“Well, so far, I’m thinking maybe Harvard, Stanford, and possibly Berkeley.”
“Really? California? Good for you—an adventurer, like me! Of course, I didn’t get to go to college because . . . well, anyway . . .”
Her mother rolled her eyes and laughed. What a hypocrite she was to make Mark sound like some kind of pioneer! She would never let Gina apply to a college that far away.
“I hope you’re going to put some thought into their art programs,” her mother went on. “You’ve got such talent.”
The way she tilted her head! Gina thought. Was she flirting with him?
“I hear you’ve been doing some painting yourself. You must’ve inherited Gina’s talent.” Mark winked at Eleanor.
“Oh, there’s talent in the Banton family all right. That’s my family, I mean. In fact my nephew, Sid, is a marvelous painter. He was, anyway. He’s thrown all that talent away to work in the antiques business.” She tsked, casting her glance into the distance, then caught herself and looked back at Mark. “Well of course, Virginia’s the real artist in the family,” she said, smiling. She turned to Gina. “How about those . . . clay sculptures you did for your . . . semantics project?”
“Semiotics,” Mark corrected.
Her mother snapped a leg off her lobster. “Oh right. Semiotics.”
Gina tried to ignore the conversation, turning to the cove where two kids were swimming off their rowboat. She waited for the delayed rattle of oarlocks and the thwack! as they hit the water.
“The pieces are very evocative, though, aren’t they?” Mark said. “Romantic. Like Stonehenge in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
He was masterful!
“I think you have something there,” her mother said, even though Gina was quite sure her mother had never read Hardy. “Virginia, sweetie, could you go in and get another Coke for Mark?”
“That’s okay—I’ll get one,” Mark said. He rose from his chair, producing an awful crack. “Uh-oh,” he groaned, looking down at the stretcher he’d snapped off.
“Don’t even think about it!” Eleanor said. “That chair’s so old, it’s probably been repaired a hundred times. Cassandra Westwick’s chair,” she added.
“Cassandra West . . .” Mark took a second look at the chair.
“Cassandra was a relative of ours—a Salem witch,” Eleanor said. “Since Cassie was supposed to be born on Halloween, we thought it would be fun to give her a witch name.”
In her head, Gina did the math. She noted Cassie’s birthday: September eighteenth, nineteen fifty-five. Her parents were married in nineteen fifty-five, too, in February. Seven months. How premature could a baby be? “What? Cassie was premature?” she said.
“Certainly,” her mother said.
“I’m sure Gina’s told you about her other famous American ancestors?” her father said.
“Dad,” Gina protested. “I’m sure Mark has his own famous American ancestors and doesn’t—”
“No, no. I don’t. I’m Jewish, remember?” Mark said.
“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” her father said. Under the table, Gina felt the wind of her mother’s leg kicking her father.
Before Mark was up the next morning, Gina rode her old bike to the phone booth at Tobey’s. She had to call Cassie; she couldn’t get the mystery about Cassie’s birth out of her head. She’d never heard that Cassie was almost six weeks premature and had been a small baby.
“Oh yeah,” Cassie sleepily confirmed on the phone. “Did it just occur to you? Why else do you think they’d get married in the winter—in Maine?”
Now, her mother’s ranting about Cassie’s immorality filled Gina with fury. She wanted Cassie to share her outrage or at least to wonder with her how the pregnancy might have happened. But she realized that Cassie probably had no answers and worse, was not even interested in speculating. She was gone; that was all. Gina let their conversation wind down with chitchat and rode home.
Back at the house, she examined a photograph of her mother and father on the hall desk, taken when her mother was probably not yet thirty. Gina had walked past this picture thousands of times, but hadn’t seen the two people she saw now, perched on the deck of a sailboat, their strong, tan limbs touching. Her mother had made love to this man! Impossible! Though her father often embraced her mother, she never reached out for him, except to push him away. Yet once, she’d wanted him enough to let herself go too far.
“Hi, Lo.” Mark’s voice drifted down the stairwell; she looked up to see him pointing a sword at her.
“Handle with care. It’s from the War of 1812.”
