Firefly Beach

by Luanne Rice

  They would drive away from the sea, north through pine woods and meadows of yellow flowers. The road followed a lazy brown river, and when Skye was young they would keep her occupied by telling her to count the red barns and black cows. Her father was so famous, the whole world wanted him, but on those trips he was theirs alone.

  When they got to New Hampshire, to Redhawk Mountain, they would unload all the camping things. The trees were tall, and skinny green caterpillars dangled from branches by silken threads. Her father would help them pitch their tents; he would take the guns out of their cases. The .22-caliber rifles were heavy, especially when the girls were young, but their father taught them how to lift them slowly, to aim carefully.

  Hugh’s face by the campfire was shadowed with worry, for the fact that he had three daughters and the world was a cruel place.

  Caroline had sat between Clea and Skye, listening to him, hearing the sounds made by wild things in the woods. He had told them that learning to shoot was necessary, to protect themselves against predators. His girls were sensitive and kind. Others were not, and bad men existed in a kill-or-be-killed world. They knew he was right, he had said, because of the man who had come to their house. Their father had spoken so gently, as if he were telling a bedtime story.

  The fire crackled. Her sisters were warm beside her, and her father drew them close. He knew they loved wildlife, kept lists of the birds they’d seen. Each had her own garden at Firefly Hill. In some ways, hunting was like a nature walk. The softer you walked, the more creatures you saw. When it was time to kill, you became one with the animal. Mysteriously thrilling, the hunt stirred instincts most humans had long forgotten, a fantastic surging of life deep inside. He talked about hunting the way he talked about art: the ecstasy of life and death.

  Caroline didn’t believe it for a minute. She was thirteen, Clea was eleven, Skye was eight. Listening to their father, faces aglow in the firelight, the three girls were terrified. But they trusted him. He saw to their welfare with passion and kindliness, and if he said they should learn to shoot animals, they would.

  Caroline’s first kill was a squirrel. It sat on the branch of an oak tree, its tail curled over its back. She aimed the way her father had taught her, and squeezed the trigger. The squirrel toppled over. Just like a toy on a shelf, it fell off the branch. It lay on the ground, a black hole in its white fur. Caroline felt sick.

  Her father wanted them to go their own ways, to explore the mountain and hunt on their own. If such independence was terrifying for Caroline, she could only imagine how it was for her younger sisters. She used to follow Skye. She would track her, fifty yards back, as if Skye were her quarry, just watching out for her.

  Once Skye was crossing a narrow bridge across a fast stream. Halfway across she lost her footing, falling into the water. Caroline laid her gun down, kicked off her shoes, and went in after her. It was early spring, and the water came from melting river ice, farther north. The frigid water slashed around her, freezing her limbs, plastering them with the dead leaves of last winter. Her wool clothes weighed her down. Up ahead, Skye kept disappearing under the water.

  By the time Caroline got her arms around Skye, they were in the rapids. The white water hissed in their ears. She spit out mouthfuls of cold water. Blinded by icy spray, she caught nightmare glimpses of snakes sunning themselves on the flat rocks they passed. Bumping into logs, tearing their clothes on sticks, Caroline clutched Skye with one arm and tried to grab branches and vines with the other.

  Crashing down the river, Caroline felt the stones underwater. The force would drive the sisters into deep, swirling pockets, and they would be sucked under and spit out. Craggy boulders blocked their way, too slippery to grasp. The river pulled them forward. Caroline wondered how high the falls would be; she knew they were going over. She wondered if they would die.

  But then the river evened out. The rapids gave way to a wide, peaceful stream. The roar faded away to silence and birds singing. Overwhelmed with her own life, the sense of safety, Caroline began to laugh with joy. She hugged Skye. But Skye didn’t hug back. Her lips were blue. Weighed down by her jacket and boots, she felt like a sack of grain. Caroline pulled her to the riverbank. Skye was alive, and her eyes were open. But they wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t meet Caroline’s.

  “Skye, we’re safe,” Caroline said, rubbing her small hands.

  “Did you see?” Skye asked, her voice small and frozen. “All those snakes on the rocks back there?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I want to go home, Caroline,” Skye said, the feelings breaking out. She began to cry hard. “Take me home. Please take me home.”

