Текст книги "What I Thought Was True"

Автор книги: Huntley Fitzpatrick

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-one

“This is what comes after Tess?”

I rouse myself from the sleep I’ve fallen into on the glider during Mrs. E.’s nap to find Cass standing over me, holding one of her racy books. This particular cover features a man wearing an eye patch and all too little else, and a stupefied-looking woman in an extremely low-cut dress that he’s clearly in the process of lowering farther. They are, of course, standing on a cliff. In a brewing thunderstorm.

“I’m not at all sure this is physically possible,” he muses, squinting at the cover.

“Which part? Her breasts?” I sit up to scrutinize the book.

“No, I wasn’t thinking of those, but now that you mention it . . . anyway . . . where’s his hand?”

“Isn’t this it?” I point.

“I thought that was her, er—”

“No, it’s his hand. I’m sure.”

“Then what’s that?”

I peer at the book cover. When you examine it closely, she does indeed appear to have too few appendages and he too many.

“Stand up,” Cass directs. “If I put one hand here on your shoulder, and then you sort of collapse back, like she’s doing—farther, Gwen—I’d need to have a hand right here on your back so you wouldn’t fall off that cliff. But instead, his other hand is all over her tits . . . so why doesn’t she hurtle to her death?”

“Tits, Cass? Ew.”

“I know. There are no good words.”

“Maybe she’s a gymnast with superior muscle control.”

“She’d have to be in Cirque de Soleil to manage this. See, if I take away this hand, you—”

I fall back on the glider with a rusty clang of springs.

“—wind up exactly where I want you.”

* * *

I’m not someone who forgets where I am. But I have not spent any time lying on a gently swinging glider on a porch by the sea kissing a beautiful boy. Don’t think. All my focus, every thought, narrows to this moment, the soft sounds we’re both making, a few squeaks from the glider springs, the whole world faded to background music.

Until—“What in the name of God is going on here?” and Cass, scrambling, slides off me, landing on his butt and looking up at Henry Ellington with the same stunned expression I must wear.

Behind him is Gavin Gage, his face poised, neutral. Henry, however, is a thundercloud. An apocalyptic thundercloud turning darker and darker red. Cass moves in front of me. I shove my shirt back down. He starts to say, “This isn’t what it—” then falters because that’s one of the lamest lines ever, right up there with “It didn’t mean anything” and “We can still be friends.”

He switches to, “It’s my fault.”

“Where’s my mother while all this is going on?”

I hop up next to Cass and hurriedly explain, face flaming, that it’s okay, she’s napping.

Which makes things worse.

“If this is your idea of what’s acceptable while a helpless old woman is resting—in her own house—on my dime, you are very much mistaken.” Then: “Who the hell are you?” to Cass.

“Uh—the yard boy.”

“Not anymore,” Henry returns succinctly. “Nor will your dubious idea of caretaking be needed from now on, Guinevere.”

His mouth is screwed up in a line, he’s ramrod straight. If he were a teacher in an old-fashioned book, he’d be hauling out a ruler to rap us across the knuckles.

Anger rises in me, steam in a kettle edging toward a boil.

“Henry, maybe we should all take a moment and calm down,” Gavin Gage interjects unexpectedly. “Back when you and I were their age—”

“That’s not the issue here,” Henry barks. “Take whatever you brought with you and get out.” His voice is softer now, but no less deadly. “You’ve abused my trust, and the trust of a helpless woman. There will be consequences beyond the loss of your jobs, I assure you.”

I hate that he can do this. And he can. And with an impact far beyond this small island. My mind flicks fast. I think of our first “conversation”—itemized—his veiled threat. His muted discussion with Gavin Gage on the other side of the kitchen door. The way he folded that check and held it out to me, set it down on the counter like the ace of spades. And I can’t do it—I can’t keep my mouth shut, I—

“Listen,” I start, “what makes you think you—”

Cass puts a warning hand on my arm.

I make a strangled sound, fall silent.

This isn’t just about me now.

I need the money, yes. But Cass’s dad got him the job. Getting fired would be one more screw-up, and I can tell just by the way he won’t meet my eyes that this has already occurred to him.

