Cocoa Beach

by Beatriz Williams

  “But Simon found the money, anyway.”

  “Yes. That’s Simon for you. He always finds a way.”

  The gear slips into place at last, and the Packard surges forward. We’ve been driving all day, and I can’t count the number of times I considered wrestling the wheel from her grasp and driving the car myself, down the long, overgrown roads while the hot sun engulfed us. Probably I should have done it. I doubt the additional strain on my injured head could be any worse than the fright and the nausea induced by Clara’s driving.

  But every time, the urge died away. I’m really not up to driving. Only three days have passed since the attack on Cocoa Beach, and I can’t yet walk across a room without feeling sick. I can’t lift my eyes to the sunlit sky. The doctor gave me a bottle of pills, which have relieved the ringing in my head, though I think they’ve sapped me somewhat—as pills sometimes do—of a bit of my will as well.

  The lane flattens, and lines of young eucalyptus trees appear at the edges to shade us from that impossible sun. I wonder if Simon planted them. The white house beckons at the end, teethed with simple Doric columns, and as I peer eagerly through the glass, holding Evelyn on my lap, a figure emerges through the front door, under the shadow of the portico, dressed in pale clothes. My chest seizes up.

  “Who’s that?” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Who is that, out front?”

  Clara strains her neck, and in that instant of pause, I realize the person standing on the stately front portico of the Maitland plantation house is wearing a dress.

  “Her? I expect she’s the housekeeper. Unless she’s one of Simon’s mistresses, in which case we shall shortly have an awkward scene indeed!” Clara says gaily.

  “Of course she wasn’t his mistress.”

  “Oh, don’t be frosty. I was only joking. Anyway, you shouldn’t care.” The lane is drier here, protected from the rain by the trees, and the gravel spurts from our tires. “I spoke to her on the telephone yesterday, to tell her we were coming. She’s quite kind, actually. I think you’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  The lawn draws close and the Doric columns loom large, and the Packard begins its swing into the circular drive. I try not to stare at the woman waiting for us on the steps, but there’s something about her carriage, something about the pale blue drape of her dress—really quite up-to-date, for a housekeeper—that draws my attention. And something else.

  “Why, she’s a Negro!” Clara exclaims.

  Going to Maitland was Clara’s idea, to begin with. My own head was too muddled. When I awoke, the morning after the attack on the beach, I thought I was back in France. I thought, in fact, I had never left, that the year was 1918, and the war hadn’t yet ended, and I was still unmarried. I thought I lay in a bed at the American Hospital in Neuilly, and these anxious faces surrounding me—Clara and Samuel and the local Cocoa doctor—had no meaning.

  Where’s Simon? I mumbled, and everyone exchanged a look, Clara to Samuel to the doctor and back, and it was Clara who came close and took my hand and reminded me that Simon was gone, darling, Simon was dead, and I was in Florida, and I had gone walking on the beach and stumbled into a nest of bootleggers, landing rum out of Bimini, and it was a lucky thing that someone heard the commotion and sounded the alarm, because that gang had left me for dead.

  At her words, the pieces of memory began falling into place, conscious and unconscious: the sense of myself as Virginia Fitzwilliam, widow and mother, and the sequence of events that had ended in a blow to my head. Which ached and rang in a terrible racket, once I thought about it. I asked desperately after Evelyn, and they brought her to me, and though my limbs were weak and the contents of my skull all shaken up like an especially potent cocktail, I managed to convey to her that Mama was awake and feeling better, there was nothing to worry about. I just needed a little rest.

  And that was when Clara snapped her fingers and said she had the most wonderful idea. We should go away from the bustle of town, we should go to Maitland for my convalescence. A thousand acres of peace and orange blossoms would be just the thing for me! And Evelyn, of course. Evelyn could have the run of the place. Every child should have a little freedom to run around, especially during the hot Florida summer. Samuel could stay with us, when business allowed. What jolly times we would have! But most of all, peace and quiet. Peace and quiet for my head to heal, for my bruises to fade. What did I think of that?

