A Hundred Summers

“Don’t even think of putting the blame on my shoulders, Budgie Byrne.” I set down the hurricane lamp and looked out the window, at the breaking waves, even higher than they were a moment ago.

  “Greenwald,” she said.

  “Not for long.” I turned to her. She looked pale, even against the white pillows, lipstick gone and hair lank. Her eyes were enormous, like round, dark-rimmed saucers, their blueness lost in the dim light.

  “You’re in for the fight of your life, darling,” she said. “I won’t let you take him back so easily.”

  “He was never yours.”

  She stared at me, blinking, and turned her face away. “I’m going to tell the world what happened. I’ll ruin your mother. I’ll ruin Kiki. You won’t be able to go anywhere. You’ll see what it’s like.”

  “I don’t care. Nick doesn’t care. My mother can go to hell.”

  “So you say. But your soft little heart will turn. You don’t have the strength for a good fight, Lily. You never did.”

  I gestured to her arm. “And you do? Slitting your wrists? Very brave, Budgie.”

  “He took me by surprise. Now I’ve had time to think it over.”

  I sat down at the end of the bed and leaned over her legs. “Oh, good. More plans from that fiendish brain of yours. Tell me, what are you contemplating now? What new plots to make the people around you ever more miserable?”

  She lifted her left arm next to her on the pillow, quite close, so the bandage brushed her cheek. “I only wanted you to be happy. I brought up Nick to meet his sister. I brought up Graham to give you a husband. I’ve done everything for you, but it wasn’t enough. You were always jealous of my beauty, of the way men wanted me, and you wanted it for yourself.”

  She said this with such drunken sorrow, with tears brimming in the pink corners of her eyes, that I felt the instant sting of truth, of that tiny shard of truth Budgie had always wielded to such effect, even when doped up with pills and desperation.

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “You know it’s true. You wanted my life, you wanted my husband.”

  Budgie whispered the words into the noise of the storm, her face still turned away from me, and my eyes, for some reason, fastened on the tiny pulse at the base of her throat, nudging her skin with the speed of a frightened rabbit.

  My God, I thought. She’s scared of me.

  I wrapped my hands around her feet, anchoring us together in the narrow bed. “No, Budgie. You wanted them. You wanted my life, and my Nick. They weren’t yours, and you took them. You could have stepped in that winter, you could have stepped in anytime in the last six years and told me the truth and set us free, but you didn’t. You watched me suffer, you watched Nick suffer. Then, once the money dried up, you used your dirty secrets to corner Nick.”

  She turned to me at last. “You should thank me. I could have talked about what I saw that night. I followed them from the party, your mother and Nick’s father, did you know that? I saw everything. You should be grateful I kept my trap shut.”

  “You could have told me, for God’s sake! I was in agony. I thought I’d nearly killed my father. I’d given up Nick because of it.” I let go of her foot to slam my fist into the bed. “You could have told me! It’s what friends do.”

  Budgie struggled up from her pillows, eyes blazing. Her voice was slurred with drugs, stuttering, the fury breaking out in spurts from the fog in her brain. “And why should you have everything, Lily? Everybody always loved you. Even Graham fell for you, and he never fell for anybody. You and your adorable straightlaced family, your sweet eunuch of a father. I’ll bet your papa never crept into your room at midnight and told you what a pretty, pretty girl you were, and not to say anything to Mummy or she’d beat you. Did he?”

  The whole world seemed to thicken and slow to a halt around me. Even the storm paused for an instant, withholding the next gust, shocked. From a vast and impenetrable distance, I heard Aunt Julie’s sharp voice calling out something to Kiki.

  She told me things that would make your toes curl, things I’ll take to my grave.

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

  “So, you see, there were different rules to my life. I took my two hundred clams a month, thank you very much, rather than tell you the truth. It seemed the obvious choice at the time. And when Nick asked me for a divorce in Bermuda, I told him he had a sister, and if he ever wanted to know her, if he ever wanted to see his precious Lily again, he’d better stick with me and play the loving husband and not make a peep. Not a single ever-loving peep.”

  “Budgie . . .”

