Cocoa Beach

  One time—just that one time—I asked whether it was difficult to love a child who wasn’t his own, and he said it wasn’t. Samuel was his brother, after all, and so Sammy was his nephew. His blood ran in Sammy’s veins. And the boy was such a delight, such an upright, clever, inquisitive chap. Just such a son as any father would be proud of. And his face took on animation, and his eyes crinkled in pleasure at the recollection of Sammy’s charms, and I found myself thinking that Sammy’s mother must be a fool, not to be in love with this man, to want a real marriage with this man.

  A fool, or else a woman with no heart to give.

  But this idea lasted only a moment and never returned. And now? As I stand, gazing at this woman before me, whose wide-mouthed smile belongs exactly to Simon, I cannot quite comprehend what this means. The full dimensions of the charade that has been practiced upon me.

  The woman is still speaking. Clara, she calls herself. Clara Fitzwilliam. I interrupt her to ask, if she’s actually Clara Fitzwilliam, who the devil is the woman at the Phantom Hotel who claims to be her?

  “I don’t understand,” Clara says.

  “Clara Fitzwilliam’s been in Cocoa since February. Staying with her brother. Staying with Samuel.”

  Clara grips her hands together at the intersection of her ribs. “My God. Then it’s true. She’s here. My God, she’s actually done it.”

  “Who’s here? Done what?” I take her by the shoulders. “Tell me the truth! Who the devil are you? Who the devil’s she?”

  “I’m Clara Fitzwilliam! I’ve already told you! Don’t you remember? We met in the conservatory at Penderleath. When you and Simon were just married, and my parents were sick. It was frightful. I ran downstairs wearing that surgical mask—”

  “No! That’s impossible! Samuel’s with her. Samuel ought to know his own sister!”

  “Of course he knows his own sister. He knows me. He’s just going along with her charade. Don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t see! Why on earth would he pretend someone is his sister when she’s not?”

  “Because he’d do anything for her. He always would. Poor Samuel. He’s been under her spell since he was a boy. Doing whatever she asked him. But this! My God, the nerve of her!”

  You know, the human memory is an extraordinary thing, malleable and indestructible all at once, capable of reason and deceit, capable of anything. As I gaze at this woman, thinking, It’s impossible, I cannot possibly have mistaken one Clara for another, I can’t possibly have been such a dupe, her grave, pale face seems to change before me, transforming into the face buried deep in my recollection, half hidden by a hygienic surgical mask, hollow-eyed and desperate, during a brief, frantic moment in a crumbling Cornish manor. Or maybe it’s the memory that changes. Maybe I have been remembering her all wrong, ever since Clara Fitzwilliam danced into my bedroom six weeks ago, calling me sister. Pouring herself into the vast depression inside my heart.

  I dig my fingers into her thin shoulders. My stomach is cold with fright.

  “The nerve of whom?” I ask huskily. Even though I think I already know the answer. I think I already know what she’s going to say.

  She whispers back: Lydia.

  She didn’t believe him at first, she says. Before he left for Florida, Simon warned her that Lydia might not be dead after all, and that if she reappeared, Clara was to let him know, and to avoid her at all costs, because she had murdered her own father. Because she would do anything to get what she wanted. You can’t believe the deceit of which she is capable, Simon said.

  “And then I got the terrible news about Simon.” Clara’s eyes fill with water. “There was this letter, an awful letter from his lawyer, because Simon left me a bequest from his estate, and the very next day she turned up on my doorstep.”

  “Lydia?”

  “Yes. She demanded the money, she said it was her birthright. She made the most terrible threats, and then she left. I thought she’d return—I went to stay with a friend—but she never did. So I decided to come to Florida and find Samuel and warn him—”

  “You’re too late for that. She arrived here in February.”

  “Oh, God. And Sammy?”

  “Sam,” I say slowly, “is at Maitland. In good hands.”

  “Is he? I suppose as long as he’s safe from Lydia . . .”

  “Safe from Lydia?”

