by Jean Stone
From the window Nikki could see Aunt Rose. She’d been inside for days, but now strolled the beach with Uncle Mack. Nikki wondered how Rose had hung onto him for so long. Had no one told him of the curse on the men who married Atkinsons? As the couple moved toward the lighthouse, Mack held Rose’s arm as if she needed propping up. They stopped at the foot of the lighthouse and Rose sagged against the white concrete pillar, the phallic symbol of seamen, no pun intended, Nikki once told Mary Beth.
Then Uncle Mack lifted Aunt Rose’s chin and took her in his arms. Nikki imagined the words he must be whispering.
“It’s all right, my darling, I will take care of you now.” Though how he would do that remained a mystery because, as part of the curse, the Atkinson women always selected the least prosperous for mates.
A rap-rap on her door was followed by Mary Beth in person, before Nikki could ask Who is it or say It’s okay to come in.
“I’ve come to set your visitation rights,” Mary Beth said as she flopped on the pink-and-red floral cushions of the white wicker furniture that, even as a child, always made Nikki feel like someone she was not. She wondered, now that the house was Mary Beth’s, if Nikki could decorate the room the way she wanted. “I insist that you’re on the Vineyard every single second I’m here,” Mary Beth chattered. “I couldn’t stand it without you.”
Nikki laughed. “You only want me for my driver’s license.” There were some benefits to being sixteen, not fifteen, like knowing that the kind of boat-necked jersey and tailored Bermuda shorts that Mary Beth had on today were definitely queer, no matter that they came from Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue.
“Very funny.” Mary Beth covered her eyes with her hand. “I have a splitting headache. All this talk about money.”
“My mother says it’s the most important thing in the world.”
“Well, of course it is, even though you won’t admit it,” Mary Beth said, and Nikki suspected she’d been listening at doors again, something her cousin was quite fond of.
Nikki looked back to Uncle Mack, who still held Aunt Rose in his arms. “How much will we get from our trust funds?”
“An income forever, to buy whatever we want.”
“Well, that’s not true, Mary Beth. There will always be limits. Even for us. Besides, how much can we buy?”
Her cousin sat up. “You are such a dolt. I can buy a house on the Riviera, for starters.”
“And be friends with Grace Kelly?”
“Well, why not? I have as much money as a princess.”
“What about love? Will our money buy love?”
Mary Beth rolled her eyes. “Not according to the Beatles. But they probably wrote that song when they were poor.”
“Well, I’d rather have love like Aunt Rose and Uncle Mack than all the money and all the estates in the world. Including on the Riviera.” Moving to her vanity, Nikki sat down, brushed her long, mocha-colored hair, then snapped on a beaded headband. “I’m taking a ride to Oak Bluffs. And I hope you don’t mind, but I need to go alone.”
“Why? Are you going to see … him?”
Him was the one person Nikki knew loved her. Hopefully, he would still love her even if he learned her family was so rich, even if he found out she now had a trust fund.
“Why can’t I meet him?”
Nikki laughed. “Because you wouldn’t like him.” She stood up and examined her cutoffs and white peasant blouse. “Stay here and count your money. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.” She grabbed her tapestry bag and headed for the door.
“No, you won’t!” Mary Beth called after her. “You never tell me the good parts, I just know you don’t!”
Just then Gabrielle scampered up the hall. “Mary Beth!” she cried. “Will you comb my hair like Barbie’s?”
“Oh, go away,” was the last thing Nikki heard Mary Beth mutter before she escaped down the back stairs to rendezvous with him.
It was a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, and though Nikki could certainly afford a newer model of anything, this was hers, the car that she’d put a down payment on with the money she’d made at the Tisbury Fair, selling the lighthouse scenes she’d painted on barnboard. It was her first taste of making money off summer people of which she was one, so it didn’t make a lot of sense except that the money was hers to do with as she pleased, and she was pleased to buy the dark green “bug.” On the hood, she’d painted a big white and yellow daisy. Her mother had almost had a stroke.
