Summer Nights (6 page)

Gary wanted a new car. He couldn’t think of anything else he’d replace.

Beth fixed her hair, setting the impossibly thick red locks in hot rollers, hoping it would keep the planned wave through the evening, but knowing it wouldn’t because of the humidity out on the river. She had let it get very long, and because it was so thick, it just stuck out, like a horse’s mane in the wind. Sometimes Beth loved her hair, and other times she could not believe she actually appeared in public with that tangled mass of hair flying in people’s faces.

She laced on her sandals—white, with soles so thin she’d be lucky if they lasted the whole night. She didn’t like them after all and ran around trying to find a different pair. “Beth!” shrieked her mother. “Just go. I can’t stand it, you look perfect, now leave!” So she went.

“Put air in those tires!” shouted her father as she drove off. “They’re too low.”

She detoured to the garage. Maybe to replace that repulsive guy with the missing teeth, some adorable college boy would have been hired to pump gas, and…

There wasn’t anybody to pump gas. She had to put air in the tires herself, holding her skirt carefully off the greasy pavement with one hand and trying to get the cap off the tire valve with two fingers so she wouldn’t get oil all over her hands.

When that was done, she ran into traffic leaving the shopping center. She inched miserably along in the heat. You’d think with a million cars,
one
of them would be full of teenage boys. But you’d be wrong, Beth thought. Teenage boys do not go to the mall on Saturday afternoon.

Finally she got to Benjie’s. No handsome boy served her. Two middle-aged women, whose weight indicated they ate entire boxes of the rich, homemade ice cream all day, handed her Con’s order. Beth Rose resolved to have only a tiny taste of ice cream, lest she grow up to resemble these creatures. “You got a cooler?” asked one fat woman.

“A cooler?” Beth said.

They looked at her as if they didn’t sell ice cream to people as dumb as her. Ninety degrees and a long, slow drive to Westerly River. “No,” said Beth in a small voice.

“Better drive fast,” they told her.

But there was no way to drive medium, let alone fast. Traffic filled the roads. Ahead of Beth a car stalled in the heat and had to be pushed onto the shoulder. The ice cream began to melt.

Great, thought Beth. People who want ice cream will have to get in my car and lick it off the upholstery.

She had forgotten to put on her watch. A thin band of pale skin on her wrist showed where it ought to be. Instead it was lying in the bathroom on the shelf. She put the radio on. All her favorite songs got played but nobody mentioned the time. Her right ankle began hurting from being in first gear for so long. The speedometer never went above fifteen.

At last she neared the river and prepared to make the tricky turn across traffic to the dock parking lots. She could see kids on board the
Duet,
distant bright shirts and skirts, mingling like flowers in a vase.

The parking lot was full. She circled the lot a second time. I don’t believe this, Beth thought. What I want in life is romance and what I get is low tires, stalled cars, and full lots.

The
Duet
began pulling away from the dock.

Beth jumped out of the car. “No, no, wait! I have the ice cream! You can’t leave without me!”

“Lady,” shouted the driver behind her, “you’re blocking traffic. Get back in and drive.”

She got in and drove desperately, finally pulling right up on the grass, crumpling the
NO PARKING ON THE GRASS
sign. The
Duet
pulled remorselessly away from the shore. She ripped open the door to carry her ice cream.

“You can’t park here,” said a policeman.

“I know, but I have the ice cream,” Beth said miserably, “and the boat—”

“Is gone,” said the policeman sympathetically. “Now drive back across the main road and park in the commuter lot. You’ll have to hire a boat to catch up to them, if you really want them to have that ice cream.” He looked in the backseat. “Not that anybody will want it now.”

There was no choice. She obeyed, parked across the road, and staggered across the stopped traffic with an armload of melting ice cream.

The
Duet
was too far out in the river even to yell at.

This is my life, thought Beth Rose. This is my entrance to adulthood. Kip goes to New York. Anne sees the world. Emily gets married. I sit on the dock with ice cream melting around my ankles.

I have truly missed the boat.

