Summer People (15 page)

There was something festive about the way the table looked with a scarlet lobster sitting on each plate, but Beth seemed to be the only one who was excited about it. Garrett slouched miserably in his chair, and Winnie picked her lobster up by the claw and plopped it into the bowl meant for empty shells.

“I’m not eating that.”

Marcus was inspecting his plastic bib. “Weird,” he said. “This is a bib like a baby wears.”

Garrett and Winnie hadn’t even deigned to acknowledge their bibs. “It’s to keep the melted butter off your shirt,” Beth said.

Marcus frowned, but tied the bib behind his neck anyway. “If you say so.”

Beth secured her own bib in solidarity, then she lifted her glass of white wine. “Cheers, everyone! Happy summer.”

“What do I do with this thing?” Marcus asked, wielding his lobster cracker.

Garrett rolled his eyes and huffed a little.

“Sorry,” Marcus said. “We don’t eat a lot of boiled lobster in Queens.”

Beth showed Marcus how to crack open the claws, and she separated the meat of the tail from the shell. This, she knew, was the kind of scene Arch had in mind when he invited Marcus to Nantucket. “You’re going to love this,” she said. “When you get the meat free, you dip it in the melted butter.”

Garrett cracked his lobster. Winnie helped herself to a roll, which she tore into pieces. Once Marcus tasted the lobster, his face brightened. “This is great!” he said. “This is delicious.” He picked up the extra lobster. “I’ll eat Winnie’s if she doesn’t want it.”

“Go ahead,” Winnie said.

Beth sipped her wine. She felt empty, scooped out. As a kid, lobster night was magical. It was symbolic of a good, rich life. Her parents always drank too much wine on lobster night; they sang the old songs.
Falling in love again … I can’t help it.
Now here she sat, alone, with her recalcitrant twins and this boy whose life was anything but good and rich. Beth felt tears coming, but no, she wouldn’t ruin it. She was going to work with what she had. Garrett and Marcus were both eating. Winnie had torn up her roll and was now tentatively considering an ear of corn. Beth picked the snowy flesh out of her lobster claw, dunked it in butter and let the taste fill her mouth. She was doing the best she could.

“Piper comes home tomorrow?” she asked Garrett.

“Friday.”

“It’s nice to have you around for a change. We haven’t sat down to dinner like this in a while.”

“We should go out more,” Winnie said. “When Daddy was here, we used to go out more.”

“What do you care if we go out or stay in?” Garrett asked. “You never eat.”

“Shut up, man,” Marcus said. “I’ve seen Winnie eat plenty.”

“Thank you,” Winnie said.

“Maybe we should go out,” Beth said. “Maybe all of us should go out when Piper gets back.”

“Who cares about Piper?” Winnie said.

“I’ll take Piper out alone, thanks,” Garrett said. “And if you want to go out with David alone, then just go. Don’t use me as an excuse to see him.”

“Who said anything about wanting to go out with David?” Beth asked. She ripped off one of the lobster’s legs and sucked the juice out of it. “Are you ready for your driver’s test tomorrow?”

“You’re changing the subject, Mom,” Winnie said.

“What subject is that?”

“The subject of David,” Winnie said. “I think we should talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“He likes you.”

“He’s an old friend. I’ve known David since I was sixteen years old.”

“If you want to date him, I think it’s okay,” Winnie said. “You don’t have to keep blowing him off because of us.”

Garrett gagged on his food, sending a shower of corn kernels across the table.

“Spare me,” Winnie said to Garrett. “It’s okay for you to be happy with Piper, but it’s not okay for Mom to be happy?”

Garrett reddened. “These are personal matters,” he said. “Family matters.”

“Oh, what?” Winnie said. “Now you’re going to blast me for bringing this up in front of Marcus? You suck. You really suck.”

“I love you, too,” Garrett said.

“I’ll leave,” Marcus said. “I can eat outside.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Beth said. “This summer, you’re part of the family. You’re going to have to tolerate our squabbles.”

“I like David,” Marcus said. “He seems straight up and down. But he’s not Arch. Arch was one in a million.”

Everyone at the table was silent at those words. Beth put a finger under her nose.
Don’t cry,
she told herself.

“Thank you for saying that, Marcus,” she said. “That means a lot.”

Marcus shrugged and dug meat out of a lobster claw. “It’s true,” he said. “Arch will never be replaced. He died trying to save my mother.”

“Arch’s death had nothing to do with your mother,” Beth said. “It was an accident.”

“He wouldn’t have been on that plane if it weren’t for my mother,” Marcus said.

“That’s true,” Garrett said. He looked defiantly around the table. “I mean, no one can really deny that.”

Winnie glared at Garrett, then rolled the ear of corn away from her on the plate. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand. We won’t think you’re trying to replace Daddy if you want to date David, Mom.”

“I will not be dating David,” Beth said. Her voice sounded unusually firm. She wanted to set the record straight, for the kids and for herself. “We’re just friends. But thank you for your permission. It’s nice to know you realize I’m a person, too. I get lonely, too. In fact, sometimes it’s very lonely being the mom.”

“But you have us,” Winnie said.

Beth tried to smile. “Of course,” she said. “I have you.”

Beth sat on the wicker sofa drinking wine long after the kids went to bed, thinking about how unfair it was that David Ronan should reappear to haunt her
this
summer, which was already so painful. She couldn’t believe she had gone to his house. She had signed her name as “Elizabeth
Ronan.
” Beth cringed, thinking that in a million years she would never have the guts to admit that one to Kara Schau, much less anyone else.