“It’s bad enough you have to buy one of those … those hippie cars. But a daisy? Nicole, I forbid you to drive that car until you remove that … mess.”
Nikki smiled now as she shifted into low gear at the Edgartown intersection, then veered off toward Oak Bluffs. It had been Aunt Dorothy who’d intervened. They were ensconced on the veranda, out of the summer sun. Dorothy told Nikki’s mother that the Beetle was perfect for a sixteen-year-old girl and that the daisy was cute. She must have had too many gin and tonics that day, because then she told Nikki’s mother to lighten up and stop acting like a dried-up old maid. Nikki had almost laughed out loud. And though Margaret sneered each time she came within sight of the car, the topic, gratefully, never resurfaced.
But as she drove along the beach road now, Nikki wondered if Aunt Dorothy would stick up for her niece if she knew what was really going on in Nikki’s life.
“He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.” Gabrielle scowled, hating that she always ended up on the loves-me-not part. Daddy said she should start backward with the loves-me-not, and then it would always end on the loves-me where it belonged. Daddy also said there would be many men to love her, but the lucky man would be the one she loved back.
It all seemed kind of complicated, like the way she knew Mommy was crying right now, even though Daddy sat beside her on the Adirondack chair, holding her hand and whispering stuff Gabrielle couldn’t hear because she wasn’t supposed to.
It all seemed like adult stuff, like the thing called the trust fund Aunt Margaret had told them about.
Gabrielle set the daisy stem on the lawn. She wondered why Aunt Margaret didn’t like kids, even her own daughter, Nikki, and she wondered why she never cried the way Mommy did. Daddy said Mommy cried because she was so sad about Grandfather, but Gabrielle knew it started way before that. One time, back in New York, her mother stood in the doorway of Gabrielle’s room and looked in and watched when she thought Gabrielle was sleeping, but she was not. Gabrielle had not opened her eyes, because she could hear her mother crying and she did not want to let her know that she knew.
“Princess?” Daddy called over to her now where she sat on the small checked tablecloth, ready for a picnic with Barbie and Ken. “Where are Mary Beth and Nikki?”
Gabrielle shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you find them? Maybe they’ll take you digging for clams.”
She picked up Barbie and straightened the bottom of her skirt. There was no sense trying to explain to Daddy that Mary Beth and Nikki didn’t have much time for her this summer, that they were always off doing something that did not include a kid. They hadn’t said so, but Gabrielle knew, just the way she knew when her mother was secretly crying, and the way she knew that right now was another of those times and that Daddy wanted to get rid of Gabrielle, even though she’d been there first.
If she couldn’t go with Nikki she might as well start thinking about her debutante gown. Mary Beth lay on a small part of the eight hundred and twelve feet of beachfront that now belonged to her, only her, flipping through Bride magazine. She still had two years until her coming out, but she wanted to start planning now. The world was changing, and Mary Beth sensed that her ball would have to be the grandest of the grand, not at all like those staid, boring things of the sixties and the fifties, like when her mother had been crowned Deb of the Year.
Nikki, of course, had already announced she had no intention of coming out, that she had not become liberated to take three steps back. Nikki
claimed she was independent like her father, but Mary Beth wasn’t sure if she agreed: She’d been too young when Nikki’s father had left. She only remembered being shocked when she learned that Aunt Margaret had taken back her maiden name and given it to Nikki, too, as if there’d never been a man, as if Aunt Margaret never had a husband and Nikki never had a father. Nikki might never admit being one smidgen like her mother, but, as Mary Beth saw it, Aunt Margaret had been the liberated one, long before the word was a topic of discussion.
Rolling onto her back and staring up at the puffy white clouds in the blue Vineyard sky, Mary Beth wondered if she should be liberated, too. There were lots of ways she could do it, like going to her ball in a dress other than white. Could she wear red, white, and blue satin in honor of the nation’s bicentennial?
“You’d better put on suntan lotion,” a voice beside her said.
