The House on Fripp Island Read online

  “Seems like he manages to avoid that guilt part altogether,” Lisa said. “As far as I can tell, in his view if he wears that crucifix and hits communion once a week, he’s pure as a lamb.” Lisa was quiet for a bit. Her green eyes swirled bright with the reflection of blue sky. “When I think of him with another woman, though,” she said, “it’s like I almost . . . Put it this way, if there is another woman, part of me almost feels grateful to her, because he requires so little of me. He’s clearly getting what he needs somewhere else, so I’m off the hook. Know what I mean? In my heart of hearts,” Lisa said, pinching her nostrils, then releasing them, “if he’s having an affair, I don’t think I give a shit.”

  Poppy’s chin jerked into her neck. “Really? In my heart of hearts I think, if he’s cheating on you, he’s an imbecile.” She paused. “But if you’re OK with it . . . I guess it could be a lot worse then.”

  “I wouldn’t leave him now, I don’t think. Probably not until the girls are out of school. I don’t want to shake up their lives. He’s a great dad, much as it pains me to give him even that. But credit where it’s due. I mean, he’s got way more patience with Kimmy than I do. He can listen to her stories the whole way through and pretend he’s interested in every word. He’s almost always the one that helps her with homework. He makes up dumb little jokes that just thrill her . . . Anyway, like I said, I don’t want to take away from who he is as a parent. I’ll give him that. And for the most part, he and I stay out of each other’s business these days.” A stray red hair had caught on Lisa’s sticky lipstick, and she drew it away with a pinkie. “Besides,” she said, “dating seems awful, doesn’t it? Especially at this age. I wouldn’t want to be alone, but I’m also not too eager to try and meet somebody at this stage of life. Did I tell you about my friend Karen?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’re in book club together,” Lisa said. “She caught her husband cheating about five years ago and divorced him straightaway. She thought she’d have some fun with some young guys, get her groove back, then settle down with someone else. But it’s been nothing but trouble for her since leaving her husband.”

  “In what way?” Poppy asked.

  “These men she dates.”

  “Does she have bad taste?”

  “Sure, that’s part of it,” Lisa said. “But also, things aren’t like they used to be in the dating scene. It’s a different world out there these days, Pop. You can’t know what you’re getting into with a guy who’s single at a certain age.”

  “That’s awfully old-fashioned of you.”

  “First guy Karen went out with was a meth addict who stole all the cash from her purse when she got up to use the restroom.”

  Poppy scoffed. “Well, where’d she meet this guy? In a cardboard box on the street?”

  “In the library,” Lisa said.

  “Go on.”

  “Another guy she met at a bar. Musician, I believe, taught guitar. She said he was really good-lookin’. Long blond ponytail. They went on a few dates, eventually he invited her back to his place. Turned out he lived in his parents’ basement. Walls of his bedroom were covered in Santana posters. Fritos crumbs in the bed. Hamster in a cage. Guy was forty years old.”

  “Come on.”

  Lisa added, “By this point Karen was so hard-up she did sleep with the guy, but just the once. And she said the hamster watched the whole time.”

  Poppy howled.

  “I have one more,” Lisa said. “But you’re not gonna like it.” She gathered her hair over one shoulder and twisted it. “So finally Karen went out with a professor who a friend set her up with. She thought she couldn’t go wrong with a friend of a friend. And she was really into the guy, seemed like it was heading in the right direction. He was smart, polite, funny, had a good job, spoke nice about his folks but didn’t live in their basement . . . So the two of them started spending some nights together. And then, out of the blue, one night while they’re in the middle of doing it, the guy asks if she wants him to hit her. You know, during sex.”

  Poppy pitched back, terrorized.

  Lisa continued. “Karen said, ‘Uh, not really,’ and he did it anyway. Kept at it, too. Put his hands around her neck and squeezed. Said it really turned him on and all the other women he’d dated were OK with it. She tried to talk herself into being OK with it, thought maybe she was being a square. And then, amidst all this, she found out the guy was sleeping with half his students. So . . . yeah. That last one really messed her up in the head. I don’t think she’s been on a date since.”

  “I should think not! Who are these people? And we’re supposed to raise daughters in this world?”

