by Susan Wilson
Oh, yes, Kiley remembered Emily Claridge, and her twin sister, Missy. “Oh, Emily. Of course I do.”
Kiley had stood on her porch, chewing her lips in grumpy disappointment. Mack and Grainger were heading over to Great Harbor to see about a mast, and she was stuck having lunch with the Claridge sisters. Missy and Emily. Mrs. Claridge was her mother’s best friend in Hawke’s Cove. The two families often did things together, but the girls had grown up without becoming friends. Her mother wouldn’t hear of her bowing out of the planned luncheon.
In an allusion to their twindom, Missy and Emily, always in that order, were referred to as the “Doublemints” behind their backs. When they were little, their mother always dressed them the same, a habit that had continued to their teens, as if they felt a certain safety in keeping the outside world confused as to their individual identities.
The Claridge twins never needed anyone else. They were each other’s perfect companions, and anyone else was extraneous. The three girls were polite to one another, played nicely together when their parents played bridge, but they had never shared a meaningful conversation any more than they shared their toys.
For years Kiley had been forced into these little “girls” luncheons, her mother insistent that she have proper girlfriends in Hawke’s Cove. Yet, in the same way that the Doublemints hadn’t needed anyone else, Kiley hadn’t needed them. She had her boys.
Today as they worked on Blithe Spirit’s hull, Kiley had complained to Mack and Grainger over the sound of the electic sanders. “I’m being forced to have lunch with the Doublemints.”
“That’s the price you have to pay, Blithe, for being so popular among your own kind.”
“Shut up, Mack.”
“Make me.”
They were making such good progress on the boat that Kiley was loath to give up even an hour of work. They’d cleaned the barnacles and algae off the hull, and were nearly done with the sanding. After much debate, the boys had decided to patch the hole with fiberglass. The best way would be to replace the boards, but they didn’t have the expertise to do that job. After that repair was made, they’d start painting and varnishing and polishing the brightwork.
The boys dropped her off at her home on their way to Great Harbor to look at the mast. Kiley waved good-bye, looking as if she were going to her own execution.
Lydia was standing in the doorway. “Do you want me to drive you?”
“No. I’ll walk.”
“You can clean up and put on something more respectable than those.” Her mother’s gesture toward her paint-dust covered cutoffs was eloquent in its disapproval.
Once changed into bermuda shorts and crisp white blouse, Kiley went out by the back door, avoiding her mother on the phone with her father back in Southton. This would be a quick visit; sandwiches, a glass of lemonade, two cookies, and off to snag another half hour with the sander before her tennis lesson at three.
The bluff road ran behind the Claridges’ house, so the view from it was undistracted by traffic. Today the sky and the sea matched in faded blue. Like so many of the Hawke’s Cove summerhouses, this one was named: Sans Souci,“without care.” Missy and Emily were slouched on the white Adirondack chairs set up on the lawn, still in their tennis dresses, racquets propped against the sides of their chairs, reminding Kiley of Ralph Lauren’s advertisements in the New York Times Magazine. Poster girls for the preppy look. Seeing Kiley come through the garden gate set in the carefully trimmed privet hedge, the pair waved her over.
Around egg salad sandwiches, the chat was gossipy and centered on their own interests. They’d had a great doubles game this morning, creaming the Eastlakes. Did you hear that our father was going to buy a new boat, a thirty-six-foot yawl this time? Custom-made. The old boat wasn’t nearly as fast as this new one will be. Daddy was going to christen it, can you stand it, Miss Emily, a pun on our names. Missy and Emily took turns speaking, like actors in a play. First one let it drop that they were both heading for Wellesley. Then the other described the difficulty in choosing between Wellesley and Vassar. Once they’d entertained each other with the tale of their heroic debate, one finally asked Kiley where she was going in the fall.
