Summer People (22 page)

“She went to see Rosie,” Garrett said. “She’ll be back next week.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “She went to see Rosie,” she repeated. “How about that.”

On the seventh day, it rained. Winnie and Marcus started a Monopoly marathon at the kitchen table. The wind was out of the southwest and the house shook. Garrett helped Beth close all of the shutters and the storm windows, while Marcus and Winnie rolled the dice. Garrett watched them, stupidly wishing that he could play, but resenting them too much to ask. Beth, probably taking pity on him, asked him to build a fire while she went to work making a vat of clam chowder. Garrett got the fire roaring, then helped his mother by peeling potatoes and dicing onions. Once the soup was simmering, he crashed in the recliner in front of the fire and vowed not to get up until he’d finished
A River Runs Through It.

He was eighteen pages from the end when the electricity went out. He heard a cry from the kitchen—“Oh, no! Our game!”—and he knew Beth would be rummaging through the utility drawer for candles and matches. Garrett put down his book and leaned back in the recliner.

You love me, too, don’t you?

Yes.

A few minutes later, Beth brought him a candle. “How’re you doing?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Garrett was surprisingly grateful when she sat down next to him.

“I don’t like being angry at one another,” she said. “This thing with you and Piper …”

“I love her,” he said. It felt brilliant to admit it. “I’m in love with her.”

His mother searched his face. “Okay.”

“You think we’re getting too serious too fast,” he said. “I know you think it. But you’re not me and you’re not Piper.”

“That’s true,” she said. “Do twenty-five years of experience count for anything?”

“You don’t remember what it feels like to be young,” he said. “You don’t know what I feel like. She’s only gone for ten days, right? But it feels like
forever.
”

“I do remember what it feels like,” Beth said. “I was in love at your age.”

Garrett felt a split second of connection with his mother, until he realized what she was referring to. “With David?” he sneered.

“Yes, with David. I was in love with him. We were having sex.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Garrett said.

Beth faced the fire.
I know what I’m talking about!
she wanted to shout.
Please believe me!
Instead, she said, “You’re so young, Garrett. Piper is just one in a long line of girls.”

Garrett held his book up so that it blocked Beth’s face. “See, you don’t know what I feel like. Because if you knew, you wouldn’t say that.”

“Summer does something to the brain,” Beth said. “It’s intoxicating. Everything shimmers. And when you fall in love in the summer, it’s the best love you can possibly imagine. Especially here. Because there are sunsets and walks on the beach and fireworks. But summer loves aren’t meant to last. They burn very hot and bright, and then they go out. Eventually, Garrett, they always go out.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” Garrett said. “You’re making me feel worse.”

“If I never split with David, honey, I wouldn’t have married your father.”

He felt a different kind of sadness then, a sadness because the ease with which he used to talk to his mother was gone. Now, every conversation was unpleasant for him. “Please don’t say anything else,” he said.

Garrett waited for Beth to leave the room, but she remained next to him in the candlelight, lost in thought. After a minute of listening to the howling wind and the
rat-tat-tat
of rain against the shutters, Garrett returned to his book. He wasn’t really reading, he was skimming, because damn it, he wanted to finish. And more important, he wanted Beth to understand that his relationship with Piper was
his
; it wasn’t some reincarnation of her and David. She couldn’t predict the ending based on something that happened a generation ago.

Garrett finished the book and set it victoriously on the side table. Beth was asleep, thank God, and since there was nothing else to do, Garrett blew out the candle, eased back in the recliner and closed his eyes.
You love me, too, don’t you? Yes.

That night, a gust of wind pushed open Garrett’s bedroom door. Garrett was tired, and he contemplated leaving the door open, but he felt oddly exposed, so he got up. Then he saw something move in the hallway. Somebody: Marcus slipping into Winnie’s room.

