Shorecliff (4 page)

“Condor’s well enough, girl,” Eberhardt growled.

Aunt Margery and my mother smiled behind Rose’s back. As with most of my family members, Eberhardt for them was simultaneously a terror and a joke. He knew it as well as anyone and chuckled as he made his way out of the room.

Then Uncle Frank and Uncle Cedric filed in, shuffling like delinquent schoolboys. Frank Wight was the carpenter who had married Margery, and he looked the part. A bigger but more subdued version of Charlie, he was brawny and blond, the sort of man who both pleased children and annoyed them. He was forever swinging me around, ruffling my hair, slapping my shoulder in what was meant to be a friendly pat. It was irritating to be manhandled, but at the same time he never talked down to me. He treated me as a miniature human rather than as a member of a different species, and I appreciated his matter-of-fact tone. That day he even let me look at the rabbit carcasses, which I had an extreme urge to do until the moment before he took them out of the bag, at which point I felt an anticipatory nausea and fled.

Cedric Robierre, the paleontologist from Boston, was utterly different from Frank. He was not an absentminded professor but rather a tall, businesslike man with an air of competence. He gave the impression of wearing a suit, though naturally during the summer he preferred linen trousers and an open-collared shirt, and on hunting trips he invariably wore a red plaid jacket. It was clear that his true home was in the esoteric chambers of Harvard. I liked Uncle Cedric much more than Uncle Frank because with Cedric, as with Philip Ybarra, I could sense a mighty brain pulsating behind his forehead. I loved the feeling that the minds of the people around me were working all the time, thinking new thoughts, turning over old ideas, pushing unknown boundaries.

Behind Frank and Cedric strode Uncle Kurt, the best uncle of all. When he came in he spied me before anyone else, even though I was the shortest, and said, “How’s my youngest soldier!” Then he hugged me. How well I remember the feel of that crisp khaki against my skin! When he let me go I stared at him, breathless, while he leaned against the doorframe—a figure bathed in light, my personal war hero.

Three days later the day came. Tom Robierre, a celebrity by default because he was the last to arrive, the last unknown who might catapult excitement into our lives, was arriving by the 6:30 train into Pensbottom. The town was so small that it merited only two trains a day from Portland, one early and one late. All of our arrivals thus took place in the evening, necessitating a late dinner. The plan was that while my mother stayed behind to cook, Aunt Margery would drive the rattletrap to the station with Aunt Rose, Tom’s mother, in the front seat and his sisters Isabella and Delia in the back. There was a momentary upset, however, when Delia announced that she had no interest in meeting the train.

“Don’t you want to see your own brother?” Aunt Rose asked.

“I’ll see him when he gets here,” Delia said, shrugging. “Besides, Delia and I are going to the shore—can we?”

“Alone?”

“We’ll be with each other.” That was the Delian answer for everything. Behind her, Delia Ybarra erupted into giggles. “Seriously,” Delia Robierre went on, adopting the solemn voice she found effective when negotiating with her parents, “of course I want to see Tom, but I know Philip is much more interested in meeting him at the station.”

This was true. Philip and Tom had a bond that I envied and admired. I tried to emulate their offhand interactions, and for years afterward I would catch myself thinking, “What would Tom do?” or “What would Philip think?” It was unusual for Philip to come out of his lair, mental and physical, with enough vigor to state that he wanted something, but in this case he did step forward and say, “I want to meet him.”

The aunts were suitably impressed. Now that Loretta was gone, the Ybarra children had become hopelessly mysterious to the other aunts. My mother, of course, was intimidated by nothing and no one, but she rarely intervened in situations like this one. As far as I was concerned, she was a Buddha, sitting quietly in her chair with a calm smile on her lips, hoarding all the answers. Aunt Rose was the one who dealt out decrees. She often reminded me of an admiral inspecting a ship, shouting orders, pacing the decks, directing her crew with unerring confidence. Aunt Margery, the family fussbudget, was more hotheaded and impulsive, though she also did most of the work in the house. She talked nonstop and often worked herself into states of half-hysterical emotion—I don’t know how Yvette and Fisher and Pamela, with all their unflappable poise, could have come from her and Frank. As for Aunt Edie, her antiquated ideas of proper behavior made her as alien to us as we were to her. They were a disparate family, the Hatfield girls.

