Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  Partly it was the look in her mother’s eyes that had her so upset. That morning, when her mother had tried talking to Regis about her father and marriage and going back to see Dr. Corry, her gaze had been so distant and tormented, Regis had almost wanted to turn the tables and ask her mother if she wanted to talk about it. Her mother said she was too young to get married and have children? Hah! Maybe her mother should go to therapy, just for a reality check.

  One of the curses of what had happened to their family was that Regis had had to grow up so fast. With her father gone so long, she had stepped in to comfort her mother, pull her weight by working two jobs, and look after her younger sisters.

  Getting married almost made her feel like a kid in comparison.

  “You okay, Reeg?” Jennifer, her coworker, asked, glancing over as if to see why Regis’s line was moving so slowly.

  “Just a little clumsy tonight,” Regis said, wiping a streak of butter pecan off the counter. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jenn said. “Only three and a half hours till closing, and then this will all be just a bad memory.”

  Regis laughed and took the next order. As always, there was a big crowd—people who had spent the day at the beach or on boats, wanting a treat to finish off their day. She stood behind the counter, working fast, occasionally glancing up to see who was there. Every time a man approached with his kids, she felt herself tilt, her stomach flip. Every father reminded her of hers; every tall man made her think that tonight was the night, that her father had finally come home. But those were childish thoughts. She was a grown-up now. Her father had missed the last years of her childhood.

  Serving ice cream to all the hot beach girls—some still in wet bikinis, from swimming after dark, others in capri pants or sundresses—and to all the cute beach boys in shorts or jeans, some with their shirts off, Regis felt like the unsexiest, dorkiest kid in Black Hall. Dusting the books in Aunt Bernie’s library, which she had done that morning, seemed glamorous in comparison.

  Scooping ice cream all evening, the only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that her father was on the way. No one knew what it was like for her, realizing that he’d gone to jail for six years because of her. Even though she couldn’t remember the details of that stormy day, certain sounds had recently started becoming more vivid: thunder crashing out at sea, Gregory White screaming he was going to kill them, the sound of her father’s fist smashing his face.

  She pushed those flashes away with happier memories: Irish accents and green fields, gorgeous old ruins of towers and castles on so many hilltops. Their first day there, after spending time on the headland with her father’s amazing sculpture, their family had visited the graveyard in Timoleague, where her great-grandmother lay buried—at the mouth of the Argideen River, with wide marshes so reminiscent of the ones here in Black Hall.

  In Skibbereen, the family had gone to the Paragon, a pub with dark walls and stained-glass windows. All the tables had been taken, and the proprietor had grabbed Regis’s father by the arms, said in a friendly, wonderful Irish voice, “Whatever you do, don’t leave!” He found chairs, pushed tables together, and the next thing Regis knew, the whole family had been seated, and someone took the stage and started playing a fiddle, and Regis had been so happy, she could almost ignore the tension between her parents.

  “Hey,” she heard now as she cleaned up the spilled ice cream.

  “Peter!” she said, glancing up to see him standing in line with Jimmy, Josh, Hayley, Kris, and some other kids from Hubbard’s Point. “I didn’t expect to see you!”

  “We decided that Peter needed some ice cream and cheering up,” Kris said. “We were hanging around on the boardwalk, but all he kept saying was, ‘Regis’s working tonight.’”

  “It’s true,” Josh said, his arm around Hayley. “It was getting boring to hear him.”

  “What can I say?” Peter asked, his eyes burning into Regis’s. “I have a one-track mind.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” said one of the girls Regis didn’t recognize. Her laugh was a seductive, electric trill. She was small and blonde, with a dark tan everywhere. Regis knew, because she was wearing so few clothes: a tiny bikini top, short denim shorts with the top button gone, and legs up to her chin. “Boys and girls in love—it’s so our parents!”

  “You got a better plan?” Kris asked.

  “Love the one you’re with,” the girl said. “It’s the only way to go.”

