“Hi,” she said to the man behind the bar. He wore a navy blue blazer, pants of white sailcloth, and boating shoes. He was an old man with brown, lined skin and little hair, but his eyes were clear and curious as he looked Rachel over.
“Good evening,” he said gently. “I’m afraid we’re not really open tonight, miss, but as it’s chilly I’ll pour you one drink if you can show me some identification.”
“Actually, I’m looking for a room,” she said, afraid now that she should have called first or gone to the kind of town with all-night clerks and swimming pools. “I guess I should have made a reservation.”
The old man looked past Rachel toward the two women playing backgammon in front of a small fireplace. “Are we open for guests, Fiona?” he asked reluctantly.
“No, we’re not,” she said. She wore a housecoat with pink rosebuds on it. Blue veins burrowed like worms along the tops of her feet, swollen in satin mules, and her shoulders were padded with fat. Rachel recognized her immediately, for there were dozens like her in Belle Haven, and knew that this was the woman who hung the sheets out in the sunshine, polished the wooden floors, and made sure that the windowpanes gleamed. When the woman looked up and saw who was asking, she put down the dice and sighed. “I’m sorry, honey, but I just wasn’t expecting anybody. I haven’t got a single room ready, and it’s already so cold upstairs. We only heat up the rooms if we know someone’s coming.”
“Oh,” Rachel said, “I understand,” for she usually accepted what she was dealt, even when she knew that a bit of persuasion might turn things her way. “Thanks anyway.” She turned toward the door. But after the long, hopeful drive she had no stomach for a night in an infested motel or, worse, in the Impala. She wanted badly to sleep in the room upstairs where she had slept before, next door to the room where her parents had stayed, to look out the window the next morning to find the irreproachable sea waiting there for her. She wanted to be by herself in a safe and sheltered place where people would ask nothing of her and she need not ask much of them.
It was therefore with a certain anxious determination that she turned back from the door, walked up to the tired woman, and said, “I don’t need sheets, or towels, or even a pillow. Just a blanket and some soap. Please. And I’ll leave everything tidy.” She realized that she sounded a bit unhinged, so she smiled and added, “My name is Rachel Hearn. I stayed here with my parents when I was seventeen, and I haven’t been back to the Cape since. I’m not sure where to go.”
“You college kids are all alike,” the woman sighed, pushed herself out of the chair. But she smiled as she said it. “Take my place, Jack,” she instructed her husband as she led Rachel out of the bar and down a dim hallway, “but don’t drink my brandy. I’ll be right back.”
The two women stopped at a vast linen closet and then climbed a narrow staircase to the rooms above. “Would it be all right if I stayed in the room with the painting of the rumrunner?” Rachel asked.
“Of course … Rachel, is it? I’m Fiona.” She led Rachel down the hallway, her old eyes fumbling in the poor light. “This is the room,” she said, handing Rachel a bundle of cold, smooth linen so she could open the door, switch on the light, and make sure all was as it should be.
Although Rachel protested, Fiona helped her make up the bed and even tracked down a hot-water bottle for her feet. She was generous with blankets and towels, unwrapped a bar of soap, opened the window for a moment to freshen the air, and then said good night. “I’ve forgotten your key,” she remembered as she was leaving, “but you can collect it at the desk when you go out in the morning. The heat will be up before long. Sweet dreams.” And then she was gone.
Since there wasn’t yet any heat to hoard, Rachel turned out the light, opened the window wide, and leaned into the night. She could see the light from the bar below her tinting the bare branches of the lilacs and could hear the faint sound of voices. It was that quiet. She felt much as she had as a little girl, comforted by the knowledge that her large, capable, strong parents were in the house with her.
Although she could not see it, Rachel knew that the ocean was very close by. She felt herself thriving on its kaleidoscopic smell, on the sounds of fledgling waves and of the rigging of sailboats at their moorings, beautiful as bells.
She felt so removed from Harry and Paul, from her friends, and from everything that had become important to her in recent years. She felt so near to her parents, the old, ramshackle house she’d grown up in, and all the people whose faces she would still recognize decades from now because they were a part of Belle Haven, as she was.
As she lay in bed that
