Olivia

  "Look at the stars!" Belinda declared. "Isn't that the Big Dipper?"

  "Where?" Nelson stepped up beside her and she pointed, leaning against him. "No, that's the Little Dipper. Over there," he said, physically turning her, "is the Big Dipper."

  "I didn't even know there was a Little Dipper, too. Did you, Olivia?"

  "Of course," I said.

  "Don't you just love the way the stars glitter on the water?" Belinda followed, not even taking note of my response. She seized Nelson's hand and tugged. "Come on, let's take off our shoes and run on the sand."

  "What?"

  "That's ridiculous, Belinda. He's wearing nice shoes and . . ."

  "No, it's all right," Nelson said laughing. "I think I might enjoy it."

  He sat beside her and pulled off his shoes and socks. Then he looked at me.

  "Aren't you joining us, Olivia?"

  "I know how cold that water is," I said.

  "No, it's not," Belinda said leaping to her feet. "Belinda used to be terrified of the ocean," I said. "Well, I'm not anymore," she cried. "I have to step into it once in a while to cool off, remember? I'm Miss Hot."

  Nelson laughed and she tugged on his hand again. I watched as the two of them went running down to the surf.

  "You're going to get soaked," I shouted, but the roar of the sea drowned out my voice. Reluctantly, I slipped off my shoes and socks and drew closer to them.

  Belinda squealed and continued to splash and run with Nelson clinging to her hand. His laughter trailed out to sea. Suddenly, Belinda stopped. We were a good thousand yards from the house and before us, the beach was dark, deserted.

  "It's so warm and the water's not really cold, is it?" Belinda asked.

  "No," Nelson said. "Surprisingly, it isn't." He looked back at me.

  "It's not exactly a bathtub," I said.

  "I'm going in," Belinda suddenly declared.

  "What?" Nelson's face glittered in the starlight, his smile soft, gentle.

  "Skinny dipping. Haven't you ever done that?" "Belinda!" I cried. "Don't you dare."

  "Oh, I don't mean right down to naked," she said. "You can't see much out here anyway. Haven't you ever gone skinny dipping, Nelson?" she challenged.

  "Oh, sure, but . . ."

  "Don't look unless you're coming in after me," she declared and unbuttoned her blouse.

  "Belinda, stop that this instant," I ordered. She peeled off her blouse and quickly undid her skirt. A moment later, she was standing in her bra and panties.

  "Here goes," she screamed and ran toward the waves. Nelson looked at me.

  "What do you say?" he asked.

  "Absolutely not. I'm going back to the house," I said, my heart pounding.

  "It does look inviting," he said, nodded to himself and then took off his shirt.

  I stared, amazed as he slipped out of his pants, not at all inhibited by my presence. Then he called to Belinda and charged at the sea. I watched the two of them splashing and frolicking in the water. She threw herself into his arms and they both sank for a moment, reemerging and laughing like two teenagers. I was fascinated, jealous and angry all at the same time.

  "If you're not coming in, maybe you can get us some towels," he called.

  "Yes, Olivia. That would be nice."

  Belinda stood in the water, the starlight making her bosom glimmer. Her panties had become transparent, and Nelson's shorts didn't offer much coverage either.

  "MI right," I shouted. "I'll be right back."

  I hurried through the darkness, slipping on the sand, cursing Belinda under my breath. When I reached the house, I was careful to enter and get to the laundry room without being noticed. I gathered up some towels and rushed out, feeling like a coconspirator. By the time I returned, they were both out of the water, sitting very close to each other.

  "Hurry, we're freezing," Belinda cried.

  "I don't doubt it. You'll both probably get pneumonia or something."

  "We'll be fine," Nelson said. I tried not to look at him when I handed him the towel and cast one at Belinda.

  "Better get out of the wet stuff," Nelson said moving off a bit. He wrapped the towel around himself and slipped his underpants off. Belinda, not as modest, took off her bra and panties. I stood between her and Nelson and handed her clothing to her as quickly as I could.

