The Shore (43 page)

And a whole party full of friends, a whole party that she had organized. She, Claire Plimouth.

“Want to dance?” Finn said in her ear, and Claire took another drink of her piña colada and set it down.

“You bet I do,” she said, and went to the party.

Nineteen

Claire danced until her feet hurt, and then she danced some more. She talked and laughed and made plans to see people again next summer. She didn't know if they meant it, but she was beginning to think that she did.

She didn't drink much because she wanted to end this party in remembering, not forgetting. She had plenty of time for the other kinds of parties—or maybe she was already starting to get over them.

She danced with Max. She danced with Poppy and then with Jodi. She cut in on Lauren, who'd hooked up with Jospeh. It wasn't what she'd expected—Lauren was an intellectual type who worked at the coffee shop, but who knew? She mentioned, casually, “Dean's little project.”

The information that cut both ways. The members of the household suddenly seemed to find any part of the room with Dean in it where they didn't want to be. But others made a point of seeking him out.

Sometime later, very early in the morning, she pulled Finn after her up the stairs and they went to bed. And Claire was glad she'd had a chance to figure out that while there was more to life than sex—much, much more—sex definitely added more to life.

Especially when you did it right, with the right guy. No, person, she corrected herself, smiling in the half-dark of early morning and thinking of Jodi.

She snuggled closer to Finn, happy and sad at the same time. “Finn.”

“Mmm,” he said.

“You never talk about the future, do you?” Claire asked.

“The future?” he sounded sleepily confused.

“You know, like what you plan to do . . . where you think you'll be in, oh, I don't know, ten years.”

“Ten years! Ten years is a long time,” said Finn. “I'm happy now. That's good enough.”

Suddenly Claire realized that it was. And that Finn didn't talk about the future because he was living it, right now.

“I love you, Finn,” she said. “I always will.”

Finn took it the way she meant it. He understood. He tightened his arm around her and said, “I love you, too, Mermaid Claire,” and she smiled again, with sadness and joy, and fell asleep.

Going domestic on Finn a couple of hours later, Claire slipped out of the bed to find coffee and water, leaving Finn and Barrel
still asleep. She was relieved to see the upstairs hall unscathed and drunken body free. She resolved not to think about what the downstairs looked like until she'd had many more cups of coffee and hours of sleep.

She was almost to the stairs when she smelled the smoke. Claire narrowed her eyes. It wasn't stale smoke from last night's party. Actually, now that she thought about it, people had been pretty good about taking their smokes outside.

But someone, here, now, wasn't.

Dean, she thought, torn between anger and exasperation. She went to his door and pushed it open without knocking.

But it wasn't Dean. Dean was gone. The room was empty, computer and Dean free.

“Coward,” she muttered, and then, thinking about the massive cleanup ahead, “Shithead.”

She left the door open.

Sniffed. Not Poppy or Jodi. Poppy didn't smoke, and Jodi was a random smoker, and was, from the empty appearance of her room, sleeping in Poppy's room.

Not Finn, not me,
Claire thought and groaned inwardly. Linley.

Linley's house, Linley's rules, Claire told herself. It didn't matter now. She'd be gone tomorrow. She'd get a new roommate next year, or better yet, share a house. She didn't need Linley, and she definitely didn't feel like dealing with Linley right now.

But she looked in, anyway, as she passed Linley's room.
The door was ajar a crack, and she pushed it slightly wider and looked in.

Linley sat in the big rocking chair by the window, rocking. A saucer heaped with cigarette butts sat on the nearby table. But Linley wasn't smoking. She was just rocking, slowly rocking, back and forth, back and forth.

It gave Claire the creeps. She swallowed. “Linley?” she said softly.

At first, Linley didn't answer. Then she said, “Have you ever had sex in a rocking chair? I have. Or tried to, with Max. In this rocking chair. Of course, it wasn't in here at the time, it was downstairs. It didn't work out very well, but that didn't matter because Max and I . . . Max and I . . . Max . . .” Her voice broke.

To her horror and dismay, Claire saw Linley was crying. Claire ran across the room and put her hands on the arm of the chair to stop the rocking. “Linley,” she said. “Oh, Linley.”

