ALLISON
I’ve always loved the idea of a country club. The comforting sense of community, a way for adults to gather and eat or go to events, to learn or play, something like a church without the religion. When Duke and I had been married, his parents had belonged to a lovely country club on Martha’s Vineyard that I’d always felt like royalty stepping into. Crushed velvet drapes, oil paintings of important-looking people, a ballroom where they sometimes screened classic movies on weeknights. Duke’s parents were chairs of the International Club, which as far as I know meant that every month or so someone went to World Market and bought snack foods from England or Italy or Mexico and ate them while discussing what language expert they might bring in someday. Country clubs felt like a cross between a nice wedding reception, college club activities and vacation resorts. The bonus for me was getting to dip into that lifestyle every now and then without having to pay for it.
But the Opal Beach Country Club lacked that pizazz I’d come to expect from these kinds of places. The building was low and long, and faded flags flanked the entrance, flitting about in the wind as if bored. Inside, the coral carpets had seen better days, their threads worn bare in well-trodden spots. Painted metal seahorses decorated the chandeliers, which gave them a sort of antique-store feel. Round tables filled the ballroom, all draped in that same coral color.
As I walked in, waiters whisked by with steaming silver trays, still setting up the buffet. I felt self-conscious arriving alone, but I hadn’t wanted to travel with the Bishops either. I’d forced myself to put on a black dress and sparkly heels and toss back a shot of vodka. Now I felt a little wobbly and a lot nervous.
Lorelei spotted me, stepped out from a group she was talking with, and waved. She greeted me with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, told me to put my purse on a round table in the corner. “Hands free for drinking!” she chimed, and I wondered if her over-cheery demeanor was because she’d already had a few.
Phillip, who was talking with a woman I’d never seen before, took a quick moment to shoot me a wink. Next to him stood a tall, rounded man in a burgundy jacket with the same salt-and-pepper hair and thin nose as Phillip. I guessed he was Phillip’s brother. He glanced at me, his hands shoved into the pockets of his crisp dress pants. He might have once been handsome, like his brother, but unlike Phillip, he hadn’t aged well. He was paunchy, and his skin was plagued with age spots. He’d lost much of his hair, combing over the few strands that remained. But his eyes were small and shrewd, flicking quickly from one person to another, surveying the crowd, judging, dismissing and sizing up.
“Oh my word. Sugar.” The loud voice behind me tore my attention away. I turned, but I already knew who was giving Lorelei a flurry of hugs. Mabel Halberlin. She was wearing a deep purple floor-length gown and silver ballet flats. She noticed me and reached over with her painted claws to shake my hand. “Hello, dear. Have we met?”
“I believe we did, at the coffee shop downtown,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m Allison.”
“That’s right,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “Lorelei was just telling me about you. You’re house-sitting for Patty and John.”
“That’s me,” I said, weakly.
“And this is my son, Clay,” Lorelei said, introducing a professorial-looking man with small round glasses who had just come off the dance floor with his daughter, Letty. Clay shook my hand politely, his blue eyes barely meeting mine. He was not unattractive, but certainly hadn’t inherited the same natural charisma that his father had. It was as if Phillip Bishop had sucked all the charming good looks out of the family and saved them only for himself.
And then it clicked. Clay. The name of the boy Tammy said she and Maureen had hung out with all those years ago. Could this man be Tammy’s old friend? It was hard to imagine Tammy hanging out with a Bishop. And Maureen? I couldn’t imagine what Lorelei would think of her.
“Okay, Allison.” Mabel moved closer. “So Lorelei here was saying that you are a television personality.” She tapped my shoulder with her fingernail. “And I just got the most smashing idea. I need a host for my real estate association’s holiday party.”
“Host?”
Mabel nodded. “And wouldn’t you be perfect? We have an emcee every year. Just to welcome everyone, do the raffles. Oh, usually it’s someone so boring, like the mayor—don’t tell him—but this year, well, I want to do something different.”
