Summer People (38 page)

The holidays came, and because they were the first holidays without Arch, they could only be described as bearable. In January, Beth took the twins to Hunter Mountain to ski, and for the break in February, the three of them flew to Palm Beach and stayed at the Breakers. Garrett praised his mother for these trips, these
distractions,
and helped out as much as he could—carrying luggage, arranging the limo to and from the airport, and being as amiable as possible.

While they traveled, he found himself thinking about the baby more often. He’d never realized how many children inhabited the world. Babies in car seats and strollers clogged the train station and airline terminals. Garrett heard their cries during takeoff and landing. He noticed, in every public bathroom he used now, the beige Koala changing station bolted to the wall. These had been there all along—they hadn’t been installed to torment him—and yet he never remembered seeing one before. At Hunter Mountain, Garrett, Beth, and Winnie ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant and Garrett became so preoccupied with a blond two-year-old boy at the next table who did a fire engine puzzle over and over, shrieking with delight each time he completed it, that Garrett barely touched his fajitas. At the Breakers, he separated from his mother and sister and lay on a lounge by the baby pool where he watched the little ones cavorting in their water wings. A baby, an actual baby, lived inside of Piper and this time next year that baby would be crawling or walking or swimming. His child. His little boy or girl. It hurt him in a way he couldn’t name. It was worse than heartbreak. It was worse, in a way, than losing his father.

Beth thought that March would never arrive, but then, of course, it did. They marked the one-year anniversary of Arch’s death quietly—dinner in the apartment with Arch’s mother. Trent Trammelman called Beth in the morning to say that the law firm was donating money in Arch’s name to establish a scholarship fund at Danforth. Arch’s secretary, now the secretary for a new attorney, sent flowers, and a bunch of thoughtful souls sent cards. Beth hated the idea of a death day as an anniversary, and yet once it was past, she felt relieved. A milestone survived. Since Christmas, friends had been inviting Beth over to meet men—single, divorced, widowed—and once Beth caught on, she always begged off, saying, “Please, it hasn’t even been a year.” Now that the anniversary had come and gone, her excuse vanished. And yet, Beth couldn’t bring herself to think about dating. All she could think about was their impending trip to Nantucket.

Beth spoke to the headmaster at Danforth: this was a very important family trip (she did not call it a vacation), and for reasons she couldn’t specify, she didn’t know how long they’d be gone.

Everyone at Danforth accommodated them. Winnie and Gar-rett both had excellent grades and they’d both been accepted to college. Garrett got into Princeton on early admission, and Winnie had been accepted at NYU, though she was still waiting to hear from Columbia, Williams, and Brown.

They were free to stay on Nantucket as long as they cared to.

Marcus was coming along for the week of his spring break. He, too, had been accepted to college—Queens College, a short bus ride from his apartment, and Colgate University, upstate. Colgate was a white person’s school, but his English teacher, Ms. Marchese, encouraged him to apply. He wrote an essay about his mother. The admissions committee was so impressed by the essay that they offered him a full ride for all four years, giving Marcus an opportunity worth much more than thirty thousand dollars. Marcus spoke to the swim coach and the head of the black student union, both of whom encouraged him to come. But the deciding factor was the enthusiastic call from one of the English professors who’d read his essay.
You have a way of turning words on a page into pure emotion,
the professor had said.
You have the makings of a fine, fine writer.

Beth had never been to Nantucket in March, and as soon as she stepped out of the Rover onto Horizon’s shell driveway, she understood why. The wind was brutal, whipping across Miacomet Pond in cold, wet sheets. The sky was low and gray and the ocean was a roiling black. The town had been practically deserted—less than half of the businesses showed any signs of life. In New York, trees had already started to bud; crocuses were up. But not here.

This time, Beth had brought her cell phone, and as soon as she sent the kids to the Stop & Shop for firewood and groceries, she called David. He’d sent a Christmas card—no picture, no note—just the three names signed in his handwriting at the bottom. She was nervous dialing his number and not because of Piper. A couple of times over the winter she caught herself repeating his words of the previous summer.
I thought about kissing you. I thought about making love to you.
When she got very lonely— weekend nights at home when the kids were out and she could hear New York frolicking outside without her—she entertained the possibility of her and David together. Not married again, but together. As companions—that’s what she wanted as she grew older—someone to spend time with once the twins left. Would it be so crazy if that person was David?She went so far as to wonder if he would ever visit her in the city. He’d never been there to her knowledge. She could show him the city the way everyone should experience it.

