Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  Jill tucked her mousy hair beneath her hand-knit hat and looked down at her four-year-old sweater and worn Wrangler jeans—not even bell-bottoms, just jeans. “Rita,” she said, “I know how I’m going to get off this island. I know what I’m going to do.”

  “Please don’t say you’re going to marry a Kennedy.”

  “Nope. I’m going to go to college. Then I’m going into television. I’m going to make it big.”

  Rita was quiet a moment. Then she shrugged. “Hey, you’re the honor roll student, not me. Besides, your parents can afford it.”

  Jill stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She’d never thought she was smarter than Rita. She’d always felt her grades only reflected the long hours her mother forced her to stay in her room with no TV and no radio, with only her schoolbooks and her parents’ expectations. No, she never thought she was smarter than Rita. But sometimes she felt guilty that she had a father, and that he, unlike Rita’s, had not taken off when they were in the third grade. She studied the women reporters again. “You know how badly I want to leave here, Rita.”

  “Sure, kid,” Rita answered as she walked back toward her bike. “I gotta get to work. The tavern’s going to be jammed.”

  Jill had suspected many times that that day had been the beginning of the end of her friendship with Rita, that it had been why Rita had left the island right after graduation, with no explanation and no good-bye, leaving Jill with only an unsettled loss and an undefined ache of regret.

  From the window now she saw Christopher board the ferry, probably wanting to feel the water beneath him, to imagine what had happened that night about which few will ever know the truth. She thought about Christopher, her long-awaited partner; she thought about Chappaquiddick and how it had shaped her life; and she thought about Rita, and wondered what had become of her, and why her best friend had never been in touch.

  “Hey, Mom, I’m home.” Kyle’s voice resounded from the kitchen, sending waves of contentment through Rita, like no other sound in the world. He appeared in the doorway of the living room, all six feet two, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired masculinity, a vivid reminder that Kyle was no longer her “little” boy.

  She drained her glass and smiled. “How was your day?”

  “Great,” he said, tossing his keys on the chair. “But you’re not going to believe where I’m working Monday.”

  “Nantucket?” It would be wonderful if Ben liked Kyle’s work well enough to keep him on in winter. It would help Kyle’s confidence, as well as his wallet.

  “Nope. Right here on the Vineyard. Jill McPhearson’s house.”

  She set down her empty glass. The scotch rolled over in her stomach. “Jill’s?”

  “Yeah. Can you stand it? Ben keeps getting these jobs for celebrities. We’ll be working there all month. I guess her boyfriend’s here, too. Sure would like to meet him.”

  Rita dropped her feet from the coffee table. “They’re only people, Kyle. They’re not gods.”

  Kyle shrugged. “Still, it’s pretty cool.”

  “A lot of celebrities come to the island, you know that. They come here for their privacy. They pay dearly to have no one bother them.”

  “I’m not going to bother them, Mom. I’m going to work for them.”

  She stood up. There was no way she was going to think about this now. There was no way … “I’ve got to get to the tavern,” she said quickly. “Remind me to set my alarm early. I promised to make penuche for Jesse Parker’s mother.”

  “It’s August, Mom. Don’t you have enough to do?”

  “I like to be neighborly.”

  “The Parkers live a mile away.”

  “What can I say?” Rita said as she headed upstairs to change into her tavern uniform. “The old lady says my fudge is better than hers ever was.” The truth was, everyone loved Rita’s fudge. And Rita loved making it, because it made people smile: sick people, troubled people, people she knew, people she didn’t. A batch of her sweet fudge made them all smile, and the way Rita figured it, people didn’t have a lot to smile about as a rule.

  Kyle followed her to the foot of the stairs. “Did you know her?” he asked. “When she lived here?”

  Rita gripped the wobbly handrail. “Who?”

  “Jill, Mom. Jill McPhearson.”

  She let go of the handrail and continued up the steps. “A little,” she answered. There was no point in telling Kyle that Jill Randall McPhearson had once, in another time, in another life, been her best friend. There was no need to tell Kyle, because on this freaking island, he would more than likely find out soon enough.

