The Surfing Lesson (Digital Original) (4 page)

Curtis paddled out. Hadley turned to Drum, she raised her face to him, she touched his bare chest with one Concord grape–painted finger. She was thanking him, telling him how miraculous he was, telling him how he had saved the say, telling him how amazing it had been watching Drum out in the water with her son. She drew a line from his heart down his chest then down to his stomach, then down to his…

Drum grabbed Hadley’s hand. This was it! Margot thought. They were going to kiss!

Drum dropped Hadley’s hand, he didn’t exactly shove it away, but it was definitely a gesture of dismissal. He was giving her her hand back, saying, please don’t touch me like that, I’m a married man.

Hadley tried again. Maybe her luck with men was based on pure persistence. She took a step closer to Drum and upturned her face, pursing her lips. One of the straps of her cover-up slipped off her shoulder. There could be no mistaking her intentions. Margot thought,
Take the bait, Drum! This is the woman who taught you to love pistachio ice cream, who encouraged you to make “In the Blood” your own personal anthem.
But Drum stepped away, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe her gall; he walked a few yards away, spread out his towel, and sat down. He pulled his cell phone out of his backpack.

Hadley called something out to him, but he didn’t even bother looking up.

Margot’s heart plummeted. Her eyes filled with tears. And at that second, her phone buzzed. She had a text message from Drum.
I love you,
it said.
I wish you were here.

Margot looked up in alarm, thinking he must have seen her and
that
was why he hadn’t kissed Hadley,
that
was why he’d walked away. But when she checked, Hadley was staring at Drum, and Drum was resting his forearms on his knees, watching Curtis surf. He hadn’t seen Margot. If he had seen her, he would have beckoned her down. He didn’t play games like this.

Suddenly a man came up behind Margot and she nearly jumped out of her shoes. He was a couple years older than she was, and he wore only a pair of orange swim trunks; he was carrying a long board. His bare torso was tanned the deep brown of a tobacco leaf; his hair was black and wavy, with a few strands of gray in the front. He stopped next to Margot when he saw the scene transpiring down on the beach.

He said, “Holy Mother of God, look who we have here.”

Margot didn’t respond. The man sounded like a carnival barker who smoked a hundred cigarettes a day.

He turned to her. He said, “That there is the girl of my dreams.”

Margot nodded. The girl of everyone’s dreams.

She said, “You’re Elvis?”

His eyes lifted in surprise. He held out his hand, fingers stained with nicotine. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Margot said. “No, I don’t think we’ve met. I just… well, I’ve heard about you. You teach surfing?”

“At Cisco,” he said. “To the punks with rich mothers.”

“Oh,” Margot said. She crunched her water bottle, which was now empty. “Do you know who the guy is?”

“That guy there?” Elvis asked. “Yeah, I know who that is. Everyone knows who that is.”

“Who is he?” Margot asked. Thinking: Boy Scout, good guy, doting father, amazing cook. He speaks Japanese and gives great foot rubs. Thinking: Nobody knows where it comes from and nobody knows where it goes.

“It’s Drum… Drum… shit, I forget his last name. But I’ll tell you what…” Elvis leaned closer to Margot as if to let her in on a secret.

“What?” Margot said.

“He’s the greatest surfer this island has ever seen,” Elvis said. “Watching him is like watching fucking Baryshnikov.”

Margot nodded, wishing Elvis had been able to tell her something she didn’t already know.

At that moment, Drum stood up and grabbed his board, which was sticking straight up out of the sand. He ran with it to the water line, and then began to paddle out.

“Lucky you,” Elvis said. “You’re going to witness.”

Margot took a deep breath. Curtis had come in off the water, and he was now standing next to his mother, both of them watching Drum.

Drum let a few waves go. He had always been picky. Because of her vantage point up on the dune, Margot saw the one he would take even before he did. She watched him sense its approach, she saw his muscles tense. She knew the man so well. If they separated and divorced this year and he moved to the west coast, and she next saw him on a surfboard twenty years from now, she would still know which wave he would take.
You need to be your own best friend
, her mother had told her. But Drum was her best friend, Margot couldn’t deny it, and she was going to lose him.

“There he goes!” Elvis said.

Drum was moving, he was up, he was riding the wave low and sweet all the way across the break, going for maximum speed rather than flair. He made the board act like a razor, cutting the wave cleanly across the middle. Margot was sure Hadley was swooning on the beach the way Margot used to swoon and wanted to swoon now. Elvis let out a whoop, and the sound attracted Drum’s attention. He looked up at the dune and saw Elvis—and Margot—and something in his face changed. He lost his balance, and tumbled headfirst into the crashing foam.

