28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

  On the beach, Mallory calls Frazier’s name and Jake jogs along the waterline. The waves slam the shore with uncharacteristic force, or maybe it just seems that way because it’s so late and so dark. There are some stars, but clouds cover the moon, and there are no other homes on this stretch of beach, no homes until Cisco, nearly a mile away. Mallory has never realized how isolated her cottage is.

  Jake calls her; he’s picking something up. It’s Frazier’s clothes—jeans, the Nirvana shirt.

  “Did he?” Mallory looks at the water. “Did he go in?”

  Jake drops the clothes and strips down to his boxers.

  “You’re not.”

  He charges into the water.

  Mallory starts to shiver. The night has suddenly turned sinister. She thinks back to the moment they were all sitting around the dining table toasting Cooper. Everyone was comfortable, safe, together.

  But then Leland and Fray had crossed arms. Bad luck, if you believed her mother.

  Mallory keeps Jake in sight, his dark head, the sleek curve of his back when he dives into an oncoming wave. She scans the water to the right and the left. She screams down the beach, “Fray! Fray! Fray!” Her voice sounds like something broken or ripped. “Frazier Dooley!”

  Jake staggers onto the beach, out of breath. “Leave his clothes where we found them,” he says. “Go call 911.”

  Mallory tells the dispatcher that she lives in the cottage on Miacomet Pond and she has lost a friend in the water. An eternity—four and a half minutes—passes before she hears sirens, and another minute passes before she sees lights. One ambulance pulls up; it’s followed by a truck towing a trailer with an ATV. Jake leads the rescue team—one uniformed officer and two divers in wetsuits—down to Frazier’s clothes. The team members have lights; they have boards and rings and buoys.

  One officer stays at the house. He’s beefy, with reddish hair and freckles. He’s…familiar-looking?

  “I’m JD,” he says. “You were my server last week at the Summer House.”

  “I was?” Mallory says. She’s too panicked to go back and search her memory.

  “How long ago did he leave?” JD asks. He has a clipboard. He’s the information man.

  “I’m not sure,” Mallory says. How long were she and Jake kissing? “Half an hour?”

  “Had he been drinking?”

  “Yes,” Mallory says. “Beer and…Jim Beam.”

  “Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

  “I didn’t know he was going swimming,” Mallory says. “He told us he was taking a walk. I thought he wanted to be alone.” She drops her face into her hands. Why did Fray go swimming in the middle of the night? Why did he drink so much? Why did Leland go to town with her friends from New York? She could have seen them Sunday when she got home for her friend Harrison’s rooftop thing or whatever. Why did Cooper leave? His best friends were here! The weekend was for him!

  JD is looking at Mallory sympathetically, but she knows what he’s thinking: She shouldn’t have let Frazier wander off by himself. Whatever the consequences are, she deserves them. “I watched him leave. I should have gone after him.”

  JD sighs. “I’ve seen situations like this go both ways.”

  This doesn’t make her feel any better.

  “Let’s start with his name and date of birth. Just tell me what you can.”

  The divers search the water for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. When Mallory is finished with JD, she goes down to the scene. JD has lent Mallory his jacket, but still, she’s freezing. Jake is in his wet boxers and T-shirt; they won’t let him go back in the water because the risk of losing him is too great.

  “He’s not out there,” Jake says to Mallory. “They would have found him by now.”

  “They have to keep looking,” Mallory says. To stop looking is to…what? Give up? Switch from a rescue mission to a recovery mission? It’s too heinous to even contemplate. If something bad has happened to Fray, Mallory will never forgive herself. She wants to blame Cooper or Leland, but she was the last person to see Fray. She watched him head into the dark mouth of the night holding the bottle of Jim Beam by the neck. She knew his volatile history, the shadow of tragedy that followed him everywhere because of the gaping hole where his parents should have been.

  Fray! she thinks.

  There’s shouting. The ATV is barreling down the beach toward them. They found Fray. Mallory hears the officer on the beach calling in the divers.

  Alive? she thinks. Or dead?

