The House on Fripp Island Read online

  Back at home that evening, John and Poppy talked it over. She was still livid over the failure of the first operation but ultimately in favor of doing the second, so that he could get off the medication. John wasn’t so sure. “I came out of the first one worse off than I was before,” he pointed out. “And our debt’s already through the roof, Pop. I go in for another one, we’ll be paying it off for the next twenty years. And with no guarantee? Why don’t I give it a go for a few more weeks with the new dosage, try and do better with the exercises I’m supposed to be doing, then see where we’re at.”

  The combination of a higher dosage and renewed diligence with his exercises at home had helped. He continued to watch his diet and was shedding a pound or two a week. John still had episodes, but they were less frequent and passed more quickly. As he gained strength, he was less afraid to be active—to throw a football with his kid, to swing an ax. He was nearly back to full functionality at work.

  When he was first prescribed the pills, John had vowed to himself that he would be one hundred percent honest with his doctor about his level of pain and dependence on the drug. Now he knew that if he was honest about his progress at his next appointment, which was scheduled for the week they returned from Fripp Island, the prescribed dosage would almost certainly be scaled back. He was contemplating whether he wanted to delay the appointment.

  John sent fresh oxygen directly to the base of his spine as he shifted in his seat and cruised toward the next hole at a slower pace. Gentle, gentle. He glanced Scott’s way to see if his pain had caused any alarm, but Scott was oblivious, staring vacantly out over the course and fingering the gold crucifix he wore around his neck.

  John shifted again, absorbing the tension from his spine into his tailbone. Easy does it. He sipped his Scotch.

  Their golf cart crapped out on the eleventh hole, coughing instead of moving when John hit the accelerator, then sputtering out altogether. John turned the thing off and removed the key, then tried to turn it back on, and the starter wouldn’t even turn over. John gave this a few more tries, with no success. He got out of his seat in order to look at the motor and belts.

  “Scott, take the keys and give her one more go while I look inside to see if it’s something I can tinker with.”

  Scott tried to start it up while John peered in. The volatile odor of hot rubber rippled through the air.

  John said, “Reckon it’s either the battery or the alternator. Either way, we’re not gonna get her up and going on our own again, that’s for dang sure.”

  Scott had gone through about a third of the bottle of Scotch by this point. His speech was baggy and he was not steady on his feet. He ran a hand through his hair, which was now slick with sweat over the crown of his head, and said indifferently, “What are we gonna do?”

  “Probably just need to abandon the cart and walk back to the clubhouse to let them know.” John stared out over the sun-soaked fairway. It was a two-mile walk back to the clubhouse, and the temperature had to be pushing ninety. He glanced at Scott and said, “Why don’t you stay here in the shade, watch the clubs, and I’ll head back in.”

  John welcomed the thought of a break from Scott’s company, even if it involved a long walk in the direct sun. In the past hour, Scott had gone from a merry, giggling drunk to a melancholic and unpredictable one. A few holes back, Scott had bungled a ten-inch putt, then smashed the head of his putter to the ground in anger and hissed something under his breath—John thought it might have been the C-word, which would have been both vile and bizarre—but he wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly and decided not to ask Scott to repeat himself or clarify.

  Scott didn’t object to the idea of John going for help while he sat in the shade of the cart. He tipped his glass toward John, offered a brittle laugh in response to no joke, and said, “I’ll hold down the fort, then.”

  Lisa and Poppy settled themselves on beach chairs that faced the water. Lisa was slick as an otter, gleaming with a sheen of sunscreen. She wore a white bikini and a wide-brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. Poppy had tied her hair on top of her head and sported a distinct farmer’s tan—forearms deep brown and freckled, shoulders nearly as pale as Lisa’s. She wore a navy one-piece and large aviator sunglasses with reflective lenses.

  Alex was napping on a towel next to them, a baseball cap over her face, and Rae was on the far side of her.

  Lisa called down, “Rae, what’re you reading?”

  Rae didn’t look up. “A book.”

