The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  “As a wee laddie, all he ever wanted was to be a soldier,” she said. “Serve his Queen, return to the estate, and raise children and dogs. But at university he fell in with the separatists and became passionate about Scotland’s independence.”

  Her hand went to her face. He entwined his fingers in hers and drew her closer. His collarbone against her ear, she counted his heartbeats.

  She told him how Harald had expelled Mallo, and about their unexpected reunion nearly two years ago. “That childhood friendship boiled over into this other thing,” she said. “This force. We were foolish enough to think we could keep it secret. When we hatched plans to elope, I thought Father might banish me, too, but Mallo so believed in his political future, was so sure his—our—side would eventually prevail. He was confident we could mend anything.”

  She looked out at the boats. Liz ran his thumb over her palm. When she was able to speak again, she told him about Mallo’s death.

  “At least he lived to see the act pass,” she said.

  Someone poured water on the remains of the fire. There was a sharp hiss. A plume of smoke rose up and covered the stars, and she watched until they twinkled through it and the sky was clear again. The breeze brought the smell of wet ashes.

  “Senseless violence robbed us both,” she said.

  Liz tightened his arm around her and touched her chin. She settled her head against his shoulder again.

  “I packed away all my feelings and dove into work,” she said. “The Yanks assumed I was a workaholic with no love life, making it possible never to speak of him. To think, I traded a year I could have been married to him on the chance of a bloody promotion.”

  She described Burtie’s death, her transfer to London, Harald’s mental decline and death, and their financial ruin.

  “I thought I could keep it all in, but in the months before I first came here, I began leaking emotion like a cracked bowl. I believed paralyzing grief was best shared only with a dog.”

  “Beats drowning it in booze,” he said.

  “Maybe you were smarter, going on a rampage and getting it out of your system.”

  “Some things neither of us will ever get out of our systems.”

  A couple wandered up from the beach and stood looking into the bar, then moved on.

  “Jason sometimes has to remind me how hard I fought to survive on Feather,” Liz said. “He says I have to ‘embrace da choice a’ life, mon.’ When I slip, he’s tolerant of my moods and black spells.”

  “I’ve never seen a black spell.”

  “Yes, you have,” he said. “I get really quiet, go away. Around you, they’re short.”

  She squeezed his hand, which was still wrapped around hers.

  “Maybe you keep me from going all the way to the bottom,” he said. “If I do, I can be there a long time.”

  “Liz,” someone called from the bar, “cash up?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Right there, Junior,” he called. He helped Els stand up, and she leaned into him on the way to the bar.

  She thought he might try to sweep her up and carry her across the court, but he folded her arm under his and guided her to the steps. Light from the kitchen window cast a golden grid onto the gravel. Her whole body was humming.

  He pulled her into his arms, lifted her chin, and looked at her searchingly. He kissed her cheek so softly she barely felt it, despite yearning for it, and then he kissed her a little lower and again on the corner of her mouth. Whole minutes seemed to pass between kisses. When finally he kissed her full on the lips, she rose on her tiptoes to put her hands in his hair and held him there and returned the kiss again and again, deeper and deeper. His arms went around her back and she clung to him, her tiptoes barely touching the ground.

  He loosened his grip, and she felt for her footing and laid her cheek against his chest. He kissed her hair. “I’ve felt protective of you from the minute I hauled you out of the water,” he said. “A scared little kid trying so hard to be tough.” His hand drifted to her neck, his fingers tracing the silver chain, the blue bead. “Even when you really piss me off, which is often enough, I can’t forget that terrified, brave little girl for long.”

  The idea that he’d seen the very thing she’d struggled to conceal all her life, and that it was what bound him to her despite her moods, left her too unmasked, too confused, to form a reply.

  He kissed her again, this time tenderly, lingeringly, as if her lips and mouth were a new country he wanted to explore and remember forever, then looked into her eyes. “Thanks for tonight.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and walked her up to the lounge. He switched on the Chinese lamp, and in its gentle light his eyes were the color of blueberries. She sought the refectory table for balance, wondering what would, should, come next, but her head was a pudding of revelations and emotions that needed sorting. She wanted him both to leave her alone and never to leave her.

