The finish line was ahead of her. People she didn’t know were jumping up and down and screaming. She ran as fast and as hard as she could across the line and people grabbed her, pulled her to a grassy spot on the side of the road. She let them sit her down. They poured water on her head, made her drink. She must have been holding her calf because someone started rubbing it. And someone else yelled in her ear. “Five-seventeen . . . three hours, sixteen minutes.”
She sat across from Sandy in a pancake house the next morning, working her way through a stack of pecan pancakes, high and wide. She hadn’t been able to eat a thing the night before.
Sandy had bought a paper from the machine outside, and now he handed it to her across the table. She had no trouble finding the article: Blair Doctor Speaks out on Lawsuit was the headline. Her heart thumped against her ribs. It was a short article, and she skimmed it quickly. She smiled as she read Cole’s quote out loud to Sandy.
“’There can be no winners in a suit like this. By the time the court makes a decision it will be too late to perform surgery on this baby. The parents will be left with no options, and I’ll be left with the knowledge that I could have helped if Blair had had the funds to provide the necessary equipment. It’s a situation without blame, and we are all losers.’”
She looked up at Sandy. “A whole lot better than no comment, I’d say.”
17.
She lay on her back on the gym mat, five-pound ankle weights attached to her legs. Her stomach was perfectly flat under her blue shorts. She bent her knees, straightened her legs above her, and lowered them with a grimace, gripping the bench behind her with her hands.
The gym had been an unexpected bonus when she moved into the Chapel House. It had once been a second garage, and Jay, Janni, and Cole had gradually equipped it over the years. The room was now complete with weight machines, two ellipticals, a rowing machine, and free weights. There was a mirrored wall with a barre and a stereo system built into the cabinets under the only two windows. The gym seemed out of sync with the aged tranquility of the rest of the house. Nevertheless, it was well used.
She counted slowly to twenty-five, then sat up to ease her breathing. She watched the flakes of snow twirl outside the windows. People were saying it was unusual weather for the first week of November, that it was going to be a cold winter. She hated running in the cold. She could always use the indoor track at the Y, but that would never give her the training she needed. She wanted to break three hours in Boston. She thought she could. In her memory, Somerville hadn’t been that hard. Three weeks had passed, and she’d forgotten the pain.
Cole groaned. She turned from the window to watch him. He lay on one of the padded benches, holding the barbell high above his chest. The thick muscles along the backs of his arms trembled. He let the bar down slowly, his face contorted, his chest and arms glistening. There was just a suggestion of extra flesh above the waistband of his black shorts. She liked that—a slight flaw that saved him from perfection.
It was at times like this, when she couldn’t get her eyes or mind off him, that she thought again about moving out. Lately, when she made love to Sandy, she found herself imagining he was Cole. That frightened her, struck her as pathetic. She didn’t know how she could free herself from that fantasy unless she got away from the Chapel House.
She owned that house on the lagoon in Point Pleasant. It was a good house, airy and clean, with a slip for a boat in the backyard. Her tenants’ lease would be up in February. She couldn’t think about it. Every time she thought about leaving she got a pain in the center of her chest—a clear warning, she was certain, to put the idea out of her mind.
Cole sat up now and looked at her. “Giving up?” he said.
“It’s more fun watching you.”
“I’m sure it’s a lot easier watching me, too,” he said, getting to his feet. He mopped his face with his towel before draping it around his neck. He’d been in good spirits lately. The media coverage of the lawsuit turned out to be a boon for the Fetal Surgery Program, generating far more public support than criticism. And the Carsellis had dropped the suit when a psychiatrist specializing in phobias read about their plight and offered to help Peggy get to Boston. They’d sent Cole a long letter of apology that he’d carried around with him for days, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was over.
He sat down next to her on the mat and gave her a little shove with his shoulder. “Get those legs going, woman,” he said.
She reached for the buckle on one of the weights. “I’m through for today,” she said, pulling at the strap. “I called your mother again this morning. She won’t meet me for lunch this week, either.” She missed her afternoons with Virginia.
“Don’t take it personally. She hasn’t seen any of her friends since the surgery. I’m afraid she’s never going to pull out of it.”
“I thought of forcing myself on her, calling and saying I’m on my way and that I won’t take no for an answer. I could bring lunch and she wouldn’t have to go out or get dressed or clean the house. She’d have no excuse.”
“I’d love you to do that.” His old grin was back, lopsided and appealing, and she looked away from him, back outside to the falling snow.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
She knocked on the Perelles’ door and waited. After a minute she rang the bell. Virginia had said she’d be in. “I don’t go anywhere anymore,” she’d said.
Kit stomped her feet and hugged the bag of Chinese food closer to her chest. She should have worn gloves and something heavier than her corduroy jacket.
She looked around the expansive front yard, remembering how the trees had formed a canopy over the lawn during the summer. Now the yard was littered with yellow leaves. She could barely see the lawn at all.
