The Bay at Midnight

“You never asked to stay anywhere else,” I said, frowning.

“And you call my cell phone constantly to check up on me,” she said. “Do you know—”

“Not to check up on you,” I corrected her. “I call you because I care about you. And I don’t call you ‘constantly.’” Our too-frequent arguments often had this flavor. They started off in one direction and then took a circuitous route that left my head spinning. “What is this really all about?” I asked.

She let out an exasperated sigh, as though I was too dense to possibly understand. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that soon I’ll be on my own and I think it’s time I got some practice, so that’s why I think I should live at Dad’s for the summer.”

“You won’t be on your own at Dad’s,” I countered, although I knew Glen would do all he could to please his only child. He’d greet any potential conflict between Shannon and himself with his usual passivity. I’d had to be the disciplinarian—the bad guy—with our daughter from the start.

I thought about Shannon’s graduation ceremony. Glen and his sister and nephew had sat a few rows behind Mom, Lucy and me, and I’d felt as though the three of them were staring at me. I wanted to go up to Glen after the ceremony, throw my arms around him, point to Shannon and say, Look what we did together! But there was a wall between us, one that was probably my fault. I was still angry for what he’d done to me and to our marriage. Shannon knew nothing about any of that, and I planned to keep it that way. I would never have harmed her father in her eyes.

“I know I won’t actually be on my own,” she said. “That’s not the point. I’m just going to do it, Mom, okay? I mean, I don’t really need your permission, right? To stay with him?”

I couldn’t think clearly. “Can we talk about this later?” I asked. I looked down at the letter in my lap and realized I had folded it into smaller and smaller rectangles until it could fit neatly in the palm of my hand.

“What’s that?” Shannon pointed to the fat wad of paper.

I unfolded it carefully, still feeling some disbelief that Abby Worley’s visit had occurred at all. “I had a visitor,” I said.

“Who?”

“The daughter of Ethan Chapman. He lived next door to my family’s summer bungalow when I was a kid. He was my age. His older brother, Ned, died recently and Ethan’s daughter—her name is Abby—found this letter in his belongings. It was addressed to the police.”

I handed the letter to her and watched lines of worry form between her eyebrows as she read it.

“Oh, Mom,” she said, exasperation in her voice. “Like you really need this.”

“I know.” It came out as a whisper.

“Ned was Isabel’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?” She used Isabel’s name more easily than anyone else in the family, perhaps because she had never known her. To Shannon, Isabel was the aunt who had died long before she was born. The one we rarely mentioned, even though Shannon looked more like her with every year. The thick dark hair and double rows of black eyelashes, the almond-shaped eyes and deep dimples. Shannon was now seventeen, the same age Isabel had been when she died. She knew what had happened the summer I was twelve and she understood that those events were the reason I held on to her so tightly: I would never let her run wild as Isabel had. Shannon knew it all, but that didn’t stop her from resenting my attempts to keep her safe.

“Yes,” I said. “Isabel’s boyfriend.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

I looked down at my hands where they rested in my lap and saw that she was right.

“What are you supposed to do with this?” She handed the letter back to me.

“I’m going to talk to Ethan about taking it to the police. And if he won’t take it, I’ll do it myself.”

She let out a long breath. “I suppose you have to,” she said. “Have you talked to Lucy about it?”

“Not yet,” I said, although I’d been thinking of calling my sister when Shannon had arrived. I needed to talk to someone who understood how I felt.

Shannon stood up. “Well,” she said, a bit awkwardly, “I have to get back to the store. I just wanted to tell you…you know, about moving to Dad’s. Sorry that my timing sucked, and that it turned into this big, like—” she waved her hands through the air “—this altercation or whatever.”

I nodded. “When will you go?”

“In a couple of days. Okay?” She was longing for my blessing.

“Okay.” What else could I say?

She handed me the empty Coke can. “Would you mind sticking that in recycling, please?” she asked.

I took the can and held it on my lap next to the letter. “Have fun at work,” I said.

“Thanks.” She bounced down the porch steps with an ease known only to the young.

