by Jean Stone
Daniel, of course, also went to the party, as did their brother Roger and Michael, Daniel’s roommate, who had ended up going to the cotillion with a girl from New Jersey. “She’s ugly as dog breath,” Daniel had made it a point to tell Lizzie, which did not say much because Daniel’s taste was questionable: he’d taken Evelyn Carter, the granddaughter of the congressman who’d “gotten” Daniel into West Point. Her buck teeth had straightened out, but her personality had not: Evelyn Carter would always be one of those people obsessed with everybody else’s business. But Daniel had taken her. So much for great destinies.
Besides, Lizzie didn’t care who Michael had taken to the cotillion. He was simply Daniel’s roommate, the other Massachusetts boy who had been appointed to the academy. “Michael Hamilton Barton,” he’d introduced himself when he’d been a plebe and Lizzie was only twelve. She later learned that he was a “Barton of Lynnfield,” which mattered to Father.
Just as Lizzie stretched her neck now to try and pick out Michael in the perfectly aligned ranks, a voice behind her whispered, “He’s on the left. Third row. And he asked about you last night.”
Lizzie blushed. “Sit down, BeBe,” she whispered back. “Before you give Father a heart attack.” She ignored the cold-as-ice glare that Will Adams gave BeBe and tried to find Michael among the other gray-suited graduates, secretly dying to know what else he had said.
Later that afternoon, Lizzie sat on the wide back veranda of their Martha’s Vineyard summer home. It was a sprawling, gray-shingled, white-trimmed house set atop a sloping, velvet lawn that met a path that snaked through a thicket then sneaked to their cove and down to the sea.
It was a summer view she knew well, a view meant for just sitting on the white wicker swing on which she was sitting now and watching the sunsets, the seagulls, the tide, and, well, nothing special.
Nothing special, like the way Michael Barton and Daniel tossed a football now, back and forth, high into the pink and peach and navy blue end-of-the-day sky. By the sounds of their laughter no one would guess they had both come here to await their military orders, the word from the Army as to where they would go.
She pushed her feet against the porch floorboards and tried not to stare. But Liz couldn’t help herself.
Like Daniel, Michael had changed since those early plebeian days. His chest was broader, his shoulders straighter, his voice had become grown-up deep. And he was … handsome. Handsome and smart and surely interested in older girls, surely not in the sixteen-year-old kid sister of a roommate, despite what Father seemed to want.
“All that money and textiles, too,” Will Adams had said at least a dozen times, referring to Michael’s lineage, which ran strongly through several renowned Lowell mills.
Lowering her eyes to the moist spot that seeped from Michael’s chest through his T-shirt, Liz tried to decide what it would be like to fall in love with him and his textile mills. Love was unknown territory for Liz. For a girl from a proper Boston family who attended a proper girls’ school, romance was restricted to infrequent dates and backseat kisses and groping between movies and curfew.
“No daughter of mine will shame the Adams name,” she’d once heard Father shout at BeBe, when her sister had come home late—again. Mother had once told Liz that BeBe reminded Father of his dead sister, Ruth, of whom none of them was allowed to speak for some unknown, perhaps sinister, reason.
As Liz slowly rocked on the swing, she wondered why she had always felt compelled to follow Father’s rules and BeBe had not, and what it had to do with his dead sister, Ruth.
“Go back for a long one,” Michael shouted to Daniel. Daniel complied with four, five, six long strides backwards that landed him straight into the thicket of tall grass and scrub oaks.
He disappeared. For a moment, then another, Liz heard nothing. She smiled, suspecting what Daniel was doing.
Then he emerged. He was not carrying a football, however. Instead he was clutching the tail of a fat black-and-white skunk.
Liz squealed.
“Go back for this, Barton,” Daniel yelled, twirling the skunk by the tail in a game he had invented that had sent his mother and most other sane people shrieking into the house.
“You’re nuts!” Michael shouted but did not run away.
