by Luanne Rice
“Is that Lily’s?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, touching it. “It doesn’t seem as important now. None of it does—I wish we’d never found it. Or opened the box.”
“The box of money,” Sam said. He kissed her again, as if he could take back what he’d just said. Terry called again, and when she said impatiently that she had a date that night, she wanted to get home to get ready, Dana had to smile.
But even as she backed away to return to her nieces waiting in the car, his words hung in the air. The hidden cash, the secret key: two things that didn’t add up to the happy ending she wanted to write to her sister’s mystery.
AT GRANDMA’S CONDO, all was peaceful. There was a crazy, somber tone that reminded Quinn of a nightmare or the day of her parents’ funeral: bizarre and unreal, as if all you wanted to do was wake up.
The condo looked across the marsh. Hello! That’s why they call it Marshlands Condos! Quinn banged her head against the wall to remind herself not to be stupid. Her little braids formed handy shock absorbers that kept her brain from banging around.
God knows her brain was getting a workout. Trying to analyze those kinky little rope fibers, see what Sam and Aunt Dana were jumping up and down about. Quinn got the part about her parents hitting the tow rope, but she didn’t get the part about her mother crying that night before, saying he’d thrown their life away. Brain bruise deluxe-arama.
The meal sucked. Poor Grandma didn’t realize how much everyone hated cube steaks. As a supposed treat, she had marinated them in Wishbone salad dressing. She served them with Tater Tots and green ketchup. For dessert, what else: pudding pops.
Quinn chowed down just so they could hurry up and get back to the beach. Allie refused to touch the steak, so Aunt Dana went into the kitchen to make her a toasted cheese sandwich. For at least the tenth time that day, Quinn’s eyes filled with tears.
How had her mother become such a good cook? With Grandma frying steak and Aunt Dana burning the bread, where had her mother gotten her cooking talent? Quinn missed her all the time, but she honestly didn’t believe she had ever missed her mother so much as she did at that moment.
Tenderloin, swordfish, soufflé, chicken cordon bleu, veal stew, Caesar salad … her mother cooked like a dream. She had fed her family the same way she had loved them: with passion and fervor and constant creativity. Tonight Quinn didn’t want to remember that her mother had yelled at her father, that she had read Quinn’s diary. She wanted only to recall the love in the hugs and kisses and food on the table.
“May I be excused?” Quinn asked the minute she had hidden her last bite in her napkin.
“Sure,” Grandma said. “I was watching old movies before, honey. If you want, there’s one still in the VCR.”
Quinn ran into the living room. One thing she had in common with Grandma: They both loved home movies. While Allie colored pictures on the low table and the adults talked in near whispers, Quinn hit the button and watched the tape begin to play.
It was their last vacation at Gay Head, many summers ago. The weathered cottage, its field of salt hay. There was Mommy, beautiful in one of her bright sundresses. Daddy stood behind her, coming toward the camera with Quinn standing on one of his shoes and Allie on the other. They were happy together the year before the yelling started. The sun was out, glaring into the camera lens.
“Grandma, you always shoot into the sun!” Quinn shouted now.
“I know, I know. I’m too old to learn,” her grandmother called back.
Now she and Aunt Dana started talking in a low voice. Quinn got the gist: Aunt Dana was explaining about how Mark had run into a tow rope, how it was a horrible tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. Grandma was clucking at first, but soon she started sniffling, saying, “My baby, my baby,” under her breath as the sobs came and Aunt Dana had to comfort her.
Quinn watched the home movie. There was her mother—Grandma’s baby—smiling into the camera, dancing with her family. It was a Vineyard reel—their family name for the dance they had created—swinging each other to the sound of the waves and wind.
“My baby,” Quinn whispered out loud, watching herself be passed from her father to her mother. Now she was in her mother’s arms, feeling the sunlight come from above, feeling her mother’s locket and the little key bump the top of her head.
