Beach Roses

by Jean Stone

  Rita closed her eyes and wondered if all women were so stubborn and if that’s what made them strong.

  “I have an idea,” she said quickly, glancing at the twins who were at her feet, busily emptying a cabinet of large pots and pans, and thanking God that her own life had taken a huge turn for the better. “Tell her that you’ll bring her. But don’t go to the airport. Meet me at the hospital in the Emergency Room.” If anything happened to Katie, Rita thought it would be best if they were where she could get help. “I’ll try to reach the others from the support group,” she added. “Maybe together we can convince her to stay here.”

  “Should I call the doctor?”

  “Doc plays poker at the Hall Tuesday nights.” Some things a Vineyarder just knew, like the ferry schedules and the tide times and the way to shuck a clam. “I’ll call him if you want.”

  “It’s up to you,” Joleen replied. “Can we meet in half an hour?”

  Rita hung up the phone and wondered if she’d ever learn not to get involved. She glanced at her watch; she must call Hannah. Then Rita remembered she didn’t have Faye’s number; she couldn’t look it up, because she didn’t even know the woman’s last name.

  Rita asked Hannah to please let Faye know. After the crisis, she’d ask Hannah for Faye’s number. Surely someone at the phone company would trace it for a last name and an address. Then Rita might learn once and for all what had happened to Faye’s child and maybe why the woman seemed so hauntingly familiar. Maybe she’d even find out if Faye was their benefactor, not that it should matter, but, after all, Rita was nosy, so of course it did.

  In the meantime, Joleen rushed Katie into the Emergency Room, both clad in sunglasses though it was now after dark, both wearing wide-brimmed straw hats way ahead of season. Rita and Hannah stood up to greet them; Faye had not yet arrived.

  Katie looked surprised to see them. Rita shushed her and steered them to a small conference room that was square and airless. It occurred to her that this was a place where bad news was delivered: I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but your son has been eaten by a shark or killed in a car accident … or … or I’m sorry, Mrs. Faye Blank, but your child has been … what?

  Rita pushed away her thoughts and hugged Katie Gillette. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, then hoped it wasn’t her words that made Katie cry. Hannah cried, too, then took her turn hugging the girl. Joleen stood in the corner, hand to her mouth, an observer in a tableau of the comforting of grief. She removed her sunglasses: Rita was not surprised the woman looked like shit. Superstar of the seventies and eighties, now no different from them.

  They sat down. Then in walked Faye, who looked as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a catalog for the well-groomed woman over fifty. Rita was struck by the odd thought that though Faye was not much older than she was, somehow she seemed so much more mature.

  Sophisticated, Hazel probably would say.

  Snob, Rita would have added, though the woman had seemed to enjoy their unexpected luncheon spoof.

  Katie wiped her tears. “My mother said we had to stop so Doc could give me tranquilizers before I go to New York.”

  “Your mother lied,” Rita said. She folded her hands on the table and leaned close to Katie. “We’re going to help you through this, Katie, but we don’t think you should do it by going to New York.”

  Katie blinked. “But you don’t know what’s happened.”

  Hannah spoke next. “We know Miguel’s mother was horribly killed. And we know other things: that the media thinks you’re recuperating from fatigue, that you’re at an unknown location, resting your body and your beautiful voice.”

  Katie just stared from one to the next.

  Faye stepped toward the table. “Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.” Rita wondered what Faye’s dogs must have been and how hard it had been for her to let them do that.

  Katie turned to Joleen. “You brought me here for this?” she asked. “So they could talk me out of going?” She stood up and put her hand on her belly. “Thanks for your concern, but no thanks on the advice.” She looked back at her mother. “Are you going to take me to the airport or must I call a cab?”

  Just then, Doc appeared in the doorway. “No one’s going anywhere,” he said with authority. “The winds have kicked up and the flights are cancelled.”

  Collective sighs sighed around the room, except from Katie who stood, tense.

  “Which does not,” Doc continued, “mean that Katie can’t go in the morning. In fact, I recommend it. Grief is usually unhealthy until it’s faced.”

