That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  Hal turned around. “What?”

  Daisy steeled herself. She hadn’t talked to Beatrice yet—her daughter was ignoring her texts, and every phone call she’d made had gone straight to voice mail. “Don’t you think we should hear her side of things, too? To find out what really happened?”

  Hal shook his head. “Whatever happened, Beatrice isn’t judge and jury up there. She vandalized school property, she accused someone, in public, of something he might not have done. And,” he concluded, like he was making a closing argument in court, “she’d already been in trouble.”

  Daisy bent her head. It was true. Even before the incident, Beatrice had ran been on academic probation for cutting classes. Her daughter ran an Etsy shop on which she sold tiny felt replicas of pets for a hundred dollars apiece. She had made it very clear, to her parents and the school’s administrators, that she preferred crafts to academics.

  “Maybe Beatrice just wasn’t a boarding school kind of kid,” Daisy ventured. This was a point she’d made repeatedly when they were deciding whether to send her, a decision that was no decision at all, because, practically from the moment of her birth, Hal had been planning on Bea going to Emlen, which he, and his father, and both of Daisy’s brothers, had attended. “You’ll carry on the family tradition,” he’d said, to which Beatrice had rolled her eyes.

  Hal believed the experience of boarding school would make their daughter strong and independent. Daisy thought that Beatrice was too young to be away from home, and that she’d be going to college soon enough, so why rush her out the door? “And Beatrice doesn’t even want to go,” Daisy argued. She’d tried to explain to her husband the particular tenderness of the fourteen-year-old girl. She remembered being that age and feeling as if she was moving through the world like a snail or a turtle whose shell had been removed: freakish and vulnerable; naked and weird. At least, that was how she’d felt, although she suspected that her daughter was made of sterner stuff. Still, she’d made her case: that girls their daughter’s age were especially susceptible to any insult or injury, that even the smallest slight would wound Beatrice terribly, and that she would carry those hurts with her forever, the way Daisy herself did. But Hal hadn’t listened.

  “It’s not up to Beatrice,” Hal said, in a tone that was pedantic and ever-so-slightly patronizing. “It’s up to us to do what’s best for her.”

  They’d gone around and around, and Hal, as usual, had prevailed. He’d gotten Bea to write an essay through some combination of cajolery and outright bribery, and Daisy suspected that he’d upped his annual gift to the school to an amount that could have ensured the acceptance of a hunk of rock. Beatrice had gotten into the car willingly, had been chatty and even excited on the drive to New Hampshire. But after she’d arrived, her phone calls consisted of one-word answers (“How are your classes?” “Fine.” “Do you like your roommate?” “Sure.”). On her first-semester report card, she’d gotten straight Cs and a dozen unexcused absences.

  Hal continued up the stairs, muttering about how that was the last donation he’d ever be giving Emlen. Daisy waited for the sound of the bedroom door closing before calling her daughter, who finally deigned to pick up. “What happened?” Daisy asked. She wasn’t sure if Beatrice would be angry, or sad, or ashamed. Given the vagaries of fourteen-year-old emotions, any of those, singularly or in combination, wouldn’t have surprised her. But Beatrice sounded calm, even—could it be?—happy.

  “They’ll probably kick me out. You and Dad have to come up here.” She lowered her voice. “The dean wants to talk to you.”

  Daisy said, “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll let you stay?”

  “Probably not!” Beatrice didn’t just sound pleasant, Daisy realized. She actually sounded cheerful. “It’s fine, though. Now I can tell Dad that I tried, but that this isn’t for me.”

  Daisy’s mind sped backward to a memory of her daughter at two and a half, in a tiny pair of denim OshKosh overalls, with a striped pink-and-white T-shirt underneath, determinedly trying to climb the garden stairs, falling on her diapered bottom each time. No, Mumma, I want to do it my OWN self. They’d called her Trixie back then, and Daisy could still see her, on her first day at kindergarten, posing proudly with a backpack that looked as big as she was. She could remember the powdery, milky smell of Bea’s skin when Daisy would kiss her good night; the weight of her as an infant, like a warm, breathing loaf of bread, when she’d finally fall asleep in Daisy’s arms. She could remember, too, getting teary at some Disney movie or another when Beatrice was four or five, and her daughter staring at her curiously, asking why she was crying. “Because it’s sad,” Daisy had said, gesturing toward the screen. Beatrice had patted her mother’s forearm with her plump starfish hand. “Mumma,” she’d said kindly, “those are not real people.”

