by Jean Stone
“Miss Blair,” the gravelly voice said into her answering machine, “this is Mr. Martin.”
She leaned forward on the edge of the thirty-something-year-old sofa, her heart pounding wildly in her throat.
“We’ve talked it over and decided to make an offer. Two million dollars. Flat. No negotiating.”
She leaped from the sofa and screamed “Yes!” Then she quickly sat down again, as though Mr. Martin could hear her reaction, as though he might find out how important this was.
“Of course, as you mentioned,” he continued, “the offer’s contingent on our approval of the interior.” He paused. Rita stared at the machine.
“But I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” he said. “Give us a call when you have an answer.”
He hung up the phone, and Rita beamed. She was going to sell Joe’s house; she was really going to sell Joe’s house. She could pay off the IRS before they took her away. And, almost as good, she could tell Charlie that she was done at the tavern. Then she’d never have to worry about running into Jill or facing that bitch again.
She leaned back against the sofa and realized that tears were pouring down her cheeks.
Chapter 9
Jill had managed to drag Jeff from his computer for dinner; Amy, incredibly, had agreed to eat.
They sat at a table by the window at the Wharf, Jeff devouring fish and chips, Amy picking at chicken Caesar salad. Jill nibbled on scallops and decided this was better than staying in that house, better than cooking in that kitchen … the kitchen that once belonged to Florence Randall, that one-of-a-kind, real special lady.
“Mom, you’re not going to believe who Carrie’s father is,” Amy chattered. “Sam Wilkins. Sam Wilkins, the rock star. Do you believe it?”
Jill sipped her iced tea. “I’m surprised you know who he is. He’s from my generation.”
“He’s a legend, Mom. Everybody knows Sam Wilkins.”
“Who’s Sam Wilkins?” Jeff asked.
“Mom,” Amy said, turning her head from Jeff, “tell him to shut up.”
Jill sighed and returned to her scallops. “Cut it out, both of you.”
Amy tossed back her hair. “It’s really cool, Mom. Carrie lives in L.A. and everything.”
L.A. A picture of Lizette French sprung to Jill’s mind, followed by a vision of Sam Wilkins’s daughter in her abbreviated clothes. Carrie was well suited for L.A. She started to tell the kids that they might be living in L.A., too, but quickly changed her mind. There would be plenty of time for that later, if they struck a deal with Maurice Fischer, if RueCom was serious, if Jill could prove she was capable of doing national stories.
Suddenly Jeff bolted from his seat. Jill looked over at his empty basket of dinner. “I’m going to the men’s room,” he said and quickly disappeared.
“Can’t you do something about him?” Amy asked once Jeff was gone.
Jill tried not to smile. “Your brother is your brother, Amy. Someday you’ll appreciate each other.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “But, Mother, he’s so juvenile.”
“He’s sixteen. All sixteen-year-old boys act that way until they get their license.”
“Carrie has her license.”
And a shiny new Porsche, Jill wanted to add.
“She invited me to her house tomorrow. They live on the beach. In Gay Head.”
Jill shook her head. “She’s a lot older than you, Amy.”
“She’s only eighteen, Mom. That’s not so old.”
“I don’t want you driving with her. You’re too young.” She noticed Amy’s jaw tighten.
“What if you drive me there?”
“As I said,” Jill replied, “you’re too young to be hanging around with eighteen-year-olds.”
“Great,” Amy whined. “And just what do you expect me to do for the next three and a half weeks on this stupid island? I don’t have any friends here. I’m not like my geeky brother who stays in his room and plays with his computer.” The pitch of her voice changed to anger. “You won’t let me go to the beach alone. You won’t let me have any friends. You barely let me breathe, Mom.”
Jill sipped from her water glass, deciding to ignore Amy’s comment. Her daughter, after all, had no idea what it was like to be imprisoned by a mother, entrapped in emotional shackles since the day she’d been born. She glanced at Amy, at the lowered dark eyes so strikingly Florence’s, and wondered if, when Amy turned eighteen, she would follow in Jill’s footsteps and leave home.
