Beachcombers. Part 2

Abbie's attention was caught by the photograph on the mantel. Their Aunt Stella had taken it at her daughter's wedding ten years ago. The three sisters were dressed in matching bridesmaid's gowns, lavender tulle fantasias.

Abbie's curly brown hair was feathered close to her scalp, accentuating the elegant shape of her head, and the length of her neck. She'd inherited her father's tall, lanky, wide-shouldered swimmer's body and stood with an ironic tilt behind the froth of dress. Abbie had worn her hair short all her life. It was easy to keep--she often trimmed it herself--and it made swimming easy. She was twenty then, but clearly she was an adult. She held herself with authority. Her smile was genuine but perhaps just a little sardonic.

Emma was a few inches shorter than Abbie--it was always remarked upon, how the three sisters were like stair steps. Like Abbie, she had big hazel eyes. Unlike her older sister, she was round, as their mother had been. Not fat, not even plump, just round. Her bosom bulged at the strapless neckline. Her waist was small, her hips wide. Her brown hair was as curly as Abbie's but Emma had freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks and her face was less angular than Abbie's. She was the "cute" one, and it drove her crazy. She set and rolled and ironed and blew her hair dry, and for photos she jutted her chin out, trying to look sophisticated. She always just looked cranky.

Lily had been only twelve that year. She'd sleeked her wild red curls into a formal chignon and lined her gorgeous green eyes with kohl. She was the shortest of the sisters as well as the youngest, and the most dainty. For the photo she'd turned a bit sideways, curling her shoulder up to her cheek in a kittenish come-hither gesture. She looked like a child playing dress-up.

"Why is this thing on the mantel?" Abbie wondered aloud. "We all look so young."

"Dad likes it there," Lily said. "It's the last formal photo taken of the three of us together."

Abbie did a slow turn around the room. "It's like entering a time machine." She quickly held her hand up. "Not criticizing! Just saying." She took a moment to study her baby sister. "Wow, you have really turned into a bombsh.e.l.l, haven't you?"

Lily blushed. "Do you think so?"

"How could I not? You've got some Rita Hayworth stuff going on for you now."

Pleased, Lily hurried to return the compliment. "And you look like--Audrey Hepburn."

"Ha. I think I'm more Sigourney Weaver in Alien."

Lily nodded enthusiastically. "I can totally get that!"

"What's Emma looking like these days?" Abbie idly ran her fingers over the piano keys--it was just slightly out of tune.

Lily tugged on Abbie's arm. "Let's go up and see her."

4.

Emma Emma lay on her bed like the letter S with a cat nestled into the crook of her knees and her ancient Paddington bear squashed up against her chest. Much of the stuffed animal's fur had worn away, and his left ear was held on with a safety pin, but she only loved him all the more for that. Paddington had seen her through many crises. His fur probably still held all the salt from the tears she cried the year her mother died.

Downstairs, the screen door slammed. Voices floated up, Lily's rapid girlish soprano, Abbie's lower, slower phrases. It had been two years since she'd seen Abbie.

Emma had been so happy for Abbie when she went to London. No one knew better than Emma how Abbie had sacrificed her own life to keep the family going after their mother died. Perhaps Emma hadn't been really aware of it when she was a teenager, caught up in her own grief and desires. Certainly when she got a scholarship to U. Ma.s.s./Amherst, she'd accepted in a flash, and gone away for four years, a.s.suming that Abbie would stay home to take care of Lily and run the house. It was what Abbie did. Had she taken Abbie for granted? Yes, she had. They all had. Even, especially, their father.

Jim Fox was a contractor, a reliable, friendly, even-tempered man who never let his clients down. He was not ambitious, or if he was, his ambition was simply to enjoy each day. He loved the island and the community. He loved taking the time to talk, over a sandwich lunch at the drugstore where he could jaw with his buddies, or leaning against his truck shooting the breeze with a friend--another contractor, a realtor, the police chief, a fisherman.

