28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Mal?”

  She rests her head on his chest and he closes his eyes. Three hundred and sixty-two days he has waited to hold her in his arms.

  “I’ve been tired lately,” she says. “Link and I had a tough year. I want him to study and play baseball and be a good kid and he wants to make out with his girlfriend and go to bonfires and get high with his buddies.”

  “I feel your pain,” Jake says.

  “Is Bess giving you a hard time?”

  “Not me.”

  “Ursula?”

  Jake nods. Bess doesn’t have a boyfriend, go to bonfires, or smoke dope. She stays home with her friend Pageant, and the two of them make incendiary posters for the rallies and marches and protests they attend on the weekends to fight for climate change, reproductive rights, transgender rights, immigration rights, gun control, Amnesty International. It’s hard to keep up, and whereas Jake tries to be supportive—he loves that Bess is using her voice—Ursula’s attitude is one of amusement, which comes across as patronizing.

  Off to defend the lesbian cheetahs? Ursula asked recently. Or is today Ugandan dwarves?

  You’re offensive, Bess said. If anyone knew what you were really like, no one would vote for you.

  Bess! Jake said, but she had already slammed out of the condo.

  Ursula tossed it off with a laugh. Let her go, she said. I hated my mother at that age too. It’s natural.

  “What if we went out tonight after dinner?” Jake says. “What if we went to the Chicken Box for old times’ sake?”

  “I’d love to,” Mallory says. “But we can’t. We dodged a bullet, Jake. I thought for sure Ursula would put you on lockdown and I’d be alone this weekend.”

  “She seemed unconcerned,” Jake says. Mallory told him about the whole situation with Leland’s Letter and Ursula calling Cooper. Mallory found it strange that Ursula hadn’t simply confronted Jake, but that’s because Mallory doesn’t understand the architecture of his marriage. Ursula doesn’t deal with the issue head-on partly because she can’t summon the emotional energy and partly because she’s afraid if she pulls the wrong block, the whole Jenga tower will fall. A failing marriage is a death knell in politics; Ursula will maintain at any cost.

  Jake isn’t thrilled that Cooper knows what’s going on, although Cooper covering for them has bought them some freedom. Why not enjoy it? “We’re so old now,” he says. “We won’t know anyone at the Box.”

  “We might, though.”

  “Let’s do something different, then,” he says. “How about if after dinner we take a bottle of wine down to the docks and drink it onboard the Greta? It’ll be nice to be out on the water. We can sit on the bow. No one will see us.”

  Mallory purses her lips. “Mmm, I don’t know about changing up our routine. We do things the way we do them because they work.”

  “No one is going to see us on the bow of your boat, Mal.”

  She huffs. “Fine. But when we’re walking, stay six paces behind me with your hands in your pockets and wear a hat.”

  Jake laughs. “Deal.”

  They park Mallory’s Jeep downtown and walk—Mallory first, Jake following—past the Gazebo, Straight Wharf, and Cru and onto the docks. It’s fun to be out at night among people enjoying the last weekend of summer. Jake is nervous, which only heightens his pleasure; he’s drunk too much wine, probably, and Mallory has a second bottle in her bag. They may have to sleep on the boat and sneak off at the crack of dawn.

  They come to the gatekeeper. Beyond a certain point, it’s boat owners and guests only. There’s a teenager with strawberry-blond hair curling out from beneath his University of Miami hat like lettuce peeking out of a hamburger bun. Jake nearly turns back. Mallory knows every teenager on this island. She’s the English teacher—the best, the most popular. Any one of her students could whip his phone out of his pocket to snap a pic of the dude Miss Blessing is hanging out with and then post it on Snapchat. Someone else would then do face-recognition. First the high school and then the entire island would know that Miss Blessing was seen at the docks at nine o’clock at night with Jake McCloud, husband of Ursula de Gournsey.

  Is he being paranoid? Probably.

  “I’m on the Greta,” Mallory says to the kid. “Slip one oh six.”

  “’Kay,” the teenager says.

  They walk on. Jake feels so relieved that he reaches for Mallory’s hand, and she swats it away, as she should. He grabs her by the shoulders and she elbows him in the ribs. They’re at slip 100. The Greta is three boats ahead on the right. They’re almost in the clear.

