Barefoot in the Sand

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Poor Florence,” Laura said fiercely. “What a nightmare her mother must have been.”

  “My memories of my grandmother are pretty vague. She died when I was nine. And she only came to visit once a year from her home in Quebec. Her husband, Joseph, was Canadian, and when my mother married, my grandmother and grandfather went back to his hometown. He was sickly by then. I never met him. He died shortly after my brother did.”

  “Ah! I see now. Your grieving grandmother hoisted her anger and frustration onto her daughter. She probably blamed her for both deaths.”

  “I never thought of it that way, but you could be right.” Arden sighed. “My, what a mess! My mother must have been pretty damaged already to collapse so completely when her baby died. Instead of being able to stand up to her mother, she just accepted the blame inflicted on her.”

  Laura put her empty cup on the side table and, looking deeply troubled, stared down at the cat in her lap for some time.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about the paintings.”

  “No,” Laura said quickly, looking back at her mother. “I’m glad that you did. It’s just . . . Do you think we can escape from the crazy cycle we were born into, mother harming daughter?”

  “Yes,” Arden said promptly. “I believe we can. We’re not Regina and Florence, or Florence and Victoria. We’re Arden and Laura.”

  “What about Victoria?” Laura asked gently. “What happens to her in all this craziness?”

  Arden considered for a moment. “She was only a child when I put her aside. I suppose she needs to be forgiven for any wrongs she committed. They wouldn’t have been done intentionally.”

  “And she needs to be honored for her courage and perseverance.”

  “‘With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, ’” Arden quoted with a smile, “ ‘an object in life need not fail you.’”

  Laura smiled back. “Let me guess. Lucy Snowe.”

  Chapter 57

  “Pink lemonade?” Laura asked. “Really?”

  Laura and her mother were at the bookshop preparing for a special event on the topic “Star-Crossed Lovers in Literature.” Together, they had created a program that, they hoped, would engender lively discussion and introduce the attendees to doomed literary lovers they might not have known about, such as, for example, Stephen Gordon and Mary Llewellyn in Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness, and Joseph Asten and Philip Held in Bayard Taylor’s 1870 novel, Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania. A whopping twenty-five people had signed up for the event, which meant that additional seating had been borrowed from dedicated members of the book group.

  Arden laughed. “I know. It’s kind of cheesy, pink for romance. We should be serving Bloody Marys and devil’s food cake. Much more appropriate.”

  “You said it.” Laura sighed dramatically as she continued to set out napkins. “Tristan and Isolde. Anna and Count Vronsky. Romeo and Juliet. I nearly drowned myself in those tales of doomed love. In fact, I’m convinced it tainted my idea of true romance and contributed to why I chose to marry a guy around whom there were so many obstacles. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that my love would cure him of his soul sickness or whatever lofty thing it was that made him act badly.” Laura paused. “It was almost as if the obstacles themselves made my efforts worthwhile and my love more valuable.”

  “When there is affinity between two people, ‘the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle.’ That’s something Paul Emanuel tells Lucy Snowe in Villette.”

  Laura smiled. “So, it all comes down to fate? I used to believe that, but now I’d like to imagine I’m in control of my life, at least parts of it. I’d like to think that if I ever fall in love again, it will be with someone completely unobjectionable. Sure, we could be torn apart by forces we can’t control, but that’s life. A plane crash like the one that took JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, or some dread illness that separates us, like with poor Keats and Fanny Brawne. Or like what happened to poor Abelard and Héloïse, for that matter!”

  “My, you’ve got it bad, haven’t you? Years ago, I came across a quote supposedly by Frida Kahlo. It really struck me. Part of it goes, ‘You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry.’ I guess I’ve always felt that Rob could have been such a lover, if we had been allowed to live our lives together. But who knows what might have happened to us over time?”

  “There are so many factors that can conspire to keep lovers apart. It’s amazing that lovers ever manage to stay together.”

