her? Is she the mythical lady?”
And slipping the picture into the frame, behind the glass, looking only at his work, Peter said, “I’m afraid so.”
Still staring at Misty, his eyes jumping around every part of her, her hands and legs, her face and breasts, the friend cocked his head to one side, studying. Still chewing his gum, he said, “Are you sure she’s the right one?”
Some magpie part of Misty, some little princess part, couldn’t take her eyes off the guy’s glittery red earring. The sparkling enamel heart. The flash of red from the cut-glass rubies.
Peter fitted a piece of backing cardboard behind the picture and sealed it around the edge with tape. Running his thumb over the tape, sealing it down, he said, “You saw the painting.” He stopped and sighed, his chest getting big, then collapsing, and he said, “I’m afraid she’s the real deal.”
Misty, Misty’s eyes were pinned inside the blond tangle of the friend’s hair. The red flash of the earring there, it was Christmas lights and birthday candles. In the sunlight from the shopwindow, the earring was Fourth of July fireworks and bouquets of Valentine’s Day roses. Looking at the sparkle, she forgot she had hands, a face, a name.
She forgot to breathe.
Peter said, “What’d I tell you, man?” He was looking at Misty now, watching her spellbound by the red earring, and Peter said, “She can’t resist the old jewelry.”
The blond guy saw Misty staring back at him, and both his blue eyes swung sideways to see where Misty’s eyes were pinned.
In the earring’s cut-glass sparkle, in there was the sparkle of champagne Misty had never seen. There were the sparks of beach bonfires, spiraling up to summer stars Misty could only imagine. In there was the flash of crystal chandeliers she had painted in each fantasy parlor.
All the yearning and idiot need of a poor, lonely kid. Some stupid, unenlightened part, not the artist but the idiot in her, loved that earring, the bright rich shine of it. The glitter of sugary hard candy. Candy in a cut-glass dish. A dish in a house she’d never visited. Nothing deep or profound. Just everything we’re programmed to adore. Sequins and rainbows. Those bangles she should’ve been educated enough to ignore.
The blond, Peter’s friend, he reached one hand up to touch his hair, then his ear. His mouth dropped open, so fast his gum fell out onto the floor.
Your friend.
And you said, “Careful, dude, it looks like you’re stealing her away from me . . .”
And the friend, his fingers fumbled, digging in his hair, and he yanked the earring. The pop made them all wince.
When Misty opened her eyes, the blond guy was holding out his earring, his blue eyes filled with tears. His torn earlobe hung in two ragged pieces, forked, blood dripping from both points. “Here,” he said, “take it.” And he threw the earring toward the workbench. It landed, gold and fake rubies scattering red sparks and blood.
The screw-on back was still on the post. It was so old, the gold back had turned green. He’d yanked it off so fast the earring was tangled in blond hairs. Each hair still had the soft white bulb where it pulled out at the root.
One hand cupped over his ear, blood running from between his fingers, the guy smiled. His corrugator muscle pulling his pale eyebrows together, he said, “Sorry, Petey. It looks like you’re the lucky guy.”
And Peter lifted the painting, framed and finished. Misty’s signature at the bottom.
Your future wife’s signature. Her bourgeois little soul.
Your future wife already reaching for the bloody spot of red sparkle.
“Yeah,” Peter said, “fucking lucky me.”
And still bleeding, one hand clamped over his ear, the blood running down his arm to drip from his pointed elbow, Peter’s friend backed up a couple steps. With his other hand, he reached for the door. He nodded at the earring and said, “Keep it. A wedding present.” And he was gone.
THIS EVENING, Misty is tucking your daughter into bed when Tabbi says, “Granmy Wilmot and I have a secret.”
Just for the record, Granmy Wilmot knows everybody’s secrets.
Grace sits through church service and elbows Misty, telling her how the rose window the Burtons donated for their poor, sad daughter-in-law—well, the truth is Constance Burton gave up painting and drank herself to death.
Here’s two centuries of Waytansea shame and misery, and your mother can repeat every detail. The cast- iron benches on Merchant Street, the ones made in England, they’re in memory of Maura Kincaid, who drowned trying to swim the six miles to the mainland. The Italian fountain on Parson Street—it’s in honor of Maura’s husband.
The murdered husband, according to Peter.
According to you.
The whole village of Waytansea, this is their shared coma.
Just for the record, Mother Wilmot sends her love.
Not that she ever wants to visit you.
Tucked in bed, Tabbi rolls her head to look out the window and says, “Can we go on a picnic?”
We can’t afford it, but the minute you die, Mother Wilmot’s got a drinking fountain picked out, brass and bronze, sculpted like a naked Venus riding a conch shell sidesaddle.
Tabbi brought her pillow when Misty moved them into the Waytansea Hotel. They all brought something. Your wife brought your pillow, because it smells like you.
In Tabbi’s room, Misty sits on the edge of the bed, combing her kid’s hair through her fingers. Tabbi has her father’s long black hair and his green eyes.
Your green eyes.
She has a little room she shares with her grandmother, next to Misty’s room in the attic hallway of the hotel.
Almost every old family has rented out their house and moved into the hotel attic. The rooms papered with faded roses. The wallpaper peeling along every seam. There’s a rusty sink and a little mirror bolted to the wall in each room. Two or three iron beds in every room, their paint chipped, their mattresses soft and sagging in the middle. These are the cramped rooms, under the sloping ceilings, behind their little windows, dormers like rows of little doghouses in the hotel’s steep roof. The attic is a barracks, a refugee camp for nice white gentry. People to- the-manor-born now share a bathroom down the hall.
These people who’ve never held a job, this summer, they’re waiting tables. As if everyone’s money ran out at the same time, this summer every blue-blood islander is carrying luggage at the hotel. Cleaning hotel rooms. Shining shoes. Washing dishes. A service industry of blue-eyed blonds with shining hair and long legs. Polite and cheerful and eager to run fetch a fresh ashtray or decline a tip.
Your family—your wife and child and mother—they all sleep in sagging, chipped iron beds, under sloping walls with the hoarded silver and crystal relics of their former genteel life.
Go figure, but all the island families, they’re smiling and whistling. As if this were some adventure. A zany lark. As if they’re just slumming in the service industry. As if this tedious kind of bowing and scraping isn’t going to be the rest of their lives. Their lives and their children’s lives. As if the novelty won’t wear off after another month. They’re not stupid. It’s just that none of them have ever been poor. Not like your wife, she knows about having pancakes for dinner. Eating government-surplus cheese. Powdered milk. Wearing steel-toed shoes and punching a goddamn time clock.
Sitting there with Tabbi, Misty says, “So, what’s your secret?”
And Tabbi says, “I can’t tell.”
Misty tucks the covers in around the girl’s shoulders, old hotel sheets and blankets washed until they’re nothing but gray lint and the smell of bleach. The lamp beside Tabbi’s bed is her pink china lamp painted with flowers. They brought it from the house. Most of her books are here, the ones that would fit. They brought her
