A Month at the Shore

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "If I were you," said Victoria, "I'd think about getting a tetanus shot." She frowned in disapproval. "Barbed wire. Who do they think they are, anyway?"

  "You mean, who do they think we are," Liz corrected. "Obviously they don't trust my side of the neighborhood." She took in her tiny cottage, the smallest house on a street of small houses. "And let's face it, why should they? We don't exactly radiate wealth and prosperity."

  "Never mind," said Victoria with an airy wave of her hand. "That will come. It's your karma. I had a vision."

  Liz laughed and said, "You and your crystal ball just might be right. After all, yesterday — the very day I moved in! — there I was, talking through this fence to their housekeeper. I suppose they sent her over here to make sure I wasn't in some prison-release program, but I liked her, even if she was a spy. Her name is Netta something, and she was as chatty as could be. Apparently her boss is some workaholic bachelor —"

  "Uh-oh. No business there," said Victoria, sipping her wine.

  "That's what I thought, too, at first." Liz raked her hair away from her face and cocked her head appraisingly at the Queen Anne-style mansion.

  "But then I found out that his parents stay at the estate — East Gate, it's called — every summer. It's been in the family since it was built, a hundred years ago. Besides the parents, there are a couple of semi-permanent guests staying there now as well. They must do some entertaining." Liz smiled and said, "Naturally I found a way to let it drop that I was an events planner."

  "Did the housekeeper even know what that was?" asked Victoria.

  "I made sure of it. I told her I design weddings, dinners, birthdays, dances, receptions, fund-raisers, charity events — the works."

  "In other words —"

  "I lied." Liz's deep brown eyes flashed with good humor. "Hey, if I told her I arranged kids' birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, you think she'd have been impressed?"

  "You did what you had to do, Liz Coppersmith," agreed Victoria. "You planted the seed."

  "Yeah. That was the easy part. The hard part will be to provide references who're old enough to read and write."

  Victoria said, "If you need references, don't worry. I'll come up with references."

  And she would, too, because — unlike Liz — Victoria had money to buy anything she wanted.

  It wasn't always that way. Less than six years earlier, Victoria —Judy Maroney then — had crossed the Rhode Island border with her husband, two children, and not much more than high hopes that her husband's new job at the Newport Tourist and Convention Center would give her family more stability than he had at his old job in the defense industry. The family was eastbound on Route 95, just a few miles behind their moving van, when they were sideswiped by a drunk driver and ended up broadside to two lanes of eastbound traffic.

  Judy's husband, Paul, and their four-year-old son were killed instantly. Their daughter, Jessica, who would've been two in a week, had lived another forty-eight hours. Judy Maroney, behind the wheel, was saved, just barely, by the driver's-side airbag.

  And she could not forgive herself, both for being at the wheel and for surviving. That, at least, became Liz's theory. How else to explain the post-trauma amnesia that had no medical basis?

  Judy's mother-in-law, to whom Liz had once spoken, had a different theory. She believed that Judy, rejecting the unspeakable horror of her loss, had invented a new identity to get around having to face that abyss. Hence the single — and now legal — name "Victoria."

  Whatever the reason, Judy Maroney had for all practical purposes died in that crash. And the woman who replaced her — Victoria — had never once, to Liz or to anyone else, alluded to the accident. Tori was pleasant, she was friendly — by far the most cheerful member in the grief group — and she was totally amnesiac.

  The accident had resulted in a huge settlement for her. Money hadn't given Judy back her memory — it certainly hadn't given her back her family — but it had given the woman named Victoria lots of people willing to call themselves friends. Or references. Or whatever she wanted.

  "Hey, you," said Victoria behind her. "Have you heard a word I said?"

  Victoria had an almost spooky knack for knowing when Liz was focusing on her amnesia. Liz was forced to back up mentally, searching her brain for the last of her friend's lighthearted babble. "Of course I heard. You think I should give my house a name."

  "I really do. Houses sound more important when they have names. How about 'West Gate'? Or 'Harborview'? Or — I'm quoting you, now — 'Bigenuf'?"

  "I was talking about the mortgage, not the house," Liz said, laughing. She set her wineglass on a nearby stepstone and turned her attention yet again to the imposing mansion to the east. Since yesterday, it had held her in its thrall.