J
EREMIAH DUNSTAN SHOULDERED THE
heavy movie camera and waited for the white convertible to appear. He had shot the arrival of each party guest and had a nice scene of them crouched down in various corners in the little boat. He was hot and tired and wished he could be a guest instead of a hired hand.

Back last summer Jere and his father had taken (as they always did) day trips downriver with people who wanted to fish. They were mostly working men who could fit only a couple days of fishing into their lives each year. They wanted action. Unfortunately, fishing on the Westerly River was not a high-action item.

Jere had been given a movie camera for his birthday, because at the time he insisted he would be a famous Hollywood director. It had turned out to be more work and less fun and a lot more expense than he had bargained for. Plus, who did you show these films to? You needed an awfully kind girlfriend and Jere hadn’t found one.

Then on one of the fishing trips, Jere brought the movie camera along. He was hoping to get good river shots for a film he wanted to make about a runaway kid. The client of the day, who had caught a small insignificant fish, shouted, “Film me! Film me!” He spent the rest of the trip focusing in on Mr. Stein reeling in, Mr. Falkland eating another roast beef on rye, Mr. Swanzey pretending to dive over the side. At the end of the day, they asked Jere if they could buy the film.

Jere was off and running. He advertised in four local papers and circulars, and had more work that summer than he could handle. Everybody wanted a movie of their wedding, Fourth of July party, or first baby’s christening.

Jere was a year younger than most of the guests at the party on the
Duet.
They had graduated in June and he still had his senior year to go. Since Westerly was a huge high school, he knew this crowd only by sight and they did not know him at all.

He hoisted the camera for the next quartet of guests. They would be immortalized together.

Molly parked next to adorable old Gary, who dated every girl once and hardly any girl twice. Only Beth Rose. Molly had never figured that one out. She had a feeling even Gary had never figured that one out. “Hi, Gary,” she said sweetly.

“Hey, Moll, how ya doin’, how’s summer been?” Gary sauntered on toward the dock. Molly fell in step with him.

Mike (Kip’s old boyfriend) and Toby (nobody’s boyfriend ever, so far) hopped out of a car to join them. Nobody mentioned that it was odd for Molly to be part of this particular gathering; only girls would think of that. Boys were so nice and thick, thought Molly contentedly. You could count on a boy never to spot the things that mattered.

She hooked her arm through Gary’s. Gary was pretty hard to surprise. He looked down at her arm and laughed, and when the kid with the movie camera focused on them, Gary lifted their two arms to wave. Molly pirouetted for the camera and lost Gary in the process; Gary always kept going, kind of like a tank; either you kept up or you got lost or crushed.

Kip was busy organizing the pile of goodbye presents out of sight, so that the gift wrap and ribbons wouldn’t glitter in Anne’s eyes and give it all away. Molly felt grateful that she was nothing at all like Kip Elliott.

“Okay, now everybody has to hide!” shouted Kip in her General-with-the-Troops voice. “There’s the cabin, the life-preserver cabinets, the benches. I want everybody to find a place and I’ll stand out on the dock and inspect.”

Inspect! Molly thought, laughing at her. Only Kip would make a party have an inspection. The girl is pitiful.

“Don’t you like it how Kip always has things under control?” Gary asked. “Nothing ever goes wrong if Kip is running it.”

Molly said to him very seriously, as if she really wanted to know the answer, “Why don’t you date Kip, Gary?” Boys always fell for that tone of voice and gave her honest answers. Girls were harder to fool.

“I’d date Kip all right,” Gary said, “but I don’t think Kip would date me. She wants the world. All I ever want is the next dance.”

Molly laughed and so did Gary. She thought, now
there’s
a possibility. I’d take Gary in a heartbeat. And maybe tonight, I will!

“Quiet!” Kip thundered from somewhere out on the dock. “No more whispering, no more laughing. I want utter and complete silence.”

Molly giggled. “Honestly, she is so—”

“Sssssssh!” hissed everybody else.

Molly sank back in her dark corner to sulk. But she came out of it quickly. She had gotten on board. And this was one party where they couldn’t make a crasher leave. There was going to be a whole river between Molly and her car.

Con drove to the river. He and Anne had parked there many an evening, winter and summer, staring at the water, staring at each other, hearts beating hard, words impossible to find, but action easy to come by.

