All the Best People

by Sonja Yoerg

  Osborn finally spoke. “The doctor made an unfortunate remark. Of course, the people who live on the lake are, by and large, poor, and it’s tremendously sad.” He opened the car door. “Let’s just forget this for now, okay? Enjoy the ride home. Carole will be waiting and we’ll have a lovely dinner together.”

  Solange’s pulse slowed at the thought of their daughter. She glanced over her shoulder at the tall brick buildings sitting squarely on the lawn, yielding no clues as to what transpired inside. The sun was strong and reflected heat off the pale granite stones at her feet. She climbed in the car and rubbed her arms, shivering. Osborn should never have brought her here. She would never forget what she’d seen and what she’d heard and wanted nothing more than to leave it behind.

  16

  Solange

  Osborn’s case—that’s how she thought of it—went to trial the summer of 1936, four years after Ploof’s boat had succumbed to the storm. The presiding judge was George Holborn, a man inclined so far to the left, Osborn complained, he appeared likely to fall sideways out of his seat. The trial dragged on for nearly a year, due to ill and misplaced witnesses, blizzards, lost paperwork and the death of Judge Holborn’s wife.

  One evening after she’d put Carole to bed, Solange intercepted Osborn on his way to his office. He’d taken to sequestering himself there, which struck Solange as cowardly.

  “Who was on the stand today, Osborn?”

  “I’m tired, and I still have work to do.”

  “Was it the caretaker? What questions did you ask?” Solange was too impatient to wait for the morning paper and had to know every detail of the trial, including Osborn’s version of information she received through other means. She couldn’t help herself. It was as if her marriage was being tried and decided upon, her choices, her life.

  Osborn grew impatient. “I defend Putnam in court every day, Solange. Why must I come home only to defend him, and myself, again?”

  “It’s what you chose.”

  “I do not choose to argue with you.”

  “I won’t be mute when I feel strongly.” She could see how worn out he was, but her sympathy grew thin. How could she forgive him for being on the wrong side of things? And he never asked about her activities, her work with the poor, her efforts to document police harassment, which had escalated dramatically that winter. Like boxers in a ring, she and Osborn tended to their wounds in separate corners. Her bright and noble young man had grown cold to her, unmoved by her arguments, immune to her zeal, which his impassivity only inflamed. At night he moved as far from her as possible, leaving a space between them that never warmed. Their love, which Solange had naively accredited with absolute power, had failed to bridge their worlds.

  Osborn opened the office door. “I have more on my mind than strong feelings.” He slipped inside. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  Solange struggled to quell her frustration. She crossed the foyer on her way to the kitchen for something to drink.

  “Mama?” Carole clung to the stair railing. At nine, she’d grown into a watchful child. She no longer slept well and her appetite had dulled.

  “You’re supposed to be in bed, my love.”

  “I heard you and Papa talking.”

  Watchful and diplomatic. The word she meant to use was “arguing.”

  “I’m sorry.” Solange climbed the stairs, led her daughter to her room and tucked her in.

  Carole hugged her toy dog to her chest. “Papa’s taking me to the pictures tomorrow. If you come, too, I can sit in the middle.”

  Solange stroked the girl’s hair from her forehead. “We’ll see.” Her daughter’s pleas to reunite her family broke Solange’s heart. Osborn, too, was distressed. What a place they’d come to, where sadness and pain were what they shared most.

  She wished Carole good night and went downstairs, the hollow echoes of her heels resounding through the empty spaces.

  • • •

  Nine months after it had begun, the trial ended. Judge Holborn awarded Sylvester Ploof $450 of the $2000 demanded in the suit. Osborn filed an appeal, and the case continued. Once the dispute became about money and not morality, public opinion shifted in favor of the Ploofs. How could a billionaire be so uncharitable to a poor man who’d lost everything? Solange no longer discussed the case with Osborn. She rarely spoke with him at all.

  He went in early and stayed late, and accepted every offer from clients and colleagues for social engagements. Solange’s habitual absence at these gatherings was explained away until it became unnecessary to do so, as it was assumed. Burlington was a small city and rumors about the state of their marriage took to the air like seagulls at the fishing piers. Solange strove to stay above it, or far from it, but it was impossible.

  Spring arrived as it always did in Vermont, late and in a mad rush. One fine May morning, Osborn entered the sitting room where she was tending houseplants.

  “Solange, I’ve made a decision.”

  Her hands quieted above a fern. She looked at him, surprised to find a hesitant smile on his lips.

  “I’ve rented a house on Cape Cod for the summer.” He stepped closer and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “For the three of us.”

  “Leave here? Just go away?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Nothing’s that simple, Osborn.”

  He said he’d arranged for all the holiday time he dared, and would work from the Cape as much as he was able. She could do as she wished. He took her hand. “Please. Let’s just go.”

  The hope on his weary face stirred the same feeling inside her. “All right. We’ll go.”

