The Summer Wives_A Novel

by Beatriz Williams

  “From what I’ve seen so far, there’s not much left to corrupt.”

  “Aw, Miranda. Stop busting my chops.”

  “I’m your sister, darling. I’m supposed to bust your chops.”

  Hugh laughed—he seemed to have a sunny nature, my kid brother, God knew why—and reached over to land a swift pat on my knee. “You know what? I think I like it.”

  I made a noise of dismissal and crossed my legs, so that the knee he’d patted was covered over by the other. I wore a simple dress—simpler is always better, my husband used to tell me, and he was right about that—a short, well-cut sheath of sapphire blue and a pair of low matching heels, so the knees in question were bare. I’d hesitated upstairs before putting it on. Maybe the dress was too short for the Winthrop Island Club, maybe the Families weren’t keeping up with the times. Maybe all the matrons would sneer at me, and all the debutantes would narrow their eyes. Well, they were going to do that anyway, weren’t they? Might as well give them something to sneer at. I stared at the gray road ahead, pale in the late sunshine, and I thought I could taste the sea at the back of my throat.

  “Do you ever think about it?” Hugh asked. “Or do you just push it out of your mind?”

  “Think about what?”

  “The murder,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the draft blowing past my cheeks. Hugh’s car was a Ford convertible, ten years old, noisy and fast, most un-Island like. I wondered where he got it and how he’d paid for it. I turned the words over in my head—the murder—and I said, “You say that like it wasn’t your own father.”

  “Well, I never met him, did I? I have his genes, that’s all. I mean, I love him, I guess. The idea of him. But I didn’t know him at all.” He paused to shift gears. “How well did you know him?”

  “Not very well. I only met him a few times, actually. When he was courting my mother, and then the wedding. Then they went away on their honeymoon and didn’t come back until the end of the summer.”

  “When Vargas killed him.”

  I turned away to stare at the passing bushes, the young trees, far more of them than there were eighteen years ago. I’d mentioned this to Isobel a week or so ago, and she said that the seeds apparently blew in during the hurricane of 1938, that’s what the scientists said, and now the new growth was finally starting to take hold and spread. One hurricane taketh away, and another hurricane giveth.

  “Didn’t he?” Hugh said. “Come on. Lay it on me. You were there at the lighthouse when it happened.”

  “I don’t know. I was asleep. As you must know, if you read those transcripts.”

  “But were you really? Asleep? I always wondered.”

  “I testified under oath, didn’t I?”

  “But you were in love with him, right? So maybe you were trying to protect him. You said you were asleep, but you really saw everything.”

  “Who says that?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone around here. They say you nearly got him off. When you went public, gave all those interviews and said you didn’t believe Vargas could have killed anyone, a lot of people believed you. You were pretty convincing, even then.”

  “Well, I didn’t get him off, did I?”

  “Only because he pled guilty.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hugh. “We can talk about something else. I’m just curious, that’s all. I always wondered.”

  “Of course you did. He’s your father.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me any more?”

  “I’ve already said everything that needs to be said,” I told him, and I opened my pocketbook and put down the sun visor, so I could touch up my lipstick in the mirror. “Thanks for the roses, by the way. Where on earth did you find them?”

  “Roses?” he said. “What roses?”

  7.

  They love a little excitement at the Winthrop Island Club, and don’t let them tell you any differently. When Hugh Fisher and I appeared at the entrance of the dining room, arm in arm—he insisted—you could see the disturbance pass from table to table, the way the waves ripple away when you drop a stone into a pond of still water. Quick, flickering glances and furtive words and turned shoulders, that kind of thing. People reached for their cocktails and drank.

  Hugh leaned into my ear. “We’re sitting with the Huxleys, by the way. Did I mention that?”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Mrs. Huxley telephoned to beg me an hour ago.”

  “But she didn’t know I was coming too.”

  “I thought it would be a terrific surprise. Come along.”

