Summer People (32 page)

“And that’s it?” Garrett said.

“That’s it,” Beth said. “That’s the whole story. My father’s attorney took care of the divorce. I didn’t see David again for several years, and by that point, we were both married to other people. And I made the conscious decision never to think or speak of it again. To anyone, including your father. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed, and I’m even sorrier if you feel I betrayed your father. But that was my decision. It was an event from my past.
Mine.
Do you understand?”

The twins nodded mechanically, like marionettes.

Beth felt drained. There were other things she wanted to discuss with the kids—the Malibu rum, the whereabouts of the ashes—but those things hardly mattered to her at this moment. The only thing that mattered now was that she had told the one story she’d tried with all her might to forget. The reason she’d tried to forget was because of the expression on David’s face that final morning. It was the look of a man whose dream had been crushed without warning. It was the look of a man who
would
have loved her forever, who would have taken her for a ride on the back of his dirt bike into infinity.

Beth stood up. She made herself a piece of toast at the counter, ate it in four bites, then went upstairs to her room. Her business with the twins was finished for the time being; they would have to process all they’d heard. What Beth realized before she took a Valium and fell into bed for a nap was that there was one more person she needed to talk to about all of this before she put it to rest for good, and that person was David.

Beth thought of biking or driving out to David’s house that evening before dinner (it grew dark at seven o’clock now, a sign that August had arrived), but Beth didn’t want to talk with David in front of his girls. She let a few days pass. Her relationship with the twins returned to almost normal, however they seemed to bestow upon her a new kind of respect—maybe because she had finally owned up to the truth, or maybe because they had never before imagined her as a person capable of getting married on a whim by a judge wearing Bermuda shorts. When Beth saw Piper, she, too, treated Beth differently, more formally, always calling her “Mrs. Newton.” One night, Beth screwed up the courage to ask Piper where David was working.

“This week, Cliff Road,” Piper said. And then, as if she knew what Beth was planning, she added, “One of the new houses on the left just before you reach Madaket Road.”

Beth decided to go see him the following morning, climbing into the Rover at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock. She wanted to catch him early, say her piece, and leave. Unfortunately, there was a blanket of fog so thick that Beth couldn’t see any of the houses from the road and she worried that she wouldn’t be able to find the right one. But then she spied two huge homes with fresh yellow cedar shingles on the left, and she took a chance and chose the first of the two driveways. There were a number of vans and trucks—one of them David’s.

Beth parked in a spot well out of everyone’s way and climbed out of the car. She began to feel nervous about this plan—after all, David was working. He had a business to run, contracts to fulfill; he didn’t need his old girlfriend showing up to rehash something that happened back in the Ice Age. Beth glanced at her car and considered leaving, but what if he saw her? That would only make things worse.

The house was so new that there was no front door, only an extra-wide arched opening. The floors were plywood, but all of the drywall was hung, and a boy of about eighteen knelt in the hall sticking a screwdriver into an outlet, which seemed to Beth a perilous undertaking. When the boy saw her, he stared for a second—clearly there weren’t many women on these work sites— and Beth was able to ask for David.

“They’re painting on the third floor,” the boy said, finally blinking. Beth wondered if something was wrong with the way she looked—she’d taken extreme care in appearing casual. Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, flip-flops, her hair in a clip. Beth thanked the boy and proceeded up the stairs, two flights, to the third floor, which was comprised of a long hallway with many doors— bedrooms, bathrooms, a big closet. Beth found each one being painted a tasteful color—buttercream, pearl gray, periwinkle— but she did not see David. The kids painting were all teenagers, too. Beth asked one of them if he knew where David was.

“On the deck at the end of the hall, drinking his java,” the young man said. This kid was very pale and had black hair to his shoulders. “You his wife?”

Beth walked away without answering.