“Smith. A foregone conclusion in my family.” Her mother was a Smithie, and her mother before her. But it suited Kiley, partly because of the family tradition, partly because she liked the college’s emphasis on nurturing strong women. She might major in art, or maybe philosophy. Everyone she knew who went off to college inevitably changed majors, so she’d wait to see what was out there before declaring her intentions to the world.
“We were accepted there.”
A vaguely dismissive gesture from the other. “We wanted to be closer to a major city.”
“So, where are your two friends going?”
The question surprised Kiley. Generally Mack and Grainger were not a topic for this pair. Of course they knew them from a distance, Mack as a newcomer to the club, and Grainger a familiar face from the kiddies’ sailing school; but until now they’d never shown any interest in them, any more than they took an interest in any of the other year-rounders of the Cove.
Kiley took a bite of sandwich before replying. “Mack’s going to the University of Rhode Island.” Her tone was light, pleased a little that they were interested. Still, she felt an unreasoning need to defend Mack’s choice of a state university. “He’s going to major in marine biology and that’s the best school for it.”
“What about the other one? Heathcliff.”
Kiley set down her half-eaten sandwich. “You mean Grainger?” Her tone remained light, but her defenses were engaged. Heathcliff? Bitch. “He’s going into the Army first. He’ll be attending college while he’s in.”
“Hmmm. He’s cute in a rough sort of way. Mack is cute in a more Andover sort of way.”
“I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“So, Kiley, which one do you date?”
“Neither. We’re just friends.” An unpleasant heat touched her cheeks. What a ludicrous idea.
“So if you don’t care, then maybe you’d introduce us at the next Y.C. dance?”
“Sure. I guess.” Kiley looked from one twin to the other, trying to see if, behind their matching Ray-Bans, they were winking at each other. A wave of suspicion washed through her, countered immediately by self-doubt. Why wouldn’t Missy and Emily want to meet her friends? Like the twins said, they were cute. She had no romantic claim on them. Yet there was something out of kilter here. The Claridge twins were the products of prep schools and privilege. They consorted with her only because her family had been in the Yacht Club since 1935. Their parents allowed that her parents were acceptable because her father was a successful litigator in an affluent community, and her mother came from good stock, second-tier Boston Brahmin. Kiley herself had the right physical attributes of good skin, straight teeth, and a powerhouse backhand.
Slumming. Wasn’t that the word for what the Claridge twins were suggesting? No, there was nothing wrong with Grainger, nothing rude or crude about him, or risky. In the strange social hierarchy of the clubbier summer folk, those who made Hawke’s Cove their home year round were viewed as lesser souls. Because of their own “summer people” origins, the MacKenzies were tolerated, particularly because of Dr. MacKenzie’s professional status. But Grainger, as she well knew from her mother’s remarks, was beneath regard. She’d known girls at school who liked to date the rough boys, to flout convention and strike fear in parental souls by running with the dangerous ones.
She was surprised to see avidity on their matching faces. Something just this side of it. Curiosity?
Kiley forced the wave of discomfort to settle. She was being an idiot. After all, the club was overrun with young women; boys were at a premium. It didn’t mean anything, yet she had the overwhelming feeling that she didn’t want to share her friends with the likes of the twins.
Of course, Mack and Grainger would be falling down with laughter at the idea that the Doubl
emints wanted to date them. They’d all have a good laugh.
“I’ll give them your number.” Kiley swallowed the last of her lemonade, then made a show of looking at her watch. “I’ve got a tennis lesson in a little while, so thanks for lunch. See you at the club.”
“Will you be there Friday? The dance?” The Doublemints were standing up, twinning the same stance.
“Yeah. I guess so.” Kiley felt horribly monosyllabic.
“Are they coming?”
Kiley could see the italicized word they as if printed in front of her.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not their keeper.”
Deliberately, Kiley turned left at the gate and headed back to the MacKenzie house. She wanted to laugh: how could they assume that she was dating either of them? The idea should have been ridiculous, but like a mischievous imp licking at the back of her subconscious, it took on a life of its own. Kiley couldn’t imagine what profound alterations her relationship with the boys would have to undergo to enable that to happen. Having no siblings, she believed that Mack and Grainger filled some of that lack in her life, as fond cousins might.
