A Week at the Shore

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Dad would approve,” Anne says. “He always thought photography was a faux art.”

  “Christ, Anne,” Margo scolds.

  “What? It’s true.”

  Joy redeems herself by cutting in. “Your turn, Margo. What’s yours?”

  “Forbidden desire?” She takes her time crossing to the sink, searching for rubber gloves in the under-cabinet, pulling them on. Then she turns and holds up a hot pink finger. “Once, just once, I want to sing with Bradley Cooper.”

  “Well, that’s a good one,” says Anne. “You can’t sing.”

  “None of us can,” I point out and break into Happy Birthday to prove it. Joy covers her ears, but I’m smiling at the memory it brings. “If we celebrated a birthday anywhere but home, people around us would laugh. We were awful.”

  “Still are,” Margo says, “but that’s the point of this truth. It’s something I know I can’t have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it. Okay, smarty pants,” she goads Anne, “what’s yours?”

  Smarty pants. If that isn’t a flash from the past, I don’t know what is. It was Margo’s favorite epithet, used as many times on me as on Anne, and with the same goading now as then. But this isn’t the time to goad. Anne is too sensitive. I can’t believe Margo doesn’t see that.

  Anne continues to spoon leftovers into plastic containers—to spoon them slowly and with great care. I’m starting to wonder whether she’s too threatened to confess her forbidden desire, when she raises her eyes. They land hard on Margo. “I want a week alone with Mom.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  Nor does Margo, to judge from her silence. Finally, she says, “You hated Mom.”

  “I never knew Mom. You got her the most. You had her all to yourself for two years. Then you came along, Mal, and yeah, you had to share her with Margo, but two is better than three. I was third. I got the dregs. If Dad hadn’t paid attention to me, no one would have.”

  I can understand her wanting Mom’s undivided attention. We all did. But her vehemence? Her resentment? Her loving Dad more because she felt Mom loved her less? I always thought her loyalty to him came from the fact that he coddled her.

  Feeling horrible now, I ask, “Did you really think that?”

  “Yes.”

  Margo looks as disturbed as I am. “But everyone babied you. You got three times the attention either of us got. You had older sisters. I never did. We looked out for you in school. I never had that.”

  “I wanted Mom,” she repeats, glaring now.

  “Maybe I’m glad I don’t have siblings,” Joy states and, when all eyes snap to her, adds a meek, “Moving right along … secret hiding place?” To reinforce the diversion, she says, “Mine is the leg of the snowsuit I wore when I was a baby.”

  There is silence. I’m not sure any of us can recalibrate so quickly. Then again, I’m not sure any of us can fully process Anne’s declaration, least of all Anne, who is suddenly looking more wounded than angry. There are years of lost love in her expression. How to process that?

  We need time. Seeming to realize it too, Margo and Anne take visible breaths.

  I focus on Joy and say a quiet, “I know.”

  Her jaw drops. “You know?”

  “You’ve always been so insistent about saving that snowsuit for a child of your own, that when I saw the legs getting fatter, I checked it out.”

  “You looked?” Guarded now.

  “Squeezed. When what I felt was not a rat, I backed off.”

  She is barely relieved. “But now it’s no good as a hiding place.”

  “I said I didn’t look. I won’t.”

  She pouts before turning to Anne and muttering, “Secret hiding place?”

  “Daisy’s box,” Anne states. She’s still annoyed. But at least she’s playing.

  “Daisy,” I breathe, letting that particular memory surface into an image of something tiny and gray.

  “Our cat?” asks Margo. “Our one and only pet? Who was sick from the get-go?”

  “I loved her,” Anne declares, daring anyone to refute that.

  “What happened?” Joy asks Anne, before turning on me. “I never knew you had a cat.”

  “She didn’t live long,” I explain.

  “Three months,” Anne says. “She was born with a neurological thing, and I held her and hand-fed her and kept saying she needed medical treatment, only no one listened to me.”

  Margo clearly remembers that part, too. “There was nothing we could do,” she says.