Garrett’s first instinct was to sound an alarm.
Hey! Stop! You can’t go in there! This isn’t allowed!
If Marcus were sneaking around in the middle of the night then he must be having sex with Winnie. So Winnie had lied to Garrett and Beth, lied right to their faces. Garrett was suddenly wide awake. He crept down the hallway toward Winnie’s room.

He stood outside Winnie’s door and suspended his breathing, thinking of his mother banging on the bathroom door while he was inside with Piper. Winnie’s door didn’t close properly, and when Garrett pressed his forehead against the door frame and squinted, he could see in. He was a despicable person after all, a Peeping Tom, a pervert.
If you want details of someone’s sex life, get your own.
He was a hypocrite! But he was propelled forward by his desire for justice. It was bad enough that Marcus was here for the summer, but having sex with Winnie! Garrett would turn them in; Beth would be forced to send Marcus home, and she would have to admit she never should have invited the kid here in the first place.

When Garrett peered in, what he saw was this: Marcus and Winnie lying in bed, fully clothed. Winnie was wearing her sweatshirt and Marcus had on a T-shirt and shorts. Marcus was holding Winnie from behind, spooning her, his chin resting on top of her head. They appeared to be sleeping. Garrett stood there for several minutes, waiting for more to happen, but nothing did. They slept. Like an old, married couple. Garrett stepped into the room and yanked Marcus out of bed. Marcus hit the floor, ass first. Winnie sat up, confused. She nearly screamed because she saw
Garrett
in her room. Garrett stood over Marcus with his fists in the air. He’d never fought anybody in his life, but he was going to fight Marcus now.

“Get up,” Garrett growled. “Get
up,
motherfucker.”

Marcus blinked, rubbing his backside. He squinted at Garrett. Here it was, his biggest fear realized, but Marcus found he wasn’t scared. He was merely annoyed. “What are you doing here, man?”

“Garrett,
get out,
” Winnie hissed. She climbed out of bed, pulling the bottom of her sweatshirt down over her rear end.

“No,” Garrett said, in a loud voice that he hoped would wake Beth. “I’m not getting out until Marcus tells me what the hell he’s doing in your bedroom.”

Marcus held his palms up. “We were sleeping, man.”

And though he knew this was the truth, Garrett kicked Marcus in the chest as hard as he would have kicked a soccer ball if he had an open shot on goal. His adrenaline surged. He
hated
the guy.

Marcus took the blow with a sharp release of air, and fell over his knees, guarding his chest with crossed arms. His breath was gone and he flashed back to a time, years earlier—before he became a master at holding his breath underwater—when a cousin had dunked him in the municipal pool and Marcus thought he was going to die.
Where was the air?
Marcus’s vision turned red, and when it cleared, he saw Garrett dancing in place, waving his fists. “First your mother causes our father’s death,” Garrett said. “And now you’re trying to screw my sister.”

Garrett’s leg shot out again, and Marcus felt like a dog being kicked by a cruel child. It felt like every mean word and deed of the past nine months was contained in that second blow, which caught Marcus in the windpipe. He fell over backward. Thinking of the hour and a half he’d sat, all alone and completely naked, in the swim team locker room as he waited for Arch; the way his father sprayed the baseboards of their room at the Sunday Sermon Motel with Raid to get rid of the roaches; how not one of their neighbors had spoken to them since the murders, and Vanessa Lydecker wouldn’t even open the door to her apartment when she saw it was Marcus through the peephole.

All Marcus could do was wheeze. It occurred to Garrett that Marcus was really hurt, possibly even dying. Winnie picked up the lamp by her bed. She wanted to bash Garrett over the head, but she was afraid of showering Marcus with broken glass.

“You asshole! You jerk!” she screamed. “How dare you! You kicked him! You hurt him!”

“It’s not fair!” Garrett said. “He doesn’t belong here, Winnie. He doesn’t belong in this house and he doesn’t belong in your
bed
.”

