The Summer Wives_A Novel

by Beatriz Williams

  You would think that a pair of binoculars might be a longshot for a small, old-fashioned general store on Winthrop Island, but Miss Laura poured the coffee and went right into the back. She returned about five minutes later with a cardboard box. “You’re in luck,” she said. “My father must’ve stocked these before he died.”

  “Thanks. How much?”

  “Ten dollars sound fair?”

  I opened the box and pulled out the binoculars. They weren’t much to look at, just plain black, no fancy dials or levers or anything. “Do you mind if I try them out in the harbor?” I asked.

  “Suit yourself.”

  I splashed a little more coffee down my throat and went outside, where the sunshine had finally tumbled over the crest of the hill and filled the harbor with light. The early ferry was just putting in at the dock. I raised the binoculars to my eyes, and the magnification shocked me. I stared in fascination at the face before me, a middle-aged man wearing a felt hat and an expression of intense anticipation as he observed the rituals of docking. I could see the stubble on his chin, the small, diagonal scar disfiguring the middle of his forehead, the three vertical lines between his squinting eyebrows, each detail rendered in bright, sunlit color.

  I lowered the binoculars and went back into the general store, which seemed much darker and plainer than when I left it. I finished the coffee and opened my pocketbook. “Ten dollars is more than fair,” I said.

  “Plus twenty-five cents for the coffee,” she said.

  I dug out a quarter. “Can I ask you a question, Miss Laura?”

  “If you like.”

  “How’s your sister doing, all by herself at the lighthouse?”

  If I was hoping to shock some information out of her by the suddenness of my question, I was surely underestimating—and not for the first time—the stoic Islander nature. A very slight, very discreet vibration passed over her skin. She took away my coffee cup, and when her face was turned to the side, she said, “No idea.”

  “Miss Laura, I wish you’d trust me. God knows I’ve suffered my share in all this. I think I deserve your confidence by now, don’t you?”

  She set the cup and saucer in the wide, deep sink and asked me if there would be anything else.

  “For God’s sake,” I said. “Don’t be such an Islander.”

  Miss Laura whipped around. “What do you know about that? What do you know about living here? About making a living off the crumbs of rich folks? You think you have a right to us. You and the Fishers. Suffered your share? You’re the cause of all this misery. And now you’ve come back, for what? To ruin us all over again?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What have I done?”

  “You just use us when you need us, and you never care about the mess left behind. Bianca and Francisca and poor Joseph. You stay away, do you hear me?”

  My nerves were jumping now, my heart hammering. I felt as I did in that hospital in Wiltshire, packing my things at three o’clock in the morning. I pressed my fingertips into that worn counter, which had once been so new and shining. “Joseph. What about Joseph? Tell me!”

  She came to stand before me, across the counter, and she leaned her own hands against the surface and said, “Never you mind. Never you mind about any of us. I swear, if they burned Greyfriars to the ground, I’d dance on the ashes. I would.”

  “Laura!”

  Miss Laura jumped guiltily and turned to the stockroom door, where her mother stood akimbo in a neat blue dress and cardigan sweater, unbuttoned.

  I said, “Stay away from what, Laura? Tell me!”

  “Deus meu, Laura. What’s that fly in your eye? Miranda has nothing to do with our troubles.”

  “But—”

  “We have all got our misery, rich and poor and in between. And we each bring our own shame upon ourselves, and God alone can judge us.” She pointed to the storeroom. “Go. They are bringing some boxes from the ferry, I need you to unpack them.”

  She was the kind of woman who must be obeyed, and Miss Laura, after a brief, resentful mutiny, pushed herself away from the counter and followed the path laid for her by that single finger. When she was gone, Mrs. Medeiro turned to me.

  “I am so sorry, Miranda. Girls can be so impertinent.” She glanced down at the binoculars on the counter. “Is that for the moon tonight?”

  She seemed perfectly serious, as if she actually thought I was going to observe, with a pair of bird-watching binoculars, a couple of astronauts prowling the Sea of Tranquility. I tucked them back into the box with my trembling fingers. “I don’t think the weather’s going to cooperate. We’re headed up to the Monks’ instead, to watch the landing on television.”

  “It’s so exciting. I remember riding in a donkey cart back in Portugal, when I was a girl. I never saw a car until I was sixteen. Now we are walking on the moon. The moon!”

  “It hardly seems possible, does it? I’ve got my fingers crossed that everything goes well.”

  “I will say ten Hail Marys tonight. I have been praying all week since they started up their rockets.” She nodded at the box. “Did you get everything you needed?”

  “I did, thank you,” I said, as if my heart were not still pounding, as if I didn’t hear Laura’s voice knocking in my head—stay away, stay away—and because I couldn’t sustain another word of conversation, I wished her a good morning and left, to the faint jingling of bells, out into the familiar salt atmosphere of the harbor. The passengers were now disembarking the ferry, and I spied the man I’d observed earlier at ten or twenty times magnification, who now strode across the landing toward a plain white Chevrolet idling on Hemlock Street. As I watched, mesmerized, he unbuttoned the front of his suit jacket, which was far too heavy for summer, and maybe he felt the weight of my stare, because he turned his head and found me, and his eyes widened in recognition.

