Jill wandered through the crowd, stopping when people recognized her, pausing when Rita saw someone she knew. In the glow of the lanterns, an odd familiar feeling had surfaced: a feeling that she was home. Her feet were tired, her head buzzed from the tide of voices that ebbed and swelled from the crowd: still, Jill realized she was smiling, and that there was, indeed, something to be said about the comfort of familiarity.
Then she saw Amy cross between the pews of the Tabernacle and head toward her, her face radiant in the light. Amy had, however, removed her vest. Jill winced at the sight of her daughter’s young breasts, firm and revealing in the chill of the night.
“Mom, can I go now? Please?” Amy asked as she reached her mother.
“Put your vest on, honey. That tank top is too tight.”
Amy sighed and slipped the vest over herself. “Yes, Mother. Anything you say, Mother. Now, can I go?”
“I’m not ready to leave, honey.”
“Kyle said he’d take me home. Please, Mom,” she continued with a roll of her eyes. “This is so boring.”
“I thought you’d have a good time with Carrie.”
“I was. We were. But she and Kyle had a fight. She left with somebody else.”
Rita appeared at Jill’s side. “Let the kids go, Jill. I can catch a ride home with you.”
“Well,” she hesitated, feeling that no one seemed to understand Amy was only fourteen, yet wanting very badly to let her daughter breathe.
“My kid’s responsible,” Rita joked. “Honest.”
Jill smiled. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll see you at home later.”
The look on Amy’s face was one of genuine thanks.
“Is it okay if we stop for ice cream?” Kyle asked.
“Frozen yogurt,” Amy chided.
“Okay, okay,” Kyle said with a laugh. “Frozen yogurt.”
“Fat free.”
Jill slipped her hands in the pockets of her linen pants and decided that the sparks she saw between them were nothing more than a mother’s overactive imagination. “Only if you get chocolate,” she answered.
“Great. See ya, Mom.”
“Amy?” Jill called after her.
Amy turned around.
“Didn’t you get a light stick?”
Amy flipped back her hair, waved, and walked away. It could have been worse, Jill supposed. Amy could have ignored her completely.
“She’ll be fine,” Rita said, taking Jill’s elbow and guiding her toward the Tabernacle. “Look,” she said, pointing toward the side of the building. “There’s Jesse Parker. Remember him? He works at the post office now.”
Jill squinted and saw a group of several men. She couldn’t pick out Jesse Parker.
“The guy in the blue T-shirt,” Rita said. “I want to go talk to him. His mother’s in a nursing home. I promised to bring her some fudge.”
Jill studied the tall, thin man with the high-blood-pressure red face. He looked to be twenty years older than she and Rita; not as though they had grown up together, gone to school together. “You go ahead,” Jill said. “I’ll wait by the tree over there.” She walked to a large oak while Rita went to mingle with the boys.
Settling on the ground at the base of the tree, Jill surveyed the people. Her mind drifted back to the Illumination Nights of years ago—how she and Rita had combed the crowds, how Rita’s mother had told them it was the perfect place to find boys, because women always look more beautiful in candlelight.
But the only boys they had ever seen were the boys they saw all year in school, or the boys who belonged to the tourists and weren’t interested in the island girls. She smiled now as she thought of Amy’s remark earlier tonight. God, Mom, her daughter had said, this is so queer.
It had not been queer to Jill and Rita when they were fourteen—it had been a very special island event, like the annual regatta or the beach plum festival at the church. It had been something to look forward to, something to do.
Jill wondered if Amy would have felt the same way if she’d grown up on the island, if Illumination Night had been a part of her youth. She picked a brown oak leaf from the ground, and thought about those August nights when she was very young and the lanterns had looked like a thousand fireflies, glowing with magic, sparkling with excitement. She remembered holding her father’s hand, walking through the crowds, whispering to him, as though real voices would break the spell.
Once, her mother had come with them. Jill thought she must have been around seven or eight. Florence packed a picnic basket with cold chicken and deviled eggs, cole slaw and watermelon. Just before dusk they spread a blanket on the beach across from Ocean Park: Mother had not wanted to eat where the other families were clustered together sharing sandwiches and laughter and jugs filled with Kool-Aid. Still, Mother had come.
Jill tried to pull up the memories of the rest of that night, tried to remember what her mother had been like, what her mother had said, what her mother had done.
“Wipe your fingers,” Florence said when Jill finished eating her chicken. “Wrap the bones in a towel. Don’t throw them in the bag.”
Jill dutifully obeyed.
“Can we go to the park now?” she asked, carefully tucking in the ends of the paper towel, the way Mother instructed, so the bones wouldn’t fall out.
“Not until the music starts,” was the answer.