“Gracious, Henry. Do be quiet!” calls Mrs. Ellington through the screen porch door. “If it’s not bad enough you’ve woken me up, your bellowing is likely reaching all the way to Ada Partridge’s house, and you know how she’ll respond. It would be most embarrassing to have her call the police and have you arrested for creating a public disturbance.”

Henry offers an explanation that is unflattering in the extreme to both Cass and me, in which the words lewd, depraved, and wanton appear more often than you’d think possible, since, maybe, The Scarlet Letter. Jesus, we were only kissing.

Instead of a shocked gasp at the end, Mrs. E. gives her low belly laugh. “That’s what all the fuss was about? The dear children were simply—obeying my request.”

Henry, Cass, and I all goggle at her. Gavin Gage sits down in one of the wicker chairs, crosses his ankles, amusement gleaming in his eyes. All he’s missing is a box of popcorn and a soda.

Mrs. E. edges the porch door open with her cane and steps out. “You know I adore the theater,” she observes serenely. “Sadly, I am no longer able to attend it in the city—such a great crush of people. It has been my dearest wish to see my favorite play, Much Ado About Nothing, performed once again. Your dear father took me to that once, when we were in London.” She leans her cane against the weathered porch shingles, clasps her hands under her chin, tips her face to the side, magnanimous. “I still remember my favorite line. ‘Lady, I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes . . .’ ”

Cass’s lips twitch. He ducks his head to hide it.

“I don’t remember that they were all over each other like white on rice in that play,” Henry says, sounding like a sulky child.

Mrs. E. waves a hand at him airily. “Shakespeare, dear boy. Very bawdy. Dear Guinevere and Cassidy were most reluctant but I urged them to be faithful to the text, and to rehearse assiduously.”

Ridiculous from the start, this is now officially over-the-top. Henry glowers. Mrs. E. gives him her benevolent smile.

There’s a long pause, and then Henry grudgingly allows that he must have misinterpreted what he saw. His mother graciously accepts his apology. Within minutes Cass and I have our jobs back.

Cass excuses himself to go back to work, but as I head to the kitchen to make tea, he pops his head in through the window. “Helpless old woman, my ass.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Mrs. Ellington just saved my job—and Cass’s. And for the next two hours, I betray her.

* * *

Gavin Gage’s eyes don’t glitter with avarice, or bulge with green dollar signs like in cartoons, but as I go through the whole tea-serving ritual with all the silver pieces, at which I am now a semi-pro, I notice his cool appraising glance every time I pick up a new item.

Mrs. Ellington chats away, asking Gavin about his family, recalling little details of his friendship with Henry, how they met at Exeter, were on the sailing team together, this French teacher, that lacrosse coach, etc., etc., and Gavin Gage answers politely and kindly, even reminisces about some trip they took as boys with the captain to Captiva.

The only comfort is that Henry Ellington is even more uncomfortable than me. He would so lose to Grandpa in a poker game. He keeps grimacing, shifting around in his seat, pulling at his collar. When Mrs. E. tries to engage him in polite social conversation, he’s totally distracted, making her repeat her question. At one point he says abruptly, “I need some air.”

And goes out to the porch.

Mrs. E. stares after him, then smoothes things over, saying that of course, Gavin, dear Henry did not mean to be rude. The poor boy works so hard. Gavin assures her he understands. It’s all so far from what’s going on under the surface that I want to scream.

* * *

Perched on our battered front steps that afternoon, Grandpa Ben performs his own ritual as methodically as Mrs. E. enacts her tea one. Emptying out his pipe. Tapping the fresh tobacco out of the pouch. Packing it in.

I told Grandpa everything. Or almost everything. Not about Henry walking in on Cass and me. But everything else, my voice hushed but sounding loud as a scream in my own ears. I expect Emory, crashed early on Myrtle, lulled to sleep by the soporific Dora, to bolt up, eyes wide. But he slumbers on, freeing Grandpa to smoke, which he hates to do around Em with his asthma. Grandpa says nothing for a long time, not until the pipe is lit and his already rheumy brown eyes are watering slightly in the smoke.

