Tigers in Red Weather (36 page)

Hughes looked up at the sky and a noise escaped him, a strange, sorrowful sound he didn’t know he was capable of making. He ran his hands over his eyes and then, stiffening his spine, he levered himself
away from the boathouse, the rough surface of the clapboard pushing back against his palms.

He walked toward the door, and entered the lit interior, feeling the glow of the lantern on his clammy skin. Daisy’s little tearstained face looked up at him from her mother’s lap, and Nick smiled at him, softly, conspiratorially.

“Here you are,” Hughes said. “Just where I thought you’d be. My two best girls. I’m so glad.”

ED

1964: JUNE

I
have this image of Daisy. It is early summer and we’re standing on the porch of Tiger House. It’s dusk and I’ve just come back from visiting my mother in the hospital in the city. She has stayed there longer than anyone expected and longer, I’m sure, than Aunt Nick and Uncle Hughes can afford. The hospital is a strange place and I’m having one of those moments in which where I’ve been and where I am don’t connect. Where I’m wondering How was I just in that place and now I’m in this other place? and none of it makes any sense. And then I look at Daisy and I have the sensation that, just at that moment, while I’m looking at her, she is unfurling. Right there and then, before my eyes.
Becoming
, as my father would have called it. She doesn’t mention my mother or the hospital. She looks at me and says: “The Reading Room? I’m dying for a drink.” And I say, “OK,” or something. And then she slips her arm through mine and I can feel her bracelet through my shirtsleeve and it sends shivers up my spine. We step off the porch into the evening. And that’s how it begins.

*  *  *

“I always have this strange feeling,” the woman with the violet eyes was saying, “that everyone here is the same person.”

We were standing at the Reading Room bar and Thomas was waiting to take our order. Daisy just laughed, but I thought it was an interesting thing to say, and I moved closer to the woman.

“Gin and tonic for me,” Daisy said. “Ed?”

I couldn’t really concentrate on the drink order, because I was still thinking about everyone being the same. The room was full of men and women who looked like they could have all been born in the same second of the same year, even though, of course, they hadn’t. Navy blazers; yellow blazers; green trousers; pink skirts with yellow whales; yellow belts with pink lobsters; Nantucket reds; Nantucket baskets; blue and white rep ties; yellow and purple rep ties; pink and navy rep ties. It made my head hurt.

“Ed?”

I looked up and saw Thomas drumming his fingers on the polished wood.

“Oh, hell’s bells,” Daisy said, turning away. “He’ll have a gin and tonic, too.”

I smiled. “Hell’s bells,” I said.

Daisy smiled back and poked me with her elbow. Only Daisy did things like that.

“Olivia, you know my cousin, Ed,” Daisy said, turning back to the woman with violet eyes.

“I’m not sure.”

I, for one, couldn’t ever remember having seen this Olivia before. She was pretty, but a little too old to be that pretty. I put her somewhere between thirty-eight and forty, but she had the kind of looks that would have made a debutante popular.

“Ed’s going to Princeton in the fall,” Daisy said.

I always found this sort of conversation a bit odd, but one of the things I’d learned in boarding school was that alma maters were some kind of character reference. It was just one of those things. Boarding school had been extremely educational in this way, teaching me how to decode these small intricacies that everyone else seemed to understand naturally, and I was grateful to Uncle Hughes for having sent me there, although I suspected he wouldn’t have thanked them for it.

“Are you? Princeton? Well, that’s nice.” Olivia seemed distracted, but she pulled herself together, adding: “Go, Tigers!”

I liked her. I could see the hem of her slip a little, and I liked that, too. She was exposed, and slightly uncomfortable. I was standing so close to her now, I could smell her perfume. She smelled like candied roses. I wanted to reach out and touch her hair, which was an unusual shade of red, feel its texture between my fingers.

Daisy was signing the chit, in that hasty way of hers. Scribble, scribble and then shoving it away like she couldn’t bear to look at it one minute longer. I’d watched her do it for years. At the yacht club, the tennis club, and here, where women were admitted into the inner sanctum every other Sunday.

I would have liked to stay and chat a little more with Olivia of the Violet Eyes, but Daisy handed me my drink, and said: “We have to go find my mother and father. Pay our dues. They are footing the bar tab, after all.”

