Local Girl Swept Away

  Daydreaming, I lost track of time. Before I knew it, it was almost seven and I had to run to the café. Most of the shops weren’t open yet. Tourists slept late and the locals, out early, didn’t need lighthouse key rings or sweaters for their dogs. By ten o’clock Commercial Street would be thronged with the usual assortment of characters: vacationing parents blocking the sidewalk with their double strollers, young men in short shorts, high heels, and silvery makeup handing out flyers for the drag shows, hand-holding women in matching Cape Cod sweatshirts, and a smattering of year-rounders trying to keep up a normal pace as they headed to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions.

  I loved all of it: the quiet, dawn beach and the pushy throngs on the sidewalk. The smell of fish on the wind and the scent of incense from the head shop. I loved the flapping boat flags strung across Commercial Street, faded after a season of sunlight, and the rainbow banners flying in front of stores selling everything from antique mirrors to lobster salt-and-pepper shakers. I breathed it in like pure oxygen, wondering if I would ever be able to live anywhere else.

  • • •

  “My last day for the season,” I said as I started another pot of coffee through the machine.

  “I know,” Char said. “Dad’ll give you some weekend shifts this fall if you want them. He likes you.”

  I laughed. “I guess you didn’t tell him about the syrup fiasco then?”

  “What he doesn’t know can’t come back to bite us in the ass,” she whispered.

  “If he needs help later in the fall, I’d love to pick up some shifts, but I want to get my portfolio together the next few weeks, not to mention all the other application stuff. Early decision deadline for RISD is November first. Money won’t matter if I don’t get in.”

  I picked up the full coffeepot and made the rounds of the room. The man at the table in the window, a regular customer who usually stayed long enough to read the New York Times front to back, asked for his fifth refill of the morning.

  Charlotte carefully sliced bagels, her bandaged finger proving it’s the most dangerous job in the café. When I came back behind the counter she said, “I can’t believe summer’s over already. And we’re seniors in high school. That’s just weird.”

  “I know.”

  “Has Lucas come back yet?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He’s coming back though, isn’t he?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t ask me. He doesn’t answer my e-mails.”

  “I always kind of liked Lucas. I mean, he’s a little goofy, but . . .” Charlotte’s voice trailed off and her eyeballs bulged as she looked over my shoulder. The bell on the door announced an entrance, but the look on Charlotte’s face was reporting a ghost. Who the hell had just come in?

  “Um, maybe you shouldn’t turn around,” Char said.

  But what else could I do? I couldn’t run into the kitchen and hide—I worked there.

  So I took a deep breath and turned slowly to face the customer. For just a moment I thought it was a ghost. But then I recognized Carla, her hair dyed the exact bold coppery-red that Lorna’s had been naturally, parted in the middle and hanging straight down the sides of her face. Her cheeks glowed with sparkly blush and her mouth was thick with dark red lipstick. Her bony legs looked translucent beneath short white shorts, and a skimpy tank top, which I was sure had once belonged to her daughter, drooped at her neck. She looked like Lorna, but Lorna old, haggard, scary, and probably out of her mind.

  “Well, look who works here!” Carla sang out. “I wondered what the hell happened to you!”

  “I, I came by the house,” I stuttered. “I knocked on the door, but nobody—”

  “Yeah, I was hiding out for a while. But then they told me they were gonna fire my ass from the store if I didn’t start coming in, and I only had about two nickels left in the bank, so I got my shit together. Onward!” She punched her right arm into the air, and then, a little unsteady on her platform sandals, gripped the countertop. “Nobody keeps Carla Trovato down!”

  I wondered if she was drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time she was wasted at ten in the morning. On the other hand, her regular personality was so bizarre, you couldn’t always tell.

  Charlotte disappeared into the kitchen, but I was sure she was listening to every word.

  “So you’re still managing Old Hat then?” I asked Carla.

