Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

She sat on the plush bench in the middle of the room. “ Prego, I think.”

“Like the spaghetti sauce?”

They started giggling and the salesman disappeared and returned with a box. Arch tried the shoes on. He looked adorably clownish-his dark suit and the blue shoes.

“The thing is,” Arch said, “some people actually buy these. Europeans.”

Beth urged him to be quiet.

“You know,” Arch said to the salesman, “these are a little flamboyant for me. May I see the black tasseled loafers in a ten and a half?”

Arch bought two pairs of shoes and three pairs of dress socks. This improved the salesman’s humor. When they left the store, he bid them farewell with an authentic sounding “Ciao!”

Beth and Arch returned to the apartment and showered together, something they hadn’t done in years. They made love on the bathroom floor, then wrapped themselves in towels and fell into bed.

It was dark when Beth woke up. Arch lay next to her, snoring. She was confused for a minute, thinking it was the middle of the night, but then she remembered the lunch. It was still afternoon. Five minutes to five. Winnie had swimming until six, and what was today? Monday. Garrett had floor hockey on Monday. He’d also be home around six. Beth snuggled up to Arch. She loved to watch him sleep. He slept so devotedly, like he was giving sleep everything he had.

She switched on the TV and caught the last half hour of Love Story on TNT. Oliver buys plane tickets to Paris, but no, it’s too late. Jennifer has leukemia. She dies, Oliver sits alone in the snowy park. Beth was sniffling when Arch finally opened his eyes.

“Jennifer’s dead,” she said. She turned off the TV and sank back into the pillows. “I love that movie but I always hope that it will end differently. Of course it never does. We should get up. The kids’ll be home soon. They’ll need to eat.”

“Jade Palace?” Arch said. “Pu-pu platter for four?”

“After that lunch, I thought I’d skip dinner,” Beth said. “But I could go for a pu-pu platter.”

Now, at Horizon, Beth poured herself the last of the wine. She remembered that dinner, the four of them at Jade Palace eating potstickers and spare ribs and crab rangoons. She remembered Arch and her sitting in the backseat of the cab with Winnie on the way home-Arch in the middle with his arms around both of them, saying, “I love my girls.” She remembered getting home and listening to the phone messages-one message from Arch’s secretary, Polly, with his travel arrangements for the next day, and one message from Caroline Margolis inviting them to a dinner party on Saturday.

“Tell her we’ll come if she makes her key lime pie,” Arch said.

The day ended with Beth calling Caroline to accept, the kids going to their rooms to do homework, and Arch disappearing into his office to prepare for his trip to Albany. Later, Beth and Arch climbed into bed and read for a while.

“This was the perfect day,” Beth said. “Thank you.”

Arch kissed her. “If I could, Beth, I’d spend every day with you just like I did today.”

He was gone in the morning before she woke up, but when she rolled over she found one of the flame-colored roses on his pillow.

The painful part about remembering all the details from her last day with Arch was that these same details were cruelly present two days later-she didn’t find out Arch’s plane had crashed until very early on the morning of March 16th. Beth was wakened by the phone at quarter to six in the morning, and when she noticed Arch wasn’t in bed, she yelled to him to answer it. She didn’t realize he wasn’t home. He’d called the night before to say his flight was delayed because of weather and he’d be home late, and Beth assumed he came to bed then got up early to work in his study. When the phone didn’t get answered and the machine picked up, Beth groaned and reached for the phone through the fog of her sleep. That groan, that action of reaching, was the last innocent moment before learning the awful truth. At times, she wished she could freeze time and stay there, half asleep, in the not-knowing.

It was Trent Trammelman on the phone, the managing partner of Arch’s firm. The authorities had called him first because it was the law firm’s plane.

Beth screamed like she was falling into a hole she knew she would never escape from. And then, the absolute worst thing she’d ever had to do in her life: tell Winnie and Garrett, who were in their rooms getting ready for school, that their father was dead. Winnie was in her bra and panties, shrieking with embarrassment when Beth opened her bedroom door. Beth didn’t remember speaking any words, but she must have conveyed the news in some way because Winnie crumpled to the ground like she’d been hit by a bullet, and Beth sank to her knees and covered Winnie’s body with her own, the two of them moaning. Garrett found them there and he, too, started wailing, which really pushed Beth over the edge: her strong teenage son crying like a baby.

Before she knew it, the apartment was filled with people. People from the law firm, friends, Arch’s mother, kids from Danforth. In Beth’s mind, this happened instantly. The apartment was filled with people and the smell of coffee and cell phones ringing and talk of the black box, and there was Beth still in her nightgown, like one of those bad dreams where she was throwing a party but had forgotten to get dressed. The buzzer from downstairs rang again and again-the florist with sickly-sweet arrangements, her neighbor with a ham, Caroline Margolis with a key lime pie. Was she imagining this? It was all happening so fast, so soon, these condolences, that Beth grew confused. She was waiting for Arch to walk through the door to the apartment and send everyone else home. By evening, hysteria set in. Arch was never coming home. She would never see him again.

One of the people who came that first day was Dr. Schau, who was Trent’s wife’s therapist. She showed up after office hours and gave Beth a shot and finally everything slowed down. Beth was able to see the horrible things in the apartment that no one else could see: the eleven orange roses, the boxes with two brand new pairs of men’s shoes, the leftover moo shu pork in the refrigerator.

The vision, when she closed her eyes, of Oliver sitting alone in the snowy park.

By midnight, Beth had finished the wine but she was still wide awake. She would be forced to take a Valium, but first she stood up and went to the screen door. It frightened her to remember how raw her grief had been. Now, after four months, she had coping mechanisms in place. The thing that helped the most was that she was here on Nantucket. Not only was Nantucket quieter than New York, it was darker. All she could see were the stars and a couple of tiny lights from her neighbors’ houses in the distance. Then, a pair of headlights approached. Kids headed to the beach. Drunk, probably. Beth shuddered: when she woke up, she would have to take Garrett to get his license. As the car drew closer to Beth’s house, it slowed down. Beth switched on the porch light. David’s truck. She blinked twice, certain she was hallucinating. Too much wine. But no-it was David, driving by her house in the middle of the night. Beth’s first instinct was indignation, until she realized it was no worse than her walking through his house that afternoon. She opened the door as quietly as she could and tiptoed down the shell driveway in her bare feet. She climbed into the truck.

David was in a T-shirt and shorts. His hair was mussed. Without a word, he drove toward the water. When all that was in front of them was ocean and night sky, he stopped. He undid his seatbelt and slumped against his door. “I couldn’t sleep.”