Bob Willoughby was just sixty-one when he died. They scattered his ashes in the thoroughfare. That summer their mother, Scarlet, had stayed in the house much later than usual, well into October, until Remy told her that the water had to be turned off or she ran the risk of bursting a pipe. The float was pulled up the day she left. Now she was gone too.
On the float, they picked up items from a pile of duffel bags, totes with stitched initials, two small coolers, and a case of wine. It was only ten. Loaded down, they teetered up the ramp. The skids of their shoes scratched against the asphalt paper. Through the fabric of her thin shirt Libby could feel the note stiff against her skin, trying to push its way from her pocket, trying to be seen.
“God, it smells so fucking good here,” said Gwen.
“You say that every time,” said Danny as he came up the ramp behind her carrying a case of wine.
All Libby could smell was Gwen’s suntan lotion and Danny’s sleeping bag, the warm, earthy smell of a dog bed. She was too accustomed to the dry smell of pine needles and lichen, the salt of seaweed and wet rope. She wanted to read the note again; she wanted to tear it up. But she couldn’t do that with them here, ready to take it from her, to wrestle the reins from her hands.
It was low tide, making it a steep climb up to the pier. Libby, a bag in one hand, a sleeping bag in the other, headed up the twisting path hemmed by rocks and beach roses. On the porch she held out the duffel and sleeping bag to Danny. “Your bedroll and valise, sir.” He typically responded to her Victorian bit with, “I’ll take a snifter of brandy in my chambers at the usual hour,” or something similar. The hours of watching BBC dramas with Scarlet had rubbed off on him. Today, though, he just stared at the water, biting his nails, before he realized she was talking to him.
“Dan, your crap.”
He turned to her and shook his head. “Sorry, the view, it sucks me in.” He shrugged, took his things, and headed upstairs.
Now Libby stood alone on the porch, among the coolers and the case of wine. Her siblings apparently thought the food would just magically float onto the shelves in the pantry. They never thought about logistics, about the number of beds divided by the number of invited guests, the cubic space of a side-by-side refrigerator, the amount of wine that people consume while on vacation. They bought and brought what they were told. They were good about sticking to the menu she drafted. But she was the one charging any dry goods they couldn’t carry from the mainland over at Fairholm’s. Her siblings seemed to forget that their mother was gone. There was no one who diligently carried and stowed. No one who cataloged and restocked. Well, there was, of course: Libby. Really, in the three years since their father died, Scarlet had been receding, leaving Libby to pick up the various tasks left behind. She wasn’t sure what was worse, to replace her mother or to be ignored as the replacement.
She didn’t want to be her mother. Scarlet had been the fire of her hair, of her name. And Libby had been burned. All of them had. Except Danny. To her face, she was called Mom, but between them, she was always Scarlet. Because she was bigger than the diminutive; because, like a hurricane, she needed her own name. And now she was just a swirl of sand in an urn, a ship in a bottle.
After dragging two coolers into the kitchen, Libby knelt on the floor of the pantry in front of the open refrigerator and attempted to put things away. Soon every shelf and drawer was full, and she sat on the floor with a jumbo jar of mayonnaise and a pitcher of iced tea. No matter the configuration, she was inevitably left with two extra things, jam and a block of cheese, a head of lettuce and a family-size tub of hummus, a net bag of lemons and two pounds of sliced ham. Finally, she shuffled and stuffed and finagled the lemons and the tea as the remainders, and she left them both on the kitchen table, its oilcloth shining in the sun.
A glass of iced tea in hand, Libby walked through the dining room toward the door to the porch. She stopped in the entrance to the great room, and glanced up at the door to her parents’ room at the end of a long balcony. It was separate with its own porch and bathroom. When she had first opened the house she had left her parents’ bathroom empty of soap or the bucket often needed to assist the plumbing. But she had made their bed. The sight of the bare-buttoned mattress had made her cry. That was three weeks ago. Now she was settled; she hadn’t cried since. Libby hated missing her mother and hated hating her, so she didn’t want to think of her at all. Libby looked over the great room; through the bay windows the sunlight stretched beneath the Ping-Pong table and wicker chairs showing the dull spots on the floor fringed with white water stains. She added “refinish floors” to a growing list in her mind.
