The Surfing Lesson (Digital Original) (2 page)

She wanted rage now. She wanted to feel
something
.

“Hey, Hadley!” Margot said. She bent in and kissed the woman’s tanned cheek. Soft as suede.

“Hey, guys!” Hadley said. “Hey, Drum!”

“Hey,” Drum said. He gave her half a wave.

Suddenly, it was their turn to order. No time for a reunion. Margot said to Hadley, “Why don’t you wait for us outside? We’d love to catch up!”

Hadley said, “Yes, of course!”

She scooted past Margot and Drum and the kids and Margot caught the scent of Hadley’s intoxicating perfume, a scent that had nearly caused her to vomit at the Matterhorn, and again at the art gallery. Did Drum smell it? She looked at him. His mouth was a grim line.

“What’s wrong?” Margot said.

Drum didn’t answer her. He was placing their order with the adorable fifteen-year-old server, who wore her hair in two Alpine braids like Heidi. When he was done, he said, “I don’t feel like dealing with Hadley Axelram tonight.”

“We aren’t ‘dealing’ with her,” Margot said. “We’re just going to say hello.”

“It always ends in disaster,” Drum said. He looked at her. He had gotten some nice sun on his face the past three days, and his eyes seemed very blue; he was getting the golden streak back in his hair that Margot had so loved when she first met him. He was such a great-looking guy. He was kind and sweet and a fabulous father and a doting husband. He was the best surfer she had ever seen, and maybe an even better skier. But she didn’t love him; that knowledge pierced her like a Chinese star in her gut. “You have to admit, it always ends in disaster when we see her.”

“Well, guess what?” Margot said. “It won’t tonight. I promise.”

Margot met Drum in the summer of 2001, eight days after his second breakup with Hadley. Hadley and Colin O’Mara had been “taking a break” that summer, and one late night at the Chicken Box, Hadley and Drum found themselves on the dance floor, stuck together like magnets. But by the end of July, Hadley had become frustrated with Drum, saying he didn’t make enough time for her, and she returned to Colin. Margot had been on Nantucket for just one week—the first week of August—whereas in the previous twenty-five-odd years of her life she had spent the entire summer on the island, at her family’s home on Orange Street. But that summer Margot had an internship at the executive search firm of Miller, Sawtooth, and a week was all she could finagle. She was lucky to get a week.

Margot had been lying on her towel at Cisco Beach, intent on finally getting some sun on her office-worker-white body, and she had whiled away the hot hours by watching Drum surf. Margot’s brother Nick said he knew Drum casually from “around,”—which meant, Margot assumed, that Nick and Drum drank at the same bars and hit on the same women—and Nick introduced them when Drum came in off the water. Margot had been surprised at how tall and solid Drum was up close; on his board, he crouched and bent and twisted like a jockey riding a temperamental horse. Up close, Margot could see his eyes were silvery blue, the color of water, and he had sunbleached streaks in his hair. He was as handsome as Apollo the sun god, but Margot refused to let herself worship. She was twenty-five years old, halfway through her MBA at Columbia. She was a serious person, beyond gushing over a surfer.

Who wanted to be treated to their love story? Drum had asked Margot out pretty much on the spot. “Do you have plans tonight?” And because Margot did
not
have plans and because the other girls on the beach were looking at Drum covetously, Margot said no. She had always had a competitive streak.

Margot and Drum had gone out every remaining night of her vacation—drives up the beach in his Jeep to see the sunset, dinner at the Blue Bistro and the Galley and Le Languedoc (where Drum always paid with a wad of tens and fives, his tips from bartending). They went to one movie (
Ocean’s Eleven
) and had lots of very exciting sex in the down-at-the-heels cottage Drum rented on Hooper Farm Road. When Margot left at the end of the week, Drum had taken her number and her address in the city, and she thought,
I will never see this guy again.

A part of her had also thought—admit it!—
I won’t go back to New York. I’ll quit my internship. I’ll stay here the rest of the month and watch Drum surf.
She had taken this a step further, thinking,
I won’t go back to business school. I’ll go to Aspen with Drum. I’ll get a ski pass. I’ll work as a barista.

