Cloud Nine

‘Is Sarah your real name?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve lugged it around my whole life. For a while in seventh grade I tried out Sadie, but it wasn’t me.’

‘No,’ Secret agreed. ‘You are definitely a Sarah.’

For the first time since coming in, Secret focused on Sarah’s hair. It had grown out about half an inch, and the color was somewhere between yellow and gray. She knew people having cancer treatments lost their hair. Beauty tips were one of Secret’s best talents, and she eyed Sarah appraisingly.

‘What?’ Sarah said. The way she blushed, touching her hair with a stricken look in her eyes, made Secret feel so bad, she almost spilled her cider. Sarah was self-conscious! Secret had seen that same expression in the eyes of her friend Margie Drake when two of the cool girls, whispering and pointing, had made fun of her new perm.

‘Well …’ Secret said, trying to decide. She could lie, say nothing, pretend she had just been about to burp. Or she could tell the truth, offer to help. ‘I was just noticing your hair,’ she said bravely.

‘My poor hair,’ Sarah said, still pink. ‘Yep, I lost it. It used to be dark brown, and now look. It came in such a funny color. Somewhere between old socks and dirty dishwater.’

‘You could bleach it,’ Secret suggested. ‘The way it’s growing in, it’s so cute and punky. You could get it pure white and look so great!’

‘Like Annie Lennox,’ Sarah said, smiling.

‘Who?’ Secret asked.

Just then the bells above the door sounded. A cluster of tiny silver bells, just like you might find in England. A group of college girls walked in, hugging themselves to get warm. Sarah called hello to them, and they called back. She offered them cider.

Secret nestled into her spot on the edge of the bed. The bed took up most of the store. But it was a bed no one would ever sleep in. Like a toy bed in the bedroom of a beautiful dollhouse. Like her playhouse in the middle of their apartment in Newport. All they needed was Fred’s toy train chugging around the room, sounding its happy whistle.

Sarah served the college girls cider, but when she was done she came back to sit beside Secret. Their mugs were cool enough to really drink now. Side by side they sipped their drinks, while outside the air grew colder. The girls’ voices were cheerful and excited. Their parents had sent them money, and they were all buying new quilts for the winter. They were the paying customers, but Sarah was sitting with Secret. As if she were her friend. As if she were hers alone.

Later that night, Sarah stood in front of her bathroom mirror. The lights were bright, and she thought she looked like a startled cat. Her ugly yellow-gray hair stuck straight up, like the soft bristles of a baby brush. Ever since closing the shop, she had found herself thinking about what Secret had said: She could bleach her hair.

Thinking about it felt radical. Sarah had never dyed her hair before, never even considered it. Growing up, she hadn’t fooled around with her appearance much. She had never been much for makeup, especially lipstick. It always felt so heavy on her mouth, and she was always licking her lips to see if it was still on. It made her feel too obvious, as if she was drawing too much attention to herself. Beauty products were for other, more glamorous girls.

But now, ruffling her hair, she wanted to do something. She hated the way she looked. Ever since the chemo, she could hardly recognize herself. She looked either very old or very young, anything but her real age. Her hair had come in colorless, and she had lots of new lines around her eyes and mouth that put her close to forty, but she had an alarmed, perpetually surprised look at all times that made her look like an overgrown infant.

No one ever mentioned it, how weird she looked. Not even her friends – not even her wonderful nurse, Meg Ferguson. At the hospital, someone had come around with wigs to try on, but Sarah had said no to those. Wearing a wig would feel like having pantyhose on her head, sweaty and claustrophobic. The scalp equivalent to lipstick. Sarah had gone the distance for her brain tumor, trying every revolutionary treatment known to doctors anywhere, but when it came to her appearance she wouldn’t try the simplest things.

Sighing, she walked into her bedroom. Annie Lennox played on the CD player; Sarah had put her on for moral support. Annie and Sarah. And Secret. She wondered if Secret Burke knew what a big favor she had done her, breaking the ice about something that had been driving her crazy with stupid worry.

Thanksgiving. What if she went? Aside from all the old sorrow with her father, their history of letdown and resentment, Sarah had an even bigger fear about the possibility of going home to Elk Island in less than three weeks. She was afraid to have Mike see her this way. She didn’t want him to feel scared, or disgusted, by his own mother. She would have to hire extra help or close her shop for the long weekend.

She remembered naming her first shop. She was nineteen years old, a college student in Boston. Nineteen! Hardly older than Mike! Where had she gotten the confidence, the ambition? The shop was tiny, one single room with a brick wall and parquet floors. Sarah had walked through the door and filled the place with all her dreams. She would stock the shelves with Aunt Bess’s quilts, become a successful businesswoman. Envisioning additional stores, catalogue sales, a chance to save the farm, a way to make her father happy on earth and her mother proud in heaven, Sarah had named her store Cloud Nine.

Cloud Nine. Leaning against her bureau, Sarah remembered designing her logo: a golden ‘9’ on a white cloud superimposed on a blue oval, tiny white down feathers drifting down like snowflakes. She had commissioned David Walker, a woodcarver on Elk Island, to make the sign. Naming the store had given her so much pleasure, such a sense of dreams coming true, of knowing exactly who she was. She hadn’t felt anything like it before and never would again until Mike was born.