She remembered sitting very still on the blanket, pretending to watch the surf, yet straining to listen to her parents’ conversation, waiting for her mother to say they could go. She was afraid if they didn’t hurry, the fireflies would be gone before they got there.
She did not remember the rest of that night, only that it hadn’t been as much fun as when she and Daddy had gone alone, as though the magic had vanished.
“It’s only because you’re growing up,” Daddy said the next morning. “Things look different when you’re a grown-up.”
Jill brushed a few dead leaves from the back of her legs now and wondered why she had been so quick to believe her father. Perhaps it was because she had feared they had not had a good time because of her, because of something she’d said, because of something she’d done. Somehow, she must not have tried hard enough, or surely, her mother would have been happy, their Illumination Night outing more fun.
Jill watched the crowds begin to thin and stayed quietly in her place, as still as a firefly whose light had gone out. She thought about the last excerpt of her mother’s diary, about the knowledge she now had of her mother’s inner torment, her belief that she was not, did not know how to be, a good mother. It was, in fact, true. But Jill now knew it had not been her fault. Nor had it been her mother’s.
Most incredible of all was Jill’s father. George Randall must have been a man of great patience, a man with a deeper kind of love for Florence than Jill had been capable of understanding. A kind of love Jill still did not know. If that kind of love could even exist in the bizarre, self-serving world of today.
“Come on, kid,” Rita’s voice called out. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had as much folksiness as I can take for one day.”
Jill pulled herself from the ground. “Rita,” she said as they walked toward the park, toward the Range Rover. “Can we go somewhere and talk? There’s something I want to tell you about.” She’d decided to tell Rita about the diary. Maybe she’d even show it to Rita. Maybe she could help her deal with this. Maybe Rita, her best friend, could help.
“Sure,” Rita answered. “I’ve got a great idea. Charlie probably closed up early. I know where he stashed a great bottle of single malt scotch. There’s something I want to talk to you about, too.”
The tavern was dark, the front door locked.
“No problem,” Rita said. “I know how to get in the back.”
“Break in?”
“Not exactly break,” Rita said as she motioned for Jill to follow her. “More like pry.”
“Charlie won’t care. He loves me, remember?”
Jill got in step behind her and they started toward the alley. The night was as dark as the campgrounds before the lanterns were lit, the path was narrow.
Suddenly a can rattled. Jill stopped. Her heart raced. “Shit,” Rita said. “Me and my big feet.”
“God, Rita, don’t do that again. You scared me to death.”
They started walking again, Jill gingerly looking down, as though she could see her feet in the dark. She thought about the few times she’d come down this alley—tagging along behind her father. Then, Jill had known nothing would happen to her. No matter how dark or scary the alley was, she knew her father would protect her. Walking down here had been an adventure then; something to do that was much better than staying in the house, the stuffy, tension-filled house.
As they made their way around back, a shadow fell across the Dumpster. Jill looked up: the back light was on, the way her father had always left it. She almost expected him to be there, too.
Rita went behind the Dumpster and emerged with a crowbar. “Don’t look so shocked,” she said. “All I have to do is pry off the padlock. There’s a hammer we can put it back on with when we leave.”
“Charlie never gave you a key?” Jill whispered, then wondered why she was whispering. If Rita wasn’t afraid to break in, why was she? After all, it wasn’t as though the Edgartown police cruised the back alleys. Besides, if they were caught by the police, Charlie Rollins would never press charges.
“The key was lost years ago. Besides, the lock’s all rusted now.”
“Isn’t there a regular lock? A dead bolt or something?”
“Why? This works fine. Besides, it’s not like there’s a high crime rate on the island, remember?” Rita moved toward the door with the crowbar.
Jill turned her back to Rita and shifted her eyes around the area, the lookout sentry. She had to admit it was fun being with Rita again, letting herself fold into Rita’s own special brand of mischief.
“Holy shit,” Rita whispered, “looks like someone beat us to it.”
Jill turned around. “What are you talking about?” Her eyes fell to the lock that dangled from the door.
“Someone got here before us.”
“Someone broke in!” Jill exclaimed, as though that wasn’t exactly what they were doing.
“Well, hell,” Rita said as she started to open the door, “then I guess this means we’re not breaking and entering.”
“But what if someone’s in there?”
“Look in the window. Do you see any lights on?”
Jill groaned. A picture of the tabloid headlines flashed into her mind: TV personality arrested for burglary. She wondered how Addie would get her out of that one.
“Come on,” Rita said. “Don’t be such a chicken.”
How many times had Rita said those words to Jill? Jill shook her head. “Okay, okay,” she answered, and stepped into the darkness behind Rita.
