Suzanne Beecher

Dear Reader,

Writing keeps me honest. Every day I hold up a mirror and force myself to look in it--sometimes I try to resist what I see.

It's not that I don't like myself, I do, very much. But some days I think the joke's on me. Maybe I'm the last one to get to know Suzanne. After writing a daily column for somewhere over 30 years you'd think I'd know the real me by now, but when I looked in the mirror today I realized I've become everything I set out not to be.

This small-town girl wanted to be a big city girl, but in truth I'm a little bit sappy, (rolling my eyes this very minute), a girl who likes to bake cookies and give them away, someone who likes to surround herself with memories of the past--even though she has to rewrite some of them. The girl who everyone thought was a loser but look at her now; she's found a way to pay the bills.

This small-town girl likes to wear an apron around the house and I wear one sometimes when I'm writing, too. My grandma used to wear two aprons, one was for cooking and one was for company. When a neighbor knocked on the door, Grandma would take off her cooking apron and the one underneath was neat and clean. One of my aprons is for writing and the one underneath is when I take a break to cook--when I'm looking for inspiration.

"Thank you very kindly," this small town girl uses that expression because I think it emphasizes what seems to be lacking in the world these days. I don't use it hoping other people will notice, it's there for me, so I don't get lost, so I don't forget who I want to be.

There's still a little girl inside of me who likes to carry a bubble machine down Main Street, like I did the other day, and I hope she never leaves. I move easily between two worlds. I know what's expected of me in the grown-up, get ahead world and I do what I need to do, so I don't look out of place. And then there's Suzanne's small-town world and I like to share it with people whenever I get the chance.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@firstlookbookclub.com

P. S. This week we're giving away 10 copies of the book Saltwater: A Novel by Katy Hays. Click here to enter for your chance to win. 

PART 1

PULITZER PRIZE–NOMINATED PLAYWRIGHT MISSING ON CAPRI

International Herald Tribune

Sunday, July 19, 1992

CAPRI, ITALY -Police and volunteers are searching for Sarah Lingate, who was reported missing Sunday afternoon.

The playwright and her husband, Richard Lingate, have been vacationing on the island with Richard's older brother, Marcus, and his wife, Naomi. At 1:07 P.m., police were notified that Lingate could not be located on the grounds of the villa where she and the family have been staying.

Lingate was last seen Saturday evening during a dinner held to celebrate the renovation of Casa Malaparte, an effort funded in part by the Lingate Foundation. Following the party, invitees walked to the Piazzetta for a round of drinks. Neither Richard nor Sarah Lingate was seen again after the group reached Bar Tiberio. An eyewitness noted there had been a disagreement between the couple prior to dinner but declined to elaborate on the nature of the conflict. Richard reportedly returned home without his wife around 2 a.m.

Richard and Marcus Lingate are best known as the heirs to DVH Holdings, a privately held energy firm founded by their grandfather, oil magnate Aaron Lingate. The firm was liquidated by their father in the mid-1980s, and the brothers have used the proceeds to pursue personal interests: Marcus as an early-stage tech investor and Richard as a supporter of the arts.

HELEN LINGATE

NOW

Money is my Phantom limB. it was Part of my BoDy onCe. i know this because I feel its loss like an ambient current that runs up my spine, an occasional, sudden shock. Money is metabolic, a universal part of our constitution. Lorna taught me that.

Before her, I didn't have the vocabulary for money. I changed the subject, I demurred, I shifted my weight, brushed my hair behind my ear, smiled. I twisted the Cartier bracelet on my left wrist again and again until the skin turned strawberry.

What I'm saying is, I lied.

Money has always made me uncomfortable, both having a lot and not enough.

That ends now. I saw how heavy the bag was when Lorna lifted it. Bulky with our cash. I still don't remember whose idea it was. Hers or mine, it doesn't matter. After today, we'll whisper the story to each other like an incantation. Do you remember? They never knew. Then, I hope, we will laugh.

Good stories are like that. They become a reflex, as automatic as breathing. I know this because my body was built—bone by bone-out of stories like that.

Stories about money. They were also lies.

Every week my father recited them to me, their outlines as familiar as my own hands. That my great-grandfather had struck oil while prospecting for gold. That it had happened not far from our house in Bel Air. That the exact site had been paved over but was near the intersection of Glendale and Beverly Boulevards.

My great-grandfather never wanted the oil. That part, my father emphasized, was a mistake. All he wanted was gold. What he got was better: property, mineral rights, imported hand-painted French pillows. A name—Lingate.

What a mix-up! A surprise! A moment of aw-shucks luck. It could have happened to anyone. That's America's promise—that it still could.