  Lisa persisted, “What’s it about?”

  Rae released an annoyed exhalation and tucked her auburn hair behind her ear. “I don’t know, like, this family. It’s about a lot of things. OK? God.”

  “Excuse me for showing an interest,” Lisa said, and gave Poppy a nervous and apologetic smile.

  Rae shifted on her towel and fiddled with a hoop earring. She was trying to maintain a nonchalant expression on her face, hoping to high heaven that her mother wouldn’t ask to see the book and open it to the page that Rae had been reading and rereading for the past hour.

  Rae spent several hours in their local library each week. Her top quest was to find books in the Adult Literary Fiction section that contained graphic sex scenes, but had benign covers and synopses that her mother wouldn’t question. Lisa wouldn’t let Rae check out erotica or any other sort of genre fiction with a trashy cover, and Rae had already exhausted the YA section for sexually explicit material—Judy Blume was about as racy as it got. So nowadays, library visits consisted of Rae feverishly skimming adult literary novels with an eye for words like “naked,” “throb,” and “breast.” In her current pick, Rae was reading again and again the scene in which a young woman seduced her father’s best friend. The young woman knew it was a terrible idea, but she did it anyway, and they became secret lovers. As Rae devoured the description of the seduction, a foamy sweetness curled up through her.

  Rae looked up from her book when she saw that Ryan and Kimmy were making their way in from the ocean. Ryan’s black hair was dripping, blue swim trunks tight around his muscular thighs. Rae kept her chin low, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Kimmy spread out her towel next to her sister, and Rae emitted a small groan, as though Kimmy’s very existence on the beach made it a less pleasant place. Ryan shook out his snorkel gear and set it on the ground next to Poppy. In his hand he cradled a tiny dead crab, its body dime-sized, legs white and delicate as a snowflake.

  Poppy said, “Whatcha got there?”

  “He’s got a fungus on him,” Ryan said. He held the crab closer to Poppy’s face, and she pinched her nose.

  Ryan pointed out patches of gray-green fuzz on the crab.

  Poppy said, “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “Doesn’t quite look like Lagenidium callinectes.”

  “What?”

  “A fungus that grows on crustaceans sometimes, but I don’t think that’s what this is. I’m gonna try and figure it out. I brought some books along and some litmus paper and stuff.”

  Poppy said, “I hope you’re not planning to take that thing into the house. It stinks.”

  Ryan glanced at Lisa, as though she would have the final say in this.

  Lisa waved a hand in the air. “Do whatever you want with that thing. Stick it in a martini glass in the fridge for all I care.”

  Poppy shrugged, then said to Ryan, “If you’re going inside, put on some more sunscreen and bring me a string cheese, would you? They’re in my purse.”

  Lisa said, “Cheese in your purse?”

  “String cheese never goes bad.”

  Ryan said, “I think you’re wrong about that. String cheese is still cheese. I think.”

  Lisa said, “Yeah, Pop, that’s gross. We stocked up on real cheese and charcuterie anyway, it’s in the fridge. Bunch of different kinds.” She turned to Ryan. “Grab some of that instead,” she said.

  Poppy whined, “I like my string cheese.”

  Ryan draped his towel over his shoul
ders and headed in to the house, crab in hand. Lean brown muscles swelled in his calves as he made his way up the beach.

  Poppy settled back to lie on her towel, and shortly she slipped into a sun-struck daydream, her thoughts going as loose and bland as old Jell-O.

  This pleasant haze was interrupted a few minutes later when Lisa’s sharp intake of breath woke her. Poppy sat upright. Lisa was gazing down the beach. She didn’t lift her hand to point, but dipped her chin in the direction of a nicely built young man in swim trunks and a white T-shirt, walking a handsome chocolate Lab with a bright red collar along the water’s edge.

  She said to Poppy in a low voice, “Is that him?”

  Poppy stared at the man. “Keats Firestone?”

  “Mm.”

  It was hard to tell for sure from this distance and because he was in swim trunks versus the work clothes he had worn half an hour earlier, but that handsome, boyish face and something in the posture . . . “I think so.”

