Southampton Spectacular

by M. C. Soutter

  But now Pauline was there, too. She did not seem happy to see Devon. “Excuse me?” she said. Her voice was quiet. And cold.

  Devon didn’t look up. She kept her eyes locked on Ned. “Is your head okay?” she asked, and managed to make it sound as though she were asking him a funny question. A wonderful question. Ned almost smiled back.

  “You are not in charge of this child,” Pauline said. A little louder now.

  Devon reminded herself that conflict was not allowed. A scene was not allowed. She held Ned’s hand and kept ignoring the babysitter, kept looking down at Ned with a smile. “I was impressed with your diving,” she said to him. “How many did you get on that last try?”

  Pauline grew impatient. She threw aside the towel she had brought over for Ned, and she reached out for Devon’s hand. “Let him go,” she hissed.

  Devon finally looked up. In seven years, she had never been this close to Pauline. The babysitter was wearing lipstick. And too much eye makeup. Her skin glistened with suntan oil, and Devon could feel the wiry strength in her as she tried to pry her hand away from Ned’s. Devon looked into her eyes and saw real aggression there. Real hatred.

  She’s terrifying, Devon thought, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. We always knew she was off somehow, but this is more than that. This is awful.

  Still Pauline was prying at Devon’s hand, and still Devon resisted. Suddenly the babysitter stopped. “Let go of his hand right now,” she said to Devon. “Last chance.”

  Devon said nothing. She glanced down at Ned again, and she tried to feed him some of her calm. To assure him that no matter what happened here, it was not his fault. Then she looked back up at Pauline and shook her head slowly.

  “Fine,” Pauline said. She reached out again, but this time she grabbed Devon’s index finger and twisted it quickly back.

  There was a sickening popping sound, and liquid fire seemed to come flashing up Devon’s finger and through her hand and arm. She was aware, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Pauline had just broken the finger on her left hand, but this information seemed irrelevant. It was something to be addressed later. She made no sound. She held onto Ned. She looked steadily at Pauline, who looked back at her first with fury, and then with something like distress.

  Devon glanced back down at Ned again. She could not speak, because if she had opened her mouth she might have cried out. So instead she gave him a little nod.

  We’re still here. We’re still okay.

  Pauline waited for another moment, as though studying Devon. Looking for cracks in the wall. “Okay,” Pauline said finally, still in that hateful whisper. “More for you later. Much more.”

  Devon just nodded slowly at her, as if to say that this had been a lovely exchange, and she looked forward to their next meeting. She waited until Pauline had retreated all the way to her towel at the other side of the pool, and then she released Ned’s hand. She turned and walked back slowly toward her chaise, focusing all her energy on being silent, being unobserved, invisible.

  Not making a scene. Not making a scene.

  Except that if she didn’t get back to her chaise in about three seconds, she was going to faint. And that would be a scene all its own.

  She was aware of Austin’s voice suddenly behind her. Next to her. He was saying her name in an urgent, insistent tone, as though he had been trying to get her attention for a long time.

  “Devon? What just happened? You look strange.” He came even closer, took her hand.

  Not the injured one, thank God.

  “Devon?”

  She turned to look at him, and now her brain decided that the pain in her finger was allowed priority. The fire came rushing back into her hand and her arm, all the way to her chest and stomach, and her breath caught in her throat. “I need a doctor,” she whispered to him, and her eyes filled with tears. “Quietly,” she managed to add.

  Austin reacted well. He took care of her.

  Her vision began to blur. She was quickly feverish from the pain, and then Austin was leading her out of the club, to the public beach entrance fifty yards away. She wondered where they were going – they were supposed to be getting her to a doctor – and she was on the point of telling him this when she heard the wail of a siren. All at once she was grateful to him for paying attention.

  No scene. Almost no one had noticed anything happening.

  No one except Ned’s mother, Tracy Dunn.

  It had now been one full week since Mrs. Dunn had taken a drink, and her senses had returned with a vengeance. Her mind felt sharp, and the pain and nausea of withdrawal were nearly all gone; she was no longer distracted by the challenge of simply making it through the day. She could see and hear and smell things now that she had forgotten even existed. The shimmer coming off the water was beautiful rather than blinding. The sound of the ocean was invigorating. She could smell the sand and the salt all the way from here.

  She had seen Devon get up. Had seen her take Ned’s hand, seen her take it in a way Tracy Dunn realized she was supposed to be doing herself. Then she had seen Pauline go over to them, and Pauline and Devon had said something to each other.

  Pauline had reached out, and Devon’s body had twitched. Ever so slightly.

  Tracy Dunn didn’t like what she was seeing.

  She watched Pauline return to her towel, and she tracked the babysitter’s progress across the bricks like a Siamese cat tracking a robin.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Dunn whispered to herself, so quietly that no one else could hear. She began nodding slowly, and her eyes narrowed into slits. It was an expression Jerry Dunn might have recognized, an expression that meant his wife had made a decision. Had he been there, he might have asked her where this expression had been for so long. It had been many years since Tracy Dunn had looked so clear-eyed.

  So determined.

  “We’re going to give this whole thing one more try,” she whispered.

