Beach Roses

by Jean Stone

  If they sat in Faye’s car, there was no telling what the woman would do. Kidnap her, perhaps? Drive her off the end of the Oak Bluffs’ pier?

  Sometimes Rita wondered where her imagination came from, why Hazel was so carefree and Rita could be such a doom-and-gloomer.

  In the meantime, Faye stood in front of her.

  A woman scorned. Did it matter that the “scorn” happened years ago? Did it matter that Rita’s choice had been Joe or federal prison?

  “Why don’t we all walk down to the 1802 Tavern?” Hazel suggested. “We can get out of this infernal sun, and the twins and I can have a cold drink.”

  “My mother knows most everything about the support group,” Rita said when Faye came into the tavern after moving her car to a parking lot. “She was a nurse.” Rita hoped the added comment gave Hazel the right to have been told.

  Then again, she thought, sliding across the bench of the booth so Faye could sit down, why did she care what Faye thought? She’d already blown the chances for the Center, hadn’t she?

  She gripped the handle of a frosty beer mug that Amy quickly delivered. “So what’s going on?” she asked, feigning nonchalance.

  Then Faye told them. She told them about Evan and about his accusations. She told them about the gun, that she’d slipped it into her purse.

  Was it still there?

  Then Faye told them about Doc’s heart attack.

  The sadness that washed through Rita was not like one she’d known: It was not the kind of deep sadness she’d had when Kyle died, but the edges of it were the same, a woeful ring of grief, an unwanted reminder of life cycles and of uninvited loss.

  “How is he?” Rita asked.

  “He’s stable. But they won’t have a prognosis for a while.”

  Rita looked at Hazel, who stared at Rita with an odd, disconnected stare, as if she’d had a stroke. “Mother?” Rita asked. That’s when she noticed the film that had crossed Hazel’s eyes, a light, wet film that looked an awful lot like tears.

  “Mother?”

  Hazel blinked. “Rita Mae,” she said with slow deliberateness, “go to him. Please.” She closed her tearful eyes.

  “Well, of course I will, Mother. I’ll go over later.” Rita shifted on the bench.

  “No,” Hazel insisted. Her eyes popped open, her jaw set firm. “You must go now.”

  “Now?” Rita looked around the room. Was it her imagination once again or had the clatter of pub glasses and the murmurs of the patrons grown a bit more silent in the low-beamed, cozy room? “Now, as in right this minute?”

  Hazel leaned across the table and pried Rita’s hand from the frosty mug.

  “Now,” she repeated. “You must be there for Doc in case anything happens. Because, God forgive me, he is your father.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  They went out to the greenhouse because that’s what Evan wanted. Hannah paid no attention to the stale scent of pot; she knew by his expression that was what this conversation would be about. She had not expected the rest, how he’d gone to see Doc, how he’d brought a gun, how he’d planned to kill himself.

  “I’ve had the gun forever,” Evan said. “I kept it locked up in the shed.”

  Locked up in a drawer, Hannah thought. Locked up like his pain.

  “I didn’t load it,” he added. “I didn’t want to die. I just knew I needed help.” He put his head in his hands. He’d aged at least ten years.

  “You could have told me,” Hannah said. “You didn’t need to do something so … so horrible.”

  He lifted his head again. “Isn’t it ironic?” he asked. “You’re the one who’s sick, but I’m the one falling apart.”

  She wanted to hold him close and love him. She wanted to tell him everything would be all right. But suddenly Hannah was tired of taking care of everyone, from Evan to his mother to their three kids as well. For years she’d done nothing but listen to other people’s problems, and here she was again, no matter that her mother was out of jail and her daughter had run away and her husband might have killed himself even though he said there were no bullets in the gun. No matter that she was facing a mastectomy.

  She patted his knee, because that was the best she could do.

