Beach Roses

by Jean Stone

  They had sailed to Chatham and halfway back, Greg and his college friend. Dana had gone with them and brought her boyfriend-of-the-week. The two had stayed on deck once the sun went down, to neck and drink and God-knew-what. It was several minutes before the boy pulled himself together to alert Greg that his sister had gone overboard back a few hundred feet.

  It had been too late. And the pain they’d all endured had been too steep a price to pay, especially for Greg.

  When Faye’s breast cancer came along two years later, its punch of trauma and disbelief was weak and insignificant by comparison.

  She rolled onto her stomach, aware of the saline pouch that had been implanted after that, aware of her remaining breast, now tattooed for what was left of her shattered life. And then Faye listened to the fire and wondered if there was a God and if there was a heaven and if she would see Dana when she finally died.

  SEVEN

  It could have been a day since Faye had curled up on the floor. It could have been a day, or maybe it was two, that she had only moved to stir the fire or to add another log, only rose two or three times to pee. Even Mouser seemed to sense the need to just stay put, to lounge in and out of napping without noticing the world.

  She did not know how long she’d been there when the pounding sounded at the door.

  “Faye! Let me in!”

  It was her sister, Claire, who had no business being on the island at this time of year, let alone at Faye’s house when she’d not been invited.

  “Faye! Goddamnit!” Pound, pound, pound.

  Faye ran her hand through her hair and considered not answering the door. But the Mercedes was in the driveway and the noise had suddenly alerted Mouser, who rubbed against her back and who, no doubt, wanted food.

  A loud thud followed by another suggested that in another heartbeat her perfect sister would break down the goddamn door.

  “Just a minute,” Faye shouted at what turned out to be the top of her lungs. The volume was surprising because she’d not heard her voice for hours, maybe days.

  She hauled herself up off the floor and knew she must look ridiculous, with matted hair and mottled, unwashed skin. Clutching the comforter around her, she made her way to the back door.

  Claire was not amused. “Let me in, you ungrateful, lying bitch.” She did not wait for an invitation, but bullied her way through the door, her fur coat leaving the scent of a slightly damp, slightly gamy animal in its wake. In the living room, she yanked off the coat and threw it on a sofa.

  “I drove through two feet of leftover snow to get here,” she announced.

  Faye blinked and took another look outside. Though the sun was shining now, indeed, a thick shelf of snow carpeted the yard. She doubted it was two feet, though.

  “I would have driven through seven feet, but that’s how I am.” She rubbed her arms as she stood in front of the dying fire. “You didn’t tell me,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  So Claire had learned about the cancer. After all these weeks, just when Faye thought she was off the hook, somehow her sister had found out.

  “How do you think that made me feel? I kept calling you at home and at your office. Finally Gwen said maybe I should call your doctor. I said, ‘I can’t just call her doctor.’ She said, ‘Yes, you can if you pretend you’re her.’ So I called and said I needed the date of my next appointment. The woman laughed and said it was in two weeks for the mammogram, how had I forgotten that? She didn’t think forgetfulness was a side effect of radiation.”

  Gwen? Faye had called the office when she’d arrived on the Vineyard. She’d asked Gwen to finalize the RGA study. She’d asked if she would mind presenting the results in Chicago. She had told her she was on the island, but she had not mentioned breast cancer. Then again, Faye paid Gwen well because she was so smart.

  “What did you think?” Claire went on, her voice trembling now, shaky from anger, Faye knew, because she knew her sister and her sister’s moods and her reactions as well as she knew her own. “Did you think I wouldn’t stand by you? Did you think I would make matters worse?”

  She marched around the room while Faye remained standing in one place. Claire waved her hands around; Faye caught a glimpse of the tiny ring of wampum on Claire’s little finger. She turned her head away.

  “And what about poor Adam?” Claire went on. “The reason I was trying to find you was that, believe it or not, he said he’d like to try again to meet you. I know it was just a lunch date, Faye, but wouldn’t it have been kinder to simply say ‘Sorry, I’m not dating right now because I have breast cancer again’?”