At the end of the hall were French doors, one of which was propped open with a gallon can of primer. The doors led to a huge deck that overlooked Maxcy’s Pond, which through the fog, had a dull silver glint, like a pewter plate. David sat in a teak chair, drinking his coffee, reading the newspaper. Beth watched him for a second, his right ankle was propped on his left knee and the paper rested on his legs. His sipped his coffee, turned the page, whistled a few bars from the music inside. Beth realized how enraged she was. At him, at Rosie—God, Rosie— and at herself.

“This is quite a view,” she said.

He swung around so quickly he spilled his coffee. When he stood up, the paper slid off his lap onto the deck.

“Beth,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a sneaking suspicion you didn’t actually work,” Beth said. “And I see now that I was correct.”

David wiped the coffee off his arm with a napkin, then he folded the paper up, but seemed at a loss for what to do with it, so he tucked it between the rails of the deck. It slipped through the rails and fluttered to the ground, three stories below. Beth took the chair next to his.

David gazed glumly at the newspaper below. “I’ve been here since five-thirty getting my guys set up,” he said. “I was taking my coffee break.”

“Not a bad life,” Beth said.

“Why are you here?” David asked. “You certainly didn’t come to praise my choice of career.”

“You know why I came.”

He looked at her in that old, intense way that made the bottom of Beth’s stomach swoop out. “I had nothing to do with it,” David said. “Rosie told them.”

“Oh, I know,” Beth said. “That only makes it worse.”

“She’s been wanting to tell the girls for years,” David said. “She was just waiting for the opportunity to present itself.” David sank into his seat. “Finding out that Piper was dating your son was irresistible.”

“It’s none of her business,” Beth said in a tight voice. She felt herself losing control and she reached for her mental reins. She breathed in through her nose; her ears were ringing with the injustice of it. Rosie kept the secret for twenty-five years only to let it splash at the worst possible time. “It’s nobody’s business but ours. Yours and mine.”

“We were
married,
Beth.” David looked at her, as if for confirmation, and she nodded. “It’s a part of your past you have to face.”

“But that’s what I mean,” Beth said. “Why shouldn’t I be able to face it when I want, or not at all? It belongs to me. But no one else thinks that way. You don’t believe I have a right to my own past, and neither do my kids. So I was forced to tell them the story about you and me and that summer, the cottage, the blood tests, the cosmos, the judge. I told them everything. Okay? I hope you’re happy.”

David was quiet for a moment. “How did you explain the part where you left me?”

“I explained it like it happened.”

“And how, exactly,
did
it happen?” David asked. He raised his palms and showed them to her, then he placed them on the sides of her face. She pulled back—this was already too much contact—but his hands held her steady. In her mind, she saw a struggle, she sailed over the deck’s railing to the ground where the newspaper lay in the mud.

“Let go of me,” she said, as calmly as she could.

“I loved you,” he said. “And you left me.”

“Yes,” she said.

He dropped his hands from her face and stuffed them into the pockets of his gray canvas shorts. Beth gazed at his tan legs fleeced with golden hairs, his crooked toes. His person was so familiar to her and yet he had changed. They were both different people now from the characters in the story she had told the twins. She noticed for the first time some gray hairs around his ears.

“I’ve thought about it so much this summer,” David said. “I haven’t seen you in what—three weeks? four?—and yet I’ve thought about you every day. I thought about kissing you.”

“David.”

“I thought about making love to you.”

“David!”

“And I asked myself over and over,
What do you really want from this woman?
She just lost her husband. What do you really expect?” He grabbed onto the rail and leaned forward as though he were the one contemplating a headlong dive. “Do you know what I decided?”

“What?”

“I want to know why you left me.”

Beth bounced on her toes. She felt the bike path calling her. She didn’t want to explain herself; she wanted to run away, just as she had twenty-five years ago.

“There were a lot of reasons,” Beth said. “Mostly, I wanted to finish college.”

“You could have finished on the Cape.”

“I wanted to finish at Sarah Lawrence.”

“You have no idea how snotty you sound,” he said.

“Maybe that is snotty, or maybe I just like to finish what I start.”

“Except in the case of our marriage,” David said.

