He had been sitting before the window, as before, the ghostly remains of a smile on his face. I had knelt before him and kissed his dry cheek and put my hands on his knees.
“I’m going up to Seaview today, Daddy. I wish I could stay and see you longer, but I have a few things to do. Some wrongs to put right.”
He looked at me without speaking, his old blue eyes flat in the diffuse light.
“I don’t know if you can understand me, Daddy. I hope you can. I hope you’re still there. I’m going to get Nick back, Daddy. You threw him out, once, but I think it wasn’t because of the reason I thought back then. I think it was something else. I hope it was something else.”
His right knee moved beneath my hand. I found his fingers, folded together in his lap, and pressed them between mine.
“I think you would like him, Daddy, I really do. I think you would have gotten along so well. He isn’t easy to know well, but once you do, once he trusts you, he’s so warm and kind, so brilliant and funny. He unfolds like a flower.” I bent my face into our clasped hands. “I wish things had been different. I think he would have been good for you. I think you would have been good for each other.”
The clock had chimed nine-forty-five, and I knew I had to go. I rose, kissed Daddy’s hands, and put them back in his lap, and then I kissed his cheek again. “Good-bye, Daddy. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Wish me luck.”
I thought perhaps he’d leaned his cheek into mine, but I might have been wrong. I hurried downstairs and jumped into Uncle Peter’s car and zoomed up Park Avenue, beating every stoplight.
I drove to the absolute limit, stopping only for gas and coffee. By the time I reached Rhode Island, the weather, so fine and breezy along the shore towns, had grown strangely heavy, almost oily, as tiny packets of rain slammed against the windshield and debris whipped across the road and the power lines shrieked in agony. I put out my cigarette and wrapped both hands around the steering wheel. As I turned down Neck Road, I lifted my eyes and caught a glimpse of the ocean, thick and gray, streaked with long rollers beneath a sickly dun sky. A gust of wind caught the car, making it stagger.
Oh, damn, I thought. Another storm. Just what I needed.
I drove down the approach and past the clubhouse, which was shut and deserted, the tables and chairs already locked inside for the winter. Most of the houses were shut, too, the awnings put away until next year, wooden shutters closed tight. The Palmers had left last weekend, and so had the Crofters and the Langley sisters. I drove past the Huberts’ house, where Mrs. Hubert was bringing in her zinnias, one pot in each hand, skirts whipping furiously about her legs.
I drove past the Greenwalds’ house without even looking.
I drove unconscionably fast, rattling and bouncing along the potholes, spurting gravel from beneath Uncle Peter’s heavy tires. My hands clenched around the wheel; my eyes ached from peering through the dashing wipers. A swirl of rain hit the side of the car just as I pulled up in front of the old Dane cottage, and I clutched my hat as I ran down the path and opened the door with a crash.
“Mother!” I screamed.
I heard a movement in the floorboards above me. I turned and ran up the stairs.
“Mother!” I screamed again.
“Lily! What is it?”
Her feet emerged down the attic stairs, one by one, shod in practical brown leather and dark stockings. I stood quivering as she revealed herself, scintillating, every nerve in my body ready to burst. Her hands appeared, holding a pair of white towels. A pink cardigan lay about her shoulders. Her dark hair, pinned in a little knot at her neck, was coming undone. Her eyes were round and bright with surprise.
“You’re back already?” she asked, and then: “Goodness me, you’re a mess. What have you done to yourself? Your dress is all wrinkled, and your hat . . .”
I took off my hat and tossed it on the floor. The familiar smells surrounded me, old warm wood and salt air and lemon oil. The scents of summer, of Seaview. I raked my hand through my springing curls. “All this time,” I said, “all this time, you’ve let everyone think Kiki was my daughter. Mine and Nick’s. I had no idea. Everybody knew but me.”
She brushed back her straggling hair. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Tell me why you and Mr. Greenwald were in Gramercy Park that night. Tell me. Tell me to my face, Mother.” I was breathless with effort and anger. I could hardly get the words out.
