by Nancy Thayer
It’s so rare for him to talk with her, she sits up straight and looks as intelligent as she can.
“The neighbors tell us there are vandals in the neighborhood.”
“Vandals?” She tastes the word; it has an appealing kind of Robin Hood ring.
Cara hurries to reassure her. “They’re not hurting people, don’t be afraid of that. But people’s possessions are being destroyed. The tires on Roger Johansen’s Mercedes were slashed. Someone put dog feces in Tigger Marlow’s mailbox—this is not funny! It’s disgusting, it’s a cowardly form of violence, Emily, as you’ll understand if it ever happens to you.”
“They come at night,” Emily’s father says. “You’ll be safely asleep by the time the little bastards get up to their tricks, but if you see anything …”
“Or,” Cara continues, making her voice sweet, “if the little McIntyre girl happens to mention anything, perhaps some of their friends expressing ill will for the summer people—we expect you to tell us.”
Emily stares at her mother, confused. Is she being asked to spy on her friends?
“You understand?” Cara raises her voice.
“Yes, Mother,” Emily replies, although she’s not sure she does.
The Porters are invited to a fund-raiser for Sandy Willard’s political campaign. The Willards are holding a lobster bake on the beachfront of their Dionis house. This is a very important event, Cara tells Emily at least a trillion times. This man might someday be the president of the United States.
So Emily allows Cara to tie her hair with a red, white, and blue ribbon, and she wears the white sundress and matching sandals Cara bought for the party. With her long blond hair, she looks pretty, really, not beautiful like her mother, but pretty. It’s not that often she’s invited to her parents’ gatherings, and secretly, she’s looking forward to it. Her life has become a walk on a tightrope between childhood and maturity. Maybe here she’ll find something that will make her want to cross over into adulthood. After all, she is eleven.
But the party turns out to be, for Emily, what Cara would call “the most dreadful bore.” The lawn is crowded with men in navy blazers and patchwork trousers, while thin women with face-lifts and false smiles and flamboyant Lilly Pulitzer dresses prattle and coo like a crazy jungle where the birds have gone bonkers.
After Emily meets her hosts and politely expresses her gratitude for the invitation, she’s set free to wander around looking for anyone her age. Near the house, a group of nannies herd a bunch of toddlers. Stepping inside, she finds all the other kids gathered in the family room—four boys younger than Emily and three girls older. They glance at Emily dismissively before letting their bored gaze trail back to the television screen.
Emily collapses on one end of the sofa and stares at the television, too, until two hours have passed and she can’t stand it anymore.
By then her parents and the other adults are well oiled and relaxed by liquor into peals and guffaws of laughter at just about anything anyone says. Her father’s face is crimson, and her mother’s weaving as she stands, a fresh glass in her hand.
Emily asks if she might go home—it’s almost eleven o’clock. Sure, they say, call a cab, they’ll see her in the morning.
Yawning in the taxi in spite of the heavy metal music blasting from the radio at volcanic volume, Emily rides through the night to her home. She tosses the driver a bill and steps out onto her driveway.
The cab roars off, leaving Emily alone in a sudden expanse of stillness. She can hear the slight sigh of the waves, but no birds sing, they’re all tucked away for the night. The yards on the cliff are large, the houses on either side dark. Hydrangea bushes loom like people crouching.
Her parents won’t be home for hours. Too bad Maggie’s in bed. It would be fun to prowl the streets with her. They could pretend they were Nancy Drew and Bess, peeking in windows.
Suddenly, three people bolt from the privet hedge three houses down. Footsteps and muffled laughter race toward her. It’s three teenage boys—it must be the vandals! Seized with a terrified delight, Emily stands paralyzed as they draw near. She doesn’t stop to think that these guys could hurt her.
She doesn’t hesitate when she recognizes one of them.
“Ben?” she calls.
The tallest boy screeches to a halt in front of her. “Emily? What are you doing out by yourself?”
Emily stares at him, dumbfounded, while one of the other boys mutters, “Ben! Damn it, you retard, come on!”
“Are you okay?” Ben asks. Out of breath, he braces his hands on his thighs and sucks in huge draughts of air.
