“The surroundings she’s familiar with would oppress Old King Cole,” I said to Peter when he called that night. “I’m taking her to Retreat in the morning and the hell with continuity. Tommy professes to be concerned about it, but even I can hear the siren call of McNulty’s tavern down on the docks through his protests. To hell with all of them, Peter. She needs Retreat and so do I. And I’ll bet you do too. When can you come?”
“Oh, Maudie, not for a while,” he said, and I thought he was truly contrite. “Martin wants maybe another month; they’ve asked me to do a southern leg, and I really ought to. The scholarship is almost assured. And after that, a city or two in Canada—”
“Oh, Peter,” I said softly, disappointment searing me. I had seen us all together so long in my mind, playing on the beach with Darcy or sailing with her, her little head aflame in all that blue.
“But I promise I’ll come when I can,” he said hastily. “Listen. How’d you like to meet the President? Not to mention Jackie?”
“Peter! When?”
“Sometime around Christmas; Martin says JFK wants us to come to one of the state to-dos during the holidays. Dinner and a concert or something. I said I’d love to, but of course I’d have to coax you.”
He laughed. He knew I loved the tall young President with a fierceness to match that red head, and my joy and pride in him had gotten me into not a little hot water at Boston and Northpoint dinner parties, where Republicanism flourished like tomatoes around a hog pen, as Aurelia used to say so long ago on Wappoo Creek.
I laughed too.
“Boy, are you going to have to dish out for a new dress,” I said. “Okay. We’ll see you when we see you. But August, Peter. By August. Promise.”
“I promise, Maude,” he said.
Retreat did, indeed, start to work its magic on Darcy from almost the instant we arrived at Liberty. Micah had engaged Caleb’s capable wife, Beth, to mind her in the mornings and early afternoons, on the condition that small Micah Willis III could come along, and from the moment Darcy laid eyes on that square, brown, darting three-year-old the healing began. Darcy stretched out a finger from the safety of my arms and touched his nose and said, “Funny,” and both children stared at each other and then began to laugh, that glorious, froggy belly laugh of childhood that sweeps everything before it into joy. After that, her robust bloom came creeping back, and she began to walk and then to run after him wherever in Liberty and on the lawn and beach and down at the yacht club that Beth took them, and in the space of two days they were inseparable, almost twinlike in their closeness.
“I never saw anything like it,” I said to Micah on the afternoon of the second day, when he came to pick up Beth and little Mike. “She’s as shameless as a camp follower. Oh, Micah, this is such a place for children; I wish every child could have a dose of Retreat. It’s practically healed her already, when nothing else we or the doctor did helped.”
I knew he would understand my allusion. I had told him about Happy and our visits to the family counselor when I called, and he had merely snorted.
He looked speculatively at me, now, and I read something in his dark face that stopped my tongue. I waited. He did not speak.
“What’s bothering you?” I said finally.
“Nothing that won’t wait.”
“Tell me now. I’ve got Petie and Sarah coming for supper, and whatever it is will just hang over me until I know. Tell me so I can enjoy my evening.”
He sat down on the edge of the kitchen table and picked Darcy up and held her over his shoulder, absently fondling the red curls while she patted him all over, head and face and shoulders, mouth and nose, babbling softly to herself.
“I reckon Petie and Sarah aren’t going to tell you, at least not right off, so I will, because you should know. It isn’t apt to amount to much, but this is a small place…there’s been a smart bit of talk around the colony this summer about last fall. About the hurricane, and Elizabeth and the baby, and all. It’s not so nasty as it could be, but bad enough, and it’s gotten back to Sarah and Petie and the girls. I hear the girls had some things said to them at camp. Petie and Sarah have gotten so they won’t go out, and people have gotten so they’re kind of scared to ask them, thinkin’ they won’t want to come—you know the damn fool kind of social things that go on up here. So now I think Petie and Sarah feel that everybody’s avoiding them. It’s good you’re here. They’ve been holed up in the Little House for two weeks, like they were under siege. Truth is, everybody’d be glad to see them, but I think they’re past seeing that. Nothing you can’t fix, I’m sure.”
