Page 24 of Under the Stars

Meredith held the pillow tight to her stomach and stared at the side of her father’s face.

He’d been forty-nine years old when she was born.

He had fought in the war and everything, had flown a bomber and been shot down over France.

He was still handsome, but his age was showing now—that strong jaw had begun to soften, the sharp nose to turn red and spongy.

His fair hair was fading fast and thinning at the front.

He had grown a paunch. Once she’d walked into the sunroom and caught her parents on the sofa together, kissing.

Her mother’s blouse was unbuttoned and her father’s hand had disappeared underneath it.

Meredith had turned and run because she didn’t want to spoil it—this rare and fragile harmony between the two of them.

She was probably six or seven but she could remember every detail, down to the way the sunlight had slanted in through the French doors and lit her father’s hair into a fireball.

Dad took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

“What I want to tell you is not to be like Isobel. Not to be like your mother. Let some poor fellow into your heart and make him welcome there. You’re so beautiful, just like your mother, and you think it gives you power, and it does, God knows, but it’s going to wreck you someday.

Everyone’s going to want a piece of it. Everyone wants to own you.

And then it’s gone, and what do you have to show for it? ”

“Wow,” she said. “And I used to wonder why Mom didn’t want a husband around to explain things for her.”

He got up slowly, like an old man. “The kid’s parents are on their way over. They want to talk to you.”

“Tell them to go screw themselves.”

Dad stared at her, long and sad. “He’s their son. They’ve lost their son.”

“Poor them.”

“Jesus, Meredith. Are you okay?”

She lifted her head to meet his stare. Her throat wouldn’t work, her mouth wouldn’t shape the words.

“Pumpkin,” he said. “What the hell happened out there? Did he hurt you?”

She sat there with the pillow to her stomach, so hard she could scarcely breathe. When had his eyes faded from vivid blue to that washed-out gray? Hooded and weary. Or maybe it was the cruel July sunlight that attacked him through the window.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell them you’re not feeling well.”

—

When he was gone, she set the pillow aside and went to the small white desk in the corner where she used to do her homework.

Oh, innocent days of homework. She took out a Bic pen from the drawer and filled two sheets of paper, which she folded and put into an envelope.

In the act of writing Isobel on the back, she heard a knock on the door.

“What is it?” she snapped.

Isobel pushed the door open and held out a tray. “I thought you might want something to eat.”

Meredith was about to say she wasn’t hungry, which was true. Instead, she slid the envelope under a book and stood.

“Thanks,” she said.

—

Meredith made herself eat the tuna sandwich and the raw carrots from Isobel’s garden.

It wasn’t that her mother was a health food junkie or anything—she grew her own food to save money.

By now it was late afternoon and the room was a crucible.

Meredith opened the window sash and sucked in the breeze that came from the water.

It wasn’t so hazy today and she could see the clear pale outline of the Fleet Rock lighthouse.

The Coast Guard had installed an automatic light back in 1970, so nobody lived there, but when they were kids, she and Mike used to row out to the rocky little island all the time and explore the spit of stony land and the lighthouse itself, which had a hidden entrance dating from the rum-running days, among other irresistible features.

Isobel caught them once and hit the roof.

Made Meredith promise never to go there again, but of course Meredith never had any intention of keeping that promise.

She just made damn sure they only returned to Fleet Rock when Isobel wasn’t around.

—

Before Granny died, Greyfriars was wilderness enough.

A few of the artists stayed year-round, but most arrived in the middle of May and departed the day after Labor Day—the regulars and the newcomers, men and women, painters and sculptors and musicians and writers, and at least a couple of actors, thanks to Aunt Miranda.

To Meredith, the arrival of the artists each summer was the arrival of life.

Now the colony was closed. Isobel said she didn’t have the heart to run it anymore, and maybe that was true.

But the daily silence made Meredith want to crawl out of her skin, and the nightly silence was even worse—like death.

You could hear every wooden creak, every whistle of wind.

Isobel moped from room to room with nobody to care for.

Trudged to bed at eleven o’clock with a cup of tea and a paperback novel.

She would look in on Meredith and wish her good night, and Meredith—fully clothed under the blankets—would wish her the same.

Then, when the footsteps had receded down the hall and the water flushed along the pipes from Isobel’s bathroom, she would slip from bed and creep down the stairs and out of the house.

Probably Isobel heard her. In the echoing house, the acoustics were against Meredith—each creak of the stairs, each squeak of a door hinge betrayed her.

But she never said anything. Meredith always suspected that Isobel had been the one sneaking out of the house forty years earlier, and while you could accuse Meredith’s mother of any number of sins, you couldn’t say she was a hypocrite.

—

Tonight, she laid her escape with greater care than usual.

She waited an extra hour, until the silence had deepened into a creature all its own.

She held her shoes in her hands and went out the kitchen door, which lay at the opposite end of the house from Isobel’s room.

Her bicycle leaned against the tree where she’d left it.

In less than ten minutes, she coasted around the corner of the Mohegan Inn and hid the bicycle in the bushes.

On summer weekdays, the Mo’s bar closed down at midnight. Mike was upstairs by a quarter to one.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Just needed some company, that’s all.”

He took off his clothes, turned out the lights, and climbed into bed. He smelled of beer and toothpaste and comfort. Afterward, she let him hold her against his chest and stroke her hair. His heartbeat rocked her to sleep.