She turned away, as if to go back up the stairs. “I don’t want to talk about that night, Lily. It’s too upsetting. Your poor father, falling to the ground like that. Now come upstairs and help me put these towels in the windows. There’s a storm rising, if you hadn’t noticed, and Marelda’s gone into town for supplies.”
I grabbed her arm and turned her around.
“Lily!” she exclaimed, clutching the towels to her chest.
“Tell me the truth, Mother! I deserve to know that!”
“I don’t know what you mean! You ran off with that Greenwald boy. That’s the truth.”
“And nine months later Kiki was born, and everybody thought she was mine. Mine! And you let them! You let me hold her, you let me take care of her and raise her. You let them think she was mine. Why did you let them, Mother? Why?”
“Take your hands off me! Good God! Is this how you speak to your mother?” She shook off my hand, and I grabbed it again and shook her, making the rest of her hair fall from its pins around her shoulders.
“She wasn’t Daddy’s baby at all, was she? How stupid have I been all these years, thinking Daddy was even capable of conceiving another child with you? Or have I just been pretending to myself? Have I known it all along?” I dropped her hand and sank to the floor, covering my face with my hands. “Poor Daddy. And he found you two there, in that apartment, the one Nick’s father kept for his mistresses. You had no idea I’d just been there with Nick, had you? No idea at all, until Daddy walked right through the door, looking for me, because I’d paid the doorman to take him a note so he wouldn’t worry.”
“That’s not true! That’s not true!” She ran up the stairs, two at a time, her heavy shoes pounding on the old wooden floorboards.
The door slammed below.
“Christina!” Aunt Julie’s voice floated up the staircase. “Christina! Where are you? God, what a mess outside. Is that Peter’s car?”
“We’re up here,” I called down softly.
“Lily?” Her shoes scraped against the stairs. “What are you doing here? Was that you, in Peter’s car?”
“It was me.”
She came around the landing and stopped. “What’s the matter? What are you doing on the floor? Where’s your mother?”
The wind sang against the windows, making the house rattle uneasily. I looked up and met Aunt Julie’s face, wet with rain, and I couldn’t speak.
“Oh, God,” she said. Her hand dropped from the newel post. “Where’s your mother?”
“In the attic, putting towels in the windows.”
“Well, well.” She looked up the attic stairs and back down at me. “I guess I’m only surprised it took seven years.”
“You’ve known, of course.”
“Darling, I did try to talk you out of seeing that Greenwald boy. The gossip was already making the rounds. Your mother wasn’t exactly herself that fall, and people were talking.” She looked up the stairs again. “When your mother breaks the rules, she doesn’t mess around.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Julie.” Mother marched down the stairs and stopped halfway. Her face was white; her hair had been put back clumsily.
Aunt Julie threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, for God’s sake, Christina. It’s not as if anybody blamed you. You only had to be a little more discreet. And not have gotten pregnant, of course, but luckily you had your daughter’s indiscretion to cover up for you.”
Mother made a little sob, and I saw that she was crying, that long tears were streaking down her face and dripping from her
jaw. “It’s not true,” she said.
Aunt Julie folded her arms. “Oh, be a trump for once, and own up to it. You had seven years of saving your reputation at your daughter’s expense. I’d call it a good run and step down like a lady, wouldn’t you?”
Mother crumpled onto the last step, just as I rose, holding the stairway banister, looming above her.
“It’s worse than that,” I said. “You let me think I’d caused Daddy’s stroke, that it was because I ran away with Nick. But it wasn’t, was it? It was you, all along. Your betrayal, not mine. And I pushed Nick away because of it, I gave him back his ring because I couldn’t bear what I’d done to my father, because I was afraid I’d kill him if I didn’t give Nick up. I thought it was my penance. All this time, Mother. You let me do it.”
She looked up. “Is that where you heard this? From the Greenwald boy? I suppose he told you about the note, convinced you that I . . .”
“Note?” I asked.
Aunt Julie turned to Mother. “What note?”
She stood up and brushed past me. “Nothing.”
I grabbed her arm. “What note, Mother? What are you talking about? You sent a note to Nick?”