  “There’s a good rehab facility over on the Cape,” Evan continued. “I heard about it at a recovery meeting.” He examined leftover soil beneath his fingernails. Farmer’s hands, he’d once told her, back in happier times. “I stopped going to meetings after you were diagnosed,” he said. “I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “Anyway, our health insurance will take care of my treatment. And I think Don Bishop can handle the business this season.” Don Bishop owned a competitive nursery, but when need arose on the island, friendship came first.

  “No matter.” Hannah sighed and patted Evan again. “It will work out somehow.”

  They sat a few more minutes: Evan said he was sorry. He cried, but she did not. She thanked God that Doc had been kind and not had him arrested. Then she wondered if Doc would be okay and how Evan would get down to the pier to catch the next boat to the Cape.

  Rita listened to the story in vague disbelief, though she knew it must be true. Hazel was eccentric, but she’d never tell a lie, not about something such as this.

  Doc was Rita’s father.

  Oh.

  SHIT.

  They’d met in Boston after the war.

  He was a young doctor; Hazel was a nurse.

  “When the soldiers started going home, I convinced Doc to come to the Vineyard. We needed good doctors. Doc had a degree from Harvard Medical School.” Her old eyes brightened. “Imagine, Harvard!”

  But Rita had been working to imagine other things, like how it could have happened that she’d never had an inkling.

  “Doc should have been a bigwig in Boston. But he came here instead.”

  The pieces of the puzzle slowly took their shape. And then came the inevitable wrinkle, because Hazel’s life, like Rita’s life, made a shar-pei’s coat seem taut.

  “Doc was a married man. He had a little boy. When the war was over, he realized he didn’t love his wife. She was from that awful upper class. She said she only married him because he’d gone to Harvard and that meant he could go to her daddy’s private club.” Hazel grew quiet for a moment, then she added, “Anyway, Doc left his family and came here because he didn’t love them, he loved me.”

  She told Rita that Doc had never known, not for certain, that he was her father. Hazel hadn’t told him. “What could he have done?” she asked.

  Well, Rita thought, maybe he could have loved me.

  Hazel urged Rita to go. “Don’t let him die before he knows, Rita Mae.” Then she simply added, “Please.”

  Rita supposed she could have asked why she had to be the one to tell him. But a lifetime lived with Hazel told her there would be no point, because her mother had already issued her instructions. Rita stood up. “Bring the twins home,” she told Hazel. Then she excused herself and silently left the tavern.

  • • •

  She walked up North Water Street, past Jill and Ben’s house. No Jill, no Ben, not even Charlie was around. No one who could help Rita make sense of what she had just learned.

  No one was around, so Rita was on her own like she’d so often been before.

  But that was then.

  And this was now.

  And this seemed worse, because she’d adjusted to the old stuff, and this was new. This was raw and achy and confusing all at once.

  She walked toward the Edgartown Lighthouse, because at least that hadn’t changed.

  She sat on the small strip of rocks that crawled up from the water and laced the edges of the beach.

  Above her, seagulls soared.

  “Shit,” she said, picking up a stone and skimming it over a small ripple of water.

  When she was a kid, Rita had been told her father was “a man who’d picked up and left the way most men seem to do
.” Back in the sixties, that explanation made sense because, well, why not? Hazel never pretended their life was traditional, and though Rita longed for a real home filled with family, she took what they had and tried to make do.

  But how she’d envied her friend Jill! Jill had a mother and a father and never had to spend the summers in other people’s houses so they could rent out theirs.

  Now, it turned out, Rita had a father, too.

  Doc.

  He’d been there all along, but not under their roof.

  And now he’d had a heart attack and Hazel thought that Rita should deliver the unexpected news.

  What would she say? “Before you die, Doc, there’s something you ought to know”? Could she really say that? She closed her eyes. She thought of Kyle.

  “Rita? May I join you?”

  Rita flinched. A shadow spilled over her and stretched down across the rocks. The voice belonged to Faye, which was just what Rita needed.

  “Please,” Rita said, closing her eyes, “please leave me alone.”

  “I can’t,” Faye said. “We need to talk.”

