The Summer Wives_A Novel

by Beatriz Williams

  “Aw, Miranda. It’s me.” He held out his hand. “It’s your brother. It’s Hugh.”

  3.

  I remember exactly where I was when I first learned I had a baby brother. I knew he was arriving, of course—or rather it, I knew it was arriving—but still I felt a shock when the Countess laid the newspaper on my breakfast tray and pointed to the relevant item. We were staying in Paris at the time, the Ritz. It was the end of March and the weather outside the window was bleak and terrible, and I’d caught a nasty cold on the liner. Hadn’t been out of bed since we arrived, almost. I remember the soft sheets and the elegant blues and yellows of the room, and the Countess’s anxious face as she watched me read the few lines.

  To Mrs. Hugh P. Fisher of Winthrop Island, New York, and the late Mr. Hugh P. Fisher, a boy, Hugh Percival Fisher, Junior, at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

  “It’s a boy,” she said, quite unnecessarily.

  “My brother,” I said, in the throaty, rough voice of a bad cold.

  She took the newspaper back. “I hope everything went well. It doesn’t say anything about their health, mother and baby.”

  “And they’re not going to tell us, are they? Isobel or Mama.”

  The Countess folded the newspaper, refilled my coffee cup, and kissed my forehead. “I’ll find out the details, don’t you worry. Just rest and get better.”

  I drank my coffee and sat back on the pillow and thought about this new fact, this new human being, squalling in some bassinet across the ocean, who belonged to me. It didn’t seem real. Maybe because I was sick, maybe because I had endured so much in the previous seven months, calamity after calamity, until I was simply numb. I could not seem to create a place for him in my brain, in my heart, this living bundle of humanity. He was a theory. My brother, Hugh Fisher Junior. Of course they named him after my stepfather; they could hardly name him anything else, after what happened. I wondered what he looked like and what kind of personality he had, what kind of man he would be. I remember turning my head to gaze at the rain crawling down the window, the gray Paris landscape beyond, and wondering if I would ever find out.

  And now here he was. This was what he looked like, this was who he was. A living human being. A teenager.

  I lost my grip on the pool’s edge and flailed to right myself. Hugh dove forward and caught my arm and sort of slid into the pool right next to me. A silly young grin split his face.

  “Sorry to sneak up on you like that,” he said. “I only just got back last night.”

  “Got back from where?” I gasped.

  “School. St. Paul’s. You knew that, didn’t you? I know you and Mom write letters.”

  “Of course I knew that. I understand—I understand you’re doing well there.”

  “One more year to go.”

  “My goodness. I suppose so. You’re—you’re seventeen now.”

  He leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Nice to meet you, sister. If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a hell of a lot different inside a swimming pool than you do on screen.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I said. “Hugh.”

  “Aw, don’t cry. It’s all right.”

  There was absolutely no way to embrace him, as I clung to the crumbling stone edge of the Greyfriars swimming pool, mastering my shock. For some reason, I still pictured my brother as a kid, about eight years old, grinning and towheaded as he appeared in one of the photographs Mama dutifully sent me, once we had begun to write to each other again. Now the white hair had darkened to gold, and only the grin remained of the picture in my head.

  “Now you’re getting it,” he said, rubbing away a tear from my cheek. “Take a deep breath.”

  “You look like your father.”

  “So they tell me. C’mon, let’s get out of the water.” He turned and stroked to the ladder. I watched his confident arms and my eyes began to sting again, so I launched myself after him before I could think, I followed him in a daze, took his hand to help me up, and at last our arms went around each other, an embrace that would have been awkward if Hugh hadn’t hugged quite so tight, so wholehearted, as if I really were his long-lost sister.

  Well, Christ. I was, I thought. I am.

  “Can’t believe it,” he said, pulling away to beam at me. “Mom didn’t say anything. It was Isobel. She said I could go down to the pool this morning, they’d filled it up finally.”

  “I filled it up,” I said.

