Summer People (35 page)

“Do you have enough money?” Winnie asked.

He patted his pockets for confirmation, then he yanked Winnie into the booth with him. She was relieved. The two of them wedged themselves on either side of the telephone, and Marcus managed to squeeze the door shut. He held the receiver in one hand and Winnie’s wrist with the other. Then he swallowed, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like that of a nine-year-old boy.

“Mr. Celtic?Yeah, this is Marcus Tyler?Yes, I got it yesterday. Listen, I have some bad news.”

Winnie squeezed his fingers.

“No, more time isn’t going to help. When you first asked this spring, I thought I could write it. I definitely wanted the money, and I understand it was, like, a huge leap of faith to offer that kind of cash to a kid. But I tried all summer, and I can’t seem to get any decent sentences on paper. At first I thought it was writer’s block, but then, I don’t know …” Marcus took a huge breath, sucking all of the remaining oxygen out of the phone booth, then said in his normal voice, “I don’t want to write it.”

There was silence, then the frantic, faraway voice of Za-chary Celtic talking. Marcus listened with his eyes squeezed shut, like he was enduring some awful pain. He took a breath to speak, but was shut out. Winnie hated to see him like this— trying to say his piece, but failing. She felt as badly as she would have at a racial slur—standing with Marcus on Second Avenue, say, while cab after cab passed by Marcus’s outstretched hand.

“Mr. Celtic?” Marcus finally said. It sounded like he was interrupting. “I’ll pay you back the five hundred dollars. No, really, I want to. And I’ll pay you back whatever it cost you to take me to lunch that day. Just please don’t say anything bad about me to Ms. Marchese because I need her to write me a college recommendation, you know?” He paused for a minute then dove back in. “Except, see, I don’t think I’m going to change my mind. What’s done is done. Angela and Candy are dead, my mother is in prison for the rest of her life, my uncle only has half a brain, and I don’t have any explanations for that. I’ve made up excuses on my mother’s behalf, I’ve tried to justify her actions, I’ve tried to understand every possible reason why she killed two people but I don’t have the answers. I’m not even sure my mother has the answers. But it doesn’t matter.
I’mnot going to write this book
.” Marcus hung up the phone on Zachary Celtic, saying, “I’ll send you that money, sir.”

The receiver hit the cradle so hard there was a residual metallic ring. Marcus stared at himself in the front of the phone.

“Well,” he said.

“You did a good job. You said all the right things.”

“Think so?” Marcus asked. He touched the receiver as though he wanted to call back and start over. “He said in true crime hot topics go cold real quick, but that he thought my mother’s story would always have appeal, in case I ever changed my mind.” Marcus wiped sweat off his forehead. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

“I know you won’t,” Winnie said.

“I’m determined to pay the guy back, even though he said I should hold on to the five hundred bucks. He said that was money he was willing to gamble with. But I don’t take money for nothing.”

“Do you feel better?” Winnie asked. “Now that it’s over?”

Now that its over
. Marcus feared that this thing with his mother would never be over; it would be a part of him for the rest of his life. However, the dread about the phone call was gone, leaving Marcus feeling empty, in a clean way, like a vessel that had been washed out. “Yes,” he said. “I guess I do.” He took Winnie in his arms and hugged her, and then they opened the door and stepped out into the fresh air.

Piper scheduled her first ultrasound appointment before Garrett left because she wanted him to come with her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

They were sitting side by side on Horizon’s deck in upright chairs like an elderly couple—not sunbathing, not reading—just staring at the ocean and thinking. They still hung out together in the afternoons, though evening dates were over; Piper was too tired and Garrett had no desire to pursue her. He figured his reluctance to go to the appointment would just be one more thing that pissed her off, but instead she took both his hands and looked him dead in the eye. “I know there’s a person inside you who wants to do the right thing.”

But how, he wondered, was going to the ultrasound appointment the right thing?It wasn’t a baby he was ever going to know.

“Right now this baby is in our care,” Piper said. “It’s our responsibility to make sure it enters the world healthy.”

The appointment was the following day at two. Garrett drove Piper to the hospital. They sat in the waiting room watching the action in the adjoining ER—a man had fallen off his moped and done something unnatural to his arm, followed minutes later by a little girl who had been stung by a jellyfish—until Piper’s name was called.

A nurse led them down the white hallway to the X-ray room. Garrett’s heart was thudding like a bowling ball hitting the gutter. He thought of that first walk on the beach with Piper, then the bonfire where he met her awful friend Kyle, then buying the box of condoms, the first time they made love, then the Fourth of July, the long stretch of days while she was at Rosie’s, the summer evenings they spent parked at the beach. It all seemed like it happened eons ago, with another person.

Garrett had expected a doctor, but the woman who entered the room to do the ultrasound was young, with a ponytail and thick Boston accent. She patted the exam table, indicating that Piper should sit down on it.

“My name’s Marie,” she said.

Then she asked Piper questions:
Bladder full? Date of birth? Date
of last menstrual period?
If Marie was surprised that Piper was only seventeen, she didn’t let on.

“Go ahead and lift your shirt, hon,” she said.

