"Because you cheated, that's why. You said count to three, but you went after two."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Oh, stop; stop—or there'll be no beach this afternoon. There's the car; go put my carryall in it," said Ivy.
"I'll do it, Mom!"
"No, I'll do it; I'm older."
"Mom, I asked first!"
"Here, Cissy," said their grandmother, whipping off her wide-brimmed hat to distract her. "It's too breezy for this, anyway. Put it in the car for me, would you?"
"Can I try it on?"
"Nuh-uh, you can't, Cissy. It's too big for you and you'd look dumb. Wouldn't she, Aunty Holly?"
"It's not too big, Gram. See?" said Cissy, jamming it over her head. "It's like being under your beach umbrella."
"You can't wear that, Cissy," said an outraged Sally. "Mom, tell her she can't."
"Can too."
"Mom! She always wants to do everything!"
"Oh, good grief... give me the hat. Get in the car, both of you, and not another word. You're going to give Gram a headache before you've been on the island five minutes. Go."
Ivy turned to her sister and her mother and said, "This is how it's been, all the way from California. I was ready to open the emergency hatch and shove them out of the plane."
The girls shouldered and nudged one another for a few steps and then burst into a race for the car, and it was true: Cissy was faster. She turned to the three women she loved best in the world and pounded her chest in triumph. Sally got in the wagon ahead of her and claimed the seat behind the driver, undoubtedly because it had access to the rearview mirror.
"They'll settle down," Holly said to her sister. "They're just excited, that's all."
Her mother smiled and said, "You know who they remind me of, don't you? You two. Holly was forever trying to beat you at something, and you were forever not letting her."
"Ivy beat me at marriage," said Holly, though she hoped to catch up there, too, before long.
"I had to get married," her sister said wryly.
"Not your fault; that was genetic," Holly teased, nudging her mother. "Like mother, like daughter."
"Will you hush," said Charlotte, reddening. "You're both so loud."
"Sorry, Mother," said Holly, linking her arm through Ivy's. "We'll be good."
****
An hour later Holly and Ivy were sitting in wet bathing suits on the big, raggedy pink blanket that Charlotte kept in a wicker trunk just for trips to the beach. The blanket was worn around the edges now, just like the Anderson family, but it was soft and familiar and almost unbearably comforting. Holly and Ivy had napped on it under a beach umbrella when they were babies, and so had Cissy and Sally. During an outing, no one would think of plopping her fanny anywhere else but on that pink and precious heirloom.
Ivy stretched out on her back and let the sun do the work of a towel. "This just feels great. The Pacific is still as cold as a witch's tit. Three cheers for New England."
Holly nodded toward their mother, shelling with Cissy and Sally at the edge of the gently rolling surf. "Incidentally, I told Mom that I called you late last night, so she knows you know that Dad's staying at the Bouchards."
"Which reminds me: what were you doing up at two in the morning?"
"Oh, just foolin' around," Holly said vaguely. "You know how restless I can get when I'm working on something."
She watched as Cissy and Sally began to build a castle at the edge of the water. Foundation first: side-by- side went two inverted buckets of sand.
"Hey, look, a duplex castle," she said to her sister. "And you're worried that they can't get along."
Ivy twisted her head sideways for a view of her daughters and smiled. "They'll be best friends again by the time we leave, and then they'll spend the next eleven months forgetting what it was they liked about each other."
She rolled onto her stomach and turned her cheek to the sun. "If you're going to have kids, you'd better move it along, Hol. They take a ridiculous amount of energy."
Holly smiled and dug her toes into the warm sand at the edge of the blanket. "I'm working on it," she admitted.
Her sister squinted at her. "Oh? And how are you coming along with your Mr. Right?"
"He's looking right as rain to me."
"Mom's worried about you ending up hurt."
"I know. She thinks he's too involved in chasing after Eden to notice me."
"No one's found that engraving, I take it?"
"It's not for want of trying."
"Oh, well. The engraving is the least of our problems," said Ivy, reaching for the suntan lotion. "Did you redo the back of Cissy's shoulders?"