  “Not for Peter,” Hayley said, smiling at Regis.

  “Life’s too short,” the girl said, giving Peter a sizzling look.

  Peter seemed to be ignoring her, still gazing at Regis, keeping their intense connection. So why did Regis feel like vaulting over the counter and smashing a cone of mint chocolate chip into the girl’s face?

  “Down, Alicia,” Josh said.

  “Well, that’s how we do things in New York,” Alicia said, elbowing him. “You are all so provincial out here! Last year Peter seemed like fun, and this year he’s totally boring. Next year I’m making my parents take a house in the Hamptons instead of Connecticut.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Regis said.

  “Oooh, bitch-bite,” Alicia said, fixing Regis with a moderately amused stare. It actually sent a shiver down Regis’s spine as she realized that she was suddenly on the girl’s radar screen.

  “Hey,” someone called from the back of the line. “Could we get some service here?”

  “You know,” Alicia said, leaning her elbows on the counter, “he’s right. Looks like you’d better get to work….”

  “What will you have?” Regis asked.

  Peter and his friends stepped in, ordering ice cream cones. But Alicia just stayed there, never taking her eyes off Regis. She looked as voracious as a wild dog, and not half as nice. “I’ll have a butterscotch sundae,” she said. “Hot butterscotch always makes me think of sex.” As she said the words, she wiggled her hips, brushing them against Peter.

  Josh and Kris rolled their eyes, and Hayley shook her head. Peter just stepped back, gazing at Regis in a reassuring, protective way, letting everyone knew they were together. “Knock it off, Alicia,” he said.

  “Oh, poopie,” she said. “You’re all such a bunch of New England puritans. Get me back to the city!”

  As she went to get their order, Regis’s hands were shaking. By the time she brought back their ice cream, Peter was standing off to the side, talking to some other kids. Regis had seen them at Hubbard’s Point, but she didn’t really know them. It was a whole different, self-contained world there—Peter’s old childhood friends, and the new ones from this summer, all gathered together in the idyllic land between the railroad trestle and Long Island Sound. Some of them had full-time summer jobs, but some, like Peter, took it somewhat easy. Regis thought of what her mother had said, and tried to push the words away.

  Regis’s love for Peter was tender and private. She knew that some people, including her family, questioned it. He could seem a little spoiled, even arrogant. But Regis loved him. She loved how he looked at her, with amusement and longing in his eyes, as if he knew she was about to make him smile, as if he’d never wanted anyone more.

  When they were new, he had once come to their house to pick her up. It was raining. For most of the day there had been occasional soft showers, just misting the trees, but now it was really coming down. They had planned to go to the movies with his Hubbard’s Point friends, but Regis had wanted to run down to the beach in the rain. She’d kicked off her shoes, tugged him by the hand.

  She remembered the expression on his face—hesitant, reluctant, as if there was nothing in the world he wanted to do less than go running in the rain. But she’d stood on tiptoe, looking him in the eye. His gaze had been so direct; she remembered the feeling that he was taking her in, that she was really registering with him, that he was trying to figure out what made her tick.

  He’d held her, one hand on the small of her back, the other stroking her cheek.r />
  “Would it make you happy?” he asked.

  “More than anything,” she said.

  He’d slipped off his loafers, fancy and Italian, left them in a corner of the kitchen. He hadn’t asked for a rain jacket, hadn’t grabbed an umbrella from the stand beside the door. Grabbing Regis’s hand, he’d held the screen door, and they’d gone tearing across the field. Rain pelted their faces and shoulders, their backs, soaking them through.

  They’d gone puddle-jumping, through pools of water collecting in the hollows at the base of the hills, up and down the rows of trellised grapevines in the vineyard, and into the wildflower meadow. Their feet squished through the mud, stomped on the wet grass, all the way down to the beach.

  Holding his hand, Regis had run across the sand. Their bare feet were covered with mud and sand, and they couldn’t stop, they ran together, fully dressed, straight into the water. They were already so drenched, right down to their underwear, that they could barely tell the difference. The rain water had felt cool, but the sea felt like a warm bath.