  "Anyone can look at either of you and see you've been in the water," I said after they were both dressed.

  "Let's go up to my room and dry our hair," Belinda suggested.

  The two of them hurried toward the house, me following behind, feeling like a third wheel. Up in Belinda's room, I watched the two of them dry their hair. Belinda went into the bathroom and put on another pair of panties and a bra.

  "Just keep these here for me," he told her handing her his wet underpants. "Until they're dry."

  "I can put them in the dryer downstairs," I suggested.

  "No problem. I'm fine," he said. He looked at Belinda. Her eyes were dazzling with excitement and laughter. "That was great," he said. "Never thought one of my parents' dinner parties would be this exciting. Thanks."

  He turned to me.

  "Well, I guess we'd better show our faces and pretend all is well. How do I look?"

  "Fine," I said reluctantly.

  "I'll be down in a moment," Belinda chimed.

  Nelson and I left and started to descend the stairway. We could hear our parents talking loudly in the sitting room.

  "You're sister's terrific," he said.

  "You don't have to live with her," I replied. He laughed.

  "Yeah, I bet she's a handful, huh?"

  "A handful is an understatement," I told him. He laughed again.

  He was smart enough to see my point. I was sure. But did it matter?

  Men were blind. Some, deliberately, I thought.

  5

  Going to the Chapel

  .

  If any of our parents had noticed Nelson and

  Belinda had gone swimming, they made no mention of it before the evening ended. After Belinda came downstairs, she and Nelson were hungry again, probably from their frolicking in the water, and they had dessert and coffee. I just had some coffee. Nelson and I did most of the talking, discussing politics, Cape Cod and business. There was no music after dinner, no entertainment this time, so after we were finished, Colonel Childs declared it was time for him and his family to go. Nelson had to go back to law school early in the morning.

  At the door Nelson told Belinda and me he would look in on us when he returned. Daddy gazed at me with some excitement in his eyes, but I shook my head. After Mother went upstairs with Belinda, Daddy pulled me aside in his office.

  "Well? How did they get along?" he asked. I thought a moment and then flopped into the leather chair adjacent to his desk.

  "Dreadfully, as I expected," I said. "She made a fool of herself as usual."

  "What?" Daddy sat behind his desk. "What happened? They seemed to be getting along so well at dinner."

  "She wanted to go for that walk on the beach, but she had something else up her sleeve, Daddy. She pulled off her clothes and challenged him to go swimming with her."

  "Pulled off her clothes?"

  "I was so embarrassed, I thought I would die."

  "Oh no," Daddy said, his face, losing its robust color put there from all the wine he had drunk.

  "Oh yes. I kept trying to get her to behave, but it was no use. Belinda will always be Belinda, Daddy. We might as well accept it."

  He nodded, sadly.

  "Well, I tried. I had an idea and I tried." He looked up at me, his eyes glassy. "I'm tired. Let's get some sleep," he said.

  "Don't worry, Daddy. You'll figure something out yet," I said. He smiled quickly and patted me on the shoulder.

  "Right, right," he said.

  "As I suspected, Nelson Childs is looking for a woman of some substance," I added as I left the office. "Belinda just isn't right for him."

  "I see," Daddy muttered behind
me, but he never suggested or assumed Nelson would be a good prospect for me. His attention was committed solely to Belinda as usual. "However, I'm not about to give up. I have something else up my sleeve," Daddy said.

  I turned on the stairway.

  "What?"

  "Give me a few days to work out the details," he replied cryptically. I thought he meant he was going to come up with some other approach to getting Belinda and Nelson Childs together, but he had an entirely different prospect lined up, and this one was, in his terms, "more sensible from a business standpoint." Also, he thought it might help if we held one of our formal family meetings and he proposed the idea to Belinda himself.

  "So we can avoid any further

  misunderstandings and bad behavior," he explained when three days later, he announced his decision to have the meeting.

  "You might as well wish for the whole world, Daddy, if you're going to wish for no further bad behavior from Belinda."

  "We'll see. We'll see," he said, his eyes firm with determination.