  Anne looks about to argue, then relents. “Maybe not. We had her cremated. The ashes came back to us in a little wood box. It was mine.” To Joy, she says, “Every year on the anniversary of the day she died, I used to sprinkle a few of those ashes around outside.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I say and glance at Margo, who seems as ignorant as me.

  “When there were none left,” Anne goes on, “I used the box for whatever I wanted to hide. Since everyone still thought Daisy was inside, they wouldn’t touch it.”

  “Poor cat,” Joy whimpers and links an elbow through Anne’s in consolation.

  Anne looks at me. “What’s yours?”

  “Secret hiding place? Here?” I smile. “Empty film canisters.”

  “But they were tiny,” Margo argues.

  “So were the earrings that I didn’t want either of you to borrow. What about you?”

  My older sister’s eyes dart uneasily at my younger sister. She takes a tentative breath, murmurs, “Speaking of earrings,” and clears her throat. “There was a removable wood panel near the electrical outlet in the potting shed. I was watching when the outlet was installed. Remove the panel, and there’s a kind of shelf.”

  We wait.

  Finally, I ask, “What does that have to do with earrings?”

  Brows lifting in apology, she looks at Anne. “Those pearl earrings of Mom’s that you wanted?”

  “Mom lost them,” Anne says.

  “Unless some rodent is wearing pearl earrings, they’re still on that shelf.”

  Anne gasps. “You hid them so she couldn’t give them to me?”

  “I wanted them myself.”

  “I thought she didn’t want me to have them!” Pulling free of Joy’s arm, she backs away from us. “How could you do that, Margo? Didn’t you know what those earrings meant to me?”

  “No—”

  “Did you ever think of those earrings all these years? Did it never occur to you, especially after Mom died, that I might want them?”

  “No!”

  “Well, I would have. Even after all this time, I’d have liked to know she really did want me to have them, but you couldn’t be bothered. There you were living your sweet life in Chicago while I was back here taking care of Dad.” Her face is tight, her hands balled at her sides. “I’ve sacrificed, Margo. I’ve given up a bazillion other lives to take care of him. But you were too absorbed with yourself to chip in, because coming back here might interfere with your fancy-pantsy life. You left me all alone—just dumped everything on my shoulders—because you were too important to do things like dismantle your father’s office and pack up his life and take him to the dentist and … and buy him socks. You’re mean, Margo, mean.” Her voice is jagged. “Mean,” she shouts and makes for the door. “Selfish. Hateful.”

  “Where are you going?” Margo cries as Anne flies through the mudroom.

  “I want those earrings!”

  Margo is out the screen door seconds after her. Exchanging a look of alarm, Joy and I follow. Though I understand what Anne is feeling, I don’t know what she might do. Tear the shed apart looking for loose boards? Throw pots? Grab a trowel and hit Margo? When we were kids, she used to pummel Margo with her little fists if Margo made her angry enough. We aren’t kids now, but there’s something about family being reunited in the family home that unearths long-buried resentments.

  And then there’s the issue of my guilt. Much of what Anne said to Margo applies to me. I haven’t been
back to help with Dad. I didn’t help with Mom either. So here we are, my sisters and I, still worlds apart.

  The rain has slowed to a tepid mist, but with clouds blocking the moon, it’s dark. I hold Joy’s hand as we run down the stairs, then stop us both. “Maybe you should go back inside with Papa.” I want her with me. But that’s one more bit of selfishness to add to the rest. My sisters are a worry. It could get ugly.

  Joy tugs me into motion. “Are you kidding? I started this. I’m in.”

  Rounding the side of the house, we run over the wet grass. The potting shed is only a dark blob until a light goes on inside. It is dulled by the dirt on the windows, but first Anne’s, then Margo’s outlines appear. By the time we enter ourselves, Anne is at the far wall, the only one with a double layer, reaching over pots and between tools to pound at planks on either side of the outlet. Squeezing in beside her, Margo flattens a palm on the correct one, angles it in, lifts it out. Her hand is inside before Anne’s can make it. This is atonement for her.

  Then she screams and jerks her hand back.

  Snake, I think in panic.

  “Snake?” Joy yelps.