  Chapter 4

  “I can’t,” Jill said as Christopher slid his hand beneath her silk nightgown. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. It was the damn house. The damn room. The damn bed.

  He raised her nightgown and brushed his lips across her nipple. It stiffened. His erect penis pressed against her thigh. “It might make you feel better,” he whispered. The scent of his breath drifted lightly toward her: minty toothpaste, not quite masking the dinner of pizza—take-out pizza, because Jill had been unable to bring herself to cook in her mother’s kitchen.

  She gently moved his head away and covered herself. “Maybe tomorrow, okay?”

  In the soft glow of moonlight that seeped through the sheer white drapes, she saw Christopher run his hand through his hair. “Sure,” he said. “Tomorrow.” He lay back on the bed, turned his back to her, and fell into silence.

  She was aware that tears had formed in her eyes. In the four months they’d been sleeping together, she’d never said no to Christopher. She’d never wanted to. There were, of course, times when she had been tired, stressed from the show, preoccupied with thoughts of the kids. At those times, Jill pretended to have an orgasm. Faked it, as the magazine articles said. She’d long since decided there was no harm in that, especially if the next day meant an early call or a tedious interview. It was sometimes better to have sex and get it over with. Besides, she reasoned, she and Christopher had so much more than … sex. They had a future together—a bright-lights, big-city future.

  But tonight, Jill didn’t have the strength even to fake it. She was too aware of the mattress beneath her skin, the subtle lumps and curves of the mattress where her parents—Florence and George Randall—had slept together for so many years. She could not stop herself from wondering if … when they slept side by side right here … if Florence had ever faked it, or known that she could. It was a concept Jill found disturbing, not for the answer but for the fact that she’d even thought it at all.

  She pulled the sheet to her chin, her nostrils catching the stuffy scent of the linen closet, the oppressive odor of island must. She quickly pushed the sheet away. The tears rolled down her cheeks. She stared into the silhouette of the shallow fireplace and wondered if she had the strength to make it through an entire month, or if she should leave tomorrow.

  At five minutes to ten on Saturday morning, Ben Niles parked his ’47 Buick on North Water Street and took a last look at the note that lay on the seat beside him. It had been there since yesterday morning, after he’d stormed into the Edgartown Post Office, demanding to know who had mailed it to his house in Oak Bluffs. From behind the counter, Jesse Parker had looked at him blankly, said he couldn’t help him, then asked if Ben had been working for any interesting people lately, as if the letter meant nothing, as if threatening notes were mailed out of Edgartown every day.

  “Bastard,” he muttered, then got out of the car and slammed the door. The note must have come from Dave Ashenbach—the one person with enough stupidity to try to intimidate him.

  He marched up the brick walk, lifted the brass door knocker, and rapped twice, cursing himself for taking on yet another celebrity job, all in the name of money, as if he needed any more, as if he needed the name of one more celebrity goddess on his perfect-people-packed résumé. But when the pushy PR woman had called, Ben had seized the opportunity to stay on the Vineyard this month. It would g
ive him plenty of time to finalize his plans, plenty of access to convince the town fathers to bless them. As long as Ashenbach stayed the hell out of the way.

  The door opened and a woman stood there, looking as though she’d just rolled out of bed, yet still like the goddess of a perfect world. He wondered if beneath the silk-and-lace robe her body was as fake as her hair color.

  “Jill McPhearson?” he asked.

  Her eyes grazed over him as though she were expecting a guy dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, rather than jeans and a T-shirt. As she pulled back her hair he noticed her hands—soft, uncallused skin, long, slender fingers, and a huge diamond ring that shouted “I’m taken. In case anyone hasn’t heard.” He tipped back the brim of his Red Sox baseball cap and looked squarely into her eyes. “I’m Ben Niles,” he said. “The renovator.”

  “Oh,” she commented. “Mr. Niles. Come in.”

