Other Shepards Read online

  “There’s our chariot,” Annie says, pointing.

  My eyes locate the white sliver bobbing in the waves. Slowly it shapes into a weather-beaten hull canopied by a grimy sail and crewed by two old men wearing floppy hats and all-weather oilskin jackets.

  Annie waves and breaks away from us, climbing up the pier, then easily springing from pier to boat. In the setting sun, her hair is the color of gold fire. “Come on, girls,” she calls. “No chickens. That means you, Geneva.”

  As the boat laps to the edge of the pier, one of the men reaches forward and plants a foot on its outermost lip while his other leg, heavy with muscle and burnt by sun, anchors him to the boat deck. He takes my hand as I leap, and in another second my bare feet hit the wet deck of the boat. In an instant, Geneva is beside me. Her face is serious but her eyes gleam with her own bravery.

  “You did it, you did it.” I scratch the back of her neck, pat her arm. We squat together in the trunk, the back of the boat, braced against the swinging jib and yardarm. Annie stays up on the other end and seems fueled by some second strength, although she looks light enough to fly away, a scrap of blue skipping over the pale waves.

  I touch my jeans pocket to feel the hard lump of Saint Jude. Louis had asked me to try remembering everything I see, to report back. I look at the water and wonder if there is anything in New York City that matches all these colors.

  The boat catches a puff and begins to lift and dip us over the thumping waves so carelessly I think that Annie and the men have lost control of us. We lift, sink, lift, and then a coastline of black rock and thick columns of banana trees ring our horizon.

  “Volcano Beach,” Annie tells us. “Those rocks you’re looking at are the fossilized remains of a natural disaster that happened over a million years ago.”

  The giant rocks resemble half-melted candles, too fixed in place and too ancient to remind me of disaster, like the oldest black-habited nuns at Ambrose, who look harmless but are quick to slap you a demerit for tiny offenses like wearing boxer shorts beneath your kilt.

  “Okay, guys, our ride’s over. Out, out, before this thing beaches. Take your shoes and bags and jump.”

  “Into the water?” Geneva cringes and looks to me for help. “Jellyfish?” she mouths her fears to me. “Manta rays?”

  “You’ll be fine,” I mouth back. I grab my waterlogged loafers.

  Annie already has jumped overboard. She stands up to her waist in water. “Hold your bags above your heads,” she tells us. I wind the strap of my carry-on tightly over my shoulder so that it tucks just beneath my armpit. Geneva copies me.

  “Get your feet ready to hit bottom,” Annie instructs. “It’s not all that deep.”

  “Thanks,” I say to one of the men. He smiles with teeth that catch me off guard, they are so white and sharp, and I realize that his face is not old so much as sun-leathered and salt-cured by years of winds and water.

  Annie wrings out her water-sopped skirt once we are on dry land, tying a corner of the fabric into a knot that hits her at the knee. She walks quickly and her gaze is restless, her eyes like a gecko’s, crisscrossing from sky to trees and back again.

  “Where do we go from here?” I sigh. I am soaked and dizzy and exhausted from travel. “How far to the bungalow?”

  “We’re already here.” Annie points. “They dropped us off at the back door, practically. Not a moment too soon.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Geneva says, but our pace quickens.

  The house is wedged into a cut of hill just visible just behind a plot of banana trees. We recognize it at once, and Geneva and I break into a run, half laughing, half screaming, the way we used to on Christmas morning.

  The grass rasps against my ankles, and Geneva keeps pace, for once unafraid of stepping on bullfrogs or falling down rabbit holes. Familiar objects focus and click inside my brain as I run. I spy the hammock at the edge of the lawn; its familiarity is jolting. I see the bungalow’s wavy lasagna shell roof and the waist-high terra cotta pots by the door. I see the flower boxes, the slatted shutters, the two steps leading up to the patio. It is as if the box of slides have whirred together into a movie with sound and dimension. We vault the patio steps in a bound.

  The tiled patio is hushed and echoing, and our breathing is heavy as horses’ when we brake at the front door. We stand, unsure of our next action, until Geneva jabs at the doorbell. The sound resonates through the house with a buzz that reminds me of our mosquito zapper at the shore.

