Tigers in Red Weather (9 page)

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Ed said. “I came to say hello.”

“If you weren’t sneaking, then how would you know about my hiding place?”

“I know everything about this house,” Ed said, picking some imaginary dirt out from under his thumbnail.

“Oh, aren’t you just cool as a cucumber,” Daisy said, and stamped her foot on the braided rug. “You don’t know everything, Ed Lewis. I bet you don’t know even where my secret strongbox is.” She immediately regretted having said anything about the strongbox.

“It’s in the trapdoor in front of the wine cellar,” Ed said, not looking up from his nail. “Actually, you’re not the only one who has secret hiding places in this house.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

Ed just arched one eyebrow.

Daisy was infuriated. “You really are an imbecile. You’d better stop poking around my stuff, Ed Lewis. I mean it. If you don’t, I won’t pick you as my doubles partner for the round-robin.”

The threat was a real one, and it had the desired effect of silencing
her cousin. But she found she couldn’t stay mad at him for long. She was secretly glad to see him, even if he was irritating.

“Anyway,” Daisy said, shifting her weight. “Let’s go down to the Quarterdeck and see who’s around. I want to check my bike.”

“I’d rather walk,” Ed said. “You can’t really look at anything when you’re on a bike.”

“We’re not ten anymore. We can’t just walk everywhere.”

Ed was silent.

“All right, well … fine, then.” Daisy couldn’t think of any more threats. “But just get out. I’m going to change.”

When she heard Ed heading down the stairs, Daisy yanked off the sundress and sweater her mother had laid out for her that morning and pulled on her green checked shorts and a white cotton blouse. She slipped into her boat shoes, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mother made her keep her hair in a bob—
long hair is common
—but Daisy really wanted to grow it so she could have a ponytail that swung around her shoulders.

Her legs were still a bit too pale for the shorts and her blond hair was curling around her face with sweat.

Only horses sweat. Men perspire and women glow
.

She knew her mother disapproved of the shorts, but Daisy thought they made her seem older. She looked like a baby anyway, just like the Gerber baby, in fact, with its curly blond hair and saucer eyes, so she needed all the help she could get.

“Hell’s bells,” Daisy whispered to her reflection. The minute she had heard Scarlett O’Hara say it, she knew that expression was for her. It made her feel grown-up. A signature expression, one that gave her the air of an impatient plantation belle.

On her way downstairs, Daisy could hear her mother’s jazz coming from the record player; her mother’s, and no one else was allowed to touch it. Daisy had a Chuck Berry record she had bought at the five-and-dime, but it sat unopened in her room.

She found Ed in the blue sitting room, staring out onto the front porch, where her mother sat with Aunt Helena. He turned and put a finger up to his lips.

“Helena, I don’t understand why you let him do it to you, I really don’t,” her mother was saying, pushing a black lock away from her face.

“Avery’s just been working so hard,” Aunt Helena said, her voice almost a whisper. “I don’t mind. I …” She stopped, then said: “Things have been, well, a little off lately. Before we came, there was an incident with Bill Fox, you know, the producer. It was my fault, really.”

Daisy hoped to hear more about the incident, but her mother didn’t seem to care.

“He’s a fool, your husband,” she said. Her mother didn’t bother to whisper. “He’s a goddamn fool and he was lucky to get you in the first place.”

Daisy looked at Ed. His expression was neutral, but his eyes had darkened, ever so slightly, the way they did when he was concentrating on something.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aunt Helena said, and although Daisy could only see the back of her head, she knew her aunt was about to cry.

“Helena, this has been going on for years.”

Daisy tugged at Ed’s arm. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

Abruptly, her mother turned her head, peering in toward the window where they stood eavesdropping.

“Are you two off somewhere?” she asked, as if it were the most natural thing that they should be listening.

“We’re going to the Quarterdeck,” Daisy said quickly, going to the front door and walking out to the porch.

Ed followed slowly behind her.

“That’s fine. Why don’t you take fifty cents from my purse and buy yourselves some clams.”

When neither of them moved, she added, “It’s in the kitchen,” and gave Daisy a look.

