Summer People (36 page)

She smiled indulgently as he walked into the kitchen. “How’d the appointment go?”

He shrugged. “Okay.” The picture was in his shirt pocket— he’d pulled it out twice after dropping Piper off to look at it. “Here, want to see?” He handed the photo to his mother.

Beth held it up to the light.

“These are the arms and legs,” Garrett said. “And this dark spot?That’s the heart.”

His mother turned the picture and squinted. Despite her most fervent wishes, a few tears leaked from her eyes.

“I know you’re disappointed in me,” he said.

She wiped her tears away quickly. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was just thinking of all of the things your father is going to miss.”

“Can we come back for the birth?” Garrett asked. “The baby is due March twenty-seventh.”

“This house doesn’t have heat,” Beth said. “And it’s going to be tricky with school. I don’t even know when your spring break is.”

“Please?” Garrett said.

Beth handed him back the picture. “I guess we’ll figure something out,” she said.

With only two days before they were to leave, Beth became very busy. First, there was packing—and when Beth looked around the house, she saw things everywhere that had to be put into boxes. It overwhelmed her. She got up before dawn and made herself a pot of coffee. When Arch had come at the end of August, they used to awaken early all the time and watch the sun rise, brightening the water. It was Arch’s favorite time of day, the time when Nantucket, to him, seemed its most at ease.

Beth poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. She heard a groan, followed by the splintering noise she’d been fearing all summer, but before she could steady herself, the chair she was sitting on crashed to the ground. Beth hit the floor with a tremendous wallop—her whole body vibrated and there was a sharp pain in her right wrist. The surprise and the pain of it was enough to make her cry, but all Beth could think was that the ancient chair finally breaking was some kind of message from Arch. Things can fall out right from under you and you will survive. Beth picked herself up. Brilliantly, her coffee remained intact on the kitchen table. She took a long sip, then rotated her wrist a few times. It still worked.

She inspected the chair, wondering if it could be salvaged, but decided, in the end, it should go into the trash. Furniture was one of those things that could be replaced.

She left the house for a run before any of the kids got up, inhaling the air like she might never breathe again. She ingested the sight of the land—the flat blue pond, the green dunes, the gold sand, the ocean.

She didn’t want to leave.

Of course, she felt this way every August—but in previous Augusts, Arch had been around to help, and he was very matter-of-fact about packing up. He washed and vacuumed the car— three months of accumulated sand and grime from driving on these dirt roads—then he brought the empty boxes up from the basement and he packed while Beth cleaned. It took them twenty-four hours. Arch double-checked their reservation at the Steamship. They gave all of their perishables to Mrs. Colchester three houses down who stayed until Columbus Day; they ate their final dinner at the Brotherhood, locked the house, tucked the key under the mat, and left. Beth had been sad to leave since she was five years old, old enough to realize that the island had a soul that she loved as much as she loved a real, living person.

Why were they going back to New York?What waited for them there?The kids had another year of school, the most critical year. Beth had the apartment, her position on Danforth’s advisory board, a few friends who would allow her to be a third or fifth wheel at dinner parties. She had Kara Schau. She had her gym, her hairdresser, the best Chinese food in the world at the Jade Palace, the museums, which she rarely visited anymore, though she felt encouraged by their stately presence in her neighborhood. There was Arch’s mother, Vivian, on Fifty-ninth and Sutton Place, whom they would see once a month for a lunch of roast beef and watercress sandwiches. It was a bleak picture.

And then there was the matter of the baby. Beth marveled that she and David hadn’t ended up in the same pickle so many years ago—thinking back, she couldn’t remember what they had used for birth control. Beth felt sorry for Garrett and disappointed in both him and Piper, although she had to admit, Piper’s decision was mature and responsible. David and Rosie had raised her right, and Beth was mortified to discover that she herself felt much like Garrett—hoping for an abortion, hoping that the whole mess could just be swept under the rug. But no—there was to be a baby in March. Now that it was an undeniable fact, now that Beth had seen the ultrasound photo, her feelings changed. That baby was her grandchild. The mere word made her gasp with disbelief—she was far too young!—but it was true. The baby belonged to all of them. It whispered in Beth’s ear, begging her to stay.

She packed the kitchen and the dining room, leaving only breakfast things. They got sandwiches from Something Natural for lunch and ate strange combinations of leftovers for dinner. The kids were good about helping—they gave Beth their clothes for one final wash and she did all of the beach towels except for two, since Winnie and Marcus wanted to swim right up until the final morning. Beth packed up her room and started cleaning. She dusted every surface in the house with a rag, then bleach and water. She vacuumed all the floors and had Winnie beat the rugs. As long as there were tasks still ahead of her, she had time left. And so she took out all of the screens and sprayed them down with the hose; she rinsed all of the deck furniture. She went into town and bought an approximate match of the kitchen chair she had broken. She delivered a big bag of perishables to Mrs. Colchester, and because the woman wasn’t home, Beth left the bag on the front porch with a note that said, “Another summer ending!”

