The Body in the Kelp ff-2

by Katherine Hall Page

  “Of course everyone is calling us `fortune hunters' and worse, much worse," Eric was saying.

  Faith didn't know Eric, or Roger, well enough to have formed an opinion; but certainly Pix had been surprised along with the rest of Sanpere to find that Matilda Prescott had left her magnificent house not to flesh and blood, but to these two off-islanders. Pix had been in the IGA when she heard one bitter Prescott connection say, "Why didn't she just have the place torn down? Same thing.”

  Matilda did leave the contents of the house to her relatives, and Sonny Prescott was the executor. It was his decision to auction the whole caboodle off at once rather than have endless arguments and lifetime feuds over who was supposed to get which teapot and to whom Matilda had faithfully promised the rosewood parlor furniture. This way, they'd split the money, and if someone was dying to have something, why he could just bid at the auction like everyone else. There was some grumbling over this, especially among those with the faithful promises, at least three of them for the parlor furniture; but in general the Prescotts thought Sonny had done the fair thing. However, first a bevy of them, including Sonny, was going through every chest, every drawer, every possible secret hiding place for the gold.

  Darnell Prescott's gold that is.

  Matilda's father, Darnell had owned the lumberyard, and it was widely known that he never trusted banks—even before the crash—nor did Matilda. He paid cash for everything, and there wasn't a Prescott on the island who didn't ardently believe in the existence of a well-worn leather pouch filled with gold coins. Others tended to classify it with Captain Kidd's cave—the real one was on virtually every island within sight.

  Even if some of the Prescotts were skeptical, they weren't taking any chances of seeing headlines in the Ellsworth American, "Vacationing Indiana Couple Buys Trunk Filled with Gold Coins at Local Auction." Or still more catastrophic, having Eric and Roger pull up a loose floorboard and discover the loot.

  The kickwheel stopped, and Eric deftly sliced the goblet from the base of clay and set it in a row of others in the shade.

  “It's not as if her family ever paid much attention to her. They couldn't stand her and she couldn't stand them. We lived next door to her for years, and they wouldn't even bother to plow her out in the wintertime. Roger and I did. Not that we ever thought she would do something like this. My God, I couldn't believe it when the lawyer told us, but now I realizeshe was dropping a lot of hints just before she died. I had made some lobster stew, which she loved, and brought it over. She was bed-ridden at the end, you know. She kept saying over and over how terrible it was about our house. It burned down in May, Pix probably told you. Then she went on saying we wouldn't have to worry long. I thought she meant because Pix and Sam had let us have this place and said something about the Millers being great people. Matilda kind of humphed, which meant she agreed, but she went right on talking about how far away it was from our studio and how were we going to meet our orders?”

  Faith realized she was no doubt expected to make some comment about all this. She had been in a semicomatose state with the heat, drone of the wheel, and singsong cadences of Eric's seemingly guilt-ridden, seemingly self-righteous defense. She sat up, stretched, and looked at Eric, who was · standing over her about to get back on the wheel.

  “Well, I'm sure she knew what she was doing. From all I've heard about Matilda, she was a very determined lady, and she must have wanted to give you a place to live. An incredible place to live.”

  Eric laughed. "It is, isn't it?" He paused. "It's the house of my dreams.”

  Faith moved back into the shadow from the boathouse. "It's the house of anybody's dreams. I wouldn't mind having it myself and I don't even like houses as a rule. You do things for a house you would never do for anyone or anything else, not even your husband, and what do you get back? You have to do the same things all over again in a while. So it has to be an extraordinary house to be worth it, and you've got one.”

  All's fair in love and real estate, Faith thought to herself, but just the same she would look behind her on dark nights for a while if she was Eric or Roger. If the two of them died without issue, the house reverted to the Prescotts. That was as good an invitation as any, and the Prescotts were certainly crying bloody murder all over the island. It was bad luck and lousy timing for them. If Matilda hadn't clung so tenaciously to what was left of her life, like one of the limpets on the granite ledges in the view from her windows, the Prescotts would have gotten everything. She had changed her will only after the fire had destroyed Roger and Eric's house.

