Moon Shell Beach: A Novel Part 10

Adam stood up. "Helen can help you with the paperwork. I'd better go see my eleven-thirty. You've made a good choice, Clare, I think that's a really nice dog." He walked away, stopping at the door to say over his shoulder, "Let me know how she works out."

He was giving her a reason to get in touch with him! "I will," she promised.

"And tell Jesse h.e.l.lo," Adam said, and left the room.

SEVENTEEN.

During the month of May, the island slowly woke. The sun shone brighter, igniting the sea into a flashy, spangling blue, and the air was milder, enticing everyone outside, away from their dark sheltered lives. People tied back their curtains, washed windows, swept their porch corners free of the last of the pine needles fallen from Christmas wreaths, and hung baskets of faux flowers on their front doors. In town, the shopkeepers set out real pansies, daffodils, and crocuses in their window boxes, and the DPW street-sweeping machines, like humming robot housewives, went up and down the main streets, whisking away all the sand spread over the once-icy roads, making each cobblestone s.h.i.+ne like a polished gem.

It was the beginning of the magnificent party that was summer on Nantucket. Summer people arrived to open and air out their homes. Tourists came to stay in the inns and walk on the beach and dream of all they would do with their lives. Lexi's parents had always loved seeing their summer regulars return to shop in their store and to catch up on gossip-for Myrna and Fred it was almost as if their hundreds of children were home from college. The island was caught up in the excitement of something-everything-beginning anew.

It was all so poignant to Lexi, so idyllic and hopeful, especially because she was back home. And she was back home. Every day she felt how people accepted her. Behind the post office counter, Martha Smith, who had dated Adam in high school, greeted her with a smile. At the grocery store, several people with familiar faces nodded and smiled at her as they steered their carts down the aisles, and Fred Carney, who now ran the meat department, actually stopped her to tell her that if she ever needed a special cut to ring the bell and ask for him. At the Main Street Pharmacy, Watson Lomax, who had begun his interest in drugs early in his teens, was now, amusingly, a pharmacist, who helped Lexi decide on which over-the-counter allergy medication to use. And Patricia Moody phoned to ask Lexi if she'd like to join the community chorus. Lexi thanked her for the invitation but declined, admitting she couldn't carry a tune.

Box by box, her merchandise arrived, trundled over the cobblestones by the UPS man and his dolly. The clothing was on the second floor, safely shrouded in dust-proof plastic, still in boxes, waiting to be ironed and hung on her padded silk hangers once the sawing, hammering, and painting were done. The racks were draped in protective plastic; the mirrors she'd ordered leaned against the walls in their cardboard boxes. The display cases for her jewelry and accessories had come, too, and sat in the middle of the shop floor covered with sheets. The walls were painted just as Lexi had dreamed they would be. She had done the work herself and she'd done a really amazing job. Her concept was clever, and she'd always been good at art, but this, well, this surprised her, how good it looked, just like her dreams. She had sheets of brown paper taped over the large front window so no one could see in until everything was perfect, and it couldn't be perfect until the cubicles were built.

Jesse hadn't come to build the dressing cubicles. Clare had promised he would, but he hadn't shown up, and she supposed it was no surprise. Why would he do her any favors?

She'd pored over the phone book, calling other carpenters, but all she'd gotten were answering machines. May was crazy busy on the island, Lexi knew that. Caretakers were running around turning on water and taking down shutters and repairing any damage the weather had done over the winter. Next door, Clare and her a.s.sistant Marlene were concocting and packaging chocolates from morning to night, so Clare was too busy to spend time with Lexi, and Lexi would be too busy, too, if she only had a couple of dressing rooms! But she had no dressing rooms!

What else could she do? Lexi looked around, her hands on her hips. Leaning against the wall were a group of photographs blown up to three feet by five and showcased in ornate frames. Each shot was of a tall, slender blonde walking on a stretch of beach. They were pictures from her travels, but she didn't want these photos to be about her. She wanted them to be about the mystery and romance of walking on the sand by the water's edge. She wanted them to be mesmerizing, exotic, and dreamy. After hours of careful study she'd chosen six perfect shots with her back to the camera, then had them cropped so that she was to one side, in the shadow, or in the distance.

She couldn't hang them herself; they were too heavy. She would have to call her parents. They had invited her for Sunday dinner last week, and slowly the ice between them was thawing. Myrna was frankly curious about Lexi's merchandise and her father had offered his help with heavy lifting.

Just as she flipped open her cell phone, someone knocked on the door.

She pulled the door open. "Jesse!"

The sight of him knocked her breath right out of her lungs.

"Clare said you needed some work done."

