Эд Макбейн - Last Summer

Rhoda stopped again and turned her eyes toward the fire, as though trying to find in its turbid flames the words to explain what had happened next on that night five years ago. We were all silent. Sandy sucked on her prune pit once, seemed to sense the sibilant sound was an intrusion, and then simply waited attentively with her head bent, the firelight behind her, the prune pit in her hand.

“The house was empty for a long time,” Rhoda said. “They had all gone down to the beach with flashlights to watch Mother as she attempted the swim. I forget how much they had bet, I think it was ten dollars.”

“How did she drown?” Sandy said.

“A cramp. At least, that’s what they thought. They couldn’t know for sure. They said it must have hit her coming back, halfway between the sandbar and the shore. It was Daddy who broke the news to me. ‘Your mother is dead,’ he said, and I said, ‘No, she isn’t,’ and he said, ‘Rhoda, honey, your mother is dead.’” She nodded, and then stared into the fire again.

“That’s a rough break,” David said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I still miss her,” Rhoda said quietly.

“They’re pains in the asses,” I said, “but I guess you can miss them when they’re gone.”

“I thought my father was dead for the longest time,” Sandy said. “They got divorced when I was a baby, and I grew up thinking he was dead. Then one day this man arrived at the front door of the house and I said, ‘Yes, sir, may I help you?’ and he said, ‘Sandy, I’m your father.’ My mother came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Get the hell away from her, you bum.’ That was the first time and the last time I ever saw him.”

“That’s worse than if he were dead,” Rhoda said.

“He was handsome,” Sandy said.

“I often wonder what she was trying to prove,” Rhoda said. She looked across the room at Sandy. “What could she have been trying to prove?”

“Hey, put on some more music,” Sandy said suddenly. “Come on, David, how about it?”

“Okay,” David said, and got to his feet.

“You still haven’t told us anything about your self , though,” Sandy said. “Tell us something about yourself.”

“Like what?”

“Something terrible.”

“I don’t know anything terrible.”

“Everybody does. Tell her something terrible, Peter.”

“I once made Ritz cracker sandwiches out of cream cheese and snot,” I said easily, “and gave them to my cousin to eat.”

“That’s disgusting,” Rhoda said, but she giggled.

“What have you done?” Sandy asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” Sandy said, the same single word again, and again she reached into the prune box in dismissal. A look of panic crossed Rhoda’s face. She studied Sandy, who had turned her head away and was disdainfully nibbling on the prune. Then she looked at me, hopefully.

I didn’t say a word.

David had put on a Beatles LP, and we listened now as “Taxman” flooded the circular living room in the center of the circular house. Outside, the rain drummed its steady accompaniment.

“Well...” Rhoda said, but Sandy did not turn to look at her.

“This is the only really talented group around,” David said, gesturing toward the hi-fi setup.

“I like the Stones better,” Sandy said.

“The Stones are derivative.”

“But dynamic.”

“But derivative.”

“What I did once...”

“I also like the Yardbirds.”

“Second-rate.”

“I think they’re super.”

“What I did...”

“Yes, what the hell did you do?” Sandy said, turning toward her sharply and abruptly.

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“Of course not.”

“I...”

“Listen to this one,” David said as “Eleanor Rigby” started. “This one’ll become a classic.”

“I spit on my mother’s grave,” Rhoda said.

“When?” Sandy asked.

“At the cemetery. When everyone else had left. I stayed behind and spit on her grave because she had no right to die that way, no right to leave me all alone.” She suddenly covered her face with her hands. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Sandy said cheerfully, and then rose and went into the bedroom, where she had left her yellow rainslicker and a brown paper bag. The bag contained two coloring books and a box of crayons she had bought at Mr. Porter’s. We spent the rest of the afternoon coloring pictures before the fire.

It was a very good day.

We decided to teach Rhoda to swim.

She assured us there was nothing psychosomatic about her inability to do even the dog paddle, no fear stemming from her mother’s drowning, no lingering effects of what might have been considered a traumatic experience. She wasn’t afraid of water, she said, nor of the idea of swimming, and in fact never gave very much thought to drowning — although she did often think of her mother’s death, but only in terms of an accident and rarely in terms of an accident that took place in water. The only problem about learning to swim, she told us, was her lack of coordination. She couldn’t seem to synchronize her arm and leg movements, and as a result she sank to the bottom each and every time she tried. We convinced her this was nonsense, and she agreed to have another go at it, even though she was pessimistic about the outcome.

We went around to The Blue Grotto, where, of course, Violet came out to greet us. She was wearing a white suit with bell-bottomed slacks. Sandy complimented her on the outfit, which I thought made her look like a brewer’s horse, and Violet told her she had bought them at a little place on the mainland called Kinship Korner. Sandy promised to look in on the shop, and then she and Violet exchanged some polite chatter about Sunday’s party, which I headed off when it started to get to the part about “the horrid little girl who,” noticing that Rhoda, ears pricked, was sensitively ready to take offense and possibly burst into tears again.

“Violet, how’s chances of renewing our old arrangement?” I said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Violet said. “You boys hardly spoke to me on Sunday.”

“We were very busy,” David said. “How about it, sweetheart?”

The “sweetheart” melted her completely. She looped her arm through David’s, flabby breast pressed against him, and led him around to the kitchen. He came back some five minutes later, the beer wrapped as usual in his poncho.

“What’s in the poncho?” Rhoda asked.

“Shhh,” David said.

She looked at him in puzzlement, and then gave a little-girlish shrug and followed us down to my father’s boat. Violet came onto the dock with us, helping us to cast off, and waving as we started the engine and moved out. Mr. Matthews’ Chris Craft was moored alongside a yacht from Floral Gables. He was aboard her in swimming trunks and blue cap, cleaning his fishing rods.

“Hi, Sandy!” he shouted as we chugged past, and Sandy lazily lifted her arm to wave at him.

We hoisted sail as soon as we cleared the breakwater. There was a good wind that first day of August, driving bloated white clouds across an azure sky, billowing into the sail, sending us skimming across the water at close to twenty knots. Sandy was at the tiller, wearing a new black bikini her mother had bought for her in the city. Her hair was held at the back of her neck by a tortoiseshell barrette, and she was wearing huge sunglasses and a gold heart locket that a boy from Mount St. Michael’s had given her the year before. I was wearing my sawed-off dungarees, which I sometimes swam in, and David had on a pair of white boxer shorts with a blue anchor near the change pocket. He looked positively great. He was handsome to begin with, of course, but now he had a marvelous tan, and his hair was much lighter, and his body was good and tight from all the swimming we did. He also had this very cool look about him, as though he were a recording star or something, vacationing incognito on Greensward and just dazzling anybody who happened to come into his orbit. It was a good confident look, and I tried to imitate it sometimes, but it never worked with me because of my sprouting acne and my dumb nose.