next to the man down. He’s all right, Budgie.”
“Oh, thank God,” says Budgie.
I stand on my toes, but I can’t see well enough over the heads before me. I push away Budgie’s head, climb on the bench, and rise back onto the balls of my feet.
The stadium is absolutely silent. The band has stopped playing, the public address has gone quiet.
“Well, who’s hurt, then?” demands Budgie.
The boy climbs on the seat next to me and jumps up once, twice. “I can just see … no, wait … oh, Jesus.”
“What? What?” I demand. I can’t see anything behind those two men in white, kneeling over the body on the field, leather bag gaping open.
“It’s Greenwald,” says the boy, climbing down. He swears under his breath. “There goes the game.”
SEAVIEW, RHODE ISLAND May 1938
Kiki was determined to learn to sail that summer, even though she was not quite six. “You learned when you were my age,” she pointed out, with the blunt logic of childhood.
“I had Daddy to teach me,” I said. “You only have me. And I haven’t sailed in years.”
“I’ll bet it’s like riding a bicycle. That’s what you told me, remember? You never forget how to ride a bicycle.”
“It’s nothing like riding a bicycle, and ladies don’t bet.”
She opened her mouth to tell me she was not a lady, but Aunt Julie, with her usual impeccable timing, plopped herself down on the blanket next to us and sighed at the crashing surf. “Summer at last! And after such a miserable spring. Lily, darling, you don’t have a cigarette, do you? I’m dying for a cigarette. Your mother’s as strict as goddamned Hitler.”
“You’ve never let it stop you before.” I rummaged in my basket and tossed a packet of Chesterfields and a silver lighter in her lap.
“I’m growing soft in my old age. Thanks, darling. You’re the best.”
“I thought summer started in June,” said Kiki.
“Summer starts when I say it starts, darling. Oh, that’s lovely.” She inhaled to the limit of her lungs, closed her eyes, and let the smoke slide from her lips in a thin and endless ribbon. The sun shone warm overhead, the first real stretch of heat since September, and Aunt Julie was wearing her red swimsuit with its daringly high-cut leg. She looked fabulous, all tanned from her recent trip to Bermuda (“with that new fellow of hers,” Mother said, in the disapproving growl of a sister nearly ten years older) and long-limbed as ever. She leaned back on her elbows and pointed her breasts at the cloudless sky.
“Mrs. Hubert says cigarettes are coffin nails,” said Kiki, drawing in the sand with her toe.
“Mrs. Hubert is an old biddy.” Aunt Julie took another drag. “My doctor recommends them. You can’t get healthier than that.”
Kiki stood up. “I want to play in the surf. I haven’t played in the surf in months. Years, possibly.”
“It’s too cold, sweetie,” I said. “The water hasn’t had a chance to warm up yet. You’ll freeze.”
“I want to go anyway.” She put her hands on her hips. She wore her new beach outfit, all ruffles and red polka dots, and with her dark hair and golden-olive skin and fierce expression she looked like a miniature polka-dotted Polynesian.
“Oh, let her play,” said Aunt Julie. “The young are sturdy.”
“Why don’t you build a sand castle instead, sweetie? You can go down to the ocean to collect water.” I picked up her bucket and held it out to her.
She looked at me, and then the bucket, considering.
“You build the best castles,” I said, shaking the bucket invitingly. “Show me what you’ve got.”
She took the bucket with a worldly sigh and started down the beach.
“You’re good with her,” said Aunt Julie, smoking luxuriously. “Better than me.”
“God did not intend you to raise children,” I said. “You have other uses.”
She laughed. “Ha! You’re right. I can gossip like nobody’s business. Say, speaking of which, did you hear Budgie’s opening up her parents’ old place this summer?”
A wave rose up from the ocean, stronger than the others. I watched it build and build, balancing atop itself, until it fell at last in a foaming white arc, from right to left. The crash hit my ears an instant later. I reached for Aunt Julie’s cigarette and stole a long and furtive drag, then figured What the hell and reached for the pack myself.
“They’re arriving next week, your mother says. He’ll come down on weekends, of course, but she’ll be here all summer.” Aunt Julie tilted her face upward and gave her hair a shake. It shone golden in the sun, without a single gray hair that I could detect. Mother insisted she dyed it, but no hair dye known to man could replicate that sun-kissed texture. It was as if God himself were abetting Aunt Julie in her chosen style of life.
Down at the shoreline, Kiki waited for the wave to wash up on the sand and dipped her bucket. The water swirled around her legs, making her jump and dance. She looked back at me, accusingly, and I shrugged my told-you-so shoulders.
“Nothing to say?”
“I’m looking forward to seeing her again. It’s been years.”
“Well, she’s got the money now. She might as well spruce up the old place. You should have seen the wedding, Lily.” She whistled. Aunt Julie had gone to the wedding, of course. No party of any kind among a certain segment of society would be considered a success without an appearance by Julie van der Wahl, née Schuyler—known to the New York dailies simply as “Julie”—and her current plus-one.
“I read all about it in the papers, thanks.” I blew out a wide cloud of smoke.
Aunt Julie nudged me with her toe. “Bygones, darling. Everything works out for the best. Haven’t I been trying to teach you that for the past six years? There’s nothing in the world you can count on except yourself and your family, and sometimes not even them. God, isn’t it a glorious day? I could live forever like this. Just give me sunshine and a sandy beach, and I’m as happy as a clam.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the sand and lay back on the blanket. “You don’t have a whiskey or something in that basket of yours, do you?”
“No.”
“Thought not.”
Kiki staggered back toward us with her pail full of water, sloshing over the sides. Thank God for Kiki. Budgie might have had everything in the world, but at least she didn’t have Kiki, all dark hair and spindly limbs and squinting eyes as she judged the distance back to the blanket.
Aunt Julie rose back up on her elbows. “Now, what are you thinking about? I can hear the racket in your brain all the way over here.”
“Just watching Kiki.”
“Watching Kiki. That’s your trouble.” She lay back down and crossed her arm over her face. “You’re letting that child do all the living for you. Look at you. It’s disgraceful, the way you’ve let yourself go. Look at that hair of yours. I’d shave mine off before I let it look like that.”
“Tactful as ever, I see.” I stubbed out my half-finished cigarette and opened up my arms to receive Kiki, who set her pail down in the sand and flung herself at me. Her body was sun-warmed, smelling of the sea, smooth and wriggling. I buried my face in her dark hair