  Her voice had the same overenunciated lilt of others he’d worked for, other show-biz, perfect types. “Call me Ben,” he said as he stepped into the foyer, onto a worn oriental rug. She was nearly as tall as his five feet nine. Christ, he thought, tall, pretty, and skinny. He wondered if that was what had made her famous. Calm down, Dad, he could almost hear his daughter, Carol Ann, say. Carol Ann—who seemed to think it was now her duty to step in and keep him under control, the way her mother had tried, the way Louise had nearly perfected before her death two years ago. Well, he was fifty years old now, and quite able to take care of himself. He took a deep breath and tried to remind himself that Jill McPhearson had nothing to do with his problems. “I understand you need some work done.”

  His eyes quickly traveled from the faded floral paper in the hall to the drawing room on the left, the dining room on the right. It was a grand old home, Georgian style, rich with butternut and mahogany trim, the kind of solid Vineyard tradition he would showcase in his living museum—Menemsha House—if the variance ever came through, if Ashenbach minded his own damn business.

  “I need you to make it salable,” Jill responded. “I’m putting it on the market.”

  No surprise there, he thought, suddenly weary of the synthetic people he’d allowed to permeate his life. “That’s a shame,” he responded slowly. “Not many of these old places are so well preserved.”

  “My family has lived here for generations.”

  He resisted shaking his head. “Then it’s even more of a shame.”

  She folded her arms across her flat stomach and tossed back her shoulder-length hair—her shoulder-length, uncombed, bottle-streaked hair. “What do you need to see first?”

  Ben wondered if he had pissed her off. He tugged at the brim of his cap. She’s a customer, he told himself again, a customer whose money will help pay for Menemsha House. He tried to smile. “I’ll check the structure. The plumbing, the wiring.”

  Just then a man appeared at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in a polo shirt and neatly pressed cotton shorts. Ah, Ben thought, the other half of the perfect couple.

  “You must be here to refurbish the house,” the man said as he came down the steps. “Well, you certainly have your work cut out for you.”

  Ben glanced at Jill and noticed what appeared to be annoyance flash across her face. “This is Ben Niles,” she said. “Ben, Christopher Edwards.”

  He nodded toward Ben’s cap. “I see you’re a baseball fan.”

  “One who remembers that Christopher Edwards pitched three no-hitters against the Sox in ’73.”

  “Don’t hold it against me.”

  Ben laughed, the way his customers expected, part of his game that he knew so well. “I wasn’t a Sox fan at the time.” He wanted to add that he’d been nowhere near New England—or the Vineyard—until twenty years ago, a fact that was part, if not all, of the town fathers’ problem. He was not a native, not one of them. But Ben cut himself off. For all he knew, Jill McPhearson, synthetic or not, was Dave Ashenbach’s kissing cousin.

  Christopher smiled, then turned to Jill, who still seemed annoyed by his presence. “Honey, I’ll show Ben around.”

  “No,” she answered brusquely. “Thanks, but why don’t you fix yourself breakfast?”

  He looked at her a moment, then looked away. “Fine. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  She turned back to Ben. “If you’d like to start in the basement, I’ll get into some clothes and be right down.”

  Ben nodded and let her direct him toward the back of the house, silently pleased that paradise was never quite as perfect as it seemed. Then again, he reasoned, women like Jill McPhearson probably never had to worry about the Dave Ashenbachs of the world, or about their dream going up in smoke, burning to the ground, with them in it.

  “I’d like to go up to the widow’s walk,” Ben said an hour after Jill had joined him, after she had finally begun to relax, having pushed down in her mind the fact that Christopher had practically raped her this morning. Ben’s arrival had thankfully stopped him.

  “The widow’s walk?” she asked. A chill that was greater than the one emitting from the damp, crumbling, brick basement walls seeped through her. She leaned against an old metal pot that her mother had used for making beach plum jelly—her famous beach plum jelly that won first place every year at the fair, the same jelly that no one but Florence knew the recipe for, handed down from generation to generation of the Randall family; the same Florence Randall who once declared the widow’s walk off-limits. “Must you go up there?” Jill asked, brushing a cobweb from her eyes.