  Timidly, Beatrice asked, “Is Dad really mad?”

  “He’s just worried about you, honey,” Daisy said. “He wants you to be happy.”

  There’d been a pause. Then Beatrice, sounding cynical and older than her years, had said, “We both know that’s not true.”

  Picture each worry like a gift.

  Daisy began with the biggest one, her daughter. Hal had already decreed that, if they expelled her, Beatrice would attend the Melville School, a private, co-ed institution on the Main Line that had already told Hal they’d be more than happy to take her for the remainder of the year (they’d also been happy, Daisy had noted, to charge them for an entire year’s tuition). Beatrice would probably complain about not going to Lower Merion High, with her middle-school friends, but she’d survive.

  Of course, Beatrice back home meant another three and a half years living with a daughter who behaved as if she despised her. Daisy hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until Beatrice was at Emlen, and there’d been a lovely calm spell, stretches of nights without fights, without wall-rattling slammed doors or screamed “I hate yous!” She and Hal had enjoyed a few quiet dinners, a few peaceful hours together on the sofa. Several of those evenings had even concluded with a pleasant interlude on the king-sized bed. Hal had commented, frequently, on how pleasant things were, how enjoyable, with Beatrice gone, but to Daisy, the silences seemed to echo more loudly than the shouting ever had. The house felt like a museum, and she felt like a trespasser, sneaking around and trying not to trip the alarms.

  Daisy worried about her daughter. She worried about her mom, who’d had two small “cerebral events” the previous year, and had spent six weeks in a rehab facility. Even though her mother’s gentleman friend Arnold Mishkin had promised he’d take care of her, Daisy still had fantasies of opening her front door one morning to find Judy Rosen standing in her driveway, surrounded by suitcases and the Lladró figurines she’d recently started collecting. Of course, her brother Danny would help. Danny lived sixty miles away, in Lambertville, with his husband, in a three-bedroom ranch house with plenty of room, but Judy would insist on staying with Daisy. Daisy was the youngest, and the only girl, which, in Judy’s world order, made Daisy the one responsible for her care.

  In her imagination, Daisy wrapped her mother, and her mother’s figurines. She put them away and moved on to the other worries impatiently waiting their turn, jostling for her attention.

  There was Lester, their elderly beagle/basset hound, whose heart condition was getting worse. Poor Lester, at twelve, had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and was on three different medications, and he seemed to be losing his appetite, and Hal was already making noises about how it might be time for Lester to go to that great dog park in the sky.

  Which brought her, finally, to Hal. Did he still love her? Had he ever loved her? Was he having an affair? Two years ago, there’d been a summer associate of whom he’d spoken almost endlessly, and, at a Christmas party the year before that, Daisy thought she noticed one of the paralegals staring across the punch bowl. The pretty young woman’s gaze had moved from Hal to Daisy back to Hal again, and Daisy could imagine what she was t
hinking: I don’t get it. What could he possibly see in her? At fifty, Hal was handsome, even dashing, his shoulders still broad and his belly still flat, the lines on his long face and the gray in his dark curls only adding to his appeal, whereas Daisy, twelve years younger, just looked short and dumpy and, probably, desperate. If Hal wanted extramarital fun and excitement, he’d have ample opportunity. Daisy tried not to think too much about that, or whether she’d care if she learned that Hal was cheating, or if she’d just feel relieved that someone else was tending to what he used to call my manly needs. She would have asked her best friend, Hannah, her opinion, whether Hal was being faithful and what she, Daisy, should be doing if he wasn’t, except, nine months ago, Hannah had died.

