Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
For Christina, Matthew, and Alexandra Egan,
and for Robert Egan—
our uncle Bob
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
—HERMAN MELVILLE, MOBY-DICK
?PART ONE
The Shore
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
They’d driven all the way to Mr. Styles’s house before Anna realized that her father was nervous. First the ride had distracted her, sailing along Ocean Parkway as if they were headed for Coney Island, although it was four days past Christmas and impossibly cold for the beach. Then the house itself: a palace of golden brick three stories high, windows all the way around, a rowdy flapping of green-and-yellow-striped awnings. It was the last house on the street, which dead-ended at the sea.
Her father eased the Model J against the curb and turned off the motor. “Toots,” he said. “Don’t squint at Mr. Styles’s house.”
“Of course I won’t squint at his house.”
“You’re doing it now.”
“No,” she said. “I’m making my eyes narrow.”
“That’s squinting,” he said. “You’ve just defined it.”
“Not for me.”
He turned to her sharply. “Don’t squint.”
That was when she knew. She heard him swallow dryly and felt a chirp of worry in her stomach. She was not used to seeing her father nervous. Distracted, yes. Preoccupied, certainly.
“Why doesn’t Mr. Styles like squinting?” she asked.
“No one does.”
“You never told me that before.”
“Would you like to go home?”
“No, thank you.”
“I can take you home.”
“If I squint?”
“If you give me the headache I’m starting to get.”
“If you take me home,” Anna said, “you’ll be awfully late.”
She thought he might slap her. He’d done it once, after she’d let fly a string of curses she’d heard on the docks, his hand finding her cheek invisibly as a whip. The specter of that slap still haunted Anna, with the odd effect of heightening her boldness, in defiance of it.
Her father rubbed the middle of his forehead, then looked back at her. His nerves were gone; she had cured them.
“Anna,” he said. “You know what I need you to do.”
“Of course.”
“Be your charming self with Mr. Styles’s children while I speak with Mr. Styles.”
“I knew that, Papa.”
“Of course you did.”
She left the Model J with eyes wide and watering in the sun. It had been their own automobile until after the stock market crash. Now it belonged to the union, which lent it back for her father to do union business. Anna liked to go with him when she wasn’t in school—to racetracks, Communion breakfasts and church events, office buildings where elevators lofted them to high floors, occasionally even a restaurant. But never before to a private home like this.
The door-pull was answered by Mrs. Styles, who had a movie star’s sculpted eyebrows and a long mouth painted glossy red. Accustomed to judging her own mother prettier than every woman she encountered, Anna was disarmed by the evident glamour of Mrs. Styles.
“I was hoping to meet Mrs. Kerrigan,” Mrs. Styles said in a husky voice, holding Anna’s father’s hand in both of hers. To which he replied that his younger daughter had taken sick that morning, and his wife had stayed at home to nurse her.
There was no sign of Mr. Styles.
Politely but (she hoped) without visible awe, Anna accepted a glass of lemonade from a silver tray carried by a Negro maid in a pale blue uniform. In the high polish of the entrance hall’s wood floor, she caught the reflection of her own red dress, sewn by her mother. Beyond the windows of an adjacent front room, the sea tingled under a thin winter sun.
Mr. Styles’s daughter, Tabatha, was only eight—three years younger than Anna. Still, Anna allowed the littler girl to tow her by the hand to a downstairs “nursery,” a room dedicated purely to playing, filled with a shocking array of toys. A quick survey discovered a Flossie Flirt doll, several large teddy bears, and a rocking horse. There was a “Nurse” in the nursery, a freckled, raspy-voiced woman whose woolen dress strained like an overstacked bookshelf to repress her massive bust. Anna guessed from the broad lay of her face and the merry switch of her eyes that Nurse was Irish, and felt a danger of being seen through. She resolved to keep her distance.
Two small boys—twins, or at least interchangeable—were struggling to attach electric train tracks. Partly to avoid Nurse, who rebuffed the boys’ pleas for help, Anna crouched beside the disjointed tracks and proffered her services. She could feel the logic of mechanical parts in her fingertips; this came so naturally that she could only think that other people didn’t really try. They always looked, which was as useless when assembling things as studying a picture by touching it. Anna fastened the piece that was vexing the boys and took several more from the freshly opened box. It was a Lionel train, the quality of the tracks palpable in the resolve with which they interlocked. As she worked, Anna glanced occasionally at the Flossie Flirt doll wedged at the end of a shelf. She had wanted one so violently two years ago that some of her desperation seemed to have broken off and stayed inside her. It was strange and painful to discover that old longing now, in this place.
Tabatha cradled her new Christmas doll, a Shirley Temple in a fox-fur coat. She watched, entranced, as Anna built her brothers’ train tracks. “Where do you live?” she asked.
“Not far.”
“By the beach?”
“Near it.”
“May I come to your house?”
“Of course,” Anna said, fastening tracks as fast as the boys handed them to her. A figure eight was nearly complete.
“Have you any brothers?” Tabatha asked.
“A sister,” Anna said. “She’s eight, like you, but she’s mean. Because of being so pretty.”
Tabatha looked alarmed. “How pretty?”
“Extremely pretty,” Anna said gravely, then added, “She looks like our mother, who danced with the Follies.” The error of this boast accosted her a moment later. Never part with a fact unless you’ve no choice. Her father’s voice in her ears.
Lunch was served by the same Negro maid at a table in the playroom. They sat like adults on their small chairs, cloth napkins in their laps. Anna glanced several times at the Flossie Flirt, searching for some pretext to hold the doll without admitting she was interested. If she could just feel it in her arms, she would be satisfied.