  “Can you tell me more about your marriage?” Arden looked up from the vase of white roses she had just placed next to the pitchers of pink lemonade. “Or is this a bad time?”

  Laura looked at her watch. Guests wouldn’t be arriving for another twenty minutes or so. “Sure. Why not? It was a mistake from the start, but try telling me that at the time. My friends at the college had a bad feeling about Jared. They said he was too obviously charming. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I thought they were just jealous. None of them were in a relationship, and two of the women were divorced. One was a single mother. The father of her kid had gone off with his secretary, if you can believe that old cliché. What those women really were, was smart.”

  “ ‘The heart wants what it wants.’ How old were you?”

  Laura frowned. “I was old enough to know better. Who knows? Maybe I would never have gotten involved with Jared had my parents been alive. Sometimes I get so angry with myself for taking on such an obviously damaged person. And angry with him for being who he was. Which is not really fair, is it? People are who they are.”

  Arden nodded. “Yes. But some people are predatory. It’s legitimate to be angry with them for luring you into their dramas. I’m not sure how legitimate it is to be angry with yourself for being vulnerable to a predator.”

  Laura nodded. “You’re right, of course. If only I hadn’t made the mistake of agreeing to a joint bank account. Before we married, I had no idea Jared had a gambling problem. I’m not condemning Jared for being a gambler; I know it’s an addiction. But I should have been smart enough to keep apart at least some of what my parents had left me as security for my future. At the time, I really believed it would be like announcing to the world that I didn’t trust my husband.” Laura sighed. “Too many old-fashioned romances and not enough practicality.”

  “I’m sorry. If I thought it would really make you feel better, I’d suggest you have one of these decadent cupcakes I got from Chez Claudine.”

  Laura smiled. “A cupcake always makes me feel better, especially one with a mound of icing. But I’ll wait until later. You know, the thing I feel most bad about is that I let Jared squander the money my parents worked so hard to earn for my sake. It’s like throwing Mom and Dad’s gift in their faces.”

  “You didn’t mean any disrespect. They would know that.”

  Laura knew that Arden was right. Still, she thought, she would probably always feel a bit guilty.

  “I lost my inheritance by running off the way I did,” Arden said. “It was only much later that it dawned on me what I’d given up. Money. A lot of it, certainly more than I could ever earn on my own. The contents of the house, my mother’s jewelry. The house itself and the land on which it sits.”

  “Who do you think will get it all now?” Laura placed the stack of handouts she and her mother had prepared by the tray of cupcakes.

  Arden shrugged. “I have no idea. For all I know my parents latched on to some young person along the way, a distant relative or maybe someone who worked for my father, and made him the heir to the Aldridge fortune.”

  “Which is rightly yours.”

  “Is it? I’m not so sure. And what if a portion of it is ill-gotten gains? After all, I never really did understand what exactly my father did for a living. Something with high finance. Could I in good conscience accept money come by in an underhanded way?”

  Laura half smiled. “Rig
ht now, I’d say yes to any sort of financing someone wanted to give me, from a fistful of cash to stock in some hot company. Who cares how they came by any of it?”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  Laura sighed. “No. I don’t. Having a conscience can be so inconvenient. But I’m stuck with one and so are you. We’ll just have to go on making the best of it.”

  The bell over the door alerted the women that their guests were beginning to arrive. Mrs. Shandy and Lydia Austen led the way, followed by, among others, Arden’s neighbor Marla Swenson; Judy Twain; Elly and her mother; Jeanie Shardlake; Martha Benbow; and Tami and her mother.

  “Pink lemonade!” Tami exclaimed. “My favorite!”

  “Cupcakes!” Elly cried. “Awesome!”

  “No men, I see,” Laura murmured under the excited chatter of the growing crowd.

  “Did you really expect any?” her mother asked.

  “No.” Laura smiled. “Not for a moment.”

