The Summer Wives: Epic page-turning romance perfect for the beach
I thought of something, just then, as my mouth hung open and the words formed in my throat. I thought of the moment I crawled into her bed after we learned about Daddy, into her hot, tiny bedroom that stank of July, and how bleak those violet eyes had seemed to me then. How wet and curling the lashes around them. She was hardly more than a child herself then; not just physically young at twenty-nine, but childlike. That’s the word. In those days, Mama was one of God’s childlike people, and I offer that as a compliment. Oh, she was clever, there was nothing diminished about her intellect. I guess I mean she was childlike in spirit, the way we’re supposed to be and never really are, lamblike in her innocence, and my father’s death was probably the first time this faith had betrayed her. I remember thinking I’d heard the cracking of her heart in the way her voice cracked and broke as she whispered to me in that terrible moment, and when I embraced her soft, small body, I embraced her more as a sister than a daughter. When we slept at last, we curled around each other for comfort. So it had gone on for seven more years. We had read each other’s thoughts and dreamed often in each other’s beds. We’d laughed and wept, we’d shared books and clothes. When we went to the seaside for a week each summer, everybody just assumed we were sisters, the especially close kind of sisters, by the way we giggled and ate ice cream and gamboled hand in hand in the surf.
So as the old lie formed in my throat, I recognized its untruth by the sting of bile, by the stiffness of my vocal cords as they labored and labored to give birth to the words. And then this gust of fury blew through my chest, stealing even the breath I needed to say them. I thought wildly, like a premonition, This is the end, not the beginning. We’ll never stand like this again, we two.
But my God, I couldn’t actually say such a thing! Not while her enormous violet eyes begged me to say something else. But I couldn’t say those words either, so I just placed my two hands on her cheeks, atop the veil, and kissed her, and in that instant the right words came to me.
I said, “Daddy wouldn’t have wanted you to pine away the rest of your life.”
She nodded frantically. “He was so good.”
“Don’t cry, Mama. Here, have some champagne.” I turned for the silver tray on the dresser, loaded down with bucket and champagne coupes of crystal etched in trailing leaves, and I refilled my glass and Mama’s. Before I handed hers over, while I stood there holding them both in my fingers, fizzing sweetly between us, I said, “You really love him, don’t you?”
“I do, Miranda. I truly love him.”
I gave her the glass and clinked it with mine. “To true love.”
Before I could sip, a soft knock sounded on the door, and Isobel slipped inside the room without waiting for an answer. She wore an identical dress to mine, pale blue and full-skirted to just below the knees, off-shoulder sleeves overlaid by sheer organza. Sweet floral cap nestled in her hair. “Everybody ready in here? Your groom awaits impatiently. Oh my! Don’t you both look lovely. And champagne! Wait! Don’t start without me!”
She rushed to the dresser and poured herself a glass, which finished off the bottle and nearly overflowed the wide, shallow bowl of the coupe. She smelled of cigarettes and flowers and champagne, and when she raised her glass, her eyes glinted with either mischief or wine, I wasn’t sure. “What are we toasting, girls?” she said.
“To true love,” I said.
“Oh yes. To love!”
We clinked and drank, giggling a little, and through the crack in the door came the sound of violins and a dignified cello. Isobel put her arm around Mama’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear, and there was something so intimate about this gesture that I turned my head and stared through the window at the sea, at the Flood Rock lighthouse erupting in the exact center of the frame. A sailboat beat lazily across the channel behind, and in the violent sunshine, the whiteness of its canvas hurt my eyes.
7.
A CERTAIN NUMBNESS gripped me as I followed Isobel down the aisle between the rows of white chairs. I fixed my eyes on Mr. Fisher’s shiny gold head, his hands twisting behind his back, and when a gasp seized the air behind me, as everybody caught sight of my mother in her lavender wedding dress, I heard it down the same narrow tunnel as I heard the Figaro wedding march, rendered delicately by a string quartet in the corner of the room.
