Beach Girls Read online

  Her mother had once told her that sea glass took a long time to make. You had to throw back the pieces that weren't ready—that were too sharp or shiny, not yet tumbled smooth by the sea. Closing her eyes once more, she thought of her mother, her aunt, and Stevie. She wondered whether they had ever sat in this spot. She wondered whether her sea glass had been here then, whether maybe one of them had picked it up, thrown it back into the waves because it wasn't ready.

  It would be nice to think that she had, Nell thought. Oh, it would be so nice. . . .

  Chapter 8

  THE NEXT THREE MORNINGS WERE DARK and clear, and each time Stevie crossed the footbridge on her way to swim, she glanced at the boardwalk and saw Jack waiting. Daylight began to infuse the sky before actual sunrise. While Stevie swam—in a bathing suit now—she saw the stars fade so that only the brightest planets were left. They cast a passionate spell, somewhere between romance and Eros. Stevie felt crazy and confused. As if knowing, and not wanting to leave her alone in that state, Jack would wait until she'd safely emerge from the sea, and then he'd turn to go home.

  On the fourth morning, she woke up earlier than usual. The air was muggy again, hazy and thick. She heard the Wickland Shoal foghorn, off in the distance. She imagined Jack hearing it, too. They were connected by strange mysteries—they'd barely had a conversation, but she could hardly wait to see him. The sheets felt sensuous on her body, reminded her of the brush of the sea. Her thighs ached, and her nipples stung. The sensations were wild, made her think of making love with a man she barely knew.

  That day she skipped her swim.

  Tilly lay on top of the bureau, already awake, green eyes glowing. The gaze seemed to accuse Stevie of cowardice. “I know,” Stevie said. She got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, refrained from looking out the window to see whether Jack was on the boardwalk. She fed her cat and the bird, and instead of going down to the beach, she climbed into her car and drove out of Hubbard's Point.

  She sped along the Shore Road, through the marshes and past the Lovecraft Wildlife Preserve. The air was heavy, thick and white. Egrets fishing the shallow coves, pale sentries, raised their heads as she passed. Stevie imagined the birds telegraphing her approach to the castle, its ivy-covered stone tower and ruined crenellated parapet just visible above the tree line. She pulled through the stone gates, touched the horn as she passed the fieldstone gatehouse where Henry lived, then turned up the steep driveway—smooth pavement giving way to a dirt-and-gravel track. When she reached the top, she smelled coffee.

  It was only six A.M., and fog hung in wisps in the pine trees. Stevie took a deep breath, listening to the low foghorn—Wickland Shoal. Although the castle compound was high on Lovecraft Hill, it overlooked the mouth of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, and water sounds carried as if they were just feet, and not half a mile, away.

  Stevie's aunt and mentor, Aida Moore Von Lichen, lived and painted here. She was seventy-nine, going on thirty, with more life and verve than most people a quarter her age. Born in Ireland, just like her beloved brother Johnny, Aida was an abstract expressionist of great repute. She had come of age in New York with the Cedar Tavern crowd, as artistic as her brother was literary.

  Aunt Aida owned the castle—a folly built in the 1920s by her much-older second husband, Van Von Lichen, the heir to a ball-bearing fortune and, more famously, a Shakespearian actor known for playing Iago and Falstaff. Uncle Van had died twenty years ago, having run through the bulk of his once considerable inheritance. Lacking a desire for grandeur, and, in any case, the money to sustain it, Aunt Aida had let the castle fall to bat-and-mouse-infested ruin, and she lived instead in a small wooden outbuilding with no inside plumbing. She drew her water from an old white pump with wrought-iron curlicues. An ardent environmentalist, she loved her simple life. Summers in Black Hall, winters in the Everglades. Her stepson, Henry, recently retired from the Navy, was spending the summer in the castle gatehouse.

  “Hey, Lulu,” Henry called to Stevie as he hiked up the hill. Fifty and movie-star handsome, he looked like he belonged on the grounds of a ruined castle.

  “Hey, Commander,” she called back.