Elvis turned to Margot. “You don’t know him, but he sure seems to know you.”

Margot didn’t have a reply to that, but none was needed. Elvis rushed down onto the beach to greet Hadley.

Margot waited until Drum surfaced. His head popped up and his eyes sought hers out. She thought,
Yes, I’m here. I’m still here
.

He waved to her. She gave him a thumbs-up and called out, “Good ride!” Later, when she talked to him, she might use those very words, she might say,
We had a good ride, Drum. We had a good ride.
Or she might come up with better words. She had plenty of time to think about it on the hot, lonely run for home.

Elin Hilderbrand has lived on Nantucket for twenty years. She runs every morning, delivers her children to their sporting events, and occasionally frequents the front row at the Chicken Box.
Beautiful Day
is her twelfth novel.

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In June 2013 Reagan Arthur Books will publish Elin Hilderbrand’s
Beautiful Day.
Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

Finn Sullivan-Walker (bridesmaid):
I can’t wait to see Jenna wearing her mother’s gown. It’s vintage Priscilla of Boston, silk bodice with a sweetheart neckline and lace column skirt. There used to be a picture in the Carmichael house of Jenna’s mother, Beth, wearing the dress. I was obsessed with that picture when I was younger, even before Beth died. Seeing Jenna in that dress is going to be surreal, you know? Like seeing a ghost.

Douglas Carmichael (father of the bride):
I can’t stand the thought of giving Jenna away. She’s my last one. Well, I guess technically Nick is my last one, but Nick might never get married.

Nick Carmichael (brother of the bride):
My sister has extremely hot friends.

Margot (sister of the bride, maid of honor):
Can I be honest? I really just want this weekend to be over.

They were on the ferry, the hulking white steamship that was properly named the
Eagle,
but which Margot had always thought of as
Moby Dick,
because that was what their mother used to call it. Every year when the Carmichael family drove their Ford Country Squire into the darkened hold of the boat, Beth used to say it was like being swallowed by a whale. She had found the ride on the steamship romantic, literary, and possibly also biblical (she would have been thinking of Jonah, right?)—but Margot had despised the ferry ride then, and she despised it even more now. The thick, swirling fumes from the engines made her queasy, as did the lurching motion. For this trip, Margot had taken the Dramamine that Jenna offered her in Hyannis. Really, with the seven thousand details of her wedding to triage, the fact that Jenna had remembered to pack pills for her sister’s seasickness was astonishing—but that was Jenna for you. She was thoughtful, nearly to a fault. She was, Margot thought with no small amount of envy, exactly like their mother.

For Jenna’s sake, Margot pretended the Dramamine was working. She pulled down the brim of her straw hat against the hot July sun, which was blinding when reflected off the surface of the water. The last thing she wanted was to freckle right before the wedding. They were outside, on the upper deck. Jenna and her best friend, Finn Sullivan-Walker, were posing against the railing at the bow of the boat. Nantucket was just a smudge on the horizon; even Christopher Columbus might not have said for sure there was land ahead, but Jenna was adamant that Margot take a picture of her and Finn, with their blond hair billowing around their faces, as soon as Nantucket was visible in the background.

Margot planted her feet at shoulder width to steady herself against the gentle and yet nefarious rocking of the boat and raised the camera. Her sister looked happy. She looked excited-happy that this was the beginning of her wedding weekend, which was certain to be the most fun-filled and memorable weekend of her life—and she also looked contented-happy, because she was confident that marrying Stuart James Graham was her life’s mission. Stuart was the One.

Stuart had proposed to Jenna on a park bench across the street from Little Minds, the progressive, “sustainable” preschool where Jenna was the lead teacher, presenting her with a ring featuring Sri Lankan sapphires and ethically mined diamonds from Canada. (Stuart was a banker, who made money buying and selling money, but he knew the path to Jenna’s heart. )Since that day, Margot had cast herself as devil’s advocate to Jenna’s vision of a lifetime of happiness with Stuart. Marriage was the worst idea in all of civilization, Margot said. For two people to meet when they were young and decide to spend the rest of their lives together was unnatural, Margot said, because everyone knew that human beings changed as they got older, and what were the chances—honestly,
what
were the
chances
—that two people would evolve in ways that were compatible?