Chapter Six
Six
Marly Orcutt was sick of being the baby of the family.
She was fourteen (almost fifteen) this summer, but everyone still treated her like a little kid.
Her cousins Priscilla and Sylvie were their usual stuck-up, snotty selves, acting like they were all grown up while Marly was just a pipsqueak.
Which she wasn’t. She was almost as tall as Sylvie already, for Pete’s sake. And she’d recently bought a bra.
Marly had spent every summer at Oxeye since she could remember.
Her grandparents had left the house to her mom and her Aunt Betty.
Every June, as soon as school was over, Mom packed Marly and her three older brothers into the station wagon, along with Happy and Yappy, their two irritable old terriers, and they headed for Maine.
Aunt Betty was usually there already, since Priscilla and Sylvie’s private school let out early, and Marly’s cousins always claimed the twin beds in the attic room under the white oak.
Mom and Aunt Bet slept together in the big room up front when their husbands stayed in town for work, and the boys got the second attic room, piled in like dogs in a kennel.
When Marly’s father and Uncle Don came down for the weekends, Marly’s brothers were moved to the porch and Mom and Dad slept in their attic room.
Marly was always relegated to a folding cot in with the girls—who always made it clear they didn’t want her there.
Marly was what her mother called “a late child” and her brothers called “an accident.” But Marly had decided “afterthought” would be the most appropriate term, given that’s how she got treated.
Once they even forgot her entirely in all the chaos of packing up the house and left her behind in Oxeye.
She’d had to go down to the general store and use the pay phone to call someone to come back and get her.
Old Mr. Laughton had lent her the money for the call, and she’d called her dad’s work number, knowing that Mom and the boys would still be on the road.
Her dad had been busy, but his secretary had said to sit tight at the house and someone would come get her—Marly’s mom would surely realize and turn around before she finished the near four-hour trip to Boston.
It had taken two hours: one to notice Marly was missing and another to drive back.
The year after that, Marly noticed they’d installed a phone in the house on Tinker Street.
This year, they were rolling into Oxeye on the nineteenth of June, Marly crammed in the back with the dogs, her brothers Bobby and Virgil taking over the entire backseat, and her eldest brother Paul driving like he was in a bumper car at the fair.
Mom kept letting out noises of distress and grabbing at the steering wheel.
Doris Day was on the radio, singing some sappy song about starlight and love.
Mom loved Doris Day and Patti Page and all kinds of squares.
Marly preferred it when her brother Bobby took over the radio.
She liked it when Johnnie Ray was sobbing away, and she really liked the Orioles and the Du Droppers.
But Mom didn’t let Bobby at the radio dial if she could help it; she said all that wailing gave her a headache.
Mom got a headache a lot. Eighteen-year-old Bobby was what Mom called a “handful,” even though Marly thought sixteen-year-old Virgil was the real troublemaker.
He was just so good at it that Mom never caught on.
Marly wished her father would come away with them for the summer, and not just for the occasional weekend, because he was a pushover compared to Mom.
Bobby in particular could always get around him.
Mostly because Dad liked keeping the peace, and if there was one thing Bobby could do, it was upset people.
Marly shuffled the dogs out of the way and pressed herself to the window as they reached the coast. She loved the first glimpse of the bay, the foaming cobalt flashes through the trees and the yachts flying toward the horizon.
She held her breath as she looked for all the familiar landmarks: the roadside stalls with their turnip greens and asparagus, rhubarb and bunches of blue flag iris; the fishing tackle shack; and the elegant sweep of the Saint-Cyr resort on the spit just before they crested the hill into Oxeye.
Sometimes Marly imagined they were rich and were actually on their way to stay at Saint-Cyr, with its wide porches and its black-and-white-striped awnings.
The resort was a white temptation in the woods, with unmatched views of Penobscot Bay.
In summer it was full to the brim with families, and in fall with romantic couples having illicit rendezvous.
Or so her brothers said—but they’d never spent fall in Oxeye and so how would they even know?
Aunt Betty said Saint-Cyr had fleets of waiters in little jackets with shiny buttons, and bathrooms stocked with French soaps.
