The Summer Wives_A Novel Read online

  Still, he loved books, especially old ones. He taught me to read when I was very small, two or three years old, and by the time I was five we were decanting Shakespeare aloud to each other, each of us taking parts. We sat in his study, a fusty, tiny, comfortable room with large windows. I took the leather chesterfield sofa while he filled the armchair nearby. We drank cocoa and the air smelled of chocolate and leather and especially books—you know the smell I mean—I don’t know if it’s the ink or the paper or the glue in the bindings, but it’s a very particular odor. I still smell it, somewhere in my memory, and it carries me back to that room and the sound of my father’s voice as he began John of Gaunt’s dying speech—

  Methinks I am a prophet new inspired

  And thus expiring do foretell of him . . .

  He had a beautiful round baritone, and as he sat there in his armchair and spoke, one leg crossed over the other, wearing his soft shirt and tweed jacket and woolen vest while his blue eyes fixed not on the page—he knew the words—but upon or rather through the opposite wall of the study, I might have thought he really was the Duke of Lancaster, the great Plantagenet prince, splendid in his despair. To my mind, there was no man more heroic than my father.

  This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,

  Dear for her reputation throughout the world,

  Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it

  (here his voice shook with agony)

  Like to a tenement or pelting farm:

  England, bound in with the triumphant sea

  Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

  Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame . . .

  And he named me Miranda. Prospero’s daughter, raised alone by her magician father on an uncharted island of fairies and strange creatures. I used to wonder why he chose that particular character, that particular daughter, that particular play. I think it had something to do with the sea, which he always loved, and with tempests, which also fascinated him. There may be more than that, but I’ll never know. He embarked for England—“This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this precious stone set in the silver sea”—on the second day of November 1943, when I was ten years old, and I last glimpsed him waving at the rail of a gray-painted troop ship, before it dissolved like a ghost into the dark mist of New York Harbor. That was all.

  Still, I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven the sea for swallowing up my father like that. As I stood there at the end of the Greyfriars dock, watching the lobster boat tear toward me, the drone of its engine filled me with an unnamable thrill. Terror or joy, I couldn’t tell. It just seemed to me that watery Neptune, having swallowed my father, was now spitting something back eight years later.

  Something in the shape of a stripling boy with dark, curling hair and tanned skin, who could rescue a man from drowning.

  3.

  Now, I didn’t know much about boats in those days, but I knew enough to grab the rope the young man tossed me and loop it tight around one of the bollards. The tide was high and slack, and the boat rode only a foot or two beneath the wooden planks. Inside the boat lay Popeye, coughing and wheezing, bleeding all over the place from I don’t know where.

  The young man lifted Popeye in his arms and hoisted him up toward the dock, where I hooked my arms around his shoulders and dragged him away from the edge. He was heavier than I thought, made of wet, compact bone and muscle, and my bare feet slipped against the wood. “Careful!” exclaimed the young man, leaping up beside me, and he tore open Popeye’s shirt and checked his heart, his breath, because he’d stopped wheezing and now lay limp in my arms.

  “The doctor’s on his way!” I gasped out. “I saw you from the window.”

  “Ah, Jesus Mary. His arm.”

  I looked at Popeye’s left arm, which was bent horribly, leaking blood.

  “Here,” said the youth, “hold it steady while I lift him. Can you do that? One, two, three.”

  I scrambled to my feet and bent to cradle Popeye’s elbow while the young man scooped him carefully upward, lifting that weathered old fellow like—I don’t know—like a knight would lift a damsel. Now I could see the bone sticking through the skin, through the wet plaid shirt, but I wasn’t going to be sick, oh no. I thought, the nurses in the war saw far worse, didn’t they? Some nurse maybe tended my father. They hadn’t flinched, and neither would I. I laid Popeye’s arm across his middle as best I could, and we started down the dock to the lawn. Popeye remained still. I prayed he wasn’t dead. The sun hit the side of my face as we loped up the slope of the lawn, past the boathouse and the tents, up the steps of the terrace and around back to the kitchen, where the maid was waving for us.

