The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  The sky was barnacled like a boat, encrusted with stars. Torches had been lit to push back the nighttime chill, and blue and orange fire danced in a mesmerizing swirl.

  “No, it never does,” Julie agreed, rubbing her arms to ape shivers as a man she’d been talking with a few minutes earlier called out a comment about the summer weather not lasting.

  Julie finally reached the bar. Someone stood ahead of her in line, and Julie leaned against the sheet of skirting, pretending to appear casual, as if the need for a drink wasn’t a wild creature inside her, triggering a desire to grab the person in front and hurl him over the side of the cliff. She was exhausted from making conversation, the prospect of what school starting the day after tomorrow would bring, plus the simple, impossible task of an unintoxicated life. Only one thing could tamp down her nerves, give her fuel for the fight that a brand-new class of the toughest strangers—young ones—required. It was silly to have chanced quitting now. The binges, maybe. Those could go. But there was no reason not to have a shot or two for relaxation at night.

  “Hey, it’s the new teacher!” crowed the guy behind the bar.

  He looked too young to drink himself. A high schooler maybe, preparing to take his leave. On the walk over here, Ellie had mentioned the exodus that was about to take place, older island kids going off to the mainland for the school year.

  “On the house for you tonight,” the kid said. He put a hand in front of his mouth and mock-whispered, “Actually it’s on the house for everyone.”

  Julie smiled.

  “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “Scotch,” Julie said easily. “Neat.”

  The kid poured a generous finger.

  “Aw.” Julie mock-pouted. “Can’t you make it a double?”

  No graduate worth the distinction would give a second thought to the teacher of the school he’d aged out of, let alone how she liked her pour.

  The boy’s hand had stilled, now he dipped it. “Good call.”

  Fireflies twinkled like stars as Julie walked off with her drink. It had been so long—two days that felt like two centuries—and she wanted to enjoy her first sip without being observed. She swirled the liquid in her cup, raising it while licking her lips in a way that even to her own mental image appeared vaguely animalistic, distasteful.

  “There she is!” called a woman with a frothy, light spill of curls.

  Peter’s mother. With her own mother striding just ahead.

  Julie tipped the cup over, letting its contents spill onto the ground.

  * * *

  “Ms. Weathers,” the grandmother said. Her voice was comparatively cordial, although its tone sounded inauthentic, like something painted on. “I’m so glad to welcome you to our island. I’d been hoping we’d have an opportunity to chat.”

  So they were just going to pretend like the other night had never happened. Overall, it was probably a relief. “I’m glad to meet you as well, Mrs. Hempstead.”

  The grandmother’s head of silken white hair inclined. “Before we spend time on pleasantries, perhaps you should see what’s happening down there.”

  She thrust a long, elegant finger into the dark and pointed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Torchlight flickered, throwing lilting shadows over the night.

  Peter’s grandmother stalked in the direction of the ocean, her daughter hustling to keep up. Julie followed at a fast clip as well.

  The cliffs at this spot on the island, versus those by Julie’s house, were low enough to allow descent via a twisting, snaking path. Despite her years, the grandmother took the trail without hesitation, reaching out with a steadying claw to brace herself against rock face, before regaining her footing and starting down again.

  Julie had done her share of hiking in her life, yet still was tempted to sit on her butt and slide down the sandy trail. It tended to give way beneath foot, steep as a runaway truck ramp, but a sliver of the width. And sand wasn’t like soil. It kept silting away, until Julie feared she’d be left with nothing to stand on besides air.

  Dignity kept her on her feet—if a seventy-plus-year-old woman could do this, then so could she—and focused on the two people in front of her. Their white heads glowed in the moonlight. They looked from the rear less like mother and daughter than sisters.

  At last the three of them arrived on a curved sickle of beach.

