“We’ll never be rid of it,” Danielle said now. “We’re caught in that damned murder and it never goes away.”
Franco shook his head. “We will,” he said, in the tone of all-purpose reassurance a man learns from marriage. “We nearly were rid of it, before this.”
He took her hand, that little hand with its sweet pink manicure, the same as when they were in high school. Then her hand had been perfect; now it was soft, with knotted veins showing and a constellation of age spots near the thumb, which only heightened his sense of her innocence, her fragility.
Her hand squeezed his. “I haven’t planted my window boxes,” she said.
“We’ll stop on the way home and get some flowers.”
She could hear in his voice the gratitude and tenderness that a marriage is supposed to hold.
“Vita’s pretty,” she offered. “Or she will be, once she learns to manage herself. She’s got her mother’s eyes.…”
He could feel her fishing around, trying to read his feelings for Sabine. “She does not,” he said stoutly. “Sabine’s eyes were shrewd and that was all. Don’t say that about that poor girl.”
“Well, she didn’t get made from your rib, Franco.”
“My genes just blotted hers right out,” he said, rubbing his chin so she could hear his beard scratch. “Those tired old Yankee genes. Vita’s a good Portagee girl, you’ll see. LaRee told me she’s sad she never had a boat named after her.”
“Never thought of it,” Danielle said, “but now I do, it doesn’t surprise me. I suppose I took it for granted growing up, that my dad was captain of the Little Danielle. But it’s good to be able to take things for granted. Remember the little dories you built for the boys?”
“I’d forgotten all about them,” he said.
“You could make one for Vita.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I could.”
They turned in at the Driftwood Cabins and bumped over the dirt lanes between the cottages. The Machado house sat on a high, bare foundation—a storm tide would have the marsh flooding right up the driveway. There were four cars parked along the road—Maria’s, Amalia’s big white SUV, Cabbage’s truck, and a brown Pontiac that looked twenty years old.
“It’s a high school reunion,” Franco said, sighing. What wasn’t? Amalia, still hurt and resentful over a dance forty years ago… and he, even now, reverential toward Bobby, who had the most baskets, the quickest rebounds.… High school had set the course of their lives, and they hadn’t known how to alter it; there was nothing that showed them another way.
“I wonder if Vinny killed himself because once his mother was dead there really wasn’t any reason not to,” Danielle said. “Maybe it wasn’t that he couldn’t live without her but that he stayed alive for her sake.”
“I suppose,” Franco said. Who knew? And why would anyone want to know? Vinny had lived and now he had died. Franco remembered that the Red Sox had won the night before; it would make for an easy conversation with Bobby.
There was his bicycle, leaning against the front staircase. “What the hell?”
“Georgie, maybe?”
“Nah,” Franco said. “Georgie’s on foot, remember?”
“We’re stuck with him on the Rainha,” Danielle said. “He can’t go to Fatima’s now.”
The stench hit them when they opened the door. “Something died in the wall,” Maria explained. “And just when company’s coming. Come in.”
“…and they were just watching, from across the street,” Amalia was saying indignantly. “Like she thought it was some kind of freak show.” The room was neat; the rabbit was in the cage and the dog chained to the back steps, but you could feel disorder lurking. Linguica rolls and pastries were set out on the table but no one ate.
Franco and Danielle sat on the edge of the sofa, holding their coffee cups. “Some people thrive on the pain of others,” Amalia said. “Sorry for the family, I don’t wonder.”
“Eh, Franco?” Bobby Matos said, holding up a bottle of aguardiente, and Franco held his cup out to receive it.
“I’m not good enough, Bobby?” Danielle said, reaching her cup out, too. Bobby chuckled and said you could never guess with the ladies, but Amalia shot him a poisoned glance. Aguardiente was for men—peasant men. Bobby drank it the same way he belched at the table, to assert his masculinity.
“How’s your daughter, Franco?” Amalia asked.