  “It’s rough out there,” Lisa said. “How’d I get into this anyway? Oh, right. What I’m trying to say is that Karen might not admit it, but I think she would gladly take her husband back at this point, affair and all.” Lisa picked at a knot on the armrest of her chair. “I think she’d be better off if she’d stuck it out in the first place, though at the time everything inside her was telling her to run.”

  “I don’t know,” Poppy said. “I think she was right to follow her heart. I think people usually are.” She rubbed her eyes. The sun felt like a weight on the world. “If you can’t trust your own heart, what can you trust?”

  Lisa was quiet for a while, then she said, “I think things aren’t always as they seem.”

  “Even your own heart?”

  The melancholy changed shape and moved around inside Lisa, oozing and shifting like oil in a lava lamp.

  “Well, anyway.” Poppy released a heavy sigh. “You’ve depressed me.”

  “Me too. Sorry.” Lisa patted Poppy’s hand, then reached up to brush a few curls away from Poppy’s bright sweating cheek. “Still,” Lisa said softly, “sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like.”

  “If you’d married Rex Wright?”

  “Hah!”

  Poppy knew this would get a laugh. Rex Wright was the dishwasher at Luigi’s, the restaurant where Poppy and Lisa had worked together in high school. He kept his hair shaved clean and shiny to the skull and had a drawn-to-scale lightbulb tattooed on the back of his head. He had spent his twenties in jail for armed robbery. Management was too scared to fire him, though they knew he was snorting amphetamines in the employee restroom during his shift. Rex had been hopelessly in love with Lisa when she worked at the restaurant and gave her a stuffed koala bear that smelled powerfully of cigarettes and old perfume.

  “No,” Lisa said, “I wonder what it would’ve been like if I’d stayed in Wheeling.”

  “Oh,” Poppy said. “Sounds like a dangerous game.”

  Lisa sipped her sangria. “Do you ever play it? Wonder what your life would be, in another life?”

  “Nah,” Poppy said. “I don’t have the time or the imagination.”

  “So things are good with John?”

  Poppy nodded with such easy assurance that Lisa felt a twinge. She looked away and stared out at the water. She didn’t want to feel spiteful. Of course things were good, things were always good with John, Lisa thought, even when things were bad with John, things were fine with John.

  Envy could zoom up through Lisa as quick as a puff of air, and then it might disappear just as quickly, or it might twist around like a snake in her stomach for days. Lisa had never been attracted to John—he was a kind man, a handsome enough man, a manly man who knew how to use tools and fix problems—but still, there was nothing even resembling attraction there. So it wasn’t that Lisa wanted to be Poppy, or to have Poppy’s husband. But seeing what Poppy and John had, what they shared, and the simple awareness that her best friend had another best friend in her spouse, was not painless or uncomplicated.

  The smell of charred burger fat wafted over from a barbecue next door.

  Down at the beach, they could see that Ryan was in the water, Rae was in her chair, and Alex was using a plastic shovel to bury Kimmy in sand, up to her chin.

  Abruptly breaking th
e silence, the doorbell’s pleasant electronic melody sang through the house and reached Lisa and Poppy on the deck.

  Lisa said, “That’ll be the maintenance guy, for the fridge,” and she got up to let him in.

  Poppy followed a minute later, carrying the half-full pitcher of sangria inside to replenish the ice, and she found that Lisa was not in the kitchen but still at the front door, where the maintenance man stood before her. Poppy gazed down from the top of the stairway. The maintenance guy looked to be in his mid-twenties, clean-shaven, dirty blond hair, bright cheeks, lean, muscular build, wearing khaki shorts and a Dickies work shirt. Really cute guy. In swirling white cursive embroidery, his breast pocket read Keats. He held out a clipboard to Lisa, awaiting her signed approval for the work he intended to do.

  Poppy hesitated before approaching the entrance and caught only the tail end of what Lisa was telling the man.

  “. . . just fine,” Lisa was saying, her voice at a bizarre, nervous pitch that Poppy did not recognize. She did not take the clipboard from him but instead took a step backward.

  “Sorry for the trouble,” Lisa said. “We won’t be needing your help after all.”

  A strange look passed briefly over Keats’s face, and his natural flush spread. He lowered the clipboard and tapped it against his thigh, eyes low, then turned and left the house.

