Ann quickly discovered that Maureen was one of those women who used the word “husband” too much. My husband this, my husband that. If she cared so much about her husband, why didn’t she stay in Marblehead with him and get some action? Ann couldn’t believe Maureen was so giddy over someone she’d been married to for a long time. It made her even more anxious to meet this mysterious husband, which was why she agreed to babysit the next night, even though the last thing she wanted was to spend more time in the Shaws’ hermetically sealed home. Maureen offered to pay her overtime, and that was nice, but Ann babysat because she was curious: What kind of man could make his own wife so insecure? What was it about him that made Maureen so jumpy and eager to please?
All she knew about him was that his name was Anthony, and that he had large feet, based on the worn leather boat shoes that sat outside the back door. She liked to imagine him as a real man, strong and confident like the characters in the Harlequin romances she read. A man with secrets. Men, she thought, should be different from her father, inaccessible and mysterious.
Maureen twirled in front of Ann like a little girl in a beauty pageant. “So, be honest. What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” Ann said, although she thought otherwise: that pink wasn’t a good color for Maureen, not with her burnt-red hair and freckly, coral complexion. The silk clung to all the wrong places.
Maureen put her hand on Ann’s shoulder and smiled. “Gosh, it’s so nice to have another gal in the house.”
Gosh? A gal?
Maureen could sense Ann’s disapproval. “You think I’m too old for it, don’t you?”
“I don’t think you’re old,” Ann lied. She thought Maureen was ancient.
“You’re so young and beautiful. What would you know about losing your looks?” Maureen shook her finger at her, which made Ann feel like she was being scolded instead of warned. “It happens just like that, you know. Like someone flipped a switch. You’ll see, my dear. Sooner than you think. One day you’re beautiful, the belle of the ball, and the next day you’re—well, you’re me.”
Ann set the book down. The plot of Pelican Brief was too confusing. She looked around the living room and groaned. Maureen’s decorating was so self-conscious that Ann felt like she was in a museum. Every object was on display as if it were meant to be observed and learned from, like the framed photos of Toby and Brooks that Maureen had blown up and tinted sepia to make them look timeless. The photos hung in the dining room and were framed in gold and lit from above as if they were real art. The boys’ necks looked like they could snap under the weight of their abnormally large heads. They had small eyes, big noses, thin lips, and their mother’s ruddy freckles. The strange combination of features was a study in big and little, delicate and thick, and their expressions were of kids who didn’t like to have their photos taken. Ann felt restless for the boys, as if they were trapped inside those frames the same way she felt trapped inside their sealed house, where Maureen’s hovering attention to the home was evident in every detail, like the polished decorative seashells that Maureen had scattered thoughtfully on the coffee table and across the mantel. Ann had never seen pink shells on the Wellfleet beaches that were anything like the ones Maureen picked out. She suspected they’d been bought in Bermuda, a place that sounded especially rich, and where Maureen told her they owned another home—or “a little place,” as Maureen called it.
Ann looked out the window to make sure nobody was around before she walked down the plush white-carpeted hallway that led to the Shaws’ bedroom. She opened Maureen’s closet and found the dress hanging on the door in a sheer plastic bag. She carefully pulled the raw silk off the hanger and set it on the bed, the pink standing out against the dizzying Waverly floral print on the coverlet.
Ann had poked around in the master bedroom before. She loved to discover things in the intimate spaces of the people she babysat for. Back home, she’d discovered a completed marriage quiz in the green pages inside the Johnsons’ Ms. magazine. Mrs. Johnson had answered “No” to the question “Do you still love your husband” and “Yes” to one that asked if she fantasized about other men.
In the Shaws’ nightstand drawers, she found a Reader’s Digest, a half-used tube of K-Y jelly, and a container that looked like the one she’d used to store her retainer, only it had a rubbery, flesh-colored disc inside. A diaphragm. She recoiled in horror, as if she’d seen a jellyfish swimming around in the bedside table.
