The Beach House (32 page)

“Nan, I wish Michael were here because I shouldn’t be the one to have to tell you this. I don’t, in fact, even know how to tell you this, but . . . you didn’t imagine it.”

“What do you mean, I didn’t imagine it?”

“I mean, Bee just arrived with her . . . her father.” He speaks haltingly, not knowing how on earth to tell her. “His name is Evan Palliser. But we’ve all just found out that wasn’t the name he was born with . . .”

“It is Everett, isn’t it?” Nan looks into his eyes, whispering as the tears well up and Daniel nods.

“Where is he?”

“He’s in the hallway. He wants to see you.”

Nan struggles to sit up, to compose herself, then nods, putting her shaking hands between her legs to still them.

Everett walks in, his eyes fixed on Nan, not needing to look at anything else in this room for it is all exactly the same. The smell is the same: beeswax and lavender, honeysuckle from the trellis outside, the musty fusty smell of the heavy antique crewel curtains framing the drafty windows.

It smells like home. A home he has thought about for so many years, thought he would never see again. Being here, smelling the familiarity, is shocking to him, overwhelming his senses in a way he could never have anticipated.

He knows the exact pattern of the needlepoint on the Chip-pendale chairs that his mother sewed when his father was away at war. He knows which leg of which table snapped off when he and his cousins were tearing through the room as children, and had to be glued back on by a furniture restorer they found on the Cape.

He knows each painting on the wall, each print, each dent and mark, but he is not looking at any of these things as he approaches the sofa.

He is looking at Nan.

“My God,” he says, sinking down without taking his eyes off her. “You’re still just as beautiful.”

Nan looks him steadily in the eye, then slaps him around the face, as hard as she possibly can.

“Do you have any idea,” she says, her voice cold, icy, imperious, “what I have been through? Do you have any idea of the struggles I have had? The pain I went through, raising our son as a single mother, wondering what I did to cause you to commit suicide, the guilt I have carried my entire life?”

“I can only imagine,” Everett says, shame casting his eyes to the floor.

“No. No, I don’t think you can. I don’t think you can imagine how I went to bed in tears every night for years, wondering how I could have been so awful, what I could have done differently, how I must have been a horrible wife, a terrible person to have made you commit suicide. And while I’ve been struggling, look at you. You’ve presumably had a wonderful life, just sailed away, forgetting about us, letting us live this terrible lie all these years . . .” And Nan bursts into tears.

“Mom?” Michael bursts into the room and runs toward his mother. “Mom? What’s going on?”

He turns, sees Everett, and stops, his blood running cold.

“Oh Christ,” he whispers. “Dad?”

Under different circumstances, this place would be beautiful, although even under better circumstances Jordana isn’t quite sure why she would ever come here when the Hamptons is so much closer for her, not to mention so much trendier.

Jordana loves the Hamptons. Loves stocking up on her Calypso tops and Miss Trish sandals, her armfuls of diamond bangles— because you never know who you’ll bump into having dinner at Nick and Toni’s, and you always have to look your best, just in case.

She loves that she could be sitting next to Jerry Seinfeld on one side and Martha Stewart on the other. She loves that every night is filled with different parties. It’s all about seeing and being seen, dressing up, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good.

Nantucket is beautiful, no question about it, but, Jordana thinks as she looks slightly disdainfully around the pool area, where are all the gorgeous models? Where are the breast implants? Where are the diamonds, for God’s sake?

This is not a world Jordana understands, and now that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to stay, she can’t wait to get out of here.

But where to? Jackson is at home, waiting, terrified this will be permanent, wondering what he’s done wrong, vowing to do things differently, to do anything she wants just for them to be together again.

For the first time, Jordana has to consider her future. She had convinced herself that she and Michael were destined to be together, that when he saw her again, found out she was having their child, he would do the right thing, would come back to her and they would build a life together, just as they had talked about during those heady early days of the affair.

