The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point)

by Rice, Luanne

  “Oh,” Bay said, smiling. “Then I'm especially touched you'd stop by. I didn't know you worked with flowers . . .”

  “I don't, usually,” Alise said. “I usually just do interiors, but I have one client who likes me to oversee the terraces as well, and I went a little overboard this time. Mark told me you've started gardening.”

  “I have,” Bay said. “For Mrs. Renwick.”

  “Isn't she a character?” Alise asked, laughing. “Mark just loves having her as a client. He always comes home with great Augusta stories.”

  Bay nodded pleasantly; Alise probably didn't know that Augusta had been Sean's client, till last June . . .

  “Anyway,” Alise said, “enjoy the flowers. You know, maybe we can work together sometime, Bay. If I get a client who's looking for a gardener, I'll keep you in mind.”

  “I'd appreciate that,” Bay said.

  It was a small thing, really, but the night made Bay feel . . . normal, after all the months of desolation. To be sitting outside with Tara, having another friend stop by to give her such a lovely plant. It was enough to make her believe everything was going to get better. Bay had felt so unwanted by Sean, and then she had lost him; her grief had been doubled.

  But tonight she felt good. She felt secure, to have such good friends, part of a community. To have started working at something she had a talent for, something she understood, that might be the beginning of a real future for her and the kids. To be sitting in front of the house she loved, with her children safe inside.

  And to be able to watch the moon and wonder whether Danny was seeing it, too.

  THE GOOD—THE GREAT—NEWS WAS THAT THEY WERE going to the McCabes' for dinner, but first Eliza would get to spend the whole day with Annie.

  The not so good news was that Eliza felt the darkness coming back. She felt threatened by everything: a knocking at the door when her father wasn't home. A feeling that someone was following her. Scratching at the screen in her bedroom window one warm night last week, and a soft voice: Eliza, Eliza, your mother wants you.

  It sounded so real!

  And when she looked, the next day, she saw scratches on the metal mesh—as if someone had tried to cut through with a knife. She even showed her dad. He looked at the marks and said they were just from wear and tear, branches scraping the house during gales and nor'easters. Of course he thought it was in her mind. Let's face it, Eliza thought. Even I think it's in my mind. It was just like the boy—or girl—who cried wolf. And most of Eliza's life was just one big cry for help.

  Some things helped. Annie helped. Sunny days helped. New clothes helped for a short while. But for such a short while, she had to wonder: Why spend the money at all?

  Earrings helped, but the piercings helped more. A little prick of pain, another hole in the skin, letting some of the pressure out.

  Starving was good. It was so real. The body was really pretty dumb, when you thought about it. It was trained to be hungry when it really didn't need food. Like, show the body a ham sandwich, and its mouth would start to water. Same thing with a chocolate bar, especially, for Eliza's body, one with almonds.

  That was the crazy thing: other bodies might go wild for peanuts or coconut. Bodies were very personal in their appetites. Annie, for example, had struggled with her weight. But now, according to the most recent phone calls, the hunger was a bit under control, and her body was shrinking just slightly.

  For Eliza, life was a constant struggle. She felt like a worker at a nuclear power plant: Keep the pressure up here, let it off there, let the steam build to a head, then twist the valve and let some escape.

  Eliza did that with starving and cutting. Starving let her body build up pressure till her muscles were screaming for vitamins and nutrition, and cutting let the screams fly out of her organs, into the sky.

  Her dad was out in the boatyard, outside, and Eliza was in the shed, after work, sitting at the desk, her favorite place in the world to do her work: her cutting.

  She called it “the grandfathers' desk,” because that was what it was: created by one grandfather for the other. Not exactly like Annie's story of the beloved grannies, however. This was commerce, not friendship: Her mother's family had had all the money, and her grandfather from that side, Obadiah Day, had hired her grandfather from her father's side, Michael Connolly—poor Irish immigrant that he was—to build and carve him this desk.