Mr. Fisher shared no such reserve. Unable to stop himself, he turned to watch his bride approach, and you should have seen the way his face lit up when he glimpsed her. Oh, they were most certainly in love, the two of them. Even the minister couldn’t help but grin. Mama’s own parents were dead, there was no one to give her away, so she just put her own hand into Mr. Fisher’s hand when she reached him, an act of flagrant self-determination, while I stood to her left and watched the minister’s mouth move. Took Mama’s bouquet of small pink roses when Mr. Fisher required her other hand as well. I don’t remember a single thing anyone actually said. When I think about that wedding today, I remember the pastel colors, the smell of all those flowers, the scrape of impatient chairs, and the dampness of the minister’s lips as he married my mother to Hugh Fisher, amen.
8.
MANY HOURS AFTERWARD—I won’t bore you with the details, I mean a wedding’s a wedding, right?—afterward we slouched on the edge of the dock, Isobel and I, swinging our legs above the twitching sea. A bottle of champagne sat between us, mostly finished. Overhead, a high and brilliant moon illuminated our identical pale blue dresses, illuminated the water and the line of the horizon, illuminated Flood Rock and the stocky lighthouse that thrust from its center.
“The way he carried her aboard.” Isobel shook her head slowly, drunkenly, because she had swallowed twice as much champagne as I had, and I’d swallowed a great deal, I’m afraid. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything half so romantic as that.”
“Isn’t it traditional?”
“Across the threshold of a house, Peaches. Not a yacht.” She had a little trouble with the word threshold, but it came out all right in the end. Peaches had first appeared sometime around sunset, as we started the second bottle of vintage Pol Roger that someone had carelessly left out after the last guest had departed. You’re just as sweet as peaches, Miranda, she told me, filling my unsteady glass, and I guess that’s how nicknames happen, isn’t it? In a strange new world like this, you need a new name, and someone gives you one. Peaches. Because she thinks you’re sweet.
“Well, it was an awfully big yacht,” I said. “Almost as big as a house.”
“Yes. Almost as big as Vanderbilt’s.” She paused solemnly. “Do you know how he used to describe a yacht?”
“No.”
“A hole in the water, into which you pour money.”
“You’ve got to pour it somewhere, don’t you? Otherwise it just sits there in the bank, getting bored and reproducing.”
“Money’s such a lovely thing to have. I don’t know what I’d do without it. Work or something, I guess.” She yawned. “Except what? I’m just like Daddy, no good for anything except decoration and conversation. And dancing. I’m a terrific dancer.”
“Horses,” I suggested.
“But I only know how to ride them. Not to care for them or feed them or anything useful.” She lifted her left hand and admired the diamond on her finger, which glittered in the moonlight. “Can I confess something awful to you?”
I didn’t think there was any need to reply—either way, she was going to tell me—but I said, Of course, just to fill the air.
Isobel wriggled the ring from her finger and held it out before us both. I hadn’t seen it this close until now; I didn’t want to be caught staring at such a thing, like a poor country cousin. Now it was a relief to indulge my curiosity. I saw the central diamond was round, or else slightly oval, about the size of an especially plump raisin and surrounded by smaller dark stones that must have been sapphires.
“I came out here last night, by myself,” Isobel said. “Right on this very spot. Clay and I had a fight after dinner.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“It was after you left. He drove me home from the Club, and we fought in the car. I can’t remember what it was about. We were both rather drunk.” She laughed. “Surely you noticed today?”
“Didn’t you make up or something?”
“No, of course not. You’ve got to make them stew, Peaches, you’ve got to make them suffer for their sins. Anyway, I came out here last night, all drunk and wretched, and sat on this exact spot on the dock. I took off my ring just like this, and I held it above the water, just like this …”
In the instant before her fingers opened, I saw what she was going to do. I flung out my hand desperately, almost pitching myself into the water, just as her own left hand darted forward to catch the heavy, glittering fall of the ring. Our two hands bumped and the ring bounced from one of those eight outstretched fingers—I’m not sure which—and Isobel gasped. Together we fumbled, and for a terrible, infinite second, the ring crashed crazily between us like some kind of ping-pong ball, off my knuckle and her thumb, the round bone of my wrist, spinning in a strange, weightless midair suspension.
Then somehow, miraculously, Isobel’s hand closed around it.
We both slumped forward over our knees, panting.
“Jesus Christ, Peaches! What the hell were you doing?”
