Gossip of the Starlings

by Nina de Gramont

  “Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,” she quoted. “And make me travel forth without my cloak, / To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way, / Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?”

  We stopped and stared up at the sky. Perhaps we expected rain clouds to gather at her bidding. Gentle wisps of white floated through the pale autumn blue.

  “That’s number thirty-four,” Skye said. “I memorized all the sonnets the summer my Mom and I went to Stratford-on-Avon.”

  “I’ve been there, too,” I said.

  “It’s pretty,” Skye said, and I nodded.

  We walked on, and after a long stretch of meadow and brush, began passing houses—lovely New England clapboard, modest and dilapidated country mansions, occasional ponies grazing in front yards. Skye wanted to stop at the apple orchard for a snack. We cut through the cider-scented trees, reaching the little harvest store just as Mrs. Gray turned the lock. Skye banged on the glass and clasped her hands against her face, pleading. A few minutes later we were back on the road, eating chunks of smoked cheddar cheese and Mrs. Gray’s homemade cookies. It should have felt incongruous—the exhilaration and the unweighted happiness, instead of guilt and worry over being caught. But it felt so natural, almost innocent to impose our own messy rules.

  With our thumbs pointed outward, Skye and I walked under an elm. Its low-hanging branches muted the strong light. An old, wood-paneled station wagon stopped on Percy Hill Road, and a young woman pushed open the back door for us. A guitar case, covered with sunflower stickers and political slogans, took up most of the backseat. US OUT OF NICARAGUA. NO NUKES. MONDALE/FERRARO. SAVE THE WHALES.

  “You can throw the guitar in the way back,” the woman told us.

  Skye crawled in first and moved the instrument gingerly, balancing it on top of bags and boxes of clutter. Once we were settled, I recognized the driver as our English teacher’s wife.

  “You girls going to town?” Mrs. November asked, when we finally closed the door.

  “The bus station,” Skye said. I kicked her lightly in the shin, but she didn’t seem to register that she’d said anything alarming.

  We saw Mrs. November in the rearview mirror, frowning slightly. The bus station was several miles past the general store and obviously out of her way. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel in one progressive, rhythmic thump. Mrs. November didn’t teach at Esther Percy, but sometimes she led singalongs after Wednesday night chapel. Probably close to Ms. Latham in age but somehow seeming much less adult—perhaps because of her once-removed status as authority. Certainly in a position to turn us in, but not obliged to.

  She put the car into gear and drove down the road. I watched her long fingers on the wheel, noting the diamond-encrusted wedding band.

  “What a pretty ring,” Skye said, following my gaze.

  Mrs. November didn’t glance at her hand but lifted it off the steering wheel and waved in a slight, dismissive motion, as if she’d forgotten the ring were there and meant to shake it loose.

  “It was his grandmother’s,” she said.

  “I love that art deco jewelry,” Skye said. “All those tiny diamonds and platinum from the twenties.”

  “You don’t say.” A lighthearted sneer. Mrs. November’s voice sounded girlish as our own, but she infused it with just enough condescension to make us instantly adore her. She had long brown hair and a mannish face—beaky nose and narrow eyes. But her demeanor, confident and slightly amused, insisted on attractiveness despite these physical shortcomings. From steering to glancing in the rearview mirror, every movement carried the grace of expertise.

  At the bus station, Mrs. November let the car idle a minute. With one arm sprawled across the back of the front seats, she turned to look at us—long enough to let us know she was taking in our features and, in Skye’s case at least, our identities.

  “Do you want to tell me where you’re headed?” she said, in a tone too authentically casual to be teenage. “Just in case you turn up missing?”

  “Oh, we have permission,” I told her.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’re going to my parents’ house on Cape Cod,” Skye said, an almost exact imitation of Mrs. November’s measured cool. “You’re welcome to come along, if you like.”

  Mrs. November laughed. “Don’t think it’s not appealing,” she said. “But alas I have this life to attend to.”

  We stood in the parking lot, waving as she drove away.

  “She’s so cool,” Skye said. “I wonder how he ever snagged her.”