She has spent hours lying in bed at night, planning how she and Michael will live, where they will live. Somewhere not too remote, close enough to the city for them to be able to get in when they need to, somewhere where they could open a small jewelry store, a place with a wealthy enough clientele who would come to them and buy, but simple enough for Michael to be happy.

Pound Ridge, perhaps. Or Katonah. Maybe Nyack. She had even gone to the real estate sites and looked at the kind of houses she imagined them living in. Not like the vast Great Neck mansion she and Jackson lived in—marble floors and sweeping stair-cases—but something that Michael had always dreamed of, an old farmhouse with wide-planked floors and cozy, low ceilings, fireplaces in every room, rolling fields behind the house. It had never been her dream before Michael, but she was willing to edit her dreams for him, willing to become the person she thought he wanted her to be.

It never occurred to her that it wouldn’t happen. Now what is she to do? Go back to Jackson? Allow him to think the baby is his, even though technically it’s impossible? God knows how she would get around that. Should she confess the affair, promise to never stray again?

She doesn’t want to go back to Jackson. She wants to be with Michael, but if she can’t be with Michael, can she really do this on her own, is this really something she wants?

A baby. Not an accessory. Not a puppy like her adorable little Maltese terrier, but a baby who couldn’t be left at home alone when she went shopping, nor in the car, looking pleadingly out of the window as she sat in restaurants for lunch with her girlfriends. A
baby.

Oh God. What is she going to do?

Jordana sits down on the bed and sighs deeply, rubbing her stomach unconsciously. She won’t have an abortion, though. She can’t. This is a child she made with Michael, a man she loves, and if she can’t have him, she can have his child. It’s the next best thing, and maybe once the child is here, maybe then he’ll change his mind, maybe then he’ll realize what they could have together.

She’s going to have this baby. It’s the only thing she’s sure of right now.

She gets up to go to the bathroom, blinking twice as she sits down and stares, uncomprehendingly, at the blood.

And she bursts into tears.

The initial euphoria of being with her mom has worn off very quickly. Yes it’s beautiful here, yes this house is kind of cool, but it smells old and Jess isn’t sure she likes old, isn’t sure she’d actually want to sit down on one of those threadbare velvet chairs in the living room, yes there’s the beach, but none of her friends are here . . .

Yesterday was good. Her mom was so thrilled to see her, which was a bit of a surprise, and she didn’t really say anything about the shoplifting, just told her that when she was ready to talk about it she would listen and wouldn’t judge, and then she took her shopping, which was really nice, especially when Jess was expecting a lecture.

Jess knows it was probably guilt, but look what she got out of it! A bunch of T-shirts, a baseball cap, a sweatshirt, a bathing suit and a ton of shells and notebooks and fun stuff at the Hub. All she had to do was pick something up and say, “Oh isn’t this
so
cute,” and her mom would buy it for her. With hindsight, Jess now realizes that was probably to stop her taking it for herself.

They went for ice cream and walked around the little shops by the marina, and in the evening they had dinner at home with the other tenants, although not with Nan, who had excused herself and gone to bed early.

Jess is fascinated by Nan. She’s never seen anyone like her before. She is old but she doesn’t
seem
old, and she is nothing like Jessica’s grandmothers, who wear twinsets or tracksuits, not flowing silk shawls in bright jewel colors and beaded satin slippers, just to hang out at home.

Her mom says Nan is wonderful, but she wasn’t wonderful yesterday. Mom says she’s had a big shock and she just needs some time to adjust, so hopefully she’ll be back to herself soon.

Meanwhile, what’s Jess supposed to do with herself for the next few weeks? There are only so many times you can listen to the playlists on your iPod without getting bored, and even though it’s really, really nice to be with Mom, Jess doesn’t want to hang out with her, and now her mom says she’s taking the rest of the summer off and they’re staying here. Jess wants to hang out with people her own age, and no one here is under the age of about forty.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Nan watches Jess from her bedroom window, sitting on the sand, hugging her knees, playing with the sand, gathering it up in her hand and letting it sift slowly through her fingers. Nan shivers, and puts on a robe from the bathroom, slips her feet into flip-flops and makes her way slowly down the stairs.