  “Oh, look at you. Look at your pretty blue eyes, all full of feeling sorry for Budgie. Do you know how often you’ve looked at me like that? You and Nick both. And I craved it and hated it at the same time.” She fell back again and closed her eyes. She was wearing a nightgown, I noticed at last, peach silk with ivory lace, covered by an open robe of matching peach silk. It shone beautifully against her skin, even in the dimness. She must have been wearing it when Nick arrived this morning. Her breasts curved beneath, still incongruously full, the lace disappearing into the shadow of her cleavage. “Now I’ve lost my stinking baby, and I’ve lost my stinking husband. What the hell am I supposed to do, Lily? You who always know the right thing.”

  Aunt Julie was coming up the stairs. The thump of her footsteps cut through the roar and whine of the flying wind outside, the rattle of the old boards of Budgie’s house.

  I wondered which unspeakable bedroom had belonged to Budgie when she was a child. This one? The one across the hall?

  “You know the right thing, Budgie,” I said. “You always have. It isn’t hard. It’s a lot easier than fighting all the time.”

  The bedroom door flew open. Aunt Julie stood there, face wild. “Is Kiki with you?” she demanded.

  I jumped from the bed. “No! I thought she was with you! Isn’t she with you?”

  “Oh, Jesus!” She put her hands in her hair. “She’s gone! I’ve looked everywhere!”

  I flew across the floor. “The attics! Have you checked the attics?”

  “Not yet.”

  I went to the bottom of the attic stairs and called up. My voice was wild, frantic. “Kiki! Kiki! Are you up there?”

  Silence.

  “Kiki, don’t hide! For God’s sake, this is no time for games! Please let us know you’re safe! Please, darling!”

  My words echoed faintly back.

  Aunt Julie made a little cry. She twisted her hands together. “She didn’t go out, did she? She wouldn’t have gone out. I didn’t hear the door.”

  “The cellar?”

  “I looked in the cellar, damn it!”

  I turned and met her eyes. My heart slammed in my chest, spreading panic through every vessel of my body.

  Adrenaline.

  Where would she go? Think like Kiki. Why would she leave? What could possibly draw my precious sister outdoors into the maw of a thundering September blow?

  What, indeed?

  With a snap, like a final puzzle piece locking into place, my brain returned the unthinkable answer.

  “Nick,” I said. “She went with Nick.”

  23.

  SEAVIEW, RHODE ISLAND

  Wednesday afternoon, September 21, 1938

  We stumbled down the stairs, Aunt Julie and I, our feet clattering together down the wooden boards. I beat her to the door, flung it open to a wall of rain and wind, screamed out Kiki! Kiki! but the words hurled themselves back in my face.

  “It’s no use!” said Aunt Julie.

  I ran back to the kitchen, to the mudroom adjoining it. Another raincoat hung on the hook, poised for the constant deluges of this hottest and wettest of summers. I slung it on. Budgie’s boots were too small, but I shoved my feet in them anyway and tossed the hood of the raincoat over my head.

  I had to force the door open, to lower my shoulder and push with all my might, and then it tore away off its hinges. The wind caught it and tossed it up into the a
ir like a beach ball, and it was gone.

  I staggered into the storm, screaming Kiki’s name. I couldn’t see anything. In the last ten minutes, the sky had blackened, the rain so filled the air it was like drinking rather than breathing. If I opened my mouth, I would drown. I put my hand to the side of the house and bent myself into the wind, but it was no use. I fell to the ground and crawled, and the water sloshed around my hands and knees and feet, foaming and filled with bits of seaweed, stinging with sand and salt.

  Foot by foot, yard by yard, I crawled along the side of the house. I crawled past the hydrangeas, which the wind had nearly stripped of leaves and flowers. I crawled through the surging water. I reached the end of the porch, wrapped my fingers around the post, and staggered to my feet.

  “Kiki!” I screamed.

  Seaview beach lay before me, but there was no beach. It was all water, surging and towering, straining up the gentle rise to Budgie’s house. Water was all I could see; there was no sky, no other houses, no car in the lane. No familiar figures of Nick and Kiki, stuck together as they had all summer.

