Summer People (30 page)

When she got home she was dismayed to find the Rover in the driveway. She had downed both bottles of water, she was slick with sweat and her vision was blotchy. She needed to eat, she needed rest. She couldn’t bring herself to face her children. What would she say? Where could she possibly start?

When she walked inside, the house was quiet and Beth removed her socks and shoes on the bottom step of the stairs. She might be able to forego lunch and just pull her shades and climb into bed. She was so overwhelmingly tired that she knew she could sleep until morning. But then she heard whispering and she forced herself to tiptoe down the hallway and poke her head into the kitchen.

Garrett and Winnie were sitting alone at the kitchen table staring at the urn now filled with flowers. The broom and dustpan were out, and beyond the twins, Beth could see the deck had been swept clean. When the kids looked up and saw her, Beth had a hundred simultaneous memories of their faces. She remembered seeing them for the very first time, when they were an hour old, sleeping in their incubators in the hospital nursery. She pictured them on their second birthday, their mouths smeared with chocolate icing. She saw them at age ten, the first time they ever took the subway alone—the six line down to Union Square where Arch was going to meet them. She visualized them in the future, walking down the aisle at Winnie’s wedding—Garrett in a tuxedo and Winnie in a pearl-colored slip dress, arm-in-arm, Garrett giving Winnie away. More times than Beth could count in the last five months, she had thought, It should have been me who died. But now, gazing at her children and the urn of flowers, that sense of guilt, guilt at
surviving,
vanished. She was their mother. They needed her more than they needed anyone else. Including Arch.

Beth poured herself a Gatorade. The only sounds in the kitchen were the cracking of ice, and the distant pound and rush of the waves outside. Beth drank the entire glass of liquid, then poured herself another. The silence was helpful. This was going to be the most important conversation she ever had with her children and she wanted to pick her words carefully. She couldn’t help herself from asking, “You scattered the ashes without me?”

Winnie traced a scar in the table. Garrett said, “Yes.”

Beth sat down; her legs felt weak. “Why?”

“We were angry,” he said.

Beth imagined Kara Schau as an invisible fourth party at the table. She would praise Garrett for identifying his emotions. Beth wasn’t as pleased. What she thought was: When you’re angry you break a vase, you yell, you resort to sarcasm. You do not deceive your mother in the cruelest possible way.

“Angry about what?” she asked.

“You were married,” Winnie whispered. “And you never told us.”

“That’s right,” Beth said. “I was married and I never told you.”

“And you never told Dad,” Winnie said.

“And I never told Dad.”

“You lied to all three of us,” Garrett said. “Your family.”

“I did not lie.”

“You lied by omission,” Garrett said. This was a legal premise that he’d learned from his father. What you didn’t say could be just as damaging as what you did.

“It happened a long time ago,” Beth said. “Before your father, before you. It has no bearing on your lives.” She swallowed some more Gatorade. “It is none of your business.”

“Except you’re our mother,” Winnie said. “We thought we knew you.”

“You do know me.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Garrett said.

“We want to know the whole story,” Winnie said. “We want to know what happened.”

“Oh,” Beth said. This she wasn’t ready for. She had devoted so much energy to not thinking about the details of August 1979 that to conjure them up would be like calling a voice or spirit back from the dead. “I’d like you to respect that it’s my private past. It’s not something I want to share—with you or anyone else.”

“Piper knows the whole story,” Garrett said. “But I wouldn’t let her tell me about it. I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Piper heard the story from David?”

“From Rosie, actually,” Garrett said, knowing that this detail, beyond all others, would prod his mother to speak. “So I wasn’t sure how accurate it’d be.”

“It wouldn’t be accurate at all,” Beth said. She was livid at the thought of
Rosie
giving away her secret. Rosie!

“Just tell us, Mom,” Winnie said.

Beth leaned back in the chair; it whined. “Where did you put Daddy’s ashes?”

They were both quiet and Beth watched them exchange a quick look. She wanted to tread carefully here because she wanted the truth.

“In Quidnet,” Garrett said. “We’ll show you where. Later.”

Later, meaning after Beth explained herself. It was blackmail, but what did she expect? These were teenagers.

“Where’s Marcus?” Beth asked.

“He’s in town,” Winnie said. When Winnie saw the broken glass on the deck and then the urn right there on the
kitchen table,
she’d warned Marcus that there was going to be a confrontation, and without hesitation, Marcus said he would make himself scarce.

“Go ahead, Mom,” Garrett said. “Tell us.”