  “Put him right here, Joseph! I cleared the kitchen table. Doctor’ll be a minute. Oh Jesus Mary!” she cried. “Look at him! What happened?”

  Down he went on the table. Joseph checked his chest again and swore. Bent over his face and pinched his nose and laid his mouth on Popeye’s mouth, breathed the air of his own lungs into Popeye’s lungs while the maid ran for kitchen towels or something. I just stood there, holding Popeye’s arm together, not knowing what else to do. After a breath or two, Popeye started to heave, and Joseph rolled him quick on his side. Out came another quart or so of water, more sputtering, a groan of misery, and the doctor burst through the door right that second, dressing gown flapping around his legs, thank God.

  4.

  There has never been any such thing as a hospital on Winthrop Island, as I later learned. Either you were sick enough to head for the hospital on the mainland, or you made do in your bed at home. This doctor—Dr. Huxley—didn’t have a regular practice here. He was a summer resident who made himself available for emergencies on the understanding that he wasn’t to be disturbed during cocktail hour or golf.

  Lucky for Popeye, the good doctor was an early riser who just happened to live half a mile up Winthrop Road from Greyfriars. He set Popeye’s broken arm and stitched up the holes in his hide, and Mr. Fisher had him put up in one of the guest bedrooms with strict instructions to watch for signs of pneumonia.

  “What about his family?” I said. “Shouldn’t we telephone them or something?”

  Joseph looked down at me kindly. “He hasn’t got any family. Wife died two years ago. Kids moved to the mainland.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame.”

  “That’s the way it is on the Island, I guess. Kids move away.”

  He was blushing a little, looking down at me, and I realized I still wore my old green flannel nightgown, which was wet with seawater and blood and stuck to my skin. I crossed my arms over my chest. Mr. Fisher and Dr. Huxley were upstairs with the maid, settling the patient in some spare bedroom or other. The kitchen was growing warm as the sun penetrated the window glass, and I noticed the smell of something baking, something sugary and vanilla-scented, something for the wedding, so I supposed the oven was on, too, adding to the general heat. I stared at the kitchen table, which Joseph had helped me clean up just now, dishcloths and hot water and vinegar that still stained the air. All immaculate, erased, you’d never know what happened. Just any old big kitchen on any old big summer estate. Two people standing in awkward proximity, like a pair of actors who’ve lost their place in the script.

  Joseph started to turn away, toward the door.

  “Want some coffee?” I said.

  “Have you got any made? I mean you needn’t make fresh.”

  “I think so.” I went to the electric percolator on the counter and lifted it. Heavy. Behind me, there was a faint scrape of a chair leg on the linoleum. I opened up a few cabinets, looking for coffee cups.

  Joseph cleared his throat. “You must be the daughter, then. Mrs. Schuyler’s daughter.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, I’m sure sorry I ruined the big day for you.”

  “Oh gosh, that’s nothing. I mean, he’s alive, isn’t he? That’s got to be good luck. Thanks to you. The day’s not ruined at all. Do you want cream or anything?” />
  “I’ll get it.”

  The chair scraped again, and from the corner of my eye I saw him step to the icebox and open the door. He stood about an inch under six feet, and he still wore his yellow oilskin overalls atop his wet shirt, though his hair was beginning to dry in soft little waves around his ears. I turned toward him and offered the coffee cup.

  “Thanks,” he said, dribbling a bit of cream from a small blue pitcher. “You?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He moved the pitcher over my cup and tilted it so the narrowest possible rope of yellow-white cream fell inside. “Say when.”

  “When.”

  He moved away, putting the cream back in the icebox, and I turned to the window so he wouldn’t catch me looking at the place where his hair met the back of his neck. I didn’t know much about boys, had hardly spent any time around a boy, and I couldn’t tell how old he was. Twenty? Twenty-one? Older than me, for certain. Though his skin was fresh and unlined, there was something fully grown about his shoulders, something wide and weight-bearing. And his voice had an easy, mature timbre, not like a boy’s voice at all.