It's a good story, right?

But even in my childhood, the contours of the lie were visible. The landscape of that Los Angeles couldn't be occupied by mortals. It was prelapsarian—tangled bean fields and sweet orange blossoms, oil running like foamy soda up to meet the derricks, streams that could still be panned for gold.

In college, I learned the truth. For twenty years they kept it from me. I don't blame them. To us it was more than a story; it was a myth. Our own family heirloom. We passed it down the way some families hold on to a piece of silver, insisting to each subsequent generation that it's early American. Maybe forged by Paul Revere himself. A sign of the family's ancient, unshakable commitment to the Revolutionary cause. They show it off at DAR luncheons, they're a Mayflower family. Only later, when they go to sell it, do they discover it's from the nineteenth century, a reproduction.

In the end, it's just a story.

The truth was, my family had swindled their way into the largest oil lease in California—the Wilson Oil Field—at the dawn of the twentieth century. We had done so by promising the original leaseholder, a wildcatter's widow, that the family would split the profits if oil was found in the first five years. Five years and one day later, the first oil derrick was drilled.

She sued, but lost.

You can understand why they preferred the story.

These days, it's rare anyone thinks about the oil. Instead, it's the events that happened on this island thirty years ago that get top billing. My mother's death. Whether or not my father got away with her murder. My family resents that she tarnished their myth, that they can't polish her blood off their silver.

But I'm grateful. Because it's her story I can use. After all, shouldn't I be able to profit from family stories, too? Isn't that a fair exchange for never having known her, for being back on this island, in this villa, every anniversary of her death?

I think so.

My phone tells me it's noon. Anywhere else, noon might be considered late, but not here, not on Capri. My tongue is thick, my vision jumpy in the sunlight. It's my hangover, cresting, punishing.

I pull back the sheets and swing my legs over the side of the empty bed. I only remember pieces of last night. The sheets tangled around our legs, Freddy's back slick with sweat. He went directly to the pool this morning; I heard the splash.

I make it to the bathroom, where I cup water in my hands and slurp it until, unsatisfied, I drop my head and drink directly from the tap. I brush my teeth, scrub my face, and examine the creases my pillow has left on my skin. With one last glance in the mirror, I slip into the hallway and walk toward Lorna's room.

She's still asleep, I'm sure. Her night tumbling into day, the sun barely up when she returned to Capri. I press the door open. Just a crack. It's enough to see that her sheets are still pulled tight, unmussed by the weight of a body, a tangle of hair.

I step into her room. It's full of midday sunshine, the curtains never closed. The bathroom sink—I check that, too—never used the night before. There is no evidence of her, of Lorna. Her absence so total that, for a minute, I doubt she ever came with us at all.

I tell myself it's only a delay. That she'll be back soon. That I'm wrong. That the story she told me, the story we told each other, was the truth. It wasn't a lie.

But then, I know all about stories. And lies.

LORNA

HOURS BEFORE LORNA'S DISAPPEARANCE: 36

I am at sea.

The realization is accompanied by a familiar, bland horror. The kind that always seems to whisper: Is this how I die?

Only it sounds like this: I am at sea. It's the same.

Behind us, Sorrento is getting smaller. Its square, stately hotels, their lettering bleached by the Mediterranean sun, are now just smears of color—pink and white—a collection of rusting balconies and terraces. The Lingates don't seem to feel it. The way the dark water churns across the stern. The way we are trapped, all six of us, on this fifty-foot yacht.

Minutes ago, it wasn't too late to send them ahead without me. I could have stayed ashore, feigned an emergency. But then my bag was loaded and the lines were thrown and the simple truth was I 'needed' to be here. I can do anything for a week. Longer, I have learned.

I pull my eyes away from the shore, where the Italian peninsula is quickly going out of focus. When I turn, my employer, Marcus Lingate, is looming over me, blotting out the sun and the island ahead of us. He has left his wife of almost forty years, Naomi, on the bow. Helen Lingate and her boyfriend, Freddy, sit across from me. Richard, Helen's father, the widower, is alone under the flybridge.

Marcus thrusts a champagne glass in my direction, forgetting that I don't drink. I take an obligatory faux sip. I close my lips against the sweetness, the bubbles. I smile. 'It's good,' I'm saying. 'All of this is good.' He nods at my pleasure, and when we hit chop from another, larger boat, he lurches into the seat next to me.

"No working this week," he yells over the wind and the engine. He's smiling. Like it's a secret we need to keep from everyone else—my sterling work ethic.

"So you've told me," I say. He has.

"What?" he says, as if he didn't hear me. But then, a few seconds later: "You don't believe me?"

(continued on Tuesday)

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