All the Finest Girls

Back Bay Books

Chapter One

I've never been much of a traveler, particularly not to places under the sun'sfiercest gaze. So it was with a will borne of some strange and ungovernabledesire that on a midwinter day I flew from New York to the Caribbean island ofSt. Clair.

Ssss. Lady. Whereyouwannago?

Stepping out from the terminal at the Thomas P. Rose Airport, I was instantlyenclosed by a clutch of taxi drivers jostling one another for my fare. Thelittle concrete building stood open-faced to the road, and everywherevacationers in bright cotton and baseball caps hustled about, shouting to eachother Over here, Bill, this guy says he can take us above theclackety clack of idling shuttle buses. I tried to press forward butcollided with a rolling suitcase that slammed against my knee, missed only abeat, and continued smartly on. Out in the sun, the noonday heat rose andshimmered like grease in a pan.

"Someone will be picking yah up," Lou's sister had said when we spoke the daybefore, ringing off before I could get more detail. I looked around at thecircus of people and felt a flutter of nausea. My face, caught in the reflectionof a car window, was tense as a drum. After what must have been ten abjectminutes bobbing around in the chaos of island reception, I retreated to a shadedbench and began searching my bag for a pair of sandals.

A sad, familiar noise, the rattle of pills against plastic, came from somewherebeneath my clothes. Oval and blue as robins' eggs, the pills were meant tosoften a spur of anxiety that sometimes went for the base of my skull. I'd takenone and slept, badly, the night before, and again on the airplane, only to wakenumb and blue under the blast of the air-conditioning system. In the tropicalair, my medication hangover plus the two layers of wool I wore were making mefeel smothered. I cursed aloud, and a woman seated next to me inched down thebench.

It was then ?barefoot, my bag half unpacked?that I heard my name. A tall,chestnut-colored man with a precise flat-top hair-cut had planted himself beforeme, blocking out the sun. I stood up quickly and felt myself wobble as the bloodrushed from my head.

"You Adelaide?" he said, looking not at but past me and jingling the keys in hispants pocket.

The smooth planes of the man's face were interrupted by two tight, walnutlikebunches of muscle in his jaw. I pushed my belongings back into the bag andextended my hand, but the airport PA system just then crackled to life, drowningout my response. Ladies and gentlemen, flight forty-three to St. Thomas withcontinuing service to San Juan will now begin preboarding at gate two.Passengers with small children Ignoring me, the man took my bag and walkedaway. I followed, shoeless, as we weaved through a chorus of gaily dressed youngwomen holding up signs for Sandals and Club Med. Picking my way along the hotgraveled road, I nearly lost sight of him. At last, on a narrow grass divider, Icaught up as he stopped for traffic. His face wore the expression of a manwilling himself to be alone.

"I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name," I said as we moved off again.

"Derek," he answered.

Derek; an adult face to go with the name I'd once worried like a rosary. As alittle girl, I'd imagined meeting Lou's boys a hundred times, had fashioned themwith thoughts and personalities as if clothing imaginary dolls. None of myfantasies had resembled this sudden, brittle truth.

The seats of Derek's car were small and close, forcing me to tuck in my elbowsso he could shift as we got under way. Sweat streamed down my back. Timidly, Iflapped the hem of my sweater for relief, not daring to remove anything else inthe tight space of the car. Perhaps meaning to be helpful, or not, Derek flippeda switch and an infernal blast of air spewed from the vents. I sat back andtried to act relaxed.

The car lurched ahead and soon we were careering along a wrecked mainthoroughfare that hugged the southern coast of St. Clair. It ran like a ribbonthrough tattered seaside villages, opening up to sandy inlets with pink hotels,and giving way here and there to a long view of a busy Caribbean harbor town. OnDerek's side of the car, the lee side, sugarcane fields ran ragged to the greenhills of the north. The line between quaint and calamitous wavered with eachbump and turn in the rutted road.

Feigning interest in the scenery, I managed at last to get a good look at Derek.His skin was several shades lighter than his mother's, but the features wereeerily familiar. The fine, curved etches around his mouth reminded me powerfullyof Lou and, for a second or two, took my breath away. I thought of her dippingher wrist in my bathwater and pausing in silent contemplation. I tried not tostare.

"When's the service?" I asked, finally, after we'd traveled a long mile insilence. The question cast a harsh glow on the ordeal ahead, a picture of whichhung for a moment like a scrim between us. Derek clenched and unclenched hisjaw.

"Two days' time."

"That's good," I said. "I mean, it's all a lot to handle, I'm sure." Just aheada goat was coming down off an embankment and into the road. Derek swerved toavoid it, never taking his foot off the accelerator.

"It's just terrible what happened," I added, pitching my voice to a near shoutas Derek threw the little car into low gear. He braked and, without anyindication of having heard me, made a sharp turn onto an unpaved side street. Oneither side of the road, drab houses of cinder block and tin lined up in slackrows, one or two decorated with dirty curtains and window boxes. Halfway downthe block, at a peeling yellow door, we came to an abrupt halt. Derek left meand went inside. I got out of the car to pull off my sweater and, in the sanctumof that momentary eclipse, wondered just what the hell I thought I was doingthere.

It was just past dawn when my mother had called with the news. My bedroom wasstill dark, save for a wan spoke of winter light barely grazing my dirty window.She spoke quickly, wedging her words in before I could look at the clock.

"Good morning, darling, it's Mom. Sorry to wake you, I just thought you'd wantto know Louise died." My mother had a tennis partner named Louise, a tiny womanwhose face-lifts had had the strange effect of making her look beaten up. For amoment I thought of her and could not imagine why Mom would call me with thisinformation. We're not close, my mother and I. Not in that way. I'm not theperson she would look to for comfort.

"June, you remember June, she called first thing. Isn't that dear? She's stillwith the Rubinsteins."

It was then that an image of Louise, as familiar as my own thumb, firstappeared. Not my mother's friend, but Lou, my Lou. Dressed in her Sundayclothes, she was walking straight as a rod down my grandmother Edith's loopingdriveway, toward church.

"How?" I asked, lying still beneath the covers.

"You remember she couldn't swim?"

"No."

"Well, it seems she drowned."

My mother paused. The upset I heard in her silence rattled me. She wanted me toask for details. She would have liked, I'm sure, to simply talk with me.And I did want to know more, but I was too far gone, too deep in my campaign oftruculence to make the long march back.

After a moment, she continued.

Here we were, then, playing our parts.

"She hadn't been doing well, physically, for some time. Something about herheart, I think. The night before, her sister put her to bed but, in the morning.Well. Oh, Addy, I think it was just awful. They couldn't find her, ifyou...