"Yep."
"So—are we all caught up now on the family soap?" Ivy asked, sitting up to reapply lotion to her own shoulders. "Dad's deluded, Mom's deluded, and Eden's having the last laugh according to your Sam. Charming. Do my back for me?"
"Sure. There is one other thing," Holly said, taking the bottle and squirting a blob into her hand. "Sam and I made love aboard the Vixen last night."
"What?"
"Mm. It kind of just happened. Stop twisting."
"What were you doing aboard the boat? What was he doing aboard the boat?"
"I was looking for the engraving and Sam was looking for me," said Holly, trying to coat her sister's pale skin. "Hold your hair up. Anyway—you know how it is when you and a guy are at each other's throats, and what you really want is sex?"
"It was like that?"
"No—but for a while I thought it was. I was so hot for him that I thought, okay, it must be because it's been a while since I've been to bed with a guy. But when Sam and I finally made love, it wasn't just good sex or even great sex, it was ... more than that."
"How much more?"
Holly handed the suntan lotion to her sister and pivoted from the waist. "It was like, I don't know, finding myself. Completely. In Sam."
"Since when were you lost?"
Scooping up her hair, Holly bent her head down. "You know how it feels when you're looking for your car keys, and you look everywhere, and you get more and more frustrated, and then you finally see them and you think, ah, and for that one split second everything comes together? You're complete? It's like that. You still have to get in the car, do your errand, deal with traffic; but for that one fraction of a second, your existence is perfect. That's what it's like when I see Sam."
"You're comparing Sam to a set of car keys?"
"I'm doing a really rotten job of explaining this, aren't I?" Holly said, laughing. "You're the analytical one in the family; you try. How was it with you and Jack when you met?"
Ivy gave her sister a querulous look and then shrugged. "Do you know how long ago that was? Jack and I were seniors in college. We were young, we were stupid, we got caught, we got married."
She rubbed the lotion onto Holly's back with the same no-nonsense efficiency she used on her kids. "All in all, we weren't a bad match. There are things—a lot of them—about Jack that I'd love to change."
Her voice seemed to catch as she said it, but she sighed after that and said, "For one thing, I wish we hadn't married so young; we'll always wonder about paths not taken. And I wish he wouldn't roll up his socks in his shorts when he throws them in the laundry," she added lightly.
"But if you're asking, is he Mr. Right, then I'd have to say I no longer believe—if I ever believed—in the concept. I think lots of people are suitable for one another. Does that answer your question?" Ivy said, capping the lotion and tossing the bottle in her beach bag.
"Do you have any regrets?"
Smiling, Ivy nodded at her two little castle-builders and said softly, "What do you think?"
"That's great," said Holly, and it was great that Ivy had no regrets; that her two children had made her not-bad marriage worthwhile.
Holly gazed at their mother as she knelt with her granddaughters, dripping wet sand down the side of a giant tur
ret on the duplex castle—and she wondered, really for the first time, whether Charlotte Anderson felt the same.
Chapter 21
The tradition had been carefully established over the years: after the beach came cotton candy and carousel rides on the Flying Horses, and after the carousel rides came cheeseburgers, and after cheeseburgers came ice cream cones at Mad Martha's. This year the cast was smaller, but the play was the same.
Late in the day, five weary females—the middle two with stomachaches—returned to the beautiful Greek Revival on Main Street, where the twin beds under the gabled dormers had been made with special care in sheets splashed all over with pink geraniums, and pillowcases trellised in blue and white.
The children showered up the hall while Charlotte showered down the hall, and Holly and Ivy unpacked the trunk that Ivy had shipped east earlier in the month. After weeks of dreary emptiness, the house was suddenly abuzz with people and movement. Holly could hear the squeaks of excitement in the old wood floors, feel the sighs of relief on her cheek as the seabreeze gusted through newly opened windows in rarely used rooms.
The house was happy again.