Maureen’s room was huge. In the corner was a full-length three-way mirror complete with big round vanity lights. It belonged in the dressing room of a fancy department store instead of a summer home. Ann flipped on the lights and inspected her outfit: a Boston College T-shirt she’d gotten when they’d stopped to tour there on the drive out, and a pair of loose athletic shorts. She kicked off her shorts and T-shirt and stood in front of the mirror in her bra and underwear, a matching set with little red hearts on them. Usually she’d be tan by now, but she’d spent so little time in the sun that her skin was still as pale as it was in February back home in Wisconsin.
She wasn’t used to seeing her whole body so completely, front and back, side to side. She unclasped her bra and let her breasts loose. She had a large chest for someone so tall and thin, almost a D cup—breasts that slowed her down when she ran. One of her nipples was inverted. She rubbed the soft, pink flesh between her thumb and index finger until it got hard to match the other one. Pleased with the result, she turned around and focused on the spot where her thigh met the soft curve of her ass. She didn’t have any dimples or cellulite to worry about, no flaps under her arms, not yet. She could hear Maureen’s voice in her ear. One day you’re beautiful, the belle of the ball …
She cupped her butt cheek with her hand and remembered when Tommy McNair had done the same thing when they danced together at junior prom, his sweaty hand greedy and impatient. He’d just snorted an eight-ball of coke and was jacked up and distracted. “Let’s get out of here and do it,” he’d said, burying his oily face in her neck. She looked across the room and saw Michael staring at her with an expression of concern.
“No,” Ann said. “Let’s not.”
At the after-party, he threw up all over the pool table. Boys were idiots. Well, not all boys. Not Michael.
Yesterday, when she’d come home from babysitting, she found him working in the garden, shirtless. He’d stopped to smile and wave to her. She swore he must have grown almost a foot since he’d moved in with them, and he’d become more muscular, but still lean. His dark hair had some wave in it from the humidity. She couldn’t believe how handsome he was—and how wrong it was for her to even think of him like that. She looked at her reflection and thought of his golden-brown skin, and the trail of dark hair below his belly button that led—no, no, no!
She shook her head to clear away the thought the way she might shake an Etch A Sketch. He was her brother now, for real. The papers were signed.
The door swung open.
Mr. Shaw.
He wore an expensive-looking black suit that looked small on him, as though the seams were about to pop.
She was so surprised she couldn’t even scream. She reached for her T-shirt and held it against her naked torso.
“Well,” he said. His voice was so deep the walls practically shook when he spoke. “Hello there.” He sounded amused instead of angry. So much was happening she couldn’t think straight.
“So, you’re the new girl. Ann.”
Ann nodded. She could feel her face burn from embarrassment. Why was he speaking to her so casually?
“I hear you’re from the Midwest,” he said, looking her in the eyes, which made her feel even more naked. What was he talking about? Why was he engaging in a normal conversation with her?
“I’m—” She felt so stupid.
“I’ve been to Chicago a few times. Some great blues bars there. You like the blues?”
The blues? She did, actually. Her dad was a fan of the old stuff. Ma Rainey. Lig
htnin’ Hopkins. Curley Weaver. She couldn’t tell him this. She just nodded.
Anthony took his tie off.
“I know I shouldn’t be in here,” Ann said.
“Says who? This is my house. I say it’s just fine. More than fine.”
“But I—”
“My wife is right.”
“Right about what?”
“She says you are darling.” He said it like they were sharing an inside joke. “Although I might have chosen a different word.” He looked at her hip. “‘Darling’ doesn’t do you justice.”
“I’m sorry. I should—”
“Don’t be embarrassed. We’re both grown-ups.”
Ann didn’t feel like a grown-up. She snuck a longer look at Anthony in the mirror. She’d expected him to be preppy, like the grown-up dads in yacht club shirts and madras shorts she’d met when she picked the boys up in Chatham. They had receding hairlines and potbellies. He was nothing like that. He was sturdy and strong. He wasn’t very tall, probably shorter than Maureen, but he took up space as if he were a bigger man. He had dark brown hair and a clipped, manicured beard that accentuated the bluntness of his features. His nose was short and thick and looked like it had just been punched, and his chin was perfectly square. His cheekbones were so pronounced that they were practically shelves for his eyes—eyes that stared appreciatively at Ann’s reflection in the mirror.