  Alive. The officer on the ATV found Fray all the way down at Fat Ladies Beach, passed out in the sand. He was unresponsive at first, the officer said, but just as they were moving him onto the backboard, he came to and puked in the sand.

  The rescue mission takes some time to reel in and pack up. Once the paramedic checks Fray’s vitals, asks him a few questions, and determines he doesn’t need a trip to the hospital, Jake helps Fray into the cottage. Mallory thanks JD and the beach officer and the ATV officer and the two divers a hundred times apiece. She pulls twenty dollars out of her shorts pocket and tries to press it into JD’s hands.

  He laughs. “Keep it. This was your tax dollars at work.”

  “Well, then, I’ll bake you some cookies and drop them at the station.”

  “Cookies work,” JD says. He smiles at Mallory and she shuffles back through her mind to last week at the Summer House. Yes! This guy had come in with a white-haired gentleman, his father, who had engaged in some harmless flirting with Mallory and then left her a huge tip.

  “I remember you,” Mallory says. “Your dad was terrific.”

  “He told me I should ask you out,” JD says. “Are you here year-round or just the season?”

  “Year-round,” Mallory says. “I’m hoping to be working at the high school this fall.”

  “Cool,” Officer JD says. “Would you want to…or is that guy, or the other guy…I mean, do you have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t,” she says. “But…” She shakes her head. “I think I’ll need a few days before I can think straight. You have the number here. Maybe give me a call next week?”

  “Yeah, I will, I’ll do that. Hey, I’m glad things turned out okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mallory says. “Thank you, sorry, thank you.”

  JD waves as he climbs into the cruiser. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Mallory and Jake fall asleep in her bed on top of the covers and with their clothes on, but when Mallory wakes up, Jake’s arm is draped over her waist and his breath is warm on her neck. She opens her eyes, and before everything comes flooding back, she savors the weight of his arm, the steadiness of his breathing.

  Is he her boyfriend?

  No. But lying beside him feels incredible. She doesn’t want to move. She could die right here, she thinks, with no regrets.

  When Fray rises, he drinks a quart of orange juice, then sets the empty carton on the table and says, “I’m going home.”

  While Frazier is in the shower, Jake cracks eggs and drops slices of Portuguese bread in the toaster. Mallory looks out the window and sees a cloud of dust heading for the cottage. A boxy white Jeep Cherokee with a rainbow stripe of Great Point beach stickers across the bumper pulls up out front. Leland hops out and runs inside.

  Mallory closes her eyes. She hopes Fray disobeys her “quick-shower” mandate; she doesn’t have the energy for a scene. She says to Jake, “Tell Leland to come into my room, please.”

  A few moments later, Leland knocks on Mallory’s bedroom door. “Hey.”

  Out the window, she sees the Cherokee is idling.

  “They’re waiting for you?” Mallory says. Her voice is hoarse from all the screaming on the beach. “You’re not staying?”

  “They’ve invited me sailing,” Leland says. “Kip’s friend’s dad has a huge yacht, I guess.”

  “Who’s Kip?” Mallory asks. “You know what, never mind, I don’t care who Kip is. Just pack your stuff and leave before Fray gets out of the shower, oka
y?”

  “I could come back tonight,” Leland says. “Or, I mean, these guys have a reservation at Straight Wharf at eight, so maybe you could join us?”

  Mallory wonders if maybe the run-in with these New York friends wasn’t random. Maybe Leland had planned this. But either way, Mallory can’t compete with yachts and an impossible-to-get reservation at Straight Wharf. “I’m all set,” she says. “But please go now. Frazier is pissed off.”

  “Fray needs to grow up,” Leland says. “He needs to move on.”

  Mallory decides not to say anything to her about the events of the previous night. Leland quickly changes into a bikini and a cover-up, runs a brush through her chic haircut, fluffs her pink bangs. She turns to Mallory. “Are you angry?”

  Yes, I’m angry! Mallory thinks. Leland wanted to surprise Fray, and she thought nothing of making out with him in the back of the Blazer; that was all fine. But walking off with her new fancy friends was rude—and, Mallory has to admit, utterly typical of Leland. She plays with people’s feelings. Mallory wouldn’t put it past Leland to have dreamed up this whole scheme—lure Fray back in, then abandon him so that she could be the one who was finally walking away from their relationship, in complete control.

