The House on Fripp Island Read online

  In the months leading up to their wedding, Lisa converted to Catholicism in order to appease Scott and his parents and so that the priest at Scott’s home church could officiate. Baptism, first communion, confirmation, the whole shebang. Lisa privately found the whole process ridiculous and humiliating—taking classes alongside eight-year-olds, pretending she cared to know the difference between schisms and the sacraments—but for Scott’s sake she fulfilled these requirements without complaint.

  Their reception was a lavish affair at the country club Scott’s parents belonged to. Poppy got rip-roaring drunk, picked a fight with the DJ, and wore Lisa’s garter around her own head for a while. Lisa thought it was all a gas, but Scott’s mother was appalled and insisted on calling a cab for John and Poppy, back to the Super 8 where they were spending the night. Scott’s mother said to John, “The Super 8? You didn’t get a room at the Plaza? We got the special rate and everything, specifically—” She cut herself off, but the meaning was clear: We got the special rate specifically for people like you.

  John said, “We’re just fine, thanks, ma’am,” and he refused the twenty that she tried to stuff in his palm for the cab when it approached. Poppy was loudly whisper-slurring, “What are you doing? John, take that money! John—” as he ushered her into the car.

  Scott and Lisa honeymooned in Cancun.

  Lisa called Poppy on the second day and complained of the affected accent that Scott put on when speaking to the hotel staff and the sycophantic way he asked for a blow job. Poppy was snorting with laughter until she heard tears in Lisa’s voice.

  “Oh, no,” Poppy said. “I thought you were joking. But it can’t be that bad, right? You’re jet-lagged.”

  Lisa sniffed. “You’re right, I’m just in a funk.”

  Poppy said, “Have a margarita and take a nap.” She paused, then lowered her voice. “And if it is that bad, well, listen, I’m sure it’s not too late to get it annulled. You’ve got options.”

  It was a shaky start, but things settled down after the honeymoon.

  Things were quite good for a while, actually. Scott and Lisa did a lot of traveling over the next few years. Lisa got into yoga and organic cooking and expensive skin-care lines from the Home Shopping Network. Then she got pregnant.

  And now, somehow, both couples were approaching their twentieth anniversaries. Twenty years? Amazing how time could slither away from you, that sly bastard. Blink and a year is gone. Get a good night’s sleep and when you wake your kids are half grown.

  Back at the house, Poppy was surprised to find Rae awake—it wasn’t yet six thirty. Rae was seated on a barstool at the kitchen island. She was still wearing her yellow pajamas, but her hair looked neat and combed-through, her face bright, possibly a little makeup, features wide awake as though she had been up for hours. She was drinking coffee and reading from the same novel she’d had on the beach the day before.

  Poppy said, “Hola.”

  Rae said, “Hi.”

  Poppy knelt. She removed one shoe. It stank, so she put it back on, loosened all the laces, and shuffled around with untied shoes. She poured herself a glass of water.

  “You’re an early bird for a teenager,” Poppy observed. “My kid would sleep till noon if I’d allow it. You drink black coffee?”

  Rae nodded. “But my mom makes me do half-decaf.”

  “I see,” Poppy said. She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the toaster. Hair huge, a clown’s wig, sprung free from the rubber band and bobby pins. Face still red with exertion and slick with sweat, she observed, “I look like I escaped from a mental institution.” She hoped this would elicit a giggle from Rae, but it did not. She fluffed her hair up even bigger. “Cavewoman?”

  Rae tented her book on the counter before her, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said, “You smell like smoke.”

  An ice cube slid into Poppy’s mouth and she crunched it. “You don’t miss much, do ya?”

  “Do you smoke cigs?”

  Poppy gazed at Rae. “On rare occasions. I bummed one from a nice young lady up the road. My lungs were giving me hell.”

  Rae said, “Do Ryan and Alex know you smoke?”

  “No,” Poppy said. “And neither does John. So let’s keep this between you and me, missy.”

  Rae smiled, sly like a cat.