  Privilege. Tradition. Wealth. Elegance. Lineage. It was all there, on the other side of the barbed wire. Everything about it was the opposite of her own life. Liz had been born and raised in Newport's Fifth Ward, a working-class neighborhood of mostly Irish families that — until the yuppies began moving in recently — had changed little over the past century. Privilege in the Fifth Ward meant getting a parking place in front of your own house; tradition meant meeting with the same people every Friday night for a game of cards.

  "Do you think I'm being too ambitious?" she suddenly asked Victoria. "Do you think I should work my way up through the Point and the Hill before I go after East Gate and the rest of the Bellevue Avenue crowd?"

  "Heck, no," Victoria said cheerfully. "This is Newport! The town has a long tradition of society-crashing. Where would the Vanderbilts be if they'd taken some slow-but-sure route?"

  Liz turned to her friend with a wry look. "I'm not trying to break into society, Tori. I just want to be able to make a little money off it once in a while."

  Victoria came up to Liz and put her arm around her. "And so you shall. You'll make tons of money. And you and your little girl will live happily ever after in a big house of your own. If that's what you want."

  Together they gazed at the shingled and stuccoed Queen Anne style mansion, sun-washed and golden in the evening light. After a moment Victoria said, "Where is Susy, by the way? With your folks?"

  Liz nodded. "She's been feeling ignored, what with the flurry of moving and all. My parents have her overnight."

  "Lucky for you they live in town."

  "Isn't it, though?"

  Liz was very aware that her friend's own parents were dead. Even if they'd still been alive, Victoria wouldn't know them. The amnesia was so bizarre, so sad, so complete. When Liz met Victoria in the grief group, she herself was on the ropes emotionally. For a while she convinced herself that as she pulled out of her numb state, Victoria would, too. Then she realized that being left by a husband — even learning there'd be no more children— didn't come close to losing one's whole family in a car crash.

  "You're doing it again," said Victoria. "Drifting."

  "Sorry. Did I tell you that someone in the mansion has two kids?" asked Liz. "I saw them playing outside. There's a little blond girl who's my Susy's age; I think her name is Caroline. And there's a two-year-old boy that the housekeeper has to chase after every minute."

  "You're thinking they'll be playmates for Susy?"

  Liz's reaction was the dry laugh of a working-class townie with no illusions. "Not unless I attack this fence with cable-cutters." She turned and began walking back to her new little home, a cozy twenty feet away from where they stood.

  She added, "I just meant, with kids around, you're always celebrating something or other — baptisms, bar mitzvahs, birthdays, graduations, weddings. The kids could end up being my ticket to Bellevue Avenue. Besides," Liz said with a musing smile, "it'd be fun to do something for those two. They looked so sweet."

  ****

  Netta Simmons was on her hands and knees picking up pieces of a broken soup bowl when a plate of steamed vegetables went flying over her head, smashed up against the eighteenth-century inlaid sideboard, and came dri
bbling down the polished wood not far from where she knelt.

  That's it, the housekeeper decided, tossing the soup bowl pieces into a plastic pan. I quit. After thirty-eight years, to have to put up with this?

  Leaning on one knee for support, Netta got to her feet with a painful "oof" and turned to face her tormentor.

  "Caroline Stonebridge —" Netta began, her lips trembling in her jowly cheeks.

  "Caroline, sweetheart, that wasn't called for," said Cornelius Eastman from the head of the table. "You could have hurt Netta. Now, come — be a good girl and say you're sorry."

  The five-year-old blonde with the Shirley Temple curls turned her steel-blue gaze on Netta and said, "I'm sorry." Under her breath she muttered, "That I missed."

  Instinctively the housekeeper turned to Cornelius Eastman's son: handsome dark-haired Jack, him that she had practically raised from scratch, him that would've cut off his hand before he'd ever raise it to her in anger — with or without a plate in it.

  Jack Eastman stood up and threw his napkin on the table in disgust. "This is impossible, Dad!" he said angrily. "Send the brat to bed without supper — God knows she has no use for it."

