Remembrance

Lynn Michaels

Chapter 1

Though nine years had passed since she’d been to her grandmother’s house on Martha’s Vineyard, Cathy Mar­tin had no trouble spotting its blue shingled roof from the coastal highway. She’d taken the hardtop off her red MG on the ferry over from Wood’s Hole. The wind was up, hissing through the salt grass that clung to the dunes between the house and the beach with Yankee tenacity. It whipped sand in her eyes as she turned the Midget into the rutted lip of the driveway.

Memory diminishes things, but the house looked just as big and stately as Cathy remem­bered. The canary-yellow boardwalk ran across the lawn from the front porch to the scratchy gray ribbon of beach. Of all the things that had changed during the years she’d lived in London, Cathy was glad her grandmother’s house wasn’t one of them.

She’d changed most of all. She was twenty-seven now, weighed ten pounds more than she had at eighteen and her once near-platinum hair had dark­ened to ash-blond. She no longer had a figure or a husband, just a tummy trimmer and a di­vorce decree.

And a faint suspicion that her life wasn’t quite as together as she thought.

Cathy parked the MG at the bottom of the sloping driveway and slid out from behind the wheel. She pushed the door shut with her hip, screened her eyes with both hands and surveyed Cat’s House -- the closest her grand­mother had ever come to giving her miniature estate a name.

The title offended some of the stuffier islanders but it surprised no one who knew Catherine Lindsay, the long retired but still-revered Belle of Broadway. Her love for puns and spoonerisms was legendary.

Two stories with an attic and a widow’s walk, the house was built of traditional Cape Cod clapboard in 1853 by Captain Ezekiel Croft, as renowned in his day for his whaling exploits as Cat Lindsay was for her exploits on and off the stage.

The quarter-mile grounds included a separate three-car garage, which had once been the sta­bles, a gardener’s cottage, a greenhouse, a lath house, a guesthouse and a gazebo ringed by roses.

Cathy squinted toward the white-railed fence enclos­ing the garden and saw Hadley Archer, her grandmoth­er’s antiquarian gardener, look up from the hybrid teas. Wondering if he’d remember her, she waved.

Had stared at her a moment, then leaned the pruners he held against the fence and fished a pipe from the pocket of his tattered corduroy jacket. He took a worn leather tobacco pouch from the pocket of his muddy gray trousers, opened it and began filling his pipe.

This was the signal Cathy remembered from childhood summers spent at Cat’s House. She could sit on the fence and watch Had work as long as she watched in silence. When he pulled out his pipe it meant he was finished and it was okay to talk.

Cathy walked across the lawn, swung up on the fence and leaned against one of the posts.

“Hello, Had. Is Grandma in the greenhouse?”

“Nope.” He folded the pouch and tucked it in his back pocket. “Miz Linzay left some while ago.”

“Oh.” Cathy sighed, disappointed. “Where’d she go?”

 “Dunno. Took off with that actor feller.”

There was no point asking which actor feller. Had could recite the Latin and common name of every plant variety on the Vineyard, but the names of the theatrical notables who vacationed on the island and took sporadic turns paying homage to Cat Lindsay were as foreign to him as Prunus maritima would be to one of them.

“Oh, well. I’m early.” Cathy looked down the rows of rose bushes that were just beginning to bud and asked, “Which one is ‘Catherine Lindsay’?”

“Those six there.” Had nodded at two tri-corner plantings flanking the gate. “Put ‘em there so’s they’d be the first bloom you see.”

“How’s it feel to be a world famous hybridizer?”

“Lotta to-do.” Had turned his back to the breeze blowing off the beach, snapped the tip off a wooden match with his thumbnail and lit his pipe. “Don’t under­stand all the hoopla ‘bout the rose or Miz Linzay’s memoirs. For three, four weeks after word come out she was gonna write a book, the place was crawlin’ with folks, mostly show biz mucky-mucks come out to see if they was gonna be mentioned or to make sure they wasn’t.

“Then --” Had pointed a muddy index finger at Cathy “-- all them fellers your father hired to help Miz Lin­zay write the book started showin’ up. Seemed like ever’ week there was a different one. Spent most m’time pickin’ ‘em up at the ferry, drivin’ ‘em back a few days later, pickin’ up another one, drivin’ ‘im back.

“High-strung bunch. Worse’n Miz Linzay’s actin’ friends. Even that Mr. Penney. Always seemed real steady, but he was goosier than the whole lot of ‘em.” Had shook his head, his dentures clicking on the stem of his pipe. “You s’pose you can get Miz Linzay’s book written, Cathy?”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said confidently.

