Summer People (8 page)

“Is that what you're planning to do?”

“Well, I've already done it once,” Nathan said, affecting modesty about his accomplishment because telling the truth would have embarrassed him. He had published a thousand black-and-white copies of his collection of illustrated short stories,
Let Us Now Praise a Romantic Man,
but he'd never persuaded any company to distribute them. He'd had to do it himself: hauling them around in the backseat of his Civic, hawking them at comic book conventions, cajoling the few comic stores in town to let him place a few issues on their shelves. Roughly six hundred copies remained in the printer's boxes, and so far he'd recouped only half of the $2,000 it had cost to print them.

“Do you have a copy I could buy?”

“I don't have one here, but maybe I could mail you one after the summer,” Nathan said. He took another sip of his drink and added, “I'm kind of trying to move on and work on new stuff.”

“What are you working on now?”

Nathan shrugged. “Lots of different stuff, actually.”

“Well, I'd be interested in seeing your work sometime.”

“Yeah, I'll have to show you something,” Nathan said, nodding. Deep inside the box of comic books he'd brought with him, there was a copy of
Let Us Now Praise a Romantic Man.
But the autobiographical stories about a young man's romantic tribulations now left him feeling so mortifyingly
untalented that he could no longer bear to leaf through the pages, much less show them to anyone else. When he'd tried starting another graphic novel—detailing the last year before his mother's death—he'd found he couldn't work on it without sobbing. So for the last several months he'd done little more than random sketches he hadn't planned for anyone else to see. Nathan picked up another mushroom from the tray and asked, “So what do you do in Boston when you're not at church?”

Eldwin scratched his neck, frowning, as if attempting to remember his life in Cambridge. “I guess I spend a lot of time at home with Rachel and the kids. I used to do more writing, essay writing for journals. And every once in a while we try to do something with friends. But it's been a hard year. Rachel's father was sick for a long time, and he just passed away last February.”

Nathan's mouth was full, but he said, “I'm sorry.”

Eldwin shrugged. “He wasn't always a nice guy, but he was her father, and her last parent, so she's been having a tough time. That's why she's not here tonight.”

“I can understand that,” Nathan said, swallowing. “My mom passed away a few years ago, and when I think about it, I still feel like I can't breathe sometimes.”

Eldwin nodded.

Nathan glanced at the far corner of the room just in time to see the mustachioed older man put his hand on Ellen's knee as he said something to her.

“Do you know if that guy sitting next to Ellen is Bill McAlister?”

Eldwin followed Nathan's gaze, then said, “Yeah, that's him. I just met him.”

Nathan shook his head.

“What?” Eldwin asked.

Nathan informed him of his conversation with Glen, and Eldwin said a woman had already told him earlier that evening about Bill's affair with Ellen. Nathan asked, “Do you think a lot of people know?”

“I think a lot of people in this community know things they're not supposed to know about one another.”

“Well, how did the guy seem to you?”

“He seemed polite, in a gruff kind of way,” Eldwin said. “I didn't talk to him long. I talked mostly with his wife. I think she said he used to be a hedge-fund manager in New York.”

“My God. His wife is here?”

Eldwin attempted to point her out, but he couldn't locate her in the crowd. Giving up, he asked, “Would you like to go chaperone?”

Nathan didn't want to, really—he wanted to grab Ellen and leave—but he followed Eldwin across the room closely enough to be able to smell the cigarette odor wafting from him. As they approached the couch, Nathan kept his eyes on Mr. McAlister. Dressed in crisply pressed khaki pants and a blue blazer, he had the build of a former athlete who had managed to stave off growing fat. His widow's peak of gray hair was thinning to baldness around the crown, and deep laugh lines like parentheses framed his crooked smile. Firmly gripping Nathan's hand, he asked, “So you're helping Ellen out this summer, huh?”

“Trying,” Nathan said as he and Eldwin sat down in upholstered chairs across from the couch.

“Don't let her take advantage of you, now. She can be a real taskmaster.” The sagging ruddiness of his face was enlivened by the twitch of his mustache and the twinkle in his gray-brown eyes.