  He had nicknamed her Lulu for her dark-haired and messy-love-lifed resemblance to the Hollywood silent-screen femme fatale Louise Brooks. She called him Commander because that was his rank at the time of his retirement.

  “You're out early,” he said.

  “I've got a lot on my mind,” she said.

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Oh no,” he said. Very tall and powerfully built, he had silver hair, sun-struck blue eyes, and wind-weathered ruddy skin from nearly thirty years of standing on the bridge of various naval vessels.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Who's the lucky man?”

  “I'm not in love.”

  “Lulu, you're always in love. That's your blessing and curse.”

  “More curse,” she said, giving a small laugh. She turned away to hide the blush in her cheeks.

  They walked over to a rounded boulder at the edge of what Aunt Aida called “the pine barrens”—a forest of white pines and cedars stretching all the way to Mount Lamentation. Developers were always offering her tons of money to sell the land, but she swore she'd die penniless before giving in.

  Henry lit a cigarette and handed it to Stevie. She blew three perfect smoke rings, and then gave it back to him.

  “You bring out the bad habits in me,” she said.

  “Someone has to, and you have so few left. Now that you're sober, I've lost my drinking buddy,” he said. They laughed and shared the cigarette, watching fog clear from the mouth of the river. The foghorn continued, even though the Sound was now visible, flat-calm and silver-blue, already dotted with boats trailing the scratched lines of white wakes. Across the Sound, Orient Point was a thick pencil smudge.

  “You're not going to tell me?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You've had it rough, kid,” he said. “You've given so much and gotten so little.”

  Cocking her head, she looked up at him. “Really? I feel as if I've hurt everyone I've ever loved.”

  “That, too,” he said. Although Henry had never married, he had had a long relationship with a woman in Newport. She had broken up with him last year, and although he did his best to act like a stoic sailor, he was really heartbroken. “Love's a bitch for all concerned.”

  “Except when it isn't,” she said. She closed her eyes, wondering what that even meant. She had never stopped hoping. In spite of all her missed connections and thwarted starts, she had always expected to find lasting, thriving, nurturing love. The desire for it was so strong, it still brought tears to her eyes, and again she thought of her friend on the boardwalk.

  “Press on regardless,” he said, falling back into Navy-speak as he so often did. It was oddly comforting, and Stevie smiled.

  “Really?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I admire you,” he said.

  “For getting divorced three times?”

  “For getting married three times,” he said. “You are the bravest girl in the world. I should have had the balls you have. All Doreen ever wanted was a ring, and I was too chickenshit to give it to her.”

  “Oh, Commander,” she said. “Marriage isn't any guarantee. . . . I'm living proof.”

  “You're a force of nature, is what you are,” he said. “I've sailed frigates and aircraft carriers through hurricanes that didn't have half the power you have.”

  “Get out,” she said, watching boat traffic in the water below, listening to birds in the trees all around.

  “All those years aboard Cushing,” he said, “I used to read two things. Shakespeare, because . . . well, you can imagine. And the Odyssey.”

  “Makes sense for a man on a voyage.”

  “You know what you are, Lulu? You're a new character in the Odyssey.” He searched for the name. “Luocious,” he said, pronouncing it Lu-oh-shus. “You're a siren who lures men onto
the rocks . . . but it's always your boat that gets wrecked.”

  She looked away, because it felt so true. “Is Aida up?” she asked, kissing his cheek and then pressing herself up from the rock.

  “Of course,” he said. “Sometimes I think she never sleeps.”

  “See you later, Henry.”

  He saluted, watching her go.

  Stevie let herself into the house. Aida was already painting. She stretched her own canvases, and this one was a six-by-six-foot square, almost as big as the north-facing picture window. Stevie stood back and assessed the work, the latest in her Beach Series: the top half was pale gray, the bottom half dark blue. The line where they met resembled a horizon.

  “How are you, dear?” Aida asked without turning around.

  “In need of a wise aunt,” Stevie said.

  Aida laughed. “And you came here?”

