Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  “Baltimore,” he answered.

  Her racing heart began to ease. She frowned. Then Jill remembered her mother had never told her about Robbie. It was possible Florence had lied about other things, about anything. She and George could have lived in Baltimore.…

  She really was going crazy.

  She started to speak. Her mouth was dry. She cleared her throat, then asked, “Do you come from a large family?”

  Ben laughed. “What is this, twenty questions?”

  She brought her hand to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Can’t help myself. Reporter’s instincts.”

  “Well, I didn’t come from a large family. I was an only child. My father was a dentist. My mother was a teacher.”

  The edge in his voice cut through her hope. Ben wasn’t Robbie. Ben wasn’t the brother she’d known nothing about. Of course he’s not Robbie, you fool, she said to herself. Then, another thought jarred her: Ben wasn’t Robbie … but maybe he knew who Robbie was. If he had been raised on the island, maybe he remembered her brother.

  “Have you been on the island long? Did you go to school here?”

  Ben spread a blueprint on the ground and studied it. “I’ve been here twenty years,” he answered. “And counting.” He turned to a stack of tiles piled beside the blueprints. He picked them up. “Of course, according to folks here, I’m still just visiting. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want to replace that downstairs bathroom ceiling.”

  “Oh,” she replied, trying to mask her frustration. “Of course. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  Ben steadied his eyes on hers. “What with our two days off next week.…”

  A seagull shrieked in the distance. Jill fought to regain her composure. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t interfere with your schedule.”

  “I said I’d try to have your house done by Labor Day,” he answered. “We’ll do our best, but two days is a lot of time to lose.”

  She cleared her throat. “Some people will be here from the media. They’ll be taking photographs.…”

  He waved her off. “No problem. I’ve got a client over on Nantucket who needs some work. I could use a couple of days to get the plans laid out.” He turned to the house. “Kyle,” he called, “give me a hand with these ceiling tiles.” Jill watched Ben’s helper—Carrie’s boyfriend—emerge from the bulkhead, sweat shimmering off his youthful chest, a broad grin on his face.

  “Yes, Master,” he joked.

  Ben swatted Kyle on the arm, and the two of them disappeared into the house.

  She turned and resumed her walk toward the harbor, where white sails softly glided across the quiet water. Off to her left, she saw the lighthouse. The place where she and Rita used to go, to think, to talk, to share their deepest hopes and dreams and secrets. Not that they’d known what secrets were. Not secrets like long-lost brothers. She stood at the edge of the water and tried to stop the gnawing in her stomach. The gnawing, the wondering. If Ben didn’t know anything about her brother, Robbie, was there someone else on the island who did? Someone she could learn something from?

  She could always go back to the diary. Jill shuddered. No. She did not want to read one more word of her mother’s … confession. She did not want to see her mother’s handwriting, feel her mother’s feelings, or touch that damn silky lock of baby’s hair.

  But, goddamnit, she wanted to know.

  Then it hit her. The tavern. The 1802 Tavern, her father’s business. His father’s before that, and before that, and before that. Charlie Rollins had bought the tavern from Florence after Jill’s father had died. Maybe Charlie knew something about Robbie. Charlie was older than Jill … maybe he knew something.…

  Rita pulled the white dress over her head and threw it on the floor. As she walked toward the bedroom, she checked her watch and wondered if she should bother to dress for work … if she should bother to go to the tavern at all. Taking the risk that she’d run into Jill was something she couldn’t handle. She’d had enough failure for one day.

  On her way past the end table, she flicked the red button of her answering machine.

  “Hi, baby,” came Joe Geissel’s voice.

  She grabbed the cotton robe from the back of the bathroom door and wondered why the sound of his voice now made her feel like vomiting.

  “I sure hope you’re not on your way over here,” he whispered heavily. “My wife just arrived. Jesus. Just what I fucking need.”

  As Joe paused on the tape, Rita glared at the machine. “Christ,” she muttered, realizing it must have been Joe calling when she was running out the door, primed to win him over, ready to seal her big deal.