  Daisy rolled from her left side onto her right. She sighed again, and made herself close her eyes. She had met her husband when she was twenty years old, and he was almost thirty-three. Red flag, red flag, red flag, her friends had chanted, all of them certain that there had to be something wrong with a guy Hal’s age who’d never been married, who was interested in a woman almost thirteen years his junior. Hal had clearly been aware of the conventional wisdom, because, on their first date, he’d said, “I should probably tell you how I got to be this old with no wife or kids.”

  “At least you don’t have an ex-wife,” said Daisy.

  Hal hadn’t smiled before clearing his throat. “I was a pretty big drinker, for years.”

  Daisy said, “Oh.” She was thinking about twelve-step programs, about Higher Powers and meetings and sponsors and You’re only as sick as your secrets. She thought, At least he’s telling me now, before I got really interested and, then, Ugh, but I liked him! She’d liked his confidence, and—shallow, but true—she’d liked his looks. Hal was handsome, with olive-tinted skin that stayed tanned even in the winter and emphatic brows, like dark dash marks over his eyes. He had a way of taking up space that felt like a first cousin of arrogance—the result, Daisy assumed, of his age, the money he’d grown up with, and the success he’d already had as a lawyer. He’d come to her door in a tweed sports coat and a tie with a bouquet of flowers for her mom, apricot-colored roses and lilies. He’d held the car door for her, waiting until she was settled before walking around the car and getting behind the wheel. He drove skillfully, and asked Daisy questions, and seemed to actually listen to what she said.

  Daisy had liked that he was older; that he knew who he was, that he already had an advanced degree, a house, a career. A man like that seemed unlikely to announce, the way her roommate’s boyfriend recently had, that he wanted to pursue an MFA in poetry instead of an MBA in finance, or to decide, like one of Daisy’s previous beaus, that he wanted to try sleeping with men in addition to women.

  All of that zipped through her mind as she sat across from Hal in the restaurant she’d picked. Hal must have seen it. Daisy had never been good about keeping her feelings off her face. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, smiling. “My friends didn’t do an intervention. I never went to rehab, and I don’t go to meetings. It wasn’t anything like that. I liked drinking, but I didn’t like who I was when I drank. So I stopped.”

  “Just like that?” Daisy had asked.

  “Just like that. For the last three years, I’ve had a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve, and that’s it.” He made a rueful face, those emphatic eyebrows lifting. “I’m not going to tell you that the first few days, or weeks, were pleasant. But I’d never been an every-single-day drinker. I guess I was lucky. But yes. I just stopped.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you if…” She’d nodded at the sake that he’d ordered for her.

  He shook his head. His voice sounded a little gravelly when he’d said, “I like to see a woman enjoy herself.”

  She’d kissed him that night, made out with him after their next date, slept with him on the date after that. And it had been good. Better than good. The best sex she’d ever had. Not that she’d had a lot of sex. She’d slept with exactly four boys, two of them just once, and Hal had been the first one with whom she’d had an orgasm. At first, when he’d kissed his way down her belly and gently coaxed her thighs apart, she’d been self-conscious and shy, wondering if she should have waxed, or shaved, or washed herself ahead of time, but then he’d pressed his face right against her, breathing her in, his hands tightening on her hips, pulling her closer, like he couldn’t get enough of her. He’d eased her underpants down her legs, and, before she could worry about how she smelled or looked down there, Hal had done something, made some combination of movements with his fingers and his tongue. Daisy had jolted off the bed like she’d been electrified. “Oh,” she’d said. “Oh.” Hal had laughed, low in his throat, and then Daisy had forgotten to worry, or to think about anything at all. When he raised his face, still wet, to hers, Daisy had kissed him, and she’d tasted herself on his mouth. Hal had still been kissing her when he’d rolled on top of her, pushing inside of her in a single stroke, then pulling out slowly, and doing it again, and Daisy had thought, So this is what all the fuss is about.

  When it was over, she’d rested against him, catching her breath, and then she’d gone to the kitchen, determined to woo him, to delight him the way he’d delighted her. She’d cracked an egg into semolina flour, running the dough swiftly through her pasta machine while a pot of salted water came to a boil. She’d cooked the ribbons of pasta perfectly al dente and served them with salt and pepper and good Parmesan and a poached egg resting gently on top. Hal had twirled the first strands around his fork and raised them to his mouth, and from the look on his face she thought she was feeling a version of what she’d felt when he’d done that thing with his tongue. “This is amazing,” he’d told her. “You’re amazing.” Daisy had smiled shyly, wondering how long it would take before they could make love again.