  A man and a woman step off one of the huge yachts on the left. The man is big and burly. Mallory and Jake have to move aside so the couple can pass.

  “Evening,” Jake says.

  The man stops. His weight makes the deck boards creak.

  “Mallory?” he says.

  Mallory turns. “Oh!” she cries as though someone goosed her. “Bayer?” She moves tentatively in the man’s direction but then seems to think better of it and offers half a wave. “Hello there. Good to see you.” She has clearly decided against a big reunion with Bayer—talk about an appropriate name; the guy is huge and hairy—and Jake is relieved.

  Onward, he thinks. But he’s aware that the moment hasn’t quite ended. Bayer is staring at them—at Jake now—while the woman, a slim brunette with an armful of gold bangles, is focused on her phone.

  “You,” Bayer says to Jake. “Do I know you?”

  Jake isn’t going to risk looking this guy in the eye, so he checks out the boat the two just came off of: Dee Dee. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure?” Bayer’s voice presses.

  “He always thinks he knows people,” the brunette says. She slips her phone into her bag. When she reaches for Bayer’s hand, her bracelets jingle. “Let’s go, honey. Reservation at nine thirty.”

  Jake says, “Have a good night.”

  “Yes,” Bayer says. “You too.”

  Mallory shoots forward like a nervous three-year-old filly out of the gates at the Derby. She practically runs down the dock to slip 106 and leaps onto the boat like it’s about to sail away. Jake can’t help himself; he laughs.

  Clearly, she’s spooked. She takes a key out of the back pocket of her white capris, unlocks the padlock, and pulls open the door to the cabin. She descends into the dark.

  Jake hears her setting the wine bottle down, then rummaging through a drawer. By the time he’s beside her, she has yanked out the cork.

  “Who was that?”

  “Bayer,” she says. “Bayer Burkhart.” She takes a deep drink straight from the bottle.

  Bayer Burkhart; the name rings a bell. Or is he imagining this? “Who is he?”

  “Somebody that I used to know,” Mallory says. “Wow, that was weird. Freaky, even. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”

  “Do you know who the woman was?”

  “No, but I have a guess.” Mallory goes to the little cabinet for glasses. “When I knew him, he lived in Newport.”

  Newport. Something is definitely familiar about the name and Newport, but Jake can’t quite grasp it.

  “Were you and Bayer Burkhart involved?” Jake asks. He’s suddenly aflame with jealousy.

  “I suppose,” Mallory says. “Briefly. One summer. Though it’s funny—when I was looking at him just now, I couldn’t dredge up one pleasant memory.”

  “Good,” Jake says, and Mallory hands him a glass of wine.

  It’s Sunday night, post–Chinese food, post-movie, post–fortune cookies, post-lovemaking. These are bittersweet hours—the last eight or ten before he heads back to the airport. It feels worse this year, but why?

  Mallory has fallen asleep and Jake resents her for it, though over the years, he knows, he’s usually the one who falls asleep first while she lies awake contemplating the torturous nature of their relationship.

  Mallory is breathing into the soft down of her pillow. The new
mattress is yielding but firm; it feels like it’s made of fondant icing. Jake runs his hands down Mallory’s back. She has such soft skin that he makes it a point to touch her any chance he gets. This time tomorrow he’ll be back in Washington. Bess and Ursula won’t return to DC for another couple of days so he’ll have some time to decompress, shake the sand out of his shoes, get his head back where it needs to be—family, work, raising money for the CFRF. This all sounds fine and it will be fine. The goring pain he feels right now at the thought of leaving Mallory will subside, bit by bit, until at last it’s bearable—and then, in April or May, the dull melancholy that settles like a blanket of dust over his heart will turn, almost instantly, into anticipation.

  There’s moonlight flooding through the window from the pond side, so when Jake’s finger runs across a rough spot on Mallory’s lower back, he squints at it in the ghostly light. A bite, a scrape? A spot of some sort, he sees. He reaches for his reading glasses and his phone and shines a light on it. An irregularly shaped black mark on her back. It looks nefarious, but is it? Jake snaps a picture of it. Is he overstepping his bounds?