“She’s in the Shakespeare play, the one down at Mackerel Bay Park,” he said.
“She’s so smart,” Danielle said, demonstrating her open-mindedness. It was tiring to go around demonstrating your open-mindedness all day when you’d just rather be home watching the soaps and reading mysteries.
“Seems pretty stupid to me,” Dorotea said, sullen. “She was over here yesterday making a fool out of herself.”
“She was?”
“Yeah, I don’t know who she thinks she is, barging in like that right after my dad died.”
“That was Vita?” her mother asked. “Your friend from school? I thought…” She looked over at Franco, puzzling. “I got her mixed up.…”
“Yeah, and you made me go walk with her.”
“I didn’t.…” Maria’s voice broke, and she looked away, sucking her lip. Then: “You need to do something—look at you.”
Maria had a plain, anxious face with small, dull eyes—like an opossum, Franco thought. She was sixteen when she was hustled into marriage, seventeen when Dorotea was born… twenty-three when Vinny went to prison. Amalia had kept an eye on her, helped her get the job at the nursing home. Franco’s head ached; he rubbed his temples. It was a great relief to remember that he’d been on the news the night before, that they had sent the satellite truck all the way out to Oyster Creek to interview him, because he, Franco Neves, was, in this case, an authority.
“Randy Redwoods, he’s a nice guy,” he said.
“You mean, the news guy?” Bobby said.
Danielle closed her eyes and shook her head. “Yup, you got the big famous lothario, right here,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Lothario,” Franco mocked. But he lingered over the syllables. It was a better title than assistant harbormaster. Amalia raised an eyebrow to show she didn’t find anything funny, which was a fact everyone already knew.
“Your college fund has five hundred dollars in it, as of this morning,” she told Dorotea.
“I’m not goin’ to college,” Dorotea said quietly, stubbornly aggrieved.
“Thank you,” her mother said emphatically. “For setting it up.”
“Bobby’ll talk to the VFW,” Amalia said, her voice a bit thinner after Dorotea’s rebuff. “We’ll have a breakfast there, in August, and a supper later.”
Tourists would go to a pancake breakfast, a lobster roll supper. They would pay a lot for anything that felt authentic, true to the place. And who wouldn’t give something to a girl whose father had just died, who wanted to get an education?
“I don’t even have my license,” Dorotea protested.
“Well, when am I going to do driving hours with you?” Maria said. “The middle of the night’s about the only time I’m not working.”
“I’d take you driving, honey,” Danielle said.
“Can’t afford the permit anyway,” Dorotea answered, pulling her head in.
“When I was your age I’d never yet crossed the Sagamore Bridge,” Franco said.
“Well, I have,” Dorotea said. “I been to Souza-Baranowski every visiting day for ten years, until she got too busy.”
“Until I got a second shift at the Horizons,” her mother said. “So you didn’t have to drop out.”
“There’s more across the bridge than Souza-Baranowski,” Amalia said. It wasn’t that she believed this herself, really. It was that there was so little left on this side of the bridge that Dorotea—all of them—would have to leave.
“I don’t want to go,” Dorotea said, with a harsh tug at her slipping bodice.
“How did my bike get here?” Franco thought to ask.
Dorotea looked up. “That’s Vita’s,” she said. “She left it here, but I guess it’s finders keepers.” She said this with bitter triumph, as if she had at least torn away one thing from Vita’s huge pile of riches.
“You don’t have a bicycle?”
“Where would I get a bicycle?”
“Franco could teach you to ride,” Danielle said.
Franco turned to her with irritation and she gave the slightest shrug, and smile. “Be good for you,” she said.
Cabbage was drinking his aguardiente straight from his coffee cup now.
“Lost two in one week. How many natives are left?” he asked.
“Lost two, lost ten, lost a whole world. Should have been standing room only in the church this morning,” Amalia said, and she couldn’t quite help glancing at Franco as she said it. “Can you imagine bringing someone in from Newburyport to be harbormaster? Because he understands ‘pleasure boating’? Can you imagine?”
