Emily's Ghost (26 page)

Emily was surrounded. The
kids were everywhere, jumping and tripping and tugging at her
skirt, shouting their names -- Sarah and Will and Becky and Missy
and Rob -- and making polite conversation between adults a
laughable concept.

"What a wonderful
welcome!" Emily cried over the tops of their curly
heads.

"That's because I told 'em
you were bringing Milky Ways for everyone," Lee said, his eyes
dancing with blue light.

Emily looked her dismay,
and Lee laughed and said, "Mother, may I present Miss Emily
Bowditch," in his best prep school manner. "Emily, this is my
mother, Margaret Alden."

Mrs. Alden tapped her
son's forearm in tender reproach and extended a firm hand to Emily.
"He's an awful tease. Just ignore him; we all do," she said with a
warm smile.

Emily nodded, her eyes
just catching Lee's in a glance, and said, "Many happy returns,
ma'am." She saw in Mrs. Alden's violet-blue gaze the most basic
message of all:
Don't be afraid; we will
not harm you.
Emily smiled, flushing
slightly, and took in the hazy panorama of Vineyard Sound and the
bluff-marked islands to the north. "What a magical place this is,"
she said shyly.

One of the little ones --
Becky or Missy -- wrapped her arms around Lee's knee and asked
plaintively, "Is Emly gon' do magic now?"

Lee looked down at the
moppet clinging to his leg and said, "In a little while,
sweetheart. Run and show Emily how well you can swing."

The child ran off,
accompanied by two or three other little show-offs. "Magic?" Emily
repeated as the three adults made their way toward the brick
terrace adjoining the house.

"I told them that a
beautiful fairy princess named Emily was coming," Lee said as he
held out a chair for his mother, "and that she would bring magic
with her."

"But I left my wand and
stardust in the cab," Emily protested, feigning the dismay she
really felt.

"I for one think you're
quite charming, even without the wand," interjected Mrs.
Alden.

"Which is what I told the
kids," Lee agreed. "Come with me, Emily, and we'll scare up my
sister. Excuse us, Mother."

Lee took Emily inside the
house, fending off little clinging creatures with secret whispered
promises that all seemed to end with "later."

When they were alone, Lee
turned to her. "I'm glad you came," he said in his quiet
way.

"I'm glad you asked me,"
she answered in kind.

"You look very nice," he
said with his gently ironic smile. "Still."

He was giving new meaning
to the expression "Less is more." Yet she wouldn't have traded his
simple compliments for all the diamonds in Amsterdam. There was
something in his voice, something in his eyes. Nine simple words,
and they sent a thrill that rolled over her and through her and set
her very soul vibrating. Oh, she had it bad, all right. She was
just now realizing
how
bad.

She stood there in
confusion, wanting him to do something, not quite knowing how to
make it happen, stalling for time. "Gee . . . I . . . this . .
."

He brushed her lips with a
feather-light kiss. "I know. Me, too." Then he took her hand and
said softly, "Come meet the rest of the clan."

They passed through a
series of rooms bright with sunlight and chintz and needlepoint
rugs scattered on wide-board floors. Fireplaces were everywhere.
Even now she smelled the sooty, sweet scent of burned-up wood;
apparently nights on the Vineyard were cool. The furnishings, a
comfortable blend of Federal and country, were not exactly in
museum condition. Everything had been kicked, moved, sat on, stood
on, rubbed, polished, pushed, shoved, and rearranged until it
fitted the house like an omelet in a pan. There were no hard edges
left anywhere, only soft, worn, loved ones.

The kitchen itself was a
delight, functional and unadorned, with unmatched pieces of
scrubbed pine and a massive butcher-block island. There was a view
through twelve-light windows of an herb garden to the west and the
hazy blue sound to the north. The three women who were cleaning up
and setting out a birthday cake had obviously done it together
before. When Lee and Emily walked through the door, they all looked
up as one.