  Margo shakes her head as Anne reaches into the cavity. What she pulls out isn’t a snake. It is dark and small, but it doesn’t wiggle, slither, or coil. That would have been too easy.

  Chapter 20

  It’s a handgun, but it might have been reptilian from the way Anne holds it at arm’s length.

  “Omigod,” Joy breathes.

  Margo breathes something less polite.

  I am so hit by the implications of a gun existing that I barely breathe at all.

  But Anne does—breathes, thinks, acts in ways that suggest she has envisioned this scenario before. Securing her grip on the weapon, she rushes past us out of the shed.

  “Stop!” Margo yells.

  “Go back to the house, Joy,” I order and take off after Anne. The light escaping the grimy windows of the shed is absorbed in an instant by the murk, but I know the way. She has made a beeline for the beach stairs and is racing down. “No, Anne, wait!” I shout, because I know what she plans, and she shouldn’t, absolutely should not.

  The rain has picked up again, thickening the pungent smells of vegetation and marine life, but nothing slows her. Racing across the wet sand and down the sodden dock to its end, she hauls back, puts everything she has into a side-arm swing, and hurls the gun far out to sea.

  Stumbling to a stop beside her, I watch in horror as it disappears. Given its import, it should make some sort of show before going down. But if even the smallest splash occurs, it is lost in the rain-roiled waves.

  “Anne!” I protest, dismayed, “why?”

  She turns on me, voice rising over sea and rain. “Why not! I don’t want a gun around. He threatened Jack, he’ll threaten other people, he just loses it sometimes without knowing what he’s doing, and now you and Margo are here—and Joy, do you want a gun around her? What kind of mother are you? What kind of awful mother wants a gun anywhere near her child?”

  “You said there was no gun, you swore it,” I charge, refusing to look back when footsteps patter from behind. I’m suddenly, powerfully livid at Anne—livid that a gun did exist, livid that it is now gone, livid that she didn’t consider anyone’s wishes but her own. Mostly, I’m livid that she doubts I’m a responsible mother. She stood up there on the bluff all but crying at the thought of raising a child alone. But everything I’ve done for Joy all these years, I’ve done alone. It was me, only me—no Bill, no Dad, no Lina, no cozy little Bay Bluff to help—and I’ve produced an incredible person, so clearly I’ve done something right.

  Anne may be right. I haven’t been here for Dad. But I’m a good mother. She has no right to question that. And I’m a good sister, if keeping the three of us in touch is any measure. She didn’t help with that, not one bit. It has been me, all me, spending a lifetime trying to keep peace.

  Well, fuck that. Birth order only goes so far. Attack me, and finally, belatedly, wholeheartedly, I attack back.

  Here on the dock in the dark under a steady rain, I let go in a voice that is fierce after years of restraint. “You call Margo selfish, but you’re the selfish one, Anne. You had no right to do what you just did. It was thoughtless and uncaring. What happened that night happened to all of us. Just because we weren’t here doesn’t mean that gun didn’t shape our lives. It’s haunted us for twenty years—was the biggest question—and you just threw away all the answers. What in the hell were you thinking?”

  Eyes dark, mouth tight, there is little sugar in her heart-shaped face. “That gun would tell us nothing.”

  “How do you know? It had a story. If we’d been able to confront him with it, he might have talked. If it had a serial number, it could have been traced.”

  She doesn’t blink. “Why? You want to stir up the whole sordid story again? I mean, God, Mallory, it’s not like a medical examiner can match a bullet to a body. There’s no body.”

  “That’s not the point!” I shout. The ocean air blows through my increasingly wet clothes, but it’s not cold that shakes me. It’s anger. “The point is, we might have learned something. He denied having a gun that night. If we’d been able to trace this one to a later manufacture date, we’d have known for sure that he was telling the truth. If he didn’t buy it, we might have been able to find out who did. Maybe it belonged to Elizabeth. Maybe Dad tried to take it away from her and it accidentally went off. Maybe she deliberately shot herself.”