  Faye briefly wondered if Claire had any idea how absurd her last comment had sounded.

  Suddenly Claire whipped around and flailed her arms at Faye. “I’m just goddamn mad, that’s what I am! I’m just goddamn mad that I drove all the way down here and caught an impossibly rocky ferry and nearly heaved my breakfast just so I could come and tell you that I’m sorry and—Look at you!”

  Faye bent her head to look at herself.

  “You are a mess! When was the last time you had a shower?”

  Leaning down, Faye picked up Mouser and held him against the comforter and against her breast, the one that was maimed but not yet gone. She kissed his head. She turned and went into the kitchen to get the cat something to eat. She left Claire standing by the fire. By the time she found the cat food, opened the can, and dumped the contents on a plate, Claire had put her fur back on and stormed out the door with the same explosive force with which she had arrived.

  And then Faye realized that she hadn’t said a word to her younger sister because Claire had not asked how she was feeling and if there was anything that she could do to help.

  “So far I’ve completely alienated one woman and leaked the secrets of another. Can they still call it a support group if the membership is only one?”

  “Rita, calm down,” Charlie said into the phone. He said that lots of times to her, because it was his job as the kindly, understanding husband. It was, however, easier to take when he was sitting next to her and not over on Nantucket, building other people’s houses.

  “This wouldn’t happen if you were here,” she said, and knew it made no sense and was glad he didn’t point that out.

  “Think about the Women’s Center,” he said. “Remember, it’s for the island.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She looked out the kitchen window and wondered if the damn snow would ever melt or if she’d have to pay a kid to shovel, after all. God, she hated feeling like a single parent, head-of-household once again.

  “Besides,” he added, “it will keep me home, if you can stand it.”

  “What?”

  The line crackled a little; calls between the islands sometimes did that.

  “Ben and I reviewed Doc’s plans today,” Charlie said above the crackle. “When we’re finished on Nantucket, we’re coming home to build the Center.”

  Rita smiled. Her husband was coming home. “Yeah?”

  “Only if you want me there,” he said with a Charlie-chuckle, which he did because he knew there was nowhere else Rita wanted him except in their home and in their bed. “As long as you don’t screw up the funding for the place.”

  If he meant that to be funny, Rita was not amused.

  She did not take a shower, but she took a bath. The water helped to warm her; Faye could not remember it ever being so cold in the big, old house, except for the night that Dana died.

  She brewed some tea and tossed a wedge of cheese and a ragged piece of a baguette onto a plate. She vaguely remembered stopping at the store; she must have gone out just before the storm, because the bread was fairly fresh.

  Taking her food into the living room, she sat on the sofa in a more civilized manner. She glanced at the phone and wondered why Gwen had not called to warn her about the coming of perfect Claire. But seeing the phone only reminded Faye that she had not heard from R.J. Browne.

  What if Greg could not
be found?

  The bread was not as fresh as she had thought. She washed it down with a long drink of tea, then started to tap her foot, her senses slowly reviving as her life kicked in again.

  Glancing around, Faye wondered what had possessed her to keep this old place after the divorce. Was it because Claire had a cottage down the road? Was it so Greg would always be able to find his mother? She thought about Rita Blair. Had Faye simply kept the house as some form of revenge?

  No commission for you, my pretty.

  Ha!

  Faye pictured Rita as if it were yesterday. She was dressed like a hooker in a sleeveless white tank dress that barely covered her crotch and did little to obscure anything about her breasts except her nipples. She had that mass of red, red hair and wore ridiculous stiletto heels.

  “My name is Rita Blair,” the woman had said. “I’m the owner of SurfSide Realty.”

  She was, of course, there to get laid. Faye knew that, because she knew her husband, Joe Geissel, better, even, than she knew her sister. Rita Blair was there to get laid and she had not expected to see Faye because Faye usually spent summer weekdays in the city—it was what she had been doing since Dana died, because she could not stand to sit still, especially on the Vineyard.

