The sea was close and black and the mist floated over it in eerie scarves. New leaves on the spreading limbs moved in the wind, obscuring her view. I’m being paranoid. She sighed and scrabbled down into her pocket for the satin sack. The stones glittered in the half-light. They were cool to the touch and mysterious, staring at her eerily, but they warmed quickly. She knew she ought to get rid of them but something about them warranted care. She slipped them back into their sack, got up, and leaned against the open window. You could barely make out the Great White, now, hazy in fog. That’s my mother’s sister in there, she thought, smiling. And you never knew what life held in store. She yawned and climbed back into Wendell’s bed, half listening to the monotonous slosh of the tide as they cuddled warmly like an unmatched pair of spoons, drifting, lime and lemon, off to sleep.
Claire
When I opened my eyes in the morning, the inside of the cottage was thick with fog. At first I lay there, puzzled, but then remembered I’d left the big window open all night. The weather had changed. I threw off the blanket. I felt strangely good, different. I got up and let the kitten out, then, following her lead, I treated myself to a good stretch. I’d get myself in shape, by gum. I did a little Downward Dog, then staggered across the floor to the window and peered through a wall of mist. There I saw it. The magnificent wisteria, old as the hills, had come down during the night. It lay there, tangled and broken off, a vine once as imposing as Jack’s beanstalk. I shuddered, glad, at least, that Noola was no longer alive to see its demise. I shook my head sadly. Then I heard it—the woman with the infant! Without even brushing my teeth, I shrugged into Noola’s beaver coat and took off, climbing over the devastated wisteria, finding my way down the steep path to the beach by holding on to the rocks. Down below in the wispy fog I saw her slender retreating figure. Now was my chance to invite her over and I trotted across the sand, the water lapping on my right, her keening song keeping me on course as the fog lifted and then again swallowed her up. Charmed with my own generosity of spirit, visions of company for lunch and a young friend to advise and chat with filled my heart.
“Hi,” I called. “Hello there!” But even in the stillness she didn’t hear me. I reached, keeping up, and tapped her on the shoulder and she whirled around. She was a man! Long, straggly, yellowed white hair blew in the wind crisscrossing his whiskery face and pale blue eyes, an old man swirling in the thick mist, one moment there and the other not, and there was no baby, just a wrapped-up broken doll in his arms! The hairs on my neck stood up. I screamed with no sound coming out. Like in a dream, my legs would not move. Then I turned at last and I found myself running, running frantically away.
When at last I clattered to the top of the hill, I saw Mrs. Dellaverna out digging, looking as though she were kneeling on a cloud. I almost ran into her arms but I spotted Jenny Rose in and out of the mist, leading Wendell up the winding path—little refugees from Shangri-La—and I ran to her instead. I don’t even know what I was afraid of, but the vacant blue eyes of the man had terrified me. And that terrible fog … I just sobbed on her shoulder, not caring if I frightened Wendell, just losing it completely. Jenny Rose led me into my own place and boiled up some coffee she found on the stove. Wendell held tightly onto Jenny Rose’s hand but he didn’t look frightened, just curious.
“Sure, you’ve had a shock,” Jenny Rose said as she spooned sugar into the cup.
“Oh, God,” I cried, crashing my fist on the table, “I hate sugar in my coffee!”
“All right, all right,” Jenny Rose soothed. “Now tell me what happened?”
Mrs. Dellaverna was in the doorway. “You met up with Daniel, I think.”
“Yes, it was a man! He’s a man.” I covered my mouth. “An old man. But he had this long platinum hair.” I trickled my hand down my side. “And I only ever saw him from the back. I heard him singing, well, not really singing but humming, like, keening and I thought it was a young woman with an infant.” I sniffled, pulling myself together. “You know, I remembered how hard it is with a new baby and I thought, oh, let me invite her up to the cottage. My own son had colic,” I went ranting on, “and I’d walk him, from seven to nine every night.”