  But, Faith continued to reflect, then the Prescotts would have been at each other's throats instead of at Eric's and Roger's. They couldn't all have lived in the house. She stood up and stretched some more.

  She could see Samantha and her faithful shadow, Arlene, valiantly trying to keep Benjamin from tearing himself to ribbons on the razor-sharp, barnacle-encrusted rocks near the shore. They were showing him the tiny crabs and other things that inhabited the tidal pools.

  Samantha was a Pix in the making, or a Pix product, depending on whether you were looking at the apple or the tree. She had shell collections, rock collections, bird-feather collections, and fern collections, all carefully labeled, which would have put many a botanist, ornithologist, or whatever to shame.

  Arlene seemed to know everything by osmosis. She didn't have Peterson's field guides, life lists, or Latin names, but she knew what would make you sick if you ate it, on which offshore islands the gulls nested, and the best places to dig for clams. What was even more important to Faith at the moment was that they were both the kind of adolescent girls who adored children.

  Just as the adult world could be divided into cat lovers or haters, child worshippers or tolerators at best, there seemed to be a very clear distinction between those girls who baby-sat for the money and were perfectly adequate at keeping your child safe, even somewhat entertained and clean, and those girls who were happiest pushing a stroller, playing games, and marveling at the antics of small beings. Many of them seemed to move straight from horses to kids. Faith thought of suggesting this topic to a psychologist friend of hers for a scholarly monograph, "From My Friend Flicka to Rock-a-bye Baby.”

  She gazed out at the three tiny figures by the water's edge again. She had been thankful to have Samantha on the payroll and now it looked as though Arlene would join her. Not onlywas it close to an embarrassment of riches, but the girls seemed to be having fun.

  It wasn't that she didn't have fun with Benjamin. She completely adored him. They were moving from the tactile, physical communication of babyhood to the tactile, physical, verbal, you-name-it relationship of the toddler. Somewhere along the line he had lost that sweet, milky baby fragrance and taken on a sweet, sweaty little-boy smell. It had happened before she realized it.

  But talking to someone who referred to himself mainly in the third person, and who rarely achieved sentences longer than three words and these mostly self-involved, did pall occasionally, and it was then that she greeted Samantha with open arms. Arms that were opened to place Benjamin squarely in Samantha's.

  Faith sat down again and leaned back against the boathouse. As long as they looked so content at the shore, she'd wait a bit longer before getting Ben for lunch.

  From where she was sitting she could see Eric's profile. He was extremely good-looking. His normally blond hair was bleached almost white by the sun; he had blue eyes to match and a good body. He'd taken off his shirt, and she could see he was slim without being skinny. All that potting and loading and unloading the kiln had evidently been good exercise—nice muscles. She finished her inventory by looking down at his hands. They were large with long, tapering fingers The kind of hands a statue has. In fact, it would not have been too adulatory to say he looked like a statuePraxiteles, not Michelangelo.

  Not my type though, Faith thought. Too much of a piece. Tom's slightly off-center nose and rusty-brown hair strayed across her mind. Benjamin might have the same
hair. His strawberry-blond curls were beginning to darken. It was too soon to tell about the nose.

  Faith hadn't asked, nor cared; but Pix had told her that Roger and Eric, contrary to public belief and often derision, were not gay. They were college friends, one from Iowa, one from Texas, who shared a common passion for clay. They became partners and built up a thriving business in New York, producing unique ceramic pieces as well as an elegant line of dinnerware, much of which appeared in at least one room in the Kips Bay Decorator Show House and went from there to penthouses, country homes, and favored dwellings on both sides of the Atlantic. Needing change and more space, they had come to the island on the recommendation of a printmaker friend who lived nearby on the mainland. They had been here for six years, going their separate ways for a month or two in the dreary winter months, but otherwise living and working together in what seemed like an easy harmony.