  • • •

  They were blessed with a bright day on the car journey south; hillsides cast in the palest green, earth freshly turned in the fields, rivers testing their banks with the last of the snowmelt. Carole slept in the car as she always did. Solange gazed at the scenery, her emotions in abeyance. After a time, she closed her eyes. They skirted Boston and approached the ribbon of land unfurled upon the sea. Carole, now awake, wanted to know about the place names—Sandwich, Mashpee, Truro—and laughed when her father made up outlandish stories to account for them.

  Osborn slowed the car as the house, placed with care between the road and the sea, came into view. The drive was lined with a white picket fence nearly obscured by flowers in riotous bloom. The small house and its windmill, clad in salt-worn shingles, looking out upon the ocean but not commanding it, had a fairy-tale aspect, the lines and colors perfectly attuned to the landscape. Sandy paths, idle trails, wound between the dunes and around tidal ponds. From the backseat, Carole let out a gasp of delight.

  Osborn parked, opened the barn-red door and stepped aside for Solange. Carole followed her in, dashed across the whitewashed floors and hopped onto a window seat with a broad view of the dunes and beyond to the sea.

  “I’m spending my summer right here!”

  “And so you shall!” Osborn bent to whisper in Solange’s ear. “I want nothing more than for us to be happy here.”

  She half closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “It’s very peaceful.”

  And it was, for a time. Carole played on the beach and swam with Solange. The sea was nothing like the lake, of course. It was boundless, insistent, with a quality of longing that was new to Solange. The sea claimed the eastern horizon, offering up the sun each morning, reaching after it with grasping waves each evening. Solange found it strange and terrible at first, and resisted enchantment, but as the days at Chatham fell behind her, she yielded to its beauty.

  Carole loved everything from the start—the cottage, the dunes, the surf, the seagulls pitching and whirling. She considered the shells, jellyfish and bits of bones the water relinquished upon the strand as personal gifts. Osborn learned to catch bluefish and cook lobster, and on some days he neglected to shave. Their skin browned. The weight on Solange’s chest lifte
d a bit, and she slept late into the mornings.

  They’d been at the Cape for a week before Osborn reached for her in bed. She turned to him cautiously, unsure. He’d become a partial stranger, someone she might or might not want to know more deeply. They had not made love in months, but with only each other and their daughter for company, the nights were theirs alone, and desire broke through their cool, raw surfaces. Tenderness followed and spilled into the days. But Solange didn’t trust the change and held part of herself back, wary of suddenly abandoning their habitual conflict simply because they shared a different bed. She wanted to return to a place of safety and warmth in their marriage, but achieving that by running away felt cowardly, a clever trick, and unlikely to last.

  In mid-June, after they’d been in Chatham five weeks, they prepared to return to Vermont. Solange’s niece was to be married and Osborn was needed at the law firm. Solange sent Carole to her room to pack her books and toys and went to the kitchen to box up the perishable food.

  Osborn came in and stood before her at the kitchen table, a concerned expression on his face. “Darling, I wanted to speak with you about the wedding.”

  Solange wrapped the morning’s bread in brown paper and placed it in the box. “What about it?”

  “A box of papers was delayed and arrived just now. Reston included an article from the Free Press about several armed burglaries at the waterfront.” Solange looked up at him. “I’m not happy with Carole attending the wedding.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” He had not been invited, as he was even less welcome among Solange’s family now than before the trial. But of course she would go, as would Carole.

  “She can stay with me, or Elsie.”

  “It’s not a matter of her care, Osborn. As you know.”

  “This summer’s recession has made the area more dangerous.”

  “It’s a wedding!”

  “And so there will be drinking.”

  Pressure built in her chest. She clenched her jaw. “I suppose no one drinks at proper weddings in the city?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what, Osborn?”

  He exhaled sharply in frustration. “Why can’t you just be happy, Solange? I’ve given you everything. Why do you insist on making things difficult for us?”

  “By attending my niece’s wedding?”

  “By refusing to accept that you no longer live on a boat, scratching out an existence. By dragging our daughter into unacceptable situations.”

  “They are her family!”

  He grabbed the chair back in front of him and leaned toward her. “Have you looked at Carole, Solange? Have you looked at her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I love you, Solange. And I don’t care where you came from, you know I don’t. But I can’t bear to see Carole put in danger, or ruined.”

  Solange stared at him, her thoughts spinning to make sense of his words. She heard Carole’s quick footsteps on the stairs and in an instant the girl appeared, wearing a white sailor dress with a blue collar and a brass anchor buckle at the waist.

  “Do you like my new dress, Papa? Aunt Bettina sent it.”

  “Very much. It suits you.”

  She flung her arms around him, blonde curls bouncing. Solange looked from her daughter to her husband and to her daughter again. They were so similar. The words of the doctor at Underhill flashed in her mind. Blood will tell. Osborn’s blood had made a strong showing in Carole. She had no place on a barge, on a lake. She was not a Bouchard. And no one would ever have cause to call her a pirate. Solange knew she ought to be relieved.

  “Aren’t we going?” Carole asked.

  Osborn kissed his daughter’s cheek. “Let’s pack the car.”

  Solange placed the lid on the box. Osborn smiled at her kindly, picked up the box and left, Carole at his side.

