Beach Plum Island

by Holly Robinson

  In seconds Peter had settled into her most comfortable chair, a tall flowered armchair with a matching hassock that had been her mother’s favorite place to read to Elaine when she was little and their family still lived in the Newburyport house. Before everything fell apart, it was their nightly ritual, Elaine cradled in her mother’s arms, sometimes not even looking at whatever picture book her mother held but drawing on a pad of paper Mom always kept on the table next to the chair.

  Elaine hadn’t been able to stand the thought of leaving the chair in the house for Katy; she’d taken it to the cabin in Maine when they left, then brought it back to Boston after Mom died. Such pointless anger, that rage against Katy and Gigi. Now it was mixed with sorrow: her mother had never held Peter and read to him. He had never known her at all.

  “Nice place,” Peter said, glancing around as if he could see it.

  Maybe if you were blind from birth, you found other ways of appreciating spaces, Elaine decided: the feeling of a rug underfoot, the furniture, the smell from an open window. Her front windows were open despite the traffic sounds because she loved the sweet fragrance of the huge white flowering bushes that flanked the condo building like snowdrifts.

  “Thank you,” Elaine said. “Can I get you something? Tea? Water?”

  “Do you have any beer?”

  Elaine shook her head, then realized he couldn’t see that. Such a learning curve here. “No, sorry. I don’t drink.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment on this. Only said, “Water would be great. Thanks.”

  “Flat or sparkling? Ice or no ice?”

  He steepled his fingers, rested his chin on them, considering. “Sparkling on ice. More festive that way.”

  Peter was trying to lighten this moment, and Elaine appreciated that. She wasn’t sure if she could reciprocate. Right now, she felt as if her skin were cracking and about to split in various places, to peel right off her and expose the nerves beneath.

  She brought him the glass, then sat on the couch across from him. He had relaxed against the chair, the cane resting against one side of it, and he’d put a foot up on the hassock.

  “You sure know how to make yourself at home,” she said. She’d meant it as a compliment, but as a shadow crossed her brother’s face, she could see how the remark could be taken the wrong way. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . ”

  “No, it’s fine,” he said, waving a hand. “I’m used to getting around on my own because most people don’t know what the hell to do when a blind person comes to visit. They’re afraid of being too helpful, and some people are. Other people are oblivious. One of the most important things we learned at Thompson—that’s where I went to high school—is how to navigate situations independently, and also how to accept the idea that other people don’t know what we can do for ourselves unless they ask us, which most are too scared to do.”

  Elaine had never thought about this before. Now she felt terrible about never asking people with disabilities whether they needed help. She’d always been afraid of insulting them.

  “Why are you here?” she said. “I was planning to go to your party at Ava’s tomorrow. You didn’t need to come all the way here.”

  That eyebrow again. “All the way here? You mean, like ten minutes in a cab to cross the river from Cambridge? We’re practically neighbors.”

  Elaine thought about her date with Gabe in Harvard Square. She didn’t have good memories of Cambridge. But maybe that would change now. “Still,” she said, “what’s the point?”

  He laughed. He had a deep laugh, deeper than she would have expected, given his thin build. “I love it that you’re not groveling and apologetic for not coming to see me with Ava and Gigi that first night they found me.”

  “I didn’t know they were doing that,” Elaine said. “But you’re probably right that I wouldn’t have gone with them. I wasn’t ready. I was working on some other things at the time. My own issues. Grief. Anger.” She took a deep breath, then added, “And I’m an alcoholic.”

  Peter whistled. “Wow. I wish all my clients had your backbone. You just zero in on the problems and meet them head-on, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.” Elaine was trembling so hard she had to put down her glass of sparkling water, not even bothering with finding a coaster in the drawer of the coffee table.

  She still couldn’t believe this was her brother, or that she had a blind man sitting in her living room, or that she was an alcoholic and, furthermore, had just admitted it to a man who was both a total stranger and, with Ava, her closest blood relative.