  A low growl curled out of her mouth. “For what it’s worth. Nobody wants that old vintage crap anymore.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. The store always seems busy.”

  Carla’s lip turned up at the corner and I could feel her scorn coming before it hit me. “Whatayou know about it, wiseass? You think you’re so smart!”

  Her disgust ripped a hole in my memory. Lorna’s mother had always been like this—irritable and mean. You tried to feel sorry for her—husband gone, only child drowned—but it was hard. She didn’t allow sympathy.

  I had the same sick feeling in my stomach that I remembered having at ten when I first hung out at Lorna’s house. I’d tried to act nonchalant when her mother swore at her, but the poison between them infected me too. My parents cursed sometimes, when they were arguing or when their kids were driving them crazy, but their voices were never full of contempt like Carla’s. I didn’t know how Lorna could stand up under the ugliness. After a few visits to the Trovato house, I always asked Lorna to come to my place instead. She never argued.

  “Some of these idiots around here, they come into the store just to stare at me—I know they do.” Carla’s voice got louder as she ranted. “They don’t want to buy anything. They just look at me with their big, leaky cow eyes. They want me to start bawling in front of them or something. They want me to give ’em a show.” She grunted. “Fat chance!”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re doing okay,” I said, turning aside to ring up some other customers who were waiting by the cash register.

  “You think I’m doing okay?” Carla laughed loud enough to get the attention of the paper-reading man in the window who frowned at the disturbance. The couple at the cash register exchanged a meaningful glance as they pocketed their change and left. “God, I forgot how naïve you are, Jackie. You’re so clueless. Even Lorna used to say that.”

  She did not. I wiped any lingering trace of kindness from my face. “Can I get you something, Carla? Coffee?”

  Carla looked down at the red plastic watch flopping around her skinny wrist. “Damn it, I’m late again. Just give me a coffee to go. Large. Black.”

  My hand trembled as I poured the coffee into the paper cup. The liquid was very hot and under normal circumstances I would have given the customer a second cup to help absorb the heat, but there was nothing normal about these circumstances. Spill it all over yourself, I thought. I don’t care.

  Carla slapped a lid on the cup, oblivious to the coffee’s temperature, and tossed two dollar bills on the counter.

  “Come by the store,” she said as she headed for the door. “I’ll give you a discount.”

  As soon as she was out of sight, I fell back onto a stool. Charlotte was immediately beside me.

  “Oh, my God. That was Lorna’s mother, wasn’t it? She’s awful!”

  I nodded. “Good thing it’s my last day here for the season. Now that she knows where to find me she might stop by to insult me every morning.”

  “Was she always like this?”

  “Since I’ve known her. Like this and worse.”

  An ugly scene I’d witnessed years before flashed back to me, one I’d revisited often over the years. It must have been the summer we were twelve. I had a hand-me-down banana bike that had belonged to one or more of my brothers, and Lorna would perch on the seat behind me to ride out to the beach at Herring Cove. I still looked like a stick figure at that age and wore an old, worn-thin, racer-back tank suit, but Lorna was already filling out and she’d gotten a string bikini somewhere, maybe Goodwill, that fit her perfectly.

  She attracted a lot
of attention in that suit. Grown men would turn around and look at her, which gave me the creeps, but I think she kind of liked it. Finn and Lucas didn’t go to the beach with us much that summer, and looking back on it, I think they were probably uncomfortable around Lorna in that suit. Until then we’d just been four pals, and even though I had secret feelings for Finn, and I’m sure both Finn and Lucas had their dreams about Lorna, on the surface we were best friends in a perfectly sexless way. Until Lorna wore that bikini and made it impossible.

  So it was just the two of us at Herring Cove that day. We’d already been in the water to cool off and were just about to lie down on our towels when we heard her tearing up the sand toward us. Carla, drunk and mad. I don’t know where she came from. She must have been riding around with one of her drinking buddies and spotted us. She flew at Lorna, grabbing one of her arms and yanking it so hard I felt the pain in my own shoulder.

