“There’s nothing to tell,” Rhoda said, and blushed. The blush seemed entirely contradictory; I could not imagine it on the face of the girl who had boldly requisitioned Deuce’s microphone and drowned the night in horrid sound.
“There’s always something to tell,” Sandy said. She was eating prunes by the fireplace, lazily dipping her hand into the green Sunsweet box, chewing off the black meat, sucking the pits dry. She had told us the day before that she had been irregular for more than a week now, ever since The Big Rape Scene, when she’d been more terrified than she was willing to admit.
“Well, my mother is dead,” Rhoda said, and stopped.
“How did she die?” David asked.
“She drowned,” Rhoda said.
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On Martha’s Vineyard, five summers ago.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“God, that must have been awful,” Sandy said.
“Yes. Yes, it was.”
“Didn’t she know how to swim?”
“Oh yes, she was an expert swimmer.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well...” Rhoda said, and stopped. “I don’t like to talk about it, really.”
“Okay,” Sandy said, and popped another prune into her mouth. There was something chilling about the way she said that single word, as though she were suddenly excluding Rhoda from our closed society, in effect sending her outdoors into the driving rain. I sensed it, and I know that David did, too. I was surprised, however, to see visible recognition of it crossing Rhoda’s face and settling into her serious brown eyes. She hesitated only an instant before speaking again. Sandy had cowed her with a word, and I almost smiled at the ease of her accomplishment. I restrained myself only because Rhoda, after all, was going to tell us about something very serious and important, the drowning of her mother five years ago on Martha’s Vineyard.
“It was a bet,” Rhoda said. “My mother made a bet with this man.”
“What was the bet?”
“That she could swim out to the sandbar and back without stopping to rest.” Rhoda paused. A spark crackled out of the fireplace and onto the living-room rug. Sandy lifted the prune box and then brought it down on the spark, killing it. “There had been a party that night...”
“Oh, was it at nighttime?”
“Yes,” Rhoda said, “and I think everyone had a little too much to drink. I don’t remember very much about it because I was only ten at the time. There was a writer there who had written a bestseller about a man who takes another man’s identity, and there was a lyricist who kept using the word ‘fantastic’ all night long, ‘Oh, that’s a fantastic roast beef,’ or ‘Oh, where did you find this fantastic old lamp?’ I remember him very distinctly. I don’t know how the thing started, I think they were all a little bored. I was in my nightgown already, starting up for bed, going around the room and kissing everyone goodnight. The lyricist was very drunk, when he kissed me goodnight he cupped my behind in both hands and kissed me right on the mouth, smelling terribly of whiskey.” She blushed again. Outside, the rain swept in against the windows, driven by a sudden ferocious gust of wind. The eaves of the house creaked. By the fire, Sandy made tiny sucking sounds around her prune pit.
“They were saying that Mother was a great swimmer, and someone remarked that women had more stamina than men, and someone else said women had an extra layer of fat around their bodies, which was what made it possible for them to stay in the water for long periods of time without getting chilled. The writer, I think it was, explained that this was why so many of the long-distance swimmers had been women, like Gertrude whatever-her-name-was who swam the English Channel...”
“Ederle.”
“Yes, I think that was it. I don’t know if what he said was true or not, but I remember the women taking offense at the idea of having an extra layer of fat, and my mother saying — she was very slim and athletic-looking, you see — saying she had a lot of endurance and certainly did not have an extra layer of fat. All the women in the room said, ‘Bravo, Irene,’ and that was when the lyricist said Mother’s endurance was only a matter for speculation until it was proved. Daddy said that Mother had swum to the sandbar and back without stopping, the sandbar being a half mile offshore, and the lyricist said this was impossible, and Mother said she could do it again anytime, and he said How about right now?
“So that was how it started, I guess. I think they were all sort of restless, there had been a party on Friday night, and another one on Saturday night, and this was Sunday in the middle of August, and it can get kind of dull, I guess, I suppose it had got kind of dull for them. So Mother took me upstairs to tuck me in, and I could hear her changing into her bathing suit in the bedroom next door, and then she came in wearing the suit, a red one, and a short terry-cloth robe over it, and kissed me goodnight. She looked very pretty and very excited. When she kissed me, I smelled the same alcohol on her breath that had been on the lyricist’s, but of course she wasn’t drunk — she never drank to excess, just to feel happy, she always said. She turned out the light and left the room, closing the door behind her. That was the last time I saw her alive.”
Rhoda stopped again and turned her eyes toward the fire, as though trying to find in its turbid flames the words to explain what had happened next on that night five years ago. We were all silent. Sandy sucked on her prune pit once, seemed to sense the sibilant sound was an intrusion, and then simply waited attentively with her head bent, the firelight behind her, the prune pit in her hand.
“The house was empty for a long time,” Rhoda said. “They had all gone down to the beach with flashlights to watch Mother as she attempted the swim. I forget how much they had bet, I think it was ten dollars.”
“How did she drown?” Sandy said.
“A cramp. At least, that’s what they thought. They couldn’t know for sure. They said it must have hit her coming back, halfway between the sandbar and the shore. It was Daddy who broke the news to me. ‘Your mother is dead,’ he said, and I said, ‘No, she isn’t,’ and he said, ‘Rhoda, honey, your mother is dead.’” She nodded, and then stared into the fire again.
“That’s a rough break,” David said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I still miss her,” Rhoda said quietly.
“They’re pains in the asses,” I said, “but I guess you can miss them when they’re gone.”
“I thought my father was dead for the longest time,” Sandy said. “They got divorced when I was a baby, and I grew up thinking he was dead. Then one day this man arrived at the front door of the house and I said, ‘Yes, sir, may I help you?’ and he said, ‘Sandy, I’m your father.’ My mother came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Get the hell away from her, you bum.’ That was the first time and the last time I ever saw him.”
“That’s worse than if he were dead,” Rhoda said.
“He was handsome,” Sandy said.
“I often wonder what she was trying to prove,” Rhoda said. She looked across the room at Sandy. “What could she have been trying to prove?”