16.

ABBY BROUGHT HOME a pair of Jack Russell terriers and named them for her grandparents, Irene and Jake. Caitlin was indignant. "She thinks those little rodents can take Sweetie's place? And naming them after her grandparents! Can you imagine naming your dogs after your grandparents? I mean, what is wrong with that woman?"

Sweetie had grown old and tired last summer. She'd hardly been able to walk. Still, when she'd collapsed and with one final shudder died at Lamb's feet, Caitlin was devastated. They all were. They'd had a service for her on the beach. "Lord, we give you our Sweetie," Lamb said. "She asked for nothing, she gave everything." Caitlin, tears streaming down her face, ran up and down the jetty, scattering Sweetie's ashes. Later, Vix helped her build a memorial to Sweetie out of sand and sh.e.l.ls, but when the first storm washed it away Caitlin begged Lamb for a proper stone. They planted it near the house, between the big pines.

Sweetie

Faithful Companion

1970a"1981

After that, Caitlin was consumed by death. Did Vix believe in past lives? Because Phoebe did. Phoebe had her own channeler, the same channeler who was helping Shirley MacLaine find her previous selves.

But Vix was more interested in this life than any other.

Caitlin asked how many times a week Vix thought about death, because she thought about it every day, sometimes more than once a day, like Woody Allen. He was obsessed by it. Most creative geniuses were.

"Are you planning on being a creative genius?" Vix asked.

"Absolutely," Caitlin said. "What else is there?" Then she laughed and gave Vix a jab in the ribs. "You take everything so seriously."

"Sometimes it's hard to tell with you."

"I'm going to be a woman of mystery, don't you think?"

"Either that or a schizo."

Caitlin's face froze. Now it was Vix's turn to laugh. "Who takes everything seriously?" But just to prove that she, too, could speak of the unspeakable, Vix said, "I saw a dead person once."

"Really a who?"

"Darlene."

"Who's Darlene?"

"My mother's a" She hesitated before spilling the beans, before admitting Darlene was her grandmother, knowing Tawny wouldn't like it. Instead, she said, "She was an old family friend."

"How'd she look?"

"I was really young. I don't remember that much." She was sorry she'd brought up the subject in the first place.

"Was she in a coffin?"

"No, she was at the hospital."

"Were you there when she actually a died?"

"I wasn't in her room if that's what you mean." She'd been in the hallway with Lewis and Lanie, trying to engage them in a game of Go Fish because Tawny had told her to keep them out of the way and quiet. But she couldn't get Lewis to stop crying, not even by letting him go first. When she went to tell her mother, she found the curtains drawn around the bed and doctors and nurses all over Darlene. Her mother had grabbed her arm and led her back outside.

The following week Caitlin woke her in the middle of the night. "Vix a are you afraid to die?"

"I don't like to think about dying."

"But we're all going to, aren't we? I mean, n.o.body lives forever. In order to get to our next life, or what-ever's on the other side, we have to actually a die."

"I suppose a"

"I wish I were a dog."

"They die, too."

"But they don't lie awake at night thinking about it."

"Maybe it's like Our Town," Vix said, trying to calm her. "Maybe we get to stand around after a and watch."

"But then we'd be invisible."

Vix liked the idea of being invisible, of watching and listening without anyone knowing. But she didn't say so. "Could we finish this conversation some other time because I'm really, really tired."

Caitlin didn't say anything else and Vix fell back asleep. She'd no idea how much time had pa.s.sed when she felt Caitlin's hand on her arm. "Vix a" Caitlin was kneeling beside her bed. "I've made a decision. I'm not going to hang around waiting for it to happen. I'm cutting out before it all falls apart a before I'm old and ugly and n.o.body wants me."

Vix feigned sleep, uneasy with the direction of Caitlin's thoughts. Woody Allen was one thing, this was another.

"Promise you'll go with me," Caitlin said. "I'd be too scared to go by myself."

When she didn't respond Caitlin shook her. "Vix a promise you'll go with me?"

When she still didn't say anything Caitlin said, "Vix a I'm scared. Can I get in with you?"

She moved over and Caitlin slid in beside her. Only then, with Vix's arms around her, could Caitlin get back to sleep.

Caitlin's fear unnerved Vix. She was almost relieved when last summer's focus on death turned into this summer's obsession with s.e.x. Caitlin was drunk with her Power. It wasn't enough to have Von l.u.s.ting after her, she flaunted it at home, too, coming on to Gus and even Daniel. The house was abuzz with s.e.xual vibes. Caitlin was alive and well and anxious to prove it.

Sharkey hardly ever crossed paths with them, except for the night he came out of the bathroom and found Caitlin and Vix waiting their turn in the hall. Caitlin was in a short robe, loosely belted, with nothing underneath. "Cover yourself up, will you!" Sharkey growled, shoving his towel at her.

"Shark a" Caitlin said, "we used to take baths together. What's the big deal?"

