The Shell Collector (16 page)

“What?” I’m still clutching the robe tightly around me.

She waves her hand at the room, at the whole house. “Just leave it like this. You’ll want to make it your own, but he won’t give a shit about you in a week and he’ll just have his staff put it all back where it was. All the little dents in the carpet will vacuum out in a few days. So save yourself the time.”

“I—”

“And another thing: Don’t let his smile fool you. It’s a shell. Ness is not a happy man. He never will be. You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking you can change that.”

“Look—” I say.

“Oh, you’ll think I’m a bitch for a month or so. You’ll hate me because I got the closest to him. But in another month or two, you’ll remember this conversation, realize I was right, realize I was being nice to you, trying to save you, and you’ll thank me. You might even write me a nice note.” She smiles. “I have quite a few of those.”

And then she turns and walks away before I can tell her that she’s wrong. Before I can thank her right then. Before I can tell her that she’s confirming everything I already think about the man, giving me the power to resist my baser urges while reminding me why I’m here. That if I knew where to send it, I’d write her that note right now. And I am newly resolved to reach out to her for an interview before I publish my final piece. I now have my in: I can tell her she was right, that I want to thank her in person, and that I want to know more about Ness’s unhappiness, where it comes from, and why he keeps it so cleverly hidden.

I’m running all this through my head when someone says, “I’m hungry.”

I refocus and see the gangly girl from Ness’s pictures standing in the doorway. Holly. His daughter.

“You’re the new one, huh?” she asks. And before I can answer: “What can you make me for breakfast?”

“I’m Maya,” I say. I reach out my hand, and Holly studies it a moment before accepting.

“Riding practice got canceled,” she says.

“So I heard.”

“Mom says I’m not old enough to stay at our house by myself, but she leaves me alone here all the time. I think if I get hurt, she wants it to be on his property.”

“Or maybe if you break something, she wants it to be his,” I suggest. I smile and hope she knows it’s a joke.

Holly smiles back. And then I feel a pang of sadness at how this seems normal to her, talking to a strange woman in her father’s bedroom, a woman who is wearing her father’s robe, and asking that woman to fix her something to eat. Thankfully, she turns and leads me toward the kitchen, and I’m able to use the robe’s lapel to dab at my eye.

“Let’s cook something outrageous,” Holly calls out above the noisy rain. “How about a peanut butter omelet? With a cranberry chocolate milkshake. We’ll get flour everywhere.”

“I don’t think any of those things take flour,” I say. I re-knot Ness’s robe around me as I follow her to the kitchen. No use changing into his clothes now, no use explaining. Everyone has already made up their minds.

“The flour won’t go in anything we
make
,” Holly explains. “It’s just
because
. And if we ask Monique nicely, she won’t clean up after us. Dad’ll have to do it.”

Holly cracks the fridge and pulls out eggs and a carton of chocolate milk. Even with the note suggesting I make myself at home, it feels strange to rummage around Ness’s kitchen. Especially in his robe and with his daughter.

“You don’t think your dad will mind me raiding his fridge, do you?” I ask.

Holly turns and looks at me with stern seriousness. “Dad says when he’s dead and gone, all of this will be mine.” She waves her arms at his house and the estate beyond. This proclamation seems to come out of nowhere. I’m trying to make sense of it when she continues: “So how do we know he isn’t already dead?”

Two heartbeats pass before she smiles at me. She turns and brings out a handful of items that no sane person would combine: pickles, blueberries, cheese, a stick of butter.

“Are you pregnant?” I ask, catching on to her sense of humor.

“Twins,” Holly says, not missing a beat. “So triple portions for me.”

“Have you ever had an egg-in-a-hole?” I ask.

She scrunches up her face. “That sounds disgusting. Make me one.”

“Okay. Why don’t you put on some music. I couldn’t figure out how the radio works earlier.”

I don’t even know that there
is
a radio. But Holly shouts “Righto!” and trots to a wall panel. Like magic, there’s music in the room, the lilting up and down of reggae. That distracted her for all of five seconds. I arrange her ingredients by the stove and study them the way a chemist might. I can make this work, I tell myself.

