Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  “Oh, I am, Ma. I’m just busting with excitement.” She’d slapped the white bread over the bologna and stuffed it in a plastic bag.

  “He’s a man from Boston. A stockbroker or something.”

  “Is he rich?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Rita slipped the sandwich and two cookies into a small brown bag. She opened the refrigerator door, set Kyle’s lunch next to the quart jar of grape jelly, and thought about how that figured, that Jill would end up with the husband and the money and all those things that someone like Rita would never have, that someone like Rita didn’t, apparently, deserve.

  The only time Rita felt avenged was when she learned of Jill’s divorce: that Jill had two kids to raise alone, not one, like Rita, and that Jill didn’t even have her parents to help, because she was still too damn stubborn to come back to the Vineyard, which was fine with Rita because who needed her anyway.

  She poked back the ball-fringe curtains at the kitchen window now and looked into the driveway. Kyle’s pickup wasn’t there. She glanced up at the round clock over the refrigerator: 9:20. He must have had a heavy date last night.

  She went back to the Formica table, sat down, and opened her appointment book.

  There were two cottages to clean by noon, in case any Sunday house shoppers happened to find SurfSide Real Estate in the yellow pages. Though she’d only dared to invest in one pair of season ferry tickets this year, even that had been a waste. The biggest firms had scooped up all the ticket blocks, luring their potential customers with the promise of coming and going from the Vineyard with ease—their customers, not Rita’s. The results had been simple: no perks, no customers, no commissions.

  Closing her appointment book and slipping it back into her briefcase, Rita noticed the stack of mail she’d picked up yesterday. She pulled it out and surveyed the windowed-envelope return addresses of Master and Visa cards, the electric company, the phone company. Then she saw the one from the IRS. Rita frowned and tore it open.

  Delinquent Payroll Taxes, the title read. Her eyes scanned the sheet, the listing of her name, along with those of her two laid-off secretaries. There was a line for penalty charges, a line for interest. The total taxes due, by September fifteenth, was just over twenty thousand dollars.

  She was still sitting at the table, staring at the notice, wondering why the IRS was picking on her when, surely, there must be huge corporations screwing the hell out of them, when the sound of Kyle’s pickup revved in the driveway. Rita looked up quickly and realized her heart was pounding. She quickly stuffed the IRS notice in her briefcase and snapped it shut.

  He breezed in the back door with a smile on his face and a donut box in his hand.

  “You deserve a treat,” he said as he leaned down and kissed his mother’s cheek. “I brought you eclairs. Your favorite.”

  “Just what I need. Haven’t you heard about fat cells?”

  Kyle laughed. “Ben says …”

  “Ben, Ben, Ben. That’s all I ever hear about.”

  Kyle looked hurt.

  She put out her hand and touched his arm. “I’m sorry, honey. I know how much you think of your boss. I’m tired, that’s all. With a long day ahead. Forgive me?”

  “Sure, Mom,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound quite as convincing as his words.

  Rita pulled the box toward her and opened the lid. Inside were four fat eclairs, the kind they probably didn’t serve at San Quentin, or wherever it was they sent tax evaders. Though the pit of her stomach felt like a rock pile, she plucked one out and took a big bite. “Mmmm,” she accentuated. “I take back everything I’ve ever said. Ben Niles is a saint.”

  Kyle laughed. “You working today?”

  She looked at her son. “It’s Sunday. It’s August. What do you think?”

  He laughed again.

  “You certainly are in a good mood this morning,” Rita said.

  Kyle dug out an eclair and ate it in three swift bites.

  “Chew your food, don’t swallow it.”

  “I am in a good mood, Mom. I had a great time last night.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Nope. Her name’s Carrie.”

  “Carrie. Not the one Stephen King wrote about?”

  He rolled his eyes, then devoured another eclair. “You’re not going to believe this, but it’s Carrie Wilkins.”