Daniel let out another yelp, twirled the skunk again, let it fly into the thicket, and raced up the slope toward the house, with Michael Barton in sudden fast pursuit.
“And that, my dear Lizzie,” boomed the voice of her father, who had appeared beside her, “is the kind of tough stuff it takes to be president of the United States.”
Liz nodded, because she and everyone—including Daniel—knew that he meant it. She leaned back on the swing and wondered if, when Daniel became president, she would have fallen in love by then, and if her children would be allowed to play on the White House lawn, and if Daniel would be too important to twirl skunks anymore.
She also wondered if Michael Barton would still be in their lives, if Daniel might appoint him an ambassador or something important, and if an embassy in an exotic land would be as elegant as the White House itself.
“And every president,” came a voice from the doorway, the voice of Evelyn Carter, Daniel’s know-everything-about-everyone cotillion date, “deserves one of these.”
Liz’s eyes dropped to Evelyn’s hands, where she held a shiny, blue-silvery, hefty handgun. For a brief second, Liz thought it was pointed at Father. Then Father laughed and Daniel and Michael lumbered onto the porch, and Father said, “Let’s have Mother bring us some fresh-squeezed lemonade.”
It was a graduation gift for Daniel, a working antique that had been in Evelyn’s family since World War I, maybe earlier, and it was called a pistol, not a gun.
“It’s from Grandfather’s collection,” she explained, “He had planned to put it in the celebrity auction this Saturday, but he decided Daniel should have it instead.”
That, of course, was an honor in itself. The annual Chilmark auction was famous for its social-register festivities, an occasion when those Vineyarders whose names or likenesses had ever appeared anywhere in the media had the “privilege” of donating goods or services. The money raised went to island youth programs; the prestige that it generated lined the egos of the rich.
“Grandfather would have brought it himself,” Evelyn continued, “but he’s still not quite right since the stroke.”
Will Adams nodded understandingly. Daniel moved his eyes from the pistol to Father to Evelyn, then back to the gun. Liz wondered if he was worried that one lousy cotillion date had now locked him into a family-made match, the result of God only knew how many years of “favors” passed between Will Adams and Evelyn’s congressman grandfather.
“He felt you should have it,” she added with an overeager bat to her lashes, “now that you’re a soldier and all.”
“Thank you,” Daniel said. “And thank your grandfather for me, please. It’s …” He turned the pistol over in his hand and studied the wood-carved handle. “It’s great.”
Great, Liz knew, was a neutral kind of word that Daniel used whenever he did not know what else to say, and in this case it must mean he was not impressed with Evelyn or her gift. It was an observation that made Lizzie smile.
Then Evelyn dug through the red straw tote bag that matched her red canvas shoes and withdrew a small box.
“Ammunition,” she said, proudly holding the box toward Daniel. “Grandfather always says you never know what might happen next.”
For a moment no one spoke, as if each was contemplating what, indeed, might happen next.
Then Father took the ammunition. “We’ll need to keep this in a safe place,” he said and reached for the gun. Daniel seemed glad to hand it over. “I’ll lock it up in my desk in the study. But first we’ll have young Hugh Talbot check it out for safety.” Hugh Talbot was the new town sheriff.
Evelyn smiled and Daniel nodded and Michael took another drink.
It occurred to Liz that Danie
l might be glad to get his “orders,” so that he’d be able to escape Evelyn Carter now that he was a “soldier and all.” Swirling the ice cubes in her glass, Liz considered where Daniel would go and how long it would be before he came back again and if the straw tote bag-toting girl would hang around and wait.
Then she stole a quick glance at Michael and wondered where his orders would send him and if she should write to him and if he’d write back. Just then a stranger appeared at the foot of the porch, and Liz forgot about Michael Barton altogether.
It was like something out of a movie, the kind you go to alone on a Saturday afternoon when you’re feeling lonely and in need of a good pull on your emotions, maybe an opportunity to leave a few tears in the balcony.