With slow deliberation, Marcus sat up, then got to his feet. His chest and throat throbbed with a red, glowing pain, and from that pain came a power, monstrous and terrifying, a sudden knowledge that he was capable of really bad things. Marcus’s lungs felt like they were bleeding and he couldn’t swallow, but that hardly mattered. He grabbed the front of Garrett’s T-shirt and threw Garrett onto the bed. He had four inches and thirty pounds on the kid, and Marcus marveled that Garrett had had the guts to come after him in the first place. But it incensed him, too. Garrett thought he was superior because he was
white,
because he was
rich
. Marcus punched Garrett right across his pretty face and instantly there was blood everywhere. Marcus backed away. He coughed a loogie up into his hand. The room spun. Winnie shrieked and dropped the lamp onto the floor, where it shattered. She was screaming now, screaming for Beth.

Marcus cut his foot on a shard of glass from the lamp. Now his foot was bleeding and maybe his lungs, and certainly Garrett’s face. There was blood everywhere and Winnie was going hoarse in her upper registers trying to wake Beth. Marcus stumbled forward and looked at Garrett who had his arms up now, shielding his face. Marcus wanted to call him a baby, a sissy, a
pussy,
but what he said was, “I’m not going after your sister, not like that anyway. We’re friends.”

Garrett tried to spit at Marcus, but he only managed to dribble some bloody saliva.

“Do you want me to hit you again?” Marcus asked. Wondering if fighting back all along would have been this easy, this gratifying to the dark side of his psyche.

“No!” Winnie said. “Look at him, Marcus! God, he’s
covered
with blood.”

The bedroom door swung open and the light came on. Beth entered the room in her seersucker bathrobe.

“What,” she said, her voice hoarse and murderous, “is going on?” She saw the blood and gasped. “Garrett!” she said. “What
happened
?” She spun on her heels and pinned Marcus with her eyes. “What have you
done
?”

It was the blood that was the problem, Marcus realized. Gar-rett was covered with blood and Marcus wasn’t. His mind skipped beyond explaining the course of events, beyond being sent home, beyond being found guilty of assault, and sent to a juvenile detention center until his eighteenth birthday. It skipped to this:
They all think I’m just like her.

“Marcus,” Beth said. “What have you done?”

“I punched him,” Marcus said.

“Mom, you don’t know what happened …” Winnie said.

Beth didn’t seem to hear. She helped Garrett up and led him to the bathroom where she dabbed at his face with a wet towel. So much blood, but thankfully not much actual damage—a swollen nose, maybe, and by the morning, a black eye. Winnie crowded into the bathroom with Beth and Garrett, crying now, because this was all her fault.

“We were just
sleeping,
” Winnie said. “And Garrett barged into my room and started beating Marcus up.”

“Garrett beat
Marcus
up?” Beth said. “Looks to me like it was the other way around. Just look at your brother! Look at his
face.
”

Back in Winnie’s room, Marcus sat on a clean part of Winnie’s bed holding a wad of Kleenex to the gash on his foot.
They all think I’m just like her.

“Garrett started it,” Winnie said. “He kicked Marcus in the chest, twice, really hard. He came into my room, he pulled Marcus onto the floor and then he kicked him!”

There were splotches of blood now on Beth’s bathrobe. “Gar-rett?”

Garrett inspected his face in the mirror. It looked like someone else’s face.

“Garrett attacked Marcus in his sleep, like a
coward,
” Winnie said. “So Marcus hit him back. Marcus only hit him once.” Winnie had seen in Marcus’s eyes, though, the possibility of more, and it frightened her. She ripped off a long piece of toilet paper and blew her nose. This was all her fault.

Garrett touched his eyelid. He had a sharp headache.

“Garrett should mind his own fucking business!” Winnie said. She wasn’t sure yet if her mother realized she had broken a lamp. Every piece of furniture in Horizon had, like, seventy-five years of history behind it, and so her mother would blame that on her, too.

Garrett raised his eyes to meet Beth’s gaze. He had no words.

“I don’t know what to do,” Beth said. “I don’t know how to fix this.” She wasn’t crying but her voice was so defeated that it was worse than crying.