“I thought—”
“For God’s sake, I wasn’t going to drop it!”
“But you did. You did drop it.”
“Not for real.” She straightened and opened her hand to reveal the panes of the diamond, sheltered from the moon by her curled fingers. “I was only imagining, Peaches. You know, picturing what it would be like. I’d never do it for real. What do you take me for? Some kind of dope?”
“Of course not. We’re just—we’re awfully drunk, aren’t we?”
“Awfully. But not that drunk.” She shoved the ring back on her finger. “Listen, Peaches. You mustn’t ever try to save me, all right? I like to sail close to the wind, as close as I can, but I won’t capsize. You know what that means, capsize?”
“Of course I do.”
She laughed. “Don’t be sore. I know you’re not a sailor, that’s all. Capsize means to flip the boat over, Peaches, to land yourself in the drink because you weren’t careful enough. You didn’t know how to save yourself. But I know how to save myself, never fear. I know what I’m doing.”
“All right, then.”
“Don’t be sore,” she said again. She placed her hands on the dock and hoisted herself up to her feet, wavering so deeply I thought she might topple, in the same way her engagement ring had hung above the brink of disaster. But she didn’t. She just yawned. “I’m so dreadfully bored, now that it’s all over. Aren’t you bored, Peaches?”
“Not really. It’s a beautiful night.”
“Well, I haven’t got your brains, I’m afraid. I need a little action to keep me happy.” She turned and started down the dock.
“Where are you going?”
“To the boathouse,” she called back. “For a flashlight.”
She returned in a moment holding this flashlight, which she aimed out to sea in the direction of Flood Rock, switching it off and on in an irregular rhythm. The air was still warm, and a slight salt-laden breeze came off the water, lifting the edges of our dresses.
“Is that Morse code?” I asked.
“Silly. It’s just a private signal.” She lowered the flashlight and stared across the channel. The moon was not quite full, but the sky was so clear that the whole world seemed gilded in silver, and the rocks of the lighthouse etched by so fine a line, I couldn’t breathe for the beauty of it. The light revolved slowly from the top of the building, streaking across our quadrant every ten or fifteen seconds. It arrived twice before Isobel lifted the flashlight and sent another signal.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” I said.
“No, he’s not. He stays up late, reading Portuguese novels to his mother.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“It’s the only thing that puts her to sleep, apparently.” She flashed the signal again and checked her watch. “She’s a queer old bag. But I guess anyone would go a little nuts, living out there on a rock.”
I cupped my elbows with my hands and watched the lighthouse. For what, I wasn’t sure. Some kind of answering signal, I guessed. For some reason, the whole exercise came as not the slightest surprise, as if I’d been expecting some communication of this nature between Isobel and the vital young inhabitant of Fleet Rock, after all that had been said and not said in the kitchen that morning. My dress was damp and dirty and stained by the grass, thanks to a game of croquet that Isobel started up right after Mama and Mr. Fisher had disappeared in their yacht around the tip of Long Island. Headed all the way to Europe together, just the two of them and a silent, devoted crew. Mama wore a beautiful suit of sky-blue summer tweed, and as she’d waved goodbye from the railing, she looked almost too perfect, like somebody had painted her there as a kind of ideal, a magazine advertisement or something, sky-blue dress matching the sky-blue sky, while the deeper hue of the sea cast them in relief. The clean white railing. I imagined I presented a wholly different image, so stained and ragged as I had made myself during the course of the ensuing hours. Now it was almost midnight, and surely we were flashing our torch into a void. Surely the whole Island had gone to sleep, and Joseph Vargas too.
A tiny light flickered from the side of the lighthouse.
Isobel made a triumphant noise and grabbed my hand. “Quick,” she said. “Before he says no.”
9.
JOSEPH VARGAS STOOD on the edge of the small wooden platform that served as the Flood Rock quay. I couldn’t see his face very well because the lighthouse blocked the moon, but I thought he was furious. His voice confirmed this. He called out, not loudly—I guess he didn’t want to wake anyone—but with terrible force.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Isobel? At this hour?”
“Hour, schmour. I’ve brought champagne!” She stood in the bow and held up two bottles, one in each hand.