  Well, I didn’t care about Maitland one way or another. At the time, lying there in that white, fresh bed, battered, having just escaped death, I only wanted to leave Cocoa. I wanted to leave Cocoa, and the beach, and the vision I had encountered there. I wanted to gather up my daughter and get the hell out of Florida itself. But I couldn’t go all the way home to New York, not when I could scarcely sit up. Not on the brink of July, when New York was at its worst. Clara was right, I needed to convalesce. And Maitland Plantation was fifty miles from Cocoa—I knew that much from Mr. Burnside—and remote from the coast, where the bootlegging gangs did their work.

  But I couldn’t tell Clara the real reason I wanted to escape. How could I possibly explain what I had seen on the beach last night? How could I explain that I had, in receiving those blows, been struck with a terror far more crucifying than physical injury? So I would go to Maitland, and when my eyes stopped swimming I would write to Sophie, and together my sister and I would think of something. Together we would take Evelyn and go to live with Sophie and her new husband, somewhere no one could find us, somewhere no one would hurt me again, somewhere we would be safe.

  And in the meantime, I had Clara and Samuel to protect me. Clara and Samuel, who had been right all along. Whose vision remained clear, when mine was distorted by a longing I had never learned to conquer.

  The housekeeper greets us at the entrance of Maitland as if she owns the place—which, if the world were more just, I suppose she would—and introduces herself as Miss Portia Bertram.

  “How was the drive?” she asks, while a neatly dressed man appears from around the corner of the house to unstrap our trunks from the rumble seat. The introductions have already been made, and still Clara stares with a kind of rapt fascination at Miss Bertram’s cheek.

  “Not too bad,” I say, just as Clara reports cheerfully: Hot as blazes!

  Miss Bertram smiles. “Cook’s just made up a fresh pitcher of iced lemonade. And you”—she bends down to Evelyn, who hides behind my skirt, clutching one hand, and this time her smile is genuine—“you must be Miss Evelyn. My, aren’t you just the picture of your daddy.”

  Evelyn’s nose slides against the side of my leg, and I look down to see that she’s actually peering out from her sanctuary. Meeting the friendly inquiry of Miss Bertram’s face.

  “What a big girl you are,” Miss Bertram says. “You must be six years old!”

  Evelyn giggles.

  “Seven?”

  Another giggle.

  “Eight? You can’t be eight. No, ma’am. You’re not big enough for eight.”

  “Two!”

  “Two? Two years old?”

  “She’ll be three in December,” I say, stroking Evelyn’s hair. “She’s tall for her age.”

  Miss Bertram straightens and winks at me. “She gets that from her mama, I think.”

  “Rather,” Clara says. “We’re a funny threesome, aren’t we? Samuel is enormous, and I’m tiny, and Simon was just in between. I don’t think he was quite six feet, was he?”

  “Just six feet, I think. An inch or two taller than me.”

  “Was he as tall as that? I suppose I always think of him next to Samuel. I say, though, this is grand. How on earth did Simon fix it up so well? I understand it was practically in ruins.”

  Miss Bertram’s smile disappears. “Not quite ruins. We did the best we could.”

  “Have you been here so long?”

  “All my life, Miss Fitzwilliam.”

  I intercept Clara’s arm before she
can ask any more questions. “Let’s go inside, shall we? I could do with a glass of lemonade.”

  The house was designed for the Florida climate, all deep porches and shuttered windows and high ceilings and a vast column of a staircase wending upward in the center, and Clara exclaims at the coolness inside. I think it has something to do with the furnishings, too—what there are of them, anyway—spare and sparse, light in color and texture, creating a dreamlike atmosphere. There are hardly any doors. Miss Bertram leads us from room to room, separated by a minimum of walls, and I remark on the paucity of furniture and decoration.

  “Mr. Fitzwilliam wanted it that way,” says Miss Bertram. “He thought you should be the one to decorate the house, once it was finished.”

  “Isn’t it finished already?” Clara asks, depositing me on a lonely sofa. She wanders to a tall French window and fingers the diaphanous drapery.

