Summer with My Sisters (5 page)

F
reddie had invited the Higgins girls to an opening reception at the Winslett Gallery in the neighboring town of Ogunquit, where Sheila was showing some of her photographs, specifically black and white portraits of rundown barns, ruined outbuildings, sagging staircases, and dilapidated farmhouses.

“I like that all of the images are of things falling apart,” Violet said. She was wearing a filmy white cotton dress that came to her ankles and a sparkly pink druzy pendant around her neck. Daisy thought she looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of a fairy story. Daisy herself was wearing jeans and a slightly too small T-shirt under a plaid blouse. The only remotely fancy thing she had to wear was the navy dress she had worn to her father’s funeral, now stuffed in the back of her closet. She had vowed never to wear it again, but for some reason she hadn’t been able to throw it away.

“I find beauty in the decrepit or the nearly so,” Sheila explained to the girls.

Freddie laughed. “That’s why she’s with me.”

“You weren’t always decrepit, darling,” Sheila replied. “But I tolerated you until you became interesting.”

Violet nodded. “I agree with Sheila. I think newness and perfection are boring. Decay is poignant. That’s why fall is my favorite time of the year.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?” Daisy noted. “One person’s perfection is another person’s dilapidation. If that’s even a word. I’ll have to look it up when I get home.”

“Have you always been into photography, Sheila?” Violet asked. “I mean, since way back when you were young?”

“Only since I retired. A late-life, golden years hobby, you might say.”

Freddie nodded over Sheila’s shoulder. “A hobby that’s just netted you some cash. The gallery owner just put a sold sticker underneath one of your sagging edifices.”

“Finally, appreciation comes knocking at my door!”

“I wonder who bought it. Can you find out?” Daisy asked.

“Certainly. Though I’m not sure I’ll ever know where and how the owner will display it. That’s frustrating. What if my beautiful work of art gets stuck on the inside of a bathroom door?”

“At least the owner will see it every day,” Violet pointed out.

“Oh, lovely,” Freddie said under her breath. “Here comes Georgette Lacey.”

Daisy frowned. “Who?”

“The woman who owns that awful estate development on Baybridge Island,” Sheila explained. “I’m sure you’ve heard of her. Your parents certainly knew all about her.” Sheila lowered her voice to a whisper. “They couldn’t stand her.”

“My dears!” Georgette Lacey was extremely thin with a head of light blond hair so uniformly cut and colored Daisy thought it might be a wig. That, or a snap-on plastic hair helmet. She had definitely had plastic surgery; the skin on her face was so taut and strained it looked painful. She was wearing a bizarre pajama-like outfit in a wildly colored paisley print and a necklace of wooden beads that was so big and chunky Daisy was sure it would cause her to fall on her face before the night was over.

“I can hardly believe it’s you!” the woman cried, crossing her hands against her chest and addressing the ceiling rather than Daisy and her party. “The poor orphaned children, or two of them at least. I was away all winter in Florida. I only just got back two weeks ago and I heard the bad news about Oliver. I’ve been meaning to send a card, but oh, there’s been so much to do what with getting settled in and my winter tenants left the place in such a state and I just had to rush down to New York to attend the debut performance of a new opera at the Met and . . .”

“Yes, well, we’re sorry for all that,” Freddie said, putting her right hand on Daisy’s back and her left on Violet’s, and not too gently propelling them all away from the chattering woman and her unwanted attentions. “What an idiot,” she murmured when they were out of earshot.

Sheila frowned. “Why is it that people so often make another person’s tragedy—or happiness, for that matter—all about them?”

“I totally see why Mom and Dad didn’t like her,” Daisy said. “She’s a caricature.”

“She’s scary,” Violet said. “Her aura is all wrong.”

That wasn’t the only thing about her that was all wrong, Daisy thought. The woman was a phony through and through. It was easy to distinguish the genuinely sympathetic people from those who offered condolences just because they wanted to be a part of local news, from those who wanted a little claim to fame, like Georgette Lacey so obviously had. “Guess who I ran into the other evening?” Daisy imagined her telling her neighbors. “Those poor pathetic Higgins girls!
I
thought they looked just devastated.”

Daisy sighed. She so wanted things to be normal again; she so wanted people to treat her as they had before she became the girl with no parents.

