The Summer Wives_A Novel

by Beatriz Williams

  “Joseph!”

  I turned, but I couldn’t see him, because the clouds had moved in around sunset and the moon was obscured. I just saw a movement in the darkness, a shadow pass between me and the lights of Greyfriars, and then a hand touched mine. I flung my arms around his neck.

  “Ouch,” he said.

  “Sorry, that’s the flashlight.”

  “Flashlight?”

  “I was going to signal you.”

  “But you don’t know the code, do you?”

  “I thought you’d figure it out anyway.”

  He laughed. “I wasn’t going to wait around for any damned flashlight, believe me.”

  I drew back. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “Not long. A half hour, maybe. I figured if you were going to steal away, you’d have to wait until your parents went to bed.”

  “If I was going to steal away?” I said.

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t be sure.”

  We stood apart by only a few inches. My right hand gripped the flashlight; my other hand had somehow found his. The connection seemed both tenuous and momentous, as if the firm, intimate touch of his fingers was too good to last. “Let’s go to this beach of yours,” I said.

  “We can’t. You can’t stay out all night, not with your parents home. Anyway, I don’t have any sandwiches, and it’s too dark to sail that far.”

  “Then let’s go to the lighthouse. We can sit on the rocks, on that little beach there, like the first night.”

  “Why not stay here? Nobody’s going to find us.”

  “No! I want to go somewhere, I want to get away from Greyfriars.”

  He glanced over my shoulder, almost as if he could detect the sea behind me. “Tide’s pretty high right now, with the full moon. The current’s going to murder someone.”

  “Please, Joseph. Not here, anywhere but here.”

  There must have been some note of desperation in my voice, because he didn’t say anything for a moment, and I could just about hear the sound of his thoughts turning over, or maybe it was the sound of the blood in his veins, the blood in my veins, our heartbeats, our breath, our longing.

  He cupped a hand around my cheek, and the heat of his palm surprised me. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he said. “Remember that.”

  10.

  For many years afterward, I thought about that journey across the Fleet Rock channel, and whether I felt some kind of portent as Joseph positioned the boat inside the mighty rush of the tide. But no. At that moment, I felt nothing but exhilaration, nothing but the lightness of escape and of coming joy. I remember the breeze was chillier than I expected, as if something new and cool had insinuated itself into the atmosphere since the afternoon, but I imagined it meant only that autumn was coming, that we had better snatch our delights while we could. Anyway, Joseph had given me his thick, cabled sweater, had settled it over my head with his own hands, so the chill couldn’t find me.

  I certainly didn’t notice that Joseph struggled overmuch with the oars. The journey toward the lighthouse was easier when the tide was rushing out—as it then did—because Fleet Rock lay a little to the east of Greyfriars, not true south. Going back was the trouble. We’d have to wait until the tide slackened; not even Joseph could haul us into the Greyfriars dock against a full spring tide. But I wasn’t thinking about our return journey at all. I think, at the time, I wanted to stay on that rock forever with Joseph. You know how it is when you’re eighteen, and you’ve fallen in love for the first time. I watched him leap to the dock with the rope and secure the boat; I moved to the bow and took his hand and leaped too. He made one of his joyful noises and kissed me, and we scrambled without words over the rocks to the small, coarse beach on the other side, nearly engulfed by the tide, where he found us a tiny resting place like a nest, and the water washed up almost to our toes.

  I tucked my head in the hollow of his shoulder and spoke softly.

  The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,

  When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

  And they did make no noise, in such a night

  Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls

  And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents

  Where Cressid lay that night.

  He laughed and answered me.

  In such a night

  Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew

  And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself

  And ran dismayed away.

  “Why, how did you know that?”

  “Maybe you’re not the only one who knows a little Shakespeare, Miss Schuyler. They teach this stuff in the Winthrop Island School, too.”

  “But they don’t make you memorize it, do they?”

  “I guess I always liked that bit. What comes next?”

  “Dido,” I said.

  In such a night

  Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

  Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love

  To come again to Carthage.

  “Poor Dido,” said Joseph. “He never did come back, did he?”

  “No. He never did.”

  The water kicked against the rocks. How strange, to be nestled here in Joseph’s arms, the two of us alone in the universe, talking about Dido. Across the water, the lights of Long Island twinkled, as if from the other side of the ocean, the other side of the world.

  “I used to sit on this beach and dream about sailing away somewhere,” Joseph said.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere. See the world.”

  “You’d need to build a bigger sailboat,” I said. “And find a crew.”

  “That’s what I used to think.”

  “So you gave it up?”

  “Sort of. I don’t know, lately I’ve been dreaming of something else. Like I might find some girl to sail with me.” He held me in front of him, between his legs, inside the arc of his arms. His chin rested on the top of my head. “Just sail away together, without telling anyone. Maybe go to Bermuda first, just to get our sea legs, and then head south. The Caribbean, South America. If we liked someplace well enough, we’d stop and build a hut on the beach and live there. What’s the matter?”

