Summertime Guests Page 7

  “I think the idea is that he’d own the store. You know, manage it.”

  “Well, it’s less than ideal,” Walt had concluded.

  And Claire had come so close to saying the other thing on her mind, which was why did he have so much trouble getting on the Ben-train? Why was it so easy for him to support Amber getting her graduate degree in anthropology and not Ben earning his degree in health sciences? She didn’t exactly see Amber setting off for an anthropological dig anytime soon, so why was he so hard on their son? It made no sense to her. Ben was a constant disappointment to a father who’d apparently been hoping for a son who’d work at the same firm as he did, a son who’d want to throw back a few beers and watch football together on a Sunday afternoon. But if he’d taken any time to get to know Ben over the years, he’d understand how ridiculous that was.

  “You’re such a hypocrite,” she’d screamed at him on one particularly bad night, when a conversation between Walt and Ben had resulted in Ben charging up to his room in tears. “Here you’re always telling Amber she can be anything she wants, but with our son, you basically spend all your time telling him all the things he can’t be. Or that you don’t want him to be. Why can’t you just let him be?” She’d stormed out of the house and walked probably three miles, well past the outer reaches of their neighborhood and into some parts of Providence she’d never seen before. When she crawled into bed later that night, Walt had offered a half apology.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper with Ben. I shouldn’t have.” But there was no acknowledgment of how wrong he’d been, how unfair his wildly different expectations were for his two children.

  “Well, I think it would be best if you tell him yourself in the morning,” she’d said.

  So many years of running interference between the two of them! No wonder she’d been utterly exhausted back then.

  When Walt died, she’d been shocked, naturally. And sad. It was hard to believe that the man she’d shared a home with for thirty-six years was gone, taken from her as quickly as a snap of the fingers, his heart closing up. She remembers sorting through his closet with Amber a few weeks later, their knees covered in dust bunnies as they pulled out his myriad plaid shirts, some still unopened, his multiple pairs of tan chinos and shoes. Packed them up and toted them off to Goodwill. And as they drove away, a surprising sense of lightness had drifted over her, as if she’d been carrying around that damn closetful of shirts for thirty-six years.

  But the empty space in her bed, the vacant seat across the dinner table, those voids still feel unfamiliar to her. She’d gotten accustomed to having Walt around. Like the leaky faucet or the ancient dining-room table that she’s forever banging her knee into, he’d become a permanent fixture in the house. Occasionally annoying, but familiar.

  Plus she can’t shake the feeling that he might show up any minute and announce he’s been away on a very long trip. If he did, she wonders what advice he might give her? About Amber. About her newfound solitude. Even about Ben.

  When her phone chimes, she glances at the unfamiliar number and debates answering. Probably a telemarketer calling to offer her a deal on insurance, a burial plot. She picks up, ready to be annoyed. “Hello?”

  “Claire? Claire, is that you?” The voice is familiar, and for a second, she almost thinks it’s Walt calling, but then it comes to her, a flood rushing in. Marty. “It’s Marty,” the voice says.

  When he hadn’t called last night, hope had cratered in her, and she’d considered that maybe he’d had no interest in reconnecting. But now that his voice is on the other end, she can’t quite believe it.

  “Marty. Hello!” she says loudly enough that the statuesque woman sitting three seats down and reading The Silent Patient looks up from her book. “I’m so glad you called,” she says more discreetly. “I wasn’t sure that you would.”

  There’s some throat-clearing on the other end, then, “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure I would, either. It’s been such a long time, you know?”

  Clare nods her head. Oh, how she knows.

  “Anyway, I was sure surprised to get your note, and I thought, hell, if you wanted to talk, why not? Is everything okay, I hope?”