  It was not the first time Faye had been faced with the reality of Joe’s indiscretions, but it was the first time one had stood on her back stairs, claiming she had a buyer for her house that was not for sale.

  It had made her sick, though Rita Blair would not know that. It was not until the woman had rattled her old car down the driveway that Faye allowed herself to calmly go into the bathroom, remove her beige linen shorts and sleeveless silk shirt, step into her robe, neatly tie the long sash, then move to the toilet bowl and vomit her last meal.

  They met again, that time on the ferry when Rita had followed her. She’d said she had an offer of two million for the house.

  Faye had tried to change seats.

  “You do know that while you’re in the city each week, your husband is conducting his own business, don’t you? His own very personal business?” Rita stuffed a business card into the book that Faye had been reading. “Call me by Tuesday or the offer is gone.”

  It had been several years and a long divorce ago. And though Faye had never called her, she hardly could forget that woman or her red hair. It was apparent, however, that Rita did not remember Faye, whose hair had not been silver then. Perhaps Faye had merely been one of a string of summer people Rita had tried to screw. Literally. Figuratively.

  Faye sipped her tea again and realized it was now cold. Cold like the house. But she still sat there, holding on to the cup, when an hour or so later, another knock sounded at her door.

  It wasn’t Claire this time; it was Doc Hastings.

  The first time Katie had seen Joleen after Joleen’s nervous breakdown was at a sprawling house somewhere in the Berkshires. Katie was thirteen and her father had just finished her first music video. The song had been an old one of Joleen’s.

  She cried when she saw Katie. “My Kathryn,” she had said, but seemed afraid to hug her daughter who was, by then, nearly as tall as she was. Joleen was still beautiful, in her earthy sort of way.

  They’d walked through a cemetery down the street from the sprawling house. Across from the cemetery was a bell tower.

  “An old man plays the chimes every day at twelve o’clock,” Joleen told Katie and her father. “There’s a woman on my floor who goes insane when he does.” Then she laughed. “That’s some joke, isn’t it? That she goes insane?”

  Katie had laughed because she loved her mother and had spent four years without her.

  On the drive back to the city, Cliff told Katie he had filed for divorce. Katie just stared out the car window at the Hudson River, which snaked alongside the road. “You understand, don’t you, Katie-Kate?” he asked. “Our lives are going to change now. Your mother will be better off without us.”

  The next time Katie saw Joleen was at her high school graduation. Although she had three hit records by then (all remakes of Joleen’s), Cliff had insisted that Katie finish high school. She did not notice Joleen until the ceremony was over, when she caught sight of a woman at the back of the auditorium. The woman had long hair and wore a long black dress and shawl. She disappeared among the crowd.

  When Katie was nineteen, she went to the Vineyard, because that was where Joleen had gone after she was cured. The visit had been tentative. Katie talked and Joleen answered and they went to a bean supper at the church, because it was off-season and nosey tourists would not bother them. They had not really bonded, because Katie’s father—not his presence, but his existence—seemed to get in the way.

  Katie sat in the middle of her bed now and tried to pull her knees up to her chest—they did not come close. Nearly seven pregnant months had eliminated both pink sequins and flexibility from her life.

  Stretching out, she lay her hand on top of her growing baby-mound. “Are you okay in there?” she asked, but did not get a response.

  With a small sigh, Katie wondered what to do that day and the next. Joleen, no doubt, was painting, sequestered in her studio. They ate their meals together and spoke cordially, but the wall of years stood fast between them: there were few words; there were no hugs.

  She supposed that she could write a song. But Katie’s biggest hits were Joleen’s songs, not hers. “Joleen with a nineties twist,” Cliff promoted Katie early on. It no longer was the nineties, but Katie still sang her mother’s songs.

