Nantucket Nights (34 page)

When Marcus got inside, he realized there wasn’t much worth stealing. He followed Beth through the rooms, nervously thinking of Garrett behind him carrying bags. He should be helping Garrett. But Winnie had taken his hand and now he was sandwiched between Beth and Winnie both asking him,
Didn’t he just love it? Didn’t he think it was magnificent?

The house was big. Marcus could say that with confidence. There was a hallway where you walked in with a living room on the right. A flight of stairs on the left. Past the stairs were a kitchen and dining room that had a row of windows and glass doors looking out over the water, and a deck beyond the kitchen with a green plastic table and chairs. The house was big but not fancy. The furniture was white wicker, except for one nasty-looking recliner the color of a dead mouse. The pictures on the walls were faded watercolors of the beach; the curtains were a creepy filmy material. The floorboards creaked and the house had a smell. An old, grandmother smell Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d expected—he guessed he’d pictured something like a fashion magazine, something more like the Newtons’ apartment on Park Avenue which he’d seen for the first time that morning—with real antiques and Oriental carpets and brass candlesticks and sculpture. TMs house didn’t feel like poverty, just like a house owned by white people who’d stopped caring. How had Arch described it?
A funky old summer cottage
—and Marcus had pretended to understand what that meant. Now he knew, it meant this. This was how white people lived when they relaxed at the beach.

Marcus checked out the view from the deck and then wandered back through the first floor. Garrett brought m a second load of stuff and dropped it at Marcus’s feet in the living room. Marcus was looking for the TV; he didn’t see one anywhere.

“Is there TV?” Marcus asked.

“No,” Garrett said. “Sorry, man, you’re going to have to do without
Bernie Mac
for the summer.”

“Hey,” Marcus said, straightening his shoulders in
his new white shirt that was so fine it felt like money on his back.
Fuck you
was on the tip of
his tongue. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was that a racial comment already? Well, why not? Why not put him in
his slave’s place right away? Before Marcus could prepare a response, Garrett was headed out the door again, aiming for load number three. Marcus followed him out.

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Marcus said. He sounded, ridiculously, like a homeroom teacher. Garrett didn’t even turn around. “I’m sorry I’m bumming you out. I don’t want to ruin your summer with your family.” Marcus couldn’t believe he was talking like this. What he’d learned in the past nine months was that the easiest response to other people’s shit was silence. Let
his eyes drop to half mast, pretend like he hadn’t heard. Pretend like nothing they said could bother
him. Marcus would get his revenge on everyone later, once his book was published.

“Why did you come, then?” Garrett said. “I know my mother offered. But you could have said no. You could have spent the summer at home. Closer to .. . your own family. Why did you come with us?”

Marcus felt guilt rising in his throat along with his long-ago-eaten breakfast. He
should
be at home. His father was going through a very stressful time trying to live without Mama. But things at home had gotten so horrible that Marcus needed to escape. At home, the phone was always ringing, the press calling, or people who had somehow gotten their number who wanted to share their feelings about what a monster Constance was. Marcus had lost all
his friends, he suffered cold-eyed glares from his neighbors and teachers and people he didn’t even know. He couldn’t get an aspirin from the medicine chest without seeing all of Constance’s half-used makeup, the tubes of lipstick, the skin stuff she loved that made her smell like apricots. He couldn’t walk in or out of the apartment without thinking of Angela’s and Candy’s bodies bleeding onto the floorboards. The worst had passed—the weeks after the murders when they were forced to stay in that fleabag motel, the humiliating afternoon in the swim team locker room—but Marcus’s life in Queens,
his new identity as the
murderer’s son,
suffocated him. His mother was gone forever, but at the same time she was everywhere, tainting every moment. He wanted out. On the whiter, brighter side, there was Marcus’s book deal, Mr. Zachary Celtic, true crime editor at Dome Books, the thirty-thousand-dollar advance that no one knew a tiring about except for Marcus and his English teacher. At home, Marcus would have had to get a job. Here, he had the luxury of a summer without work—long days of quiet hours to write the truth about his mother, whatever that was.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Garrett. He reached past Garrett into the car for
his own bag— a black leather duffel that had cost him nearly two hundred dollars. He’d bought it to impress these people, but in the Nantucket sun, Marcus saw it was all wrong. It looked like a drug dealer’s bag with garish brass buckles and a strong smell of leather.

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “But here I am. A nigger boy on your turf.”

Garrett glared at him. “That’s a low blow. You’re calling me a racist, and that’s not what this is about.”

“What’s it about, then?” Marcus said. He felt himself sweating and worried about the expense of dry-cleaning
his new shirt. It was at least ninety degrees out.

“It’s about us losing our father,” Garrett said. “That’s what this summer is about. That’s what every day has been about since
his plane crashed. That’s the only thing anything’s going to be about ever again, okay?” Garrett got tears in
his eyes, but because his hands were full, he wiped his face on his shoulder.

“Okay,” Marcus said. He was proud of himself because he understood not only what Garrett was saying, but what he hadn’t said.
Our father is dead because of your mama. If he hadn’t been defending her, he wouldn’t have gone to Albany. If he hadn’t gone to Albany, his plane wouldn’t have crashed.
Arch was another victim of the day Connie Tyler lost her mind. Marcus wanted to apologize on
his mother’s behalf, but apologizing wouldn’t help. If Garrett hated
him, Marcus would have to live with it. It wouldn’t be worse than the other stuff Marcus was living with.

Suddenly Winnie appeared, tugging on Marcus’s arm in an eager, excited way, like a little kid. All three of them were seventeen, but Winnie seemed younger. Maybe because she was a girl. Or because she was so skinny. She had no body to speak of, certainly not the way some of the girls at Cardozo had bodies—with huge tits like balloons under their sweaters and curvy asses. Winnie was a stick person—right now she was wearing jean shorts that showed two Popsicle-stick legs, and her torso was swimming in her sweatshirt. She had blond hair like her mother and she was cute in a way that elves are cute. But not womanly. Even Marcus’s twelve-year-old sister LaTisha had more action going on than Winnie.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you your bedroom.”

“In a minute,” Marcus said. He wanted to finish with Garrett, although he could see that the moment had passed. Garrett walked by them with
his load of luggage and Marcus slung his bag over his shoulder and reached for another box. He needed to catch up.

“Come on,” Winnie said. “Please?”

Marcus managed to stave her off until he and Garrett had unloaded most of the car. In silence, except for the squeaky complaints of Marcus’s shoes.

“Come on, Marcus,” Winnie said.

Marcus picked up Ms leather duffel, which looked nothing but ugly compared to the Newtons’ luggage, and followed Winnie up the stairs.