I was glad when Dad picked me up after the fireworks. I really didn’t want Scout to see me the way I looked when I slept over there. I never did my hair or wore makeup anyway, but at least at home, I had some eyeliner and mascara. And I could blow-dry the weird cowlicks out of my hair.
I kept pathetically close to the phone the next day. I desperately wanted to be invited to Hazard Point.
I watched the clock all morning. I didn’t want to be left out of a sail or a swim, especially if Scout was going to be there. Who knows how soon he would be going back to DC? The phone finally rang around 10:30.
It was Pixie. Pixie?! I tried not to sound disappointed.
“Hiya! Remember, this is our day!” Ugh! I forgot she had dibs on me. She went on. “I thought it would be fun if we had a reading party. Would you like to come over and read together? I have a reading cottage.”
I had never heard of such a thing.
Of all the Toohey invites, this one would normally have appealed to me most. By this point in a typical summer, I would have been halfway through my reading list, and now, I didn’t even know where I had left that macroeconomics book. Yet here I was, disappointed.
I had hoped we’d go out to the island. Or play baseball on the west lawn. Or scrape guano off the dock with Pepper, Pike, and Cheddar … and Scout. I knew that none of them would be a part of this “reading together” thing. I can’t imagine any of them reading anything that hadn’t been assigned.
But Pixie had “dibs.” Which was creepy and cute at the same time. She was really nice, if socially awkward. That’s probably what they said about me, too. She was probably someone I could have been friends with all throughout high school. Maybe she had been as lonely as me all this time, too. Probably not though, as her whole clan was never too far away.
“Sure,” I said. I doubted another offer was coming anyway.
“Great! Let me give you directions. You know we don’t live at the Big House. We live a few houses away. It’s a similar style, architecturally, but ours has attic dormers where the Big House has a full story on the third floor. But they are both gray cedar shingles with white trim,” Pixie said, who must have thought these details would be more helpful than, I don’t know, a house number?
“Okay, so you go down Hazard Point Road, but not all the way to the end—wait, are you walking or are you driving? Can you drive? I don’t know how. I could have gotten my learner’s permit, but I have to confess I am a little afraid. It seems like such a huge responsibility to drive a car, I mean—”
“I’ll be walking,” I said. Dad had already left, so it was up to me to get myself into town. It would take me about an hour and a half! And there wasn’t a sidewalk anywhere until you got into the village.
“Okay, so don’t go by Hazard Point Road. Go to the path that comes out behind Mulligan’s market. The one with the Queen Anne’s lace, near the dumpster; the other one doesn’t go anywhere. Follow that until it comes out on Hazard Point Road, between a privet hedge for that bed and breakfast … ” she said it like it was a swear. “ … and the stone wall for Cousin Mickey’s place. Take a left and walk past three houses. When you come to the house with the dog that barks really loud, don’t worry about the dog because even though it sounds like he is coming at you, he can’t leave the yard; he’ll get a terrible shock. They have one of those fence thingies. That’s so mean! I could never. Ours is the next house, number 56.”
Why she just couldn’t say go to 56 Hazard Point Road is beyond me.
I took a shower and blow-dried my hair, using the round brush like it said to do in Seventeen magazine. It came out perfect. I looked like a shampoo commercial.
I left a note for Dad and put my good sneakers on and headed out. I hoped to run into Flo or the mailman or someone who’d drive me to the village. But the mail had already been delivered, the roads were quiet, and then I remembered it wasn’t one of Flo’s days with us.
On this side of the highway, we did not get the refreshing sea breeze. It was hot, and I started to sweat, and the shady areas were full of bugs.
Finally, I could hear a car coming—a big, beat-up green Plymouth. It was Skanky Stacy, my lab partner from high school who would make me do all of the work while she told me stories of her partying. I never thought I’d be happy to see her. She stopped, and I got in. In a town like Keech, we all help each other out, even if we can’t stand each other.
