Beach Roses Read online

  Now she wondered if they’d have a field day with her, too, and if they’d proclaim her a mental mess as well.

  Keeping her head turned from the window as she slowly passed the restaurant, Katie felt an ache in her belly that she recognized. It was an ache of loneliness; the kind she’d felt as a small child when she was friendless, because how could the daughter of Joleen bring friends home to play?

  And then it was not Joleen onstage but Katie, her life becoming a glass storefront like Linda Jean’s, where those around her were with people and had lives, but Katie was shut out, on one side or the other.

  Eastaways was open. Katie quickly ducked inside the clothing store for distraction. She found herself standing in the children’s department, where miniature shirts and pants and overalls hung on tiny hangers, neatly new and crisp.

  “May I help you?” a clerk asked.

  Katie adjusted her sunglasses. “I’m looking for baby things.”

  “Over here,” the woman said, and Katie traced the woman’s steps through racks that had to be too close together because real estate on the island was at such a premium.

  When they reached “over here,” Katie quickly stopped. “There,” she said, “what’s that?” She didn’t have to ask: She knew a pink-sequin leotard when she saw one. “I’ll take it,” she said.

  The woman looked perplexed. What would an infant do with a pink-sequin leotard? Katie could not, of course, explain that the leotard was for her, that she would dismantle it and use the pink sequins for her journal, an appropriate “souvenir” to symbolize the first part of her life.

  In addition to the leotard, Katie picked out a cuddly white blanket and a thick hooded towel and three adorable baby outfits. She could not get over the softness of the things; just touching them to her cheek stirred her excitement and reinforced that her decision had been the right one.

  Sí, she thought, I am ready to be a mother.

  With or without Miguel.

  With or without breast cancer.

  As she stood at the register while the clerk rang up the items, Katie noticed a silly purple hat up on a shelf. It had a large, silk gardenia and a wide, floppy brim.

  “I’ll take the hat, too,” she said with a smile. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for Katie to make some friends, after all.

  “You’re crazy,” Hannah said with a laugh when she opened her front door and Katie stood there modeling the big purple hat. “Don’t you know the kids are home from school today—including my fourteen-year-old daughter who feels a need to mimic you and my eleven-year-old son who wants to marry you?”

  Katie groaned. She’d forgotten that her presence often caused quite a stir. She swooped the hat from her head and handed it over. “I know you’ve been holding out for a grotesque purple hat. I bought other things, too. Baby stuff. Show and tell.”

  “Baby stuff? Oooh, my favorite things.” Hannah laughed again and plunked the hat atop her wig. “Let’s go out to the greenhouse. Just let me get my coat.”

  In the daylight of the greenhouse, Katie could see that Hannah’s peachy skin had lost its natural sheen and had dulled like a photograph printed on nonglossy paper. But the wide purple brim helped bring out a small radiance, and Hannah seemed genuinely pleased that Katie had come.

  Hannah dragged some crates into a corner and they sat down.

  Katie looked around at the flats of leafy greens that poked through squares of soil. “What a wonderful business,” she said. “To always be surrounded by newness and life.”

  “Ha,” Hannah laughed. “It’s my husband’s business, not mine, and it means I won’t see him again until the first frost.”

  Katie smiled and asked, “You have a happy marriage, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” Hannah replied. “Most times.”

  “Miguel wants to marry me.”

  “The father of your baby?”

  Katie nodded. “I need to think about it after the baby’s born. After my radiation’s done.”

  Hannah twirled a new green leaf between her fingers, a geranium, maybe, or a marigold. “What does he think about that?”

  “He still doesn’t know about the cancer. I need to do this myself.”

  “Why?” Hannah asked.

  Katie stared at her a moment.

  “I can understand that you don’t want the world to know,” Hannah continued, “but your boyfriend?”

  “My father knows.” As if that made it okay that Miguel did not.

  Hannah nodded again.

  “I guess I don’t want the chaos a wedding would bring. The media. The publicity.”