  “Don’t you think he’s good enough for her?” I asked. Skye rolled her eyes, refusing to entertain that possibility.

  Early in the school year, I had come into the dining hall late after training with Captain Zarghami. Dinner was over, so I walked into the kitchen and begged a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich from the cook. As I settled alone at a corner table, Mr. and Mrs. November sat facing each other in the middle of the abandoned room. Their untouched plates were pushed aside, and they whispered fiercely, each one’s clipped and breathy words running into the other’s. Something about their pose—gesticulating fingers so close, foreheads nearly touching—struck me as very passionate. It looked so much more intimate and imperative than my parents’ clipped and frosty arguments. From my considerable distance, I could see Mr. November’s pale face taut with anger, a prominent vein red and swollen at his temple. He looked about to kill her, or else burst into tears. I picked up my sandwich and crept outside, not wanting to embarrass them, and worried that if they saw me they’d feel the need to explain themselves.

  “I like Mr. November,” I said now, to Skye—inanely, not even sure that I meant it.

  We went inside to the ticket window. “I’ve never been on a bus before,” Skye said. And then, like it had only just occurred to her that we’d have to pay, “Can you loan me the cash for my ticket?”

  Skye’s great-great-grandfather had founded the First Bank of Boston. Somewhere along the already wealthy line, the Butterfields had bought a television station as a tax shelter and then watched it balloon into a communications empire. Her father had divested from that empire when he entered politics, but the fortune itself remained. The Butterfields owned a house in Georgetown and three homes in Massachusetts. Yet Skye never had money for anything. Perhaps her family considered cash an unseemly form of currency. One fact the Butterfields had managed to keep out of the newspapers, possibly because it would seem so unlikely: Skye’s scholarship student had paid her for every one of the papers she’d written.

  I bought the tickets. Skye and I had been friends less than eight weeks, and already I couldn’t remember a time when everything I owned wasn’t gladly available to her.

  But as the bus rolled over the highway, and the scenery around us darkened, I found myself drifting away from her, toward better-known friends. Toward John Paul, his memory looming larger as the distance between us lessened.

  “Will I like him?” Skye asked.

  “Sure,” I said, though I wasn’t sure. Apart from me, I hadn’t met anyone Skye liked. And John Paul could be reticent, not at all a flirt. He would be polite to Skye, but he would refuse to be starstruck. Still, looking at her—the regal recline transforming her nylon seat into an overupholstered throne—I had a sinking feeling that John Paul would see the two of us, stepping off the bus, and wish that Skye were his. He wouldn’t reveal it—not a glimmer. But the wish itself would be unavoidable.

  “Is John Paul cute?” Skye asked.

  “No,” I said. “He’s beautiful.”

  She leaned back against the headrest, disengaging. I thought this piece of information—one of the few snippets I’d ever granted—would please her. But like so many beautiful people I’d known, she disliked hearing the word attached to anyone else.

  “Your friends are always so attractive,” my mother used to say, clearly bewildered. She became even more perplexed when I hit the teenage years and beautiful boys courted me surely as bea
utiful girls. I never knew how to explain: it wasn’t that I loved gorgeous people, but that gorgeous people loved me. Maybe it was my looks—pretty enough to confer status but plain enough not to threaten. Or maybe something more, some cryptic message written on my body or in my carriage, decipherable only to a very particular kind of person.

  Our bus pulled into the darkened station. I could see John Paul, waiting on the stoop outside, a worn cotton sweater loose over his broad shoulders. An unexpected swell rose beneath my ribs: just when I thought I’d gotten used to him.

  “That’s him,” I said to Skye, and she leaned over my lap to look out the window. I tried to wave to him over her impossibly bright head.