  “I don’t know why she’s here in the middle of the goddamn week,” Joe went on. “Don’t know if she’s staying through to Sunday or not. You’d better not call me, babe. I’ll let you know when she’s gone.”

  He made kissing sounds into the phone, then hung up.

  Rita moved into the living room, plunked in the Boston rocker beside the fireplace, stared at the yellowed wallpaper, and wondered why her life had become so pathetic. Joe Geissel was just one more in a long line of married men who offered sex … and safety. It had been years since Rita had slept with anyone who was morally, technically, or legally “available”; years since she’d even slept with an island man. Men—boys they had been then—like Buck Winthrop and Don Reilly and even Charlie Rollins who, though now her boss, thankfully seemed to have forgotten that he and Rita had once professed their “love” in the secret room of the 1802.

  Buck, Don, Charlie—Rita remembered them all. The sex had been fun, the consequences, steep. But now, surviving nine months at a crack without a roll in the sack had become less painful than getting involved with someone who knew every move you made, had ever made, and every move your family ever made.

  She hadn’t minded, until Kyle. Since then, she’d steered clear. There was no way her kid was going to be raised with the kind of mother Rita had, the kind of mother that Hazel was, the kind Jill knew nothing about.

  Jill had seen only the good parts of Hazel: she did not know how the woman cried at night, scared to be alone. Jill did not know that it had been Rita who parented her mother, not the other way around; Rita who massaged her mother’s neck when the tension took its toll; Rita who made her own meals from the time she was five, and did the laundry and cleaned the house, because her mother was too busy working, or too hungover.

  Jill had never seen these things. She had not seen them because Rita hadn’t wanted her to know. Any more than Rita had ever told Jill about the nights—so many nights—when Rita lay awake, listening to the sounds of thumping and pumping in the room next to hers, or the times she’d found her mother, bare-ass naked, giving some guy a blow job in the backseat of a car parked under the streetlight in front of the house.

  To Jill, Hazel Blair had been wonderful, free, accepting. To Rita, she had been a responsibility. It still amazed Rita that Hazel had finally found a man who loved her, a tourist who took her from the island, married her, and safely tucked her in financial security in a mobile home in Sarasota.

  Yes, Rita thought now, she’d been right to have stuck to married men, to not have to fear that islanders would talk about her, the way she’d suspected they’d talked about her mother. Islanders like Florence Randall, who wanted nothing to do with Rita’s mother and made it clear from her coldness that she wasn’t crazy about Rita and Jill being friends.

  But though Rita might have a life of hard work and few rewards, she would never become the subject of island gossip. She would never do that to Kyle. Maybe someday God would make it worth her while—maybe someday she, too, would find a man who would take her loneliness away.

  Yeah, she thought to herself, and maybe someday I’ll win the fucking lottery.

  She rose from the chair and quickly erased the message on the answering machine. No sense in Kyle hearing Joe Geissel’s garbage.

  She went into the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the
sink, and took out the bottle of scotch. “Shit,” she said as she held the bottle to the light. Only about an eighth inch of the amber liquid swirled around the bottom. And she’d forgotten to pick up more.

  Unscrewing the cap and swigging the residue, Rita tossed the bottle in the plastic wastebasket by the back door and stared out the window over the sink. What she needed was a drink. A decent, stiff drink. Maybe she should get dressed after all. Maybe she should go to the tavern early, sneak a bottle into the secret room, and have herself a ball. Let Charlie worry about it if she was too smashed to work.

  It was past the hour for the lingering lunch tourists; too early for the cocktails and dinner crowd. Jill hoped it would be a good time to talk with Charlie, to use her interviewing skills to discreetly uncover what she wanted to know. As she stepped through’ the old oak tavern door, she decided she’d approach him the same way she would any unsuspecting target: praise him first, admire his accomplishments, then let him think he was going to help her solve a problem. It was a technique that worked every time.