  2

  Two men in white and red and blue uniforms were talking to Devon now, asking her to explain. To please tell them what the emergency was, what was the problem? So that they could help. Chest pains? Dizziness? Why had they been called in the first place?

  Devon finally held up her hand.

  She looked at it with them for the first time, and Austin could not help himself. “Devon, holy shit,” he said.

  Her finger was hanging at an unnatural angle, as though it had been placed there in haste by an inexpert child trying to create a clay sculpture, a gruesome imitation of a hand. The knuckle at the base of the index finger had swollen to the size of a large grape, and the skin there was a mixture of purple and black and blue and pink. Devon felt her stomach do a slow, treacherous roll.

  “I’m going to throw up now,” she announced, and there was a brief commotion as all three men darted forward at the same moment. Toward her, after she had just warned them that she was about to expel chunks of bile and digested food onto the sidewalk.

  After she had stopped choking and they had helped her to wipe her mouth, Austin and one of the EMT’s eased Devon onto the folding gurney. The other EMT began inspecting the injury. “Okay,” he said, being careful not to go anywhere near the finger itself. “We’re not going to touch this at all.”

  Austin glanced at him. “What?”

  “We’re going to give her some painkiller, but that’s it for now. A surgeon needs to look at this.”

  Austin nodded once, and he turned back to Devon. “How did this happen?”

  She shook her head. “In the ambulance,” she said weakly.

  They loaded her in head-first, and Austin climbed in and squatted down next to the gurney. He waited until the doors were closed and they were underway, and then he put his hand on her shoulder. “I was in the pool,” he said, sounding very ashamed.

  If there had not been so much pain, she might have laughed at him. No kidding, she thought. Instead she just shook her head again.

  “I’m going to give her a sedative,
” said the EMT who was riding in the back with them. He had placed an I.V. in her arm before the ambulance had even started moving, and now he was preparing a solution of something out of a little bottle. “She’ll probably be out in about two minutes.”

  “What happened?” Austin asked again.

  Devon looked at him for a minute. The pain was so bad now, it felt as if the whole world were nothing but her hand. Just a white spot of pure, pulsating pain with its center at the base of that one mangled finger. She knew that she was not supposed to discuss the things she knew, but for a moment she couldn’t remember why. “Pauline,” was all she said.

  “The Dunn babysitter?”

  She nodded.

  Austin’s mouth hung open for a moment. His voice became very quiet. “That woman broke your finger?”

  Suddenly it all came rushing back. The reasons. The things she had to protect. The people she had to protect, even if it meant staying quiet about things that should never, ever be kept quiet.

  Devon could feel the painkiller moving through her now, could already feel the blankness coming in at the sides of her vision. She would be unconscious in a matter of seconds, but there was more she had to say first. “You do not tell anyone,” she said, and she was pleased at how strong her voice sounded. Austin looked at her with confusion in his eyes, but he did not protest. “James and Ned,” Devon said, and then she was at a loss to explain anything else. It was too much to put into words. She was nearly out of time. “Find some other way,” she said dreamily, and she could hear her own voice trailing away. Austin seemed far above her now, so far that she could barely reach him with her words. “Some way to make her – ” She tried to explain, could not. Tried again. “To make her – ”

  With the last moment of consciousness, she did the best she could.

  “Make her disappear,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  It was enough. Austin understood. Or thought he did. He was quiet for a few minutes as the EMT checked Devon’s pulse to make sure she was not going too far under. Then Austin sat up, and he nodded to himself.

  He pulled out his cell phone and began making calls.

  3

  Devon was home a few hours later, and her parents wanted to know what had happened. Where she had suddenly gone without telling them, or telling anyone. Why she would make them worry like this.

  “It was an accident,” Devon said, holding up a hand wrapped in multiple layers of gauze and bandages. Her index finger had been splinted straight and secured using the middle finger as extra support, so that her hand now had a permanent “We’re #2!” look to it. “It was stupid,” she said. “I bent it back on the door in the bathroom at the club. Austin took me to the hospital. I’m fine.”

  Her parents looked at her, caught between the relief at seeing her safe and the anger at having been kept in the dark. “You need to call us next time,” Peter Hall said sternly. Devon was pleased to note that he sounded completely like his old self.

  “What’s the point of having a cell phone otherwise?” Cynthia Hall added.

  Devon nodded and looked contrite. Which was easy, because she felt contrite. And ashamed. About not telling them what had really happened. About not calling, because she hadn’t trusted herself to lie convincingly over the phone. Most of all, she was ashamed that she wasn’t willing to let them in on the situation. To let them share her burden.

  They’ve had enough excitement this summer, she reminded herself. This one is all mine.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t all hers. Maybe it was Austin’s now, too. She wasn’t positive how much she had told him in the back of the ambulance, but she had clearly told him something. All afternoon at the hospital, he had looked focused. As though he were still swimming his laps, trying for a new PR. He had been on the phone constantly, though only when he was out of earshot. The secrecy made her nervous, and she reminded him several times that no retribution was allowed.