Ellen shook her head demurely.

“Well, she can take advantage of me all she likes,” Nathan said, and smiled. The words immediately burned in his ears with an unintended sexual connotation, and he sought to disguise his embarrassment by taking a long drink from his glass.

For a while they talked about how—like Nathan—Mr. McAlister had been born in Cleveland. His house had been on Coventry, not far from where Ellen lived, but he had not spent much time there as a child before his parents sent him to boarding school. After graduation, he served on a
naval carrier in the war and then moved to New York. “I met Ellen when I started coming up here to the Cove, but I'd actually met her before, many years ago, at her coming-out party, even though I don't think she remembers.”

“I remember,” Ellen said.

“Well, what was I wearing?”

“You were wearing a
tuxedo.
”

“Well, that's right,” Mr. McAlister said, shrugging with a she's-got-me-beat expression and then bursting into raucous laughter. Nathan looked away and noticed a few people stealing glances at them. The older man pushed himself farther back on the couch, resting his wineglass between his legs, and said, “Did you know Ellen used to be a great golfer? She was a great athlete in general, good at tennis, but she was a fantastic golfer.”

Nathan wondered what it would be like to hear the talents you had enjoyed in life spoken of in the past tense. But Ellen was watching Mr. McAlister with an expression of fond expectation.

“Do you remember the tournament you were in—what year was that, eighty-seven? Ellen played in a mixed golf tournament here when one of the best players got sick and his replacement was Vice-President George Bush.”

Eldwin said, “George Bush is a member of the Alnombak club?”

“He's an honorary member.”

“Does he have a summer home here?” Nathan asked.

“No, his place is down in Kennebunkport,” Mr. McAlister said, waving further questions away with his hand. “Anyway, he was playing in this golf tournament, and then you had Ellen out there—the only woman—but she was playing with the men because that's how good she was. I think you had Rainier out there too, didn't you?”

“I may have.” Ellen smiled.

“That would be just like her, taking her dog,” Mr. McAlister said, shaking his head. “She was always bending the rules and getting away with it, because no one could say no to her. So anyway, she's in the tourna
ment, and she wins the damn thing and beats the vice-president by how much, Ellen?”

Ellen's smile erupted into a laugh, a delighted, confident laugh that Nathan had never heard from her. “I think by a lot.”

“Yeah, I think so too, because do you remember what you said to him when you both were walking into the clubhouse afterward?”

Ellen was still smiling, but she knotted her brow. “No—oh, no, what did I say?”

“You said, ‘I hope you'll be a better president than you are a golfer.'”

Ellen laughed again but put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Bill,” she said, letting her hand fall away. “I didn't.”

“You did,” Mr. McAlister said, chuckling.

Soon, a man with snow white hair sat down and began to talk about a tennis match that he and Ellen had played together. Nathan might have stayed longer, but Eldwin used the base of his wineglass to touch Nathan's knee. “You might want to head out there if you want to talk with Leah,” he said.

Nathan wanted to talk with Leah, but because a blade of nervousness twisted inside him at the prospect, he first had to relieve himself. In the bathroom, he did not turn on the overhead light because there was a candle burning beneath the mirror and he much preferred the way he looked in the flickering shadows. Zipping up his pants, he stood in front of the mirror and practiced the close-lipped smile that disguised his too small teeth. Then he unlocked the door. The thought of going back through the living room to exit out of the patio doors did not appeal to him. So he turned in the other direction in search of another way outside. Walking stealthily down the hallway, he found a laundry room with a door leading to the backyard, but he was drawn a few paces farther in the direction of a small library. From the doorway, Nathan could see a matching brown leather couch and chair sitting in front of a marble fireplace, and, on the far side of the room, floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves set into adjacent walls. Looking back to make sure no one was watching, he stepped inside the cozy room. Many of the books were
faded, picture-heavy manuals about sailing and shipbuilding, but there was also row upon row of nineteenth-century-edition books by Dickens, Thackeray, and Twain. Pulling the novels from the shelves, Nathan was struck by the high quality of the binding, and even more by how often the books contained illustrations. From beneath the rows of nineteenth-century fiction, Nathan pulled out a massive, old leather-bound copy of
Don Quixote
and paged through intricately detailed illustrations by the artist Gustave Doré. So much of great art is great patience, Nathan thought, optimistically. But staring down at the most famous drawing—of the Don being knocked off his horse by a windmill—Nathan felt a familiar pang of doubt about his talent and abruptly returned the tome to its shelf.

