That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Boys will be boys.” Diana had meant to sound teasing and agreeable, but her voice sounded flat and cold. Hal had narrowed his eyes in a way that made her heart briefly stop beating. Vernon, meanwhile, thought she was agreeing with him.

  “That’s it. That’s right. Boys will be boys. Boys have always been boys. And nothing—not political correctness, not all of this ‘Me Too’ stuff, not feminism—none of it will ever change that. It’s their nature.” Having concluded his speech, Vernon went back to attacking his mushroom-free chicken. Hal was still glaring at him, white around the lips, one hand fisted around his fork.

  “And what if it was a girl who’d done what Dad did?” Beatrice asked.

  “A girl wouldn’t,” Vernon said. “That’s my point.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Evelyn. “Some of the girls these days are pretty wild. Just as bad as the boys are, from what I hear.”

  Vernon shook his head. “Everything’s upside down these days. And everyone’s so damn sensitive! Women acting like a man paying her a compliment is some kind of assault. People getting up in arms if you get their pronouns wrong. All these rules about what you can and can’t do in the office. You know,” he said to Beatrice, “that your grandmother Margie was my office gal.”

  “No,” said Beatrice.

  “It’s nonsense,” he said, as he began wiping his plate with a chunk of bread.

  “I disagree,” said Daisy. She’d drawn herself up tall, and her face looked flushed above the same blue necklace she’d worn to New York City, the first time Diana had met her.

  Vernon looked at her sharply. So did Hal. Daisy’s gaze was steady.

  “I don’t think the new rules are bad,” said Daisy. “I mean, obviously, you can’t stop people from being attracted to their coworkers. But sometimes there’s a power differential, and I don’t think it’s wrong to make people aware of that.”

  “You can’t have bosses chasing secretaries around the desk.” Evelyn looked like she was remembering something unpleasant.

  “Hear, hear,” said Judy. Diana wondered how many desks the two of them had been chased around in their day, how much bad behavior they’d had to endure.

  “I’ll bet boys today are afraid to even look at a girl,” Vernon said, shaking his head. His jowls wobbled, but his comb-over remained motionless.

  “Poor boys,” Diana said. She said it very softly, but Hal, who’d been looking at his plate, jerked his head up. For a long, silent moment, their eyes met across the table. Diana forced herself to hold his gaze, even though she wanted desperately to get up from the table and run. I see you, she thought… and imagined that she could hear Hal saying, I see you, too. She was going to ask him something, to poke at him again, but Beatrice got there first.

  “Dad, what do you think?” she asked.

  Diana could see red spots, high on Hal’s cheeks. His voice was tight. “Do I think that some of the women are making mountains out of molehills? Yes.”

  “Damn right,” Vernon muttered.

  “Do I think there’s kind of a one-size-fits-all mentality to the punishment, where a guy who hits on a subordinate is treated the exact same way a violent rapist is treated?” Hal continued doggedly. “Yes. Do I think there should be some way for men to make amends and rejoin polite society? Yes. And on the whole…” He looked around the table, his gaze touching on each woman’s face, first Judy’s, then Evelyn’s, then his daughter’s, then his wife’s, before his gaze found its way to Diana. “I think this country is long overdue for a reckoning.”

  “I agree,” said Daisy, getting quickly to her feet. “Now, who’s ready for dessert?”

  * * *

  Diana watched, and waited, hoping there’d be an opening, a moment where Hal was alone. She waited until Vernon and Evelyn departed, and Danny and Jesse were saying that they should be going home, too; that Danny had the early shift at the soup kitchen in the morning. Now or never, she thought.

  “Hal, can I ask you a question?”

  He looked at her. “Of course,” he said, his voice cool and polite. His shirt still looked perfectly pressed, not a hair on his head disarranged.

  “And Danny, you too.” Danny’s eyes were very wide, and his sweater had come untucked. “It’s a question about Emlen. You’re both Emlen men, right?”

  Diana led the men as far away from the group as she could, to the very edge of the room. She could hear Daisy in the kitchen, the small, domestic sounds of running water, the clink of silverware and the clatter of dishes. Lester the basset hound was standing with his front paws on the dishwasher’s open door, gazing adoringly at his mistress as she scrubbed and rinsed, pausing only to swipe his tongue over each dish placed into the machine. Diana thought about how men made messes and women cleaned them up; how this was the way of the world.

  “What can we do for you?” asked Hal, and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Well,” said Diana. “For starters, you can tell me if you remember me.”

  Danny gave a small, pained noise. Hal just stared.

  “It was a long time ago, right after you’d finished high school. Do you remember a party on the beach? A bonfire?” she asked. She saw Hal’s shoulders stiffen as his eyes narrowed to a squint.