Jesse wore work clothes-jeans and a blue denim s.h.i.+rt. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and a small gold hoop shone from one earlobe. He was slender and fit, his face already tanned, his eyebrows and lashes almost white. She'd always thought of him as the most laid-back boy she'd ever known, easy with his smile, lounging in his bones, always looking like he was about to start whistling. A s.e.xual Huck Finn.

But right now-something about him sent her pulse racing. Suddenly her entire body seemed to wake up-she was uncomfortable and exhilarated at the same time, like a bird cracking open its sh.e.l.l. This was crazy. Lexi tore her gaze away from Jesse-that helped, to not look at him-and waved her hands around the room as she babbled.

"Oh, yes, Jesse, thank heavens you're here! I'm so grateful! Come in!"

Jesse came inside, looking around the room, and Lexi couldn't help it-she looked at Jesse. As if her gaze fell like heat on his skin, a flush spread up his neck. She wanted to seem natural. What would she say if Jesse was just another normal man? It wouldn't be so unusual to study a person you hadn't seen for years.

"You haven't changed one single bit," she told him truthfully.

"You have," he said, flas.h.i.+ng her a sideways glance. "You're thinner, and honestly, I think you're taller."

"Ouch!" she responded, with a laugh, because this was Jesse, who never had a mean bone in him. "The main thing is, I think I'm smarter. At least I hope so."

He shot her another sideways glance. Their gazes connected and something flashed between them like an electric shock. Jesse walked to the other end of the room. Lexi stayed where she was, her heart fluttering, thinking, What was that?

"So what do you need?" Jesse asked. His voice was hoa.r.s.e and as he heard his words, his blush deepened.

Oh, wow, Lexi thought, and knew she was blus.h.i.+ng, too. When she spoke, her voice came out in a breathless mouse-squeak. "Two cubicles." She cleared her throat. "Two dressing rooms. I thought here, at the back. Just about six feet wide and deep, and I'll need these two mirrors mounted on the walls. I made sketches of what I want." Leaning against the display case where her various work papers were piled, she pulled out the drawings.

Jesse came to stand next to her. He picked up the papers. On his right wrist he wore a sterling-silver bracelet with a turquoise stone. How very Jesse. The turquoise was the same color as his eyes. He had a cut on one of his knuckles, and a long scar on his right palm. His hands and fingers were thick from working, the ends of his fingers callused from playing guitar. Did that mean his fingertips weren't sensitive to the touch?

"...kind of wood?" Jesse asked.

Lexi's throat was dry. "It doesn't matter, just plywood, I'm going to paint it." Good grief, Jesse had always been a chick magnet in high school, but she'd never been susceptible to his power of attraction, perhaps because back then it took all her concentration simply to walk down the halls without tripping over her own big feet. But now! She felt like a raft at the edge of a whirpool. This wasn't good.

Ripping her body away from the counter, she lurched back to where the cubicles would be. "And I thought curtains on rods, rather than doors. I mean, doors look more elegant, but they'd take longer to hang. I want to open as soon as possible."

Jesse put the papers down, carefully aligning them into neat piles. "You'd better get yourself another carpenter, then. I'm on Steve Sergeant's crew and we're stretched thin as it is."

"Oh, Jesse, I've tried to get someone else." Oh great, she thought, insult the man. Embarra.s.sment washed over her. "Not that I didn't want you, I do want you!" Now Lexi knew she'd gone as red as a cooked lobster. "I mean, Clare, Clare," yes, Clare was her life preserver here, "Clare said she'd ask you, and so I waited, and then you didn't come, so I thought I'd try someone else, but I can't get anyone else." She looked hopelessly at Jesse and felt her cheeks flame. The very sight of him did strange things to her belly.

"Watch out." Jesse's voice was low and warning.

"What?"

"You're about to knock over the paint."

Lexi clutched her head. "Oh, man, I'm such a stork!"

"Hey." Jesse stopped, attention caught by a picture learning against the wall. "Nice pix. Is that you?"

She focused. "That's me. That sarong I'm wearing? It's one that I designed myself."

But Jesse was looking at the beach. "Where is this?"

"Bali."

"Really? What's it like?"

"Oh, it's spectacular, Jesse. Enchanting, really. There's such a sense of peace and everything's together, animals, people, trees, the sand. It's like Heaven."

"Can I look at the others?"

"Sure." Lexi watched as Jesse knelt to sort through the pictures. The man was just drop-dead gorgeous. The years had added muscle and depth to him. He looked more adult. More powerful. She gave herself a mental slap and ordered her mind back to the pictures. "That's Maui. That's Nice. Rio, obviously."

