A Hundred Summers Page 5

  “Oh, let me think.” Budgie tapped her pointed chin. “Well, for one thing, she used to swim naked in the ocean, in the morning, before everyone else was up.”

  Kiki rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know that.”

  “She still does, does she?” Budgie laughed again. “In the little cove near your house, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, well. I’ll have to come over some morning, for old times’ sake. Even though dawn isn’t my style at all.” Budgie disengaged her arm from Nick and bent down. The motion made the neckline of her dress gape away from her skin, exposing the slim curves of her breasts. She was not, it seemed, wearing anything underneath. “Why, look at you! You’re the very image of Lily. Isn’t she, Nick?” She looked back over her shoulder.

  My hand tightened around Kiki’s, drawing her against my leg.

  Nick crossed his arms and spoke in a low voice: “There’s a resemblance, naturally.”

  “Except for that dark hair, of course. And all that tanned skin! How has she managed to get so brown already, Lily?” Budgie straightened and looked at me with laughing eyes.

  “She was out playing on the beach all day.”

  All at once, I became conscious of the preternatural quiet saturating the veranda. The clink of glasses, the hum of conversation: everything had settled into stillness. A breeze stirred between us, loosening my already unruly hair; I tucked a strand behind my ear and tried to ignore the sidelong gazes pressed to my back, the finely tuned attention in the air.

  “Lucky girl, to have such skin. Oh, look. You’re empty already.” She placed her hand on Nick’s arm, her left hand. Three square diamonds competed for precedence on her ring finger, overwhelming the slim gold band that contained them. “Darling, be a gentleman and refill Lily’s glass.”

  Nick held out his open palm. I had forgotten how large his hands were, the way they dwarfed mine. “What are you having, Lily?” he asked.

  I placed the glass against his fingers. “Gin and tonic.”

  He turned to Budgie. “Anything I can get for you, darling?”

  “I’ll have the same.” Without warning, Budgie linked her arm into mine. “We’ll have a nice chat while you’re gone, won’t we, Lily?”

  “I ought to find my mother and Aunt Julie. We’re supposed to have dinner.”

  “Oh, join us. They should join us, Nick, shouldn’t they?” She turned, but Nick had already disappeared in search of gin. “Well, I’m sure he’ll agree. He’ll be delighted to catch up with you, after all these years.”

  “I can’t speak for my mother. . . .” My skin shrank away from the touch of her arm. I took a step back, as if put off balance by the unfamiliar pressure. Kiki turned her face up, looking at me anxiously.

  “Oh, please, Lily. I’ve been so eager to see you again.” A new note entered her voice, or rather left it: a shedding of brightness. Her arm tightened and pulled me back. “I’ve missed you, honey. We used to have such good times. Sometimes I think . . .”

  “Lily! There you are.”

  Mrs. Hubert’s voice bolted between us, so suddenly that Budgie’s arm jerked back as if caught in some naughtiness by a sharp-eyed teacher.

  I followed the sound to the corner of the veranda, from which Mrs. Hubert advanced with a purposeful stride, sparing not a glance for Budgie, nor for the interested eyes following her progress over the rims of an army of highball glasses.

  “We’ve been wondering where you got to. I’ve asked your mother to join us for dinner tonight. We’re inside, I’m afraid, but surely you’ve had enough sea air for one evening.” Her voice was laden with meaning.

  I hesitated and looked at Budgie, whose face had stiffened into a false smile. “Budgie has just asked me to join her and Nick. You remember Budgie, don’t you, Mrs. Hubert?”

  “Of course I remember Budgie.” She finished her sentence before turning her gaze to Budgie herself. “How do you do. It’s Mrs. Greenwald now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Mrs. Hubert passed right over the customary congratulations, and instead said: “What a stylish dress you’re wearing, Mrs. Greenwald. You look like a film star.” Her tone conveyed exactly what she thought of film stars.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hubert. You’re looking well. I can’t believe . . .”

  “I’m afraid, however, I must steal Lily and Kiki away. We’re deep in discussion for the Fourth of July party at the moment, and I can’t possibly spare her.”

  This was news to me, as I hadn’t volunteered for the Fourth of July committee this year.

