The Lucky Ones

by Stephanie Greene

  “Come on, Lucy!” the three older children shouted together. And then they were running, hair flying and legs churning as they raced past the low scrub that covered the Island, past the road that went off to the right, to the caretaker’s cottage, and around the corner until they saw their grandfather’s house with the deep front porch and the circular driveway with the rose bushes and their car parked in the shade under the porte cochere.

  The trunk was open. Their father’s arms were full of suitcases; more were piled behind the car. But still they ran. Even when Sheba came out onto the porch in her pale gray uniform and they could hear their grandfather’s deep voice calling to them, they ran.

  “We’re going to the dock!” one of them shouted. It could have been all of them, it sounded so full. And nobody yelled, “Come back.”

  Chapter Two

  “So! The Heathens have arrived!” King Herbert called in a booming voice as he and Sis came out onto the terrace that night. He raised the huge bottle he was carrying above his head and announced, “Let the summer games begin!”

  “That’s a magnum,” Natalie whispered authoritatively as she and Cecile dutifully stood up.

  “What’s a magnum?”

  “The size of the bottle. It’s champagne.” Natalie smoothed her hair and put her shoulders back, her eyes on King. “Mom let Harry have a glass last year. She’d better let me have one tonight.”

  “Me, too,” Cecile said; anticipating the stinging taste of it, she made a face. Her father had given her a sip of champagne from his glass last Christmas. It tasted sour and sharp; the bubbles had tickled Cecile’s nose and made her sneeze. When she hotly accused him of adding vinegar to it, on purpose so she wouldn’t like it, the grown-ups around the table had roared with laughter.

  Jack grabbed Lucy’s hand and pulled her over to stand next to Cecile and Natalie, forming a straggly line. They would stand there, shifting their weight from one foot to the other and grinning, for as long as it took: troops, ready for inspection. The first night of cocktails on the terrace with King and Sis was a summer tradition. The month of August couldn’t start without it.

  “King,” Mr. Thompson called from the bar under the awning, “what can I get for you?”

  “What you always get for me, Andrew,” said King. He strode toward their father with his hand outstretched, while their mother and Sis met near the door. They leaned toward each other and quickly touched cheeks twice, once on each side, the pearls Sis wore, even in a bathing suit, dangling between them. Cheek kisses, Cecile and Natalie used to call them, and practice as they rolled, giggling, on their bedroom floor.

  Where King was big and blustery, Sis was small and dry. Her thin arms and legs looked bloodless; her pale hair was pulled back so tightly in a bun, it looked as if it must hurt. She wiggled her fingers at the children, lined up and expectant. It was the closest she would come; they gazed coolly back. Mrs. Thompson said something and the two women went to join the men at the bar, Sis swaying slightly as she clutched their mother’s arm.

  Natalie and Cecile exchanged quick looks.

  King and Sis were the brother and sister who lived in the Pump House near the dock and had grown up with Mrs. Thompson. Sheba told them that King’s wife had run off with Sis’s husband, but the children were far more interested to think King might be a real king. For years, they felt a frisson of excitement whenever he came down to the dock or they came across him standing on the drive. “There’s the king,” one of them would whisper. They longed to catch him wearing his crown but never did.

  It was Natalie who’d finally discovered the truth.

  “He’s called King because he’s a Protestant,” she explained one day as they gathered around her in one of their bedrooms. “Protestants give their children names like that.”

  “What’s a Protestant?” asked Jack, who was three.

  “The opposite of a Catholic,” Harry said.

  “Do Catholics use names like that?” said Cecile.

  “Of course not,” Natalie said. “Can you imagine calling Jack or Harry King?”

  King was bigger than life; they all adored him. He was teasing their mother unmercifully now as they clustered around the bar. She slapped his arm and laughed up at him, playful and happy. Not like that day last summer, Cecile suddenly thought, when King had made her mother so angry.