  Regis had clung to Peter, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, the salt water holding them both, making them buoyant. Peter had kissed her, their mouths open and hot, and his expression so full of excitement and joy, and Regis had known that he had never, ever done anything like that with any other girl. It might have seemed like a small thing to other people. But to Regis, it was huge, and she knew it was for Peter, too. They had crossed a line. And she loved him for following her where she wanted them to go.

  “Mmm,” Alicia said now, taking her sundae, then licking the whipped cream and eating the cherry without even using her hands. “Yummy.”

  “Enjoy your ice cream,” Regis said to everyone.

  “Regis,” Peter said, bounding over, taking his coffee cone. “Thanks. What time do you get off?”

  “Eleven,” she said. “At closing.”

  “I’ll come pick you up. I can’t wait, Regis. I never can…”

  “Oh, Peter,” she said, overwhelmed with love, leaning forward for a quick kiss. The people in line were crowding up, impatient to get her attention.

  “I love coffee ice cream—give me some,” Alicia said, leaning toward Peter’s cone and licking it. “Yummy,” she said again, looking over his shoulder, straight at Regis.

  Why was Peter letting her do that? The sight felt like a punch in the stomach to Regis. She closed her eyes for a moment, to block it out, and something weird happened: she flashed back to Ireland, when they were all there, Gregory White dead on the cliff. Regis had been in shock, her memories frozen in amber. Driftwood, fallen from the sculpture. No—pulled loose by Gregory White. Lying on the ground. Then covered with blood, flung into the sea.

  Just last night, that image had poked through—as if it were alive, a memory she wished she could push back into the sticky ancient mess, never to emerge, jumbled together with her mother crying, yelling that she should never have brought the girls to Ireland, that she had always known something terrible like this would happen.

  “There are no rules with you,” her mother had wept. “It’s so dangerous…”

  “Honor,” her father had said as the police led him away. “I didn’t know this would happen—I had no idea. I didn’t want Regis to be here.”

  “But of course she would be,” her mother had said. “She would follow you anywhere—to the edge of the world. That’s what she did, don’t you get it, John?”

  “Don’t hurt him,” Regis had whispered, just like a little zombie. “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt my father.”

  No one could understand her. They thought her teeth were chattering, couldn’t make out the words. Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him.

  Don’t hurt him, Regis thought now, watching Peter leave. What a thing to remember. Had she really said that, and why? Or was it just her crazy mind conjuring things out of nowhere, nothing better to do while she waited on pins and needles for her father to come home?

  The Hubbard’s Point kids climbed into their cars. Regis’s hands were still trembling as she filled the orders of everyone in line. Once Peter had driven away, Regis’s thoughts went back to what they’d been at the beginning of the night: drawn to fathers and their kids, coming to Paradise for some ice cream. Once she glanced up, thought she saw her father standing under the trees at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Dad!” she said under her breath, dropping a scoop of chocolate chip right on the toe of her sneaker.

  When she looked up again, the man was gone. She busied herself, cleaning up the floor, starting from scratch with the person’s order.

  Hurry home, she thought, making a chocolate chip ice cream cone. I need you, Daddy….

  After midnight, when everyone but Sisela was asleep, Agnes made her rounds. The Academy was a different world then. Everyone slept so peacefully; her mother and sisters never even heard her leave. Regis was exhausted from working late at the ice cream stand, and she’d fallen asleep in her uniform. Agnes kissed her sisters’ foreheads before she left, and they barely stirred. Only Sisela saw her go, watching her with wide green eyes, giving her blessing and encouragement.

  Once last year, Agnes had sneaked into the convent, tiptoeing into the enclosure where the nuns lived. Laypeople weren’t allowed in there. Agnes had been afraid she might be committing a sin by trespassing there, but then she remembered how Aunt Bernie had once taken her and her sisters behind the wall. They had been very young, curious about nuns. Aunt Bernie had said, “We’re just like everyone else, except we live in a convent. It’s not so mysterious.” And it hadn’t been, not really. There were normal bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room with one long table.