Michael Ezekiel Loring Talbot.

Thinking her son’s name filled Sarah with so much emotion she had to grip the bureau top. She had always loved the name Michael. It was strong, and it had belonged to an archangel, and it sounded poetic. She had given her son the name of a leader and an athlete, someone who had fun and took risks.

Sarah had wanted to name Michael for his father, but she had been free to give him ‘Loring’ only as a middle name. Michael, like Sarah, was a Talbot. Perhaps that was why he was clinging so tenaciously to the island and his grandfather, to the old farm and the refuge it provided.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she blinked them away. No use crying about things she couldn’t change. Mike had made his decision. She couldn’t even say he had run away from home, because he hadn’t even hidden his plans. And his destination wasn’t New York or Los Angeles or even Albany: It was the family farm. Still, he was only seventeen, now living on Elk Island with the original recluse. In search of the truth about his own dead father. Mike would kill her if he knew she still thought of him as her baby, but she did.

Sitting on her window seat, Sarah took a sip of herbal tea. She ate only healthful things now. She walked a little every day, as much as she felt able to. Some days she felt strong enough to run on the college track, like she had before getting sick, but she wasn’t ready to push it. Her doctor had told her to take it slow, and Sarah listened to what he said. She wanted to live. She had brought a boy into this world, and she wanted to live to see him safely moving on a shining path.

Alice Von Froelich walked into her daughter’s bedroom and tried to determine by her breathing whether she was actually asleep or just faking it. Several blankets and a quilt were piled high, pulled right over her head. The radio was playing, but Susan had been falling asleep to music for as long as Alice could remember.

Standing stock-still, hoping to catch her moving, Alice hardly breathed herself. She glanced around the room. The lamps were turned off, but the hall light illuminated certain things. Undeniably elegant, like the rest of Julian’s house, Susan’s room showed very few signs of being occupied by a teenage girl. Noticing this, as she did every time she entered, Alice crinkled her brow and exhaled worriedly.

Susan loved the idea of England, so Julian had let her choose two Gainsboroughs from his collection: a little girl in a blue dress, and two spaniels on a satin pillow. Her furniture and accoutrements were English too: the Queen Anne bed and dresser, the antique rocker covered in Susan’s favorite shade of rose, the monogrammed sterling silver brush and mirror on the vanity. Julian had given them to her last Christmas, along with several sterling picture frames for her great collection of photos.

Stooping down, Alice took a closer look at the photos. Susan certainly did love her father: Will was in every one. There they were, in the cockpit of his Piper Cub, when Susan was four years old. Sitting on his lap under an umbrella at the Black Pearl, the family’s favorite restaurant in Newport. Standing on the dock just before he’d shipped out for the Middle East. Alice remembered taking all three pictures. And then her eyes fell upon the fourth.

‘Freddie,’ she whispered.

There he was, his last Christmas, standing in front of a tree with Will. Her lanky, sleepy boy, braces on his smile, so beautiful and tall. In this shot, Fred was nearly the same height as Will. How had Alice never noticed that before? Was it just the perspective? She couldn’t see their feet; had Fred been standing on a box, a stack of books?

‘Mom?’ Susan asked, shielding her eyes against the hall light.

‘Honey, you’re awake,’ Alice said, sitting on the edge of her bed.

‘You weren’t home.’

‘Didn’t you get my message?’ Alice asked, feeling that panicky guilt. ‘I called the machine.’

‘I got it.’

‘We had cocktails with Dean Sherry, and then a bunch of Julian’s friends decided we should all cook dinner together. So we went to Martine’s house and made Indonesian food and listened to Armando play some new pieces on his keyboard.’

‘God, how boring,’ Susan said, scowling.

‘Did you eat?’

‘Yes.’

Alice worried. She stared at Susan, wondering what was going on in her head. She sounded so tense and sullen, almost as if she were trying to make her feel guilty. As if it weren’t already a fait accompli.

‘What did you have?’

‘Dad took me to Chedder’s. I had a salad.’

‘You called your father? Susan, you know there’s a whole pantry full of food downstairs. Pansy bought every single thing you put on your list. The refrigerator is loaded with lettuce, all those strange kinds you love. Susan …’

‘“Susan”?’ she asked, frowning. ‘If you expect me to answer you, you’d better call me by the right name.’

Alice refused to play into Susan’s trap. She had been acting out ever since Alice and Julian had gotten married, and one thing she knew worked best was the name game. Alice felt her blood pressure mounting through the roof. She had a sneaking suspicion that Will was enabling this. He was so easygoing, he’d let Susan get away with anything. He had gone to pieces when Fred died, and he wasn’t even halfway put back together again.

‘Honey?’ Alice heard herself asking with an admirably even tone. She never spoke about Fred to Susan, not wanting to upset her. He had been her big brother, her hero. But she had to ask. The question just came out: Alice couldn’t have held it back if she’d wanted to. ‘Was Freddie as tall as your dad? Almost as tall?’

Silence. Downstairs, she heard Julian and Armando laughing. Drinks were being poured. The clack of pool cues. The chime of the break.

‘Susan, answer me.’