  Older than me. Maybe not all that much, but enough. Not a boy, after all, but a grown-up, a man who worked for his bread, whereas I was still a child, only just graduated from school. Eighteen last February. Eighteen going on eight, as unworldly as a kitten in a basket.

  I stirred my coffee and sucked the spoon. Joseph came up next to me, not too close, and said, “How do you like the Island? You came up the other night, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful.” I set the spoon on the saucer. “How did you know? When I came up, I mean.”

  “Miss Schuyler, here’s the first thing you need to know about the Island. Everyone knows each other’s business. All of it, about five minutes after it happens, if not sooner. Spreads through the air or something.” He paused to sip his coffee. “Also, I saw Isobel driving you back from the ferry.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  The window overlooked the lawn and the tents. Sometime during the fuss of the past hour, an old rust-red Ford truck had driven onto the grass, and a couple of men were now unloading crates from the back. Crystal and china, I guessed. I could just see the edge of the dock, and the tip of Popeye’s boat tethered up on the other side against the pale blue sky.

  “It’s got the whole island buzzing,” Joseph said.

  “What has?”

  “Why, the wedding. Mr. Fisher’s a big man around here.”

  I shifted my feet and looked down at the still, muddy surface of my coffee. “I don’t really know him that well. He’s been awfully nice to Mama.”

  “I hear they met at your school? Your mother and Mr. Fisher?”

  “Yes. Last year.” I paused, and the silence seemed so heavy and almost rude, given the tender, friendly way he’d asked the question, I rushed on. “At Isobel’s graduation? One of the events. I don’t really know which one, there’s so many of them, ceremonies and parties and things. My mother was a secretary in the president’s office, you see, ever since my father—well, since my father . . .” I stuttered to a stop, brought up short in the middle of all that flustered babbling by the thought of my father.

  “Killed in the war, wasn’t he?” Joseph said, without embarrassment.

  “Why, how did you know?”

  “Like I said, the Island’s been talking about this for weeks, Miss Schuyler. Not that I listen to gossip much. But you can’t help hearing a few things, even without trying. My grandmother, she runs the general store in town. There’s nothing she doesn’t know.”

  I glanced at him, and though he stared straight ahead, holding the cup to his lips like he was fascinated by the unloading of crystal and china, I thought he was smiling a little.

  “Is that so?” I said. “What else have you heard?”

  “Oh, just this and that.”

  You know, it’s a funny thing. I didn’t know this boy, this man. Just his name and face and approximate age, and the fact that he trapped lobsters for a living, that he could swim, that he was the kind of fellow who would jump in the sea to save another fellow from drowning. He was a stranger, but he wasn’t. We’d held a bleeding, broken man between the two of us; we’d watched the eternity of life pass before us. Now we shared a pot of coffee. Stared out the same window, breathed the same air. So he wasn’t a stranger, but he was.

  I set down my cup and turned around to hop up and sit on the counter. The clock on the opposite wall pointed its sharp black hands to a quarter past seven. A quarter past seven! I thought I’d lived a lifetime. I crossed my arms over my disgraceful nightgown and said—not to Joseph but to the room at large—“He taught at Foxcroft for eleven years. My father. He took a leave of absence to join up, so when he was killed, Miss Charlotte gave Mama a job to make ends meet. She’s like that, Miss Charlotte. Sort of tough and horsey, if you know what I mean, but heart of gold.”

  “What did he teach?”

  “Art. That’s why he volunteered, because he heard about what the Nazis were doing, looting and destroying all those treasures, and he couldn’t just—couldn’t stand by, he said . . .”

  “A good man, then.”

  “He was. Oh, he was. Of course, I was only eleven years old when he died. So maybe I never saw him as a real person, as somebody ordinary and fallen.”

  “No,” Joseph said. “He fought for something he believed in. That’s a hero in anyone’s book.”

  “Everybody fought. Mr. Fisher fought.”

  “Yes, he did. Lucky for your mother, he got out alive, though.”

  “Yes, lucky for her.”

  “They say she’s a real beauty, your mother.”

  “Mama? Oh yes. Haven’t you seen her?”

  “Not up close, no. Just the photograph in the local rag.”