Beth stared at the pond, which was a shade darker now. It was going to rain. “I couldn’t stand to disappoint my parents.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I wanted to live my life the right way, David. Graduate, get a job, get married in a church with my parents’ blessing.”

“You were a coward,” David said. “You weren’t brave enough to follow your heart. When you actually agreed to marry me, I thought I had changed you into the kind of person who took risks. But when you left I saw that you were the same scared little girl you were at sixteen. Afraid of doing anything wrong, afraid of being your own person.”

He was trying to hurt her and she couldn’t blame him. At the time, Beth felt she had a choice between pleasing her parents and pleasing David, and, in the end, she chose her parents. But deep down, Beth also knew she was doing what was
right.
Thinking about that lunch at the Mad Hatter made her cringe inside, even now. She wouldn’t have lasted eighteen years as David’s wife. She would have taken off long before Rosie had. This, however, wasn’t a sentiment that ever needed to be spoken out loud, even if David was prodding her to admit it.

“I acted as my own person,” she declared. “I left of my own free will, because I knew it would be better for both of us.”

“Well, it wasn’t better for me.”

Beth stood up. “What is it you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Of course I’m sorry! Of course I remember what happened. When I was telling the story to the kids, I remembered every single detail down to what Danny and Scott were eating for
breakfast
the morning I went back home.” She glanced at David and was dismayed to see that there were tears in his eyes. Why was he ripping the scab off this old wound?
Leave it alone!
she pleaded silently.
We’re old now. We have gray hair
. “I was wrong for the way I left you. I was wrong not to tell you to your face, but I simply couldn’t. I was afraid. I knew I was going to hurt you and I didn’t have the courage to sit and watch. I loved you, David, in that blind way that teenagers love each other. But I was smart enough to realize that it wasn’t love for the long haul. When I left, I did us both a favor. That doesn’t make it right. I’m sorry. Even now, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do me a favor by leaving,” David said. He lay across the chair like he’d been shot. His neck was exposed, and his Adam’s apple; she could see his pulse. Beth imagined her young self climbing onto the back of his dirt bike, and holding on to him for dear life. Kicking up dust into the sunset. That was how this all started, and this was how it was going to end, here on the deck of a complete stranger’s house.

“I
am
sorry, David.”

“So am I.”

They remained silent until the first raindrops fell, and then Beth announced that she should let him get back to work.

“I’ll see you out,” he said.

They walked down the hall, past the rooms with their heavy smells of paint and blaring music and the teenage boys who would ask one another on their lunch break if Beth was David’s estranged wife. A few of the kids would say yes, a few would say no, and nobody, Beth realized, would be completely wrong.

G
arrett’s days with Piper were dwindling. The Newtons were scheduled to leave the day after Labor Day, and when Garrett checked the calendar, he found himself staring at the fourteenth of August. They had less than three weeks left.

That night, Garrett and Piper went to the Gaslight Theater to see a heist movie. Piper knew a guy who worked there and so they were able to buy beers at the bar and take the beers into the theater with them. Piper took one sip of her beer and excused herself for the bathroom. She was gone a long time—she missed all of the trailers. When she returned, she took Garrett’s hand and squeezed it so hard that Garrett winced and looked over, even though as a rule, he disliked it when people talked in movies.

“I threw up,” she whispered.

Garrett moved his arm around her shoulders. “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

She shook her head and slumped in her seat toward him. Garrett hoped she wasn’t getting sick; the thought of even a day without Piper disheartened him. He drank his beer and the rest of Piper’s as well.

After the movie, Garrett drove to the beach. No matter what they did at night, they always parked at the beach on the way home. But when Garrett pulled up to the water, shut off the engine and made a move to kiss Piper, she raised her hands to shield her face.

“Hey,” Garrett said. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel well,” Piper said.

“Still?”

“Still.”

