He laughed and stood up to make some. The cat came in and jumped onto her lap, purring in his broken way, and Elaine stroked him until his fur crackled. She ate two pieces of wheat toast with strawberry jam, and then Gabe made cheese omelets and she ate one of those, too, and had two more cups of coffee. She told him about Ava leaving a phone message for her last night, saying they had news about Peter.
“I couldn’t tell from her voice whether it was good news or bad,” Elaine said. She loaded their dishes into the dishwasher and began scrubbing the egg pan.
“What are you hoping for?”
Gabe reached above her to put away the glasses she’d washed, and she smelled his skin, spicy and warm. It was a comforting scent; Elaine wanted to lean her head back against his chest and rest there, smelling him.
“I hope he had a happy life,” she said slowly. “I feel sorry for the guy. But I hope he’s so happy that he only wants minimal contact with us. You know, like occasional holidays. That would be enough for me, and it would make Ava and Gigi happy.”
“You sound very mature.”
Elaine could hear a smile in Gabe’s voice. He was still behind her, rustling around in a closet now, it sounded like. She finished washing the pan and did the spatula, then wiped the counters clean. “I’m trying to be less of a spoiled drunken dimwit,” she said.
“Sounds like a reasonable plan. Think you’ll succeed?”
He was standing very close to her now, doing nothing. Elaine laid the sponge down and slowly turned around to face him. Gabe was only a foot away, holding a bag of cat food in one hand, his dark corkscrew curls in a tangle.
“I don’t know. Do you?” she asked.
“I hope so.” Slowly, Gabe stepped toward her. He cupped her chin in one hand and tipped her face up to the light, peering at her eye. “Have you put ice on that?”
“It’s too late now,” she said.
“It’s never too late to try again,” he said, and kissed her.
It should have been an awkward kiss, with him in his robe and bare feet and holding the bag of cat food, and her smelling of swimming pool and ice cream and coffee. It should have been the kind of tame, passing-ships kiss that married people have, a kiss that acknowledges imperfection as well as passion, the kind of kiss that happens long after two people have disappointed each other and then forgiven each other, too, so many times that they feel safe.
It was a kiss in a kitchen, for one thing, a kiss with a hungry cat meowing in the background, a kiss taken and given without makeup or showering or combing, a kiss that lasted, Elaine would think later, much longer than it should have, but not nearly long enough. Because she had never been kissed like that before, and she would never get tired of it. That much she knew.
• • •
Sarah had come to band practice and now she was sitting at Ava’s kitchen table, her head resting on her arms. Something must have happened between her and Sam.
Gigi wanted to ignore her—she barely knew Sarah—but here they were, the only two in the kitchen, and the only girls in the house other than Ava, who mostly stayed upstairs or out in her studio while the band was playing, “giving them space,” as she always said, when really Gigi knew Ava was in and out of the house enough to spot anything skeezy going down.
Neal hadn’t come tonight. He’d taken a job as a busboy at Panera, working there as well as the barn now so he could put away money for college. He and Sarah had a single mom who worked ten-hour shifts at the hospital as a nurse, so they were on their own a lot. Gigi couldn’t imagine this; she’d always had so many adults in her life.
And now Peter, too, who she was getting to know through e-mail, mostly. He told her he had a speech recognition program for his computer and he could also type in Braille, which she thought was cool. He was coming to Beach Plum Island this weekend; Gigi and Ava were planning a birthday party for him with Charley’s help. They had a baby girl; Gigi would get to meet her this weekend, too. The baby was asleep that night they’d found Peter.
Gigi took a slice of pizza out of one of the boxes on the counter—that’s what she’d come into the kitchen for—and ate it standing by the fridge. Sarah was still snuffling. The guys were in the other room arguing about Doctor Who, a TV show that only guys seemed to get. Guys didn’t seem to care that the special effects on that show looked like they’d been made by fifth graders. Evan told her that was the point.