  “As in Sam Wilkins?” Sam Wilkins was one of the famous celebrities who had been using the Vineyard as a summer refuge since his Grammy-winning days of the sixties and seventies, and since that nasty business about his dead wife.

  “Carrie’s his daughter.”

  “Well, la dee dah,” Rita said. “Maybe you’ll get to meet her famous father. Maybe he’d like to sell his house.” And maybe her famous father has about twenty grand he’d like to part with, she wanted to add.

  Kyle wrinkled his brow. “Mom? Is anything wrong?”

  “Wrong? No. It’s just that it’s summer. Summers are tiring.” Even though she fought it back, a freaking tear spilled from her eye.

  “Mom!” He leaned over and wiped her tear. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing, honey. I’m just worried about making ends meet. As usual.” She patted his hand. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Now tell me about your new girlfriend. I want to hear some good news.”

  “Well, they live in Los Angeles,” Kyle said. “Carrie said her father’s making a comeback.”

  “Just what the world needs. Another aging rock star.”

  “Mom, Carrie’s really nice.”

  “Is she a singer, too?”

  “She wants to be an actor.”

  “What’s she doing hanging around with you?”

  “I dunno. She likes me. She thinks islanders are cool.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Well,” he stumbled. “She’s younger than me, but she’s older, if you know what I mean. She lives a different kind of life.”

  “How old is she, Kyle?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Rita sighed. “That’s awfully young.”

  “Mom, she’s only here for the summer.”

  “Just watch yourself, Kyle.”

  “Why, Mother, whatever do you mean?” he asked with a hint of sarcasm and a shit-eating grin that told Rita he knew exactly what she meant.

  Rita stood up. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said. “Thanks for the eclairs.” She left the kitchen, heading for the shower, and wondered what Carrie Wilkins—or her famous father—would think if they knew Kyle was actually a year older than he thought … and what every “cool islander” would think if they knew Rita Blair was headed for jail.

  Chapter 6

  He took a ten-thirty flight. After dropping Christopher at the airport, Jill maneuvered the bulky Range Rover back toward Edgartown, trying to block out thoughts of Maurice Fischer and RueCom and Lizette French, realizing that, more and more, her life was being engineered by Christopher—and, of course, Addie.

  The price of fame.

  In the slow line of traffic, Jill stared at the bumper of a minivan in front of her, at the silhouetted heads that bobbed up and down, necks twisting this way and that, as if afraid to miss a sight along West Tisbury Road. Clutching the steering wheel, she realized she could not control the queue of cars, any more than she could control her life, now that Christopher was in it. The scary part was, the thought was exhilarating, above and beyond her wildest dreams, far surpassing the way it had been with Richard.

  She remembered her early years with Richard: how she had fought to keep from becoming swallowed up in Richard’s life, in his tantalizing world of international business, in his jet-setting from London to Boston, from Geneva to New York. For no matter how often she traveled with Richard, no matter how many worlds she saw, she was still nothing more than Richard McPhearson’s wife, with nothing more to list under “occupation” than housewife … wealthier, perhaps, than her mother had been, but still
just a housewife, with nothing to count on but a string of predictable days, then weeks, then years.

  After the kids were born Jill insisted on going back to work as a TV reporter, insisted that she was not about to travel the world with two small children at home, nor would she stay home and clean and cook and, God forbid, polish silver with that smelly pink paste her mother had used every Saturday night, shining the silver as if the president were coming for dinner.

  At first Jill had blamed Richard for the breakup of their marriage—he, after all, was the one who cheated, the one who found himself a mistress in Rome, a woman eager to cook for him, to coddle him, to make him feel “special.” It wasn’t until long after the divorce that she realized perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps she had “cheated” on Richard, too, cheated him out of the kind of wife he expected.

  She wasn’t going to do it again. Unlike Richard, Christopher expected her to be someone—a woman who saw no limits for her career, and would not get bogged down by the trivia of life.

