by Doug Burgess
“So,” Alicia cuts in, staring hard at me, “did you enjoy the fifty-cent tour?”
“I…yes.”
“Did Marcus show you everything you wanted to see?” Her eyes are blazing now, and I suddenly realize Alicia is drunk.
“Yes, I think so.”
“How’s the view from the bedroom?”
“Alicia,” Marcus interjects, “why don’t you go ask Consuela if dessert is ready?”
“I don’t—”
“Go check.” His voice is hard suddenly, brought down like a fist on the table. Without another word Alicia gets up and leaves. “Sorry about that,” Marcus mutters. “She drinks too much. It’s always been bad, but I swear it’s gotten worse.”
“She doesn’t like Little Compton, then?”
“I thought she would. She’s always nattering on about country life. Grew up in some godawful town in upstate Jersey. I figured she’d be glad to escape it, but wherever we went was never as good as Bumfuck, New Jersey.” He sighs, shakes his head. “And now we can’t even leave.”
Alicia reappears. “Dessert’s on its way.” Her voice is flat, dead.
“Thanks, hon.”
Now we are all looking around the room, as if a new conversation topic was tucked like a prompt card somewhere in the rafters. My eye alights on a buxom mermaid carved of oak and stretched alluringly over the fireplace. She is, rather incongruously, wearing spectacles and holding a writing tablet. “Where’d you pick her up?” I ask.
Marcus chuckles. “Stands out a bit, huh? No, she came with the place. They carved her right into the lintel above the wardroom door when this was still a sub chaser. In fact, she gave the boat its name. Ever heard of Calliope?”
I have, actually. Calliope was the writer’s muse, whispering verses into the ears of Homer and Aristophanes. She was also, according to some legends, a gorgon that allowed her prey to write on until their magnum opus was complete. Then she would eat them. I let Rhinegold tell me all this and try to look surprised.
“They named all the sub chasers after figures of mythology,” he finishes. “This one was part of the C-Class: Calypso, Callisto, Calliope. The Calypso and Callisto were both sunk during the war. I like to think the goddess Calliope looks after this boat, maybe puts in a good word with Neptune.”
“Poseidon,” I correct.
“Oh, well done,” says Alicia sarcastically, giving me the slow clap.
“So,” I say, in what I hope to be a casual tone, “I noticed you both at the funeral. Were you friends of Emma’s?”
“Never met her,” Marcus answers. “But it sounded like she was a local character. Seemed like the right thing to do to pay our respects.”
“Oh, I thought perhaps you chose Little Compton because you had family here.”
“No,” says Alicia sharply, “We don’t know any of these people.”
Not long after that the dessert comes, a limp pear tart with burnt crust and something gelatinous on the bottom. I wolf it down as fast as I can and then, without actually leaping up from the table, start to make exit noises. Rhinegold puts on a face of polite regret, but I can see relief etched at the corners. Alicia barely looks up. She remains at the table as Rhinegold walks me through the saloon. “Sorry,” he murmurs again.
“For what?”
He simply shrugs. We are on the aft deck now, and the wind lashes salt against our cheeks.
“I had a great time,” I assure him, feeling absurdly like a teenager letting down their date gently. “Thank you for dinner, and for showing me the house.”
He nods, looking out to sea. “Guess I’ll see you around, then.”
“Yup, definitely.” I give his hand a good, masculine pumping, and go down the ladder. Someone has thoughtfully brought my Corolla around. The seats are already warm. As I turn around toward the driveway, I look into the rearview mirror and see Marcus Rhinegold staring after me. Like Gatsby, he raises his hand.
One minute later, I realize I left my coat in the saloon.
The saloon door is still open when I climb back on deck. My coat is draped over the chair just behind it, and I think I can just grab it and go. But even as I reach for it Alicia’s voice—bored, languorous, disdainful—murmurs, “So, did you suck his cock?”
I jump, and the coat falls from my hands. But she is still in the dining saloon, and the door is ajar. I can hear the clink of ice cubes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcus growls back. “I doubt if you do.”