Apparently Sarah either didn’t know Gigi was in the room, didn’t care, or was waiting for someone to ask her what happened. Most girls were a mystery to Gigi. Why didn’t they just say what they wanted?
“What’s wrong?” Gigi finally asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Sarah muttered.
“I’d understand better if you picked your head up and talked so I could hear you.”
This was mean, something a mother would say, but it did the trick. Sarah sat up and wiped her eyes with her hand. She looked so much like Neal it was freaky, really: that long brown hair, the sharp features. She and Neal even had matching clover tattoos on the backs of their necks. “Sorry,” Sarah said.
“It’s fine.” Gigi handed her a napkin for her to blow her nose, then sat down at the table. Maybe it was because Sarah did look so much like her brother, or maybe it was because, for about the first time ever, Gigi felt like she could talk to a girl her own age without being self-conscious about it, but she found herself wanting to help. “Did you and Sam break up or something?”
Sarah shook her head. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut; they were so puffy and red from crying. “We can’t really do that, since we’re not going out, right?” She sighed and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “He says he likes me, but he doesn’t like me enough for us to commit.”
“That sounds like Sam,” Gigi said. “He doesn’t commit to much. I mean, except to music and lacrosse. Those are his two big loves.”
“So you’re saying I’m wasting my time.”
“I don’t know,” Gigi said, trying to be as honest as possible, because otherwise what was the point of a conversation like this? “In the movies, they always show people waiting, like, their whole lives for that one person they love. Sometimes the endings are happy, and sometimes it’s all a big ironic tragedy or whatever. But how can you know if somebody will love you if you don’t wait around? And then there’s another way to look at it, too, which is what else would you be doing if you weren’t being with this person? I mean, do you like Sam enough to hang out with him while he’s making up his mind, or are you always feeling disappointed and sad like you are tonight? If most of the time it’s good when you’re together, then it’s probably worth sticking it out. Otherwise, you should walk.”
Sarah smiled. “I can see why my brother likes you so much,” she said. “You’re really wise about love.”
Gigi laughed. “No, I’m not,” she said, then thought of Neal, of the way she had finally kissed him at the barn, with the rain falling like a thousand soft kisses on the cobblestones outside the tack room. She’d tried to make her lips as soft as the rain, and she could tell by the way he kissed her back that Neal liked it. “I only know love is out there.”
They practiced until about eleven; Gigi was happy to see that Sarah stayed and even danced with another kid during a couple of the songs toward the end. She hoped this would make Sam jealous, but who knew what went through Sam’s mind? He always acted so cool in front of his friends even though Gigi knew that he was as geeky as Evan on the inside. She didn’t envy Sarah.
Afterward, Gigi made Sam and Evan help her clean up. She’d suggested they’d better start doing this, or Ava might say they couldn’t use the cottage as a practice space anymore. She was startled to see Uncle Simon show up at the back door. At first she thought he must have come to pick her up instead of Gramma Dawn, but then she saw the overnight bag in his hand and everything clicked into place.
“Ooh la la,” she said.
“Don’t tell your grandmother,” Uncle Simon begged, looking sheepish. He put the bag down and gave her a hug. “How was practice?”
“Decent. We’ve got two new songs. I think we’ll be ready for the show. We’re going to play for Peter’s party as a sort of dress rehearsal.”
“That’s great. I can’t wait to hear you guys,” he said.
Then Gramma Dawn was blowing her horn—she never got out of the car, so Uncle Simon’s secret was safe unless she noticed his car on the street in front—and Gigi kissed him good night. “See you in the morning,” she said. “I’m coming over to help Ava load the kiln.”
It was weird, thinking about him with Ava, but it was good, too, Gigi thought as Ava came in from the studio, her smile lighting the whole room when she saw Uncle Simon. Gigi liked thinking about so many of her favorite people—Evan and Sam, Simon and Ava—all in one house together for her to visit whenever she wanted. Her family.