The house was sinking, growing old, and that list was getting longer and longer. The chimney was cracked above the fireplace in Libby’s room, and her Toile de Jouy wallpaper had faded so much she could barely read the months that were spelled out beneath each bucolic scene. The great room’s white cathedral ceiling, girded with beams, was veined with brown water stains. Sailing pennants and animal heads—moose, deer, a boar, even an angry-looking fox—that hung from the interior balconies that looked out over the room were shaggy with dust. The house had come to them as it was: furniture, animals, pennants that marked races beginning in 1914, the 1938 ferry schedule still pinned to the kitchen wall. This was what happened when you bought from the wife of a disgraced politician who had fled in the middle of the night with his starlet girlfriend, leaving all the furniture behind, leaving dishes in the sink. To this they gradually added their own permanent features: a toddler’s shoe resting on the stovepipe, a feather tucked in a cracked tile on the dining room mantel, a sketch of the fireplace pinned beside the same fireplace. The kitchen doorframe was repeatedly marked in pencil with the same names, different years, different heights, each of them growing steadily past the latch.
Libby returned to the porch steps with her iced tea and sat down looking out toward town. Tom sidestepped Libby and thumped down the steps.
“Taking the Whaler for a quick ride,” he said. He scrubbed her head as he went by.
“Have fun.” Thanks for asking.
Six months ago, three years after their father had died, their mother Scarlet became sick. Her thyroid. Normally the easiest type of cancer to fight, but they had found it too late. They agreed that Tom would pull the plug. Tom said it should be him. Gwen tried to talk him out of it, tried to say she was the one to do it so he wouldn’t have to. Libby didn’t volunteer. She had spent the last seven years wishing her mother was dead. Some irrational part of herself worried that she had somehow caused the cancer. Her rage had grown a tumor in her mother. She couldn’t bear to kill her again. And Danny was practically catatonic already. So it had to be Tom or Gwen. Tom just made up his mind and closed the discussion, like he was finishing some giant leather-bound book.
Afterward, they wanted to be at the house, they wanted the comfort of it, of their childhood, a place where their mother could still be, a place that could never be robbed of her presence. But it was winter, and so they had settled in Tom’s living room with its brown velvet upholstery and Tiffany-blue walls, and each took turns holding Danny. He couldn’t stop crying, not to eat or drink. He even cried in his sleep, struggling with the sheet on Libby’s foldout couch.
Danny had held Tom’s beagle-terrier mix, much to the dog’s dismay, until Melissa replaced the dog with a large glass of wine. When she wasn’t holding Danny, Libby washed dishes, dried them, and then washed and dried the dish rack. When she started in on the oven, Melissa put her to work making pasta for dinner. From her place at the kitchen counter, through the darkness of their front hall, Libby had seen Tom go to his wife. Then he kissed Melissa, pulling open her shirt and grabbing at her breasts, her neck, pulling her hair, as if he wanted to devour her, as if she was the one who was dying, and he could save her by eating her alive. He crumpled against her, and Libby heard him say, “Now we can finally sell that fucking house.” She had never heard him swear before. Libby had looked away, back to her pasta
.
From the porch she watched Tom glide out into the thoroughfare. Libby finished her tea, picked up the case of pinot noir, and headed into the house. She could hear running water from the upstairs bathroom. After depositing the bottles in the sideboard, Libby readjusted a straw hat with fake lilacs and a yellow slicker on their hooks in the small hallway off the dining room. She held the brim of the hat for a moment. The last time she’d seen her mother wear it, Scarlet had been standing in the kitchen, shirtsleeves rolled up, arms mud smeared, audibly glugging a glass of water. Sometimes she had seemed almost human, wearing hats and everything, not some great scaly beast. Libby could hear Gwen and Danny upstairs.
“These mattresses are gross,” said Danny. “We’re going to be asphyxiated in our sleep by all the camphor. What’s with the fucking mothballs anyway? Is it 1953?”