Kiley stumbled a little on a rough spot in the pavement. Catching herself, she thought suddenly of Mack’s blue jar full of daisies and her sense that day of things being suddenly off balance. As if walking through cobwebs, Kiley rubbed her hands down her arms as though to brush away the unwelcome thought. Dating would change everything. The easy camaraderie would become overladen with the things a romantic relationship required, demands and expectations that their simple friendship avoided. Surely they never thought of her that way.
And how could she ever choose between them?
She pushed open the gate into Mack’s backyard. The boys weren’t back yet from Great Harbor. Not satisfied yet, the imp brought up the memory of that anonymous hand touching her bikini-clad breast that Friday night. Surely it was accidental. It was inconceivable that either one would want to “cop a feel” of her breasts. It just couldn’t be that they might see her as a “girl.” Nor would she ever look at them romantically. Kiley, mindless of her white blouse, picked up the palm sander.
Let the Doublemints have at it, then. Yet a swift surge of jealousy surprised her. She saw herself standing outside while the four of them held hands, a fifth wheel. How could she bear to share them this last summer together?
Emily Claridge’s voice brought Kiley back to the moment. “I was calling to remind you about the Fourth of July Picnic. Can you believe it? Some things never change, and the picnic is still going on after all these years.” Emily chatted away, mercifully giving Kiley time to gather her thoughts. “Anyway, we’re hoping you’ll bring the famous Harris potato salad.”
“I hadn’t planned on…well, sure. Of course I will. Enough for how many?”
“We’re asking everyone to bring for twelve.”
“Great. No problem.”
“So, how’ve you been?”
Kiley had no idea how to answer that question. “Good, fine. You?”
“Oh, there’s my call-waiting. I’ll catch up with you at the picnic. Same place, same time. Maybe you’ll come for cocktails beforehand?” Emily’s voice disappeared, leaving a soft hum on the line.
Kiley raised her eyes heavenward in thanksgiving for call-waiting.
Almost as soon as she stepped away from the phone, it rang again. Surely this time it was Mother.
“Kiley, I’m so glad I caught you.” Not her mother, but Sandy from the office.
“Sandy, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, God, Kiley, it’s the doctor.” Sandy’s voice was muffled as she blew her nose. “Doc John is dead.”
Kiley sat down in the small chair beside the phone table. “What?” Disbelief thinned her voice. Dr. John Finnergan, Doc John to them all, was only in his early sixties, fit, healthy and vital; surely he couldn’t have dropped dead. “What happened?”
“He was on his way home from the hospital last night. When…” Sandy paused again to gather herself. “When his car was hit by a guy running a red light.”
“Dear God.” Kiley struggled to speak against the lump in her throat. “I’ll come right home.”
“No, don’t. There’s no need to disrupt your plans. His wife says there won’t be a funeral, just a memorial service later. But you should know…” Sandy began to cry in earnest. “…we’re closing the office. For good.”
“On whose say-so?”
“It was in his papers. That if anything happened to him, Dr. Ruiz was to take over his patients.”
Elmer Ruiz, principal in the family practice located in their building. The practice was fully staffed, and would have no need for a receptionist or additional nurses. Or a nurse practitioner. Kiley bit back the thought. “Sandy, it’ll be all right. Don’t panic. I’ll come home and talk to Dr. Ruiz.”
“Don’t, Kiley. Don’t change all your plans. It won’t do any good.”
“I’ll call him anyway.” Certainly there was something she could do. A long time ago, someone had warned her about working for a single doc, instead of a partnership that would endure anyone’s departure. It just didn’t seem possible that Doc John hadn’t included them in his contingency plans. She and Sandy had been with him for over ten years, and his nurse, Fiona, had been with him nearly as long. “Sandy, we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Just don’t worry.”
