Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  “I see,” she said, turning away. And then, an idea came. Another of her “Ginny specials”—an idea that might get them into trouble, but there was nothing much to lose. “Well,” she said, trying not to show her smile, “I’ll let you get back to your work. I’ll see you later.” She strutted off, feeling his eyes on her backside, feeling mighty happy that they were. Not only that, but she’d really scored. A picnic at Tashmoo Pond, wherever the hell that was. Chances are, the old man’s “daughter” Melanie would be there. And she’d probably even bring her little girl.

  Ginny walked toward the house, rubbing her hands together, pleased that she still had it, the way to get what she needed from a man. She hoped that Jess had brought some old jeans and a sweatshirt to wear to Tashmoo Pond … something that hinted “townie” and didn’t have Ann Taylor or St. John knit oozing from every seam.

  Chapter 16

  “We can’t just crash a picnic,” Jess had protested when Ginny told her of her plan.

  “We won’t exactly ‘crash’ it. We’ll make Richard’s father think we were out exploring and just ‘happened’ to come across it.”

  “I don’t know, Ginny …”

  “Look, do you want to get on with this or would you rather spend the next week holed up in that room, waiting for your darling Richard to return?” She suggested that Melanie might be there; she did not tell her about the little girl, the granddaughter Jess did not know she had. Even Ginny knew it would not be fair to raise Jess’s hopes too high.

  Yet finally she’d convinced Jess, and now the two of them stood on the roadside, dressed in jeans and “Vineyarders” sweatshirts that Ginny bought for them last night, peering down a grassy hill toward a small, duck-infested pond, where half a dozen rickety skiffs were rowed by kids in orange life vests, where picnic tables had been set close to the water’s edge, where people milled and others sat in lawn chairs and on blankets, where accordion players strolled and played, where chatter and laughter mingled with aromas of sizzling charcoal grills. The islanders seemed to be enjoying their last hurrah.

  “I feel like I’m watching someone else’s family reunion,” Jess said.

  “Well, it could be yours. All we have to do is walk down the hill. Besides, that smell of hot dogs is mighty appealing. Maybe I can convince the old man to give us one or two.”

  “I don’t know, Ginny …”

  “Trust me, kid.”

  She saw them. They were standing on the knoll, looking down into the crowd, and she saw them, big as life.

  And then she saw them walking. Slowly. With determination. The fat one waddled down the hill, followed by the other.

  Karin leaned against a tall oak tree and marveled at how easily things fell into place when one simply planted a small seed and let nature do what nature did.

  No one stopped them. Jess stayed close behind Ginny, trying to mask her embarrassment, trying to act as if they both belonged there, which of course they did not. It was not the first time she’d followed Ginny’s lead; it was not the first time she’d stepped away from the so-predictable and into Ginny’s world. She wrapped her hands in the hem of her too-large sweatshirt and admitted it was fun, in a Ginny sort of way.

  “Hello. Good morning,” she heard Ginny saying now as they passed among the people. “What a lovely day.”

  An old woman behind a makeshift booth was handing out free ice cream. “Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?” Ginny asked Jess.

  “Forget it!” Jess whispered. “You’re not going to get any.” Fun or not, she could only go so far. And she would be content if this new adventure yielded only a glimpse of Melanie and nothing more.

  “God, you’re such a priss. Just like always.”

  “Just find Richard’s father. Let’s get this over with.”

  They walked past a horse-pulled wagon that kids were piling onto. “Ride?” asked a young man.

  Jess poked Ginny in the back.

  “Maybe later,” Ginny replied, then turned around to Jess. “Let’s walk down to the water. Maybe he’s there.”

  Jess ambled after Ginny, remembering when they had all gone to the state fair together, four very pregnant girls trying to have a good time—eating cotton candy and playing games of chance, and forgetting all their problems if only for one day. She wondered if it had been that long since she’d smelled hamburgers cooking on a grill; she wondered if it had been that long since she’d felt like such a kid.

  They stopped beside some tall cattails. “I should have paid attention to what he wore at breakfast,” Ginny said. “We may never find him in this crowd.”

