Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  No, she reasoned as she steered the car off Route 28, neither Charles nor Chuck could be behind this. Then she wondered if Maura would call this denial.

  Winding her way through narrow side streets lined with Cape Cod-style houses and canvas-covered boats in snow-crusted yards, Jess finally located the driveway of the cottage Miss Taylor shared year-round with her sister, Loretta. She turned off the engine and studied the small house in front of her: the cozy, many-paned bungalow that her old housemother called home. The shingles were grayer than Jess remembered, weathered in the salt air to a soft, faded silver; the white picket fence, which had been dotted with beach roses when she was last here, now stood unsteadily in the late afternoon light, decidedly in need of a coat of fresh paint. Edging the lawn were clusters of withered hydrangea bushes, whose once fat blue blossoms were brown now, brittle-looking and barren. But even more disturbing was the stillness—the vacant feel of the tourist-free street, the ghost-town numbness of desolation, the wintertime loneliness of a summertime haven.

  She wondered if it was the same way on Martha’s Vineyard.

  Uncertain what she would say to Miss Taylor, suddenly weighted with dread, Jess reluctantly emerged from the car and stepped into the stillness.

  She took a deep breath of damp sea air and tried to convince herself that Miss Taylor would know if the letter and the phone call were anything more than a prank—or if there was a chance there had been some mix-up, that Amy had not been hers, that her baby was still alive.

  Jess walked along the ice-dotted flagstone path, regretting not having worn boots.

  At the front door, she rubbed her hands together, then rang the bell. “Please be home,” she whispered at the wooden door.

  After a moment, she heard the shuffle of feet from within. Jess wondered how old Miss Taylor would be now—nearly eighty, perhaps. Loretta would be even older from what she remembered about the only time she’d seen the woman five years before.

  At last the door opened. It was Loretta, a bit more bent over, her bluish skin more translucent than before.

  “Loretta Taylor?” Jess asked.

  The woman scowled. “What is it? What do you want?”

  Jess cleared her throat. “I met you several years ago,” she said loudly, as if the woman were deaf as well as old. “My name is Jessica Randall. I’ve come to see your sister?” She wondered why the last sentence had come out like a question.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Loretta Taylor grumbled. “My sister is dead.”

  The door started to close. Jess raised her hand to stop it from shutting. Quickly, she said, “Wait. Tell me what happened.”

  “Last summer. The damn cigarettes finally got her.”

  Jess closed her eyes and pictured Miss Taylor, a bright slash of red painted on her lips, a nonfilter cigarette dangling from her hand, staining her fingers in brown-yellow tinge. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she managed to say. “I didn’t know …”

  “Well, you do now.” Loretta abruptly closed the door, leaving Jess alone on the stoop.

  Jess slipped her hands into her coat pockets and stared at the door, as if waiting for it to open again, as if expecting Miss Taylor would be there this time, saying what a terrible tease her sister was and always had been, and why didn’t Jess please come in and sit down.

  She stared at the door, but it did not open. Slowly, Jess realized that it would not. She stood there, feeling a dull pull on her heart, the pull of yet another loss, another thread torn from the fabric of her life.

  Miss Taylor was gone.

  Miss Taylor was dead.

  As the blunt knife of reality carved a new hollow inside her, Jess also realized that without Miss Taylor, she might now never know the truth. Miss Taylor, the one person Jess had been able to trust.

  The sky grew darker. A sudden spray of sleet began to pelt her face.

  Chapter 4

  Maybe she was just a little bit horny. Ginny sat on the edge of her bed and laughed, knowing that being a little bit horny was probably like being a little bit pregnant.

  She touched her hand between her legs; she slowly rubbed the warm, dry spot within.

  Nothing.

  Not the tiniest tingle nor the dewiest drop of moisture hinted that her hormones needed tending to.

  She flopped her naked body back on the bed where she’d been for nearly forty-eight hours and flung her hand over her head. God, she thought, I’m not even freaking horny.