  I kept my gaze straight ahead as I walked through that dining room, my arm linked with that of my sturdy young brother, the same way I might at a film premiere or an awards dinner, when everyone’s catching a glimpse of you, everyone’s examining the cut of your dress and your hair, the color of your lipstick, your posture, your stride, your cleavage, your everything. But this was different. You might encounter a little jealousy in those crowds, a dagger look or two, but the gazes are largely admiring, even worshipful, especially when your husband walks by your side, and he’s their most revered of all gods, legend of all legends, whom nobody dares to cross.

  The Families, on the other hand. The members of the Winthrop Island Club. That’s a different crowd altogether, the toughest crowd in the world. I don’t think a single one of my famous London friends could have got himself into the Club, not for a million dollars, and especially if he were so gauche as to actually offer a million dollars. And this brother of mine, Hugh Fisher Junior, he might possess a great deal of goodwill on the strength of his good looks and his tragic upbringing—the Families are nothing if not loyal to their own—but I knew and he knew that he was crossing an uncrossable line, as he escorted his notorious half sister into that dining room overlooking the magnificent links and the cliffs beyond, and the hazy blue sky of a June evening. The difference was, he was enjoying it.

  I recalled that eighteen years ago, the Huxleys always ate at the table in the far northwest corner of the room, adjacent to the famous sixth hole, and I’ll be damned if my brother didn’t steer me in that direction now. Horses in a pasture couldn’t have been more habitual, and indeed the fellow who lifted his martini glass as we approached, hiding an expression of horrified astonishment, had something of the look of a horse. Long face, large, dark eyes set a little too far apart. Rather like his sister, Livy.

  “Hugh,” he said helplessly, starting to rise, because I was a woman, after all, even if I was that woman.

  “Mr. Huxley,” said Hugh. “I’ve brought a little surprise with me. I hope you don’t mind. My sister, Miranda. Miranda, Dick Huxley.”

  I held out my hand. “Of course. I remember Dick very well. You were just eleven or twelve when I last saw you, isn’t that right?”

  Dick looked at the woman who must have been his wife, and then he looked at me, and at last he reached out one shaking hand and touched mine, briefly. “Miss—Mrs.—”

  “Just Miranda. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? Is this your wife?”

  “Y—Yes. Candy. Candy, this is—this is—”

  “I know who it is,” the woman said coolly. She was slim and dark-haired, altogether too pretty for Dick Huxley, which meant she wasn’t from one of the Families. She’d married in, I guessed, on the strength of her looks and her ambition. “How funny of you to bring her along tonight, Hugh. I’m not sure we have room at the table for her.”

  God, the nerve of her. I had to admire her nerve. I glanced around the table, which was large and round, laid for seven, one seat empty. I judged plenty of space between settings, but maybe the family liked its elbow room. There were four more Huxleys, two children and an older couple that I recognized instantly as the grayed, wrinkled versions of Dr. and Mrs. Huxley, Livy’s parents. Mrs. Huxley was looking at her daughter-in-law, wearing an expression of faint approval, and Dr. Huxley was studying the ice in his gin an
d tonic. The children—aged just below their teens, a boy and a girl—were bouncing from their seats with excitement, bless them.

  “Oh, look. Your lovely children.” I bent down to look at them on their level, the way you absolutely must with young ones. “Do you know something? You’re just about the age your father was, when I last saw him.”

  “You’re Miranda Thomas, aren’t you?” the girl said, in awe.

  “Can I have your autograph?” asked the boy.

  “Children.”

  They snapped to attention. Candy Huxley had that look on her face, the rage of a betrayed mother, flushed cheeks and fierce eyes, and now I knew for certain she wasn’t from one of the Families. They don’t do rage, they don’t do passion. They drink quietly, copiously, to wash it all out of their systems. I also knew that I wouldn’t be forgiven for this small act of seduction, that I had just destroyed any chance of redemption, and maybe I’d done it on purpose. Maybe I wanted to drive myself out of the pale right away, a single stroke, so I wouldn’t have to stalk across this damned dining room again in my life. And yet I had come here willingly.

