The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  We talked very little as we ran west away from Smith Cove and around a peninsula that thrust out into the water. Islands and land, inlets and houses along the shore seemed remote and unreal. There was only the sun and the sea and our winged Anabel.

  Eventually we came about and headed into the wind before dropping anchor off an empty beach.

  “There were visitors here during the summer,” he said, “but there’ll be no one around now.”

  Again we got into the dinghy we’d towed behind us and rowed into shallow water, where Evan jumped out barefoot and pulled the small boat farther onto the beach, where it could rest safely on the sand. I took off my shoes, rolled up my slacks, and then jumped down into Evan’s arms. He steadied me, released me at once—though I didn’t want that—and walked beside me along clean, damp sand that felt firm and cool beneath my feet.

  Judith had ordered a lunch packed for us and Evan made a small cache of our possessions, with jackets we didn’t need in the warm sun, and the lunch box we would return to later, piled upon the sand. For a while we walked along the beach together, not talking at first, but somehow hand-in-hand—as if that were the only proper way to walk a beach.

  It was all so beautiful, so utterly peaceful. Ahead of us were bluffs, a sagging snow fence to keep sand from drifting, a few stunted pine trees, while beside us grew patches of beach grass and bright yellow goldenrod. Farther inland rose thick, tangled growth, and I could hear birds singing. Winter was a long way off, and above us gulls soared and dipped, though their shrill cries seemed far away in the blue heights overhead, unable to shatter the peace of this lonely beach.

  Yet it wasn’t possible for me to relax and let all this peace and beauty be. I knew I must talk to Evan. I must let myself go and tell him everything. How to start without just blurting what I wanted to say, was the problem. Perhaps there would be a way if I got Evan to talk a little first, and I began tentatively.

  “What was your life like—growing up around here?” I asked him as we walked along. “It must have been a wonderful place for a boy.”

  “It was. I could be outdoors all the time—summer and winter. My father was what they called a naturalist in those days. He knew all about ecology before we used the word so commonly.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was a social science teacher in our local high school. She’s retired now and lives with a sister out in Colorado. I try to get out there once or twice a year to see her. My father died when I was ten, but he taught me a great deal before that time.”

  “You were lucky,” I said.

  Something in my tone caught his attention. He led the way up the beach to dry sand and we dropped down on it together. The mood for talking was upon him too—everything was right, all was favorable for what I had to tell.

  “What does that mean?” he asked. “That I was lucky? What about you?”

  It was very easy now. “I was adopted when I was about two months old and taken to live in a small town in Connecticut. I meant that you were lucky to have your own real parents. But I couldn’t have had a better mother and father, and I loved them as much as anyone could love their natural parents.”

  He caught the past tense. “What happened?”

  “They died last June. In a train crash in Italy.”

  “I’m sorry.” His hand reached for mine. “I can still remember what it was like when my father died, without warning, of a heart attack. It must make a great difference for you.”

  “I think I’ve been floundering ever since.”

  “That’s not exactly the impression you give.”

  “I’m good at bluffing,” I said. It was time to tell him, time to open up the whole subject while we were talking about me—yet I still wasn’t ready. Something fearful in me held back. I didn’t really know whether I could trust him to understand. Instead, I asked a question I hadn’t meant to ask—at least not yet. “Have you always known Stacia?”

  The peaceful spell was gone, and I had banished it. I could tell by the chilling in his eyes, but though I was sorry, I had known this quietness between us couldn’t last forever. There were rapids ahead, and I flinched from facing them, even though I knew I must. Gentle waves rolled onto our beach, and I listened to the sound they made, waiting.

  Evan picked up a bit of broken shell and tossed it in one hand. “As you must have noticed, there’s no marriage left between Stacia and me. When I’ve finished this effort to preserve the Rhodes’ collection, and when I’ve done what I can to save the house for Judith and Herndon, I’ll go out to Montauk to live, near the lab.”

  His telling me meant something in spite of the chill in his eyes and his voice, and I tried to take heart

  “Does Stacia know?”

  “She knows, but she hasn’t accepted it yet. She never lets go of anything she thinks belongs to her.”

  “Has she always been like that—I mean, the way she seems to be now?”

  “Judith says she has.”

  “All those dolls,” I murmured.

  “Yes—and worse. Things I learned much later. And yet—”

  His voice gentled, and I knew he was looking back to the Stacia he must have known in the beginning, when she still cared enough to give herself to attracting him. How beautiful and desirable she must have been. Ever since I’d come to the house, I had seen the occasional flashes that sparked between them and I wondered if a man like Evan ever got over a woman like Stacia, even if their marriage ended.

