Beach Roses Read online

  “Well,” Hannah said brightly.

  Another bag produced a similar top, that one in turquoise with glitter reading “too cool.”

  “Well,” Hannah repeated, and Evan—hooray!—came to her rescue by jokingly saying, “Be careful, Riley. Your friends will want to take them from you.”

  “No chance,” Riley said, then produced three pairs of large, dangling earrings and two velvet chokers.

  “Wonderful, honey,” Hannah said, to which Riley made no comment but seemed content enough.

  Casey insisted they stop for miniature golf—Evan got stuck under a lighthouse, Hannah, at the windmill—and they made it to the ferry just after sunset.

  Crossing Vineyard Sound, the waters were calm and the family was tired. Sitting next to her mother, Riley dozed, then slowly rested her head against Hannah’s shoulder.

  And Hannah smiled.

  And then Hannah realized that not once the whole day had she thought about breast cancer or chemo. Well, not hardly once, anyway.

  “I’m meeting him for lunch tomorrow,” Faye said at the meeting Monday night. “At Seasons.”

  “A date,” Hannah said. “Well, that’s exciting.”

  “What are you wearing?” Katie asked.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

  Rita watched the women as they sat in their circle. She suspected it did matter to Faye what she wore, but that the woman was too upper-crust to admit it.

  “The truth is,” Faye continued, “I’d rather not go. I don’t want a man in my life at the moment. I have a few other things to deal with right now.”

  “If you wait for the right time, it will never come,” Hannah said.

  “She’s right,” Katie added. “What’s he like, anyway?”

  “He’s a friend of my sister’s. Which is part of the problem.” Her long fingers knitted themselves into one another. “I doubt that he’s really my type.”

  Rita glanced from Hannah to Katie, who seemed to have bonded with an unspoken purpose: to convince Faye that Adam Dexter might answer all feminine prayers.

  “Is he rich?” Hannah asked.

  “Is he cute?” came from Katie.

  “Does he believe in generosity to worthwhile causes?” Rita popped out with, because the Women’s Wellness Center could always use another benefactor, especially one with a name.

  “Stop it, all of you!” Faye cried good-naturedly. “I only agreed to meet him because my sister is so angry with me. And I only told you because, well, because I don’t know why. Maybe to prove there is life after breast cancer.”

  “We already knew that,” Hannah replied. “What we still don’t know is what you’re going to wear.”

  Faye was right, Adam Dexter was clearly not her type. He wore a yellowed, white shirt and outdated blue tie, had nondescript eyes and nondescript, receding hair, and his teeth seemed too big for his mouth. He was a purveyor of superior (according to him) software systems for the marine industry, he supervised seventy-eight others like him at ports throughout the world, and, if he had a lot of money, Faye surmised he kept it to himself.

  She ate half of her lobster roll and hoped he would have to leave soon, when he asked, “So. What’s it like to have cancer?”

  Just as she considered throwing her plate at his face, Faye was distracted by a small commotion at the front door. In walked three women: one wore a lime turban with synthetic blond curls, one had on a black wig that looked like Cleopatra’s, and one sported a huge purple hat with a plump white gardenia parked on its brim.

  “Table for three,” the one in the lime turban loudly announced, “and make it snappy. We’re starving.” She flashed what appeared to be a ten dollar bill. As she waved her arm, her hand caught the edge of the turban, tipping it to one side and revealing a clump of red curls underneath.

  Faye did a quick double take, then sucked in her cheeks as the women pranced past her table and made themselves at home behind three potted plants.

  The purple-brimmed woman peeked through palm fronds and stared straight at Faye. “Don’t you just hate it when you have to wait for a table?” The palm fronds snapped shut and Faye suppressed a wide smile.

  She turned back to her date. “Actually,” she said, “having cancer is remarkable. It opens up your world to wonderful, loving people you otherwise would not have known.”

  She returned to her lobster roll and ate it with gusto, while, from the other side of the plants, she heard the three zany women order their lunches.