  She closed her eyes. Why was she feeling so uncomfortable, so damned displaced, as if her mind had left her body and was floating around in outer space, looking for another ride? Looking for a better place to live?

  She wondered if this was grief: the kind of shit those mindless people on those mindless talk shows went on and on about, as if they were the only ones who’d ever been screwed by life.

  Somehow, Ginny doubted if her problem was simply grief. She’d been there. She’d done that. But grief for her had always meant a time of living, a time of screwing, a time to reaffirm the fact that she was still alive, that she was still a person. Grief was party time. Grief was not the time to lie across the bed naked and alone, touching herself to see if she had any desire left at all. Touching herself and coming up with a sad, pathetic nothing.

  No, this couldn’t be grief. She shuddered at the thought that maybe Jake had had the last of Ginny’s sex, that he’d had the last of her predictable, gushable, wondrous orgasms. As a lover, he hadn’t even been that good, with a smaller-than-average uncircumcised penis that spent more time drooping toward his balls than pointing up at her. It had been, she knew, the reason he’d tolerated her escapades with all the others—the tight-assed, washboard-stomached others whose dicks knew where to go and how to make her beg for more.

  But something had happened after Ginny found Lisa. Something weird and strange. For finally she’d stopped running; she’d stopped needing more. She had her husband; she had a daughter. They both wanted to be a part of Ginny’s life, though who the hell knew why.

  She rolled onto her side now and ran her hand across her flesh, over the humps of her firm, silicone-implanted breasts, bought and paid for with Jake’s money, like everything else in her life.

  It had been a miracle that he’d never learned about Brad.

  Pinching her nipple, waiting for the spark between her legs that did not come, Ginny thought about the night she’d fucked Jake’s son.

  She’d been dressed in one of her hottest dresses, the white trapeze, unbuttoned nearly to her navel, the hem grazing her suntanned thighs. Jake was gone. Out of town again, leaving her alone. She’d hit Club LeMonde, in search of action. But the guy who picked her up turned out to be a virgin and thought she was his mother.

  So she’d come home. Drunk. She’d poured herself another stiff one and downed it in one gulp.

  And then Brad was there, standing in the family room, his big hands strong and eager, the muscles of his chest straining through his shirt, his dick so huge and ready, she could see it pulsating through his jeans.

  She let him slide the fabric of her dress off her shoulder. She let him gently rub the skin. And then she let him kiss it, making tiny circles with the tip of his warm, wet tongue. And then he lowered his head and found her breast.

  “God, how I want you,” Brad said. “How I’ve wanted you from the first day I saw you.”

  She thought that she protested. But once his mouth was on her nipple, his tongue teasing, licking, sucking, firm, firmer, firmer …

  Ginny moaned and parted her legs. “Bite me,” she commanded.

  His teeth sank into her.

  “Harder!” she screamed. “Hurt me!”

  He bit her again.

  Her body throbbed. And then he was between her legs, ramming and slamming that great big juicy dick over and over until she cried and shrieked and only wanted more.

  And now, the memory of that night was too damn clouded to even make her want to cum.

  “Screw it,” she said, hauli
ng herself from the bed and stalking to her closet.

  She jerked open the door and stared inside, remembering that after that night with Brad, she’d burned her clothes. Every last bit of sexy, white-hot clothes.

  Somehow, she’d replaced them. She’d replaced the clothes but not the feeling. And now when she reached in, she wanted only sweatpants and a big, snuggly shirt. One of Jake’s shirts. One of dead Jake’s shirts.

  Ginny was standing in the family room in sweatpants and Jake’s shirt, staring out the window, stuffing baked-not-fried Tostitos into her mouth when the doorbell rang.

  It was probably another flower delivery from Lisa’s well-wishers. Or worse, it might be Lisa herself, the nice-nice daughter that Ginny really didn’t need right now. Not that she had any idea exactly what—or whom—she needed. She brushed some crumbs from her shirt and hoped Consuelo would quickly send whoever it was away.

  “Ginny,” a small voice came from across the room. “It’s me. Jess.”

