Summer People (13 page)

“You know the story,” Beth said.

“I know the Disney version,” Garrett said. “Tell me the real story.”

Beth leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I had just graduated from Sarah Lawrence. I was twenty-two. We met in July. I spent that summer in New York—it was the only summer of my whole life when I wasn’t here on Nantucket. Your father was in law school at NYU and he says he was studying on the subway platform when he got distracted by a pair of legs coming down the stairway.”

Garrett said, “And he vowed to himself, ‘I am going to marry the woman attached to those beautiful legs.’ ”

“See,” Beth said. “You already know.”

“But what was it
like
?” Garrett said. “When you first started dating? Did you know you were in love with him?”

“No,” Beth said. “I’d sworn off men at that point in my life. I wanted to make some money so I could pay my rent. But your father was persistent. Once a week he took me on what he called ‘Date Package A,’ which was a fancy restaurant and drinks at a club. Sometimes dancing. Then once a week we went on ‘Date Package B,’ which was the movies, and beers afterwards. Some nights we walked in Central Park or the Village or Chinatown. We went to the Frick or the MOMA on Sunday afternoons. We ate at the Turkish restaurants on Eightieth Street. Your father knew the city inside and out. I always teased him that he had the subway maps tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.”

“He knew every stop on every train,” Garrett said.

“He lived with Gram and Grandad on Sutton Place, so he had no rent to pay. They gave him plenty of money to take me out. They wanted him to get married.”

“What about you? Did you want to get married?”

“No.”

“Why did you, then?”

“Well, because. We dated for almost two years and then it was time.”

A stop sign up ahead. Garrett touched his foot to the brake gently. “You married Dad because it was
time
?” he said. “What about being madly in love?”

Beth pointed out the windshield, indicating that it was safe to proceed. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I want to know.”

“You and Piper just met, sweetheart. It’s infatuation. Puppy love.”

Garrett clenched his teeth. “Don’t tell me what it is.”

Beth bit her lower lip. “Okay, sorry. You’re right. Yes, I married your father because he was smart and funny and I knew he’d take care of me. I’ll tell you something now that I’ve never told anyone else. I didn’t fall in love with your father until after we were married, and even then I can’t pinpoint a moment. It was a process—the process of shedding the cells of Beth Eyler and growing the cells of Beth Newton. I very slowly became a woman who was deeply in love with your father. That is the real story.”

Garrett turned onto their dirt road and his heart crumbled at the thought of three days in their house without Piper. He reviewed his mother’s story. It was funny to think of his mother as a single woman who at one time could have decided to resist his father’s advances. Who, in fact, had married his father without loving him.

“So you gambled on him, then?” Garrett said.

“I trusted myself,” Beth said. “I had a gut feeling that marrying Arch was the right thing to do.”

“If you’d married someone else, you wouldn’t be a widow,” Garrett said. He pulled into the driveway and shut off the car, hoping his mother wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t sure why he’d just said that.

“True enough,” Beth said. “But I don’t regret being married to your father for one second. If I’d known he was going to die at the age of forty-five, I would have married him anyway.”

“Really?” Garrett said.

“Really,” Beth said. “Because that’s what unconditional love is all about. The ‘no-matter-what’s.’ ”

Garrett walked into the house. It was quiet; Winnie and Marcus were probably at the beach. He would join them; he felt too lonely to hang out in his room by himself, although he needed to finish
Franny and Zooey.
He wondered, would he love Piper no matter what? Not yet, but Garrett felt the possibility growing. As he changed into his swim trunks, he eyed the urn of ashes on his dresser.

“I never thought I’d say this,” he said. “But you were a lucky man.”