I’d done my share of those kinds of events—usually charity dinners or university fund-raisers. It was easy, and even could be fun. Wear a brightly colored cocktail dress, toss around a few jokes, pose for some photos. I was good at them. I had been good at them. But that seemed far away, another lifetime ago. “I’m not exactly a—I’ll think about it,” I said. I found a waitress and waved her over.
“Okay, but don’t think too long. I’ll need to nail someone down before Thanksgiving.”
Phillip sidled over, tipping his drink in my direction. “So, Allison, how are you finding Opal Beach so far?”
“Oh, it’s great,” I said.
“Yes, yes. This really is a special place,” Mabel piped up again, her eyes gleaming. “Shame to see it going downhill.”
Lorelei gave me a knowing look. “They’re building another public beach farther down, where Mabel lives.” She said public like it was a dirty word.
Mercifully, it was time to be seated, and Mabel went off to find her table in a flutter of hand waves, air kisses and “sugars.” I followed Lorelei and Phillip to the table, and after a scramble in which Letty insisted on sitting next to me, I found myself next to her and Phillip, with Clay on the other side of Letty, next to his mother. Phillip’s brother was across the table from me and extended a hand across to introduce himself as Zeke. “Pleasure,” he said in a tone that implied the exact opposite, and then proceeded to snap at a food server for a fresh glass of wine.
Clay busied himself breaking the hard bread crust off Letty’s slices while she told me in great detail about every second of her day. “And the sand crabs make little bubbles, that’s how you know they’re there. They won’t drown, though. But you’re not supposed to dig them up...” Thankfully, the waitress brought my glass of punch swiftly.
“So you’re from Annapolis?” Phillip asked when Letty took a break. “We know that area well. Big sailing community.”
Lorelei chimed in. “Clay was on the crew team in high school and college. Then it was sailing.”
“My ex-husband’s family was very into that,” I said automatically, and then wanted to kick myself for mentioning them.
“Oh yes? And who’s that?” Phillip asked with interest.
“Their last name was Shetland,” I said.
“Dennis and June?” He lit up and nodded and pointed at Clay. “Clay used to sail with their daughter.”
“Jenny?” I picked up my punch and downed the rest of it. Opal Beach was a small town, but it seemed to get smaller and smaller every time I turned around.
“Oh right, I remember her. Weren’t they the ones who did the duck boat races every year for charity?” Clay asked. He told Letty to stop hanging off her chair and, to his mother’s dismay, shoved a large piece of cantaloupe in his daughter’s mouth.
“I’d forgotten about that. Lorelei, you remember those?” Phillip said.
“Mmm-hmm.” Lorelei reached across Clay with a napkin to let Letty spit out the rest of the fruit.
“Jenny was great fun,” Clay said.
I bet she was. Jenny had a Vineyard Vines kind of look about her, almost-white shoulder-length hair and an eternal tan. But Duke had told me that in high school she’d been treated for gonorrhea, and once Duke and I had to drive out in the middle of the night to pick her up after she’d been in a bar fight with another girl about a drummer in some terrible cover band.
“Did you go out sailing with them a lot?” Phillip asked.
“Oh no.” I shook my head, smiling. “I get terrible seasickness.” The first time I’d gone out on a sailboat with Duke’s family, back when we were dating, I’d spent most of the time hanging on to the side of the boat, turning green. They’d given me ginger ale to sip, and after I vomited that all over the side of their boat, I’d wanted to die. But they stayed on the water for another hour or two, claiming the weather was simply too perfect to turn around yet. You’ll be fine, they’d kept telling me while they drank chardonnay and sang along to music. Just keep looking at the horizon. Even later, after I’d learned to take Dramamine and wear the pressure point bracelets, I never forgave them for that day.
“Lovely family,” Phillip said. “Haven’t seen them in years.”
“A pity,” Lorelei said. She caught my eye and I saw a hint of something there. Distaste, whether for me or for the Shetlands I wasn’t sure.