  Ginny blinked at the nothingness outside. Jess? No, she thought. And yet she knew. It would not be out of character for Jess to come all the way across the country when she’d seen the media reports about Jake’s death. Like Lisa, Jess was nice. God help me, Ginny thought, then slowly turned around. And there was Jess. That whisper of a woman from another place in time.

  “Jesus,” Ginny said, “what the hell are you doing here?” It hadn’t been that long ago—had it?—since Jess had shown up with the idea of a reunion. With the idea of meeting Lisa. She’d come unannounced that time, too. Unannounced, and most decidedly unwanted. And though they hadn’t seen one another since the reunion, they had stayed in touch—if phone calls once every few months and Christmas cards with kids’ pictures tucked inside was considered staying in touch.

  Jess walked toward her now, a thin smile on her pale, New York-winter face. “Ginny, I think I need your help.”

  Ginny looked back at the window, but there was no escape. She turned reluctantly to give Jess a kiss-kiss-hug. “I guess it’s ludicrous to say you weren’t expected.”

  “If this isn’t a good time, I’ll leave.”

  As Jess slipped from Ginny’s hug, Ginny noticed the pink that rimmed her eyes. It seemed a little odd—Jess had barely known Jake. Then again, as a kid she’d been prone to tears—she had spent many weepy days and nights at Larchwood, waiting for her boyfriend who’d never written. Yeah, Ginny decided, news of Jake’s death might be enough to touch off a torrent of Jess’s ready tears. “Did you cry the whole flight out?”

  Jess tossed her small, boxy handbag on the leather sofa, dead center on the cushion where Ginny. had fucked Brad’s brains out so very long ago, back when she had a libido, back before Jake was dead. Ginny shoved another Tostito into her mouth and waited for Jess to say how sorry she was that Jake was dead and ask what she could do to help.

  Instead, Jess said, “It’s been a long time, Ginny. You look … good.”

  “What I look like is a piece of shit,” Ginny replied and held the bag toward Jess. “Chips?”

  Jess shook her head.

  Ginny plunged her hand into the corn chips again and pulled out one, then two. She examined each carefully as if looking for the words she was supposed to say, as if they’d be imprinted between the flaky bits of brown stuff and the little flecks of salt. She knew she should thank Jess for coming. She knew she should say that Jess looked good, too, or that at least she looked the same, which, of course, was true. Ginny popped the chips into her mouth and wondered if teeny, tiny people ever aged, or if they one day simply folded up into an osteoporosislike, embryonic position and wrapped themselves in hand-knit afghans. “Have a seat,” she said. “I guess.”

  Jess had a seat beside her handbag. “Ginny,” she said, “the strangest thing has happened.”

  And then, while Ginny remained standing, eating, numb and motionless in the middle of her family room, Jess went on and on about some letter from her baby and a phone message and that Miss Taylor was dead and Jess’s kid might still be alive and she really didn’t think anyone would do this to her if it wasn’t true and God, what should she do.

  She never even mentioned Jake.

  “You’re the only one I have to turn to,” Jess continued. “You’re the only one who understands.”

  She was wrong, of course, because Ginny didn’t understand. She didn’t understand what the hell Jess was talking about or why she was here. “All I know is that you’re telling me Miss T. is dead.”

  Jess nodded. “She died last summer.”

  “Christ. I can’t believe that she’s dead, too.” The woman had kept tabs on Ginny like a hunter tracking deer, had seemed to know each thought she had and every move she made.

  “Miss Taylor was old, Ginny. Not like Amy.”

  Ginny turned back to the window. “Or Jake,” she said.

  Behind her there was only silence—that bracing, dead-air kind of silence that happens just before someone cries. Or screams.

  Then Jess found her words and her tiny voice asked, “What?”