He was a good father, patient and decisive and loving. He taught his daughters to sail, to clean a bluefish, to use a Phillips screwdriver. He took them to the summer fairs and he built them the Playhouse at the back of their yard.

But he'd been hit hard by their mother's death. He'd gone quiet, paralyzed by grief, and without Abbie taking over the way she had, who knows what would have happened to their family. Their father had continued working, and working hard, so the family never suffered financially. But the light had gone out of his eyes, and even his smiles were sad.

Emma had been thirteen when their mother died. As she grew older, Emma wanted to do something to help her family, but she didn't have the homemaking talents or the natural bossy authority Abbie had, so for a few years she felt lost. During high school, she gradually learned that she was smart, and by the time she started college, she had formed a plan. Perhaps she couldn't run the house the way Abbie could but she could help in other ways. She determined to save herself, and her family.

In college, she majored in economics. It didn't come easily to her, but she studied hard. She didn't party much and she didn't fall in love. She worked part time at a copy center and saved her money instead of spending it on lipstick and clothes. After graduation, she went to Boston and landed a plum job in a high-powered investment firm. She started on the lowest rung, but she worked industriously and diligently, and gradually she made a name for herself as a broker. She scrimped her pennies and saved them until they grew into dollars, then invested her own money in high-risk-high-payoff stocks.

Emma earmarked one account for Nantucket. For her father. When it reached a nice fat sum, she was going to come home and present him with a check. So he would be safe, and could continue to work in his peculiar leisurely way, or not work at all.

By her third year, she was living the good life. She started dating Duncan Fairly, another broker in her firm, an ambitious, energetic type A who liked her style. They quickly became a couple. She vacationed with him in the Caribbean. They bought each other designer clothing, and reveled in their image. They were the glam couple of the firm. He asked her to move into his Back Bay apartment.

She invited him to Nantucket. At first, she worried that their eccentric old house and her father's way of life were a little too downscale for Duncan, but Duncan never criticized. He knew Nantucket was a great place to make contacts. He liked sailing, playing tennis, eating out at the posh restaurants. And it was on Nantucket that Duncan proposed to her, in August, while they were walking on the beach at sunset. It had been perfect, almost as if Fate were following a schedule Emma had drawn up.

By then, fourteen years had pa.s.sed since Emma's mother's death. Her father was less paralyzed, happier in his life, more there, but Emma had another idea for brightening his life. She would give him grandchildren. He would love having grandchildren. He would be such a great grandfather, patient and instructive, showing them the berries on the moors, the sh.e.l.ls on the beach, the fish sparkling like magic firecrackers in the harbor waters.

Emma wanted to wait until it was all ready, the bank account bulging, her pregnancy begun, and then she would spread the future before her father like a magic carpet. She would present her father with a nice fat check and instructions to fix up the house, because she wanted to bring her children to the island as often as possible.

In October, the stock market was. .h.i.t by a death blow.

The money Emma had invested vanished like smoke in the wind. Her savings were gone. The money in the aggressively-invested, high-risk account for her father disappeared in a blink of the eye.

The firm fired her. She tried to remind herself that dozens of brokers had been fired along with her, but the comfort that brought was ice-cold.

She tried not to be desperate. For a few months she hung on, frantically searching for a new job, networking at parties--the few parties that anyone gave. It was difficult in the new economy to be optimistic, but she was young. She was in love. Duncan had not been laid off, after all. He made enough money. He could support her and a baby or two. Of course they couldn't have the lavish wedding they'd been planning, but she really didn't mind. Their new life together was what counted.

In May, Duncan broke off his engagement to Emma. He had, he told Emma, fallen in love with Alicia Maxwell, another broker at the firm. Another broker who hadn't been fired. The daughter of such old family money that this financial blow was a gnat's bite to her.

Emma was stunned with loss.