“Used to go down to the wharf before dinner and get a fish,” Cabbage said. “Cod, or mackerel, or a sea clam for pie. Anyone would give me one, it was like askin’ for a penny.”
“Do you remember when the squid washed up in the bay?” Franco said. “That was back… oh, before high school.…”
“I remember,” Amalia said. “You boys loved it.”
“Yeah,” Cabbage answered. “They were better’n water pistols, the way you could squirt the ink. Chased the girls all over until they slipped and there they were flailing around in the squid pile.… But you wouldn’t let it go, Danielle.”
“You put one down my shirt, I put one down your pants,” Danielle said. “Came out even.”
“Best day ever,” Cabbage said.
“They were all good days. Everyone’s father went out fishing on a dragger in the morning and was home for supper that night.”
“We played all over town. There was always one mother or another watching us out the kitchen window.”
“Couldn’t imagine anythin’ else.”
The conversation guttered out, all of them staring past one another, remembering.
“Franco, you’re sure you don’t want to sell the Rainha?” Bobby said suddenly.
“For scrap?” Franco sounded injured, then smiled and shook his head at himself.
“Five hundred,” Bobby said. “I’ll sink her out past Barrel Point. I believe I’d have an oyster reef there within a couple of years.”
Franco sighed. “Not… not now. Maybe next year. I had a guy wanted to buy her and fix ’er up. He’ll be back in July, maybe then.”
“Didn’t say anything to me about it,” Danielle said. “Did this guy actually see her?” Probably he’d been telling someone at the Walrus about the Rainha, the cypress wood in the cabin that wouldn’t weather, the way she’d stayed stable and solid and rode out the highest waves. The longer he talked, the better that boat would have sounded, and the guy would have said, “I’d like to come see her sometime; I’ve been looking to buy something.” And Franco would have filed that away, under HOPE, sneaking it into his unconscious without passing it by REALITY. He needed to; that she understood.
“Are you moving over to Fatima’s now, Maria?” she asked. They couldn’t sell the boat with Georgie on it.
Maria shook her head, slow and deliberate. “Can’t,” she said. “That house needs so much work, gotta sell it.” Fatima’s house tilted at the end of Whiddon Alley, up against the old cemetery, the lace curtains turning to rags in the windows, the paint long since worn away. It was easy to imagine the real estate ad: “In town, walk to beach! Good bones, antique features; ready for your inspiration.” And a few hundred thousand of your dollars. But someone would renovate it, keeping true to history, turning the little yard into a patio with an arbor, adding a widow’s walk if they could get around the zoning board. And there they’d be, every August, waking up to fill their lungs with salt air, start the ceviche and head for the beach, back in time for a martini and a shower before the guests arrived. Urbane laughter would float up the street, and they’d lean back listening for the saxophone, on the same street where Danielle’s grandmother had called her kids in for dinner by beating a pot with a wooden spoon.
“Another one gone…” Amalia said.
“My shift starts in an hour,” Danielle said, standing. “Maria, I’ll call the first of next week and see what I can do, all right?”
Maria nodded, stood up to bid them good-bye. Seeing Danielle start out the door, she said suddenly, “They’re sending his ashes tomorrow. In a hearse.”
Danielle closed her eyes, nodded.
“You gotta… Someone’s gotta…”
“I’ll come over,” Amalia said, stoic. She would bury them all, buy a one-way ticket to Lisbon, turn out the lights, and leave the town to the washashores. “Bobby can cover the shop. Do you mind if I use your…”
She started to open the door at the side of the room, but it pushed back. Maria had dragged all the clutter from the living room into the bedroom. To walk through you’d have to climb piles of laundry, a mattress folded over on itself, a television with an antenna improvised of tinfoil and wire, a Disney Cinderella costume that must have been Dorotea’s years ago.
