Jennifer Close - The Hopefuls

But I never said any of this out loud. Instead, we went over to their apartment the night before they left, sat in a circle of lawn chairs (all of their furniture was gone), and drank vodka out of plastic cups. And at the end of the night, when we hugged good-bye, I said, “What are we ever going to do without you here?”

I sat on the bed and watched Matt pack his suitcase, carefully, as he always did. He was an unusually slow packer, folding a shirt over and over to get it right, rearranging piles to make sure they fit just so. Usually, I teased him about it, sometimes setting a timer to see if he could set a new record. But he had the same look he’d had on his face for over a month now — mouth set in a straight line, eyebrows wrinkled like he’d just heard unpleasant news — and I knew he wasn’t in the mood for a joke.

“Are you bringing your running shoes?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up.

“Okay. And you think we should leave by ten a.m. tomorrow?” At this, he just nodded. I waited a few seconds and then said, “You know, if you don’t want to go we can skip it. Or go later in the week.”

Matt looked up, surprised. “I never said I didn’t want to go.”

“I know. It’s just you seem…” I tried to find a nice way to say angry or annoyed.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know, never mind. It was just a suggestion.”

“Plus, we can’t skip it. My mom would have a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Matt’s parents spent most of the summer at their house in St. Michaels, Maryland, and during the third week of August the entire family joined them. Throughout the summer, Michael’s and Will’s families went up there other random weekends, and so did Meg, and sometimes even we did too. But Babs was firm on the fact that no matter what, she wanted everyone together for one week. No excuses.

This trip never really felt like a vacation to me, mostly because the Kellys weren’t the kind of family who slept in or sat around reading novels in the sun. They took boats out on the water, played badminton or football, organized tennis tournaments and swimming races. They never sat down. It was like spending a week at a weird adult athletic camp with highly competitive campers.

Matt had spent the whole summer focused on Dan Cullen’s senate seat, unable to let go of (what he kept calling) his missed chance. He was obsessed with what he should do next and it was almost impossible to have a conversation with him about anything else. Once, he even (God help us) used the word legacy. He kept mentioning classmates of his from Harvard (all wildly successful, of course) and comparing himself to them, like everyone he graduated with was going to think he was a failure.

Part of me thought he’d be calmer with the Dillons out of town, but it soon became clear that he missed being able to discuss his career with Jimmy and so I became his default sounding board on all things relating to Matt’s Career, and it was wearing on me. It was wearing on us. And I didn’t think a solid week with his family would help the situation.

“All done,” Matt said, zipping up his suitcase. “What about you?”

“Yep,” I said. “All packed and ready to go.”

—

We didn’t get on the road until almost 10:30 the next day, which I knew drove Matt crazy. It only took about an hour and a half to get there, but Matt liked to be the first to arrive, because in the Kelly family, even the drive to vacation could become a competition.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, when we got in the car. “There’s no rush to get there.” What I meant, of course, was I’m in no rush to get there. I picked up the coffee that Matt had gotten for me and took a sip. He’d added just the right amount of cream, and it tasted perfect. I drank my coffee and stared out the window, knowing that this would be the most peaceful part of my week, trying to savor the quiet.

I never considered myself to be unathletic until I started going to St. Michaels with the Kellys. I played volleyball in junior high and soccer in high school and maybe I wasn’t the best on the team, but I certainly wasn’t the worst. I was coordinated. I could stand upright and hit a ball. I played shortstop for the Vanity Fair softball team, for Christ’s sake.

But my first year in St. Michaels, things changed. During a heated volleyball game, Will spiked the ball over the net and it hit me right on the nose. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me through the net with a scrunched-up face. “Everyone, take five,” he shouted to everyone who was playing, as if they didn’t see the blood that was spilling out of my nose. Will led me inside, sat me down in the kitchen, put a bunch of ice cubes in a baggie, and wrapped them in a towel for me to put on my nose. I’d met Will just a few times before this trip, and I was mortified to have him see me like this.

“It’s okay,” I kept saying to him. “Really, I don’t think it’s broken.” I had no idea if it was broken or not, but it felt like I needed to reassure him. He was looking at me nervously, like he was afraid I was going to start crying.

“Keep the ice on as long as you can,” Will said. Matt had taken his nephews out on a kayak, and Will kept looking at the door hoping that he would show up.

“You can go back out,” I said. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“Are you sure?” Will asked.

“Yes, I’m totally fine. I’ll just sit here with the ice.” I wanted desperately for him to leave then, and he finally did after patting me on the shoulder and telling me to “hang in there.” I listened to the volleyball game resume outside, and stayed in the kitchen until the bag of ice started to melt and drip down my face.

My nose wasn’t broken, but it did swell up and I had two light purple bruises underneath my eyes. There’s a group picture from that trip that Babs has hanging in the kitchen, of everyone standing on the dock. Someone must have taken it from a boat on the water, but I don’t remember who. (It seems like something they would have had me do, since we weren’t engaged yet and Babs didn’t like to have non — family members in family pictures.) I always look at the picture when we go to their house — the shot is far away, but you can still see that my nose is lumpy and miscolored.

On the last night of the trip, when Will knew it was okay to joke about my nose (and probably couldn’t help himself any longer, because the Kellys needed to make a joke out of everything), he stood up and toasted me. We were all eating crabs, as we always did for the first and last meals of the trip, and Babs had laid out newspapers on the table and put metal buckets in the middle for the shells. Everyone had mallets in their hands, and I was concentrating on my crab, trying to ignore the splashes of butter and pieces of shell that were flying everywhere. (After these dinners, the smell of Old Bay and crab lingered everywhere.)

Will stood up and wiped his hands, then hit his mallet lightly against his beer bottle. He cleared his throat. “I’d just like to take a minute to announce that the volleyball MVP award will be going to Beth, who was willing to use any body part to stop the ball. Well done, Beth!” He held up his bottle and chanted, “Hip, hip, hooray!” until everyone joined in.

The whole table clapped and cheered, even Nellie, who’d said, “Oh, Will,” in a halfhearted defense of me when he announced my name. I knew that I had to smile, so as not to seem like a bad sport, a killjoy who couldn’t take a joke, and so I did even though it made my nose throb. Matt put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him, but he was also laughing. That was the thing about the Kellys, they always thought they were so damn funny.