  Stevie gave her a hug. Her aunt was tall, like her father. She wore a red bandana over short curly white hair, and a smock on top of denim overalls. Her nails were short and chipped, caked with oil paint.

  “There's coffee on the stove,” Aida said.

  “Thanks.” Stevie refilled her aunt's Cushing mug—a tribute to her stepson's last vessel. Then she filled one for herself. The two women sat down at the old pine table, sipping their coffee. The cottage windows were wide open, and the salt-and-pine-scented breeze blew through.

  “What brings you here so early?” Aida asked.

  “I'm trying to figure some things out,” Stevie said. “I had two visitors last week. They've both . . . gotten under my skin.”

  “Hmm,” her aunt said, staring at her painting.

  “One is a little girl, Nell. She's the daughter of an old, dear friend of mine . . . Emma. She told me that Emma died.”

  “Oh dear,” Aida said, looking directly at Stevie.

  “I know. I can hardly believe it—it seems like we were just swimming together, lying on the sand, planning to have wonderful lives . . .”

  “So young . . . too soon,” Aida murmured.

  “It's awful. She died in a car crash—and our other friend, Emma's sister-in-law Madeleine, was driving.”

  “How terrible for Madeleine!”

  “I know,” Stevie said. “I can't even imagine.”

  She and her aunt just sat in silence for a minute. Stevie stared over at the new painting, at the pale rectangles. Were they sea and sky or sand and sea? She didn't know, and it didn't really matter: the feeling of beach washed over her, calming her.

  “Emma did have a wonderful life, it seems,” Stevie said. “Her daughter is just like her—so smart and sweet, curious about life. She wanted to meet me, because I was her mother's friend, and she just marched up the hill and introduced herself.”

  “That took courage,” Aunt Aida said, deadpan.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that sign, for one thing. It puts the fear of God into all who approach. But, of course, that's the point, isn't it?”

  Stevie didn't reply at first. She knew she pushed people away—and it worked. Kept her safe, free from making any more mistakes, from getting hurt, from hurting others. “Well,” she said finally, “Nell made it past the sign. And I invited her and her father over for dinner last week.”

  “That was good of you.”

  “It went well—except toward the end, I mentioned getting together with Madeleine, and that didn't go over at all. Jack—Nell's father—wants nothing to do with her. And she's his sister!”

  Aunt Aida tilted her head, as if that made sense. Stevie stared at her.

  “She's his sister—how can he just write her off like that?”

  “You're an only child, dear.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Aunt Aida took a deep breath, stared at her seascape as if for strength, then looked directly into Stevie's eyes. “I always wished that your parents had had another child. Always thought that you needed a sibling. I wanted you to have what Johnny and I had. And what your mother had. Then you would understand about Madeleine and . . . what was his name? Jack. That's it.”

  “Well, I don't have a sibling, so you have to tell me, Aunt Aida.”

  She sighed. “Siblings are each other's world—when they're young. For me, it was The World According to Johnny. The sun rose and set on him. We had the same family, same house, same music . . . we walked each other to school.”

  “Jack was four years older than Maddie.”

  “Johnny was three years older than I . . .”

  Stevie listened.

  “Age isn't so important. It's the feeling that is. You grow up counting on each other. You never want to let each other down. So when something big happens, it's cataclysmic. It might be easier to write each other off than actually ever talk about it. Or deal with it.”

  Stevie pictured how angry Jack had gotten when Stevie had started talking about Madeleine. He had looked so upset—not just furious, now that she thought about it, but hurt. As if the breach had taken something away from him.

  “Did that ever happen with you and Dad?” Stevie asked.

  Her aunt didn't reply. Instead, she stood up, got the coffeepot, and refilled their mugs. Then she sat down again. “You could call Madeleine yourself,” she said.

  “I know,” Stevie said. Having this talk with Aida solidified the thought she'd already had. “I plan to.”

  “Good,” Aunt Aida said.