“Is that yours?” he asked, pointing at Maureen’s dress on the bed.
She shook her head no. Of course it wasn’t hers. He knew that. “It’s your wife’s.”
The word “wife” hung in the air between them, awkward and even a little sexy. Ann tried to convince herself that the wife wasn’t Maureen, but the idea of a wife.
“Tell me, do you like it?”
“Like what?”
“The dress.”
“I guess so.” What did it matter what she thought of it? “Look, I should go.”
“No, no. You like it. You should try it on. That’s what you were going to do, right? Don’t let me get in the way. Let’s see it on you.”
“I can’t.”
He unbuttoned his suit jacket and loosened his tie, revealing a prominent Adam’s apple. “I told you, it’s fine.”
“I shouldn’t have come in here.”
“Leave it to me to tell you where you should and shouldn’t be in my own home. Look, I understand. You were bored. Tell you what: I get bored here, too. Bored senseless.” He slurred the last word, so it sounded like a blur of s’s. She wondered if he’d been drinking.
“I should go get the boys. Their lessons will be over soon.”
“You have time. Go ahead, try it on. It’ll only take a few seconds. Come on, indulge me. Let’s see if you’re as pretty in pink as I think you’ll be.”
“Can you … can you look away? Please?”
“No, Ann. I honestly can’t.” That was the first time she’d ever heard her name said that way, or the ache of desire in a man’s voice, a real grown man’s voice. It scared her, but it also turned her on. She felt like she’d gained access into a world that had previously been forbidden.
He grabbed the dress by the skirt and passed it to her. Then he let his finger graze the top of her hand when he tugged the shirt she’d been holding so it would fall free and drop on the floor. “Boston College, huh?”
Perhaps if she’d corrected him things might have gone differently. But she liked being thought of as older than she was.
“Just let me see,” he said, smiling. “I’m not asking you to undress.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed with his chin on his hands. She looked at him through his reflection in the mirror—three sets in the vanity, from three angles, his eyes all over her. “C’mon,” he said, and smiled.
She’d screwed around with boys back home, “mashing” under the bleachers at football games or in her friends’ wood-paneled basements at parties, but she’d never let it go too far. She was usually comfortable saying no, pulling a boy’s hand away from the hem of her shirt and the snap of her pants.
She decided to think of this as a game, one in which she had power. Emboldened, she smiled. She pointed her toe through the dress, and shimmied the delicate fabric over her hips. It felt like a whisper against her skin. She slipped her arms into the armholes. The dress was meant to be cute, not sexy, but it might as well have been lingerie, the way Ann felt wearing it. She reached behind her for the zipper and struggled to pull it up.
Anthony stepped off the bed and approached her. “Let me help.” He did nothing at first. She could feel the heat off his body, and she wanted badly for him to either walk out of the room or to touch her, but she was also worried about either scenario.
His breath was heavy and warm on her shoulder. It ignited something in her, a hunger that felt suddenly hot and urgent—and wrong.
He reached for the zipper at the small of her back. He dragged it up slowly, one tooth at a time, until his fingers made electric contact on the base of her neck, lingering there, warm and insistent, his fingers callused and hard and masculine. He gently tugged at the rubber band holding her ponytail and set her golden hair loose. “There,” he said. “All you need is matching polish for your toenails.”
She curled her bare toes deep into the thick pile carpet.
He backed away and stood in profile, doing nothing to hide the hard-on that bulged pointedly through his slacks like a drawn sword. She knew he was proud and he meant for her to see it.
He stared at her for a while, his gaze intense, direct. “I think I’m going to have to start spending more time out here on the Cape, aren’t I?”
