“You mean you’ve never been?” I couldn’t believe she lived only a few hours away and had never seen the city.
“No. Someday I’d love to see the Radio City Rockettes. They are so glamorous.” The idea that Montauk was her whole world still shocked me. I didn’t know why, it wasn’t as if we left our small town all that often when I was growing up, but this town just seemed so infused with New Yorkers now, it didn’t seem fair that Elizabeth hadn’t seen the city they all sprang from. “Do you feel like you are in the center of it all?” she continued.
“Sure, it’s exciting, when you have a big night out at the opera or some party, but sometimes it’s as if we’re all just being carried along.” My apartment, my life with Harry, the dinners, it all flashed into my head for a minute. I didn’t miss it.
“I’m sure that life pulses around you when you’re in the city.”
“Goal!” the boys called out from behind us.
Elizabeth ignored them with the skill of a seasoned mother to three boys. “Oh, and the skyscrapers, to see the Chrysler Building and the new Empire State in real life, so tall and magnificent.”
“They are pretty spectacular. One of Harry’s clients had a party on the observation deck at the Empire State when it first opened and Fred Astaire was there, taking in the views with his lady friend just like the rest of us. I was so struck by him, all the way up in the sky with us.”
Elizabeth was mesmerized. “Wow.”
“There’s always somewhere to go and someone to see, if that’s what you want. But I don’t always want that. It’s too much sometimes.”
“Do people dress up just to go out, even in the day?” she asked.
“No. Well, actually yes, I suppose they do, but it’s the same as here. No one comes down to breakfast at the Manor without being fully dressed and made up for the day.”
“Sometimes there are leftover newspapers from the city at the post office and Patrick brings them home for me to read.”
“I could take you sometime,” I said, believing at that moment that I meant it but not really knowing how that would work, the two of us in the city together, or how we’d explain it. She smiled and brushed the baby’s fine, wispy hair back from his face.
“I’ll get there one day,” she said. “Maybe when the boys are a little older.”
* * *
Later that afternoon I kept Thomas company in the lighthouse kitchen as promised.
“I’m making my famous stew,” he said, placing five pork chops on the kitchen counter.
“That’s a lot of meat for three men,” I said.
“I usually take a plate up for Milton’s wife when I cook for the men. She usually has a friend over to play bridge when we have our keepers’ dinner, so it’s one less thing that she has to worry about.”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” I said, wondering what it would be like to have a man cook for me.
“Oh, it’s no trouble, I’m cooking anyway and besides, she’s fed me plenty of times.”
I’d dressed in an outfit completely inappropriate to cook in, but I wanted to look nice, even if I wasn’t actually staying for dinner.
“The butcher in town gets the chops from Fink’s Farm in East Hampton,” Thomas kept on. “When he’s got time he delivers them up here. Between the meat and the potatoes and the biscuits, it keeps us going for a while.”
“I wish I could stay.”
“Milton and Worthington are always ravenous when they come over here, as if they haven’t eaten for days! But I know they have. At least Milton has; his wife is a fine cook.”
The darkness down in the kitchen made me forget it was only midafternoon. I felt as if I were in a different world, just the two of us, cut off from everything.
“You up for peeling some potatoes?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. He brought a paper bag over to where I sat at the long wooden table.
As the water came to a simmer in the saucepan he dropped in the chops, letting them poach gently, then Thomas sat across from me and attempted to chop the celery and carrots, stopping every few seconds and rubbing his ribs.
“Want to switch?” I said, passing him the potatoes and taking the wooden chopping board and knife.
“So, from what you’ve told me it sounds like you’re spending more time in the fishing village with Pat’s wife and the boys than you are up at that fancy castle of yours.”
“Well, first of all, it’s not a castle,” I said, “and secondly, the reason I am spending so much time with Elizabeth and Patrick is because I need a ride up here to help a certain someone, who fell down a trench, to do his job.”
“Hold your horses,” he mocked. “I think you are starting to enjoy yourself up here.”
“Oh, you think so?” I grinned. “I am actually very active in my community at the Manor. In fact, tomorrow night I am attending a planning party for the end-of-summer masquerade ball, which, by the way, you are all invited to as you should know, because it’s a locals and city folks soirée, and I’m on the planning committee.”
“Fancy,” he said.
“I’m quite important, I’ll have you know,” I said.
“I’m sure you are.”
“No. The truth is,” I said, “this place reminds me of home, looks nothing like it, but the feeling I get when I’m here at the light or in the fishing village, it’s just natural, friendly, comfortable. No pretenses. It reminds me of my childhood, the open air and the nature.”
I started on the green beans, snipping off their tops and tails. I put one in my mouth and when I looked up Thomas was watching me. “I guess I just like being around you and Elizabeth; I feel comfortable.”
“And your husband? What’s he like?”
The reminder of Harry made my body tense up. I kept on chopping. “Let’s just say he gets comfortable in other places.” I didn’t meet his eyes, but something about telling Thomas made me feel as if I were giving myself permission to be there at the lighthouse. “Apparently he has other lovers, more than one, maybe even women that I know or interact with, and I’ve been so naïve.”