  Again they fell silent, sipping the hot coffee. Stevie couldn't stop looking at her aunt's painting. It seemed so open and free—with a feel of the bigness of sea, sky, and beach. The series captured the beach's changing colors and moods. Stevie felt disturbed about her morning swims, about how much she looked forward to the silent connection with her old friend's husband. She had made so many mistakes in love—and in the last few years, barricaded herself off from the world. She pictured the sign in her yard, and she thought of Henry's words, about boats being wrecked on the rocks of love.

  “What's that?” her aunt asked, watching Stevie's face.

  “Oh, I was just thinking of Henry,” she said. “He was just cautioning me about falling in love.”

  “He's a fine one to talk,” her aunt snorted.

  “Won't Doreen give him a second chance?”

  “How about a hundred-and-second chance? Henry sailed the seven seas, always expecting that she would be there waiting for him. Then he left the Navy, expecting to just move in and expect her to welcome him with open arms. She wanted a commitment; Henry, as much as I love and adore him, wanted a roommate.”

  “He loves her,” Stevie said.

  “Does he?” Aunt Aida asked. “Or does he just want her to be there when he wants her? I'm unconventional in plenty of ways, but I think he should have married her. It upsets me to see him so sad. Just as it upsets me to see you so sad. . . .”

  Stevie blinked, looked away. “I'm fine,” she said.

  “Sweetheart,” Aunt Aida said. “You are not. I can see it. It's a beautiful summer day, and you are troubled. Meeting Nell and her father has stirred you up, and it's not just about Madeleine, is it?”

  Stevie shook her head. Sometimes she and her aunt didn't even need words. Aunt Aida had been there for her after her mother's death; no one could ever take her mother's place, but her aunt had loved her so steadily, and knew her so well.

  “We think love's supposed to solve everything,” her aunt said quietly. “But so often, it's just the opposite. It creates difficulties we never even dreamed of.”

  “Love?” Stevie asked. “I barely know them. . . .”

  “You loved your friend Emma,” her aunt said. “And they are her family. I have the feeling that meeting them, seeing them together, has set you thinking about your own life. About family . . .”

  “You're my family.”

  “I love you, Stevie, but I'm not enough. You deserve to find someone to really share a life with. Have children with . . . I had my years with Van—and the happiness of wa
tching Henry grow up. I wish Van and I could have had kids of our own, but it wasn't to be. Henry's like a son to me.” Her gaze became very somber. “I don't want you to be lonely.”

  “I'm not lonely. I'm just being careful—I'm not going to make the same mistakes again. I have you . . . Tilly . . . my work. You know what a balm it is, our painting, our art . . .”

  “Tell yourself that, my love,” Aunt Aida said, “when your whole life has passed you by, and you have nothing but canvases to show for it.”

  Stevie felt herself blush. She stared at the wood grain in the pine table, shocked by the feeling in her heart.

  “When do you think you might call Madeleine?” her aunt asked, gently changing the subject.

  “I'm not sure,” Stevie said. “Maybe after Jack and Nell leave the beach.”

  “Too bad you have to wait that long,” Aunt Aida said. “I have the feeling that she's in great need of a friend. And so are you. . . . Perhaps more to the point, Nell's in need of an aunt.”

  The words hung in the air. Stevie waited, but Aunt Aida said nothing more. The only sounds were birds singing in the trees outside, and her own heart pounding in her ears.

  Driving home, Stevie remembered one sunny day—the afternoon of the July full moon. She and her friends had walked through the path to Little Beach. They were teenagers, wanting to escape the prying eyes of adults. Boys were on their minds. Everyone liked someone—the details were delicious and absorbing. Falling in love was one summer-long fever.

  “They want us,” Emma said.

  “And we want them,” Madeleine said.

  “I told Jon I'd meet him on the Point,” Stevie said. Desire was new to her. Already she was experiencing the loveliness of obsession, the crazy heat of getting lost in wanting someone, thinking about him all the time.

  “What time did you say you'd be there?” Madeleine asked.

  “Two,” Stevie said, and Madeleine nodded, as if to say she'd better go.

  But Emma had a different take on it. She grabbed both her friends by the hand and pulled them down the hard sand, just below the dry seaweed of the tide line.