It was nearly impossible to explain the romance of that sixth and final summer of Beth and David. But maybe not—because here were her twins, each experiencing love for the first time. Still, Beth feared she wouldn’t be able to convey the heat and light, the depth and weight of her love for David. It was their sixth summer together; they were each twenty-one. When they rejoined in late May they realized that they had grown into adults, or almost. David had moved out of his parents’ house and he rented the cottage on Bear Street. Beth was given full use of her grandfather’s Volkswagen bug, which still ran, though barely. It was the perfect summer. David worked as a painter six days a week from seven until three; Beth didn’t work at all. While David painted, Beth ran errands for her mother, helped out around the house, and sat on the beach in front of Horizon. Then at three o’clock, she disappeared. Beth’s mother was preoccupied with Scott and Danny, who, at fourteen and sixteen, were turning her hair white. Beth’s father flew in from the city every other weekend. And so Beth was free—she met David at his cottage at 3:15 and for her, the day began. They swam, they sailed, they went to the nude beach, and they raked for clams that they cooked up later with pasta for dinner. They went to bonfires and drank too much beer and fell into bed in the wee hours giddy and spinning. They made love.

David asked Beth to marry him in August. It was his day off, a Wednesday. Beth heard David rise early, before the sun was up, and when she opened her eyes, he was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a tray. A blue hydrangea in a drinking glass, a slice of cantaloupe, a bowl of strawberries. A bottle of Taittin-ger champagne.

“Whoa,” she said, sitting up. “What’s this?”

“Will you marry me?”

Beth laughed. She remembered wanting to open the champagne. She remembered David wrapping his hand around the back of her neck.

“I’m serious. I want to marry you.”

“I want to marry you, too.”

“Today.”

“What?”

“We’ll get dressed, we’ll go to the Town Building.”

“You’re a nut.”

“Next week, then. Next Wednesday. Will you marry me next Wednesday?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes,” David said. “Bethie, I love you.”

Beth never actually said yes, but she never said no either. She got swept along by David’s enthusiasm and by her own desire to have the summer last forever. They were going to get married. But Beth couldn’t bring herself to inform her parents. She didn’t dare breathe the word “marriage” under Horizon’s roof.

Beth and David went to the hospital to have their blood tested. Beth bought a white sundress in town. She savored the tingly, secret excitement, the outlandish daring of it—she was getting married! They bought rings, inexpensive ones, plain gold bands, a hundred dollars for both.

The morning they were to be married, David rose early again. He returned with a huge handful of purple cosmos.

“Your bouquet,” he said.

Only when Beth saw the flowers did she have her first pang of regret for what had yet to happen. This was her bridal bouquet. The white crinkled cotton sundress hanging in the closet was her wedding dress. She and David were going to climb into the bug, bounce down the cobblestone street to the Nantucket Town Building and get married. David was absolutely
glowing
— he looked the way she always thought she would look on her wedding day. But it was a different wedding day that she’d dreamed of: six bridesmaids in pink linen dresses and six groomsmen in navy blazers. Her father walking her down the aisle. She hesitated. The trappings of a wedding didn’t matter. Who cared about a cocktail hour, a nine-piece band, chicken Kiev, and chocolate wedding cake? She took the flowers from David.

“They’re perfect,” she said.

Winnie and Garrett stared at her. Not in many years had she held them in this kind of rapt attention.

“Are you saying you knew you were about to make a mistake?” Winnie said.

“I had mixed feelings,” Beth said. “But you hear about cold feet all the time—a bride and groom are
supposed
to have cold feet. And I loved David. I was twenty-one years old. If I’d wanted to back out, I would have.”

When she emerged from the tiny bathroom in her white dress and rope sandals with the cork heels, David fell back on the sofa with his hand over his heart. “You look so beautiful you scare me,” he said. “God, Beth …” His eyes filled and Beth felt a swell of pride. This was exactly the kind of reaction she wanted from her husband on her wedding day. She wanted to bowl David over; she wanted to bring him to tears. Beth was pleased with how she looked—young and blond and very tan. The dress, while not a wedding dress, was perfect for a girl like her on a summer day. Her spirits lifted.

David drove into town but had trouble finding a parking space. It was overcast, and the town was filled with people lunching and shopping. Beth remembered being terrified that her mother would see her, or a friend of her mother’s. She squeezed the purple cosmos; they left gold dust all over her hands, and she had to wash up in the public restroom of the Town Building before the ceremony.