  Maybe—but in the morning, he’s going to show her the picture and insist that she get it checked out.

  Summer #25: 2017

  What are we talking about in 2017? What aren’t we talking about? The New England Patriots over the Atlanta Falcons; Moonlight over La La Land; Floyd Mayweather Jr. over Conor McGregor; North Korea; Justin Verlander; Becky with the good hair; Charlottesville; Jeff Bezos; the Tappan Zee Bridge; the Paris Agreement; Steph Curry; avocado toast; CrossFit; Meryl Streep; the eclipse; the Las Vegas shootings; the Women’s March; Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria; #metoo: Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Mario Batali, Louis C.K.; “I want something just like this.”

  Mallory has melanoma. Skin cancer. The words are scary, but she refuses to panic. She has to maintain for Link.

  He has grown six inches in the past year, he has his learner’s permit, and he’s been dating a girl named Nicole DaPra, and by dating, Mallory means that they are Siamese twins. She suspects they’re having sex so she buys a large box of condoms from Amazon (no point having someone see her doing so at the Stop and Shop and starting gossip) and puts them on his dresser while he’s lying in bed, watching some YouTube video on his phone.

  He looks up, sees the box, and says, “I don’t need those, Mom. Nicole is on the pill.”

  Suspicions confirmed, then. Mallory feels herself tearing up even though Link’s comfort in telling Mallory this indicates that she has done a good job parenting. They have an open line of communication on even the most sensitive of topics. It’s a beautiful thing, so why is Mallory crying?

  She slips out of his room without his noticing and stands on the front porch where she can watch the ocean. The ocean has been her counsel for all these years, she realizes. The ocean has been her spouse.

  She says to the ocean: I’m crying because he’s growing up. He and Nicole—a girl I like very much, a girl I love, I couldn’t have picked a sweeter, smarter girl—are sleeping together, which means his childhood is over. I am not his best girl anymore and I never will be again.

  Or maybe she’s wrong. Maybe a mother is always her son’s best girl. She can hope.

  She tells Link about the spot and the diagnosis. She tells him not to worry; they caught it early. Her surgeon, Dr. McCoy, excises the spot and does a sentinel-lymph-node biopsy. The margins are clear; her lymph nodes come back clean. She has a medical oncologist, Dr. Symon, who orders thirty days of radiation at Cape Cod Hospital. That will take care of it, Dr. Symon says.

  The devastating news is that Mallory can’t go back in the sun. She has to cover up; SPF 70 won’t do. She buys four beach umbrellas. She buys wide-brimmed hats, Jackie O. sunglasses. Her skin remains winter pale. She can swim if she wears a surf shirt but even so, she has to hurry back to the shade. The sun is a sniper, it’s the Grim Reaper, and yet she longs for it. She has lived a life free of vices except for Jake, white wine, and…the sun. The sun has been her drug of choice. She is now in rehab, headed for recovery.

  Link and Nicole go to prom together. They are the best-dressed couple; Nicole wears pink satin, a gown that reminds Mallory of the bridesmaid dress she wore to Coop’s second wedding, the night she conceived Link, and Link wears pink seersucker pants and a navy blazer. Mallory takes ten thousand pictures. She stands with Nicole’s mother, Terri, who is a nutritionist at the hospital and a single mother like Mallory; they would probably be friends if Mallory had the energy to start a friendship from scratch.

  She should call Apple and see if she can be lured away from Hugo and the boys to have dinner at Fifty-Six Union—martinis and truffle fries.

  No, Apple is not good at last-minute plans. Mallory should have scheduled this last week, last month.

  She misses Leland.

  Maybe she’ll see if Terri wants to go to dinner. Would that be weird, the two of them out while their kids are at prom?

  Yes, weird.

  Terri turns to Mallory and says, “I have news.”

  Mallory smiles. Nicole’s pregnant? she nearly jokes. But that wouldn’t be funny.

  “Nicole is spending next year abroad, in Ravenna, Italy.”

  Mallory blinks. “She’s in high school.”

  “This is the new thing,” Terri says. “Kids do immersion programs in high school. She’ll live with a family that has other kids—an older daughter, a younger son, a daughter Nicole’s age—and she’ll go to school there. September to June.”