“Shannon?” I called as she walked down our sidewalk.

“What?” She didn’t bother to turn around.

“If you talk to Nana, don’t say anything about this to her.” It was an unwritten rule in my family never to talk to my mother about the summer of ’62.

“I won’t,” she said, lifting her arm in a wave.

I stood up then, letter and Coke can in my hands, and walked into the house to call my sister.

CHAPTER 3

Lucy

My cell phone rang as I got out of my car in the McDonald’s parking lot in Garwood. Seeing on the caller ID display that it was Julie, I answered it. “Hi, sis,” had barely left my lips when she launched into the conversation she’d had with Ethan Chapman’s daughter. I leaned against the car, listening, trying unsuccessfully to conjure up a cohesive image of Ethan and Ned Chapman. Ned barely existed in my memory, and Ethan was twelve and blurry around the edges. I didn’t like his daughter’s reason for showing up on Julie’s doorstep one bit.

“You know what, Julie?” I said when she’d told me everything.

“What?”

“I grant you, the whole thing is unsettling,” I said, “But I think Ethan Chapman’s daughter should solve the mystery on her own. Leave you out of it. You don’t need this.”

“That’s what Shannon said.”

“I have a very smart niece,” I said.

Julie didn’t respond.

“What are you thinking?” I reached into my shoulder bag for my sunglasses and slipped them on. Who knew how long I’d be standing out here talking with her? I couldn’t walk into McDonald’s while having this conversation: Our mother was in there.

“If George Lewis didn’t do it,” Julie said, “I can’t just sit back and let the world think he did.”

“Yes, you can,” I said, although my zeal for justice was normally, if anything, stronger than Julie’s. “Let Ethan’s daughter take the letter to the police, then. As long as she does it, I don’t see why you have to be involved at all.” I was surprised at how upset I felt. My creative, sensitive sister was already clinging to the edge with Shannon—Isabel’s double—getting ready to go away to college. I didn’t want anything to add to her stress and I was annoyed with Abby Chapman for dragging her into something she really had no need to be part of.

“That’s just it,” Julie said. “I don’t think she’ll do anything about it without his okay. I have to talk to him. I’m in a bind.”

I could tell she’d already made up her mind. “Okay,” I relented. “If you have to, you have to.”

A group of kids walked past me, their laughter loud in my ear.

“Where are you?” Julie asked.

“I’m in the McDonald’s parking lot.”

“Don’t tell Mom about this.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” I couldn’t believe she thought I needed the warning.

“And I got some other good news today.” Julie’s voice was tinged with sarcasm.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Shannon wants to live with Glen for the summer.”

“Ah,” I said. Shannon had spoken with me about that possibility. She always ran things past me before she laid them on Julie. She told me things she wouldn’t breathe to another adult. I was the person who’d taken her to get birth control pills when she was fifteen; Julie would kill me if she knew. This year, with Shannon the age Isabel had been when she died, Julie seemed to snap, tightening her grip on her daughter just when she should have been loosening it. So, I’d told Shannon that while it would be hard on her mother to have her live with Glen for the summer, I thought it was a good idea. It might help Julie get used to letting her go.

My lack of surprise at Julie’s announcement made her suspicious.

“Did you know?” she asked.

“She’d told me she was considering it,” I admitted.

There was a brief silence on the line. “I wish you’d told me,” she said.

“It wasn’t a sure thing, and I thought it should come from her.” I felt guilty. “It might be good for both of you, Julie.”

Two men in their mid-thirties walked past me in the parking lot, not even glancing in my direction. I was approaching fifty, the age of invisibility for a woman, and I was more fascinated than distressed by the phenomenon. It seemed to have happened overnight. Four or five years ago, even though I’d worn my silver-streaked hair the same way I did now—in a long French braid down my back, with thick, straight bangs over my forehead—I’d still been able to turn heads. My skin was nearly as smooth and clear as it had been then, and I wore the same type of clothes, mainly long crinkly skirts and knit tank tops. Nevertheless, men my age and younger now looked right through me. Maybe I was giving off the scent of decay. I didn’t mind. I was taking a long, possibly permanent, break from dating.

