“No. I’ve never been on a private boat.”
“Really? I thought you California girls did it all.”
He helped me onto the boat.
“I’m not really a California girl, not in the sense you mean,” I said. “I wasn’t born there, and we lived in other places.”
“Right.”
He got the boat untied and started the engine.
“I thought we’d go to Salem for lunch,” he said. “The town’s about a fifteen-minute walk from the dock. I know a great pub restaurant, the Witches’ Brew. Get it? Salem, witches?”
“Yes, I get it,” I said.
“Get comfortable,” he said, nodding to the seat beside him.
I sat, and then he smiled, and we shot forward into the water so fast and hard I screamed. He slowed down, and we began to cruise to Salem.
Salem, I thought. I recalled Daddy talking about witches when Ava was reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller for her college class. I knew the play well. Of course, Daddy did, too. He knew more about books, theater, and film than anyone I had ever met.
“They feed on their own fear,” Daddy had said. “What they don’t understand they condemn or denounce so they can keep their power and wealth. Remember this, my darlings, you can use fear as a tool to protect you. They can only use it as poison to weaken and defeat them. You are the beautiful, the perfect, as long as you are one of us.”
“Hey,” Liam said. “Don’t you love the scenery, the ride? You look so damn serious.”
“Of course,” I said. “I was just thinking of where I was not so long ago, how unhappy I was, and how amazing life can be.”
He smiled. “Come over here and steer, get the feel of it,” he said. “C’mon. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m hardly that,” I said, and slipped in front of him to take the wheel. It was exhilarating. I was so into it that I didn’t realize he was still behind me, his hands on my arms, his face close to my cheek and my neck, his lips finding my ears and moving along my neck to the curve into my shoulders. “You’re distracting me,” I complained, but not forcefully.
“I love this spot on your body. It’s so soft.”
With his right hand, he pulled the lever that slowed us down, but the waves, as calm as the ocean was, lifted and bounced us. He turned me around to kiss me.
“I thought you might never have been kissed on the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “Wanted to be sure it happened.”
“You did all this just for me? Thank you,” I said, laughing.
“What a wise-ass.”
He accelerated again, and we went bouncing hard over the waves, the spray finding its way to my hair and my face. None of it was unpleasant.
Ava would never enjoy this as much as I am, I thought. She might pretend she did in order to draw in her prey, but to go out simply for the joy of it wasn’t something she ever did or mentioned. Everything I’m doing reassures me that I’m different, I concluded, buoying up my courage and determination.
We docked in Salem and, holding hands, walked up the street to the restaurant he had described. It was a replica of what an old colonial pub might be, with the waitresses and waiters in costume, the menu describing foods the way they would have been described in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While we were eating, a town crier entered to announce the daily news, describing an upcoming wedding and the arrivals of ships.
“Sometimes the news is real,” Liam said.
Afterward, we stopped at a shop, and he bought me an old-fashioned rag doll.
“I don’t think Julia has this one,” he said, and then he did something that I thought was very nice. Despite all of the dolls Julia had, he bought her one, too. On the way back to the boat, we stopped for some homemade ice cream cones. As I licked mine, I recalled how forbidden sweets had been to us, how adamant Mrs. Fennel had been about our not eating candy and ice cream. I used to think of it as poison, and if I did stray, I’d wait to be thrown into some dire condition and hear all of the “I told you so’s,” but that had never happened, and it wasn’t going to happen now.
What I realized was that Mrs. Fennel would forbid things that would make us crave a different existence. Taste the world beyond, and we might start to wish we were in it, she surely thought. She had been the keeper of our souls until we made the ultimate sacrifices for Daddy and then determined that any change, any diversion, any escape, was not only forbidden but impossible. Full of defiance and new joy, I wanted to embrace this life fully and make it impossible to return to my prior existence.