  “Sometimes I just stare at her, you know, thinking it’s not possible anyone could be that beautiful. She was so young when she married Daddy. Only just eighteen. Can you imagine being a widow at twenty-nine? But she loved him so much, she just couldn’t look at anyone else for ever so long.”

  He moved a little, turning his head to look at me. “What about you? Happy about all this?”

  “Me? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “No reason.”

  “Mama’s happy, the happiest I’ve ever seen her, at least since Daddy died. You can’t mourn forever, can you?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And I guess Mr. Fisher loves her back, because he’s not marrying her for money, that’s for certain.”

  “A real Cinderella story, then.” He finished his coffee and moved to the sink. Rinsed out his cup. “Best be off. Got to take Silva’s tub back to the harbor. And Pops’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “Can’t you signal him in or something? There’s plenty of coffee left.”

  He smiled. “Pops’d never come in here. Not Greyfriars.”

  “Really? Why not? Mr. Fisher’s not some kind of snob, is he?”

  “A snob? No, nothing like that. I’ll say this about the Island. The Families and the locals, they respect each other, which is more than you can say of a lot of places like this.”

  “The Families?”

  “Summer residents. Like you.” He wiped his fingers on a dishtowel and held his hand out to me. “Real nice to meet you, Miss Schuyler. Wish it could have been under friendlier circumstances, of course, but it’s been a pleasure all the same.”

  I slid down from the counter and shook his hand. “It’s Miranda.”

  “Miranda.” He smiled again. “Admired Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration! Worth what’s dearest to the world.”

  I snatched at the edge of the counter behind me. I think my mouth made an amazed circle. Outside the window, which was cracked open an inch or two, the birds sang like mad, thrilled to pieces at the beauty of the morning, and Joseph just stared at me like we were sharing a secret, and he was waiting for me to find out what it was.

  Finally I
said, “Why, how do you know—”

  “Joseph! My goodness, what’s going on?”

  We turned to the doorway, where Isobel Fisher stood, long limbed and done up in curlers, her yellow dressing gown belted at the waist.

  5.

  I met Isobel Fisher at the same instant I stepped onto Winthrop Island for the first time, two nights before the wedding. The morning storms had cleared away, and the breeze was cool and smelled of ozone, of the ocean. She had come to meet the ferry, and when I saw her, leaning against a massive, venerable Oldsmobile 98, wearing a checked shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and billowy white trousers, I waved from the railing. We might not have known each other, but I recognized her face and the pale, corn-silk shade of her hair. She wore no cosmetics that I could see, except for a swath of cherry-red lipstick, perfectly drawn. I remember she wasn’t wearing a hat.

  The ferry’s engines ground and ground, shoving us alongside the dock in lazy, expert thrusts. Isobel’s gaze slid along the line of passengers at the rail, and when she found me at last, still waving, she straightened from the car and waved back. I don’t know if she actually recognized me. As the ferry knocked into place and the ferryman tossed the rope to the fellow on the dock, she swung her car keys from the index finger of her left hand, with no apparent regard for the monstrous diamond that perched a few digits down.

  That was Thursday evening, and there weren’t many other passengers. I came last down the ramp, staggering a little under the burden of the two old leather portmanteaus that contained nearly all I owned. My pocketbook banged between my wrist and the handle of the right-hand suitcase. As I reached the bottom and stepped onto the dock, Isobel went around to open up the back. “Just a minute!” she called, thrusting her head and shoulders inside, rummaging around. “I picked up the flowers from Mrs. Beardsley along the way. Was your journey perfectly horrible? I can’t believe you made it all by yourself, you brave thing.”

  Her torso emerged from the back of the Oldsmobile. She pushed back her pale hair and reached for one of the suitcases, and without any effort at all she lifted it up and heaved it inside. Even at school, her lean, straight-hipped athleticism had awed me. Nearly all the girls brought their own horses to Foxcroft, but Isobel had brought two—great, rangy, bloodthirsty beasts—and hunted them both all autumn. Once she’d broken her arm in a bad fall, and the sling had somehow suited her.