Mark put the sword away, came downstairs, and rested his chin on Gina’s shoulder. “Your mom? Sexy lady,” he observed about the photograph of her mother, toned and confident posing in her shorts. “And her daughter, too.”
Gina and Mark drove the Mustang to the beach the next two days and stayed all afternoon. It was cozy, lying next to Mark in a sweet cloud of Coppertone. Through the triangle of space between her arm and the towel, she watched teenagers strutting self-consciously along the sand and thought of all the days she’d come here alone. Now, she basked in the supernal comfort of being a girl with her boyfriend at the beach. Her eyes followed the sexy curves of Mark’s sun-bronzed back to where they formed a little valley at the top of his swimsuit. In this idyllic landscape, crowded with mothers and small children, she could run her hand across his warm skin without the risk of initiating something more. If only this delicious attraction she felt from a short distance didn’t evaporate as soon as Mark put his moves on her!
“Why don’t you take the dinghy out for a sail?” Gina’s father suggested as he was stepping out the front door the next day. He and her mother were driving to Boston to pick up a new tripod and wouldn’t be home until three. At the bottom of the steps he turned and said, “Watch the current in the river, though, if you’re out when the tide turns.”
“Do Ron and Eleanor ever go anywhere without each other?” Mark asked Gina when they were rigging the sail. He held the bag and pulled out bunches of sail while Gina slid the clips onto the mast.
“No,” she said. “You make them sound devoted.”
“Your father is. He’s like, dorky-in-love. It would drive my parents nuts to be around each other all the time.”
Her father was dorky-in-love, Gina thought; lately, this had been making her kind of sick. “They don’t have sex,” she said, remembering the porn videos Mark had found in his father’s drawer. “At least your parents have sex.”
“Yup. Of that we can be sure.”
Gina tugged the halyard, and the sail slid up the mast, flapping in the breeze. The tide was still more than an hour from being high, so they had to push the boat over the mud with the oars to get it afloat. Gina took the tiller, and when they reached the mouth of the cove, she put the centerboard down. The boat heeled nicely on a steady forward course. It was a perfect sailing day; with the wind from the southwest, she could stay on this tack all the way to the lighthouse. She took a deep breath, pulling in the fresh salty air, and leaned back against a cushion. Strands of hair caressed her face, and the sun warmed the top of her thighs. Everything felt right. She was already sad about Mark’s leaving tomorrow.
Mark took off his shirt, stretched out on the center seat and was soon asleep. When they reached Miller’s Island, Gina pushed the tiller hard to come about. The sail flapped wildly then caught the breeze, turning the boat on its ear. Mark jerked awake. “Whoa!” he howled, sitting up and squinting in the bright light. He reached over and took his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket.
“Do you wanna sail?” Gina asked.
“Sure.” Mark’s sweatshirt was in the hold, and he reached under it and pulled out a beer.
“Did you just take that from the fridge?”
“Don’t worry; they won’t notice.”
They changed places, and he took the tiller. Gina peeled down to her bathing suit and stretched out on the seat. She closed her
eyes and listened to the water swooshing against the hull.
Mark touched her shoulder. “Come on down here and sit by me,” he said.
He finished his beer and sank it overboard, then propped up a cushion for her. Gina slid over to sit cross-legged next to him on the damp floorboards. When he put his arm around her shoulder and slid his hand into her bathing suit top, she concentrated on not letting her urge to pull away spoil the sublime afternoon. But conversation died instantly upon Mark’s hand making contact with her palest flesh; in the brilliant daylight while motorboats whizzed by, she felt awkward. Mark seemed to feel only her breast. As soon as she managed to, she put his hand out of her mind. Mark reached over, took hers and plunged it into his bathing suit. It was always like this: his telling her hands what to do. “Just hold it there, okay?” he said. He tilted his head back and pushed his hardness into her hand.
“Mark, c’mon.” Gina pulled her hand away. “You aren’t even paying attention to the wind. We’re luffing—head off a little.”
She reached for her shirt and Mark made his sad dog-face. Now she felt like a meanie and a prude. What was wrong with her?
