She saw the key flash in his hand, then his hand plunge into his pants pocket. Or she saw no such thing — she saw only that something was being held, something disappeared. “Have the key?” she said, trying to sound casual.
“Yup,” he said. He sat down beside her. He said, “I’m surprised he didn’t put a table between the chairs and maybe drag out two of those plastic footstools.”
She looked at him. He looked older than she expected in the shadows. “Maybe free popcorn’s still to come,” she said, again trying to sound neutral. Casual and neutraclass="underline" were they the same thing? Was she going to be wondering about little distinctions when she was old and gray — was she going to be one of those stereotypes, the amoral woman who does whatever she wants, but who never gets what she wants, because she doesn’t even know what that would be?
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Norwegian couple, the woman in a cropped top and tight silver pants, the man in jeans and pointed-toe boots and a Western shirt in a crazy shade of yellow decorated with dark brown arrows. The Norwegians? Was this their version of going native? “Over there, step out of that light into that other one,” the older man called and they moved immediately, in unison, where they were told to go. The woman’s hair looked longer than Moira remembered. Maybe it was extensions. They were clearly actors. Part of the film. Startled at the same realization, Hughes punched her lightly in the arm. “The ghouls are stars!” he said. “What do you know!”
Kunal came out of the Norwegians’ room, carrying an ice bucket holding an upended bottle. He didn’t look in their direction. “Move more to the left, that’s right,” one of the men rolling lights said to the couple. “You know what you’re doing, right?” They nodded. Hughes continued to stare, slowly shaking his head. Kunal and the owner stood outside the office in a huddle. “James, back it up a little,” one of the men called to another. “That’s right, follow Rick. I think I fucked up placing that last camera over there.”
The Norwegians stood shoulder to shoulder. Tinkle, tinkle went the wind chimes. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, Moira thought. How I wonder what you are. She’d once played that, slowly, on her xylophone. Her brother had taught her how to read music. Her father had taught her to play tennis, then beat her every time. Her mother had taught her that kindness was a virtue and tried to see that her two children lived that way, even if her husband started fights in restaurants and once deliberately knocked over a glass of water on a tablecloth.
She was on her feet before she realized she was in motion. It was now thought that actions often started first, and explanations or rationalizations followed: I jumped up because I was mad! No, the person jumped up and then had to find a reason why.
Moira said to Kunal, “I know you’re busy, but I wanted to apologize for him. We’re not married, you know, and he’s never going to marry me, but that’s neither here nor there. You’ve seen to it that we had a lovely time here, and he appreciates that as much as I do. He’s just one of those guys. You read him right. I apologize.” She leaned forward slightly, the owner looking at her, perplexed. She kissed Kunal lightly on his forehead, a chaste, sister-brother kiss, which startled him and made him blush, though she could see from the sparkle in his eye that it was okay.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He turned to the motel owner, who held the ice bucket out to him. With his thumb in the slushy, cold water, Kunal took a step backward. He said to the owner, “What does it mean, ‘neither here nor there’?”
THE LITTLE HUTCHINSONS
On their way to their summer house, the Little Hutchinsons stopped in to say hello to us every summer. If you’re curious about why they were called the Little Hutchinsons, it’s because Al Hutchinson was six foot three — a basketball player, later a coach, from North Carolina — who married a very short woman from Bangor, Maine, and together they produced three sons, the tallest about five foot seven. The other boys, including our friend Gilly (the youngest), were about my height, which is five foot two.
I’m not obsessed with height, but it’s the obvious thing to ask about someone called “little.” The Senior Hutchinsons died when their private plane went down. Neither of the older boys wanted their house, uninsulated and in need of repair, though beautifully situated above cliffs that staggered like the nude descending a staircase down to a small, pebbly beach.
Etta Rae, who had not particularly enjoyed visiting her husband, Gilly’s, parents when they were alive because of the amount of work it required helping them plant and prune flowers and bushes, making the meals, washing up… Etta Rae totally changed her impression of the house and of life in Maine after the tragedy that befell the Senior Hutchinsons. Every summer since, they’ve vacationed during June and July in the house, renting it out in August.
My husband and I live in the town you have to drive through to get to the big houses on the cliff above the beach. Our house is near the stone bungalow that used to be the library. I was quite surprised when Etta Rae asked if Marcy, their only child, might have her wedding party in our backyard. The house they inherited is a big, beautiful Victorian. There’s even a cupola at the edge of the property, though it’s lacking most of its roof. Etta Rae told me that they’d been advised that because of the direction the wind usually blew when there was a storm, a tent pitched in their backyard would be inadvisable in the event of bad weather on Marcy and Jasper’s wedding day. Marcy was marrying her third cousin, who had cut our lawn every summer when he was going to Colby. They’d met in college, having seen each other only once during their childhoods. He’d been a problem child who’d been sent away to boarding school in Baltimore when he was younger, but he’d returned to Maine for college.
Marcy was a petite girl who wore heels or platform shoes or boots with stacked heels, no matter the fashion. Her husband-to-be was even shorter. For a man, he was quite short. When Marcy and her fiancé were out walking, people sometimes collided with them because they didn’t see them coming — especially when one or the other was disembarking from a parked car. I liked Marcy, but I was less sure about Jasper, though years had passed since he’d last been called before a judge. He’d gone to drug rehab and gotten clean. Still, there was something about him I didn’t trust. I expected him to erupt someday, or to cause trouble eventually — what kind, I couldn’t have anticipated. This fear figures in the story because, as crazy as I thought the request was to use our backyard to erect a tent when they lived on beautiful property overlooking a beach, I might simply have said yes if not for the fact that I once saw Jasper deliberately run the lawn mower over a turtle. He wasn’t a child when he did this; he was a junior at Colby.
Etta Rae did not make her request in my husband’s presence. We had our annual lunch of lobster rolls and herbal iced tea at the hotel across the road from the newish park full of rugosa roses and, in recent years, an assortment of tall grasses. As we sipped our tea, she told me that anxiety about the wedding was raising her blood pressure and that her husband, Gilly, was quite upset about it. He had even, behind her back, offered to give a considerable sum of money to the young couple if they would elope. Apparently at least the groom had considered this a good idea, but their daughter very much wanted a celebration. Could they elope and would her parents still give them a party, a bit after the fact, in June or July? They would. But because two companies who erected tents had expressed doubt about the safety and security of structures pitched above the cliffs (the gazebo would hold about six people and would have been useless, even if in perfect condition), Gilly had the idea — at least according to Etta Rae — that they ask if we’d be willing, as an alternative, to have the party at our house.