  “You stupid little slut!” she screamed. “What the hell are you doing prancing around out here half naked?”

  Lorna tried to pull away from her. People all around were staring at us and I knew she was embarrassed, but Carla was unstoppable once she got going.

  “You’re just asking for it, aren’t cha?” Carla yelled. “Advertising yourself like a cheap whore! You might as well just take the whole thing off!” She grabbed one of the strings at the side of Lorna’s bikini bottom and yanked the bow open.

  “Mom!” Lorna jumped away from her and managed to get the string tied again, but I could see her hands shaking.

  A middle-aged man who’d been sitting nearby with his whole family got up and came over to Carla and started telling her to leave the girl alone or he’d call the police. He had his cell phone out and everything. The beach was crowded and it felt like about a hundred people were staring at us. We were a cheap show for the tourists.

  While Carla cussed out the man with the cell phone, Lorna took off running down the beach. I figured she’d wait for me at the changing rooms, so I gathered up our towels and lotion and rode my bike there.

  I found her pacing around the outdoor drinking fountain. The look in her eyes was so murderous I thought if she’d had a gun or a knife she’d probably go back and finish Carla off. I kind of wanted to myself. Instead we rode to my house and didn’t say a word about it. Not then and not ever.

  “I can’t even imagine having a mother that whacked out,” Charlotte said. “When she first walked in, with that weird outfit and everything, I thought for a minute . . . I mean, she looked so much like . . .”

  “I know.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “It makes more sense when you see her mother.”

  I was stumped. “What makes more sense?”

  She flushed and turned aside, noisily rearranging dirty dishes in the plastic bin. “Well, I just mean, if you believe what some people are saying. Which I don’t, necessarily.”

  I stood up, putting myself in Charlotte’s line of vision. “What are some people saying?”

  “You know. That Lorna . . . that maybe . . . it wasn’t an accident.”

  I stumbled backward. “Who says that? Who?”

  “I don’t know. Some people. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Well, those people should shut the hell up! They didn’t even know Lorna!”

  “But her mother said it too, didn’t she? After the memorial service?”

  “Charlotte, are you really saying you believe that woman who was just in here? Who is obviously out of her mind?”

  The man in the window didn’t appreciate the continuing noise. He folded his unfinished newspaper under his arm and gave us a disgusted look as he headed out the door.

  “I’m not saying I believe it, just that I understand why people do,” she said. “Personally, I think she just fell. She wasn’t the suicidal type, was she?”

  “Lorna absolutely did not kill herself. I know that, Charlotte. I don’t know what happened, but I know it wasn’t that.” How could I not know what happened? I was there!

  Charlotte nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry I said anything.”

  I grabbed the plastic bin from her hands and took it back to the dishwasher, but I couldn’t put aside the disturbing conversation so easily. I came back out with a tray of clean coffee cups and banged it onto the counter. “I feel like I have to prove it now. I hate that people are talking about her like that.”

  “It’s a small town,” she said. “They’ll forget about it as soon as they have something else to talk about.”

  A young couple pushing a stroller came bumping through the door, arguing. Charlotte grabbed two menus and led them to a corner table.

  No, I thought, people wouldn’t forget about it. They’d remember the story they’d made up themselves starring Lorna as the girl who killed herself by jumping off the breakwater in the middle of a raging storm. She’d become part of the mythology of Provincetown, like the severed hand found in the dunes years ago, or the fishing boat that disappeared without a trace two miles outside the harbor. They’d turn her into a mermaid or something, and blame shipwrecks on her.

  If only I could figure out the truth. But already I could feel Lorna slipping away from me, lost not only to the waves, but also to gossip and rumor.

  10.

