Up Island (22 page)

“I wouldn’t know her if I saw her,” said a voice I did not recognize. “What does she look like?”

“Like Jane Russell in
The Outlaw
from the neck down. From the neck up she looks like Auntie Mame.”

Trish Phipps. Livvy’s sailing partner. My face flamed.

“Not
the
hat!”

Corky Fredericks, Livvy’s first Radcliffe roommate. I knew her from the beach club, too.

“Yep. The famous hat. Mawmaw’s hat, as y’all undoubtedly know. I think it’s an old Southren custom, to wear your dead mama’s hat.”

Gerry again, aping my accent expertly.

“Shut up, all of you,” Livvy said. “She’s my best friend, and she’s going through an awful time. You know that.”

Oh, bless you, Livvy!

“Well, what the hell am I, chopped liver?” Gerry. “I’ve known you since we were six years old.”

Jealous, then. I felt obscurely better.

“My best Atlanta friend, idiot,” Livvy said. “And I’ll admit she’s been acting a little odd. She’s not normally like this.

But then she’s not normally being divorced for a thirty-year-old Coca-Cola lawyer who looks like Angelica Huston, either.”

“Ah jus’ knew Co’Cola would be involved in it
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somehow,” Trish Phipps said, picking up Gerry’s thick accent.

“When is honeychile goin’ home, then? Or is she gon’ stay with you and Caleb forever? I hear those unattached Southern belles are real big on livin’ with other folks. Shoot, I don’t reckon it would be so bad. She could take in y’all’s washin’.

Look after ol’ Caleb, doncha know. Wonder if she wears the hat to bed?”

There was a soft explosion of laughter. Most of it I recognized from the beach club mornings.

Livvy’s rose over it, reluctant but clear.

“Shut up, everybody. Help me look. She might be sick.”

I slipped through the line of poplars and hurried down through the floodlit meadow until I found one of the parking attendants. I asked for Livvy’s Cherokee. When he had consulted a list on a clipboard, he walked me there, shining his flashlight on the flattened grass.

I got into the backseat and curled up in as small a ball as I could make of myself, and closed my eyes, but not before I had torn off the hat and flung it to the floor. I should have been angry, but I was not. I felt nothing but a terrible morti-fication, and a profound desire not to talk, to Livvy or anyone else.

When they finally found me, I kept my eyes closed and muttered, “I’m sick. Leave me alone,” and they did. We made the long, dark ride down island and across to Chappy in silence. Once Gerry started to say something, but Livvy cut her off.

“Save it,” she said shortly.

When we had dropped Gerry off and parked outside Livvy’s cottage, I sat up and said, “I’m going to run on in. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me. I feel awful.”

UP ISLAND / 187

“I’m sorry,” she said in a distant voice, and I knew that she did not believe me. I could not even imagine what she thought I had been doing during the party. Crouching and shivering in the Jeep, probably.

I got out in silence and hurried upstairs to my room and closed the door.

“In the morning,” I thought. “In the morning I’m going to call and change my reservation and go home as soon as I can. I don’t have to see any of those women again. I don’t even have to see much of Livvy.”

But she defended you, the rational part of my mind pointed out.

But she laughed, said the other part, the larger and older part.

I thought I would not sleep, but I was asleep before I could turn over. I had the subway dream again; in it my mother said, in the strange, hollow, mechanical drone, “Hold your shoulders up. It just makes you look bigger when you slump.

Hold your shoulders upupupupupupupup…”

I woke very early and went downstairs and called Missy Carmichael at home, to tell her to have the house opened for me.

“Hey, I was gon’ call you when I got to work,” she said.

“Something’s come up. Two somethings, in fact. Bad news short-term, real good news long-term.”

“Why am I not surprised? Shoot,” I said tiredly.

“Well, the worst of it, but maybe the best in the long run, is that Tee’s closed your joint checking and savings accounts and opened another one in your name. It’s got five thousand dollars in it. There’ll be another five thousand deposited every month. I called that Lorna woman you said you’d told about me, because our private eye needed another little shot of
188 / Anne Rivers Siddons

moola, and she told me. She didn’t have your number up there or she’d have let you know directly.”