  "Now, Jack —" his father began unhappily. "I know it's not easy for you. You couldn't have had this — situation — in mind when you took over East Gate. But what can we do? Caroline is a fact in my life, whether —"

  "I don't like broccoli," said little blond Caroline. "And Netta knows it."

  Netta saw Jack clench his jaw, a good sign. She folded her arms across her chest and waited with a kind of grim hope: maybe the son would overrule the father and lock the little monster in the carriage house for a year or two.

  But no. In a controlled voice Jack said to Caroline, "When and if we can bribe a new nanny to take care of you, you can go back to eating all the junk you want. Until then, you will eat whatever Netta prepares for the rest of us. If you ever throw one morsel of food again, you will eat in the kitchen, in a high chair, like your little brother. Now. Either finish your supper or go to your room."

  Caroline stuck out her lower lip and said, "You wouldn't talk to me like that if my mommy was here. When is she coming back? I want her here." The child began a wailing refrain of "I want my mom-mee ... mom-mee ... mom-mee ...," kicking her chair leg for emphasis.

  Netta sighed; the girl's lament was a routine event by now. Caroline's mommy was a thirty-year-old woman named Stacey Stonebridge who'd rocked the Eastman household when she showed up seven weeks earlier with a boy in her arms and a girl at her side. The girl, she'd announced blithely, belonged to the elder Eastman.

  No one much doubted the truth of Stacey's story; that was the sad thing. It hardly paid to bother with blood tests and DNA analysis. Stacey was pretty, leggy, and young, but most of all, blond — which is how Cornelius Eastman liked them a few years ago. Now that he was in his seventies, he seemed to have gone back to raven-haired beauties. But a few years ago? Oh, yes. Blondes couldn't miss.

  Mrs. Eastman had taken one look at Stacey, packed up her bags, and removed herself to Capri for the remainder of the summer. This time, Netta knew, the hurt went deep. It was possible that tall, blond Stacey was the last straw. Time would tell.

  Caroline's wailing continued. Cornelius Eastman rubbed his silver temples with manicured fingers and said fretfully, "Now, Caroline, we've been through all that. Please don't pound. Your mother is at the clinic. You want her to get well, don't you?"

  Stacey? Not a chance. She's much too fond of her pills and her bottle. She's not ready to get well. Netta knew it, Jack knew it, and so did the elder Eastman.

  Caroline pushed her plate away with a morose look. She was getting ready for the next phase of her tantrum: self-pity.

  Cornelius turned to his son and said, "Where's the damned breeder, anyway? Didn't you say he'd be here at six?"

  Jack glanced at his watch. "That's what he said. Well, have fun. I can't wait any longer. I'm off to the shipyard —"

  Caroline began to sniffle. "I just didn't want broccoli, because it's my birthday. I shouldn't have to eat broccoli if I'm being five years old." Tears began rolling freely. "And I don't even have a cake." She turned to the senior Eastman with big, glazed blue eyes. "Dada? Do I?"

  Oooh, she's good, thought Netta. That Dada-thing that she'd come up with: it always made Mr. Eastman melt visibly.

  He was doing it now. "Of course we have a cake for you, darling," the old man said, his face creasing into a hundred lines of happiness. "Would we forget you on your birthday?"

  "She knows we have a cake," Netta snapped. "She's already dug a trench through the frosting."

  "Forget it, Netta," said Jack tiredly. "It's not worth it." They were interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. Caroline stopped sniffling at once. Cornelius Eastman grinned broadly. Jack shook his head with wary resignation. And in the adjacent new kitchen, installed expressly so that Netta wouldn't have to fuss with the dumbwaiter and the old basement cook-area anymore, Caroline's little brother Bradley let out a welcoming shriek.

  The puppy was here.

  Cornelius Eastman himself went to get the door, with Caroline right behind him. Jack got up to leave.

  "Jack Eastman, where do you think you're going?" said Netta.

  The next sound they heard was a high and relentless arf-arf-arf-arf!

  "Oh, lord," murmured Netta, "your father really has gone and done it."

  A white ball of fluff came cannonballing through the dining room, hardly stopping long enough to pause and sniff Netta's skirt, then Jack's trousers, before racing to the nearest table leg, lifting its leg, and peeing.