Jenny Rose patted my arm. “Sure, you’re not used to living by the sea. It does strange things to a body. The fog and all …”
“I think you scared him, eh?” Mrs. Dellaverna said wryly.
“Who’s Daniel?” Jenny Rose jumped up and down.
Wendell spoke up, “Daniel, he lives just down the road from Twillyweed. He’s got a lovely cottage. But it’s run-down now.” Except for the Elmer Fudding of his Ls and Rs, Wendell spoke with the vocabulary of an adult and I was shocked to normalcy because he sounded so mature—no doubt what comes from a child spending all his time with women.
Jenny Rose put her hands gently on his shoulders. “Do you know him, then?”
“Oh, sure,” he said easily. “Me and Mama always go. We take him mozzarella and cheese and parsley sausage when we go to Uncle Giuseppe’s.” He stuck his thumb into his mouth, clamming up.
Jenny Rose mouthed the word Annabel to me. Wendell noticed this and he sunk into his neck.
“Ach,” Jenny Rose soothed him, “sure, you’ll be wanting to speak of your mum, isn’t that it? None of us mind, do we, Auntie Claire?”
“No.” I felt better and now somewhat foolish. I looked down at my cup. “I have no idea how old this coffee is.”
Mrs. Dellaverna reluctantly left to get some fresh milk and I showed Wendell the button safe.
“This will keep him busy for the while,” Jenny Rose declared, setting him up on a throw rug.
Mrs. Dellaverna returned with the milk. She’d also brought a bell jar, sliced bread, and a salt shaker filled with red pepper flakes. “Oh, Dio! You have to have spicy.” She nestled it into the condiments grouping. “It’s what makes life good! You got to have the zest!”
“And what’s in the bell jar,” I asked, “sauce?”
She gave me a hard look. “Gravy.”
Together the three of us cleared off some seats. Mrs. Dellaverna said, “One more, we can play cards.”
I put WFUV on the radio, cleaned the percolator as best I could, giving it a wicked scrub, and set about to make a decent pot of coffee. We watched Wendell arrange the buttons into separate piles.
Jenny Rose said, “He’s making a little shop.” We both smiled.
Mrs. Dellaverna popped some slices into the toaster, checking it first for mice.
Jenny Rose said suddenly, “You know, we could rent a little shop in town and sell buttons.”
“Too expensive,” Mrs. Dellaverna protested sourly, drumming her fingers for the toast.
“No,” Jenny Rose pursued excitedly. “There must be five little empty shops in town.”
Mrs. Dellaverna laughed. “Don’t be pazza! You can’t make no living selling buttons.”
“No,” Jenny Rose went on enthusiastically, “but vintage button shops are a draw. There’s one in Dublin. We could put my pictures on the wall and your photographs and have a sort of gallery. I could make popovers and tea.”
“Mmm.” I shrugged, not really paying attention, for I was still seeing that man, that Daniel, with his haunted face there alone on the beach. “I could make my sauerbraten,” I said.
Mrs. Dellaverna said, “I could make spaghetti!”
“Is that what you really want to do?” Jenny Rose said suddenly.
“No,” I admitted.
“What do you really want to do?”
I closed my eyes and saw myself on a clear day sailing past the lighthouse with Morgan Donovan at the helm. That woke me up. What was I thinking? I shook my head to clear it and saw the mess before me. Slowly, I stood to fetch another cup.
Jenny Rose, her little chin in her fist, said dreamily, “You know, I think I know who you mean, this bloke Daniel. When I drove into to
wn the first time, I saw him behind his dirty windows—it must be the same fellow—and I thought how sad. Long silky white hair, just like you said, almost platinum. I’m not surprised you took him for a lass from behind. Dead skinny. Little bat shoulders. Could be good looking, but he’s got those awful, haunted eyes. I still remember seeing him and thinking this is America? What’s wrong with him, Mrs. Dellaverna?”