"You're not four anymore, that's the big deal." And with his head down he pushed past them.

A minute after she and Caitlin stepped inside, closing the bathroom door behind them, Gus knocked. "Bathroom in use?"

Vix opened the door a crack. "What does it look like?" she asked, her toothbrush sticking out of the side of her mouth. He was in shorts but no shirt. His chest had a patch of dark curly hair. Bru's chest was hairless and smooth. She wondered for half a second how it would feel to press her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s against Gus, then looked away, totally embarra.s.sed by such a revolting thought.

Gus JESUS! When she opened the bathroom door and he caught a glimpse of her in that flimsy T-shirt, and under it the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he was right back where he'd been two years ago, that night Abby and Lamb had almost blown it. Something happened to him that night, something he didn't want to think about because his father always said, You don't s.h.i.t where you eat. But that night, just for a minute, he'd wanted to take her in his arms, feel her body against his.

He'd warned himself. Cool it, she's just fifteen.

Yeah a so? he argued. He knew girls her age who put out. h.e.l.l, he knew a fourteen-year-old who gave great hand jobs.

He's kept his distance since then, afraid to give in to his feelings. But now she's seventeen and it's a whole different ball game, isn't it?

17.

CAITLIN CALLED IT the Summer of Their Brilliant Careers. They were working as a team for Dynamo, a cleaning service, earning good money, and Caitlin never complained about the long days or the foul condition of some of the houses. She was proud of herself for learning to clean out a toilet bowl, for scrubbing a tub until there was no sc.u.m left, things she'd never learned from Phoebe. They awarded the most disgusting bathrooms the New and Improved Dingleberry Award.

They never met or even saw most of their clients but they were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. They knew who was constipated by the boxes of Fleet enemas hidden in bathroom drawers or the prune juice and raw bran stocked in the fridge. They knew their clients' medications and why they were taking them. They knew what their clients were reading, what music they listened to, and who watched p.o.r.no tapes on the VCR.

They knew who was having regular s.e.x by the pubic hairs and bunched up tissues under the blankets, the lubricants on the bedside tables, the condom wrappers in the trash. Unlike some of the girls working for the service, they were discreet. They never tried on their clients' clothes or experimented with their makeup. They had their standards.

Their favorite clients were a gay couple out on Squibnocket Pond who left them beautifully printed lists of ch.o.r.es and always some little goody along with it, an unusual sh.e.l.l or a perfect rose or a sample box of Chilmark Chocolates.

They made up for the a.s.sholes on Middle Road who smashed every dish in the house and left the pieces all over the floor. When the slimeball and his girlfriend came home in a huff that afternoon and found Caitlin and Vix still cleaning up, listening to Stevie Nicks on the tape deck, he exploded. Vix wanted to take off before it got serious, but Caitlin looked right at him and said, "I believe you're responsible for the cost of replacing the dishes."

He reached into his pocket and began to throw hundred-dollar bills at them while his girlfriend tugged on his arm crying, "Honey, stop a honey, please a"

Hundred-dollar bills, five of them, two of which they pocketed, as he yelled, "Replace the G.o.dd.a.m.n dishes and get the f.u.c.k out of this house!"

Abby SHE CAN'T SLEEP. The strain of having all five of them in the house is taking its toll. She's worried sick, especially about Caitlin and Vix. She has the feeling, from the way they get themselves up at night, there are boys in the picture this summer. But who are they? What are they doing together?

And just because Daniel has finished a year at Princeton, and Gus, at Northwestern, they think they're grownup, beyond rules. Gus has turned into a man overnight. Last summer he'd still been a teenager, her son's best friend. Now, when he looks at her she sometimes feels herself blush. How can she possibly tell him what to do? She supposes she'll have to learn to let go, as Lamb says, learn how to live with grown children. But where's the manual on that?

She's grateful they all have jobs. Not that she's thrilled Daniel and Gus are working nights, bussing tables at the Harborview, never getting home before midnight, never getting out of bed before noon. The girls are another story. Out of the house at seven every morning, home after work to shower and snack but never sitting down to a proper meal. The only one she doesn't fret over is Sharkey. At least she knows where he isa"working at the garage all day, locked up in his room at night with the new computer. Sharkey, who went off to Reed a year ago and has never said a word about it, not to her anyway. He doesn't give her any trouble. Maybe she should be worried about that!

ABBY INVITED VIX to try her new yellow kayak. Lamb had surprised her with it at the start of the summer. They'd christened it with a bottle of champagne. Now Abby could paddle off her anxieties in the pond.

On their way down to the dock Abby said, "You know, Vix a I'd like to think if I had a daughter she'd be a lot like you." She took off her sungla.s.ses and wiped the lenses with her T-shirt. "That's a compliment. I hope you take it as one."

Vix stammered. "I do a absolutely." "I consider you a person of real values and ethics." She paused, then added, "That's a compliment, too."