  “You can’t do anything,” she said, lying in the E.R. bed while the surgeon studied X-Rays of her mangled finger. “She’s not a drunk guy at a carnival or some criminal breaking into a house. She’s the nanny. She’s been with them for a long time. Ned and James are both vulnerable; if we start shouting accusations, it will hurt them. You’ve seen the way Ned’s been acting, right?”

  “Nobody’s going to start shouting anything.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Austin shook his head. His cell phone rang, and he stepped away from the bed.

  “Who are you talking to?” Devon said. “You can’t talk to anyone about this. No one’s allowed to know what happened – ”

  But Austin waved her off impatiently. He was far enough away now so that she could not hear what he was saying, but she could still see the expression on his face. It was the same way he had looked at the carnival when Duane had been on the ground beneath him, unconscious, jaw broken. The calm look she had grown used to was gone. Far gone.

  Austin was cutting at the air with his hand, and now pointing, and now pressing his thumb and fingers together as though describing a precise measurement.

  His eyes were alive, jumping.

  4

  The next day at the Beach Club felt awkward to Devon right from the beginning. And tense. She came with her parents, who refused to let her try driving herself. Peter and Cynthia Hall were in no rush, so Devon arrived later than usual.

  And yet none of her friends were there.

  She set up in her usual spot, and then she felt as though she were on a stakeout. Waiting for a target to arrive.

  Or am I the target?

  It was hard to know. Either way, she hoped Austin would come to the club soon.

  The first to arrive was James. Followed immediately by Ned and Jerry Dunn. Devon noticed the absence of little Frankie, who was typically nestled into James’s arm when they arrived. Jerry Dunn looked upset. Maybe he and Pauline had gotten into a fight.

  The way adulterous people sometimes did.

  Okay, maybe. But where is she? Where's Pauline?

  Devon kept waiting. She kept watching the entrance at the top of the steps, expecting Mr. Bindle to pick up his head by a few degrees in that respectful way of his, the way that meant he had spotted someone coming up the stairs.

  But Mr. Bindle’s head stayed down.

  So that left Pauline, Frankie, and Mrs. Dunn unaccounted for. Which for any other family might not have been strange, but this was not any other family. Pauline never missed a day at the Beach Club, and neither did Tracy Dunn.

  They’re home with Frankie? Neither one of them ever wants anything to do with him. He’s a baby. He cries. Wets his pants, poops, all that stuff.

  James came over to say hi. He looked more relaxed than Devon could remember seeing him in weeks. Years. He even looked as if he had gotten a good night’s sleep.

  His eyes went wide, and he pointed at her hand. “Jesus, Devon. What the hell?”

  She gave him an embarrassed grin, and she fed him the same line she had fed her parents. Hand in the door. Stupid me.

  James didn’t respond for a second, and Devon got the strong impression that he did not believe her. “Okay,” he said. “Now I’m extra confused.”

  “Why?”

  “My mom wanted me to give you a message.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t really know.” He looked at Devon’s wounded hand again and shook his head. “She didn’t seem to know, either.”

  “What?” Devon propped herself up in her chaise and put her book aside. “Nothing you’ve said so far makes any sense.”

  James shrugged. “Can’t help it. Anyway, my mom wanted me to tell you she’s sorry about yesterday.” He stood back and opened his hands, as though proud of himself for having delivered his mother’s strange note.

  Devon tried to keep from glancing down at her hand, which had begun throbbing. She probably needed to take another one of the painkillers the doctor had given her. “Sorry about what?

 
; James shook his head. “She didn’t seem to know.”

  “She didn’t know why she was sorry?”

  “Right. But she kept on saying it was her fault.” He pointed at Devon. “She made me promise to emphasize that part: it was her fault, and she’s sorry. She said she’s going try harder from now on.”

  Devon gave him a small, puzzled smile. They looked at each other silently for a minute, each of them trying to parse through this cryptic communication. James still seemed confused, but it was a pleasant, detached sort of confusion. His relaxed expression hadn’t changed.

  Devon, meanwhile, felt strangely touched. She could remember being fond of Tracy Dunn, but that had been years ago. Before Pauline. Before James’s parents had descended into a fog made of infidelity and alcohol.

  “Okay,” Devon said finally. “I’m not sure what it means, but good job giving me the message. Tell her thanks. And no problem.”

  James cocked an eyebrow. “No problem on the thing she’s apologizing for?”

  “Right.”

  “The thing she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but which is her fault somehow, and which may or may not be the same thing that you don’t know?”

  “Exactly.”

  James shrugged again. “Good enough,” he said, and he took off his shirt. “I seem to be baby-free this morning, so I’m going for a swim. Could you make sure Ned doesn’t die or try to kill anyone for a few minutes?” He managed to say this in a way that was lighthearted, and Devon nodded.

  “I’m on it.”

  James jumped into the pool. Devon watched him swim, and she kept an eye on Ned, who seemed nearly as calm as his older brother. He was sitting in a pool chair, just looking at the water. He, too, looked uncommonly well rested. Content, even.

  Devon tried to decide whether she should now be feeling relieved or even more apprehensive than before. Tracy Dunn had obviously entered the equation, hopefully as an ally. If that were true, then the entire Dunn family dynamic could be moving toward a much better, much more stable setup.