There they were, right in the movie, catching the light: the silver locket Aunt Dana had given her mother and the tiny key her mother had worn on the same chain around her neck. Silver and gold: They didn’t match, but they went together. Besides my daughters, my two most prized possessions, her mother had said of the locket and key.
Her mother had always kept a diary: like mother, like daughter. She had taught Quinn the pleasures of writing everything down, the necessity of it. And after a while, when it became as natural as breathing, the way it helped to figure everything out.
Her mother had taught her that diaries should be hidden. Quinn didn’t know her mother’s secret hiding place, but even if she did, she would never have breached it. Never in a million years. No matter how bad things got, how curious Quinn felt, she would never read her mother’s diary. And she would have expected her mother, knowing how precious a diary was, to treat Quinn’s with greater respect herself.
But this wasn’t the time for blame, for anger. What was done was done.
“Grandma, Aunt Dana,” Quinn called as her mother danced for the camera, that wonderful Vineyard light shining on the key and locket. “Come watch the movie.”
“Soon, honey,” Grandma said.
“In a minute, Quinn,” Aunt Dana said, then lowered her voice again, telling Grandma about the dive, asking her questions about Daddy’s projects, saying maybe it was time to stop looking, time to set all the questions to rest.
Staring at the key around her mother’s neck, Quinn knew that was out of her control. Questions couldn’t be set to rest until they were good and ready. The waves charged in beneath the Gay Head cliffs like mermaids’ horses, fast and white. Blinking at the screen, Quinn could almost see the mermaids now, right behind her mother’s head, dancing in circles with Quinn on her toes.
“I want to go back there,” Quinn whispered.
“Where?” Allie asked, looking up.
“Martha’s Vineyard.”
“What do we need all that water for? We have the Sound.”
“You weren’t born there,” Quinn said, her voice nearly as dreamy as the feeling in her heart. She wanted to see the place again before it was all built up, ruined by development. She looked at her mother’s and father’s faces and brought them into her mind. “You didn’t live with them there.”
THAT NIGHT, when the girls were in bed and the moon had fully risen to flood the eastern sea, Dana threw on her robe and went out into the yard. Once again, she couldn’t sleep. More than anything else, she wished it were Thursday.
She wanted Sam.
She wanted to talk to him, to sit up with him in the thin, silver moonlight and talk about another night like this. How could Mark not have seen the tow rope? Dana gazed over the Sound, at the white light spread over the waves, and wondered how it would feel to be sailing along, to feel your boat be pulled into the sea beneath you.
She wanted to ask Lily, and she wanted to talk to Sam. Instead, the only thing she could think of doing was to go down into the garage and try to make sense with her brush and paints. This was her language, the way she had always solved her mysteries before. Turning to her canvas, she let herself work.
The dark, purple water topped with fine gold-edged waves. Staring at the painting, Dana touched her brush here and there. She worked on the seaweed and eelgrass below. Weaving the mermaid into the work, she wondered why she had ever thought she’d needed Monique for a model. She found herself painting Lily’s face.
There in the dark garage, her sister came alive. Her features flowed from Dana’s brush, and her bright eyes met Dana’s and smiled. Her hair fell loosely around her beautiful face
, the same face Dana saw every day when she looked at Quinn and Allie.
“Tell me what I need to know,” Dana said, painting furiously now.
Outside, leaves rustled above the garage roof.
“What do I need to know to help Quinn? Allie’s all right,” Dana whispered. Her brush flew across the canvas. Blue-black water, clear as glass. A silver locket tangled in the weed. “But I’m worried about Quinn. She won’t let go of you.”
An owl flew into the garage, roosting in the rafters. It might have frightened Dana, but she barely noticed.
“She keeps your ashes on the mantel. Yours and Mark’s. She’s convinced there’s more to your story, that we have to find out before she’s ready. Oh, Lily. I am too,” Dana said. Her hand brushed the key around her neck, and with absolute urgency she painted a tiny gold key lying in the sand. “What happened? What did you and Mark do?”