“They’re passing around bacon-wrapped shrimp,” Violet said. “Yum.”

“Grab me one?” Daisy smiled as she watched her sister make off after the waiter. Violet might be into alternative healing, astrology, and the mystical power of stones, but she was as big a carnivore as the average American teenager.

P
oppy examined the photograph on the wall before her. “Crumbling Barn II.” She liked Sheila’s work, but at the moment she felt she could use a good dose of bright flowers and iridescent rainbows and sparkling waves. Color. Movement. Life. No more reminders of death, of things coming to an end.

Already Poppy had seen no fewer than five people not so discreetly nodding in her direction and whispering meaningfully to their companions. She had caught the eye of one woman she vaguely recognized and the woman had abruptly turned her back. Really, Poppy thought, some people acted as if death itself were contagious, as if mere eye contact with a grieving daughter would bring destruction on their own home.
It’s going to happen to you, too,
Poppy said to the woman’s back.
You can’t avoid it by turning away.

She sighed. Sometimes she felt annoyed by life in a small town and now was one of those times. Boston was not the biggest city, but it certainly afforded a strong degree of anonymity if you wanted it. And then she saw him and realized that at that particular moment anonymity wasn’t very appealing.

Jon Gascoyne. She didn’t think she had ever noticed how really handsome he was, in a model sort of way, except for the rough-around-the-edge touches—sun-etched lines at the corner of his eyes, windburned cheeks, and his hands . . . As he approached her she noticed that his hands were definitely not the delicate hands of a man who made a living posing in outrageously expensive clothing. At another time, Poppy thought, she might have been interested in him. But not now. Not when things were so up in the air.

“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. “I don’t think we’ve ever actually met, though of course I know who you are.”

“No. I mean, you’re right. We haven’t officially met before. Poppy Higgins.”

“Jon Gascoyne.”

“Of the market and the restaurant,” Poppy said, releasing his hand.

“And the lobster boat.”

Poppy smiled. “I’m of Willow Way. That’s about all.” “That’s plenty. You have a beautiful house.”

“Thank you. My parents loved it at first sight. Except for expanding the garden they didn’t change a thing.”

“I was terribly sorry to learn of your father’s passing,” Jon said. “He was a great man.”

He looks me straight in the eye,
Poppy noted.
He’s not afraid.
“Yes,” she said over a catch in her throat. “He was.”

“My parents and I were at the funeral. It was pretty impressive. I’d never seen so many people turn out for a memorial.”

“Almost six hundred,” Poppy said. “The minister said we were breaking fire code, but no one had the heart to turn people away. And we got cards and notes from hundreds more who weren’t able to be there.”

Jon smiled kindly. “I hope that was some consolation. Knowing how much your father was loved and respected.”

Poppy lowered her eyes, unable for a moment to bear the kindness. “Yes,” she said. “It was some consolation.”

“I took one of your mother’s courses when I was at Adams, you know. She was a wonderful teacher, so entertaining. She always had time for her students, even after official office hours.”

Poppy looked up again and smiled. “Thank you, again. I never took any of my mom’s courses. We both felt that it wouldn’t be right, that the other students might think she was favoring me. But I did go to hear her speak on special occasions.”

“Me, too. I remember this one talk she gave, right after her book came out I think. It was a mob scene. You’d think she was a rock star.”

Poppy laughed. “I was there! My whole family was, even Violet and she was just a baby.”

“Speaking of your family, I see that your sisters are here, along with Freddie and Sheila. I bet they’ve been a help to you. Freddie and Sheila, I mean.”

“Yes. I don’t think that I could have . . .” Poppy found her voice too wobbly to go on.

“You’ve been living away, haven’t you?” Jon asked.

A tactful question,
Poppy thought. “Yes,” she said, her voice restored. “In Boston. But I’m back now. Well, obviously.”

“How long are you planning to stay in Yorktide?”

“Oh, not long at all. Well, that’s not true. At least five years, until my youngest sister turns eighteen. I’m my sisters’ legal guardian, you see. It was my father’s idea.”

“That must be challenging.”

“Yes,” Poppy admitted. “It can be. But it won’t be forever. I’ll go back to Boston when Violet is legally an adult and settled in college.”
Assuming,
Poppy thought,
I can convince her to go to college.