“Hey, Mom,” Jeff called as he reappeared at the table. “There’s a sign in the hall for volleyball. It’s every morning on the State Beach. Can I go?”
She set down her fork. “I didn’t know you play volleyball.”
“I’m on the intramural team at school.”
Jill signaled for the check, realizing that perhaps she knew as little about her own children as she had about her mother. “Well, I guess …”
Amy stood up. Her chair flew from under her. “Oh, great. That’s just great. He can do anything. I can’t do shit.” She stormed out of the crowded restaurant and through the front door.
They had driven back to Water Street in silence. Amy had closed herself in her bedroom; Jeff had returned to his computer. Jill stood in the middle of the kitchen, wondering which boxes to pack next, certain that Amy hated her as much as she, at fourteen, had hated her own mother. Hopefully, Amy would grow out of it. The way Jill never quite had.
She opened one cabinet and saw exactly what she expected to see: the dark blue enamel lobster pot. She hauled it out: nested inside were varying sizes of stew and soup pots. Slowly, she examined them. The smallest was aluminum: Florence only used it for homemade chicken broth. Next came the turnip pot for Thanksgiving, the cast-iron clam chowder pot, the battered beef stew pot. She sat back on her heels and studied the array of Florence’s kitchen essentials. Then, she ran her hand around the top of the beef stew pot, remembering snowy winter nights, when she’d walked home from school in the almost-dark, and felt, upon opening the door, almost happy, almost safe, when greeted by the aroma of the simmering stew.
Closing her eyes now, she could almost smell the aroma.
“Great stew,” she could hear her father say. It was always “great stew,” or “great chowdah,” or “great casserole.” And each evening, Florence gave a tight little nod in response, never a “thank you,” never an acknowledgment, as though she didn’t really care if he liked it or not.
But once, he had forgotten to compliment her. Halfway through the meal, she’d thrown down her spoon, burst into tears, and fled to the sewing room.
Jill stared at her father who sat, motionless, one hand gripping a chunk of half-eaten cornbread. It wasn’t until the sounds of Benny Goodman filtered into the dining room that George—and Jill—resumed their meal in silence, as though nothing had happened, nothing had changed.
She bent her head now, pulled back her hair, and tried to smell inside the pot. But no comforting aromas lingered: only the distant scent of cleanser, dulled by years of unuse.
Staring into the pot, Jill wondered why she was putting herself through this, and why she felt as though she were going to cry.
Quickly she shook her head and stood up. Renesting the pots, she grabbed a carton and lifted the stack inside, then closed the lid and zipped a strip of tape across the opening. She grabbed a felt marker, scrawled “Pots” on the side of the brown box, and underlined it with an angry black streak.
She rested back on her heels and wondered why she had done that. Why had she packed the pots as if she were moving them, taking them … where? Home? Did she want these Florence Randall reminders in her kitchen? Did she really want the long-ago aromas to follow her back to Boston? Or to L.A.?
“The church women,” she said aloud. She pushed the carton against the wall and knew what she would do. She would donate all of Florence’s things to the ladies of the church. Surely they still had a rummage sale or whatever they called them today. Surely the lad
ies would enjoy picking through Florence’s things, helping themselves to whatever they wanted, raising money for their cause with the remnants.
Jill put her hands on her hips, pleased with her decision. Oddly, she knew it was what Florence would have wanted. To leave her legacy to those who would appreciate it; to those who knew what a very special lady she had been.
The only problem was, Jill would have to face them.
She stared at the cartons, knowing she couldn’t face Hattie Phillips. She couldn’t face her mother’s blue-white-haired friends. There had to be another way.
Shoving the carton aside, Jill almost laughed. The ladies would have loved this stuff, though. They would have loved pawing through it and arguing over it all—even the hideous vase in the widow’s walk.
Then, she remembered the diary. Should she throw it away? Should she give it away?
Forty years from now, would she want Amy to give hers away, if Jill had ever kept one, if Amy still despised her?