With Piper gone, Beth figured she would finally get a break from David. She had seen him every day since the dinner party. When he came to pick Garrett up, he showed up early and knocked on the screen door, and just seeing his silhouette on the other side of the front door brought back a host of memories—David knocking on that door when he was still a teenager. His very presence in her life now was so astonishing that Beth couldn’t help herself from inviting him in for a beer. They talked about everyday things—his work on huge summer homes owned by twenty-eight-year-old millionaires, traffic, taxes, the new recycling laws. Every so often, he called Beth by her old nickname, “Bethie,” pronounced in a drawn-out New York accent, and as their conversations deepened, he unearthed a memory or two from their summers together: watching the meteor shower from First Point on Coatue, the time they went blackberry picking at Lily Pond and David got stung by a bee, fell into the prickly bushes and ended up the next day not only with awful scratches, but a bad case of poison ivy.

“I can honestly, say, Bethie, I haven’t eaten a blackberry since then.”

For the first time since Arch died, she found herself able to laugh.

Although she relished the companionship, she was still steeped in the morass of her sorrow. She still half expected to be picking up Arch at the airport on Friday afternoons. She still took a Valium in order to sleep. One night, when Garrett and Piper went to a party, David enticed her into a game of cards on the deck, and she made a point of telling David about her marriage to Arch.

“It wasn’t perfect by any means,” Beth said. “But it was good.”

She and Arch had laughed together. They enjoyed the kids. They took a vacation each winter by themselves, to exciting places—Tahiti, the Seychelles, Venezuela. Of course, it went deeper than that. Beth and Arch had understood each other on every level. They occupied each other’s psychic lives. They were each other, to the extent that this was possible in a marriage. Yes, Arch worked long hours in his office downtown; yes, Beth administered every detail of their domestic life. No, they didn’t have a lot in common in the way people understood that phrase. Rather, they were opposite sides of the same coin. They complemented each other, completed each other. They’d created a life that glowed.

“I just can’t get over him and move on,” Beth said. “He was my husband for twenty years.”

David appeared to be listening but it was as if he didn’t understand her language, or chose to ignore the meaning of her words. Beth grew close to screaming out,
Yes. I loved you but that was years ago and now I need you to leave me alone!

Yes, I loved you, she thought.

Beth was grateful when Piper went away. She needed time to regroup. To strengthen her resolve.

Horizon had no telephone on principle. Living without a phone was the ultimate nod to a Nantucket summer, which in the mind of Beth’s grandfather, was reserved for long hours of undisturbed reading or beach time, leisurely meals. Interaction should be conducted as in the old days: in person. Or by mail. It was outdated, yes, but Beth respected it. She never considered putting in a phone line.

Once Piper flew to the Cape and Beth had a respite from David, she hunted down a phone booth in town. She wanted to call Kara Schau, her therapist. First to set up an appointment, and then, the next day, to talk. It was more than inconvenient to talk to her therapist in the booth outside of Visitor Services; it was embarrassing. She turned her body so that she faced the building. She would keep her voice low.

Kara Schau came on the line sounding chipper and enthusiastic, and Beth pictured her wearing a beige linen blouse and black skirt, her dark curly hair escaping its bun. Kara was a dream—the kindest, most perceptive woman Beth knew. In the months since Arch died, she’d become a friend, which Beth viewed as a problem. She wanted Kara to like her; she wanted Kara to praise her. She didn’t want to delve into the messy emotional situation at hand, but Beth needed to talk to someone, and Kara was a professional.

“How’s Nantucket?” Kara asked. “I’m terrifically envious, you know.”

“It’s fine,” Beth said. “Therapeutic.”

“As long as it’s not putting me out of business,” Kara said. “And since you called, I gather it’s not. How’s everything going?”

“Fine,” Beth said. “The kids seem to be coping okay. Marcus is adjusting. He and Winnie spend a lot of time together.”

“Good,” Kara said. “They both need peer support. Garrett, too, but he’s not as forthcoming. I would have been surprised to hear that Garrett and Marcus were close. That bond, if it forms at all, is going to take some time.”

“They’re not close,” Beth said. “At first I worried that they would, you know,
fight,
but that problem has been headed off, for the time being, anyway.”