By the time they’d sailed around the island, the breeze had died to a mere breath. Mark let the sheet run free until the sail was all the way out on a reach.
“The tide’s high,” Gina said when they reached the cove. She pulled up the centerboard and dangled her fingers in the water. “It’s soupy! Feel it!”
Mark dragged his hand overboard and smiled. Gina stood up and let the sail drop with the halyard. After they’d furled the sail and secured the boat on the outhaul, they dove into the water. Mark bee-lined for the shore, but Gina swam to the middle of the cove where she stopped and treaded water. She looked around her at the green fields and barns, the apple trees and rickety docks that rimmed the water. The cove was sacred to her, the center of a small, safe universe. A place where she could be buffered, weightless and free. She thought of Sandy—how she missed their swims together.
“Come out!” she yelled to Mark.
“I’m tired and hungry,” he called back. “Come back in, okay?”
Gina was disappointed, but hungry, too. She sidestroked in to the dock, and they climbed the hill. She pulled out the garden hose so they could rinse off the salt water and tinsel-shaped strands of seaweed.
Her parents hadn’t remembered to open the windows before going out, and the house’s heavy, mildewy air blanketed the light heartedness she’d felt outside. As she and Mark went upstairs to get dressed, a hornet bombed across the hall, just missing her head. She checked the clock: one-thirty; still an hour or so before her parents would be home. They parted ways in the hall, Mark going to the guest room, she to Cassie’s to change. She started to shut the door but decided it would be unfriendly and left it ajar. Within moments, Mark came in with his suit off, drying his hair with a towel. She reached for her clothes on the bed, and he looped the towel around her stomach from behind, pulling her body against his. He purred into her ear, smelling of beer. “Let me dress you,” he said, and she thought, He won’t try anything new here. He unclipped her bathing suit top and pushed her bottoms down to her knees with his thumbs, then pressed them to the floor with his foot. A wave of queasiness—or was it just hunger?—rolled over her. She pulled away. Mark turned and kicked the bedroom door shut with his foot.
“Mark—” his name caught in her throat.
“Shhh, don’t worry.”
His face was flushed, unyielding as his eyes moved up and down her body. “Mark!” More emphatic this time, but he pressed his lips against hers, and his tongue moved frantically around in her mouth. Heat and fear, his hands on her breasts again. The wooden monkey that had once been hers looked down at her from the new shelves her parents had just built where the old door to the maid’s stair had once been. Hands slid around her damp body. On the bureau, a photograph of Cassie and Gina under the apple tree. In the picture, Cassie was just the age Gina was now; she wasn’t smiling because moments before, Eleanor had told her she couldn’t go out that night with Billy Cutler in his Chevy. Mark’s mouth was on her nipple, and he nudged her backward toward the bed. Their skin touched everywhere; everywhere was wet, slippery. Determination seemed to harden Mark’s whole body as he arched her back and eased her down, letting her head fall into the nubby cotton of the bedspread. Below him now, she felt small, limp. She gripped the rug with her toes. “Mark, what are you doing?” As if she didn’t know. “We can’t . . .” Was he seeing her? No. His eyes roamed, never meeting hers. He was all hands and then he was leaning into her, and she tightened her thighs against his weight, but they trembled. Where was her strength? No, Mark.
“No, Mark!” Had she said it out loud? Yes, she must have because his hand slid over her mouth, his eyes were closed, and he was saying, “Shhh, it’s okay. You’re so beautiful.” And then footsteps—was it?—on the stair. Had her parents come home early? “Shhh,” Mark said again, because he had heard it, too, and she froze, taking herself outside the room now, listening beyond their breathing, beyond what pinched and pulled, listening to the walls, barely feeling him slip inside her; yes, she was certain now, steps and the closing of the bathroom door. Must not make a sound. Not a sound. Slipping in and out, hurting her, stuffing her resistance farther and farther up inside her, his breath stealing hers.
The awful ache in her back stopped. Her whole body pounded. She listened. Goose bumps broke out on her skin, as if every inch of her was extending itself to hear. Mark stood over her and offered his hands to pull her up off the bed. A hideous calm spread over his face.