  She stands with her phone wedged between her shoulder and ear, wraps her towel around her waist and heads toward the pool gate to gain a sliver of privacy. On the adjacent lawn, a young boy with floppy blond hair and his father, lean and tall, swat at croquet balls. She watches while the man rearranges his son’s hands on the mallet. “Oh, everything’s fine,” she lies. “I’m taking a little time off from the paper, treating myself to a vacation at the Seafarer Hotel, and well, I thought since you were in Boston I should reach out and say hello. Seeing as you never come to any of our reunions. You like to make yourself scarce, don’t you?” Her thoughts unspool in a meandering ramble, and she regrets that her last comment sounds like a criticism or, worse, a suggestion that she’s been on the lookout for him for the last thirty years.

  But he laughs on the other end, a big-hearted, generous chortle that she didn’t realize until now how much she missed. “You know me. I was never into that reunion stuff. So how the heck are you? I see you’re a bigwig at the Providence Dealer. What else is new?”

  She debates launching into all that’s happened, wondering how much she needs to bring him up to speed. Has he read her entries in their high-school alumni magazine that catalog the various milestones in her life, such as Ben’s and Amber’s births and graduations, the birth of her grandchild, Fiona, or her promotions at the paper? “Well,” she begins, pausing for time to better arrange her thoughts, “I guess you know I’ve got two grown kids now, Ben and Amber, and I’m a grandmother now, if you can believe it. My oldest, Amber, has a three-year-old. And what else? Oh, Walt passed away about a year ago.” She hadn’t meant to deliver this particular piece of news over the telephone, but it slips out, as easily as air.

  On the other end, there’s a beat of silence before Marty says, “Oh, Claire. I’m really sorry to hear that. He seemed like a good guy for you.”

  Hearing those words is like cracking a walnut right open, her old boyfriend’s admission that her husband had been a good match. But there are too many pieces to pick up at the moment to address the matter head-on. Instead, she hurriedly says, “Thank you. We had a good thirty-six years together.” She pauses. “Listen, not to change the subject, but I was wondering if you wanted to get together while I’m in town. Maybe over dinner? Or you’re welcome to come sit by the pool with me here. It’s quite lovely.”

  What she really wants to ask him is: Why hasn’t he called all these years? Does he still think about her? If Audrey passed away three years ago, then why didn’t Martin pick up the phone to seek her out? There’s nothing in the old-boyfriend rule book that says you can’t still be friends.

  But she stops herself, bites her tongue. She mustn’t play all her cards at once. “Patience,” Walt would coach her, the one thing that has never come naturally to her. Claire always had to chase the story, whereas Walt preferred to sit with an idea for a while, turn it over like a rock in his hand. “Sometimes the biggest stories come from waiting, not from breaking the news first,” he’d say, and she’d tell him that he should stick to accounting. Not right now, Walt, she thinks involuntarily. He’s not here at her side, of course, but the fact that he still insists on worming his way into her head from time to time annoys her. Especially when lately it seems to be whenever she’s thinking about Marty.

  “Well, wouldn’t that be nice?” Marty says now, and Claire waits for him to say more while she watches a handsome pool boy, dark wavy hair, tan as a chestnut, deliver lunch to her chair. A grilled cheese-and-tomato on rye along with a generous margarita. There’s one of those festive paper umbrellas, bright pink, poking out of it.

  “I’m working till four thirty most days at school,” he continues. “But I suppose I could cut out a little early tomorrow. Ho
w’s Thursday night?”

  A knot of relief (he said yes!) and disappointment (she’ll have to wait till tomorrow) forms in her chest. “Thursday’s perfect. Where shall we meet?”

  Another beat of silence follows while presumably he thinks on the other end, and Claire takes the opportunity to wander back to her lounge chair, swerving around a brother and sister who swat a Pro Kadima ball dangerously close to the pool. When the tiny red ball lands in the water, they play rock, paper, scissors to see who has to jump in; the sister loses and cannonballs into the deep end. Claire drops into her chair, fishes the pickle spear off the white china plate and tilts the phone upward to better mask the sound of her crunching.

  “How about our old haunt? Bricco in the North End?”

  A shudder ripples through her as soon as he suggests it because Claire has been thinking the exact same thing. “I’d love that,” she says finally. “Five thirty? Six?”