Virginia opened the door, and Kit had to force a smile to mask her shock. Before her stood a withered old woman, her skin colorless, her hair dull and uncombed. She wore a droopy beige terrycloth robe, flat where her right breast had been.
“You said not to clean or get dressed up,” Virginia said. “I took you at your word.”
“Well, I meant it, so that’s fine.” Kit moved past her, heading for the kitchen. It was hot and dark in the house. She felt as though she were fighting for air.
She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and settled Virginia into it. She began opening the cupboards in search of plates.
“I’m not too hungry,” Virginia said. “I warned you on the phone that I’m not good company these days.”
“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to see you. I’ve missed our lunches together.”
“I’m not the same woman who used to be your lunch partner.”
“It would be hard to go through what you have and remain the same.” She dished out small spoonfuls from each carton onto Virginia’s plate, thinking that it looked like food for a child. She scooped twice as much onto her own plate. She was famished, as usual.
She set Virginia’s plate in front of her. Virginia picked up the fork in her left hand and began slowly toying with the food.
“You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Virginia?”
“I can’t use my right arm yet,” she said. “It’s so frustrating. You know what I feel like doing? What I really want to do? I feel like putting my face in this plate and eating off it like a dog. It’d be easier than trying to use my left hand.”
“Oh, Virginia.” Kit set down her own fork. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
“I’m not doing a good job of it either. Really, I thought I was stronger than this. Some days I want to give up. The chemotherapy makes me so sick I wish I were dead. And look what it’s done to my hair.”
She touched her left hand to her hair and Kit noticed that it wasn’t just dull, it was thinning as well. Virginia’s white scalp was clearly visible.
“I’m constantly checking my left breast for any changes. I think to myself, well, if I find a lump there I won’t tell anyone
. I think I’m actually hoping to find one. I’ll let it grow and grow until it kills me.”
“Please don’t let that happen. You would be missed so much.”
“Missed by whom?”
“By a lot of people. By Cole, for one, and Phillip. By your friends.”
“They don’t really care. They called in the beginning. ‘Oh, we’re sorry, how can we help? Blah blah.’ Then they don’t call again. Or when they do, they say, ‘Cheer up, Ginny! Time to get on with your life.’ They don’t care about me, about the person that I am now. They want me to be the old Virginia, and she’s gone forever.” Virginia sat back in her chair. “I look at myself in the mirror and I can’t believe what I see. I have to keep reminding myself it’s gone for good. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with my breast back.”
“When can you have a prosthesis?”
“I have one,” she said dully. “This woman came over from the hospital and brought it with her. I haven’t tried it, though.”
“I’d like to see it,” Kit said. Pushiness seemed to be the right approach.
“Now?”
Kit nodded.
Virginia got to her feet with enormous effort and led Kit to the bedroom. The drapes were still closed, and the air was stale. She went to her dresser, took a plastic bag from the top drawer, and handed it to Kit.
Kit took out the prosthesis. It was made of clear plastic and filled with a jellylike substance.
“It has a wonderfully natural shape.” She looked encouragingly at Virginia.
Virginia sighed and pulled a bra out of the drawer. “That needs to go in here.”
Kit put the prosthesis in the cup of the bra, and Virginia untied her robe. Kit tried to turn away but she was too late. There was the purple scar, the flattened chest wall. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but this was worse. She blinked hard, trying to hold back the tears, but they spilled over and rolled down her cheeks before she could stop them.
Virginia looked surprised. She closed the robe over her chest and pulled Kit to her with her good arm. Kit felt the bony frailness of Virginia’s body under her own strong arms. She hugged her as tightly as she dared, feeling a part of what Virginia felt: maybe it wasn’t worth it.
“I’m sorry, Virginia. It just hit me all at once what this must be like for you.” She let go of her and took a tissue from the box on the dresser to wipe her eyes.
Without a word Virginia slipped her robe off. “Help me into this, okay?”
“Is it painful having a bra against it?”
“It’s a strange feeling. It feels completely dead, yet overly sensitive at the same time.”
She put the robe back on, holding it shut across her chest with her left hand, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She smiled. “Not too bad,” she said.
“No, it looks great!” It really did. She never would have guessed.
Virginia touched her hair and made a face at her reflection. “I can’t wash my hair because of my arm. Phillip’s done it for me a few times, and Corinne, but it’s not enough.”
“Let me wash it for you.” She was already leading Virginia by the hand back to the kitchen.
“Just one thing, Kit,” Virginia said as she leaned over the sink. “Go gently. I’m afraid one of these times all my hair will go down the drain.”
She dried Virginia’s hair with a blow dryer, curling the fine strands around her fingers.
“So, how is my son doing?” Virginia asked over the sound of the dryer.
“He’s fine. He’s in better spirits now that Estelle’s in therapy.”
Virginia shook her head. “As a psychologist I feel blasphemous saying this, but I don’t think therapy can change what’s wrong with Estelle. I’ve never understood Cole’s attraction to her. It pains me to think that he’s taken in by the way she looks. I thought I raised him better than that.”
“You have no reason to be critical of the way you raised Cole. He’s a wonderful person.”