  She rolled onto her side. She could call Miguel. “Come and get me and our baby,” she could say. “I will marry you.”

  They would not need to tell Cliff until it had been done.

  But would Miguel still want to marry her if he knew that she had cancer? Would Ina want him to?

  She pressed her fingers to her temples. If she’d had the mastectomy, her fans might or might not still love her. But what about Miguel? Would he still love her if they had a baby but she had no breast and no career?

  She could not call him. The baby was his, but the cancer was hers alone. Whatever was she thinking? “Cabin fever,” the old salts of the island called it.

  She thought about Jack Nicholson in Stephen King’s The Shining. If she didn’t get out soon, would Katie lose her mind?

  “Damn,” she said and sat up. Before she turned into Jack Nicholson, she supposed she could start a journal the way Rita had suggested. It’s not as if anyone would see it, out there on the Vineyard.

  First, she needed paper and a pen. Maybe she could find something across the hall in Joleen’s bedroom.

  “I’d offer you a drink, but I’m not sure what’s here.” Faye had let Doc into the house and directed him to the living room, where the fire’s embers barely glowed.

  “Nothing, thanks,” the old man said as he sat down.

  Faye turned to the fireplace and began to layer on more logs. Despite the fact that wood was a welcome mat for field mice, she was grateful she’d stockpiled it last fall; it was almost as if she’d known she’d be back before the summer and would need a cozy fire. It was almost as if she’d known about cancer-number-two.

  “How are you feeling?” Though Doc was not her physician, he had seen her through much pain: the summer Dana died; the other summer after her first diagnosis. He had talked her through the rough spots; more than a doctor, he had been a friend. When she’d arrived on the Vineyard ten days or more ago, he’d been the only one she’d called.

  “I’m okay,” she lied, “most of the time.” She stoked the fire; they talked about the storm. Then she turned around and sat down. “Rita told you I walked out on the group.” Her eyes moved to his kindly face. “I don’t need a support group, Doc. It’s foolish at my age.”

  Rubbing his hands, he leaned forward on his knees. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  At least he didn’t scream at her the way Claire had done.

  She would not, of course, tell him the real reason she
could not go back. “Rita wants us to keep a journal,” Faye said, then added with a snicker, “I haven’t done that since I was a kid. My sister found my diary and read every word. ‘Faye loves Jimmy O’Brien.’ She taunted me with that for a year. I swore I’d never write.”

  Doc sort of smiled again.

  They sat in the silence. The fire hissed and popped.

  “They’re scared,” Doc said. He folded his hands and seemed to study his fingers, his age-thickened knuckles, his brown-spotted skin. “I brought Hannah’s husband into the world. And her three kids. Buried her mother-in-law just three years ago. Ovarian cancer.”

  Faye’s eyes moved to the fire.

  “Katie’s only twenty-one,” he added. “I had hoped you might help them.”

  She glanced at him, then turned her head away. “I thought you suggested the support group to lift me from my depression.” His words had not been exactly that, but close enough.

  “And I thought you might help them,” he repeated. “You’ve been through it, Faye. They haven’t.”

  She’d been through it, all right. As if cancer was not bad enough, she’d been through a confrontation with a woman with red hair who’d been fucking her husband as if she’d been entitled. She’d been through two more years of veiled denial until she’d had the courage to hire R.J. and start the steps to the divorce. Faye’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m scared, too, Doc,” she said quietly. “Would anybody believe that I might be scared, too?”

  Her tears fell in big drops; Doc did not try to stop them. “Like it or not, Faye, you’re a strong woman. Not every woman has been through the things you have. Not every woman has built a load of fortitude from which to draw.”

  “Is that what I’ve been doing? Building a load of fortitude?”

  He laughed. “Would that be so horrible?”

  No, she supposed, it would not.

  “All I ask is that you think about it again, Faye,” he said, then stood up. “We don’t always get to pick the people who need us.”

  If he was talking about her, he had the grace to keep it to himself.