Summer People (34 page)

“It would be romantic, wouldn’t it?” Winnie asked. “To have a baby?”

“Don’t talk that way,” Marcus said. “It won’t be romantic for Garrett and Piper. Those two didn’t even kiss good-bye tonight.”

Winnie had noticed. The relationship between Garrett and Piper was different now, and not in a good way. Garrett kept talking about going back to New York like there was nothing he’d rather do. Meanwhile, Winnie wanted to stay on Nantucket forever. Once she got back to New York, everything would change. She would go back to living on Park Avenue, Marcus would go back to Queens. They could still see each other; it was thirty-five minutes on the subway. But it wouldn’t be the same. They wouldn’t be living together; they wouldn’t spend every afternoon on the beach swimming; they wouldn’t eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together on the deck. Instead, Winnie imagined herself stepping off the train in an unfamiliar neighborhood where all the other girls her age were black or Hispanic and
tough
. Smoking cigarettes, chewing gum, dishing out attitude when they saw Winnie and Marcus walking down the street holding hands. Winnie had beentoMarcus’sapartmentoncebefore with her father and Garrett—the building was shabby, and although Marcus’s apartment was nice on the inside, it looked like an apartment where the mother was absent. There had been dishes in the sink—lots of them—and there were two TVs blaring in different rooms. Marcus’s sister, LaTisha, he said, came home from school and plunked herself in front of the set until bedtime. She did her homework in front of
Oprah
and ate her dinner in front of
Jeopardy!
Winnie didn’t want to place herself in that apartment or on the street in Queens, but she was afraid the trip to Manhattan would intimidate Marcus just as much, and that he wouldn’t come. New York, Winnie was certain, would stink. They wouldn’t be safe from the rest of the world like they were here.

A few days later, the Western Union truck pulled up in front of the house. Winnie was the only one around. Garrett and Beth had gone running together and Marcus had fallen asleep down on the beach. Winnie was in the kitchen making sandwiches when she heard the crunch of tires on the shell driveway and she reached the front door in time to meet the driver and sign for an envelope. Winnie became sore with the memories of previous summers—the FedEx truck came nearly every day with documents for her father.

The Western Union man tipped his hat at Winnie in an old-fashioned way that made her smile. She looked at the envelope and saw it was addressed to Marcus. It was a telegram, she realized, another telegram for Marcus. There had been one a few weeks earlier, back when they were angry at one another, and she had forgotten to ask him about it. From one of his parents, his father probably, telling him it was time to come home. She wanted to throw the envelope away, or else she wanted it to contain happy news, like Marcus had been offered a college scholarship. Like his father had found a great new job and they were moving to Manhattan.

Winnie took the envelope down to the beach along with their lunch. Marcus was still asleep, face down, on his beach towel. He was so tall and solid; at night, when he held her, she wanted to melt into him and disappear.

She nudged the bottom of his foot with her big toe. “Turkey sandwiches,” she said. The days of Malibu and Coke were over, but she’d brought a thermos of icy lemonade. She laid out lunch as Marcus rubbed his eyes and sat up.

“I’m really going to miss this,” he said. “You know?”

Winnie squinted at the ocean. A seagull stopped at the edge of their blanket and squawked for some of their lunch. Winnie threw a piece of bread crust. Finally she understood the heartache her mother felt every year when she left this island. It was falling in love here that did it, Winnie guessed. It was falling in love here that made you never want to leave.

“A telegram came for you,” Winnie said. She pulled the envelope out of her jean shorts. “Just now. Western Union.”

Marcus looked at the envelope but didn’t reach for it right away. Winnie’s heart dropped. It was bad news. She remembered the morning of March sixteenth, her mother coming into her bedroom while Winnie was getting dressed for school. Her mother didn’t have to say a single word; Winnie knew in her gut that her father was dead.

“Is everything okay?” Winnie whispered.

The seagull returned, begging for more. Throw the telegram to the seagull, Winnie thought. Throw it into the ocean. It seemed plausible on such a gorgeous day that bad news could simply be tossed away.

Marcus opened the envelope, shaking his head all the while. Maybe it was from Constance. Could a person send telegrams from prison?

“What does it say?” Winnie asked.

He fell back onto his towel. “There’s something I have to tell you. Remember back a couple of weeks ago when I got that other telegram?I know you were the one who slid it under my door.”

Winnie nodded. It was awful of her to slide the telegram under the door like Marcus was some kind of leper, but at the time she’d been too indignant to knock.

“And remember when I told you that I had a secret?”

Of course she remembered! She felt like shaking him. Didn’t he understand that his every word printed indelibly on her brain?

“Yes,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Marcus said. “These telegrams?Are you ready?”

Winnie was pretty sure she wasn’t ready, but she nodded.

“They’re from my editor.”

Winnie smiled at him. She thought he’d said “editor.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I have an editor,” Marcus said. “At Dome Books in New York. His name is Zachary Celtic.”