  Eric was a master at glazes, although they both did everything. His current woman friend was Jill Merriwether, who operated a small gift shop in Sanpere Village. Jill didn't sell their work. Her line tended to run to objects with blueberries on them, clam-basket planters lobster potholders, balsam pillows, books about Maine, and jam, usually strawberry and blueberry, made by a number of people on the island. The shop was, in fact, called The Blueberry Patch. Faith had bought Robert McCloskey's Blueberries for Sal there for Benjamin, and it was rapidly supplanting Goodnight Moon as the most-requested bedtime story. She figured she had read it about twenty times since buying it, and so far neither Ben nor she was tired of it.

  Sanpere was an idyllic place, but still she imagined it must be pretty horrible in the off season. The population dropped drastically—from 3000 to 1200—although according to many islanders this was a blessing—and the cold weather forced an existence just ripe for cabin fever. She had met a friend of Pix's who had lived here one winter between jobs, and she had told Faith that by January she was going to every meeting on the island, even AA, just for the company.

  “Don't you miss the city, Eric?" Faith wondered aloud.

  “Of course I do, and when I can't stand it anymore I go down, and then after a week I miss Sanpere and can't wait to get back. That's how I know this is right for me. If you aren't satisfied in New York, then you must either be nuts or have found a spot that's better for you. Roger feels the same. He goes to the city even less often than I do, and it's usually for the business."

  “But what about the opera, theater, bagels?”

  She looked at his well-worn 501 jeans. Clothes were obviously not a problem.

  “Our deep freeze is stocked with bagels, Jewish rye, decent steaks, and all those necessities, and we have Alistair and PBS for the finer things of life. We do miss our friends, but they love to come up here. It's a much better atmosphere for us to work in, less pressure, less distraction. We are happier as artists and happier as people than we've ever been in our lives. Saner." He gave the clay an emphatic slap, then started to kick the wheel.

  Still Faith found it all very hard to understand. Aleford was bad enough, but at least Boston was not a cultural wasteland. There were all sorts of things to do that they seldom did. Sanpere didn't even have a movie theater. She'd heard that a group of residents did get up a little-theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a few years back. Then the week before the opening the Maggie ran off with the Big Daddy, and no one had tried since.

  She stood up. "Well, I wish you good luck and much happiness in your new house, and if you have a housewarming, please invite me. I want to look in every corner and drink tea or something else in the gazebo.”

  Eric gave her a warm smile. "You don't have to wait for the party, Faith. As soon as we move in, you and the Millers will be our first guests, and anytime you want to sit in the gazebo, feel free.”

  Faith decided she liked him. She liked attractive people. They were nice to look at, but Eric had more than that—intelligence and the kind of good nature that charms, yet isn't revolting.

  “Thank you," she replied. "That sounds wonderful and I'll try to dig up a parasol. Now I have to rescue Samantha and get Benjamin home for lunch and a nap. I never realized what a slave children are to routines. I always thought childhood was supposed to be a time of freedom, but if the same things don't happen at the same time every day, he gets totally crazy."

  “I know; my sister's kids are such little conservatives. But with them it's food: `I say it's spinach and I say to hell with it' type stuff.'' Faith laughed, and her impression of him was reinforced—it was nice to share the same classics. She said good-bye and set off down the path to the beach.

  Benjamin was right on schedule and started falling into his chowder at one o'clock. Faith scooped him up and put him to bed. She decided to take the new Vogue out to the hammock and have a rest herself. She'd drastically shortened most of her skirts a couple of years ago despite the prevailing fashion in Aleford, which had been mid calf since the late twenties. Now it looked as if she would have to raise some of them an inch or two more. It was absorbing work coping with trends. Besides, all this lassitude was exhausting. And she needed her strength for clamming with Pix later in the afternoon when the tide was still low.

  She had no sooner opened the magazine to an Issey Miyake quilted jacket that said "Faith, you need me" when a shadow fell across the page. She looked up. In this case, way up. It was Pix.

  “Faith, how long have you been asleep? You were so peaceful I didn't want to disturb you, but you said you wanted clams."

  “I don't even remember dropping off. What time is it?" Faith tried to avoid wearing a watch whenever possible.