“You don’t need any more champagne.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll bet you do. Look, I’ve brought my new sister. You remember Peaches, don’t you? From this morning?”
There was a little pause. “Of course I remember Peaches.”
“Well, it turns out she can row. Lucky for me, because I do believe I’d have just gone round in circles, in my ineb—ineeber—in my condition.”
During the course of this speech, I managed to maneuver the boat up to the quay, despite the swift, angry current that wanted to yank us in the opposite direction. Joseph reached in and grabbed the rope next to Isobel’s feet, and with his other hand he lifted her safely to the dock.
“Well, you’re a fool, that’s all. Why’d you do such a crazy thing? Might’ve drowned you both.”
“I’m bored,” Isobel said simply, removing her shoes. She turned and started to scale the steps cut into the rock. The shoes dangled from her left hand. Joseph made a noise of frustration, torn between helping me out of the boat and helping Isobel mount the stairs. He must have figured I stood in greater danger, because he swiftly wound the rope around the bollard and held out his arms to me. I rose to my feet and did my best to appear steady and sober. I don’t think he was fooled. He put his hands on either side of my waist and hauled me through the air to solid ground. I felt a brief sensation of weightlessness, of the world disappearing around me, and then his hands were gone and I stared at the ghostliness of his shirt as he went after Isobel. When he caught her, she laughed, as quicksilver as the moonshine around us.
“What a naughty pair we are,” she said. “Don’t send us back, though. Can’t we just stay a little while?”
Joseph groaned in such a way that I knew this wasn’t the first time they’d enacted this scene. I stood there on the dock and looked up at the pair of them. Took note of the stocky line of his shoulders, covered by the white T-shirt, while the darker color of his arms sort of melted into the rocks. Both hands sat on his hips. Isobel stood a step or two above him, her blond hair made white by the moon. On her face sat an expression of triumph, even though Joseph hadn’t yet capitulated.
He lifted his right hand and dragged it through his hair. “Just a minute or two, all right? Then I’m rowing you back myself.”
“Yes, do. I love watching you row.”
Isobel turned and picked her way through the rocks around the other side of the lighthouse. Joseph turned to me and held out his hand. “Hold on. It’s kind of tricky, if you don’t know where you’re going.”
I slipped off my shoes and gathered them in my hand. “Where are we going?”
“The beach, it looks like.”
“Beach?”
“It’s not much, but it’s ours.”
I reached him on the steps and put my hand in his palm. His fingers closed around mine and he started through the rocks, the same way Isobel had gone. They were damp and slippery—the tide was on its way out—and I couldn’t see the holes and gaps between them. Couldn’t judge my steps so well. I didn’t want to rely on Joseph’s hand, but I had no choice. His palm was rough and strong, a fisherman’s palm, and he kept a solid grip as we clambered through the silvery darkness to the other side of the lighthouse. Once my foot slipped, and he caught me by the elbow. “All right?” he asked, and I was surprised by the closeness of his face, the scent of his breath that suggested toothpaste.
“Yes,” I gasped back.
He turned and led me forward, and over the corner of his shoulder the beach appeared. Beach. Just a scrap of pebble and sand, really, at the bottom of a sac formed by two outcroppings of rock, maybe fifteen feet apart. Isobel lay there, surrounded by the pale tulle waves of her bridesmaid gown, and her shoes in a small pile near her hip. As we drew near, I saw that her stocking feet pointed out to sea, and her head rested on her folded hands.
“She’s not asleep, is she?” I whispered.
“No, she’s not,” Isobel called out. “Just resting my eyes. Did you know your beach moves, Joseph?”
He released my hand and dropped into the sand beside her, propping himself up on his elbows. “I had no idea,” he said.
“Well, it does. Sort of sways back and forth. Up and down. Baby in a cradle.”
“Izzy—”
“No! That’s not it. Not a cradle.” Her voice had begun to slow and slur. “A magic carpet. That’s it. I’m flying, Joseph, flying. Don’t you feel it?”
“’Fraid not. Just good old solid ground for me.”
“Oh, that—that’s—such a shame …”
“Izzy.”
No answer.
Joseph peered briefly over her face and laughed. “Out cold. How much booze’ve you two sucked inside today?”