"Just in time!" said the
oldest, a plump woman in a housedress and an apron who was lining
up cups and saucers on a massive tray. "You carry this right out
there, Lee. Your mother likes her coffee
hot,
and you're just dawdlin', I
see." She gave Emily a shrewd but not unfriendly look.

The second woman was about
Lee's age, beautifully dressed in wrinkle-free linen and quiet gold
jewelry. "It's true, Lee. Just because we taxpayers pay you money
to sit around and do nothing all week doesn't mean we'll let you
get away with it on weekends. You heard Inez. Move along." She gave
him a gently ironic look that Emily had seen before, through eyes
that matched his shade of blue.

The third woman was in her
mid-thirties, dressed in white slacks and a boat-neck striped
shirt. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had an
absolutely dazzling smile. "We ran out of pink candles, Lee; I had
to add blue. It makes it so obvious that I've gone into a third
box," she said, making a funny, guilty face at Emily.

"That's no problem," Lee
said, sneaking a bit of frosting from a side flower. "Mother can
take it. Emily, I'd like you to meet Inez, the real boss behind our
operation, and my sister Grace, and my sister-in-law Hildie. If
you're wondering about a pecking order, it goes: Inez, Mother,
Grace, and then poor Hildie." He licked the frosting off his finger
and wrapped an arm around his sister-in-law and kissed the top of
her head. "Hildie's been in the family for only eight years, you
see.

Emily shook hands all
around and said, "It seems to be a happy arrangement."

Lee seemed almost
surprised. "You're right. It is." He gave her another one of those
looks, the ones that made her dizzy, and said, "If you want to wash
up, I'll rustle up a sandwich for you."

Emily begged off but took
him up on his offer of a bathroom. As she walked out of the kitchen
and down the hall she heard Hildie whisper, "All in favor? Show of
hands."

When she came out, Lee was
waiting for her around the corner in the library. It was a man's
room, fitted out in tufted leather and smelling faintly of tobacco.
On the wall were seascapes in oil and a watercolor by Winslow
Homer. Lee was slouched in an easy chair, staring thoughtfully at a
cluster of framed photos on a small library table next to him. When
he saw Emily, he went to her. "You were a hit," he said, tracing
his fingertips across the line of her cheek.

"You folks are easy to
please," Emily quipped.

"We're an impulsive bunch,
it's true," he said, which is not what she really wanted him to
say. He looked at her sideways as they walked out onto the terrace.
"But we know what we like."

Two other couples had
joined Mrs. Alden on the terrace by now. They were old, old
neighbors whose names Emily promptly forgot after being introduced
to them. After a minute or two the smaller children began to
assemble as if by primal instinct. The French doors were thrown
open, and Jane and Richard came through with fierce expressions on
their faces, walking in life-or-death synchronism with a blazing
sheet cake between them. Somehow they managed to shift the cake
from the palms of their hands onto the glass patio table -- to a
round of relieved applause -- and then the birthday song began,
cheerful and high-pitched, after which Mrs. Alden and eight little
helpers extinguished the flames. There was more applause, and a
certain amount of infighting over who got to pull the candles and
suck off the frosting. Hildie got it all on video.

The cake was cut and
passed around, and the grown-ups chatted easily and amiably over
coffee. Emily was neither the focus of the conversation nor
ignored. The talk was general enough for her to join in --
overdevelopment and the dismal real estate situation, for example
-- and when it wasn't, someone always made the effort to bring her
up to speed. They were, in short, perfectly delightful company, and
she wondered why she'd dreaded coming.

After a while Mrs. Alden
stood up and said, "Before it gets dark, let me show you the
peonies."

It wasn't an invitation so
much as a friendly subpoena. Emily saw Lee exchange glances with
his sister Grace, and that, more than anything, frightened her. If
this was a cross-examination, she'd blow it for sure. She smiled
nervously and fell in beside Mrs. Alden, who took her around to the
front of the house to view a bed of exotic tree peonies soaking up
the last of the day's gold light.