  “Not quite. The library annex was just begun when—”

  “When he died.”

  Miss Bertram stares at the back of Clara’s head. “Yes.”

  Clara turns and lifts one of her delicate eyebrows. “You must have been awfully upset when you heard the news.”

  “Of course. We have endured a lot of trouble together, Mr. Fitzwilliam and I.”

  “Fixing up this old ruin.”

  “Yes. And turning the plantation back into a working farm, Miss Fitzwilliam. That was a whole lot of work, believe me. We were just coaxing those poor old trees back to life, you know, and now this.”

  The sofa is plain and white and comfortable. I sink against the cushions and watch Evelyn as she scampers from window to window. “What a terrible inconvenience.”

  Miss Bertram folds her hands behind her back. Her face, turned toward mine, is really quite lovely. I know she must be thirty-five or forty—about the same age as Clara, in fact—but she hasn’t got a single line. Just that patient expression in her eyes, which are not brown but a kind of opaque, unexpected gray. She says softly, “I’d hate to see all our hard work go to nothing.”

  “Mrs. Fitzwilliam could sell the place, of course,” Clara says briskly.

  “That’s true. It’s my property, isn’t it? Some rich bootlegger, maybe, with money to burn.”

  Miss Bertram stiffens. “Sell! Sell Maitland?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why, because the family’s owned it for generations!”

  “Not my family,” I say. “My husband’s family.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? You married Mr. Fitzwilliam, I believe. You took his name. Bore him a beautiful child. He left this place to you, ma’am, not to anybody else. He trusted you to carry on for him.”

  “Then he ought to have considered my wishes, instead of his own.”

  Clara smiles at Miss Bertram. “She’s had an accident, you know. As I said over the telephone. She’s here to convalesce.”

  Miss Bertram accepts Clara’s smile with a faint, sage curve of her own, and for a moment the two women seem locked in a kind of ethereal communication, back and forth between their stiff mouths and their bright eyes, and I’m struck by how pale Clara looks, when only a day or two ago I was admiring the apricot glow of her suntan. I glance down at my bare arms, and then back to Clara’s cheeks, and then Miss Bertram’s warm brown skin.

  At last, Miss Bertram tilts back to me, and her expression grows kind. A pair of tiny lines pops out from the outer corner of each eye. “I understand. You’ll want to rest now, won’t you, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? I’ve had the beds upstairs all aired and changed, but I’m sure Mr. Fitzwilliam would have wanted you to take his bedroom. The master’s bedroom. I remember how he chose everything the way he thought you’d like it.”

  I’ve never believed in ghosts. For one thing, if spirits could return to visit those left behind on earth, wouldn’t my mother have returned to me by now? I certainly would, if some terrible sickness or accident parted me from Evelyn. I would shatter Valhalla itself to reach my daughter, if I had departed from her too early. If I had left her alone, without my protection. If I had some warning to communicate to her.

  But my mother, in death, never gave me the slightest hint that her spirit lived on beside me, or protected me from the man who had murdered her, so as time went on I gave up any hope—or dread—of supernatural beings. I came to understand that we living people exist alone in this physical realm, and the departed spirits belong solely to the eternal one.

  This I firmly believe, and yet, as I stand in the center of the master’s bedroom at Maitland, while Evelyn tugs and tugs on the tall French door to the balcony, I can’t shake the uncanny sensation that someone stands by my side, watching her with me. I think I can feel the shimmer of warmth, just to my right, prickling the hairs of my arm. For an instant I don’t dare to turn my head, because I’m afraid of what I’ll see. A pair of spots appears, floating in the air before Evelyn’s head, and I realize I have forgotten to breathe. The room sways. Something brushes my arm.

  “Virginia? My goodness!”

  “Clara.”

  “Are you quite all right? You’re all gray!”

  “Just a little dizzy.”

  “Oh, you’re exhausted, aren’t you? My poor darling. Do sit down. There’s a nice cushy armchair right here. Evelyn, sweetheart, you must wait just a moment.”

