Summer People (27 page)

“That one time he and I went surf casting out at Great Point?” Garrett said. “We explored on our way home and found this place. He said he wanted to bring you and Mom here for a picnic.”

“Really?” Winnie said. “Where should we stop?”

“Up here,” Garrett said.

Winnie pulled onto the shoulder. The radio was playing Linda Ronstadt singing “Long, Long Time.” Garrett opened his door and they both blinked at the dome light. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Winnie’s heart pounded in her ears. She was unable to move.

“Garrett?” she said.

He came to the driver’s side and helped her out of the car. He kept his arm around her as he steered her into the meadow. There were Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, and a thicket of low blueberry bushes.

Garrett opened the urn. He put the top of the urn by his feet, and when he straightened, he reached into the urn, but then he withdrew his hand.

“You first,” he said. “You throw first.”

“Why?”

“Because you were his little girl,” Garrett said. “He loved you best.”

Immediately Winnie’s eyes were blurred by tears. She sniffled. “Oh, Garrett, you know he loved us exactly the same.”

“He loved us a lot,” Garrett said. He was crying, too, and this made Winnie cry harder. She knew she would never forget this moment as long as she lived. Her twin brother, this hidden meadow, and the water beyond it, the music in her head, her mother’s secret in her heart. Winnie slipped her hand into the urn. The ash was fine and silky with a few chunks. The remains of her beloved father, the man she loved first, the man she would always love beyond any other man, even Marcus. Winnie called up the memories she had left: her father across the table from her at EJ’s Luncheonette eating his red flannel hash; her father in the balcony of Danforth’s indoor pool, whooping like a rodeo cowboy as a signal to her to give the last lap of the race all she had; her father on any one of five thousand nights coming in to kiss her good night on the forehead, never shutting the door without saying, “I love you, Winnie. You’re my only little girl.” He had been a great lawyer—that was why his obituary ran in all of the New York papers, including the
Times
—but he’d been an even greater father. This, she realized, was the highest compliment anyone could give a man.

With a wide, circling motion of her arm, Winnie scattered him, set him free, let him go.

J
ust like that, Marcus’s summer was falling apart. He wished he’d never heard the secret news about Beth and David—it was family business and he’d been dragged in, first by Beth, then by Winnie. Marcus had promised Beth he would support Winnie, but her reaction to the news was so overblown, so immature, that Marcus could feel nothing but disappointment in her. Their relationship, whatever it was—boyfriend/girlfriend or just friends—was turning to rags faster than Winnie’s sweatshirt.

Marcus couldn’t figure out what the twins’ so-called revenge was, but there was a definite change in their behavior. They spoke very little to Beth, and when they did speak, it was in a cool, formal tone, the way you would talk to a stranger at a bus stop. One-word sentences, short, tired phrases, crisp and distant. Beth tolerated it for about a day and a half, then she confronted them at dinner. “All right, kids. What’s going on?” Garrett and Winnie didn’t blink, didn’t crack a smile; they simply looked at each other meaningfully and retreated into themselves, like a set of twins Marcus read about once in a magazine article who had their own spooky form of communication.

Winnie had also stopped talking to Marcus. When they occupied the same space—the kitchen, for example, while making breakfast or lunch—Winnie smiled at him benignly, like Marcus was someone she’d met once before but whose name she couldn’t recall. He wanted to shake her—
this is not how you treat people when you’re angry!
But Marcus didn’t want to give Winnie the satisfaction of knowing how much her behavior bugged him. After all, he had his own life. He had, he reminded himself with increasing guilt each day, a
book
to write.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking of her, though, from listening to every word that came out of her mouth (mostly words directed to Garrett, or to Piper, if she was around). He couldn’t help himself from listening for her in the middle of the night; he knew her footsteps, and when they were in the house together, he kept track of her. One afternoon, as he hung out in his room, he heard her march up the stairs and stop just outside his door. He tried to steady his breathing as he waited for her to knock. Marcus was ready to forgive her—even to apologize.

Strangely, no knock came. Instead, there was a whooshing sound as an envelope skated across the wood floor. Marcus shook his head. It was just like a woman to write a note.

When he bent over to retrieve the envelope, however, he saw that it wasn’t a note and it wasn’t from Winnie. It was a Western Union telegram and that, he realized with a surge of fear, meant only one thing: Zachary Celtic. Zachary had bugged Marcus for a phone number, a fax number, an e-mail address—he wanted a way to contact Marcus to check on the progress of the book.