  “Miss Schuyler!”

  I whipped around. “Oh! Tom, you startled me. You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl.”

  “My apologies. I was just on my way up to Greyfriars. You’ve saved me the trouble.”

  “Your men are doing a terrific job, if that’s what you’re checking on. The bathrooms are almost finished, and the plasterwork in the dining room—”

  “Oh, I wasn’t going to ask about that. I had a look-in yesterday, while you were out swimming. No, it’s something else. Kind of a favor.” He eyeballed the harbor and adjusted his hat. Tom Donnelly was a man of old habits and persisted in topping off his ensemble with a straw panama hat, an article more typical of one of the summer scions than a year-rounder, but then again he and his father had made a great deal of money building and repairing houses on the Island. I guess he had a right to a panama hat, if he wanted to wear one.

  “What sort of favor?” I asked cautiously.

  “Well, you might’ve heard I’m throwing a little party on Horseshoe Beach at the end of summer. Everyone on the Island’s invited. I thought it might be a nice idea, with the clubhouse closing early for the demolition, and—well, I’ve always liked the way the summer folks and the year-rounders got along on Winthrop. If we could all come together, have a few drinks, a little music, some good times together, it’s just good for the Island.”

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  He stuck his fingers in his belt loops and sort of rocked back and forth, from heel to toe to heel again. Looked back at me and smiled, and now my hackles were truly raised, my inner radar was on high alert. So many people want favors, you know; it’s one of the things they don’t tell you about having your face on magazines and movie posters. Everybody believes you owe him a little piece of yourself.

  “So I was wondering,” he said, “I was hoping you might help us out a little.”

  “Donate something, you mean?”

  “No. I was thinking you might provide a little entertainment for the evening.”

  “Entertainment? And just what did you have in mind?”

  A fine red flush overtook his face. “Oh! N
othing fancy, of course not. I thought—you’ve got all those artists living under your roof—I thought you might organize a little theatrical production for us. Raise the tone of things. It doesn’t have to be long—a half hour or so would be ideal.”

  “I see,” I said slowly.

  “Will you consider it, then? Everyone’d be tickled pink.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they would. Certainly I’ll consider it. Of course it depends on the cast. Whether I can get enough of the residents to pitch in.”

  “Excellent, excellent. You’ll let me know?”

  “I will.”

  He touched his hat. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I do want everyone to have a good time. And Miss Schuyler?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Something with an island theme, you know? Like South Pacific or—or—I don’t know. Since we’ll be on the beach, and we’re an island.”

  I smiled and tucked my cardboard box under my arm. “I’m sure I can think of something, don’t worry.”

  4.

  The morning after I first returned to Greyfriars, I walked all the way down to the harbor and back again, even though the weather was gray and terrible. I wanted to get it over with, to tread that path right away and chase off any ghosts that might be lurking along its curves and slopes. When I reached the cliffs, I went off the road itself and stood in the damp, lengthening grass to gaze out over the Fleet Rock channel, the Sound, the lighthouse, and that was where Isobel found me.

  She’d hardly said a word when I arrived at Greyfriars the evening before, had shown no surprise or curiosity. She’d called for my mother, who hustled and bustled and made space for me, as she might for any artist arriving for a summer’s residency at the Greyfriars Colony—almost as if she’d expected me, come to think of it—and the three of us hadn’t said a word about the past, or the future. Only the immediate present necessity.

  Isobel didn’t speak much on the cliffs, either. We’d stood together, a few feet distant, because our limbs seemed to flinch apart if we tried to approach any closer. The freshness of youth was gone from her face; she was as slender as ever, skinny even, the old athleticism just an echo along her arms and legs. She wore no cosmetics, not even her old swipe of red lipstick, and her straight blond hair had faded and thinned. The sea wind whipped us hard, but neither of us was going to be the one who backed down first. At last she made some remark about the weather, and I replied in kind.

  Then she said, as we stared together across the channel to the lighthouse, “Remember how we rowed out to Fleet Rock, after the wedding?”

  “I remember.”

  “I sometimes wonder if everything would have gone differently. If I hadn’t rowed you out, and you hadn’t fallen in love with Joseph.”

  “It was too late,” I said. “I was already in love with him.”

  “But he wasn’t in love with you yet. It was the Shakespeare that did it, you know. I heard you. You thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I heard you speaking in that voice of yours, and I nearly fell in love with you myself.”

  I couldn’t think of any reply to that. Anyway, my heart was too full, standing there in that familiar grass, watching Long Island Sound twitch below me. Eventually she turned me to face her and ran her fingers along the enormous bruise that disfigured the side of my face, and I willed myself to stand there and let her do it, though my skin shied away from her skin.

  I don’t know how long we stood there, while she examined my wounds. I stared at her critical face and thought how plain she was, and how I had once thought her the most beautiful creature alive. At some point, I reached up and pulled her hand from my cheek.

  “Whose idea was it, anyway?” I asked. “The colony.”