“Good-bye,” I said to Olivia. “It was nice talking to you.”

She smiled, but she was already looking for someone else to cling onto, in that sea of sameness.

Daisy grabbed my hand and said: “Stop dawdling, Ed Lewis,” and we pushed through the small crowd out onto the dock, where women were trying not to get their heels stuck in between the planks. Outside, Daisy hesitated for a minute, her hand loosening its grip on mine, before she spotted Aunt Nick standing on the far edge, with Uncle Hughes close by.

Aunt Nick was not in the sea of sameness. She held a certain fascination for me, it was something about the way she moved, but I didn’t particularly like her. And in many ways, underneath her unusual appearance, she was just like everyone else. It seemed to me that the world was made up of two camps: There were people like me and Daisy, who lived as honestly as we knew how, and then there was the rest of the world, who, for various reasons, couldn’t help lying to themselves.

As we approached them, I could see Uncle Hughes recoil, but only with his eyes. It was a neat trick and I admired him for it, the way he could make his body say one thing while his mind said another. And although I knew he couldn’t stand me, ever since the summer with Frank Wilcox, the funny thing was, I didn’t dislike him. I was even a little sorry about all that. I hadn’t meant to make him take against me, but I hadn’t learned yet to keep certain things to myself. How to talk to people. Another thing boarding school had been good for.

“Hello, darling,” Aunt Nick said, leaning in to kiss Daisy. I could smell the perfume she always wore, floral but with some hint of alcohol. “Hello, Ed.”

“Hello,” I said. I shook hands with Uncle Hughes.

“How is your mother?” Aunt Nick asked. She looked as if she really wanted to know.

“She’s in the hospital.”

“Yes,” Aunt Nick said. “The doctor thinks she will be ready to come back home this summer. Did she seem … well?”

“I suppose.” I never really knew what people meant by that, only that you were expected to answer in the affirmative. By Aunt Nick’s standards, my mother was not well. She was very angry and not all that good at hiding it, despite what seemed to be a considerable effort.

I could tell, during my latest visit, that she had been trying to communicate
something to me, about Aunt Nick, I think. But, honestly, I wasn’t sure why she was so angry. It wasn’t as if she had been doing much before she went to the hospital, except sleeping in that dark room and fighting with my father.

“I hope so …” Here Aunt Nick trailed off.

Uncle Hughes put his hand on her arm.

“Mummy,” Daisy said, “Ed just got here. He doesn’t want to talk about the hospital.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Aunt Nick said, and looked around, probably to see if anyone had been listening.

“So, Ed,” Uncle Hughes said, smiling. “What are your plans for the summer?”

“He’s going to be my date,” Daisy said, squeezing my hand, which was actually getting quite damp from her grip. “That is, if he can stop mooning after older women. You should have seen him.” She smiled at her parents. “He could barely tear himself away from Olivia Winston long enough to order a drink.”

“I wasn’t mooning.”

“Liar,” Daisy said.

Uncle Hughes gave me one of his keen looks and I just made my face go blank.

“Oh,” Aunt Nick said, looking over our heads toward the door. “Isn’t that Tyler Pierce?”

Of course it was Tyler Pierce, which Aunt Nick knew because she was looking right at him. But Daisy turned anyway, and then turned back quickly.

“Who’s Tyler Pierce?” Uncle Hughes asked.

“One of Daisy’s beaux,” Aunt Nick said, smiling that big, crazy salad smile she had.

“He’s not a beau,” Daisy said, but I could tell she wasn’t being entirely truthful. I could always tell when Daisy was doing that, because it didn’t fit well on her.

“Well, here he comes,” Uncle Hughes said. He was also smiling now, not like Aunt Nick, but as if what Daisy had said amused him.

“Hello, Tyler,” Aunt Nick said.

“Hello, Mrs. Derringer, Mr. Derringer.”

He was standing right next to Daisy, but she didn’t look at him, which was probably a good idea since he was staring at Aunt Nick.

Then he did say: “Hello, Daisy,” so she had to turn to face him.

“Hello.” She said it in a cool voice, but I could tell from her eyes that she wanted him to keep talking to her. “You remember my cousin, Ed.”