  We lifted our backpacks and filed off the bus, and the next thing I knew my nose was pressed against the dusky scent of John Paul’s sweater. His chin on top of my head, and the good, honest grip of his embrace.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me when I turned around, if Skye had vanished into the night air, like an imaginary friend. Where’s Skye Butterfield? the others would ask, when I reached the car without her. They would sympathize completely when I confessed to fabricating my association with her—which suddenly seemed too unlikely, too fantastic, to be real. Yet there she stood, a face from the newspapers and television, her hands in her pockets. Perfectly pale and poised. And I found I didn’t want to continue with the weekend, which could only mean sharing her, or exposing her, or both. I couldn’t help but feel: two worlds that should only be parallel stood on the brink of collision.

  “Hi,” John Paul said to Skye, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Inwardly, I winced. Just the other day, Skye had been going on about that very phrase, insisting that no well-bred person ever said “Nice to meet you.”

  “What are you supposed to say?” I’d asked her.

  “How do you do,” Skye said. “Or if you want to be less formal, How are you.”

  I couldn’t tell if Skye had registered John Paul’s polite faux pas. But I could see the barest trace of surprise in her face—at his working-class Yankee accent, which had been evident even in those few words. And it struck me that although Skye had spent hours telling me about her expulsion, she’d never once mentioned the scholarship student’s name.

  I held John Paul’s hand a little bit tighter.

  We walked over to the battered old Buick. Susannah and Drew sat in the back, saving shotgun for me. I saw their expectant heads—craning forward as we approached, waiting to catch a glimpse of Skye. I felt her slow down beside me, aware of their curiosity, and confused by the car itself, with its rusted and dented exterior. Her footsteps became too deliberate.

  “Why Miss Butterfield,” Drew called, in a British accent borrowed from Monty Python. “You’re even more beautiful in person.”

  I slammed the front door, and Skye slid in back cautiously.

  “Ignore him,” Susannah said, leaning across Drew’s lap. I could see her face, a floating vision in dark air lit by streetlamps. She looked like she always did: sad, beautiful, watchful, so that her dismissal of Drew sounded strangely compassionate. As if his inappropriateness were a reflection of the world’s unavoidable ills and there was nothing to do but bear it.

  Over Susannah’s dark head, Drew smiled a little too broadly. Susannah didn’t see his expression but must have sensed it, sitting back and placing a hand on his skinny knee. It disappointed me that Skye turned away from her so quickly. I wanted to see a moment of appreciation—to take in these two girls, recognizing each other. Instead of the brief, polite turning away, as if forced to sit beside a stranger at the movies.

  Susannah wedged her hand around the headrest and squeezed my shoulder. “Hola, Catherina,” she said, and I smiled back at her.

  John Paul started the car. “Where to?” he said.

  Skye rolled down her window, letting in the cool, briny air. She gave him directions and pressed her elbow against the door, leaving room for two more teenagers between her and Drew. Still, it felt companionable enough: our carload of outlaws, rumbling down the sandy and vacated streets.

  SKYE’S BEACH HOUSE was in the town of Sesuit, on the bay side of Cape Cod. We made our last turn down a private road and rumbled over sand and shells—scrub oak and pitch pine on either side. Finally the vegetation gave way to the top of a clear hill and a wide, wild lawn. Even at night, the view of the Butterfield house was picturesque, the calm bay reflecting moonlight. The car stopped in a square parking lot in front of a multicar garage, and we climbed out into the evening to stare at the towering, rambling edifice before us. John Paul held my hand as we followed Skye along the dark path.

  Skye spoke in practiced and modulated tones, like Jackie Kennedy describing the White House renovations. The original house had been built in 1857. She pointed to a modest, two-story wing, settled back on the edge of a wildflower meadow. The property had changed hands in the early 1900s and the first addition had been built—a single story closer to the ocean, now acting as a breezeway to the grandest part of the house, erected after the Second World War as a resort hotel. There were nineteen bedrooms, Skye told us, each with a private bath and an ocean view. Ceramic numbers still hung on every door. She pointed out yet another addition, built in the seventies, even closer to the water’s edge.

  “The ballroom,” Skye said, “so they can host fund-raisers.”