Linley was really crying now. No, not crying, bawling. Howling. She doubled over like an animal and wailed. Claire tried to put her arms around Linley, but Linley knocked them away.

“Don't!” she gasped. “Don't touch me!”

“I'm sorry, Linley,” Claire said. “I . . .” Linley was still mad at her. Fair enough. Claire had been pretty awful to Linley.

Linley said, “No one can touch me. I won't . . . I can't . . .” And she cried, if possible, harder. Claire gripped the arm of the chair, trying to think.

A sound in the doorway made her look up. Jodi stood there, her eyes wide, her face pale. “Close the door,” Claire ordered, and Jodi obeyed automatically. Then she came to kneel on the other side of the chair.

“G-go awaaay,” Linley wailed.

“No,” said Jodi. Her eyes met Claire's over Linley's bowed head. She mouthed, looking almost panic-stricken,
I've never seen her cry before.

Aloud, Jodi said, “Linley, stop.”

But Linley kept crying, heartbreaking sounds that hurt to hear.

Claire looked around for a tissue, went to the bathroom, and came back with a roll of toilet paper and a damp towel and tried to wipe Linley's face.

Again, Linley struck Claire's hand away. “You'll make yourself sick,” Claire whispered. She looked around, feeling helpless, wishing she could figure out what to do.

“I'm sorry, Linley,” Jodi was saying. “Okay? I'm sorry.”

That was when Claire saw the pictures. They'd tipped off the little table by the chair and had spilled across the floor. She picked them up and began, mechanically, to put them in some sort of order. Linley pictures. Linley's parents' pictures. Linley and Max pictures.

And her hand stopped over the odd picture out, the picture of schoolgirl Linley with the older girl who looked like her.

“Jodi,” said Claire. “Who is this?”

Jodi gave the photo a perfunctory glance and said, “Don't know . . . Linley. Linley! You've got to stop.”

Claire turned the picture over. Childish handwriting declared, “Caro and Me.”

“Linley,” said Claire, looking up. “Who's this? Who's Caro?”

Linley stopped crying on a sharp intake of breath. She didn't move. Claire could hear her breathing, harsh, raspy breaths. In a low voice, she finally said, “My sister.”

“What?” Jodi rocked back on her heels. “Your sister? You don't have a sister. You . . . never told me about a sister. You said you were an only child.”

“My parents just had me, and me they didn't see,” said Linley.

“Right,” Jodi said, and Claire remembered Linley tossing the line off, too. Laughing. She could get away with anything because her parents were so busy being social citizens. Fundraisers and society photo-ops kept them off Linley's case.

“You have a sister,” Claire said, to make sure.

Linley finally looked up. Her face was swollen, her eyes red. Tears still ran, silently now, down her face. She made no effort to wipe them away. “Had,” she said. “Had a sister. She drowned when our boat went over in the bay. A freak squall. I held on to the bottom of the sailboat, but the current took her away.”

“You had a sister?” Jodi seemed stunned.

Claire reached out and tentatively patted Linley's arm. This time, Linley didn't even seem to notice. “It was my fault,” she said. “I wanted to go sailing. For my birthday. I was nine. Just Caro and
me. She was seventeen, and I thought she could do anything.”

“Oh, Linley,” whispered Jodi.

“We went over and I grabbed on and she was gone. Just like that. I called and called. But she never came back. Another boat came and found me and they looked too. Everybody looked. But she was gone.”

Linley looked at Jodi, then at Claire. “I keep thinking maybe she's still alive somewhere. That she just hit her head and one day I'll look down the beach and there she'll be. She liked to sail, not to surf . . . but she might be a surfer now. She could be. She always . . . liked the water.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Claire blurted out. “Oh Linley.”

Linley's face twisted. “Oh, I know that. Everyone said so. Even my parents. But after Caro . . . after it happened, it was like I didn't exist. I was so good. I was the best kid ever. I got great grades and cleaned my room . . . I spent more time with the housekeepers than with them after that. They started this scholarship fund in Caro's memory and then got this whole party life and they'd kiss me good-bye every night before they left and then I wouldn't see them again until the next night.”