  When he turned to go, she reached for his arm, and he stopped and looked at her for a long beat.

  “My fantasy goes like this,” he said. “We spend some unhurried time together on Iguana. Put that stateroom to proper use.”

  The fantasy was so similar to her own she almost laughed. Finally, she found her voice. “Would that be a dare, Captain?”

  He grinned. “If that’s what it takes.” He leaned in and kissed her left eyelid. “I’ll make you coffee and fresh grapefruit juice in the morning.” He kissed her right eyelid. At the door he paused. “I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.” He stepped out and closed the screen gently behind him. The frogs chanted in the still night.

  CHAPTER 37

  From their table in Golden Rock’s garden, Els and Lauretta looked through the hedge-high poinsettias at the hazy profiles of Montserrat and Redonda.

  Lauretta agitated her lemonade with her straw. “Condé Nast Traveler is running a piece on the Resort reopening and wants to include us in their Nevis ‘must visit’ list. With a photo. Just so you know, I’ve turned down two wedding requests. And I’ve been busting my butt to mend fences after you were so rude to that historical society woman.”

  “She had the cheek to pull weeds on her way up the drive,” Els said. “Then she went nattering on about an encounter with Jack years ago. Said he was drunk at ten in the morning and wearing only a shirt.” She sipped her iced tea. “She seemed to believe it was his civic duty to open the garden for their fund-raiser.”

  Lauretta twirled a curl around her index finger. “You aren’t Jack. Why turn down high tea among the flowers for a bunch of ladies we’d love to have as regulars?”

  When their food arrived, Els made slow business of unrolling her silverware, spreading her napkin, and tasting her snapper. Lauretta plopped ketchup onto her plate and dipped a French fry.

  “Book it soon, then, before the season really kicks in,” Els said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Lauretta said. “You’re barely listening to me.”

  Els stared out at Redonda and chewed a slice of cucumber. “I’ve invited my mother to visit.”

  Two weeks before her thirty-fourth birthday, she’d spent a boozy, blue evening mulling over all that had happened since she turned thirty-two, her last birthday with Mallo in the world. Though she’d found purpose again, and glimmers of a sense of belonging, she knew that immersing herself in the pub was barely keeping at bay her loneliness, and doing nothing for her blooming obsession with her mother. Before she could second-guess herself, she’d fired off a letter that said, in part, “I can’t have a life unless I understand what’s happened to me, to you. I must see you and try to know you, if you’ll let me. Please Mum, for this birthday, make your gift a visit.”

  Jack had appeared as she was signing the letter, read it over her shoulder, and said, “Atta girl, sweet.” He’d smiled his pirate smile. “Grab life by the throat and give it a good shake.” He’d looked so self-satisfied, she’d wondered if he imagined the letter his own idea. The next morning she
’d gone to the Nevis philatelic bureau, selected its most beautiful tropical stamps, and posted the letter before she could chicken out.

  Lauretta looked at her over her flying fish sandwich. “I thought she wouldn’t budge off that Eye-talian island of hers.”

  “I begged her to come while she still can.”

  “She sick?”

  “Fine, for all I know, but Father didn’t make sixty.” She pushed the snapper around her plate. “I’ve got questions only she can answer, I can’t risk her going senile, and I want her on my turf.”

  “When’s she coming? We’ll have a party.”

  “In about a fortnight,” Els said. “She might make the party or ruin it altogether.”

  With her brief acceptance letter, her mother had enclosed a color photo of herself in a flowered bathing suit that accentuated her voluptuousness. She was talking to the camera operator, a hint of flirtation in her eyes. She seemed vibrant, animated. Els pulled the christening photo out of the study desk and compared her mother’s vacant expression with this flirty one, hoping the mother who visited would be the Ischia version.

  Susie threw her front paws into Els’s lap, and Els stroked her ears. “Dum-da-dum-dum,” she sang. “Moment of truth, girl. If we’re lucky.”

