Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

“I love you,” he said, and his father’s words popped into his mind: Don’t mistake sex for love. But Garrett wasn’t mistaken here. He did love Piper. Just the thought of not seeing her for ten days made him want to do something drastic.

She didn’t respond to his declaration. He’d always been good at reading other people’s thoughts, but here he was drawing a blank.

“You love me, too, don’t you?” he asked.

She touched her nose. “Yes.”

Garrett let out a long stream of highly relieved air. Then, he felt buoyant. They were in love!

“Five minutes is up!” David yelled from the house, though clearly it had only been three or four minutes. “Inside, Piper. Pronto!”

Piper kissed Garrett on the mouth, but chastely. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she said.

“Wait,” he said. “Give me your mom’s phone number. I’ll call you from town. I’ll call every day.”

She took a few steps backward, shaking her head. “I don’t think you should,” she said. “I’ll see you when I get back.” She waved, but in a way that looked like shooing.

Garrett watched her retreat to the house. His lungs ached; he felt like a scuba diver descending deeper and deeper where the pressure of the water was unbearable and there wasn’t enough oxygen to survive. Ten days! He waited until Piper reached the door, hoping she would turn and wave, but she didn’t. She stepped into the house-or was pulled in, Garrett couldn’t tell- and the door closed very tightly behind her, leaving him with nothing to do but climb on his bike and pedal morosely away.

Under certain circumstances, ten days could seem like a very long time. For example, Garrett imagined that ten days in prison would seem like a long time. Ten days of hard manual labor would seem like a long time. The first ten days after Garrett’s father died had seemed like an eternity. But even that didn’t drag on quite as long as ten days without Piper. Especially when Gar-rett’s favorite pastime became reviewing those minutes with her in the driveway in his mind.

On the bright side, Piper had told him she loved him. On the dark side was her response of not really, when asked if she wanted to be separated for ten days, and the fact that she didn’t want him to call her, and the more awful fact that when she left she didn’t kiss him with any kind of passion. The conclusion Garrett drew-the only conclusion he could live with for ten days-was that David had said or done something to scare Piper right out of her normal personality. She was sheepish, she was timid. Without the diamond in her nose she hadn’t even looked like herself; she was Wonder Woman without her magic bracelets. The only part of the conversation Garrett could really take to heart was the part when Piper said she loved him-because that one word, “yes,” had sounded completely sincere.

Garrett called up a favorite saying of his father’s: It’s fruitless to speculate. Garrett would simply have to wait until the fifteenth. There would still be plenty of summer left. In the meantime, he tried to make it through the hours. The mornings dragged, even when he managed to sleep until nine, which wasn’t often now that he was falling asleep shortly after nine at night. The sun rose at five and a stripe of light fell across his face around six-thirty, and that usually woke him. He figured he might actually knock a couple of books off his summer reading list. He finished Franny and Zooey, which he liked, even if he didn’t fully understand it, but then he got bogged down in A River Runs Through It. Talk about a boring book! Ten days would seem like a very long time if you were standing knee-deep in cold water trying to catch a fish without any bait.

The worst punishment for Garrett was having to spend time with Winnie and Marcus. They were so happy, so obviously a couple now, that it turned Garrett’s stomach. Winnie practiced driving the Rover with Beth in the passenger seat and Marcus in the back; he went along for moral support, Winnie said. Garrett thought meanly that Marcus would probably never get his driver’s license; he would never own a car, and could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d taken a cab. Still, Marcus joined the driving lessons, leaving Garrett alone in the house to contemplate the injustices in his life.

On the fourth day without Piper, Beth asked where she was. Garrett was shocked by the question. Although he hadn’t told anyone about Piper being banished to Cape Cod, he counted on Beth, at least, to intuit it. Why else would he be moping around the house?

“She went to see Rosie,” Garrett said. “She’ll be back next week.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “She went to see Rosie,” she repeated. “How about that.”

On the seventh day, it rained. Winnie and Marcus started a Monopoly marathon at the kitchen table. The wind was out of the southwest and the house shook. Garrett helped Beth close all of the shutters and the storm windows, while Marcus and Winnie rolled the dice. Garrett watched them, stupidly wishing that he could play, but resenting them too much to ask. Beth, probably taking pity on him, asked him to build a fire while she went to work making a vat of clam chowder. Garrett got the fire roaring, then helped his mother by peeling potatoes and dicing onions. Once the soup was simmering, he crashed in the recliner in front of the fire and vowed not to get up until he’d finished A River Runs Through It.

He was eighteen pages from the end when the electricity went out. He heard a cry from the kitchen-“Oh, no! Our game!”-and he knew Beth would be rummaging through the utility drawer for candles and matches. Garrett put down his book and leaned back in the recliner.

You love me, too, don’t you?

Yes.

A few minutes later, Beth brought him a candle. “How’re you doing?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Garrett was surprisingly grateful when she sat down next to him.

“I don’t like being angry at one another,” she said. “This thing with you and Piper…”

“I love her,” he said. It felt brilliant to admit it. “I’m in love with her.”

His mother searched his face. “Okay.”

“You think we’re getting too serious too fast,” he said. “I know you think it. But you’re not me and you’re not Piper.”

“That’s true,” she said. “Do twenty-five years of experience count for anything?”

“You don’t remember what it feels like to be young,” he said. “You don’t know what I feel like. She’s only gone for ten days, right? But it feels like forever. ”

“I do remember what it feels like,” Beth said. “I was in love at your age.”

Garrett felt a split second of connection with his mother, until he realized what she was referring to. “With David?” he sneered.

“Yes, with David. I was in love with him. We were having sex.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Garrett said.

Beth faced the fire. I know what I’m talking about! she wanted to shout. Please believe me! Instead, she said, “You’re so young, Garrett. Piper is just one in a long line of girls.”

Garrett held his book up so that it blocked Beth’s face. “See, you don’t know what I feel like. Because if you knew, you wouldn’t say that.”

“Summer does something to the brain,” Beth said. “It’s intoxicating. Everything shimmers. And when you fall in love in the summer, it’s the best love you can possibly imagine. Especially here. Because there are sunsets and walks on the beach and fireworks. But summer loves aren’t meant to last. They burn very hot and bright, and then they go out. Eventually, Garrett, they always go out.”