“Let me just take some quinine for my rheumatism,” said Gwen, “and a DEET rubdown to soften my skin.”
“You’re both going to burn in hell,” Libby called up the stairs. “I should’ve just let the mice nest in your beds. Then it could be toxoplasmosis for everyone.”
“We’d have to eat the mice for that to happen,” shouted Danny.
Gwen broke into a chorus of “Burning Down the House.”
“Do you think David Byrne and Jeff Goldblum were separated at birth?” said Danny.
“Or they’re soul mates,” said Gwen.
Libby climbed the stairs as Gwen walked from Danny’s room with a pillow under each arm. Libby followed Gwen into her room. There was no better view in the house than the one from this bed. When she was alone in the house, Libby liked to read here when it was raining and watch the storm move through the thoroughfare. They called Gwen’s room the Pilot House because of all the windows. But it felt like the room at the top of a lighthouse, and Gwen was the light, a beacon shining out to sea, out at the thoroughfare, toward town. That light was a signal to all the local boys who had wanted to conquer a summer girl.
“What’s wrong with your pillows?”
“We’re swapping. I need something with more heft.” Gwen tossed the pillows at the head of the bed and then unzipped her duffel. Libby sat down on the bed and edged the door shut with her foot. Gwen glanced at the door, then sat on the floor facing Libby.
“He freaking wiped down the dashboard when we stopped for lunch. Who does that?” said Gwen.
“He’s in rare form. I thought he was going to make Dan cry on the boat.” Libby imitated Tom’s hook-and-line pantomime.
“This is why I won’t go sailing with him anymore,” said Gwen. She unzipped her duffel and pulled out her kit.
“Were there rooms left at The Navigator?” said Libby.
Gwen nodded. “We stayed up way too late heckling Lifetime movies.”
“With Tom?”
“Yeah right. Tom wanted us to all stay in one room. He said something about a slumber party. But I was not about to put up with him for the night. Dan slept on a cot in my room. How’s it been here?”
Libby looked out toward town for a minute, as if her eyes could travel into the post office through their little brass box and back in time to see a man carefully writing the note on the counter. She wasn’t able to keep secrets from Gwen. Libby took the note from her breast pocket. She stretched her arm out over the bed and passed it to Gwen. Gwen put down the pile of underwear she was shoving into a drawer and read the note:
To the Willoughby Family,
If you ever consider selling, please contact me. Your property is truly unique, and I would, contingent on inspection and confirmation of acreage, be prepared to offer approximately 3.1 million. This offer stands as long as I do.
Sincerely,
Rafe Phillips
Attached was a business card bearing his name and beneath it, “Vice President, Kallman Enterprises.”
To Libby hearing the words aloud was like being hit on in the worst way: “I’d like to give you a real pearl necklace.” As if just by virtue of having a beautiful house, she was some kind of property slut. She wouldn’t have wanted to sell even when her parents were alive, but now that they were gone, now that it was hers, well, all of theirs, certainly not.
“Holy—When did you get this?” Gwen fanned herself with the note.
“This morning.”
“So you haven’t shown it to Tom?” Gwen examined the note again as if she were a graphology expert trying to suss out some hidden message.
“As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t worth a second thought. He’d want to analyze it. He’d be all over it. He’d be a shark,” said Libby.
“And this is one big bucket of chum.” Gwen dangled the note, pinched at one corner like it was a dead fish.
“It’s probably not even for real. I mean, why would anyone offer that much sight unseen?” said Libby. She lay down on her side, her head propped up on her hand.
“Maybe ’cause our pal Rafe”—Gwen waved the note—“doesn’t give a shit what it looks like.”
“But it needs so much work, to get this place back to what it was . . . I can’t even imagine.”
“Oh, Bibs, Money Bags isn’t looking to restore. He’s looking to demolish. That price is for the land. He’d just build some giant McMansion or condos. He’s probably a developer.”
Libby sat up and took the note back from Gwen, stared at it as if she had missed some key sentence. Up here, there was no computer to look up this viper, to see how many Levittowns he had probably perpetrated over wetlands and burial grounds.