  I turned to Hugh. “Perhaps we might—”

  “What, no room for my sister?” My brother looked directly at Candy. “I see plenty of room. There’s always a place for family, isn’t there, Dick?”

  “Hugh, I think—”

  “Dr. Huxley? Mrs. Huxley? I’m sure you remember my sister, Miranda. I’m sure you’d like to welcome her back, after all these years.”

  Mrs. Huxley’s face turned to granite. Dr. Huxley frowned at my ear.

  “I heard a story once,” Hugh said, “I heard a story that you were one of the first people Miranda met on the Island, Dr. Huxley. I think Isobel told me. Old Mr. Silva fell off his boat and they brought him into my father’s house, and you raced over to stitch him back together on the kitchen table.”

  “That was Joseph who saved Mr. Silva, you know,” I said. “Dove into the water after he fell from his boat. Joseph Vargas.”

  The name dropped like a cannonball into the middle of that table, as I knew it would, and in that instant I realized that everyone around us had gone quiet, that a gargantuan silence filled that dining room as nothing had ever filled it before, at least in my brief experience there. Not a clink of glassware, not a nervy chuckle, not a single rheumy cough. Just the smell of perfume and cigarettes, just the strain of two hundred ears.

  “Did he?” said Hugh. “Isobel didn’t say. How about that.”

  Candy Huxley turned to her husband. “Dick. Say something.”

  Poor Dick. He fiddled with his napkin and babbled a little. “Now, Hugh, now—let’s—you know, Hugh—the marshals were just here—and, uh—”

  Hugh, who was more than a decade younger, displayed considerably more composure. He set his hand on Huxley’s shoulder and said quietly, “Dick.”

  And I thought in that second that Hugh Fisher’s son and namesake was maybe born for the wrong age, that he would have made an excellent army lieutenant, a leader of men, absolutely certain of himself at the moment of crisis. I thought that his father, whatever his faults, would be terribly proud of this young man, of whose existence he scarcely even knew before he died.

  I touched my brother’s elbow. “You stay and eat, Hugh. I’ll just—”

  “No, Miranda. You’ll just what? Drive home alone? If there’s one thing that makes me mad, it’s a fellow who won’t stand by a lady.” He removed his hand from Huxley’s shoulder and took my arm. “We’ll both leave. Good night, ladies. Gentlemen.”

  The words about groaned with irony, but before anybody could stiffen his back at this unspeakable slur, before Hugh could even steer me around for our departure, another voice reached us.

  “Hugh Fisher. Look at you, young man. Back from school, are you?”

  I tilted my head to regard the man before me, dressed in the eternal Club uniform of jacket and tie and slacks, and I knew he was familiar. I knew that face, that voice, and I can’t really say why I didn’t immediately recognize him.

  He recognized me, however. He turned his bland, tanned face toward me and smiled broadly. Held out his hand and said, “Miranda Schuyler, as lovely as ever. You’re always welcome at my table.”

  I took his hand, and the name came out before I even knew it. “Why, Clay! Clayton Monk. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  8.

  I considered this little lie as we sat on the little stone bench overlooking the eighth hole green a couple of hours later, Clay and I, taking in the fragrant, salty twilight as we watched Hugh instruct Clay’s pretty daughter Lucy on the art of sinking a long putt.

  Because of course Clay had changed; everyone changes, and why would you want to stay the same? God knew I wasn’t the same round, pink child who had stood on these links eighteen years ago to be kissed for the first time. And Clay? Clay was no taut war hero of twenty-six, pining for a wife. Clay had grown a bit of jowl, and his nose was starting to take on the rosy, middle-aged sponginess common to his tribe, and naturally he had put on weight around the middle. That longed-for wife now stood at the edge of the nearby green, dangling a cigarette, sipping a cocktail, observing their daughter’s progress. And I don’t mean the golf.