“So precious.” The ice cubes rattle again, and by the sound of it she has just drained her glass. “You look peaky, though. Guess he didn’t put out after all. Sickening for you. Well, there’s still that Starbucks kid in Warwick. You can send the car to pick him up if you don’t feel like a drive.”
“Alicia…”
“Call me by name!” she hisses back, suddenly furious. “You owe me that, at least, you miserable faggot fuck. One bit of honesty. One thing about our marriage that isn’t a total sham.”
A sigh. “Okay. Crystal. It’s been a really long day, and we don’t need to go through this again right now.”
“Don’t we?” She laughs coldly. “Don’t you think you’ve put me through enough, without bringing your butt boys back home and making me eat dinner with them?”
Marcus doesn’t answer. I can imagine the look on his face, the same hopelessness I saw in his eyes when I told him I wasn’t interested.
“You think this is easy for me?” she goes on, her voice getting higher. “Wearing these clothes? Dyeing my hair? Playing the dumb cunt every time we go out? You think I like it?”
“No.”
“We could be in Monte Carlo right now, you know that? Or Brazil, with all the brown ass you can lay your hands on. Why the fuck are we here?”
“You know why.” For the first time his voice has an edge to it. “It’s the same reason you can’t just divorce me and go off with any of the fifteen guys you’ve had on this boat since we left Marseilles. It’s why as much as you hate me, as much as you loathe the very sight of me, you still can’t pick up the phone and call Anthony. Don’t pretend like you haven’t thought about it. I have. I think about it all the time. But you see, I can’t leave you either, my darling dearest. Because we’d be dead within a week. You know it as well as I do. And so here we are manacled together on our own little slave ship for all eternity. Or at least until the house is done.”
“What am I supposed to look forward to in that?”
“Your own private wing. And doors with locks on them.”
“So I’m just supposed to sit in this frigging New England sinkhole and rot?”
Marcus chuckles. It’s not a pleasant sound. “To be honest, love, I don’t care what you do. The choice is yours. But you’d have rather a hard time keeping clear of the Molinaris without my checkbook backing you up.”
Now it’s Alicia’s—Crystal’s—turn to be silent. Treading as softly as I can, I drape the coat over my arm and tiptoe toward the aft deck. The ladder creaks with every rung, but the boat creaks, too, as it rocks against the jetty.
Chapter Six
I figured Billy would want a complete account of the evening’s events, but days pass without a word from him. “I expect he’s busy, following up leads,” Irene says serenely. Yeah, right, I think. He’s probably already regretting the fool’s errand that sent me out there, and too embarrassed to ask about it. Of course, the embarrassment between us exists on several levels.
“You could always call.”
But I won’t do that. None of this was my idea, anyway. There are no further messages from the Calliope either. Marcus Rhinegold has retreated back into his mahogany-lined shell. I give the Aunts a general picture of the night, minus a few lurid details, and let it drop. I don’t think Marcus Rhinegold murdered Emma. In fact, I don’t think anyone did, and I have
a sneaking suspicion the Providence Police Department feels the same. With no news, life slips back into a familiar rhythm. Halloween brings the fog, a great wet blanket pulled up to the chin. The harbor vanishes. Boats emerge like phantasms trailing long streamers of blue-white cloud. Mast lights hover like fireflies. Little Compton becomes an island, as remote from the world as Greenland’s coast. I spend most of the day in my room staring at the walls. They are the same shade of bubblegum pink; the pictures still sit on the dresser in their chunky resin frames with teddy bears and balloons. My closet is full of clothes I will never wear again but Grandma refused to throw away, even when she could still remember why. I don’t want to know what’s under the bed.
Tonight the Laughing Sarahs come over to help Grandma hang the plastic witch on the door and light the jack-o-lantern that Constance carved. On the newel post in the hallway is a soup tureen full of Mars bars, Twix, Snickers, and Milky Ways—whole ones, not miniatures—for kids that will probably never show. Grandma used to have a reputation as the best giver on the block; the big bars were her idea, not mine. But then last year she became confused and tried to shoo the trick-or-treaters off her porch, waving a broom and screaming for the police. I doubt they’ll come back.