  “Six o’clock,” he says. Then, “And Claire?”

  “Yes?”

  “It will be really good to see you.”

  “You, too, Martin.” Her heart cartwheels across her chest. “See you tomorrow.”

  After tapping off, she watches the young girl with a dark ponytail, probably eight or nine, pull herself out of the pool, the tiny red ball in hand. Claire attempts to tamp down her excitement. The man she nearly married will be sitting across from her tomorrow night! It’s almost impossible to believe.

  Martin, Martin, Martin, she thinks. Can a flame be rekindled? Do you still have feelings for me? She thinks back to how Marty used to be able to tell exactly what she was thinking, even when she was trying her best to hide it. He always knew when she was upset or worried or scared. They used to joke that he had ESP. Does he still have this second sense, she wonders? (Walt, on the other hand, always seemed entirely unaware of her moods, even when Claire thought she was conveying them quite directly. He’d stare at her as if her expressions were inscrutable.)

  The question of what to wear skitters across her mind, but then she recalls the outfit already packed in her suitcase, a blue-and-white polka-dot sundress. All this time wondering how her old boyfriend’s life has taken shape, and tomorrow she’ll find out. All this time wishing she’d chosen differently, and now perhaps she’ll have another chance. The margarita, when she sips, is heavy on the booze and light on the fruit—she’ll be bombed in no time, which, given the circumstances, probably isn’t such a bad thing.

  She searches for her reading glasses and finally locates them on top of her head (Oh, if only her kids could see her now, misplacing her glasses: they’d have a field day!) and slides them down on her nose. Her mystery book sits on the table, and when she opens it to the thumbed-down page, it takes her a minute to familiarize herself with the characters once again. Another few minutes pass before her mind sufficiently quiets to read.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, a few chairs down, a man dressed in pink Bermuda shorts and a Tommy Bahama button-down shirt lowers his newspaper to make a quick call to his boss. He reports that Claire O’Dell is relaxing by the hotel pool and, for all intents and purposes, looks as if she’ll be here for the duration of the afternoon.

  NINE

  Jason had posted something funny on Facebook last night about the current mess of the world—or at least he thought it was funny—but when he checks his account before stepping onto the tennis court this Wednesday morning, he’s disappointed to see that the post has received only a handful of likes. Why are people so sheepish when it comes to calling out corrupt politicians on the terrible things they do? He’s much more likely to get a positive response to a post of a puppy chasing its tail (an easy hundred likes, no problem). But say one thing about how people should be held accountable for their actions, and suddenly, all those so-called friends have crawled under a rock.

  Not that everyone has to agree with him, of course. And yet, more often than not, he’s surprised when they don’t. Because he’s usually posting about tough-to-argue-against ideas, things like saving the environment or being a responsible citizen. If he were pressed, he’d probably admit that he posted as a distraction from what he really needs to do—which is to call his department head, George, and alert him to the harassing text he got from a student. It’s university protocol. Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since Charlie’s text. But there’ve been no follow-up messages, which Jason interprets as a good sign—the kid probably just needed to blow off steam.

  Next to the tennis net, there’s a white chair (very Wimbledon-like, he thinks), where he tucks his phone underneath a towel and out of the sun. It’s ten thirty-five. They’ve reserved the court for an hour, which should be plenty of time for his girlfriend, a former junior tennis champ, to crush him. Next to the court is a mounted brass plaque that Jason steps over to read. It says In July 1921, the 30th president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, also known as “Silent Cal,” played tennis with his wife, Grace, on this court. They were honored guests of the Seafarer several times during his presidency.

  “Hey, did you know President Coolidge played here?” he shouts over to Gwen, who’s already on her side of the court and stretching, her legs in an inverted V, her hands flat to the ground.

  Her blond ponytail bounces when she lifts her head. “No. Cool,” she says, as if she’s not really all that impressed.