Then finally, “We do not know.”

That’s it?

“Well, exactly, Grandpa. But . . . but . . . it’s clear Henry doesn’t want his mother to know either. That can’t be good.”

“There are things you don’t want Lucia to understand. Not all of them are the bad things.”

I feel heat sting my face. “No—but those things aren’t like . . . Those things are personal.”

“Pers-o-nal.” Grandpa draws the word out slowly, as if he can’t remember what it means in English. That happens every now and then. More this year than last, more last year than the year before.

“Personal. Belonging to me,” I translate.

Grandpa Ben tilts his head, as though he’s still not clear, but then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his worn dark leather wallet, nudges it open, hands me a picture.

Vovó.

Oh. Not that. My stomach hurts.

I think I know what Grandpa’s doing.

I remember my Vovó, emaciated and pale near the end, but in this picture she’s warm and strong, all curvy brown arms holding up a silver-flecked fish half as big as she is and laughing. The grandmother I remember, wholehearted and real, always smiling, not the solemn one formally posing on the wall, frozen in time.

I look at the photo for only an instant before I hand it back to him. I know what he’s saying, without saying, and I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to think about it. But I say it out loud anyway.

“Other people’s stories.”

He nods at me, a small smile. “You remember. Sim. Histórias de outras pessoas . . .” He trails off.

This is as close as we have ever come to talking about it. Another memory of that long-ago summer, nine years ago, the year Cass’s family was on the island.

It was one of those New England years of weird weather. Hurricane season runs from June to November here, and it’s usually a non-event. Something brews off the coast of Mexico, blows out to sea long before it hits us here. Marco and Tony watch the path on the Weather Channel, field the calls from summer people, stand ready to block shore-facing windows with plywood. We year-rounders don’t worry so much, knowing our low-crouching houses are hunkered down to survive storms, outlast anything. But that year, Seashell was moody. Unpredictable. Currents and squalls from every different direction. There was a lot of heat lightning at night, rolling thunder that tumbled over the island like an angry warning, but came to nothing in the end.

Nic and I had the run of the island that summer. We were seven and eight. Marco and Tony hired us to catch blue crabs off the creek bridge to sell, hooking them with bent-out safety pins, piling our catch into Dad’s emptied-out plastic ice cream buckets, but that was pretty much the only structured activity. We could climb onto the Somerses’ boat and jet off when we wanted to. We could have sand fights with Vivie at the beach. Work on swimming out to the boat float, then the breakwater, our biggest goals. Dad was at Castle’s 24/7 . . . he’d just extended the hours. Mom was newly pregnant, with Em, nauseated most of the time. If we left her a box of saltines and a stack of books, cheap and stained from the library or a yard sale, we could go off until sunset.

Vovó was nauseated too, but for a different reason. One I wasn’t supposed to know about.

“It will only worry your mother,” Dad explained to me firmly, looking sharply in the rearview mirror after we dropped Vovó off at the doctor’s. “She’s having a hard time as it is.” Hahd. Heavy on his accent. Which I knew meant he was worried.

“It will be fine,” Grandpa said stoutly. “Your Vovó, Glaucia, she has been fighting germs her whole life.”

But this needed more than Clorox and Comet, of course. Vovó got sicker, and the story for Mom was that she was working longer hours—that’s why she wasn’t coming by as much, looked a little thinner, and I stopped being worried and got scared.

So I told Mom. It felt like she started crying then and cried for the rest of the summer.

It was the angriest I’ve ever seen Grandpa. He threw a pan—he never did things like that—his eyes as wide with shock as my own when it hit the floor, eggs and linguica spattered everywhere. And yelled at me, all these words I’d never heard, strung together in ways I couldn’t understand. Except for that phrase, because it wasn’t the last time I heard it. “Histórias de outras pessoas.” Other people’s stories—Mom would say it later, when Nic and I scrambled to pass on some bit of Seashell gossip, some nugget of information to talk about at dinner. Deixe que as histórias de outras pessoas sejam contadas por elas—are their own to tell.