  Brake lights flashed red. Jill jammed on her own and resisted the urge to blow her horn. Then she suddenly remembered there was no reason to hurry: there was no need to rush home. The children were old enough to survive without their mother, and all that was there was work to do—cleaning out, sorting out, throwing out the possessions of her parents, remnants of her childhood. All that was there were old memories to dredge up, and wait until Christopher called tonight to tell her the news, to tell her if they were going to win even greater fame, and if her career, indeed, was limitless.

  Her grip on the steering wheel eased, her thoughts began to calm. She was not going to lose Christopher as she’d lost Richard: this time, she was going to make it work. Even if Lizette French thought otherwise.

  She glanced at the stream of cars and wondered if the lives of the people inside were working out, and if, this time, hers really would.

  As the line inched its way toward the center of town, Jill spotted a street sign on the left: Beauford Terrace. She recognized the name: Beauford Terrace was where Rita had lived.

  Quickly she snapped on her signal and turned down the street. The houses had always been less grand than on Water Street; now, they seemed closer together, in more need of repair. She looked to the left—Rita, she remembered, lived on the left. One house, two, three … there it was. The fourth house on the left, the small clapboard saltbox with the peeling red paint and sagging front step.

  She pulled onto the shoulder and stopped, staring at the house where she’d once spent so much time, remembering the kitchen table where she’d spent so many hours with Rita and Hazel. Those were happy times for Jill, especially, because of Hazel, the woman who had been more of a mother to Jill than her own throughout her lonely growing-up years.

  It was a house filled with laughter, love, and acceptance, filled with Hazel Blair. It was Hazel who listened, Hazel who advised, Hazel who showed Jill and Rita how to wear makeup, who bought their first pairs of panty hose, and who was there with the flashbulb the night of the junior prom; while Florence kept busy in her kitchen, her silence letting Jill know she would have preferred she go to the prom with another boy, a more acceptable boy than Bruce Lindquist, a fisherman’s son, the friend of Rita’s boyfriend-of-the-week who, Jill remembered, happened to be Charlie Rollins.

  Yes, Jill thought now, Hazel had been the perfect mother. She studied the house now and wondered if Hazel still lived there, if she ever thought about her daughter’s friend, Jill, and if she knew all the good things that had happened in Jill’s life. She wondered if Hazel would have agreed that she should let the kids’ pictures be in Lifestyles magazine.

  A horn blared behind her. Jill glanced in the mirror: her vehicle was in the path of a truck towing an enormous boat. As she began to turn the Range Rover around, Jill caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror: her neatly groomed hair, her smoothly applied morning makeup, even though it was Sunday, even though she was on the Vineyard. Her eyes dropped to her huge engagement ring, then she slowly put the shift into Drive and headed back to the main road, back toward Water Street, knowing that it no longer mattered what Hazel Blair thought, because life on Martha’s Vineyard was one thing; Jill’s world now, quite another. She had been, after all, reborn: she had become a product, a commodity, of the spin-doctor nineties.

  If only she could remember that, everything would be fine.

  Armed with a box of plastic trash bags, a muffin, and a fistful of strawberries, the Jill-of-the-nineties marched directly toward the widow’s walk to begin her task. Confidence, she knew, was her greatest ally. It didn’t matter that when she’d returned to the house and walked into the kitchen, a small ache had crawled through her. It didn’t matter that her breakfast had sat, sadly alone, awaiting the family that had not come.

  Families, she’d groaned, and cleared the table to restore the room to Florence’s order. Then she noticed that one muffin was gone. Jeff, she thought, thank God for Jeff.

  When she reached the top of the stairs now, Jill decided there was no point in sorting out things to sell: if Christopher called tonight with good news, they might have to pack up and leave sooner than planned. A show going into syndication could mean a lot of work to do, fast.

  Glancing quickly around the widow’s walk, she decided to trash everything, starting with the trunk she’d opened yesterday.

  Once again Jill lifted the lid and removed the pewter dish. She took out a trash bag and dumped it in. Next was a newsprint-wrapped vase, hideously decorated with a bright blue bird. She pitched it on top of the dish.