  “You’d rather be alone.”

  “To make my own decisions. Besides, I don’t know if I want to marry him.”

  “Then that’s the best reason not to get married.”

  “Were you sure, Hannah? Were you sure about your husband?”

  “Evan? Oh, yes. I was very sure.”

  The rich greenhouse air was quiet for a moment. “Hannah?” Katie asked. “Am I being selfish?”

  “Maybe,” Hannah said. “But maybe that’s okay. Sometimes being selfish is what helps us to get strong.”

  Katie thought about Joleen, about how Cliff once said she was the most selfish woman on earth, as if she’d had her breakdown on purpose, just to wreck his life. But had her mother needed to be selfish in order to survive the ordeal that her life had become?

  “Katie,” Hannah said quietly, “I’m being selfish, too. I’ve decided to take a medical leave. I’ve turned my lesson plans over to a substitute.”

  “Hannah, that’s great news, you need to give yourself a break.”

  “Just as you do. If I’ve learned one thing, Katie, it’s that you need to do what your heart and your head tell you. And don’t forget that what’s going on right now is just right now, and that it will all have changed in a month or two or three. And that will be okay, too.”

  Katie stopped herself from crying, because this was to be a happy visit. She put a hand on Hannah’s arm and said, “You know what, Hannah? I hope I can be half as good as the kind of mother you must be.”

  “Ha!” Hannah laughed, though Katie hadn’t meant it to be humorous. “Come on,” the woman continued, “let’s see the treasures in those mystery bags. I hope they’re as nice as my hat.”

  What kind of private investigator left a message then went incommunicado for days?

  A week had passed since R.J. called with his vague message: Sorry I missed you. Except to go to the support group meeting and pick up some food, Faye had not left the house. Even Mouser was getting bored with her presence.

  Day Seven since his call, she wrote in her journal, the one outlet she had for staying mildly sane. She had tried escaping through work; she had tried escaping through cleaning the house and going through old photo albums. But it was the journal that kept her focused on her mission and her mind off the cancer. As much as she hated to admit it, Rita had been right.

  I’m sitting in Greg’s bedroom. It’s no longer Greg’s bedroom, of course. I wonder why I had no problem changing his room, but I could not touch Dana’s. Maybe Greg was right. Maybe I blamed him for her death and I wanted him out of my life and I needed to enshrine her, goddess that I know she definitely was not.

  Would I have done that to my own son? Was it truly my fault that he left?

  She looked around the room.

  Over there, by the window, Greg had hung his posters of swimmers and divers. Of Greg Louganis, his hero.

  She rested the end of her pen on her bottom lip. Why had she never asked her son if he was gay? She’d known since he’d been fourteen, since she’d seen him look at a young man on the beach, and somehow it had been as if a comic-book lightbulb had lit up over her head. Your son is gay, the lightbulb said.

  Why did I never tell Joe? She continued to write. And why did I never tell Greg that I knew? Would things have been different? Would Dana still be alive?

  “My friend, Bruce, was with us,” Greg had said
the night of the accident. “We’d gone below deck.”

  Faye had not asked what Greg and Bruce were doing while Dana was being swept overboard.

  Joe had assumed they’d been playing poker, because he was Greg’s father and not the kind of man who would be good at accepting that his son was gay. Unmanly. One of those.

  She dropped her pen on the notebook and stared at the last words she’d written. Would Dana still be alive? So she did blame Greg for her daughter’s death. She did blame him, even though she knew Dana was at fault.

  Was it because she had to blame someone?

  Had it been easier to blame Greg than Dana—or herself? The woman who, when cheated on, engrossed herself in work and stopped being a mom as well as a wife?

  She closed her eyes and pushed down the lump in her throat. She wished with all her might that the phone in the hall would ring, that it would be R.J., and Greg would be on his way home.

  But the phone did not ring, and Faye was alone in the silence with the ghosts of her children that lingered in the house, and with the gut-wrenching guilt that sometime between then and now, her son might have died a painful, sad death from AIDS.

