Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Nick and Zachary Celtic invited Marcus to lunch. Although it was two-thirty and Marcus had already eaten lunch in the cafeteria at noon, he agreed to go along. They went to a diner down the street from the school, and after Nick made it clear that Zachary was picking up the check, Marcus went crazy ordering a roast beef club, fries with gravy, chocolate milkshake, lemon chiffon pie. Zachary asked Marcus all kinds of questions about how he liked school ( fine ), why he liked English class ( liked to read ), who his favorite writers were ( Salinger, Faulkner, John Edgar Wideman ). It was as Marcus was slipping into a food coma induced by this second lunch that Zachary announced that he was the true crime editor at Dome Books and that he wanted to offer Marcus thirty thousand dollars to write a first-person account of life with his mother, before and after the murders.

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?