Aunt Margery, Aunt Rose, Isabella, and Philip rattled off to meet Tom. From my vantage point on the furthest fencepost, I could see Isabella turning to say something to Philip, then his elusive gleam of teeth, then her fit of laughter. I hadn’t wanted to go meet Tom before, but now that Isabella and Philip were enjoying a private party in the backseat of the rattletrap, I was filled with jealousy. There were so many of us that moments with only one or two others were precious, no matter who those others were, and Isabella and Philip were the
crème de la crème.
I spent the hour until they returned daydreaming on the fencepost about what they were saying, deaf to Pamela’s remark that I would get splinters on my behind. She departed with the others, and I was thus the first to see the little cloud of dust that signaled the approach of the old black car. In my excitement I tried to stand on the post. A shriek came from behind me—Aunt Edie had witnessed my antics. The whole crew came tumbling out the front door, and I was deprived of my sentinel’s prize. But it didn’t matter, for the rattletrap was chugging toward us with three young heads in the back now, Tom sandwiched between Philip and Isabella. We waved and shouted. Uncle Kurt stood next to me and held me steady on the post, laughing his contagious, gunfire laugh. Tom was getting a Hatfield Special.

The rattletrap pulled to a halt, and the rear door closest to us flew open, creaking on its hinges. There was a moment when all we could see were Isabella’s endless arms and legs, flailing like a trapped octopus as she tried to get out before her brother. In the end she scrambled almost into the dust before finding her footing and scooting to one side. Her mouth was stretched in a grin that seemed to cut her face in half—she didn’t mind making a fool of herself as long as she knew why people were laughing. Philip, meanwhile, had emerged on the far side with his usual serpentine dignity. We ignored him.

Tom was luxuriating in this imperial arrival. He had enough dramatic sense to wait a second or two before following Isabella. Then he slithered out feet first. He was still wearing his student’s outfit of white shirt and tweed suit. We fell silent. I was leaning against Uncle Kurt’s shoulder. Tom stood next to the car, squinting from the sun. Like Isabella and Delia, he had light brown hair that sat atop a comfortable, snub-nosed face. But he, much more than his sisters, had inherited his father’s handsomeness. He was magnetically attractive, and now he stood before us, allowing us to drink in the sight of him.

“Hi, everyone,” he said, waving a sheepish hand.

Such casual words—and yet, to me, they were the beginning of everything.

T
he morning after he arrived, Tom proved our theories about his talent for action by suggesting a family tournament of croquet. We were all in the kitchen, eating breakfast in the Hatfield fashion, which was to come at will and linger for as long as the food held out. My mother and Margery usually prepared the meals, Rose being too lazy and Edie too pernickety to do well in the culinary realm.

“Is there a croquet set here?” Charlie asked. “I’ve never seen one.”

“You’ve never looked,” said Aunt Margery. “Of course there’s one. We played croquet all the time when we were young, didn’t we, Caroline?”

“I remember perhaps one or two games,” my mother replied, smiling.

We found the set in one of the closets by the kitchen, a forgotten hideaway filled with antique sports equipment. Charlie crowed over an ancient baseball bat, and I located a bag of heavy balls that no one could identify. A few days later I asked Uncle Kurt about them, and he said they were bocce balls. He offered to teach me how to play but never did, so they remained a mystery until much later in the summer. Tom, of course, found the croquet bag, a big, unwieldy, canvas sack full of sharp wickets and clattering mallets. In uncovering the bag he threw a pile of litter into the room behind him, and Delia Robierre picked up an ancient kerosene lantern, stained with age. “What’s this?” she asked, amused to find a reminder of the age of gas lighting—which, in those days, was not so many years in the past. But Tom had no time for distractions, and the lantern was returned to the closet with all the other paraphernalia.

“Outside, everyone!” he ordered. He had a way of taking command that made us forget how short he was, how slender and insignificant his boy’s figure appeared as he strode onto the lawn. Only next to Uncle Kurt, who was so obviously a man, did his leadership falter. Kurt would have played, I was sure, but he was still in bed, recovering from the hunting expedition, which, according to Uncle Cedric, had been tiring for all concerned. That hadn’t stopped either Cedric or Frank from being present at the opening of the grand tournament, but, in typical fashion, they said they would sit by the sidelines and produced lawn chairs to carry out this plan.

“Lemonade for our parched throats, sun hats for our balding heads, lawn chairs for our tired legs—it’s all we need,” Uncle Frank declared.

“Anyone would think you were two twittering old aunties,” Francesca said.

“I don’t believe any child coming from the Hatfield family should describe an aunt as a twitterer,” Cedric replied. He had a dry monotone that perfectly set off his careful jokes.

Francesca laughed and turned around to demand the first mallet.

“There are only six,” Tom said.

“Play in pairs,” my mother suggested. “We often did that.”

“We don’t want to play,” the Delias said. They spoke in unison with uncanny frequency, standing next to each other, pale and dark, stocky and skinny, straight-haired and curly-haired, and each grinning the same Cheshire-cat grin, as if between the two of them they were hiding a raft of secrets.

“That’s fine. Caroline and I will play,” Aunt Rose announced.

“And me?” Aunt Margery asked. “What will I do?”

“Sit with the uncles,” Rose said, nodding over at them.