  “Mine. I knew she wouldn’t take in boarders, she’s too proud. So I thought, let’s call it something else. Something with prestige. Artists command respect, you know, even when they’re terrible.”

  “Yes, that’s true. Even when they’re terrible.”

  Her eyes slid back to regard the bruise. “I was also the one who told her to write to you. I thought you ought to know about your brother. He ought to know about you.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  She was still staring at the shiner. Without pity, which was a good thing, because I might have socked her if she gave me pity. She just said, shaking her head, “You sure know how to pick them, don’t you?” And she walked away, just like that. In my relief I nearly fell. I’d thought she was going to ask me how I got that bruise, and I would have had to tell her the truth. I couldn’t lie to Isobel.

  But she hadn’t asked me then, and she still hadn’t asked me. For two months, we had lived under the same crumbling roof, and we had shared no further confidences of any kind. Most of the time, she looked past me or—if absolutely necessary—through me, which was why I was so surprised to see her stalk down the driveway, on the twentieth of July, as I returned from the village with my binoculars.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “The television! That’s what’s the matter!”

  “What television?”

  “As if you didn’t know!”

  “I don’t know.”

  She set her hands on her hips. “Somebody set up a television in the library.”

  “A television! Who?”

  “Who? Who?” Isobel snapped her fingers. “I know, maybe it’s Brigitte. I’m sure she’s rolling in dough. She could buy twenty TV sets.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hugh and I are headed to the Monks’ tonight to watch the landing. You should come along, you and Mama. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

  “Aren’t you just full of clever ideas. No, thank you.”

  “I’m serious. You should. You can’t hide yourself from the world forever.”

  “I’m not hiding myself from the world.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “I don’t know, Miranda. What do you call what you’re doing? Because I don’t see that husband of yours anywhere around here. I don’t see him calling, or sending postcards, or writing messages in the sky. I’ve been wondering if he even knows you’re here.”

  Her eyes, for the first time since my arrival, gazed directly into mine, and for an instant that fierce blue gaze looked exactly as it did in my memory. We stood next to the giant rhododendron that served as a final barrier before you turned the corner and saw Greyfriars, and in the flat, overcast light the lines of her face disappeared. She was ablaze with life.

  “I don’t know anything about the television,” I said, and I walked past her down the drive, around the corner, cutting across the circle of the driveway—the fountain long since dry—toward the door.

  She caught up in long, lithe strides. “You’ve come here to fix us, have you? Come here to make amends, maybe? Lavish all your stinking money on this place and buy some kind of forgiveness?”

  “I don’t need your forgiveness.”

  “If it’s Hugh you want, you can’t have him. He’s ours.”

  “Hugh belongs to Hugh, Isobel. Not to any of us. If you try to hold him here, you’re going to lose him altogether.”

  “How dare you,” she said.

  “Oh, I dare. He’s my brother, too. If you can’t see how badly he wants to break free—”

  “Is that why you bought that sailboat? So he could just take off and leave us, whenever he wanted?”

  I was climbing the front steps. At the top, I turned and looked over my shoulder. Isobel stood at the edge of the driveway, where it met the steps, and her face was defiant.

  “How do you know about that?” I said.

  “My uncle Peter told me yesterday. Dr. Huxley’s been trying to unload that ship for years, and then you, out of the blue—”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly why I bought Hugh that sailboat. And I’m having it refitted and stocked it with food and water and maps, ready to sail whenever he wants. Because a boy like that needs to make his ow
n adventures.”

  “A boy like that needs to understand who his friends are.”

  “Don’t, Isobel. Don’t play the matriarch. You of all people should know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I understand, believe me. I understand a hell of a lot more than you do.”

  Her expression was so angry, and her voice was so bitter. The driveway stood behind her, the unkempt gravel and the wilderness of rhododendrons. That first week in May, I had gone down on my hands and knees and pulled up all the weeds, starting from the front door and working my way outward, weed by weed, to the road. But they came back. That’s the thing about weeds, you can’t let up. As soon as you’ve finished pulling out the last ugly, persistent plant, you have to start right back at the beginning again.

  “What happened, Isobel?” I said softly. “What happened to you? You were so full of life. You were going to escape, you were going to do something.”

  “That was you. You left. Someone had to stay and take care of them.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Neither did I.” She paused and looked away. “He was my brother.”

  “She was my mother. My own mother, and she wouldn’t speak to me. You wouldn’t speak to me. I would have given anything—”

  “Oh, stop. You took my mother, didn’t you? I’d say that was a fair trade.”

  “Your mother took me. She took me when nobody else would.”

  Isobel turned back to me. Her cheeks were pink, and the tip of her nose. “I don’t know why she’s letting you do this. I don’t know why she’s letting you take over the damned household with your money and workmen and your charm. As far as I’m concerned, you can just fly back to London.” She made a motion with her hands, as of wings. “Go on. Fly.”

  I set my hand on the doorknob and stared at it. My thumbnail was short and bare of varnish, almost childlike, and I liked the change. “No, thanks. I might stay for a while, in fact,” I said, and I was just starting to turn the doorknob, to push open the heavy door, when Isobel’s voice stopped me again.