Summer People (19 page)

Marcus lifted her off of him. “Good way,” he said, knowing how this would thrill her. “Now
go.
”

Later, Marcus helped Beth pack the picnic into coolers: fried chicken, potato salad, cucumbers in vinaigrette, deviled eggs, oatmeal cookies, iced tea, beer. She had a special red, white, and blue tablecloth, and all of the matching plates and napkins.

“This looks great,” Marcus said. And then, before he could stop himself, he said, “My mom always made coleslaw. With horseradish in it. It was a big hit.”

Beth stopped what she was doing and stared at him, and Marcus got the awful feeling that followed whenever Constance was mentioned. Marcus wished Winnie would come down and rescue him—but she was napping, and Garrett had taken the car to pick up Piper and Peyton. Marcus tucked a sleeve of plastic cups into the picnic basket.

“Oh, Marcus, I’m sorry,” Beth said. She got an unsteady vibe in her voice, like she might start to cry. “I didn’t even
think
what this would feel like for you. With your mother in jail, you probably don’t want to celebrate Independence Day.”

“Uh …” Marcus was caught off-guard. “No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“It’s
not
fine,” Beth said. “It was insensitive of me. But we do this whole rigmarole every year, and I just thought that if I kept things normal they might start to
feel
normal.”

“I’m excited about a picnic,” Marcus said. “I’ve never been on an actual picnic, with a picnic basket and everything.”

Beth sank into one of the kitchen chairs, thinking that this was another thing Arch would have loved: taking Marcus on his first picnic. “You’re sure you don’t mind? Maybe we should just forget it.”

“I want to go,” he said.

Beth threw her hands into the air. “I don’t want to see David!” she said. “I should never have invited the girls, but I thought a big group of kids would be fun. Plus, David goes to the same party every year, at this huge house on the Cliff. But no! This year as soon as he hears the girls are coming with us, he decides to forget the party. He’s only coming along because he knows I don’t want him to.”

Marcus began to wonder if what Winnie said were true. Maybe Beth and Garrett were too consumed with their own lives to give their little romance a second thought. But before Marcus could pursue this reasoning further, he heard Beth whisper something under her breath.

“I’m sorry?” Marcus said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, I’m keeping a big secret from my children.”

She was crying now. Marcus handed her a red, white, and blue napkin. He sat quietly, wondering if she was going to tell him the secret. He felt extremely interested, but also ashamed at this interest. If she told him the secret, he might have to keep it from Winnie.

Beth crumpled her napkin and tossed it lamely in the direction of the trash can. Marcus had an urge to pick it up and throw it away, but he was rooted to his chair.

“It’s about David.”

Marcus let his eyelids droop, his standard defense when he heard something he didn’t like. “Please,” he said. He stalled, unsure of what to say. He liked Beth; he could see the woman was in pain, the kind of pain you felt when you had something to admit and couldn’t wait to get it off your chest. The kind of pain Mama had been in right after the murders. She had called the police and turned herself in. “Please don’t tell me.”

Beth looked crestfallen, and he felt bad. Beth was the reason he was here. She’d given him the great gift of this summer, with picnics and fireworks and everything.

“I wouldn’t be able to keep it from Winnie,” he explained.

Beth smiled. “You like Winnie.”

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Just promise me that you’ll be there for her this summer when she needs you.”

“I’m here for her,” Marcus said.

“She’s so fragile, and your friendship is important to her.”

Marcus felt embarrassed and proud, and relieved, because it sounded like she was going to let him off the hook. He opened his eyes.

Beth lifted herself out of her chair and stood by him. She put her hand on his shoulder and left it there a second. Marcus’s throat ached. For the first time all summer, he missed his own mother, the way she used to be, when she put her hands on either side of his face if she couldn’t find the words to express herself.

Marcus heard a car pull into the driveway. Beth walked out into the hall.

“There they are,” she said. “Marcus, will you go up and wake Winnie? We have to get ready to leave.”

The screen door opened and Garrett walked in, followed by Piper, Peyton, and David. David was carrying a six-pack of Hei-neken.

“I hope someone made deviled eggs,” he said jovially.

As Marcus headed up the stairs he tried to imagine what the secret might be, and he figured it had to do with sex. An affair, maybe. Marcus was irritated; he could tell he’d be thinking about this all the time now, although he was interested to know that sex was plaguing people other than him. He knocked on Winnie’s door.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going.”

Her hair was mussed and she was rubbing her eyes. “I’m grouchy,” she said.

Marcus felt a rush of emotion. She was so childlike, so funny and adorable that he flashed her his dimples. That worked. Her face brightened and she hugged him.

Walking down the cliff toward Jetties Beach, Beth noticed that Peyton was the only one without something to carry. In front, leading the way, were Garrett and Piper holding hands, each lugging a thermos in the other hand. Behind them were Winnie and Marcus holding either side of the big cooler. Beth had the picnic basket and two blankets and David was loaded down with folding chairs. Peyton slunk along at David’s side, empty-handed.

“Why don’t you catch up to your sister?” David asked her.

“I don’t want to. She’s with Garrett.”

“Well, go anyway. I need you to scout out a good spot for us.”

“I’m hungry,” Peyton said.

“Exactly why we need you up front. We can’t eat until we’ve found a place to sit.”