“You going to the village?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Work?”
“No, friends.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re friends with the Tooheys. Hop in. I am surprised you’re going like that,” she said. I got in and pulled down the visor to take a good look at myself in the little mirror. My hair was a mess. The style had fallen out, and the mousse I had used to style it was just making my hair look dirty. My eye makeup was completely smudged all over.
“God,” I said. She pulled a ponytail holder off of her directional signal lever and handed it to me. I destroyed what was left of my hairstyle by pulling it all back and up into a high pony. In my shorts pocket, I found an old tissue that had been through the wash and survived as a hard white ball of paper. I used that to scrape off the black goo from around my eyes.
I asked Skanky to drop me off at Mulligan’s. When she had driven off, I found the path with the Queen Anne’s lace.
I got to 56 Hazard Point Road, and Pixie met me by the front gate. It was beautiful. The gate, I mean. The house was beautiful, too, but the gate was something else. It had an arch that was laden with pink climbing roses, just past peak, so that the path was strewn with fallen petals, and every little gust of sea breeze tossed more to the ground around us.
“I used to call this a pink blizzard when I was little!” she said, as the wind lifted another load of blossoms off the plants and threw the petals around us.
“Come around back and see my reading cottage. It used to be my dollhouse.”
I followed her down a path flanked by flower and herb gardens. In the rear of the house, overlooking a rocky cove stood her reading cottage—a one-room gray cedar building facing the Atlantic with white trim, two windows, and double doors. It matched the rest of the houses in the compound. Two more windows were on either side. A clothesline connected it to the main house like an umbilical cord. A clothesline! They were full of surprises, these Tooheys.
The cottage sat on the path that connected the Toohey yards and traced most of the outer outline of Hazard Point. It would have been a great hiking path, but the only people who knew about it lived on it and they liked to keep it that way. I am sure they would shoot a bed-and-breakfast guest if they saw one.
Pixie opened the double doors, and a little light went on at the corner of the cottage roof.
“That’s how my mother knows I’m in here. Of course, I don’t really need it anymore. I am not a child, but she likes to know where I am just the same. Plus, if she knows I am in here reading, then she just sends lunch down and I don’t have to go up to the house.”
Pixie left the two big doors open, filling the inside with natural light and a fabulous view of the water, framed by stunted pitch pines and wild roses. In the corner, there was a little round cafe table, adorned with an old tablecloth and a mason jar filled with roses, Sweet William, and heliotrope.
A comfy wingback chair and a chaise lounge cozied up the place. Pastel patchwork quilts were folded neatly on the backs of each. Above us was a loft, accessible by ladder, where I assumed you could sleep. And the fairies and elves would fly up to the loft and cover you with a blanket made entirely of rose petals and sweet dreams. Not really, but it felt like that.
“Sit wherever you like,” she said.
I picked the chair. She sat on the chaise. I looked closely at the quilt on the chair nearest me. p.e.t. was embroidered on many of the squares.
“PET?”
“Perpetua Elizabeth Toohey—my initials. These quilts were made from my childhood dresses. My mother embroidered my initials on all of my dresses.” I took a close look. Tiny floral patterns, checks, and teeny animal prints filled each square of the quilt on my chair.
I had never seen any object so sweet and wonderful. I couldn’t even remember if I had met Pixie’s mother. And why would they even call her Pixie when she already had an adorable nickname made right from her own initials?
“I have a confession,” she whispered.
Good God! What could this be, I thought.
“That your name is really Perpetua?” I asked. She chirped a couple of giggles.
“You are sooo funny! Not that, but—” she leaned toward me, “I have never, not even once in my whole entire life,” she paused, “read Pride and Prejudice!” She covered her hands with her mouth and leaned back and then bent forward toward me, giggling and chirping like a bird.
“Me neither!” I said.
“Oh my gosh! I was hoping so because I was thinking, let’s read it together!”