“No, I didn’t. I misspoke.” She flashed to Aunt Julie, and away.
“Now, this is getting interesting,” said Aunt Julie. “Tell us about the note, Christina.”
A gust of wind shook the house. The timbers groaned loudly, like a ship at sea. I glanced out the hall window and saw the surf kicking up around the battery, the foam flinging high above the battlements. The sky above was as dark as twilight, smeared with yellow ochre.
A cold hand wrapped around my heart.
“Where’s Kiki?” I asked.
“She’s down at the Huberts’,” said Aunt Julie.
“What’s she doing there?”
“Well, after all the excitement this morning . . .”
“What excitement?”
Aunt Julie’s hand clapped over her mouth. “Oh, of course! You’ve just arrived! The most god-awful scene at the Greenwald house.”
I took her by the shoulders. “What happened?”
Her mouth formed a speculative circle. Her finely plucked eyebrows lifted into her forehead. “Oh, Lord,” she said slowly. “This is beginning to make all kinds of sense. Let me take a crazy guess, Lily. You saw Nick when you were in the city.”
“Tell me what happened!”
She plucked my hands from her shoulders. “Well, your Nick arrived around ten o’clock, I’d say, and stormed into the house. I was on the beach with Kiki, you see, enjoying the sunshine, sneaking my usual smoke from under old Mrs. Hubert’s gimlet eye. After a bit, we heard voices, mostly Budgie shrieking all kinds of nonsense, and then a bang, and the next thing you know, Nick’s calling out to me on the beach, Budgie’s had an accident, could I help him get her into the car.”
“Oh, my God!” I covered my mouth with both hands. “What happened?”
“She’d tried to slit her wrists, apparently, the damned hysteric. He’d stopped her before she could do much damage—actually broke down the door of the bathroom, from what it looked like—but it was messy enough all the same.”
“Oh, no! Is she all right? Did Kiki see anything?”
“No, I sent her down to the Huberts’ right away. Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to find her! My God!”
Aunt Julie hurried down the stairs after me. “Lily, she’s fine! Everyone’s fine! Nick took Budgie to the hospital, Kiki’s helping Mrs. Hubert with her damned . . . whatever they are, zinfandel . . .”
“Zinnias. Which hospital?”
“I don’t know! Listen, Lily, stop! Come to your senses a moment.” She took my shoulder as I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned me around. The mascara had smudged around her eyes with the rain, giving her a hollowed look, most unlike herself, almost human. “There’s a storm getting up outside. It’s not safe. Stay here, we’re fine here. We’ll get news in the morning. I’m sure they’ll stay in the hospital overnight, with the weather like this.”
“But I have to find them! You don’t understand! He was asking her for a divorce, and . . .”
“Of course he was! I can put two and two together, for God’s sake, especially when it comes to divorce. Just calm down, Lily. You’re not in a goddamned Greek tragedy here.” She patted my shoulder. “She’s in good hands. He won’t let her hurt herself. For one thing, there’s the baby.”
“It’s not his baby.”
“Oh.” She gave a start. “Well, then. Whose is it? That scamp Pendleton’s, I guess?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Did everybody know but me?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? Nick’s a good fellow, a man in a thousand, I’d say. He had everything in hand, very calm, towel around her wrist and all that. He’ll take care of her.”
I slumped against the door. I could feel the wind straining against it, the rain pelting the wood behind me. “Of course he will,” I whispered. “That’s what he does.”
There was a snap, a singing in the air, and the lights went out.
“There goes the power,” said Aunt Julie. “All right, then. Let’s go down to the Huberts’ and fetch Kiki, and we’ll come back here and wait out the storm. I don’t know what your mother’s up to. Probably slitting her own wrists.” Aunt Julie took my hand and opened the door, fighting the wind, the sharp smell of salt and ozone. “My God, it’s stirring up fast! Good thing you’ve got Peter’s Studie.”