“Okay, Kiley. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
After the knee-weakening shock passed, it leveled into grief. John was a good man, a wonderfully compassionate doctor, and she would miss him. It was so unfair.
After a few minutes, Kiley dialed Mrs. Finnergan’s number.
Thirteen
Grainger drove away from the Yacht Club and Will as fast as he could. He didn’t want to know if Will was entertaining any notion that he might be his father. It was obvious that the boy had some inkling that his mother and Grainger knew each other a lot better than a curt “yeah” revealed. Will’s open-eyed examination of Grainger’s face unnerved him. Grainger found only Kiley’s face in Will’s—not his, not Mack’s. And yet, he kept looking.
Pilot fidgeted on the seat, turning to look at Grainger, then pointing his blunt nose at the window, as if to tell him he was being cheated of a walk. The spaniel part of him relished the rain, but the unknown quantity in him made him smell pretty rank, once wet.
Back at the boat works, Grainger knew he had a million things to do. The July deadlines were approaching: promises to have the Murrays’ boat rerigged, and the Worths’ little fiberglass fourteen-footer repaired where one of the kids had banged it up against a dock. It was too damp to paint. He should go back and start bending the replacement planks for Miss Emily.
Mr. Claridge had been the “Admiral” of the club for a little while before some long-forgotten minor scandal deposed him. Now he returned every August, when his daughters and their princeling husbands came to stay in Hawke’s Cove.
Mr. Claridge rarely sailed Miss Emily anymore; the two-masted yawl was too much for him alone, and the twins’ husbands weren’t good sailors, or even very interested. Still, he kept her in trim, throwing a lot of business Grainger’s way. Grainger hoped that eventually he might get to broker Miss Emily to a new owner.
Grainger ran into one or the other of the twins every summer, but they spoke only of the boat, as if their common past was forgotten. He’d been working on this boat for the better part of two months without giving much thought to either Missy or Emily, but, oddly, today he remembered their nickname. The Doublemints. And he recalled so clearly Kiley telling him to call them.
“They want you to call them.” Kiley held out a piece of scrap paper between two fingers, reaching across the kitchen table, where they had Scrabble set up. Mack was in the bathroom, and Grainger and Kiley sat alone.
Grainger stared at the scrap, unsure what this meant. Certainly he knew the twins, and well enough to know that he wasn’t considered their kind. They weren’t his type, either. Kiley sat across from him, her b
lue eyes challenging him with this bit of silliness, one hand casually flipping her blond hair over her shoulder.
“Should I?” He meant to be flip.
Kiley lay the scrap of paper down on his last word, S L O P E. He’d gotten a double-word score and was ahead by six points. “I don’t care.”
“Maybe I will.” Grainger wanted her to laugh, to see the witty sarcasm.
“Maybe you should.” She kept her eyes on her tiles. “Is grezix a word?”
“No.”
“Look it up.”
“It’s not a word, Kiley.” Grainger was annoyed, not at her insistence on imaginary words, but that she so cavalierly would have him date one or both of the twins. Didn’t they stand together, all three of them, against the world? Hadn’t they an unspoken pledge to remain a trio? Especially this last summer. Whatever leave he might get from the Army, two things were certain: It would be brief and it might not be during this halcyon time of summer. The long summer days of swimming and Scrabble and working on Blithe Spirit were dwindling, and every day he felt the pressure of imminent change, the way barometric pressure portends a change in the weather. It might be years before the three of them were together again, and by then, they would be different people.
And here was Kiley, treating their remaining time together as cheap, as if they had all the time in the world. Her flippancy brought to the forefront the strain they were all under that summer to keep up the pretense that everything was the same.
Maybe it was the long nights of physical frustration as he dreamed of Kiley, and the more frustrating days of pretending he cared for her only as a brother might, or a pal. Whatever it was, he was hurt. All summer long, Grainger had believed that their threesome was more valuable than his own happiness, and that the sanctity of it was reward enough.
Mack came back into the room and plopped down in his chair, rocking the small kitchen table a little when he banged his knee against the table leg.