She didn’t want to waste her time thinking about David Ronan. She should be thinking of Arch, remembering him. Remembering what was the freshest in her mind—their last day together. It was early March, not a romantic time of the year in anyone’s book, but Arch had called mid-morning from the office.

“Lunch at Le Refuge?” he said. “I can get out of here in ten minutes and meet you at quarter to one if traffic’s not too bad.”

“Sure,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

“I have to go to Albany in the morning,” Arch said.

“For how long?”

“Just the day,” Arch said. “But for a good reason. Alex Benson has agreed to meet with me about Connie.”

Alex Benson was an old law school friend of Arch’s. He was close to the governor, politically and personally, and Beth knew Arch had been trying for months to set up this meeting. “Anything promising?” she asked.

“Oh, who knows,” Arch said. “To be honest, honey, the most promising thing in my life right now is our lunch date. I’ll see you in a little while.”

Beth could remember thinking, as she hung up the phone, that she wished Constance Tyler’s trial would start and finish, if only because the gravity of it sapped Arch of his usual sunny disposition. Since Arch had started working on the case, he’d become preoccupied, and less tolerant of frivolity. He’d snapped at Winnie the week before for complaining about her SAT prep course.

“Thank God you don’t have any real problems,” Arch said. “You could be sitting on Riker’s Island facing lethal injection or life in prison.”

He was impossible now, too, at cocktail parties. He took legal research to the gym and read on the StairMaster.

Taking on the case and taking it on for free made Arch feel righteous. He earned lots of money defending corporate Manhattan against charges of fraud, false advertising, sexual harassment, and general bad faith, but with the Constance Tyler case he felt he was helping someone who needed help. He knew she was guilty, but he was so opposed to the death penalty that to be able to fight it and win just once would make his career worthwhile. His partners at the law firm frowned on all the time the case was eating up, and the enormous expense, but this didn’t phase Arch in the slightest. He brought in twice as much business as any other part-ner—he’d earned the right to take this case, a point he made quietly at the monthly partners’ meeting. Constance Tyler was his top priority, period. At times, Beth actually felt
jealous
of Connie, so thoroughly did she consume Arch’s thoughts.

At lunch, Arch was in a surprisingly good mood. He arrived before Beth and was waiting at their favorite table with a bouquet of flame-colored roses.

“Look at you,” Beth said. “Look what you’ve done.”

“Orange roses,” he said, presenting them to her. “They seemed right somehow for a dreary day in March.” He kissed her. “I love dating my wife.”

“This is a great surprise,” Beth said. “I was just at home thinking about how I might clean out the china cabinet.”

“Let the china cabinet go uncleaned!” he said. He called the waiter over and ordered a bottle of Sancerre. “I’m not going back to the office today.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m not. Once the trial starts next week I’m going to be slammed. So today I’m going to have a long, leisurely, wine-soaked lunch with my wife and then I’m going to walk her home in the rain and spend the afternoon in bed with her.”

What Beth remembered now was how fortunate she felt that afternoon. They drank not one, but two bottles of wine, they ate goat cheese and wild mushrooms and garlic-studded lamb and lemon tart. They talked about all of the things they never had time to talk about at home—trips they wanted to take once the kids went to college, the books they were reading, current events. After Arch paid the bill, Beth floated to the door inhaling the scent of her roses. She was certainly the luckiest woman on earth.

They walked home in the cold drizzle, giggling and falling against each other. Arch pulled Beth past their apartment building, up to Madison Avenue.

“I want to buy shoes,” he said.

They went into Giovanni Bellini’s, which was hushed and smelled of expensive leather. The sumptuous pairs of handcrafted loafers were lined up on the shelves. The first pair Arch reached for were an outlandish electric blue.

“To go with my seersucker suit,” he said. To the salesman, whose mouth was a grim line, he said, “Ten and a half,
por favor.
Oops, wait a minute, that’s Spanish. Beth, how do you say ‘please’ in Italian?”

She sat on the plush bench in the middle of the room. “
Prego,
I think.”

“Like the spaghetti sauce?”

They started giggling and the salesman disappeared and returned with a box. Arch tried the shoes on. He looked adorably clownish—his dark suit and the blue shoes.

“The thing is,” Arch said, “some people actually buy these. Europeans.”

Beth urged him to be quiet.

“You know,” Arch said to the salesman, “these are a little flamboyant for me. May I see the black tasseled loafers in a ten and a half?”

Arch bought two pairs of shoes and three pairs of dress socks. This improved the salesman’s humor. When they left the store, he bid them farewell with an authentic sounding
“Ciao!”

Beth and Arch returned to the apartment and showered together, something they hadn’t done in years. They made love on the bathroom floor, then wrapped themselves in towels and fell into bed.

It was dark when Beth woke up. Arch lay next to her, snoring. She was confused for a minute, thinking it was the middle of the night, but then she remembered the lunch. It was still afternoon. Five minutes to five. Winnie had swimming until six, and what was today? Monday. Garrett had floor hockey on Monday. He’d also be home around six. Beth snuggled up to Arch. She loved to watch him sleep. He slept so devotedly, like he was giving sleep everything he had.

She switched on the TV and caught the last half hour of
Love Story
on TNT. Oliver buys plane tickets to Paris, but no, it’s too late. Jennifer has leukemia. She dies, Oliver sits alone in the snowy park. Beth was sniffling when Arch finally opened his eyes.