“You only wrote one book,” Had replied. “Some kinda novel, wasn’t it?”

That was more or less what the critics had said, but Cathy gave Had a plucky smile. “I’m sure I can do it. And so is my father.”

Had snorted. “Your father thought all them other fellers could, too. T’the man, they all lit outta here glassy eyed and mumblin’ to themselves.”

All them other fellers totaled eight and each was a highly regarded author. Especially Noel Penney, her fa­ther’s oldest friend. Two years ago Noel had won a Pulitzer for Phineas’s Rainbow, the biography of Phineas Martin, Cat’s long-dead husband and the grand­father Cathy had never known.

When her mother emailed her that Noel was going to co-author her grandmother’s memoirs, Cathy had thought them the perfect team. Her father hadn’t men­tioned the other seven fellers when he’d called her in Lon­don and cajoled her into taking a crack at the book. He’d saved them until she’d come home to Boston three days ago.

Now that she recalled the conversation, Cathy realized her father had been uncharacteristically vague. That he had, in fact, looked a bit glassy eyed. He’d even mumbled once or twice.

Uh-oh, she thought.

“Now that you mention it. Had, my father wasn’t clear about the turnover in co-authors. What exactly was the problem?”

“Wouldn’t know.” Had knocked the ash out of his pipe and put it in his pocket. “Don’t mix in Miz Linzay’s personal business. Just tend the garden.”

Hadley Archer had been just tending the garden and mixing in as much of Cat’s business as he could since Cathy was ten years old. She smiled at his disclaimer and slid off the fence.

“See you later, Had,” Cathy said and turned toward the driveway.

“I think Miz Linzay wanted you to write her memoirs all along.”

Cathy had taken only a few steps when Had offered this opinion. She turned back and asked: “Why me?”

“She knows you ain’t afraid of ghosts.”

A shiver started up Cathy’s spine. Then one corner of Had’s mouth twitched and she laughed.

“Oh, I get it. I’m not afraid of ghosts -- or ghostwriting. Pretty good, Had.”

Her lips pursed thoughtfully, Cathy walked back to her car. Eccentric as Had was, he was also as stalwart and honest as her father was sophisticated and facile. Lindsay Martin was not only a playwright, he was a playwright’s son. He knew just the right words to chose.

Her father could manipulative with the best of them, but she wouldn’t let what Had told her about Cat’s co-authors trouble her. At least until she’d unloaded the car, had a drink and a chance to call her father.

Cathy was halfway up the flagstone patio steps, stumbling under the weight of two suitcases that had seemed a lot lighter when she’d strapped them onto the luggage rack in Boston, when the Dutch back door swung open.

Helmut, Cat’s cook and major domo, weighed three hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. He crossed his heavily tattooed arms on the lower half of the door and watched her. Didn’t offer to help, just watched.

“Hi, ya, Cath. Yer early.”

“I got -- ” She gasped, pausing on the second step from the top to catch her breath “ -- an early start.”

“Those look heavy. Better get ‘em in here before you drop ‘em.” Helmut unlatched the door, swung it open and dis­appeared inside.

“Some people never change,” Cathy panted as she struggled the suitcases across the patio, wrestled them through the door and dropped them with a thud in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“Hear you lost weight.” Helmut turned away from the sink and handed her a glass of water. “About a hunnard and eighty pounds of ham.”

Helmut meant her ex-husband Garrett Pauling -- the next Olivier, as he liked to call himself -- and though Cathy was sick to death of divorce jokes, she smiled good-naturedly as Helmut’s booming laugh rattled the copper saucepans hung on the white tile wall behind the stove. Then she drank the water and gave the glass back to him.

“Had said Grandma took off with some actor. Any­body I know?”

“Nah. Just that bum what lives down the beach.”

“D’you know when she’ll be home?”

“Whenever she wears him out. You got any more lug­gage?”

“Yes.” Cathy’s voice and her expression brightened hopefully. “Two more cases, plus my computer.”

“Better leave ‘em till later, then. Those stairs are a bitch.”

“Why, thank you, Helmut,” she replied with a smile. “How thoughtful.”

Cathy picked up her suitcases and headed for the main staircase in the dining room, wondering how Hel­mut -- who as far as she knew hadn’t been up them in the nearly two dozen years that he’d worked for Cat Lindsay -- had discovered that the stairs were a bitch.