  “Did you? Hasn’t been filled in years. Not since the Fisher stock stopped paying dividends. Mr. Monk told Mom she oughta sell out before the whole company went belly-up, but she wouldn’t.” He picked up a towel from one of the lounge chairs and tossed it at me, and then he proceeded to the cabana to fetch himself a towel of his own. “Anyway, Isobel had the old gleam in her eye, if you know what I mean, so I figured something was up. As soon as I saw you, I knew what it was.”

  “I thought you said I looked different offscreen.”

  “Well, you do, but you’re still Miranda Thomas, you know? Nobody else like you, especially around here. You’ve got that glow.”

  “That’s just the makeup they give you.”

  “No, it’s not.” He whistled as he toweled himself off. “The fellows at school don’t believe me when I tell them you’re my sister. Just wait till I—”

  “No! You can’t tell them.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I laid my finger on my lips. “I’m not here.”

  Up went his eyebrows. “Ah! I got you. Incognito. What about the rest of the Island, though? Don’t they know you’re here?”

  “I haven’t been out yet. I’ve stayed at Greyfriars.”

  “Well, I guess if you wanted to hide out somewhere, you couldn’t find a better place. Still. No one’s going to tell if you head to the Club for dinner or something. This is the Island, after all.”

  “Do you still belong to the Club? I thought—”

  “Mom keeps up the membership somehow, though she never goes.”

  “Oh. Of course. I should’ve known she would.” I tucked the towel around the top of my breasts and sat down on one of the chairs, while Hugh lit himself a cigarette from the pack he seemed to have fetched from the cabana, along with his towel. “Should you be smoking that, at your age?”

  “Aw, you won’t tell, will you?”

  “That depends.”

  He waggled the pack at me. “Want one?”

  “No, thank you. They’re bad for your health.”

  Hugh flung himself on the neighboring lounge chair. “Everything’s bad for your health. You might as well live a little. Anyway, I don’t do it that often. Just sneak a couple, here and there. What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t believe it’s you, that’s all. I can’t believe you’re sitting there.”

  “Neither can I. I mean, I can’t believe you’re sitting there. Look at you, in the flesh. And I just hugged you.”

  “You were just a theoretical brother. Your mother and I—”

  “Our mother, sis.”

  “We fell out for a few years, around the time you were born. As you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. At least you patched things up a little. Passed the old olive branch between you. And now you’re here.” He turned on his side, and he looked so much like his father in that instant, smiling and golden, it shocked me. I had to curl my fingers into my palm, the way I did sometimes, on camera or at home, when I thought I could no longer bear the strain of everything.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “And I’m here. And Mom, and Isobel, and all the dear old crazies with their easels and pottery wheels. So maybe we can pretend to be a real family, for once. At least for the summer, anyway.”

  “We are a real family.” I reached out and touched his arm. “It’s wonderful to meet you at last, Hugh Fisher Junior. In the flesh.”

  “Same to you, Miranda. Miranda Thomas. My famous sister.”

  “Oh, that. It’s just a show, Hugh. J
ust some stupid films.”

  “Not stupid at all. It’s how I got to know you. I’ve seen your movies about a million times, you know that?”

  I turned away and pulled my legs up to my chin. Above the boxwoods, the sky was fresh and blue, absent of any clouds. “That’s not really me, Hugh. We’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Well, it was the best I could do at the time. I thought about writing, but then I figured—I didn’t want to bother you or anything—just some fan of yours . . .”

  “Hugh, my God. You’re not—you’re my brother. I’d have been delighted, I really would. I wish you had. I’d have written too, but I thought—well, Mama . . .”

  “Yeah. Mom.”

  “She’s done a wonderful job raising you. I can see you’ve grown into a fine boy.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” He voiced deepened. “You’re a fine young man, Hugh Fisher, a credit to your father.”

  I turned my head and saw that he was still looking at me, or maybe beyond me, past the top of my forehead to land on the boxwoods, or the cabana, or the ragged rooftops of Greyfriars looming above all. He had a certain faraway expression. My God, he was handsome. I thought I was used to handsome, I was used to men whose looks arrived from some different universe, some territory of the gods, like Valhalla, but young Hugh Fisher might have had them all beat, and he was just seventeen.