• • •
Elaine hadn’t been planning to drive to Beach Plum Island on Monday. But Tony had called last night to insist that she take another week of vacation and really commit to her new life, and it was such a gorgeous day that the first thing she thought of when she looked out the window of her condo was Ava’s cottage and how long it had been since she’d seen her and the boys.
She would surprise Ava, Elaine decided, and come up with those pecan rolls she loved so much from the Blue Heron bakery as a peace offering. She would listen to whatever news Ava wanted to tell her about Peter, the thing Ava had hinted at in her message the other day. Maybe she could even try to reach out to Gigi. She might not ever love Gigi, but she could be kind to her. Everyone deserved kindness.
Elaine knew she felt generous in part because Tony and Gabe had both been so generous with her. She hadn’t stayed at Gabe’s long after that knee-quaking kiss in the kitchen, but she knew now that she would go back and try it again.
Elaine made the drive to Beach Plum Island in record time, keeping the windows open and listening to whatever was on Pandora. She hadn’t even texted Ava, though she’d been tempted, especially after getting a text from Ava asking her to call. We need to talk, the text had said.
“You got that right,” Elaine said aloud, smiling as one of her favorite Pink songs came on. This gave her a good excuse to shake her hair and howl into the wind, thinking of Dad. A happy memory, this time, of him holding her hand and Ava’s, too, one day at the beach, and running into surf so cold that they had all come up out of the water shrieking, Dad making his voice a girly scream. He knew how to have fun, her father. And maybe that’s what was making the pain of losing him less, lately: she was able to conjure some of the happier memories as well as the bitter ones.
Elaine drove fast, as she always did, taking the bridge at sixty instead of the posted twenty-five. It was fine. It was Monday, after all, not a heavy beach traffic day, and she loved imagining how surprised, how pleased, Ava would be to see her, to hear what she had to say.
Elaine parked the car a little way down the street from Ava’s cottage, risking a ticket in order to surprise her sister. She crept around the studio side of the house and approached from the back along the beach. She could make out Ava’s fair head over the fence; she must be sitting outside with the newspaper.
Good. This was their morning ritual, hers and Ava’s, something they’d done almost every time Elaine had spent the night up here, starting back when her sister first got divorced and moved to the beach with the boys. Elaine used to spend entire weekends helping Ava with Evan and Sam when they were little. God, she loved those kids. Why hadn’t she seen more of them?
Well, that was about to change, too. She still had time before they left for college. Maybe she could even take Sam on college tours. She certainly knew enough admissions officers.
Elaine drew closer to the fence and saw Ava clearly now, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs with the newspaper spread on the table beside her. She was laughing, tipping her head back and laughing. She must have seen something funny in the paper, something she’d share with Elaine in a minute.
Then the picture shifted, as surely as if someone had cut up the scene with scissors in front of Elaine’s eyes: a man stepped out of Ava’s sliding doors onto the patio, a handsome bare-chested blond man in pajama bottoms carrying two mugs. He handed one of the cups to Ava and bent down to kiss her.
Ava put her arms around the man’s neck and pulled him to her. As the man turned his head to put his own cup down on the table next to Ava’s, Elaine at last saw his face and realized the man was somebody she’d seen before. Someone she’d never liked, simply because he was Katy’s brother. Simon! Ava was with Simon!
The screech in her head was so unbearable that Elaine was afraid it might have escaped her like a siren. But no, Ava was still laughing, and Simon was kissing her neck now, lowering himself to his knees in front of Ava’s chair, pressing himself between her legs, lifting up her shirt and putting his mouth on her breasts.
Elaine fled. She ran so fast that she fell once and dropped the bag of pastries. She left the bag there—the seagulls would make short work of that—and kept running, losing a shoe and picking it up but not bothering to put it on again.
Ava with Simon! How had that happened? How long had it been going on? Clearly, a long time. Ava never brought men home. She’d never shown any interest in any man since Mark, except, briefly, that architect who tried to talk her into moving to California. Ava had made it clear then—had always made it clear—that she lived for her children, not for herself. And certainly not for any man.