On the landing twenty steps up from the first floor, Cathy took a rest stop. Here the staircase split into two flights of twenty more steps each and formed the square second-floor gallery above the living room and dining room.

Sunshine poured through the round leaded glass window high above her. The gleaming oak banisters en­closing the gallery were constructed, scaled down to fit the house, from the railings on the Rachel Simms, Captain Croft’s whaling ship.

Rachel Simms, the daughter of a New Bedford mer­chant, had been his fiancée. Though he’d named his ship for her, old Zeke hadn’t been real eager to settle down. After ten years of waiting, Rachel got fed up and mar­ried somebody else while Zeke and his crew were at sea. When he returned to port and found Rachel married, Captain Croft had been so heartbroken he’d scavenged and then scuttled the Rachel Simms somewhere off the Vineyard.

No one knew where. Not even the captain’s great-niece, from whom Cat Lindsay had bought the house.

Growing up, Cathy had thought the story so romantic. She’d daydreamed about finding a piece of the Rachel Simms washed up on the beach. She’d spent rainy days in the attic poring through the captain’s papers, all care­fully stowed away in musty old sea trunks left behind by his niece.

Cathy hadn’t cared about the maps and charts, she was looking for love letters from Rachel. She’d never found any, and now -- as she drew a deep breath and launched herself, arms shuddering, up the right-hand staircase -- Cathy cursed Captain Croft for building such a damn big ship, and then such a damn big house to accom­modate its bits and pieces.

The bedroom she’d always slept in shared the widow’s walk, a bathroom and a sitting room with Cat’s bedroom at the far end of the gallery. Other than the tangy smell of Pine-Sol and fresh sheets on the turned-down four-poster bed, the room hadn’t been altered since the last summer she’d spent at Cat’s House. The summer she’d turned eighteen. The sum­mer she’d met Garrett.

Playbills from her father’s shows all but obscured the full-length mirror on the closet door. Posters of Oasis, Blur and Pearl Jam clung to the blue walls on thin strips of yellowed adhesive tape. A stuffed Snoopy lay on the bed.

Cathy didn’t remember leaving so much junk behind, hadn’t any idea that her grandmother would enshrine it, or that it would suddenly make her feel so old and disjointed. But that’s how she felt, old and disjointed and totally out of place.

Her Assertiveness Training taught that large-muscle exercise was the best way to work off feelings of inade­quacy. Twenty minutes later, after she’d lugged the rest of her luggage upstairs -- she left her crated PC in the dining room -- Cathy flung herself, heart thumping, face first on the bed.

Maybe a better way to deal with insecurity would be a tall, dark and hand­some EMT well trained in the more titillating as­pects of CPR. Since one wasn’t handy, Cathy sat up and wondered what she was going to do till her grandmother came home.

She could clear all this junk out of her room and haul it up to the attic, but she’d had enough exercise for one day. She thought another moment, then decided to take to the beach with Phineas’s Rainbow.

Noel Penney was apt to show up. Two years ago he’d sent her an autographed copy of the book. In her thank you note, Cathy wrote that she’d absolutely loved the book. She supposed she ought to read it just in case.

She tugged the wedding-ring quilt off the bed, put on her sunglasses and made for the beach with her grandfather’s biography tucked in the crook of her arm.

Once she’d cleared the dunes that protected Cat’s House, the chilly April wind streamed her hair behind her and raised gooseflesh on her arms inside the sleeves of her sweater.

A half-mile or so down the beach Cathy found a small windblown dune that would probably be gone after the next big storm and hunkered down behind it. The midday sun had disappeared behind a scud of gray cloud, but the sand was still warm.

Cathy wrapped herself in the quilt and wiggled her back into the dune. Her goose bumps receded and sand skittered around her as she leaned Phineas’s Rainbow against her drawn-up knees and looked at her grandfather’s photo on the back cover.

It was a black-and-white taken when he was thirty-five, some twenty-two years before Cathy was born. He’d been outrageously handsome, a dark-haired, blue-eyed three-way tie between Cary Grant, Errol Flynn and John Barrymore, who’d starred on Broadway in two of his plays.

Catherine Lindsay was the love of his life. He’d met Cat in his mother-in-law’s parlor in Boston on a sunny October afternoon in 1927, six months after he’d married Cat’s first cousin Alma.

He’d slept with her that night, dumped Alma in the morning and, after lunch, caught the New York via Philadelphia train with Cat. Cathy had never been able to figure out exactly who had corrupted whom, but knowing her grandmother she’d always felt pretty sure that Phineas had been the corruptee.