“Of course.”

We shook hands, but I got the distinct impression that he had no idea who I was.

“I was just on my way to the bar,” Tyler said. “Can I get anyone a drink?”

“I’ll go with you,” Aunt Nick said. “Darling? Do you want anything?”

“No,” Uncle Hughes said. “I’m going to try to get an oyster before they’re all gone. Shall I get one for you?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Aunt Nick said, and she looked at Uncle Hughes in a kind of soft, pretty way that made my hands twitch.

Daisy leaned back against the wooden rail and looked up at the sky.

“You still like him,” I said.

“Yes, Ed, I still like him,” she said quietly. I could see the muscles in her forearms flexing beneath her skin. She looked back at me suddenly, with heat in her voice, and said: “But I don’t like that way he has. It’s too perfect and fake.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is fake.”

“I know, and I sort of hate him for it sometimes.” She scuffed the bottom of her shoe against the boards. Her shoes were yellow, I noticed, and flat.

“He stares at your mother,” I said.

“What?” She looked at me like she hadn’t heard me.

“Your mother,” I said, “he looks at her.”

“Who doesn’t?” Daisy said. “Anyway, it has nothing to do with my mother. It’s about what happened with us. We’ve slept together.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. But it certainly was an interesting development.

“Last summer, if you were wondering. And don’t stand there looking at me funny.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“Sometimes I hate everyone.”

When she said things like that, I thought about touching her, on the shoulder, or her wrist. Just to see if her skin felt different at that moment. I hardly ever touched her, only when she touched me, really. And I had no desire to. Except at times like this, when she was in this kind of mood. Then I wondered if I touched her, if I would be able to feel it, like a change in temperature. But I knew I couldn’t, I must not ever touch her when I was wondering about something.

“I want a drink,” she declared.

“All right.”

“Will you get me another gin and tonic?”

I walked back inside to the bar, where Thomas glared at me, but got me the drink anyway. I took a pistachio out of one of the bowls and snapped off the shell. I like the way, with a pistachio or a peanut, how it has this very hard shell and then another skin on the inside over the nut, like the shell isn’t enough.

I looked around at the room.

The woman with the violet eyes was gone, but outside, on the front porch, I saw Aunt Nick talking to Tyler. She gave the impression of being half-in, half-out of the Reading Room, like she’d wandered out there without realizing and then had tried to correct the situation.
Tyler was taller than she was and he had to bend his neck slightly to speak with her. I picked up the drink and made my way over to one of the windows that looked out onto the porch. If I leaned against the wall next to it, I’d be able to hear what they were saying without being seen. Oldest trick in the book.

I eyed the gin and tonic in my hand and then took a sip. I’d get Daisy another one. I bit down on an ice cube and felt it shatter between my teeth.

“I was really glad to see you here tonight,” Tyler was saying, “because I made your lemonade today. Do you remember the secret recipe you told me about?”

Aunt Nick laughed, like she didn’t care what he was saying at all. “Did you? My goodness. When did I give away my secret recipe?”

“Ages ago, I guess. But I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Oh well, I’m glad.”

There was a silence and I imagined him looking at her. And then he said: “Are you having a good time?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” She laughed again. “What a funny thing to say. Of course.”

“Good. I can never tell what you’re thinking. You’re one of those people.”

“One of what people?”

“I don’t know, the kind that’s hard to read. You always look like you’re having a good time, but I get the feeling that sometimes it’s … I don’t know, a show.”

“This is a very deep conversation, Tyler. One I’m not sure I’m capable of carrying on after only two cocktails.” Aunt Nick had her “Don’t be a fool” voice on.

“That’s what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you’re pretending. Right now. I can see it.”

“Goodness, this is turning very strange.”

“I can see you.” He sounded very sure of himself and then he added, “Nick.”

There was another silence, and I had to will myself not to look.

Then Aunt Nick said: “Let go of my wrist, Tyler, darling. You’ll make a scene.”

She strode through the door, her back very straight, and saw me standing there off to the side.

“Oh, Ed,” she said. “Where’s Daisy?”

“Out on the dock.” I looked at her to see how she would react. She must have known I could have heard, but she didn’t say anything else. She just walked off in the other direction.