I’ll tell you, the things we got up to in Seaview.
I let Kiki pull me up from the blanket and knelt with her on the sand. She handed me a shovel and told me to start digging, Lily, digging, because this was going to be a real moat.
“We can’t have a real moat this far from the water,” I said.
Kiki said, “Let the child have her fun.”
“And what is that thing you’re wearing, that abomination? Don’t you have a bathing suit?” asked Aunt Julie.
“This is my bathing suit.”
“Lord preserve us. You’re going to let Budgie Byrne see you in that?”
I dug my shovel ferociously into the moat. “She’s not a Byrne anymore, is she?”
“Ah. So you are holding it against her.”
I stopped digging and rested my hands on my knees, which were covered by the thick cotton of my black bathing suit. “Why shouldn’t Budgie get married? Why shouldn’t anybody get married, if she wants to?”
“Oh, I see. We’re back to bygones again. Where are those cigarettes? I could use another cigarette.”
“The child can hear you,” Kiki reminded us. She turned her pail over and withdrew it to reveal a perfect castle turret.
“That’s lovely, darling.” I shoveled sand upward from the moat excavation to form a wall next to the tower. For an instant I paused, wondering if I was angry enough to shape it into battlements.
Aunt Julie rummaged through the basket, looking for the Chesterfields. “Did I tell you to bury yourself with your corpse of a mother for the past six years? No, I did not. Live a little, I told you. Make something of yourself.”
“Kiki needed me.”
“Your mother could have looked after her just fine.”
Kiki and I both stared at Aunt Julie. She had found the cigarettes and held one now between her crimson lips as she fumbled for the lighter. “What?” she asked, looking first at me and then at Kiki. “All right, all right,” she conceded, holding the flame up to the cigarette. “But you could have hired a nanny.”
“The child does not wish to be raised by a nanny,” said Kiki.
“Mother has enough to do, with all her charity projects,” I said.
“Charity projects,” Aunt Julie said, as if it were an obscenity. “If you ask me, which you never do, it’s a bad sign when a woman spends more time looking after orphans than her own family.”
“She looks after Daddy,” I said.
“You don’t see her looking after him now, do you?”
“It’s summer. We always come to Seaview in the summer. It’s how Daddy would want it.”
Aunt Julie snorted. “Has anybody asked him?”
I thought of my father in his pristine room, staring at the wall of books that used to give him such pleasure. “That’s not nice, Aunt Julie.”
“Life’s too short for nice, Lily. The thing is, you’re wasting yourself. Everyone has a little bump in the road when they’re young. God knows I had a few. You pick yourself up. Move on.” She offered me the cigarette, and I shook my head. “Let me cut your hair tonight. Trim it a bit. Put some lipstick on you.”
“Oh, do it, Lily!” Kiki turned to me. “You’d look beautiful! Can I help, Aunt Julie?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Everyone knows me here. If you put lipstick on me, they won’t let me into the club. Anyway, dress myself up for whom? Mrs. Hubert? The Langley sisters?”
“Someone’s bound to have an unmarried fellow down for the weekend.”
“Then you’ll have him running for your gin and tonic before I can stick you with my hatpin.”
Aunt Julie waved her hand in dismissal, trailing a coil of smoke. “Scout’s honor.”
“Oh, you’re a Girl Scout now, are you? That’s rich.”
“Lily, darling. Let me do it. I need a project. I’m so desperately bored out here, you can’t imagine.”
“Then why do you come?”
She wrapped her arms around her knees, staring out at the ocean, cigarette dangling ash into the sand. The wind ruffled her hair, but only at the tips. “Oh, it keeps the beaus on their toes, you know. Disappearing for a few weeks every year. Even I wouldn’t dare bring a boyfriend to Seaview. Mrs. Hubert still hasn’t forgiven me for my divorce, the old dear.”
“None of us have forgiven you for your divorce. Peter was such a nice fellow.”
“Too nice. He deserved better.” She jumped to her feet and tossed the cigarette in the sand. “It’s settled, then. I’m taking you in hand tonight.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
Aunt Julie’s crimson lips split into a thousand-watt smile, the one the New York papers loved. She was nearing forty now, and it crinkled up the skin around her eyes, but nobody really noticed the crinkling with a smile as electric as Aunt Julie’s. “Darling,” she said, “I don’t remember asking your permission.”
LIFE IN SEAVIEW revolved around the club, and the club revolved around Mrs. Hubert. If you asked any Seaview resident why this should be so, you’d be met with a blank stare. Mrs. Hubert had been around so long, no one could remember when her reign began, and considering her robust state of health (“vulgar, really, the way she never sits down at parties,” my mother said), no one would hazard a guess to its end. She was the Queen Victoria of summertime, except she never wore black and stood as tall and thin as a gray-haired maypole.
“Why, Lily, my dear,” she said, kissing my cheek. “What have you done with your hair tonight?”
I touched the chignon at the nape of my neck. “Aunt Julie put it back for me. She wanted to cut it, but I wouldn’t let her.”
“Good girl,” said Mrs. Hubert. “Never take fashion advice from a divorcée. Now, Kiki, my sweet.” She knelt down. “Do you promise to be a good girl tonight? I shall have you blackballed if you aren’t. We are young ladies at the club, aren’t we?”
Kiki put her arms around Mrs. Hubert’s neck and whispered something in her ear.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Hubert, “but only when your mother’s not looking.”
I glanced back at Mother and Aunt Julie, who had been stopped by an old acquaintance in the foyer. “Are you sitting out on the veranda this evening? It’s so lovely and warm.”
“With this surf? I should think not. My hearing is not what it was.” Mrs. Hubert gave Kiki a last pat and rose up with all the grace of an arthritic giraffe. “But off you go. Oh, no. Wait a moment. I meant to ask you something.” She placed a hand on my elbow and drew me close, until I could smell the rose-petal perfume drifting from her skin, could see the faint white lines of rice powder settling into the crevasses of her face. “You’ve heard about Budgie Byrne, of course.”
“I’ve heard she’s opening up her parents’ old place for the summer,” I said coolly.
“What do you think of it?”
“I think it’s high time. It’s a lovely old house. A shame it sat empty so long.”
Mrs. Hubert’s eyes were china blue, and hadn’t lost a single candlepower since she