  “Well, he’s Simon’s son, isn’t he, poor chap? My brother must have set something aside for him. And that’s what she wants. Simon’s money. However she can get it.”

  However she can get it.

  Until this instant—those words—I don’t think I’ve really understood. What this woman is trying to say. That Clara is really Lydia, Lydia Fitzwilliam, the first Mrs. Fitzwilliam, a Lydia Fitzwilliam who is a fiend. A fiend who wants my money. The fortune Simon left to me.

  That is all we are, to a woman like that: cards to be played and discarded, according to her desire and our usefulness.

  How is this possible? She was so kind. She was so sympathetic. She wanted me to be happy; she wanted me to enjoy myself and to fall in love again. How could she want me to fall in love with Samuel, her own lover?

  You cannot conceive the deceit of which she is capable.

  “Poor Samuel,” Clara says. “Poor fellow. You see, he wasn’t like Simon. Everybody loved Simon. Lydia was the first girl who took an interest in him. I say, what’s the matter? Where are you bolting off to like that?”

  “The hotel!”

  She follows me out of Samuel’s office. “But you’re hurt! Look at you! What hotel?”

  I fling open the office door, I don’t know from what reservoir of strength, and run down the corridor to the stairs.

  “Who’s Evelyn?” Clara calls after me.

  “My daughter. Our daughter!”

  “My God! And you left her with Lydia?”

  I can’t answer her; my terror paralyzes my throat. And I have no breath to waste on words. No time to think through what Clara has told me—the real Clara, she claims, the one I met briefly in Cornwall, with her gray dress and her gray face, and yet so eerily echoing the other Clara, the Lydia-Clara, like two saplings grafted from the same tree, one watered with tears and the other with champagne.

  Outside, the street is deserted, except for Samuel’s Ford and the Packard parked on the opposite curb, not far from the entrance to the hotel, just between the umbrellas of light shed by a pair of streetlamps. Relief drenches me. They haven’t left yet; they haven’t taken her away. And then: Of course not. Stupid woman. They need me, don’t they? If this new Clara is telling me the truth. If Simon wrote me the truth.

  Or perhaps she clings to this last card—the legal fact of our marriage—in case she finds herself in need again.

  They need my fortune, don’t they? The fortune Simon left to me. Or far better, the fortune my father left to me. My God, what a windfall. They need me married to Samuel, perhaps, and then dead by some convenient accident, so common in this unruly state, rife with disease and predators.

  Or maybe they haven’t left because this woman is the liar. This woman is the false Clara.

  My head hurts. My guts ache. My right hand throbs beneath the bandage.

  Clara catches up and joins me on the pavement, breathless, clutching her hat. I turn to her and grip her arm. “Tell me something, quickly. How did your parents die?”

  “My parents? What do you mean? They died of the ’flu.”

  “Are you certain? Absolutely certain? You were there, you nursed them.”

  She looks bewildered. “Of course I’m certain. I came down with it myself, the day after you arrived. It was weeks before I recovered. Poor Simon, he was beside himself.”

  Her expression is utterly without guile. I release her arm and say, “Do you know how to drive?”

  “Yes.” She hesitates. “Well, a bit.”

  “Wait in the Packard. Don’t go inside, or they’ll know I’ve caught on.”

  “But what about you?”


  I turn away without answering and push my two hands on the revolving door of the Phantom Hotel, until it gives way into the lobby.

  The desk clerk looks up with surprise. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”

  “Good evening, Clay.” (The clock above the lobby mantel reads half past two o’clock.)

  “Good—good evening. Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Are you—shall I call a doctor?”

  “No, thank you, Clay. I’m not hurt.”

  I walk across the lobby carpet without another word, conscious of the blood on my clothes, the state of my hair. I avoid the clerk’s gaze, though I can tell he’s shocked, he’s thinking of reaching for the telephone and calling the police, raising the alarm, and I suppose that Samuel probably had the wit to use the back entrance, where no hotel staff might be encountered at this hour.

  I reach the elevator and step inside, and I speak very gently. “Ninth floor, please, Potter.”