  I reached over the gap between us to pluck the cigarette from between his fingers and drop it on the paving stones. “Just leave off the cancer sticks, all right?”

  Hugh rolled his lean blue eyes, in the way of teenagers everywhere, and flopped on his back to take in the sun. “Whatever you say, sis.”

  4.

  I must have dozed off, because I found myself startling awake, sometime later, to discover the empty chair by my side. According to the sun, only a short time had passed, and yet I had the disquieting feeling that I’d lost the entire morning somehow, that I had possibly dreamed the whole episode. That I had imagined Hugh as well, like the lobster boat at dawn. But when I looked down at the paving stone, I saw the spent cigarette lying there where I’d dropped it. I picked it up and ran my finger around the end, where his mouth had been, and I thought, My brother.

  I rose from the chair and tossed the cigarette end into the hedge of enormous, overgrown boxwoods that enclosed the pool from view. Eighteen years ago—as I well remembered—those bushes had been trained into immaculate, square-edged perfection by a fleet of gardeners. Not one of those gardeners remained now. The green lawn, the fragrant roses, the careful perennial borders—all wilderness. I had spent my own money to fill this pool, to pay for the fellow who came once a week to clean it. One patch of cultivation existed, and that was a new patch altogether, a kitchen garden, where Mama and Isobel grew the vegetables and herbs that had once come from the grocer in town.

  Imagine my surprise, then, when I emerged from the cabana, showered and dressed in my caftan, and discovered a small clutch of new June roses on the lounge chair, where just a moment ago I’d been sleeping.

  5.

  Also in the way of teenaged boys, Hugh Fisher slept all afternoon and woke at five o’clock, wanting to go to the Club for dinner and to see his friends.

  “Certainly you may,” said Mama, without looking up from her easel. “Are they expecting you?”

  “’Course they are. It’s summer, after all. Everyone’s back on the Island.” He bent and kissed the top of her head. “What’re you painting?”

  “That.” She pointed her brush at Brigitte, who perched naked on the low stone wall bordering the terrace, clasping her arms around her legs, leaning her cheek against her bony knees. Brigitte, I should add, was about seventy years old, but she displayed not the slightest sign of embarrassment at her nakedness, as if her sagging, imperfect body did not belong to her at all, or else belonged to all women. Whereas I, in every photograph—not the films, mind you, just the photographs—felt the weight of the camera lens like a brand against each precious inch of exposed skin.

  Hugh peered at the canvas. “Not bad this time. The angle of her arm, that shadow. You need to work on her face, though.”

  “Faces are the hardest.”

  Hugh straightened and turned to me. The sun hadn’t yet fallen behind the ridge of the Greyfriars roof, and he stood there like Apollo with his blond hair and his tanned face, bathed in light. Sometimes it’s astounding, the inequitable distribution of genetic material, those fateful, chemical spirals locked in our cells, and the worst thing, or else the best thing, was that he had no idea. No conscious knowledge whatsoever that he, Hugh Fisher, had received such an unfairly vast largesse from nature while the rest of us made do with less. He just smiled, without guile. “Miranda? You coming?”

  There was a shattering little silence. Even the two chattering sisters on the nearby lawn—oil paint, both of them—seemed to arrest their conversation, and in the quiet, I became aware that Brigitte was humming to herself: a wandering, tuneless tune. Isobel, on the other side of the terrace, looked up from her pile of knitting.

  “What did you say, Hugh?”

  “I thought Miranda should come to the Club with me for dinner tonight.”

  “Miranda? The Club?”

  “Yeah, the Club. Where else can you go for dinner around here?”

  “She can’t,” Isobel said. “Her bruises.”

  “What bruises?”

  “On her face.”

  Hugh stared at me. “She hasn’t got any bruises.”