She blinked back to the present, and when she did, the hunkiest guy she’d ever seen was standing in front of her. He wore cutoffs and a T-shirt and his sun-streaked hair touched his shoulders and sweat glistened on his chiseled face.
He must be a mirage. She could have asked him if he was, but her mouth had suddenly dried up.
“The ozone layer,” he said. “Haven’t you heard about it?”
Did mirages talk? She shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “Hasn’t everyone?” She vaguely remembered hearing Nikki talk about a hole in the sky caused by aerosol deodorant or something like that.
He smiled. His teeth were as white as the lighthouse that stood behind him on their property … her property.
“My name’s Mike,” he said.
She would have told him her name, but she had become mute.
“I’m a landscaper up at the estate.” He pointed up toward the big house. “Thought I’d take a dip in the water while I’m on lunch break. If that’s okay with you.”
She shrugged again and wondered if she should sit up and reveal the soft mounds of her too-small breasts that peeked from her bikini top, or if she should keep them covered so he wouldn’t think she was a slut. “Suit yourself,” she said, and stayed in her position, demurely covered up.
She wished he wasn’t standing over her, because in her line of sight was the bulging front of his shorts. She moved a little on the blanket and tried to push away those questions that recurred too often lately, about what a penis really looked like and how it would feel to have it plunge inside her, as a romance novel she’d read had said it could do.
She turned back to her magazine with feigned indifference. From the corner of her eye she watched him race down to the water. As he splashed in the waves she thought about Nikki. Was it fair that her cousin had a secret boyfriend and Mary Beth did not? Nikki would not tell her anything, other than that his name was Henry and he was a summer person. The boy in front of her now—Mike—surely must be a townie. Someone who would be here year after year, someone who would wait for Mary Beth to arrive every season because he would barely be able to withstand the winters without her.
Someone who might teach her a few things about life.
Dropping her Bride magazine, she stood up. She tugged the bottom of her bathing suit over the firm cheeks of her butt.
“It’s up to me, you know,” she called toward the water.
He looked in her direction. “What?”
She sauntered to the water’s edge. “Me,” she said. “I’m the one who says what’s off-limits and what’s not. My grandfather left me the estate in his will.”
Mike looked up the beach in the direction of the house. “Lucky you.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Well, just stay away from the rock jetty, it’s slippery and dangerous.” She did not say “It’s slippery and dangerous and no place for a girl,” as Aunt Margaret warned them each day. “And don’t get any ideas about camping out in the lighthouse. It’s been padlocked for years.” She took a few brave steps into the water.
He smiled again. “I promise I’ll be good,” he said with a wink, and she didn’t get the impression he was referring to either the lighthouse or the rock jetty.
As he waded through the water steadily toward her, Mary Beth wondered if maybe she should wear a clingy black sheath to the debutante ball, one that showed off her figure that would, hopefully, be more full by then, with a backside that was round and boobs that were, well, big.
In the meantime, she’d have to learn how to make do.
5
Nikki put her peasant blouse back on and drank from a warm can of Tab that sat on the floor by the bed. Henry remained stretched on his back atop the blue-ticked mattress. He lit up a Marlboro and did not smile. “One of these days,” he said, “we’re going to get caught.”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “I love you.” She took a deep drag from his smoke.
He did not answer, but he did not have to. Henry had told her over and over how much he loved her, how much he cherished their moments from the day they’d met at the outdoor tabernacle when she’d sat at her easel painting a picture. He’d asked what she was doing there, because that day was a special service only for colored people, Negroes, or Afro-Americans as they liked to be called that summer.
She stroked his naked black thigh now, and cupped his softened, still-moist penis that, yes, got as big as she’d heard an Afro-American man’s could get, bigger, perhaps. And unbelievably good, based on her experience, which was limited to one other penis that belonged to Larry, a white boy back at school, who had prematurely ejaculated each of the four times they’d “done it,” or attempted to do it. Gently, she squeezed Henry’s dark, sumptuous plums. “So what if they catch us? I’m only someone you hired to teach you French over the summer.”
