Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Marcus joined her at the table with his breakfast: two peanut butter and beach plum jam sandwiches on raisin bread, a hard-boiled egg, a nectarine, and a giant glass of Gatorade.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re up early. Did you eat ?”

Winnie didn’t answer except to move her hand indicating, Hi, so what, of course .

Marcus took a huge bite out of one of his sandwiches.

“I’m going into town this morning,” Winnie said.

Marcus swallowed and took a long pull of his Gatorade. “Really? Why?”

One of the things that made today so painful was that Winnie and Garrett had agreed to keep this a secret, at least until their plan was executed. This meant no telling Marcus, even though Marcus would understand. He was angry at his own mother; he practically hated her.

“I have to buy some books for school,” she said.

Marcus nodded, unimpressed. The best kind of lie, Winnie realized, was a boring one.

The worst kind of lie was the kind that Winnie uncovered at the town clerk’s office less than an hour later. Winnie was nervous as she entered the Town Building-it was air-conditioned and hushed with polished concrete floors. It had long corridors like a high school. The building felt different from the rest of Nan-tucket-this was an office building, where people worked . Winnie stood for a minute outside of the town clerk’s office. A brunette woman wearing a melon-colored dress and stockings and heels sat typing at a desk. When she looked up, Winnie walked away, the soles of her running shoes squeaking against the polished floor. Now she felt like an idiot, but she didn’t know what to say. What if the woman asked her for ID? She didn’t even have a driver’s license! She should have insisted Garrett come with her; he was better at dealing with adults than she was, but Garrett hadn’t wanted to come. He was certain of their mother’s guilt; he didn’t need proof.

Winnie decided to walk around for a few minutes. She climbed the stairs and the first office she came to was the DMV. How ironic it would be if she took her driving test now and returned home with her license. Even that would be enough to hurt her mother’s feelings. Beth was excited about waiting in the awful DMV room while Winnie took her test. She wanted to be the first passenger that Winnie drove legally on her own. Winnie hesitated; maybe she should take the test. That would be enough punishment for Beth, and then she and Garrett could forget about their horrible plan for tonight. Winnie closed her eyes and tried to picture herself parallel parking, but when she did, she saw herself hitting the granite curb and popping a tire. Winnie moved on: past the court rooms, past the passport office, all the way to the stairs at the opposite end of the building. Then, without options other than leaving or finding out the truth, she marched back to the town clerk’s office. The woman in the melon-colored dress looked up and smiled in such a friendly way that Winnie decided it was okay to speak.

“I want to check and see if my mother was married in 1979,” Winnie said. “Is that something you can help me with?”

Melon stood up and walked over to a large gray filing cabinet. “Name?”

Deep breath. “Winnie Newton.”

“We’re looking in 1979,” Melon said. “What month?”

“Summer?” Winnie said. “July, August?”

“And you said the last name is Newton?”

“That’s my last name,” Winnie said.

Melon smiled at her as though Winnie were telling a joke and she was waiting for the punch line. “Is that the last name I’m looking for?”

“No,” Winnie said. Oh, God, Garrett! “I’m sorry. My mother’s last name at that time was Eyler. Elizabeth Eyler. E-Y-L-E-R.”

Melon nodded definitively as if this made much more sense. She started flipping through the cards in the filing cabinet. “Nope, nope, nope,” she whispered. “Nope, nope, nope.”

Winnie didn’t know what to do with her hands. Putting them in the back pockets of her jean shorts seemed too casual, too teenagerly. She decided it would be more reverent to clasp them in front of her.

“Nope, nope, nope.”

A very small part of Winnie held out hope that this was all a hoax, a mistake, even a lie concocted by the Ronan family. How Winnie would relish telling Garrett he was wrong. If there were no record of the marriage here, then she would never believe it was true.

“Here it is!” Melon said brightly. “Eyler and Ronan. Oh.” Her forehead crinkled. “David Ronan? Your mother was married to David Ronan?” She put a hand up. “Don’t answer that. It is none of my business.” She handed the card to Winnie. “It’s fifty cents for a Xerox copy, and a certified copy costs five dollars and takes three business days.”

Winnie pulled a dollar out of her pocket. Thank God she thought to bring money! “Just one copy, please.”

“My pleasure.” Melon took the dollar bill from Winnie, and removed fifty cents from her desk drawer. Five seconds at the copier and a bright flash of light later, Melon handed Winnie the change and the proof of her mother’s betrayal. Melon smiled again, in an intimate way, and Winnie felt her face turn red. Melon obviously knew David Ronan, and now the news of his secret first marriage would leak out. But, really, what did Winnie care?

When she gazed down at the marriage certificate, the first thing she noticed was the word “Divorced,” stamped in large black letters across the top. Winnie scanned the paper, line by line. Bride’s name: Elizabeth Celia Eyler ; Bride’s D.O.B.: May 2, 1958 ; Groom’s name: David Arthur Ronan ; Groom’s D.O.B: September 18, 1957 ; Date of marriage: August 16, 1979 ; Officiant: Judge Leon Macy ; Witnesses: Kenneth Edwards, James Seamus, Kelly Wilcox. The marriage certificate was all signed, sealed, and official-looking. It was real. Winnie felt like she might vomit up her Cheerios right into Melon’s typewriter. She pressed the paper to her chest, whispered, “Thank you,” and ran from the building.

She sat outside on a park bench with her head between her knees. Okay, this was really bad. This was-not the worst-but the second-to-worst. Her mother and David all signed, sealed, and official on a card in the Town Building where anyone could look, where anybody could get a copy for only fifty cents! Well, she and Garrett had been betrayed, that was all there was to it. Winnie tried to imagine what her father would do if he were still alive and he’d found out this sickening news. She tried to imagine him getting angry, except he didn’t get angry at Beth. He would probably say he was disappointed-not because Beth had been married before, but because she chose to conceal it. Deeper down, he might be sad and maybe even a little jealous. Arch, though, had a way of understanding and then forgiving other people’s flaws-Constance Tyler’s, for example. Arch might even say it wasn’t any of their business-but that thought evaporated immediately. Beth was his wife, their mother! This was their business!

Winnie climbed on her bike. She would go home and lay low until nightfall, when she and Garrett would inflict their revenge. What they planned to do would break their mother’s heart, but Winnie no longer cared. She had a copy of the marriage certificate in her pocket, made official by a younger version of her mother’s signature. Now it was Beth’s turn to learn what it felt like to be shut out, to be excluded from life’s most important knowledge.

Beth was out for a run when Winnie got home. Winnie wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. “Don’t feel well! Please do not disturb!!!-W.” But of course Beth knocked on her door as soon as she got home. Winnie had anticipated this very situation and moved her small dresser in front of the door as a blockade.