"I do have a favorite, and
this is it," Mrs. Alden said as she hovered over an exquisite,
subtle flower the color of a Persian Bokhara. "It was here when I
was a girl. My grandfather brought it back with him from the
Orient."

Emily smiled and murmured
something nice, but she was thinking,
My
God. Even their flowers have longer bloodlines than I do.
She was afraid to point to any one of the peonies
as her own favorite. What if the one she liked was too pink or too
common or, God forbid, a recent hybrid? She wanted Fergus and his
commonsense approach: If it looked good and smelled good, it must
be good.

They walked back and forth
a bit, with Emily afraid to have an opinion, until finally Mrs.
Alden said, "You know, I've been wondering whether my son would
ever bring someone home after, well, Nicole. You do know about
Nicole, don't you?"

Emily nodded, and Mrs.
Alden went on. "The accident completely shattered Lee. You probably
know that he was thinking of resigning his seat in the Senate. We
all were so very, very worried about him. He's much more
introspective than my other son. Charles is in Europe again this
week; he's in sales."

She plucked a brown leaf
here and there as she spoke. "But Lee is an idealist, making him
perfect for public office but not so very adept at finding, well,
someone. You do understand me?"

Emily nodded hesitantly.
She had no idea what Mrs. Alden meant. Was she warning Emily away?
Was she saying, "Hang in there, he'll come around"? Or was she
softening the inevitable blow to come from him?

"I'm glad we had this
little chat," Mrs. Alden said in a kindly way. She reached into the
pocket of her challis skirt and took out a pair of pruning shears.
"Now. Which ones would you like for your room tonight?"

Emily took a deep breath
and pointed to a pale silvery lavender clump, even though she would
have preferred the bright crimson ones farther down the
line.

"Ah. Mystery. A wise
choice," Mrs. Alden said, sounding pleased.

When the mosquitoes came
out, everyone went in. Inez had set up a small buffet of quiches
and cold cuts and crusty French bread. By now all the children were
hungry again, and Emily -- who was becoming good at moving freely
with a small child attached to each leg -- helped Hildie and Grace
feed their brood. The kids had seized on Emily as one of their own,
while Hildie and Grace marveled at the strength of the bond. Emily
laughed and said something about being new blood, and Lee came
around and made a big thing about biting her on the back of her
neck, which made her blush. She saw Hildie and Grace smile at each
other, and that made her blush even more.

After the late snack,
Grace and Hildie began rounding up the littlest ones for bed, but
they broke free and ran laughing in jerky, flat-footed steps to
Emily, and hid behind her skirt. Very quickly it turned into a
game, and the children became more keyed up than ever.

"Hopeless! They're nowhere
near ready for sleep," said Hildie to Grace. "We've got to get them
out of the living room. All right, you monsters," she said,
addressing the horde, "I'm throwing you all in a cage together.
Uncle Lee will put a television in your room, and you all can watch
videos."

An earsplitting cheer went
up, followed by a stampede toward one of the bedrooms. Hildie
winked at Emily. "Half of 'em will be asleep before today's tape
plays through. We'll peel the bodies off one by one and
redistribute them to their own beds later."

"You spoil them, Hildie,"
said Grace mildly.

But it was clear that
Grace was ready for a little peace and quiet and some adult
conversation. Emily had learned that Grace's husband, a political
consultant, was also away a great deal. Didn't anyone work nine to
five for the telephone company anymore? How did these women cope?
Obviously, Emily decided, they banded together the way they were
doing now. Why not? It worked for the Kennedy family.

Lee stole the
nineteen-inch television from the living room and staggered off
with it. A moment later Missy -- adorable and shy -- came out and
approached Emily. A couple of the others hung back behind her,
peeking from the hall and giggling.

With her thumb hanging
comfortably from her lower teeth Missy said, "We want
you
to watch wif
us."