Summer People (18 page)

He tasted different words: “my mother,” “Mama,” “Constance.” But he couldn’t bring himself to speak. There were so many things he wanted to tell her. About the sweatshirt for starters— how his own teammates had left him without a stitch of clothing and how Arch had come all the way to Queens with the sweatshirt, and how that afternoon proved to Marcus that Arch was one person in the world that he could trust. Everyone else had abandoned him—his friends, his teachers, his cowardly father. His mother. Marcus also wanted to explain to Winnie how dealing with all that made him stronger. How he knew he could have won every race of the swim season, but he held himself to second each time, so that Marcus’s swim coach seemed to forget that Marcus was the murderer’s son and presented him with the most consistent swimmer trophy at the end-of-the-season banquet. He wanted to tell Winnie about how he was going to write a book and with the money, put himself through college. Marcus was afraid that just saying the words, “book deal,” would sound like bragging and quite possibly the magic attached to those words would vanish.

Marcus felt badly because he came here with noble inten-tions—of talking—but now he found his body in stiff revolt. His body wanted to be kissing Winnie and rubbing her right up against him.

“I like you,” he said, finally. Because this seemed like a truth that had to be acknowledged.

“I like you, too,” she said, snaking a hand under the covers.

He banged his head lightly against the wooden headboard of her bed and moved her hand away. He remembered when Arch invited him to Nantucket. It was only a few days before his trip to Albany, it was early March—cold, wet, and miserable. Arch called Marcus at home, ostensibly to see how Marcus had fared in the All-Queens Invitational (second place) but really just to check in, take Marcus’s temperature, as it were.

Only ten days before the trial. How are you hanging in?

My life sucks,
Marcus said.
I can’t wait for this thing to be over.

Arch was quiet for a minute, then he cleared his throat and said,
What are your plans for this summer?

This summer?

You like to swim, right? Do you like the beach?

Yeah,
Marcus said.
I guess so, yeah.

How about you join my family and me on Nantucket this summer? We stay in a funky old summer cottage that my wife inherited. It’s right on the ocean.

I don’t know,
Marcus said. At the time, it seemed like Arch was offering too much and Marcus had the sinking feeling that Arch knew something Marcus didn’t. Like they were going to lose the trial and Constance was going to die.

I want you to consider it,
Arch said.
Seriously. It would be good for you to get away. It would be good for my family, too.

Marcus had doubted that, even at the time. The Newtons needed him around like they needed bugs in their beds.

“I shouldn’t be here this summer,” Marcus said now, to Winnie.

“What?” Winnie said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I love it that you’re here.”

“Garrett hates me,” Marcus said. “He looks at me funny.”

“He looks at everybody funny,” Winnie said.

This was true. As many times as Arch had said,
My daughter, Winnie, you’ll like her,
he’d never said anything similar about Gar-rett.

“There was something else I wanted to tell you,” Marcus said. “Something you should know.”

“What is it?” Winnie said.

“I miss him, too.”

“Who?”

“Your father,” Marcus said. “Arch …” H e didn’t know how to continue. What to say about Arch that Winnie didn’t already know or that hadn’t already been said by somebody else? In the
New York Times
a city councilman was quoted as saying “New York has lost not only a good attorney, but a good citizen, a hero for the common man.” A hero, Marcus thought, for one family on the verge of imploding. “Your dad. Arch. I miss him just like the rest of you do.”

Winnie covered her eyes with her hand. “Will you please stay here with me tonight?”

“I can’t,” Marcus said, though sex, that tangible presence, seemed to be standing next to the bed, egging Marcus on. “What if we get caught?”

“We won’t get caught,” Winnie said.

“Not tonight,” Marcus said.

“Tomorrow night?”

“Another night,” he said. Talking, too, would have to wait for another night. Real talking—telling Winnie all the secrets that were crowded into his heart. He couldn’t go into any of it while he was in Winnie’s bed with Winnie half naked and all over him. With enormous effort, he moved away from Winnie and put his feet on the cool wood floor. When he stood up, the floorboards squeaked. He pushed sex out of the way and tiptoed into the hall, closing Winnie’s door behind him. Arch was dead, Constance was alive. It was wrong and yet with all his anger and confusion, Marcus also felt gratitude, an enormous gratitude because he was
here.
Suddenly the summer seemed short and precious; he wanted it to last forever.

In the Elmhurst section of Queens, the Fourth of July was a huge, multicultural block party. Whole streets were closed off and the half-barrel bar-b-q pits appeared for jerk chicken and pork shoul-der—the Laotian women passed around hand-rolled lumpia. Kids set off bottle rockets and adults drank beer on the front stoops. The music was loud; there was a fist fight or two. Constance had always disdained the chaos—year after year she stayed inside with the air-conditioning cranked, drinking from a cold bottle of white wine while she prepared coleslaw for a hundred people. At dinnertime, she sent Marcus down to the street with the coleslaw mounded in her one good wooden salad bowl with more or less the same sentence: “Make sure nobody walks off with that bowl, child!” No one would confuse Connie for a patriot.

This year things were going to be different. Beth had gotten up at six in the morning to beat the rush to the grocery store, where she bought red, white, and blue napkins, plates, cups, miniature flags, and bags and bags of food. When Marcus woke up and went downstairs, he helped Beth put the groceries away.

“Are you, like, a member of the D.A.R. or something?” he asked.