  But to Agnes, it was wonderful. And she thought nuns were different. They saw the world uniquely; that was why they had to leave it. Because no matter what Aunt Bernie had said, Agnes knew that nuns weren’t like everyone else. She thought their hearts were more tender. They felt things so deeply. They cared about everyone and everything so much, it sometimes hurt to breathe. Whenever she heard them chanting the hours—vigils, lauds, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline, beautiful psalms full of emotion and longing and praise—she thought the nuns sounded like angels who had somehow come to earth.

  At vespers, in the early evening, with lights just beginning to go on in the convent and the refectory, Agnes would stand still and listen, and very faintly, just above the sounds of the waves gently rolling in and the wind rustling the leaves, she would hear the nuns chanting. The sound was ineffable, so beautiful, tugging at her heart.

  The soft, piercingly lovely voices would chant the psalms, one hundred and fifty of them. The nuns chanted them all through the hours of the day, starting at vigils, three-thirty in the morning. The sisters faced each other in two rows on either side of the aisle, with one side singing the first two lines, and the other singing the second two, sounding like dueling angels climbing ladders to the sky.

  The time she had snuck into the convent, she had walked past the part where Aunt Bernie and the school nuns lived, all the way to the back of the house, to the cloister. This was where the contemplatives lived, behind the filigree cast-iron door, in the enclosure. Aunt Bernie had lived here at the beginning, when she had first become a nun. Agnes didn’t know why, but she knew that Aunt Bernie had suffered greatly. She could tell by the shadows in her blue eyes.

  Agnes had gripped the iron curlicues with both hands, wishing she were on the other side. Her heart had ached, tears welling up, her whole body shaking; that was how badly she’d wanted to be in there. She was so positive that she belonged in the cloister. To be shut off from the world, away from all the pain. Not because people out here were so terrible—no, not that at all. Because they were so dear. Because Agnes loved them so much. She couldn’t bear it sometimes. She thought that she would die of love—for her family, the way they had been before everything broke in Ireland; even more in the six years since.

 
No one had caught her that night. And no one had caught her any other night, either. Sometimes she thought someone was watching her. Once she glimpsed a flash of red—like a fox, or a redheaded spirit—peeking out over the stone wall. Other times, there were streaks of white, like angel wings.

  Agnes believed that she was having visions of an angel with red hair.

  Visions were not new here. No one knew the details, but all the girls whispered that Sister Bernadette Ignatius had once had a visitation from the Virgin Mary. Agnes’s Aunt Bernie! Right here at the Academy. So why shouldn’t Agnes have visions as well?

  Right now, slipping out of her family’s cottage, she looked left and right. She had her camera, the better to record what she had been seeing, slung over her shoulder. The salt breeze was so warm, she ran across the grass wearing nothing but her nightgown. She probably should have changed, but she was in a hurry.

  When she got to the first wall, she jumped up and ran along the top. The stones felt rough under her bare feet, but she didn’t care. She felt breathless with excitement and anticipation of what she was about to see. The moon seemed caught in the treetops, its light broken into shadows on the lawn and stones. Agnes prayed as she ran, jumping from one wall to the next.

  At the top of the hill, she took a deep breath. Here there were no trees; the moon was alone in the sky. Its light flooded down the land, sloping gently into Long Island Sound. Agnes’s heart began to race; she hoped she was right about what was going to happen next. Wishing for visions was one thing; planning for them was another.

  She had prayed for guidance. Knowing that these moments were a gift, she had doubted whether she should ask for more than what was freely given. But she was only human, her mind was full of doubts. Was this a real vision?

  Why did the visions never occur at home, when there were others around? Some days she wondered whether she was imagining the whole thing. So, to be sure, she’d made a plan.