Words spilled from Linley. She was hiccupping and crying and she couldn't seem to stop. “So I gave up. I decided I could do anything I wanted, what the hell. It freaked them out, but they didn't really care. Our family died when Caro died, and it wasn't my fault, but what difference did that make?”

She stopped. Full stop. “I can't do this,” she said.

Jodi grabbed the towel and wiped Linley's face, almost roughly. “Do what?” she said.

“Live,” said Linley.

“Linley, I've never met anybody more alive than you are!” said Claire. “You make everyone around you alive, too.”

“Truth,” agreed Jodi. She put down the towel and unspooled some toilet tissue and held it to Linley's nose. “Blow.”

“Everyone you love leaves you,” Linley said dully, as if she was talking to herself. “No matter what. I thought Max . . . I loved Max. I thought he would stay. That it would be okay, maybe, then. But . . .”

“Max knew. About your sister?” Jodi asked.

“I told him,” Linley said. And then, randomly, “He came back, but not really. He's going to be a monk. Did you know that? A monk!”

“A monk?” Jodi said, sounding horrified.

Claire remembered that first real conversation with Max on the beach. India. A rinpoche . . .

“A Buddhist monk,” she said. “That's what he's been doing. Studying Buddhism.”

“Why?
Why?
” Linley said, and then, “I've been a shitty friend. I'm sorry. Jodi, Claire, I'm sorry. I . . .”

She started to cry again.

“Get Max,” Claire said to Jodi.

Jodi got Max. When he came, awake, as Claire had known he would be, she said, “You and Linley need to talk.”

And then, because she was Claire and liked to organize things so no one made any mistakes, she shook Linley's shoulder and said, “Linley, talk to Max.”

She followed Jodi out of the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

After the scene in Linley's room, the chaos downstairs didn't seem so bad. What were a few bodies on chairs and sofas, a sea of plates and bottles and party debris?

Picking through the wreckage, Claire and Jodi managed coffee and then went back upstairs, each balancing two cups. Linley's door was still closed. It was quiet.

Jodi said, “You think she'll be all right?”

Claire said, “I don't know. Maybe someday.”

And then they went back into their private lives.

They cleaned all day, Claire and Finn, Poppy and Jodi. Max came down and waded in not long after they started. Linley, quiet and subdued, came down much later.

She cleaned without talking. But no one was talking much. No one mentioned Dean, although Jodi did tape a sign on the Dumpster that said dean in big letters.

Finally Finn heaved a last bag of garbage out, turned, and said, “Surf?”

“Surf,” said Linley, almost the first word she'd said all day.

So they went surfing, all of them together, one last time.

Poppy and Max and Barrel sat on the beach. Finn and Claire and Jodi and Linley mostly floated in the fat waves, catching random rides that didn't really amount to much.

Linley and Jodi drifted down the current a ways, and Claire saw that they were talking. She surfed her hand through the water and smiled up at Finn. “I'll be back,” she said suddenly, and knew it was true.

His eyes crinkled. “You think?”

“I think.” She paused, then said, “I don't think I'm cut out to be a banker after all. My folks have my sister and my brother. That's plenty.”

“What do you think you'll do?” Finn asked.

“I don't know yet. Finish school, probably. Think about it. About this. About life.” She laughed because it sounded so corny, and Finn laughed, too.

“Whatever you do, you'll be good at it. Look how you caught on to surfing.”

“Oh, I'll keep surfing. You can count on that.” Claire took a deep breath. “Finn.”

“Here.”

“If you decide you need to get to Hawaii, I'll take care of Barrel for you. Call me and I'll come get him, or you can bring him to me. I think of myself as, well, I don't know. His mom. His parents may not be together, but they've got this great kid, and they could share him. . . .”

Super stupid,
Claire, she thought.

But Finn was grinning. “Barrel's mom,” he said. He nodded. “I like it.”

“So you'll think about it?” she asked.

“I think I'll do it. Someday. Soon.”

“Someday,” Claire agreed.