From the car Marly could see the tennis courts as they drove past, and lawns leading down to the water, and there was a lifeguard’s chair set up by the stone stairs that led into the bay.
From the Oxeye cliffs you could get a clear view of the little yachts and canoes that sailed out from Saint-Cyr’s private pier.
It was like a place in one of those movies Mom dragged Marly to, where lazy beautiful people led lazy beautiful lives.
Marly bet they served shrimp cocktail and ice cream at every meal at Saint-Cyr, and slept in beds with canopies, and quaffed cocktails on the verandah. Cary Grant probably even stayed there.
Maybe now that Marly was almost fifteen, she could convince Mom and Aunt Bet to take her there for a visit.
Sometimes they took pity on her when the older kids ditched her, and they’d take her to the movie theater or the ice cream parlor in Rockport.
Maybe now that she was almost fifteen they’d feel even sorrier for her?
Because it was desperate to be fourteen-almost-fifteen and all alone for summer.
And she really was all alone this summer.
Because her wretched brothers had decided to pack their damn tent.
They said they’d pitch it just on the fringes of the woods, behind the wild little orchard of crabapples, and fend for themselves.
Mom seriously thought all of their Boy Scout expeditions were paying off, but Marly knew it was because they planned to sneak off every night to Rockport, where there was a bar that didn’t ask for ID.
She couldn’t believe Mom let them camp on their own.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Mom argued, flapping Marly out of the way as she tried to wrestle the dogs out of the wagon. “I thought you’d be happy to have your own room.”
“My own…” Marly was crestfallen. Which was stupid, because having your own room should be great, but she couldn’t deny the deep sting she felt that the girls were finally ditching her for good. “What do you mean my own room? Where are Sylvie and Cilla going?”
“They want the boys’ room. Aunt Bet fancied it up this spring. She said she needed something to keep her busy while Uncle Don was on that work trip, remember? So she came up and did a bit of decorating. I’m sure I told you,” Mom said absently. “She thought the girls would enjoy a nice new nest.”
Marly was sure her mother hadn’t told her. Mom never remembered to tell Marly anything.
“Yoo-hoo!” her mother called as she opened the front door. “We’re here!”
There was the sound of big band music drifting through the house. The warblyness told Marly it was coming from the old wireless, which Aunt Bet kept in the kitchen so she and Mom could listen to it while they “cooked.” Their cooking looked a lot like sitting around yapping.
“Aunt Lori!” Sylvie came crashing down the stairs.
For a skinny girl she crashed around a lot, Marly thought sourly.
Sylvie was what Mom called “pert and perfect,” a five-foot three natural blonde who looked like she belonged in an advertisement for Coca-Cola.
She was sporty and suntanned and always seemed about to burst into a cheer.
Marly secretly committed to memory all Sylvie’s little gestures and movements, wishing she could be half as pretty and peppy. Although she would have died if anyone had guessed.
Marly’s mom adored Sylvie. And Sylvie adored Mom.
The two of them were mad for movie stars and swapped magazines all summer long: Modern Screen, Screen Stories, Silver Screen, Filmland.
Sometimes they took Marly along to a double feature and occasionally they forced her to sit through the same film multiple times.
The previous summer Marly had seen Singin’ in the Rain at least half a dozen times—she knew the dialogue by heart.
“Please tell me you brought your copies of Confidential, Aunt Lori!” Sylvie exploded as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her ponytail swinging vigorously.
“Mom says I can only read it if you think it’s okay.
Please say it’s okay or I’ll die. I’m the only girl in my class who hasn’t read it yet!
” Sylvie was seventeen and prone to exaggeration.
Marly watched as her mom pursed her lips and gave the kitchen door a surreptitious look, just to check Aunt Bet wasn’t listening in. “If I lend it to you, you can’t let your mother see,” she whispered. “It’s very… adult.”
Normally that would have pricked Marly’s ears, but she knew that in this case “adult” just meant some old gossip was telling tales about Rita Hayworth or Frank Sinatra.
Sylvie didn’t deign to say hello to Marly; she was too busy conning Mom out of her magazines. She and Mom disappeared upstairs, Happy and Yappy scrambling along after them, leaving Marly all alone in the hall.