  “Maybe Anne bought the gun,” Margo says from my side. The poised Chicagoan is gone. Like the rest of us, she is soaked. Joy is beside her, and while I want her back at the house, out of the rain, and away from ugliness, it’s too late to shield her. To her credit, she knows to keep her mouth shut.

  Not Anne, who cries, “Are you kidding? I would never buy a gun. I don’t want to touch a gun.”

  “But you knew he had one,” Margo says.

  “I did not.”

  “You knew it was in the shed.”

  “I did not! What is wrong with you?” She points a shaky finger up at the bluff. “Did you not see me back there? I didn’t even know there was a loose panel! You did, Margo—and if I hid a gun there, wouldn’t I have known about the earrings—earrings Mom meant for me—earrings that you stole?” Perhaps remembering them now and wanting to get them, she tries to dodge past us, but we are three blocking her one, all four of us bedraggled. And I’m not done.

  “It was Dad then,” I say. “Dad hid the gun there.”

  “Why does it matter? The gun is gone! He can’t use it. We’re safe. That’s one good thing about Margo being a thief—it led us to the gun—and anyway, Mallory, why should I listen to you? Put you to the test, and your true colors show. I always knew you were on her side.” Her gaze broadens. “If either of you cared for Dad, you’d know I did the best thing.”

  “Just because the gun is gone doesn’t mean it didn’t exist,” Margo says.

  “It didn’t,” Anne insists. “That gun had nothing to do with what happened to Elizabeth.”

  “Well, wouldn’t it have been nice to prove that,” I say. I’m growing desperate, like she is an impenetrable wall getting thicker by the minute. “I have tried so hard, Anne—have tried to keep things calm between us—and all you can think about is who’s on whose side? What about the common good? What about working as a threesome? What about consulting each other and reaching a consensus? Did it not occur to you that we might have thoughts about disposing of the gun? Did you not think to ask?”

  “You would have said no.”

  “Because no was the responsible thing to say,” I argue. “Listen to yourself. It’s great that you’re an optimist, but there’s a difference between optimism and naiveté. Optimism is the hope that things will work out well. Naiveté is the refusal to be realistic when they don’t. Being naïve doesn’t work now, and trust me it won’t work in seven months—” I trip at the words and quickly add, “or twelve months or twenty
months.” But the damage is done.

  Anne’s face changes into something I’ve never seen. “You’re right about not being my sister,” she seethes with a venom that the rain can’t dilute. “Whoever your father is, he must be a rat. You’re not Dad’s. You have none of his good in you. You’re the bastard daughter, Mallory,” she spits, “the bastard.” When she pushes past me, I’m stunned enough to do nothing.

  She doesn’t run, simply stalks back down the rain-coated dock to the beach as we watch in shock.

  “What was that about?” Margo says into her wake, then to me, “What was that about?”

  I push wet hair back from my face. “Anger,” I reply, but I’m trembling harder than ever. When Joy’s cold fingers slip between mine, it’s a lifeline. Pulling her close, I tuck her hand against my churning middle. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Suddenly, brutally aware that I’m the mother, she the child, and we’re standing in the rain, I wrap an arm around her and start us down the dock. “I didn’t think it would get so bad.”

  “What was she talking about, Mom?”

  “What was that about?” Margo repeats from my other side. I pick up the pace, but she stays close. “‘Whoever your father is’? What in the hell did she mean by that? And seven months? That’s a magic number. Is she pregnant?”

  Joy might have missed that part had Margo not pointed it out, but I’m too devastated to do more than mutter, “She’ll have to tell you herself,” and hurry across the sand. The night is too dark, too wet, too empty at the edges for me to be here another minute.

  “She is,” Margo declares as we hit the stairs. “Is it Billy’s?”

  “You’ll have to ask her,” I say, not trusting myself with another word. Having botched this whole thing, I’m numb. I can’t possibly imagine the awful scene to come inside.

  Even before we reach the top of the stairs, though, headlights slice through the rain. With the angry crunch of tires on wet gravel, Anne whips the Volvo around. By the time we’ve fully crested the bluff, red taillights have shrunk and, seconds later, are gone.