  “Why are we waiting? It’s not like we expect anyone to be here,” Geneva says after a few panting minutes. “We need a key is all. Check under the mat. Oh!” She puts her ear against the door. “The telephone’s ringing.”

  My fingers are warm and stain to orange when they brush over the rain-rusted key, tucked under the doormat so long that when I pick it up, its outline remains imprinted on the concrete like a tracing in a crime scene. The key sticks slightly as I turn the lock. We take off our wet shoes and socks, leaving them to dry on the patio, before stepping with caution into the darkened front room. The telephone ringing stops before we have a chance to figure out what to do about it.

  “You think the parents are calling here already?” I whisper, looking at the black rotary phone.

  “I don’t care,” Geneva says, pushing past me. “This is our house. We can be here if we want.”

  “Geneva, look.” I point to the vase of fresh wildflowers on the coffee table. We stare at the burst of red and yellow blooms; their arrangement is like a silent invitation, a message for just my sister and me.

  “We’re expected,” Geneva says, wide-eyed as she reaches out to touch a petal. “We’re somebody’s guest.”

  “Maybe the same person who sent us the tickets.”

  I move to one of the windows and pull the cord on a set of curtains. The drapes split to wash the room in twilight. The room is as sparsely decorated as a hotel lobby, more formal than the pictures, as if time has matured it into a respectable old age.

  “Hey, kitchen.” Geneva dashes through an arched doorway at the far end of the room. “Come look. Oh, come see this little old wooden freezer.”

  “In a minute.” I draw each set of curtains carefully, watching the fresh dust rise from the fabric. Every window offers a smear of sunset. I squeak open the glass panes and listen to the winds snaking through the grass. I badly want to believe in all of it, I realize: the mystery tickets and the thoughtful, invisible host. I want to believe that the spirit of the island has beckoned us, enticed us with its hint of making amends for our family’s wrecked past.

  “There’s a lot of food!” Geneva calls. I hear cupboards opening and shutting. “A giant thingy of gumdrops! Have you ever heard of fig jelly? Or raspberry chutney? Think they’d mind if we tried some? There’s good cereal and health cereal. Two bad flavors of ice cream in the freezer, rum raisin and pistachio, ugh. Oh, Holland, come look what I found!” The silence that follows makes me curious enough to go see. I find Geneva in a narrow pantry galley that extends off the kitchen.

  A tree rises up between the two glassed-in china cupboards. Branches curl and reach over the panes and hinges. The colors look fresh and moist, and they are bumpy to the touch.

  “Our tree,” I say. “It’s for real.”

  “In oils,” Geneva says. “They’re thick. She must have used tubes and tubes of paint.”

  “It’s stupendously big,” I say. Branch tips scrape the ceiling. I have to step back and stand on tiptoe to see the entire creation from top to bottom.

  “I like our kitchen better,” Geneva remarks. “Let’s go look at the bedrooms.”

  There are four, each with its own window and clothes closet. Geneva and I pick out adjacent bedrooms and unpack our few items of clothing. The furnishings are few and neat, but there are enough personal touches in the master bedroom—a extra towel hanging over the back of a chair, an open bottle of suntan oil on the bedside table—to indicate that other people definitely are occupying the
bungalow.

  “You know, Geneva, I think the Hubbards are probably here,” I say, finally voicing my concern.

  “No,” she snaps. “They always come down in the changeover weeks between April and May. Always. We’re still in the end of March.”

  “Well, somebody’s staying here,” I persist, opening the closet. “A man and woman from the look of it. Maybe it was the Hubbards who sent us the plane tickets. Maybe they’re expecting us. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No,” Geneva answers firmly. She sits on the bed and picks up a framed photograph from the bedside table, which she hands me. I stare at a photograph of the Hubbards. It is an outdoor picture; each of them is smiling and wearing a necklace of binoculars. Their lined faces take me by surprise. In our slides, they are permanently young, closer to Brett and Carla’s age than the parents’.

  “Nerds,” Geneva says with a sniff.