  The house had gables and widow’s walks. It had balconies and turrets, decks and piazzas. Skye’s grandfather had bought the place in the late fifties, but renovations had been undertaken faithfully. As Skye led us through the cavernous front hall—once a reception area for hotel guests—we expected musty Oriental rugs and dripping faucets. Instead we were greeted by polished wood and cheerful white walls; picture windows exhibiting the bay like a gigantic, rolling mural. The only one who appeared nonchalant was John Paul—accustomed to feigning indifference in the face of his schoolmates’ wealth. The rest of us were openly astounded. No one asked for a tour. It would have taken too long.

  My parents’ roomy and well-appointed three stories were no match for this. I thought how odd it must have been, growing up an only child in all this space. No siblings’ voices, reverberating through the hallways.

  “My parents used to close it up in winter,” Skye said. “Boards on the windows, the water turned off. But then we always ended up coming for holidays and vacations, and my dad decided it would be easier to just keep it open year round.”

  We came to rest in a low, luxurious living room. Through the wide glass wall we could see the lawn lit by flickers of buoys and passing ships.

  “Is that the bar?” Drew asked. He strode toward it on long legs, sandy hair grazing his shoulders. The sort of boy who was not handsome but—through some lucky combination of height, charm, and confidence—would always date beautiful girls.

  For an instant, Skye furrowed an uncertain brow. Then she waved her hand, turning the place over to him.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “They’ll never notice.”

  Drew opened louvered cabinets to reveal everything from Pims to Absolut. “Do we have this place to ourselves?” he said, inspecting wine labels.

  “There’s a caretaker next door,” Skye said. “If you see him, just wave.”

  “Won’t he call your parents?”

  “The election’s in two weeks,” Skye said. “Good luck finding them.”

  She opened a drawer in a small table, then closed it. As Drew and John Paul mixed drinks, she circled the room. The furniture was antique and spare—only a few drawers to be found. Skye opened every one, closing each quickly, not enough contents to sift through.

  “Looking for something?” Susannah said. Her voice sounded gentle, not unfriendly. But I knew her well enough to have registered her decision not to like Skye, which made me nervous. Susannah, too used to being courted, could be coyly outspoken.

  “Money,” Skye said. “I want to pay Catherine back for the bus ticket.”

  “You don’t know where
your parents keep cash?”

  Skye shook her head.

  “They wouldn’t leave it in a living-room drawer,” Susannah said. She ran her fingers over the gilt frame of an impressive-looking oil painting. “You want to look in their bedroom. Or if your father has an office.”

  “I’ll help,” Drew said. A cork popped cheerfully out of its bottle, and Susannah frowned at him.

  “Catherine and I will go,” she said, holding out her hand for a wineglass.

  SKYE DECLINED A DRINK; Susannah and I followed her upstairs to the Butterfields’ rooms on the third floor, carrying our wineglasses. The house—this section, at least—still retained the layout of a hotel, so despite the vast scope it was easy to navigate. The master suite—two rooms and two bathrooms on either side of an airy sitting room—had been constructed in the most recent renovation, everything designed around huge windows and the endless, sparkling view.

  “It’s amazing, when you think about it,” Susannah said, searching the bureau drawers in Mrs. Butterfield’s bedroom. She let her eyes roam around the room, the weight of her glance too significant to merely be registering decor. “Doesn’t it seem weird that some people have huge houses like this? Summer homes that just stand empty most of the time? While some people live on the streets.”

  The personal challenge must have been so foreign; Skye didn’t seem to recognize it. She replied with the affectless tone of a weary politician. “My father’s done more for the homeless than anyone in the Senate,” she said. She sounded more tired than defensive.

  “I’m not criticizing,” Susannah said quickly. “I love your father.”

  “Everybody does,” Skye said. She stood on tiptoes and ran her hands across the top shelf of the walk-in closet.

  “He’s going to save the old-growth forest right by Catherine’s house,” Susannah said. “In Old Lenox.”

  “No he’s not,” Skye said. “They’re already planning to clear-cut there.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “It’s one of his campaign promises.”

  “That’s why they’re not announcing it until after the election.” Skye gave up on the closet and strode into the sitting room. Susannah and I followed. We stood in the middle of the room and watched as Skye set immediately to searching.