“That’s all right. Margery can play for me,” my mother said.

“But you’re much better than Margery,” Rose objected, frowning.

“We’ll switch off,” said my mother. “There’s nothing wrong with three to a mallet.”

Aunt Edie appeared at the door, and Isabella said at once, a smile twitching her lips, “Here comes Aunt Edie. She’s a mean hand at croquet, you know. Back in her glory days, she would play in the nationals. They used to call her Edie the Invincible. But sometimes they called her Edie the Skunk.”

“Be careful,” Aunt Margery said. “You’re closer to the truth than you know. Edie used to beat us every time we played. Even Kurt—he used to be absolutely furious when she skunked him across the lawn. He would dedicate the game to getting his revenge, and so, of course, he always lost.”

“Croquet, is it?” Edie asked, sweeping over the lawn. She wore a blue skirt and a strange green jacket, short and old-fashioned. Her nose traveled well before the rest of her body. “Is there a free mallet?”

“The older generation can battle it out over the blue mallet,” Tom said. “But the rest go to us. Who wants green?”

We paired off: Francesca with Charlie, Tom with Isabella, Philip with Fisher. Yvette was given a mallet to herself, which indicated not so much that the other cousins were being generous as that no one wanted to put up with her acerbic comments. Pamela and I got stuck with the crooked yellow mallet, identified by Tom as the runt of the litter. The wood of its handle had warped, and whenever you hit a stroke with it, the ball inevitably curved left.

“But we’ll lose!” I protested.

“Just take the warp into account,” said Tom, dismissing me.

“What does it matter?” said Pamela. “We would have lost anyway. This way we have an excuse.”

Just as we were beginning to play, Uncle Frank asked, “Shouldn’t Kurt have made an appearance by now? It’s unlike him to miss something like this.” From that point on, though Isabella had only just made the first stroke, my interest in the game was overshadowed by a stronger interest in Uncle Kurt’s whereabouts. When would he come? I played with one eye on the door leading into the kitchen and flubbed my shots even more than I would have because of the warp.

“We’ll never get anywhere if you play like that,” Pamela pointed out, her serenity undiminished. “Would you like me to play it all the way through?”

“No, I want to play.” I was determined to be visibly part of the game when Uncle Kurt appeared.

Tom and Isabella, the only sibling pair, soon took the lead. Isabella told me later that all the members of their family were fanatical players down in Boston and that she and Tom had devoted hours to improving the accuracy of their shots. They didn’t mention this at the time, though—they gave the credit to natural talent. “Never picked up a mallet before in my life,” Isabella said, flexing her thin arms. Neither Aunt Rose nor Uncle Cedric saw fit to contradict her.

Charlie swooped up from behind and hit their ball with his. “Watch out—you’re going to be skunked,” he warned.

“Let me do it,” said Francesca. “You hit her. I get to skunk her.”

“You don’t know how.”

“Of course I do! I’ve played before. My mother taught us, and she’s better than any of you.” Francesca put one dainty foot on her own ball and raised the mallet.

“You’ll knock your foot off,” said Charlie. “Let me help you.” He wrapped his arms around her and put his hands over hers on the mallet. With one massive toe he nudged her foot off the ball.

Francesca’s laugh rang out from within his embrace. “Charlie, we’re in public!” she exclaimed, and the aunts’ eyebrows rose. Then she said, “Get off me, you big bear,” and all the cousins began to laugh. A few glanced toward Aunt Edie. It was the undying joke of the summer, with just enough flavor of reality to give it punch.

Aunt Edie was trying to dominate the blue mallet and finding strong opposition in Aunt Rose. My mother and Aunt Margery had dropped out after the first round. “What’s the use?” Margery said, near to fuming. “They’ll just shove us to one side when they think they can make a better shot.”

Yvette, who could play a game with complete indifference or with competitive zeal but never with anything in between, had set her eyes on victory. It took her at least five minutes to prepare for every shot, and she ignored the shouts and groans of the other players. She would bend over her mallet, her blond hair falling in a curtain beside her face, her concentration like a fish cutting a line through a stream. Most of the time her shots were accurate, but she was still no match for Tom and Isabella.

The kitchen door remained obstinately shut, and Uncle Kurt did not appear. At last I asked my mother about him. “Why won’t he come out? Doesn’t he want to play with us? I thought he loved croquet.”

“Well, you know, dear,” she replied, “he’s working on writing something this summer. I think he finds it hard to concentrate with all of us here, and that’s why he has to lock himself in his room during the mornings. You mustn’t bother him when he’s working, but he’ll find time to play with the rest of us, don’t you worry.”

“What is he working on?” I asked, intrigued.