Garrett rested his hands on the steering wheel and looked helplessly out the window. Even though they had more than two weeks left, everything had started to take on a sheen of nostalgia. The ocean at night, for example. Garrett soaked in the sight so that when he went back to New York he might remember what it was like—the waves, the reflection of the moon on the water, the way it felt to have Piper next to him.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

Piper didn’t respond. A few seconds later when Garrett looked at her, he saw she was crying again. Piper had cried three nights in the past week because she was so upset about his leaving. That was probably why she threw up earlier. Garrett knew from his experiences with Winnie that girls threw up when they got upset. He didn’t like the fact that he was causing Piper to cry and vomit, although he was glad she was going to miss him.

“It’s only a year,” Garrett said. “Not even a year. Nine months—September to June.”

“That’s not it,” Piper said.

“I’m
not
going to find another girlfriend,” Garrett reassured her. “I already told you, there isn’t a girl in New York City as pretty as you.”

“Garrett.”

“We’ll talk on Sundays when the rates are low, and we’ll e-mail every day. God,” he said. “I wonder what people did before they had e-mail?”

“I’m late for my period,” Piper said.

This took Garrett so by surprise that at first he couldn’t decipher what she meant. “What?”

“But I’m, like, super erratic. My cycle can be twenty-eight days for six months and then I’ll skip a cycle all together. It’s happened before. A bunch of times. At least twice.”

“Are you telling me you might be pregnant?” Garrett asked. He couldn’t believe this. They had used condoms every single time they had sex. He’d made sure of that. He’d been so, so careful—well, except for the time his mother caught them, when he hurried, when he fumbled while disengaging. But that was so long ago, the Fourth of July. He leaned his head back.
Oh, please, God, no.

“Might,” Piper said.

“How late are you?”

“Pretty late.” She burst into a fresh round of tears.

“Okay, okay,” Garrett said. He had to keep her from getting hysterical. What was it his father had always said?
It’s fruitless to speculate.
There was no need to jump ahead and consider how neither of them was prepared to become a parent at seventeen. Not with a year of high school and four of college and three of law school for Garrett. No need to jump ahead to where Piper might get an abortion—it certainly couldn’t be done on Nantucket—or how to pay for it or what their parents would say.

“You need to take a test,” he said.

“Where am I going to get a test?”

Garrett wrinkled his brow. “At the store? I don’t know. The pharmacy?”

“I
live
here, Garrett,” Piper said. “I know at least three people who work at the Stop & Shop and my father is friends with the couple who own the pharmacy. He paints it every year. I can’t go buy a pregnancy test. Everyone knows me.”

Garrett felt like Piper had thrown a huge blanket over his head and he was having a hard time shaking it off. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Me?”
she said. “It’s not
my
problem, Garrett. It’s
our
problem. If I am pregnant, it’s half your fault.”

“I know,” Garrett said defensively.

“
You
should buy the pregnancy test,” Piper said. “Nobody knows you.”

She had a point; he knew practically no one on the island other than his family. Still, the idea of buying a pregnancy test was humiliating. Buying a box of condoms had been bad enough. The condoms—Garrett couldn’t even think about the condoms without shrinking inside.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

Piper seemed to relax a little at this promise. She fell across the front seat and lay her head in his lap. A few seconds later, she fiddled with the zipper of his jeans, but Garrett took her hand and held it tightly. His body was filled with nervous tension that would be impossible to battle. He held Piper close and after several minutes he felt her body melt into his. She was falling asleep.

“Piper,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”

When they pulled into the Ronans’ driveway, Piper roused herself enough to undo her seatbelt. “So you’ll get it?” she asked. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he said. He pulled Piper toward him and kissed her. “Do you think you are?”

Her eyes were only half open. She was, as Garrett’s mother would say, falling asleep in her soup.

“No,” she said dreamily. “Probably not.”

Garrett felt a rush of relief. It was, after all, her body.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Garrett.”

The next morning, Garrett rose early and drove to the Stop & Shop. He bought a pint of raspberries for his mother, who loved them, a bag of Doritos, a package of bacon, a jar of olives, a six-pack of root beer, and the pregnancy test. He dashed for the checkout line. The cashier, an older Jamaican woman, rang up the groceries without even glancing at him. Garrett paid with cash, refused his receipt, and hurried from the store.

