Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Beth poured herself a Gatorade. The only sounds in the kitchen were the cracking of ice, and the distant pound and rush of the waves outside. Beth drank the entire glass of liquid, then poured herself another. The silence was helpful. This was going to be the most important conversation she ever had with her children and she wanted to pick her words carefully. She couldn’t help herself from asking, “You scattered the ashes without me?”

Winnie traced a scar in the table. Garrett said, “Yes.”

Beth sat down; her legs felt weak. “Why?”

“We were angry,” he said.

Beth imagined Kara Schau as an invisible fourth party at the table. She would praise Garrett for identifying his emotions. Beth wasn’t as pleased. What she thought was: When you’re angry you break a vase, you yell, you resort to sarcasm. You do not deceive your mother in the cruelest possible way.

“Angry about what?” she asked.

“You were married,” Winnie whispered. “And you never told us.”

“That’s right,” Beth said. “I was married and I never told you.”

“And you never told Dad,” Winnie said.

“And I never told Dad.”

“You lied to all three of us,” Garrett said. “Your family.”

“I did not lie.”

“You lied by omission,” Garrett said. This was a legal premise that he’d learned from his father. What you didn’t say could be just as damaging as what you did.

“It happened a long time ago,” Beth said. “Before your father, before you. It has no bearing on your lives.” She swallowed some more Gatorade. “It is none of your business.”

“Except you’re our mother,” Winnie said. “We thought we knew you.”

“You do know me.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Garrett said.

“We want to know the whole story,” Winnie said. “We want to know what happened.”

“Oh,” Beth said. This she wasn’t ready for. She had devoted so much energy to not thinking about the details of August 1979 that to conjure them up would be like calling a voice or spirit back from the dead. “I’d like you to respect that it’s my private past. It’s not something I want to share-with you or anyone else.”

“Piper knows the whole story,” Garrett said. “But I wouldn’t let her tell me about it. I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Piper heard the story from David?”

“From Rosie, actually,” Garrett said, knowing that this detail, beyond all others, would prod his mother to speak. “So I wasn’t sure how accurate it’d be.”

“It wouldn’t be accurate at all,” Beth said. She was livid at the thought of Rosie giving away her secret. Rosie!

“Just tell us, Mom,” Winnie said.

Beth leaned back in the chair; it whined. “Where did you put Daddy’s ashes?”

They were both quiet and Beth watched them exchange a quick look. She wanted to tread carefully here because she wanted the truth.

“In Quidnet,” Garrett said. “We’ll show you where. Later.”

Later, meaning after Beth explained herself. It was blackmail, but what did she expect? These were teenagers.

“Where’s Marcus?” Beth asked.

“He’s in town,” Winnie said. When Winnie saw the broken glass on the deck and then the urn right there on the kitchen table, she’d warned Marcus that there was going to be a confrontation, and without hesitation, Marcus said he would make himself scarce.

“Go ahead, Mom,” Garrett said. “Tell us.”

It was nearly impossible to explain the romance of that sixth and final summer of Beth and David. But maybe not-because here were her twins, each experiencing love for the first time. Still, Beth feared she wouldn’t be able to convey the heat and light, the depth and weight of her love for David. It was their sixth summer together; they were each twenty-one. When they rejoined in late May they realized that they had grown into adults, or almost. David had moved out of his parents’ house and he rented the cottage on Bear Street. Beth was given full use of her grandfather’s Volkswagen bug, which still ran, though barely. It was the perfect summer. David worked as a painter six days a week from seven until three; Beth didn’t work at all. While David painted, Beth ran errands for her mother, helped out around the house, and sat on the beach in front of Horizon. Then at three o’clock, she disappeared. Beth’s mother was preoccupied with Scott and Danny, who, at fourteen and sixteen, were turning her hair white. Beth’s father flew in from the city every other weekend. And so Beth was free-she met David at his cottage at 3:15 and for her, the day began. They swam, they sailed, they went to the nude beach, and they raked for clams that they cooked up later with pasta for dinner. They went to bonfires and drank too much beer and fell into bed in the wee hours giddy and spinning. They made love.

David asked Beth to marry him in August. It was his day off, a Wednesday. Beth heard David rise early, before the sun was up, and when she opened her eyes, he was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a tray. A blue hydrangea in a drinking glass, a slice of cantaloupe, a bowl of strawberries. A bottle of Taittin-ger champagne.

“Whoa,” she said, sitting up. “What’s this?”

“Will you marry me?”

Beth laughed. She remembered wanting to open the champagne. She remembered David wrapping his hand around the back of her neck.

“I’m serious. I want to marry you.”

“I want to marry you, too.”

“Today.”

“What?”

“We’ll get dressed, we’ll go to the Town Building.”

“You’re a nut.”

“Next week, then. Next Wednesday. Will you marry me next Wednesday?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes,” David said. “Bethie, I love you.”

Beth never actually said yes, but she never said no either. She got swept along by David’s enthusiasm and by her own desire to have the summer last forever. They were going to get married. But Beth couldn’t bring herself to inform her parents. She didn’t dare breathe the word “marriage” under Horizon’s roof.

Beth and David went to the hospital to have their blood tested. Beth bought a white sundress in town. She savored the tingly, secret excitement, the outlandish daring of it-she was getting married! They bought rings, inexpensive ones, plain gold bands, a hundred dollars for both.

The morning they were to be married, David rose early again. He returned with a huge handful of purple cosmos.

“Your bouquet,” he said.

Only when Beth saw the flowers did she have her first pang of regret for what had yet to happen. This was her bridal bouquet. The white crinkled cotton sundress hanging in the closet was her wedding dress. She and David were going to climb into the bug, bounce down the cobblestone street to the Nantucket Town Building and get married. David was absolutely glowing - he looked the way she always thought she would look on her wedding day. But it was a different wedding day that she’d dreamed of: six bridesmaids in pink linen dresses and six groomsmen in navy blazers. Her father walking her down the aisle. She hesitated. The trappings of a wedding didn’t matter. Who cared about a cocktail hour, a nine-piece band, chicken Kiev, and chocolate wedding cake? She took the flowers from David.

“They’re perfect,” she said.

Winnie and Garrett stared at her. Not in many years had she held them in this kind of rapt attention.

“Are you saying you knew you were about to make a mistake?” Winnie said.