Real values and ethics? She wondered what Abby would say if she knew how Vix used to dream about changing places with Caitlin, of just walking out on her family to live with them in Cambridge. G.o.d, had she ever been so young, so naive?

Now Abby tried to talk to her about drinking, drugs, s.e.x, about herpes. Vix listened politely, then a.s.sured Abby she didn't like the taste of beer, let alone the hard stuff, that she'd promised her parents she'd stay away from drugs, which were more plentiful in Santa Fe than the Vineyard, and as for s.e.x, she was still a virgin and intended to remain one. She just didn't say for how long.

Abby handed her a stack of college catalogs left over from the Chicago Boys and urged her to study them. "You know there's a scholarship waiting."

She felt as if she were fourteen again, with Abby encouraging her to plan for her future. But this time the only future she was interested in was that night and the next night and the night after that, with Bru.

18.

PARADISE WAS A SHACK that served as the on-site office of Bru's family's construction business. Three of Bru's uncles had seen the eighties building boom coming and had bought up a group of rundown cottages on Menemsha Pond. Bru and Von were part of the crew renovating the first place, turning it into a five-bedroom house. The shack had no water or electricity, just a table made from a sheet of plywood sitting on sawhorses and a couple of beat-up chairs. But who cared?

They lit candles, slipped their tapes into the boom boxa"Don't you want me, baby? Don't you want me, oha"and danced until they'd heated up the place and themselves. Then Bru led Vix out to his truck, leaving the shack to Caitlin and Von. The truck had a cap on the back and orange s.h.a.g carpet on the floor. The first time Vix lay down on it without her shirt she got carpet burns on her back. After that Bru spread out an old cotton comforter to protect her skin.

This time it was Caitlin who wanted details. "Does he nibble on your earlobes? Does he suck your nipples? Does he press it up against you as if you're doing it but without actually doing it?"

The answer to all of the above was yes. Yes a yes a and yes. But Vix couldn't talk about it. She couldn't tell Caitlin how he'd ease down her jeans and reach inside her panties, touching her gently, slipping a finger into the moist delicate tissue where only her fingers had been before. And how she loved it! Loved the fire inside her, the explosion at the end. He knew she was a virgin and he never tried to rush her, though he said it had been a long time since he'd been with a woman that way. A woman! He taught her how to make him come, dipping her fingers into the jar of Abolene he conveniently kept in the glove compartment, wrapping her hand around him, sliding it up and down until his Package throbbed and sputtered while Van Halen played on the tape deck.

Not that he didn't want more, not that she didn't. But it was his decision to wait. She thought he really was nervous about making it with some seventeen-year-old summer girl from a prominent family, because by then he and Von knew Lamb Somers was Caitlin's father, that she was Caitlin's summer sister. And neither of them was looking for trouble.

He asked about her boyfriends in Santa Fe. She told him there weren't any, which was true. Until then her s.e.xual experience with guys had been limited to Mark Shulman, a tall, awkward cla.s.smate at Mountain Day, whose tongue darted in and out of her mouth when they kissed, like a frog's catching flies. Please a please a he'd whimper, grabbing her b.u.t.tocks through her jeans.

Please, what? She wanted him to spell it out, but he never did. He was kind to her the night she got drunk on margaritas and puked out the window of his Bronco. But she wasn't seriously attracted to him and when they decided it wasn't going to work he started sniffing around Lanie.

Vix asked about the redhead. Fini a finis a finito a "She was older," he said. "She wanted me to make promises I wasn't ready to keep."

Bru JEEZ a SHE'S SWEET. So sweet. Hard to resist. And she doesn't seem that young when they're together. Not too young for him. He has to keep reminding himself to go slow, not to rush her. There's something about being her first, about teaching her everything his way. Like training a puppy but better. That silky hair, those soft, round t.i.ts, nipples that stiffen before he even touches them. Says she's never had a real boyfriend. Hard to believe. But why would she lie? He's never known a girl who's so wet, who comes so fast. Not like the redhead. He could go down on her all night and still nothing. Victoria wants to know what happened between them. What can he say? She's five years older. Ready to tie the knot. Wants kids. No thanks. Not yet. Anyway, she's got a new guy now. Maybe he can make her come. Maybe he doesn't care if she doesn't.

That expression on Victoria's face the first time he led her hand to his c.o.c.k. I can't believe I'm touching a p.e.n.i.s, she'd said. Then she'd giggled like a little kid. He'd tilted her chin up, kissed her.

Von's always telling him Trouble is hot. He can believe it. He's had a couple of dreams where both of them come on to him at once. The Double Trouble thing.

"I DID THE f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o THING," Caitlin said as she and Vix were driving home one night, the rumble of thunder in the distance. "He loved it. It made him crazy."

"But what about a you know?"

"It wasn't that bad, if you don't mind warm gooey laundry detergent. But to tell the truth, by then he couldn't have cared less. I could have spit it onto the floor and he wouldn't have noticed. That's how out of it he was. You should try it a that is, if you haven't already."