  The women remained silent; Katie said, “Thanks, Doc.”

  He held up his hand. “Which is not to say that you should make the trip alone.” He looked toward Joleen. “If you don’t feel up to it, then I suggest someone else accompanies Katie.” His eyes scanned the small room. “Support groups are successful because they find strength in numbers.”

  Which must be why today nobody pees without one, Rita thought.

  FIFTEEN

  Rita had offered to drive the minivan, but Faye had insisted on the Mercedes. It wasn’t like Rita not to take control, but in order to avoid rocking the precarious boat, she’d agreed. All she had to do now was make it across.

  She smiled as she looked toward Cape Cod on the horizon and knew that she would, after all, do just about anything not to rock any boat that she was on: despite being a Vineyard girl, Rita could get hopelessly seasick even on a clear day like this one, even when the waters were calm. She wasn’t much better when sent aloft in a plane. Both of those things accounted for the fact that she’d only been off-island a few times in her life, and then only when under duress—when she was pregnant with Kyle; when Hazel was living in Florida and insisted Rita visit, just once, Rita Mae; when Jill was in England and needed her.

  What Rita could not do for herself, she could manage for others, which was why she now stood on the deck of the old workhorse, The Islander, counting down the journey’s forty-five-minute trek.

  “It’s such a beautiful day,” Hannah said from beside her, the hair of her blond wig catching the light breeze. Earlier, she’d quietly remarked to Rita that it was a shame the occasion was too somber for her purple hat, that she loved the way people looked at her and smiled when she had it on. “It’s great to be on the water on such a sunshiny day.”

  As much as Rita agonized over large, rocking vehicles, she was even more uncomfortable when perky people rode them. “Oh, it’s a blast,” she replied, then looked at Hannah and realized that, though it might be a “sunshiny” day, the woman’s skin was sort of gray. Of the three breast-cancer patients, Hannah was the one Doc suggested should stay home. “Nonsense,” Hannah protested. “We’re sticking together. That’s what real friends are for.”

  Friends? Was that what they’d become? And did that include Rita, though she was cancer-free? She decided that it did. “I’m going, too,” Rita had proclaimed, and so there she was, hoping she didn’t look as sickly as Hannah surely felt.

  “Are you okay?” Rita asked, because how could she not?

  Hannah said yes and seemed to mean it. “I’m excited, though. I’ve never been to New York City.”

  “You’re kidding,” Rita said. “Well, neither have I.” She didn’t know much about Hannah, other than that she was a teacher and hadn’t grown up on the island or Rita would have known her or her family or some friend of a friend. With less than fifteen thousand year-rounders on the entire Vineyard, sooner or later one got to know everyone, or at least someone who did.

  “I’ll bet my daughter would love to see the city,” Hannah said with a short laugh. “She wants to be an actress. I’m not sure how much to encourage her or how much to protect her.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Tough age.”

  “No easier than twelve.” She gave a soft smile. “Mindy’s in my science class.”

  Rita looked back toward land, toward Nobska Light that
inched too-slowly closer. She wondered how much Hannah knew about Mindy other than that Rita and Charlie were now her legal guardians.

  “She’s a nice girl, Rita. Very bright.”

  Rita nodded. “We adore her.” She didn’t say it because Hannah was her teacher; she said it because it was true.

  “Well, I used to adore my daughter, too. Lately it hasn’t been easy to please her.”

  “It must be her age,” Rita said. “My mother didn’t say anything right until I was over thirty.” Mothers, she thought. Daughters. Had Faye lost a daughter? Rita had almost inquired the day before at their lunch, but the mood was too light to darken with sorrow. “Hannah,” she asked now, “has Faye told you about her child? The one she lost?”

  Hannah shrugged. “No. I get the feeling it’s hard for her to talk about. I think more than the cancer, it makes her really sad.”

  Sad? Yes, Rita knew what that was.

  “I think I’ll check up on our patients,” Hannah added, turning from the rail. Faye and Katie had stayed below deck: Katie masked in sunglasses and an auburn wig from the patient services department. “Are you coming?”