  Lisa grabbed Rae’s binoculars, which were sitting on top of the cooler, looked through them, and whispered, “It’s like he’s rubbing it in our faces.”

  “What, the fact that he exists?”

  “The fact that he lives a ten-minute walk up the beach.”

  Poppy said, “Chill. Put those binoculars away. Don’t make like we’re watching him. He hasn’t noticed you.”

  Lisa ignored her and adjusted the focus on the binoculars. “You’re right, he is wearing a wedding ring.” She was silent for a bit, then whispered, “Do you think his wife knows?”

  “How could you not?” Poppy said, then reconsidered. “Well, I guess it’s possible you wouldn’t know.”

  Lisa said, “I think it’s more likely she doesn’t know than she does, don’t you think? Because what kind of a woman would stay with a man if they had any sort of—”

  Lisa cut herself off abruptly when Alex rose from her nap on the other side of Poppy and pulled the baseball cap from her face. She rubbed her eyes, gathered her knees to her chest, brushed sand from herself, and gazed at the tide line, where Keats and his dog were now passing directly in front of them.

  Poppy watched as Alex lifted handfuls of sand and released the grains slowly through her fingers, eyes on Keats and his dog.

  A weighty thrust of sunshine made Poppy feel trapped.

  Lisa coughed loudly and said, “Well, anyhow. How’s the water, kids?” She looked down the row of them: Alex, Kimmy, Rae.

  Kimmy said, “I’m ready to go back in.” She turned to Alex. “You want to come? Out at the sandbar it’s really calm, and we can do handstands and grade each other.”

  Lisa saw that Keats and the dog had passed and were now a ways down the beach.

  Alex said, “I have to plug my nose underwater, so I don’t know if I can do that one-handed.”

  Kimmy said, “I can hold up your legs to train you.”

  The two young girls headed back toward the ocean.

  Lisa said, “Rae? You been in the water?”

  Rae shook her head.

  Lisa rose from her chair and said, “I’m going to get my feet wet. Care to join?”

  Rae shook her head again.

  Lisa sighed with a sweetness, her pale chest rose and fell, and she wore the slightest pout. Rae had seen her mother put on this look before, and noted that it almost always produced good results. It seemed to Rae that it wasn’t very hard for Lisa to get what she wanted from people, just by being beautiful. And when that wasn’t enough, it was with one of these subtle gestures—a shy smile and dip of the chin, a feminine sigh. Rae had tried some of these moves on boys in her class at school, but they seemed to go unnoticed, except for the time Erik Moyer demanded, “Why are you being weird with your eyes?” Generally speaking, the boys at Rae’s school were not quite right in the head. They went crazy for video games like Mortal Kombat and movies about robots and zombies. As far as Rae could tell, some of them didn’t even brush their teeth in the morning.

  Lisa had certain looks she used to get what she wanted, and so did Rae. In fact, Rae had cultivated a perfect look of jaded disgust to get out of doing things with members of the family, and she wore it now.

  Lisa grimaced, taken aback even though she had seen this look many times before. “Alright, then,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Poppy said, “I’ll come along.”

  As the two of them approached the water, Lisa said, “I try to remember what it was like, being fourteen. It was miserable, right? That’s why my daughter is such a sourpuss? Well, she’s never been much for swimming anyway. But it’s not that my daughter is a miserable person. Right?”

  Poppy laughed. “It’s tough at that age,” she said. “You think whatever you feel is how it really is. Truth. And even worse, you think that whatever you’re feeling is the way you’re always going to feel. You can’t see a way around it.”

  Lisa said, “Ryan seems like he got through it just fine. Was he like that when he was fourteen?”

  “Sure.”

  “When did he grow out of it?”

  “Around sixteen,” Poppy said. “He sort of . . . well, I don’t know really how it happens, but things just got better. He got out of his own head, I suppose. Developed interests.”