  All the same, he was still a handsome fellow. He wore his age better than most of the men around here. Maybe he drank less, maybe he ate less. Maybe he spent more time exercising. He sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and smoked a quiet cigarette. The glass was empty on the bench next to him, but he hadn’t gone for more. I gazed across the darkened course, made silver by the rising moon, and the monumental, rambling clubhouse to our right, and I thought that maybe I hadn’t lied that much after all, that Clay remained the same in everything essential. Certainly the Club was the same, the Island itself had altered by not one hair in eighteen years. I said this aloud to Clay.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Summer after summer, we stick to our ways around here. It’s our own world.”

  “That’s the appeal of an island, I suppose. You get to evolve all by yourselves, like Madagascar. Or not evolve at all.”

  Clay gestured with his cigarette toward the nearby mansion. “That’s going to change, though. Did you hear? We’re finally going to build a new clubhouse.”

  “A new clubhouse? Why?”

  “Well, look at it. It’s a dinosaur. Too big, too grand, too expensive to keep up.”

  “Too expensive? Haven’t you got all the money in the world?”

  “Oh, we’re just thrifty New Englanders at heart. That old place was never really our style. We’re not Newport, after all. Nobody’s here to show off.”

  “Still, it seems like a waste. It’s not that old, is it? It only went up in the twenties. And didn’t some famous architect design it?”

  “Well, it’s too late now. The contract’s signed. At the end of the season, Tom Donnelly’s going to knock it down and build us something smaller, a little less flashy. A family sort of place.”

  “I hope he’s got a big enough wrecking ball. It’s going to take weeks. Wouldn’t it be easier just to blow it up?”

  “Residents won’t have it. It’s in the contract, he’s got to dismantle it piece by piece, without explosives or fire or wrecking balls or anything like that. He wasn’t too pleased, but he wanted the contract.” Clay paused to smoke. “A good man, Tom Donnelly.”

  “I never met him.”

  “He lives down at your end of the Island. A year-rounder. Does most of the construction work around here. People trust him.”

  I stared at the yellow-lit clubhouse, as gargantuan and indiscreet as they come, turrets and gables and half-timbering, a vast cliché of olde English vernacular, and I supposed he was right. It was the kind of architecture that pretended to old age, a false birth certificate, a pedigree where none existed, and the Islanders didn’t need that kind of clubhouse. They had their own pedigrees.

  Clay coughed and went on. “If you’re thinking of making any repairs at Greyfriar
s while you’re there—fixing the place up a bit, I mean—he’s the right fellow to call. I’d be happy to introduce you. The house could use some work.”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  “Your poor mother, left without any money. First the taxes on the estate, and the mortgages—she had to sell the New York apartment, not that she ever lived there—and then the Fisher company stock. I told her to sell it all, but she had this faith.” He shook his head. “Hugh Fisher. He sure knew how to spend money, that fellow. Remember that damned yacht of his? Twenty crew, all on salary. That was the first thing she sold, after he died, and even that just went toward the tax bill.”

  “Were the taxes so bad?”

  “Seventy-seven percent. She had to sell everything she could, and all she had left was the Fisher stock. She lived on the dividends until those went dry, and a year later the whole company went bankrupt, and she had just about nothing to live on. Terrible situation. We’d help out if we could, but she’d never take it. You, on the other hand.”

  “Me?”

  “You could fix things up, while you’re here. I think she’d appreciate it. She’s done everything she could to hang on to Greyfriars, because of your father. She wants to keep it for young Hugh.”

  “It’s going to cost an awful lot of money to fix up Greyfriars,” I said. “It’s fallen to pieces, almost.”

  “Well, but—I don’t mean to be vulgar—but . . .”

  “You can be vulgar with me, Clay. We’re old friends.”

  “Well, surely money’s no trouble. That husband of yours, he’s made a lot of movies, hasn’t he?”

  “Ah. Yes, of course,” I said. “He certainly has.”

  “I’d be happy to put you in touch with Donnelly. He’s a good man.”

  “Please do.”

  “It would give you something to do while you’re here. A project. I know we’re a little dull here on the Island, for a movie star like you.”

  I returned my attention to the three figures on the green, and to Clay’s wife, languid in the moonlight. She was not beautiful, too long-nosed and sharp-boned, but she didn’t need to be beautiful, did she?