What I Thought Was True

Chapter Thirty-four

“Far too beautiful to go back indoors,” Avis King says determinedly. “I propose we have our reading session on the beach instead of some stuffy porch.

A chorus of agreement from the ladies, although “stuffy” is the last thing anyone could call the Ellington porch.

“I personally am in favor of being rebellious and forgoing my nap today. My word, Henry is becoming fussier than any old woman. He called last night to make sure I was going to rest from one to three. I dislike being nagged,” Mrs. Ellington says crossly.

But, since we didn’t bring any reading material to the beach, I’m dispatched back to the house to fetch The Sensuous Sins of Lady Sarah.

When I get there, I am not at all surprised to see Henry’s car parked in the driveway.

As I push open the screen door, I have a wave of weariness, then near fury. Other people’s stories, I repeat to myself.

The door slams behind me and I shout, “Hello!” The way I learned to make noise coming home when Nic and Viv might be there alone. Hello. I’m here. A witness. Don’t let me catch you.

Henry Ellington turns, startled, from the kitchen sink, where he’s standing, drinking a glass of water. He doesn’t look well. His skin’s pale, almost gray, and a sheen of sweat marks his forehead.

Spread out all over the kitchen table are silver bowls and all those complicated pieces of the tea set and these little cups with handles and engraved initials and silver bears climbing up them. Over the summer, they’ve become more than things to polish and wash. I know their stories. The powdered sugar sifter Mrs. Ellington’s father used, “on Cook’s day off,” to top off the French toast, the only thing he knew how to make for Mrs. E. and her brothers. The ashtrays she and the captain bought at the London Silver Vaults. “They were so lovely. Neither of us smoked, but look at them.” The grape shears. “We got five of these as wedding presents, dear Gwen. I enjoyed thinking that everyone, so proper, who danced at our wedding, imagined us dangling grapes over each other’s mouths, like some debauched Greek gods.”

So many moments of Mrs. E.’s are laid out on the table, like silver fish resting on ice at Fillerman’s. I wonder if Henry even knows the stories. And if he does . . . how can he possibly sell them?

“Guinevere? Where’s Mother?” His brow draws together. He straightens, somehow seeming to make himself taller. “I’d assumed she was napping, but there was no sign of either her or you.”

“At Abenaki with the ladies,” I say flatly. God, I’m suddenly so tired. I could sit at the blue enamel painted chair, rest my head on my arms, just go to sleep. Except that I’d have to move aside the silver first.

“You left my nearly ninety-year-old mother on the beach. With a bunch of eighty-year-olds to watch over her. This seemed like a responsible choice to you?”

He’s peering over his reading glasses, literally looking down at me.

It isn’t until I shove my hand into the pocket of my jean skirt and hear the crackle of paper that I remember what it is. Dad’s had extra loads of laundry lately. This was my one clean skirt. I didn’t think twice when I put it on this morning.

I pull out the check that Henry Ellington gave me, holding it out of sight.

I took it, that day Henry offered it. I don’t need to open it again to see the amount, scrawled firmly in blue ballpoint pen. I haven’t deposited it. But I didn’t tear it up either. I never threw it away.

“Do you have an answer for me, Guinevere?” he asks.

Last night, I finally asked Mom why she named me Guinevere, after a woman no one admired. We were eating ice cream on the porch, passing the spoon back and forth, nearly over our heads to avoid the hopeful, slightly toothless leaps of Fabio.

“Really, Gwen, honey? I always liked her. She wasn’t a wimp or a simp like that Elaine. Not helpless, asking someone to rescue her. Knew she loved them both. Mr. Honorable and Mr. Heroic. Arthur and Lancelot. I always thought she was the star of her own story. At least she knew what was really going on.”

Which, of course I do.

So yes, I do, in fact, have an answer.

I smooth the check out on the kitchen table. Next to the fish knives. The silver ashtrays. All the stories. Henry Ellington looks down at it, his face showing nothing at all.

The day Dad gave me his “she’s loaded and she’s losing it” advice, I never thought it would actually apply to me, and definitely not like this.

I take a breath.

“Mr. Ellington,” I say. “You told me you were giving me this because I deserved a little extra. I don’t think you meant that. I don’t think you admire my work ethic. I don’t think you like me or value my service. I think you expect my silence.”

His face crumples for a moment, the lines of his cheeks, his eyes, all contracting, freezing. Then he holds out a hand, palm outraised, like my words are traffic he’s stopping. “I don’t think you understand my position here, Guinevere. I’m protecting my mother. A helpless old woman.”

Helpless old woman, my ass.

“Mr. Ellington.” I close my eyes. Another deep breath. Open them. “Does she really want . . . does she really need . . . your”—I raise my fingers to form air quotes—“protection?”