  “It sounds beautiful, that’s all.”

  “’Course, I’d have to finish college first. Work hard for a year or two, saving up to build a good, strong, sweet-sailing ship.”

  “Yes,” I said, and a drop of rain fell on my nose.

  “Wouldn’t be for years yet, I guess. But it would be worth it. Just think.”

  I turned in his arms. “Why not now? Just leave, just elope. Borrow somebody’s sailboat, if you have to.”

  “Because she might have second thoughts. Somewhere off the coast of Brazil or maybe Argentina, when the weather starts to turn.”

  “Never.”

  “Well,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I guess we’ll have to just wait and see. You might have other ideas, after your first year of college.”

  “I might have a lot of new ideas, but this one—this one won’t change—”

  “Miranda.”

  He pressed his palm against the back of my head, urging me into the softness of his sweater. I breathed in the scent of wool and wondered why he stopped me, when I had so much I wanted to say, so many words cramming the inside of me.

  Joseph said, “Listen to me. I want you to promise me something. Just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you get to college—”

  “Don’t talk about that yet.”

  “No, I mean it. When you get to college, I want you to think about auditioning for something. The school play, whatever it is.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. You’re a natural. There’s something inside you, and when it comes out—I can’t explain—I just think you ought to try. Promise me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t maybe. Do it. Look, I’ll tell you what. You try out for tha
t play, whatever it is, and I’ll come to watch you. I’ll borrow some fellow’s car, I’ll bring five dozen roses, we’ll go out to dinner someplace grand—”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “I mean it. I do.”

  “I don’t want to act in front of a bunch of people.”

  “With you, it’s not acting. It’s something else. It’s you, coming alive with something I can’t even—and I don’t want to be the fellow who stands in your way.”

  “But I don’t want to share that with anyone but you.”

  “Miranda. Just promise me.”

  I didn’t answer. At Foxcroft, I had never considered performing in anything; the terror of standing on a stage, of not being good enough, had held me fast. Now Joseph’s arms held me fast. The world spread out before me, vast and twinkling with promise. He laid his hands on my hands and spoke in my ear.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  11.

  Something I need to tell you. Those were the words I heard when my uncle came to tell me about Daddy. He worked in the War Office, that’s how he knew the news first. Instead of sending a telegram, they sent Uncle Harry. He wore his best uniform, so I knew something was wrong, even before I looked at his face. My mother was already upstairs, crying.

  He crouched down, so that he was right down at my level, eye to eye. He was a handsome man, my uncle Harry. Blue Schuyler eyes, fair Schuyler hair. In my hair, I take after my mother. “There’s something I have to tell you, Miranda,” he said, taking my hand. “It’s about your father.”

  And I don’t remember his exact words. I just remember that the walls and the floor disappeared, and I was falling irretrievably into darkness, and the only thing holding me steady was my uncle Harry’s strong arms, which were scratchy and smelled of wet wool.

  A week later, Uncle Harry left for Italy and never came back.

  12.

  So you’ll forgive me if I shivered a little when Joseph said those words to me, There’s something I need to tell you. Shivered and pulled away, actually launched myself out of his arms, so that he had to take my hand and ask me what was wrong.

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “You can’t tell anybody else. You have to promise me that. Not even my father. Especially not my father.”

  “Why? What’s it about?”

  “Sort of a family secret. I’ve been thinking about telling you all evening, since I left you at Greyfriars. Not because I want to cause trouble or anything, but because I want to be straight with you, I don’t want to hide anything, and Isobel—you had the wrong idea—I wanted to explain, so you’d understand, you’d know there’s no possibility—Isobel—”

  “Isobel what?”

  “She’s my sister.”

  For a moment, I just knelt there on the damp sand. A gust of wind blew against us, the vanguard of some approaching squall. I remember counting the sweeps of the light above us, though I don’t remember how many passed. “Your what?” I whispered.

  “You see, a long time ago, before I was born, obviously—”

  “Whose—whose—so your father—”

  “Is Hugh Fisher,” he said. “Is your stepfather.”

  “He’s your father.”

  “Yes.”

  I noticed, in some distant part of my brain, that the wind continued to rise, that the few tiny drops had turned into a drizzle. It struck my head, it struck Joseph’s forehead and his nose. I reached up and wiped the rain from his cheek, but it was no use. As soon as my hand moved away, there was more rain behind it.

  Hugh Fisher, I thought. Hugh Fisher is his father. Fathered him. Engaged in—engaged in—with some woman—with Joseph’s mother. And made Joseph. And made—at almost the same time, but not quite the same time—Isobel.

  My stepfather did this. Hugh Fisher did this.

  “Say something,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  “You look like you don’t believe me.”

