Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Marcus dropped his black bag on the floor. That was all he’d brought, just one bag. “The room’s fine,” he said. “It’s good.”

“You have your own bathroom,” Winnie said. “Well, toilet and sink. The bathroom with the shower’s down the hall. And there’s a shower outside. Actually, this used to be my room.”

“Did it?” Marcus sat on the edge of the double bed and bounced a little, testing the mattress. The room, just like the family and the population of the island, was white. White walls, white furniture, white curtains, white bed. He tried to imagine writing a memoir of darkness and death in this room; it wasn’t ideal.

Winnie noticed Marcus’s eyes falling closed, like she was boring him to death. He looked way too big for the bed with its white chenille spread. The bed, and the room in general, were too dainty. But all the other bedrooms had two singles, except for the master bedroom which had a queen. Winnie thought she was being generous by giving Marcus her room, but now she wasn’t sure. He didn’t look happy.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

Marcus sat perfectly still, his hands resting on his knees. He wasn’t sure yet what kind of responses these people expected of him. Happy? There was a word that had lost its meaning. All he could think about was setting his feet free from these damn shoes and putting on his pool flip-flops with a pair of tube socks. “I’m just getting used to it here,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s different from where you grew up, huh? Different from New York, I mean. That’s why Mom likes it. It’s quiet. There isn’t even a phone in the house. Which is going to be a problem, I guess, if you want to call your family? Your dad? Or… do they let you call your mom?”

“They let me,” Marcus said. “But I don’t call.” His voice was dead; he had no desire to talk about his mother. He liked the idea, though, of no telephone, no TV, no papers, no connection to the outside world. He liked the idea of three months isolated at the edge of the water. He needed it. Arch had known he needed it, and that was why Arch invited him here.

The room, Winnie realized, was stifling hot. “Maybe we should open the window,” she said. “Maybe you’d like some air, for, you know, breathing purposes.” She checked for the dimples but Marcus just stared at her.

“I can do it,” he said.

“Right,” Winnie said. She could make a pest of herself no longer. Her mother always referred to the things “any self-respecting woman” would or would not do. In this case, any self-respecting woman would leave Marcus alone for half a second so he could get adjusted.

Winnie backed out of the room. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you, I guess? I mean, obviously, we both live here. Want to swim later? I’m on the swim team at Danforth, you know.”

“I know,” Marcus said. “Your dad told me.”

Winnie’s mouth fell open. She was filled with an incredible emotion that she couldn’t name: her father talked about her to Marcus. Bragged about her, maybe. “Did he?”

“He said I’d like you,” Marcus answered, truthfully, because Arch was always telling him that. My daughter, Winnie, you’d like her.

“That’s what he said to me about you,” Winnie said. “Those were his exact words.”

Marcus didn’t respond except to nod almost imperceptibly.

“Do you?” Winnie asked.

“Do I what?”

She almost said, Do you like me? But she felt her self-respect about to fly away forever, so she made herself leave the room. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

Beth did feel better although she’d planned on saying so regardless, for the kids’ sake. Was it possible that Arch’s spirit resided here, that his soul had slogged through the icy waters of Long Island Sound to wait for them on Miacomet Beach in Nantucket? When Beth looked out over the water she felt a sense of peace, she heard Arch sending her a distinct message, It’s going to be okay, honey. It’s all going to be okay. That was, perhaps, just the healing property of water, of clean air, of open space. Of being, finally, in the place that she loved more than anywhere on earth. Her family’s house on Nantucket.

The house, the house. The house was named Horizon by Beth’s grandfather, her mother’s father, who bought the land and built the house in 1927. Beth had been coming to the island every summer since she was in utero, but her memories started at age five, the summer of 1963, when her grandfather bought a cherry red Volkswagen bug convertible and drove her around the island with the top down, while she ate lollipops in the backseat. She remembered sitting on Horizon’s upper deck with her grandmother at night, looking at stars, her grandmother singing, “Mister Moon.” Ordering take-out fried shrimp dinners from Sayle’s and eating them on the beach at sunset. The summers lined up in Beth’s mind like the scallop shells that she and her younger brothers collected and left to fade on the windowsill all winter. Starry nights, shrimp dinners, long days at the beach, outdoor showers, rides in a convertible with a fresh lollipop, bonfires, her first cold beer, falling in love, blueberry pie, riding the waves all the way back to shore, cool white sheets against sunburned skin-every detail that defined an American summer- that was what this island meant to Beth.

In honesty, Beth wasn’t certain that either of her kids felt the magic of Nantucket the way she did. Arch never understood it: he joined them every weekend, and for two weeks at the end of August, but even then he set up camp at the dining room table and worked. Even then the FedEx truck rumbled out to their spot on West Miacomet Road every day but Sunday. No, this was Beth’s place.

If they could just make it through the first day, Beth thought, things would be all right. If they could just settle into a routine. But that wasn’t going to happen instantly. Beth wanted to dive right in, she wanted to be in her bathing suit lying on the beach with a sandwich and a cold Coca-Cola five minutes from now, listening to the pound and rush of the surf, listening to the twins and Marcus, poor Marcus, playing Frisbee, laughing, getting along. But there had to be process first: pulling the cushions for the furniture from the dank basement and airing them out on the deck (she could ask Marcus to do that; she needed to start treating him like one of the other kids, and less like a charity case that Arch had left her to handle). They had to unpack-put the kitchen supplies away, move their shorts and T-shirts and sandals from their suitcases into the empty dresser drawers and closets that smelled like old shelf paper and mothballs. They had to let the hot and cold water run in all of the spigots to clear the residue out of the pipes. Beth would clean-dust the bookshelves that were crammed with bloated and rippled paperbacks, vacuum the floors, and convince Winnie to beat the braided rugs with the long-handled brush that hung in the outdoor shower.

Before Beth could organize her thoughts-new ones kept materializing like clowns popping out of a car-Garrett collapsed in one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. The chair groaned like it was an inch away from breaking.

“Mom,” he said.

Mom, Beth thought. The one-word sentence that both Garrett and Winnie used all the time now. It had so many meanings and it was up to Beth to decipher which one was relevant at any given time. Mom, I’m angry. Mom, I’m bored. Mom, please make the pain go away. Mom, stop harassing me. Mom, please stop crying, you’re embarrassing me. Mom, why aren’t you Dad? Beth twisted her diamond ring. The “We Made It” ring. A constant reminder of how sadly ironic the world could be.