“Excuse me,” the stranger said. “I’ve lost my dog.”
Liz did not know if everyone else felt the same slow-motion movements of the next few moments, moments that would be burned in her memory—the way the late-day sun seemed to melt into her face, the way it spread its heat all through her body.
Quickly, she put a hand to her throat and willed herself to breathe.
“She’s a black Lab,” the stranger was saying, though somehow it didn’t seem right that he had a voice, because he looked more like a statue, a carved marble statue that wore cutoff jeans where a fig leaf should be. His chest, however, was bare and broad and shimmery in the sunlight maybe from lotion or maybe from … sweat.
Liz glanced at the others in case she had groaned out loud.
But their eyes were fixed on the stranger.
“No dogs around here,” Father said. “We’d know if there were. My son is allergic.”
The son he referred to was not Daniel, but Roger. Liz was surprised that right now she was able to remember that.
The stranger blinked. He was looking at her now; his long-lashed, deep-set eyes were as dark as the hair on his head and the hair on his chest, which trailed into a V and disappeared beneath his belt. “Well, if you see her,” he said, “her name is Snuffy. She’s real friendly.”
Father gave a curt nod, but did not ask what to do if they saw her, how they could get hold of him, where he lived.
“Well, thanks,” the stranger said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Father stood, watching him leave.
“I know who that is,” Evelyn said. “His family just bought the house on the other side of the cove.”
Father raised his thick gray brows. Obviously, he had not yet heard the news.
“The Bentley place,” Evelyn continued. “Well, it’s now owned by the Millers. From Westchester. He’s the son. And his name is Josh.” She lowered her voice and added, “They’re Jews. The whole lot of them.”
“He’d kill you,” BeBe said.
They sat in Liz’s small room after dinner—the room that was tucked under the eaves. They sat on her small iron bed that smelled slightly of mothballs and dampness and everything summer.
“I’m sixteen, Beebs. It’s not as if I’m twelve.” Liz wrapped her old chenille robe—her “island robe”—around her more tightly, knowing that BeBe was right. Father would kill her if he had any idea she had … what? Fallen madly in love with this boy named Josh Miller? And why had she? She’d seen him for what—one minute? Two? They hadn’t even spoken, and yet …
Was it his smile? His eyes? His … scent? She’d once read in a magazine that people emit scents just as animals do. That for every person there is a positive—and positively delicious—scent. Maybe if she explained that to Father, that it was all about nature, that it wasn’t her fault …
“Besides,” BeBe continued, “you don’t know anything about him.”
“I know he’s gorgeous.”
“Maybe he has a girlfriend.”
“I don’t care.”
“He’s Jewish.”
“I don’t care about that, either.”
“Well, maybe he does.”
Liz looked at her sister. “Why would he care that he’s Jewish?”
“He might care that you’re not.”
Liz rose from the bed and paced to the window. She looked out onto the sandy earth below, lit only by the firelight that spilled from the living room downstairs, and by the half-moon that had risen high in the sky. “I’ve got to find a way to see him again, Beebs.”
“You’re smitten, Lizzie. It was bound to happen and now it has. Do yourself a favor and forget it. Trust me, it will pass.”
Liz did not answer, but stared out the window.
“And aside from the obvious, don’t forget that Father has picked out Michael for you.”
“Michael is nice,” Liz replied dreamily. “But he’s not quite as … I don’t know …”
“Hormonal,” BeBe said, then moaned. “Oh, Lizzie, don’t do this. Don’t even give Josh Miller one more of your thoughts or Father will know, and Father will have him removed from the face of the earth.”
Liz leaned against the window screen, breathed in a deep breath of cool Vineyard night air, and wondered if, in order to do that, Father would use the pistol that Evelyn had brought Daniel, the pistol with plenty of ammunition, because you never knew what might happen next.