Winnie felt like the butt of some kind of joke, though she wasn’t sure yet if she was supposed to be angry or laugh along.

“I still don’t understand.”

Marcus squinted at the ocean. The sun seemed to have gotten brighter in the past few minutes. So Winnie was skeptical. She believed in him, but not that much.

“I have a book deal with Dome,” Marcus said. “This guy, this editor, Zachary Celtic, offered me thirty thousand dollars to write a book about what happened with my mother.”

“You’re kidding,” Winnie said. “Thirty
thousand
dollars?”

Those three words had power, Marcus realized, even over someone with plenty of money like Winnie. They’d held so much power over him that he’d agreed to write a book he didn’t want to write. There, he’d admitted it.

He didn’t want to write the book.

“They gave me five hundred dollars already,” Marcus said. It sounded like such a paltry sum when compared to thirty thousand, but since Marcus now knew he had to pay it back, it seemed like a lot. “But I spent it. And what this telegram says is that the first fifty pages and a complete synopsis are due next week, September first. ‘Per our agreement.’ ”

“You’ve written fifty pages?” Winnie said.

“No,” Marcus said. “I’ve only written one page. I had writer’s block this summer.”

“Maybe they’ll give you more time,” Winnie said. “Like an extension on a term paper?”

“More time won’t help,” Marcus said. “I’m not going to write it at all.”

“Really?” Winnie said. Now she was having a hard time processing what he was telling her. He had a book deal for thirty thousand dollars but he was giving it up?Turning it down? She felt compelled to push him toward greatness. Marcus could be a writer, a real writer, before he even turned eighteen. “Why not?”

“I don’t have it in my heart,” Marcus said. “I’m furious with my mother and I know better than anyone else that what she did was wrong, but that’s not stuff I want to explain to the rest of the world. I want to work it out privately.”

“But you don’t talk to your mother,” Winnie said.

“Yeah, I know,” Marcus said. He felt like crumpling up the telegram and tossing it into the water, but it had the phone number of Dome Books on it and now he had to call. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to be a writer. And I will be someday. But I’m not writing this story. I kept thinking of your dad, too. He wouldn’t have wanted me to write this book.”

“Yeah,” Winnie said. “He wasn’t into exploiting his cases.”

That word, “exploiting,” was the one that made Marcus squirm. Along with the horrible things Zachary Celtic had said at lunch, and the way the five hundred dollars was handed to him—cash in an envelope—so seedy, so underhanded. They were buying Marcus’s betrayal. “Anyway, that’s my secret. I have a book deal with this big publishing house for all this money but I’m not going through with it.”

“Well, okay, then,” Winnie said. She poured two cups of lemonade and handed one to Marcus. They clicked cups in a toast, though they had different ideas about what they were drinking to. Winnie thought they were drinking to Marcus’s future career as a writer, if not with this book then with another. Marcus thought they were drinking to his freedom.

Winnie was thrilled to accompany Marcus on even the smallest errand; standing in line at the post office to get stamps with him was a delight. But this—going with him in the morning to call his editor and turn down the book deal—was monumental. Marcus was so nervous about the prospect of contacting this man, Zachary Celtic, that he said he wouldn’t come to Winnie’s room at all that night, even though she begged him to as they sat on the deck looking at the stars. She reminded him that their nights together were dwindling in number.

“I can’t,” he said. “My guts are bound up about this call tomorrow. I just want tomorrow to come so I can do it.”

“What are you going to say?” Winnie asked.

“I’ll just tell him I’m not writing it. I’ll tell him I’ll return the five hundred bucks.”

Even though Marcus and Winnie were in love, there were certain things she was afraid to ask. Like where he was going to get that kind of money.

“And what about your mother?” Winnie said.

“What about her?”

“Will you go see her when you get home?”

He squeezed her hand so tightly she nearly cried out in pain. “I don’t know what to do about my mother,” he said.

In the morning, they rode their bikes into town and called Za-chary Celtic from a phone booth. Marcus had brought the telegram along with him. He dialed the number, then pumped the payphone full of quarters; his pockets were heavy with them. Winnie stood at Marcus’s back, outside of the booth. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear the conversation, and for a moment she wondered why he’d invited her along when clearly this was something he wanted to do by himself. She looked up and down the street at the people walking their dogs, drinking coffee, waiting for the shops to open. A man on a bench nearby read the
Wall Street Journal
and talked on his cell phone about the upcoming football season. Marcus had two fingers plugged in his ear and his head bent forward. Winnie heard him say, “Zachary Celtic, please. True crime. It’s Marcus Tyler calling.” His voice was strange. Winnie wanted to touch him in some reassuring way, but she was scared to. The man on the bench blabbed into his cell phone, bragging now about the dinner reservations he’d managed to “score” at the Pearl and American Seasons. Winnie nearly shushed him. Marcus pumped more change into the phone. He turned around and smiled weakly at her, saying, “They’re seeing if he’s available.”