  Dear Diary, Katie began, as she sat on the sunroom later that afternoon, with tea and one of the scones Faye had baked. It had been Rita’s idea to surprise Faye at lunch, to bring some laughter into her life. “All in good fun,” Rita had said, and from the look on Faye’s face, Rita had been right.

  Katie had gone home happy as well, and was inspired to work on her journal. Among her Saturday purchases was a special, spiral-bound journal. It had a cloth cover that had a picture of what looked like the lighthouse in West Chop, though the book was made in China.

  On the first page Katie pasted a half-dozen pink sequins. She decided she would not include any of Joleen’s music: This project was her own, not another reenactment of her mother’s muse. There had already been too much of that in Katie’s life.

  Dear Diary, she reread, as if the words somehow would help her put her priorities together and ease the longing for Miguel.

  She tap-tapped the ballpoint on the edge of the notebook and looked out the window and down to the sea. The spring snow was gone now, leaving behind the startled purple and yellow heads of a few crocus clusters out on the lawn. She looked across the grass, past the tangles of beach roses waiting to burst forth with their fragile blossoms—all pink and white and wrinkled from salt spray, yet heartier and healthier than their petals would appear.

  One summer Katie and Joleen had gathered beach roses and together they made rose hips—nature’s vitamin C.

  “Prevents the scurvy, you know,” her father had cackled and her mother had laughed and her father placed a blossom over one eye like a patch. “Ho, ho, ho in a bottle of rum,” he chanted, and they pretended they were the pirates from the legend of two hundred years ago; pirates who chewed the rose hips, then spit the seeds overboard and watched them wash up on the beaches of the Vineyard, where, against all odds of the harsh sea, they took hold and flowered and propagated, whatever the heck that meant.

  Katie rested her hand on her stomach. She prayed that, like the beach roses, her baby would be healthier than its small size might suggest.

  Inside the kitchen, the phone suddenly rang. The ring was loud and unfamiliar. She looked toward the studio where her mother worked, but, working or not, Joleen would not answer the phone.

  The phone rang again.

  Katie pulled herself up and went to the counter where the answering machine was. If she didn’t pick up the receiver, would that mean she truly had become Joleen?

  On the fourth ring the machine kicked on. Katie stood first on one foot, then on the other. The machine clicked, reversed, then clicked again. Then there was a voice, a familiar voice.

  “Katie,” the voice said. “Katie, this is Brady. I hope you’re there. We need to talk.”

  Brady? She was not surprised that he’d tracked her down; she felt a splash of guilt that she’d not phoned him to say she was safe.

  “Katie,” he continued. “Oh, Katie. Please call me. There’s been an accident.”

  FOURTEEN

  An accident?

  She grabbed the receiver. “Brady?”

  A sliver of silence slipped through the line. An accident. Oh, God, was it her father? Was it Miguel?

  “Katie,” Brady replied. She braced herself against the counter. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “It’s Ina,” he said. “Oh, Katie, Ina was killed late last night. Stabbed by a mugger a block from her apartment.”

  Ina?

  He paused.

  She paused.

  “She’s dead,” he
said.

  Katie did not hear herself scream. It must have been someone else, because she was not a screamer; Katie Gillette was too sensible to scream.

  It might not have been her, but somebody screamed. She dropped the receiver and stood, staring, as Joleen rushed in from the studio and retrieved the phone receiver. Then she turned her back to Katie and spoke into the phone in tones that were hushed.

  Uh-huh.

  I see.

  Oh, dear.

  After a moment Joleen hung up. She gently helped Katie onto a chair.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Joleen said over and over as if Katie hadn’t heard her the first time.

  She shook her head. “No,” she heard herself say. “It’s not possible.”

  Joleen sat next to her and pulled her chair close. She took Katie’s hands and rubbed them with hers. “It happened very fast,” Joleen reported. “She was on her way home from your father’s. She had taken the bus.”