  An elderly couple sat at one table, an island map spread in front of them. At one end of the bar were two thirty-something women, sipping from wineglasses, their heads close in conversation.

  Jill walked past the tables to the opposite end of the bar. She slowly pulled back a tall wooden chair and sat down. For Jill, the child, it had once been a high climb to reach the top of the chair. She wondered if she had ever sat in this very chair … while waiting for her father … while procrastinating about going home. She quickly pushed away the flashback and flicked her eyes around the room, reminding herself of her mission.

  In a moment that seemed like an hour, Charlie Rollins appeared from what Jill knew was the kitchen, toting a tray filled with glasses. He hadn’t seemed to age—he still looked like the same jovial, dirty blond-haired teenager who had a love of surfing and an eye for Rita. Charlie had never been the greatest-looking of the boys, but there was an assuredness about him, a kind of big brother sense. Big brother, Jill thought, and tried to calm the butterflies that fluttered inside her.

  Charlie glanced at Jill and smiled beneath his now filled-out mustache. He set the tray by the sink, then blinked and looked at Jill once more.

  “Hey,” he said with a genuine grin, “Jill Randall. God, I heard you were back in town.”

  “Long time, no see, Charlie.”

  He wiped his hands on his clean white apron and moved toward her. “Wow, you look terrific. The city has been kind to you.”

  “You don’t look so bad yourself. I’m glad to see this place hasn’t killed you.”

  His eyes swept the tavern. “This place? Not a chance.”

  She followed his gaze. “You’ve done a wonderful job. It looks exactly as it always did. My father would have appreciated that.”

  “Well,” he said, laughing, “it’s not the easiest place to maintain.” His eyes moved over the room. “Had the plumbing replaced, and the wiring. And I had termites whose ancestors must have moved in back in the eighteenth century.”

  “I’m having some work done at the old house now,” Jill said. “Did Ben Niles do your restoration?”

  “Ben?” Charlie laughed. “He only works for summer people. People with the big bucks.”

  “Oh,” Jill said quickly, then changed the subject. “Well, business here certainly seems to be booming. I was in the other night with my family …”

  Charlie nodded. “So I heard. I was upstairs doing the books.”

  “Is your office upstairs?”

  He laughed. “Hell, my whole house is. I live there.”

  Jill remembered that her father had rented the apartment over the tavern, though she’d never been up there. “Well,” she continued, “my kids got a kick out of seeing their roots.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said, shifting his gaze to the women at the other end, then back to Jill. “Hey, can I get you something? Wine? A beer?”

  Jill settled back against the rungs of the chair. “Sure,” she said, “I’ll have a beer.”

  “Draft?”

  “Sure,” she answered, wondering how many years it had been since she’d had a beer, if, in fact, she’d had even one since leaving the island. “Do you have a family, Charlie?”

  Charlie held a tall glass up to the tap and pulled the lever. Dark golden liquid gushed forth. “Me? Nah.” He set the foamy glass on a paper coaster in front of Jill. “I almost got married once. Her name was Betty. Came here with her folks one summer back in, I don’t know, somewhere in the early seventies. Anyway, Betty hated it here. Wanted to live in the city.” Charlie winked. “But I guess you know the feeling.”

  Jill smiled. She wanted to ask him if he knew what had ever happened to Rita, but reminded herself that was not why she was here. “Do you miss having children?”

  “Me? Between this place and being a town selectman, I hardly have time. There were six kids in my family. I’ve got eleven nieces and nephews now—plenty of family to go around.”

  She congratulated herself for the way she got him to open the door to what she wanted to know. “Big families must be nice,” she said. “I always hated being an only child.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “You didn’t have any brothers or sisters, did you?”

  Clearing her throat, she sipped of the dark beer. The taste bit into her tongue. “Actually, I did have an older brother.”

  Charlie scowled. “You did?”

  A sinking feeling drowned her butterflies. “You don’t remember him?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Nope.”

  “He was seven years older than me. You don’t remember hearing my father talk about him?”