Grandpa reaches out for me now, nudges his knuckles beneath my chin. Once, twice. But I don’t nod back. I feel a little sick. We’ve never brought that up. The whole topic, my part in it, ended when he threw the pan. Or later that evening when he bought me an ice-cream cone, cupped my chin in his hands and apologized, then said, “We will not speak of it again.”

“Pfft,” he says now, thrusting his hand rapidly through the air as though shooing away flies. “Enough. Enough of the long face. Here, querida.” He hunches back on his hips, reaching into his pocket, pulls out his customary roll of bills, held together with a rubber band—the wallet is only for pictures—extracts two fives and hands them to me. “Go out with the young yard boy. Be happy.”

“What about the Rose of the Island?”

“To grow in the salt and the heat and the wind, very tough, island roses.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie, Grandpa.”

His eyes twinkle at me, and his broadest smile flashes. “Rose is strong, Guinevere. With other things not known for sure, I would rely on that. And here is your boy now.”

Grandpa waves enthusiastically at Cass, strolling up with his hands in his pockets, as if flagging down a taxi that might pass him by. He makes a big production of ordering Cass to sit down on the steps, inspecting his blisters, then punching him on the shoulder with a wink. “Take the pretty girl and go now.” As we walk away, he calls one last phrase after us. “Even though they look like that, eu a deixo em suas mãos.” Heh-heh-heh.

What? I trust her in your hands?

Oh God. What happened to the knife salesman?

“You sure you don’t know any Portuguese?” I ask.

“We really have to work on your greetings, Gwen. ‘Hey there, babe’ would be a lot better.”

“I’m not going to call you babe. Ever. Answer my question.”

“Nope. All I got was that he sounded happy. Phew. Thought he might have heard”—he jerks his head in the direction of the Ellington house—“the Henry Ellington story. Almost got you in big trouble there.”

I’m so grateful that this story is mine right now that I turn, pull him close so quickly, I can hear a startled intake of breath, see a little spot he missed on his chin shaving, see that the base of his eyelashes are blond before they tip dark. “I’d say you’re worth the risk.”

“Forget what I said. Your greetings are great. Perfect.”

I’m just about to touch my lips to his when I hear a loud “None of that funny business here!” and realize we’re in front of Old Mrs. Partridge’s yard. Where she’s also standing, rooting through her mailbox impatiently.

I try to move back, but Cass’s hand snakes behind me, holding me in place. “Good evening, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Never mind that, Jose. None of this in a public street.”

“Not the best spot for it,” Cass allows. “But it’s such a beautiful summer afternoon. And look at this girl, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Look at this girl somewhere else,” she says crossly. But there’s just a shade of amusement in her voice and she leaves without further harassment.

I stare after her, amazed. “How did you do that?”

“She’s only human. Seems kind of lonely,” Cass says. “Now, where were we?”

* * *

Friday, early evening, we take the sailboat out again, anchor in Seldon’s Cove and are lying, Cass’s head on some seat cushions and a life jacket, mine on his chest, the thrum of his heartbeat in my ear. Since Seldon’s is protected by two spits of land encircling it in a C, the motion of the water is gentler than in open water, as though we’re being rocked in a giant cradle.

I close my eyes, see the sun glow orange-red through my lids, feel Cass’s thumb, the skin healing but still rough, trace up the side of my arm, sweep back down, then along the line of my other arm. I start to squirm, ticklish.

“Steady. I’m mapping you,” he says, close to my ear, moving his touch to my jawline, then along my lips to the little groove above them.

“Useless fact,” I say. “That’s called a philtrum.”

“Useful fact,” Cass counters. “Maps came before written language.” Now he’s tracing the line of my chin. Under my ear, down, sweeping back. My chin? Not anywhere anyone has been interested in before. I’m resisting the urge to grab his hand and put it somewhere more risky.

“I’ve heard of math geeks, but map geek is new.”

“Maps are the key to everything,” he says absently. “Gotta find your direction.” He clears his throat. “Hey, Gwen? I know that guy—the one who was at the house with Mrs. E.’s son. Spence’s dad buys old paintings and stuff from him.”

“Is he a sleazebucket?” I ask. “Because I think Henry Ellington might be.”