Aunt Helena kept her face turned away from them. She had a glass of scotch in her hand. For as long as Daisy could remember, her aunt had had a glass of scotch in her hand. When Daisy smelled it from the decanters on her father’s bar, or on his breath when he kissed her good-night, a picture of Aunt Helena, blond and soft, would rise up in her mind. Normally, her father drank gin and tonics. Daisy knew because he let her make them for him sometimes. She loved the bar, with its collection of swizzlers, a rainbow of different-colored glass. The beautiful decanters, her grandmother’s crystal, each with a silver plaque that had the name of the alcohol engraved in swirling script. Her father had taught her to put the gin in first, then the ice.
Finish it off with tonic water from the glass seltzer bottle, and squeeze a quarter of lime over the top and let it drop in
. Daisy loved to watch the tonic fizz the second time when the lime hit it.

“Come on,” Daisy said to Ed.

“Go on, Ed,” her mother said. “Keep Daisy company. Your mother and I want to catch up a bit.”

Without a word, Ed turned and went back into the house. Daisy followed him down the hall into the summer kitchen, which was a big, bright affair, with a big, white oven that Daisy wasn’t allowed to touch. It was lighter than the poky winter kitchen, which had long since been converted into a linen closet. Across the hall from the kitchen was a conservatory that looked out over the driveway and back lawn, bordered by her dead grandmother’s blue hydrangea. (Her mother said that the blue was rare and came from the way her grandmother had mulched them with coffee grounds.)

“I can’t believe she didn’t say anything about my shorts,” Daisy said, pulling out her mother’s wallet.

“Who cares about your shorts?” Ed said.

“Oh, well,” Daisy said uncomfortably. She started humming “Rockin’ Robin.” “You ready?”

Ed just looked at her. His eyes reminded Daisy of the silver skin of the small fish in the bait shop.

“Oh,” she said. She scuffed her shoes against the baseboard of the counter. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. People talk like that all the time.”

“Who talks like that all the time?”

“Well, in the movies, anyway.” She looked at Ed’s eyes and wondered if he, too, was mad. “Anyway, the point is it’s probably just talk.”

People will talk. Ladies don’t listen
.

“You don’t know anything,” Ed said. “Not about Hollywood, anyway. Things are different there.”

“Well, look, let’s not think about it. Let’s go, and we can skip the bikes and walk slowly all the way there, if you want.”

At the Quarterdeck, kids were milling around, laughing and eating hot dogs wrapped in waxed paper and fried clams from striped boxes, as the day unwound. It was just a shack, with a roof over the kitchen and a counter for ordering, but you could always find someone there you knew. Dozens of bikes were leaning against the clapboard sides of the shack and, on the stone wall across the road, groups sat chatting and sizing one another up.

“I’ll get the clams,” Daisy said, the quarters hot in her palm. “You go find a spot.”

Daisy gave the boy with acne her order, then put her back to the counter to get a better view of who was around. Looking at Ed amid the other groups of kids, she felt a small pinch in her stomach. It wasn’t that he was a square, really. In fact, lots of kids thought he was mysterious, even cool, coming from Hollywood, with his pressed dungarees and Ray-Bans. It was just that he was so different; the way he looked at people, the same way her mother looked at melons in the supermarket. Most people didn’t even notice it. The ones who
did stayed away from him. It didn’t scare Daisy, it just made her feel sad and a bit restless.

When her order came up, she walked over to where Ed was standing and perched herself beside him on the wall. She picked out a fat clam and slipped it into her mouth, feeling the greasy batter shatter against its soft belly. Daisy could smell the fishing boats docked behind the Quarterdeck and she felt the breeze riffle her hair, making the down on the back of her neck rise up. Summer seemed to arrive at that moment, with its mysterious mixture of salt, cold flesh and fuel.

She saw a tall boy, sandy-haired and slim, talking to Peaches Montgomery.

“Who’s that guy?” Daisy asked, nudging Ed. The boy’s spiky hair reminded Daisy of sea grass and she imagined him smelling like the inside of her riding hat: sweet, salty and like leather.

“Tyler Pierce,” Ed said. “He’s fourteen, if you were wondering. Which I imagine you were.”

“How do you know him?” Daisy said, ignoring the dig.

“I ran into Peaches when I was walking around town this afternoon, before you got here.”

“Yes, and?”

“She was talking about him,” Ed said.

Daisy looked at Ed, but he didn’t continue. Instead, he carefully picked a clam out of the box and began inspecting it.