  Her mother had proposed to arrive just before Liz’s next time in port, and Els was apprehensive about how this collision of her unexplained past and barely coalescing present would work out. She reached for a piece of stationery and Harald’s fountain pen and wrote her reply slowly, reading over each sentence before starting the next.

  When she finished, satisfied she’d cloaked her anxiety in cheery enthusiasm, she was unsure how to sign off. Her mother had closed with “baci—G.” Els wondered if she wanted to be addressed by her given name now, as if they were peers. She spoke it aloud, Giulietta, and tried to imagine saying it to her mother’s face. Finally she scribbled, “I can’t wait. Ciao, Eleanora.”

  By midafternoon the mango shade extended to the deck of Toad Hall, where Vivian sat in her wheelchair crocheting an aqua baby blanket for the church jumble sale. Els passed around sweet iced tea and a plate of biscuits.

  “Doc Lytton would scold me,” Vivian said. “Find me a lemon crème, Husband.”

  “What we celebratin’?” Finney popped a jam tot into his mouth.

  Eulia walked up the hill from the house, Peanut in tow. She carried herself in a square-shouldered, fluid way now, and the cropped hair from her Resort days had given way to a crown of braids.

  Peanut threw himself at Els, and she kissed his forehead and offered him the biscuits. He took one in each hand, looked up at Eulia, and put one back.

  “My mum is arriving Monday week,” Els said. “I need all of you to help me get through her visit.”

  “She some kind of dragon lady?” Eulia asked.

  “It’s one of the possibilities.”

  “How long she stayin’?” Finney asked.

  “No clue,” Els said. “I’ve booked her a week at Oualie.” She swirled her tea. “She’s Italian, so I hope she’s into food. Vivian and Eulia, maybe you can show her some of your specialties. Finney, would you take her snorkeling?”

  “You sure she up to that?”

  “She’s only fifty-four. I believe she swims.”

  Vivian drew herself straighter. “Husband, it’s time we gave Els back her cottage.”

  “Nonsense,” Els said. “I might want to keep a little distance between Mum and me.” A kestrel swooped down over the court and rose with a gecko in its talons. “She’s been mentally unbalanced in the past. I’ve no idea what to expect.”

  “Nevis can have a calming power over people,” Vivian said. “You know that yourself, Els.”

  “I need more than calm,” Els said. “I need answers.”

  The sight of Jack leaning against the kitchen sink made her drop the container of ice cream. Susie flattened her ears and skirted where he stood, but darted over to investigate the windfall. Els shooed her away and put the container on the table.

  “I can’t wait to meet that mother of yours,” he said.

  “You stay away from her,” she said. “She might be receptive too. The idea of the two of you conspiring is beyond unnerving.”

  “Then I can’t wait to see you meet that mother of yours.”

  “I’m having dreams—nightmares—about it,” she said, watching a moth circle the candle. “The last one wasn’t even the scariest, but it was the most vivid and coherent.”

  She recounted being in Iguana’s cockpit with Liz and her mother, a Sophia Loren look-alike with big sunglasses and an ample bosom filling out her string bikini. The sea was angry, the wind blustery. Something popped and the sails began to flap. Liz shinnied up the mast and fixed whatever had broken, and when he swung back down, Giulietta gave him a sexy kiss and called him her hero and he was smiling. Giulietta put her hand on Liz’s naked chest and said, “Bellissimo.” She grabbed Els’s hair, dragged her to the rail, threw her overboard, and yelled, “You don’t deserve him.” The wind filled the sails and Iguana sped away, leaving her alone in the heaving sea.

  “She may be a piece of work,” Jack said, “but I doubt she’s traveling halfway around the world to drown you.”

  “She could turn Liz against me,” she said. “Or bring out my inner bitch so that I drive him off myself.”

  “When are you going to give Liz any credit? That boy’s one determined SOB when he sets his heart on something.” He stepped toward the door and started to vaporize.

  “Don’t leave yet,” she said. “I need to talk to you about Liz.”

