Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  Then she set down her fork and wondered why she gave a shit.

  “Not even Barbara Walters was able to interview me.” Sam laughed as he tasted the strawberry shortcake in front of him and raised his fork in a mock toast to Jill. “I’ll tell you something, Maurice, this little lady is incorrigible.”

  They were seated under the canopy, where they had been served an enormous feast. Dusk was beginning to soothe the crowd; the strains of Vivaldi had been replaced by a trio from Sam’s former backup group who subtly interspersed his most popular recordings with a blend of contemporary songs.

  Jill had felt they were monopolizing Sam’s time, but the host didn’t seem to mind. And if Maurice knew he was being courted, he didn’t seem bothered, either.

  “I’ve known all along that Jill was special,” Maurice said, “which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to mention. I planned to wait until later, but it would be more fun if everyone here was part of it.”

  Jill’s heart began to race. She dared not look at Christopher. She took a sip from her glass. The flattened champagne bubbles fluttered down her throat.

  “Sam?” Maurice asked, “Do you think your little band would mind if I borrowed their microphone?”

  Sam pushed back his folding chair. “Not at all.”

  Jill moved forward on the edge of her seat as she watched Sam escort the RueCom king to the area where the music played. Christopher took her hand.

  “This is it, honey.”

  She stole a glance at him. He smiled.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Maurice began, the microphone in one hand, the other hand high in the air. “May I have your attention, please.”

  The crowd murmurs dwindled, then ceased. “Most of you may not know my face, but hopefully you know my name. I’m Maurice Fischer, and I am the president of RueCom International. Hopefully, this island has cable access.”

  A ripple of laughter floated under the tent.

  “Like all of you, I came here today as a guest of Sam Wilkins.” He looked to Sam, who nodded and waved. A smattering of applause followed quickly.

  “Aside from the great party he’s put on, Sam and I have something else in common. We’ve become friends with one of your natives, Jill McPhearson.”

  Jill wanted to shrink from sight. Her eyes darted quickly around. She did not see Carrie. But she did see Ben Niles. He smiled.

  “Jill thinks I only came to the Vineyard for a weekend away,” Maurice continued. “What she doesn’t know is that I have actually come bearing good news. Good news, the kind of stuff she and Christopher Edwards have brought back into vogue with their enormously successful television show.”

  There was more light applause. Jill wondered if it was coming from the out-of-town guests or from the islanders, but didn’t want to look around to find out.

  “The good news is simple. RueCom thinks that Christopher Edwards and Jill McPhearson make a damn great team. So great, in fact, that my company has made the decision to syndicate their show. As of October first, they will no longer be saying ‘Good Night’ to Boston, but to all of America.”

  Jill’s hand tightened around her glass. She felt Christopher’s arm slide around her shoulders. He leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “Hey, that’s terrific,” Sam said, stepping up to the microphone. “Let’s hear it for Jill and Christopher!”

  The drummer played a flourish; the crowd cheered. Jill glanced over at Ben, who stood by one of the canopy poles, a tentative smile directed toward her.

  “Are you happy, honey?” Christopher whispered in her ear.

  Jill blinked. Her thoughts blurred together. Despite all the talk these past few weeks, she realized now that she’d never really believed it would happen, never believed it could happen to Jill Randall, the stringy-haired girl who’d stood outside of the Duke’s County Courthouse dreaming of the day when the world would be hers. Suddenly her mind began to spin with images of elaborate sets and elegant wardrobes and the name “Jill McPhearson” on the small screens in kitchens and living rooms and the multiscreens in television stores across the nation. She wondered if they would meet the president. “My God,” was all she could manage to say.

  “We’ll have to finish out September in Boston.” Christopher’s words sounded like a faraway echo in her ears. “Then it’s off to L.A., Hollywood, here we come.”

  The band started to play again as Maurice and Sam made their way back to the table.

  “I guess you won’t be getting rid of me as a neighbor, just because you’re selling the house here,” Sam added.