  “The kids are driving me crazy,” Rita confessed to her husband while they lingered over steamers and chowder at The Chart House in Tisbury. Charlie had come home from Nantucket for the weekend, and Hazel offered to baby-sit so they could go out. Rita picked The Chart House because it wasn’t in Edgartown where they’d know everyone, not that it much mattered because they’d already seen about a dozen people they knew. It was the Vineyard, after all, and it was still off-season.

  “Good,” Charlie replied, a lilt to his voice, “it will keep you out of trouble until I come home to build the Women’s Center.” This time he did not add, “Unless you screw it up.” Instead, he smiled. God, she loved that smile. How was it possible that one pair of turned-up lips and one set of teeth could still make Rita feel all safe and warm and good after how many years?

  Forever, of course. Since she’d first accused him on the elementary school playground of looking like Lumpy on Leave it to Beaver, and since he’d first said, “Yeah, well, your freckles make you look like Howdy Doody’s sister,” and she’d gone home in tears that she’d made sure were well-hidden.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” she said now.

  He laughed.

  She set down her spoon, then she laughed, too.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “I miss you, too, honey. But this is a big project. It requires both Ben and me to be there. It means a lot to the island.”

  “The other island,” she sneered, meaning Nantucket, which might as well have been East Patagonia—where Rita hadn’t been, either—because it would have required a boat or a plane to get to, and anything that even hinted of motion made her throw up.

  He laughed again. “What’s with you tonight?”

  He was right, of course. Normally Rita was not one to complain; she was the rock, the one who lived each day with gusto and let no baggage get in her way. Lately, however, she felt a tiny bit off-center. She wondered if it was because of the support group. She wondered if it was because of Faye.

  “Do you remember a tragedy that happened several years ago, where a child died here on the island? In an accident or something?”

  Charlie looked at her blankly, or not-so-blankly. He could, she realized, have been thinking about Kyle—her Kyle, their Kyle.

  “Other than Kyle,” she said, and tried to smile a half-smile.

  He picked up another steamer, pried open its shell, then rinsed it in clam broth. “I’m sure there have been many tragedies involving kids,” he said. “No different than anywhere else.” He popped the clam into his mouth. “Why?”

  Rita shrugged. “There’s a woman in the support group … she lost a child more than a decade ago. Something about it … about her … is bothering me.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Someday maybe you’ll run for mayor of the island,” he said with another broad smile. “You get too involved, honey. You need to learn to stay out of other people’s problems.”

  She blinked. “Oh. Right. The way you do. At least I’m only ‘involved’ with a few women, not half a damn island who doesn’t even deserve you.”

  He wiped his hands on his napkin, then slid them under the table and rested them on Rita’s knees. The touch of his fingers made her shiver and smile at the same time. “Charlie Rollins,” she said, “you’re flirting with me.”

  He pressed his palms into her knees. “Yeah,” he said. “And after dinner I’m going to drive you down to Menemsha and we’re going to park by an isolated beach and I’m going to make love to you in the backseat.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time. With a houseful of kids and a mother to boot, Charlie had swept his wife up-island more than once. Rita smiled and finished her chowder, grateful that he’d traded in the old Toyota for the minivan that had all that room in back.

  THIRTEEN

  Faye’s phone rang at nine-forty-five. Her eyelids sprang open in a synchronized spring; her heart found its way to her throat. She was still on Greg’s bed; she had fallen asleep.

  Ring.

  She bolted from the bed.

  “Don’t you dare hang up,” she shouted and skidded on the hardwood floor into the hall. She grabbed the receiver just before the machine would click on.

  “R.J.,” she panted. It was hard to get a breath with one’s heart up in one’s throat.

  Instead of R.J.’s hello, she heard a short pause, then, “Faye? Is this Faye Randolph?”

  It was a man, but did not sound like R.J.

  “Who is this?” The question was edged with quick annoyance.