After packing several more cartons, Jill went to bed. Her back ached from unfamiliar chores, her head ached from God knew what, and her mind whirled with jumbled thoughts of Amy, of her mother. As she lay in bed staring up at the canopy, willing the sleep that would not come, she knew she agreed with Amy on one thing: three and a half weeks on this stupid island was too much to ask of any of them.
She squeezed her eyes closed and wondered how her mother had endured so many decades here. Well, she reasoned, the how was apparent. It was apparent by the soup pans and stew pots, and, of course, the beach plum jelly pot hidden in the basement. It was apparent by the songs of Benny Goodman, still embedded in Jill’s brain.
Yes, the how was apparent. But what about the “why”? Why had Florence been so content to be sequestered here?
Slowly, her mind drifted to the diary, to the small part she had read, written by a young woman with dreams, with hopes, with excitement about the future.
It was so hard to believe it had been written by her mother.
She rolled onto one side, pulled the musty sheet more tightly around her. She’d known that Florence was raised in New York City. She’d known she had a sister named Myrna. And she’d known that Florence and Myrna had “breeding,” from the times she’d heard her mother chastise Rita, Jill’s one and only friend. “That girl has no breeding,” Florence said on more than one occasion. “She’s a bad influence on you.”
Jill flipped onto her stomach and pushed her face into the pillow. If Florence had such breeding, why did she ever come here? Why did she ever stay here? And had she thought that proper “breeding” meant raising your daughter to be miserable?
Slowly, Jill pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. There had to be more to Florence Randall than pots and pans and proper breeding. There had to be something … something Jill’s father had seen in her, long ago. Or had it been nothing more than a ruse?
Without stopping to reconsider, Jill got out of bed, pulled on her robe, slipped into her slippers—her apricot satin city slippers—and left the bedroom, heading for the hall, heading for the widow’s walk.
Sun. Sept. 23, 1945
Jill took a long breath and stared at the page. She curled her feet in under her and pulled the handmade quilt around her legs. Then, slowly, she began to read.
I met him in the park today. His name is George. He has just returned from England; on his way home to Martha’s Vineyard. He looks so handsome in his uniform. He asked to take me to the cinema tonight—I said yes! Mother will never approve.
Jill smiled, then read on.
Mon. Sept. 24, 1945
George Randall is wonderful! He brought me flowers today … white carnations. He is taking me to the park this afternoon. Is this the man I’ve waited for?
Thurs. Sept. 27, 1945
He kissed me! In under the bridge in Central Park, he stopped rowing the boat. He stood up. The boat rocked, and I was so scared my heart started to beat really fast. At first I didn’t know what he was doing. Then he leaned over and kissed me. His lips tasted like pipe tobacco, warm and smoky. He rested his strong hand against my cheek—I worried he’d feel how flushed I’d become. But then, he kissed me again. Oh, God! I think I shall never see that bridge or a rowboat or orange autumn leaves again and not remember that I was kissed by a handsome man in uniform … a son of a tavern owner. Wouldn’t Mother just die if she knew?
Sun. Sept. 30, 1945
He holds my hand at the most wonderful times. Today we stood at the counter at Romano’s Deli, ordering bread and cheese and grapes for our picnic lunch, when, suddenly, George reached out and took my hand. He squeezed it so gently I thought I was going to melt right then and there, all over the floor.
I wonder if Daddy ever held Mother’s hand. It’s hard to picture her letting him do that—it might have mussed her manicure! Holding hands, to her, was probably a pointless thing, something she couldn’t have been bothered to let him do.
It’s hard to remember Daddy, he’s been dead for so long. One time I told Myrna that Mother must have killed him, with all her demands and her need to always be in charge of everything. Myrna punched me and told me to shut up.
Jill tucked her hair behind her ears and wondered what it would have been like to have a brother or a sister—someone to tell you to shut up the way Amy did to Jeff. She bit her lip and forced herself to focus on her mother, to keep reading on.