Chapter 5
Late the next morning BeBe came outside, lit a cigarette, bent the match, and stuffed it into the grass. Father, of course, did not allow her to smoke in the house. She wondered if he considered smoking worse than being in love with a Jew. She inhaled deeply and thought about Liz. Her sister had finally grown into her legs and was becoming the kind of elegant beauty that would be perceived as classic, timeless, and all those other Romanesque words; refined beauty that attracted men for the long haul, way longer than one night; beauty that was very much unlike BeBe’s own unique, ungroomed style.
So Liz had grown into her little-girl legs and now her heart had caught up. BeBe exhaled her relief on a slow stream of smoke, grateful that now the shock might not hurt if Lizzie ever learned that her sister, her idol, had slept with the boy that Father had chosen as Lizzie’s ideal mate.
BeBe closed her eyes. She tasted the coarse taste of her morning cigarette, felt the dewy ground soak into her butt, and realized that “slept” was not exactly the right way to say it. “Had sex” was more like it. Or simply “fucked.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Michael had slurred after too many beers with tequila chasers.
They had slipped from the graduation-eve party and found a secluded dark spot on West Point’s Flirtation Walk, under an oak tree, behind a stone wall.
In her heart, she knew Michael was right, but by that time she had pulled down her panties and was positioning herself over him. At that point she did not care whose penis it was, as long as it fit, as long as it would make her feel wanted and make her feel good, and smooth out—if only for a few moments—the rough edge that encircled her heart.
It did.
What had not made her feel good was that immediately after, Michael had asked if her sister had a boyfriend yet and if she’d be on the Vineyard with the family this summer.
He asked BeBe these things while her skirt was still raised and while she still had his wetness deep inside her.
But before she could answer, Michael passed out, drunk as the skunks that Daniel loved twirling.
BeBe had quickly dressed and told herself that none of it mattered; that she, after all, had been the one to pursue Michael at the party. She was not trying to steal him from Lizzie; she was trying to show Father that she was good enough to get a “good” boy, too, whether he believed it or not.
At least, that was how it seemed after several gin and tonics.
Of course, her plan had backfired, but after sobering up, BeBe told herself it was better that way.
Still, she thought now, taking another drag on her unfiltered cigarette, it would have been nice if Michael had been sober enough to act as if he’d liked her a little, as if she really was special enough to be liked by someone normal, an all-American boy.
She flicked
a shred of tobacco from her lip and reminded herself that all-American boys did not go with girls like her: they were reserved for the Lizzies of the world—the Lizzies with the cheerleader looks and tightly closed thighs. Which might not remain closed much longer, if Liz had a chance at Josh Miller.
BeBe knew the signs, and she knew it was up to her to stop her kid sister before Liz’s life took the same downhill course as her own. All she had to do was figure out how to divert Lizzie’s thoughts back to Michael, even if it meant BeBe had to switch sides and agree with Father.
“You’ve got to help me,” BeBe said to Roger. He looked up from the lilac bush cuttings he was transplanting behind the garage. Surprise showed on his face, for Daniel was the brother people always went to for help. Daniel, not Roger.
He set down his trowel and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Sure, Beebs. What’s up?”
It occurred to BeBe, not for the first time, what a shame it was that Roger, one year younger than Daniel, seemed doomed to stand forever in his brother’s huge shadow. Even physically he seemed inferior: where Daniel was sturdy, Roger was slight; where Daniel was handsome, Roger was … well, not unattractive, but plain. In the eyes of the family, he was number two next to Daniel, just as BeBe would always take a backseat to Liz. It was simply the way things were.
BeBe stuffed her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs. “It seems as if our Lizzie has a beau.”
Behind the rims of his glasses, Roger’s eyebrows went up. “Liz has a boyfriend? What’s wrong with that?”
“The problem is not what, it’s who.” And then she told him about Josh Miller.
Roger agreed that Father would explode if he learned Liz was in love with a stranger, let alone a Jew.