  “Nick! Kiki!” I screamed. “Nick! Nick!”

  Where had it come from, this sea? This was no storm I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t breathe.

  A hand landed on my shoulder from the porch. “Come in!” screamed Aunt Julie. “Get inside!”

  “I can’t!” I screamed back.

  “Come in!”

  She crawled over the side of the porch and landed in the water next to me. She wasn’t wearing a raincoat. She grabbed me by the legs and pulled me down. “Come in! You can’t leave me alone! I need you!”

  I was sobbing, screaming Kiki’s name, Nick’s name. Aunt Julie dragged me by the arm around the front of the porch, dragged me up the stairs with the storm beating our backs. We landed on the porch just as its roof ripped off and flew away.

  “They’re gone!” Aunt Julie was sobbing, too. “Come inside!”

  We crawled to the door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge against the wind.

  I pulled, I yanked. The howl of the storm invaded my ears and my brain, until I felt every waver in my bones. Aunt Julie’s bony hands closed around mine and pulled with me.

  Amid the chaos, something changed. Something drew breath and hauled itself up in the jaundiced darkness. I could feel it at my back. I turned back to the beach.

  A dark wall was building, as tall as a house.

  “Get inside!” I screamed to Aunt Julie.

  Together we pulled at the door, levered it with our fingers, until it stood open a foot or so and poured water into the entrance hall. I wedged myself through and pulled Aunt Julie after me.

  I didn’t stop. I scrambled to my feet and ran up the stairs. “Budgie! The surge is coming! Quickly! Up to the attic!”

  Budgie looked up from her pillows. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Now, Budgie!”

  “Where’s Nick?”

  “He’s at my mother’s house. He’s safe. Come on!” I saw she wouldn’t move. I went to the bed and scooped her up and over my shoulder, with the preternatural strength of panic. She shrieked and hit her fist against my back.

  Adrenaline.

  Adrenaline hauled us both up the stairs to the darkened attic, with Budgie flailing at me and Aunt Julie right behind.

  Adrenaline dropped Budgie into an old armchair and sent me flying to the low-lying windows, stuffing blankets in every possible nook, tossing them to Aunt Julie, while the rain thundered and the windowpanes sang.

  Adrenaline dragged the doors from their stack on the attic floor, where the workmen had piled them, obeying Budgie’s instructions to tear everything out, open everything up, paint everything white. Adrenaline braced them against the seaward windows, until the dark room was almost black.

  I felt the impact an instant later, as the wall of water hit the house, surrounded the house, turned the house into a single wooden island in the great sea. I heard the ocean smash through the windows and doors and walls below us, heard it pour through the rooms where we had been standing a moment ago, where Nick had thrown the blue-and-white vase in helpless rage and then leaned down in his raincoat and kissed me good-bye.

  “What’s happening?” screamed Budgie. She fell out of the armchair and started crawling toward me.

  I went to her and picked her up and cradled her against me. “It’s the surge, Budgie. The water’s coming up around the house. We’re high up, don’t worry. It won’t reach us.”

  Another wave hit. I felt the foundation absorb the impact, the shock move through the timbers. The floor shifted beneath us. Budgie screamed again and hid her head in my chest. Her hair was dry and warm, blotting the dampness of my dress.

  “Nick! Where’s Nick?” she demanded.

  “He’s fine. He’s safe. Hush.” My body shook. Tears dripped down my face and into my mouth. I clung to Budgie. Aunt Julie crept across the floor and joined us.

  We huddled, wet and shivering. Another wave hit, and the house began to tilt.

  “Oh, my God!” said Budgie. “Oh, my God! We’ll be killed!”

  I thought, perhaps if I sit here, frozen, it won’t be true. Perhaps if I go on sitting here, if I hold on to Budgie, hold on to Aunt Julie, the house will stop shifting on its axis, will stop disintegrating pillar by pillar below our bodies. The water will stop crashing through the floors, and Kiki will come back, and Nick.

  Water began to trickle through the blankets, under the doors propped over the windows.

  “It’s reached the attic,” Aunt Julie said in wonder, almost calm.