Then, with less than a day left—they were leaving on the 9:30 boat the next morning—Beth decided to broach the topic with the twins that gnawed at her insides. She couldn’t leave the island without doing so.

She found Garrett in his room neatly folding shirts and shorts and putting them in his suitcase, but Winnie had to be called up from the beach. Beth promised Marcus, “I’ll only borrow her for a few minutes.” Once she had the twins in the same place, the upstairs hallway, as it happened, she took a deep breath.

“I need you to show me the place where you put Daddy’s ashes,” she said.

They nodded, as though this request were long overdue. Gar-rett abandoned his packing and Winnie yelled from the edge of the deck to Marcus. “I have this thing to do. I’ll be back in a little while.”

The three of them walked silently out to the Rover, where Beth climbed into the backseat. It was late afternoon, sunny, a gorgeous day in early September. Garrett sailed up the Polpis Road, a section of Nantucket Beth had always found beautiful, with handsome homes along the road, and winding dirt roads that led to either the harbor or the moors. She studied the backs of the twins’ heads. There was something odd about sitting in the backseat while they drove. It was the role reversal—years and years had passed with Arch and Beth up front and the kids in the back. Beth supposed she should be sad, but what she felt was freedom. She didn’t have to be responsible; she could let them lead the way.

With them facing forward, it was also easier for her to bring up the crazy idea that had been festering in her head the past few days.

“What if we stayed?” she said.

Garrett reached for the volume knob of the radio and turned it down. “Did you say something, Mom?”

Beth cleared her throat. “I did. I asked you, What if we stayed?”

Winnie turned her head, though not far enough to meet Beth’s eyes. “Stayed where?”

“Stayed on Nantucket. This year. What would you think?”

“No way,” Garrett said.

“You could go to Nantucket High School,” Beth said. “We could get heat for the house. A furnace! And we’ll put in a phone. When the baby is born, I could take care of him or her. Piper wouldn’t have to put the baby up for adoption. I mean, you guys will be going to college next year, anyway, and I could, you know, live on Nantucket and raise the baby.” Her voice gained strength and conviction, like the plan was a dream she was remembering more vividly as she kept talking. Raise the baby herself, of course! With occasional help from David. Piper and Garrett could visit all the time, whenever they wanted, but their baby would be like a much younger sibling instead of their child. It would be a real Nantucket baby, who would grow up in Horizon, the fifth generation of Beth’s family to sleep under its roof. The idea of the baby, the bassinet, the stroller Beth would push while jogging, the outfits she still had from when Winnie and Garrett were young, the wooden toys, the silver spoon that would deliver pureed pears and sweet potatoes into the tiny pink mouth—it all sounded so superior to returning to New York that Beth was crushed when Winnie snapped her fingers and said, “Mom! Earth to Mom! Return to reality!”

“The baby is going to be put up for adoption,” Garrett said.

“And we’re going back to New York,” Winnie said. “That’s where we live.”

“But your father—”

“Dad would want us to go back to New York,” Garrett said. “And finish at Danforth.”

“Is
here,
” Beth said. “Your father is here.”

As if on cue, Garrett hit the turn signal and directed the car down the road to Quidnet. Beth sealed her mouth. She was losing her mind. Stay on Nantucket?Keep the baby?She was talking nonsense. She was trying to make these minutes in the car be about something other than what they were really about. They were really about going to see the place where Arch’s ashes were scattered. Thinking about the ashes meant thinking about the decision to cremate, those wretched days in the apartment with all the people drinking coffee and preparing Beth sandwiches that she couldn’t possibly eat. It meant thinking about the day the doorman called up to say she’d received a package and opening the box that contained the urn, sent to her via UPS like it was something she’d ordered from a catalog.

Garrett drove through a thicket of trees and then Beth saw a meadow and on the far side of the meadow, the harbor. The water shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Garrett pulled over. He opened the door and helped Beth out like she was an invalid.

“This is it,” Garrett said.

She couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful spot. It was flat and calm and quiet. It was everything a final resting place should be.

“All these years on Nantucket,” she said. “And I’ve never been here.”

“Dad and I discovered it,” Garrett said proudly.

Winnie and Garrett each took one of Beth’s hands and the three of them stepped out into the meadow. Beth bowed her head.
Thank you,
she said—to God or to Arch, she wasn’t sure—
thank you for this, the most awful summer of our lives. As crazy and gut-wrenching as it was, we made it. We are stronger. We are closer. We are still standing here, together, a family.

To her children, she said, “When I die, will you bring my remains here?Will you put me here with Daddy?”

Winnie rested her head on Beth’s shoulder. “We don’t want you to die.”