The Bishops navigated to other topics—the new manager at the club, a friend of theirs who was supposed to be there tonight but skipped out because she was sick, food shipment troubles at their restaurant. I was still mad at myself for bringing up Duke. Or maybe they already knew the whole story, I thought with bitterness. Maybe they’d all gathered around for a family viewing of my weather report.
I played “I spy” with Letty during the meal, but she grew antsy and started wandering around the ballroom. Clay watched her go, weary. With the empty seat between us, we found ourselves chatting.
“That punch is good, but watch out, it’s a killer,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “It’s so easy to keep drinking it. What are you having?”
“A salty dog. Ever have one? It’s my favorite beach drink.”
“What’s in it?” I asked, but Clay was not paying attention. He was swiveling his head back and forth to try to catch a glimpse of the trouble his daughter might be getting in. Earlier, Phillip had mentioned that Clay was a math professor, and I could believe it. He wore a tweed jacket complete with leather elbow patches and didn’t seem to fit in with this crowd, growing bored each time anyone brought up gossip about another local, taking quick glances at his phone where someone—I’d guessed his wife—kept texting him. He seemed like he would rather be anywhere else than sitting at a country club dinner and would be more at home up on the band’s stage with a PowerPoint presentation, lecturing on something brilliant. Perhaps Mabel should be asking him to host her dinner.
Growing bored myself, I tried to imagine him as a teenager, hanging out with Tammy, drinking on the beach, not a care in the world. What had it been like growing up as a Bishop? Having access to a beach—to anything, really—whenever he wanted? I had only had one childhood friend who was rich—Edie Almar. Her parents were both doctors, and going to their house had felt like going to an amusement park—a built-in pool, an ice cream bar, a pool table in the basement. They even had a fish tank built into the wall of their dining room, and I had been mesmerized by the giant orange fins of the goldfish, undulating like tiny billowing wind socks around and around. But whenever I’d hung out with her, somewhere below the surface I’d always been aware of my generic-brand jeans, frayed at the hem. The embarrassing inflatable kiddie pool in our backyard that my father refused to throw out, that he’d sometimes, to our horror, go and sit in when it really got hot, his bare chest white like a ghost. The fish tank on the kitchen counter, its glass always a filmy green, the small neon tetras dying out regularly. I knew, no matter how close Edie and I got as friends, that we’d always be different. Was that how it had been with Clay and Tammy?
“Hey, so were you friends with my friend Tammy years ago?” I asked when he’d finally caught sight of Letty dancing and relaxed.
“Tammy? Quinn? Oh yes, we go way back. She’s got the best coffee around here.” His phone buzzed again on the table between us, and he grabbed it and stuck it in his pocket, but not before I caught the words, Ha ha. You poor thing! From a glowing text box. “Tammy’s great,” he said again, clearly flustered.
“She is. And you’re right about the coffee.”
We both watched as Letty whirled by with an older gentleman who was carrying her on his back. She waved enthusiastically to us as the man reminded her to hold on with both hands. “She’s always the charmer,” he muttered. “It’s one of those things where you never know if you should let them go off, be independent, or stay close to protect them.”
“I can imagine. I’m sure it only gets harder as they get older. Especially for girls.”
Clay took his glasses off, blew on them and put them back on. “Her mother’s in Spain this semester working on a research project. She calls us every night. The separation’s been difficult.”
“But I bet it’s nice to spend more one-on-one time with her, right? Show her this lovely beach town you grew up in?”
He considered that. “Sure, we don’t get down as much as we’d like, though.”
“You used to spend your whole summer here, right?”
“Long time ago.” He sighed. “Different times. We did all kinds of stupid stuff. Tammy and I have some crazy stories from those days.”
“Like what?” I said in a teasing voice, sipping on my punch. I could feel it blurring my head, but I also felt good. Comfortable.
“Oh, I’d have to have more of these to spill those secrets,” he said, rattling the ice in his drink.