Anne was afraid to look at him. She was swamped by her memories. Strange how the terrible moments became good when looking back, simply because they had been shared. They were part of the whole existence of Con and Anne as a pair, that had turned them into the two individuals they were now.

Anne wet her lips. She was beginning to melt. Not from the heat. From Con.

The
Duet
was docked, quietly rocking in the river awaiting its next journey. Its dark green paint gleamed, and the setting sun flickered tongues of gold across the gilt paint and brass fitting.

“Duet,”
whispered Con. “We were one once.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I guess you’re a solo now,” he said lightly. But when she turned to look at him, a muscle in his jaw was twitching with tension.

“Dinner reservations aren’t for a while,” Con said, suddenly getting out of the car. “Come on. We’ve got time. Let’s just sit on the deck benches for a few minutes.” He took her hand and did not circle the convertible to open the door for her, but drew her to her feet and lifted her over the steering wheel and door. She laughed with delight. The wind caught her blue dress and lifted it like a balloon, and let it down again just as Con let her down.

Jere hoisted his camera as the white convertible drew up. He stood next to his father’s plain, unremarkable van, effectively camouflaged just by being too dull next to the glittering boat and the river in the sun.

The boy was Con Winter, greatly admired at Westerly High, definitely a big man on campus. Jere didn’t think much of the breed. Too pretty for his taste, too aware of themselves.

And with him, of course, Anne Stephens.

Jere loved photographing her. In her slender, cool, golden way she was so lovely. She moved with grace, slowly, as if concentrating on each step. Definitely a person who looked before she leaped. He slipped around his truck and knelt beside a large green trash barrel at the water’s edge. He got a wonderful picture of Anne, close-up, dreamily looking out beyond the boat, toward the horizon.

She turned to Con, and they kissed, very lightly, and he caught it perfectly; they were silhouetted against the purple streaked sky and the wind was lifting her hair.

But it did not seem real to Jere. The couple was too lovely. They actually looked made for movies, and not for real life. He felt no envy for them, only delight that he could be the cameraman.

He swiveled to face the deck, ready for the burst of kids.

Anne had celebrated her seventh birthday on the
Duet.
She remembered her friends’ excitement. How everybody had Dixie cups of ice cream and wanted to throw the cups overboard when they had eaten, and pretend they were flotillas of boats, and have races with them. The captain said No, very sternly, it was Pollution. For years Anne thought pollution was something Dixie cups did.

She walked up the gangplank, which was a wide gray slab with narrow chain rails, dangling like iron ribbons. It seemed odd that there was nobody about to take tickets. Probably it had been rented for a private party and she and Con should not just—

“SURPRISE!” screamed fifty voices.

From every cabinway and door, from behind every bench and below each solid rail, leaped every single friend she had. Emily and Matt and Kip and Gary and Mike and Peter and Jody and Susan and Lynda and Jimmy—

“SURPRISE!”

“Happy good-bye party!”

“Bon voyage!”

“Good luck!”

“Sharon, that’s a dumb thing to say, you can’t have a
happy
good-bye party.”

“We’re not sad for her, are we?”

“No, we’re jealous of her! We get to say good-bye to our parents and she gets to say good-bye to the United States!”

“You wouldn’t get me to do it. All it is is sleeping in strange beds with different radio stations and getting jet lag and eating crummy hotel food and not understanding the languages. Ugh. You couldn’t pay me to go.”

“You could pay
me
to go! Please, please, somebody pay
me
to go!”

They had brought little gifts. Nothing big, they didn’t have the money and Anne didn’t have the suitcase space. Writing paper, a money belt, a pencil that said
WESTERLY HIGH
. Toby had heard there was terrible purse snatching in Rome so he gave her a can of Mace. Susan was afraid she would forget her own country, so she had xeroxed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. From Gary came two miniature American flags. “You be sure to wave them if you stumble into any anti-American demonstrations,” he told her.

Con was quite indignant. “If she stumbles into any anti-American demonstrations, she’s to
leave,
not draw attention to herself!” he said. “You think I want my girl hurt?”