  “But look how they’re holding hands,” I protest, although they do look kind of nerdish. “I wonder, if they are staying here, where they went off to? I hope they don’t mind if we eat some of their food. I’m starved.”

  “Stop saying they’re here.” Geneva holds her hands over her ears. “It’s our place, our weekend. We’re not sharing it.”

  “Why don’t you go see if Annie wants dinner?” I suggest to change the subject. “I’ll see what I can cook up.”

  Back in the kitchen, I snap on lights and look through the drawers and cupboards. I picture myself in the slides: me holding a can opener, me filling an ice tray. I feel like an actor who half-believes in the painted scenery as I move over a stage that only appears to be real. I know we will not be able to keep up the charade for long. At best we are visitors here; at worst we are secret trespassers. And while it doesn’t seem so outrageous to think that the Hubbards might have mailed us those tickets, I’m not surprised that Geneva would rather believe in the mystery.

  I make soup, using canned chicken stock and packaged noodles. I find a saucepan and rinse it out, then splash in the broth. The phone begins to ring again just as I’m stirring up a batch of lemonade. I poke my wooden spoon intensely at the concentrated lemonade lumps and hum out loud until the noise stops.

  “Annie doesn’t want dinner of course, just her coffee.” Geneva shakes the familiar paper bag of ground coffee. “She’s resting on the hammock and says she wants to sleep there. She looks tired. I have to get her some extra pillows and blankets.” She skips off, excited to be the nurse instead of the patient.

  From the kitchen window, I watch my sister stagger out into the garden, her chin clamped over the mounds of extra bedding. She piles blankets over Annie. I can’t hear their voices, but I can see Geneva’s concern for Annie by the way she stands and twists her hair, scratching absently at her bug bites rather than examining them with her usual hypochondriac’s intensity.

  “I don’t appreciate it when people who are sick say they aren’t,” Geneva remarks when she comes back inside.

  “What about people who are never sick but always think they are?” I counter, giving her a meaningful look.

  “Oh, come on, Holland, that’s different,” Geneva says. “Being scared is different from being sick.”

  After our salty chicken soup dinner, Geneva and I join Annie outside, mostly to get away from the reproachful jangle of the telephone. We stretch out on the grass beside the hammock and pick from a shared mound of gumdrops that rests on a paper towel between us. Annie is propped up with pillows, and her restless fingers trace elaborate invisible brocades on her lap. I sneak a lasting glance at her profile. The falling twilight tones down the sting of her yellow hair and gives her face a serenity I don’t find there by day.

  I clear my throat. “Annie, I think people might be staying here besides us.”

  “The Hubbards,” she answers.

  “Hey, wait, how do you know?” I ask. “Are you sure?”

  “And where are they?” asks Geneva.

  “They’re out on the main island tonight. They’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?” Geneva repeats my question.

  Annie shakes her head as if she cannot believe we would bother her with such doubts. “Do you think I would bring you all the way here and then abandon you both?” she asks. “That would be very careless of me.”

  “Only you’re not leaving us,” Geneva insists.

  “No, I’m right here beside you,” Annie answers.

  Knowing that the Hubbards will arrive tomorrow depresses and relaxes me. Deep down, I guess I always knew they were here from the moment I saw the flowers on the table. I check on Geneva; her cheeks are chipmunked with gumdrops, which prevent her from talking.

  “They’ve always seemed pretty nice, those Hubbards,” I tell her. She nods and chews, grumpily resolved.

  We look up at the stars and listen to the scratch of cricket song. The night air is sweet with the scent of wild roses, and I remember the perfumed woman on the elevator to Carr’s. “It’s just rose water, dear. You can buy it at Bigelow’s.” But the air tonight is nothing like her city smell.

  Geneva is quiet and I think she has fallen asleep, so her voice surprises me. “It’s paradise, isn’t it?” she asks.

  “Paradise? I don’t know. It isn’t like I imagined,” I answer. “I thought Saint Germaine would be a place that would make me wishful, make me miss the others. But instead I feel the opposite. What’s the opposite of wishful?”