“Come on,” I said. “Besides, Tammy’s already spilled some of the best ones, I think. Like the time you and her and her friend Maureen put sand crabs in some guy’s sleeping bag?”
“Barron.” A sneaky smile spread on Clay’s face. “God, he was pissed. Never did get the smell—” He stopped. Tilted his drink my way. “Did you say Maureen?”
“Yeah. That girl who went missing?”
“Missing?” For the first time, I felt him focus in on me, really look at me, and I got goose bumps on my arms. “I don’t remember that,” he said slowly.
“Oh really? I’m sorry. She made it sound like you guys were close.”
Zeke’s head turned toward me. But when I glanced his way, he shifted again and nodded at something Lorelei was saying.
Clay paused, took a drink, and then his voice got more casual. “Oh, Maureen. Yes, my god. I’d forgotten about her.”
“So what did happen to her? She just vanished?”
“Nah, she was a Summer Girl—that’s what we called them.” Summer Girl. I found the term interesting—wasn’t Clay technically a summer boy? But I kept my mouth shut, let him continue. “I haven’t thought about her in ages, honestly. There were a lot of girls.” He chuckled, and I recognized the innuendo beneath his words.
“So you two dated?” I said, surprised.
“I’m not sure I’d really call it that. I mean, nothing serious. Like I said, there were a lot of girls.” He broke off, waved his hand. “That sounds awful, maybe, and I don’t mean it that way.”
I forced myself to laugh with him. So many girls. Who can tell one from the other? Ha-ha. I swallowed my anger and tried to stay breezy. “Did you ever hear from her after that summer?”
He looked down at the table. “Nope. She left. Just like everyone else did.”
“She worked for the traveling carnival, right?”
Clay relaxed a bit now that my questions moved off him. He nodded. “Yeah. That was all bad news, wasn’t it? Hey, you need another drink?” He gestured toward my glass.
“So you didn’t stay in touch, I presume?”
He picked up a fork on the table and twirled it in his fingers. “What? Like pen pals? Nah.” He put the fork down and pushed his chair back to get up.
“What is this you’re going on about over here?”
I jumped, turned to find Zeke standing over our chairs, one hand on the back of each, a grin on his face. He kneeled down, smirking, and I felt my skin crawl. “Didn’t mean to scare. It’s just the conversation on the other side of the table is dreary.”
Clay pointed at me, and I got the sense he was relieved for the interruption. “She was just talking about an old friend of mine. The gal who runs the coffee shop downtown?”
Zeke held his palms up. “I don’t do caffeine.” His face was so close, I could smell the wine on his breath. He grinned, showing his teeth. “You’re not interrogating my nephew here, are you?”
“Of course not.” I shifted in my chair, putting more space between us. “I was just...curious.”
“Well, you know what happened to the curious cat.” He chuckled. “I’m just joking, of course. My nephew here is full of great stories. Can I get you another glass of punch?”
When I stood up, the room started spinning. I took a few seconds to hate myself. Whenever I got nervous, I needed to have something to hold in my hand. I’d refilled how many times?
I excused myself and walked slowly to the ladies’ room. The bathroom was large and spacious, with four shower stalls and dressing rooms for the summer pool. I took my time, not too eager to get back to the Bishops’ table. I wasn’t sure how much more small talk I could muster. My energy levels were sapping, like they’d used to after a long shift at the station. I could only be “on” for so long, and then I felt like an egg, my shell forming small cracks. My face hurt from smiling.
I felt untethered. Was it being around someone else’s big happy family that made me feel this way? Or just the alcohol? I wanted to go home. And not just back to the beach house. A real home. Not Annie’s apartment, which had never really been mine, even though she’d made me feel as comfortable as she could. Not my parents’ house. Not the home I’d shared with Duke, which was tainted and tarnished by all that had happened. I wanted to go home. But I had no home. I had nothing.