Ann didn’t realize she’d been lost in a spell until Anthony cleared his throat. “Well. I hope you’ll forgive me. This is entirely inappropriate, Ann. My work has been stressful—incredibly stressful—and the drive out here was long. Horrible traffic at the bridge. When I walked into my room and saw you, what could I do?” He paused. “What could any man do?”
“It’s—it’s fine,” she said.
“No. It’s not. I let this go too far. It was my good fortune to see you in all your glory. Now if you’ll excuse me, you should change. Mo would be upset if she knew you were rummaging around through her things. She likes to keep things separate.”
Keep things separate? What did that mean, she wondered.
“But don’t worry, I won’t share your secret.”
“My secret?”
“I wouldn’t think of it.” He walked to the door and winked. “It was so nice to meet you, Ann.”
He lingered over her name before he walked out of the room and gently clicked the door shut behind him. By the time she’d taken off the dress and hung it back up she could hear his car engine turn over, followed by the sound of his wheels rolling backward.
FIVE
Poppy
Kit taught Poppy all the parts of the board: nose, tail, deck, rails. Before they even got in the water she lectured her about safety, which made Poppy think Kit was a little less cool, because safety was something only adults were supposed to care about.
Poppy’s parents took the ocean seriously. Over the years, Poppy and Ann had frequently lost track of the shore while they were swimming. Depending on the direction of the wind, the gentle pull of the tide would slowly and imperceptibly tug them north toward Truro, or south toward Orleans. They’d get caught up in their bodysurfing, and when they looked at the beach for the lifeguard stand and the familiar yellow umbrella marking their parents’ encampment, they’d see only a blank expanse of sand. Suddenly, they would swim to shore and race down the beach, finding Ed and Connie frantically calling out their names. They knew that the pull of the ocean could take their girls away into unsafe waters, farther from the main swimming areas, where the seals swam and the sharks followed.
Safety was just as serious for Kit as it was for Poppy’s parents. She had a kind of reverence for it, barking out what sounded more like commands than bits of advice. “Never let your
board get between you and the wave. Always hold the nose up. Don’t ever think you know where your board is when you pop. Cover your head no matter what. If it’s behind you and a wave is coming, the board’ll smash you in the head or crack your nose. Hurts like hell, trust me. That’s why my nose whistles when I breathe.”
Before they even got in the water, Kit taught Poppy how to paddle on dry land. She also made her practice lifting up her chest, bringing her right leg forward and planting it sideways on the board while her other leg dragged behind it. She practiced squatting, arms down. “Don’t look at your feet. Look at the horizon. Imagine the water is rushing around you. Squat. Bring down your center of gravity.”
Poppy, anxious and tired of imagining surfing, finally got into the water. It was cold and exhilarating, and the board was huge and hard to manage. Kit sounded like a drill sergeant, and Poppy internalized Kit’s voice.
“Get on your board when the water is waist high. Paddle to the sandbar. Use your shoulders! Now go to where the waves are breaking. Turn around and face the shore. Look behind you for the wave. OK, here it comes. You’re going to need to learn how to watch for waves. OK now paddle, paddle, lift up your chest, feel it, feel it, now go!”
Poppy stood up her very first time. She loved the feeling of the water under her board, loved the energy of the surf, loved the rush of adrenaline. This was way better than researching history or babysitting rich kids. And it was way better than what she was before that moment: Gordo’s daughter, her mother’s sidekick, Ann’s pesky younger sister, Michael’s coffee shop buddy. She was always somebody else’s something; never anything special on her own. She didn’t stir the pot the way Ann did, she didn’t tug at anyone’s heartstrings like sweet Michael. Everyone thought she was just a space cadet, quiet and dreamy. And now here she was, on top of the ocean.
“You got it, girl!”
Poppy didn’t ride her first wave for long, maybe ten seconds, just long enough to know she’d never had more fun. It was as if the moment she stood up on the water she’d finally become her true self. She’d heard of people who knew they were alcoholics after their first sip of whiskey. Poppy was addicted to surfing after her first wave.
The Second Home Page 6