  Katie frowned. “She couldn’t have been at Daddy’s,” she said. “He has a different housekeeper now. Ina worked for me, not him. She must have been at Miguel’s. He lives in a small apartment downstairs in our building. He wanted to be close to me. He said that when we got married we could live there if I wanted. It’s small, but I like it there. It has a nice fireplace …” She knew she was rambling, but as long as Katie talked, she did not have to think about the phone call or its message.

  Ina?

  Dead?

  Joleen moved closer and wrapped her arms around Katie. It was an awkward hug, years delayed in coming, but it was a mother’s hug, nonetheless. “Ina was at your father’s,” Joleen repeated. Her words were tedious in the slow-motion air, her voice was hesitant as if she, too, were crying.

  “Why was she at Daddy’s?” Katie asked. “Ina knows I’m here.”

  And then Joleen’s moist eyes flashed away—out toward the backyard that sat in the sunshine, where the beach roses waited to turn to pink and then red, to turn to vitamin C that was so perfect for the scurvy. And then she asked, “Didn’t you know? For years, Ina Enriquez has been your father’s mistress. I thought everyone knew. It was the reason I left.”

  Her mother brewed more tea, but Katie could not drink it. She sat, helpless, on the chair, wondering why she could not reach Miguel, wondering why he had not called her himself. He’s angry with me, she realized. He’s angry because I would not let him stay.

  But his mother is dead.

  His mother was my father’s mistress.

  My father’s mistress?

  She held her arms around her baby-belly and rocked back and forth. Lunch with Rita and Hannah seemed a lifetime ago. A lifetime—Ina’s lifetime. How could Katie have laughed and had such a good time when Ina was already dead?

  By dusk, neither Katie’s father nor Miguel had called. Katie could no longer stand it. Against Joleen’s advice, she phoned the apartment, the apartment bought and paid for with the profits of Joleen’s “Goin’ Home,” the apartment maintained with Katie’s voice and Katie’s flash—as directed by her father.

  Brady answered.

  “I don’t care what he’s doing, I need to talk to my father.”

  “He’s, ah, he’s taking care of the funeral arrangements,” Brady replied.

  “I don’t care if he’s embalming the body. For Christ’s sakes, Brady, let me talk to him.”

  She had not spoken to her father since she’d packed her suitcases and informed him she was going to the Vineyard.

  Cliff had said, “I can’t believe you’d rather be with her.”

  She’d thought of a million responses after she had left, but at the time all she said was, “Daddy, I’m sorry, but this is what I have to do.”

  He’d put on his favorite black jacket and gone out of the apartment so he would be the one who’d left her, not the other way around.

  She wondered now if he had gone to Ina, if all those other times he’d gone to Ina, too.

  He picked up the phone. He sounded tired. “Brady shouldn’t have called you.”

  “Brady is my friend,” she said. “He knew I should know. Ina was my assistant, Daddy. She was my baby’s grandmother.”

  Cliff did not reply.

  “I’m coming to the funeral,” Katie said.

  “Absolutely not.” Though Cliff needed to be in control, his words were rarely sharp-edged. This time they were. “The last thing we need is scandal. We do not need you to show up in public, pregnant.”

  She could have said that at least breast cancer was not so obvious, but now was not the time. She could have said that the world would know in a few weeks anyway, so what was the harm? She could have said those things, but all Katie could think of was that Ina had been his mistress, and it had cost their family. She bit her lip. “If you were so worried about scandal, you shouldn’t have been screwing Ina all these years.”

  He did not deny the accusation. Her insides knotted up. “Is that why you said I couldn’t trust Miguel? Or that I couldn’t trust Ina? Was it because you were afraid I’d learn your dirty secret? Or didn’t you think Ina was that important, in which case it might make me even angrier?”

  Cliff said he would speak with her later when the shock had worn off and when she could be reasonable.