  The younger set missing from the party had gathered here, or rather, a short distance out to sea, on a cluster of seaweed-draped rocks. The tide was low enough that reaching the rocks amounted to a splash through calf-high water, no crashing surf or riptide to contend with, so the sight that made Julie stop and stare was not the children’s location.

  Nor was it Peter’s presence amongst them, splayed out across the tallest of the rocks; why wouldn’t he be there, given the fact that his family was hosting the party?

  It was Peter’s demeanor, his mannerisms, everything about him.

  He appeared to be a totally different child, perched atop the biggest boulder, legs dangling, princely and cool. Shouts of laughter carried over the water, and though Peter didn’t join in, the other kids looked at him each time a joke was made.

  Peter’s grandmother and mother stood with seawater swirling around their ankles, impervious to the cold. Julie sensed this to be some sort of test, for her to ferret out whatever might be wrong with what looked like a perfectly pleasant kiddie variation of the adult assemblage higher up, with the added bonus of Peter having come into his own, holding court amongst his peers instead of running off to lurk at the teacher’s house.

  Was it the tide coming in with a vengeance, water now climbing the rocks? But surely these island kids knew how to account for the tides—and swim, if it came to that. The temperature of the ocean, a hypothermia-inducing fifty-five or sixty degrees, despite summer being barely past its peak, didn’t appear to faze them.

  “I’m sorry,” Julie said. “I don’t see…”

  The grandmother faced her, arms crossed over the broad ledge of her bosom. “From what I heard, your sea legs are woeful.” She smiled to remove the sting of her words. “As is your sea vision apparently. The water plays games with the eyes. It can make one miss things.”

  Julie looked out again.

  Martha caught her eye and pointed with a timid, shaking finger. She glanced at her mother, who gave just the slightest twitch of her head, causing Martha to lower her hand.

  Julie squinted out to sea, water riding a bright bar of moonlight. At last she spotted a smaller rock, at an angle from the grouping. No, not necessarily smaller. It was just that the tide had already encroached on this more distant rock, swallowing all but the inverted bowl at its top.

  Another child sat there.

  * * *

  “That’s Eddie Cowry,” Martha began to explain. “The other children don’t like—”

  “I know who it is,” the grandmother interrupted. Her voice suggested there was nobody and nothing she didn’t know.

  “Of course you do, Mother,” said Martha. “He’s just a bit far away.”

  “Are you suggesting my eyesight is not what it once was?” her mother said dryly.

  “I was just giving our new teacher some context!” Martha replied, causing the grandmother to sweep up her daughter’s hand in what appeared to be a tight grip.

  “Oh hush,” the grandmother said. She looked down at Julie, her blue gaze illuminated by moonlight. “If adults have to intervene, the Cowry boy will never be able to make it in his classmates’ midst, poor thing. It’s a sad fact of life that children must sort some things out on their own.”

  The social parameters were becoming clear to Julie. The kids arrayed on the near rocks had prevented the other boy from venturing closer to shore. And the grandmother’s snide remark about vision notwithstanding, Julie could make out plenty about Eddie
Cowry: how young he appeared to be, hunched over a pair of canted knees, his small body quivering with cold. Had Julie met a Cowry this evening, Eddie’s mother or father? The name didn’t ring a bell; then again, she’d heard so many names.

  Voices drifted down from the top of the cliff. Traded murmurs, calls, and shouted questions, bursts of loose laughter. A group of parents crowded forward, edging past each other to descend the path that led to their children. As the sound of their voices grew louder, the grandmother twisted around in the shallows, sending up a wave of water. The spontaneous socializing the parents had been engaged in ceased as suddenly as a door slamming shut. Everyone stopped talking, laughter cut off, and the parents turned to ascend the path in the opposite direction, scrabbling to get back to the top.

  The grandmother chose that moment to make her exit, moving swiftly despite the clutch of the sand, and towing Martha along beside her.

  “Wave goodbye to your son,” the grandmother ordered.

  Puppetlike, Martha lifted her hand.