  Lisa closed the door quickly behind him and locked it. She paused, then locked the deadbolt too.

  Poppy said, “What the hell was that all about?”

  Lisa spun, startled to find that Poppy had followed her back inside and witnessed the interaction.

  “Nothing.” Lisa flapped a hand in the air.

  Poppy dipped her chin. “Don’t lie to me, liar.”

  Lisa said, “I need another drink.” But before making a move for the kitchen, she turned and stared out front to make sure he was actually leaving, then actually gone.

  3

  OUT ON THE GOLF COURSE, they were only on the fifth hole, but Scott was already pleasantly drunk. He had brought a handle of Scotch with him, and they were drinking out of little wax paper cups. John had a surprisingly good midrange swing and was a decently skilled putter as well. Scott was tempted to try and twist John’s arm into playing for money, something small, a buck a hole, anything to raise the stakes, but he didn’t think John would go for that, even if Scott worked up some sort of handicap for himself to even things out. Nah, John didn’t seem the betting type. And Poppy would probably blow a gasket if John lost a single dime out on the golf course. Poppy was such a tyrant, she probably counted the cash in John’s wallet every time he came and went from the house. Probably counted the bills and the change. Scott chuckled to himself at the thought of this.

  John was driving the golf cart across the range now, up and over the smooth manicured hills. A sweet sea breeze wafted through and seagulls soared overhead. The fairways were surrounded by thick, lush woods. Insects hissed and rasped, and woodpeckers hammered at the trees, which creaked in the wind like rusty hinges. These strange frequencies echoed over the course and gave the impression that a very different and wild world lay just beyond its borders.

  John lifted his finger from the steering wheel to acknowledge another pair of men tooting by in a golf cart. Like Scott, both of them were wearing white linen shirts, pastel shorts, and aviator sunglasses. John was trying hard not to feel self-conscious about his tennis shoes and his secondhand polo shirt. Poppy had done some shopping for both of them at the Goodwill in Wheeling in anticipation of this trip, but John felt itchy and weird in this blue polo that was too tight around the neck and smelled of another man’s life.

  Scott was also wearing a sharp white leather golf glove on his left hand. He fussed with it constantly, doing and undoing the Velcro strap over his wrist like it was a tic, stretching his fingers out to admire the glove, balling them into a fist to examine his knuckles.

  Scott said, “Lisa reminded me you two celebrate your twentieth anniversary in a few weeks.”

  John nodded. “Planning to get away for a night, go down to the Luray Caverns and have dinner at a Mexican joint. I guess that means your twentieth is coming up too, what, this fall?”

  “September,” Scott said. “If we make it that long.” He laughed.

  John didn’t know what to say, so he laughed too. He’d heard from Poppy that things were not great between Scott and Lisa, but he didn’t know all of the details and didn’t particularly want to.

  Scott sipped his Scotch and ran his gloved hand through his hair. He was feeling chatty and generous and open to being vulnerable. “Man to man,” he said to John, “you’re still in love with Pop, then, are you? Twenty years later?”

  “In love with her?” John said. He too was getting pleasantly drunk. It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t be driving the golf cart, since he’d had a few drinks after taking his pill, but he felt perfectly competent and judged that he was a good deal less sauced than Scott at this point.

  “In love?” John repeated. “I don’t reckon I know what that even means anymore. Can’t remember. I guess I’d say . . . I can’t imagine my life without her. Whether that means I’m still in love with her or just that I’ve got no imagination . . . hard to say.”

  This made Scott laugh very hard, and he clapped John on the back. He took off his sunglasses to adjust the little rubber feet, fitted them back over his nose, took them off to adjust them again.

  Scott said, “Your boy do any golfing?”

  “Ryan? Nah,” John said. “He’s never been much into sports.”

  “Shame,” Scott said, squinting. “He’s built for it.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Your younger one’s got some balls, shaving her head like that,” Scott remarked, then he screwed his face up, appearing to regret his choice of words. “I didn’t mean she’s actually got balls. Not that there’d be anything wrong with that. What I meant was that I think it’s cool.”

  John laughed. “I think it’s cool too. Alex is her own bird. Always has been.”