  As soon as she spoke the words, Jess noticed Richard’s father, sitting at a picnic table, laughing with another man.

  “There he is,” she said. Immediately Jess regretted coming here. After all, this was not a state fair and they were no longer teenage girls.

  But Ginny had followed her eyes to the table, and now it was too late. She marched forward.

  “Mr. Bradley,” she said, tossing back her hair and strutting her Ginny strut. “So this is where you hang out on Memorial Day.”

  “Ginny,” he said with some surprise, and quickly stood. “What are you girls doing down here?”

  “We were drawn by the music,” Ginny said. “Don’t worry,” she added with a small smile, “we’re not staying.”

  He stepped away from the table. “No? Not even if I cook you up a burger?”

  “But this is a town picnic …” she protested, though not too much.

  Richard’s father shook his head. “No problem,” he said, then added with a wink, “You’ll be my guests. Now what’ll it be? Burger with the works? How about some clam chowder? It’s nice and fresh.… Millie Johnson made it.…”

  “Well …” Ginny feigned a thin protest once again. “If you insist.”

  “I do. And I also insist you call me Dick.”

  Dick, Jess thought. Leave it to Ginny to befriend one of those.

  “If you stay,” Dick was saying, “maybe you’ll get some good material for your research.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Ginny responded, “I’m sure I will. And since you insist, I’ll have a hamburger. With the works.” She turned to Jess. “Jess?”

  Jess shifted her eyes back to the crowd, wondering if the youngest Bradley, Melanie, was among the group. “No thank you, I’m not hungry.”

  “No burger?” Richard’s father—Dick—asked. “We’ve got plenty. With Richard and Melanie not here, I’ve brought enough to feed an army.”

  If Jess were playing poker she’d have lost the hand for sure. She quickly turned her back, so Dick would not see the disappointment on her face.

  “Your kids aren’t here?” she heard Ginny ask.

  “Only Karin. Richard’s off-island, and Melanie’s home with my poor little granddaughter, Sarah.”

  The air was filled with the sounds of laughing, squealing children, the chatter of adults, the clink of horseshoes on metal posts, and the off-key notes of accordions being played by men in overalls. The air was filled with sounds and yet they all seemed to have frozen—still and dead and hanging there, while the meaning of Dick Bradley’s words sank in.

  Jess turned back. “Sarah?” she asked.

  His face glowed as much as she supposed a seventy-year-old, weatherbeaten face could glow. “She’s a pistol, that one. Broke her leg on the school playground. Poor little thing. She’s in a cast up to her hip.”

  Jess’s cheeks were hot. Her heart began to ache, those butterflies from long ago returned to flutter in her stomach, in her arms and in her legs. “Sarah’s your granddaughter?” she asked.

  Ginny elbowed Jess. “Well, that’s too bad,” she said. “If we stay on this island any longer, maybe we’ll get to meet the entire Bradley family.”

  “How long are you staying, anyway?” The question did not come from Richard’s father. It came from Karin. Jess had not heard her approach, but she was standing there staring at them with curious, doubting eyes.

>   And suddenly Jess knew that Karin knew. The chill that ran through her was not from the chilly morning. It was not from the breeze that drifted off the water. It was from those eyes of Karin’s, those eyes that told her that she knew. She knew who Jess was. And she knew what Jess was doing there.

  Why haven’t I heard from my mother? The garbled voice on the telephone came sharply to her mind. And every instinct or intuition Jess ever had now told her that the voice had belonged to Karin. Karin had made the call; Karin had written the letter.

  But why?

  She stared at Karin; her mouth was dry, her eyelids could not blink. And then Jess heard Ginny answer, “We’re not sure how long we’re staying.”

  “I need to know soon,” Karin said. “It’s Memorial Day weekend. I have to know when we can rent your rooms again.”

  “We’ll let you know,” Ginny replied, then turned back to Dick. “Now where’s that burger? I’m starving.”

  Jess pulled her eyes away, yet still felt Karin staring, her eyes moving from Jess to Ginny, then back to Jess again. Finally, silently, she left the group, walking toward the water, walking along the shore, away from Jess and Ginny, away from the Memorial Day town picnic.