  “Wow,” Mallory says. “That sounds…expanding. I didn’t realize this was happening.”

  “She kept it under wraps in case she didn’t get accepted,” Terri says. “It’s very competitive.”

  “Does Link know?” Mallory asks.

  “Not yet,” Terri says. “She wants to enjoy prom. She thinks he’s going to be upset.”

  “Oh,” Mallory says, thinking, They’re sixteen and dating, not engaged. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  Link is not fine. Link is a soggy mess. Nicole didn’t say a word to him about her plans to spend an entire school year in Italy, and Mallory has to admit, she’s impressed. She thought it was impossible for a modern teenager to keep a secret.

  “She’s not leaving until September,” Mallory says. “That’s over three months away. Things may change between the two of you by then.”

  “Yeah,” Link says. “I’ll love her more.”

  It’s a rare night that he’s home alone. Normally, he and Nicole do all their studying together at either the cottage or Nicole’s house. But tonight, Nicole is at the information session for her program. Mallory made Link’s favorite meal—grilled Greek chicken and pasta with lemon-garlic cream sauce—but he just stares at it.

  “Please eat,” Mallory says.

  “I can’t,” Link says, and then tears drop down the cheeks of her big, strong, handsome son’s face. “I’m going to miss her so much.”

  “Come here,” Mallory says. She abandons dinner and pulls him over to the new sofa, which is so fluffy and comforting, they call it Big Hugs. Mallory remembers all the times they sat on the old sofa, the sturdy, unforgiving green tweed, in front of the fire in the fall, winter, and early spring or in the summertime when all the doors and windows were thrown open and the cross breeze kept them from melting. They read, they watched TV, they talked; when Link was a baby, she nursed him on that sofa, and it was where he liked to sleep when he was home sick from school.

  Mallory sighs. She’s a certified expert in the field of missing the person you love. She can’t let Link know this specifically, but maybe she can impart some wisdom. “I know you’re afraid that Nicole is going to meet a cute Italian boy or that she’s going to learn a language, see art, sit in magnificent churches, and eat incredible meals without you and the fact that she has had those experiences and you haven’t will put distance between you. She’s not only your girlfriend, she’s your best friend. You two have found the purest kind of ro
mantic love, which is young love.” Mallory’s eyes blur with tears. What an emotional year it has been already, and here it is, getting worse. “It will hurt for a while, a few weeks or a month, but in the best-case scenario—and we can only hope for the best—the two of you will find a way of coping with the distance. Or…you’ll decide that the year might pass more easily if you break up. Nicole may want to be free to dive headfirst into her new Italian life, and if that happens, you need to let her go graciously. You have school and sports and me. I’ll be at your disposal if you want to vent your sadness or your anger or your frustration. I’ll also be the first one to understand if, with Nicole gone, you want to date Lauren or Elsa or Asha.”

  “Ew,” Link says. “No.”

  “You’re young,” Mallory says. “And the worst thing about being young is not being able to appreciate that you’re young because you aren’t old enough to know any better.”

  “Mom,” Link says. “I’m going to marry Nicole. Mark my words. We are getting married as soon as we graduate from college.”

  “That’s a solid plan,” Mallory says because she realizes these are the words he needs to hear right now. “But don’t wish your life away. What if you start by enjoying every second of your time with Nicole between now and the day she leaves? Be present. Don’t worry about the what-ifs.”

  Link’s phone starts to buzz. It’s Nicole; she must be finished with her meeting. Link jumps to his feet.

  “Okay, Mom, thanks.” He bends down to kiss Mallory, then answers the phone.

  “Come on over,” he says. “My mom made dinner. Greek chicken. She said she thinks us getting married after college is a solid plan.”

  At the end of July, Mallory realizes she’s going to have the same problem that she had during the summer of baseball: Link doesn’t want to go to Seattle. Not for the month, not even for a ten-day visit, which is what he’s done the past two years. He won’t go to Washington, DC, to see Coop; he won’t go anywhere. He wants to stay on Nantucket and work at Millie’s general store alongside Nicole until she leaves for Italy.