“She seems…distant or something,” Julie was saying in my ear, and I turned my attention back to the phone call. “She’s changing. Have you noticed? I think she’s putting on weight and she doesn’t go out anymore. I’m worried about her.”

Julie was right. Shannon did seem more withdrawn lately, more reserved in our conversations, and she didn’t call as often. I hadn’t noticed the physical change in her until Saturday, when I saw her walk across the stage to get her diploma. There was a heaviness about her, more in her spirit than her body, but I made light of it to relieve Julie’s anxiety. “She’s just having a growth spurt,” I said. “And as for the social life, you used to worry when she did go out. You need to be more careful what you wish for.”

Julie sighed. “I know.”

We wrapped up the conversation and I slipped my phone into my shoulder bag as I walked across the parking lot and into the restaurant. It was full of kids, Garwood’s summer-school students, who were different from the kids I taught at Plainfield High School. Garwood’s students were from mostly white, middle-class families, while Plainfield’s public school population was ethnically diverse and economically challenged. I taught ESL—English as a Second Language—because I relished being surrounded by all those kids whose varied skin colors and languages were overshadowed by their universal yearning to belong.

I spotted my mother at the opposite end of the restaurant. She was standing next to a table in her red-and-white uniform, holding a couple of trays in her hands, talking with a young woman and her two little kids. So many of my friends my age had to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes. I got a kick out of the fact that I visited mine at McDonald’s. Mom was the greeter who always had a smile for everyone, who supervised kids in the play area and who straightened the place up with as much care as she did her own home. She looked smaller to me than she had just a month ago. I used to think she was so tall, but either her spine was contracting, shrinking her, or her height had been an illusion to me. Her hair was white and very pretty. She had it done every week, and it was always soft and natural looking. Her snowy hair was set off by her caramel-colored skin, inherited from her Italian mother. People always thought she’d just returned from a cruise to the Caribbean. Isabel had looked the most like her, but I got her perfect nose and full lips and Julie got her large dark eyes. We were both very lucky to get any part of our mother’s beauty at all.

I came up behind her.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

She looked delighted to see me, as I knew she would. She wrapped one arm around my waist.

“This is the daughter I was telling you about,” she said to the young woman. “The bohemian one.”

I laughed, and the woman smiled blankly. I was certain the twenty-something-year-old woman had no idea what bohemian meant, but she smiled nevertheless.

“Your mother said you just got back from Nepal,” the woman said, holding a French fry in front of her little son’s mouth.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “It was a fantastic trip. Have you been?”

“Oh no.” The woman nodded at her children. “I haven’t been anywhere in three years, for obvious reasons.”

I hadn’t been to Nepal in three years, either, but it was the trip my mother loved to drag out to impress people. To her, it sounded exotic. I wished I could take her there, but although she was remarkably healthy for eighty-one, I was afraid the altitude and the walking would do her in.

“Do you have a minute to visit?” I asked her.

“Of course!” She excused herself from the young woman, but then noticed a mess left on one of the tables. “You take a seat and I’ll join you in a minute,” she said.

I bought an iced tea and sat down at a corner table. Mom was finding more things to do and chatting with one of her much, much younger co-workers, an Hispanic girl with a delicate tattoo on her wrist that made me want to get one myself. I did have a tattoo of a butterfly on my hip—a very foolish mistake made in my twenties when I didn’t realize exactly how gravity would affect that part of my body in middle age. For that reason, I’d tried to talk Shannon out of getting the tattoo of a cello on the small of her back, but she’d insisted and, I had to admit, it was kind of pretty when she wore her low-rise pants. The tattoo was so artfully done that even Julie only freaked out for about ten seconds when she saw it.