To make room for her visitors, Charlotte had moved back into the master bedroom for the first time since learning that her husband no longer wanted to share the big four-poster bed there with her. Holly noticed, when she popped into the bedroom to see how her mother was, that she had bought new sheets of periwinkle blue to replace the white ones trimmed in eyelet that she always used to prefer.
Whatever works, Holly thought as she paused outside the bathroom.
"Mom? You okay in there?"
"Of course I am; why shouldn't I be? I didn't eat a double cheeseburger." She opened the door for Holly, then went back to toweling her hair.
"You got some color today," Holly observed.
"I know. My nose is going to peel," her mother said, grimacing at herself in the mirror. "I was so busy running after the girls that I forgot to use the lotion myself."
She turned back to Holly and said, "Is that why you're here? To check on my sunburn?"
Holly returned her wry smile. "You know why I'm here."
"I'm fine. Really, I'm the best I've been so far. The children are a wonderful tonic; I don't know why I was afraid of their coming. The visit's going to work out perfectly. Now beat it," she said, nudging Holly's bare foot with one of her own. "Before you ruin my mood with your constant hovering."
The doorbell rang and Holly yelled that she would get it. Silly thought; she never stood a chance, not with Cissy and Sally in the house. They thundered past her down the stairs, barely glancing back for permission before swinging the door open to their caller.
Parked outside was the van from Beauty and the Beast, a toy shop in Edgartown. Holly's mother had complained during the previous week that she no longer had any up-to-age toys for the girls. She must have gone shopping.
Both girls took in the van, then the festive pink and yellow bows on the shopping bags. They exchanged a quick, sisterly look of understanding—loot!—and stepped back with uncharacteristic restraint so that Holly could tip the delivery girl and take the bags.
"Well, well, well—what have we here?" Holly said as she carried them high over her head so that no one could reach the envelope ribboned to the shopping bag handle. "This must be the curling iron and hot rollers I ordered for myself."
Cissy giggled and said, "They're from the toy store, Aunty Holly, and anyway, you already have curls in your hair."
"You can never have too many curls. All right," she said, setting the bags on the sofa. "Let's see now; what could be in the envelope? Directions for the hot rollers?" She pulled the envelope free without letting the children see their names written on it in a calligrapher's hand.
Sally said, "I'll read it!"
Cissy said, "No, let me!"
"No, me!"
"Me!"
Their mother appeared in the doorway, hands braced on hips, and said, "I'll read it." Turning to Holly, she said, "Is this your doing? Didn't I say—?"
"Don't look at me; I took you at your word."
Ivy sighed and said, "Obviously Mom did not." She took out the card and scanned its contents, then handed it without comment for Holly to read:
Sorry I can't be there with you girls; have fun with these the next rainy day. Hugs and smooches, Grampa.
"Oh, boy," muttered Holly.
"My goodness. What's all this? Presents?"
Everyone turned around. Charlotte Anderson, smiling and pink-nosed and summery in a yellow shift, had come downstairs to see what all the fuss was about.
"We don't know who they're from, Gram," said Cissy. "Mom won't let us see the card. Are they from you?"
"We don't even know who they're for," Sally pointed out. "Aunty Holly wouldn't even let us see the envelope."
Charlotte glanced at the store's logo on the shopping bags and said, "Well, I imagine they're for—"
In that instant it became obvious to Holly that her mother had figured out not only whom they were for, but whom they were from.
Her smile ratcheted up a notch and became brave. She said, "I think your morn should let you read the card for yourself. Don't you agree, Ivy, dear?"
A direct order. Reluctantly, Ivy handed the card over to her daughters. Each of them insisted on holding half of it as they read together.
"From Grampa!"
Sally attacked the shopping bags; Cissy said, "How did Grampa get these presents if he's in Providence?"
Her older sister rolled her eyes as she began lifting out the first gift-wrapped package. "Did you ever hear of telephones, stupid?"
It was all the excuse that Ivy needed. "Sally! That is no way to address your sister. Give me the bags," she said, taking them angrily from her daughters as Holly watched uneasily. "I'm putting them away."