Duncan didn't give her time to grieve. He tore through his apartment like an exterminator, s.n.a.t.c.hed up her possessions, tossed them into boxes, and shipped them back to Nantucket. She had no address of her own, no place to go, but back to the house where she'd lived as a child.

Now cardboard boxes grew up from the floor of her old childhood bedroom like stalagmites in a dark cave. She didn't have the heart to unpack them. She didn't have the heart for anything.

She was defeated, and beneath the loss ran a vein of fear. She didn't want to be paralyzed like her father had been. But how could she climb out of this pit of sorrow?

She heard her sisters' voices as they came up the stairs. It would be so good to see Abbie. It was comforting that she was here. Emma and Abbie had always been close. They were only two years apart, while Lily was the baby. The adorable, darling, baby-doll child, perhaps a little bit spoiled, a bit of a princess now.

But Emma had to give Lily credit. Since she'd graduated from college, she'd been home taking care of things. She bought and cooked decent food; she kept the house pretty clean. This year when Emma came home for Christmas dinner, she found a tree elaborately decorated by Lily, as well as a real Christmas dinner.

Now that Abbie was back, Emma wondered cynically just how quickly Lily would weasel out of any household responsibilities. She gave herself a mental head slap. After all, just how many responsibilities was Emma willing to take on? She couldn't even find the energy to get out of bed.

Her bedroom door flew open.

"Emma, look who's here!"

Emma rolled on her side and sat up in bed, dislodging Cinnamon from his warm nest. The cat yawned, arched his back, and fixed the newcomers with a disdainful glare.

Abbie sat on the side of the bed and gave Emma such a warm, affectionate hug that Emma had to hold her breath to keep from bursting into tears. Oh, Emma thought, she'd forgotten how wide and strong her older sister's shoulders were, as if she'd been built to comfort and care for them all.

But this time, not even Abbie could help.

5.

Lily Lily was surprised at how the old childish jealousy surfaced as she watched Abbie hug Emma. Good grief, she was twenty-two, she was an adult; when would she stop feeling so third wheel whenever she saw her sisters together?

It was only natural that they'd be close. They had only two years between them, not the eight-year ravine that existed between Abbie and Lily, or the six years between Lily and Emma.

Her two older sisters looked alike, too, both of them with their father's curly brown hair and huge hazel eyes. Lily got her coloring from her mother, which was a good thing; Lily liked being a redhead. But still, she was set apart.

Now Emma collapsed in Abbie's arms and was sobbing and blubbering out in choking gasps. "Duncan ... money ... want to die." She wailed so terribly that Cinnamon leapt up, startled, and raced from the room.

Abbie kept her arms around Emma. Over and over she said, "I know, honey. I know."

Lily stood by the end of the bed. Wanting to be closer, to be included, she leaned down to put her hand on Emma's leg. "Want some iced tea, Emma? Maybe a beer?"

"Oh, sure," Emma wailed. "Iced tea would change everything."

"I'm only trying to help." Lily moved away from the bed and sat down in the old wicker rocking chair in the corner of the room.

After awhile Emma's sobs subsided. She leaned back against the headboard. Abbie handed her a tissue and Emma noisily blew her nose. Her voice was clogged with tears when she said, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to go on."

"First," Abbie said, and the authority she'd had when they were growing up rang steadily in her voice, "you're going to get up, take a shower, wash your hair, and put on some clothes."

Emma sagged. "I don't want to."

"I don't care," Abbie retorted calmly. "While you're in the shower, Lily and I are going to change your sheets."

"Hey, let her change her own--" Lily began to protest, but Abbie shot her a look.

"Then we're going for a walk around town, and we'll stop someplace for a drink."

"I don't have the money for a drink," Emma objected sulkily.

"My treat." Abbie gave her sister an affectionate pat on her thigh. "Get moving." She stood up and nodded at Lily. "You get the sheets. I'll strip the bed."