  The boards popped open. Water spouted through, at the seam between the floorboards and the walls.

  I sprang up. “Grab a door, everyone. Quickly!”

  The smell of salt and rain filled the air. Budgie stumbled to her feet, swaying. I hauled down one of the doors from the stack and pulled her on it. “Doors float,” I said. “Hang on. Hang on with all you’ve got, Budgie.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You can.”

  Aunt Julie was already dragging a door for herself. I helped her and took one for myself, just as the water surged again, and the entire house lifted and swayed and broke apart.

  The windows smashed. Water poured through.

  “Get out from under the roof!” I screamed. “Before it collapses!”

  Budgie rose, trying to drag her door with her. I gave mine up and went to her. I helped her pull it across the pouring floor, washed with the sea. The walls were splintering. An enormous gap had opened up on one side, pouring water. I yanked the door through, pushed Budgie with me, and suddenly we were floating, heaving in an endless pitch of salt water.

  “Hold on!” I screamed at her. We lay side by side on the door. I had no idea where we were, where the mainland lay. I had no idea if we could float like this, across what remained of Seaview Bay. I tried to feel the direction of the water, to kick with it, to propel us inland.

  Something crashed against us: Aunt Julie, clinging to her door. “Kick!” I screamed at her. “Get to the mainland! It’s the only way!”

  The water spun her away.

  “Kick!” I said to Budgie, and she kicked feebly and stopped.

  I kicked with all my might, as the rain poured on my back and the wind battered and numbed me. If I was still alive, Nick and Kiki might be alive. I had to keep going. I had to reach the shore.

  I half covered Budgie with my body, settled us more securely on the door, and kicked steadily as the heaving sea carried us in its palm. I’d ridden waves before, had allowed my body to glide along the surface of the water through peak and trough. The trick was not to fight it. The water was boss; the ocean had command. You rode it as you would a runaway horse, just staying aboard and praying it wouldn’t take you too far.

  I held Budgie’s body under mine. Her wet hair filled my mouth. I tasted blood, sharp and metallic. I stopped kicking, except to keep our backs turned to the storm. I shut my eyes against the wind and
rain, except to try to peer through and see where we were going. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Aunt Julie, a blur against the driving gray, riding Budgie’s castoff door, motionless. She had to be alive, I thought, or she wouldn’t still be atop it. Nothing could stop Aunt Julie. No storm could take her.

  As the mad Atlantic threw me across the bay, and the water filled me up, and the broken remains of the Seaview cottages crashed into my fragile raft, I thought: What the hell am I going to do if I survive?

  WHEN WE HIT THE SHORE, the door flipped over and spilled us both into the water. I took Budgie around the shoulders and dragged her stumbling through the waves, our bare feet slipping on the rough ground, up and up, around trees and through blackberry vines, until we were free of the greedy ocean. I staggered over something, a log thrown up by the surging sea, and with a last heave I pulled us both over it and collapsed in its shelter. Budgie moaned and burrowed into me, shivering. I put my arms around her and held her, face angled to the ground, with just enough room to breathe.

  I don’t know how long we lay there. I hovered in some nightmare middle state between consciousness and sleep, clasping the shaking Budgie with my raw and aching hands, absorbing the rain and wind for both of us. Her fingers curled around my arms. Her skin was so wet and cold, her limbs so hollow-boned and fragile. Only her breath was warm, spreading like the brush of a feather into the hollow of my throat.

  At one point a branch landed next to us, its twigs slicing my legs and back, but the pain only merged seamlessly with the endless field of bruises and scratches that covered me.

  After a while, Budgie stopped shivering and lay still in my arms. I told myself that she was sleeping, that she would wake up when the storm was over. I kept on holding her, because if I held her tight enough, I could pour my strength into her, I could bring her back to life.

  AS SUDDENLY AS IT HAD ARRIVED, the storm departed. The shriek of air began to lower in pitch, to settle and die. A last jolt of rain hit my legs and shrank to a patter. As the volume of sound lessened, I heard a voice carry across the trees. I struggled upward, still clutching Budgie, and screamed, “Hello!”