My heart dropped coldly, and then anger flared up, red and blinding.
“What talk, Micah? Who started it?”
“Talk about who the baby might favor, and one thing and another,” he said levelly. “You were bound to hear it, Maude, and it was bound to start. Place small as this, and the drama of it, and then most everybody knew about Petie and Elizabeth being up here that time two winters ago, and most of ’em can count. It would have flurried around a little and died out, but Gretchen Winslow got it early from those two little fairies up at the inn—thick as thieves they are this summer, those three; goin’ to open a collectibles shop, I hear—and is amusing herself by keeping it spinning right along. Doesn’t take much, a word here and a little eyebrow raisin’ there. If Petie and Sarah had laughed at her, or told her to shut her face when they first heard it, it’d be over now. But they didn’t. Just went into the Little House and shut the door.”
“I would like to kill her,” I said, tears stinging. But I did not cry.
“Wouldn’t be a bad thing, actually,” he said. “But you’d do better by getting Petie and Sarah to come out and settle her hash. Wouldn’t be hard to do. They could just have a few folks in and not invite her. I took Petie sailing last week and suggested just that, but I guess by now they’re afraid nobody would come if they asked them.”
“Well,” I said, “I can do better than that. I’ll have a party and ask everybody in Retreat but Gretchen. Every single living soul. A party for—let’s see—Petie’s birthday. An early birthday party. I’ll do it next week. It’s going to be the biggest party anybody ever had in Retreat, and they’re going to talk about it for years, and Gretchen Winslow is the only breathing soul who won’t be there. I’ll send the invitations tonight.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Micah said, and began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I glared at him.
“You. You remind me so much of your mother-in-law.”
“Well, thanks so much, Mr. Willis. If I can ever return the favor, do let me know.”
“No, you remember the year she died, when Gretchen Winslow popped off at her and you because you’d brought us to the yacht club, and she asked us to sit on the porch with her in front of the entire colony and took Gretchen’s chairs to boot.”
I began to laugh too.
“Punishment by porch privileges,” I said. “A form of social retribution unknown except to the female of the species.”
“Ayuh,” Micah said. “And the thing was, she didn’t like us worth a damn, but she did it anyway. I guess she figured an afternoon with us was preferable to a minute of Gretchen Winslow’s tongue. Stopped it too, if I recall. Don’t know if it would work now. Gretchen’s acting this summer like she runs Retreat and the village both. No bounds on her tongue. She’s hurt a lot of feelings. Guess she figures she’s the doyenne.”
“Gretchen has a great deal to answer for,” I said. “And she’s just about to answer to me.”
“Good huntin’, Maude,” he said, and jerked his thumb up in the old World War II airman’s salute, and went out of the kitchen, still grinning.
“Absolutely not,” Petie said that night when I told him and Sarah about the party. His face was mottled with anger and what looked to me like fear. Micah had been right; he and Sarah had not mentioned the talk around the colony, but they were both thinner, and their faces were strained and pale, fac
es that had rarely seen the sun. I was glad I had sat down to write notes of invitation to the colony the instant Micah and Beth and little Mike left, and had hurried to the post office to mail them only minutes before my children came to Liberty. There was no going back now.
“It’s going to be a wonderful party,” I said. “You’ve never really had a birthday party in Retreat, and you’re the first Retreat baby I know of. It’s past time.”
“It’s monstrous,” Petie said. “It’s a vulgar outrage and worse; it’s a bribe to everybody up here. We’re absolutely not going to consider it.”
Sarah said nothing but looked at me speculatively.
“I think you’ll have to consider it, darling,” I said. “The invitations have already gone out—to everyone but Gretchen, of course; I really didn’t think she’d add a lot to the festivities.”
“Then you’ll have it alone, because we will not come,” my son said, the mottling fading to white.
“Yes, we will,” Sarah said. “Thank you, Grammaude. It’s a lovely idea.”