  “It’s not that Rae doesn’t have interests,” Lisa said. “She’s a reader, obviously, and the riding lessons . . . But it all seems so useless. Her interests seem no more than expensive distractions. Nothing actually makes her happy. I might as well let her sit in her room all day, scoot sandwiches under the door. Not even bother. Know what I mean?” She swatted at a deer fly buzzing at her thigh, and her palm thudded wet and slippery against her greasy leg.

  Poppy said, “Is she into boys?”

  “Nah. Not yet. Is Ryan into girls? I imagine he has a hard time fending them off.”

  Poppy rocked her head back and forth, her lips, chapped and swollen from the sun, bunched to one side. “Hard to say. There was a girl he took on a few dates this past year, brought her over to meet us, but that didn’t seem to go anywhere. I haven’t heard boo about her in months. Fine by me, she seemed like a moron anyway.” Poppy created a shape in the sand with her toe, then erased it. “I told you about the Playboy magazines I found under his mattress a few months ago, right? I think maybe that’s enough to occupy him in that department. For now. I hope.”

  Lisa laughed.

  Poppy added, “I reckon he brought one along on this trip too, based on the way he reacted when I went into his room earlier, when he was unpacking and getting settled in. Guess I caught him by surprise while he was getting his things together. He bolted across the room, trying to close his suitcase before I got a look. I realized he probably had one of those magazines tucked in there, and decided not to say anything to embarrass him. Poor guy thinks I don’t already know all his dirty secrets.”

  The two of them had reached the water, and Lisa let her feet sink fully into the sand, creating small pools around her ankles. The water was warm. Tiny white and silver and brown shells gathered and scattered all around their feet. A seagull dipped into the water a few yards out, then came to rest on it, settling its wings and bobbing gently over the waves. Lisa could see through the water to its black webbed feet, which swung lazily with the current.

  Farther out at the sandbar, Alex and Kimmy were splashing around at handstands and somersaults, their voices carrying smoothly over the water’s surface.

  Poppy said, “Lately, though, Ryan is more . . . ‘withdrawn’ isn’t quite the word. He’s a little more private, maybe. Happier than ever to spend tons of time by himself. The science stuff, seems like he’s always got something going with that, like that crab he found. Always got some sort of project going. And long bike rides, always by himself. Anyway, it doesn’t really concern me, it’s just something new.”

  Lisa said, “Maybe he’s subconsciously preparing himself for college, pulling away a bit, knowing things will be different soon. Creating some distance.”

  P
oppy said, “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

  Lisa was quiet for a while, then she said, “You don’t think Alex heard us, do you? Talking about the registry stuff? The way she sat up when we were talking again just there . . . I should have been more careful.”

  “Nah. I think she’d speak up and be asking questions if she heard anything that upset her.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” Lisa said, “how kids have such a fascination with strangers. Especially when it’s their parents interacting with strangers.”

  “How do you mean?” Poppy said.

  “Well, I guess I’m thinking how my girls, especially Kimmy, always ask, ‘Mommy, who was that? What did that man say to you? And what did you say to him? And what did that mean?’ And it’s rarely anything at all. You know, I’ll be like, ‘He asked if we want our groceries packed in paper or plastic.’ But even when it’s nothing, they think they must know everything about it.”

  The two women watched in silence as their daughters played happily together by the sandbar, while both of their minds thrashed and toiled over private concerns.

  John was drowning in heat and light and sweat after a twenty-minute walk in the sun, but he had nearly made it back to the clubhouse when the air changed, suddenly becoming as thick as paste and smelling of overturned earth. The sky darkened to the color of ash, it grumbled and cracked, and then it exploded. John made his way toward shelter under the awning of the clubhouse. It occurred to him that he’d not passed anyone else on the course during his walk; others must have wisely looked at the forecast, he thought, and headed in earlier.

  John could see dozens of people through the windows of the clubhouse, hobnobbing in their visors and pastels, sipping on cocktails in plastic cups while they waited out the storm. He had no interest in going in there; he was drenched already and would probably catch pneumonia if he set foot in that overly air-conditioned room.