Beach Girls

by Luanne Rice

  “So they went out and inflicted it on other people?” Jack asked.

  “You don't understand.”

  “I understand that some of them are in there for rape and murder.”

  “You never support me,” she said. “What I believe in. I'm there trying to help people.”

  “I support you, Emma,” his expression leaving his real feelings unspoken.

  “No you don't,” she said, shaking her head vio-lently. “You supported me when I volunteered in nice places—the children's hospital, or the nursing homes. But Dixon—”

  “I'm worried about it, okay?” he exploded. “I don't know who you're meeting there, whether they might track you home. How about that one who got your number? What if someone found out where you lived, what about Nell? I don't want them near us.”

  “‘Them,'” she spat back. “‘They.' As if they're so other. They're human beings who've had bad breaks. I'm helping Father Richard teach these men to read—doing important work, maybe for the first time in my life.”

  “I think raising Nell is important work, too.”

  “You're so sanctimonious, Jack.”

  “Look, when a convicted felon calls you at home, I'm going to get upset.” He took a breath. “I'm sorry if it seems I'm belittling your work. I'm not. I know you're good at anything you do. But does it have to be the prison? Before Father Richard came to the parish—”

  “I know what you're saying. But the volunteer program was so stagnant. I felt we were just being sent places . . . just to keep us busy.”

  Reading to kids in the pediatric oncology ward was just keeping busy? Jack didn't say it out loud. He held it inside, his chest exploding, thinking of how fascinated Emma had gotten with the terrible stories she heard from the prisoners, how terrible their lives had been, how badly they'd been treated.

  Just six months earlier, she had decided she wanted different bathroom tiles. The “old” ones—less than two years old—were Mexican, painted with flowers. Then she wanted marble. Now she thought that tiles were beside the point. She was on fire—the first time Jack had ever seen her like this—passionate about her work.

  Jack had said fine, whatever she wanted. But inside, something had come clanging down—he knew she was using her prison work as a way to avoid him. He actually wondered whether she'd developed a crush on one of the prisoners—the one who had called their house. Whenever he wanted to talk, or go out, she was involved in planning her reading lessons, or talking to her fellow volunteers about how they could effect meaningful change at Dixon.

  “What's wrong?” he'd asked her.

  “They don't have a library,” she said. “Not a real library, anyway—just a few books donated by family members.”

  “Not what's wrong at Dixon Correctional—what's wrong with us?”

  “You'd know better than I do. You're always at your office. And when you're not, you're on the computer. Or watching TV.”

  She was right—except, if he believed what Madeleine had told him, she was lying then. Still, how could Jack tell her he did those things because she seemed so hostile—or, worse, indifferent to him? They had had so much fun when they were first married. She'd gone on every business trip with him. They had laughed about everything. Then Nell was born.

  Jack had never thought he could love anyone as much as Emma. Ever. But then Nell had entered the picture. She had shown up, taken complete control. Instead of being jealous of the time Emma spent with the baby, Jack was jealous that she got more time with Nell than he did.

  Nell changed everything. She made Jack a new man. She made the sun brighter, the ocean deeper, color, truer, the moon whiter, peaches sweeter. She got Jack up at two in the morning, she got him to love being spit up on, she made him go to work exhausted and count the minutes till he got to return home, she got him to love finger painting, and to replace his office art with her crayon drawings, to go to every nursery school recital, to hang a wreath made of a circle of her green handprints.

  She got him on roller skates, and on the merry-go-round, and to matinees of the latest Disney cartoon, and to the ice cream stand, and the peach orchard, and PTA meetings, and church. Jack even went to church, because Nell sang in the children's choir.

  And as close as he got to his daughter, he seemed to veer that much farther from his wife. He didn't love her any less; he just noticed that they changed toward each other. They still talked, but they didn't laugh as much. There seemed to be so much planning, so much duty. They both preferred nights at home with Nell, so they didn't hire many babysitters; maybe if they had, they wouldn't have lost each other.