  “We talked.”

  The water rippled and a few more gulls cried, but Faye did not move to go. Rita opened her eyes. “Faye,” she repeated, “I’ve had a little shock, in case you didn’t get it.”

  “Oh, I got it all right,” Faye said, and promptly sat down.

  Rita wanted to warn Faye that sitting on the rocks would wreck her three hundred dollar pants, but decided what the hell. It was too late for the Women’s Wellness Center; it was too late for many things. She wondered if Faye had her purse and if she should ask to borrow Evan’s gun.

  “I’m sorry you never knew Doc was your father,” Faye said, as if she possibly could care. “I’m also sorry that you screwed my husband. But the way I see it, we can’t fix either of those things any more than we can pretend that they’re not true.”

  Rita blinked. This day had gone from good to bad and couldn’t get much worse.

  But the woman kept on speaking. “Whatever you choose to do about Doc certainly is your business. But Hannah and Katie need us. If anything happens to Doc, they’ll need us even more.”

  Rita looked toward her, away from the water.

  “Did you know Hannah’s mastectomy is scheduled for the week after next? Did you know she didn’t tell us because she didn’t want to be a bother?”

  Rita didn’t respond.

  “Of course,” Faye went on, “there might be a complication if Doc dies before then. Which might or might not be Evan’s fault. I wonder how that will make Hannah feel.”

  Rita winced. She considered that she hated Faye. She tried once again to believe she’d been right when she’d told herself the woman was a cold, uncaring bitch.

  “Jesus Christ, Rita,” Faye said, “stop feeling sorry for yourself. Because in case you didn’t notice, I’m the one who’s dying here, not you.”

  That was enough. Rita stood up. “I’m not convinced you’re dying, Faye. I’ve seen death, and I don’t think it’s you.”

  Faye clenched her fists. “Shut up,” she said and marched away, up toward the sand path.

  The baby kicked. Katie turned onto her left side, one of three positions she could manage, per Doc Hastings’ orders: left, right, or on her back. Her left side was her favorite because it enabled her to see the ocean.

  Still, she couldn’t get used to being in bed in the middle of the day with little to do except make “healing” pillows, write in her journal, or, worst of all, think.

  From time to time Katie wondered if she should look over Joleen’s new songs, but decided against it. By now, Katie knew her career was over. She did not have to see the inevitable tabloid to imagine what the world thought and knew about her now.

  Which was why, this morning, she had made the call. It had been surprisingly easy.

  “This is Katie Gillette,” she’d said. “I need to speak with the entertainment booking manager.” She hadn’t been nervous; she hadn’t been upset.

  “You’ll need to sign paperwork,” the manager said when he’d come on the line. “Let’s see, is there a Cliff Gillette? He booked the date; he should be the one to sign.”

  For a brief moment Katie clenched her jaw. Then she said, “No, I’ll cancel it myself. Mr. Gillette is indisposed.” She gave him Joleen’s address. “Have the contracts sent here. Will there be a fee?”

  “Hmm,” the man said. “Nope. You’ll lose the up-front costs you’ve already paid. But you’re over thirty days away, so there’s no extra cancellation fee.”

  Surely Cliff had known.

  As she lay in bed now, the relief that Katie felt was tempered by the knowledge that her father would be upset. She also knew she did not have the energy to think about a concert now or then or ever.

  She was thinking about those things when the telephone rang.

  Turning from her left side to her right, Katie was able to reach the phone, thanks to Rita, who’d rigged it with an extra long cord. Katie waited until the answering machine kicked on and she heard the voice before picking up.

  “Katie,” the voice shouted, and she knew who it was, because what little talking he did, had to be in a shout.

  She grabbed the receiver. “Brady,” she said. “How are you?” She, too, spoke loudly so that he could hear her.

  “Fine, Katie. I’m fine. Are you okay now?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I ran from you at the funeral. I only wanted to get out of there.”

  “I saw your picture this morning.”