Once back in the hallway, he stepped through the laundry room and out into the backyard. After a moment's hesitation, staring out at the empty back lawn that rolled down for a hundred yards or so to the shore, he heard children's voices floating from somewhere to the east and behind him. Plunging his hands into his pockets, then letting them hang loose at his sides, then plunging them into his pockets again, Nathan walked around the east corner of the house. There Eldwin's children and their nanny were standing on the immaculate lawn amid a course of croquet wickets and stakes. Wearing a tan sleeveless dress, Leah waved at Nathan as Eliot struck a ball that rolled to the far side of a stake. The boy's shoulders sagged, but his face lit up as he said, “Meghan hit her ball twice, so don't I get to go again, too?”

“No, hers went under the hoop, remember? That's why she got to go again,” Leah explained.

As he approached, Nathan said, “Looks like a heated match.”

“I think they're tired,” Leah said. “I had to break up a fight a few minutes ago.”

“I'm not tired,” Eliot said. He was standing on the head of his mallet, attempting to keep his balance.

“It's
your
turn,” Meghan wailed.

“Oh!” Leah said, and stepped forward toward her red ball. “Okay, it's
my turn.” She smiled at Nathan with feigned embarrassment. She whacked the ball in the direction of the intended wicket, but it wobbled past Nathan and Eliot into the mulched flower bed beside the house.

“Tough break,” Nathan said.

“I hate this game,” Leah muttered, humor infiltrating her pout.

As they watched Eliot practice his swing, Nathan asked, “So, how was sailing yesterday?”

“It was a gorgeous boat. But I had to keep these two from throwing each other overboard, so it wasn't really that fun. I think I did get a tan, though,” she said, peering down at her shoulder. Her skin was an un-freckled ripe golden brown. When she looked up, she said, “Eldwin said you were supposed to come with us, but Kendra wouldn't let you?”

Nathan smiled weakly. As he told her the story, Leah took her turns in the match, sometimes acting as referee between the children, but always glancing back expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

“I can't believe she would do that,” Leah said. “It's so
tacky.
I mean, she knew you were working for Ellen?”

Nathan shrugged. “Yeah.”

“That's crazy.”

“Well, I didn't let it ruin my day,” Nathan said. “After I found out you were busy, I went back to the house and popped some popcorn, and Ellen and I watched four hours of television, including an old Jerry Lewis movie.”

Leah hesitated, but said, encouragingly, “Oh, well, that's good.”

“That was kind of a joke. I mean, we did watch four hours of television. It just wasn't that…fun.”

Leah smiled at Nathan with puzzled amusement before positioning herself over the ball. Her legs spread as she leaned over, and Nathan averted his eyes to glance out at the bay. She struck the ball hard enough that it rolled halfway up the sloping lawn, then back down, finally resting almost where she was standing. Her shoulders collapsed and she hung her head in a comic expression of defeat.

The croquet match eventually degenerated into a game wherein each
child tried to see who could hit the ball the farthest, and as Nathan and Leah watched, she asked, “Why do you think I'm here?”

“I'm not sure. You mean in a cosmic sense?”

Leah smiled and said, “Yes.”

“Well, I mean, I don't know you that well, but you seem like a young woman probably gifted with certain abilities, and maybe, you know, maybe your purpose is just to share those—”

“All right, stop.” Leah clamped her mouth shut in an apparent effort to stop smiling. “I'm asking why Eldwin would drag me and his kids along with him tonight when it would have been
so
much easier for us just to stay home.”