  “The Fourth of July party?” piped up Kiki. “But Lily . . .”

  “Lily always has a place on the committee,” said Mrs. Hubert. “Isn’t that right, Lily?”

  I wasn’t prepared to argue. The thought of sharing dinner with Budgie and Nick pressed against my brain with all the tenderness of a hot knife. “Yes, of course. I’m very sorry, Budgie. Perhaps another evening.”

  “Another evening?” It was Nick, returning with two highball glasses, still fizzing invitingly above the ice.

  “I’m afraid we’re dining without the Danes tonight, darling.” Budgie snatched her gin from his hand.

  Nick held out the other glass to me. “What a shame.”

  “Mrs. Hubert, I don’t know if you’ve met my husband, Nick Greenwald.”

  “I know Mr. Greenwald.” Mrs. Hubert took my arm. “Come along, Lily. Kiki, my dear.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Greenwald,” said Kiki. “Good-bye, Mr. Greenwald.”

  But Mrs. Hubert was already towing us across the veranda. I heard Nick’s Good-bye, Miss Dane float behind me in the air, across the heads and hats and glasses of the members of the Seaview Club, and I wondered which one of us he meant.

  “WELL, THAT’S OVER,” said Mrs. Hubert. “I’m astonished she had the nerve.”

  “Who?”

  “Who. Budgie, that’s who. Though of course you know exactly what I meant. You always do, Lily Dane, though you look so serene.”

  Mother climbed into the car, next to Aunt Julie, who was driving. The doorman closed the door firmly behind her. I leaned forward to kiss Mrs. Hubert’s cheek. “Good night, Mrs. Hubert. Thank you for dinner.”

  “Anytime, my dear. With any luck, they’ll give up on the club before long, and you won’t have to bother with me.” She angled her face toward the side of the veranda, where Nick and Budgie were still presumably lingering over dinner. They had chosen a table for two in a direct line from the window of the dining room, so that every time I glanced outside, as I always did, their twin figures were superimposed upon my view of the familiar ocean. “Determined to wait us all out, I see,” Mrs. Hubert went on, watching my expression. “She’s got nerve, I’ll say that.”

  “She always did.” I dug my fingernails into my palm in an effort to clear my head, which was swimming in a pleasant if unfamiliar pool of gin, followed by wine. I had chosen the combination with the exact intent of banishing from my brain the crucifying image of Budgie and Nick having dinner tête-à-tête, though logically I knew they had done so before, and did so often. They were married, after all. My drunkenness had taken some effort, because every single member of the club, it seemed, had come to our table in a show of support, and I had had to concentrate very hard to keep my words whole and separate and reasonably sensible. “In any case, good night, Mrs. Hubert. I . . .” Something flickered in my brain, interrupting the timeless rhythm of a social farewell. “I’m sorry. What did you say? Give up on the club?”

  “Well, we can’t throw her out, can we? She’s paid the dues herself, God knows how, all these years since her father died. The damned bylaws. But if no one gives her any notice, or invites her anywhere . . .”

  “But why?” I asked, foggily. “Budgie’s lived here all her life.”

  Mrs. Hubert put her hand on my arm. “She knew what she was doing when she married Nick Greenwald. If she wanted to marry money—and I suppose she had to—she could have had her p
ick. She chose him.” She nodded toward the weathered gray cedar shingles of the club entrance, lit by two anemic yellow bulbs on either side of the door. “And brought him here tonight, of course, in front of all of us.”

  Through the confused tangle of my feelings for Nick and for Budgie, through the anger and resentment and the rawness of my own nerves beneath the gin and wine, I felt, against everything, a surge of outrage.

  She’s old, I thought, staring at Mrs. Hubert’s face, at its creases and flaws accentuated by the shadowing effect of the porch lights. Her ideas are too deep-set to be changed. There’s no point in trying.

  Besides, why should I defend Nick Greenwald, of all people? I had surrendered all claim to him long ago, in that bitter winter of 1932. He had surrendered all claim to me.

  Aunt Julie honked the horn.

  “I must go,” I said. “Kiki?”

