Summer People (6 page)

Marcus dropped his fork. He worried he might be sick—not because he was disgusted at this man for suggesting such a thing or disgusted at himself for falling for it—but because he’d eaten too much and the whole idea of a
first-person account
and
thirty thousand dollars
overwhelmed him.

“There are a lot of people who will pay to read your story,” Zachary said. “I’m thinking of a real insider’s view. Your mother as, like, an educated woman, a teacher and everything, and Princeton in her background, and then one day she just … you know … snaps.” Zachary snapped his fingers with such force that both Marcus and Nick flinched. “Goes totally haywire on members of her own family. I’m thinking … you know … the blood-splattered sheet and how that made you feel. The dead bodies in your own apartment. The little girl in the shoes. God, everybody’s going to want to read this. And there was sex involved, too, right? I mean, in your mother’s testimony …”

Marcus belched, loudly, then worried once again that he might be sick. Zachary moved his hand like he was clearing smoke and said, “The mere
mention
of death row is going to have the citizens of this great city flocking to Barnes & Noble to buy your book. What it felt like to have your own mother, a pretty woman, too, facing the strap-down on the gurney, the long needle …”

It was Nick who finally stopped him. “You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been itching to do.”

Marcus wondered if Ms. Marchese told Nick about Marcus’s isolation, his status as the class pariah. How he switched seats from the front row, where he could stretch out his legs, to the back row, where nobody could see him, throw shit at him, or mouth dirty words at the back of his head.

Marcus asked for time to think about it. Zachary held up his palms in agreement, saying, “Take as much time as you want. My offer stands.” He slid a business card across the table towards Marcus and an American Express Platinum card toward the check.

There was no one to ask for advice. Marcus couldn’t ask his father because his father would say no, absolutely no. And Arch was dead, he’d been dead for five weeks by that point, and all of the protection and hope that Arch provided had vanished. As awful as Zachary Celtic was, Marcus sensed this book deal was a way out. It was thirty thousand dollars which, Zachary promised, he wouldn’t have to pay back even if the book tanked. Thirty thousand dollars would buy a lot more college than Marcus could afford without writing a book. He’d seen the bank statement of the account his mother stashed her tutoring money in, Marcus’s “college” fund. The balance was $1,204.82.

Finally, Nick’s comment stuck with him.
You get to tell the story in your own words, kid.
That appealed to Marcus, even though he didn’t know
how
he felt. It was possible that he still loved his mother, but that love was buried under a huge, crushing anger. Marcus was furious. Constance had murdered their way of life that, although not luxurious, had at least been tolerable. If he was coerced into write terrible things about her, she probably deserved it.

The following morning, Marcus called Zachary Celtic from a pay phone outside the school cafeteria and agreed to write the book. That day after English class, Zachary appeared with Nick, and Zachary handed Marcus an envelope containing the five hundred dollars.

“An advance on the advance,” Zachary said. “You get me the first fifty pages and a complete synopsis by the end of the summer. I show it to my people. If they like it, the big money rolls your way.”

Marcus accepted the envelope. Ms. Marchese looked away, just like other teachers did when they saw a drug deal.

Now, Marcus lay on the beach, filled with turkey sandwich, buzzed on pilfered rum, and toasty in the sun—a better set of circumstances than he ever could have imagined for himself— except he should be up in his room
writing.
And now there was this problem of Winnie being mad at him. He should go up to the house and apologize before Garrett and Winnie formed a coalition and kicked Marcus off the island, like on that dumb-ass TV show. Or, worse, Winnie might tell Beth that Marcus was drinking. Frame him, then turn him in. That was the kind of thing that happened to black people all over America, getting blamed and busted for things that weren’t their fault. Marcus could write a whole book on that topic alone. He could write a book about a lot of things, once he found his groove. He decided to nap, take a swim, and think about everything else in a little while.

Beth left the house for a run at noon. This was her new way of torturing her body, by running ten miles in the heat of the day. She put on a white hat, tucked a bottle of Evian into her fanny pack, and kicked off down the dusty road. Tonight was her dinner party and she’d spent the morning cleaning every nook and cranny of the house with a giant sponge from the car wash and a bucket of bleach and water. Garrett had looked at her stonily and she read his mind—she was going to a lot of trouble for her old boyfriend.

“The house needed to be cleaned anyway,” she said, sounding more defensive than she intended. “It’s been sitting here all winter collecting dust and mouse droppings.”

Garrett shook his head and retreated to the deck. When had he gotten so
judgmental
? Well, she knew when. And he wasn’t judgmental so much as protective. He was the man of the house, now, and thus it was his job to protect his women. Fine. She would let it go.

Since Arch died, running had become Beth’s only pleasure. The motion placated her anxieties, the symbolism of it quenched her secret desire to run away. At home in New York, she ran four, five, six times around the Reservoir, or tackled the long, hilly route around Central Park. Both were cathartic, but nothing in the world was like running on Nantucket in the summertime. Beth ran past Miacomet Pond, which today was the deepest blue, bordered by tall dune grass that sheltered a clump of wild iris and red-winged blackbirds. It was beautiful here, and even in the heat, the air was fresh and clean. For the hour or two that she was gone, she didn’t have to be a mother. She didn’t have to be the problem-solver or the ultimate authority. Beth had discussed this sense of relief with Dr. Schau. It was wrong and unnatural, wasn’t it, for a mother to want to escape her kids? And especially Beth. Beth loved her children to distraction. When they were born, she felt she was the luckiest person on the planet—she’d hit the birthing jackpot—a boy and a girl. Two perfect healthy babies, one of each. The entire first year of the kids’ lives she and Arch would take a second every so often and marvel. How had they gotten so lucky? Why had they of all people been so blessed?