  “You need to talk to Liz about Liz.”

  The candle flame flattened when a gust of wind knocked it sideways, but no breeze stirred the mango leaves outside the door. She thought she saw a shape moving in the garden. When she looked out, all was still and empty.

  “I would,” she called, “if he would ever stay home for more than a heartbeat.” She opened the near-empty carton of ice cream, ate a runny spoonful, and set the rest down for Susie.

  CHAPTER 38

  On the day Giulietta was to arrive, Els returned from grocery shopping in Charlestown to find her mother asleep in Jack’s big chair, her bare feet on the ottoman and a half-finished glass of white wine at her elbow. Els studied her: hair a shade redder than russet, tawny skin that, in repose, was nearly without wrinkle, toe- and fingernails lacquered a deep rose. In her turmeric-colored linen dress and a Hermès scarf printed with seashells, she was elegant, alluring.

  Giulietta opened her eyes and smiled. Els felt trapped by her gaze, caught in a trespass. Swinging her feet off the ottoman, her mother opened her arms and said, “El-e-a-nor-a.”

  Susie waggled up to her, and Giulietta cupped her muzzle and kissed it. Els felt a stab of alarm that her mother might steal the dog’s affections.

  When Els leaned in and pecked her mother’s cheek, Giulietta grasped her face in both hands and looked it over, committing every lash and freckle to memory, before kissing her firmly on both cheeks. She gave off that exotic scent—flowers, a hint of nutmeg—that had permeated the cupboard where the paintings were hidden.

  Els sat on the corner of the ottoman. “Why didn’t yi call from St. Kitts so I could meet your plane?”

  “I am not bothering with local coins,” Giulietta said. “You didn’t say your airport is so primitivo, but Mr. Sparrow is there. Polite fellow. He tells me all about this house, how he is the first to show it to you. He says this Jack man is a jumpy ghost. He says your restaurant is un grande successo. He says a sailor might be your amore, but you are not letting him.”

  “You already know more about me than I do about you,” Els said.

  “You want to be private,” Giulietta said, “don’t live on an island.”

  Els imagined traveling to Ischia incognito and researching her mother and wondered if her life there was an open book, if she was a local celebrity.

  Giulietta pushed herself out of the chair and stepp
ed into her wedge sandals. “You painted these, yes?” She straightened Els’s watercolor of one of Pinky’s offerings, the calabash bowl full of skin-nips, which was propped in the bookcase. “You understand color,” she said. “The sunsets and the portrait of that man—he is Jack, yes? Those are full of emotion. They pull you in. Most of the others are safe. Pretty, but safe.”

  “They happen to be very popular,” Els said. She’d thought painting might create common ground but now saw it could be a source of competition, one her mother would always win.

  “You need to paint from here,” Giulietta said, placing her hand over her heart. “Not from here.” She tapped her temple. Els thought of the self-portrait, which she’d imagined springing from a tortured mind, but maybe a tortured heart too. Her mother walked over to her own harborscape hanging next to the door and touched the gardenia signature. “Cara,” she said, “this home you have made is bellissima.”

  Els glanced at the wine glass. “You’ve obviously given yourself the tour.”

  “The kitchen is pleasant,” Giulietta said. “Cool. But the light up here is better.” She stared at The Beatrice hanging over the stairs, her lips tight.

  “Where’s your luggage?”

  “In frog house,” Giulietta said. “When we arrive, your friends Finney and Vivian are leaving to go back to house with daughter and bambino, and they tell Mr. Sparrow to put it there.”

  Els stopped caressing Susie’s ears; the dog pressed her hand, wanting more.

  “Vivian says she makes this plan herself.”

  “They were adamant you should stay here instead of Oualie. We compromised. I’ve moved to the study, and you’re to have my bedroom.”

  “You would want me gone in three days, like fish,” Giulietta said. “Your bed upstairs, too much reminder of that house, even though you make it very tropical now.” What might have been a shudder passed through her, and then she was bright again. “Put your things back in the bedroom. I am already unpacked.”