Piper did so—the days of halter tops were over—and Marie squirted a clear jelly onto Piper’s abdomen. Garrett was embarrassed; he stared at his feet in his Sambas and wished he were running across the soccer field in Van Cortland Park right now. Only four days left until their ferry.

Marie switched on a monitor and a blank computer screen lit up. Then she moved a thick wand over Piper’s belly. The screen came alive with blobs and swirls.

“Where’s our baby?” Piper asked. She propped herself up on her elbows and studied the screen.

“Patient, hon,” Marie said. “We’re looking for something the size of a pea.” Garrett noted that Marie had yet to acknowledge his presence in the room, although he was growing used to being ignored where Piper’s pregnancy was concerned.

“Here we go,” Marie said. A white peanut appeared on the screen. Marie zoomed in. “There’s your baby.”

Garrett gazed at the screen with interest. The peanut, he could see, was moving. The peanut had tiny arms and legs.

“See this dark spot?” Marie said. “This is the baby’s heart. Here, wait a sec.”

Marie fiddled with a knob on the computer. Suddenly, a rhythmic whooshing sound filled the air.

“What’s that?” Garrett croaked.

“What’s
that
?” Marie said, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would be brave or stupid enough to ask. “Why, that’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

The baby, Marie said, was due March twenty-seventh. “But frequently first pregnancies are late.”

“Good,” Garrett said. “Maybe the baby won’t be born until April. March is a terrible month.”

Piper glared at him. “What do you care?”

“My father died in March,” Garrett explained to Marie.

“Sorry to hear it,” Marie said. “Well, look at it this way, if your baby is born in March, it will become a good month.”

Garrett rolled his eyes. The woman didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

“I’m going to take a few pictures for your doctor,” Marie said. “And for you, if you want one.”

“Of course I want one!” Piper said. “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Nawp, not yet,” Marie said. “Another eight weeks or so and you’ll come back for a second round of this. They can tell you then.”

“I feel in my heart that it’s a girl,” Piper said.

Garrett shut his eyes. He needed to sit down. A girl, a boy— the baby would be one or the other. God, it was all too much. He managed to stay on his feet while Marie took pictures of the white peanut from different angles.

“I just need to develop these,” she said. She handed Piper a couple of tissues for her belly. “You clean up. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Once Marie left the room, there was an awkward silence. Piper swabbed the gunk off her skin, then handed the tissues to Garrett.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” he asked.

“Throw them away.” She nodded to a trash can near his feet.

He slammed the wad into the can with all his strength.

“You’re angry,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re furious with me. You think this is my fault.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Of course you do.” Piper stood up from the table and tucked in her shirt. “You think it’s my fault I’m pregnant. But I have news for you, Garrett. You have to accept fifty percent responsibility.”

“Fifty percent responsibility but not fifty percent say in what happens.”

“You saw the baby floating around on that screen,” Piper said. “Do you honestly want to kill it?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“I’ll tell you what you want. You want to be back in New York where you can pretend none of this ever happened. Where you can pretend I don’t exist.”

“That’s not true.”

“It
is
true. But you know what’s funny?I don’t care. I don’t care that you knocked me up and now you don’t love me anymore. It doesn’t bother me! All I care about is doing the responsible thing here, the adult thing, and I’m doing it! I’m taking responsibility for this child without compromising my future. You never would have made this decision because it’s too hard and you’re not strong enough. This doesn’t fit into the life plan you concocted for yourself. Well, guess what, Garrett?Part of being an adult is learning that sometimes in life, pieces don’t fit.”

“We’re not adults, though,” Garrett said. “We’re kids. We’re kids having kids.”

“You’re a real summer person,” Piper said. “I realized that when this whole thing started.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You show up here for three months of the year when the weather is nice and the water is warm and you use the island. You use it up. Then in September you go back to wherever you came from and forget all about this place. Because you don’t really care about Nantucket or the people who live here.” Piper’s voice was high and shrill; her face was flushed. “You probably won’t even come back here for the birth.”

Garrett stared at her. “Of course I’m coming back for the birth.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” He actually hadn’t given it a moment of consideration, but he would not stand here and have this girl call him a coward and be right. If his child was going to be born here, he would be here. And his mother and Winnie, too. They would all get a chance to see the baby, to hold him or her, then say good-bye.

“Well, fine, then,” Piper said. “But you’re not going to be my labor coach. Peyton has already offered.”

“You’re going to have a thirteen-year-old labor coach?” Gar-rett said.

“By March, she’ll be fourteen,” Piper said.

The door swung open and Marie stepped in, holding an envelope. She looked between them. “Everything okay in here?” she asked.

“Sure,” Piper said.

“Here are the pictures. I got two for you—” She handed two to Piper. “And one for you.” She handed one to Garrett.

Garrett scrutinized his picture, grateful that he had gotten a good shot, where the arms and legs were visible and he could see the dark spot where the baby’s heart was.

He looked at Marie. “This is my baby,” he said.

She clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a lucky man.”

At home, Garrett found Beth in the kitchen packing up the place mats and napkins, the coffee grinder, the food processor. She had saved the Zabar’s shopping bags and was filling them with the things they couldn’t get in New York: loaves of Something Natural herb bread, containers of smoked bluefish paâteé and clam chowder, huge beefsteak tomatoes from Bartlett’s.