  Julie turned back to face the sea. The grandmother hadn’t asked her to go, and despite the woman’s dated, if not altogether wrong perspective on peer dynamics, Julie couldn’t imagine just leaving the kids to this. Right now, Eddie appeared to be slipping, his fingers digging into rock as the surf threatened to suck his legs out from under him.

  “Eddie, Eddie, can’t hold steady!” one of the children shouted.

  Peter remained impervious as a round of taunts was unleashed, the more vocal children looking to him for approval. He boosted himself higher on his rock, staring silently toward shore.

  “Eddie, Eddie, might be dead-y!”

  “Eddie, Eddie, I can’t rhyme but I still hate you!”

  An older-looking boy contributed a mocking “Damn, this water’s cold.”

  The careless cruelty of children never failed to take Julie’s breath away. Peter was clearly a leader of sorts in the pack, judging by how the other kids kept glancing at him, but he neither contributed to the goings-on nor made a move to stop them.

  “Eddie, Eddie, you’re not Freddie!”

  “Eddie’s smelly!”

  “Eddie, Eddie, hit you with a machete!”

  A barely perceptible tilt of Peter’s fair head seemed to be taken by the kids as a cue, prompting them to point seaward and let out another vicious volley of couplets. Peter kept himself turned away, his distance and remove a tangible force.

  Julie needed to interrupt this. The grandmother was right in one respect—if a grown-up had to wade in and tow Eddie out, the child would never regain any sort of stature amongst his fellow students, and it’d be an ongoing problem for the year.

  Julie also didn’t want to appear stumped in front of her soon-to-be students, and she wouldn’t be someone to them who tolerated cruelty. That was most important of all.

  Taunts spiraled upward like sparks from a fire.

  “Hold steady, Eddie!”

  “What did Eddie said-y?”

  “Petty Eddie!”

  Cruelest of all, as biting as the temperature of the sea: “Hey, Eddie, soon the water’s gonna be over your head-y!”

  Seawater frothed around the base of the boulders the children perched on, while the one Eddie clung to was nearly covered. Still he didn’t jump in and swim for shore. A wordless injunction laid down by a peer could be stronger than prison walls.

  The fact of which might form the basis of Eddie’s salvation.

  These children obviously attended to every detail where Peter was concerned.

  “Peter!” Julie called out suddenly, shouting over the noise of the sea and putting a temporary hold on the jeers. “Guess what?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The boy visored his eyes, then leapt to his feet atop the rock. It was a daring move given the lengths of kelp swishing and swirling in the rising sea, seeking to entwine an ankle or calf. Peter performed a long jump from one rock to another, prompting the other kids to clamber to their feet as well, though none dared a similar move.

  A wave hurtled toward shore.

  Julie needed to follow up her cry. The only problem was she had no idea what to add. She’d been bluffing, or stalling, and the kids on the rocks seemed to know it. They all faced her now, but at any moment their attention would be lost.

  Surf surged.

  Julie half turned her back on the children in what she hoped looked like a casual motion. Then, taking a gulp of salt-laced air, she shouted over her shoulder, “Depot’s been asking for you! Come back to shore, and you can take him on a walk by yourself!”

  She heard more than saw the response.

  Splashes of bodies striking the sea, muffled yelps as heads went under, then the sound of water being kicked up by a horde of plowing legs, kids approaching the shore.

  And a command tossed off as Peter emerged from the ocean, running his hands through damp blond locks. “Yo, Eddie’s gonna drown out there. Somebody call him in.”

  * * *

  Julie took the trail leading back to the mansion, her feet and legs gritty, coated with sand. The sight of Peter’s slim, upright form ahead of her was disturbing. His feet churned up sandy clods, light, impervious to the distress he had witnessed, if not caused. While Julie, by contrast, felt stooped and bent over. She’d had to contend with bullying before, of course, but she sensed that the remedies she had previously relied on might not transfer directly to this island, with its new set of legacies, nested heritages, and unseen undercurrents.