CHAPTER 19
AS THURSDAY APPROACHED, THE GIRLS FOLLOWED Dana as if they were baby chicks and she were the mother hen. The plan was for Martha to come to Hubbard’s Point and stay overnight, with Marnie available for backup. Quinn objected every inch of the way.
“It’s not fair to Grandma,” she said while Dana got dressed. “You know how the salt air bothers her arthritics.”
“Arthritis,” Dana corrected her. “But it’s kind of you to be so concerned.”
“Well, I am. And I’m worried about Mrs. Campbell too. She’s always looking after us, and I think it’s too much. Mommy took turns with her—we’d take care of her girls once in a while.”
“That’s a good point. We’ll have Cameron and June over when I get back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes in disbelief and despair. “I can’t believe you’re just leaving us here. What if something happens? New York is too far for you to go without us. You should take us, Aunt Dana. That way, if you need us, we’ll be right there—we’ll keep you safe.”
Dana smiled at Quinn, touched because her niece was thinking of something happening to her—not to them. In Quinn’s world, bad things happened to the adults, the parents. Dana, dressed in her all-purpose art-world black Catata suit, took Quinn’s hand and pulled her to the edge of the bed.
“I’m going for only one day,” Dana said.
“A day and a night and at least part of tomorrow,” Quinn scowled. Allie, who had been silent until then, rolled out from under the bed and grasped Dana’s ankle.
“Don’t go,” Allie said.
“It’s the little girl who lives under the bed,” Dana said, lifting her up and setting her on the pillows.
“What about your painting?” Quinn asked. “Your gallery lady will understand—in fact, she’ll want you to stay here and work. Give me the phone—I’ll call and tell her how beautiful it is, how it’s your best one yet.”
“New York is too far,” Allie said.
“Unless you take us,” Quinn jumped in. “That’s alternative number two. Number one is that I call the gallery lady, number two is that we go with you.”
“Okay, you two—listen to me,” Dana said. She took a deep breath. “I have to go, and that’s that. I’m very careful—always. I’ve spent lots of time in lots of cities, and New York is one of them. And I plan to come home with presents.”
“We’re not material,” Quinn said. “We don’t care about that.”
“Presents, Quinn,” Allie whispered, tugging her sister’s shirt.
“Come here and hug me,” Dana said, wrapping them in her arms as tightly as she could. Her heart hurt with how much she loved them. Outside the window, pine trees swayed in the August breeze, and joyful seagulls wheeled and cried. It was almost enough to make her change her mind and stay home.
Almost, but not quite. Dana needed a day away. She didn’t want to think about her sister’s problems anymore. She needed a break from these children she loved so much. She craved a business lunch with other grown-ups, an afternoon of wandering the galleries of SoHo with no one wanting anything from her—a taste of her old life, when all she had had to do was paint the pictures and let others sell her work. And she needed to see Sam. That night, seven o’clock at Lincoln Center …
“What’s that?”
At the sound of Quinn’s voice, Dana pulled back. The jacket of her suit had fallen open to reveal the small gold key on the silk cord around her neck. The girls stared, mesmerized, at the key.
“Is it Mommy’s?” Allie asked.
“Why do you say that, Allie?”
“She had one like it.”
“Do you know what it went to?” Dana asked, her stomach flipping.
“Her diary, I think,” Allie said. She giggled nervously, but her eyes looked upset as they swung to Quinn. “She tried her key on Quinn’s diary to see if it fit before she broke it open. Mommy’s key didn’t fit.”
“Shut up, Allie.”
“What happened, Quinn?” Dana asked, shocked.
Quinn shook her head, her face growing red. Allie moved closer on the bed, as if to comfort her sister. The younger girl looked up at Dana. “Mommy read her diary.”
“Is that true?” Dana asked.
Quinn nodded, ashamed.
“Why did she do that?”
“She said she was worried about Quinn,” Allie said. “That she didn’t want to, but she read it for Quinn’s own good. It made Quinn really mad.”