  From time to time, Daddy held these sessions to talk about our family, our business, our home and our lives. Mother even kept notes as he wished so he could look to her when he wanted to refer to something he had previously announced or asked. The journal she kept was our family history, as far as he was concerned. Mother entered all our important dates in it, birthdays, confirmations, vaccinations, childhood illnesses, graduations, and other significant events. Keeping the record of our lives was something very important to Daddy. It made us seem more like a country unto ourselves.

  I finally decided I had better have a

  conversation with Belinda about Nelson Childs just to see if she had hopes of ever being romantically involved with him. Nelson hadn't called or returned as he had promised, but trying to figure out what Belinda was thinking at any particular time was like trying to harness the wind.

  I went into her room and brought up the subject as she was getting ready for bed.

  "Nelson?" she said, tossing his name as if she had known him intimately for years. "Hardly." She gazed dreamily at herself in the mirror, fluffed her hair and then, with a painful grimace, studied a pale blemish on her chin.

  "Yes, Nelson Childs."

  "I don't think about him much," she said with annoyance. "I don't think he would be that much fun."

  "What do you mean?" I was still suspicious. She could easily have contacted him without my knowing. "You sure enjoyed yourself with him at dinner the other night, getting down to your underwear and swimming in the moonlight."

  "Oh that. Big deal," she said. She turned to me. "It's not the first time I've done something like that. It seemed like fun and he wanted to do it."

  "Why don't you think about him now then?"

  "He's too . . . career minded. All he talked about when you left to get us our towels was his school and his plans for being a successful politician. He thinks he's going to be President of the United States someday. I thought he could be a little boring and told him so," she added. "Just like he was with you when we had chocolate cake, remember?"

  I was astounded. With as much concern as she might have for throwing away an old magazine, she could cast off a catch as good as Nelson Childs. And because he was boring? Nelson Childs could never be boring, I thought. She was the one who was boring.

  "Let me understand this. On the beach, after you two had gone swimming, you told him you thought he was boring?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "And what did he do?"

  "He just laughed. He laughed at everything I said and did. So you see, I'm sure he doesn't think all that much of me. He hasn't called me, has he? You mailed his underwear to his school and he didn't even call to thank us, did he?"

  She was right about that. I was very

  disappointed he hadn't responded. I had taken great pains to pack the garment so no one would ask any embarrassing questions.

  "Frankly, I don't care if he does call or comes around again. I don't want to think about him."

  "Fine," I told her. "Don't think about him." She turned from the mirror.

  "Why are you getting so angry about it?" She stared at me a moment and then smiled. "You like him, don't you, Olivia?" she said. "You finally fell in love with someone!"

  "That's not true."

  "Yes, it's true. Sure, it's true. My sister is in love," she declared to her mirror image as if it proved I was just like her. "Do you dream of him, fantasize about being with him? Why don't you call him? Why don't you go visit him at his school?" she asked, still looking at herself. It was as though she were talking to herself.

  "You don't chase after men like that, Belinda," I snapped. "And I didn't say I was in love with him. You did."

  "You are," she said confidently and turned back to me. "So what? Why hide it? I never do whenever I fall in love. And why can't you chase after a man? What makes them so special?"

  "It's not that they're special. We're special. That's why we shouldn't act so desperate. I swear, talking to you is like talking to . . . a four-year-old sometimes."

  "Don't get upset with me just because I know you have a crush on Nelson Childs."

  "I don't!" I screamed.

  "Yes, you do. I might just tell him myself one day." "If you do anything like that, Belinda Gordon, I'll personally rip out your tongue," I threatened.

  She smiled impishly, her eyes full of glee.

  "Belinda, I'm warning you."

  "Okay, okay," she said, but she didn't stop teasing me for days, doing things like pretending at the office that Nelson was on the telephone, or by writing N.C. on my notepads. No matter how I swore or glared at her, she simply laughed. "The Little General's in love," she sang.