  Geneva thinks a moment. “Somewhereness,” she says. “When you know you’re in a place you belong.”

  I think of Starry Night preserved in its museum, a greasy shimmer of colors that look as if they had been painted only hours ago. Oil paints, same as Annie’s tree. The mystery and peace of that painting tint my view tonight, and I wonder how two skies, separated by so much time and distance, can speak the same language. Van Gogh must have been sort of an Ick himself, to paint such a luscious sky.

  “Besides, what is paradise, anyway?” I ask.

  “A splendid illusion,” Annie answers.

  I lift my head to look at Annie. Through my sleep-heavy eyes, I see the sickle of her body stretched like a cocoon between the trunks of the two banana trees. The image wavers, holds, and blurs again. The trees’ leafy roofs lift and bend in the night breeze like a lullaby.

  “’Night, Annie,” I yawn.

  At my side, Geneva is still whispering. “I’m not even allergic to the roses here, have you noticed? I bet it’s not roses, I bet I’m allergic to the chemicals sprayed on them when they come into the city.” Her voice is so quiet that I am sure it echoes only inside my head.

  eleven

  the hubbards

  I WAKE UP AND stare, shivering, into blackness. Where am I? I shove myself to my feet, dragging a protesting Geneva up with me, then prodding her into the house. We must have been asleep on the lawn for two or three hours, and now the night has turned cold. I tuck Geneva into bed. From far away comes the nagging ring of the telephone. I grope my way into the front room and pull out the jack. Back in my bed, I fall into a long, hard sleep, the best I’ve had in weeks.

  Geneva’s tug on my hand, too early the next morning, drags me awake.

  “She’s gone, her bag’s gone, her shoes! We’re alone!” Geneva’s cheeks are beet red and sleep-creased. “She abandoned us. You don’t even look surprised!”

  “Stop being so dramatic.” I sit up in bed and pull my arm free. The morning sun has filled the room with comfortless tropical heat. “I need a large glass of juice before I can deal with you.” But there is an ache in my heart when I drift outside and see that the hammock is empty. “We knew she’d leave. She’s Annie. She got us here, right? She wasn’t here to stay with us forever.”

  Geneva’s forehead wrinkles and she rests a hand on her stomach. “I’m hungry. Maybe she went to get us breakfast?”

  I look around me, to the pastel-colored bungalows that dot the hill like Easter eggs. “Don’t plan on it.” I try to appear calm, although a level of al
arm begins to percolate inside me. Suddenly Saint Germaine is the middle of nowhere, a place of exotic danger, where anything could go wrong. “Annie said the Hubbards will be here later on, remember? Till then, let’s find out where the tour buses are. That would be something, to explore the island. I have money.”

  “Or we could go swimming,” Geneva suggests, which, although it’s a careless idea, seems like the more fun one.

  I am tugging on my bathing suit when I hear the voice, a woman’s.

  “Hello! Is anybody there?”

  Immediately Geneva pops into my room, hopping from foot to foot. “Hubbards!” she mouths.

  “Who are you?” A woman stands in the doorway, hugely tall and a lot more glamorous than her picture. She reminds me of Cleopatra, from the cut of her heavy, dyed black hair to her white silky dress and the snaky twists of gold jewelry that weight her chest and ears and fingers. Her question shocks me, and I have to dismiss any idea that Dana Hubbard knew anything about our arrival in Saint Germaine.

  “We’re Holland and Geneva,” says Geneva, who seems less shocked.

  “W-who?” But I can tell that almost immediately she has connected and identified us, and her eyes lose their watchfulness as they move back and forth from me to my sister. “Lydia?” she whispers.

  “Mom’s in New York,” I answer. “It’s just us. Me and Geneva.”

  “Why aren’t you here next month?” Geneva asks.

  “Lydia’s girls.” Dana’s nails, shellacked gold ovals like beetles’ wings, flutter to her lips. “Holland, Geneva Shepard? This is so strange, this is so hard to believe. Oh, girls. Where’s Ryan? Ryan!” She shouts his name, then to herself mutters, “Outside, he can’t hear.… He’s not going to believe …”