  Rita glanced back toward the lighthouse. Close enough, she supposed, that she could take the risk. She sucked in her breath and followed Hannah across the deck and down the wet, iron stairs. Then, right there in the doorway, Rita was gripped by haunting déjà vu—an unsettling sensation that she had been there before, that she had done this, that it had not been a good thing. It was a sensation far worse than any possible seasickness.

  • • •

  The years washed away like high tide on a beach. The scene that remained was frozen in Rita’s mind’s eye, an unwanted frame from an unforgiving time machine. Rita had stood there, right in that place where she stood now. Faye had been sitting on a bench, her aristocratic nose buried in a book.

  “I’m not feeling well and I have to sit down,” Rita had said to the boy seated next to Faye, whose first name Rita hadn’t known back then. She had only known that the woman was Joe Geissel’s wife, and that Rita had spent the summer screwing Mrs. Geissel’s horny husband with high hopes for a hefty commission.

  Oh, God, Rita thought now, as she slumped against the wall. So that was why Faye was so familiar. Her hair had not been gray back then but …

  Rita could not move; the blow immobilized her. Her mind flashed back to that summer she and Kyle were in trouble, when she’d have done anything to stay financially afloat. Joe Geissel and his wife owned prime property in West Chop; the Internal Revenue Service was hot after Rita’s real estate firm. It had not mattered that Joe was married. It had not mattered that he was a cigar-smoking, Boston Irishman of dubious morals, because Rita’s hadn’t been so great back then, either.

  But now it was years later and there she was, the scorned other woman once again on a ferry with the wife of her former lover, this time not as an adversary, but as a friend.

  A friend?

  Oh, God.

  Her stomach lurched. The child, she thought. Had Joe lost a child? Had he told Rita? No. There had been no children around, no signs of any children. And if he’d said they had lost one, she would have remembered.

  Hannah was smiling and motioning for Rita to go to where they sat.

  How could she? Could Rita pretend not to know who Faye was? Could she still lead the group while secretly knowing the inside-out of Faye’s husband, from his scent to his sound to the size of his, God help her, dick?

  And, worst of all, did Faye know who Rita was? Had she known that first night of the group? Was that why she’d walked out?

  “I’ll meet you at the car,” Rita called to Hannah. “We’re almost to Woods Hole.” On shaky, uncertain legs, she managed to pry herself from the wall and descend the next flight of stairs, down to the boat’s bowels, where, with some luck, she might be asphyxiated by the carbon monoxide of the sardined cars and trucks before the big ferry hit land.

  Right now death would come as a relief, Hannah thought. She had taken her antinausea medication, had stayed away from anything chocolate, which had been making her sick, and had done her darndest to stay out of Riley’s way before leaving home that morning. Still, as they climbed into Faye’s car and waited out the last push to the pier, she was feeling bad enough to consider not going.

  Katie would, after all, be fine without her. The girl did not need an entourage to attend a funeral.

  Hannah sat in the back beside Rita, who had left the door open on her side.

  “Listen,” Rita said, with one foot in the car, the other plunked outside on the gray-painted concrete floor of the boat. “I’ve been thinking that you really don’t need all of us, Katie. Too many people will only cause more chaos. It would be better if I stayed behind.”

  The boat swayed a little in the wake of the tide. “Oh,” Katie said. Just Oh, nothing more.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go,” Rita continued, “but we make a rather obvious group … four women, one pregnant, two country-bumpkins …” If she was trying to make a joke, nobody laughed. Instead, Katie started to cry.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Rita said quietly, “but the truth is, I’m not very good on city-soil. Out of my element.” She rubbed her hands together and nodded her head, agreeing with herself, though no one else was. “Faye, would you mind popping the trunk so I can get my suitcase?”

  Faye, however, stared straight ahead and did not pop the trunk, and all Hannah could think of was that now there was no way that she could get out, too. She clutched the door handle and wished she could be more outspoken like Rita and not always the one who ended up doing things she rather would not.