Mrs. Dellaverna made a face and shrugged. “He’s here a long time. Sometimes, people go visit. They got that Eucharistic minister brings him the host. He’s not old, he just looks disheveled. What are you going to do? Put people in the crazy house just because they look and act funny? He wasn’t born that way, you know.”
I said, “What’s with the doll?”
Mrs. Dellaverna sighed heavily. “It’s a long time ago. Dio mio! That was a story.”
Wendell put down his turret of buttons and got up and moved close to the table. “He had a baby that drownded,” he mispronounced solemnly and nodded his head to affirm this.
Jenny Rose scratched her neck. I could tell she didn’t like where this was going.
Mrs. Dellaverna stroked her mustache and leaned back in her creaking chair. I prayed it would hold her. She said, “No! No, I’ll start at the beginning. See, this house here she belonged to Noola. She was a great one to sail. Every year, they have this what you call charity regatta. Her boat was the For Sail. Noola was so sure she was going to win. Daniel, he’s just a little boy, maybe seven, living here in Sea Cliff. He shouldn’t have been in the water. But he was spoiled, always up to no good. The family had plenty of money. What happened was terrible. It was a catastrophe! Noola, she ran over Daniel with the For Sail. His head, it came apart. He had to have hundreds of stitches on his head. Hundreds. He’s in the hospital for months. His brain was … He was never the same, never came back the right way. He was without oxygen too long. And he don’t hear so good, either. Noola, it’s not her fault. The kid was out where he shouldn’t have been. It was an accident. But she never got over it, see? And Morgan, he was in the boat and he watched the whole thing! Noola never forgave herself.” Here she stopped and, composing herself, took a sip from her cup. “He’s sweet. But let’s face it”—she tapped her skull meaningfully—“he’s pozzo. He looks okay. But who’s gonna be friends with such a boy? So when he grows up, he meets some junkie girl in the church basement, at one of those meetings. Janet, her name was. You know, one of those can’t help getting stoned, then yoga, then getting stoned again, in and out of all those rehab groups over at the church basement. AA. NA. One of them.” She tapped her noggin with her pointer finger. “She was smart, she smelled the money. I never liked her. But that’s beside the point. Daniel had property, you know; his parents they left him the little house there on the shore, where he lives now. It didn’t look like that then. Let me tell you. So anyway, it was a big shock when she got herself pregnant. Minchia! She’s into her thirties when she had his baby. Some people were not so sure about whether those two could take care of a baby. And let me tell you, they were right. Because one day there she was getting stoned and there’s the baby with nobody watching. And this after one time I found a needle on the beach.” She shrugged. “I’m thinking, who’s gonna change the diaper? But everybody figures somebody else is there to keep an eye on them.” She paused, not sure if she should go on and then—all of us listening with bated breath—she continued, “There was talk the baby should be taken away. Adopted through the Guardian Angel House. But then nobody wants to interfere, you know? But then something happened that changed everything. I’m outside, hanging up my wash on the line. I just happened to look down. I see the baby alone on the beach and it’s getting dark. I’m shocked! I go down. I take him up to my house and I put him to bed. I didn’t know Janet made the overdose—how could I know? Make a long a story short, Janet was dead. They found a shoe, a little baby shoe on the beach. And a sock in the water. Oh, Dio, it was terrible. Everybody thought the baby went into the water!” She bit the side of her hand. “I didn’t know Janet died. How would I know? Even after I took the baby down, and everyone saw that the baby was safe, Daniel, he kept looking for the baby. Always he looked! That was what, twenty years ago? That’s why nobody talks to me.” She shrugged, not meeting our eyes, but looking, fretful and hurt, out the window. “So now you know.”
Jenny Rose and I said nothing.
Mrs. Dellaverna smacked her ear with the heel of her hand. “Santa Maria! I gotta go. I still got my sauce on the stove!” She went out, slamming the screen.
“Look, Wendell,” Jenny Rose said. “The fog’s lifted! Want to go, now?”