  It was so, so beautiful, built of mahogany, carved with mermaids, scallop shells, fish, sea horses, sea monsters, and Poseidon. As a little girl, Eliza had had sweet dreams of the mermaids and sea horses. Now, as an almost-grown-up, she had nightmares about the sea monsters.

  She sat at the desk, slowly, reverentially, taking her knife from its hiding place, in her sock. Her pulse went up, with excitement. And her throat began to sting with the tears she wished she could shed. Sometimes she thought that maybe, if she could cry, she wouldn't have to cut; her body could weep in a normal way.

  Letting her fingers run over the desk's carved surface, she wondered whether this piece of furniture was cursed. If it hadn't been ordered, if one grandfather hadn't been hired by the other grandfather to build and adorn it, would their family have ever come into existence?

  Would her mother have met her father? Would Eliza ever have been born?

  She so often wished none of those things had ever happened. It was one reason she liked going to Banquo, felt it to be a sanctuary—although a locked one, with hard plastic-covered pillows and too many meds—because there were people there, other girls, who understood her life, who would not think it was one bit weird to hear strange voices outside her window in the night, calling her to join her mother, and who knew, at least a little, what it felt like to be her.

  To be her.

  Eliza Day Connolly.

  Annie knew, a little. She had a tender heart, just like the girls at Banquo, but she also had an amazing core of strength that Eliza loved. It intrigued her the way Annie handled everything so well, and she wished she could learn from Annie.

  But she lived so far away; if only Eliza lived in Hubbard's Point, where she could see Annie constantly. She thought of the haunted feeling of the place, as if ghosts of all the beloveds congregated there. She knew Annie felt it, too—and that was just one more reason she loved her.

  Ghosts and worries and secrets.

  Eliza's mother, for example. When would her hateful secret come out? And did her father already know? She adored him, more than he could ever know, and she would die to help him. That's why the voice at the window bothered her so much—because it reminded Eliza so much of that night her mother died.

  But the voice at the window didn't know Eliza's true feelings. It didn't know the secret. That's why Eliza had checked to see if a real person was outside on her roof—because the voices in her head would have known better. Because the voice at her window was ignorant. It didn't know that Eliza had no desire to join her mother. None at all.

  Family secrets.

  Banquo Hospital was in existence, if you thought about it, because of family secrets. People hurt by the people who loved them most. What other reason could there be for going crazy? Eliza couldn't really think of one. Her father, one of the best secret-keepers of them all, had better watch out, or who knew how he'd get by? He needed Eliza, just to keep him in line.

  She was willing to admit this: She gave him a hard time.

  Okay—she sometimes did her level best to make his life hell. To keep him on his fatherly toes and remind him that SHE was still here, SHE still needed him, SHE would never desert him. If he was busy taking care of her, he would have less time to feel tormented by what had happened to her mother.

  The man was so good and fine, but he was ridiculously blind to certain truths. He thought his good sweet Charlie had left him only in death, that last night by the side of the road? Ha!

  Sometimes a daughter knew so much more.

  Her lungs searing now, her heart a jackhammer in her skinny chest, Eliza watche
d her father out the window. She knew he'd be occupied for some time . . .

  Eliza closed her eyes, thought of her mother talking to Sean McCabe. Her trusted banker.

  It was strange that Annie, her new and only best friend, was Sean McCabe's daughter, but what good was having Dissociative Identity Disorder if you couldn't use it to occasionally dissociate on demand when you wanted and needed to most? It kept her from seeing the maroon van in her dreams . . .

  Or from remembering where she had seen it before. It tormented her, the knowledge that she had seen that van before. But where? And where had she heard that voice outside her window?

  The questions were driving her crazy, so she lifted her knife.

  She picked a spot on her body that her father couldn't see—the top of her forearm, just below the joint; it was fall now, and chilly, and long sleeves were in order—and Eliza began to ever so gently press the blade into her skin.

  Nothing too dramatic. Just enough to free the blood, to let the blood come bubbling out. One drop of blood. Another drop of blood.

  Her blood; Eliza's blood.

  It shocked her anew, every time she saw it.