  Her smile vanished. The house. The Vineyard. It will, at last, she thought, be over. It will at last be behind me, behind that other person, Jill Randall, who will be gone forever.

  She let Sam refill her champagne glass, then half-listened to their chatter about concepts and television and Hollywood. She smiled and nodded, but it was all so dizzying, as though they were talking about someone else, some other person not connected with her. Every so often Christopher gave her a wink or squeezed her hand, pressing the cool, pear-shaped diamond against her flesh, sealing her future. At last.

  Suddenly the haze of the champagne, the headiness of the laughter, and the beat of the music were pierced by a shout. A fierce, desperate shout.

  “Fire!”

  Jill snapped her head in the direction of the sound.

  “Fire!” the voice yelled again.

  Footsteps began running. Guests began screaming, shrieking, “Fire? Where?”

  “Fire!” the voice shouted again. “Over on the ridge!”

  Jill turned with the crowd, looking toward the next hill, where all she could see were sharp orange flames, bright yellow sparks, and Ben’s dream silhouetted against a black cloud of smoke.

  Chapter 24

  Ben ripped off the cloth sling and took off across the dunes. Around him people ran, shouted, slammed car doors, gunned engines. People—island people. Not the celebrities, not the tourists.

  “Ben! Ride with us!”

  “Come on, Ben!”

  But he didn’t take the time to stop. He didn’t want to slow the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He wanted to run. So he ran. And he ran, stumbling in the sand, yanking off his sneakers, tossing them into the dunes. He ran, his eyes focused straight ahead, up on the hill, up toward Menemsha House.

  Halfway there, he fell. Grit dug into his hands, his mouth. He spat. He cursed the fact that he was fifty years old. He cursed the cast on his right arm that screwed up his balance. He cursed, then he righted himself and ran again.

  The closer he got, the more engulfed the structure became. As he reached the last dune, heat blasted toward him.

  “Jesus,” he cried, then raced up the slope.

  A hundred yards from the house it happened. The explosion was so quick, so intense, it knocked him backward. He looked up in time to see the huge mushroom of blue-white heat, the orange and black cloud burst across the summer sky. The paint thinner. The primer. The tubs of wood sealant. And God, the bottled gas.

  He fell to his knees. “Jesus,” he cried again as the shriek of sirens wailed up the road, muffled only by the sharp cracks of wood igniting, splintering, caving in, and by the shock of pain bouncing from his mind to his heart.

  He stayed on his knees, he could not move. Rubber-coated firemen jumped from trucks, hauling hoses and unleashing the tanker. They shouted back and forth; Ben could not hear their words. His senses were numb, his thoughts paralyzed. Suddenly one man appeared at his side.

  “Ben!” he yelled. “Ben! Who’s inside?”

  Ben looked up at the sweat-streaked face. “What?”

  “We need to know if someone’s in there. There’s a truck parked beside the garage.”

  Ben stared at the man. “Jesus,” was all he could say.

  It was over an hour before the fire was under control enough to allow anyone to enter what was left of the house. It would have been worse, they said, if the gas tanks had been filled
. It would have all been gone. Leveled.

  By now, the sun had set; darkness had covered the land, the way the sun rises, the sun sets, no matter what has happened on earth, no matter what man has endured, or not endured. In the still-glowing embers, framed by the now blackened sky, Ben stood by the ambulance and watched and waited. Then a yellow-coated fireman emerged from the remnants with a body draped over his shoulder. Ben didn’t have to look to know it was Kyle.

  “Ben?” a thin voice wept. “Ben? Are you there?”

  Ben swallowed back bile and leaned toward Kyle. The boy’s face was charred, his eyes half-open and dazed. “I’m here, kid.”

  “Ben,” he said in a voice so small, so weak, “Ben, I’m sorry.” His chest rose. His chest fell. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I never meant to hurt you.” Then his eyes closed, and his head dropped.

  “He’s still breathing,” the paramedic announced as he tore the seal off a needle and started an IV.