Waiting for Mom, I thought about Julie’s call. I couldn’t believe that she was going to have to deal with Isabel’s death again after all this time. I remembered so little of that summer that it never held the sort of pain for me that it did for my sister. I’d only been eight years old, and the images of our lives at Bay Head Shores came to me in tiny little clips, like those short videos you could make on digital cameras. The picture forming in my mind as I sipped my tea was of Julie catching a huge eel. It wasn’t uncommon to catch eels in the canal behind our bungalow, but that one had been particularly enormous.

“She reeled it in all by herself,” I remembered our grandfather boasting. Julie had been his fishing partner. The two of them would spend hours in our sandy backyard, sitting on the big blue wooden chairs, holding on to their poles and talking, although I had no idea what about. I was usually huddled somewhere in the safety of the house with a book.

Most people probably tossed eels back into the water, but my mother and grandmother thought they were a delicacy. Mom came out of the house and she and Julie killed the eel—I don’t recall how; I have mercifully blocked that part of the memory from my mind—and then skinned it. They were standing barefoot on the narrow platform at the bottom of our dock, Julie in a purple bathing suit, my mother in a housedress and apron. Mom held the head of the eel with a rag, while Julie tugged the skin off it like someone slipping a stocking from a leg. I was watching from behind the white picket fence at the end of the dock. I was terrified of falling in, so I never got near the edge of the dock without that fence between me and the water.

I vaguely remember Grandpop and Grandma watching from the side of the dock. There was laughter and chatter, and Ethan Chapman must have been curious because he came over from next door.

“Keen,” he said, kneeling in the sand above the platform where Julie and my mother were doing their dirty work. “That is the most gigantic eel I’ve ever seen.” Ethan was very skinny, his knees the widest part of his legs. He was entirely covered with freckles, and his hair looked brown one minute and red the next, depending on how the sun hit it. His glasses were thick.

“Why don’t you come over tonight and have some?” my mother said. Then she tossed her head back with laughter at the face Ethan made. She knew the eel she cooked was safe from anyone besides my grandmother and herself.

“I don’t want to eat that thing,” Ethan said. “Could I have the skin, though?”

Julie had been about to throw the skin into the water, but she looked up at him, the whites of her eyes in sharp contrast to her nut-brown summer tan.

“What for?” she asked.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, pointing. “Look how shiny it is on the inside. Look at all the colors.”

We stared down at the inside-out eel skin. I could see what he meant. The skin had a shimmery mother-of-pearl look to it.

“It’s yours,” Julie said, tossing the skin up to him.

Ethan reached out with one of his toothpick arms and managed to catch the slithery mess. “And can I have the guts when you clean him?” he asked.

I could see Julie wrinkle her nose. “You’re gross,” she said.

“Julie,” my mother reprimanded her quietly. Then she looked up at Ethan. “Sure you can have them, Ethan,” she said. “What will you do with them?”

“Study them,” Ethan said, and I understood why Julie was no longer friends with him that summer.

Later, when my mother threw the skinned, gutted and beheaded eel into the frying pan, it still wriggled. I had nightmares about that for several nights in a row. I’d been an extraordinarily fearful child back then. After Isabel died that August, my fears gradually began to slip away. It was illogical; I should have become more fearful once my world had been shattered. But it was as though the worst had happened and I’d survived, and I knew I would be okay no matter what happened after that.

Mom finally came over to my table in the corner and sat down across from me.

“Whew!” She smiled. “Busy place today.”

“All the summer-school kids,” I said.

Mom was not really with me. Her eyes darted around the small restaurant, looking for customers she knew and tables in need of cleaning. She’d worked there for five years and it was her home away from home.

“That girl,” she said, nodding toward the young woman she’d introduced me to earlier, “is pregnant again. Can you believe it? She’s going to have three little ones under the age of four.” She clucked her tongue. “The choices people make,” she said.

“It’s her choice, though,” I said.

“Well, I’m certain her husband had something to do with it,” my mother said. She pulled a napkin from her pocket and wiped at a spot on the table. “I wish you’d go to church with me Sunday,” she said. “It’s a special occasion.”

“What’s special about it?” I tried to remember when the holy days were, but drew a blank.

“It’s Father Terrell’s birthday.”