  I told Daddy about her antics at the office, but he didn't chastise her. Instead, he bought her a songbird in a gilded cage. She had wanted one for some time. It seemed that no matter what she did or how she behaved, Daddy always rained gifts on her, whereas he simply gave me a substantial salary. His justification was I could buy myself whatever I wanted. Belinda couldn't, but whose fault was that if not her own?

  I knew Daddy had an ulterior motive when he bought her the bird, but I predicted the bird would either starve to death or die of some other form of neglect.

  "It will not," Belinda retorted. "It will be very happy living in my room, a room full of sunshine even on rainy days. Won't it, Mommy?"

  "Yes, dear," Mother replied like some windup toy whose button had been pressed.

  Nevertheless, Belinda had to be reminded to clean out the cage and feed the bird every day thereafter, finally complaining and asking why the maid couldn't do it as well as everything else.

  The following Tuesday night, Daddy declared we would have the family meeting after dinner. There were important things to discuss.

  "Oh, not another one of those dreadful meetings,"

  Belinda cried at the dinner table. "I didn't do anything wrong, Daddy. Did someone say I did?" she asked, glaring my way.

  "It's not about anyone doing anything wrong," he said.

  "Did we spend too much on clothes again?" she asked looking to Mother.

  From Daddy's expression, I could see he knew nothing about that.

  "Let's just wait until after dinner, Belinda," Mother replied quickly. Whatever she had spent on Belinda, she didn't want Daddy thinking about it now. "It's better for the digestion if we don't discuss heavy matters while we eat."

  "Why do we have to discuss any heavy matters at all?" she whined. "Men like to discuss heavy matters, but women shouldn't have to."

  "That's a ridiculous thing to say. Women aren't any less intelligent, Belinda. In many cases they're more intelligent," Ito1d her.

  "Who wants to be more intelligent?" she muttered.

  Belinda pouted and deliberately only nibbled at her food, but I was intrigued. Daddy hadn't yet told me the details of what he was going to discuss. I knew only that it had something to do with Belinda's future, another solution, perhaps, but Daddy had kep
t his plan to himself.

  We gathered in his den-office as usual, Belinda and I seated on the red leather settee, Mother in the leather chair to Daddy's right, her notebook opened, pen in hand, waiting.

  "You have today's date?" he asked her.

  "Yes, Winston."

  "Good. Then we'll bring the meeting to order. All of us understand that it becomes necessary from time to time to make some sacrifices, to make some efforts for the good of the family," he began.

  "I hate it when he says that," Belinda muttered. "It usually means he wants us to do something hard."

  "Shh, dear," Mother said. She remained poised to write down the important words.

  "Just like days of old when kings and queens thought about gaining power and wealth, they would think hard about the marriages of their children and how those marriages could benefit the family, the kingdom," he continued. "Well, the most successful families today think the same way. Nothing's changed in that regard.

  "Belinda," he continued, turning to her, "you know Carson McGil, Daniel McGil's son, the one who went to private school. I know you do because he's spoken to you a few times just recently, hasn't he?" he asked before she could offer a response to the first remark.

  Belinda shot a glance at me and then looked at Daddy.

  "I didn't do anything bad with him, Daddy. He just offered to buy me something cold to drink and then I went for a walk with him on the dock."

  "Apparently he was quite taken with you. He came to my office a few days ago to speak to me about you," Daddy continued. Neither I nor Belinda had seen Carson there. I looked skeptically at Daddy, but he ignored my expression. "A fine young man, outstanding, proper. He asked me if he could ask you for your hand in marriage." Daddy added quickly.

  "What?" Belinda said.

  "He wants to marry you," I translated. She sat there with her mouth open.

  "Carson McGil wants to marry me?" She was about to laugh, but Daddy scowled.

  "Yes, and I thought it would be a fine match. He's going to inherit his father's cannery business and we're talking about a merger with one of our enterprises."

  Belinda looked at me again, this time for some support, but I just stared at her without much expression and certainly no sympathy.

  "I'm not in love with Carson McGil and even if I was, I'm not ready to marry anyone," she said.