  At the top of the trail, the party had begun emptying out, just parents remaining, waiting for their kids. Julie listened for the name Eddie, but didn’t see the boy reunite with anyone.

  Peter came up to her and asked, “Where’s Depot?”

  Julie studied the boy. “At home.”

  His gaze grew hooded. “Huh? You said he was here.”

  “I didn’t say he was here,” Julie corrected. “I said he’d been wanting you, and he probably has. I offered to let you take him on a walk.” She paused. Julie had found that openness and self-revelation had a way of puncturing even the thickest kid armor. “It doesn’t matter. I said whatever would get you back on shore. To make everyone stop being mean to Eddie.”

  Peter gaped at her. “You mean you lied?”

  “You can lie to keep someone from being hurt,” Julie told him. “If you get kidnapped and you can convince the kidnapper that you have to go to the bathroom, and then you escape, but you didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, was that the wrong thing to do?”

  The example sounded convoluted, even to her, but Peter considered it.

  “I wasn’t kidnapping Eddie,” he muttered at last.

  “Worse,” Julie said. “Because he probably thinks of you as a friend.”

  Peter snorted, shaking his head. “I can’t be friends with Eddie.”

  Julie frowned a question at him. Unless she’d misinterpreted the whole thing, Peter was the most popular kid in school and could do anything he wanted.

  “You missed it,” he said, disgusted, taking a step away.

  Julie held out her palms. She wasn’t above admitting total bafflement to a student.

  Martha appeared, winding her way through a few late departures. The grandmother stood among a cluster of upturned faces, tending to her final guests while observing her daughter from a point of remove.

  Martha snatched a quick peek over her shoulder, and hastened her stride. “You know you’re not allowed to leave on your own,” she called to her son in a robotic voice.

  The grandmother accepted a handshake from someone. “You’re most welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed the evening,” she said. “And now you must excuse me while I—”

  Peter faced Julie, getting his final words out hurriedly. “You stood down there watching, and you still missed the whole thing.” Then his bare feet kicked up
sand and he turned and ran off, moving so fast it wasn’t worth giving chase.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Julie had lost track of Ellie, and she didn’t want to linger any longer, especially if it meant winding up alone with the grandmother. She walked across the platters of stone that made up the walkway, then located the grassy lane. She didn’t have her phone since it wouldn’t have worked, and it’d been stupid not to bring a flashlight. In Wedeskyull she almost always had her headlamp on her in case of a breakdown or longer-than-expected hike. But the sea turned out to be as good as illumination. So long as Julie kept it to her left, she would find her way back home.

  The murmur of departing guests and clatter of cleanup eroded behind her; no one else seemed to be taking this route. The house the Hempsteads had bequeathed to their daughter and son-in-law was the only dwelling that lay out this way.

  Then Julie became aware of footsteps, and she turned around, gladdened. Assuming the grandmother hadn’t chosen now for the promised chat, Julie would welcome almost anybody else’s accompaniment. Perhaps Ellie had found her.

  She peered through the darkness, surprised to see no one on the path. The sounds had been so clear: a faint squishing of grass, then a moist suck as a shoe was drawn out. Last night’s rain had made the earth sodden.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Silence, except for the eternal lift and fall of the sea.

  “Peter?” Julie called, so sure of her conclusion that she thought she heard eerie laughter.

  But no tall, light-haired boy appeared, and if there had been a laugh, it didn’t float her way again. Julie turned and kept walking, using the edge of the cliff as guide. She quickened her pace. The ocean was so immense, it made the mountains of home seem like dwarf structures. Until the house did her the service of appearing, Julie might as well have been walking through outer space, borderless, unending.

  A cough sounded behind her, and Julie whirled. That couldn’t be Peter with all his youthful provocation and bravado. The cough had sounded rattly, sick.