  Then she spotted the leather-bound book again. Starting to fling it, Jill suddenly stopped. She stared at it a moment. It was a book, she decided, only a book. Still, it had been written in her mother’s hand. She set down her plate and raised the book to her face: a faint trace of lavender wafted up from the cover. She flinched. Then, slowly, her palm skimmed the smooth brown leather. She wondered if she should open it; she wondered if she should look for the beach plum recipe. Then she remembered the Ball jars that had careened to the floor this morning: surely those were the last of Florence’s batch. Jill should at least peek inside and decide if one family heirloom should be retained, though she could not imagine Amy standing over a cookpot, stirring homemade jelly, any more than she would herself.

  She settled against the trunk and drew up her knees, remembering that she had not been allowed to help make the jelly.

  “You’ll burn yourself,” her mother said.

  “You’ll make a mess.”

  “You’ll ruin it.”

  The only chore Jill was allowed was to monitor the paraffin, watching it set into the same waxy expression of her mother’s face and wondering why she couldn’t be the kind of daughter her mother had wanted.

  But that was then. And this was now.

  With one unsteady finger, Jill pushed the button on the tarnished lock. As she turned back the cover, she looked at the flyleaf. Then she looked again. In her mother’s uniform handwriting were the words “Florence Carter.” Not Randall, but Carter. Jill stared at the name. Carter was her mother’s maiden name. Carter—the New-York-City-Carters who most probably had never seen a beach plum, let alone made jelly.

  Jill scowled. Then she turned the page.

  The paper crackled but did not crumble: the ink on the first ruled sheet was faded but not illegible. At the top was a date.

  Wed. Aug. 15, 1945.

  A small chill ran through Jill. Her eyes quickly scanned the page. It looked like a letter, addressed to no one. She refocused her gaze in under the date and began to read:

  The war is over.

  She grasped the edges of the book. My God, she thought, my God, what is this? She began reading again, forcing herself to continue, to read each word slowly, carefully.

  The war is over, the entry read. I look down from my room and I can see the people dancing on Park Avenue. Taxi horns are honking, music is blaring from rooming-house windows across the way: Glenn
Miller, Dizzy Gillespie, and Benny, Benny Goodman. The curfew has been lifted. The city breathes again.

  Jill sat up straight and pushed back her hair. She flipped ahead—page after page of handwritten entries, page after page of dated passages. My God, she thought. A diary. My mother kept a diary.

  Gooseflesh crawled over her arms. She turned back to the beginning and picked up where she left off.

  The war is over and I am twenty-five years old. I have a college degree in English. I have spent the past three years as a volunteer at the Red Cross, but doubt that my skills of keeping bandage inventories will help me make my mark upon the world. Mother thinks it’s time to put my trousseau together. For those of us who didn’t marry before the war we are old now, old to become brides. It no longer matters that we were the cream of the Park Avenue debutantes—others have passed us now, younger women, more beautiful. But the men are home now, and will be coming home, so perhaps there is still reason to hope that one has been reserved for me.

  Jill stared at the page, then quickly closed the book. She did not want to know about her mother’s past. She did not want to waste time reading about a woman she’d rather forget.

  Before she could change her mind, she tossed the diary back in the trunk, picked up her plate, and left the widow’s walk, deciding to clean out the kitchen instead. After all, she reasoned, she really must be near the telephone when Christopher called with the news about Maurice Fischer and the prospects that RueCom held for her future.

  Chapter 7

  She awoke to the sound of loud banging. Jill rolled over and looked at the old round clock on the nightstand: ten minutes before eight. She groaned. Ben Niles had said he’d be there at eight, and she’d forgotten to set the alarm.

  Pulling herself from the bed, she slipped on her lacy peach robe, threaded her fingers through her tangled hair, and went downstairs, cursing the fact she’d stayed up long past midnight, boxing dishes and heaving out cans, waiting for the call from Christopher that had not come. She had tried him three times; Addie twice. The only response had been voice mail.