We took a beautiful ride back, slowing down and stopping occasionally when we were in calmer waters. Liam sat with his arm around me, and we watched all the other water activity going on. He talked about boats, some of the other places he had been that were very beautiful, but mostly, I sensed how much he really loved where he lived, loved where we were.
“My great-aunt’s kooky sometimes,” he said, “but she’s not all wrong about heritage. I feel like I’m part of this, part of the history. Don’t tell her I said that. She’ll pile books in my arms and send me to museums galore.”
We kissed. We held each other, and I felt strengthened, hopeful, and ready to deal with any darkness that awaited. But anyone could easily say, “That’s because you haven’t done it yet.”
After we tied up the boat, we drove back to the Dolan mansion. Now that I was seeing it in daylight, I could really appreciate its size, the beauty of the grounds, and the acreage it included. Liam pulled up to the front rather than bring his car to the garage.
“You can use one of the guest suites to shower and change,” he said. “Remember, we’re staying casual.”
“That’s all I have, casual clothes.”
I saw about a half-dozen grounds people working on the bushes, flowers, and lawns.
“I used to do some of that,” Liam said, seeing where I was looking. “We had a great head gardener in those days, Pepe Rosario. I thought of him as my Latino grandfather. He retired and returned to Venezuela.”
“What about your real grandparents?”
“My mother’s family disappeared along with her, and my father’s mother died when I was fifteen. My grandfather is in an adult residence in Boston. They had my father late in their marriage. No other children. So I really only have my great-aunt Amelia, my grandmother’s sister. I’m about as poor when it comes to family as you are,” he said.
Family poor, I’m not, I thought, but I couldn’t imagine ever telling him why.
The instant we entered the house, Mrs. Wakefield appeared, as if she had been beamed down from someplace upstairs. I didn’t see her standing there near the bottom of the stairs until Liam said, “Hi, Mrs. Wakefield.”
She stepped forward.
Unlike Mrs. Fennel, Mrs. Wakefield looked plump, with a soft face nearly absorbing her two hazel-brown eyes. She wore a light brown one-piece dress with a dark brown belt. I saw no jewelry except for her modest wedding ring. Her gray hair was nicely styled, neatly trimmed at her jawline. I had no idea what her age was, but she had very little in the way of wrinkles or even crow’s-feet. There was something almost alabaster about her complexion. It reminded me of smooth soapstone, her features gently chiseled so that her nose was well proportioned to her thick, rosy lips and plump cheeks. Not pretty and not unpleasant-looking, she struck me as someone who guarded her plainness, avoiding too much makeup or any cosmetic emphasis that would attempt to make her more striking by emphasizing her best qualities. There were no best qualities. “Comely” was the adjective that came to mind, for someone with a good appearance, not homely or plain and yet not outstanding, and probably never the cause for a man to have a second look.
When she stepped forward, however, it was as if those eyes widened and rose to the surface of their eye sockets almost like a telescope expanding, the lenses focusing. Her lips tightened, as did the muscles in her neck. I saw her shoulders rise like the shoulders of a hawk preparing to pounce. She was studying me very hard, her lo
ok full of suspicion and distrust. I imagined that this was the sort of reaction she first gave any young woman Liam brought to the house.
“This is Lorelei Patio, Mrs. Wakefield. The young lady you heard my father rave about,” he added in an attempt to ensure that she had a good impression of me. However, I could see that she wasn’t easily influenced. Her face didn’t change; it was almost a mask.
“Yes, I have heard a great deal about you. So much, in fact, that one wonders if it could possibly be true.”
“Time will tell, Mrs. Wakefield.”
“It always does.” She turned to Liam. “Will you be joining your father for dinner tonight? He has a guest. Your sister is going somewhere after work.”
“Oh. No, we have reservations,” Liam said. “Who’s my father’s guest?”
“He’s in his office,” she said as a response, and started away.
“Mrs. Wakefield?”