  “She doesn’t like us,” Ginny said to Dick.

  “Karin? She doesn’t like anyone. She’s happiest when she’s walking on the beach, collecting that damn sea glass that she does nothing with.”

  After Ginny had her fill of burgers and two free ice cream cones, Jess persuaded her to leave the picnic. “Please,” she whispered. “We’re not going to find out anything else. Melanie isn’t here.”

  Ginny relented, and they trudged back up the hill where Jess had parked the car.

  On the way back to the inn, Jess had a sudden need to see the water, to feel the sun against her face and hear the soothing tide.

  “I want to find a beach,” she said to Ginny. “I need to look at the sea for a moment and think.”

  “Great. And me without a sand pail.”

  Jess smiled, then steered the car in the opposite direction from town. Soon they were surrounded by large, stately homes spaced far apart, homes that looked like they’d been there for half a century or more, houses that seemed empty now.

  “They must belong to the summer mucky-mucks,” Ginny said. “The city people with the big bucks.” She turned to Jess. “Kind of looks like the sort of place you would have ‘summered’ as a kid, if your father ever talked to you.”

  “Very funny,” Jess replied, glad that she could now be amused by the way that she’d been raised, that among so many other things, Ginny had taught her that life could have been much worse.

  Ginny laughed. “When I was little my mother and I went to Revere Beach every summer for a week. We stayed at a boarding house and shared a bathroom with everyone else in the damn place.”

  “Except that time when you came here.”

  “Yeah. That was only once, though. Then she met the asshole she married and we never went anywhere else.”

  “Oh, right,” Jess said. “I remember him.”

  Beside her, Ginny howled. It was good, Jess decided, that they could both accept the past.

  They passed a group of tennis courts, a small, closed-up post office, and an equally deserted community hall. At the end of the road was a giant curve, a loop that continued past the huge, salt-faded houses. On the curve was a tall flagpole and two benches. Jess pulled to the side of the road and turned off the ignition.

  “Let’s get out and walk down to the water,” she said.

  Ginny groaned but opened her door.

  The water was several feet below, its low tide lapping gently on the shore. Between them and the water was a sharp drop, covered mostly by tall sea grass, bending in the breeze.

  “There’s a path over there,” Ginny said, pointing to a small road, leading off to the left. Beside the road was a sign that read, Private Road. West Chop Association.

  “We can’t go there, Ginny. It’s private.”

  Ginny rolled her eyes and started toward the path.

  Something caught Jess’s eye. “Ginny,” she said. “Wait.”

  She looked again, and saw what it was she thought she’d seen: a swish of red on the beach below; a swish of a red sarong that ambled barefoot in the sand, bending now and then, pulling the hair back from her eyes and looking off across the sound.

  “It’s Karin,” Jess said.

  “God, she’s weird.”

  “It’s more than that. I think she knows. I think she’s the one who sent me the letter and made the call.”

  Ginny looked off to the beach. “Why would she?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.” Jess tucked her hands inside her shirt once more, warding off the chill. “Come on, Ginny,” she said. “Let’s go back to the inn.”

  A woman they had not seen before—the inn-sitter, Jess assumed—greeted them at the door.

  “Nice day for the picnic,” the woman said.

  “Picnic?” Ginny asked, as if to say “what picnic?” as if to pretend she’d never heard of it.

  “Town picnic,” the woman replied. “Everyone goes.”

  Not everyone, Jess wanted to say. Melanie wasn’t there. Neither was her daughter, my granddaughter. Maybe.

  Sarah. What a beautiful name.

  “Well, it’s nice that everyone goes,” Ginny said aloofly, heading for the stairs. “I’m going to take a nap, Jess. I’m tired and I’m stuffed.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” the inn-sitter added. “I hope you don’t mind. I let a guest into your room.”

  Ginny looked at Jess.

  “Phillip?” Jess asked.

  “She said you were expecting her.”

  “She?” Ginny asked.