  “Get back in the car,” Faye suddenly said. “We’re in this together, Rita, like it or not.”

  The big engines were cut; they sat there in silence. Then Rita pulled her other leg into the car and firmly closed the door. “You’re right, Faye. I’m sorry. Of course, we’ll all go.”

  The boat bumped the pier and the large cavity opened, and Faye started the Mercedes as they waited their turn to get off.

  After a long and fairly silent road trip from the ferry, they finally reached The Paramount, an art deco hotel in Times Square where Faye had made reservations. Though far south from the neighborhood where Ina lived, the hotel was small and comfortable, a respite from the noisy havens of business travelers, according to Faye, and who would argue with her?

  Hannah seemed astonished that the hotel didn’t have a sign; little, however, surprised Rita anymore, including that Katie did not know where the service would be held.

  “I’ll call some funeral homes,” Faye announced when they checked in.

  Rita thought for a moment, then said, “I think I know a faster way.”

  Faye scooped her credit card off the registration desk. “Then by all means, be my guest,” she said, and Rita was happy to oblige.

  They registered for two rooms: Rita and Hannah in one room, Faye and Katie in the other. Rita was grateful that a wall would separate the scorner from the scornee.

  Once inside, Hannah said she’d like to rest; Rita found the phone and went to work.

  It only took a minute to reach the Vineyard’s Sheriff Hugh Talbott on his cell phone.

  “I need the name of a good Manhattan cop,” Rita said to Hugh. “Someone who might know about a murder downtown.”

  “What are you into, Rita? Does Charlie know about this?”

  She smiled. “Just looking for the funeral of a friend of a friend.”

  Hugh made a sound that was neither a laugh nor a sigh. “Sam Oliver,” he said. “I don’t know his number, but he works out of Brooklyn.” He explained that Sam had ties to the Atkinson girls from the Vineyard, did Rita know them?

  “No,” she said, “not really.”

  “Well, if you hit a dead end, feel free to call back. Maybe one of the Atkinsons knows how to find him.”

  She thanked him and did not add that the last thing she wanted was one of those rich girls invol
ved in her life. She already had Faye, and that was one too many highbrows in her middle-class book. She told Hugh she owed him a batch of her fudge, her famous penuche that was renowned on the island.

  Captain Sam Oliver was not difficult to locate.

  “The woman was killed by a mugger late Monday night,” Rita told him after mentioning that his name had been given to her by a friend of the Atkinsons, because, after all, it never hurt to drop names. “It happened in Washington Heights. Her name was Ina Enriquez.”

  Captain Oliver said to sit tight, that he’d call her back.

  She sat on the bed, waiting, trying not to think about Faye in the next room, or how Rita would get through the next couple of days, pretending nothing had changed, that her past hadn’t finally come full, ugly circle as she’d always feared it would.

  She could have used a few acting lessons from Hannah’s daughter, but she should have thought of that sooner. She could have dyed her hair, but it was too late for that, too. She could dream up a story about a twin sister who’d been sent off-island to mend her errant ways. She could have, should have, would have.

  Thank God the phone rang before she made herself insane.

  “Mason-Allen is the home in charge of arrangements,” Sam Oliver said. “West Seventy-ninth and Eighth Avenue. The service is tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  Rita hung up and made another mental note to send a batch of penuche to Captain Oliver, too.

  • • •

  They met on the mezzanine at seven o’clock for dinner. Katie said she was afraid to call her father. “If he knows I’m here, he’ll be furious.”

  Hannah wanted to offer some advice, to help, but she was hardly an expert when it came to men, fathers or otherwise. So she sat back and listened, glad she had napped and now felt much better, glad she had a semblance of an appetite and could enjoy the fruit-and-veggie plate Faye had ordered for them.

  Katie nibbled on a strawberry. Her wig looked as foreign and phony as perhaps Hannah’s did. The only consolation was the dimness of the lights, which also helped soften the fact that Hannah wore turquoise while the others all wore black, as if it were a secret credo of the city that Hannah had not known.