  As they worked on Kyle, Ben turned his head back to the embers, wishing he could vomit the ache in his gut, praying that Kyle was strong enough to survive, wondering what Kyle had meant. Had he set the blaze? Had he sent the threat? And had—oh, Jesus—had Kyle been the one who attacked him? The questions made him feel sicker, as the answers seemed grievously clear.

  “Ben?” came Terry Clarkson’s voice from beside him. “There’s nothing else to be done here. Do you want a ride home?”

  He shook his head. Behind him, he heard the gurney being hoisted into the ambulance, he heard the heavy doors slam. He lifted his head to the smoky sky, tears threatening to sting the corners of his eyes. “I’m going to walk back to Wilkins’s and get my car. Thanks anyway.”

  He started down the road, his head bent, his arm throbbing. The ambulance passed him. He did not look up. As if in a funeral procession, more vehicles began to go by, descending the hill, in mourning for the boy whose life or death was uncertain, in mourning, Ben thought, for the grizzly aftermath of reality, in which fire depletes the soul and reminds us that we are only human, here for a moment, a flash in time. We are dispensable, our worlds destructible.

  He walked along the road, avoiding the dunes. Cinders poked through his socks, but the pain on the soles of his feet was nothing compared with the pain he felt within. Kyle. His trusted helper. Kyle, the man Ben had wanted for his son. The man who had violated a fourteen-year-old girl and destroyed himself while attempting to destroy the one man in his life who had cared about him.

  When he reached the top of Sam Wilkins’s driveway, Ben looked around. The yellow-and-white-striped canopy stood alone: the music had died, the laughter had ceased. The cars that had been parked helter-skelter all over the lawn were nowhere to be seen. Only Carol Ann’s small gray Nissan remained, a single reminder that people had been here, a party had happened.

  He sighed and lumbered toward the car. Just then a shadow stepped from the darkness.

  “Ben?” It was Jill McPhearson’s voice.

  He turned and watched as she moved closer, her white dress flowing around her like the robe of an angel.

  “I sent Christopher back to the house,” she said. “I thought you might come back for your car.”

  He nodded, but said nothing.

  “Are you all right?”

  He bit his lip. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “You lost your shoes.”

  He looked down at his feet. He noticed that his tan pants—the ones Carol Ann loved—were now streaked with thick black smudges of soot.

  “And your sling,” Jill added.

  They stood in silence.

  “Is the house … gone?” she asked.

  Ben dug the car keys from his pocket and examined them carefully, as though he needed to study the small silver keys to determine which one would start the car, which one would make this all go away. “It might as well be,” he said, then added, “Kyle was hurt.”

  He thought he heard Jill take a breath. “I know,” she answered. “Someone came back and told us.”

  He stared at his socks. They were coated with sand, crusted with grit. “He’s hurt bad. It’s amazing he’s still alive.”

  Jill stepped forward. “If you’d like to go to the hospital, I’d be glad to go with you.”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Because you’re my friend. And Kyle is Rita’s son. Rita is my friend, too.”

  She did not add that Kyle was her brother, her half brother by blood. But Ben could see the anguish in her eyes.

  He opened the door and stood back. “Maybe you’d better drive,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d get us there in one piece.”

  You’d think if they wanted people to be comfortable they’d do something about the goddamn air-conditioning, Rita thought as she sat on the gray vinyl chair in the emergency room waiting area freezing to death. Her feet, crossed at the ankles, barely touched the floor; she clutched her stomach around her bare midriff, wishing to hell she’d thrown on a sweater over her halter top and shorts. A nice warm sweater, one of Kyle’s. A sweater that would make her feel close to him, close to his scent, his smile, his life.

  She stuffed a fist in her mouth to prevent a cry from escaping. Then she swung her feet back and forth beneath the chair, wondering what was taking so goddamn long and why they wouldn’t let her in to see him. He was her only child, for chrissakes. Her kid.

  A harried woman in white pants and a tunic trimmed in pink marched into the waiting area, studying the clipboard she held in her hand. Rita sat up straight. Her heart stopped beating.