“Throw that shit away,” said Gwen. She took a stack of moth-eaten sweaters from her duffel. “Or actually just give it to me. I could use three million.”
Libby stood up, crunched the note into a ball, and shoved it into her pocket.
“Over my freaking dead body.”
“Language! There are ladies present!” Gwen put a hand to her chest and widened her eyes. Libby threw a pillow at her.
“I have to save it up all year; now that I’m on summer vacation I’m going to let loose on you guys for the next week. I’m going to work blue blue blue.” Libby swung open the door. “Now I have to put the freaking laundry in the freaking dryer.”
“It’s cool. Start slow. You have to build up your tolerance. We can work on ‘crap’ tomorrow,” said Gwen.
Libby gave her the finger as she walked out the door.
“Progress already!” said Gwen.
Back downstairs in the dining room, Libby could see Danny in the rug room, a book in hand, settling into one chair before moving to another, and then another. She found her wallet resting on the sideboard. Libby took the note from her pocket, smoothed it out, and slipped it into the worn leather. It was like a foreign bill, some piece of currency valuable here only for its novelty.
TWO
GWEN
July 2
Gwen made Danny pick blueberries with her. She had to keep busy or she would be tempted to talk. They stepped into tall rubber boots by the back door and headed outside. Libby was bringing in a batch of sun tea as the last bit of morning sun swung around the house.
“Leaving the house already?” said Libby. “It’s only your second day. Tom, yes. He made coffee for everyone and is already out on the boat. But you guys? This is really more fourth-day behavior.”
“I’m on dessert tonight,” said Danny.
Gwen looked at Libby and mouthed, I’m on dessert.
“I saw that, smart-ass,” said Danny. “I’m happy with Hydrox and ice cream. I’m not the fancy one here.”
“Forage away,” said Libby. “Just watch out for the poison ivy; it’s looking a little aggressive up there.”
The ground tipped slightly under Gwen’s feet, and she did a small cha-cha step, hoping to cover up her stumble. Lately, nothing felt solid. She actually preferred to be on the boat; dry land had been making her nauseous; the dip and swell of the water seemed to equalize things. She had even started to wear wristbands that activated pressure points, which so far had only su
cceeded in making her wrists hurt.
She knew there was a better solution, and she had an appointment for the third week in July. It wouldn’t be the first time. There was once in college, and then again, six months into her eighteen-month marriage. Being with the man had seemed like a great idea, the baby not so much, and then she realized maybe she could cut herself out of the marriage too.
The backyard wasn’t a yard so much as a meadow between the house and the woods. A large oak tree dominated the meadow at one end, and the other end swept past the south porch and down through poison ivy thickets, raspberries, and dead pines to the rocks of the shore. Gwen and Danny walked up the peak of the small hill behind the meadow. The water, busy with boats going in all directions, rolled away from them toward the neighboring island. Like a bustling intersection. Danny swung his bucket while he walked and hummed a tune in time with his steps. He walked ahead of her, up toward the tree line, where the blueberries grew thick and low.
Gwen believed in choice, in control, in self-sufficiency. She believed in any pagan ritual that brought women dancing naked around a fire. She did not believe in the sacrifice of the self. But there was the lowest whisper inside, something dim that pushed her to delay the appointment. Those other times, there had been no hesitation. It was just part of life, like getting strep or breaking a bone. No sexually active collegiate woman with an ounce of self-preservation could avoid it, at least no one like her with the impulsive nature of a blotto frat guy. But now she was uncertain, and that uncertainty felt weak. It embarrassed her.
Indecision was for people who didn’t really know themselves. Gwen did not linger over menus, in dressing rooms, or in relationships. She believed in first instincts and gut feelings. Only now her gut had been hijacked and, therefore, her instincts potentially skewed. Her hormones were pounding out some genetic rhythm, beating incessantly through her veins. Not telling Libby was a way of guarding against that feeling. Libby would say those words that held to the shadows inside her: “What if it’s your last chance?” And yet she hated that Libby didn’t know. She had never kept a secret from her sister.
North Haven Page 2