Beth adored the trappings of motherhood: the pacifiers, the wooden blocks, the Cheerios underfoot, the darling outfits (always matching boy/girl outfits until the twins went off to kindergarten.) She loved
Sesame Street
and playgrounds and
Pat the Bunny
and even nursing the kids when they had earaches and the chicken pox. Other mothers complained, secretly, that kids took up so much time, that they left the house a mess—fingerprints on the TV screen, and yes, Cheerios underfoot—that they sucked the intelligence out of everyday life. These complaints baffled Beth. She didn’t have a job outside of the home, maybe that was it, but she never expected Winnie and Garrett to appreciate Chagall or Bizet at age three. She didn’t care that they took all her time—what, she wondered, could she possibly be doing that would be more worthwhile?

As the kids grew, life got more interesting. There were friends and multiplication tables and soccer. Trips to the dentist, to the Bronx Zoo, to Wollman Rink for ice skating every Christmas Eve. Then high school—advance placement classes, soccer team (Garrett), swim team (Winnie), phone calls, proms, learner’s permits.

Beth loved it all. Yes, she did.

But when Arch died, one of the many, many things that changed was the way she felt about her children. It wasn’t that she loved them less—if anything, she loved them more. Especially since they were dangerously close to leaving home; a year from now, they’d be headed for college. What Beth felt was just an occasional sense of relief—when they walked out the door in the morning to go to school, for example. Dr. Schau assured her it was perfectly normal: Beth was alone now, her job was doubly hard. She’d lost not only her husband but her coparent, and so all the duties she once shared with Arch now fell to her alone. It was perfectly normal to feel relief at escaping the pressure, if only for a little while.

Beth ran all the way to Madaket, the hamlet at the western tip of the island. She stopped at the drawbridge that looked out over Madaket Harbor and drank her bottle of water, slowly, cautiously, to avoid getting cramps. There were sailboats and redand-white buoys bouncing gently in the breeze. Beth was dripping with sweat. She worried that she’d come too far and wouldn’t make it home.

But the way home was into the wind and that cooled Beth off somewhat, and the water helped, and she allowed herself to think about the dinner that night. David Ronan was going to set foot in her house for the first time since August 31, 1979, when Beth’s father threw him out. That morning was such ancient history, such a drop in the ocean by now, and yet it caused Beth’s chest to contract with guilt. The best thing was to have this dinner and put the past behind them.

Beth made it all the way back to where the road turned to dirt before she had to stop and walk. She judged it to be almost two o’clock and she was parched. The Evian bottle had a quarter inch of water left, enough to get the dusty film out of her mouth. She’d run eleven or twelve miles. She felt light, clean, and completely spent.

A car rumbled up behind her, a horn beeped. She stepped into the tall grass to let the car pass, but when she turned around, she saw it wasn’t a car and it wasn’t passing. It was David Ronan in his Island Painting van idling there in the road, window down.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” Beth wiped her forehead. Well, here was the worst possible luck. She was slick with sweat and coated with dirt and certainly she stank to high heaven. Not to mention her hair. “Are you … working out here? You have a job out here?” Her teeth were gritty.

“No, actually, I was headed to your house. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, really? Why?” Though Beth feared she knew: Rosie didn’t want to come to dinner. And who could blame her? Especially with Arch gone. It would be a sadly uneven equation; Beth had considered this numerous times since leaving the Stop & Shop on Tuesday.

“I didn’t think it was fair to show up tonight without telling you something first,” David said. “There’s something I have to explain.”

Beth looked nervously in both directions. No one was coming. She remembered from their conversation at the store that there was something David wanted to explain, but she hadn’t even let herself venture a guess. And now here was David tracking her down because clearly whatever it was couldn’t wait.

David motioned for her to come closer, which was not something she was particularly anxious to do. But she obeyed and stood only inches from his open window. She glanced into his van: it was messy with clipboards and newspapers and a couple of wadded-up bags from Henry’s. He was listening to NPR. Then Beth caught sight of something on the dashboard—a yellow stick-’em on which a single word was written “Beth.” Her name was stuck to his dashboard right where he could see it. Her name.

“Rosie’s not coming to dinner,” David said.

As Beth suspected. A host of indignations rose in her chest: Rosie was being childish, jealous, unreasonable. But she said, simply, “Oh?”

David turned down the radio and squinted out the windshield. His sunglasses hung around his neck on a Croakie. He wore a blue chambray shirt and navy blue shorts, the same black flip-flops. Beth was amazed at how clean he looked even though he was in the painting business. He was the owner, of course; Beth was pretty sure he didn’t go near any actual paint.

“Rosie left,” he said.

“What?”

“Rosie left. She left me and the girls.”

Beth pushed the lock button of David’s door down, then pulled it back up again. She heard an approaching engine and saw a car coming toward them.

“Oh, shit,” she said.

The other car slowed to a stop, waiting for Beth to move, but she could do nothing more than grind the soles of her Nikes into the dirt and will the road to swallow her up. She should never have asked David for dinner. She should have let him go on his merry way and forgotten all about him. She should have kept him safely in her past where he belonged—yet now, here he was, most definitely occupying her present. Right now—and tonight, without a wife.

“Shit,” Beth said again. The driver of the other car hit his horn then shrugged at Beth as if to say,
What, exactly, would you like me to do?

“Will you get in?” David said. “Please? So we can talk?”

“Get into your van?” She tried to swallow but the inside of her mouth was like crumbling plaster. “Don’t you have work?”

“Work can wait. Hop in.”

Beth saw she had no choice. She ran around and climbed in the passenger side. She discovered a bottle of water hidden underneath
The Inquirer & Mirror.
This was a very small positive.