  The nurse flipped a page on the clipboard, then looked up. “MacElby?” she asked.

  Rita stared a moment, then took as deep a breath as she could muster and rubbed the back of her neck. Across the room a fat old man in plaid Bermudas hauled himself from his seat. “That’s me,” he said. “Is my wife okay?”

  “Follow me,” the nurse ordered, and he waddled behind her down the hall, through the swinging doors behind which, somewhere, somewhere, Kyle was lying now, alone, without his mother.

  Rita closed her eyes and wondered for the hundredth time since the phone call why Kyle had not been at the Wilkins’s picnic, why he had been at Menemsha House, why, why, why.

  They’d told her he was badly burned. His face, his chest, his arms. Her beautiful son. Burned. Charred. Rita had heard there was no other smell like it. Fried flesh. Her son’s flesh. Blistered. Raw. Gone.

  She clutched her stomach more tightly. She could not stop her head from bobbing, as it marked time in rhythmic sync with the swinging of her feet.

  There was no one she could call.

  Her mother was too far away.

  She had no other friends. No one to sit beside her and wait. And talk. And listen. And just shut up and be there.

  There was no one, because she’d wanted it that way. It had seemed too great a risk—the fear that if anyone got too close, if anyone uncorked her, her secrets would bubble over, her sins would spill out. If that had ever happened, Kyle would have hated her.

  So now there was no one.

  No one except Jill.

  But she couldn’t call Jill. Jill would never come. Why would she? Their worlds were too far apart. And Kyle had “spoiled” her daughter, ruined her for life. But they had been friends. First, for so many years. Then, friends again, in the way that only women can be for other women, without the constant dance of foreplay and the never-ending pressure of expectations, the way men and women seemed to be.

  Get out of my life, Jill’s last words to Rita had been.

  Rita chewed the inside of her mouth and wished to God she had a drink.

  They didn’t speak on the drive to the hospital. Jill kept her hands clutched on the steering wheel, afraid to let go, afraid to lose control of her thoughts, her focus, herself.

  She had told Ben that Rita was her friend. But was she? Did she really even know Rita any longer? Once, they shared their lives. Once, they shared their dreams. Once, they shared the
ir deepest secrets.

  Over and over the thoughts tumbled in her mind, as Jill tried to make sense of that summer of 1970. When had Rita been with Jill’s father? Why hadn’t Jill known? They’d rarely been around him. Rita had hardly known him. Or so Jill had thought.

  As she turned at the blue and white hospital sign, Jill reminded herself that Rita had barely known her own father, either, that the only males in Rita’s life had been one boyfriend after another. Boys. Not men. Not fathers of friends. Not that Jill had known.

  “Swing right for the emergency room,” Ben said.

  Parking the car, Jill wondered if she’d ever really known Rita at all, the way she hadn’t known her mother, the way she hadn’t known her father. Then she wondered if she had come to the hospital for Rita’s sake, for Kyle’s, or for Ben’s.

  She turned off the ignition and lowered her head. “I’ll wait here.”

  Ben nodded and got out of the car.

  The minutes ticked slowly. Rita stared at the huge white clock with the black numerals that hung over the doorway—a jeering reminder of the long emergency room wait. She’d been here close to an hour already, with probably half the night to wait.

  She glanced at a table overflowing with magazines. Might as well read, she thought. Sooner or later they’re going to come out and tell me Kyle’s okay. She rose from her chair and walked to the table. Leaning over, she shuffled through the magazines—old, tourist-rumpled magazines, but something, at least, to do. She picked up one that looked as though it had lots of recipes—maybe she’d start cooking again, the way she’d done when Kyle was little. She stood by the table and fanned through the pages, looking for the perfect foods that Kyle loved. He might be home recuperating for quite a while. She might as well start planning now.

  Instead of returning to her chair, Rita paced the room, glancing at the color photos of pastas and tortes and fruit-layered compotes. But Kyle was an eclair man, Rita thought. Meat, potatoes, and eclairs. She threw the magazine back on the table just as Ben Niles stepped into the room.