Jon smiled. “No chance that Yorktide will weave its charming spell over you and entice you to stay?”

“No chance at all. It’s a lovely town for sure, but it’s not for me in the end.”
At least,
she thought,
I can’t see it as the place for me
.
But I don’t know much of anything for sure these days
.

“Well, at least we’ll have you as part of our little community for a few years.”

Poppy smiled even though she was slightly alarmed by this notion. She didn’t want to “be had” by Yorktide or by anyone in it for that matter. But then . . . Well, it might be nice to feel tethered to a place and a person as long as you were also doing something that
mattered
with your life....

“What about you?” she asked Jon then. “I mean, have you ever considered living somewhere else? I’m sorry. That’s a personal question, isn’t it?”

“No worries. And it’s no secret that I’m in Yorktide for good. My family is here, my work is here. Everything I love, in fact. I’ve got no reason to leave.”

“What about travel?” Poppy smiled. “Don’t you ever dream about escaping to some exotic location?”

“Exotic? Not sure exotic locations are for me! But there’ll be time for travel when I’ve really established myself and put away enough money. Until then, I watch the Travel Channel.”

“I’m afraid I’ve hardly been anywhere,” Poppy admitted. “My father traveled all over the world for so many years of my life I think I took against it somehow. I came to associate travel with missing him.”

“There’s always the future,” Jon pointed out. “Should you change your mind.”

The future,
Poppy thought.
That mysterious, undecided thing!
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t think I could forgive myself if I never got to Paris.”

“For me, it would be England. I’m a huge fan of British mysteries. There, I’ve confessed my secret addiction. Nothing more exotic for me than fields of grazing cows and windswept moors.”

Poppy laughed. “Not such a bad addiction, I think. Oh, here come my sisters. And Freddie and Sheila.”

“Beautiful photographs, Sheila,” Jon said when the others had joined them. “Have you seen the crumbling barn behind my parents’ house?”

Poppy almost laughed at the look of jubilation on Sheila’s face. “No! I must stop by and have a look! If I may, that is.”

“Anytime,” Jon assured her.

“I’m Daisy. I’m a friend of your cousin Joel.”

“Of course.” Jon smiled. “He talks about you often. I thought he might be here tonight.”

“He wanted to come,” Daisy explained, “but he was asked to sub for a sax player in a band with a gig at a place just down the street.”

“Will he get paid, I wonder,” Freddie said darkly.

“The life of a professional musician is a tough one, but Joel’s got the drive.” Jon smiled. “He’s especially impressive given the fact that no one else in our family has ever gone off to do something so out of the ordinary.”

“I’m Violet,” Violet announced suddenly. “The youngest Higgins.”

Jon bowed slightly to her. “But certainly not the least important.”

Violet smiled, and Poppy thought she saw a slight flush to her sister’s cheeks.
Well,
Poppy thought.
He is awfully good-looking.

“Are you a Virgo?” Violet asked Jon.

“Uh, yes,” he said. “I mean, I think I am. My birthday is September nineteenth.”

Violet nodded. “I thought so.”

Jon shot Poppy a look of inquiry. “My sister,” she said, “has a talent for such things.”

Freddie checked her watch and announced that the opening would soon be over. “I suggest we go someplace to grab a bite. Won’t you join us, Jon?”

Poppy was mildly alarmed by this suggestion. Since coming home to Yorktide her social life had been restricted to spending time with Freddie and Sheila, old friends who made no special demands for bright or interesting conversation, people in front of whom she wasn’t embarrassed to cry, not that she had allowed herself much of that. She wasn’t sure she was equal to more of the company of a virtual stranger—even a nice, interesting one like Jon Gascoyne—at least not at the moment. She was lucky.

“I’d like to join you,” he said, “but I can’t. It’s already past my bedtime and the lobsters wait for no man.”

Jon said farewell and went off.

“I’ve got a hankering for a crab roll,” Sheila announced. “What say we go into Perkins Cove and grab a table on the patio at Barnacle Billy’s?”

“Can we, Poppy?” Violet asked.

Poppy nodded. “Sure,” she said. Honestly, she was tired and wouldn’t have minded heading straight home. But she thought that the least she could do for her sisters was to give them a real night out.

“I am so getting fries,” Daisy said, leading the way out to the parking lot.