“No,” Beth said. “But we’re taking a picnic to Jetties Beach tonight. We do it every year. And this year’s special because you’re here. And Piper and Peyton are coming.”

“And David?” Marcus asked.

“No, not David.” Beth didn’t explain why, and Marcus knew enough to keep his foot out of that mud puddle.

Every day on Nantucket was summer, but the Fourth of July was especially summer. Beth made blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then Marcus and Winnie rode their bikes into town to watch the small parade up Main Street, the water fight between the Fire Department and the elementary school kids, and the pie-eating contest. Marcus and Winnie held hands—which started as Winnie grabbing Marcus’s hand so that he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, and ended up as just plain holding hands. They went into some shops, looking for a suitable souvenir to send home to Marcus’s sister. Marcus found nothing suitable, although he wasn’t really concentrating. He was too aware of Winnie’s hand in his, how good it felt, and yet he was concerned about what they must look like, a black boy and a white girl. Marcus felt as if he had a flashing red light on his head, announcing, INTERRACIAL COUPLE! But nobody even glanced at them sideways until they rounded the corner onto Federal Street and bumped smack into Garrett and Piper.

Marcus dropped Winnie’s hand immediately but she made things worse by putting her arm around his waist and squeezing him. He moved away. He’d told her that one of the conditions of their being together was that they had to conceal it from Beth and Garrett. Winnie didn’t understand why he felt this way; she didn’t like hiding things from her mom and brother, but she agreed. She had said,
Okay, I promise,
and yet now here she was, in Garrett’s face, hugging Marcus.

Garrett frowned. Marcus couldn’t believe they’d run into him. He had still been asleep when Marcus and Winnie left the house on their bikes.

“What’s up?” Marcus said.

“Nothing,” Garrett said.

“We’re shopping for LaTisha,” Winnie said. Winnie pronounced the name like it belonged to a white person: “Leticia.” “We watched the pie-eating contest. This skinny girl won. She ate a whole pie in, like, thirty seconds.”

“You should have entered, Winnie,” Garrett said. “You could use a whole pie.”

“Okay, we’re going,” Winnie said, taking Marcus’s unwilling hand. “Hi, good-bye.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” Piper said. “I think my dad might join us even though he’s technically not invited.”

Winnie pulled Marcus down the street, like he was a stubborn dog. “See ya!”

Marcus said, “I thought we agreed to keep this a secret.”

“We all live in the same house,” Winnie said. “It’s been a secret for two days. You think they don’t know something’s changed between us?”

“They didn’t know until now.”

“Who cares what Garrett thinks anyway. He’s turned into such a jerk since Daddy died.”

“He’ll try to kill me.”

“He doesn’t care about you and me. All he cares about is having sex with Piper.” Winnie stopped in front of another souvenir shop. “What about pot holders? Do you think LaTisha would like some pot holders?”

When they got home, the Range Rover was in the driveway; Garrett had beaten them back. Marcus wanted to go up to his room and give writing a try, but Beth had made a special Fourth of July lunch. Grilled hotdogs, pasta salad, homemade lemonade. Marcus ate three hotdogs sitting next to Winnie at the picnic table. Garrett sat across from them, scowling. Even Beth seemed impatient. She snapped at Winnie for cutting her hotdog into pieces.

“I went to a lot of trouble to make this lunch, young lady,” Beth said. “You
will
eat it.”

This was so unlike Beth that everyone at the table stopped eating, except for Winnie, who actually put a piece of hotdog into her mouth.

When, after lunch, Winnie asked him if he wanted to swim, Marcus said no. He was going upstairs to his room. He wanted to let things cool off, then make Winnie come to her senses.

She knocked on his door later that afternoon. It was four-thirty; he had fallen asleep over his still-blank legal pad, which he shoved into the drawer of his nightstand.

“Come in,” he said.

Her hair was wet—from a shower, not the ocean. She wore the sweatshirt and a white tennis skirt with blue and red piping.

“A skirt,” he said. “That looks nice.”

She shrugged. “Fourth of July. Mom gets a big kick out of it.”

“I noticed.”

“No one cares about us being together, Marcus,” she said. “Trust me, I know.”

“Garrett cares. And your mother cares. She yelled at you at lunch. She’s never done that before.”

“She’s upset about something else. She’s upset about David.”

“What about him?”

“He’s coming with us tonight and I guess she doesn’t want him to.”

“Oh.”

Winnie closed the door and climbed on top of him. She lay her head on his chest and he could feel his heart pounding into her ear.

“Mom and Garrett don’t have time to worry about us,” Winnie said. “They have their own lives to worry about. So let’s just be ourselves, okay?”

Marcus looked around the room, which over the past four weeks had become as familiar to him as his own room: the wainscoted walls, the ceiling fan that didn’t work, his bed with the white cover. He wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He’d changed so much, he’d lost track. Last year everyone in his neighborhood stayed on the street until the fireworks over Shea Stadium ended. When Marcus and LaTisha went upstairs they found Constance asleep in front of the television; she liked to watch the Boston Pops. This year he applauded as little kids with streamers on their bikes rode up a cobblestone street in a procession. He had grilled hotdogs and homemade lemonade for lunch. And now he had a white girl lying across his body.

Sex grinned at Marcus from its post by the door. “You have to go,” Marcus said. “You’re driving me crazy.”

Winnie pressed her hips against his. “In a good way or a bad way?”