The Glory Hand (3 page)

With a nervous flick of her hand, she brushed back the chestnut wisps of hair that had loosened from the knot pinned on top of her head. Two separate anxieties were tugging at her - what to do about Todd, and what to do about her mother - and as if she were trying to perform two different ballet steps at the same time, it seemed impossible to resolve either of them.

Go up and check on her.

No, let her sleep. She needs sleep. You can be out on the boat with Todd and back before she wakes up.

Cassie raised her chin, then threw back her shoulders so that her tiny breasts pushed against the black nylon leotard, and imagined Todd was staring at her the way he had stared at her last night.

The door clicked open.

Todd ... He must have been too impatient to wait for her on the beach. She arched her back, looking into the mirror to catch the expression on his face when he walked in.

'Cassie, we've got to go.'

Her mother was standing in the doorway.

Go back to bed. Please go back to bed.

'What are you doing up?' Cassie asked.

'We're leaving.'

In a long batik skirt over a leotard and tights, the outfit she always wore at Cliffs Edge, Ann Broyles looked like a ballet teacher. But something was different about her this morning: her raven hair, which was usually pulled into a tight bun, was wild and unkempt; her eyes were red (from sleeplessness or tears?), and her complexion . . . her complexion that had tanned so readily in one week of sunshine, was as wan as the dawn sky.

'Are you okay?' Cassie's cautious words were an echo of last night. And like last night, her mother ignored them, pulling the velvet curtains back across the window. She's shutting me in, Cassie thought. She's always shutting me in.

'You'd better get dressed.'

'What for?' Cassie walked to the Baldwin upright in the corner, grabbed a towel from the piano bench and wiped her forehead with it. 'Our plane's not till tonight.'

'We're due at Woods Hole in an hour.'

'You've got to be kidding.' Cassie threw the towel on the floor and started the record again with an angry scratch.

'Cassie, sometimes your father's needs come first.'

'I thought he said we didn't have to go . . .He didn't
want
us to go.'

'It's important.'

'Come on, you hate those dumb political things more than / do. I thought the whole reason you came out here was to get away from all that Senator's wife junk.'

'Honey, we don't have much time.'

Cassie turned her back on her to face the
barre.
She balanced her leg up on it and stretched until the pain shot from her ankle into her hip. 'You go ahead. I'll be okay here
. . .' (With Todd.)
'I'll meet you and Dad at Logan Airport tonight.'

Ann didn't reply. Instead, with an urgency Cassie couldn't understand, she grabbed her hand and led her -
dragged
her - out of the dance studio and into the hall.

Despite her sleeplessness, despite whatever had afflicted her last night, her mother still had a dancer's strength, Cassie thought, her grasp so tight that her ring bit into Cassie's palm. The antique silver band was shaped like a hand, with spindly fingers and pointed nails that seemed to clutch her mother's ring finger. 'You're hurting me,' Cassie said.

'I'm sorry.' But Ann didn't loosen her grip.

Cassie knew her mother would never deliberately hurt her. Whenever she held Cassie's hand so tightly that the ring stung Cassie's palm, it meant that she was afraid. 'It's Dad, isn't it? You're worried something's going to happen to him.'

'Not at all.'

On the landing, an easel faced a corner window. Her mother had chosen to work here because it was the only window on the second floor of the summer house that faced away from the sea. After the fire on the
Pandora
years before had scarred her legs, she had stopped dancing and had begun painting the view from this window: scrub pines and cypresses, sand dunes tangled with heather and wild roses. Cassie resisted her mother's breakneck pace long enough to glance at the canvas on the easel, surprised to see that the half finished work wasn't a landscape like the others that lined the hall, but a portrait: A young girl in a
tutu
, done in stormy blues that seemed to have been stolen from her mother's troubled eyes.