  He’d shown up at the house on the first morning of their vacation in a new navy blue convertible and said, “Watch this.” Waving his hand like a magician, he leaned into the car and jauntily pushed a button on the dashboard. At once, the top rose majestically up from the windshield and started back, revealing a shiny new dashboard and pristine white leather seats before folding itself neatly into pleats that sank behind the backseat.

  Cecile and Natalie had looked at each other, wide-eyed; they’d all been struck dumb. To ride without a top! Their parents would never dream of owning a car filled with such potential disaster. Their mother immediately launched into a story about a woman who’d had her head cut off when she ran into a truck while driving a convertible.

  It had made them want to ride in it even more.

  Then, wonder of wonders, King had invited them to the fair in Southampton.

  “For God’s sake, King,” their mother said. “What do you think I’ve been talking about, you clod?”

  “What on earth do you think is going to happen, Anne?” he protested. “I know how to drive. You make me sound like a hardened criminal.”

  “Please, Mom?” said Natalie.

  “I’ll make sure no one stands up,” Harry promised.

  None of them dreamed their mother would say yes, but she did; they scrambled to grab seats before she could change her mind. The front was willingly given up to Harry; the others squished into the back without bickering. None of them dared to start an argument.

  “Make sure they stay seated, and don’t let them put their hands outside the car. Cecile and Natalie, there’s to be no fooling around in back, do you understand?” Their mother directed her glare at each of them in turn. “Jack, you listen to Harry. Harry, I’m expecting you to set an example. And King!” she cried as he started slowly off. “Make sure you put up the top while you’re parked, or they’ll all scald their legs when they get back.”

  At the fair, King brought them towering puffs of pink cotton candy on paper cones and boiled hot dogs on soft rolls and let them ride on the Ferris wheel for what felt like hours, handing more tickets to the ticket taker whenever the wheel slowed to a stop. No one threw up and no one complained and when King allowed them each to have their own large lemonade without having to share, they felt as if they were in heaven.

  On the way home, King told them to “hang on to your hats” and drove very fast along Dune Road, letting them hang out over the sides of the car and scream into the wind. They came onto the Island like that, having lost all caution. Harry was standing up and shouting, waving his hat in the air at the gulls soaring above their heads, as the car clattered over the slats on the bridge, announcing their arrival.

  The fury on their mother’s face when they pulled in front of the house quieted them down like water dumped on flames. The children slunk guiltily out of the car while she yelled at King right in front of them, but even that couldn’t destroy the wonderful day. King hung his head and looked sorry, but when their mother finally turned and stormed back into the house, letting the screen door slam behind her, King did something Cecile would never forget.

  “Good day, huh, Heathens?” he said with a grin, and winked.

  He had the same look of mischief on his face now as their mother pulled him over to where they stood patiently waiting. “For heaven’s sake, King,” she said, “look at my poor children, standing at attention. I don’t know how you do it. They never behave as well for me.”

  “That’s because you don’t know how to treat them,” King said. “I’m amazed they gave a brat like you a license to have them. But wait!” He stopped, opening his eyes and mouth wid
e, as if shocked. “People don’t need a license to have children in this country, do they? It’s easier to have children than it is to drive a car.”

  “Did you hear that?” Lucy’s eyes were huge. “King called Mommy a brat.”

  “That’s because Mommy is a brat,” said Natalie.

  “See what you’re doing, you beast?” cried Mrs. Thompson, jabbing King in the stomach. He grabbed her hand and twisted away, but she jabbed him again, laughing. King was laughing, too. So much poking and jabbing, Cecile thought. Like children. “You’re teaching my children to disrespect me, King,” their mother said at last, stomping her pretty foot. “I won’t have it.”

  “All right, all right.” Clicking his heels together, King came to attention and said gruffly, “Natalie, behave yourself.”

  “Me?” Natalie cried, delighted.

  Cecile waited for King to launch into the speech he always delivered the first night, when he declared that this was going to be the summer he would finally “teach them how to speak proper English and instill in them the manners your mother obviously hasn’t.” To which their mother always said, “Take them with my blessings, King, and good luck to you.”

