Nine Women (7 page)

She had never felt the presence of his ghost, never seen faint images or slight motions in the air. She never felt that he lingered behind, fading slightly perhaps, following her into this summer.

A decisive man, he had left her completely. A quiet man, he had slipped away quietly.

After the funeral, surfeited with kisses and tears, staggering under the burden of organ chords, she’d returned to their house alone. She’d insisted on that. Not the housekeeper, not her son, not the dogs. She closed the door firmly behind her. The metallic click of the latch fell like a marble and rolled through the silent empty rooms. After a pause, leaning against the door, drawing strength from the firm unmoving wood, she climbed the stairs. Deliberately, being careful of her balance, of her breathing, a high-wire walker moving between two points. In the bedroom she sat, spine stretched alertly, hands on knees, palms up, like boats stranded by the tide. As she waited, her eyes moved slowly, meticulously covering every inch of the room. Up and down the walls, applying her surveillance like a methodical painter, slipping beneath the pictures, passing across the surfaces of the furniture. Across the floor, like a careful housekeeper, board by board, diving under rugs to survey them from beneath. And finally reaching the bed, where Hugh had died three days past, where her eyes now traced every flower on its quilted neutral emptiness.

Later, sometime during the night, she stood up, cramped and chill, and walked through the house. She went into every single room, looked into every closet, opening and closing curtains, turning lamps on and off and on again, then returning to change the pattern of light and shadow she had just made. Picking up vases and boxes and ashtrays and figures and paperweights, taking books from their shelves, turning them over once, twice, putting them back. Pressing her palms on the polished surfaces of tables and desks and chairs, then wiping away the sweaty imprints with her scarf or the edge of her skirt. Repeating, over and over.

When the late winter sun rose, yellow and thin, she was dazzled by the radiance, bending her head before its glory, hands over eyes.

In the blazing white sun of July, Myra Rowland drove her jeep along the twin strips of black asphalt that led to the beach. The road was a large semicircle through wind-shaped olives and rhododendrons (with a few late flowers in the deep cool places), through small salt-twisted pin oaks, through leathery rugosa roses covered with flat pink and white flowers. The stretches of shiny-leaved poison ivy were beginning to show blotches of yellow—the gardeners had been spraying weed killer. Nearest the shore, roots firmly planted in the dry thin ground, jack pines crowded the road, the shadows of their grove the blackish green of the ocean bottom.

The road lifted over a low hill. The red jeep popped, like a cork from a bottle, into the glare of the beach.

The ocean, blue in its distance and deep green inshore, was rumpled and creased by wind squalls. A fleet of small boats raced toward a distant orange marker, tacking back and forth, white sails bisecting the ruffled shadows. The beach itself was smooth and curved, backed by tall dunes spotted with tall sparse grasses. At the center was the clubhouse, gleaming with fresh white paint and newly washed windows, American flag and club ensign flying over the roof. On each side of the building, like outstretched wings, were dozens of brilliantly colored beach umbrellas. The breeze, onshore this time of day, was heavy with the sound of people: the hum of voices and the cries of children, high and thin like the calls of distant seabirds.

I do not want to go there, Myra thought, I do not want to go into that jumble of sound and color. I don’t want to enter the giant bubble of their breathing, these summer friends whom I have not seen for ten months.

Then she felt, as she sometimes did, a pressure in the small of her back, pushing her forward. And she heard a laugh—a cackle of profound derision—deep inside her skull.

She shifted the jeep into four-wheel drive, swung hard to the right, and accelerated directly across the dunes, dodging between signs that forbade such passage as ecologically damaging, bouncing at last into the parking lot, into the space neatly marked
MRS. ROWLAND SR.
(Hugh’s name had vanished even from there, she thought, even that small piece of wood had been corrected to reflect the new fact.)

She climbed out slowly, massaging an arthritic ache in her left hip. There was a tangle of wild beach pea vine caught in the car bumper—she snapped off four small pink flowers and tucked them into the band of her large pink beach hat. She picked up a canvas bag filled with sun lotions and walked briskly down the sloping flower-lined path to the club.

Harry Marshall was sitting at his favorite table, the one in the far corner of the deck, the one with the best view of the entrance. He’d come early, as he always did, and settled down in the greenish reflected shade of the overhead umbrella. He liked to be the first to greet his friends on the opening day of the summer season.