Rita snapped a switch. Light flooded the kitchen, awakening a scent of pine cleaner and ammonia. Shiny aluminum pots hung from poles stretched across the ceiling; the long, stainless-steel counter gleamed, the huge cast-iron stove was scrubbed and tidy, standing in wait for another day, another flurry of tourists. It did not, in fact, look much different than thirty, forty years ago, when it was Jill’s father who owned it and Rita’s mother who was the waitress.
“See?” Rita asked. “No villains.”
Jill shivered.
“Come on. The single malt’s in the secret room.”
Just as they started toward the pantry closet, toward the hidden door that led to the room, laughter rang out.
They stopped. Rita looked at Jill.
“What?” Jill started to ask.
Rita put her finger to her lips. “Ssh,” she whispered. “I think it came from the dining room.”
Jill grabbed her arm and motioned to the back door. “I told you …”
Rita shook her off and headed for the dining-room door. “If someone’s in here,” she whispered, “I’ve got to call the cops.”
“Isn’t Charlie upstairs?”
“If he is, he must be asleep. Or he would have heard this by now. Follow me.”
Jill held her breath, then let it out. Rita was nuts. Rita was crazy. But Jill couldn’t let Rita go in there alone. She tiptoed to the dining-room door and looked over Rita’s shoulder.
The door opened slowly without a creak. She peeked into the darkness. No one was there.
Laughter sounded again. High-pitched laughter.
Rita put her finger to her lips again, then waved for Jill to follow. They went into the dining room, maneuvering their way through the tables that stood empty, the chairs neatly stacked on top. From outside, the streetlamp cast an eerie glow into the room. Rita pointed to the bookcase beside the fireplace—the other entrance to the secret room.
Slowly, Jill stepped beside her. They pressed their ears to the row of books; from within came the sounds of voices, muffled through the wall. Rita raised the crowbar over her head and signaled Jill to push back the bookcase. Jill hesitated a moment. Rita shot her a look of impatience. Quickly Jill grabbed the third shelf down, the one with the reprints of Dickens, the one she remembered was the trick door.
She pulled back the bookcase as Rita cocked the crowbar. The opening was exposed, as were the intruders.
Jill caught her breath.
“Holy shit, what the hell’s going on here?” Rita asked, lowering the crowbar.
But she needn’t have asked. It was perfectly evident what was going on. Kyle sat on a table, one hand holding a bottle, the other hand positioned on top of someone’s head: someone who was kneeling on the floor in front of him, her mouth deftly sucking his erect penis. That someone, Jill realized as a shock of ice knifed through her body, was Amy.
“Get away from her!” Jill screamed at Kyle as she lunged toward Amy and grabbed her arm, yanking her upright. “Get away from her or I’ll kill you!”
“Mom,” Amy wailed, the booze on her breath souring Jill’s stomach. “Leave me alone.”
Kyle zipped his pants and slid from the table. He held up his hands. “No contest,” he said.
“Jesus Christ, Kyle,” Rita mumbled.
Her face flaming, her heart about to leap from her chest, Jill pushed Amy through the doorway of the secret room. With a firm grasp on her daughter’s elbow, she kept pushing—through the dining room, through the kitchen, out the back door. By the time they stepped outside, Jill could not catch her breath.
Amy shook free her arm. “I can’t believe how you just humiliated me.”
“You? You can’t believe how I just humiliated you?”
Amy tucked a wad of hair behind one ear. Jill stepped forward and slapped her across the face. The sound of the sting echoed in the stillness of the night. Amy’s hand flew to her cheek. Her dark eyes—Florence’s eyes—turned to steel.
“Leave me alone, you bitch,” Amy hissed, and took off through the alley, running.
A tremor tore through Jill’s body, engulfing her every muscle, her every nerve. She raised her shaking hands to her face that was now wet with her tears. “God, God,” she cried into the darkness. Never had she struck her children. Never. Never. Not with all the problems, not with all the arguments. She had wanted her children to know no violence. She had wanted them to be happy, she had wanted them to feel safe in their home. Yet now she had undone all that. She had become no different from the abusive parents she once reported on, on the streets of Boston, in the houses you’d least expect. She had done it because she had been trying so hard to trust her daughter. She had been trying so hard to stop being so protective, to stop being so smothering, so judgmental, the way her mother had always been with her.
She had tried. But, like Florence Randall, she had failed.
Her thoughts scattered in a million directions, each disconnecting from everything she’d ever believed, from every hope she’d ever dreamed. Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.
“Jill?” It was Rita’s voice. “Jill, are you all right?”
Slowly Jill turned and faced her best friend. The friend whose son had just violated her daughter, and subsequently, herself. She wiped the tears from her face and slipped her hands into the pockets. “Get out of my life, Rita,” she said quietly, then turned and went back down the alley, her heart filled with a heaviness that she had never known.