  “Isobel’s right,” said Mama. “Of course Miranda can’t go to the Club.”

  “Why not?”

  I tucked my thumb into the crease of my book and said, “Because I’m persona non grata around here, don’t you know that? I don’t dare show my face inside the sacred walls of the Club.”

  “Miranda. Don’t use that tone,” said my mother.

  “She ought to use that tone. It’s stupid. Why shouldn’t she go to the Club?”

  “She’s not a member.”

  “She’s with me. She’s my sister.”

  “For God’s sake, Hugh. Give it a rest,” said Isobel, picking up her knitting again. “She can’t go, that’s all. Maybe it’s stupid. But people have long memories around here, and—well. It’s the Club.”

  “To hell with them,” said Hugh. “It happened eighteen years ago. It was before I was born. She was a kid. And anyway, I don’t see what she did that was so bad.”

  “Hugh,” snapped my mother. “He was your father.”

  “C’mon, I’ve read the old newspapers. I’ve read the transcripts. I don’t get it. What’s the big deal? She spent the night with a boy, that’s all. It was 1951, not the Middle Ages. You can’t blame her for what happened after.”

  “You don’t understand,” Isobel said.

  Mama threw down her brush. “Do you know that the marshals were here again today? Asking about the Vargas boy?”

  “Marshals?” I whispered, but nobody heard me.

  Hugh made a noise of interest. “Were they, now? Any news?”

  “No. But I’m sure they’ll be knocking on all the other doors, disturbing the entire Island with their terrible questions, and Miranda’s the last person anybody will want to see at dinner after that ordeal.”

  “Aw, Mom,” said Hugh. “That’s not fair. It’s not her fault Vargas awarded himself an early release.”

  “Don’t be flippant!”

  I stood up. The world tilted, and then righted itself. I glanced out to sea—I couldn’t help it—and toward Isobel, staring watchfully, and then my mother. “You’re sure there’s no news?” I said.

  My mother pressed her lips together and frowned in Isobel’s direction. “No news. There’s no sign of him.”

  I breathed out slowly and smiled. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go get dressed for dinner.”

  “Miranda!” my mother said, agonized.

  “Hugh, you’ll meet me at the front door in—oh, fifteen minutes?”


  He jumped to attention and saluted me. “Right on.”

  On my way back inside, toward the one set of French doors that still opened properly, I crossed behind Mama. As I did, I turned my head to regard the canvas. Like all my mother’s paintings, it was abstract and somewhat derivative, borrowing the perspective of a more original mind. Brigitte’s body had been rendered in a series of blurred triangles, and the only clear detail was the line of numbers tattooed on her wrist, which Mama painted larger than life.

  6.

  Hugh Fisher might have inherited his father’s thick, golden hair, but he wore it longer, looser, without all that pomade I remembered, and it tumbled around his head as we sped around the long, sunlit curves of Winthrop Road.

  “So what was Isobel talking about back there?” he said. “The bruises, I mean.”

  “Nothing. It was nothing. I had a little accident just before I arrived, that’s all.”

  “An accident, huh? What kind of accident?”

  “A car accident.”

  “Jesus. Are you all right?”

  “I am, obviously. All better now.”

  “Because if that husband of yours gave you those bruises, I’d—I’d knock his lights out.”

  “Well, the car gave me the bruises, and I’m afraid its lights are already knocked out.”

  “Jesus,” he said again. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

  “Perfectly fine.”

  “And the husband? Where’s he?”

  “Back home in London, as far as I know.”

  “As far as you know?”

  “I have a marvelous idea, Hugh. Let’s talk about all your girlfriends, every single one.”

  He laughed. “That would be a short conversation.”

  “Not as short as this one.”

  Hugh whistled. “All right, all right. I can take a hint. Film director husband is off limits. At least until I can get you loaded enough to spill the beans.”

  “In which case I’ll get you drunk enough that you don’t remember a word I said.”

  “What? Gosh, Miranda, I’m not even eighteen yet. I might have to report you to the police for corrupting the morals of a minor.”