  My stomach tightened when I came around the corner and saw the JSAC gallery all lit up. It was opening night for the new season and Carolyn Winter, the artist whose show was hanging, had come up from New York for the occasion. Her canvases had been bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts—by museums all over the world. It wasn’t unusual for well-known artists to visit Jasper Street, but Carolyn Winter was Elsie’s old friend and she’d promised to introduce me tonight, which made me nervous. What were you supposed to say to famous people?

  The crowd spilled out the door onto the street, women in bright-colored clothes and men with scruffy beards in animated conversation. JSAC was the most exciting place in town, I thought, to everyone but Finn. Of course, he’d be here anyway. Rather than pay for a bartender, Elsie usually roped Finn into standing behind a table of cheap wine with a dark scowl on his face that stopped everybody but the total lushes from asking for a second free drink.

  “Sweetheart!” Elsie called as I walked into the small, boxy gallery. Her turquoise dress swirled around her hips as she turned away from the knot of people she was talking to and put her arm around my waist.

  “Big crowd, huh?”

  She nodded. “Carolyn has a following.”

  I stared at the walls, a little overcome by seeing the work of someone I admired at such close range. I’d purposely stayed away from the gallery the past few days while the canvases were being hung so that the spectacle of twenty-five Carolyn Winter paintings all hanging here together would overwhelm me. But what I always forgot was that openings were parties, which was frustrating to somebody like me who just wanted to stand quietly and look at the work. People walked in front of you, dropping cracker crumbs, spilling wine, and yakking endlessly. I’d have to come back later in the week to experience the paintings the way I wanted to.

  Elsie unwound a fuchsia silk scarf from her neck and tied it around mine, which lessened the navy blue cloak-of-invisibility look I had going. “This color looks great on you,” she said. She took my hand and led me into the main room where a lanky woman in a black dress and an enormous silver necklace was holding court. As always, the circle opened to admit Elsie.

  “Carolyn, this is Jackie Silva, the girl I told you about.”

  “Of course.” Carolyn Winter extended a clammy hand in my direction.

  “I’m honored to meet you,” I said in a hushed tone. “Elsie showed me your book and the pieces she owns and I just love your work!” The other people standing in the circle smiled at me condescendingly, as if I were twelve. What should I have said?

  “I’m happy to know the next generation finds something of interest in my work,” Carolyn Winter said, staring over my shoulder at someon
e behind me. I knew Finn would be incredibly annoyed by her, but Carolyn Winter was famous for good reason, and I was willing to put up with a little arrogance from someone whose work I admired so much.

  From out of nowhere, Cooper appeared. He smiled at me, which I imagined turned my face a lovely oven-baked red. “Jackie’s an artist, too,” he said to Carolyn Winter. “A good one. And she’s still in high school.”

  “Is she?” Carolyn Winter’s icy composure melted a little as she turned to Cooper. “And you should know about youthful talent. You were quite the prodigy yourself, weren’t you? An enfant terrible.”

  Cooper laughed easily and said, “I’m not really all that terrible.”

  “But you’ve published now, haven’t you? And rather successfully, I hear.”

  I could tell Cooper was pleased the guest of honor recognized him. It didn’t surprise me, though—he was the kind of person you didn’t forget.

  “Jackie makes the most wonderful photo-collages,” Elsie said, a valiant effort to bring the conversation back to me.

  But it was too late. Carolyn Winter was being drawn off to another circle of admirers and didn’t hear. I wasn’t surprised. She must meet young artists all the time—why would she be interested in me?

  “She’s busy now. I’ll show her the pieces I have at the house later this evening,” Elsie said, then flew off in another direction.

  But Cooper’s eyes were still fastened on me, and as the rest of the group followed the artist, he came closer. “Don’t stare at the star. Artists are skittish animals. You’ll scare her away.”

  “I wasn’t staring.”

  “Sure you were. Your eyes got huge and smoky. Beautiful, really.”

  I looked down at my ragged fingernails, ashamed that Cooper recognized the longing on my face.

  “Don’t let people like that impress you too much,” he said. “She’s just having her fifteen minutes of fame.”