  “I’m serious,” Poppy said. “John finds out I’m still smoking cigarettes, it’ll be . . .” Poppy stretched her lips wide over her teeth and drew her thumb across her neck.

  Rae was still smiling. “Do you guys fight?”

  “Me and John?”

  Rae nodded.

  “Everybody fights with the people they live with. They’re the ones whose shits you gotta smell.”

  Rae laughed, finally, and Poppy felt she deserved a prize. But a moment later Rae’s face darkened and slipped into something far away.

  Poppy said, “Your mom says you’re big into horses.”

  Rae nodded.

  “Now tell me the truth,” Poppy said. “Are you more into the horses, or the cute guy who wears the tight pants and gives riding lessons?”

  Rae stared at her. “My mom told you about Lucas? Oh my God. That figures.”

  “Hah, I gotcha,” Poppy said. “No, she didn’t tell me anything about anybody.”

  “Oh.” It took Rae a moment to decide how to respond to this. Lucas was sort of cute, nothing like Ryan, though. Lucas was pale and skinny as spaghetti. And for that matter, Rae was pretty sure Lucas was into the Korean girl who rode the Appaloosa named Strudel. Rae didn’t really give two hoots about who Lucas was into, but it was annoying when someone whose league you were out of didn’t pay you any attention at all, like you were totally useless, a lost cause. Well, anyhow, she didn’t figure Poppy needed to know any of this, so she said, “Lucas is gay.”

  Poppy clucked her tongue.

  Rae slid off the stool to refill her coffee. Her toenails were painted fire-engine red, so neatly done that Poppy wondered if it was a professional pedicure.

  Poppy dampened a dishcloth with cold water and held it to her forehead. “Humidity’ll kill ya out there,” she said. She decided she would have something to eat, wash her hands, and brush her teeth a second time, before John woke, so that he wouldn’t smell cigarette on her. She took a banana from the large wicker bowl that Lisa had filled with fruit, and peeled it. Rae took her coffee back to the island counter and returned to her book.

  Poppy sniffed her fingers to make sure the banana overpowered the cigarette.

  Rae sipped her black half-decaf coffee and curled her red toenails around the legs of the barstool.

  In Ryan’s bedroom, his heart was still slamming against his chest as he set his backpack at the foot of the bed, brushed sand from his legs and feet, and removed his T-shirt. Christ Almighty! This was way too much adrenaline for six o’clock in the morning. His mom had nearly scared him shitless when ten minutes earlier he’d caught a glimpse of Poppy finishing up her run and approaching the house. Ryan was coming in from the beach, so was on the opposite side of the house from Poppy, but he happened to see her out on the sidewalk. He stopped dead in his tracks in the side parking area, completely still so as not to attract her peripheral attention, until she was out of view. Once he was confident that Poppy was inside, Ryan swiftly entered the house using the lower-level entrance in the rec room down by the pool, which he had left unlocked. Inside, he crossed through the rec room, used the back stairway to make his way up to the bedroom level, and waited out of sight until he heard voices in the kitchen—his mother and Rae—before making a fast break for his bedroom.

  In the safety of his bedroom, Ryan sat on the end of his bed and panted. He knew his mother went for early-morning runs at home, but hadn’t imagined she would keep up the routine here. It hadn’t even occurred to him.

  The sweat at Ryan’s underarms became cold and crispy in the overly air-conditioned room. He shivered.

  Of course, if Poppy had seen him, he probably could have talked h
is way out of the situation by claiming he was down at the beach enjoying the sunrise by himself. But it was so unlike him to be up early in the morning that Poppy might have demanded more information. She might have searched his backpack. She might have asked Rae if she had seen Ryan coming or going or knew what he was up to.

  Lisa scrambled eggs and fried sausage links and toasted white bread for breakfast. Everyone filled their plates and ate on their own time. The Today show was on in the main room that connected to the kitchen. Katie Couric marveled about a pig that saved its owner by running up the street for help when the man collapsed in his yard, and Al Roker went on about the heat wave in the Southwest. A newspaper had appeared on the front porch during Poppy’s run and was now fully dismembered. Lisa brewed more coffee and prepared a second package of sausage links.

