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21

Mari

2016

B y the time Mrs. Devereaux stopped talking, the sun was setting, causing the sky to turn deep tangerine and magenta over the almost-purple sea. I checked out her canvas, nicely primed, her landscape study feathered in. I had tried to paint while she talked, even laid out my palette, neutral to chromatic, but my canvas sat blank.

“You’re stopping?” I asked.

She cleaned her brush. “I’m afraid I’ve about talked your ear off.”

“So, did they keep the German?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s enough for one day, Mari. Looks like you missed that seven-thirty ferry.”

Something about the way she said the part about the ferry irked me. Practically giddy. What did she care that I was giving up the last good plane fare to be had? And Nate would probably assume I’d been kidnapped. If he thought about me at all.

Would she just string out this story forever? Clearly she thought I was related to this Smith family somehow.

“If my mother was connected to all this, then how come she never said anything? We shared everything. It was just the two of us.”

“I can’t promise all the answers, but why not stay the weekend?” Mrs. Devereaux asked. “I have plenty of room, and I can show you the island a bit tomorrow. Then maybe you can even get something down on canvas. And you can hear the whole story.”

“I guess. Sometimes it takes me a while to get painting.”

When my mother was alive, we used to paint together, sometimes all weekend, her banging out one of her amazing Van-Gogh-on-steroids landscapes, me, a postmodern portrait or floral still life. But ever since she’d died, I could barely sketch in pencil, never mind paint.

“All the more reason to stay. We’ll go to the Chilmark Flea. You’ll enjoy that very much. They sell all sorts of things. And the best brownies.”

“Maybe I can stick around. Just one more day.” If there was a God, Mrs. Devereaux would get to the point of the story soon.

She smiled. “Good, then. I’ll rebook your flight.”

We packed up our paints and hung out in the kitchen and ate Cracker Barrel cheddar and Ritz crackers, and she brought out a really good Sonoma chardonnay. Then she scrambled some eggs and I made the toast.

“My mom and I would make this very meal,” I said. “We called it din-din fest. Like, breakfast for dinner. I’d make the toast, my specialty. She liked it timed so it was still warm when the eggs were done. And with plenty of butter. But any meal was fun with her. She was a total extrovert; everyone loved her.”

“Really.” Mrs. D. smiled. “Was she a good cook?”

“Pretty good. She was tired after work most nights. But baking was her thing. I swear, any holiday was an excuse to bake. She made Groundhog Day cookies. Before she died, she’d started making YouTube videos of how to bake obscure cookies, and she was blowing up.”

“Is that right?” Mrs. D. tried to look away, but I saw the tears in her glassy eyes. Was it because Ginny Smith was a baker, too?

“I’ll put you in Cadence’s old room,” she said. “You’ll sleep like the dead.”

That seemed like a creepy choice of words, since I’d be sleeping in an actual dead person’s room, but I was so tired I didn’t have the strength to mention it.

I said good night and closed the door to the snug room, which barely fit the full-sized bed and dresser. I ran my hand down the tufts of the white chenille coverlet, which was like something from George Washington’s old feather bed. The little milk-glass lamp on the dresser lit up the wallpaper, the cabbage roses now faded. I loved the old green-painted dresser, like the one my mother and I had seen at a shop at Big Bear. Eastlake, she called it.

Were Cadence’s clothes still in here? I slid open the top drawer and found a yellow blouse, neatly folded. I lifted it out, breathing in the scent of laundry bluing, which my mother had always washed our sheets with, and rose sachet. I loved that someone had used old wrapping paper as drawer liners. No IKEA in those days.

I opened the small closet and hung the one dress I’d brought. I counted six suitcases stacked on the top shelf. Cadence, the would-be traveler. Had she ever seen the world? Was I related to her? I’d never had much wanderlust.

I read the titles of the books stacked on top of the dresser: Anna Karenina. Jane Eyre. What must have been her brother Tom’s Emerson’s Essays. Probably her Never-Lend books.

The golden hearts at my wrist glowed in the lamplight. Cadence’s good-luck bracelet. How did Nancy Starwood of Los Angeles, California, end up with it?