In her mind, Beth willed Peyton to stay right where she was, next to her father, but Peyton succumbed to her hunger. She ran ahead, if you could call stumbling forward in clunky sandals running, leaving Beth and David to bring up the rear alone, if you could call walking with four thousand strangers alone.

“You don’t want me here,” David said.

“I thought you had the Swifts’ party.”

“I wanted to be with my girls,” David said.

“Maybe,” Beth said. “Or maybe you wanted to be with me.”

“You have a high opinion of yourself.”

“The kiss was an accident, David.”

“An accident?”

That was the wrong word. An accident was breaking a glass in the kitchen sink, a fender bender; an accident was what had happened to Arch. The kiss was something more intentional— it was a mistake.

“It didn’t mean anything,” she said, cringing at how cruel that sounded. But didn’t he see? It
couldn’t
mean anything. “I was kind of drunk.”

“Drunk,” David said flatly. “That’s original. You kissed me because you were drunk.”

Beth pressed her lips together. She liked the way Winnie and Marcus were carrying the cooler. They made it seem effortless. Piper and Garrett, on the other hand, appeared lopsided, and a second later they stopped in their tracks. Piper had to set down her thermos and rest.

“I need you to respect my wishes,” Beth said. “I’m not interested in a relationship with anyone right now.”

“You sound ridiculous.”

“Why is it so ridiculous?” Beth said. Winnie turned around with raised eyebrows. Beth smiled at her reassuringly, then lowered her voice. “I need time and space to grieve for my husband.”

“I understand that, Beth.”

“You don’t understand. If you understood, you wouldn’t be here. You would be giving me space.”

“Don’t you ever ask yourself why it’s
me
you don’t want around? I’ll tell you why. Because you still have feelings for me and you’re afraid of those feelings.”

“I don’t have feelings for you.”

“You love me.”

Beth looked to see if he was being funny. But his eyes gave off a searing heat. He was serious; he was challenging her to deny that preposterous statement.

“I loved you twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Trust me when I say things have changed.”

“It didn’t seem that way the other night,” he said.

Beth didn’t have to respond because seconds later, Peyton found a spot on the beach large enough to accommodate all of them, and then there was the welcome distraction of setting up camp: spreading out the blankets, unfolding the chairs, taking out the food and pouring drinks. David opened a beer and hovered at the far edge of the blanket while Beth took charge of doling out fried chicken, spooning mounds of potato salad onto paper plates, and trying to keep pieces of plastic wrap from flying into the water. This time last year it was the same menu, but there was only four of them: Beth, Arch, and the twins. Arch loved drumsticks. He ate them all—a total of seven—then joked about the poor one-legged chicken that was limping around somewhere. Stupid, maybe, but the kids thought he was the funniest man on the planet, and so did Beth. She put a drumstick on Garrett’s plate, hoping he would remember, but he was too absorbed with rubbing Piper’s arms. She was chilly, it seemed. Well, yeah, Beth thought, that’s what you got when you wore a halter top to the beach at night. When Garrett finally did notice the drumstick, he ate it in three bites without comment. Beth almost said,
Hey, Garrett, remember when Dad …
but she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull off the happy nostalgia she intended.

As she ate her dinner, she thought about how one day Garrett and Winnie would get married and have families of their own, and Beth would be left to remember all of the funny jokes alone. She watched as David wandered away to talk to some people he knew, waving his beer around in defiance of the open container law. Maybe she should listen to him, otherwise she might end up old and alone, still clinging to her grief.

It grew dark. Beth collected the paper plates and the wadded napkins and passed around oatmeal cookies. David appeared back at the blanket with a box of sparklers and he gave one to everybody, including Beth, and lit them with a Bic he borrowed from Piper. He watched Beth’s face as he held the lighter to the tip of her sparkler and when the sparkler came to life, bright stars dancing and hissing, he said, “There you go, my dear. Now you can write your name.”

Garrett and Piper wrote their names in a heart, as did Winnie and Marcus. Beth turned her back to the group and wrote her name in the dark air over Nantucket Sound.
Beth.
She hoped that Arch would see it, from wherever he was watching her.

Beth collected everyone’s spent sparklers and the rest of the trash and settled back in her chair in time for the first burst of fireworks. Red, gold, purple. David sat in the chair next to hers and opened another beer. Beth loved fireworks, the whistle and crackle in the air, the smell of cordite, the
oohs
and
aahs
. When the sky was all lit up, she watched the silhouettes of her kids— both of them obviously paired up now. Marcus was leaning back on his hands and Winnie sat close to him, resting her head on his shoulder. Piper lay on her back and Garrett lounged on his side right behind her. They were kissing. Beth studied them for a minute, enough time to dispel any illusions about their innocence. They were having sex. Beth glanced at David to see if he saw what she saw: the tongues when they kissed, the way Garrett’s fingers tugged insistently on Piper’s belt loops. Beth didn’t know how to feel about the situation. She and Arch had always vowed to be honest with the twins about sex and the responsibility that came with it. Arch gave Garrett condoms, and, Beth assumed, informed him how and when they should be used. Beth herself had lost her virginity at sixteen with the man sitting next to her, but somehow she had seemed older then, at sixteen, than Garrett did now, at seventeen. She would have to say something to Garrett about the sex this week—and to Winnie, too, if this thing with Marcus developed. It would embarrass all three of them—really, Arch had been much better at dealing with the kids’ emerging sexuality—yet what could she do? Let her kids go wild in the sack without a few words of caution?