Sally's eyes got huge. "Mom! You can't do that!"
"Those are for us!"
"Not if you're rude. Besides, you read the note: these are for a rainy day. It's not raining. When it rains, we'll think about it. And that's that."
Cissy burst into tears; Sally tried not to.
"That's so unfair! You're so unfair!" cried Sally, and she ran up the stairs with Cissy howling behind her.
Ivy said grimly, "Well, at least they're not on opposite sides, for once," and shoved the bags to the back of the closet in the hall.
Holly was considering how she'd feel if someone had ripped presents out of her hands. Kid or grownup, the answer would be the same: rotten.
"Ivy," she ventured, "wasn't that a little harsh?"
Ivy glanced at their mother, who was hugging herself as she stared out a window overlooking the garden. Seething, she said to her sister, "Don't you get it? He's done it again."
"Done what? Tried to reassure his grandkids that he cares about them? That's not despicable behavior, Ivy."
"He's doing this for himself, for his own selfish need. How do you think Mom would feel, having to watch the girls opening the gifts, asking her when Grampa's coming, wondering why they can't at least talk to him on the phone? How?"
"He's only trying to connect, for God's sake!"
"Oh, please!" Ivy said, her anger rising. "Trying to connect is what hurts most of all. I'm sure Mom wouldn't feel as bad if he had just ignored the girls altogether. The way it is now, she has to face what might have been if Dad were here himself to give them the presents—and deal with the guilt from having the kids run away bawling."
"Guilt! She didn't take away their presents; you did!"
"For Mom!"
"Bullshit! For you! You're angry with Dad and you're using the kids as weapons!"
"Oh-h-h, listen to Daddy's little girl," Ivy taunted. "How typical of you to defend him."
"I'm not defending anyone! All I'm doing is trying to see both sides."
"Both sides? How can he have a side? He sailed off from his entire family just to have sex on the sea, and now that Eden's dead—"
"She's not dead
!"
"—he wants to get back in our good graces. He's the one who's using the kids!"
"That's twisted! When did you turn so sour on life? Does everything have to have an evil motive with you?"
"And speaking of sex on the sea, just because you're currently looking at life through an orgasmic haze—"
"Shut up, Ivy. Shut up!"
"No, I won't shut up! If you had kids, you'd understand what I was talking about! It's easy to act like a high-court judge when you have no emotional stake in the case."
Holly was outraged. "Of course I have a stake! My God, I love the kids ... and Mom ... and you—and, yes, Dad, too! You don't stop loving someone just because he screwed up!"
"And that's another thing: you've never been married! Not even close! How would you know if a woman stops loving or not?" Ivy cried, driving the knife deep and then twisting. "How would you know?"
"I—wouldn't," Holly said, reeling from the attack. "You're right. I'm not married, I don't have kids." Furious, she fought back with the only weapon she could lay her hands on, bitter sarcasm. "Obviously I don't deserve to breathe the same rarified air as you and Mom. You're whole! You're complete! You've done it all! Whereas I—my goodness, whatever was I thinking?"
She shot her arms out in front of her and bowed low in scorn, then turned and swept out of the hall, breezing past her stunned mother in her flight.
As she unhooked her purse from the back of a kitchen chair, Holly overheard her mother say in a disapproving voice, "That was cruel, Ivy. She doesn't understand."
Ivy said angrily, "Maybe it's about time she learned! Forewarned is forearmed; there are a lot of Erics and Jacks out there!"
Jack?
Still in a state of roaring adrenalin, Holly slammed the back door behind her and went around to where her car would be if she had come in her car.
Shit. This is what happened when you let your mommy drive you places. Too embarrassed to return and ask for a lift, Holly decided to go home on foot. Her house wasn't that far—and God knew, she had the head of steam to get herself there.
Ironically, the evening was a fine one for walking, dry and clear and with no trace of the bone-chilling fog that had shrouded the island the night before. Tourists strolled and islanders drove, and every last one of them was undoubtedly in a better mood than Holly was.
Safe Harbor Page 19
