Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

“You’re not making me feel any better,” Garrett said. “You’re making me feel worse.”

“If I never split with David, honey, I wouldn’t have married your father.”

He felt a different kind of sadness then, a sadness because the ease with which he used to talk to his mother was gone. Now, every conversation was unpleasant for him. “Please don’t say anything else,” he said.

Garrett waited for Beth to leave the room, but she remained next to him in the candlelight, lost in thought. After a minute of listening to the howling wind and the rat-tat-tat of rain against the shutters, Garrett returned to his book. He wasn’t really reading, he was skimming, because damn it, he wanted to finish. And more important, he wanted Beth to understand that his relationship with Piper was his ; it wasn’t some reincarnation of her and David. She couldn’t predict the ending based on something that happened a generation ago.

Garrett finished the book and set it victoriously on the side table. Beth was asleep, thank God, and since there was nothing else to do, Garrett blew out the candle, eased back in the recliner and closed his eyes. You love me, too, don’t you? Yes.

That night, a gust of wind pushed open Garrett’s bedroom door. Garrett was tired, and he contemplated leaving the door open, but he felt oddly exposed, so he got up. Then he saw something move in the hallway. Somebody: Marcus slipping into Winnie’s room.

Garrett’s first instinct was to sound an alarm. Hey! Stop! You can’t go in there! This isn’t allowed! If Marcus were sneaking around in the middle of the night then he must be having sex with Winnie. So Winnie had lied to Garrett and Beth, lied right to their faces. Garrett was suddenly wide awake. He crept down the hallway toward Winnie’s room.

He stood outside Winnie’s door and suspended his breathing, thinking of his mother banging on the bathroom door while he was inside with Piper. Winnie’s door didn’t close properly, and when Garrett pressed his forehead against the door frame and squinted, he could see in. He was a despicable person after all, a Peeping Tom, a pervert. If you want details of someone’s sex life, get your own. He was a hypocrite! But he was propelled forward by his desire for justice. It was bad enough that Marcus was here for the summer, but having sex with Winnie! Garrett would turn them in; Beth would be forced to send Marcus home, and she would have to admit she never should have invited the kid here in the first place.

When Garrett peered in, what he saw was this: Marcus and Winnie lying in bed, fully clothed. Winnie was wearing her sweatshirt and Marcus had on a T-shirt and shorts. Marcus was holding Winnie from behind, spooning her, his chin resting on top of her head. They appeared to be sleeping. Garrett stood there for several minutes, waiting for more to happen, but nothing did. They slept. Like an old, married couple. Garrett stepped into the room and yanked Marcus out of bed. Marcus hit the floor, ass first. Winnie sat up, confused. She nearly screamed because she saw Garrett in her room. Garrett stood over Marcus with his fists in the air. He’d never fought anybody in his life, but he was going to fight Marcus now.

“Get up,” Garrett growled. “Get up, motherfucker.”

Marcus blinked, rubbing his backside. He squinted at Garrett. Here it was, his biggest fear realized, but Marcus found he wasn’t scared. He was merely annoyed. “What are you doing here, man?”

“Garrett, get out, ” Winnie hissed. She climbed out of bed, pulling the bottom of her sweatshirt down over her rear end.

“No,” Garrett said, in a loud voice that he hoped would wake Beth. “I’m not getting out until Marcus tells me what the hell he’s doing in your bedroom.”

Marcus held his palms up. “We were sleeping, man.”

And though he knew this was the truth, Garrett kicked Marcus in the chest as hard as he would have kicked a soccer ball if he had an open shot on goal. His adrenaline surged. He hated the guy.

Marcus took the blow with a sharp release of air, and fell over his knees, guarding his chest with crossed arms. His breath was gone and he flashed back to a time, years earlier-before he became a master at holding his breath underwater-when a cousin had dunked him in the municipal pool and Marcus thought he was going to die. Where was the air? Marcus’s vision turned red, and when it cleared, he saw Garrett dancing in place, waving his fists. “First your mother causes our father’s death,” Garrett said. “And now you’re trying to screw my sister.”

Garrett’s leg shot out again, and Marcus felt like a dog being kicked by a cruel child. It felt like every mean word and deed of the past nine months was contained in that second blow, which caught Marcus in the windpipe. He fell over backward. Thinking of the hour and a half he’d sat, all alone and completely naked, in the swim team locker room as he waited for Arch; the way his father sprayed the baseboards of their room at the Sunday Sermon Motel with Raid to get rid of the roaches; how not one of their neighbors had spoken to them since the murders, and Vanessa Lydecker wouldn’t even open the door to her apartment when she saw it was Marcus through the peephole.

All Marcus could do was wheeze. It occurred to Garrett that Marcus was really hurt, possibly even dying. Winnie picked up the lamp by her bed. She wanted to bash Garrett over the head, but she was afraid of showering Marcus with broken glass.

“You asshole! You jerk!” she screamed. “How dare you! You kicked him! You hurt him!”

“It’s not fair!” Garrett said. “He doesn’t belong here, Winnie. He doesn’t belong in this house and he doesn’t belong in your bed .”

With slow deliberation, Marcus sat up, then got to his feet. His chest and throat throbbed with a red, glowing pain, and from that pain came a power, monstrous and terrifying, a sudden knowledge that he was capable of really bad things. Marcus’s lungs felt like they were bleeding and he couldn’t swallow, but that hardly mattered. He grabbed the front of Garrett’s T-shirt and threw Garrett onto the bed. He had four inches and thirty pounds on the kid, and Marcus marveled that Garrett had had the guts to come after him in the first place. But it incensed him, too. Garrett thought he was superior because he was white, because he was rich . Marcus punched Garrett right across his pretty face and instantly there was blood everywhere. Marcus backed away. He coughed a loogie up into his hand. The room spun. Winnie shrieked and dropped the lamp onto the floor, where it shattered. She was screaming now, screaming for Beth.

Marcus cut his foot on a shard of glass from the lamp. Now his foot was bleeding and maybe his lungs, and certainly Garrett’s face. There was blood everywhere and Winnie was going hoarse in her upper registers trying to wake Beth. Marcus stumbled forward and looked at Garrett who had his arms up now, shielding his face. Marcus wanted to call him a baby, a sissy, a pussy, but what he said was, “I’m not going after your sister, not like that anyway. We’re friends.”

Garrett tried to spit at Marcus, but he only managed to dribble some bloody saliva.

“Do you want me to hit you again?” Marcus asked. Wondering if fighting back all along would have been this easy, this gratifying to the dark side of his psyche.

“No!” Winnie said. “Look at him, Marcus! God, he’s covered with blood.”

The bedroom door swung open and the light came on. Beth entered the room in her seersucker bathrobe.

“What,” she said, her voice hoarse and murderous, “is going on?” She saw the blood and gasped. “Garrett!” she said. “What happened ?” She spun on her heels and pinned Marcus with her eyes. “What have you done ?”