He jumped up in a shower of buttons. “Please can we go to the boatyard?” he pleaded.
“I don’t see why not.” She bent to pick up the buttons and suddenly cried, “Wendell, a kitten!”
“She’s my stowaway.” I laughed, savoring Wendell’s rapt expression, padding over to open the screen and gathering her up. I lowered her into Wendell’s outstretched arms. “I guess she’s decided to stay.”
His eyes gleamed and he cuddled her gently, lovingly, to his face.
“She hasn’t got a name,” I said. “Maybe you can think of one?”
His mouth dropped with the shock of this great idea and his glasses steamed with intensity. “I can,” he swore. Then he looked worried. “Now? Do I have to say it right now?”
“No,” I said as I filled the sink with soapsuds, “she’s been nameless so long a little while longer won’t matter. But let’s keep her here in the cottage, shall we? You can see her anytime you want.”
“All right,” he agreed solemnly, planting a dry kiss on the little head.
“Auntie Claire …” Jenny Rose put her cup in the sink. “You’ll be all right?”
“Tch.” I clicked my tongue reassuringly. “I’ll be fine. I’m a nervous Nelly, that’s all. Just don’t mention my flipping out to Morgan. He’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I won’t.” She kissed me on the cheek. I walked them outside and they took off down the hill. There was no car to be heard, no airplane overhead, just the bright caw of the gulls and the flap of the flag. I should be grateful for what I’ve got, I reprimanded myself, not thinking about another woman’s fiancé! Back inside, I found Noola’s phone book and telephoned Paige.
“Ah!” She sounded happy to hear from me. “I was just thinking of you.”
“Really? I wanted to thank you for the lovely dinner. And I thought I might reciprocate and ask you to lunch,” I said.
“No, absolutely not. I’ll take you to my club. It’s Wednesday, Ladies’ Day. You’ll love it.”
“Great.”
“Shall I pick you up in an hour?”
“Fine.”
“Oh. And no jeans.”
The wind flew in. I regarded my one and only suit fluttering respectably on its hanger. “Not a problem.”
The club turned out to be one of those prestigious white and navy affairs with touches of polished brass. It was situated in a pretty cove with a half-moon beach at its lip and tennis courts discreetly off to the side in a huddle of bushes. Striped canvas awnings pooled the wraparound porch in shade. In the main dining room, old-fashioned propeller fans whirred and dangled from the ceiling. I was the only human being not wearing white. We helped ourselves to fancy salads and fresh sandwiches at a table indoors and took seats at a round table set away from the clique of other women.
“They won’t like that we sat over here,” Paige remarked. “The women always sit together at one table. But I thought we might talk.”
“Sounds good.” I covered my lap with the creamy linen napkin.
“By the way, I notice you’ve got your camera with you. Please don’t photograph anyone here.”
“All right,” I agreed, hoping no one had noticed me shooting while she was in the ladies’ room.
A waiter came over. “G-and-T for both,
” Paige specified without consulting me, then scrutinized my face. “Are you settling in?”
“Not really. It’s a mess. And last night the wind took down that huge wisteria vine. Such a tragedy! I’ll have to have someone help me remove it. But I’ll get there,” I hurried to say, not wanting her to pull out her do-gooder persona and invade my space.
“Just how did you and Morgan meet?” She jumped right in—not a girl to waste time.
“I saw his sign from the beach, actually. Then I ran into Mrs. Dellaverna.”
She looked out toward the fleet of little sailboats heading into shore. “Good old Mrs. Dellaverna,” she said. But it was the way she said it. So she was nobody’s fool. Then she added, unnecessarily I thought, “I told him not to hang that sign. He insisted only locals would see it from the beach.”
“I see.”
“You know,” she said, toying with her earring, a tasteful gold knot, “Morgan has a lot on his mind.”
“Yes, I realize he’s just lost his mother.”
“Well, Easter. She died just after Easter.”
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