Once in the car, he transferred the pregnancy test from the shopping bag into the backpack that he normally used for school—he’d brought it to Nantucket filled with the books on his summer reading list, but now it was going to serve as the place where he would hide the pregnancy test until that evening when Piper would take it. They were going to meet early, while it was still light out, and head someplace private.

At home, his mother was the only one awake. Garrett sauntered into the kitchen holding the bag of groceries—the backpack was already tucked into the dark recesses of the front hall closet. Beth stared at him as he put the shopping bag on the table and began emptying its contents.

“I bought you some raspberries,” he said.

“You went to the store?” she asked. “What on earth for? Was there something special you wanted? You should have just told me, honey.”

“And olives,” Garrett said, holding up the jar. “You do like olives, don’t you?”

At six o’clock, Garrett and Piper picked up sandwiches from Henry’s and drove out to Smith’s Point to catch the sunset. This was one of the things Garrett wanted to do before he left the island for the summer. In previous years, Garrett’s father had arrived for the last two weeks of August and they did stuff as a family every night, including a sandwich picnic at Smith’s Point. As Garrett drove over the rickety wooden bridge at Madaket Harbor, he noted how vastly different this year was from last year. This year he was the one driving the car with his girlfriend in the seat beside him, his girlfriend who thought she might be pregnant. His father was dead; his mother had been married before. Garrett reeled at the enormity of it. He glanced at Piper. She looked pale, and nervous. He took her hand.

Garrett lowered the air in his tires at the gatehouse, and then he and Piper drove over the huge, bumpy dune to the beach. Piper groaned and clenched her abdomen. Garrett’s heart sank.

“Are you
okay
?” he asked.

“Just get there,” she said.

They drove out the beach to the westernmost tip of the island. Across the water, Garrett could see the next island over, Tuckernuck. Piping plovers scuttled along the shoreline; the air smelled of fish, and in fact, the only other people on the beach were a couple of surf casters in the distance. Garrett spread out a blanket and unloaded the bag of sandwiches and the shopping bag that contained the Doritos and the root beer. It was a clear night; the sun was a pinkish-orange ball dropping toward the blue horizon. Piper sat resolutely in the Rover.

“Aren’t you getting out?” he asked.

She moved in slow motion, like she was running out of batteries.

“Do you want to take the test before or after we eat?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Before, I guess. While it’s still light. I have to pee anyway.”

“Okay,” he said. He double-checked their surroundings; they were shielded from the fishermen’s view. He took the test out of his backpack and studied the instructions. “You pee in this cup, and then you put the stick in. If a second line shows up, it’s positive. If not, it’s negative.” He handed Piper the cup and with the lethargic movements of an amoeba, she disappeared into the nearby dunes.

Garrett tapped the plastic stick against his palm.
Dad
? he beckoned. But this moment was too monumental and too scary to share with his father. Garrett tried to clear his mind. He could smell his meatball sub and his stomach growled. He’d been too nervous to eat anything all day, and now he was starving.

After an eternity, Piper popped out of the dunes, holding the cup discreetly at her side, blocked from Garrett’s view. “Give me the stick,” she said. He handed it to her and she opened the back door of the car and moved inside. Garrett’s pulse was screaming along like a race car. He was too nervous to pray.

“How long does it say to wait?” she asked.

Garrett didn’t have to check the instructions; he had them memorized. “Three minutes, but no longer than ten.”

Piper checked her watch. Garrett lost all control. He tore open the bag of Doritos and stuffed a handful into his face. He felt like an ogre, a glutton, but he couldn’t help himself. Piper didn’t even seem to notice. Nearly half the bag was gone when Piper stepped from the car. Garrett paused in his eating; his lips burned with spicy salt. Piper emptied the contents of the cup behind the Rover’s back tire.

She smiled at him. The diamond stud in her nose caught the last rays of the setting sun. She waved the stick over him like it was a magic wand, changing his life forever.

“It’s positive,” she said.