  Mallory sighs. She dislikes arguing with anyone, especially Leland. “Disappointed,” Mallory says, and she lets half a smile slip. It’s their old joke from high school. Their parents.

  Leland kisses Mallory on the cheek. “I’ll see you when you come back to the city.”

  Mallory isn’t going back to the city, ever.

  “Okay,” she says.

  No sooner does the white Cherokee pull away than there’s another knock on Mallory’s bedroom door. It’s Frazier. His blond hair is wet and combed and he smells okay, but he’s pale and his eyes are puffy. His duffel is slung over one slumped shoulder.

  “I’m catching the ten o’clock ferry,” he says.

  “Okay.” Mallory checks her bedside clock. “I’ll drive you. We should leave in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m going to walk,” Frazier says.

  “You can’t walk,” Mallory says. “It’s too far.”

  “I need to clear my head, Mal,” he says. “I’ll see you later, and thanks for having me and all that. You have a nice setup here. I’m happy for you.”

  “Fray.”

  “Mal, please.”

  Fine. If that’s the way he wants it, fine! Through her bedroom window, Mallory watches him head down the no-name road, which is still dusty from Leland’s departure. Mallory knew there was a chance the weekend would blow up this way, but even so, she feels stung: her brother and her best friend both failed her.

  When she steps into the great room, she smells browned butter and coffee. Jake has used her new French press. “I made omelets with the leftover tomatoes and the Brie,” Jake says. “Come eat.”

  Tears fill Mallory’s eyes as she sits at the table. “Are you leaving too?” she asks.

  “No,” Jake says. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay.”

  Summer #2: 1994

  What are we talking about in 1994? O. J. Simpson, Al Cowlings, LAPD chasing a white Bronco down the 405, the bloody glove, Mark Fuhrman, Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Kardashian, Kato Kaelin, Judge Ito; Tonya Harding; Kurt Cobain; Lillehammer; Jackie Onassis; the World Series canceled; Newt Gingrich; the internet; Rwanda; the IRA; Pulp Fiction; Nelson Mandela; the Channel Tunnel; Ace of Base; Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Ross, Joey, and Phoebe; Richard Nixon; The Shawshank Redemption.

  Whether or not our boy Jake (and he is our boy, we’re with him here through the good, the bad, and the incredibly stressful) wants to admit it, his life has been changed by spending Labor Day weekend with Mallory.

  He would like the record to show that he went to Nantucket as a free and single man. A week before Jake headed to the island, he and Ursula had a category 5 breakup that destroyed everything in its path—Jake’s self-esteem, Ursula’s promises, both of their hearts.

  He hadn’t been looking for another romantic entanglement, not even an easy rebound. But by Saturday, after first Cooper, then Leland, then Frazier had left—bringing to mind the children’s song about the dog that chased the cat that chased the rat—he realized this was what he’d been hoping for since the moment he saw Mallory waiting on the dock of Straight Wharf.

  Mallory’s eyes, he’d noticed, were bluish green or greenish blue; they changed, like the color of the ocean.

  They were green when she stared at him across the harvest table with her empty breakfast plate in front of her. She had devoured every bit of her omelet, making little sandwich bites with her toast. Jake couldn’t believe how at ease he felt with her, almost as if she were his younger sister.

  Nope, Jake thought. Scratch that. His feelings were not brotherly. When he came around to clear Mallory’s plate, he saw a golden toast crumb on the pale pink skin of her upper lip. He brushed the crumb away with the pad of his thumb, gently, so gently, and then he kissed her and he experienced the most intense desire he had ever known. He wanted her so badly, it scared him. Go slowly, he’d thought. Jake had been with only a handful of women other than Ursula, most of them casual dates or one-night stands in college. He spent a long time kissing Mallory’s lips before he moved down to her throat and the tops of her shoulders. Her skin was salty, sweet, her mouth and tongue buttery. She made cooing noises and finally said, Please. I can’t stand it. This was how Jake felt as well; the want in him was building like a great wall of water against a dam, but he savored the nearly painful sensation of holding himself in check. Slowly, he moved his mouth over the innocent parts of her body. And then, finally, she cried out and led him by the hand to the bedroom. Somehow, he’d known that the experience would change his life, that he would never be the same again.