  This time he didn’t. After taking a hard look at them, he said, “What? Where’s young Harry? Missing in action?”

  Cecile and Natalie cut their eyes at each other.

  “Dad got him a job at one of his paper mills in Canada,” their mother said. “He was sixteen in December, you know.”

  “Canada?” King’s thick eyebrows rose up like wings above his dark eyes. “Going to make a man out of the prodigal son this summer, is that it?”

  “He’s hardly cutting down trees,” their mother said coolly. “Dad got him a job washing dishes.”

  “Washing dishes!” King laughed and slapped his leg. “No more lazing around on the golf course, earning big tips as a caddy, hey? You’re going to toughen him up washing dishes.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Andrew about that.” Their mother’s voice was tight. “It was his idea.”

  “Oh. I see.” King and she looked at each other for an instant, and then King gave a curt nod. “Right,” he said, twirling around to face the children again. “Enough frivolity now.” He took a brisk step to the left and stuck out his hand. “Jack, good to see you, sir. Are you and I going after those porgies again this year?”

  “Yes, sir!” Jack said, jerking King’s hand up and down twice.

  “Good man.”

  King stepped in front of Cecile. “Cecile Thompson, you’re looking spry this summer.” Cecile beckoned for him to come closer when they shook hands. “Can we go to the fair again?” she whispered into his ear.

  King glanced over his shoulder at her mother. “Only if I can smuggle you all out in burlap bags,” he whispered back. “I’ll pretend you’re potatoes.”

  Natalie was next.

  “My, my,” King said as he took her hand. He sounded surprised. “If you don’t look remarkably like your mother at this age, young Natalie,” he said, bowing his head ever so slightly.

  It gave Cecile the strangest empty feeling in her chest to see Natalie blush. How long had Natalie known? Because she did know. Cecile could see it in the way Natalie lifted her chin to meet King’s gaze. The knowledge was in Natalie’s imperious profile, too, so like their mother’s. In the curve of her smile.

  Their mother was beautiful; they both thought so. One night, years ago, when Cecile and Natalie had huddled in their nightgowns at the top of the stairs to spy on a dinner party, their great-aunt Agatha, who was very old and beautiful herself, had snuck them up some ice cream. She sat on the top step with them while they ate, her diamond earrings and necklace glittering in the dark like stars. When their mother appeared in the front hall below, dazzling in a scarlet gown with rhinestone straps, Great-Aunt Agatha had told the awed little girls that the conversation used to stop when their mother was young and she entered the room.

  Cecile had instantly felt the thrill of it: the hushed voices, the admiring faces. She’d longed to be beautiful from that moment on. Having King acknowledge that Natalie was felt like the end of a dream. Because King was right. Even though their mother’s hair was dark and Natalie’s light, they had the same ivory skin, dark eyes, sculpted mouths. Cecile hadn’t realized it until now, but Natalie and her mother had both known. The look they exchanged was like the password to a club to which Cecile would never belong.

  “Are you torturing my family over here, King?” Mr. Thompson said as he and Sis joined them, drinks in hand.

  “Only your wife, Andrew,” said King.

  “She might say I do quite a bit of that,” Mr. Thompson said.

  “King has been torturing your wife all his life,” Sis said drily. “It’s his favorite pastime.”

  “Yes, but when King does it, she doesn’t mind. Drink, darling?”

  “Thanks.” Mrs. Thompson took the glass he held out to her without looking at him as she slipped her arm through King’s. “It’s time for Jack and Lucy to get ready for bed. Run and find Sheba, you two,” she said. “And Natalie and Cecile? No dock tonight. It’s been a long day.”

  “Troops dismissed,” said King.

  “Mom’s awfully buddy-buddy with King,” Cecile said as she followed Natalie into the living room.

  “They grew up together,” Natalie said, shrugging. “Besides, Mom’s giving Dad the business.”

  “Because of Harry?”

  “I don’t blame him for not wanting Harry around. ‘My handsome son this.’ ‘My handsome son that.’” Natalie tossed her hair. “I’m sick of it, too.”