  Scott wiped a dead insect from the dashboard of the golf cart. “Man, you’re lucky, ya know,” he said. “I love my girls, honest to God I love them more than anything, but sometimes I feel like I’m living with three of my wives. If you can imagine what that’s like.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Oh, Rae and Kimmy are both Lisa’s little Mini-Me,” Scott said. “Always harpin’ on me, all three of them. Wears me out. Enough to drive a guy mad.” Scott was looking down at their scorecard, tapping it with the three-inch-long pencil. He said, “You ever cheat?”

  John glanced over at him. “Nah. This is pretty much my first time, like I said, except for putt-putt, and that’s always with the kids.”

  Scott made a face indicating that he found this answer boring or disagreeable, and John realized that Scott might not have been referring to golf.

  It seemed that the easy banter John and Scott had established in the past hour might already be running dry.

  They were coming up on the putting green. John parked the cart and wiped sweat from his brow. The sun spread across the baked grass. Scott downed the rest of his Scotch in a single swallow and swayed a bit as he got out of the cart. John pointed out a gator just up the way, sunning itself next to a small pond.

  Scott pulled out his putter and did a little dance, using the putter as a prop. He wobbled ignominiously. Then he stared at the gator. He said, “Whaddaya think that fellow would do if I gave him a poke?”

  John looked at Scott, then at the golf club. “With that thing?”

  Scott nodded. “You think he’d bite my dick off?”

  “He might,” John said.

  Kimmy and Ryan were in the water, Alex had just gone up to the house for something to drink, and Rae was seated on a lawn chair under the shade of a large canvas umbrella. She wore a black bikini and large plastic sunglasses. She was alternating between observing Ryan and her sister out in the surf through her binoculars and re
reading the same passage of her book that she had read a hundred times before.

  Of course, Rae didn’t give two hoots about birds. She had brought the binoculars along on vacation because they made her look chic and sophisticated. As it turned out, the bird-watching lie, though unplanned, had panned out quite well. Indeed, the binoculars were not only a cool accessory, but they also provided prime cover for staring at people, and staring at people was one of Rae’s favorite things to do.

  Ryan had been snorkeling for a while but was now wading casually around a sandbar in turquoise water that reached his waist. The water was calm, and Kimmy had joined him at the sandbar for handstands. Now the two of them were chatting.

  Kimmy wore a silver one-piece, and she bounced and paddled and floated around, looking as happy and sleek and at home out there as a little fish. Ryan pointed at something in the water and Kimmy listened intently. Then she was laughing, all big and cute and shaking out her hair, pulling and snapping the straps of her silver swimsuit, obviously thinking she was hot shit. Rae adjusted the focus on the binoculars. Kimmy was chattering, face lit up and wildly expressive. She was probably humiliating herself per usual, Rae thought, with incredibly boring and detailed stories that lacked a satisfying conclusion.

  Rae’s grumpiness was compounding. She found her younger sister incredibly annoying lately. It was just in the past few months that Kimmy had become interested in mascara and brand names and boys. Rae resented her little sister for a thousand things; at this moment it was for the way Kimmy was splashing carelessly and confidently around in the water with Ryan. He was seventeen, so of course nothing would ever happen between the two of them, but it was still really annoying and unsettling. What on earth could they be talking about out there all this time anyway? What could they possibly have in common?

  See, Rae had real, actual adult interests that Ryan would probably want to hear about, if Kimmy would stop demanding all his attention. Rae enjoyed literature and movies and other grown-up things. She’d had wine and whiskey and other adult beverages before, and she liked them. She had started horseback-riding lessons several years ago at a stable ten miles from home. Her parents had said they would buy her a horse if she stuck with lessons for one more year. Rae could explain to Ryan the difference between English- and western-style riding, and why she preferred English, and all the different components of a saddle. She could tell Ryan that the horse she rode, Casper, was a beautiful Arabian, and he competed in dressage. (Rae could say this word with the proper intonation, because she had taken a semester of French in eighth grade and was well versed in French culture.) See, Rae was refined and interesting and elegant, whereas Kimmy—Rae stared at her sister—whereas, God, Kimmy was like a cheap mechanical toy that had been too tightly wound.