Irene’s been volunteering at the Methodist Home again; she’s dressed as a gypsy. “Care to he-arr your fortune?” she asks in her best Zoltar voice.
“Not really. I don’t think I want to know.”
She laughs as if this were a joke. Aunt Constance is in the kitchen brewing cider. The smell of cinnamon fills the house. There are caramel apples on the dining room table. I eat two without even thinking about it, lick the goo off my fingers. “Those are for the kids!” Irene admonishes.
Grandma has been strangely quiet all evening. She sits in her rocking chair by the fireplace, the same spot where Captain Barrow occasionally appears, and stares at me. “Happy Halloween!” Irene shouts at her, every time she passes by.
But Grandma’s eyes are fixed on me alone. “Excuse me,” she says, rather coldly, “but do I know you?”
“Of course you do,” Constance calls from the kitchen. “That’s David, your grandson.”
Her brow wrinkles as she considers this. Finally she rejects it. “Where’s Rosalie?” she asks.
Irene hears, pulls a face. Without a word she goes into the kitchen and closes the door. “Rosalie?” I repeat, sadly.
“Yes. My granddaughter. Is she dead? She’s dead, isn’t she? What have you done with her?” Her eyes are starting out of her head now. She tries to rise up from the chair.
“Relax,” I tell her soothingly. “It’s okay. Nobody’s done anything. She’s fine, Grandma, I promise.”
“Stop calling me that,” she hisses. “I ain’t your grandma. What have you done with my girl Rosalie? You tell me now. Is she gone? Did you take her away? Tell the truth!”
Now the tears come. But they are mine, not hers. “She’s not dead, Grandma.”
“You married her, didn’t you? You married her and carried her off and strangled her someplace. Stole the jewels right out of her ears, like Bluebeard. And now you’ve come to get the inheritance.”
“She’s not dead, Grandma,” I repeat, more firmly. “She’s here.”
“What? What are you talking about? Where?” She looks down at the floorboards, as if this were a Poe story.
I take a deep breath. This just never gets easier. “I’m Rosalie. I used to be. They gave me an operation a few years ago and I’m David now.”
Grandma looks at me in disgust. “What the hell are you talking about? What did you do with my little Rosalie?”
“It’s true, Grandma. I’m serious.”
Her eyes search my hairline, my jaw, my chest, hunting for any sign of her lost granddaughter. Finally she sees the splash of freckles on my nose. Her expression softens. “Rosalie? Honey? Are you in there?”
“Yeah, Grandma. She’s still here, but she’s a boy now. Can you understand that?”
She frowns. We can both hear the determined sounds of pots clanking in the kitchen; the Aunts are putting on a good show. “Well, yeah, I guess so. Rosalie never liked being a girl much. Her momma made her all these little pinafore dresses that she wouldn’t wear. She’d put them on and then go roll in the dirt out back.”
I remember those dresses. “And then you made me a pair of overalls out of sailcloth, and told Mom that if I wanted to roll around in the dirt, I needed the right equipment.”
A smile lights up her face. “That’s right! I did! Huh, guess it’s my fault then.”
Now we are both laughing. “So are you…okay with this?” I ask.
Grandma thinks for a moment. “Sure,” she says finally. “I always wanted a grandson. And you’re as handsome as any grandma could ever ask for.” She pats me gently on the shoulder. “Whatever you look like, whatever you want me to call you, you’ll always be my precious little Rosalie. I’ll never forget that, I promise.”
“Oh, Grandma…”
We embrace, and Grandma goes to help the Aunts get dinner ready. I sigh, but not from relief. I’m glad it went well, of course, but it won’t last. A few days later—or hours even—Grandma will be back to wondering where Rosalie is and who this strange man is living in her house.
I know something she doesn’t.
We’ve had this conversation seven times.