But she had gone back to New York. Drum had stopped to see her on his way to Aspen. He had showed up wearing jeans and a wrinkled white linen shirt and flip-flops; when they made love, Margot noted he still had sand in the crevices of his ears. But during that twenty-four-hour visit, Margot learned other things about him: Drum’s father was an executive with Sony, and Drum had grown up jetting back and forth between New York and Tokyo. He had attended the American International School in Japan until tenth grade, and then he finished high school at Dalton. He could negotiate the subway better than Margot could. He took her to a sushi place in the East Village where the chef came out from the back and conversed with Drum in Japanese. Margot was stunned. Drum had instantly become a different person; he had become a wonder. But no sooner did Margot have this revelation than he was gone to the mountains.

There had been phone calls that winter, drunk, late-night phone calls, most often initiated by Margot, who would sometimes cry. Sometimes she called and Drum didn’t answer. He was asleep. Or he wasn’t home.

The following summer, Margot had a bona fide job offer from Miller, Sawtooth, but in a brilliant bit of negotiating, she didn’t start working until September 15. She would have all summer free to spend on Nantucket. She would have all summer with Drum.

By Labor Day weekend, she was pregnant.

Hadley was standing right outside the door when they exited. Her child’s face was smeared with ice cream and the older son grimaced at his mother and rolled his eyes. He looked so much like Colin O’Mara at that moment that Margot wanted to hug him.

There were repeat greetings. Margot kissed Hadley again, Drum kissed Hadley, the children were introduced.

Hadley said, “Wow, I can’t believe I bumped into you. I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

This was obviously a statement directed at Drum. Hadley would never be thinking of Margot all day, or even for a second.

“We always come the last two weeks of August,” Margot said. “We like to save it for the very end.”

“I’ve been here all summer,” Hadley said. She set the child down, which caused him to whimper, but she ignored this. “I left Jan eighteen months ago. I was dating a private equity guy, and that has sort of ended as well, although he’s letting us use his house all summer. It’s on the water in Monomoy.”

Margot nodded. It wasn’t surprising that Hadley had left Jan Jaap, nor was it surprising that she had traded up from Starving Artist to Private Equity Guy. What set Margot’s mind reeling was that Private Equity Guy would allow Hadley and her children to stay in his waterfront house despite the fact that their relationship had “sort of ended.” This was the kind of thing that only happened to Hadley Axelram.

“Nice!” Margot said. She took quick stock of her children—all consumed with the business of eating ice cream. “So, you were thinking about Drum today?”

Drum made a noise of exasperation, which Margot ignored.

Hadley raised her big brown eyes to Drum. Here it was, Margot thought, the Kill. Drum had never been able to resist that look from Hadley. It turned him to vapor. He could deny it, but Margot knew better.

But not today. Today, Drum was staring at Hadley like she was a skunked beer, or an invoice for back taxes from the IRS.

“Curtis really wants to take surfing lessons,” Hadley said. She nudged her older son, Curtis, who was staring at his untied Osiris sneakers. “And I found myself wishing that you were around, because who better to learn from than Drummond Bain?”

“No,” Drum said.

And at the same time, Margot said, “Of course!”

There was a look of confusion from Hadley, then an awkward silence, which was broken when the little guy started to really wail and Hadley bent to pick him up.

“I don’t give surfing lessons,” Drum said.

“Sure you do!” Margot said. For the past three days, Drum Sr. had tried to coax Drum Jr. out to the waves. Drum Jr. had no interest in surfing. He would fool around in the water with his brother, and then when he tired of that, he would get his lacrosse stick and go in search of other kids to play catch with.

“I really don’t,” Drum said.

“All right,” Hadley said. “Okay.”

“You could, though,” Margot said. “You could give Curtis a surfing lesson. We don’t have anything going on the rest of the week. You could meet him anytime. You could meet him tomorrow morning.”

Drum hadn’t touched his pistachio ice cream. It was starting to drip. He smiled at Curtis. “There’s a guy who hangs out down at Cisco Beach named Elvis. He gives lessons.”

Hadley shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not going to work.”

“Oh,” Drum said. “Right.”

Margot looked between Hadley and Drum. She had never heard of anyone named Elvis, although he was clearly a holdover from their surfing days. Maybe he was one of the people in the group photos in Drum’s underwear drawer. Maybe Hadley had slept with Elvis. Margot would have to ask Drum later.

Curtis kicked a pebble and it ricocheted off the side of the building. “That’s okay,” he said. “My dad said he’d teach me when I go to Hawaii in February.”

Drum smiled at the kid. “Your dad is a great surfer.”

Hadley made a face. She said, “February is fine, but it’s six months away. I thought it would be nice if Curtis could learn the basics now. He’s ready.”