  Solange went to the window, secured the latch and turned her back on the sea.

  • • •

  On the day of the wedding, she sailed on the family boat to South Hero on Grand Isle. Solange’s father and her brother, David, talked about the same things they always did: the weather, the fortunes of people they knew, stories about how things used to be different, better. Her mother, Rosemarie, watched Solange closely, searching for change.

  “I was only gone a few weeks, Mama.”

  “I know, but it can be easy to go a long way in a short time.”

  “Not on this boat.” Jean-Claude Bouchard winked at his daughter. With that one gesture, he’d made her feel like a young girl again, unencumbered. She smiled at him and he winked once more.

  Rosemarie pulled Solange close. “You know, I’ve never seen the ocean.”

  “It’s frightening.”

  They neared Sandbar Causeway, the water glinting like shards of ice. A half dozen boats were moored to the south, the bright colors of the ladies’ dresses visible on the lawn that stretched between a modest clapboard house and the dock. Men ferried crates from the boats to long tables arrayed on the lawn. Solange’s father tied up and David helped the women out. They made their way ashore, carrying baskets covered in handkerchiefs, pausing to greet everyone they passed.

  Solange set down her basket and admired the sprawling bouquets of blue asters, black-eyed Susans, cattails and marsh grasses on the tables. Her mother lowered herself onto a bench.

  “Let me get you something to drink, Mama.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Solange followed two men hauling crates of beer to a wagon parked at the edge of the lawn. An elderly woman—a distant relation, perhaps—ladled lemonade into tin cups from a large crock.

  “Two, please.”

  A voice behind her said, “Solange, isn’t it?”

  She turned. A dark-bearded man, well over six feet tall, smiled down at her. She might not have known him except for his eyes, a summer sky blue.

  “Caleb?” Solange hadn’t seen him in more than a dozen years. When they were small, they’d swum and fished together, played hide-and-seek on the boats, counted stars. He’d been two years ahead of her in school—when he was in school, that is—and had been a lanky boy, still adjusting to the length of his limbs and his purpose in the world. Now the set of his jaw and the clarity in his eyes told her he’d found his purpose, or was near to it. “I’d heard, I think, you were welding down in Troy. Are you back now, or visiting?”

  “I haven’t decided. You know how it is. When you come back, you can’t quite remember why it was you ever left.”

  “I do know.” She sensed the heat coming off his body and felt her cheeks redden. She picked up the cups of lemonade from the wagon bed, thanked the woman and looked over Caleb’s shoulder. “I promised my mother a drink.”

  He hunched down a little, his breath in her hair. “Promise me a dance later?”

  A dance. When had she last danced? She took half a step back, gathered herself and spoke as if to anyone. “We’ll see.”

  Solange returned to her mother and spent the afternoon catching up with old friends and with relatives she’d forgotten she had. Each time someone recognized her and shared a memory, she remembered pieces of herself she’d buried or cast aside. It was as if part of her, a substantial part, existed in these people, in their memories and in their hearts.

  As she wove through the gathering, she caught glimpses of Caleb. Twice he’d been looking at her. During the ceremony, he sat on a bench behind the row of wicker chairs that held her family. She felt his eyes on her. She pinched her wedding band with two fingers as the songs, the hymns and the vows floated over her head like dandelion seeds.

  The music began at dusk. The fiddler tapped his foot and spun the first three measures of a reel into the air. An accordion, a guitar and a harmonica joined in. The wedding guests made a circle on the lawn, which couples and giggling children soon filled. Caleb didn’t w
ait long to find her.

  “May I?” He took her hand, lifted it high and twirled her in a slow circle.

  She answered him with a smile, a twist of guilt in her belly. To erase the feeling, she told herself it was only a dance.

  They danced that reel and another, moving easily together, as if they were still children who never thought about their bodies but simply lived in them. Solange could see the boy in Caleb, in his bright, curious eyes, in the way he tossed his head when he laughed, in his mischievous grin. It occurred to her that these childhood memories had been lying undisturbed, awaiting her recognition that she’d always been drawn to him.

  A jig played, and they danced, then an air. Caleb pulled her closer. In the pressure of his hand against her back was a knowledge of who she was, of who he was, of who all the people were, dancing together under the stars on an island in a lake, blue as midnight. She hadn’t felt so alive, so herself, in years.

  17

  Solange

  Osborn, Solange and Carole had planned to return to Chatham together four days after the wedding, but Osborn was forced to stay to depose new witnesses testifying on behalf of Putnam. That these witnesses likely had been bribed didn’t change his obligation.

  “Only a few days,” he assured Solange. “A week at the most.”

  “I could go ahead with Carole.”

  His face registered surprise. He didn’t expect her to volunteer to leave town, her charity, her family.

  Solange said, “All Carole talks about is the beach.”

  In truth, she wasn’t confident of her feelings and so could not predict her own actions. Nothing had happened with Caleb other than dancing, but Solange didn’t trust herself. She felt perilously indifferent; she was a coin tossed in the air.

  Osborn said, “Regina is going to Boston tomorrow to shop. I’m sure her driver could take you to Chatham.”