Wed. Oct. 10, 1945
George’s papers have come through. He leaves for home tomorrow. I knew that this would happen, but I didn’t want to believe it. I never wanted our fairy tale to end. He promises to write, but I don’t know if he will. I think that I will go to bed now. I think that I will cry.
Wed. Oct. 17, 1945
I can’t believe I did this. I went to George’s rooming house this morning, I went to help him pack. He closed the door behind us. He took me in his arms and told me that he loves me. It felt so good to have him close to me. It felt so good for someone to love me. I kissed him back a thousand times—those soft, warm, tobacco-y lips. And then we laid down on the bed—the squeaky, springy, thin-mattressed bed. I can’t believe I did this. It didn’t hurt—George would never hurt me. He loves me. Oh, God, I hope he loves me.
Jill blinked. Quickly she reread the last entry. And then we laid down on the bed. Did it mean they’d made love? Did her mother … her proper, well-bred mother … actually make love to a soldier in a rooming house?
She tried to picture what Florence must have looked like when she was young. Like Amy, perhaps, with that elegant black hair, that peachy, creamy skin. Jill realized that she had never seen a photograph of her mother in her youth. She wondered if that was unusual, then remembered that Rita’s mother had pictures of herself everywhere—from grade school through motherhood—set in awkward, plastic frames scattered throughout their house. There were no such photos of Florence Randall. Jill’s stomach ached. She wanted to close the book, she wanted to go back to bed and pretend she’d never seen this. Instead, she turned the page.
Thurs. Jan. 31, 1946
I have to pinch myself. I look into the mirror, and I can’t believe that I’m a married woman. I wonder if I look different. George says I’m radiant. Even the Justice of the Peace said I looked radiant. And he doesn’t know our secret! George found work down on the docks and says he doesn’t mind living in New York City. Mother still won’t come to our apartment. She says there won’t be room for her to visit in one room with a bath down the hall. But I don’t care how small it is. It is ours, and I love my husband so very much. I’m going to do everything to be a good wife. And to be a good mother. Gosh! I can’t believe I’m going to be a mother!
Jill gasped. A mother? She shot her gaze back to the top of the page: Jan. 31, 1946. 1946? Jill wasn’t born until 1953.
Her thoughts raced. Did her parents have to get married? If Florence had been pregnant, it wasn’t with her.
“My God,” she said quietly. “My God.” With halfhearted hesitation,
she slowly turned the page again. Then, a piece of something slid from the book.
Jill looked into her lap. There, upon the antique quilt, rested a tiny lock of golden hair. She picked it up and held it gently, as though it might shatter, as though it wasn’t real. Her hand began to tremble.
Fri. July 12, 1946
We have a precious baby boy. His name is Robbie—Robert, after George’s grandfather. I have never known such happiness.
The lock of hair fell from her hand. Jill stared at it, as it lay on the open book. Her heart ached, her temples pounded. She lifted her head, felt the tears that stained her cheeks. The thought that her mother had kept such a secret … the thought that her mother … Florence Randall … could have had such emotion … any emotion … was beyond Jill’s comprehension.
Florence Randall had been cold.
Florence Randall had been a bitch.
Florence Randall had not been the sort of woman to … to love a baby.
But a baby boy? Had there really been a baby boy? A son for Florence? A … brother for Jill?
She looked out the window, out toward the sea. The morning sky was turning pink, the lazy harbor tide slowly slapped the shore. And Jill felt the tug of the past trying to pull her back, trying to suck her down into its chasm, as though her mother’s hand had reached up from the grave to lure her back to the misery of her youth.
Quickly Jill slammed the book. “No,” she said firmly. Brother or no brother, Florence Randall was dead. And she did not have the power to screw up Jill’s life again.
Chapter 10
At seven-thirty, Jill was seated at the small rolltop desk in the music room, scrawling out notes, pouring her sleepless adrenaline energy into the one thing she could count on: her work. Christopher had said Maurice Fischer wasn’t sure she could deliver stories of national scope. Right now, proving herself was much more important than dwelling on things over which she had no control. Besides, working was the only way to forget about her mother, forget the damn diary, and forget some unknown brother named Robbie.