I changed into my sleep T-shirt and climbed into bed. Was this the very one Bess and Cadence had shared? I eased my head down onto the pillow and tried to remember Nate’s face as I drifted off. To the sleep of the dead.

—

I woke at dawn the next day, the sun streaming through the curtainless windows, and emerged to find Mrs. D. looking like she was dressed for an African safari, all in khaki, with a straw hat the size of an actual sombrero.

“We’ll get breakfast sandwiches at 7a and eat them in the car,” she said. “The good antiques are gone by ten o’clock.”

Appreciating a fellow treasure hunter, I hurried to the jeep, and after pretty amazing bacon-egg-and-cheese croissants and hazelnut coffees, we made our way to a small flea market in a field a short drive away.

As I got out of the car, Mrs. D. claimed she had somewhere to be. “I’ll pick you up in an hour,” she called as she drove off. “Get me a brownie!”

I strolled the booths, the hot sun warming the top of my head, happy to shop by myself. If it wasn’t with my mother, I preferred to browse alone. Mrs. D. was right about getting there early, and I spotted some good things as the vendors unloaded their wares onto their tables, some sold right out of their car trunks. A fun white macrame bikini, lots of great jewelry, and a good amount of corny New England antiques, old washboards, white ironstone pitchers, and orphan teacups. But the vintage clothes were the star of the place, and two different dealers offered racks of them. I lost all sense of space and time as I looked through the coats and dresses. I tried on one short tomato-red rayon dress over my clothes that the vendor encouraged me to buy but I couldn’t afford.

Once I realized that more than an hour had passed, I hurried to the bakery table under a tree, the sign advertising cold drinks and the best island brownies. The line was a mile long, but I could see right away why Mrs. D. had pushed the brownies so hard. Not only did they look scrumptious, glistening in their Saran Wrap, but the booth proprietor greeted me with a little wave—Bike Man.

“Hey,” Ronan said as he waited on customers, a girl a bit younger than me at his side. She was so confident, laughing with some guy. Birkenstocks and wispy Dutch-girl braids. Sweet and silly. Perhaps my complete opposite.

I made my way through the crowd around the table to Ronan, suddenly more interested in him. What is it about a guy having a girlfriend that makes him more attractive? He was a bit on the older side to be unmarried. But I guess he could say the same for me. “I hear you have the best brownies.”

“We did. Just sold the last one, though.”

There was something sweet about Mrs. D. dropping me here and obviously trying to set me up with Ronan. But also incredibly awkward.

“So, you stayed longer,” he said.

“I did.”

From the direction of the parking lot came the sound of someone laying on a car horn, and I turned to find Mrs. D. waving from her jeep.

“She’ll be crushed you’re out of brownies,” I said.

He made change for a customer. “I don’t want to shock you, but she’s trying to set us up.”

“Clearly.” I released an awkward little hyena laugh and started off toward the jeep, mortified.

“Hey, you should come to the bonfire tonight,” he called after me. “Down at Black Point Beach. Just chill.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

He turned to the girl at his side. “She should come, right?”

The girl glanced at me. “Totally.” And then went back to serving customers.

“Maybe,” I said. I nodded toward the parking lot. “Not sure what’s on the schedule.”

I skittered off toward the jeep, wishing I was more like Dutch-Braid Girl, able to chat so easily with people. Mrs D. drove me home, unfazed that they’d run out of brownies, proof that she’d sent me there only for a meet-cute with Ronan.

“Ronan White asked me to come to a bonfire down on the beach tonight.”

“Isn’t that nice of him,” Mrs. D. said. “Are you going?”

“I don’t think so. I’d have to stay another night.”

“Fine with me. Why don’t we see how it goes?”

We rode along in silence, the wind warm on my face. Maybe it was the breakfast sandwich or just the change of scenery from the Jamba juice bar, but I hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long time.

I turned to Mrs. D. as she drove. “You know, I’m dying to know how that whole story ends. I have so many questions.”

“Is that right?”

I stretched my arm outside the jeep and let it float in the breeze. “Like, what happened with that German guy?”

“Oh, Peter?”

“Briar really kept it together. I would have lost my mind with all that going on.”

“How serendipitous it was that he washed up on their beach. It changed their lives and those of their friends forever. One of them in an especially profound way.”