  “You’re making that up, Natalie,” Cecile said in a fierce whisper. “Dad doesn’t feel that way.”

  “That’s how much you know.” Natalie stopped in front of the mirror above the table in the front hall. “Don’t worry, when she gets what she wants, she’ll go back to being sweetness and light again.”

  “But she can’t have Harry,” Cecile insisted. “He’s in Canada.”

  “She has her ways….” Natalie’s voice drifted off; she looked at her reflection intently. Lifting her chin, she allowed a hint of a smile, as if posing for a portrait. “King’s so full of it, saying that I look like Mom, don’t you think?” she asked, raising false eyes to meet Cecile’s in the mirror. “I thought it would never end,” Natalie said, but her eyes were bright, her color still high.

  Chapter Three

  Cecile was the first one awake. She stretched her arms over her head and reached with her toes for the bottom of the bed. It’s only our third day, she thought contentedly, letting her muscles go slack. We have twenty-eight more to go. When she couldn’t remember how many days she’d been here and didn’t know how many days were left, then she’d be on vacation.

  She lay on her back in the cool, dim room at the end of the hall that she shared with Natalie and Lucy and watched the gauze curtains on the window behind Lucy’s bed ripple over Lucy’s sleeping body. Lucy was on her stomach; her tangled curls covered her face. She had kicked off her sheets. Her short pajama top was wrapped around her chest, her skinny brown legs flailed out to either side as though she were a rag doll, tossed.

  Natalie had snuggled so far under her white cotton blanket that the only sign of her was her blond hair splayed across the pillow. The blue-and-white canopy bed she claimed would be hers when she got married, because she was the oldest girl, had belonged to their grandmother. Cecile was glad to let Natalie sleep it in; it felt like a dead person’s bed. She pretended to be grudging when she let Natalie claim it every year, but secretly, she was glad. It meant Natalie owed her.

  Natalie was dead to the world. Already she’d fallen back into her languid, bored fourteen-yearold self. She wouldn’t wake up until after nine, when she’d drift down to the terrace in her nightgown to eat breakfast, holding out her pinky as she sipped orange juice.

  “You are so twelve,” she’d said yesterday morning when Cecile came running back from the dock in her bathing su
it to grab a muffin. “You haven’t even combed your hair.”

  “You are so a hundred million,” Cecile shot back. She’d already spotted three horseshoe crabs in the shallow water under the dock by then, and netted a slew of clear jellyfish that she piled on the float before gently slipping them back into the water so they wouldn’t die. It made her wild to think of wasting time the way Natalie did.

  She would never be as old as that, Cecile vowed. It was horrible the way getting old made people put on such airs. Natalie looked miserable half the time. She heard the faint click of the door to the terrace below their room, and the almost imperceptible rumble of her father’s voice. Then her mother’s clipped response.

  Cecile kicked off the sheet and slipped her legs over the edge of the bed. If she didn’t hurry, Lucy would wake up and cry, “Wait for me!” Pulling off her nightgown, she dropped it on the ottoman where yesterday’s T-shirt lay in a crumpled heap. She slid that over her head and stepped into her shorts lying on the floor, pulling them up over the underwear she hadn’t taken off last night.

  It was one of their mother’s rules that they should never go to sleep wearing the day’s underwear. Rules about my own underwear, Cecile thought. Ridiculous. She hardly wore underwear on the Island anyway, she spent so much time in a bathing suit. She didn’t brush her hair a hundred strokes both morning and night, either, or brush her teeth for as long as it took the white sand to run out in the tiny hourglass her mother put on the glass shelf above the sink.

  Cecile ran on tiptoe down the upstairs hallway, skimming her hand over the smooth banister as she flew down the curving stairs. The dark floor of the front hall was cool on the soles of her feet; the hall felt dim and still, like a cave. Someone had opened the front door; the driveway was brilliant in the morning sun. Cecile pressed her face against the screen and breathed in, testing for the warm metallic smell the screen would have later in the day. All she could smell now was the faint perfume of the roses in the vase on the table behind her.