  I looked around for her bobbing dark head, but she was nowhere to be seen. I called out, “Aunt Julie, is Kiki in the car with you?”

  Aunt Julie and Mother glanced into the back, nearly bumping heads. “No,” said Aunt Julie. “I thought she was with you.”

  My shoulders sagged. “She’s gone off again.”

  Aunt Julie threw her hands up in the air. “Again. For goodness’ sake. Can’t you keep track of the child?”

  “Go on ahead. I’ll find her.”

  Aunt Julie put her hands on the steering wheel. “You’re sure?”

  “It’s a short walk along the beach. Plenty of moon.”

  Aunt Julie tapped her fingers against the rim, considering. She turned to Mother and asked her something in a low voice, too low for me to hear. Mother’s shoulders shrugged against the cloth-covered seat.

  “All right, then,” said Aunt Julie. “Let us know when you’re back.”

  My mother said to be careful, over the rush of gravel beneath the tires.

  Mrs. Hubert shook her head. The diamonds flashed from the lobes of her ears. “You’re a martyr, my dear. Check the bar. Jim’s been feeding her ginger ales all night, on the sly.”

  But Kiki wasn’t near the bar, nor was she chatting with the old ladies in the dining room, nor was she helping them dry the dishes in the kitchen: none of her usual haunts, in fact.

  I wasn’t worried yet, not quite. For one thing, there was the gin, still humming in my veins. For another, Kiki had been an absconder from the moment she could crawl. I’d spent the larger part of the last six years chasing her down in our apartment, on the pathways of Central Park, around the dinosaur skeletons in the Museum of Natural History, through the ladies’ underwear department at Bergdorf’s. All the doormen on our stretch of Park Avenue knew to snag her and hold her for me, should she come racing down the sidewalk alone without her shoes or, very often, her dress; I once had to march through the gentlemen’s restroom of the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal in order to fetch her, which caused one portly old businessman to fumble for his nitroglycerin tablets and another to make me an indecent offer on the spot.

  For an instant, I’d been tempted to accept.

  “Have you seen Kiki?” I asked the ladies in the dining room, one by one.

  Why, no. They hadn’t. Had I checked the bar?

  I checked the bar again, and the ladies’ room, and found Mr. Hubert groping for his eyeglasses in the foyer and asked him to check the gentlemen’s restroom. I waited outside with my fingers knit tightly behind my back, listening to him open the stalls and call her name. Then the sound of water trickling in elderly fits and starts; a flush; a pause, and the whoosh of the faucet.

  I waited.

  “Oh! Kiki. No, no sign of her, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Hubert, when he emerged. “Have you checked the bar?”

  Adrenaline, the scientists called it. I had read an article about it, in Time magazine. Adrenaline made your heart thump and your limbs go light, in a natural response to the perception of danger. I was familiar with adrenaline by now. Every time Kiki absconded, it coursed along the channels of my body like an old friend. By the time I scooped her up into my arms, I would be shaking, unable to speak in complete sentences.

  Of course she was perfectly safe. Kiki was a sensible girl. She might ignore most of the small rules, but she generally abided by the important ones. She wouldn’t go out in the water by herself, she wouldn’t go running along the jetty at night. I just had to find out where she’d gone, and she would be safe, amusing herself with something, her flexible imagination stretching itself to new lengths.

  But the glands of my body didn’t know that, had never known that. Not since the moment she was born.

  I moved outside, onto the veranda, where the rush of ocean against the sand had magnified in the darkness. All the tables were empty now, drinks and dinner finished. Even Nick and Budgie had left.

  I cupped my trembling hands around my mouth. “Kiki!” I called.

  A wave broke in a slow crash upon the beach, its white foam lit by the gibbous moon.

  “Kiki!” I called again.

  A seagull screamed overhead, and another. Something dropped in the sand, and the birds swooped down, squabbling. I thought, I wish I could travel forward half an hour, when Kiki would undoubtedly, undoubtedly, be safe and alive in my arms, and not have to endure this.

  I had to be sensible. It was time to think like Kiki. If I were Kiki, and it was time to leave for home, why would I run off? What unfinished business might I have left behind?

  Her cardigan. Had she left it somewhere?