“Do you want to sit at the counter and keep me company while I cook?” I ask.

“Yes I do,” Holly says. She pulls out one of the stools and arranges herself in it, props her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hands. “I hate the rain,” she says. “There’s nothing fun to do in the rain.”

“Naps are good in the rain,” I offer. I open a few cabinets, looking for a pan.

“To the right,” Holly says. “And naps are boring. Unless you get a good dream, and that’s like winning the lottery. Too much luck involved.”

“What about reading?” I ask.

“Booooring,” she says, but I suspect that’s going to be her reply no matter what I say. So I try a different tactic.

“You got me, then. I now hate the rain as well.” Grabbing a spatula, I turn and offer my hand to her a second time. “We shall form the I-Hate-Rain Society,” I announce. “Lovers of rain need not apply.”

“Righto!” Holly says. With a grand gesture—elbow crooked up in the air—she takes my hand and gives it an exaggerated pump.

“We would spit on our palms to seal this pact,” I say, “but that’s too much like getting rained on.”

Holly laughs. I get the pan hot and show her how to cut the holes out of the bread slices. She does the second piece herself. I feel like my mother all of a sudden. I see myself in this squirmy, fidgety, ornery, bright, funny little girl.

Butter goes in the pan. I wait for it to melt, then add the bread. The eggs are cracked into the holes we cut out of the middle. After I flip them, the cheese goes on top. When I plate the concoction, I add two slices of pickle. It actually looks like a fine addition to the family recipe. Holly pours herself a chocolate milk and takes a bite. She murmurs her approval, and I cook the middles on one side of the pan and mash blueberries on the other side, add a little more butter, and put this on the toasted rounds. It’s a real improvement, I think.

“Almost as good as peanut butter omelets,” Holly mutters around another bite.

I wonder if that’s a real thing. And then I imagine another reporter standing right where I am, holding this spatula. A string of women, in fact, none of whom know how to cook. An endless parade of people sharing moments like this with Ness’s daughter, whipping up whatever they can, and her sitting there smiling, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, full of omnivorous delight and thinking this is the most normal thing in the world.

“These are great,” she says, taking a bite of one of the blueberry centers. I start rinsing the pan and the utensils. More of my story writes itself in my head. And even the happy bits have a way of making themselves sad.

“After breakfast, maybe you can show me where the laundry room is,” I suggest. “My clothes got soaked in the rain, which is why I had to borrow your dad’s robe. Be nice to get them dry.”

“M’kay,” she says, then slurps on her milk.

“And then maybe we can watch a movie? That’s a good thing to do in the—” I stop myself, remembering the society we just formed. “Or we can do whatever.”

“Is the cable on?” Holly asks.

“I don’t think so,” I say, remembering Ness’s note.

“We can call the company and have them turn it on. I added myself to his account. I have his passcode. They call me Mrs. Wilde when I call. I lower my voice like this.”

“I’m surprised they don’t call you
Mister
Wilde, talking like that.”

“Okay, not quite that low. But we’ll go from zero to five hundred channels just like that.” She snaps her fingers.

“You can watch TV if you want,” I say, trying to make it sound like she has my permission but that it’s the least cool thing one could possibly do. “
I’m
going to figure out how to get down to the other house and retrieve my book. Ever hear of
Treasure Island?”

“My dad owns islands,” Holly says. “I think one of them is called Treasure Cay.”

“This is different,” I say. “It’s a book about untold riches and action and survival. I read it when I was about your age. That’s what I’m going to do with my day. Because I hate the rain.”

Holly squints her eyes and studies me. Her head tilts to one side, and I feel like she’s about to blow my cover and accuse me of manipulating her. I remember being that age and being whip-smart. As adults, we tend to forget how clever we were when we were younger, and so we underestimate youth just like we hated being underestimated when
we
were that age.

“You’re gonna get soaked if you go out there,” Holly eventually says. “I got wet just getting out of the car, and I had an umbrella.”

“I will armor myself against the rain,” I tell her. “Not a drop will touch me. That’s a rule in the I-Hate-Rain Society. You wanna come?”

Holly shrugs and looks away. I can tell I just lost her. “Nah, I don’t like that place. I’m gonna watch TV.”