  Oh, she wished she could cry. She felt like it, she almost could . . .

  She watched the blood spring out of the little sixteenth-of-an-inch cut and trickle down her arm, and she felt the searing anguish in her chest, knowing that everyone was just blood and bone, and death could come so suddenly and take it all away, and love could be replaced by rage, and both could be left with nowhere to go . . .

  And she let the red blood spill off her arm, onto the dark, rare wood of the grandfathers' desk, and she watched her blood drop run down Poseidon's mahogany face, into the ocean waves curling at his feet, and with her teeth gritted but no tears in her eyes, Eliza rubbed her blood into the king's face, into the sea.

  21

  SATURDAY WAS A LONG, LOVELY, TERRIBLE DAY. TO Annie, it felt like going to a movie she loved and finding out that, instead of watching it, she was actually in it; in fact, it was her life. It was like having, on a temporary basis at least, most of her wishes come true. As well as fears she didn't know she had . . .

  It started with Eliza being dropped off at nine-thirty. Her dad pulled his truck into the driveway, and Annie's mom went out to speak to him about returning at six-thirty, for dinner, all of them together. The reason Eliza was allowed to come so early was that they'd promised to do two hours of homework, and they decided to get it out of the way first thing.

  While their parents consulted in the driveway, the girls went up to Annie's room, where Annie offered Eliza her desk.

  “No, that's okay,” Eliza said, plopping down. “I want your bed.”

  “But it's so much easier to concentrate at the desk,” Annie said.

  “Well, thank you. I know it is, but I'm into sloth. My body doesn't feel like being upright today.”

  “Are you eating?”

  Eliza shook her head. “But don't tell. My father was threatening to send me back to Banquo if I didn't start. He's so . . . upsetting.”

  “I think he's worried about you,” Annie said, feeling worried herself. Eliza looked skinnier than she'd seen her before, as if each and every one of her cells was malnourished and fading away.

  “He doesn't have to be,” Eliza said. “I'm the one in our house who worries. About HIM. He's the bane of my existence.”

  “Your father?” Annie asked, marveling yet horrified by Eliza speaking of her father that way.

  “Yes. Ever since his business nearly went under, he's been so different. Hardly ever laughs. And talk about not eating. If middle-aged men could be anorexic, he'd be a candidate. Ever since last year . . .”

  “But wasn't that when your mother died?”

  Eliza had sprawled on Annie's bed, and she looked up at her with a glint in her eyes. “Yes. And you know how that changes everything.”

  “So, maybe your father is just sad.”

  “Well, it's very complicated,” Eliza said, hugging Annie's pillow as if it were a baby, kissing its forehead. “And I thank you for wanting to figure it out for me, but that's the trouble with family secrets: If we told them, we think we'd die. So . . . what do you have for homework? I have English.”

  “I have French.” Annie smiled, thrilled by the mention of family secrets . . . because she had a few of her own, and it was early, and the day was long. And just then the door opened, and her mother—as if prompted by Mr. Connolly—came in with a plate of cut-up fruit.

  “Here, you two,” she said. “Something to keep your brains happy while you study.”

  “Mmm, apples and pears,” Eliza said, beaming as if she had just been handed a platter of silver and gold. “I LOVE them. Thank you SO much!”

  “You're welcome, Eliza. We're glad you could come today.”

  “So am I,” Eliza said, still beaming.

  When her mother had left the room, Annie grabbed a few slices, then passed the plate to Eliza. She shook her head, declining. “No, thank you.”

  “But I thought you said you loved them.”

  “I do,” Eliza said, pulling her English book from her backpack. “I'm just not going to eat them.”

  Annie nodded. She understood and respected Eliza's desire. The girls did their work—Eliza on the bed, Annie at the desk. The French homework was very hard, but very beautiful, as the music of the language came off the page . . . In French class, and while studying, Annie became small and chic, a delightful gamine, the kind of girl her father would have thought was beautiful.

  Annie whispered the dialogue at her desk, enraptured by the music of the words, and loving that she had a friend in her room. It made the pain of missing her father a little duller. “You can read it out loud,” came the voice from the bed.