The whole story, what I’ve seen, what I think I know, comes tumbling out—

Except. The check. Burning a hole in my pocket. A cliché I wish were true—that it would just ignite, drift out as ashes, blow away over the ocean, instead of lurking in the pocket of whatever I was wearing that day. Because I never did—I never threw it out.

“Would you tell? If you knew a secret that could hurt someone you cared about?”

Cass’s brow furrows. For a second his fingers tighten on my chin.

“Ow,” I say, surprised.

“God, sorry. Cramp. You mean, you mean if I were you? About this?”

“If Mrs. E. were your grandmother or something and you saw what was going on?”

He looks past me, out at the water for a moment as though reading the answer from the waves. “Hm. Tough one. It’d be a different situation then—family instead of someone you work for. ‘Not my place’ and all that crap.”

“Uh-oh,” I say, smiling at him. “You’re admitting you have a place. Seashell’s brainwashed you at last, Jose.”

“This is my place.” He settles his head more forcefully on the cushion, nestles my head more firmly onto him. “Right here.”

As if I’m a destination he’s reached, searched for. The X on a treasure map. “Cass . . . does this mean . . . Are we . . . ?”

My words are coming slowly, not just because of the lazy afternoon, the lullaby rock of the water, but because I have no idea which ones to use. I’m fumbling with how to put it, what to ask, hoping he’ll somehow read my mind, fill in the blanks—

“What’s Nic afraid of, Gwen?”

“Um, Nic? Not much. Why?”

“Because he’s doing the same thing with swim practice you were doing about tutoring me. And I know in his case it’s not fear of succumbing to my deadly charm. I keep texting him to set up a time when we, he and Spence and me, can get on with it. We need to practice as a team, the three of us. He keeps blowing me off. Spence too. But I can deal with Chan. I need you for Nic.”

“It’s really important to Nic. Getting the captain spot.”

“That’s why I don’t get the blow-off. It’s important to all of us. Nic has no monopoly.”

“But he needs . . .” Here I falter, stumbling on the old lines. Nic needs it more. If he falls or fails, there’s no safety net. But then there’s Cass’s brother Bill, saying how Cass has to work harder, how he won’t come out of things smelling like a rose.

His voice roughens, less drowsy. “Speaking of what matters, in case you haven’t figured it out—this does. Us. To me, anyway. Your cousin and I are not going to be blood brothers. My best friend may not be your favorite person. Fine. But no more reversals of fortune—not with you and me.”

He says this last sentence so forcefully, I’m a little stunned. When I don’t answer instantly he moves to sit up, looks me in the eye. “What?”

“So are we . . . ?” Dating? A couple? Together? “Seeing each other? It’s not that you have to take me home to your family or—”

Cass groans. “Are all island girls this crazy, or did I luck out?”

I sigh. “Well, you know. Picnic baskets.”

“Gwen. I mean this is in the nicest possible way. You will never be a picnic. Which is one of the things I lo—” He stops, takes a deep breath, starts again: “Can we just put the whole picnic basket thing away with the lobsters? For the record, to be clear, we’re doing this right.”

“The man with the maps.”

He shakes his head, moving to his feet, tipping back against the railing of the boat so he can pull out the lining of first one of his pockets, then the other, then extend his open palms. “Map free. Know what that means? Need SparkNotes? You’re my girlfriend, not my picnic basket, or any other screwed-up metaphor.”

He says all of this firmly, his logical voice.

After a minute or two, he adds, “I mean . . . unless I’m your picnic basket.”

I laugh. But he’s not even smiling. He seems to be waiting for something. And I don’t know what it is. Or exactly how to give it to him. Instead I say lightly, “I think of you more as a Dockside Delight.” I slide over, lean into him, my hand tight against his heart, wishing that how I feel could just flow between us that way, without getting tangled up in words.

* * *

On the way home after sailing we don’t say much. I’m yawning—a long day of being in the sun and the water—and so is he. We hold hands. It feels perfect.

It’s only after I’m home, scrubbing off in the outdoor shower, that I realize he never did tell me what he thought the right thing to do was.