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By the time I get to the top to take the turn by the Field House, there’s a river of perspiration pouring down my back. Cass’s tomato-soup-red BMW is parked outside the Field House, no sign of him.
But then there’s a low rumble and a squeal of brakes and the silver Porsche pulls in, Spence at the wheel, the rest of the cockpit full of the Hill crew—Trevor Sharpe and Jimmy Pieretti and Thorpe Minot. They’re all windblown and laughing. Spence is wearing a tangerine-colored shirt. He tips his elbow on the horn. “C’mon, Somers! Get your working-class ass out here!”
They’re a mille
I’d gotten used to seeing him around Seashell, fitting in. His hair messed up by the wind and from him ru
“Look how well he cleans up!” Thorpe calls, laughing. “C’mon, Sundance, let’s get out and get you to forget your troubles.”
What troubles?
“Look what IIIII’ve got.” Jimmy waves a dark brown glass bottle of some expensive-looking beer. “Plenty more where that came from.”
Cass is laughing. He shakes his hair off his forehead in his “I’m just out of the pool” way, which at this moment seems as though he’s shaking off not water but the dust of this crummy island. He slides over the back passenger door, shoving Jimmy to the side with a hip, still smiling. He doesn’t look over toward me, doesn’t see me.
I have the weirdest feeling of loss. As though while Cass was on the island he was becoming a little bit ours, a little bit of an island boy. But it looks as though, after all, he really belongs across the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-six
“‘Her body was like that undiscovered country that he had long yearned for and never found. And so he took her, planting his flag in her uncharted regions, as only a man can take a woman he yearns for, pines for, throbs to possess,’” I read to my rapt audience.
Mrs. E. is not alone in her taste for romance novels.
The reading circle has expanded to include tiny Mrs. Cole and Phelps, Big Mrs. McCloud, and Avis King. I can hardly be accused of corrupting minors, since Mrs. Cole is the youngest at seventy-something, but I feel uncomfortable anyway. Maybe because my mom loaned me the book. Or because during one of the pirate’s more exotic seductions of the pregnant princess, Avis King made me reread a paragraph three times while she and the others tried to decide if the pirate’s feats were physically possible. And really, his flag?
Jump-starting this discussion, Avis King, growling in her pack-a-day voice: “He’d have to be extremely physically fit.”
Mrs. Cole, high-pitched and defensive: “I’m sure pirates were. All that sacking and pillaging.”
Avis King: “Clarissa, you’re all in a muddle, as usual. Vikings sacked and pillaged. Pirates spent a lot of time on the high seas on cramped boats without room to exercise.”
“This pirate certainly gets a lot of exercise,” Mrs. Ellington says approvingly. “I do like these modern romances. None of that foolish cutting away to the next scene just when things are getting good.”
Big Mrs. McCloud, imperious as a queen: “Pirates all had bad teeth too. Scurvy.”
Avis King: “Let’s just move along, girls?”
But we can only continue a short way before there’s more speculation. “The princess must be having a boy if she’s interested in getting up to all that with the pirate in her condition.
“Oh Clarissa, that’s a myth,” says Avis King. “There was no difference at all in how I felt about Malcolm when I was expecting Susa
“I don’t know . . .” Mrs. Cole muses. “I barely wanted to eat at the same table as Richard when I was with child with Linda, but with Douglas and Peter . . .” She stops, smiling reminiscently.
Mercifully, the ladies all ask for iced tea at this point. Mrs. Cole follows me into the kitchen. “This is hard,” she says softly, in her whispery little-girl voice. I assume she means the pirate and the princess and concur.
“Well, it is kind of explicit, and that can be u
“Oh heavens”—she flaps her hand at me—“not that! Do you think I was born yesterday?”
Well no, which is part of what makes it awkward.
“No, it’s that dear Rose has headed up all our summer traditions. Now she spends so much time sitting about. Doing nothing. Pla
Just then the phone rings. As if summoned, it’s Henry Ellington. “Gwen? How’s my mother doing?”
The problem is, having discussed his mother with him a grand total of once, I don’t know how much truth he wants. I say something about her appetite being good, and how she’s gotten to the beach, and he cuts in with, “What about resting? Has she been getting her naps on schedule? Same time every day?”
Does it really matter about the time? She naps, but yes, we’ve occasionally come back later from the beach or gone for a drive to some farm stand in Maplecrest where they have these elusive white peaches Mrs. Ellington craves. I stammer that I try.
“I’m sure,” he says, his voice softening. “I know Mother’s will of iron. But do your best. I’ll be coming down to see her today, as a matter of fact. But I’ll probably get there while she’s napping. Then I’d like to make di
Indeed, Mrs. E. is fretful and out of sorts by early afternoon. She agrees to go up to bed slightly early, then keeps calling me back to open a window, close a shade, bring her a cup of warm milk with nutmeg. She fusses that I put in too much honey, not enough nutmeg, the milk is too hot, there’s a scalded skin on top. Finally, she lets me leave. I sit outside her door sliding my back down the wall, checking my texts from Viv and Nic, waiting for another summons, but all is quiet, so I inch slowly down the stairs, stepping over the fourth one that creaks like the crack of a rifle if you hit it the wrong way.
I’m lying in the front yard, shoulder straps pulled down for tan line elimination, reading the antics of the pirate and the princess, when I see Mom and her current cohorts coming out of the Tucker house across the street. Buckets and mops in hands signals that they’re done. Which means that the Robinsons’ stay on the island is done. So long, Alex. I get up to walk over. Spotting me, Mom gives a cheery wave, and then fans her hands over her face in a gesture of exasperation meant to convey that her existing cleaning team hasn’t gotten any better. Angela Castle, who is Dad’s cousin’s daughter, is hauling the vacuum cleaner down the stairs, wearing a sour expression and a shirt cut down to her navel. According to Mom, Angela only consented to this job in hopes of wi
Angela drags the equipment to the back of the Bronco, while Mom reaches into the Igloo cooler stationed there and extracts a Diet Coke.