So how had this happened? And when? Was this the news Ava had been saving for her?
The shrieking in Elaine’s head was duller but still painful, drowning out her rational thoughts as the questions cascaded, the hurt and betrayal like someone sticking pins in her sides, a prickling of pain all over her body.
She slid behind the wheel of her car, her red baby, her sanctuary with the white leather seats, and gunned the engine, spinning the tires in the sand as she turned around and drove down Ava’s street, back past the center of the tiny town and toward Newburyport, building speed on the Beach Plum Island Turnpike. Such a grand name for such a little road. She didn’t care. Elaine treated the road like a turnpike: she hit fifty, sixty miles an hour, no music on the radio, just the screeching in her head as she took the bridge as fast as she always did, maybe faster, trying to leave the scene behind her in the dark blur of the past. Ava with Simon, Katy’s brother! His lips on her sister’s neck and breasts!
Elaine’s chest heaved. She thought she might be sick. She turned her head toward the window for an instant just in case.
An instant was all it took: suddenly she was driving in the middle of the bridge instead of on her side of the road. A cyclist was headed toward her, pedaling fast, a slim girl in jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt.
It was the T-shirt that saved her, saved them both, as Elaine caught the color out of the corner of her eye. She overcorrected, yanking the wheel to the right, wanting to close her eyes but knowing she shouldn’t.
There was a sickening crunch of metal and she was afraid she’d killed her, killed that poor girl, until the car slammed to a stop and she realized the smashing sound was her car, her sweet car, on the metal guardrail of the bridge. She’d been wearing her seat belt, thank Christ, but she was immobilized now, pinned against the seat by the air bag. How the hell did you get out of one of these? Nobody every taught you that.
Furiously, Elaine punched at the air bag until she ran out of energy. Then she realized she could put the seat back and did, which gave her enough room to slide out. Her legs were trembling so violently that she almost collapsed on the pavement.
The entire front end of the car was totaled, folded like an accordion, the grille steaming in the sunlight. Her beautiful baby, ruined! But at least she ha
dn’t hit the girl. Or had she, after all?
Terrified, Elaine limped the rest of the way across the bridge and glanced wildly about for the bicycle and the girl. Nobody. Nothing. What the hell? Was it an illusion? Had she imagined that cyclist? Was this what happened when you went cold turkey and gave up booze? Wouldn’t that be her luck? All this, and Ava with Simon, too.
Now the screech did come out of her head and out of her mouth, a wailing Elaine had never heard come out of a human being, certainly not out of her.
“Are you okay?” The voice was soft, tentative, and someone was touching her shoulder.
Elaine shut her mouth and nodded, still trying not to vomit. She glanced out of the corner of her eye without looking up. It was the girl on the bike, in her yellow T-shirt and black helmet. Not a scratch on her, thank God.
“I didn’t kill you,” Elaine whispered.
“No, but I think you killed your car.” The girl sat down beside her. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? I almost hit you!”
“It’s a skinny bridge. I should have been farther over.”
Elaine snorted. “Me, too.” Then she looked at the girl again, this time in horror as the girl pulled off the helmet and her face came into focus. “Oh, God,” Elaine moaned. “Gigi?”
Gigi nodded. “For a minute I thought you didn’t know who I was.”
“Shit,” Elaine said. “I almost killed you! My own sister!”
“I bet most sisters want to kill each other sometimes.”
“Yeah, but I bet they don’t literally nearly run them over with cars,” Elaine said glumly. She glanced over her shoulder at the car. Yep, still totaled.
“You didn’t,” Gigi insisted. “I could have made it by you. I think you just took your eyes off the road for a minute and then panicked when you saw me in front of you.”
“I panicked, all right. But I was already panicked.”
“Why?”
Elaine didn’t want to tell Gigi. But maybe Gigi already knew? She shook her head. “I was at Ava’s,” she said. “I was going to surprise her. But I’m the one who got surprised.”
Beach Plum Island Page 34