“I just got home from a party.”
“What do you mean you just got home from a party? You’re just a kid!”
“Okay, man, we’re out of here,” the other boy growls.
They speed off toward town, disappearing in the night.
“What were you doing?” Emily demands.
“None of your business. Look, Emily, go on in the house now, okay? You never know—”
Before Ben can finish his sentence, a galaxy of lights blooms three houses down. Old Mr. Pendergast charges out into the street, in a blue and white seersucker robe and leather bedroom slippers. He wields a golf club in his right hand and a croquet mallet in the other.
“YOU!” he bellows when he spots Ben and Emily. “You there! Don’t try to run! I’ve got you now!”
Mr. Pendergast favors lime green trousers with little whales on them during the day, and Mrs. Pendergast, Cara says, has had so many face-lifts she hears through her mouth. Last year they bought the old Marsh house, a dignified historic summer home. They tore it down and replaced it with a brand-new one.
“All right, you little hoodlums,” Mr. Pendergast snarls as he stamps down the street toward them. “You’re coming back to the house with me while I call the police.”
Ben goes rigid.
Emily steps forward. “Hello, Mr. Pendergast, are you all right?”
The old man stops dead in his tracks.
“It’s Emily Porter, Mr. Pendergast.” She offers her hand.
Mr. Pendergast narrows his eyes suspiciously.
Her voice is as sweet as sugar, as cool as ice. “You know—you and Mrs. Pendergast had drinks here last week with my parents and a few of their friends.”
“Who’s this with you?”
“It’s Ben McIntyre, Mr. Pendergast.”
“McIntyre? McIntyre. That’s not a name I know.” He peers at Ben. “You look like an island boy to me.”
Emily puts her hands on her hips and raises her chin. “He’s my friend,” she asserts stoutly.
“Is that so? Well, what are you two kids doing out here at this time of night?”
“We’ve been watching a video. We heard some noises and came outside to see what was going on.”
Mr. Pendergast glowers as he weighs her words. Finally he lowers the club and the mallet. “Did you see anyone run by just now?”
“No, sir.” Emily is pure innocence.
“It’s those blasted island kids again. They’ve put a pair of goats in the yard.”
“Goats?” Emily bites her cheeks to keep from laughing.
“They’re eating all the flowers and shitting everywhere.”
“You could call the animal control officer.”
“Yes, yes, of course I’ll do that, that’s not the point. Someone’s got to stop these nefarious little assholes before they do real damage.”
“That’s exactly what Daddy says,” Emily coos.
The old man mutters away back to his house.
Expelling a huge sigh of relief, Ben seizes Emily’s shoulders and brings her close so he can whisper in her ear. “Whoa, Emily, you were awesome.”
“Have you seen The Last of the Mohicans?” Emily asks.
“Huh?”
“In case the cops ask us what we were watching. We own The Last of the Mohicans.”
“Wow, have you got a cunning mind. Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“Good. That’s what we watched tonight, right?”
“But what about your parents?”
“They’re at a party. If they ask anything, I’ll tell them I let you in after Maggie went to bed.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“Yeah, they’ll bore me to death with a lecture.”
“Well, you saved my ass.” Ben is all heat and intensity and sweat and male, his black hair flopping in his eyes.
His hands remain on her shoulders, warm and possessive. Her knees are going wobbly. “Oh, well—”
“Look, don’t tell Maggie, okay? She’ll tell Mom and I’ll get murdered.”
“I won’t tell. But, Ben—”
“I know. I’ll cool it for a while.”
“Good.”
He wraps a brotherly arm around her shoulders and steers her up the walk to her house. “Go inside,” Ben commands. “It really isn’t smart for a girl your age to be outside alone at night.”
Emily doesn’t want him to leave—but before she can shut the door, Ben is gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ben’s so excited he’s out in the street kicking a soccer ball at six in the morning. Maggie, more composed, pretends to read, but the words float away into the air, and Frances seems to spend whole hours putting mascara on each individual eyelash. At last Thaddeus arrives in his old clanking Jeep. Everyone crowds in, and off they go along the Polpis Road.