  “I don't want to interrupt your English.”

  “That's okay. It's Dickens—Great Expectations. I can do it with my eyes closed. Some of us live Dickens . . . especially when he writes about orphans and tragedy . . .” She sighed loudly and scratched her arm, making Annie want to see beneath her sleeves, to see whether there were any new scars there. “Life with me is,” Eliza concluded, “unfortunately, one big chapter out of Dickens, urchins and skullduggery and hunger and dirty streets and evil people out on the roof whispering to sleeping girls . . . so please, go ahead now: Read your French lesson to me.”

  “What evil people?”

  “People FOLLOW me,” Eliza said, baring her teeth and making claws with her fingers. “The EVIL people . . .”

  “Really?” Annie said, shivering with the pleasure of such creative playing.

  “Yes . . . everywhere I go, I feel them there, but then I look over my shoulder, and they're GONE. Only to return in the night . . .”

  “What do they do in the night?”

  “Call my name—‘Eliza, your mother wants you.' ”

  “I wish my father would call me.”

  “It's not really my mother,” Eliza whispered. “It's just my crazy head.”

  “You're not crazy.”

  “Sometimes I'm worried that I am.” But then Eliza smiled. “It's really not too bad, though. It's a good way to be in touch with all the beloveds . . . You know, last night I had a talk with the two grannies and told them you and I are the newest best friends at Hubbard's Point. Hey, maybe it's one of them calling at my window!”

  “Maybe!” Annie said, her head spinning as it often did when Eliza got going—what MUST it be like to be in Eliza's mind? So Annie read her dialogue out loud, perfecting her pronunciation a little more as she went along, thrilled to have an audience, a friend, a fellow passenger in the lifeboat.

  A LITTLE LATER, ONE MOVIE REEL ENDED, AND THE FILM changed.

  After homework, when the two girls decided to take their lunches as a picnic over to Little Beach—so Eliza could chuck hers along the way, big surprise—Eliza took note of the black car driving by.

  “Ooh,” she said. “Cops, right?”

  “Mmm,” Annie said
, frowning and feeling embarrassed.

  “They're digging up dirt on your dad?”

  “Mmm,” Annie said, her shoulders caving in a little more.

  “Don't be ashamed,” Eliza said, squeezing her hand. “So, your dad wasn't perfect. Who is?”

  Annie couldn't quite speak at first. She watched the unmarked car cruise past, like a shark on wheels: black car, white death. “I thought my father was perfect,” she said, her voice failing her.

  “I know, Annie. I thought my mother was, too.”

  “When did you find out she wasn't?”

  Eliza stared at Annie as they walked, as if trying to make up her mind about whether she could go the whole way and confide in her or not.

  “Whatever she did, it couldn't have been as bad as my dad.”

  The two girls walked down the beach road, away from the boardwalk their nondead parents had built. When they got to the foot of the rocky path leading up to the pine- and cedar-studded hill, Eliza tilted her head back and looked.

  “What's that?” she asked.

  “The path to Little Beach,” Annie said. She half expected Eliza—in her long black spandex dress and platform shoes—to protest. But instead, Eliza's eyes widened with interest.

  “This looks just like a place where secrets can be told!” she exclaimed. “A hidden, enchanted path where good girls can tell each other terrible and amazing things . . . and where the evil people will never find them!”

  “You're kidding about the evil people, right?” Annie asked nervously.

  “I think so,” Eliza said.

  Satisfied, Annie felt a magical tingle go down her spine. The deliciousness of talking about terrible and amazing things, of not having to hide the truth, made her take Eliza's hand and help her up the steep path. The trees grew along the trailside, branches interlocking overhead, sending dappled green sunlight spilling onto their shoulders.

  Once in the woods, the first thing Eliza did was to unwrap the sandwich Annie's mother had made and throw it into the bushes.

  “For the birds,” she explained. Then, “Oh—I should have asked if you wanted it . . . you could have had two.”