“You poor jerk.” Cathy traced her grandfa­ther’s dimpled chin with her index finger. “You never had a chance.”

Neither had she once she’d married Garrett. It took Cathy nine years to realize he’d not only swept her off her feet, but swept away her identity, too. What little she’d managed to accumulate growing up in a family of congenital overachievers, rolling around for eighteen years in their genetically gifted midst like a lost ball in high weeds.

Garrett hadn’t understood that, couldn’t compre­hend why streaming along in the wake of his helicon tal­ent wasn’t enough for her. Cathy hadn’t been able to explain it to him, either, so she’d left.

First Garrett, and then London, afraid that she’d cave in and go back to him, afraid that she’d never amount to anything on her own, that she’d settle for being a poorly packed snowball tumbling along in the tail of somebody else’s comet.

Scary as it was, Cathy knew she’d made the right decision. What about her grandfather? Did he have regrets? Had he ever wished he’d stayed with Alma? According to Cat, who’d been known to lie pathologically when it suited her best interests, he never had. Yet Cathy wondered.

The sun came out from behind the clouds. The wind died as she opened the book to page 146, just before Phinneas Martin’s cataclysmic meeting with Cat in his mother-in-law’s parlor.

Lulled by the warm sand and the sun on her face, Cathy be­gan to nod off in the middle of the third paragraph on page 149.

“Riveting prose, Noel.” She yawned, let the book fall open against her chest and her eyes drift shut.

When she jerked awake, Cathy was curled on her side with the quilt tangled around her, her sunglasses askew and the book half under her head with one corner of it digging into her cheek.

She groaned and rolled stiffly onto her back, started to yawn and stretch -- and froze as she looked up and saw her grandfather standing in front of her.

Leaning toward her with his hands wrapped around his thighs just above his knees. He wore black jeans and a V-neck sweater almost the same color as the dark hair falling over his navy-blue eyes. He smiled, with his right hand lightly grazed the crease in her cheek.

“Next time you want to nap on the beach, pussy wil­low,” he said, “call me and I’ll loan you my shoulder.”

The brush of his knuckles was so light, so barely there, that Cathy felt nothing. Of course not, she thought dazedly, because he isn’t here, he isn’t real, no matter how alive he looks.

“Y-you’re dead,” she stammered.

His smile widened. He leaned closer, near enough for Cathy to count his eyelashes as the wind gusted and ruffled his hair around his ears.

“Do I look dead?” He asked.

His baritone voice had a soft, lilting cadence to it that Cathy had heard before but couldn’t identify.

“I’m going to close my eyes,” she said, “and count to ten. When I open them, you’re going to be gone.”

“Whatever you say, pussy willow.”

His voice made her shiver as she closed her eyes, cov­ered them with her hands and started counting.

“Eight -- nine -- ten.” Cathy spread her fingers and opened her eyes.

He was gone.

She thrashed out of the tangled quilt and leaped to her feet. The wind lashed her hair in her eyes as she looked up and down the almost quarter mile of empty beach in both directions and felt herself start to tremble.

Where the hell had he gone? Where had come from? Her imagination or had she been dreaming? If so, he was the most vivid dream she’d ever had.

Never again so help her God, Cathy vowed, would she fall asleep on the beach. She snatched up the quilt, her sunglasses, Phineas’s Rainbow and ran for Cat’s House.

She didn’t stop till she was in her bedroom, the door shut behind her, her shoulder blades pressed against it and her heart thud­ding in her throat. So much for Had and his the­ory that she wasn’t afraid of ghosts.

But she hadn’t seen a ghost.

Ghosts wore old sheets and moaned. So did Cathy, one hand pressed to her throat at the remembrance of long, well-muscled legs in jeans so tight they looked as if they’d been spray painted on. She’d had a dream. Too much caffeine or not enough sleep. She’d hallucinated. That’s all it was.

There was no such thing as ghosts.

Cathy kept telling herself that as she sat on the bed staring at Phineas’s Rainbow, lying front cover up on the floor where she’d dropped it, the dust jacket askew and wrinkled. It’s only a book, she told herself, pick it up and straighten it.

She did, unaware that she was holding her breath until Helmut’s booming voice thundered, “Lunch!”

Cathy yelped and let the book fly. It slammed into the pine headboard with a thwack, plopped onto the pillow, slid off the percale case and thudded to the floor between the bed and the wall.

It could stay there till hell froze. Her heart trip hammering, Cathy took a deep breath and went downstairs.