Amalia pulled the door shut, and for once she made no judgment, though bitterness shriveled her throat. To go down to the wharf after school and see them there, mending the nets, cleaning the decks, calling across to one another with the bay sparkling behind them… She had been dazzled to see her father at the wide wooden steering wheel. He’d been steering that boat since he was tall enough to see out the wheelhouse windows; he knew every shoal and channel and he could feel the weather by the movement of the waves underneath. You’d have been sure he had set the family on its way to glory. Instead, life had carried them here.
She squared her shoulders and bore it, the mess, the stink, the sorrow. “We need to open the store, Bobby,” she said. When she got home she would read more of Their Eyes Were Watching God, though it seemed silly to her, some kind of hysteria. Like Sabine Gray, or LaRee, looking for love and “fulfillment,” recognition… silly luxuries as far as she could see. After she got through the chapter, she’d clean the bathroom, getting between the tiles with a toothbrush as if there were some disease creeping in there that could be vanquished if you worked at it every single day.
21
THE TRUE TRUTH
“To think, I used to be happy here,” Vita said, looking out the big window into the woods. “That was before I understood all that was out there in the world.”
“Well, you’ve been away almost twenty hours!” LaRee said. “I’m surprised you recognize the place.”
Oh, she was back, she was back, speaking the exact phrases a sixteen-year-old was meant to, after a great adventure during which she had come very close to crossing the border into the next town. LaRee wanted to pick her up and hug and kiss her and twirl her around, the way she would have without thinking ten years ago.
“You know what I mean, LaRee,” Vita said, sulking and laughing at once, giving a little performance. She pressed her hands to the kitchen window for a second as if recalling the cell she’d escaped from.
“I do know what you mean,” LaRee said. “There is so much out there in the world and you will get to see all of it, all of the beauty and mystery. It’s all ahead.”
“I’ve already seen the bad.”
“Some of it.”
“From now on, the truth, always…”
“I promise. I never meant to hide things from you, only to wait until you could understand better,” she said.
Vita looked away, glanced back quickly as if she didn’t trust this.
“It’s not as easy as you might think, Vita,” LaRee said. “Truth isn’t a solid thing you can pass from one person to another. It’s all rags and shards, like something you’d find washed up on the beach, and you pick it up and disentangle it from the weeds and look at it fr
om every side and you begin to understand some piece of it. You kind of feel your way through.”
“But there are some solid pieces,” Vita said, resisting her.
“I’ll try,” LaRee said quickly. “I will try. I met your mom at a party, in the line for the ladies’ room. We were freshmen, so we were in the same dorm even though I was a nursing major and she was in fine arts. She seemed very… aristocratic, or something… cool and discerning. She didn’t care much about things that were terribly important to me. She never went home for holidays; she said her father ‘spent his time whoring’ and her mother was a pill popper and she’d rather eat pizza alone on Thanksgiving than feel the emptiness in that house.”
“Okay,” Vita said, guarded and waiting.
“But she took a lot of pills herself—speed. She was friends with all the chic people—they were too beautiful to sleep. They could talk about Paris, their favorite bistros and shops, and Soho, their favorite bistros and shops, and Aspen.… Well, you see what I mean. They thought they were better than I was, and… I thought they were better than I was, too.”
“Maybe they were better than you,” Vita said. Even now LaRee flinched inwardly.
“Maybe they were,” she said. “It certainly seemed like they were. They’d talk about painters, how you didn’t know Tintoretto until you’d been to the Uffizi. I didn’t know what the Uffizi was. Once Sabine said the sky was ‘Ang blue,’ and I thought it was a paint color, like alizarin crimson or something, so I said, ‘Closer to cobalt,’ to try to sound like I knew something. And she said, ‘Ang the painter.’ As if she was so tired of having to explain things like that to me. She meant Ingres… a French painter who I’d never heard of, of course.”
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