“Hell’s bells, Ed. You’re slower than molasses in January. What did she say?”

“I wasn’t really listening,” Ed said, crumbling the batter off the clam into his palm. “She knows him from home, I guess. And his family just bought a house on South Summer.”

Watching Ed dig his nail into the flesh, Daisy turned the information over in her mind. She stared at the boy a little more and wished she had a ponytail. Peaches had a ponytail, the color of fudge. It
swung from shoulder to shoulder when she moved across the tennis court.

Peaches Montgomery was a real waste of space, in Daisy’s opinion. Always preening and prancing and mincing around. Her real name was Penelope, but Peaches said she had gotten her nickname because of the texture of her skin;
like peaches and cream, my father always says
. Daisy didn’t believe that for one second. But older boys liked Peaches. Even the tennis instructors took a shine to her. Peaches had
it
, apparently.

She caught Daisy staring, and narrowed her slanty little eyes.
Almond eyes, my father calls them
. She sauntered over to where they were sitting.

“Hey, Daisy,” Peaches said, moving her ponytail from her left to her right shoulder. “Hello, Ed.” She threw the greeting in Ed’s general direction, without really looking at him.

“Hi, Peaches,” Daisy said.

“Did you just arrive?”

“Uh-huh,” Daisy said.

“I hear you all have to live in your house this summer,” Peaches said, still not looking at Ed. “I guess that will be a crowd.”

“I guess,” Daisy said, viciously stuffing a clam in her mouth. “Are you playing tennis this year?”

“I sure will be,” Peaches said. “My father’s been training me all winter. You know how he is.”

“Right,” Daisy said. She hopped off the wall and did her best to throw her bob over her shoulder.

Ed just stared at Peaches. Peaches glanced at him, almost a wince, really, before making her way to the crowd of kids calling out her name.

“Peaches has gotten fat,” Daisy said. “I bet I’ll beat her at the tournament this year.”

“Some men like that,” Ed said.

“Who cares?”
Some men like that
. This was the first she’d heard of it. “If she has to drag her fat behind around the tennis court, I’ll be able to run circles around her.”

“I bet you will beat her,” Ed said matter-of-factly.

“Thank you,” Daisy said.

The still evening enveloped them as they walked up Simpson’s Lane. It had no sidewalks, only the flowering bushes, stretching and bending over the white fences and skimming across the dusty way. It was hushed back there at this time of day, deserted by the well-heeled on their way to the yacht club for cocktails, or evening sailors on their way to Cape Poge with their picnics. Not that the other streets were especially busy, but they seemed part of the real world. Simpson’s Lane could have been a country lane leading to nowhere. It was a summer road.

Daisy idly picked a Pink Parfait and began plucking the petals off. Her mind was turning around Peaches and tennis, turning around the sandy-haired boy.

“She doesn’t like you, you know,” Daisy said, looking up at Ed, who was ambling by her side and staring at the lit windows of the houses they passed. “Peaches, I mean. You make her shiver.” Ed seemed to be in a trance, unhearing. “What did you two talk about this afternoon, anyway?” Daisy looked at him a little more keenly now. “I mean, she barely talks to any boy that isn’t at least fourteen.”

“This and that,” Ed said softly.

The buzz of the crickets rose up and a foghorn sounded off the harbor.

“You didn’t talk to her at all,” Daisy said after a moment.

Ed kept his gaze on the houses.

“So how did you know about all that stuff?”

Finally, he stopped and slowly turned toward Daisy.

“You were spying on her,” Daisy said.

“I wouldn’t call it spying,” Ed said, his silvery eyes watching her closely. “I’m educating myself.”

Daisy awoke sometime in the night. She thought it might have been the moon, echoing too brightly off the harbor. But then she heard the sound of Billie Holiday streaming up the stairs. She crept downstairs in her nightgown and bare feet and saw her mother and Aunt Helena illuminated by candlelight on the front porch. They were wearing only their slips, the silk straps straining against their curved shoulders.

Her mother was leaning in and listening with an intent expression to Aunt Helena’s soft voice, a bottle of gin at her feet. Daisy moved closer to the window.

“I don’t know,” Aunt Helena was saying. “Maybe I’m just the wrong mother. Or I’ve let him spend too much time with Avery, I don’t know. I just feel exhausted, Nick. Truly I do.”