  So the tabloids had wasted no time. “Was it awful?”

  “I’ve seen you look better.”

  She laughed.

  “Katie,” he continued, “I want to come to that island and look after you.”

  Katie had known Brady long enough to know that, for him, the request did not come because he needed a job. He wanted to be with her because protecting her was what he did.

  “Thanks, Brady,” she replied, “but I’m fine here with Joleen.”

  “No,” he said. “It will be worse when the baby gets there.”

  He said it as if the baby would arrive by ferry at the Vineyard Haven docks. He said it as if they’d already talked about the fact that she was pregnant, which they hadn’t done, not face-to-face, not one-on-one, though she knew he knew, had most likely known from the beginning.

  “Brady,” she said, “I appreciate your concern, but you live in New York. You’d be bored to death here.”

  “I don’t like New York anymore. I need somewhere new to live. I can be a carpenter. I did that before I met your father.”

  The words your father squeezed the sides of Katie’s stomach.

  “I think you should call him,” Brady added. “You don’t want things to end like this. No matter what, he is your father.”

  “Right now, that thought does not make me happy.”

  “So why bring the heavy baggage of bad feelings into your new life? Call him soon, Katie. I think he might be going away for a while. Leaving the country.”

  Katie closed her eyes. “Oh,” she replied.

  “What?”

  She realized her voice was now too soft for Brady to hear. She cleared her throat. “Where is he going?”

  Her bodyguard hesitated, then said, “I think it’s best if he tells you himself.”

  • • •

  When Katie said good-bye, she had no intention of calling Cliff. Not then or next year or maybe ever. But Brady’s words gnawed at her: Why bring the heavy baggage of bad feelings into your new life? Why, indeed, with all she had yet to face?

  She cupped her hands around her stomach as she lay there on the bed. She felt the gentle flutter of another gentle baby-kick.

  And then she picked up the receiver once again. And without caring that Cliff was the adult and Katie was the child, she dialed the number to the penthouse that overlooked the Great Lawn of Central Park.

  “Daddy,” she said when he answered the phone. Her vo
ice was just a whisper, a hesitant, small whisper. “I heard that you might go away.”

  He did not speak for a moment, and then he said, “Katie-Kate. I am so sorry for all of this.”

  She wound the cord around her fingers. She tried to think about the good times. He loves you, Kathryn, Joleen had said. You are his whole world. Apparently that had not been completely true.

  She gathered a little strength. “I’m sorry, too, Daddy. I’m sorry that all these years you felt you had to lie.” It was the closest she could come to accepting his apology.

  Silence followed. It was as if there were a time lapse between the Vineyard and New York, as if they were on a transatlantic call, waiting for the sound waves to catch up.

  “I would have called before I left,” he said at last. “I would not have gone without telling you.”

  She did not know if that would have been the case; it did not really matter now. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  This time he answered quickly, with no pause in between. “Puerto Rico,” he said, then added a brisk, half-hearted laugh. “Latino singers are the next great opportunity. Hey, a man’s got to make a living.”

  Her stomach squeezed again. She did not want to ask, but knew she must. Heavy baggage, bad feelings. “Is it Miguel? Are you going to make him a star?”

  Cliff laughed. “Well, who knows? It’s really up to the fans who becomes a star and who doesn’t.”

  Which, of course, Katie knew was not the truth. She knew it was the hype, the clothes, the style that made a star. The kind of spin created by the likes of Cliff Gillette.

  Looking out over the lawn, beyond the dunes and out to sea, Katie felt little more than sadness for what had been and what was gone.

  “I cancelled Central Park,” she said.

  “Yes,” her father replied. “I supposed you would.”

  And it was then that she knew she’d heard enough—enough to quell her anger, enough to leave only a residue of pity for her father, She also knew that, no matter what Joleen said, she would make the Vineyard her home. She had her baby to think of, a baby who soon would be a child with a future. She had her baby and her mother and her new, wonderful support-group friends. She had her breast cancer to deal with.