  Jack worked a lot—he was ambitious, and he wanted to succeed. He wanted to provide for his family, have enough money so Nell could go to any college she wanted. Emma stayed home, but she had started talking about going to graduate school—getting a master's degree in social work.

  Emma never used to be so involved in the church. She and Jack used to joke that they were “cellular Catholics”—they felt it in the cells of their bodies, in their bones, even though they weren't devout. Jack didn't go to church every Sunday, but Emma made sure he got to St. Francis Xavier on major holidays. Nell made her First Communion, and went to catechism on Wednesday afternoons.

  As time went on, Jack began to notice that Emma seemed to yearn for something more. Their big house wasn't fulfilling her—and she seemed to almost feel embarrassed by it. She started doing weekend retreats at their church—sleeping home at night, but spending Saturday and Sunday in spiritual workshops. Her circle of women friends shifted, from the country club to Xavier. Even her dreams seemed to change. Everything Jack had thought she wanted, now began to turn on him.

  She seemed enraptured by Father Richard, and the idea of public service. She was drawn to the edge—to help those who'd had hard lives, the men at the prison. Jack had failed to notice her depths, her great reservoir of compassion. He had categorized his own wife—he really had. He had thought of her as a woman made happy by Mexican tiles, a house in the right neighborhood, staying home with their daughter. He had missed the rest of her.

  By the time he started to notice, she was completely involved in her volunteer work. It wasn't that they didn't have free time, it's just that they always seemed to use their free time for everything but each other.

  Jack thought back to that last trip, when Emma went away with Madeleine. He knew his sister had meant to help—she and Chris had been down the prior Christmas, and she'd felt alarmed by the coolness she saw in Emma. The phone rang in the middle of dinner—until after her death, Jack hadn't known who it was from. But Emma took the call—while he carved and served the turkey—and she didn't come back till everyone was starting on seconds. Jack remembered how red and puffy her eyes looked, and how Nell had dropped her fork and asked, “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

  Emma had said something about an eyelash in her eye. . . .

  So when Madeleine began calling, a month or so later, to try to get Emma to go away with her for a “girls only” birthday trip that next June, Jack was all for it. He knew that if anyone could get Emma to talk about what was bothering her, Maddie could. He wanted to ask Maddie himself—what she knew, what Emma told her. But he held back.

  Emma herself was unsure of whether she should go. She loved St. Simons Island, and she yearned for the beach—one of the drawbacks of being in Atlanta was how long it took to get to the Atlantic coast. But she hesitated about leaving Nell. Not Jack—Nell. He kept pressing her, encouraging her to go and have fun.

  Selfishly, he thought that maybe the hot sand and blue water would loosen her up; maybe he would get his old Emma back. Maybe she'd touch him again, act like she wanted him; maybe she'd stop pretending to be asleep every time he reached for her. It was during those post-Christmas months that he started e-mailing Laurie in Cleveland; he felt so lonely in his own home, but he'd started hating himself for how much he looked forward to “you've got mail.”

  And then the week before Maddie had s
cheduled her trip, he and Emma had had the biggest fight of their marriage—supposedly about the time she was spending at Dixon. Really, though, about the long slide of their relationship, from love and partnership into some sort of hateful charade—neither of them happy, neither of them seeming able to change.

  Jack surveyed the line with Jim, uncovering more boundary markers and posts. He hadn't thought this way for a long time. Birds flew overhead, flushed from the underbrush by the activity. Jim called out notations, and Jack wrote them down in the notebook. Shadows and light fell across clearings and woods. Jack's mind spun with old memories.

  He still couldn't think about the accident without cringing. But he was able to remember the aftermath—when Emma was in the hospital, before they had lost hope for her survival, when he had knelt by her bedside and prayed for her to live. He had begged God to make her whole and well again. And when God turned him down on that, Jack had prayed for Emma to haunt him—to love him the way she had at the beginning.

  Maybe that was why he related to Aida—loved her on first meeting, actually. Because the woman wanted to preserve this place where she and her husband had known such great love. Jack's heart squeezed inside his chest. He heard Jim call out another number, and he wrote it down. His throat ached.