“Did you—” she breathed, her hand over her mouth.
“Uh-huh,” he nodded with a look of blissful apology.
“Virginia?” Her mother’s voice, from the bathroom.
“Not anymore,” Mark snickered.
Shock sucked the noisiness from Gina’s head, sharpened her senses. The critical seconds that would hold an expected response began to pass. In another era, she realized, she would’ve been able to escape from here, open that door and slip down the maid’s stair into the kitchen. She heard her own voice: strange, cheerful, almost singing out, “What, Mom?”
“Could you come here for a minute?”
Gina threw on her jeans and tee shirt and carried her sore and shaky body down the hall toward the long mirror, concentrating on her face, wanting to cry out at the girl she saw there but working on a smile—no, not a smile, just a look of insouciance—as she reached for the bathroom doorknob. She opened the door. Her mother sat on the closed toilet holding a nail clipper. “Yeah?” Gina chirped, searching her body for an innocent gesture, then flicking her hair behind her shoulder.
Her mother hunched, apparently examining her fingernails. She spread her hand on her thigh and with the other, began to clip. Clip! The nail hit the linoleum floor with an impossibly loud tick. Only under extreme duress would her sanitary-minded mother litter the floor with her nails.
“Where’s Mark? What’re you doing?” Her mother asked, not looking up. Clip, tick.
Clip, tick.
Gina shivered from a chill that seemed to emanate from her mother. She realized that coming on the heels of Cassie’s misdeed, her own might be the one to put her mother over the edge. Gina could do this; she could lie. “We went swimming and Mark’s changing. In the guest room.”
Her mother’s head shook like a bobble-head doll’s. She’d clipped all the nails on her hand but she started in on them again, thumb first. Clip, tick, clip, tick. “Nobody knows . . .” she said miserably. “Why do I even bother? I might as well drop dead.”
Her nails were cut to the quick. When she squeezed the clipper down on her nonexistent baby fingernail, she flinched and thrust the finger in her mouth. Gina half expected her to slump off the toilet onto the linoleum.
Eleanor looked up at her with a penetrating gaze. “I was just changing,” Gina said.
So easy to say what should have been, what they both wanted to be
lieve. Gina and Eleanor, looking across that tiny room at each other, constructing a truth from a lie.
When her mother had gone downstairs, Gina climbed into the bathtub and lay with her ears submerged. Her heart raced and for once, she welcomed the rush of adrenaline that would keep her from sinking and betraying her lie.
The water in the tub tilted when she moved, spilling into the overflow drain with a gurgle. She surveyed the room, pulling each detail into her like breaths of air: a claw-foot tub standing on a black-and-white linoleum floor, an old porcelain sink with brass faucets; above the sink, a glass shelf with her mother’s make-up collection: two lipsticks, two bottles of Max Factor foundation, a bottle of Chanel #9. Faded peach bath towels and delicate objects lined the room: a silver bowl full of shells, a white porcelain baby’s hand for holding rings. The ashtray, casa senza donna, barca senza timone. It was a cozy, feminine room, a place to linger.
She pulled her face underwater, and when she came up, her eyes strayed to the ugly rings of rust where the sink pipes connected with the wall. Mildew speckled the wall above her head, the linoleum behind the toilet was peeling up. The house was beginning to fall apart. The skin around her thumbs and toes was wrinkling. It was a different body now, stretched out before her; she would need to watch it carefully. She ducked once more, opening her mouth, flushing him from every orifice.
In Cassie’s room, her insides churned. She dressed quickly, then read three chapters of Rosshalde without a single word of it lodging in her head. She stood and left the room. When she crept past the guest room, Mark was stretched out on the bed reading, his shirt off, ankles crossed and one hand cradling his head. He turned and smiled at her. He was victorious!
She hated him.
She drifted down the stairs and out the door, across the front yard to the crest of the hill, where she sat down behind the rose bush. The tide was on its way out, and the mudflats stretched out brown and lifeless, as if the cove’s soul were being taken with the tide. But it would be reborn an infinite number of times each time the water returned: blue, green, still and reflective, rippled and dancing, frozen white.
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