  Poppy went to Ryan’s bedroom to wake him—at eight-thirty, when he was the only one yet to make an appearance. He was still sleeping, shirtless, arm flung over his face to block the sunlight.

  Poppy pinched his earlobe and said, “You need to put sunscreen on the top of your ears today.”

  Ryan opened one sleepy, small eye at her.

  “Rise and shine,” Poppy said. “Everybody else is up and hanging out.” She ruffled his hair. Ryan had Poppy’s hair. Black and coarse, the texture of steel wool, and it seemed to radiate heat. It wasn’t worth trying to comb or keep up with hair like this after one day on the beach; just cram it under a hat or pull it into a ponytail and leave it until the end of the week, then expect to use a bottle of conditioner and rip out knots the size of mice.

  Ryan swatted his mother away gently.

  “What’d you do,” Poppy said, “stay up watching the sci-fi channel till two o’clock in the morning?” She looked over at his dresser, where the dead crab from yesterday was floating in bright blue liquid, in a juice glass from the kitchen. “Speaking of which, what’d you find out about your crab fungus?” she said. “Cure for cancer?”

  Ryan chuckled and sat up in bed. He rubbed a hand over his bare chest, which was already deeply tanned from one day in the sun. He had more hair than Poppy remembered.

  She nodded toward the crab and said, “Please throw that thing away before it starts to stink, ya weirdo.”

  Ryan made a move for his towel and toothbrush.

  Poppy said, “You want eggs and sausage and toast?”

  “Please and thank you,” Ryan said over his shoulder.

  Back in the kitchen, Poppy and John loaded the dishwasher. John commented to Lisa how much he had enjoyed the coffee, and Poppy, who only ever made instant at home, acted offended. Lisa said she had been getting her coffee from the same organic beanery in their area for years—she was hooked on the stuff, convinced it was the best around. The guy who ran the beanery had lived in Maui and worked on a coffee plantation for ten years.

  From across the room, Scott piped up, “Guy’s a con artist. I saw him at Walmart once with a whole cartful of Folgers.”

  Poppy said, “Really?”

  Lisa giggled. “Scott likes to give me grief about my organic this-or-that.” She seemed genuinely amused by Scott’s accusation, and it pleased Poppy to see the two of them bantering good-naturedly this morning.

  Together they talked over their plans for the day.

  John and Alex would leave soon for the bait shop, then head directly to the pier out by Pritchards Island, where Barry, from the golf course, had talked up the fishing. Lisa and her girls planned to check out an art gallery when the place opened at ten, then make their way down to the beach. Poppy and Ryan would go to the beach first thing—both were eager for a swim.

  Scott was just announcing that he might come to the beach for a few hours, then go to the driving range after lunch, when the house phone rang.

  Poppy startled and leapt to answer it, but Scott was closer and got there first.

  Scott was cheery and familiar with the caller, offering an occasional “Sure thing!” and “You bet!” He glanced at others in the room as he carried on the conversation.

  When the call ended, Lisa said, “Who was that?”

  Scott explained that yesterday he had exchanged phone numbers with the guys he met on the golf course, and one of them was calling to invite him to join their round of golf.

  Lisa said, “Fine by me.”

  Poppy said, “Fine by me.”

  Scott looked around the room. “No one’s gonna beg me not to go? Really? Well, then I guess I’ll go.”

  Rae said irritably, “Why don’t you quit talking about it and just go, then.”

  Kimmy sang, “Go away, Daddy! Shoo-shoo, fly away!”

  Scott said, “You girls are harsh.” He threw a balled-up napkin across the room at his daughters. Rae ignored it completely. Kimmy picked up the napkin, tightened it between her palms, and hurled it back.

  Scott put it in the garbage, then went to his room to gather his things.

  9

  ALEX’S WILLINGNESS TO bait her own hook and the technique she employed had always impressed John. He recalled his own squeamishness when he was a kid, didn’t reckon he’d done it himself until he was in his early teens. That was around the time he had started hunting with his own father, too. John had cried when he made his first kill, a squirrel with a .22, and his father told him it was OK, that if you didn’t feel something the first time, there was probably something wrong with your head.

