meant mistress’s apartment. She was the lone survivor, the last man standing in the Brookline past. The floorboards vibrated beneath the carpet as she rose to her feet and walked toward him, at the same dragging tempo as the postman across the street.
She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he managed not to flinch.
“Now, don’t you know that, Caspian? You walk up, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”
At half past five o’clock, I push open the bottom sash of the bedroom window and prop my torso into the hot salt-laden air to look for my husband.
The beach is crammed with Hardcastle scions of all ages, running about the sand in skimpy swimsuits. Or frolicking: yes, that’s the word. A cluster of younger ones ply their shovels on a massive sand castle, assisted by a father or two; the younger teenagers are chasing one another, boys versus girls, testing out all those mysterious new frissons under the guise of play. Hadn’t I done that, between thirteen and sixteen, when the Schuylers summered on Long Island? I probably had. Or maybe my sisters had, and I’d watched from under my umbrella, reading a book, safe from freckles and sunburn and hormonal adolescent boys. Saving myself for greater things, or so I told myself, because that’s what Mums wanted for me. Greater things than untried pimply scions.
A cigarette trails from my fingers—another reason for opening the window—and I inhale quickly, in case anyone happens to be looking up.
Of the seven living Hardcastle children, six are here today with their spouses, and fully thirteen of Frank’s cousins have joined them in the pretty shingle and clapboard houses that make up the property. A compound, the magazines like to call it, as if it’s an armed camp, and the Hardcastles a diplomatic entity of their own. I know all their names. It’s part of my job. You’re the lady of the house now, Granny Hardcastle said, when we joined them on the Cape for the first time as a married couple. It was August, a week after we’d returned from our honeymoon, and boiling hot. Granny had moved out of the master suite while we were gone. You’re the lady of the house now, she told me, over drinks upon our arrival, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in her voice.
At the time, I’d also thought I must be mistaken.
You’re in charge, she went on. Do things exactly as you like. I won’t stick my nose in, I promise, unless you need a little help from time to time.
I spot Frank, tucking up the boat in the shelter of the breakwater, a couple of hundred yards down the shore. At least I assume it’s Frank; the boat is certainly his, the biggest one, the tallest mast. At one point he meant to train seriously for the America’s Cup. I don’t know what became of that one. Too much career in the way, I suppose, too much serious business to get on with. There are two of them, Frank and someone else, tying the Sweet Christina up to her buoy. No use calling for him, at this distance.
I draw in a last smoke, crush out the cigarette on the windowsill, and check my watch. Five thirty-five, and no one’s getting ready for drinks. Everyone’s out enjoying the beach, the sun, the sand. Below me, Pepper reclines on a beach chair, bikini glowing, head scarf fluttering, every inch of her slathered in oil. Pepper has olive skin, so she can do things like that; she can bare her shapely coconut-oiled limbs to the sun and come out golden. She’s not hiding her cigarette, either: it’s out there in plain sight of men, women, and children. Along with a thermos of whatever.
Everybody’s having a sun-swept good time.
Well, good for them. That’s what the Cape is for, isn’t it? That’s why the Hardcastles bought this place, back in the early twenties, when beach houses were becoming all the rage. Why they keep it. Why they gather together here, year after year, eating the same lobster rolls and baking under the same sweaty sun.
Just before I duck back into the bedroom, a primal human instinct turns my head to the left, and I catch sight of a face staring up from the sand.
For an instant, my heart crashes. Giddy. Terrified. Caught.
But it’s only Tom. Constance’s husband, Tom, a doctoral student in folk studies—whatever that was—at Tufts and now at leisure for the whole lazy length of the summer, with nothing to do but collect his trust fund check, tweak his thesis, and get Constance pregnant again. He sits in the dunes near the house, smoking and disgruntled, and that disgruntled face just so happens to be observing me as if I’m the very folk whereof he studies. He’s probably seen my unfastened dress. He’s probably seen the cigarette. He’ll probably tattle on me to Constance.
Little weasel.
I smile and wave. He salutes me with his cigarette.
I withdraw and pretzel myself before the mirror to wiggle up the zipper on my own. (A snug bodice, miniature sleeves just off the shoulder: really, where was a husband when you needed him? Oh, of course: tying up his yacht.) I swipe on my lipstick, blot, and swipe again. My hair isn’t quite right; I suppose I need a cut. So hard to remember these things, out here on the Cape. It’s too late for curlers. I wind the ends around my fingers, hold, release. Repeat. Fluff. The room lies silent around me. Even Percy has dozed quietly off.
As I finger my way around my head, the face in the mirror seems to be frowning in me. The way my mother—passing me by one evening on her way to someone’s party—warned me never to do, because my skin might freeze that way.
Wrinkles. The bitter enemy of a woman’s happiness.
Frank bursts through the door, smiling and wind whipped, at ten minutes to six, a moment too late to fasten my diamond and aquamarine necklace for me.
“Had a nice sail?” I say icily.
“The best. Cap joined me. Just like old times, when we were kids. Went all the way around the point and back. Record time, I’ll bet. Goddamn, that man can sail.” The highest possible praise. He blows straight past me to the bathroom.
“Even with one leg?” I call out.
“It worked for Bluebeard, didn’t it?” He laughs at his own joke.
I screw on the last earring and give the hair a last pat. “I’m needed downstairs. Can you manage by yourself?”
Frank walks out of the bathroom to rummage in his wardrobe. “Fine, fine.” His head pokes around the corner of the door. “Need help with your zipper or anything?”
My shoes sit next to the door, aquamarine satin to match my dress and jewelry, two-inch heels. I slip my feet into one and the other. The added height goes straight to my head.
“No,” I say. “I don’t need any help.”
On my way downstairs, I stop to check on Pepper.
“Come in,” she says in reply to my knock, and I push open the door to find her belting her robe over her body. I have the impression, based on nothing but instinct, that she’s been standing naked in front of the mirror in the corner. It’s something Pepper would do, admiring her figure, which (like that of our youngest sister Vivian) belongs to a different species of figures from mine: tall, curved like a violin, colored by the same honey varnish. It’s the kind of figure that inspires men to maddened adoration, especially when she drapes those violin curves as she usually does, in short tangerine dresses and heeled slippers.
All at once, I feel flat and pale and straight-hipped in my aquamarine satin, too small, insignificant. A prissed-up girl, instead of a woman: a rigid frigid little lady. What’s happened to me? My God.
“Aren’t you dressed yet?” I ask.
“I’ve just come in from the beach. So hard to leave. I haven’t lain out on a beach in ages.”
“All work and no play?”
“Oh, you know me.” She laughs. “It’s killing me, this crazy Washington life. It’s so