bits and pieces from the waterfront inland. A dinghy landed as far as the lawn at the end of Honeysuckle Lane. And the Beach Club and all the towers went dark.
As soon as Ocean Avenue was passable, defying municipal orders, Ruth loaded the girls in the car for some fresh air and a little snooping. She’d had some news, she said. Through the grapevine. They’d go investigate if it was true.
The ocean house belonged to their father, of course—completely, irrevocably. But now the town—in a plot!—was considering some kind of eminent domain. All because the seawall had been breached for half an hour!
They were going to see this travesty in motion. The girls didn’t know what Ruth was talking about. But now they waited on the sodden salt-burned grass behind the cypress trees while Ruth spoke to a police officer who’d set up a table in their old seashell driveway. Firemen in high waders came by and drank water from Dixie cups then pulled masks down over their faces and went up the high white-painted back steps where the girls once liked to hang their bathing suits on the railing to dry.
Inside, said the policeman—a grouchy man with a wide flat nose—the water had made a mark, like a finger run all along the dining room wall. A grubby, little girl’s finger, he said to Paige. Someone who didn’t wash her hands before dinner.
That’s enough of you, said Ruth. But too late, they could see the slimy trail marking their mother’s Japanese silk wallpaper. Through the white herons and the reeds. About three feet high, said the policeman to Ruth. I swear it.
All a charade, said Ruth. I don’t believe a word. A finger mark on a dodgy wallpaper? And you’re taking a house? Every one of us will be out on our keesters at this rate.
A fireman slogged toward them. He lifted a Dixie cup in a soot-black hand. The house is deserted, he said and smiled down at Ruth in an ugly way. A way that Courtney recognized as pleasure. And felt a funny twitch of being glad for him. Glad for his happiness.
Nothing like it, said Ruth. Not for a minute.
The girls were marched back to the car, and Ruth made the sign—a zip on the lips—of not saying a thing about this adventure to their father.
Despite their silence, at dinner that night their father looked downcast. So he knew. Though he said it was just the weather. That and something about taxes and a faulty plan. A thieving accountant. No recourse. He was speaking in code, to Ruth only, but they could tell by her face the news was shocking and bad. There was a very long pause after he finished talking. Chewing was impossible. Courtney remembers this night after the hurricane, the feeling as if her jaw had been welded shut by all the electrons Ruth said were flooding the air.
Wait, Paige said, as if she’d figured the whole thing out. Maybe things would be much easier if Ruth could just have her wish.
And what’s that? asked their father.
They—she and Courtney—could be taken by someone else along with the ocean house for good. Save a lot of trouble all round, Paige said with the slightest fake British accent.
Their father studied Paige: her long straight brown hair, the feathery arch of her eyebrows, her mother’s mobile, easily happy mouth, grim now, serious. He studied Paige for a long time, as if in reappraisal, before he answered in the low quiet voice. The voice that told them they didn’t need to believe him at all. He said that someday they’d recognize the jewel they had in Ruth.
Right after the hurricane, Mrs. Hoving came to visit Ruth on the screen porch. The back lawn was covered in broken branches of still-green maple leaves. All the jetsam and debris half-swept into piles for the municipal trucks to remove one yard at a time.
Mrs. Hoving had been helping Mrs. Lanahan down the road. She still did a bit of piecework stitching on the side, drapes and so on. She could do light upholstery, too. If Ruth ever needed such help. And she was so nearby today she thought, Oh, let me just lay eyes on the little ones again. Her niece’s husband was delayed picking her up, and she said to herself and then to Ruth: I told myself to walk down the lane to where that kind man has made a new home. A new start. But was it true?
Mrs. Lanahan had been full of news about the ocean house. Mrs. Hoving couldn’t believe her ears. Condemned?
Courtney came home from school but not Paige. All Mrs. Hoving had time to do in front of Ruth’s frowning, scouring eyes was pat Courtney’s wrist and say, You always had your mother’s pretty hands. Then her niece’s husband pulled all the way into the circle drive in a loud Oldsmobile with a discolored bumper. Mrs. Hoving went right out the front door. Just like that, Queen of Sheba, said Ruth to their father that night and imitated a wide sashay that looked nothing like Mrs. Hoving’s aching hip or her careful steps.
Did Mrs. Hoving leave a message for me? asked Paige.
She talked about Mama’s hands, said Courtney. Probably that was for you, too.
The main thing she said was that she was grateful, said Ruth, yes, very thankful that you two were so well loved now. At long last.
That sounds like a fib, said Paige.
Apologize, said their father.
Paige scraped out her chair and darted out of the dining room and up the staircase. Upstairs, the door to their room slammed shut.
Courtney kept her face averted from Ruth and waited for her father to make sense of the situation. He seemed confused. As if Mrs. Hoving had moved something important or stolen something and left the door wide open to worse. Finally he said, Eat your dinner, now, Courtney. It will only get cold.
It’s too gross, she said quietly. But he was distracted, listening, as if he could still discern Paige through the ceiling. I want to puke? whispered Courtney, as if telling her father what he really was listening for. Though he didn’t know it yet. Spoiling a surprise.
Oh, for the love of god, said Ruth. That’s it! That’s it. And she, too, scraped back her chair and let the tears in her eyes show before rushing out, hugging her belly, looking to Courtney like a troll who’d swallowed a poisoned frog.
Everyone’s so upset, said Courtney with a smile to her father.
Maybe Mrs. Hoving should mind her own business, he said and went off to comfort Ruth.
The night before, Ruth told them that the hurricane had flooded the Olympic-size pool at the Beach Club, so much that waves formed and pushed the French fry cooker out of the boardwalk snack shack and onto the jetty. Only the benches on the boardwalk bolted in place had any chance of staying still, she said, but then the boards buckled up like a wave themselves and the benches went with them. Those that were commemorated—for Mrs. Lawrence Thees and for Miss Ethel Bolmeyer—were retrieved and being repaired first. Their mother didn’t have a bench. Which seemed right, since she had a whole house to be remembered by. But the pool rising up was a frightening idea. What if the waves had come high when their mother taught them to swim? She’d hold them tight and leap into the pool and help them flutter up to the surface and find their breath. The two of them so tiny and so strong their mother swam them around and around in her arms until they learned to kick free.
Hurricane or not, the new school year began just after Labor Day. Courtney was in sixth grade now, Paige in the fifth. To get to Star of the Sea they had to climb over and around the storm debris, downed tree limbs still uncollected, some shellacked in a dried greenish sludge. Seaweed.
Red tide, warned Ruth. Don’t touch anything.
Now,