  Even after John had killed a few turkeys, a rabbit, and a buck, there was still something about baiting a hook that could make his stomach go a little undone. Actually feeling something writhing for its life—not seeing it twenty yards out from your shotgun, but feeling it right there in your fingertips—that was the part that could make the heart weak.

  But not Alex. She’d twist up a thick old night crawler five different ways, knot it into itself, pull the ends to tighten it, even as the thing struggled mightily to muscle its way free. Then she’d stick the hook through, catching as many surfaces as possible, purple guts oozing, the worm’s flesh working in and out like an accordion—she’d do all of this like it was straight-up nothing. She’d ball up the worm so tightly on the end of the hook it looked like a tiny Christmas ornament; no way a fish could steal a nibble without getting the hook. She didn’t even flinch.

  The two of them positioned themselves two-thirds of the way out the pier, right where Barry had said the current was likely to attract the big ones, and they sat next to each other. The cement of the pier was steaming after the rain in the night and the early heat of the day.

  John had spent a few bucks on a bag of ice and filled his cooler on wheels in hopes that they would have at least a few fillets to take back to the house. He put the heavy cooler behind him to serve as a backrest. Alex hummed contentedly as she lightly bounced her pole to try and drum up some interest underwater.

  An old fisherman was making his way in from the far end of the pier. He had a big red lump of a nose that was mushy and creased as a piece of chewed gum, and he wore a khaki bucket hat, flip-flops, and a lightweight shirt riddled with dark red and brown stains. He carried a pole and a tangled swath of netting.

  As he drew near, John said, “Any bites?”

  “Not a one,” the man said. “Reckon that rain yesterday stirred up some stuff, brought some big schools of sardines through. Nobody’s hungry today. But maybe you’ll have better luck than me.” He nodded down at Alex. “You too, son. Hope you snag the big ’un.”

  Alex said, “Me too.”

  John put a finger to his brow and murmured, “Alright now.”

  As the fisherman continued on his way, John glanced sideways at Alex to see if she had been fazed by the “son” comment, but if she had noticed it at all, she certainly didn’t seem to care.

  They sat for a long while without a bite, the sun broiling their heads.

  Occasional whitecaps broke against the pier to offer the small relief of a misty spray.

  Eventually, Alex pulled her worm in and rearranged it on the hook. S
he added a weight to her line, recast, bounced it. After a few more casts, she got up and switched to the other side of the pier.

  After a bit, John called over to her, “Awful hot out here. We oughta try and make it out earlier tomorrow. Six or seven o’clock. Beat the heat.”

  Alex said, “Sure.” She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Daddy, do you like them?”

  John glanced over his shoulder at her. She was still facing away, out across the water.

  “Who?”

  “That other family,” Alex said. “Mr. and Mrs. Daly. Rae. Kimmy.”

  “Oh.” John reeled his line in, pulled at a string of brown seaweed that had attached itself to the bait, and recast. “Mm-hm,” he said. “Do you?”

  He watched over his shoulder again as Alex’s round buzz cut tipped back and forth, left to right. “I like Kimmy a lot,” she said, “though she annoys me a little bit sometimes.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know, she’s just . . . silly sometimes.”

  John laughed. “What’s wrong with silly?”

  “There’s a difference between funny and silly. Don’t you think so? I like funny people. But sometimes Kimmy’s not funny. Sometimes she’s just silly.”

  John knew exactly what she meant. He didn’t want to encourage a judgmental streak in Alex, but he also couldn’t help the swell of pride he felt at the idea that his daughter was not and would never be a silly girl. He could imagine Alex saying things like, “Oh, get a life,” to girls who were late to class because they were too caught up doing makeup in the bathroom, or when they cried because the boy they had a crush on didn’t return a call.

  “I do like Kimmy,” Alex said decisively. “I’m not sure about the rest of them, though.”