“I can wait,” Curtis said.

Drum coughed and stared at the melting ice cream in his hand as though he couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. To Margot he said, “We have nothing tomorrow morning?”

“My dad is taking the kids out for breakfast,” Margot said. “And I’m going running. But you are as free as a bird.”

“I’ll meet you at seven o’clock,” Drum said to Curtis. “At the antenna. You have a board, or I should bring one of mine for you?”

“I have a board,” Curtis said.

“Oh, thank you!” Hadley said. “This is so great!”

“Great!” Margot said.

When she told Drum about the pregnancy, Margot had been certain he would insist on terminating. Despite their luminous summer together, their lives were about to go in different directions. Drum was heading back to Aspen to ski, and then in late March he was flying to Sri Lanka to surf. Margot had her job waiting in the city. She was going to wear a suit every day and get an expense account. The managing partner of Miller, Sawtooth, Harry Fry,
loved
Margot. He saw something in her—a tenaciousness, a natural instinct—that made him believe she would succeed. His faith in her would be shattered if he knew she had allowed herself to become accidentally pregnant at the age of twenty-five.
Go home,
he would say.
Spend your days drinking wine out of sippy cups with the other mommies at the Bleecker Street playground. Or hire a nanny and do charity work.
Harry Fry would never have hired Margot if he’d known this was going to happen.

But instead of giving Margot the money for an abortion, Drum had taken Margot to dinner at the Blue Bistro, where the waiter served her a diamond ring embedded in an Island Creek oyster. When Margot saw the ring, she ran to the ladies’ room to vomit. Once she returned to the table, Drum had cleaned off the ring; it was perched in its velvet box where it belonged.

He said, “I want you to marry me.”

She said, “Aren’t you supposed to ask?”

He said, “Margot Carmichael, will you marry me?”

Margot knew the sane answer was no. It would never work. Neither a baby nor a husband figured into her plans—not now, possibly not ever. But there was the specter of those drunken, late-night phone calls, a loneliness so profound that Margot had cried, despite living in a city of eight million people. She thought,
Drummond Bain, King of the South Shore, wants to marry me.
As it turned out, her heart was only steel-plated on three sides. As it turned out, her body was holding on to the cluster of cells growing inside her.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” Drum said. “Aren’t you supposed to say yes or no?”

“Yes,” Margot said.

When Margot was a junior in college, she had “fallen in love” with a graduate teaching assistant in her philosophy course, a Canadian named Reese.

Reese had not reciprocated Margot’s love. Reese had also, thankfully, not seen fit to use Margot for sex and walk away. Reese had been a good guy. When Margot made her feelings known to him one night in the reserve reading room over a confusing passage of Hume, Reese had held her chin and told her the following words about love.

“Nobody knows where it comes from,” he said. “And nobody knows where it goes.”

Where does it go? Margot wondered.

That night, after the kids were in bed and Margot and Drum were sharing the bathroom, washing the stickiness from their hands, Margot said, “Who’s Elvis?”

Drum said, “This guy.”

Margot waited him out. He knew that answer wasn’t close to sufficient.

Drum said, “He was always cool with me. He developed a little bit of an obsession with Hadley, I guess. Called her all the time, sometimes didn’t say anything, just breathed into the phone. Drove his pickup back and forth in front of her rental house, showed up at the gallery where she worked, that kind of thing.”

“And this was…? Before you? After you? During Colin?”

“Oh, God,” Drum said. “Who can remember?”

The winter of the drunken late-night phone calls—which was the winter after the summer that Margot and Drum had first dated, which was also the summer that Hadley had taken a break from Colin, reunited with Drum, then left Drum and returned to Colin—Hadley traveled out to Aspen on the sly. She showed up at the Aspen Club Lodge, where Drum was working the night desk in exchange for a season’s ski pass, and they shacked up together for a week, until Colin appeared, banging on the door, claiming to have a gun. Drum said he knew Colin didn’t have a gun, he knew Colin was just sad, and desperate at the thought of losing Hadley, and so Drum opened the door and let Colin in. Margot imagined some kind of hairy scene where Drum and Colin battled over Hadley, but Drum said it was low drama. Drum explained to Colin that he and Hadley had had some unfinished emotional business, but that it had been brought to a close. Hadley was free to go with Colin if that was what she wanted. Drum was going to pursue this other girl he’d met, a girl who lived in New York.