  But Caroline couldn’t. She couldn’t talk her father out of what he thought was best. Falling in the icy river was part of learning how to be tough. Seeing snakes on the rocks was how you learned to keep from getting bitten. The lesson Caroline learned that day was slightly more disturbing: Just because she felt thrilled to be alive, overcome with rapture and gratitude, didn’t necessarily mean her sister felt the same way. It didn’t mean that at all.

  Hugh had been so wrong. Caroline knew that now. Her father was dead, officially of cancer, but he had died years before, of a broken heart. Unable to bear what had finally happened to Skye, his baby, their beautiful girl, he had drunk himself to death, turning away from his family in the process. That more than the hunts themselves had filled Caroline with the bitterness she now felt. Because Skye was doing the same thing.

  March 14, 1973

  Dear the only Joe,

  I have two sisters. Clea and Skye. Clea is better than a best friend, and Skye is our beautiful baby sister. I wish we were all in the same grade together. Sometimes we want to talk so no one else can understand, and we do. It’s hard to explain, but I know what they’re thinking and they know what I’m thinking. It’s like magic, only it’s not. It’s having sisters.

  Your friend,

  Caroline

  June 19, 1973

  Dear Caroline,

  Well, he’s definitely not magic, but he’s pretty cute. Sam. Good old Sam, my baby brother. Only he’s a real baby—as in just born. Squawks like a seagull all night long. I took him out in my boat the other day, and my mother called the Coast Guard. She was really worried. Something about him not knowing how to swim (he’s about the size of a flounder), but she missed the point. The kid loves water. Loves boats too. I swear, he wanted to row.

  See you later,

  Joe

  “MOM ADMITS SKYE MUST HAVE HAD A LITTLE TOO much to drink,” Clea said, raising her eyebrow. The night before, while Caroline had maintained watch at the hospital, Clea had stayed home with her family, in touch only by telephone. She felt guilty, and it came through in the too-bright tone of her voice.

  “Like a fifth of vodka?” Caroline asked.

  The day was new, and they were on their way to Firefly Hill, to pick up Augusta and drive her to the hospital. Clea was at the wheel of her Volvo, and as they rounded the headland, Caroline caught sight of the big white ships on the horizon. They reminded her of Skye’s last words the previous night.

  “Did you tell Skye that Joe Connor was here?” Caroline asked.

  “Oh, God,” Clea said. “Why?”

  Caroline was almost too angry to say. She felt tired and rumpled from spending the night at the hospital, and she hated these triangles of sisterhood, when two would know something the other wasn’t supposed to. When she confided a worry to Clea and heard it come back from Skye. Or when she told some gossip to Skye and two hours later got a phone call from Clea, reporting the big news. Secrets among sisters were dangerous and nearly impossible to keep.

  “Because she was on the way to see him,” Caroline said flatly.

  “She was?”

  “She thinks if she hadn’t been born, none of the rest would have happened.”

  “She was drunk. I thought she’d just go to bed,” Clea said. “When she asked me about Joe’s boat…I didn’t think she’d drive. I ca
n’t stand thinking she crashed because of me,” Clea said.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Clea,” Caroline said.

  “I can’t help it. I should never have let her off the phone. Or I should have had her put Mom on the line.”

  “Blame has never gotten any of us very far,” Caroline said. “So don’t do it to yourself now.”

  They had arrived at Firefly Hill. The two sisters sat very still, staring at the door and wondering what kind of mood their mother was in. Would she be enthusiastic, ready to Visit the Sick with a big basket of freshly cut snapdragons? Or would she be frail, focused on her own arthritis or migraine headache to avoid noticing that her youngest child was going downhill fast?

  The sun shone through a layer of high gossamer clouds. Not quite bright enough to throw dark shadows, it bathed the house and yard in an overall muted whiteness. A cold front was moving in, and the wind blew hard. Augusta appeared in the kitchen window. She was dressed, ready to go. At the sight of Caroline and Clea, she gave a hearty wave.

  “Here we go,” Caroline said, opening the car door.