When Marcus reported that there was no computer at the house where he was staying, no fax machine,
not even a phone,—That’s right
, Marcus had said,
I guess these people I’m staying with are old-fashioned or something
—Zachary Celtic had grudgingly written down the address, saying he would send telegrams.

So here was a telegram, delivered by a person so angry with him that she couldn’t even knock on the door and hand it to him. Marcus slit the envelope with his pinky nail.

21 July

Dear Marcus,

How is the book coming along? No pressure, man, just checking in. September will be here before you know it! Call if you need guidance—that’s what editors are for! (And to rip the shit out of your first three drafts, of course—only kidding, man!)

Best regards,

Z

Marcus winced. Zachary Celtic wasn’t used to writing to black people if he thought the only name they related to was “man.”

The telegram reignited the panic that lay in the bottom of his stomach like cold kindling. With trembling hands, Marcus took the legal pad from his bureau drawer.
My mother is a murderer
. Even that was more than Marcus wanted to say. He tossed the legal pad onto his bed and opened the louvered folding door of his closet. His beautiful white shirt was the only thing hanging. Marcus’s black leather duffel lay across the closet floor, as hideous as a body bag. The only thing that made Marcus feel worse than the duffel was the pair of dock shoes, the left shoe stuffed with Constance’s unread letters. Those three things—the shirt, the duffel, and the shoes—were physical proof of the five hundred dollars he would never be able to pay back and thirty thousand dollars he would never see unless he could figure out how he wanted to tell his story.

Marcus lay back on his white bed.
The dead bodies in your own apartment … your mother, pretty woman, too, strapped to the gurney, facing the long needle … the blood-splattered sheet … You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been itching to do … Your mother as, like, an educated woman, a teacher and everything, and one day she just … snaps.

Yes, Marcus thought, she just snapped.

He didn’t know why his mother had killed Angela and Candy; he didn’t
have
an explanation and it wasn’t fair—to his readers or to his mother—to make one up.

Winnie and Marcus didn’t sit together at the beach anymore. Instead, Winnie sat on the deck with Garrett and sometimes Piper, and Marcus went to the beach alone. He swam the butterfly, some of his strongest swimming, because he knew Winnie was watching. He thought about how he could have won first place in every meet last season. He’d held himself back on purpose. Now
that
took skill, because nobody suspected he was throwing his races. Or maybe his coach did suspect and decided to keep quiet because he didn’t want Marcus to win. He didn’t want to face the headlines any more than Marcus did.
MURDERER’S SON WINS ALL-QUEENS INVITATIONAL.

Marcus grew lonely, especially in the hours after dinner when he and Winnie normally played games. Now he stayed in his room, listening to his portable CD player, reading about spies, thinking about his mother.

For the first time all summer, he missed TV. And with utter dismay, Marcus realized that he wouldn’t be able to write a word while he was so agitated about Winnie.

He considered going home. It was nearly the end of July; he’d had six good weeks. The atmosphere in his white room wasn’t conducive to writing, that was a big problem, so the best thing was to get home—away from so much whiteness. Away from the Newtons.

He called home on a Tuesday night, enjoying the unconcealed intrigue on Winnie’s face when he stood up from the dinner table and announced that he was riding one of the mountain bikes into town. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch, belying her thoughts:
What is he doing in town at night?
It was likely she also had questions about the telegram—Marcus had checked the envelope and was relieved to discover there was no return address to give him away. Let her wonder. Let her wonder, too, when he disappeared for good.

It cost two dollars and fifty cents in quarters to get a line to Queens on the pay phone, and at first the answering machine picked up. Marcus listened for a few seconds to his father’s melancholy intonation, “We’re not in at the moment, please—”

Then, the voice was cut off, replaced by the breathless alto of Marcus’s sister, LaTisha. “Yeah? What?”

“Or ‘hello,’ ” Marcus said, thinking despite himself that even if the Newtons had a phone they would never answer by saying “Yeah? What?” “You could say hello.”

“Marcus?”
LaTisha said, her voice interested, if not apologetic. “Is this Marcus?”

“Yes.”

“How are you?” LaTisha asked. “How’s Nantucket? Is it incredible? Dad says you never describe it.”