They’re going to visit Thaddeus’s farm, twenty-five acres between the road and Polpis Harbor.
Hidden by a great overgrown wall of privet, a rutted dirt lane leads to Thaddeus’s property, rolling out in all directions, as roughly unassuming and straightforward as Thaddeus himself.
As they tumble out of the Jeep, Thaddeus says, “Let me show you the barns and the dock before we go inside.”
“Lead on, MacDuff,” Frances says happily.
“Well, there’s the house.” Thaddeus points at a large, weathered, rambling structure with a wisteria trunk thicker than a man’s thigh plaiting its elaborate path over the front door. “I inherited all this from my father, which is only right. My sister, bless her soul, she died a few years ago, never had much interest in this wild chunk of land. She was one for the city. I helped Dad build additions to the house, and together we put up the boathouse and dock, two sheds, and the barn.”
Frances, Ben, and Maggie amble behind Thaddeus as he leads them toward the various buildings. After a few quick peeks inside, they exchange amused glances with each other. The sheds and barns are crammed with two-by-fours, pieces of metal, loops of rope, wooden crates, parts of engines, fish hooks, battered buckets, torn shirts, rusting cans of oil, and what seems like thousands of other indistinguishable items.
“I know, I probably seem like a crazy old hoarder,” Thaddeus remarks, as if reading their minds. “But remember, after all, I live on an island. When I was a boy, I was taught to save everything, every extra piece of rotted wood, hubcap, shard of glass, all of it. We never knew when we might need them, and we never have had a Home Depot here and never will.”
“Oh, I understand,” Frances tells him, laughing. “When we rented our cottage, we found three drawers in the kitchen marked: ‘Long String,’ ‘Short String,’ ‘String Too Short to Use.’ ”
“Exactly,” Thaddeus says. “Back then, we didn’t have UPS or FedEx, either. Just a Sears office so we could order from the catalog. Now hop in the Jeep. We’ll go down to the dock.”
With Ben and Maggie bouncing along in the back, Thaddeus steers the Jeep along a rough dirt track through low green brush and miniature wildflowers until suddenly they’re at the dancing blue waters of the harbor. At the dock, a red rowboat is tied.
Maggie notices a boathouse with its worn gray shingles and white-trimmed windows, but Ben runs straight to the rowboat.
“Can we take her out?” Ben asks.
“Absolutely.”
Ben jumps in, claiming the middle seat where the oarlocks are. Thaddeus helps Frances then Maggie into the rocking wooden boat, and climbs in after them.
“Take her out,” Thaddeus tells Ben, who pulls on the oars with such authority they spurt far out into the water.
The sun pours down on them so that the oars drip sequins. The only sound is the splash of the oars. Ben rows while Maggie and Frances recline, dipping their fingers in the water.
“Thaddeus,” Frances says, “this is lovely. It’s as if we’re right in the middle of a picture.”
Thaddeus’s cheeks grow pink. “Now that way”—Thaddeus points—“you can glimpse the town. See, there’s the Congregational Church steeple.”
“It looks like the cupolas are floating,” Maggie says.
“That way, of course I’m sure you know, is Pocomo.” Thaddeus waves his large hairy hand to the north. “Good for windsurfing, I hear.”
“Oh, Lord.” Frances sighs. She’s terrified of Ben windsurfing, certain he’ll break his leg.
“I’ve done it,” Thaddeus announces. “It’s easy if you’re strong, and Ben sure is strong enough.”
Ben grins widely and gives the oars another powerful pull.
Frances’s lips crimp a little as they do when she’s displeased, but Thaddeus catches her eye and winks at her and her mouth relaxes into a smile.
Maggie, observing this, googles her eyes at her brother, but he’s too busy rowing to notice her.
“We should go back,” Frances says. “We haven’t seen the house yet.”
Maggie’s the first one out of the boat. While Ben and Thaddeus tie up at the dock, she runs to peek into the boathouse window.
“Not much to see in there,” Thaddeus tells her. “The only boat I have now is this poor old girl. That shack’s been empty for years.”
