Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

Mallory kicks Jake again, only this time the kick is more of a nudge, her bare foot on his shin. If she gets any more intimate, he’s going to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom, Cooper be damned.

“What about you, Jake? Do you understand love?” Mallory asks.

Jake sets about buttering his corn. “No.”

“You do, though,” Cooper says. “You love Ursula. You’ve always loved Ursula.” He looks at Mallory. “They’ve been dating since the eighth grade.”

“On and off,” Jake says. “There’s been a lot of off, actually.”

“But you’re together now?” Mallory asks. The light is fading. There’s only a single votive candle on the table, but even so, Jake sees the question in her eyes, which are green tonight. He prefers them green.

“We are.”

Mallory cuts her burger in half in a way that seems aggressive. “Will you marry her?”

“I can’t believe you haven’t asked her already,” Cooper says.

Jake has reached a crossroads. He isn’t sure what to disclose under these circumstances. Should he spill his guts as though Mallory has no stake in the answer? There’s a way in which they’re both playacting for Cooper and for each other. “We went to Paris last month,” he says. “She demanded a proposal and I told her I wasn’t ready.”

“Ouch!” Cooper says.

Mallory throws her brother an exasperated look. “At least he’s not rushing into anything.”

“Hey,” Cooper says. “You’re supposed to treat me with kid gloves.”

Jake looks down at his burger, then up at Mallory. “What about you, Mal? Have you ever been in love?”

“Coop, may I have the ketchup, please?” Mallory says.

“Answer the man’s question first,” Cooper says.

“Just please pass the ketchup.”

“Come on, Mal. We’re having a heart-to-heart here. Have you ever been in love? And Mr. Peebles doesn’t count.”

“Who’s Mr. Peebles?” Jake asks, already hating Mr. Peebles and hoping he’s long dead.

“Her ninth-grade English teacher,” Cooper says. “Mal was in love with him. It was well documented in the diary that I stole from her room and read to my friends—”

“Thereby scarring me for life,” Mallory says.

“But that doesn’t count because Mr. Peebles was married and very devoted to his wife.”

“All the more reason to love him,” Mallory declares. “Plus, he introduced me to J. D. Salinger. That year, I dressed up as Franny Glass for Halloween, remember? I wore a white nightgown and carried a chicken sandwich and the only person who got it was Mr. Peebles.”

“You’re trying to change the subject,” Jake says.

“Yeah,” Cooper says. “Just tell the truth for the sake of honest, good-faith conversation. Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes,” Mallory says.

“Yes?” Cooper says. He sounds surprised. Jake is holding his breath.

“Yes,” Mallory says again. “I’m in love right now, as a matter of fact. So…would you please hand me the ketchup? My burger is getting cold.”

She’s in love with me, Jake thinks. Or she’s in love with the owner of the board shorts. It’s agony not knowing. He’ll ask her when they’re alone.

No, he won’t. Why ruin the weekend?

At ten o’clock, they pile into the Blazer to go to the Chicken Box. Cooper sits shotgun, Jake is in the rear, mesmerized by the back of Mallory’s neck, her earlobe, the tiny silver hoop.

“Your first time to the Chicken Box!” Mallory says to Coop.

“I should have known Krystel was bad news when she told me to come home last year,” Cooper says.

“We’re not talking about Krystel,” Mallory says.

“We’re talking about Alison!” Jake says.

“Who’s Alison?” Mallory asks.

“The stewardess whose number I got today,” Cooper says. “She’s meeting us at the bar.”

Jake isn’t sure the flight attendant will show up, but there’s a woman waiting out front when they arrive, and that woman is indeed Alison from USAir.

“Cooper!” she says. “Hey!”

Cooper pulls Jake and Mallory aside. “Don’t be pissed, but if this goes well, and I’m going to make sure it does, then I probably won’t be back tonight. Or maybe tomorrow either, who knows.”

Will he and Mallory be that lucky? Jake wonders. “Mal and I will be fine,” he says. “We’re old friends.”

“Mal?” Cooper says. “Is it okay with you? I need this.”

Mallory swats her brother away. “Go have fun. Don’t worry about us. Just be a gentleman, please.”

As Cooper and Alison disappear into the bar, Jake thinks about lobsters and stargazing tomorrow night, Great Point on Sunday, then home to play music and talk about books and maybe shower together in the mansion before they order Chinese food and watch an old movie. Maybe the networks play Same Time, Next Year the same time every year, to be clever.

Mallory is about to follow Cooper inside, but Jake grabs her hand. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She bounces on her toes. “He sure was easy to get rid of.”

“Mal, seriously.”

“Seriously what?”

“I noticed the board shorts hanging in the outdoor shower, and I want to make sure there won’t be some guy in there waiting to kick the shit out of me.”

“Ah,” she says. “Those belong to JD.”

Jake waits.

“The rescue officer, from last year.”

Jake was afraid of that.

“We’re dating,” Mallory says. “Casually.”

“But not too casually—because he showers at your house and leaves his clothes behind.”

“Well, we’re not engaged or planning to get engaged,” Mallory says. “And…he’s away this weekend, at my suggestion, mountain-biking with his buddies.” She grins. “So you’re safe.”

“We’re the only two people on earth,” Jake says.

“And this weekend is going to last forever,” Mallory says. “Let’s go dance.”

Summer #3: 1995

What are we talking about in 1995? The Oklahoma City bombing; Bosnia, Serbia; molten chocolate cake; the Macarena; Windows 95; Des’ree; the Unabomber; Yitzhak Rabin; Toy Story; Selena; Bye, Felicia; Steve Young; Eight-Minute Abs; Yahoo!; Jerry Garcia; Frasier, Niles, Lilith, Daphne, and Roz; The Bridges of Madison County; O. J. Simpson found innocent by a jury of his peers.

When we check in with our girl at the beginning of 1995, we are cheered to see how well things are going for her.

Mallory is now—after Mr. Falco’s retirement and four months of traveling to the Cape twice a week for her certification classes—a real teacher. She joined the union and attends faculty meetings; she overprepares the night before the principal, Dr. Major, comes to observe her class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she’s the cafeteria monitor, and she accepts bribes from the kids in the form of Cheetos and Hostess cupcakes. She stands over anyone with pizza and sings “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” until the student offers up the crispiest piece of pepperoni. At the end of each school day, Mallory swings by the guidance office to debrief with Apple; sometimes they gossip, sometimes they vent, sometimes they have constructive conversations about how to better reach the kids. On Friday afternoons, Mallory and Apple go to happy hour at the Pines. They order beers and mozzarella sticks and toast to another week survived as though they are living in a combat zone—life with 112 teenagers—and Apple will say, “Only twenty-seven [or “nineteen” or “twelve”] weeks until summer vacation.”

Mallory is almost embarrassed to admit it, but she doesn’t want the school year to end. She starts off each class by reading a poem and asking the kids to react to it. She chooses Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Carlos Williams, Audre Lorde, Linda Pastan, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert Bly, and everyone’s absolute favorite, Langston Hughes. Mallory photocopies short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Maxine Hong Kingston, John Updike. They discuss editorials in the New York Times . They read The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, which only a few of the kids warm to, and then they read The Handmaid’s Tale, which is a crowd favorite. Dystopia, Mallory thinks. Teenagers love dystopia, the world as they know it falling apart at the seams. Her students keep journals in which they relate passages of what they’ve read to their own lives. They write short stories, sonnets, personal essays, persuasive essays, haiku (which they like because they’re short), and one research paper, mandated by the state, which makes the kids stressed and peevish, and the unit falls in the middle of March, when everyone on Nantucket hates everyone else anyway.