“Ah,” I said. That wasn’t special enough to get me inside a Catholic church. I’d explored just about every religion possible over the course of my adult life and was probably best described as a Buddhist Quaker. I wanted peace, both inside and outside. But I watched my mother carefully fold up the napkin and put it back in her pocket. She was so cute. So devoted to her job. How could I resist her?

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Lucy!” she said.

I got along fine with my mother, despite my lifestyle choices. I’d never been married, but had lived with three different men, eight years apiece. Eight years seemed to be my limit, for some reason.

Julie’s relationship with Mom had always been a little strained, though, in spite of the fact that my sister tried to do everything right. She’d stayed Catholic, gotten married, produced a beautiful grandchild and had an enormously successful career. She was conservative and reliable, the levelheaded daughter who took Mom to her doctor’s appointments and helped her with all her paperwork. Still, there was an undeniable awkwardness between my mother and Julie that I doubted would ever go away. Julie thought she still blamed her for Isabel’s death. I didn’t believe that for a minute, but it was impossible to know if that might be the case, because my mother wasn’t the type to talk about her feelings. The topic of Isabel was always off-limits, anyway. Even I would have been uncomfortable bringing it up with her. Feelings kept under wraps, though, could be far more destructive than those brought out in the open. I knew that, and I was a brave woman, but I would never have been able to form the right words to speak to my mother about Isabel.

“Listen,” my mother said, “I was thinking we need to have a big party before Shannon goes off to college. She’ll be away for her birthday on September tenth, so it could be a combination birthday and going-away party.”

“That’s not for a couple of months, Mom,” I said.

“But you know how time slips by,” she said. “If we don’t start planning it now, it might never happen.”

“All right.” Sometimes it was better to let my mother run with an idea than to try to stop her. “What are your thoughts?”

“We could have it here.”

“At McDonald’s?” I tried not to sound too horrified. “Shannon’s nearly eighteen. I don’t think she’d want to have a party here.”

“All right, all right.” My mother brushed away my comment as though she’d known it was coming. “How about at home, then?” She meant her house, the house Julie and I had grown up in.

“Good idea,” I said.

She started talking about her plans for the party—who we should invite, a theme for the decorations, what sort of food we’d have—and my mind slipped back to the eel.

“Do you remember that huge eel Julie caught?” I asked suddenly.

My mother looked confused, my question so completely out of context. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “What eel? When?”

I realized I’d made a mistake starting the conversation, because I was certain the year of the eel had been 1962.

“Just…when we were kids,” I answered. “She caught it in the canal. When you put it in the frying pan, it still moved.”

“Oh, they always did,” my mother said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Some autonomic nerve thing,” she said. “They were dead as doornails. What on earth made you think of that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I lied. “It just popped into my head.”

My mother looked dreamily into space. “What I wouldn’t give for some eel right now,” she said.

I leaned back and sipped my soda, feeling pleased all out of proportion to the conversation: I’d said something about the bungalow and survived.

CHAPTER 4

Julie 1962

Until my sister’s death the summer I was twelve years old, I’d had a nearly idyllic childhood. The school year was spent in Westfield, a town that offered everything I could possibly need and was an easy bus ride to New York, where my parents often took my sisters and me to the zoo or the history museum or a Broadway play. My parents were smart, well educated and loving, and my overindulgent maternal grandparents, Grandma and Grandpop Foley, lived nearby. Their house was as open to us as our own.

I was a creative child—too creative, some of my teachers said—and loved making up adventures for myself and my friends. I made up stories about things going on in the neighborhood: the old lady on the corner was a witch, I had a boyfriend in another town, I was found abandoned on my parents’ doorstep as an infant. I told the kids in my class that wolves had been spotted in Mindowaskin Park, close to our homes. I loved to write plays to put on in our garage and poetry to read to my classmates.

My mother was popular among my friends, because she always took our endeavors very seriously. She’d paint scenery and sew curtains for the “stage” when we put on a play, and she’d go along with the tall tales I told the neighborhood kids, as long as I wasn’t scaring any of them too much.