  “We won’t talk about her,” he said, suddenly curt. “It’s over and done with. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and my own voice was so low I could hardly hear the words. In spite of the roughening in his tone, I knew what he had done, and I had to acknowledge this tentative reaching out between us in a thread so fragile that a wrong word might easily snap it. This was a man who was strong and independent and who had been bitterly hurt—a man reluctant to give his trust again.

  “I’ve tried to talk to Judith and Herndon,” he went on. “Judith accepts what’s irrevocable. She’s even encouraged me to break away. Herndon turns back from reality. He’s the most successful escape artist I’ve ever known.”

  I was startled: “Escape artist?”

  “He’s not willing to face anything that seems destructive and damaging to established ways. He wants all his surfaces to be neat and orderly—to relate to neat formulas. When they don’t, he closes his eyes and turns in another direction.”

  I knew so much less about any of these people than Evan did. And yet—?

  “I wonder,” I said.

  Evan tossed the bit of shell toward the water. “What do you mean?”

  “Of course I can’t know him as you do, but I’ve sensed a greater complexity than that. Sometimes it seems to me that Herndon is capable of very deep suffering. I don’t think Judith has given him as much as he has given her.”

  “That’s true enough. But when it comes to a talent like Judith’s, perhaps it’s right for her to take whatever she can to nurture it.”

  I didn’t believe this to the extent that he seemed to mean it. Not any longer. “Doesn’t Judith fail in every connection except where her work is concerned?”

  He thought about that for a moment, staring out at the water of the bay, and when he spoke the harsh note was back in his voice. “Perhaps that’s true of anyone who has demanding work. Human relationships have to take second place.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked.

  For just an instant unconcealed pain looked out of his eyes. “I’ve taught myself to believe it.”

  “That doesn’t make it true. Though I used to think that too. Ambition was the law I lived by, the thing that drove me. I couldn’t understand compromise. But I wasn’t happy. I was always searching for something more.”

  “Searching for what, Courtn
ey?”

  “I thought it was for my family—my natural parents. I wanted an answer to the mystery most adopted children have to face. Do you know what it’s like—not ever knowing, looking into faces you pass on the street and wondering if this one, or perhaps that one, is related to you?”

  “I suppose I’ve never thought about it,” he said gently.

  I went on, trying to make him understand. “There’s a depth of yearning in all of us. A questioning that colors all our lives. Most people never do think of what it might be like to find themselves cut out of a piece of cloth that is separate from the bolt. We haven’t any past. The things most children grow up with—stories about Grandpa Bob and Aunt Judy and all the rest are no part of the fabric. The relatives we hear about aren’t really ours. We didn’t come from them.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m beginning to see.”

  “It’s all taken for granted with those who have families. But not with me. Not with all the others like me. From the time we’re children we ache to know. We think the answers will give us everything.”

  “I imagine answers can sometimes be pretty disappointing.”

  “Of course. But we never believe that—we never face it. And by the time we find out we may be left adrift again and unable to go back to what we had before. That’s what’s happened to me. Only now I can’t ever again make a job all important.”

  “You have found out then?”

  I turned to meet his eyes. “Yes, I’ve found out. That’s why I came to East Hampton.”

  Realization dawned in him slowly. “The Rhodes? Do you mean—are you the baby Judith gave away with Olive Asher’s help?”

  I answered him starkly. “Yes, I am. I can’t find any reason to doubt it. Evan, how long have you known that the baby didn’t die?”

  He swallowed hard, and I knew he found it difficult to speak.

  “I didn’t know until yesterday when Judith sent us out to talk to Olive. I’d believed, along with everyone else, that the story of the baby’s drowning was true. But Judith didn’t tell me that you—”

  “I’m not sure she knows. About me, that is.”

  He went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “—that you are Anabel. And Stacia is your cousin. Which makes John and Alice—” He seemed too stunned to go on, and his words halted, fell into silence.

  “Yes to all of that,” I said. “I’ve wanted to tell you, wanted to consult you. But somehow there was never the right time or opportunity.”

  The air around us seemed to stir, as if somewhere out on the clear waters of the bay a storm was brewing, sweeping inland, sending a cold breath ahead.

  “I see,” he said, and now the chill was in his voice. “So you are the heiress whom Judith wants to bring back and use to defeat Stacia?”

  “That’s not what I want to be!” I cried. “I don’t want any of that!”

  “What proof do you have?” he asked coldly.

  I drew the little unicorn from about my neck and showed it to him. I told him of the leads I’d found, and of the way everything seemed to add up, though of course the final proof was in a lawyer’s files back in New York—the names of those who had adopted Anabel Rhodes, and given her for adoption. Only a court could order such facts released.

  “I’m afraid it’s all true,” I said. “I’ve found a family I don’t want, and who certainly won’t want me.”

  “So you came to The Shingles and spied on us all to see if we would suit you.”

  The lash of his words made me angry. “What else could I do? How could I know ahead of time if any of my leads were true, or if I would be wanted by this family, once I found it? Or—and that’s true too—if I would want them.”