  “Have you seen Homer?” Augusta called, looking around.

  The old dog sometimes disappeared. No one knew where he went. He could be gone for hours, or even overnight, but he always came back. Caroline didn’t reply, knowing that Augusta’s defense and denial were already locked in place. She just walked across the yard, to kiss her mother and drive her to the hospital.

  At the hospital, all was quiet and blue. The lights at the psychiatric nurses’ station had a shaded violet tone. Various monitors beeped and whirred melodically. The white-clad nurse pushing the medicine cart along the hall seemed to be swimming in contemplative slow motion.

  From the far end of the hall, a patient let forth an eerie, ungodly howl, like someone in extreme agony. Standing with her mother and sister, Caroline had the impression of lurking in a strange undersea environment. For no reason at all, she wondered how it might feel to dive for treasure.

  When signaled by the charge nurse, Caroline and Clea took their mother’s hands and walked with her into Skye’s room. The sight of Skye so still and pale, even more so than last night, made Caroline draw a deep breath. But her mother actually gasped. Caroline recognized this as a moment of truth: Her mother hadn’t had time to polish, encode, or reinvent the situation. Unguarded, Augusta simply stared at Skye lying in her hospital bed. With frail fingers she touched her black pearls while tears ran down her cheeks.

  The heart monitor glowed green in the otherwise dark room. Caroline and Clea stood back, letting their mother bend close to Skye, kiss her bandaged forehead. Augusta was silently crying, her shoulders shaking under her mink coat. A storm of emotion shivered through her thin body, but Caroline watched her force it down. She wiped her tears. She squared her shoulders.

  “Skye. I’m here,” Augusta said out loud.

  “She can’t hear you,” Clea whispered.

  “Skye. Wake up. Wake up, dear. It’s your mother.” Augusta spoke to Skye the way she talked to her daughters’ answering machines, as if she knew someone was sitting there listening, unwilling to pick up the phone.

  “Mom, she’s sedated,” Clea said.

  “Caroline told me she spoke to her,” Augusta said, sounding injured.

  “Just a few words,” Caroline said, wanting to cushion the fact that she had been there and her mother had not. That had always been the case, and Augusta was very sensitive about it. Caroline felt the all-too-familiar pressure in her chest. Skye was so injured and troubled, her mother was so infuriating and needy, and Clea was kowtowing to beat the band. Caroline wanted to rush out, slam the door behind her, head for the airport, and get on a plane to anywhere.

  “If she needs her sleep, let’s let her be,” Augusta said, sounding frustrated. “She’ll talk to me tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s go find Peter. He’s here, isn’t he?” And she left Skye’s bedside without another word.

  Caroline and Clea drew together. With their mother gone, the old feelings came back: just the three of us, Caroline thought, holding Clea’s hand and looking at Skye. The way it’s always been. Three sisters on a lonely mountaintop, told to hunt by their father, holding hands when he turned his back. They had always taken care of each other.

  Catching up with Augusta at the nurses’ station, the women heard the charge nurse say that Peter was with Skye’s doctor, who was just finishing up with another patient.

  Augusta raised her dark eyebrows. No one could mistake her displeasure. She watched with silent disdain as the nurses moved methodically about their tasks. What did she want them to do? Caroline wondered. Make Skye’s doctor finish with his other patients faster? Serve cocktails?

  “I’m going to go mad if that doctor doesn’t hurry,” Augusta said. She spoke in her normal voice instead of a whisper, and nurses up and down the corridor turned to look. “They’ll have to admit me to this very floor if I have to stand here another minute.”

  “Mother, shhhh,” Clea said.

  “I have no respect for a doctor who makes the mothers of his patients wait like this,” Augusta continued. “I think it’s very rude.”

  Caroline and Clea exchanged a glance. Whenever their mother became this imperious, it meant she was very scared. She refused to accept the things she couldn’t stand, the details of life she found too awful. Twisting reality was Augusta’s way of marshaling her own sanity. Clea slid her arm around Augusta’s slender shoulders, snuggling against the fur coat their mother had thrown on over her jeans and sneakers. Caroline felt her own rage start to abate.