“Oh, he’s just writing something up. About the war, I think.” My mother waved her hand vaguely. She didn’t like to think about the war because it reminded her of Uncle Harold. The two of them had been very close, and when he died in the war, she had been so upset that she left my father and me for a time. At three years old, I felt her absence vividly, but I couldn’t miss Uncle Harold because I had never met him. He is another famous Hatfield figure, one whose legendary status can never be dimmed by the mundanity of a long life.

Uncle Kurt, then, was consigned to his room. The croquet game suddenly held less interest for me, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out which window was his.

Though he never appeared, there was still a late entrant to the match. Our surprise was doubled because the latecomer was a stranger, and her arrival cost Tom and Isabella the game. Tom had just lined up their ball for the last shot before a certain victory when I, happening to look at the woods, saw a solitary figure walking toward us through the grass.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing.

Everyone stopped and turned around. It felt so strange to have anyone in our midst who wasn’t related to us that we all stood still.

A girl had come out of the woods. She looked to be about sixteen, with thick, light brown hair that fell in appealing waves on each side of her face. As she came forward she watched us intently, her eyes wide—and her eyes were enormous to begin with, their irises an unusual mixture of speckled blue and gray. They were her most noticeable feature, aside from the paleness of her skin. None of us could understand, once we learned who she was, how someone in her situation could be so fair. Her skin was not simply untanned but truly alabaster—there was not a freckle anywhere to mar its whiteness, and on the inside of her arms the blue veins were clear under the surface. When she first walked toward us she looked frightened, as if she were an animal drawn to something it knew was a trap.

At last she gave us a cautious smile. Isabella was the first to speak. “Hello!” she called. “Who are you?”

The girl waited until she had come nearer. Then, standing with her hands behind her back as if to present herself, she said, “Hello. Do all of you live here?”

“We’re the Hatfields,” Aunt Rose said. “This is Shorecliff, our family home. Where have you come from?”

“My name’s Lorelei,” said the girl. “I live on the farm beyond the woods, and I heard voices when I was walking. I thought maybe the house had been sold or rented for the summer.”

“It’s still our house, but you’re right—we’re only here for the summer,” Isabella said. “During the school year we live in all different places.”

“Do you mean you live at the old Stephenson place?” Aunt Edie broke in.

“I’m Lorelei Stephenson,” the girl said, smiling shyly at Aunt Edie.

“Fred’s daughter?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I used to play with Fred when I was a girl,” Aunt Edie said.

“You minx,” Tom whispered. Isabella and I were the only ones who heard. I looked up “minx” later in my dictionary—the definition was “a deceitful woman.” I assumed from this that Tom thought Aunt Edie hadn’t actually played with Fred.

“How many of you are there?” Lorelei asked, glancing around at us.

“Eleven cousins, eight adults,” Tom said. He had stepped to the front of the small crowd that surrounded her. “We’re playing croquet. Do you want to join us? You can play with me.”

She looked at him, and it was as if we could see her heart fluttering in her chest. She was so transparent, physically and emotionally—so different from the Hatfields. “I’d like that very much,” she said.

“You don’t need to play anymore, Isabella,” Tom said over his shoulder.

Isabella put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to retort, but her eyes flickered to Lorelei, and she said nothing. That was one of the things I loved about her—she never did anything that might hurt someone else’s feelings. When she said the wrong thing, which was often, it was usually because she was too enthusiastic or too confident that everyone would agree with her. But when she read situations correctly, she was always compassionate. “Go ahead,” she said, nodding to Lorelei. “The game’s almost over, but you can have a few shots.”

“I’ve never played before,” Lorelei said, raising her eyes to Tom’s as he handed her the mallet. “I don’t even know the rules.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “You’re just trying to hit this ball here through that wicket there with this mallet. That’s all.”

They were like two actors in a play; we were all watching them. Lorelei hit the ball feebly, and it bobbled off at an impossible angle. Charlie, who had no compunction about taking advantage of others’ mistakes, roared with delight and plunged in to skunk the ball.

Philip and Fisher ended up winning the game. Their partnership was a strange one, though typical of their personalities. Philip always wielded the mallet, but Fisher would scout out the distance to be covered and the angle at which the ball needed to travel. He would stand next to Philip like a surveyor and murmur advice to him: “Try to put a left-handed spin on it” or “Be careful of the tussock halfway to the wicket.” Philip and Fisher were the two quiet brains of the family, and their respectful friendship was one of the most understandable among us.

Charlie’s thirst for glory having led him astray, the combined calculations of Philip and Fisher brought their ball to the stake, and the aunts, forgetting their own battle over mallet rights, congratulated them. Charlie stomped on his mallet with a good-natured bellow. Francesca, with an imperious toss of her hair, laid all the blame on his shoulders. As for Tom, he was still standing with Lorelei at the place where she had mishit the ball. Isabella, from a distance, watched them.