  Peter leaned forward, his face in shadows now, hawkish with that long nose. “I meant that as a compliment,” he said. “It’s a gift, being so clear-sighted about your feelings.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Oh, I think you are. You know who you are, Elaine. You’ve just been peeling away the layers, one by one, and discovering there’s more underneath. You should be proud of yourself. It wouldn’t have made sense for you to want me in your life until you knew what your life was.”

  “Right,” she snorted. “Thanks for the psychobabble. If I wanted a shrink, I’d pay for one.”

  Peter shrugged, sat back in the chair. “Anyway, in answer to your earlier question, I came here tonight for a few reasons. The first one is that I was pretty sure, after hearing about you from Ava, that you might find a way to duck out of the party tomorrow.”

  Elaine made a sputtering noise of protest, though of course that thought had crossed her mind.

  Her brother held up a hand to stop her. “The other reason is that you were close to our mother. I wanted to know what she was like, especially at the end. Ava doesn’t seem to know much about that.”

  “You don’t want to know, either.” Elaine felt a chill go through her. “Trust me. It wasn’t good.”

  “I gathered that.” He sighed, sipped his drink. His fingers were long and thin on the glass, like her own. Like their mother’s. “Do you feel comfortable talking about her? Not the bitter end, maybe, but something? What kind of music did she like?”

  “Rock and roll,” Elaine said at once, making him laugh. “Seriously. She and Dad were hard-core rockers when they were teenagers. She had the hots for Mick Jagger.”

  “Wow,” Peter said, still smiling. “That, I wouldn’t have guessed. What else?”

  Elaine closed her eyes. “Mom loved to read. She never went to college, but she seemed like she did. She was so smart and well-spoken. She was in a book club in Newburyport and took the readings seriously, making notes, looking things up about authors. She read us lots of stories when we were kids. She’d really get into it, acting out the voices. I used to hate sitting still, but she figured out early on that I’d listen to her read me a story if I could draw or color while she did it. Later, when it was just Mom and me in Maine, I used to read to her while she drew. I guess we went full circle. I never thought about that before.”

  Elaine was quiet for a minute. She’d forgotten about those contented times with her mother. She still had some of the drawings Mom had made in the last months of her life. She liked to work with colored pencils and used vivid colors, bold strokes. For the first time, Elaine realized that must be where Ava had gotten her eye for color.

  There was one particular drawing her mother had done that Elaine had always loved, a picture of purple lupine in a field, a red-roofed barn in the background. That had hung on the refrigerator for a long time; Elaine had put up her mother’s drawings that last year together in the same way her mother used to hang up school papers for Elaine and Ava.

  She swallowed hard. Maybe in a way she had taken good care of her mother, giving her those moments of peace. That was something to hang on to.

  “Mom wasn’t ever a truly happy person,” Elaine said. “She tried to hide her depression. She functioned pretty well for a lot of years, but the
n, I don’t know, when Ava left home, Mom left, too, emotionally. She retreated into herself and it took a lot to bring her back. Aunt Finley thinks it’s because Mom never forgave herself for giving you up.”

  “She was young,” Peter said. “How could she have kept me? Girls didn’t, back then, unless their families helped.”

  “You must have thought about this a lot over the years.”

  Peter nodded. “I have, but it’s good to hear the real story. It’s too easy to have monsters living in your head unless you find the truth and put those babies to bed.”

  “I keep tucking my monsters into bed, but they keep getting up again.”

  “Naughty things, those mind monsters,” Peter said, and they laughed.

  “I’m glad you came,” Elaine said. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I was feeling guilty, letting your sisters do all the work.”

  “So what happens now?”

  Peter stood up, leaned on his cane. “Now I go home to my wife and daughter, who I hope you’ll meet tomorrow at the party. But if you don’t feel like coming, Elaine, if it’s too much for you, it’s okay for you to stay home.”

  She stood up, too. “I see. Is this your therapist self giving me permission?”