  Pix consulted her gigantic multipurpose timepiece, which did everything from simply reporting the hour to informing one of the current exchange rate in Addis Ababa and the exact date of the return of the male elephant seals to Ano Nuevo.

  “It's almost three o'clock."

  “Oh, my God!" Faith leaped out of the hammock and started running to the house. "If Benjamin is up, there's no telling what he's into, and if he's not, he'll never sleep through the night.”

  He was up, but miraculously had stayed in his crib, diverted by one of the branches of FAO Schwartz Faith kept steadily rotating there in the vain hope of keeping him from climbing out. He had learned to climb out of his crib six months before, and for weeks Tom and Faith's life was anightmare. Thrilled at the acquisition of this terrific skill, Benjamin would repeat the maneuver seven or eight times a night. It was one of those things no one tells you before you have a baby, yet everybody mentions afterward: "Oh yes, Johnny climbed out forty times a night for eight months and we were regulars on the parental stress hotline." Leach, Spock, Brazelton, all the heavy hitters commiserated and said just put him firmly back. Of course they weren't the sleep-deprived zombies in question.

  It was at three o'clock one morning, after lifting Benjamin back in and admittedly snarling at him, "It's time to go to sleep, you must stay in your bed," that Faith realized she had literally stumbled on the solution to the capital-punishment dilemma. It was fiendishly simple. Put the murderers, rapists, insider traders, what-have-you, in a cell with a two-year-old hardened crib evacuator and after a week tops, total rehabilitation or insanity would have occurred. Tom was not amused when she woke him up to tell him. "Faith, you're getting dangerously close to the edge," he had mumbled.

  Although Benjamin had somewhat curbed his wanderlust and slept through the night now, Faith was haunted by fears A recidivism. She and Pix were discussing this as they walked through the aspen grove that separated the cottage from the nearest shoreline. The green-gray leaves were quivering in the slight breeze on stems that looked too fragile to hold them in place. Shortly after Faith and Tom had arrived in Sanpere, Pix had told her that legend had it that the reason the aspen always quivered was because the cross had been made of its wood and forever after it mourned. Faith had been amazed that she had missed this tidbit of ecclesiastical folklore in her clerical upbringing and resolved to work it into the conver
sation at the next meeting of the church's ladies' alliance. She had found herself woefully lacking in such bona fides as a minister's wife. Pix would have been far abler, she reflected—not for the first time.

  Samantha followed behind with Ben in a Gerry backpack. For some typical two-year-old reason he would let Samantha and no one else carry him this way.

  All three of them were armed with clam hoes and wooden clam baskets lined with wire mesh. Faith was intrigued and a bit wary. Her wariness had increased when Pix had handed her a pair of olive-green rubber boots, size sixteen and encrusted with the vestiges of ancient mudfiats. Flapping along in these, wearing a bathing suit (Pix had said an old one, but then she didn't understand about updating a wardrobe), and beginning to feel uncomfortably warm, Faith found herself thinking that the victory might not be worth the price. However, she wanted clams and Pix said there was nothing in the world like absolutely fresh ones.

  Faith decided to concentrate on dinner and hoped that would give her the sticking power. She had invited Pix, Roger, and Eric to taste something new she had been working on. She'd been invited to St. Louis last winter as one of the judges of a barbecue-sauce competition and while there had had a local specialty, toasted ravioli—ravioli rolled in bread crumbs and quickly deep fried. It was tasty, but she realized it could be even tastier with more interesting fillings and sauces, different bread crumbs, better oil. Since then she'd been trying all sorts of combinations. For tonight she had prepared some with chèvre and red pepper and wanted to stuff the rest with these sweet whole clams, a hint of garlic, and fresh-tomato-and-basil coulis for dipping. This primo piatto was to be followed by grilled lobsters brushed with pastis and fennel butter. Pix was bringing new potatoes and salad ingredients from her garden. The thought of what awaited took Faith over the rocks, and she stepped off, firm of purpose, into the mud, ready to rake. She instantly sank down to her boot tops and couldn't move an inch. It was like quicksand, and she felt a might Hoover sucking her into the bowels of the earth. No clam was worth this.