“How?”

“Garrett found a girlfriend.”

“Already?” Kara said. “Someone he knew before?”

“Someone he just met,” Beth said. “Her name is Piper Ronan. Her father and I are old friends.”

“Is it serious?” Kara asked. “Are there sexual issues?”

“Oh, God,” Beth said. She took a breath and turned to inspect the street scene. Thankfully, it was a gorgeous day and town was deserted. Everyone was at the beach. “I haven’t given the nature of their relationship that much thought. They’ve only been dating a couple of weeks.”

“Fair enough,” Kara said. “So it sounds like the kids have found peer support. Winnie and Marcus with each other and Garrett with the new girlfriend. That’s excellent. They need it. But what about you? How are
you
doing, Beth?”

“I’m confused,” Beth said. Her nose tingled. She couldn’t believe the way crying had become such a natural instinct for her, like blinking or yawning. “I miss Arch.”

“Yes, you do,” Kara said.

Tears fell and Beth pulled a tissue out of her purse. “I really, really miss him.”

“It’s perfectly natural,” Kara said.

“But this thing has happened,” Beth said. “This man I mentioned? Piper’s father? He’s sort of … well, he’s put himself in my life.”

Silence. Beth knew this meant she was to explain further, but she was ashamed to say more. Arch had only been gone for three and a half months and here she was on the phone to her therapist talking about another man. Kara would think she was a terrible person, a cheap, insincere person. But Kara didn’t know David Ronan.

“Listen, there are some things I can share with you about this man, and some things I can’t. He was my first love. We were together for six summers, from age sixteen to twenty-one. We were … very serious. Very. And then we split up and I haven’t really seen him since. Oh, once, maybe twice a summer. Arch and I went to his house for a party a million years ago. Then, my first day here, I bumped into him at the grocery store and later I found out he’d separated from his wife, and next thing I know, my son is dating his daughter and he’s started pursuing me.”

“Pursuing you?” Kara’s tone of voice was neutral.

“Well, it’s not as if he sends flowers every day,” Beth said. In fact, Beth half expected David to produce a big handful of purple cosmos from behind his back every time she saw him, but thank God he hadn’t gone that far. “He’s just always around. Wanting to talk, wanting to have a beer together. That kind of thing.”

“Any physical contact?” Kara asked.

“Minimal,” Beth said. This was true, thank God. David hadn’t touched her in any significant way. But the way he looked at her—the way his eyes ran up and down her body—made Beth feel like she was standing there naked. He made her feel self-conscious about her appearance. She had actually bought a hair dryer and mascara at the pharmacy last week. How to explain
that
?

“And yet you feel confused?” Kara said.

“Part of me feels drawn to this man,” Beth admitted. Okay, there, she’d said it. Part of her was
flattered
by David’s attention; if it suddenly stopped, she might miss it. But the guilt—God, the guilt was enough to weigh her to the ocean floor. “But it hasn’t been long enough. My grief for Arch is so raw, so consuming—it’s exhausting. And I feel disloyal because being with David makes me less unhappy.”

“Frequently, one sees a couple who is married for a long time, and then, let’s say, the wife dies, and the husband remarries right away. It causes confusion and anger in the people close to him because of the very issue of loyalty. One way to explain this behavior is that he believes in marriage. The second marriage as a tribute, of sorts, to the first. Now, I’m not saying this example applies in your case. But it might. You were married to Arch for a long time. This man fills needs that have been unattended since Arch died.”

“Maybe,” Beth said. Naturally, she and Arch had talked over the years about what would happen if the other one died. Beth had said she would not want Arch to remarry, mostly because she didn’t want another woman raising her children. It was a selfish response, but honest. It made her sick to think of Arch married to someone else. When Beth asked Arch if he would want her to remarry, he said,
Oh, Beth, I would want you to be happy. As happy as you could be without me.