“Sarah,” Petie began, but she turned on him, her eyes sparkling.
“Hush,” she said. “Don’t you know when your hide is about to be saved?”
Petie hushed. We had a pleasant nightcap before the fire, and I watched Sarah in its light. There was a power about her that I had not seen before, and it eased my heart. Petie might be the undisputed lord of that marriage, but I saw that Sarah had become, sometime during the difficult past year, its rock. I smiled at her and she returned the smile, fully.
“Thank you, and I mean it, Grammaude,” she said softly to me, while Petie hunted for a flashlight to see them down the cliff path to the Little House. “It’s a stroke of genius,” she added, bursting into laughter. “If you’re going to break the rules, break them big. I’ll remember that. Even if it doesn’t work, this party is the most wonderful go-to-hell thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It will work,” I said, kissing her cheek. “You wait and see.”
“What in God’s name are you thinking about?” Peter said, when I called him late that night. He was in Atlanta and would be heading to New Orleans the next day. His voice was tight and irritable; Peter hated heat.
“I’m thinking about a birthday party for our son, nothing more and nothing less,” I said. “I called to see if you might not slip away and come for it. You’re back in Boston that weekend, before you go to Canada. I’ve got your schedule right here. You could drive over just for that night, if nothing else. Peter, you must. You’re the only missing piece. You really must.”
“I think it’s a ghastly idea, Maude,” he said. “Probably the worst thing you could do, under the circumstances. Spare us all and cancel the goddamned thing.”
“Under the circumstances, Peter,” I said, “it’s the only thing I can do.”
He was silent, and then he said, “Things are bad there.”
“They have been. Gretchen, of course. They’re looking better, though. And this will cinch it for good and all. But you’ve got to be here. That’s vital.”
“This could blow up in all our faces, sky high,” he said urgently. “What if nobody comes, or only a few? What kind of game are you playing, Maude?”
“A game for mortal stakes,” I said softly.
“ ‘Only where love and need are one,’ ” Peter said after a moment, and I could hear the smile in his voice, “ ‘And the work is play for mortal stakes,/Is the deed ever really done/For Heaven and the Future’s sakes.’ ”
“Robert Frost couldn’t have said it better,” I said.
“So you think the deed has to be done for Heaven and the Future’s sakes.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then I’ll try to come,” Peter said. “I can’t promise, but I will try.”
“Try very hard, darling,” I said, and hung up.
That weekend I took Mike Willis and Darcy, in her stroller, down to the yacht club. It was late afternoon, and the fleet was straggling in after the Saturday regatta, and much of the colony had gathered on the porch to see them in and have tea. That had not changed since Mother Hannah’s day.
It was a glorious blue-edged day, warmer than most, even nearing August, and the porch and steps were crowded. My heart began to pound as I rounded the last curve in the lane and came into view with the dark little boy at my side and Darcy bobbing and crowing in her stroller. Her hair blazed in the sun, and there were pink-bronze roses in her cheeks. I had, on a whim, put her into a blue T-shirt and white trousers, miniatures of what I wore myself. I took a deep breath. I had seen none of these people since before the storm last September. It was a gauntlet of sorts and I knew it, even if woven of my oldest friends. And I knew Gretchen Winslow would be among them. Well, that could not be put off any longer. Get it done.
There was silence, and then a few tentative smiles broke out, and a soft murmur, and Dierdre Kennedy called from one of the rockers, where she sat with the female elders of the colony, “Well, look who’s here! We’ve missed you, Maude, dear. Bring that baby here and let’s have a look. We’ve all been dying to meet her.”
Bless you, Dierdre, I said to myself, and lifted Darcy out of the stroller and took Mike’s hand and went up the steps to the group of rockers. More smiles and a flutter of greetings followed me, and hands reached out to pat Darcy, and my breath eased a little. Then it quickened. Gretchen Winslow sat in the last chair in the group, years younger than any of the other occupants but looking as regally at ease as if she owned the entire club by sheer force of being, and there was in her splendid water-green eyes the look of a lioness crouched for the kill. There was no mistake about that.