It might be empty to Thaddeus, Maggie thinks, but to her it looks like a haven for dreams. She could turn it into a secret retreat. She could hide her diaries here, and her notebooks full of poems and stories …
“Maggie,” Frances calls. “Come on.”
As she wriggles into the back of the Jeep, Maggie secretly decides that if her mother wants to marry this man, that’s great with her.
When they set foot inside Thaddeus’s house, Maggie has second thoughts.
Ben is thoroughly charmed.
They enter right into the kitchen. The linoleum flooring is cracked. The appliances are squat and ancient. A round trestle table covered with magazines, newspapers, books, mail, and a few dirty plates and cups sits in the center of the room. A black-and-white cat occupies the rest of the kitchen table, meticulously washing her face. She pauses to appraise them with sea green eyes, then continues her work.
“Pretty kitty,” Maggie says.
“Her name’s Cleopatra,” Thaddeus says. “You can pet her, but go slow. She’s not used to young people.”
“Whoa!” Ben cries, running his hands along the wide windowsills. “Cool stuff.”
Maggie stands next to him, taking the time to appreciate the glass bottles of deep indigo and pale turquoise, iridescent shells, striated pebbles, sea glass, and arrowheads.
“We have collections like this, too,” Maggie tells Thaddeus shyly.
“Yeah, but Mom makes us keep everything in boxes,” Ben grumbles.
Frances doesn’t seem to notice. She’s checking out a cobweb in the corner, the dust on top of the refrigerator.
“Here’s the living room,” Thaddeus says, passing through a doorway.
Maggie and her family follow. The windows are twelve over twelve, hung with plain white muslin curtains. A handsome wooden mantel trimmed with beadwork ornaments the large fireplace. On the sofa, a hound, deeply sleeping, wakes to peer blearily at them from her nest.
“That’s Susie.” Thaddeus touches her graying head with a gentle pat of his enormous hand. “She’s not a youngster anymore. I might get a new pup,” he murmurs, “but maybe not. Susie’s special.”
Thaddeus leads them through the rest of the house which wanders out and up and down in all
directions from the two small original rooms. All the rooms are in need of sweeping and dusting, and the windows cry out to be washed. Heaps of twine and rope spill from the corners of the rooms, and the steps of the wide staircase with its frayed runner can hardly be tread upon for the books, newspapers, and magazines piled there. In the long hallway, the tables and windowsills are cluttered with turtle shells, deer antlers, and dried wildflowers laced with dust in an old glass milk bottle.
“This place could use a good sorting out,” Frances murmurs quietly.
“It would be a cool house for hide-and-seek,” Maggie gushes.
“Oh, yeah,” Ben agrees, pinching the back of Maggie’s neck and laughing like a monster.
Frances puts her hand on Thaddeus’s arm. “It’s a wonderful house, Thaddeus.”
“I’m glad you like it,” he rumbles, growing pink again.
Maggie and Ben roll their eyes.
Sunday morning Emily’s nerves skitter under her skin when she enters the McIntyre house. She has a secret with Ben from Maggie. It’s weird.
Ben’s not there. Maggie’s lying on the sofa reading Edgar Allan Poe. Over the past few weeks, the girls have started reading every ghost book they can find. They’re scared all the time, but somehow they love it.
“Hello, Mrs. McIntyre … Frances,” Emily says.
Maggie’s mom looks up from her sewing machine. Her black hair’s piled on top of her head, and she wears gold-rimmed glasses which, while she looks away from her sewing, she pushes up past her forehead. They nestle in her hair like an odd tiara.
“Hi, Emily.”
Emily climbs on the sofa, lifting Maggie’s feet to make way.
“Almost done,” Maggie mumbles. A few moments later, she closes the book. “Mom, there’s no ice cream and we’re dying.”
“Poor things.” Frances rummages in her purse and hands Maggie a ten. “Here. Go to the market and buy yourselves each an ice cream cone. Buy some bread, too, will you?”
Maggie grumbles as they walk down the shady lanes, cutting through yards, but Emily enjoys it. It’s a kind of adventure. The picturesque village of ’Sconset, with its narrow bridge over the street, the giant sundial on the side of a house, its mansions and cottages, tennis courts and chapel, seems like a play set.