  The inn-sitter shrugged. “Like I said, I hope you don’t mind. All our other rooms are booked. I had no where else to put her.”

  Ginny let out a huge sigh. “Come on, Jess. I think it’s my turn to need you now.”

  Jess followed Ginny up the wide stairs and into room three, Ginny’s room. There, on the corner of the non-canopy bed, sat Lisa. And she was alone.

  “Where’s Prince Charming?” Ginny asked without so much as a hello.

  “Ginny …” Lisa began, her eyes wet with tears.

  Jess backed away. “I think I’ll leave you two alone. I’m going to walk down to the ferry in case Phillip arrives.”

  • • •

  They stood and stared at one another, not unlike the way Morticia had stared at Jess and Ginny at the picnic, with steady, not-backing-down kind of eyes.

  Ginny broke the stare and walked to the bureau where she tossed her room key on the top. In that sober, awkward moment, she regretted calling Lisa’s parents from the airport; she regretted saying where she was.

  “I thought you’d be glad to see me,” Lisa said.

  “Glad? It all depends.”

  “On whether Brad is with me?”

  Ginny walked to a maple rocking chair tucked under a slanted eaves. She pulled it out and sat down, as far from Lisa as she could get, as if her daughter were contagious, as if the further she could be from her, the less she’d have to feel.

  “He’s not with me, Ginny.”

  Ginny cocked her head. “Do you mean he’s not with you now, in this room, or he’s not with you in the biblical sense?”

  “I mean he got on a plane this morning and flew back to the Coast. He had his car shipped yesterday.”

  Ginny nodded and creaked the rockers, one rock forward, one rock back. “Fine. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s over between us, if that’s what you mean.”

  Yes, of course, that was what she’d meant. She wondered if Lisa could see the relief flooding through her.

  “I saw a lot of pictures of the two of you,” Ginny said. “In the tabloids.”

  Lisa let out a pained snicker. “Every time we turned around another flashbulb popped.”

  “You’re a star, Lisa. What did
you expect?”

  Lisa shrugged. “Brad liked it.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Ginny wished she hadn’t said that, but it was too late to take it back, too late to reach into the air between them and grab the words and take them back. She folded her hands on her lap. “So now you’re here.”

  “I’m here for a reason, Ginny. We have to talk.”

  It was as if an invisible cloud descended upon the room. Or maybe it just descended across Ginny’s heart. She didn’t like what Lisa was about to say, and she knew it before Lisa said the words.

  “He asked for money,” Lisa said.

  Ginny did not reply this time, proud of herself for holding back her tongue. She rocked again, forward, back.

  “He asked for money. A lot of money. When I told him no, he got angry.”

  Ginny stopped rocking, tensing from the hurt that rimmed her daughter’s eyes.

  “Then he told me about you.”

  She gripped the seat of the chair. Her shoulders slumped. “Me?”

  “About the two of you.”

  The stab was deep and slow, a long, dull saber piercing through Ginny’s breast and inching downward through her body, bumping, bruising, wounding every nerve along the way. It hurt too much for her to answer. It hurt too much for her to cry.

  Across the room, Lisa wrung her hands. “I guess I wasn’t shocked. But I was disappointed that you … that Jake was still alive when you and Brad had the affair.”

  Ginny closed her eyes, deciding if this wasn’t hell then at least it must be purgatory, where all her sins were going to hover for eternity.

  The rockers creaked.

  Two people in the room breathed.

  Then Ginny heard what Lisa had just said. She opened her eyes and moved to the edge of her chair.

  “The affair?” she asked. “What affair?”

  “He told me, Ginny.”

  Ginny jumped up. She stomped to the corner of the bed and shook a finger at Lisa’s face. “It was not an affair, Lisa. I did not have an affair with Brad Edwards.”

  Lisa glared at her. “He said you shaved your pubic hair into a narrow strip.”

  Ginny backed away. She was going to be sick. She just knew she was going to be sick. She clutched her stomach. The taste of grilled hamburgers and chowder and too much ice cream backed up into her throat. “I was drunk one night,” she said. “I was drunk and I let him screw me. I regretted it from the moment it happened.”