Marcus looked out at the darkened street. The shops were lit up and people strolled by eating ice cream cones. A Lincoln Navigator rumbled down the cobblestones and stopped in front of Twenty-one Federal. Two women climbed out wearing brightly colored sundresses, followed by a man wearing a navy blazer over what Marcus guessed was a Paul Stuart shirt. The man escorted both women up the steps of the restaurant while the driver of the Navigator—whom Marcus could only identify as a madras-clad elbow—called out, “Order my drink while I park this beast! Mount Gay and tonic!” How to describe such a place to his father or LaTisha? All Marcus could think was that
this
was the life Constance had visualized for herself—a life of glamour and privilege and ease.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Fine?”
LaTisha repeated. “That doesn’t help me any. What’s the beach like? And the house. Is it really, really huge? Is it a mansion?”

“It’s not a mansion,” Marcus said. “It’s just a house.”

“On the beach, right?”

“On a bluff overlooking the beach.”

“A
bluff
? That sounds cool. And the family—is the family okay, or are they, you know, snotty?”

“Snotty” was the wrong word, though Marcus understood why it was the word that came to LaTisha’s mind. Because that was what Marcus had feared, too, before he got here—that the New-tons would be snotty, snobby, that they would look down on him. That was the reason for buying the props—the shirt, the deck shoes, the leather bag. He had thought, before he spent any time with these people, that it would be about money. But it was ten times as complicated as that. The Newtons were just so very sad—as sad as Marcus was—and they kept getting sadder. Marcus cleared his throat and shook his head. He didn’t want to start feeling sorry for them now.

“The family is fine,” Marcus said. A blatant lie. “Listen, is Dad there?”

“It’s Tuesday,” LaTisha said. “He’s at support group until nine-thirty.”

“Oh,” Marcus said. He’d forgotten about the support group. The details of his life in Queens had all but vanished from his mind. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” LaTisha said. “Watching TV with Ernestine.”

Ernestine was a girl with learning disabilities from down the hall who had remained LaTisha’s steadfast friend through everything. Marcus suspected Ernestine lacked a full understanding of what had happened with their mother, but he was glad LaTisha had her for company, even if all they ever did together was watch TV.

“The house here doesn’t have a TV,” Marcus said.

“What?”
LaTisha said. “You’re kidding, right? They don’t have TV? God, Marcus, what do you do all day? And at night?”

“I swim during the day, and you know, sit on the beach. I read. Listen to music. Hang out …” He almost said,
Hang out with Winnie
, but he caught himself. “I relax.”

Suddenly, LaTisha’s voice grew suspicious. “You’re calling Dad because you want to come home, right? Geez, Marcus, I don’t blame you. You must be bored to death. Well, I’ll be happy if you come home. I miss you. This place
sucks
when you’re not here. Pop is practically never home and I have this ridiculous curfew. Eight o’clock. It’s not even dark at eight o’clock. And if he’s not here he has Mrs. Demetrios check on me. I’m almost thirteen, for God’s sake!” She paused to catch her breath and Marcus pictured her young face and her skimpy braids. When Constance first went to jail, LaTisha cried all the time because Mama wasn’t there to do her hair. “I thought I might make a little money this summer, but nobody calls me to baby-sit anymore. They probably think … well, who knows what they think.”

“They probably think you’re going to kill their children,” Marcus said.

“Yeah,” LaTisha said, as though this were something she had realized and accepted long ago. “Anyway, things would be better if you came home.”

“I’m not coming home,” Marcus said. As bad as shit was, at least he wasn’t frying on the griddle of hot city blocks, or worse, trapped inside, supervising his sister, watching reruns of
Three’s Company
and begging the air conditioner to do a better job. He felt sad about this—
home
should be a place you wanted to run to no matter what. It should be a refuge. “I just wanted to check in is all.”

“Well, as much as I told you I was glad to get rid of your ass this summer, I’m really not. It feels like everyone is dropping out of this family.”

“I’m not dropping out,” Marcus said.

“I know,” LaTisha said. “It just feels that way.”

“You should … read more,” Marcus said. “Go to the library.”

“Library?”
LaTisha said. “Now you sound like Mama.” Before Marcus could assert his obvious difference from their mother, LaTisha added, “I’ll tell Pop you called. You’ll call back—when?”

“Soon,” Marcus promised. “I’ll talk to you later, sis. Okay? Tell Ernestine I said hello.”

He hung up the phone then looked out at the charming Nan-tucket street. He was a person who belonged nowhere.