Virginia smiled. “Are you in love with him, Kit?”
She tensed. “I love him a lot, Virginia, but there’s no romance. There. You’re dry.” She snapped off the dryer and stood back to look at her work. “Pretty,” she said. “You look radiant.”
She moved to the kitchen table to fold up the cartons of cold Chinese food and to get away from Virginia’s far too observant eyes.
18.
She woke to the sound of voices—Estelle’s loud and cutting, Cole’s a low rumble. She lay as still as possible, trying to make out the words. She caught a few of Estelle’s, enough to know that the argument was in French.
She squinted to make out the time on her night table clock. Ten past midnight.
The door to Cole’s room slammed shut, and the house shook from the sound. The quick footsteps on the stairs were unmistakably Estelle’s. After a minute she heard a car start in the driveway, heard the spray of gravel as it pulled into the street.
Let her go, Cole.
She stared at the patchy moonlight on her ceiling and thought about him alone in his room across the hall, maybe shivering on his balcony as he watched Estelle drive away.
The wood floor was cold under her feet. It took her a few seconds to get her door open—it was stuck as though the house was giving her a second chance to go back to bed and mind her own business.
She slipped across the hall and knocked softly on his door.
“Yes.”
She opened the door just enough to see into the dark room. “Do you want someone to talk with?”
“Come in.”
He was sitting up against a pile of pillows in his four-poster bed under an old Amish quilt that covered him to his waist. It was strange to be in his room, in the dark, when she was certain he was wearing nothing under that quilt.
She sat down on the empty side of his bed, feet on the mattress, hugging her knees. Even in the darkness she could see the set of his jaw, the unsmiling look she’d seen only once before—the morning he’d called her a ‘fucking bitch’.
“We’ve argued every night this week,” he said.
She put her hand on his arm. Estelle’s light autumn scent hung in the air around her.
“She actually seems worse since she’s been seeing Frank,” he said. “I tell myself she probably has to get worse before she’ll get better, but she used to at least try to control her bitchiness. Now she doesn’t seem to care who knows how crazy she is.”
He was right. The only change she’d noticed in Estelle was that she no longer waited until Cole’s back was turned to aim her barbs at someone. These days Cole himself was often her target.
“What happened tonight?” she asked.
He sighed. “She thinks sex solves everything. She thinks her body is totally irresistible and when the fighting gets rough, she starts this . . . this come-on. The thing is, it usually works. It’s a way of closing my mind to the problems, I guess. Anyhow, I’m sick of it and tonight it had no effect on me. Then she said I must be impotent.” He laughed. “It would never occur to her that a man might not want to do it to her if he was physically capable of it.”
The rough edge of his words excited her. His arm under her fingers was warm, almost hot.
“I can’t be rational about her,” he continued. “You know that time you told me I was wrapped around her finger so tightly that I couldn’t think straight? You were right. That’s why I got angry with you. You were right, and I couldn’t stand to have you spell it out for me.”
He was finally seeing the light. She felt happy, listening to him.
“She said she’d find someone else for tonight.” He waited for her reaction.
“She’s only trying to upset you.”
“I don’t think so. I think she meant it. And she won’t have any problem finding someone either. There are plenty of men around here who’ve wanted her for years.” He shuddered. “I can’t stand the thought of her making love to someone else.”
Kit nodded. “You’ve been together
forever.” She lifted her hand from his arm to brush a hair from her eye.
“Don’t take your hand away, Kit.”
She stared at him, knowing that he was asking for more than her touch on his arm. She could see the color of his eyes even in the dark. He was watching her calmly. Without stopping to think, she ran her hand slowly across his chest, lacing her fingers in the hair. How long she’d been wanting to do that! She felt the staccato pounding of his heart under her palm. Her own heartbeat was even quicker.
He moved the hem of her robe aside and his hand cupped her calf, squeezing gently. A current of electricity shot through her and she knew that this was it. She couldn’t have stopped if a train were about to run her over.
She lowered her hand to his stomach and felt the ridges of tight muscle beneath the soft skin. His hand slid up the inside of her thigh, and she shifted her legs until his fingers were where she wanted them. She clutched the edge of the mattress with one hand and the quilt with the other while he stroked her. She came in an instant.
She leaned forward to kiss him but he held her by the shoulders and laid her back against the quilt. Suddenly he was inside her.
What was happening? It was all too fast.
“Cole . . .”
He didn’t seem to hear her. She felt his chin pressing into her shoulder, his movements against her body quick and careless. She stared at the ceiling, not bothering to move with him, and began to cry.
He finished quickly and rolled onto his back, and all she could think about was getting out of his room. She sat up and pulled her robe over her breasts. He hadn’t even touched them. They ached from neglect.
“Don’t go.” He grabbed her arm as she tried to stand.
“I want to leave,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Why are you crying?”
“Why do you think? I could have been some blow-up doll. You just needed to prove you could do it, didn’t you? You needed to get back at Estelle.”
Secrets at the Beach House Page 12