  Caroline, who was in hot pursuit, stopped short with a scandalized look. "He's a boy puppy! I thought I was getting a girl puppy!" She dropped to all fours and began crawling under the table after the dog.

  Arf arf arf! Arf arf arf!

  "I'm sorry, honey, that's all they had," said her amused and silver-haired father, lifting the damask tablecloth.

  Arf arf arf!

  Netta thought that Cornelius Eastman didn't look sorry as much as glad to be done with the week-long hunt for a female Maltese. And nobody seemed sorry about the wet stain on the Oriental rug.

  "But I had a girl's name all picked out," Caroline lamented as she lurched in vain after the bouncing white mop.

  At that point Netta had to dash into the kitchen to fetch Bradley, who'd cleared his own tray of food with one sweep of his arm and was screaming incoherently. It was his way of saying, "I've finished dinner, thank you so much, and now I think perhaps I'd like to join the others."

  Arf arf arf! Arf arf arf arf!

  The elder Eastman was chuckling at Caroline's distress over the puppy's gender. "What name did you have in mind, sweetheart?"

  "Snowball," said Caroline in a pout.

  Bradley, on the loose now, went charging after the puppy and succeeded in coming away with two clumps of long white hair, which clung like angora mittens to his still-sticky hands.

  Arf. Arf arf. Arf arf arf arf arf arf arf!

  Jack, a bachelor who had never in his life been surrounded by this kind of chaos, said in a loud voice, "Will somebody please get that animal under control?"

  Netta wasn't sure which animal he meant. She grabbed the one closest to her — Bradley — and began cleaning his hands with a wet washcloth as the boy squirmed and screamed to be let down.

  Arf. Arf arf. Arf arf arf.

  "You can still name him Snowball, honey," said Cornelius Eastman over the ongoing din. "Snowball is for either."

  "Well, I guess ... but ... well, all right." Caroline sighed, then gave them all a sweeping look of wide-eyed innocence. "Can we have my party now, then?" she asked. "And my presents?"

  Arf.

  There was a pause. Even Snowball paused. Finally Cornelius Eastman said, with a sheepish expression, "You said if you got a puppy that you didn't want a party, honey."

  Caroline managed to lasso Snowball with her arms and squish him onto her lap. "No, I didn
't," she murmured, studying the dog's moppy face intently. "I said a puppy and a party."

  "You said a puppy or a party, dammit!" snapped Jack.

  "'And,'" said Caroline, still studying the dog's face.

  The two men — seventy and forty— exchanged looks. Netta watched them, mesmerized by the family resemblance. Eastman genes ran true to type: the hawkish nose, the fierce blue eyes, the thick brown hair. Oh, gravity had taken its toll on the father and softened the once-square line of his jaw. But he was still a good-looking man. Paul Newman could take lessons.

  Jack began to reason with the girl in a calm, carefully controlled voice. "You don't really know anyone here, Caroline. Who would we invite? Maybe when your mother gets out of the clinic and you all go back to Aspen — maybe then would be a good time for a birthday party."

  Caroline looked up at the older of the two men. "Dada?" she whispered as a tear rolled down her cheek. "Can I?"

  "Of course you can have a party," Cornelius said gruffly. "You're only five once. By all means. Arrange one for Caroline, Jack."

  "You must be kidding. You know I'm flat out at the shipyard —"

  "Yes, I suppose you're right," Cornelius Eastman said, annoyed. He looked at his housekeeper. "Netta? Would —? No, no, you have more than enough to do already," he said quickly, withering beneath her baleful look.

  He turned back to his son. "Well, Jack, I guess you're the only one with the resources. Have Cynthia at the shipyard look into it and make the arrangements."

  "Dad, that's absurd," Jack said sharply. "She has her hands full, especially this week. We're revamping our billing system —"

  Netta leaned closer to Jack's ear and said, "If I could have a word with you, sir. I think I can help you out." She picked up her basket of broken crockery and led the thoroughly irritated son into the relative quiet of the kitchen.

  It distressed Netta to see the household in such chaos. It used to be such a quiet, well-ordered place. Too quiet, perhaps; but at least Jack could bring his work home every night as he struggled to keep the family shipyard afloat. Now, he hardly ever bothered coming home before they were all asleep.