  “We’ve never met, Faye. We should have, but didn’t.” There was a light laugh. “It’s Adam Dexter from Nashua. Your sister’s friend.”

  The pulse-pounding she’d felt earlier now moved to her temples. “Yes,” she replied. “I know who you are.” She supposed she should apologize for standing him up, but right now she was angry that he’d invaded her privacy, that he’d jolted her from sleep, that Claire obviously had given him her phone number.

  She was angry he was not R.J.

  “Well,” he said in the awkward airtime that followed. “I’m calling because I have business this Tuesday in Falmouth. I thought we might get together for dinner. Or lunch.”

  “Falmouth is on the Cape.”

  “Yes. I could take a ferry.

  “I doubt you’ll get a reservation this late.”

  “I could take the passenger ferry. We could meet in Oak Bluffs.” Pause. “If you want.”

  For all of her flightiness, Claire meant well. Faye did not doubt that her sister was concerned, that her efforts to connect Faye to a man were for what she deemed the “right” reasons. With a small sigh that Faye hoped Adam did not hear, she said, “There’s a restaurant called Seasons, up on the hill. They make a great lobster roll.” If R.J. called in the meantime, she could only hope there would not be a conflict.

  They agreed to meet at one o’clock. He said he’d be wearing a blue windbreaker and Carrera sunglasses.

  Faye returned to Greg’s bed, but did not sleep most of what was left of the night.

  Katie had said she hoped she’d turn out to be half the mother Hannah was, which was what sparked Hannah into getting up Sunday morning, making thick cinnamon French toast with powdered sugar and homemade strawberry jam, and planning a family day that even Riley might not protest.

  “Let’s go to the mall in Hyannis,” she exclaimed as she passed the jam crock to Evan. Casey and Denise shouted “Yea!” and “Yes!” and “Cool!” Riley almost smiled. Evan seemed stunned.

  “I don’t know, honey. I’m so far behind with work …”

  “It’s only one day,” she said, but he shook his head.

  “Sorry. I really have to get the flats ready for the bank.” He had a lucrative contract to provide the flowers and shrubs for all six branches of Island Feder
al Bank, a generous customer that paid in thirty days.

  But Hannah didn’t care about money right now. She hated to play her trump card, but saw no other choice. “We need a day together, Evan. And I need to forget about this stupid breast cancer and have a good time with my family.”

  He did not reply, because what could he say?

  “Four against one,” Casey interjected. “You lose, Dad.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Evan remarked, albeit feebly, “we won’t get across.”

  Hannah smiled. “Bill Langforth works at the docks on Sunday. I’ve already made a call.”

  “Please, Daddy?” Denise pleaded, her little pink cheeks dusted in white powder.

  “Yeah, Dad, let’s go,” Riley added, and Hannah folded her arms and decided that if she’d managed to win Riley’s approval, she must be a better mother than she thought, after all.

  They held hands: Hannah and Evan, Evan and Denise, Hannah and Casey. Not Riley, of course, but nothing was perfect.

  They ate whole-belly fried clams and French fries and cole slaw off paper plates at a restaurant by the water. They laughed at Casey’s bad imitation of the grumpy, middle-aged waiter who must have—they decided—forfeited a life spent at sea, to marry the boss’s daughter, who insisted he serve fish, not catch it.

  They spent an hour at the arcade in the mall, while Riley happily went off on her own with a grin on her face and two twenties in her pocket. Evan had provided the money; no sense in her spending what she had earned babysitting.

  They bought new sneakers for Casey and a backpack for Denise and ice cream cones for all of them. At five o’clock they walked to the fountain where they’d agreed to meet Riley. Surprisingly, she was already there, with a pile of bags and a Cheshire-cat grin.

  “Well,” Hannah said, “looks like forty dollars can go a long way.”

  “Sales,” Riley said, then opened a bag. “Look. Is this awesome or what?” She pulled out a tank top that surely would cling. It was black and had rhinestones that spelled “vamp.” Hannah did not know that Riley’s generation had ever heard of that word.