When I didn’t reply, she said, “I know. It’s a shitty thing to do, but it’s not illegal. You’ll have enough money to cover your and Teddy’s living expenses fairly comfortably, but you won’t ever have any reserves unless you’ve got some stashed I don’t know about. I assume you don’t.”

“No.”

“Well, don’t worry about my fees for the time being. This is going to look so godawful to a jury that we’ll probably get every red cent he’s got, so if you can tough it out for a while, it’ll be a real bonus. Of course it’s her, but it’s going to look like he’s the heartless jackass instead of just being pussy-whipped.”

I took a deep breath. “What’s the second thing?”

She fairly crowed. “This is going to be the kicker. This is going to set you up for life. Now he wants the house, or rather, she wants to live in it, so he’s saying, or his lawyer is, that since it’s legally his, he’s just going to keep it and move you somewhere else, or, and I quote, ’Provide adequate housing for you.’ Adequate, my ass. He is flat-out teetotally stupid, thank God for our side. Cuts off your money and then tries to throw you out of the home you’ve lived in for twenty years? I don’t think so.”

My heart began the familiar dragging thunder again.

“When will that happen? Surely not for a long time? I was going to ask you to get the house opened for me. I’m coming home as soon as I can…”

“Oh. That could be a problem,” she said slowly. “Of course you’ve got the right to live in it until he gets a court order for you to vacate, or you settle it

UP ISLAND / 189

privately, and that could take some time. But the thing is, it would look
much
better to a jury if it looked as though you were being super-cooperative, that you moved out the minute you heard he wanted it. I was hoping you wouldn’t come back to the house. I was thinking you might rent something short-term; I could have found something for you, but of course you couldn’t manage a decent deposit now…. Shit.

Isn’t there somebody you could get a short-term loan from?

You said Mrs. Redwine was solidly in your corner…”

“I won’t do that. I’ll never do that,” I said.

“Well, could you stay up there for a while, another month or two, maybe?”

“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question.”

“Molly…this is not the time to hang tough about this. This is the time to be so cooperative your shit don’t stink. Later,
then
you can play hardball…”

The strength ran out of my legs abruptly. I sat down on the edge of the kitchen table.

“I’ll call you back, Missy,” I said. “I just can’t talk any more right now.”

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I know this is tough. I told you it would be, with that trailer trash involved. But try to think of something soon. I’ve got to get back to Tee’s asshole lawyer before long.”

I hung up and rose and went out on the porch that overlooked Katama Bay. It was so early that the water was still and flat and pink-stained, a mirror for sunrise. Only a few white sails ghosted slowly over the surface. For the first time, the high white light of summer seemed to have given way to the lower, golden slant of coming autumn. It was warm, nearly hot, but I could almost feel the still white chill of the first frosted

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mornings here. I sat down on the chaise and put my face in my hands and closed my eyes.

“Feeling better, I trust?” Livvy said behind me. Her voice was high and sharp. She wasn’t going to let last night go.

“Yes, thank you,” I said formally, not turning.

“You want to tell me the nature of your sudden malady?”

she said. “Just so I can explain to all the people who wanted to meet you, of course.”

“I’d have thought they were too busy laughing at my hat to worry about it,” I said. My voice sounded prissy in my own ears, snippy and aggrieved.

She sighed, a long sigh. “I’m sorry you heard that. They were acting like shits. Women in groups like that are bad about ganging up on other women, especially outsiders. I guess we do it at home, too. It isn’t that they don’t like you…”

“Oh, of course not. I could tell that.”

“Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said. “There was a call on the machine from Caleb last night. He can’t come.

Youth brands has got some new crisis in Chicago or somewhere, and he’s having to go there for at least two weeks.

I’m devastated; it’s the first time he’s ever missed the Vineyard. But I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

Two weeks. Her husband is going to be away from her for two weeks and she’s devastated. Try two months, or two years, or forever, toots, and then tell me about devastation, I thought.

“You better make real sure he hasn’t got a little action going in Chicago,” I said meanly, out of my pain and humiliation from last night. “There’s a lot of that going around Coke, you know.”