WE DASHED TO THE CAR and crawled down Neck Lane to the Huberts’ house, where the zinnias were all in and Kiki was sitting at the kitchen table with Mrs. Hubert, drinking cocoa by the light of a massive hurricane lamp. She saw me, ran across the room in a streak of coltish limbs, and jumped into my dripping arms, crying my name. I looked down at her face, at her dark hair and her blue-green eyes, and I knew why she had always looked so familiar and so dear to me. Those eyes were the exact shape of Nick’s, and when they smiled, they crinkled in exactly the same way.
Well, of course they do, I said to myself in wonder. She’s Nick’s sister, too.
I thought of Nick rigging the little sailboat, sitting Kiki down at the tiller, covering her little hand with his enormous one as he showed her how to steer. My heart seemed to hollow out of my chest.
She’s his sister, I thought. And he knew it all summer long.
“Kiki, sweetheart, hurry along. We’ve got to get back home before the storm gets worse.” I looked over at Mrs. Hubert, standing by the kitchen table. “Thanks so much for looking after her. Do you need anything?”
“I don’t need a thing. I need to talk to you for a moment, young lady. In private.” Her hands went to her hips. She was wearing an apron, in incongruous candy-pink stripes, the strings double-wrapped around her skinny waist.
“Can’t it wait until after the storm? We’ve got to get back. The power’s already out, and I’m sure the telephones are, too.”
“This will only take a moment,” she said, in an ominous voice.
I looked at Aunt Julie, who shrugged. “All right. But only a minute. Take her into the living room, will you, Aunt Julie?”
My aunt bustled Kiki through the doorway. I turned back to Mrs. Hubert. “Well?”
“Don’t well me. What the devil was that over at the Greenwalds’ this morning? And don’t tell me you don’t know anything about it.”
“I know all about it. But it’s none of your business, Mrs. Hubert.”
“The hell it isn’t. I’ll remind you that Seaview is a chartered association, and among our bylaws are strict instructions regarding domestic disturbances.”
“Do keep your voice down, Mrs. Hubert.”
She glared at me and sat down in a chair, crossing her bony legs. “I’ve been more than tolerant of all Budgie’s goings-on this summer, but this is the absolute limit. She had a towel wrapped around her wrist, Lily. I’m not so old and stupid I don’t know what that means.”
A fl
are of temper ignited under my skin. “You haven’t been tolerant at all, Mrs. Hubert. Not at all. You’ve snubbed and ignored them all summer long, just because Budgie had the temerity to marry someone with a Jewish father . . .”
Mrs. Hubert threw up her hands. “Oh, for God’s sake, Lily. Are you that thick? We haven’t been snubbing that Greenwald fellow for his own sake. Jewish! I suppose some of them care about it, but no one’s said it to my face.”
“Then what is it?”
“For your sake! My God, Lily. He seduced you, abandoned you, left you with a baby! And then Budgie, that vulgar money-grubbing drunk, that loose-moraled little tramp, not only does she marry him, but she brings him here to flaunt in your face. How you could stand it, I don’t know. You’re a saint, or else a spineless fool. I’m beginning to think the latter.”
I took hold of the edge of the old Welsh dresser, rattling the plates. “You think Nick abandoned me?”
Mrs. Hubert’s face softened. She looked down at her hands on her lap, spread open, the wrinkled palms pale in the wavering golden light from the hurricane lamp. “Darling, we love you here. We’ve known you since you were a baby, the sweetest little thing. No one cared about how Kiki came about. We were happy to go along with the family story. If you’d said the word, we’d have taken our pitchforks to the Greenwalds.”
“Oh, Mrs. Hubert.” I slid down the dresser to sit on the floor. “Oh, no. You don’t understand. Nick never abandoned me, not really. I abandoned him. And Kiki . . . no, no. She’s not his daughter. She’s not my daughter.”
“Lily, I wasn’t born yesterday. Look at the child.”
I shook my head. “She’s not his daughter. She’s his sister.” I looked up and met her eyes. “She’s our sister.”
Mrs. Hubert stared at me, her eyes growing full, her mouth sagging open. She must have read the truth in my face. “You don’t . . . my God . . . your mother?”
I nodded.
“With Greenwald’s father? Those old rumors?”
I nodded.