  “Doctors do it on purpose,” Clea said. “They like to make the mothers really squirm, waiting to talk to them. Ministers do it too. Peter learned it in divinity school.”

  Augusta shook her head, her lips tightening. She was not about to laugh at anything. She was putting forth her best lofty grande-dame air, gazing appraisingly down the corridors as if she owned them. Like Caroline, Augusta Renwick had contributed to this hospital. Since Hugh’s death, her sojourns here had been for opening ceremonies, board meetings, or events involving her chaplain son-in-law. Coming to the psychiatric floor to visit her youngest daughter was most assuredly not in her realm.

  Finally Peter came along, wearing his clerical collar and dark trousers. He was talking to another man. He kissed Augusta and Caroline, then pulled Clea into a massive hug. Caroline watched the way they held each other, whispered a few words, looking deeply into each other’s eyes until a slow smile came to Clea’s troubled face. Then he introduced Dr. Jack Henderson, the head of their substance abuse unit.

  “How do you do?” Dr. Henderson said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Augusta said warily.

  “Hi, Jack,” Clea said, stepping forward.

  Augusta shuddered, possibly at the idea of this doctor getting too close, at the prospect of him knowing anything too personal about the family. Caroline had met him before, seen him at a retrospective of her father’s work.

  “Hi,” Caroline said, shaking his hand.

  “Do you know each other?” Augusta asked.

  “I collect your late husband’s work,” Dr. Henderson said.

  “Really?” Augusta asked, lightening up slightly. “That’s good to hear. Then you probably know that Skye takes after him. She’s an artist herself.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “She’s a genius, doctor. Truly brilliant, and I am not saying that just because I am her mother.” Augusta looked around the group for confirmation. Her eyes were glittering, as if tears were close by. “She’s a sculptor. She was recognized by the art world years ago, when she was very young. Right, girls?”

  “She was,” Clea said. Caroline said nothing. She felt her mother lean against her slightly, and she held her hand for support.

  “She’s so talented…” Augusta choked up. Touching her throat, she pulled herself back together. “But she seems to be blocked.”

  “Blocked?” he repeated.

  “I�
�m not an artist, so I don’t know,” Augusta said, “but her father used to say he’d kill himself if he couldn’t paint. An artist who can’t make art…She’s suffering so. Right, Caroline? We can see it, can’t we?”

  “Mom…”

  “That’s all it is,” Augusta said, trying to convince herself and everyone else.

  “Hmmm,” Dr. Henderson said noncommittally.

  “Mom, let’s wait for Skye to wake up,” Caroline said. “Let her talk to the doctor herself.”

  Augusta shook Caroline off.

  “Artist’s block,” Augusta said, her voice trembling. “It explains everything, I think. She’s so afraid she can’t work anymore. And her husband left her. It’s awful, it’s just so terrible….”

  “Yes,” Dr. Henderson said inscrutably.

  “Who wouldn’t drink a little under such trying circumstances? And I’m sure you know, alcohol fires the creative spirit. My God, could Hugh put it away! Skye takes after him even there, perhaps a little too much. If she could just moderate—”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Henderson asked.

  “Perhaps you could suggest moderation!” Augusta said gingerly, offering the doctor his solution. “Half-measures don’t come easily to any Renwick, that’s for sure—”

  “Mom,” Caroline interrupted, stopping her.

  “I believe moderation would help Skye. If she could just cut back a bit. You know, just stick to cocktails and wine with dinner. Don’t you agree?” Augusta continued, unfazed, her hand cupping her chin as if she were a consulting physician.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” the real doctor said.

  “Excuse me?” Augusta asked.

  “Moderation rarely works with alcoholics. Total abstinence is the only way.”

  “Skye is not…an alcoholic,” Augusta said, shocked and wounded.

  Linking arms with Caroline and Clea, she glared at the doctor. Insulated by her family, she felt safe. She wanted him to see that the Renwicks were good people who loved one another. She wanted him to understand that although eccentric, they were not crazy, not the sort of people who became alcoholics. Bad things had happened to them, but adversity had built their characters. Caroline ached for her mother, recognizing that in her vulnerability she was terrified for Skye.