  Because he knew he would do whatever he could to help this woman maintain her land and the castle her husband had loved so much. And because he seemed to be running as fast as he could, as far as he could, from any place that he and Emma had ever lived—from the lie their life had become.

  Scotland was far away. And Jack was so tired of running.

  He had made his plans, arranged for work permits, given his word that he would start work within the month. The problem was, he no longer wanted to go. Every night he dreamed of staying, dreamed of walking the beach, splashed by warm waves, going to old, almost unintelligible beach movies, holding hands with a kind, curious, open, beautiful woman. With a woman who had obviously won the heart of his brokenhearted daughter.

  Stay, Stevie had said.

  Romanov was counting on him. And Francesca and the people at Structural felt betrayed by his leaving, and would probably love to see him fail.

  Penance came in unexpected places. This dilemma must be Jack's punishment, for loving badly the first time. If Emma hadn't been so unhappy with him, she wouldn't have had to go down the road she had chosen. He thought of what Madeleine had told him—in a medicated stupor, her hysteria subdued.

  That while Madeleine drove down that rutted country road, Emma had slapped her in a fit of rage, sent the car out of control. Jack had refused to listen then, and he didn't want to listen now. He needed to keep Emma's memory safe. He'd force himself, if necessary, for Nell's sake.

  But somehow now, emerging from the woods and seeing Stevie's Aunt Aida coming toward him with such kindness and wisdom in her violet eyes, Jack thought of Madeleine, Nell's aunt, and felt a sickness in his soul that told him that just maybe he'd been blaming the wrong person all this time.

  “Hello, Jack,” Aida said, giving him a hug. “Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It's your vacation . . . I really have no business taking you away from the beach, and Nell . . .”

  “That's okay, Aida,” he said. “This is such a wonderful place, I'll do whatever I can to help save it.”

  “I'm going to load the equipment into the car,” Jim said. “I've got tickets for a Red Sox game tonight, and I've got to hurry back. Take care, Jack. Nice meeting you, Aida.”

  “And you, too, Jim—thank you so much,” she said, shaking his hand. “Now, can I offer you some tea?” she asked Jack.

  “Sure, thanks,” he said, and followed her into her small house.

  It was almost entirely an artist's studio, with a small daybed pushed against the wall behind the easel and table. She went out into the yard, to fill a copper kettle with water from the well, then set it on the narrow stove. They sat in straight-backed chairs at a scarred oak table, streaked with pigment. Her hands were elegant and capable, knuckles and fingernails rimmed with paint, like Stevie's.

  “You have quite a daughter,” she said, staring at Jack, as if taking his measure.

  “Thank you. I know it.”

  “She knows her own mind. I still can't believe she went searching for Stevie—and found her. And was brave enough to knock on her door.”

  “She skinned her knees that day, badly,” Jack said, remembering. “She came home with scrapes and Band-Aids. Stevie had bandaged her up. But it hit me, seeing Nell, that she must have really wanted something very badly, to take a fall like that and keep going.”

  “What do you think she wanted?” Aida asked. The kettle whistled, and she poured hot water into mugs.

  Jack didn't answer. The question hung in the air, then drifted off. There was something dreamlike about the visit—everything seemed very vivid, and laden with meaning—or no meaning at all. He saw black-and-white photographs on the wall of Aida as a young woman—tall, lean, theatrical. Dressed in gowns, costumes, nude . . .

  “Van took those,” she said. “He was so talented. A great actor, but he could easily have been a photographer, as well. That's him—”

  Jack followed her gaze to a series of photos of a large, rotund man with an aggressive nose and chin, and intense dark eyes. Dressed as Iago in some and Falstaff in others, he seemed equally at home in both roles—intense, expressive, larger than life. Jack saw the resemblance to Henry, and could well imagine such a man fathering a naval officer.

  “Henry's father,” Jack said.

  “Yes. They adored each other, but had a hard time showing it. I'm convinced that every battle Henry ever fought was for his father.”

  “He's getting married now?”