I remember what Ness said about the first night he made her sleep down there alone, and that she has rarely been back. I shouldn’t push her; there’s no point in making her do something she doesn’t want to do. But I’m weak, and I like her, and I want her not just to like me back, but for the two of us to do something she’s never done with any of the other women who stay over. Because I’m not having sex with her father, and I need her to know I’m not the same as them.

“Well, I guess I won’t be able to read my book then,” I say, making myself sound sad. “I’m pretty sure it would take the entire Society to get down there in this heavy rain. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap instead. If I get lucky, I’ll have a good dream.”

I leave the dishes and head toward the breezeway that leads off toward Ness’s room. I have no idea what I’ll do in there if she lets me go. Sit in a chair and look at an empty fireplace or gaze out at the rain.

But she doesn’t let me go. The ultimate threat for Holly is that she’ll be left alone, that I won’t beg her to play with me, which is what I suspect she’s used to.

“Wait,” she says. And I turn back to her.

“We can beat the rain,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper. “But it won’t be easy. And we’ll have to work together.”

“I’m starting to think the saran wrap isn’t a good idea,” I say.

“Turn around one more time.” Holly has me spinning in the kitchen as she holds a spool of plastic wrap sideways. I still have the robe on, and the clear cocoon forming around me is causing me to sweat inside it.

“I can’t move my arms,” I say. “And how exactly am I going to breathe if you wrap my head up?”

“Good point. Reverse.” Holly makes a spinny gesture with her finger. I twirl the other way, and she gathers all the plastic in a ball. I don’t dare tell her that I’m not really interested in getting to a book I read years ago, or that I would be fine running out there in that crazy storm and just getting drenched again—because now it’s a mission for us to get from A to B without getting a single drop of water on us.

“I’ve got an idea,” Holly says. “Better than this one.” She gives me a serious look when I raise an eyebrow at her. “My ideas just get better with time. I think you should know this about me.”

I laugh and follow her down the north breezeway. We pass the utility room, where my clothes and the two towels are drying, and go past the guest bedrooms and Holly’s room, which she showed me after we got the clothes going. At the far end of the house, we go up a flight of stairs and through a door into the garage.

Holly hits the lights. “Yes!” she says. She dances through the empty space where Ness’s red gas-guzzler had been the other day and scoops up the bundled car cover from the ground. “It’s rain-proof. Because normal people don’t use these in their garages.”

I almost point out that the cover keeps the dust off as well, but I agree with her: it’s a bit much for a car kept in a garage. My car sits in the New York sun and the New York snow and the New York floods and mostly gets driven only to move it from street to street so the sweepers can get through.

“Grab the edge,” Holly says. “Meet me in the middle.”

We lift the car cover over us and paw at the ceiling as we work our way into the middle. Neither of us can see a thing. I think about the lazy summer days when my sister and I would make forts out of furniture, sheets, and sofa cushions. Holly is giggling. I can feel her breathing on my arm. We jostle and spin and laugh in the darkness together.

“We’ll stay dry,” I say, my words swallowed by the fabric and the deep shadows. “But we’ll never see how to
get
there.”

“We’ll feel along the rails. But through the tarp.”

“Won’t we get lost?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I can get around that boardwalk with my eyes closed.”

I remember Ness’s story. But his daughter sounds so much braver than he made her out to be. I wonder how many years ago that was. Five? Six? Probably feels like ages to her.

“What about our feet?” I ask. “Won’t they get wet?”

“I’ve got just the thing.”

Holly extricates herself from the folds, leaving me in there alone. I work myself free as well. She has disappeared back into the house, returns with a pair of pink galoshes, then rummages around one of the other garage bays and brings out a pair of rubber hip waders that fishermen use.

“No rain shall touch us,” she says.

“Let’s just hope it hasn’t stopped raining by the time we put this to the test.”

We haul the gear to the living room, which gives us the shortest run down to the guest house, and I become quite possibly the first person in history to don rubber hip waders over a terrycloth bathrobe. My reflection in the living room door is of someone you would commit to an institution. Holly, meanwhile, looks downright adorable with her pink galoshes pulled over her blue jeans.