Jesse gazed at the pictures with such an intensity Lexi knew he wanted to fade right through the gla.s.s, like Alice, and into that world. Her heart went out to him, spiraling back to memories of her own teenage days, when she'd yearned to travel, to leave this familiar place and see the world, the vast, romantic, mysterious world.

"I loved traveling," she said quietly. "It's the oddest thing, how seeing new places can open up vistas in yourself, places you never before even dreamed existed."

"Yeah," Jesse said, nodded. "I've been to the Caribbean a few times. But I'd like to go to Rio. Maui, too, someday. I'm not so sure about Nice; that might be too chi-chi for me."

"So go," Lexi told him.

Jesse snorted.

"Oh, come on, Jesse, carpenters make a killing on this island. You could afford a nice trip every so often."

Very gently, Jesse relinquished his hold on the picture of Maui, carefully leaning it against the wall. "Yeah, I suppose. I guess I've just been trying to save money to buy a house."

"But you'll have Clare's house, right?"

Jesse rose. "Clare's father's house. I can't plan to live my life out in another man's house."

"I can understand that," Lexi told him, but Jesse was heading toward the door, his back to her.

He turned, abruptly. "Look," Jesse said, his voice calm, but also angry, "I'll build your cubicles. I'll have to do it in the evenings. It won't take too long."

"Oh, Jesse! Thank you!" Impulsively, Lexi moved toward him, but stopped a few feet away, paralyzed. She felt like an adolescent in the presence of a rock idol. She hugged herself, simply to do something with her hands.

"Don't thank me," Jesse said hoa.r.s.ely. "Thank Clare, I'm doing it because Clare asked me to."

"Yes, of course, I know that," Lexi babbled.

Jesse gave Lexi a look full of...she couldn't read it. Was it disgust? He looked so serious, not like Jesse at all. "I'll be here tomorrow about five-thirty," he told her, and strode away, out the door without a backward glance.

"Well," Lexi said out loud after he left, "that went well."

EIGHTEEN.

Clare was in the kitchen, deeply involved in a complicated recipe for seafood pasta. She was chopping and boiling and peeling and stirring, each move a kind of ballet maneuver because Ralph b.u.mbled around her feet, hoping for something to drop.

"Dad?" she yelled. "Dad? Could you take Ralph for her walk?"

No answer. She moved the saucepan off the burner, wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n, and went into the den. Her father sat in his pajamas, staring at an old newspaper.

"Dad. Earth to Dad?"

Her father looked up, his gaze clouded with memories.

"Dad, I'm fixing dinner and Jesse should be here soon, and I'd love it if you'd take Ralph for a walk."

Her father nodded. "Well." He put the newspapers on the table next to him and pushed up with his hands from his chair. "Well, all right. How far should I take her?"

Clare sighed. So far the adoption of the dog had not morphed into the dream-come-true happy ending she'd hoped for. Her father seemed to like the dog, but in a pa.s.sive way. He hadn't yet come to think of the animal as a creature with certain needs. Clare had encouraged her father to give the dog a name, and her father had stared at the amiable mutt who sat wagging her tail, ready for anything, and said, "Ralph."

"She's a female, Dad."

"Oh. Well, Ralphie? Or you can name her."

He wasn't connecting. "Oh, Ralph's a fine name, Dad. Kind of sounds like how dogs sound when they bark. Ralph! Ralph!" She'd thought she was pretty funny, and she did get a slender smile from her father. And he did bend to pet the dog, who s.h.i.+vered all over with pleasure.

Now Clare moved out to the hall, mentally tugging her father after her. "How about just around the block? Look, just put your raincoat on over your pajamas, no one will know. And here's her leash." Lifting it from the hook, she snapped it onto Ralph's collar, then took a plastic bag from the drawer. "And here's the bag in case she takes a dump. You remember the routine? Put it over your hand like a mitten, pick up the p.o.o.p, then bring the top of the bag down like this and tie it, and voila!"

Her father slipped his arms into his raincoat and dutifully accepted the paraphernalia. Together man and dog toddled out into the spring evening. It was almost eight o'clock, late for dinner, but Jesse was working at Lexi's and said he'd be home late, and her father didn't care when he ate or if he ate, for that matter. Clare stood at the door, enjoying the fresh air on her face and smiling. Okay, so it hadn't been love at first sight, her father hadn't leaped off the sofa and danced around the room with the dog in his arms, but he was out there walking, patiently waiting for Ralph to sniff messages off leaves and fences. It was more than he'd done for months.

Her father was moving very slowly. If he went at this pace around the entire block, they'd be eating dinner at midnight.