“Hello, Gretchen,” I said. “And Dierdre, and Erica, and all the Stallingses. This is Darcy, Happy’s little girl. She’s spending the summer with us; we bribed her mother and father liberally. Can you say hello, Darcy?”
“’Lo!” Darcy shrieked, and everybody laughed, Gretchen loudest of all.
“And who’s your handsome boyfriend, Darcy?” she said, looking at Mike Willis out of the long eyes. “That’s a Willis, or I miss my guess. Keeping it in the family, sweetie?”
I looked at her. She smiled into my face. Beautiful; she was still simply so beautiful. And as dangerous to me and mine as a madwoman. There had scarcely been time for replies to begin coming in to my invitations, but I knew Gretchen would have heard about the party. I was going to begin paying for that today, and so were those close to me. Micah had said there were no bounds on her tongue this summer. He had been right.
“We hope so,” I said, grateful that dark glasses shielded my eyes. “Every time I look at Mike I wish parents still arranged marriages.”
“Oh, but they do—at least, if they’re lucky,” Gretchen said, and there was just the smallest murmur on the porch. The old ladies present would remember perfectly how discontented Mother Hannah had been at her son’s choice of a bride.
“Not always, or many of us would have different surnames, wouldn’t we?” I smiled at Gretchen, and her smooth coffee-tan face darkened. The old women would remember, too, that Gretchen had set her cap publicly for Peter all the years before me.
I turned to Dierdre Kennedy and hugged her, and she reached out her arms for Darcy. Darcy went into them, gurgling and smiling.
“What a darling she is!” Dierdre said. “It’s really so good to have you back, Maude. When is Peter coming? We’re all so thrilled about his book.”
“Be-dar!” Darcy crowed, and everyone laughed.
“Yes, darling, Peter,” I said. “Granddaddy. He’s coming next weekend, as a matter of fact, Dierdre. And looking forward to seeing everybody,”
I did not need to look at Gretchen to know that she understood precisely where Peter would see everyone. The party throbbed in the air between us like a sunspot.
“You know,” Frances Stallings said, tilting her head at Darcy, “she is the absolute image of you, Maude. Not the coloring but everything else: the shape of her face, and the smile, and that
compact little body. It’s uncanny.”
“Isn’t it,” Gretchen Winslow said.
I knew what was coming, and that it would be bad. I tensed my muscles, waiting.
“And isn’t it a shame about Elizabeth’s baby,” she murmured. “If it had lived, Peter would have had a perfect little miniature Chambliss to take around with him, just like Maude has a Gascoigne. A matched set of look-alike grandchildren, as it were.”
This time there was no gasp, only silence. It was far beyond the pale; even Gretchen seemed to know that. She opened her mouth to speak further and then did not. She looked away from me and down.
Help me, Mother Hannah, I said silently, entirely spontaneously, and then I leaned down slightly, so she would have to meet my eyes, and said, “You might as well give it up, Gretchen. Peter didn’t marry you when he could have, and he hasn’t gone to bed with you any time since then—and boy, could he have!—and he isn’t going to, any time in the future. If I were you I’d cut my losses and get out of the game.”
And I smiled, and took Darcy back from Dierdre Kennedy, and went down the steps and put her in her stroller, and we went back up the lane toward home, Mike Willis capering ahead of us. Behind me, just as we turned the curve that would hide us, I heard, as distinctly as I heard it every summer day in Retreat from the little tennis court, the soft pattering of applause.
I knew then there would be no refusals to Petie’s birthday party.
“And there aren’t, not a single one,” I said to Peter at midweek on the phone. I would not, I decided, tell him about the ugliness with Gretchen. I knew there would be no more of it—not, at least, that would be likely to touch us. “Everybody’s coming. I even asked those strange people from Los Angeles who’re renting Braebonnie this summer, and they’re coming. Everybody says they’re actors, Peter; isn’t that wonderful? Just what we need in Retreat. It’s going to be the party of the century.”
Colony Page 41