When I looked up he had stopped peeling and was studying me.
“What?” I said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re different, that’s all. And you don’t deserve that.”
After a while he got up and tested the pork again.
“How do you know when it’s ready?” I asked.
“When it’s falling away from the bone like it is now.” He took it out of the pan, cut it into pieces and put it back in with the potatoes, carrots, celery and some diced onion as well as a bouillon cube.
“That needs to simmer for an hour or so. Now for the biscuits.” He opened the flour and cracked an egg.
“Oh, you should use Bisquick,” I said. “Add half a cup of milk. It’s the modern way. Much easier and faster. All the women use it now.”
“I like it the old-fashioned way,” he said, measuring out the ingredients and stirring, but as the dough thickened he had to pass it across the table to me.
“What about you?” I asked. “I think anyone who chooses to spend their life out here on the light must be a particular kind of person. Don’t you go crazy in the winter when it’s freezing cold and all the tourists are gone?”
He laughed. “I have Milton and Worthington to keep me company.”
“Yes, but you’re also a man; don’t you have needs for companionship, that kind of thing?”
“You get used to it. I read a lot, I paint and honestly there’s not a whole lot of free time; we work constantly.”
“You do work a lot.”
“Even on my days off I’m still working around the light. We have the garden to maintain, we grow a lot of our own food up here you know, and then there’s the damned bird cemetery, oh, and the erosion. We’re always trying to reinforce that cliff; it’s creeping back year by year.”
I stopped mixing and looked up to see if I’d heard him right. “The b
ird cemetery?”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s what I call it. There’s a spot over in the woods where I lay them to rest, en masse if you know what I mean.”
He sprinkled a handful of flour on the table and began lightly rolling the dough into small, round balls.
“Migrating geese mostly, they’re attracted to the light; they get blinded and fly right into it or crash into the tower. Must have buried a hundred this past spring.”
“What? That’s so sad.”
“It’s not so bad,” Thomas said.
“But they were on a journey, migrating; their mission was cut short.”
“They couldn’t help themselves; they were drawn to the light. They went for what they wanted; it’s not a bad way to go.” Thomas dusted the doughballs with flour and placed them neatly onto a baking sheet.
“So you made a burial ground for them? That’s very sentimental.”
“I can’t very well just leave them there to rot, and if Milton has anything to do with it he just throws them over the cliff. The fresh ones, the ones that are intact, he cooks them up. I think they should have a better send-off than that.”
“You’re a softy,” I said.
“You’d better be joking. Or at least keep it to yourself.”
It made me laugh, thinking of him burying these geese, cooking the keepers’ dinner the old-fashioned way. Somewhere along the way, I had lost this feeling of being happy, laughing; it seemed new again. Thomas got up to stir the stew and I got up, too, walking over to the stove.
“Smells delicious,” I said.
“You want to try it?”
I nodded. He spooned some out of the pan, blew on it, then put the wooden spoon up to my lips.
“Delicious.”
“Fresh herbs from the garden, makes all the difference. And a little bit of goose.” We laughed. Then he took the spoon from my hand and placed it on the counter, looking at me as if he were about to ask me something serious. “He’s a damn fool, that man of yours,” he said. “A damn fool.”
He held my hands in his for a moment; then he ran his hands slowly up my arms to my shoulders and up to my bare neck, to my face, cupping my cheeks as if I were a picture he was admiring. My legs went shaky. I didn’t say a word. I could barely think. There were just inches between us. I considered stepping back, turning away. He pulled my face to his and kissed me gently, his lips softer than I had imagined, his intentions clear and strong.
“Thomas,” I said, pushing him away, gently. “I’m a married woman.…”
“I know; I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
We stared at each other. I froze, unable to think or move. Then he drew me toward him again, one hand slipping around to the small of my back, our bodies like magnets, pulling into each other. My mouth moved with his and I placed my hands on his chest, then ran my fingers up his back and into his hair. Then he stepped away abruptly, putting his hand to his forehead.
“We can’t do this.… I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have started this. I’m a weak man. You’re a beautiful, smart, married woman. Forgive me.”
He took my hand and kissed it, a soft, gentle, thoughtful kiss; then he led me back to the table. “So,” he said, exhaling deeply, “these biscuits need to go in the oven.”
“Thomas,” I whispered. “That can never happen.…”
“Agreed,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. You have just done something to me. I didn’t know I could feel this way ever again.” He looked down at the table. “I don’t want to hurt you, or cause you any trouble; you’ve had enough of that.”
I suddenly realized how much I cared for this man, how much he seemed to understand me after such little time. This time I reached for him, pulling his body toward mine tightly, letting him lean me back against the flour-dusted table and kiss me some more.
22
He could have managed without me, but I was back at the light the next afternoon. I wanted to be near him. We had a secret between us.
“Are you sure you don’t need help with anything?” I said, sitting on the sofa while he was at his work desk. “I feel like a spare part.”
“Just having you here is making me feel better,” he said. “Actually, if you could bring the small logbook down from the desk in my room that would be very helpful.”
“Right away,” I said, and skipped up the stairs.