“Well now,” he said. “Myra’s here.”

“Who?” Bill Landrieux, his brother-in-law and law partner in the days before they both retired, was admiring his tequila sunrise, turning it around slowly. “They weren’t this color last summer,” he said. “They taste the same but they aren’t the same color.”

“Myra’s here,” Harry Marshall repeated.

Slowly, reluctantly, Bill Landrieux put down his glass. “Myra Rowland?”

“She just arrived.”

Bill peered vaguely toward the path through the dunes. “Is that her in the bright pink dress?”

“Contacts not working, Bill?”

“You know I can’t wear contacts with the damn sand.”

“Get prescription sunglasses, you vain old goat.”

“These are prescription. I got to get a new doctor.” He pulled off the glasses and squinted into the glare. “I see better without the damn things. Sure, that’s Myra Rowland. Always wears pink. Hugh isn’t with her.”

“Hugh died last winter. I clipped the obituary and sent it to you.”

“You did? I guess Jane forgot to give it to me. You know, Harry, I think that woman must have Alzheimer’s. She can’t remember anything.”

“Jane always was that way.” Harry waved to Myra Rowland, who had stopped to admire the flowering begonias.

Bill popped back his sunglasses. “The glare gives me a headache without them.”

The combination of heat and alcohol was getting to him, Harry thought. Sweat gleamed through his thin blond hair. “Maybe you should go a little slower on the drinks, Bill. Can’t have you passing out.”

Bill ignored him and continued staring at Myra, who had finished with the flowers. “So old Hugh’s dead. What’d he die of?”

“The paper didn’t say.”

“Old age, I guess. What was he? Eighty?”

“Seventy-nine.”

“I sure hope Jane wrote her a note, but she probably forgot that too.”

Harry stood up, waving and calling, “Myra, good to see you. Come sit with us for a bit.”

Myra smiled politely and warmly while she struggled to remember their names. It was so long from summer to summer, she thought. Hugh had been good at names. Hugh had always remembered for her.

“How nice to see you again.” A name popped into her memory: Harry Marshall. That was right. And Bill something or other. “You both look wonderful,” she said, brightening up her smile. “Just wonderful.”

“We’re still at the same old table.” Bill laughed. “And that’s probably the same old umbrella up there.”

“Same table, same umbrella, same drinks,” Harry said. “Yours was a gin and tonic, right?”

“You have a fantastic memory.” She sat down carefully in the canvas deck chair. Her back was very stiff today.

“I’ll get the drinks,” Harry said.

“One for me, brother-in-law,” Bill called after him.

He was pretty drunk already, Myra noticed, his skin flushed so deeply that blood seemed ready to ooze from each pore. “And how is your wife?” she inquired politely.

“Jane’s fine. She’s down there on the beach with the grandchildren. But you knew about Edna?”

“Last summer seems such a long time ago.”

“I know you remember Edna. Great friend of Jane’s. Like a sister really, not just a summer friend. They used to have lunch together every Tuesday all winter long. Well, she died.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Myra said, “I do remember her.” A short thin wiry woman who played a fine game of tennis. Myra had disliked her, her nervousness and constant movement.

“Cancer,” Bill said, wiping the sweat from his bald head. “Everywhere, even her brain. Doctors couldn’t do anything. They didn’t even try.”

All that flitting vibration stopped, Myra thought wearily, all those jerking muscles and racing feet.

Harry Marshall put the tray of drinks down on the table. “Here’s to the summer!”

Bill lifted his glass. “To us old folks. We made another year.” Then blushing, remembering, “I didn’t really mean that the way it sounded, Myra. I’m awfully sorry about Hugh. I really am. He was one great guy.”

“I don’t talk about it any more.” Myra saw relief smooth out the squinched agitation on his face.

“We bought a place in the Bahamas,” Harry said, changing the subject. “A little pink cottage with bougainvillea on the fence. The house is all right, but it was that bougainvillea that sold me. It’s pink like you wouldn’t believe.”

Bill said, “And right away Jane’s got to go see her dear brother’s house. And once she sees it, she wants one too. So we’re looking. The funniest thing, Myra, would you believe they’ve got a beach club that looks almost exactly like this one.”