  “I do. I—I don’t know what to think. How—your mother—”

  “They had an affair, just before he married Isobel’s mother. He didn’t realize she was pregnant until it was too late, so they made the best of things. She married Dad, and that’s why she and the aunts don’t get along, because my aunt Francisca was supposed to marry him instead. And then when I was born, Francisca took a boat out to Fleet Rock, nobody knows why, and you know she drowned. So it’s trouble all around, and—”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Mama told me, when I was about ten or eleven. She was worried because I spent so much time playing with Isobel, because we were so close, even then. She wanted to make sure I knew, so that—well, you know . . .”

  “Does Isobel know?”

  “She knows.”

  “So all that time—”

  “All that time.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God.”

  Another gust swept against us, a handful of nervous raindrops, and now I felt it. At last, I felt a premonition prickling my skin, or maybe it was just that first wave of rain, needle-sharp, promising a deluge in due course. I knelt there in the sand and stared at Joseph’s anxious face, trying to comprehend the facts, the meaning of the facts, the meaning of the meaning. A whole world, a vast history of Winthrop Island I had never, in my innocence, suspected. Isobel and Joseph, brother and sister. Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Vargas—what?

  “Don’t be afraid,” Joseph said. “It’s just me. Same fellow I was a minute ago.”

  I shook my head and tried to speak.

  Joseph started to reach for me, but his hands fell back at the last instant. His eyes were glassy with fear and moonlight. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I thought, I must do something. I have to do something, before the squall arrives. I took his face in my hands, and exactly as my fingers touched his cheeks, the rain began to descend in earnest, heavy drops, so I kissed him. I thought if I kissed him, the rain would stop, the coming squall would dissolve harmlessly into the air, and Joseph—I don’t know what he thought, just that he kissed me back as frantically as I kissed him. That his warm hands laid themselves upon my skin, under his sweater he had given me, under my pajama shirt beneath that, and it seemed to me that something of myself flowed like a current from my body into his, that something of him returned into me by the same channel. I couldn’t feel the rain anymore. I pulled him down on the beach with me, and there was this moment in which the tide might have turned, the course of our history might have diverted into another strait. Joseph’s hands found my breasts, my leg slid around his, and I remember thinking I would do anything, I would give anything I had to keep him there, hold him there, until the storm passed at last. I would arch my hips against his. I would slip my hands to the waist of his trousers and—and—

  Joseph flung himself away, panting, and said in a hoarse voice, “You’re getting soaked. Let’s go inside.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care.”

  We stared at each other, a couple of inches apart. The rain rattled the stones around us and coursed through my hair and my face and neck, so I felt I was drowning. Above our heads, the light made a long, eternal sweep.

  “Promise me something,” he said. “Don’t ever let them keep you down. Those bastards, don’t let them change you.”

  “What bastards?”

  He stood up. “Let’s go inside.”

  13.

  By the time Joseph wrenched the door open and hauled me into the lighthouse, we were both as thoroughly drenched as if we’d plunged into a swimming pool. That’s the thing about these summer rainstorms, so brief and potent. Two miles north, they were probably dry as a desert, had no idea of our local deluge. Just imagine if that particular squall had nudged off its course and blown elsewhere.

  The room was dark and thick with the afternoon’s heat still trapped inside. Joseph’s hand clenched mine like he thought I might bolt away. He flipped a switch and a bulb came on overhead, illuminating a small
living room, a sofa and two worn chairs, terribly old fashioned and as neat as a pin. “I’ll get you some dry clothes from upstairs,” he whispered, releasing my hand.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, stay here,” he said quickly. “Pops’s asleep, I don’t want to wake him.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She’s awake, keeping the light.”

  “I thought it was all electric now.”

  “She’s got this neurosis about the light going out. Just wait here, all right? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I wanted desperately to see Joseph’s bedroom, to know this place where he slept at night, where he had grown from an infant to a man, but there was something in his expression that warned me back. I thought about what he had told me, these revelations, the terrible, merciful deceit practiced on Mr. Vargas. So I nodded. “Don’t be long.”

  “I won’t.”

  He hurried through the doorway at the other end of the room and I stood there dripping on the rug, afraid to sit down on any of the polished brown furniture, the clean, faded upholstery. Between the two armchairs was a table on which about a half dozen framed photographs stood in neat formation, like soldiers. I stared at them for a moment, consumed with guilty curiosity. The one in the center was a wedding portrait, I could see that much, and I stepped closer and closer until there I was, picking up the photograph in its heavy silver frame, examining the terrified couple within. I recognized Mr. Vargas instantly because he hadn’t changed at all, just as stumpy and ugly as he was today, only less grizzled. He looked shocked, as if he hadn’t expected to get married when he woke up that morning, and now he stood in his best pressed suit next to a voluptuous girl in a dress of pale lace—the material seemed more gray than white—whose eyes were as wide and stunned as his own. Maybe the flash had caught them both by surprise, I thought, or maybe they’d had a spat before the wedding, born of nerves, and nearly called it all off. They were standing amid rocks, next to a stone building, which I realized was the lighthouse. Mrs. Vargas carried a bouquet of flowers, and her new husband held her elbow delicately, as if afraid to touch her.