Being in his room again made me smile. The glass of water by his bed, the pen next to the inkwell, his clothes folded on the chair. I picked up the picture of the boy again; he had Thomas’s eyes. I closed the logbook and put it under my arm.
“Beatrice, could you bring down the stationery box, too?” Thomas called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s a metal tin, actually, on the shelf above my desk. I have to reply to a few letters.”
“Okay, I see it,” I said, reaching up to grab the square tin on the shelf with envelopes peeking out, but my fingertips barely grazed its side. I stood on my tiptoes and tried again, then looked around for something to nudge it closer to the edge of the shelf so I could reach.
I slid open the small drawer under the desk. A pair of glasses—I hadn’t seen him wear glasses before—a set of keys, a notebook. I picked up the notebook and it was perfect; I used it to slide the tin toward me and picked it up with the other hand. As I did so, a newspaper clipping slipped out of the notebook and fluttered down into the desk drawer. I picked it up and saw announcements for silver, golden and diamond anniversaries. Next to them were personal announcements. Congratulatory births and marriages and also deaths. Below headlines read “Pennsylvania Poet Reaches a New Audience” and “Calling All Embroiderers.” A feeling of strange familiarity and dread hit my stomach as I read them. I had read those exact mundane headlines before; I’d read them over and over. I’d marveled at so many beginnings of life running into endings of life running into irrelevance. My skin chilled and goose bumps ran up my arms; my hands began to tremble. Before I even turned the clipping over I knew what was there. Something I had stared at and read over and over for hours, days, months. My heart beat fast knowing who I’d see staring back at me when I turned the paper over.
It was Charlie, the last photograph taken of my brother when he graduated from high school, smiling, handsome, young. My palms were sweaty; I was unable to catch my breath when I got to the part that said farmhands battled to free him, but when he reached the hospital he was already dead. Seeing the words printed on the page again made my legs go weak. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it, reaching for a reason for it to be there, in Thomas’s house. Why would this be in his drawer? I felt my body turn cold with shock and then almost immediately that turned into anger.
I raced down the stairs from the bedroom and into the living room. By the time I reached him hot angry tears streamed down my cheeks.
“I found it,” I said, throwing the logbook toward him.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?” He stood up gingerly, walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders, trying to calm me, but I shook him off.
“Don’t touch me!” I cried. “Why do you have this?” I held the clipping up—it was shaking in my hand. “How do you know about this?”
His face dropped and he brought one hand to his forehead. “Bea, please listen to me for a minute; let me explain.”
I suddenly felt scared; here I was in a house, up on a hill, no one knew where I was, with a man I’d only known a few weeks who I now found out had information about me hidden away in his bedroom, information about my brother, my family. I backed myself closer to the door feeling completely disoriented. “You’d better explain fast.”
“I should have said something earlier. I tried, but it was never the right time. I thought at first maybe you recognized me, and then I realized that you didn’t, that maybe you were too young then and too distraught at that time, but I recognized you the minute I set eyes on you.”
“What are you talking about?” A strange feeling came ov
er me, as if the blood were draining out of me, as if I knew what he was going to say.
“I knew Charlie,” he said. “I was with him the day he died.”
I slid down the wall and sat on the floor. My eyes filled with tears all over again, making my vision blurry. “What do you mean you knew Charlie?” And yet as I said it, something inside made sense; there had been a familiarity about him, something that I hadn’t been able to grasp. “How? When?”
“I briefly worked at Hicks McGowen’s repair shop in Morrisville; he’s a friend of mine from the war. Charlie and his friend Tim were doing an apprenticeship and I worked with the two boys. Hicks asked me to train them.”
I put my hands over my mouth. I remembered Charlie talking about him, his mentor. Charlie called him Tom. He looked up to him and liked him. It had always haunted me that no one from my new adult life would ever know Charlie, that the only people who knew him were back home in Pennsylvania and that he’d never make new friends, find a wife, have a child, that I’d never be able to share him with the people I knew, with family I’d married into. Thoughts were spinning around in my head; I could barely speak.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say something when you first met me?”
“I should have, I’m sorry, but I was so shocked when I first saw you, I froze. I never would have imagined I’d see you again. I remembered you from the funeral; you were just a kid, sixteen or seventeen, right? And you were so composed, so strong in the midst of all that sadness. It’s very vivid in my mind, seeing you there, your life forever changed, forever saddened, and yet you were a light among all those devastated faces. And then at your parents’ house—”
“You were at my parents’ house?”
“No, I didn’t feel right coming to the reception after what happened, but I did bring Charlie’s things to the house that he’d left at the garage and some money he would have been owed. I left it by the back door.”
“His toolbox, with an envelope of money inside. I brought that in.”
“I saw you through the kitchen window wiping tears from your eyes as you made tea for everyone else. I remember thinking how you were the one who should have been sitting down, being consoled, and yet you were making sure all the guests in your home were comfortable with tea in their cups. I thought, that day, what a wonderful woman you would grow up to be, so strong, so caring, and then when I saw you that night, here in Montauk at the pig contest, a well-to-do guest at the Manor, it was all very disorienting. I was stunned.”
Montauk Page 22