  Folding her arms around her waist, Ginny steeled herself and faced her friend once more. There was a look of shock on Jess’s face. “I thought that’s why you came. I thought you heard it on the news. Now that Lisa’s so damn popular …”

  Jess rose and went to Ginny, putting her hand on Ginny’s arm. “Jake?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Dead. Gonzo. Can you imagine?” She wasn’t sure, but Ginny thought she felt a big, fat lump of tears harden in her throat.

  “I … I’ve been so immersed in my own problems I haven’t watched the news … or read the paper.…”

  She swallowed down the tears. “Forget it, kid.” Quickly she glanced around the room. “I’m going to find that worthless Consuelo and have her get us some coffee. And maybe some of those little quiche things left over from the funeral.”

  Jess stared at the floor, twisting that ring of hers the way she always had whenever she was upset, whenever she was thinking. “Ginny,” she said, “I have a better idea. Let me take you out for dinner. Then you can tell me everything that happened.”

  Ginny looked down at her sweatpants. At Jake’s shirt. “I haven’t exactly had my beauty treatment for the day.” She did not mention that she had not showered in two—or was it three?—days now.

  Jess shrugged. “I’ll wait.”

  The restaurant was overcrowded, with tables crammed together, downtown Manhattan-style. The waiters, however, were Californiatanned and blond and wore tightly fitting muscle shirts that Ginny didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m so sorry about Jake,” Jess said, watching Ginny nibble on another sparerib between bites of butter-slathered fresh dill bread. She was glad she’d come. Ginny, of course, would never have asked her to. She would never have called and said “Jess, I need a friend.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s life. We had a good few years.”

  “And Lisa,” Jess said. “You got to share Lisa.”

  Ginny nodded and kept eating while Jess tried not to stare. She couldn’t believe how ghastly Ginny looked. Even with makeup, Ginny’s face had a pasty pallor, as if the lifeblood had been sucked from her, as if she’d died along with Jake. And the baggy brown dress she was wearing was so … sexless. Not like Ginny at all.

  “Ginny?” she asked quietly. “What are you going to do now?”

  As if the pendulum of her clock began losing time, Ginny slowed her chewing, slowed her breathing. She lowered her eyelids. “Luckily, Jake was between film projects, so I don’t have to worry about his business right now. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Right. Jess sipped her wine. “Change is scary,” she said. “We’ve both had a lot.”

  Ginny didn’t respond. Jess sensed that Ginny didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t the time to try and force her.

  “So what do you think?” Jess asked. “Should I try to find out if there’s anything to this letter? If my baby is still alive?”

  “S
hit. Don’t ask me.”

  “But it’s worked out so well with you and Lisa.…”

  “Yeah, well …” Ginny began, and then a smile crossed her mouth. “Lisa’s a good kid.”

  “I’m not sure Maura will speak to me again if I do. I think she’d be pretty upset.”

  “She’ll get over it. Kids are resilient.” Ginny polished off the last bit of her dinner.

  “But how can I find out anything? With Miss Taylor gone …”

  “You said her sister is still alive.”

  “Alive, yes. But she’s not very friendly. Besides, how would she know?”

  “Maybe Miss T. told her. Or maybe she has some old records or something. I remember Miss T. always was writing stuff down in those leather journals. God knows what she put in there. She probably recorded all the times we were bad.”

  “Like when you took off for the Dew Drop Inn?”

  Ginny laughed. “I still can’t believe the old bitch caught me.”

  “She had friends in high places.”

  “Old Sheriff Wilson—the mailman with a badge. God. I can’t believe Miss T. was sleeping with him. Hey—do you suppose she wrote about him in her journals?”

  Jess was pleased to see that a small sparkle had returned to Ginny’s eyes. Not the same hell-raising, screw-the-world sparkle that had been the trademark of her youth, but a sparkle nonetheless. “I doubt it,” Jess replied. “But it would be fun to find out, wouldn’t it?”

  Reaching for a last remnant of dill bread that lingered in the basket, Ginny proclaimed, “Then here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going back to see Miss T.’s sister. You’re going to win her over with your charm, and you’re going to ask her if Miss T. left her journals behind.”

  “Oh, Ginny, I don’t know.…”