Cassie realized it was a portrait of herself as a child, melancholy and vulnerable. It galled her all the more - it was as if her mother were trying to keep her frozen forever at age four. 'I know why you won't let me stay here by myself while you go to that thing today. You don't trust me!'

Ann stiffened. 'Cassie, I know you went out on Todd's boat last night. . . and I know it wasn't the first time.'

'Jesus!' Cassie exploded. 'I'm thirteen years old. All the other kids my age go sailing . . . swimming. Why won't you let me?'

Ann searched Cassie's eyes, it used to be that coming to Nantucket was a chance for us to be together. The dancing . . . the closeness . . . the dinners we used to have. You never minded spending time with me here then.'

'Things are different now.'

'You used to like staying in the house, dancing while I played the piano, or looking at those art books downstairs

That was before your Chill ruined everything,
Cassie wanted to say.
That was before your obsessive, consuming fear of the sea kept me here.
And yet, Cassie didn't open her mouth. For her mother was limping. Whenever the scars on her legs gave her trouble, Cassie backed off. 'I was with you, don't forget.' She chose her words carefully: 'The horrible stuff that happened on that ship ... it didn't hurt me like it hurt you.'

'You were young . . . children can be very resilient. I'm grateful you haven't suffered the way I have.' Her weary tone reminded Cassie they'd been over the same ground countless times before. 'I wish you understood it's only because I care about your safety that I've made these rules.'

'It is not!' Cassie shot back. 'It's because you're afraid. And not just of the sea . . . That's not the reason you don't like me spending time with Todd. You're afraid of what I'll do with him!' She ran across the hall into her bedroom.

The pink wallpapered room was crammed with childhood mementos. An oak cradle held frayed stuffed animals; tiny costumed mice filled a miniature Victorian house, and Princess Alexandra dolls wearing taffeta dresses trimmed with rabbit fur were lined up on the window seat where Cassie had left them the summer before. Signs of her more grown-up passions seemed to conflict with them - the chrome-framed posters of Nureyev and Baryshnikov, the black stereo speakers stark against the floral wallpaper; paperback novels by Vonnegut and Salinger scattered across the four-poster bed, their colors clashing with the patchwork quilt.

Ann followed her inside with a sigh, as if yielding to her daughter's anger. 'I'm sorry. Look, I don't mean to ruin things for you and Todd. It's just ... I don't know, it just seems like such a long time since we were together as a family. All the talk about Clay's Presidential chances . . .' She lowered her voice, as if mentioning a terminal illness. 'He can't get out to the island so easily anymore. I thought, since he was going to be on the Cape today - so close - that maybe it would be nice if we went to Woods Hole, to be with him.' She reached out to hug her, but Cassie squirmed away.

Clay Broyles' face smiled down from the collage of Senatorial campaign buttons and bumper stickers that she'd tacked above her bed. 'Sitting on some stage in front of hundreds of people . . . That's not being with him! We might as well watch him on TV!' Cassie stripped off her leotard and stood naked, defiant, in front of her, as if to say that at least her mother couldn't control her body, that she was growing into a woman, and if that meant growing away from her, there wasn't a damn thing her mother could do about it.

Ann averted her eyes as if to avoid facing the reality, and reached into the closet. 'It's a good thing I remembered to pack this.' She pulled a pink dress from a hanger, the Florence Eiseman she had bought for Cassie's thirteenth birthday in the children's department at Saks, though Cassie could have fit into a Junior size. Pearl buttons in the shape of hearts adorned the bodice, and hand-appliqued roses trimmed the prim white collar.

'Cute
.' Cassie made a face.

Ann lay the dress carefully on the bed. 'Be ready in fifteen minutes . . . please.'

Ann walked slowly out of the room and Cassie felt the urge, as she always did after such clashes, to apologize. 'Mom . . .' As usual, it was too late. Ann was halfway down the stairs. It didn't make sense. Hadn't her mother always encouraged her to express her feelings? So why, when Cassie vented her anger, did it only make both of them feel worse? They never used to hurt each other like this.