Quinn was shaking. Scowling, beet red, she looked ready to bolt. Dana took both her hands and shook them gently. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “Your mother was wrong to do it.”
“Even though it was ‘for my own good’?”
Dana shook her head, remembering back thirty years. “Quinn, I’m sorry to tell you we come from a long line of diary readers. When I was your age, or a little younger, my mother got it into her head that I was taking your mother and Marnie—Mrs. Campbell—on dangerous expeditions.”
“Like where?”
“Well, on rowboat picnics out to Gull Island. And across the railroad tracks to look for Indian caves. And trying to swim across the Sound.”
“Were you?”
“Umm, of course not.” She coughed. “I would never do such dangerous things. What do you take me for? The fact is, I wouldn’t have written about it if I had. But my mother thought I might have, so for my own good she rooted out my diary and read the whole thing.”
“Were there boys in there?” Allie asked.
Dana nodded gravely. “It was loaded with boys.”
“Mine’s not,” Quinn said. “I haven’t had time for boys.”
“Well, anyway, my mother read my diary, and I felt as if she had read my soul.”
“I felt like that,” Quinn said.
“It took a long time for us to build our trust back.”
“It would have,” Quinn whispered, “but my mother died first.”
Dana hugged her. “Now I almost wish I weren’t going to New York,” she said. “I’m really glad we talked about this. I’m coming back tomorrow, and I promise not to read your diary. I promise, Quinn. No matter what happens.”
“Really?”
“Really and truly. And, Quinn—I know your mother wishes she hadn’t read it either.”
“How?”
“Because I know your mother. She let her maternal instincts get in the way of remembering what it was like to be a girl. Don’t be mad at her for that. It only means she loved you so much, she couldn’t help herself.”
“I wish she was here so I could hear it from her,” Quinn whispered.
“So do I,” Dana said into her braids.
ONCE SHE CLIMBED onto the train, Dana felt like a different person. Her mother and the girls stood on the platform outside the small blue station, seeing her off. They might have been waving white lace handkerchiefs and she might have been a boy departing for war, so great was the pathos in their faces.
But as the train picked up steam and headed west, Dana felt the responsibilities of aunthood flying off her shoulders. She
was a single, world-traveling artist once again, leaving behind the pressures of small-town child-rearing, of suburban life. The train was air-conditioned. Outside, steam rose from the Connecticut marshes. The tide was out, and crab tracks scuttled through the mud. Herons hid in the shadows. New Haven and Bridgeport were hotbeds of traffic and trackside drama. Whizzing by, Dana saw it all. It was a child-free feast for her eyes.
She got off at Penn Station. Instead of getting a cab, she took the subway: the three train, down to Fourteenth Street. She meandered past the brick town houses along Twelfth Street, into the West Village. With time to kill, she stopped at a café on the corner of West Fourth and West Eleventh. The pictures on the wall were of Brittany, and drinking her espresso, she felt homesick for France.
Making her way through the Village, she window-shopped and people-watched. It wasn’t at all hard to get used to. This was how she had lived for so long: losing herself in the world, using the details of everyday life to inspire her art and spark her muse.
When she came upon a small boutique that sold nothing but mobiles, she saw one with mermaids: five smiling mermaids swimming through the air, their hair streaming out behind them. Dana actually bolted away from the window. She didn’t want to think about Hubbard’s Point, the ocean, or any of her personal mermaids today.
Crossing Houston Street, she entered SoHo. This part of town was late to get going. The cafés were just starting to fill up. Dana felt a twinge—although she had always been an early riser, Jonathan had loved to have his coffee and croissant at their local boîte just before noon. She hurried along.
Shops and restaurants abounded. SoHo had changed over the years. When she’d first graduated from RISD, this had been the domain of artists living in lofts in the beautiful old cast-iron buildings. She and Lily had considered applying for AIR—artist-in-residence certification—and trying their luck in the big city.