  Ben narrowed his blue—no, gray—eyes. “Only if you intend to include it with the sale of the house.”

  She wanted to ask if he thought he was being funny. Instead, she silently led him up the steep, winding stairs to the first floor, then the second. As she reached out to turn the knob on the door leading up, her heart began to flutter. She opened the door and turned to Ben. “You go ahead. I’ll wait here.”

  He laughed. “Afraid of heights?” Then he ascended the steps.

  Suppressing an urge to scream, Jill gritted her teeth and wondered if there were any sensitive men left in the world. The last, she suspected, had been her father. Well, she thought as she watched Ben’s ass move beneath the form-fitting denim, screw him. He’s a builder, for God’s sake, a common laborer. And she’d had all the male arrogance she could handle for one day.

  She narrowed her eyes, then flinched with the realization that she was still staring at Ben’s ass, his solid, sexy ass. God, Jill moaned, why are the men with the best asses usually the biggest jerks?

  Pulling her eyes away, she ball-fisted her hands and climbed the stairs, blinking back the image of taut ass muscles and the ghost of her mother’s wrath.

  Once. She had only been here once, and yet the sensation of peace, the aura of quiet, had stayed with her throughout the years. Quiet, of course, until Florence had surprised her and Rita. Quickly scanning the room, Jill noticed that it was unchanged: the cartons remained, the old steamer trunk remained.

  “This would make a great hot tub room,” Ben said.

  “I’ll have the real estate agent mention that in the ad.”

  Ben shook his head and bounced up and down on his heels, as though testing the strength of the floor. Then he went to a window and applied pressure to the casing. “It’s not in bad shape.”

  I know, Jill wanted to say. I always knew it wasn’t dangerous up here. Her forehead tightened.

  “You’re going to need some structural reinforcement. Probably on every floor. That’s where we’ll start.”

  “How long will it take?” Her eyes drifted to the black steamer trunk. She slowly walked over and removed the old quilt, remembering when Rita had tried to open it, remembering it had been locked.

  “I won’t know that until we start.”

  “I want it done by Labor Day.” She tugged at the lock; it broke off in her hand. Holding her breath, Jill carefully lifted the lid: inside were neat packages wrapped in old newspapers. She lifted one out and opened it. In her hand s
he held a footed pewter dish, round and sculpted in a feathered pattern, a peacock’s image at the top. Jill had never seen the thing, had no idea what it was for.

  Ben went back down the stairs, then stopped halfway down. Running his hand across the wall, he again bounced up and down again. “Labor Day might be tight. We’ll do our best.”

  She rewrapped the dish. “I don’t care how much it costs.” As she returned the dish to the trunk, she spotted something else, something tucked in the corner. It looked like a book. Pulling it out, she examined the cracked leather tab and a small brass lock. She pushed a button; the book opened.

  “Jill?” Ben called from the stairs. “I’d like to check out the bedrooms next.”

  She quickly flipped the pages. It wasn’t a printed book, it was handwritten.

  “Jill?” Ben summoned again.

  “Wait a minute,” she snapped, more sharply than she’d intended. She closed the book and replaced it on top of a vase. Then she realized that what she’d seen was her mother’s handwriting. She frowned a moment, wondering what it could be. Florence Randall never relaxed long enough to read a book, let alone write anything. Jill shook her head. It was probably recipes, she thought. Maybe the prized beach plum jelly one.

  “Coming,” she muttered to Ben, closing the lid of the trunk, heading for the stairs, and wishing that all males over thirty years old would get the hell out of her life.

  It was nearly one o’clock when Jill said good-bye to Ben, after signing his contract for an exorbitant fee. The paper, however, promised the inclusion of his trademark—a tiny stained glass whale to be set in a front window—proof that a Ben Niles’s guarantee came with the house. Whatever that meant to whoever cared.