I splashed some cold water on my face and reapplied my lipstick, trying to shrug off the blanket of loneliness I’d wrapped around myself. Get it together, Allison. I straightened my bra straps and took my shoes off one by one to rub my toes in the bathroom rug. Next to the sink, a pile of wrapped French-milled soaps sat daintily in a bowl. Like everything else, they looked expensive. But they did look attainable. I plucked two and shoved them into my purse.
On the way back to the ballroom, I went the wrong direction and ended up on the other side of the club. I opened another door but it led to a smaller, empty dining area overlooking the ocean that I imagined was a more casual place for lunch or drinks.
Turning back, I nearly bumped into Phillip. “Oh sorry,” I said. Behind him, a waitress was walking quickly the other way, smoothing down her hair.
“Allison.” He beamed, putting an arm around me. “Did you get lost? I can show you the way back.”
I pretended I had something in my shoe and bent down to get his heavy hand off my back. That charm I’d felt outside with the power washer—I recognized it now. So Phillip was carrying on with a waitress? Or what, harassing her? I felt a raw anger working up inside me, scratching at old wounds. Like the time Duke had come home late, drunk, supposedly at some work event. How he’d laid down next to me in bed and, in the dark, half-asleep, had muttered, I’m a bad, bad man, Ally.
I straightened up. Phillip did not touch me again, but he did walk me back to the ballroom. “The beach in the winter is such a special thing,” he murmured. He seemed thoughtful, content, not at all like a man who’d just been caught with a woman who was not his wife. “Have you ever seen the ocean glaze over with ice sheets? It’s quite stunning. It’s always been my favorite time of the year.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Most of the major decisions of my life have been made walking on the beach, staring out at the ocean. It really clears your head.”
Before we hit the table, I excused myself and told Phillip I needed fresh air. I headed away and pushed past the heavy doors before he could invite himself to join me. It was freezing outside, but a relief to be alone.
I stepped onto the patio, which led out to a small field of beach grass that eventually trailed into the golf course. At the edge of the patio, I propped myself against the concrete wall, a little woozy, willing myself not to throw up.
I turned to observe the people inside, most still chatting at their tables with drinks. A few couples danced at the center of the room. They thought they’d conquered life. But right outside their windows, just beyond, it was still wild. That vast, secretive ocean. Just beyond, nature was the true queen. She could decide at any moment to whip through, rip the roof off all this Pottery Barn decor, fancy coral jewelry, delicate starfish centerpieces.
The door swooshed open and Lorelei stepped out.
“Hi,” I said. “I just needed some fresh air.”
“That punch will get you every time.”
She stared out past the golf course toward the ocean, her gray hair tossing in the wind. She reminded me of an old movie star from the silent era, beautiful and haughty, cold and delightful. Had she seen me walking back with Phillip? Had she thought I was the reason he’d disappeared during dinner?
“Hard to believe it’s almost the holidays,” she said finally, though she didn’t seem like the type of woman to want to make small talk.
“Do you normally spend them here?” I asked.
“We will be here for Thanksgiving,” she said with a scowl, “but Clay’s wife will be home from Spain, so he and Letty will be spending Thanksgiving at her parents’ house. I’m not sure about Christmas.”
The wind shifted, and I could smell the cloying mustiness of her perfume. She lifted her arm to put a hair back in place and her bracelets jangled. “Duke deserved everything you did to him...and more.”
I opened my mouth to respond but came up empty. Had I heard her right?
“Not all men get what they deserve,” she said calmly. “You’re better off without him.”
“I—well—thanks,” I said. “So you know.”
Her eyes stared fiercely at me. “You deserved to get fired, but I’m glad you did what you did.” She handed me a glass of water. “Drink this. It will help hydrate you.”
“Thanks.”
She turned to leave, then stepped back. “Just one thing,” she said. “Did you feel any better? After?”
I looked her in the eye. “I did. Yeah.”
She nodded and vanished as quickly as she’d come. Only a trace of her perfume remained.