She could hear her stop on the landing and call to someone coming up the stairs from below:
'Cassie's got to leave in five minutes'

'No problem, Mrs Broyles.'

A girl with frizzy blonde hair walked into Cassie's bedroom. 'Jesus . . . Todd said he could hear you two bitching at each other all the way down on the beach. What's going on?' She pulled a pack of Virginia Slims from under her 'Save the Whales' T-shirt and lit up.

Cassie clutched her throat in mock agony. 'Robin,
must
you?'

The blonde snapped her bathing suit around a protruding crescent of buttock and exhaled luxuriously: 'It's not dope. Don't sweat it.'

'Is that what they teach you at boarding school? You'll stunt your growth . . . stunt
my
growth . . . turn me into a dwarf or something.'

'Pardonnez-moi
. I'd hate to screw up your gorgeous dancer's bod.' She was about to tap the ash onto the carpet when Cassie motioned her towards the bathroom. Reluctantly, Robin went in and tossed the cigarette into the toilet without flushing it. On her way back to the bedroom, she stopped in front of the mirror, tried to suck in her softly rounded stomach, gave up and flopped down onto the bed.
'Shitl'
She pulled a copy of
Watership Down
out from under her. 'How can you read stuff for school on
vacation?'

it's a good book.'

Robin rolled her eyes and blew an imaginary smoke ring. 'The dancing ... the homework . . . How do I tell my best friend she's turned into a
masochist
this past year. You'll be burnt out before you get to high school! I mean, don't you ever relax?'

Cassie smiled. 'Maybe I don't know how.'

Robin took an Almond Joy out of her backpack and offered Cassie a bite, but Cassie shook her head: 'You're too much. Here I am fighting battles with my self control day and night, and all you do is stuff your face. And the worst part is, you don't even feel guilty . . .' She eyed her friend's body enviously. Since last summer, Robin had lost her baby-fat, and had developed full breasts and shapely hips. Watching her polish off the candy bar, all Cassie could come up with was: 'You're going to get zits.'

Robin brushed a crumb of chocolate from her baby-smooth cheek. 'At least I've got tits!' They both laughed. 'Cass, you worry too much.'

'That's what I just said to my mom.'

Cassie padded barefoot into the bathroom and switched on the shower. Stretching a plastic shower-cap over her hair, she stepped under the spray and turned it as hot as she could stand.

Robin leaned in the doorway and raised her voice to be heard over the rush of water. 'She hassling you about

Todd?'

'You name it.' Cassie squirted Vitabath on a sponge and lathered her body. 'I thought you were supposed to get more freedom when you got older . . . you know, that they trusted you more. I think my mom trusted me more when I was four.' She rinsed off quickly and stepped out of the shower. Robin handed her a yellow towel and she rubbed herself down. 'God, it's like she's pulling in the reins or something.'

'Where's she making you go today?'

'You won't believe it ... I mean, I have one day left before I have to go back to Washington, right? And she's making me blow it on one of those dumb political things.' She chose a pair of pink lace bikini panties from the dresser drawer and stepped into them, then pulled on a bra, though it was clearly more a sign of hope than a necessity. 'I wish I knew what her problem was.'

Robin joined Cassie at the mirror and licked her finger, then tried to smooth down her eyebrows that had been plucked to a ragged line. 'Maybe it's menopause or something. My mom's been acting weird lately, too. Only with her, it's like she can't
wait
to get rid of me.'

'Don't I wish.'

'Cassie?'
Ann didn't have to shout: voices carried in the old house like cold drafts from the cellar.

Cassie picked up the Florence Eiseman from the bed and held it up in front of her in the mirror. Then she threw it down and plunged into the closet, pulling out a red sundress of sheer Indian cotton, with a scoop neck and spaghetti straps that tied at the shoulder.

'I thought your mom made you return that,' Robin said. 'I thought she said it was . . .'