  Potter starts from his daze and says, “Yes, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.” Operates the grille and the door, turns the lever, and only then does he catch a glimpse of me on the shiny brass interior. He makes another start, fully awake now, and turns his head. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”

  “Yes, Potter?”

  “Have you had an accident, ma’am? Do you need a doctor?”

  “No, thank you.” I stare very hard at the elevator dial, the creeping hand. “I don’t suppose Mr. Fitzwilliam and his sister have been out tonight, have they?”

  “No, ma’am. Not in my elevator.”

  “Thank you, Potter.”

  A light appears on the board of numbers next to Potter’s shoulder. The call signal for the ninth floor.

  “Why, now. That might be Mr. Fitzwilliam right this second,” Potter says, voice of wonder, waiting for me to reply, to shed some illumination on these mysterious doings, but I don’t reply. I wait for the hands, the damned hands to reach the raised brass 9 at the end of the dial, and the car jolts and stops, and Potter rises from his velvet stool and opens the door, making visible a slight female figure behind the grille, holding a sleeping Evelyn in her slender arms.

  “My goodness! Virginia!” she says. “Have you had an accident?”

  Chapter 29

  Outside Winter Park, Florida, July 22, 1922

  We are flying through the warm night in Samuel’s Model T Ford. I lie in the backseat with Evelyn, pretending to sleep, while Lydia—I can’t quite seem to comprehend this—Lydia and Samuel sit quietly up front. Samuel is driving, and he does it well, changing gears smoothly and taking every turn at just the right angle, not too fast or too slow, clean and rapid.

  Because my eyes are closed—feigning sleep, remember?—I can’t see the two of them, occupying the front seat, side by side. Every so often one of them speaks, but neither voice is loud enough to overcome the roar of the engine, and if I weren’t so terrified and determined, so invincibly and uncontrollably alert, I might fall asleep. I am so tired. The night is so warm. The vibration of the motor so soothing. In my arms, Evelyn lies beautifully unconscious, her eyelids twitching from time to time in the grip of some dream I cannot fathom. I stroke my thumb against her forehead, like a promise.

  We drive west, toward Maitland. Fifty miles away. I didn’t have a choice, really. No chance except to conceal my suspicions, to do nothing that might rouse them to some kind of rash, violent action. I have no one else. No one left to help me. No one left to trust. In all the world, there’s only me and Evelyn. And my eyes release a pair of tears, one at each corner, which melt into the cloth beneath my head and stick my eyelashes together, because of what I have done this night. This awful night.

  At some point we stop at a service station, or maybe just one of those farm stands with a gasoline pump, and Samuel honks and raises his voice to rouse the proprietor. I yawn and raise my head, as if the commotion’s woken me from my rest, and Lydia turns her head and smiles at me.

  “Go back to sleep, darling. We’ll be there soon.”

  The owner emerges, swearing a little, and he and Samuel engage in some kind of negotiation about how much a fellow should charge for a few gallons of gasoline in the middle of the night. Lydia gets out of the car and walks a few yards away, into the grass, where she lights a cigarette and stares at the dark road ahead, propping her elbow in the palm of the other hand. Evelyn stirs in my arms and opens her eyes, and I tell her the same thing Lydia’s just told me.

  Go back to sleep, darling. We’ll be there soon.

  On the road again, about a half an hour later, Samuel and Lydia begin to argue. Their voices rise. Evelyn twitches in her sleep, and I crack open my eyes, just a little, as if that will somehow make the words more clear.

  Of course, I can’t see much, just the outline of Samuel’s ear and the profile of Lydia’s nose against the dim sodium glow of the headlights. She’s turned her head toward him, and she’s doing most of the talking. I have to concentrate to hear her words, down here on the rear seat, holding Evelyn in my arms.

  Listen, Virginia. For God’s sake, listen. You have got to pay the strictest attention to these words. You have got to figure out what they’re saying to each other. You have got to know what they’re doing.

  “. . . not going to invite you, Samuel. For God’s sake. She’s a . . . [mumbling] . . . just go in there and take her.”