I hated reading with the class; I always read faster than everybody else. And she wanted us to sit and read together? But how could I say no when so little had been asked of me and they had all been so generous and nice to me?
“Sure!” I said, and she immediately produced two copies.
“I always buy two of all the great novels. Because I have always wanted to have a friend to read books with. Pepper only ever wants to read horse stories, and Pike prefers spy stories, and Cheddar, forget Cheddar. I asked him what was on his summer reading list, and he said the repair manual for the Ballcock’s engine.” She paused and rolled her eyes and went on. “When I saw that book you were reading on the day we met,” good thing she didn’t look inside “I said to myself, ‘Pixie, this girl is going to be your reading friend.’ Do you love book sales? I haunt book sales! And now we can go to them together all winter when everyone else goes home!”
That would have been fun. But I was off to college in the fall. What a shame we hadn’t met sooner.
I had never read with anyone like this before, but I was surprised at how often we reached the end of the pages together, how often we laughed or gasped at nearly the same time. Before long, I heard a little squeaky sound. I hoped it wasn’t a mouse in her sleeping loft, but then it was followed by a gentle jingle of bells.
“Lunch already? Time flies!” Pixie got up and went to the window that faced the house and lifted the screen. She reached out and pulled in a vintage clothespin bag from the clothesline, then retrieved a second one. Each had jingle bells sewn onto it, and each contained a lunch. They had made their way down to the reading house on the clothesline floating across the lawn from the kitchen of the main house, where bluebirds and butterflies had helped her mother pack them. Not really, but it felt like that.
“Let’s see what Mama has made us.” Inside the clothespin bags were two rolled sandwiches; each was gift wrapped in wax paper and a vintage cloth napkin. Each was also packed with a bottle of ginger beer and a brownie, also wrapped in a napkin and still warm from the oven. Pixie set the table from a set of mismatched dishes that were stored in a bin beneath the table. I imagined she hosted tea parties here as a little girl and wondered at what age she got to use real dishes. Maybe she was still throwing tea parties.
“I hope you like hummus. I didn’t even think to ask. Mama makes her own. It’s very good, but if you don’t, she’ll make you something else.”
“I love it,” I lied. I had never had it. I wasn’t even sure what was in it. I hoped it wasn’t some kind of pâté. It was some kind of pâté, but it was made with chickpeas, not goose liver, thank God. It was tasty but had a weird texture. We finished eating and left the mess on the table. I wondered what kind of magical creature would come to clean it up; I suspected it was some cleaning lady, who now had to bus a table of dirty dishes in a toy house in addition to all her other duties.
“Someone’s coming!” I don’t know how she knew, but she leapt up and cleaned the table, placing all the dirty dishes in a different bin and stowing it back under the table, where it was hidden by the floor-length tablecloth.
“Maybe it’s a gentleman caller,” I said, trying to be funny. But around the corner came Scout. I felt the sweat release into my arm pits.
“So this is where you ladies have been hiding all day. Have I missed the tea party?”
“Tea? There can be tea!” Pixie shouted and jumped up. I half expected her to curtsy, having spent the morning—mentally anyway—in well-mannered Regency society. In a flash, she went running toward the house. I felt bad for her because I knew he was just teasing.
Scout reclined on her chaise and picked up the book.
“Pride and Prejudice. Tell me, Miss Claire, who is more intriguing to you: Mr. Wickham or Mr. Darcy?”
I took a breath in preparation to give him my very well thought-out and impressive opinions on the subject.
“Your answer had better be ‘Mr. Toohey,’” he said.
I just sat there dumbfounded, and he got up and left. After a few minutes, I heard some gentle clinking, and there was Pixie with a tea tray, this one set with good china—Royal Albert Old Country Roses, to be exact. There were pretty little cookies arranged on a paper doily on a dish.
“Where did he go?” she said, holding the tray and looking bewildered. I had a feeling a lot of women asked this about him.