Really, she was tired. She'd been rising early the past few days, dressing and hurrying without breakfast or even a cup of coffee out to the wharf and into her shop. Marlene came in at nine and worked steadily alongside her, but always had to leave at five to fix dinner for her own family. Clare didn't have to come home and fix a proper meal. Jesse and her father were always perfectly happy with a pizza, but she wanted-subtly, even subconsciously-to reward Jesse for helping Lexi. It meant he worked extra hours in an already long day, plus he missed part of the televised Red Sox ball games. But it would only be for a few days; it was just a small job. She didn't understand why Jesse was being so sullen about it.

Back in the kitchen, she saw that the water had almost boiled out of the pasta pot. She refilled it and turned the heat to simmer. She poured herself a gla.s.s of red wine and carried it out to the back porch, sank onto a step, and leaned against the porch railing.

A winding slate path led from the house to the garage that had been transformed into her mother's studio. Now the building was dark. After her mother's death, Clare and her father had donated all her mother's art supplies-easels, pastels, oils, turps, and work tables-to the community school. So the room with its expanse of windows along the north and its glossy hardwood floor was bare. Perhaps they should turn it into a little apartment. The money from a rental would be helpful, especially now that her father had retired. Or perhaps, once she and Jesse were married and had a child or two, her father could live there. Not that she wanted to kick him out of his own house, but her parents had always told Clare they wanted to give her the house when she was older. Every now and then, during her twenties, she had rented her own little apartment in another part of town. A place of her own. She had loved the freedom to make each room look just the way she wanted it. But when her mother became ill, she'd moved back into the house to help, and since her mother's death it had seemed necessary for her to remain in the house to help her father. It wasn't such an odd situation she was in, living in her childhood home as an adult. Many of her friends were also doing it. Few people her age could afford to buy their own house on the island. Still, Clare felt like a snail grown too big for her sh.e.l.l. She wanted to move out, move on. Or stay, but make changes to reflect her own tastes and desires. Everything had gotten so drab and dusty in the house, but she couldn't yet broach the subject of changing a single thing, not with her father still in mourning for her mother.

Well, she could at least come out and clean up the flower beds, prune back the privet, and perhaps it wasn't too early to bring some of the lawn chairs out. She'd love to get over to the Cape to buy some new cus.h.i.+ons for the wicker furniture on the back porch. She longed for deep pillowy cus.h.i.+ons in pastel colors...she was in such a nesting mood these days. She and Jesse couldn't get married this summer, they'd both be working straight-out crazy insane hours. But if they married in the fall, she could have a baby next spring...

The front door slammed. She heard voices. Jesse and her dad were home. Back in the kitchen, she turned the heat up under the pasta pot and poured olive oil into the skillet. Ralph clicked into the room and stared at her with shy, hopeful eyes.

"Hi, sweetie." She bent to nuzzle and stroke the dog.

"I hope you're going to wash your hands before you touch the food." Jesse stood in the kitchen door. He had sawdust in his hair. He looked s.e.xy and exhausted and cranky.

Clare made a face. "h.e.l.lo to you, too, Suns.h.i.+ne. When did you get so frightened of dog germs? Don't answer that. Sit down. Have some wine." She washed her hands dutifully, poured him a gla.s.s of wine, and handed it to him. "Where's Dad?"

"I think he went into the den." Jesse collapsed in a chair and put his booted feet up on another chair. "I'm beat."

Clare began to stir-fry the veggies and scallops and fresh tuna. "You'll feel better soon. I'm making a yummy meal." She glanced over her shoulder. "How are the dressing rooms going?"

"I'll be through tomorrow night."

"So it's not such a big deal."

Jesse grunted.

Clare put the pasta in to cook, wondering what on earth was bugging Jesse. He was usually the sweetest man, patient, full of jokes and bonhomie. Perhaps it was just exhaustion, overwork, and the kind of psychological pressure every islander felt as the island population geared up to expand from the winter's nine thousand to twenty, then thirty, then, in August, fifty thousand residents. While the pasta boiled, Clare filled Ralph's bowl and set it down for her. She had planned to encourage her father to be responsible for the dog's meals, but it was still early. Her father had taken the dog for a walk; that was enough for today.

"I don't know why you got that thing," Jesse remarked, staring at Ralph, whose tail wagged happily as she wolfed down her food.

Surprised by the tone of his voice, Clare turned to look at Jesse. "Why, I told you. I think it will get my father out of his chair and out of the house."

"Yeah, if you nag him to do it. Be honest, Clare, you're going to be the one responsible for that animal. Which means you and I are going to be tied down even more than we already are."