  Chapter 58

  Summer 1984

  Somewhere in the house the housekeeper was running a vacuum. Victoria was glad that she was not alone. She had never been afraid of her parents before, not really, certainly not afraid of their physical wrath, but at that moment she felt sure that anything at all could happen to her, that her father might grab her arm and throw her to the floor, that her mother might slap her face, the sharp bits of one of the large diamond rings she wore causing blood to ooze from her daughter’s cheek.

  “Stop it,” she scolded under her breath as she slowly descended the main staircase. “You’re being dramatic.” For a moment she wondered if she should turn around, go back to her room, and accept Rob’s offer to be with her when she broke the news to her parents. But something, she didn’t know what, made her continue on.

  Victoria found her parents in the living room.

  “What is it, Victoria?” her father asked when she entered. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, a glass of Scotch in hand, dressed in one of his white Brooks Brothers oxford shirts, complete with gold cuff links. The crease in his pants was as sharp as a knife.

  Her mother, seated in her favorite armchair with a fashion magazine, was wearing an aqua silk dress printed with a pattern of tiny pink flowers. Pinned to the dress was a platinum-and-diamond brooch, a family heirloom.

  Suddenly, Victoria wondered if she should have dressed more appropriately for the occasion. A peach-colored linen blouse, a pair of jeans, and Keds sneakers seemed far too youthful and even silly for what was sure to be a weighty confrontation.

  A confrontation that would change the course of her life.

  “Well, dear?” her mother urged without looking up from the fashion magazine on her lap. “What is it?”

  Victoria took a deep breath and clasped her hands together. “I’ve been seeing Rob Smith,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster. “From town.”

  “What do you mean by ‘seeing’?” her mother asked, a vague smile on her face, eyes still on the glossy page.

  Her father remained silent. His expression was fixed.

  “I mean that we’ve been dating.”

  Her mother chuckled. “You can’t be. You’re not allowed to date.”

  Victoria fought a wave of anger. Her mother was doing it again, blocking a bothersome truth, pretending that all was well when it was most certainly not.

  “Yes, Mother, I have been seeing him. He’s my . . . He’s my boyfriend. You know him. I mean, he’s one of the part-time workers building the pool. You must have seen him. He’s—”

  “He’s our employee?” Florence interrupted, her tone puzzled, finally looking up from her magazine.

  “Well, yes, but he also goes to the community college and—”

  Her father now stood away from the fireplace and trained his formidable countenance on Victoria. She felt herself begin to tremble.

  “You’ll stop seeing this boy at once,” he said tightly.

  Florence had returned to her fashion magazine. The diamonds on her fingers winked each time she turned a page.

  Victoria felt a sickening buzz start in her head and begin its journey through her entire body. She felt dizzy, wobbly, as if the ground were falling away from her. Somehow, she managed to take a step closer to an armchair and grabbed on to it for support. “I . . . I can’t.” The buzzing now seemed almost to energize her. “I won’t. I’m pregnant. We want to get married,” she continued in a rush. “We are getting married.”

  Suddenly, her mother closed her magazine. “No,” she said softly. “No, no, no.”

  “We’re in love,” Victoria stated boldly. But even to her own ears the words sounded foolish and clichéd. She was a child. Rob was one, too. What had they been thinking? “Mother?” she begged. “Can’t you at least understand?”

  With a surge of energy Victoria had never witnessed before, her mother rose from her chair and tossed the magazine to the floor. “I’ll go to the police! I’ll tell them to keep that boy away from you! He’s corrupted my daughter, my only child!”

  “That’s enough, Florence,” Herbert said sternly. “There’s no need for the police. I’ll handle this.” Herbert turned to his daughter. “From this moment on, you will have nothing to do with this boy. You will not call him or receive calls from him. You will not leave the house without someone accompanying you. Needless to say, he will never set foot on this property again. Who else knows about this?” her father demanded.

  “No one.” Victoria’s voice trembled. “Only Rob. But—”

  “But nothing. You will go away to have the baby. It will then be adopted. The lawyers will handle everything. No one in Port George will be the wiser.”