“Except for the pine trees,” Harry added. “No pine trees.”

“So you have an eternal summer,” Myra said. “How nice, how very nice.”

Harry beamed. “What a wonderful way to look at it, Myra. I suppose that’s exactly what it is. We’re retired and living in an eternal summer. Damn poetic, that’s what it is.”

Liam Thorpe, who was stretched full length on one of the blue padded lounges, lifted his head and squinted across the deck. “Isabel, isn’t that Myra Rowland?”

His wife, who was lying face down, said, “I heard she came early this year, a couple of weeks ago.”

“Did you remember to write her after Hugh died?”

“I always remember.”

“She came alone this year?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Now what the hell’s that supposed to mean.”

“Her two grandsons came with her. And she’s still got that housekeeping couple she’s had all these years. And her son and his wife will be down every weekend.”

“You are a veritable treasure trove of information.”

“I met her son in the post office.” Isabel chuckled smugly. “He also told me that they’ve booked in a steady series of guests. So that’s why I said that in a way she wasn’t alone.”

“Well, she sure has room for everybody in that big old house.” Liam lay back, talking to the heat-hazed sky. “Hugh Rowland’s dead. And… Isabel, hasn’t there been an awful lot of that this winter? I mean, an unusual amount of dying.”

“I don’t think so.” Isabel’s voice was muffled by the folded towel over her head. “Of course at our age you do have to expect a certain amount, I guess.”

“But so many: I mean, that’s not natural. There was Hugh, and there was that awful woman Edna. And Sally and Andrew, remember them?”

“Liam, they were killed in a plane crash. That’s not the same at all.”

“They aren’t here, that’s all I’m counting.”

Isabel’s legs began to move restlessly. “Don’t be silly.”

“And then there was Webster. Ed Webster.”

“He’d have been close to ninety.”

“We’re not that far away, duck.”

Her head jerked up, the towel slid to her shoulders. “Liam, you are nowhere near ninety and neither am I. Don’t exaggerate.”

“And Roger. Remember him, Roger Fasterling?”

Isabel began turning over, slowly sighing with annoyance.

“How many is that?” he asked the sky. “It’s a lot.”

Isabel completed her roll and settled down on her back. Eyes closed, she began rubbing sun lotion on her face. “Well, Liam, however many people died, there are still plenty left. The place is positively packed. Just look down the beach.”

“Kids,” he said.

“And up here,” she insisted. “This deck is as crowded as I’ve ever seen it.”

“Another thing.” Liam sat up. “I don’t know half the people here. I remember how it used to be. It used to be I could walk up and down and know every face I passed. I could sit down and talk to just anybody and everybody.”

“You can still do that.”

“What would I say? What do you want me to say? Who are you? Or maybe: I knew your grandfather when he was alive.”

“You could say: I like to meet people I don’t know.”

“I’d just look senile.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Isabel bounced up and down irritably, the padded cushions squeaking. “This whole thing is utterly silly. Next year I am going to wait until everybody has finished counting and knows who died over the winter and who’s too sick to be here.” She swiped her towel at a passing deerfly. “On opening day this whole place sounds like a bunch of lunatic gardeners: Did it survive the winter? Did it survive in good shape? Has it had a little stroke, nothing serious? … God, what crazy accounting.”

“But you haven’t said we’re wrong,” Liam insisted. “Only that you don’t want to hear us.”

Isabel put the folded towel across her face, carefully, deliberately, then lifted one corner to say, “Tell me if Myra comes this way.”

Myra Rowland changed into her bathing suit, moving and bending with careful deliberation. The locker room maid, she noticed, was the same as last year: a college girl, short, bespectacled, silent.

“Hello,” Myra said.

The young woman looked up from her book, flashing brilliant blue eyes at the bottom of deep lens pools. And smiled faintly.

“Studying?” Myra asked politely as she gathered her beach towel and hat.

The blue eyes blinked, vanishing behind their lids. Stubby fingers held up a book. Myra glanced at it: something about the endocrine system.

Good lord, she sits in this damp locker room and studies that. A silent blue-eyed toad under a rock.

“See you later,” Myra said.