She paused. Although she looked at Liam, I could feel that she was really looking at me. She held a tight smile on her face, the sort of smile that bore no warmth but designed itself more to hide a minor annoyance. At least, I hoped that whatever it was, it was minor.
“Yes, Liam?”
“Lorelei will be using the brown guest room to prepare for our dinner engagement.”
“It’s not brown, Liam. It’s beige. How many times have I told you that?”
“Whatever, it looks brown to me,” he said, smiling.
She raised her eyes toward the ceiling and continued down the hallway.
“It takes a little time for her to warm up to someone new,” Liam said. “But once she does, she’s about as faithful as a golden retriever.”
“Golden or beige retriever?” I asked.
He laughed, took my hand, and led me up the stairs to the guest room. “If you need anything, just pick up the phone, press intercom, and hit three. That’s me. Everything else you need is in the bathroom. Take a rest. Before we leave, we’ll have a cocktail in the den. I’d better go down and see my father. He hasn’t had a guest for dinner in some time.”
“I hope it’s not Naomi Addison,” I said.
He laughed. And then he thought a moment, looked worried, and hurried out. As soon as he did, I dropped myself onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling. The circles embossed over the faux finish seemed to turn first clockwise and then counterclockwise. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t tired, exactly. It had just been a day filled with new sensations, new images and feelings. They had come at me so quickly and were so abundant that I was feeling like someone who had overeaten. I wondered if my capacity to be more sensitive, to hear and see and taste everything to its fullest, could ever be overloaded. Maybe that was why Mrs. Fennel and my father had wanted me to spend less time experiencing the world outside our world. The darkness I had lived within drove me to seek colors, brightness, warmth, and softness. Perhaps they had feared that I would hunger and thirst for so much of it that I would explode. It was the way I felt right now.
Liam’s kisses, his gentle embrace, the sound of his laughter, and the light of his smile danced on the insides of my eyelids. I thought I could replay every second, every moment of our time together, from the first time his fingers touched mine to the moment he just let my hand go. At this very second, I was happier than I had been, maybe ever. I felt guilty being happier with Liam than I had been with Buddy, but my time with Buddy had been too clandestine. Along with our joy had ridden the fear of being discovered, of me being exposed as a traitor. Whether or not I was deluding myself, I felt free here, free to be who I believed I really was.
I almost fell asleep thinking about all of this, but I gathered myself and took a long, delightful shower under a large rain head that splattered my body with a torrent of warm, soft water. The towels were soft and large. I wrapped myself in one and sat at the vanity mirror, drying and then brushing out my hair before pinning it back and up. I wore just a little lipstick. There was nothing much to do about my face, which at the moment looked as if it was stuck in a constant blush.
Liam had emphasized “casual,” so I slipped on a pair of sateen skinny ankle pants with a pair of backdrop kindle buckle boots and a long-sleeved lamb’s-wool antique-cream sweater. I thought it would be perfect for the cooler evening air. When I had gone shopping with Naomi, I had bought myself a pair of deco disc rusty torch earrings. I thought they looked good with my hair up. I wore no other jewelry. I had nothing else, actually. Just as I finished, I heard a knock on the bedroom door.
“Perfect timing,” I called, expecting it to be Liam. To my surprise, when I opened the door, I was facing Mr. Dolan.
15
“I don’t mean to disturb,” he began. I thought he looked stunningly handsome in a black velvet sports jacket, a black shirt, and a red tie. Daddy had a sports jacket like his, I thought.
“No, no. It’s fine. I’m really ready,” I said, stepping back.
He nodded and entered. For a moment, he simply stood there looking at me with a soft smile on his face. “You’re a really beautiful young woman, Lorelei,” he said. “A natural beauty. Most of the women I’m introduced to these days look like they would come apart in a hot shower.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dolan.”
He laughed.
“What?”
“I love how you don’t blush and yet you don’t come off being conceited or arrogant. It’s so matter-of-fact with you, your beauty.”