  “What was his name?”

  “Robert. Robbie.”

  Charlie looked up to the beamed ceiling. “Robbie. Robbie Randall.” He shook his head again. “Nope, don’t remember. Where’s he at now?”

  Just then the women at the end of the bar pushed back their chairs and stood up. “Thank you,” one of them said as she peeled off some bills and set them on the bar.

  “My pleasure,” Charlie answered, and walked toward them. “Come back again.”

  The women giggled and left. Jill took another sip of her beer, then stood up, too. There was no reason to stay. “I’ve got to run, too, Charlie,” she said, pulling a five-dollar bill from her bag.

  Charlie held up his hand. “No charge. And,” he added with a smile, “I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

  She scowled at him, then realized his gaze had veered to one side, toward the front door.

  “Look who’s here,” Charlie said.

  Jill turned quickly and looked squarely into the frozen face of her best friend, Rita Blair.

  Why me, God? Rita wanted to shout as she stopped in her tracks and stared at Jill.

  “Rita!” Jill exclaimed. She opened her arms as if she expected Rita to rush into them, tell her how wonderful she looked, and say what a fucking great thing it was to see her.

  Rita stepped back and fluffed her curls. “Jill.”

  Jill’s arms dropped quickly to her sides. “Gosh, it’s so good to see you. How are you?”

  Rita shrugged. “Older. Wiser.” She moved to one side of Jill, hoping the pounding of her heart wasn’t visible on her neck. “Charlie,” she said, “I’ve got to talk to you. Right now.” She turned back to Jill. “Will you excuse us?”

  Jill looked at her queerly. “Sure. Sure, Rita.” She clutched her bag. Her obviously several-hundred-dollar, designer asshole bag. “Stop by and see me, okay? I’m at the house.…”

  “Sure,” Rita responded, then motioned to Charlie. “Come on in the back. This is important.”

  Rita hadn’t realized until that moment just how important coming here had been. She now knew she was going to tell Charlie she was quitting her job: IRS or not, there was no way Rita could work at the tavern, as long as Jill lived two short goddamn blocks away, as long as there was any chance in fucking hell that Jill knew the tr
uth about Kyle.

  Chapter 12

  Jill went in the front door and stepped over the drop cloths that covered the foyer floor. Ben and Kyle were in the dining room replacing the rotted window casings. She waved without speaking and went directly upstairs.

  Once there, she picked up the phone from the hall table and dragged the cord into the bedroom. She closed the door and called Christopher. She was finally ready to talk; she finally needed to share her pain.

  His voice mail clicked on.

  “Damn,” Jill said. She almost hung up, then waited for the beep. “Hi. It’s me,” she said quietly. “I really need to talk to you.” She hung up, set the phone on the floor, and flopped on the bed, trying not to envision him with Lizette. Just as her eyes closed, the phone rang.

  It was him.

  “Oh, thank God,” Jill said. “I was afraid you were out on a story or something.”

  “I’m in the studio. Have you forgotten we do a run-through from four to five?” His voice sounded busy—the tone of an energetic man with a productive life. Suddenly Christopher, Boston, and Jill’s entire world seemed a million miles away. She felt her need slide beneath the layer of her soul.

  “So what’s up?” he asked.

  “Oh, lots of things.”

  “Honey, I love you, but I’ve got makeup in ten minutes.”

  “Oh. Right.” She toyed with the phone cord, stretching its coil, watching it spring back. She wanted to tell him about her mother’s diary. She wanted to tell him about her brother. But, once again, the words that came from her mouth were different. “I met Sam Wilkins today.”

  Christopher paused. “And?”

  “And I met him. That’s all.” And I have a brother I never knew about, she wanted to add, but pulled at the phone cord instead.

  “Hey, that’s terrific.”

  “It’s a beginning. I’m still not sure if it’s right for Amy.…”

  “Jill. Let her grow up.”

  She let go of the cord. It bounced on the floor.

  “Is there anything else? I’ve got to get into makeup.”