Henry’s face flushes crimson. “It’s my job,” he says. “My mother is . . . elderly. Not in full possession of her . . .” He darts a look out the window, as though making sure we won’t be overheard, even as his own voice rises. “Damn it, why am I explaining this to you? Mother’s getting older, times have changed, and she just won’t make allowances for reality. When she goes, I’m going to have this entire estate to deal with, all of her promises, her debts of honor that don’t matter anymore. Her special bequests to schools she hasn’t been to for seventy years, to people like Beth McHenry, who cleaned the house—cleaned the house, scrubbed the toilets, and changed the sheets, while I was spending all my time working in a job to support this summer home”—he says “summer home” as though it’s an expletive—“a place I barely get the chance to visit, a lifestyle that’s run its course. Yard boys and night nurses and summer help, cooks and cleaners, you, and that damned expensive end-of-the-summer party she always has. Her finances, all of our finances, have taken a hit in the market. But try telling my mother that! She’s never even had to balance a checkbook!”

He crosses over to the bar, splashes some amber liquid into a glass, goes to the freezer for ice. Instead of taking the time to smash the pieces with his little hammer thing, he just drops them into the sink, hard, then picks up the shattered bits and dumps them into the glass, tips it back, swallows.

“All this . . . drama . . . would upset her,” he mutters.

Don’t upset your mother. Dad’s refrain from that summer with Vovó.

“I can’t tell her,” he repeats.

Can’t. Won’t. Are afraid to?

I know all about all three.

“Have . . . have you tried?” The words seem to catch in my throat, it’s so hard to say them. Just a job. Not my place. But . . .

He doesn’t answer. Takes another sip.

There’s a very long silence.

He watches me over the rim of his glass. And I stare back down at the check. Set my finger down on it, deliberately, slipping it across the table as though I’m passing him a napkin, just doing my job.

“Am I fired, Mr. Ellington? Because if I’m not, I’d better get back to the beach.”

Mrs. E. has survived my neglect. She and the ladies are quite happily ensconced in their beach chairs, watching with a frightening level of appreciation as Cass rakes the sand.

They’re in a circle, towels swooped around their shoulders, bobbed gray hair, permed white hair, long braids meant to be coiled up into buns, styles that went away generations ago.

“If I were thirty years younger . . .” Avis King says, nodding approvingly as Cass flicks seaweed into the tall grass.

Big Mrs. McCloud shoots her a look.

“Fine. Forty,” she concedes. “Is this your boy, Gwen? He’s adorable.”

Adorable seems like a fluffy-kitten word, defanged, declawed—not Cass and all these feelings at all. He glances over at me, catches me looking, grins knowingly, then keeps raking.

“Ad-or-able.” Mrs. Cole sighs. “Good lordy lord lord.”

“Beach bonfire tonight, I’m hearing,” Avis King says. “Isn’t it nice that those still go on? Remember ours? Oh, that Ben Cruz. With his lovely shoulders. Always so tanned. Those cut-offs.”

Okay, disturbing. I think she just referenced my grandfather as the hot yard guy.

“He’d get the lobsters. Who was it who brought the bread from that Portuguese bakery in town? Sweet bread and regular? Ten loaves each. We’d toast them on sticks, dip them in butter.”

“Glaucia,” Beth McHenry says. “She got her license first of all of us. Remember? She used to whip around town in that old gray truck, bring potatoes and linguica and malassadas from Pedrinho’s out to the island.”

Mrs. Cole nods. “I was always partial to the meringues.”

“Remember when the captain brought the volleyball net down from the court and we decorated it with those tiny white Christmas lights?”

“Labor Day . . .” Mrs. E. says. “The final summer party. We all decided to dress in white because in those days you weren’t supposed to wear it after Labor Day. It was our last hurrah. Our big rebellion.”

“The boys wore their white jackets. If they had them,” Big Mrs. McCloud reflects. “Arthur had too many, he loaned them out to Ben and Matthias and whoever needed one. He’d lend his tan bucks too. But then a lot of them went barefoot. That seemed so rebellious.”

“We played volleyball in our long skirts,” Avis King says. “I beat the pants off Malcolm. He proposed later that night.”

“Was it easier then?” Mrs. Ellington asks. “I do believe so. Our revolts were so much smaller. Our questions so much easier to answer. There were rules to it all. May I call on you after your European tour? That was how I knew the captain cared for me. I don’t believe that translates into texting.”

They debate back and forth about it. Whether it should be one of those island rituals that sticks, the Labor Day party. Or whether its time has come and gone.

“We could do it again,” Mrs. Cole says. “We’re the entertainment committee on the board now. No rules to say we can’t. Well, none like the rules we used to have, anyway.”

From a distance, from the movies, I know these rules too—white bucks and blazers, don’t wear white after Labor Day, wear this with that, go with that good girl, not this one. Strictly controlled social calendars, when all of that seemed as though it mattered . . .

We still have those, though. Not so much what we wear, but how we act and what we do.

Other customs, rituals, rules. New important things unspoken.

Will Henry say anything to his mother? More importantly . . . will I?