  “No. This is your big brother, being supportive.”

  Elaine couldn’t move, paralyzed by emotions too powerful and complicated to name. Peter came to her, feeling his way until the cane hit her bare foot.

  “Ow,” she whispered.

  “Sorry,” he said, and put his arms around her. “I promise it’ll hurt less with time.”

  • • •

  Okay, it did feel weird at first, Gigi had to admit, setting up with the band in the middle of a Sunday afternoon instead of playing after dark. She wasn’t sure how she felt about facing the big glass windows overlooking the rippling surf while she sang. For one thing, it made her squint, and she’d spent a lot of time getting her makeup on right. Her hair, too. It was all blond, now, with just one hot pink streak Neal had put in for her, saying it would look cool.

  He wasn’t even here today. They’d decided to make this a family birthday party for Peter, and that’s why they were playing in the afternoon, so Peter could bring his wife and baby. Everyone had teased Gigi about how the baby, Emma, had punked-out hair like hers and would probably grow up to be a rocker.

  It was true: Emma had a thatch of bright red hair that stood almost straight up, giving her “one badass attitude,” Sam had declared, jouncing the baby on his knee, making Ava reprimand him for swearing and making Peter tip his head back and laugh.

  “You got that right,” Peter said. “My daughter is all about attitude.”

  Then Gigi had held the baby for the first time, and Emma had fastened her dark eyes on Gigi’s face and smiled in that toothless damp way babies had that made you want to do anything in the world to keep them smiling.

  “Hey,” she whispered close to the baby’s ear, though not close enough for those fat fingers to grab her earring. “I’m your auntie. It’s time we had another girl in this family. Welcome.”

  “Give her back,” Sam said. “You don’t want to corrupt her with some feminist crap.”

  “Right,” Evan said. “She needs to learn all about real stuff, like computer games.”

  “God help her,” Ava said, rolling her eyes, while Charley, clearly comfortable in a big crowd, passed around the cake she’d made for Peter’s birthday and laughed.

  They’d played a full set after the cake and ice cream, surprising Peter with his favorite Springsteen song, communicated via text message from Charley when Ava asked her last week. He’d gotten up and danced, looking about as goofy as a blind guy dancing could look, but when he stood at the microphone with Gigi to sing the chorus, his voice blended pretty well with hers, making it hard for her to keep going because all she could hear was how much he sounded like Dad, singing with her.

  Luckily everybody else was dancing by then, even Elaine and her friend Gabe, whose curls seemed to be doing a dance of their own on top of his head, separate from his pillowy body. He definitely wasn’t the sort of guy Gigi would have expected Elaine to choose, but Gabe was cool. He even picked up the drumsticks at one point and played decently enough.

  After that, they took a break. Some of them drifted to the kitchen for cold drinks. Simon and Gabe went out to buy more ice and a cooler, too, since of course today of all days, Ava’s freezer had quit. At the last minute, Katy had decided to go with them, saying she wanted avocado for the salad she’d brought and the guys wouldn’t know how to choose a ripe one. Gigi thought this might have been an excuse; her mom and Elaine were being polite but still having trouble making any conversation that didn’t sound scripted. Still, it was a start.

  Gigi grabbed a glass of lemonade and went outside where Ava was watering her tomato plants on the patio with a tall metal can that glinted in the sun. Ava glanced over at Gigi and smiled. “If I don’t do this now, I might forget, and it isn’t supposed to rain again until the end of the week. The poor things are parched.”

  The tomato plants were tall and thick with ripe tomatoes; Gigi picked one and bit into it like an apple. It was almost that sweet. She wiped the juice from her chin with one hand and said, “Do you think Peter likes his party?”

  Ava put down the watering can and came over to drape an arm around her shoulders. “How could he not, with the best live music in town?”

  “You really think we sound okay?” Sometimes Gigi couldn’t hear herself sing with the noise of the band around her; it was like she was inside the music.