  Samuel barks something back. I can’t seem to catch my breath; the tiny, feigned rhythm of my chest isn’t enough to keep up with a desperate new desire for more air. More oxygen.

  “. . . be rape, you damned fool, my God . . . wants you . . . half in love with you already, or haven’t you . . .”

  More from Samuel, of which I can distinguish nothing, since his face continues to meet the road instead of his companion.

  “Yes, she will.” Louder, now, and passionate, the way you speak when you don’t realize how loud you are. “She’s the kind of woman who falls in love with the men she sleeps with. And she’s dying for it, look at her. Hasn’t been properly fucked in years, poor thing. Just be bold for once. Unless you don’t think you’re capable.”

  Samuel turns at last, so I can hear him. “Unlike you, I haven’t had practice.”

  “At what?”

  “Sleeping with someone I don’t love.”

  My throat catches in some kind of gasp. I dig my fingers into my opposite wrist, praying the little noise goes unnoticed, and maybe there is a God after all, maybe He’s allowing me some little crumb of mercy from His table, because a yard or two away, in the seat before me, Lydia’s shadowed profile doesn’t flinch.

  Yes. The real Lydia. I know that now.

  “Don’t be stupid. You don’t need to love her. She’s pretty enough. She was pretty enough for Simon, wasn’t she?”

  Samuel turns his head and replies briefly.

  Laughter. “Well, you can come to me when you’re done with her. That should thrill you, shouldn’t it? You chaps are all promiscuous devils at heart.”

  He makes some kind of movement, touching her I think, angry, and she makes a little cry and tilts her head back almost joyously, reveling in whatever complicated manipulation is transpiring between them. Reveling, I think, in her power to anger him like this, because he can’t bear that she’s instructing him to seduce another woman. Because he loves her so much more than she loves him. She says, head still back: “It’s just for a little while, just until she agrees. And then we’re free.”

  “Free,” he says bitterly.

  “Free,” she says, and she curls down, out of sight, and Samuel makes a noise, a soft howl, a groan, a strange call of anguish and capitulation, and his hands clench hard on the steering wheel. For some minutes there is the most teeming, active silence, a replacement of noise with emotion, an interminable rising tension, until Samuel releases a series of sharp, quiet breaths and Lydia lifts her head, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, straightening her dress against her shoulders, tucking her hair back into place.

  As she does so, a glance happens to fall on the backseat.
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  “Pull over, darling,” she says. “She’s awake.”

  They didn’t want to have to do this, Lydia assures me in a kind voice. It’s just that there was no other way.

  “If you needed money, I would have given it to you,” I say.

  “Of course you would. You’re such a darling.” She asks Samuel for a cigarette, and he pats his jacket pocket until he finds a cigarette case. Hands her one. Lights it for her. She smiles as she takes it out of her mouth and releases the first cloud of smoke like a ghost into the air, luminous in the glow from the Ford’s headlights. Behind her, the sky is still dark and heavy, the dawn unknown. “But you see, it’s my money, really. My father’s company. My orchards, too. That was part of the marriage settlement, you know. Papa’s grand idea, to bring together the fruit and the ships into a single empire. He was obsessed with it.”

  “But you don’t give a damn about empires, not really. You don’t care about the business itself. You just want to keep anyone else from having it.”

  Lydia stares at me. Waves her hand to clear the smoke, which hangs about foggily in this thick night air. “Tell me something. How long have you known?”

  I press my lips together.

  “Oh, just tell me. My goodness. What does it matter?”

  “Since this evening. When Clara arrived.”

  “Clara!”

  “Yes. The real Clara, I mean.”

  Lydia smiles. “Oh, right-ho. Of course. I suppose I knew she would turn up eventually. But where is she now?”

  I shrug my ignorance, and it’s the truth. The sidewalk was empty when we left the hotel, the Packard untouched. No sign that Clara had been there at all, and it occurred to me, in that instant, that I hadn’t told her about Simon. Or did she still believe he had died in February?