There was a silence, and then she said, “That was UP ISLAND / 191

the rottenest thing you’ve ever said to me. Just because you can’t hold on to your husband, doesn’t mean I can’t mine…”

I wheeled around to face her.

“Livvy…I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that…last night…I heard you laughing, too.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, excuse me for being human,” she cried.

“You know, Molly, it hasn’t been the easiest thing for me, trying to cuddle and cajole you along, trying to read your moods and find things to take your mind off Tee. I’m sorry I laughed, but if you heard that, you heard me defending you, too. It seems like that’s all I’ve done for the last two weeks.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, because I’m going home as soon as I can,” I said, and then I remembered.

She read my face.

“What is it?” she whispered, the quarrel forgotten. Livvy could always tell when things were really dire with me.

I told her, trying to keep my voice matter-of-fact and level, trying not to cry.

“Oh, baby,” she said, hurrying toward me. “That complete and utter turd. That bitch. What are you going to do?”

“I guess…call Mrs. Redwine,” I said. “See what she’s willing to do.”

“No, God!” she cried, involuntarily, and I smiled at her in spite of the pain in my chest. “You can’t do that! You must never do that! You’ll never be free of her. Listen—stay here.

Stay here as long as you want to. You can close off the upstairs and keep the house reasonably warm with the fireplace and space heaters till almost December. Take all the time you need; surely Missy will have it worked out by then. You said

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you loved the Vineyard, and I’m going back home as soon as I can get a plane. You’ll be able to spread out and relax and think.”

“Oh, Livvy…” Pain twisted my heart. My spiteful words about Caleb were driving her home; how could I have planted that poison seed in her heart? Sickened by my own bacilli, I was spreading them now to Livvy, the person, besides my father and children, and, once, Tee, I loved most. Had loved…

She shook her head impatiently.

“No. It wasn’t you. I decided that last night. I don’t know why, but I just can’t stay up here any longer without him. I need to at least see him before he goes off to Chicago or wherever. Stay, Molly. At least let me make up a little bit for last night, and for the other times. I love you, and I certainly haven’t acted much like it.”

“I love you, too,” I said, choked, and we hugged for a long time.

She left two days later. When I got back from the airport, in the Cherokee, I came into the empty cottage and sat down, waiting for the warmth and peace I had felt when I had first come here to flood over me. Instead, what came was anxiety so strong it was almost real fear. I got up and walked out on to the deck and looked at Katama Bay, and all of a sudden I knew that I could not stay here, in this house, on this beach, on this little island, alone in this huge, wide, shelter-less, shadowless seascape. I knew that I would die here, alone, of fear and loneliness and loss and pure exposure.

I got into the Jeep and drove through the teeming mess that was Edgartown in late August, up Edgartown-West Tisbury Road through the stage-set forest to South UP ISLAND / 193

Road, up island. Up island…. The trip felt as inevitable and right as my own heartbeat.

When I reached the big shingled house on the crown of the glacial ridge, I looked to see if the sign was still there, on the road beside the mailbox. It was. “Furnished camp available…light swan-tending…”

I turned in so quickly that the Jeep bucked like a wild thing, and I did not slow down as I climbed the long hill.

T
HE HOUSE STOOD IN FULL SUN on the slope of a ridge that seemed to sweep directly up into the steel-blue sky. Below it, the lane I had just driven on wound through low, dense woodlands, where the Jeep had plunged in and out of dark shade. But up here there was nothing around the house except a sparse stand of wind-stunted oaks, several near-to-collapsing outbuildings, and two or three huge, freestanding boulders left, I knew, by the receding glacier that had formed this island. Above the house, the ridge beetled like a furrowed brow, matted with low-growing blueberry and huckleberry bushes. At the very top, no trees grew at all. I looked back and down and caught my breath at the panorama of Chilmark Pond and the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a day of strange, erratic winds and running cloud shadow, and the patchwork vista below me seemed alive, pulsing with shadow and sun, trees and ocean moving restlessly in the wind. Somehow it disquieted me so that I had to turn and face the closed door of the big, old house. I had come here seeking the shelter of the up-island woods, but this tall, blind house, alone in its ocean of space and dazzle of hard, shifting light, offered me no place to hide.