  “Definitely. All those hours of practicing have paid off. Too bad you have to go back to school soon.”

  Gigi rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me,” she said.

  She didn’t really mean it. Her mother had agreed, after she and Sam and Evan had spent an entire night convincing her, that it would be all right for Gigi to try her sophomore year at the public school, if Gigi signed up for honors classes and joined the chorus and did theater after school. She wouldn’t have to see Lydia, and instead she could look forward to seeing Evan and Sam and Sarah and Neal in the lunchroom, at least, and Sarah might even be in some of her classes.

  “Hey, can I crash your party?” Elaine said from behind them. She came forward tentatively, carrying her own glass of lemonade. Her black eye had faded to a pale purple bruise. “You killed that Springsteen song for Peter. Nice job.”

  Gigi felt her face flush with pleasure. She hadn’t really seen Elaine since the accident. “Thanks.”

  “Hey,” Elaine said to Ava, setting her glass down on the table. “I have something for you in Gabe’s car. I almost forgot. Wait here a sec.”

  A few minutes later, Sam and Evan came through the gate from the driveway, carrying two more Adirondack chairs painted to match Ava’s. They set the chairs down on either side of the pair by the door and retreated back into the house, complaining about being abused for their muscles.

  “Oh my God,” Ava said, putting her hands to her face. “Thank you! They’re perfect.”

  Elaine grinned and sat down in one, patted the arms. “Yeah, well. I figured two chairs might not be enough for your patio anymore,” she said. “It’s kind of a birthday present for Peter, too.”

  Ava leaned down to hug her, then sat down in one of the old chairs, leaving a chair empty between her own and Elaine’s. “I believe this is yours,” she said to Gigi, pointing.

  Gigi sat down, too, tipping her face to the sun and resting her arms on the broad smooth wooden armrests, hearing her brother laughing in the kitchen behind her, a song playing in her head. It was a song she wanted to write, a song about this island, the dunes and the herons and the sharp sting of salt in the air.

  Music for her family, sad and sweet at the same time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I truly do believe it take
s a village to raise a child. When it comes to writing novels, it takes several villages.

  In my home village, my husband, Dan, is my biggest emotional supporter, cheerleader, and bringer-of-meals. I would be eating tuna out of a can every day without you, honey. I am also lucky to be graced by the presence of my mother, Sally Robinson, who imbued me with a love of books and is a keen first reader. My children—Drew, Blaise, Taylor, Maya, and Aidan—are always and forever supporting me as well, and inspiring me with their own adventures. My life would be hollow without them. My brother Donald makes his pride clear and wows me with his tales of travel and forging iron (literally), while my brother Philip keeps making music.

  Farther afield, I have wonderful in-laws, David and Christine, who not only take time to read what I write, but then pen thoughtful notes to me about the books. My father’s family in Ohio makes me feel like a celebrity, and I am especially grateful to Jeff and Barbara, who gave me a sanctuary in their amazing garden at a time when I needed it most.

  In my publishing village, I thank my stars every day for leading me to my agent, Richard Parks. He continues to be the nicest man in New York, never failing to pick up the phone when I call for hand-holding or editorial suggestions. He is, by now, family to me as well.

  I am also blessed to have found an incredibly savvy, thoughtful, empathic editor in Tracy Bernstein, who I hope will let me crown her “My Editor for Life.” New American Library publisher Kara Welsh has my heartfelt gratitude for supporting my career. Beach Plum Island is a better book because of all of your faith and hard work.

  In my village of writers, I want to thank Toby Neal, who found the perfect sanctuary for our writing retreat in Mendocino, California, as I started Beach Plum Island, and Emily Ferrara, who accompanied me to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, while I finished the book—with a black eye and a concussion, just like Elaine (though not from drinking, thank God). Susan Straight, my friend and mentor for so many years, provided wonderful companionship during the middle of the book as we spent a glorious two weeks writing on Prince Edward Island.