  Six months later, they’d been married. Her college classmates had been shocked, some of them appalled, others just titillated, at the idea of Daisy dropping out of school and getting married so young. Daisy’s mother was unabashedly delighted. “Your father would have been so happy,” Judy had sniffled, before lowering the veil over Daisy’s eyes. “He would have wanted to pay for it, too. He wanted to give you everything.” But Daisy’s father, Jack Rosen, who’d spent his whole life being either flush with cash or close to broke, had died of a heart attack when Daisy was fourteen, at the bottom of one of his slumps. There were no savings. He’d left no life insurance, either, and her brothers, twelve and thirteen years older than she was, were just starting lives of their own.

  Daisy had abandoned her plan of following her brothers to Emlen, which had gone co-ed just three years before. Instead, she’d moved with her mother to a two-bedroom condominium in a not-great part of West Orange, graduating from public high school, taking out loans to attend Rutgers. After Hal had proposed, she’d told him that, while she knew it was traditional for the bride’s family to pay for the wedding, in her case, that wouldn’t be happening. Hal had looked at her tenderly, then pulled out a credit card. “This is yours, for anything you need,” he’d said. “I’m your family now.”

  The wedding had been in a hotel in Center City, a raucous affair that had gone until two in the morning with lots of Hal’s friends from his law firm and college and prep school. There’d been a three-week honeymoon in Hawaii, and then Daisy had moved into Hal’s house, the four-bedroom colonial on the Main Line where he’d grown up, which he’d inherited from his dad, who’d moved into a retirement community after his wife’s death. Vernon Shoemaker had taken almost all of the furniture with him, leaving only a pair of towering oak bookcases in the den and a king-sized box spring and mattress in the bedroom. Other than a pair of folding chairs and a very large TV, the house was empty. Hal told Daisy to keep the credit card and get whatever she wanted.

  Her plan had been to transfer to Temple or Drexel and finish her degree, but she’d spent that first year shopping and decorating, settling in. For their first anniversary Hal had taken her to Paris, and when she’d come hom
e she’d been pregnant. Instead of a college graduate, she’d become a mom.

  Daisy opened her eyes, flipped onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling. I have everything I want, she told herself. A stable marriage—or maybe just a marriage that would stay stable as long as she didn’t ask questions. A smart, creative, accomplished daughter who was, if not happy, then at least healthy. Financial security. A lovely home. A thriving, if small, business, giving lessons to the cooking-challenged. A husband who didn’t yell, and certainly didn’t hit; a man who still seemed to desire her. Why, then, did she sometimes feel lonely or trapped or incompetent?

  It was true that Hal had been moody lately, quiet and brooding for the last six months. Stress at work, fights with Beatrice, and then, right after they’d finally dropped her off at Emlen, one of Hal’s friends had died.

  Daisy remembered everything about the morning she’d learned about Brad. At seven o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Daisy had come downstairs, still yawning after another mostly sleepless night. Hal was in the kitchen, in his running clothes, with a spinach-based smoothie in the blender and his phone in his hand. Daisy knew immediately, from his posture, and the untouched smoothie, that something was wrong. “What is it?” she’d asked, placing her hand on his back, against the slippery, high-tech fabric of his shirt.

  In a faraway voice, he’d said, “Bubs died.”

  “Oh, no!” Brad Burlingham, otherwise known as Bubs, was one of Hal’s group of Emlen buddies, a heavyset, florid-faced man with an endless supply of dirty jokes. Daisy had never liked him, maybe because she only ever saw him at parties, and he was almost always drunk, but he’d been one of Hal’s senior-year roommates. “What happened?” Heart attack, she guessed. The last time she’d seen Bubs he hadn’t looked well. But Hal, still sounding distant, his face still grave and shocked, said, “Suicide,” before setting his phone down gently on the counter and saying, “I need to call the guys.”