  Reasonable? Was it unreasonable to expect that certain people—like your father—would not do certain things behind your back? Was it unreasonable to expect that certain people—like your father—would not deceive certain others—like your mother—then try to cover it up as if your mother had been the crazed one, as if your mother had been the loser?

  Miguel must be at Ina’s, where the neighbors would have gathered, where friends would have convened.

  She slammed down the receiver, then dialed Ina’s number. She did not know if her heart was pounding from rage at her father, vengeance for her mother, or out of both anger at and grief for Ina, the woman she’d loved, too.

  A woman answered. She spoke in Spanish.

  “Miguel,” Katie pleaded. “Por favor. I need Miguel.”

  The phone was set down; Katie could hear talking, low murmurs of voices hushed by anguished shock.

  Finally, he said, “Hello?”

  “Miguel,” she said, then her tears flowed openly. She forgot about her father; she forgot about her mother. “Oh, God, Miguel, what happened? Why didn’t you call? Are you all right?”

  He did not speak right away, then he said, “She never listened. She never listened and took a taxi. Why wouldn’t she listen?”

  He cried.

  She cried.

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll leave the island today.”

  “No,” he said. “It is not a good idea.”

  Katie blinked. “Don’t be silly, Miguel. I will be there for you. I … I loved her, too.”

  The volume of low voices seemed to have been turned up. “No,” he said again. “My mother would not want such craziness. We will do this quietly. It’s bad enough the police already know who my mother was.”

  “That she was my assistant?”

  “That she was your father’s whore.”

  Maybe she’d heard him wrong. Maybe he hadn’t said the words that had gone straight to her wounded heart. But the silence that followed told Katie that yes, he’d said it. “Miguel,” Katie replied, “I didn’t know about them.”

  He laughed a short snort. “Isn’t it ironic? I guess the Puerto Ricans are only good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to marry.”

  “Miguel, that isn’t true …”

  “Forget it. I’ve known for a long time. I tried to stop it years ago, but then we met and I figured, what the hell.”

  She did not know what he meant by that, and she did not want to ask. She bit her lip again; she felt her cheeks grow warm.

  “Anyway, I guess my mother loved him, stupid that she was. He’s making the funeral arrangements because he said she would have wanted that and I’m not going to argue. Let him pay for it, why should I?”<
br />
  If he expected an answer to that question, Katie did not offer one.

  “It’s going to be a private funeral. No one but family, a few close friends, and him.”

  “I am family. I’ll be there.”

  “No.”

  “But …” She hesitated. “Don’t you want me there?”

  “I want you where you are,” he said. “I want you safe from the media and safe from this asshole world.”

  She hung up the phone, stared at her mother, and said with clear conviction, “This is total bullshit.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” the woman who had once been larger-than-life now said to Rita, who’d never been anything except a small-town island girl with a small-town, island life. It was after seven in the evening and the twins needed a bath. Hazel was in the living room, fixated on a rerun of The Golden Girls. Mindy was at the church youth group, hopefully behaving better than Rita had behaved when she’d been in junior high and had learned that some things like smoking and boys were more fun than scriptures and verse.

  “She stormed around the house all day. I tried to talk to her, but she said she had to think. Instead of eating supper, she packed her suitcase. Now she says she’s going to call a taxi if I won’t bring her to the airport.”

  Rita wished she knew Katie better. Sometimes it was still hard to separate the sweet, soft-spoken girl from the tawdry icon on Mindy’s bedroom wall. “Are you going to take her?”

  “What else can I do? I told her I’d check the flights. Instead, I’m calling you. Please help me, Rita. I’m so afraid this will hurt the baby. I’m so afraid it will make the cancer … well, that it will somehow make it worse.”

  Rita had no idea if it would or not. She was still trying to digest all that Joleen had told her, that the grandmother of Katie’s baby had been mugged and now was dead; that Katie wanted to attend the funeral; that she’d been told not to, but would not comply. In Katie’s sequined sneakers, Rita would most likely have reacted the same way.