  Jason goes to uncap the can of fresh tennis balls, purchased for a princely sum at the hotel gift shop this morning (because even though they’d remembered their rackets, they’d somehow managed to forget tennis balls). Each ball is stamped with the Seafarer emblem, a modern outline of the hotel with three wiggly lines for waves underneath. As they tumble out of the canister, the familiar chemical scent whisks him straight back to childhood when he and his little sister, Ruth, used to hit balls back and forth at the end of their narrow street. He stuffs two into his pocket and trots over to his side of the court. Gwen’s already in position on the service line, and they swat a few back and forth, warming up. When Jason hits three consecutive balls out of bounds, she yells, “Don’t worry. I’m not judging!”

  “Ha! Right,” he calls out, his thoughts returning to when tennis was his get-out-of-jail-free ticket. Whenever their dad was having one of his nights, as his mother used to call them, he and his sister (now happily married and a financial adviser in Manhattan) would grab their rackets and play until the sky grew dark, by which time his dad would have usually passed out on the couch. His father’s moods back then were volatile, unpredictable, hard to read. One minute the family would be sitting around the dinner table and talking about high-school football, and the next thing he knew his dad’s hand would wrap around his wrist in a vise grip after Jason had asked for the potatoes to be passed. “Think you might want to add a word to that request?” he’d demand, and Jason would squeak out “Please?” Even after he’d acquiesced, his plate would sometimes end up on the floor, and Jason, in tears, would have to sweep up the shattered, jagged pieces.

  Inexplicably, his father’s wrath never fell on Ruthie, only on him and, by default, his mother. Sometimes when his mom tried to intervene on Jason’s behalf, his father’s face would flush crimson before he’d stand up and slap her across the face, the lingering imprint of his hand still visible on her cheek hours later.

  Quickly, Jason learned the skills of an artful dodger, and later, as his body began to assume the bulk of adolescence, the punches of a fighter. He’d read up on what it took to emancipate yourself, how old you had to be. In Virginia, a teenager could request emancipation at sixteen, which seemed like a million years away when he was only thirteen. He thought about running away, but where would he go? He didn’t have any relatives he knew of besides his dad’s brother, who was also a drunk, wandering in and out of jail. And there was a small piece of him that worried that by leaving, he’d be abandoning his mom and sister. Because what if, when his father discovered Jason was no longer around,
he decided to turn his rage on his sister? Every time he packed his bag to leave, the image of Ruthie sporting a black eye—instead of him—made him unpack it all over again. He must have packed that bag twenty times.

  He’s told Gwen some of this, but not the worst, not the unforgivable parts. Like how he came home from middle school one day, and his mom’s arm was in a cast. “Fell down the stairs,” she said, but he could read the lie behind her hooded eyes. He knew his dad, a telephone-line repairman, had been home for lunch that day.

  And then there was that January night when he returned home from basketball practice and two police cars, their red lights circling, were sitting in the driveway. The neighbors were standing on the front curb, wrapped in blankets, not coats (Jason remembers this strange detail), and they’d cast him worried looks but said nothing. Jason had never run so hard in his life, darting across the yard in his sneakers up to the house, his heart pounding, certain that his dad had done it this time, gone too far. But when he burst through the front door, his mother was sitting on the couch, a bag of frozen peas covering her left eye, and Jason’s dad was sitting on the couch beside her, his hand gripping her knee while he chatted amiably with the cops.

  The officers—there were two—were talking about grouse hunting with his dad as if they’d stopped by to have a casual chat. When Jason asked what had happened, his dad answered for the cops. “Oh, we had a little misunderstanding. Seems our neighbors called the cops on us. They heard your mom and me arguing. Geez, can’t anybody have any privacy in their own home these days?” The cops stared down at their shoes. He can still recall his mother’s eyes, full of fear, and the slight shake of her head when he turned to her. As if to say Let it be, Jason. At the top of the stairs, Ruthie, probably no more than nine at the time, cowered. No one took domestic violence seriously then—the husband was king of his castle. Still, to this day, Jason gives credit to those officers, who asked his mom if she wanted to press charges.