When David answered the phone, she said, “Hi, it’s me.”

“Me?”

“Bethie,” she said. Flirting with him already. “How’s Piper?”

“Two centimeters dilated, ninety percent effaced,” David said, sounding like a doctor himself. “She’s as big as a house. I mean, huge. I can’t believe this is my little girl. I just can’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. They were silent a minute, listening to the static of the cell phone. “You’ll call us as soon as …”

“As soon as,” David said. “The doctor said any time now. How long are you staying?”

“We’re staying until Piper has the baby,” Beth said. “That’s why we came, after all.”

“Right,” David said.

“Has she … changed her mind about adoption?” Beth asked.

“No.”

“So, how will it work, then?Will they come get the baby? Take the baby away?”

“There’s a procedure, yes. The people from the agency are professionals, Beth. They’ve met with Piper and gone over the range of emotions she can expect. They give her twenty-four hours with the baby, then she signs a document and the baby goes. Piper made it clear that she and Garrett want to name the baby, and that’s allowed.”

“She and Garrett want to
name
the baby?” Beth asked.

“Yes.”

Beth took a deep breath of the shockingly cold air inside Horizon. The house felt stingy without any heat. They were all going to spend the night on air mattresses and sleeping bags in front of the fire. Roast hot dogs, that kind of thing. It would be fun for about three hours.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle this, David. Watching some stranger carry away my grandchild. How about you?”

He sighed. “Oh, Beth. I’ve lived with this decision every day for the last nine months. I’ve had to deal with people coming up to me on the street, telling me how irresponsible I am as a parent and Piper is as a person. She lost two of her closest friends, she says the kids at school stare at her all the time, and her teachers treat her differently, too. They treat her like she’s stupid. But she’s not, of course. She got into BU and BC, and was wait-listed at Harvard. Her grades are the best they’ve ever been and she’s going to college, just like she said she was going to. But it’s been hard. I guess you haven’t had to give it much thought while you were in New York.”

There he was, using the same old refrain—
I had to live with the pain while you were away
. God, this was a bitter man. But no, that wasn’t quite right. He had a point; she was lucky. She had always been able to lead a double life; she had always been able to escape.

“I gave it a lot of thought,” she said. “I thought of it every day.”

“Did you,” David said. “Well, I bet Garrett didn’t tell his buddies. And I’ll bet you didn’t report it to his teachers. In fact, I’ll bet no one in New York knows why you’re mysteriously off to Nantucket this week.”

Where was all this anger
coming
from?“Not true,” Beth countered. “My therapist knows.”

“Your therapist,” David said. He breathed forcefully into the phone, then chuckled. “God, I need a therapist. We’ll see you at the hospital then, Bethie?”

She was grateful that he used the nickname. “Okay.”

She hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment, wishing that the conversation had gone better, that there had been some kind of connection between the two of them. This was the man she fantasized taking to brunch in Soho?

It was true that none of the kids had acknowledged the real reason they were here. On the ride up, Marcus and Winnie perused the Colgate catalog and admission packet line by line, trying to figure out what Marcus’s freshman year might be like. (“It sounds cool,” Winnie concluded. “It sounds cold,” Marcus corrected her.) Garrett drove the entire way and didn’t take his eyes off the road except to collect money for tolls. Now, all three kids stampeded into the house with bags of groceries—a pile of Duraflame logs and every kind of junk food imaginable. This was a camping trip for them. Winnie and Marcus braved the icy staircase to the beach because they wanted to check out the ocean, and Beth sent Garrett to the basement to switch on the water heater. When he came back upstairs, she said, “I just spoke with David on the phone. He said any day now. He said he’s going to call us.” God, even she couldn’t say it: Piper
is due
any day now. He’s going to call us
when the baby is born.

Garrett’s face was wooden, expressionless. “Okay, thanks.”

Beth touched his shoulder. He pulled away. He was so foreign to her. In six months, he would leave for Princeton and she would never know him again, not really. Such was the sadness of sons.