  Mallory’s eyes were still green when she propped herself up on her elbow after they’d made love.

  “Put your bathing suit on,” she said. “I want to show off my island.”

  They headed out the back door and down a nearly hidden sandy path that led through the reeds and tall grass to Miacomet Pond. On the shore was a two-person kayak painted Big Bird yellow that Mallory dragged out to knee-deep water. She held it steady as Jake climbed on—he wanted to appear confident, though he hadn’t been in a kayak since he was twelve years old, back when his sister was still healthy enough to spend the day on Lake Michigan. Mallory handed Jake his paddle and effortlessly hopped up front.

  Away they went, gliding over the mirror-flat surface of the water. Jake let Mallory set the pace for their paddling and he matched her strokes. She didn’t talk and although there were questions he wanted to ask her, he allowed himself to enjoy the silence. There was some birdsong, the music of their paddles dipping and skimming, and the occasional airplane overhead—people lucky enough to be arriving or, more likely, poor souls headed back to their real lives after an idyllic week or month or summer on Nantucket.

  Jake tried to absorb the natural beauty of the pond—what an escape from the Metro stations and throngs of monument-seeking tourists in DC—but he was distracted by the stalk of Mallory’s neck, the silky peach strings of her bikini top tied in lopsided bows, the faint tan lines on her back left by other bathing suits. Her hair was swept up in a topknot and the color was darker underneath, sun-bleached on the ends. He examined her earlobes, pierced twice on the left, a tiny silver hoop in the second hole.

  Suddenly, she leaned back, her paddle resting against her lap, her face to the sun, eyes closed beneath her Wayfarers.

  “You paddle,” she said. “I’m going to lie here like Cleopatra.”

  Yes, fine, he would paddle her for as long as she wanted. In twenty-four hours, she had become his queen.

  Mallory’s eyes were blue when she gazed into the lobster tank at Sousa’s fish market later that afternoon. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a gray Gettysburg College T-shirt over her bikini. Her hair was in a ponytail; little wisps of hair framed her face. She had
freckles on her nose and cheeks from the sun that afternoon. There was a tiny gap between her two bottom front teeth. Had she ever had braces? Jake knew every single thing about Ursula—they had been together since the eighth grade—but Mallory was a whole new person, undiscovered. Jake would get to know her better than he knew Ursula, he decided then and there. He would pay attention. He would learn her. He would treasure her. He would make a study of her eye color, the tendrils of her hair, the shape of her tanned legs, and the gap between her teeth.

  When Mallory picked out two lobsters, her eyes misted up. The blue in her eyes then was sadness, maybe, or sympathy.

  “You’re going to have to cook those buggers by yourself,” Mallory said. “I don’t have the heart.”

  That night was their first date. Mallory melted two sticks of butter and quartered three lemons. She opened a bottle of champagne that had been in the cottage when she moved in, left by a long-ago houseguest of her aunt and uncle. They ate cross-legged out on the porch while the sun bathed them in a thick honeyed light. Once it was dark, they laid a blanket down in the sand and held hands, faces to the sky. Jake tried to identify the constellations and explain the corresponding mythology. Mallory corrected him.

  She told Jake that her aunt Greta had moved in with a woman after Mallory’s uncle died. This had scandalized everyone in the Blessing family except Mallory.

  How could it possibly matter if Aunt Greta chose to be with a man or a woman? Mallory said. Why wouldn’t everyone who cared about Greta just want her to be happy?

  Jake had responded by telling Mallory about Jessica. I had a twin sister, he said. Jessica. She died of cystic fibrosis when we were thirteen.

  That must have been so difficult for you, Mallory said.

  It was, Jake said. Survivor’s guilt and all that. Cystic fibrosis is genetic. Jessica inherited the genes and I didn’t. He swallowed. She never got angry or made me feel bad about it. She just sort of…accepted it as her albatross.