  “Yes. After all this time. His parents' marriage was quite difficult—his mother was very hurt, and always let him know. That was her prerogative, but oh, it damaged him terribly. He never trusted himself to love someone and not hurt them.”

  Jack closed his eyes, thinking of how painful and mixed up it all got.

  “He's so . . .” Aida's eyes grew misty. “He's so the opposite of Stevie in that way—and yet exactly like her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As I've told you, Stevie's parents had an idyllic marriage. One of the truly rare ones. My brother was a poet, calm and gentle and insightful. My sister-in-law was an artist and art historian. . . . They were, to use that terribly overused expression, ‘soul mates.' They are Stevie's model. She has such a strong belief in love, and she wants to have what her parents had.”

  “Maybe it doesn't exist,” Jack said, surprised by the bitterness in his heart.

  “Oh, I know it does,” Aida said.

  “Because of you and Van?”

  She nodded. “It wasn't the first go-round for either of us. Mistakes get made, and people get hurt. That's tragic—lives are affected. But love is there—it's real. You find it, or it finds you . . . that's all it takes.”

  “That's why you want to preserve this place, isn't it?” Jack asked. “Because you loved Van here?”

  Aida nodded. “I did, and do,” she said. “I can never thank you enough for helping me this way. I've called my lawyer, and he is going to set up a land trust. I have a major show scheduled for October, and I plan to use all the proceeds to fund the trust. This will be ‘the Van Von Lichen Nature and Art Center.' The Black Hall art types will love it. Van was a great supporter of the arts, and he had many a wild party with the Connecticut Impressionists here.”

  “That's not what you paint, though, is it? Impressionism?” Jack asked, embarrassed not to know enough about art to be sure of the difference.

  “Please!” she said. “Darling, I'm in love with the new. Although it's been rather a few decades since Abstract Expressionism was considered new. . . . anyway . . .”

  “Thanks, Aida,” he said. “As soon as I get my notes together, I'll send you what I have. Before I leave for Scotland.”

  “Stevie m
entioned that you're moving there. I must say. . . . I feel sad about it.”

  “Oh, I'll stay involved with your project, even from there. Your lawyer can call me, to discuss the plans, or talk over ideas . . .”

  “Jack, that's not why I feel sad. It has nothing to do with my castle, or the hillside.”

  “Then what?”

  Aida was silent. She sipped her tea, staring at Jack over the rim of her mug with eloquent dark-rimmed eyes. He felt as if she could see right into his heart.

  “I don't know you very well,” she said, “and yet I feel I do. Stevie has told me a bit. . . . It's a feeling that I have. Simply, that . . .”

  “What? Please tell me.”

  “I think my niece will be very sorry if you go. You and Nell. I know Nell will be. And . . . I think you will be, too.”

  Jack wanted to tell her she had no idea. He cleared his throat. “There's the matter of the contracts I signed.”

  “The marvelous thing about contracts,” she said, “is that there's always a way out. It might cost you more in money, but it will save you in the things that matter.”

  “What would they be?”

  “Oh, come now, Mr. Kilvert,” Aida said, her solemn eyes twinkling. “You wouldn't be here, walking these acres and saving my castle, if you didn't know exactly what they are.”

  Jack drank his tea and thought of Stevie's story about the magical castle and the wise aunt. He didn't reply to Aida's question, because he didn't want to hear himself say that he did know; he knew all too well.

  Chapter 21

  MADELEINE SAT IN HER CAR, PARKED at Emerson's Market, just outside the train trestle that was the gateway to Hubbard's Point. She felt nervous but determined. While she sat there, two trains went by: one toward New York, one toward Boston. When she and her brother were young, they used to count the train cars.

  After quite a while, she saw what she was looking for: Jack's station wagon came down the Shore Road and drove under the bridge, into Hubbard's Point. Madeleine had scouted it out two days earlier, on a dry run. She had driven down from Providence, cruised the cottages around the tennis courts, where Stevie had said he was staying, hoping to run into her brother. But when she'd seen him and Nell climb into their car and drive away, she'd lost her nerve and driven back home.