It was the lie that they’d fabricated, in case the need arose.
Henry laughed. “Ah, but ma chérie, I am going to follow in my father’s footsteps, remember? I’m to become a Methodist minister.”
Nikki smiled. “Methodist ministers don’t fuck?”
“Not when they’re eighteen. Not when the girl’s sixteen. And white.”
“What if she’s rich?”
He looked at her and frowned, then inhaled another drag and slowly blew out the smoke. “Are you rich, ma chérie?” He did not know of Nikki’s family because she hadn’t told him, and he’d have no other way of finding out because Oak Bluffs and Edgartown were socioeconomic Grand Canyons apart.
“Filthy rich.”
“That would only make things worse. I’d be accused of the ultimate sin of being lured by the white man’s devil.”
“Well, Jesus, it’s not my fault. I could give some money to your father’s ministry. Help him build a new church on the mainland.” She yanked at the twisted sheet. His leftover sperm leaked from her and spilled onto her thighs. It was no longer warm, yet still it was erotic, as if its sticky presence reconfirmed that they’d made love, that they had joined as one, black and white, rich and poor, whether anyone liked it or not.
Henry smiled and touched her cheek. “We knew when we started this that it couldn’t go anywhere. Not beyond this room.”
She glanced around “this room” that she’d come to know well in the past weeks. It was a tiny space, Henry’s space, the attic room in a yellow-and-white-trimmed gingerbread house that had red geranium window boxes, a house like so many others that defined the Methodist campground and had been in the family for three or four or more generations. The house to which Nikki had to sneak through the backyards, to enter from the alley.
“Come,” he said, extinguishing his cigarette and pulling her down to him. “We have a few minutes before mon père gets home.”
Nikki wanted to protest, then she saw the heat of the afternoon glisten on his black, solid chest and she felt his hardness rise again. “I cannot get enough of you, Nicole,” he whispered. “Do you know that?”
Yes, yes, she knew that. She kissed his full lips and felt his thick tongue as it slid into her mouth and lightly grazed her teeth. Then she rolled on top of him and m
ounted his pole. She sat up straight, tossed back her hair, ran her hands across her breasts, her belly, and her dark-haired V, while his eyes followed her motion, while his lips parted in excitement. Then her hands came to rest between her legs, and she found her clitoris. She touched it just a little and liked that it was wet. Then, with her longest, strongest finger, she rubbed herself with fervor as he thrust himself up, up, way up inside her. She rubbed and rubbed the way that he’d showed her, the way that he liked to watch, the way that made her so hot she thought she might die right then and there and that it would be good.
It came as a big surprise to Nikki that, at the end of the summer, it was not she who’d gotten pregnant, but Mary Beth. And it was Gabrielle who overheard Mary Beth tell Nikki, and who had run off and told her mother.
Maybe because Aunt Rose was neither uptight like Nikki’s mother nor Pollyannaish like Aunt Dorothy, maybe because, at age twenty-eight, Rose was not much older than they were—whatever the reason, both Nikki and Mary Beth were speechless when she came into Mary Beth’s bedroom later that day and told them she knew.
Aunt Rose had sat on the white wicker chair next to the posters Mary Beth had hung since Grandfather’s funeral—one of Soviet ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, the other of tennis ace Jimmy Connors. Nikki stared at the posters and realized how much different Mary Beth’s room was from hers, where now the walls were decorated with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band photos and IMPEACH NIXON bumper stickers.
Nikki sat on the floor and stared at Baryshnikov; Mary Beth sat on the bed and cried.
“I’m not going to ask how this happened, because I know that part,” Aunt Rose said quietly.
It was uncomfortable to think about Aunt Rose and Uncle Mack together, even though Nikki knew that they were married and had little Gabrielle. It was uncomfortable to think that they, too, had … done it, like she and Henry had, like Mary Beth and …?