?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you mad at your aunt when you see her?” Peggy asked.

  “I don't see her,” Nell said.

  “Because you hate her for what happened?”

  “No . . .” Nell grabbed a handful of sand and let it run out through her fingers onto her knee. The grains stuck in the fine blonde hairs, trickled down her skin. She did it again and again. The funny thing was, her throat felt as if the sand was in there. As if she had swallowed a whole lot of sand, and it was making it very hard to swallow. “I love my aunt,” she said.

  “Then why don't you see her?”

  “My father will never forgive her,” Nell said. “For what happened.” The two friends were silent then. Nell held the pieces of sea glass she had collected, feeling them with her thumb.