  She leads me to the chair, and I sink back and close my eyes and listen to her footsteps, light as a fairy, as she flutters about the room. A blanket comes down across my lap; Evelyn is urged from the room. A gentle draft caresses my face, from a window newly opened, and then the door closes with a soft click.

  When I awaken, the room is dim and the air has gone quite still. The white curtains no longer flutter at the windows. I lift my head to find only a single lamp burning on the table by the side of the bed. A small domed silver tray sits underneath the lamp, and the reflection of the electric bulb creates a steady round pool around the finial, like the Arctic Circle.

  A deep lassitude fills me, not unpleasant. The ache in my shoulder has receded, and my brain no longer hurts. I lay aside the blanket and rise from the chair, and only the slightest sensation of dizziness drifts into my head. I grip the bedpost and concentrate on the curtains across the room, long and generous, shielding the balcony from view, while the world steadies around me, scented with orange blossom. A vase of them rests atop the chest of drawers along the wall to my right.

  Underneath the dome, someone has arranged a small supper of cold chicken and corn bread. I eat slowly, for I’m not especially hungry; I swallow the food only because I know I ought to swallow food, not because swallowing satisfies any particular desire within me. In fact, I have no desire at all. Every human want seems to have muted inside me, like a knife that has blunted from use.

  Except, perhaps, for the scent of the orange blossoms on the chest of drawers. I can’t seem to resist them. I wander across the room, curling my bare toes pleasurably around the soft nap of the rug, and when I reach the blooms I close my eyes and sink my nose among them, and all at once I stand on the worn stone steps of a London church, and it’s springtime, and a man is kissing my lips to the music of a thousand eager birds. As if I’ve fallen into a dream.

  I open my eyes, and there is a note nestled between the petals. A note, I would swear, that didn’t exist before.

  For some time I gaze at this piece of ivory paper, folded once across the middle, and the line of thin, black letters just visible underneath the shelter of the uppermost half. The edges gain and lose focus, though the fault is not in my mind or in my eyes. I feel, in fact, quite alert—almost acutely aware of the rub of each detail against my senses. The delicate rich scent of the orange blossoms. The white velvet texture of the petals. The silken wood beneath my fingertips, and the slow respiration of the house around me. A plump rag doll rests against the mirror, wearing a pink dress trimmed in tiny lace, and her button eyes address me solemnly. I lift one hand and pluck the note from among the flowers. The two halves part, reveali
ng the message inside.

  A single line only, just five words:

  Everything you seek is here.

  Chapter 14

  Versailles, France, August 1917

  I woke on my stomach, for the first time in my life. A disorienting rearrangement of the universe. In panic, I lifted my head, and a hand fell on my hair.

  “Shh. Go back to sleep.”

  “Simon?”

  There was a low, chesty laugh. “Were you expecting someone else?”

  My head dropped back to the mattress—the pillows were long discarded—and the tip of my nose resumed its communion with Simon’s ribs. The air was dark and drowsy and thick with beloved details, like the rustle of Simon’s breath and the texture of the old linen sheet across my back. His hand remained in my hair, stroking gently, and I recognized the smell of cigarettes. The brief, velvet depth of sleep from which I had just awakened. The strange serenity of my mood.

  The absence of dread.

  “How long have you been awake?” I whispered.

  “About dawn. Go to sleep, I said.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Rubbish. You’ve scarcely slept at all tonight.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “Yes, but I’m an old sinner, and you . . .”

  I lifted my head again, and this time I propped my elbows underneath me. Simon took shape before me, colored in black and gray: lean, naked, smoking a cigarette. Not the pungent French kind, but a good, sensible British cigarette, mild and good-humored. Parliaments or something. His hair was too short to be really tousled, but I thought I could see the multitude of tracks my fingers had left there, flattened here and parted there. Or maybe it was only my imagination.

  I asked him what was the matter.

  His hand still wove inside my hair. Nothing, he said. Nothing’s the matter.