The Aunts are back. We are sitting around the dining room table, waiting for the trick-or-treaters. But it’s nearly ten at night and nobody’s come. “Ah, to hell with it,” says Aunt Constance, and goes into the hall. She comes back with the bowl of candy and a Snickers sticking out the corner of her mouth like a cigar.
“Shame to let it go to waste,” Irene murmurs, reaching for a Twix.
“You’re getting fat, Irene,” Grandma tells her baldly.
“Shut up, Mags. Here, have a Milky Way.”
“Now what?” I ask. “Should we watch a movie?”
“They’re showing Hocus Pocus on Fox,” Irene offers. Constance gives her a withering look.
“When I was a girl,” Grandma muses, “we used to spend Halloween down at Briggs Marsh with a campfire, drinking hot cider and telling stories. The rule was it had to be scary, or about boys.”
“You know any of those kind, David?” Constance asks me. But there is a twinkle in her eye.
It’s Halloween, and I’m feeling festive. “Grandma,” I say, dragging out the tape recorder, “tell us about the people that used to own this house.”
She scoffs. “You know that story better than I do.” But she looks pleased I chose her.
“I know it, but the Smithsonian doesn’t. Come on.” I put in a fresh tape and slide the machine under her nose. The Sarahs make encouraging noises. Grandma is flattered, pretending to be cross. But these are the kinds of things she remembers now. And Irene is right: these are the next to go. I press play, and the gimbals start to turn.
MAGGIE
You’ve heard this story a hundred times. It’s about the Robies, the family that owned this house long before your Great-Great-Grandpa William bought it. They were nice folks. Damn shame what happened to them.
The Robies were a Southern family, from a little town just downriver from Memphis. Roaring Ford, Fording Road, something like that. Anyway the place is gone now, so what does it matter? The Mississippi swallowed it up—that happens sometimes.
Colonel Robie was a cotton planter. Had a big plantation house he inherited from his daddy, who inherited it from his daddy, and so on, back since the American Revolution or thereabouts. Colonel Robie wasn’t really a colonel. They just called him that because he was rich and well-respected. His first name was something silly, like a girl’s. Evelyn, I think. No, Hillaire. Hillaire Robie. That’s it. His wife was a pretty little thing named Eunice. That’s her above the fireplace in the library. George Healy painted that a few years
before the war—the Civil War, that is. That was actually painted in this very house. If you look close at the background, you can see the bookcase in the front room.
The Robies came north every May and didn’t return to Tennessee until Christmastime. A lot of wealthy Southern families did that before the War. It got pretty hot down there in the summer, especially with no air conditioning and all those petticoats and vests they had to wear. The richest families built summer homes in Newport, which is how the Vanderbilts and Astors got the idea later. See, they were just copying the Southerners. That big place on Bellevue Avenue—Kingscote—was built for another Southerner named Noble Jones. Newport was quite the place in the 1850s. People thought the air was healthier here. When I was a girl there was still a special pushcart at Easton’s Beach just for wheeling invalids into the sea. They’d splash around until someone pulled them out again. Don’t laugh, it’s true. I wouldn’t tell you anything that wasn’t true. People even thought fog was good for your skin.
Well, the Robies must have thought so, anyway, because they skipped Newport and found someplace even foggier. This house had been sitting alone for some time after the last of the Barrows died out, round 1830 or so. Colonel Robie saw it from his boat when he was out sailing one day, and asked if it was for sale. So that’s how the Robie family came to live at Barrow House.
Besides the Colonel and his lady, there was also a daughter, Isabel. I wish we had a picture of her, but she must have been something because it seems like everyone wanted to marry her before she was even sixteen. The society papers were full of it. Miss Isabel Robie went to a dance today, Miss Isabel Robie visited the polo courts, Miss Isabel Robie dispensed soup to the needy…you get the idea. But don’t think she was some mincing little violet. From all accounts, Isabel was a spitfire. She rode a horse like a man, one leg on each side, and was the first woman in Newport to play tennis when it became a fad. There was a grass court over on America’s Cup Boulevard—still is, I think—and she played a doubles match with three young men, all vying for her hand.