  No, she’d had that on at dessert. I remembered, because I’d had to roll up the sleeves for her so she wouldn’t stain them with her chocolate ice cream.

  Hair ribbons?

  Shoes?

  I was grasping at impossibilities now. Of course she had her hair ribbons. Of course she had her shoes. But there was nothing else, was there? No other children around, no one to say good-bye to. Had she been talking about anything in particular at dinner?

  If she had, I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t been listening, had I? I’d been drinking and numbing myself, chatting with the grown-ups, my mind careening among its own preoccupations. As if anything else were as important as Kiki.

  “Kiki!” I called again, screaming her name, but my voice was lost and tiny amid the roar of the Atlantic.

  I tore off my shoes and stumbled down the steps into the sand. Logic had fled, leaving only the adrenaline. I was one pulsing, panicked vessel of adrenaline.

  “Kiki!” I screamed, wallowing in the sand, stumbling over the hem of my dress. “Kiki!”

  A horn tooted from the club driveway, impatient.

  I stopped. The driveway? Surely she hadn’t gone darting among the departing cars, in the twilight crossed by headlamps. Surely she hadn’t seen Mother and Aunt Julie roar off in the car and thought we’d left her behind.

  I hovered, torn. Abandon the beach for the driveway? Which was the likeliest possibility? Which was the greater danger? I couldn’t think. I wanted to move, not to think.

  Fight or flight, the scientists called it, as if a scientist were ever moved to do either. As if a scientist in his laboratory had any idea how precious a little girl could be, how infinitely important, how deeply and passionately loved. How silken her hair under your cheek, how warm and promising her shape in your arms.

  “Kiki!” I screamed again, down the length of the beach.

  Was that a movement, flickering in the darkness?

  I froze and listened, listened, to the water moving in my left ear and the pulse hammering in my right.

  Again. Like something passing between my eyes and the porch lights, as they stretched like a diamond string down Seaview’s long neck.

  “Kiki!” I burst into a run, scrambling for footing in the deep sand. “Kiki!”

  She appeared out of nowhere, one second darkness and porch lights and the next second Kiki, running forward with her perfect spiral conch brandished triumphantly in her right hand. She threw herself into my arms and said, “Look! We found it!”
>
  “Oh, darling. Oh, darling.” I sank into the sand, weighed down by her wriggling body and my own trembling legs. “I was so worried. Oh, darling.”

  “Why were you worried? Mr. Greenwald helped me. He’s awfully nice.”

  My arms locked. I looked up, and there was Nick, ten or twelve feet away, just within range of vision, standing as still as a cliff face and about as friendly. His hat was off, held in his hand against his thigh.

  “Mr. Greenwald?” I repeated thickly.

  “I saw her running down the steps, just as we were leaving. I thought I’d better follow, just in case.” He brushed his hat against his leg once, twice. “She was only looking for some seashells, it seems.”

  “He was so nice, Lily. We looked all over until we found them. He used his lighter so we could see.” She turned and looked at Nick adoringly.

  “I hope you thanked him, darling.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Greenwald.”

  “You’re welcome.” He hesitated. “You can call me Nick, if you like.”

  “No, no,” I said. “We have a strict rule about addressing grown-ups. Don’t we, Kiki?”

  “We do.” Kiki hugged me. “Is Mother angry?”

  “No, she and Aunt Julie left already. We’re walking back along the beach.” I rose and took her hand in mine and turned to face Nick. “Thank you for finding her. She does that often, running off. I should be used to it by now.”

  “I heard you calling. I tried to answer, but the wind seemed to catch it. You’re not walking back, are you?” It was too dark to see his face, too dark to tell if he really cared.

  “It’s not so far. Half a mile or so.”

  “In the darkness?”

  “There’s a moon.”

  He stepped forward, shaking his head. “We’ve got the car out front. We can drop you off.”

  “No! No, thank you. I enjoy the walk.”

  “But surely it’s too far for your sister, at this hour.”

  “Kiki’s a good walker. Aren’t you, darling?”

  She jumped up and down. “I want to see Mr. Greenwald’s car! Oh, let’s go home with them.”

  “Lily,” said Nick, “don’t refuse on my account.”