  It. It will be adopted. A thing, not a child.

  Florence suddenly made a dash toward the door.

  “Mother! Wait!” Victoria reached out to grab her mother’s arm as she passed, but Florence was too swift. Seconds later, Victoria could hear her mother’s footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Then, a door slammed.

  Victoria looked back to her father. He had finished his Scotch. “Go to your room and stay there,” he said evenly.

  “But—” she began, unsure of what she could possibly say after what had just transpired.

  “Do as I say!” her father roared. He had never before raised his voice to Victoria.

  Victoria lowered her head as if to protect herself from a blow and hurried past her father. She had only just reached the hall when she heard him utter the most terrifying words she had ever heard spoken.

  “I’ll make that boy pay if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Had he meant his daughter to hear the threat? He must have. Why else would he have spoken so loudly? Heart pounding, Victoria fled up the stairs and into the relative safety of her room.

  “Please,” she cried aloud, “help me. Someone help me!”

  What had she expected? Her parents to smile, gather her in their arms, congratulate her on having found true love? No, not that. But also, not this. Not being separated from Rob, not being sent away, not being denied her baby . . . How had it all gone so wrong? What had she done? Everything was a mess now. . . .

  Victoria stumbled across the room and sank onto her bed, her father’s last words resounding through her head.

  I’ll make that boy pay if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll make that boy pay.

  Chapter 59

  Laura had gone for a walk; much to her mother’s delight Laura was genuinely interested in getting to know every bit of Eliot’s Corner and always returned from these walks eager to share observations and ask questions. At times, Arden joined her daughter on these excursions, but today Arden had opted to remain at the cottage and work on the notes she had taken during last evening’s “Star-Crossed Lovers” event. It had been a great success. Not a few tears had been shed, lots of laughter shared, a few ribald comments made sotto voce, and lots of pink lemonade drunk. Elly and Tami, besides having consumed an impressive number of cupcakes, had contributed a
few thoughtful remarks to the discussions, earning praise from several of the long-standing members of the Arden Forest Book Club.

  Arden had decided that the topic of star-crossed lovers deserved another visit, maybe in February to counteract the commercial excesses of Valentine’s Day, and to that end she was eager to get her thoughts on paper before they fled. She took a seat in the living room, a glass of ice tea by her side. The cats were sprawled in a large patch of sun and would likely remain oblivious of her presence until one or more got hungry.

  Eager as she was to begin the planning of “Star-Crossed Lovers Redux,” Arden found herself revisiting the story of a real-life doomed romance. She wondered if she had been in her daughter’s life at the time Laura had met Jared Pence, would she have been smart enough to see what Laura’s colleagues had seen, that Jared was not to be trusted? Would she have been capable of giving good, solid advice to her daughter? Arden had little experience offering advice. She had never gotten close enough to anyone to be sought out when trouble was looming or when a difficult decision was to be made.

  But there was always the future, wasn’t there? Maybe, as the relationship with her daughter grew and deepened, she would find herself not only capable of giving but eager to give Laura genuine guidance and support.

  Arden looked down at her notes and smiled. She had copied one of Tami’s comments word for word. “I think,” Tami had said rather boldly, “I think that even if you fall in love with someone and things don’t work out, it’s worth it because at least your life won’t have been boring, and boredom is pretty terrible. At least, that’s what I think.” Tami’s mother had fairly beamed with pride, and one of the attendees had actually clapped her hands in appreciation of Tami’s observation. Childish? Maybe. Innocent, naïve? Yes. True? Quite possibly.

  How foolish she herself had been all those many years ago, eager to believe that her parents, wanting their child to be happy, would welcome her having gotten pregnant with a boy she had known only a few short months! In hindsight, Arden could admit that their reaction had, at least in part, been justified. Herbert and Florence Aldridge had been responsible parents, protective, concerned, conscientious. That was more than could be said for too many parents.