She isn’t ready to talk to anyone in the house yet, knows they are all being careful with her, concerned; they all want to know how she is, how both of them are. Both Nan and Michael.

Poor Michael. To have a father again after all these years, to have learned that his life too has been a lie. It is perhaps worse for Michael, she realizes, because he is so sensitive.

He had looked at Everett after he had attempted to explain, interrupting him with a voice that was cold, colder than she had ever heard it, as he said, “As far as I’m concerned you’re not my father. I can’t stop my mother from talking to you but I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Everett reached out a hand to stop Michael walking out of the room.

“Please, Michael,” he said, his voice choked up. “Please let me explain.”

Michael did stop then. He looked at Everett closely, barely able to contain his fury.

“Explain? You want to explain? Sure, I’d love to hear. I’d love to hear how you explain it to a six-year-old boy who is crying himself to sleep every night because he misses his dad
so
much. I’d love to hear you explain to him that it wasn’t, as he always thought, his fault. That six-year-old grew up believing that his dad wouldn’t have left them and killed himself if he’d behaved better, or hadn’t been naughty, had listened more. Can you explain what to do with the pain and guilt and fear that little boy grew up with? Can you?” Michael stares at Everett, now sobbing openly, before dropping his gaze. “No. I didn’t think so.”

“I’m so sorry,” Everett whispered. “I was sick. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I missed you so much. I’ve spent years missing you, thinking about you, wondering what you were doing, how you turned out.”

“Well, now you know,” Michael said, turning and walking out of the room, making his way unsteadily up the stairs to his room, where it was his turn to cry.

Nan tried to talk to Michael about it later, but what could she say? She was still reeling herself.

In the middle of the night, she sat up, bolt upright in bed, a terrible thought having just woken her.

Did he want the house? Is that why he came back? Was she finally going to lose the house because of this? Of
course.
Why else would he come back after all this time?

She hadn’t gone back to sleep after that. She sat up and worried about what she should do, how she could keep the house, or, at worst, sell it and keep the money herself. She didn’t owe Everett a penny, and if there was a way to make sure he got nothing, she would find it.

Now, as the sun comes up, she notices Jess on the beach and is drawn to her. There is something about this child’s unhappiness and confusion that seems to mirror her own right now, and she steps outside, trying not to think that she is very close to losing all that she loves.

“Hey!” Daff walks into the kitchen and is startled to find Michael there. It has felt as though he has been avoiding her this last twenty-four hours, and she is shocked at the sharp jolt of pain she felt upon realizing that this may be the case.

Pleasure and pain. There is the pleasure of having Jess back, of being able to spend time with her, with nowhere else to be, nothing else to do but be fully present for her daughter.

Not that Jess has opened up to her, not yet, but Daff is hopeful, and grateful that she wants to be here, grateful that it has happened so quickly and so relatively painlessly.

Focusing on Jess has stopped her focusing on Michael, on the pain he so obviously feels, on his withdrawing from everyone in the house, taking off into town and not coming home until late at night when he knew everyone would be asleep.

How quickly these people have become her family, she realizes. Living together perhaps it was inevitable, but she had no idea this would happen when she first phoned about the rental. She imagined Windermere as a boarding house in the truest sense of the word, a place where people had rooms but got on with their lives on their own during waking hours.

Never did she dream she would feel, from almost the moment she set foot here, as if she had come home. Never did she dream she would care about the other people in this house quite as much as she does, feel as comfortable with them as she does.

Michael looks up and gives her a small smile. “Hey. I was hoping you’d be up soon.”

“Oh? Do you want some tea?”

“No. I have coffee. Thanks. I thought perhaps you’d like to go for a walk. I . . . I know I’ve been a bit distant and I wanted to explain.”