  “Most people don’t have such a choice. We have to take what we’re given.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please try to understand.”

  “I am trying. I suppose deception, the taking of an advantage with people who are hospitable and innocent of hidden motives, has always been something I’ve detested.” He stood up beside me abruptly. “Let’s eat that lunch we’ve brought and start for home.”

  We no longer held hands as we followed damp sand back to where we’d left our things, and I could feel tears of anger and frustration starting, though I blinked them back indignantly. He was a totally impossible and intolerant man. He lacked generosity and human kindness, and he was utterly harsh and cruel.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” he said, as though he’d read my mind. “I’m one of those people you spoke of who gives everything to his work and doesn’t have time for anything else. I’m the sort of man who never should have married in the first place. Some of Stacia’s problems go straight back to me. Some of the blame is mine.”

  When we reached our things, he picked up a lunch box out of the stack and held it out to me. “Do you want to unpack it?”

  I opened the box with fingers that shook a little, spread the cloth that had been enclosed, set out food and the thermos of coffee.

  “Who else knows about this?” he asked, picking up a chicken sandwich.

  “Stacia and John know. Stacia found the unicorn in my room and took it to John the first day I was here. Whether anyone else knows, I haven’t been able to tell. There’s been no change in the way Judith and Herndon behave toward me.”

  “How does John feel over finding a daughter at this late date?”

  “I don’t know that either,” I said dully. “He hasn’t exactly opened his arms.”

  Evan was silent as he ate, but if the obvious motive that lay behind my “accidents” and their possible connection with Stacia occurred to him, he didn’t put it into words.

  “Stacia doesn’t believe me either,” I said, when the silence grew long. “She doesn’t believe I mean it when I say I only want to go back to New York and never see any of the Rhodes again.”

  “In any case, it doesn’t matter what she believes, does it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Once Judith institutes her search for the lost Anabel, the trail will lead to you—if that’s who you are. And you can’t sidestep an inheritance. So you’re probably quite safe.”

  I could hardly swallow for the anger that rose in me. “I would hate to be like you! I’d hate never to trust or believe in anyone! I’d hate not to know honesty when I see it!”

  “Honesty? You?” His laughter seemed to crack around the edges. “I was right in my first estimation of you when I watched that Winser television show. You’ve lived up to everything I thought about you then.”

  That was when I disgraced myself. I started to cry. But at least I tried not to let him see. I jumped up and began busily to collect the things we would take home with us, folded the trash into a paper bag, packed away the uneaten food, whether he had finished or not. And all the while tears wet my cheeks and I had to rub them away surreptitiously so as not to be reduced to complete humiliation.

  Of course he saw anyway, and ignored—for which at least I was grateful. Yet strangely, even in my anger, I understood something of why he reacted as he did. Stacia was his major experience with a woman. He had been married to her since she was in her late teens and she had left her mark on him, so that he would never easily trust a woman again. Earlier, when we had walked along the sand, I had sensed a beginning of something between us, a softening in him toward me. I had already been drawn to Evan Faulkner, and there had even been times when he had seemed to turn briefly to me, and as we walked, something stronger had begun to make itself felt. Then I had destroyed it completely by telling him the truth he had to know.

  What had begun as a lovely morning was long over and there was no comradeship between us when we returned to the sloop that my mother had named the Anabel. As we beat upwind across the bay, sailing home, I found that all words had been finished between Evan and me. Anger and resentment had put a stop to c
ommunication, and there was nothing left to say. My tears, at least, were spent, but something fresh, a newborn part of me, had been lost, wrenched away almost violently.

  No—not wrenched away. If only it could be! This deep new pain was something I would have to live with from now on. Here beside him in the Anabel I knew what loving would be like when I’d have to love alone. At every turn I would think of him. Almost anything at all would remind me of my loss, and my self-sufficient life in an empty apartment would never again satisfy me. Work might become an anesthetic, numbing me as time passed. The moment I could handle a wheel I would leave, because here the reality of Evan’s presence and the knowledge of how he despised me would be too much to bear. Now all I wanted was that anesthetic.

  The afternoon was graying by the time we reached Evan’s car and drove across the South Fork to East Hampton, each remote from the other, aware of a barrier that could not be crossed. Here again were the little green lanes of my recent fear, and we followed them through the gates of The Shingles and past Nan’s shop. Only bare courtesies had been exchanged between us, and I didn’t care what happened from now on. There was nothing I could say to him, nothing he could say to me. But he did give me one warning before I got out of the car.

  “Be careful—if you can,” he told me. “If I’d known earlier what I do now, I’d have urged you to go back to New York today. You must leave tomorrow at the latest. I can drive you in your own car, and return by train.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, wanting only to be away from him. “I’ll leave the minute I can drive.”