It wasn’t in my nature to blush. How could I explain that? Daddy had filled me with too much confidence, but, like a skilled sculptor, he had managed to keep us all from appearing smug or vain.
“Nevertheless, I appreciate the compliment, Mr. Dolan.”
He nodded.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet,” I continued, “but speaking of beauty, you have a beautiful home.”
“Thank you. A lot of thought went into it. You can be confident that we have the best plumbing,” he added, smiling. He glanced around and then sat in the side chair and nodded at the one beside it. I sat.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Dolan?”
His eyes shadowed and grew deep and dark for a moment. I thought that Mrs. Wakefield might have seen something in me that she didn’t like and had already said something to him.
“No, nothing’s wrong. My daughter, Julia, is very taken with you. She’s a perceptive young lady. I respect her opinion.”
“I like her, too.”
Where’s the second shoe here? I wondered. What’s going to be dropped on me?
“The reason I snuck up here once I learned you were here was to have a brief chat. I want to be sure that seeing Liam is something you really want to do. What I mean to say is, don’t do anything you think might be necessary to hold on to your job.”
I sat back sharply. “I don’t know what sort of girl you’re used to seeing with your son, Mr. Dolan, but I assure you, I wouldn’t spend a moment with him outside of the company if I didn’t want to do so. And if my job depended on my pleasing the boss’s son, I’d be out of there in what I’ve heard people call a New York minute.”
Instead of being annoyed at my sharp comeback, he smiled. “You reassure me that my initial instincts about people, especially young women, are not as dull as I feared. I don’t doubt that the difficulties of your own family situation have hardened you. What’s that quote, ‘If it doesn’t kill me, it makes me stronger’?”
“Nietzsche. It’s ‘What does not destroy me makes me stronger.’ ”
“Yes, well, I wish that were true for Liam.”
“Give him a chance. Maybe it will be,” I said. “Sometimes we’re too close to see.”
His smile widened, and his eyes lost any trace of darkness.
The truth was, I wasn’t thinking of Liam. I was thinking of myself and my father and sisters.
“I won’t deny that for the time being, he seems to have developed a sense of responsibility. Look at how he dresses for work now and how he goes at it. I have a sneaking suspicion, howev
er, that he’s really trying to please you more than me.”
“I hope that doesn’t upset you.”
“Upset me? Hardly. I just wanted to be sure you were fine with it.” He leaned toward me to whisper. “I was secretly watching and laughing to myself at how hard a time you were giving him, and also the other young men.”
“A girl alone my age has to be careful.”
“Absolutely, but don’t ever think of yourself as alone as long as you’re working for Ken Dolan,” he said. He slapped his palms on his knees and stood. “Okay. I feel better. So, I understand you went out on our boat. Did you have a good time?”
“It was a beautiful day, Mr. Dolan. Salem was fun, too.”
“You know,” he said as he walked toward the door and turned after he opened it, “I think that out of the office, you can call me Ken.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “No promises.”
He laughed. “I just have to get something in my room. I’ll meet you downstairs for a cocktail before you two go off.”
I wondered how Liam would react if he knew his father had come in to cross-examine me. I hoped he didn’t know. I hurried out and down the stairs. Mrs. Wakefield was standing there, as if she had been assigned to wait for me.
“Liam is in the den,” she said. “Right this way.”
“That’s all right. I know where it is,” I told her.
She turned, surprised.
“I was here last night.”
“Oh?”
“It was late.”
She looked more thoughtful than upset about it. “Yes, well, when you’re young, you can burn the candle at both ends, but when you’re older, you realize you use up the candle twice as quickly that way.”
Even though she didn’t have to show me where the den was, she continued to walk alongside me, step for step. In some ways, she reminded me of a protective guard dog, keeping one careful eye on anyone who approached her master.
“I understand you’ve been here for quite a long time,” I said as we walked down the wide, grayish-black slate corridor.