Lily stood up, too, and snapped a brisk salute at her sister. It was really mind-boggling, she thought as she wandered out into the hall and down to the linen closet at the end, how Abbie could just waltz in like this after eighteen months away and take over. Plus, suddenly everything was all about Emma. Abbie hadn't even asked Lily how she was!

Back in Emma's bedroom, Lily dropped the sheets on the bureau, found the bottom sheet, and sailed it out over Emma's double bed. Abbie grabbed the other side and together they lifted the corners and slipped the sheet over the mattress.

"Well done," Lily told Abbie, and trying to create a sense of conspiracy between them, she nodded toward the bathroom, where the shower ran full force.

"Poor kid," Abbie said. "She worked so hard."

"I work hard, too!" Lily protested.

"Oh, right." Abbie hefted the mattress to tuck the sheet under. Of course she did it quickly and perfectly, as if she'd been trained by the order of excellent innkeepers or something. "You're writing a weekly social column for Nantucket Talk. Tell me about it."

"Oh, it's such a cool job." Lily vigorously stuffed a pillow into the case. "It is hard work, though. I have to drive all over the island; I have to go right up to people I don't know to ask if I can interview them; I have to take notes and remember a million things at once because I can't use a tape recorder; I have to try to remember everyone's face and name and be really nice."

Abbie laughed. "That sounds like fun, Lily, and perfect for you. Is it a year-round job?"

"Absolutely! Something's always happening on the island now. Armchair theater, concerts, community events like the spelling bee."

Abbie tilted her head. "Are you really so busy off-season?"

Suddenly Lily felt under attack. "I run the house, too. I buy groceries, I make Dad healthy dinners, I vacuum ..."

"I know, I'm just wondering ... The curtains need to be washed, and stuff like that."

Emma walked into the room, wrapped in a towel, her brown hair curling around her face, smelling wet and strawberry-scented from the shampoo.

Abbie ran her hand over her forehead. "You know, I'm whipped. I mean, I started the day in London, and it's nine o'clock in the evening for my brain. Jet lag must be catching up with me."

"Take a nap," Emma said. "I don't feel like going out, anyway."

"Actually, I think I will take a nap." Abbie stretched and yawned. "Emma, would you wake me in a couple of hours? I want to get back on U.S. time."

"Sure." Emma dropped her towel on the floor and slipped into her bed. She reached for the clock on her bedside table and set the alarm, then slid down between the covers, turning her back on her sisters.

"See you in awhile," Abbie said over her shoulder as she left the room. "Man, it's really hitting me. I'll unpack later."

Lily stood for a moment, then she left the room, too, mumbling, "You could have said thank you for changing the sheets."

Emma must not have heard her, for she only said, "Pull the door shut, would you, Lily?"

Suddenly Lily found herself alone in the hall. The doors to both sisters' rooms were shut, as blank and forbidding as they'd been when they were teenagers gossiping about exotic secrets while silly little baby Lily, too young to be included, hung around in the hall, waiting to be invited in, hoping to overhear even one intimate word.

Well, she wouldn't be like that! She had a life! She had work!

But she'd turned in her column this morning, and tonight, Tuesday night, nothing was happening on the island. It was still too early for the big parties, galas, fund-raisers, even for the art openings.

Well, then, she had friends! Clattering down the stairs, she yanked out her cell phone and punched in Carrie's number. Carrie was always at home with her baby and eager for adult company.

"Hey, Carrie, I thought I'd come over for a while."

"Hallelujah! I haven't had a real conversation all day. And Tommy's going to be out fishing until dark."

"Need anything? Wine, pizza?"

"If I have to eat another pizza, I'll go mad. So will Tommy. I never seem to have the time or energy to shop for real food, let alone cook it."

"Tell you what, I'll stop at the grocery store and pick up some pasta and mussels and clams and fresh parsley. You have olive oil and garlic, right?"

"I do. You're going to cook dinner for me?"

"I can't do anything fancy, but I can do a mean pasta with seafood."

"I utterly love you. I will give you my firstborn child. Really."