“Just wedding champagne. A bottle or two.”
“Between you? Then I guess Izzy must’ve taken more than her fair share.” He patted the ground beside him. “Sit down. Let her sleep it off a bit. Come on, I don’t bite.”
I sank into the coarse sand and wrapped my arms around my legs. My stockings were wet, and the grit now stuck to them like a crust. I wished I had the nerve to take them off. Along the sea before us, the moon cast a wide, phosphorescent path that disappeared mysteriously over the edge of the horizon. I said, “You’ve known each other forever, haven’t you? You and Isobel.”
“Ever since I can remember. Born a few months apart.”
“Who’s older?”
Another soft chuckle. “Me. So how did everything go today?”
“Oh, the wedding? Fine. Just fine.”
“Lobster all right?”
“Sure.”
“Caught fresh just this morning. Your stepfather bought the whole catch from me and Pops.”
“Oh, did he?” I cried. “That was your lobster?”
“Caught fresh,” he said again.
“Oh. I wish I’d known.” I paused. “It was wonderful. Best lobster I ever had.”
“Aw, you’re a good sport. Don’t tell me it’s the only lobster you’ve ever had?”
“Of course not! I’ve had lobster before.” Honesty compelled me to add, in a grudging voice, “Not often, though.”
“I guess we’ll have to do a clambake for you, this summer. Like a baptism. Make a genuine New Englander out of you.”
“I’d like that very much.”
Joseph lifted himself upright from his elbows, so we sat side by side. His arm brushed against mine, warmer than I expected. “What’s with Peaches?” he said.
“Oh gosh. Nothing, really. Isobel started calling me that today, just for fun.”
“But why Peaches?”
“Ask Isobel, why don’t you. She’s the one who made it up.”
He pointed his thumb. “Her? She’s not going to remember a thing tomorrow.”
“Then I guess you’re just dumb out of luck, aren’t you?”
He flung himself back on the sand, folding his hands behind his head, and for an instant I thought I’d angered him. Then I glanced over my shoulder and saw his chest was shaking, and a grin split his face from cheekbone to cheekbone.
“You’re a peach, Peaches,” he said. “A real peach.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with Miranda.”
“Nothing’s wrong with Miranda. It’s a heck of a name. Suits you just fine in the winter months, I’ll bet, sitting indoors with your books and your cocoa. Or dressing up for some party in your gown and long gloves. Miranda.” He said it slowly, stretching out the vowels. “In Latin, it means ‘worthy of admiration.’ That’s what Shakespeare was talking about, in that line I threw at you this morning.”
“I know.”
“Aw, of course you do. Sorry.”
“My father used to tell me things like that, when I was little.”
“Did he? I like your dad. In my head, I’ve been calling him Prospero. But I guess that’s not his real name, is it?”
“No. It was Thomas. Thomas Schuyler.”
“Thomas Schuyler. Warrior, teacher of art, father of Miranda. And maybe a bit of a Shakespeare nut, too. Right?”
I stretched out my legs and listened carefully to the rhythmic wash of the waves as they uncurled onto the beach. The air was so warm and so silvery, like a primordial dream, like we sat on a beach at the beginning of the world, and we were the only people in it. I said, out to sea: “We used to read plays out loud to each other.”
“Did you? Now that’s grand. Do you remember any of it?”
“Of course I do.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A lot of things.”
“Can you do Once more unto the breach?”
“That’s a man’s part.”
“So what? You’ve got it in you, I’ll bet. Thomas Schuyler didn’t raise a sissy.”
I straightened and crossed my legs, Indian-style. The tulle floated out over my knees, and as I gazed out over the gilded water, I thought, if I strained my eyes, I might actually see all the way to France. Harfleur. Did it still exist? Had anything happened there in the last five hundred years since the siege, or had it fallen into obscurity? Had my father maybe glimpsed it, in his last days? We’d received no letters from France. Any messages, any postcards he’d had time to write had disappeared along with his body, and yet I felt sure that if my father had seen Harfleur with his own eyes, he would have written to tell me.
“It’s been a while,” I said. “Since he left for the war.”
“Say, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I mean, if it hurts too much or something.”
“No. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”