  In a low, impressively level voice, he said, “You need to leave.” His hands were steady, but she saw the way he’d gone white around his lips.

  Diana arched her eyebrow. “You don’t want me in your house? It’s a terrible feeling, isn’t it, having someone where you don’t want them? Acting like your wishes don’t matter?”

  “I’m sorry,” Danny whispered. And then Jesse was there, as if drawn by his husband’s distress, glaring at Diana.

  “Danny?” he said. “Is everything all right here?”

  “Everything’s fine,” said Diana, and smiled, showing her teeth. “Turns out, Danny and Hal and I all knew each other, a long time ago. We were just getting reacquainted.” She could read Hal’s thoughts, evident in the lines of his body, his tensed shoulders and narrowed eyes: I will hurt you. And she smiled even more widely, knowing that he couldn’t. For once, finally, she was the one with the power, the knowledge, the upper hand. His life was an oyster, dropped from a great height onto a rocky shore. Now his shell had been cracked open and the soft, defenseless meat had been exposed. Hal couldn’t protect himself. Not from this. The only question left was how much damage she would do.

  “To be continued. Good night, for now,” she said very softly. “Thank you for having me.” And she leaned forward to gently press a kiss on Hal’s cheek.

  27

  Beatrice

  That night, after the party, the line of light beneath her parents’ door stayed lit for hours. Beatrice could hear their voices in their bedroom, rising and falling in a way that suggested an argument. She lingered in the hallway, hoping to hear what they were saying, but all she could make out once was the sound of her name.

  On Sunday morning, she decided to start a new project. Her dad had left early for his office, saying something about a deposition he needed to review, and her mom had decided to clean out the pantry, which, Beatrice knew, was a task she reserved for moments of greatest unease. Neither one of them seemed to have any inclination to spend time with her, or ask her opinion of Saturday night’s festivities. That was fine with her.

  She began by retrieving one of her frozen mice from way back behind the quarts of chicken and beef stock, where she’d stashed her latest haul. By then, eviscerating a frozen mouse was a matter of minutes, a few quick steps. She picked up her scalpel and sliced down the spine, from the mouse’s shoulder to hips, slipping in her fingertip and gradually, gently, separating the pelt from the flesh. When it was free, she stuffed the skin with the cotton and wire form she’d made, sewed the skin shut, and used straight pins to keep the feet and mouth in place. She snipped the gold clasp off an eight-by-twelve envelope and bent it into a cuff, and used a bit of red silk for a cape. She adjusted her pins to give the mouse’s head
an arrogant tilt, and worked at the wires to pose it, just so. Maybe Diana needed an intern, or a housesitter. Maybe she would just take Beatrice under her wing and introduce her to her famous, stylish friends, and teach Beatrice all her secrets, so that Beatrice could grow up and be just like her, glamorous and confident and unbothered and brave.

  She left her art to dry overnight and turned to her homework: a problem set for math class, two chapters of history to read, and an English essay to rewrite. For dinner, her mother served leftover chicken, with a fresh loaf of sourdough bread. Her father was still at the office, and when the meal concluded, her mom didn’t ask Beatrice to play Scrabble with her, or at least sit in the den and watch TV. She just trudged off to her bedroom. Which gave Beatrice the perfect opportunity to color her hair, a silvery lavender that she was quite pleased with in the end.

  On Monday morning, Beatrice was on her way to homeroom when Cade Langley called her name.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I can’t be tardy.” Beatrice had barely spoken to Cade since their trip to the Mütter Museum. After he’d brought her back to school she’d gone to English class and, from there, straight to the office, where the high-school dean asked where she’d been, then called her mom and dad. Since then, Cade and his friends had been ignoring her in the cafeteria, and Cade had barely even looked at her in class, or when they’d passed in the halls. And, of course, her parents had taken her phone away, so she had no way of getting in touch with him.

  Cade took her hand and pulled her into a dark nook under the staircase. Beatrice could hear the pounding of feet overhead as kids made their way to class.

  Beatrice waited. Cade didn’t say anything.

  “Hey,” she said, “I really need to go to class.”

  Cade reached into his backpack and pulled out a small, wrapped package, a light rectangle that felt like a book. “I got you a present.”

  She looked at him curiously.

  “Open it.”

  Shrugging, she ripped the paper and saw a copy of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. “Ooh!” She already had a copy, but figured everyone could use a spare. Opening the book at random, she read, “M is for Maud who was swept out to sea. N is for Neville who died of ennui.” She closed it and looked up at Cade.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Cade fidgeted, putting his hands in his pockets, then taking them out. His cheeks looked especially red, like he’d been running, or outside in the wind. “I thought you’d like it. It made me think of you.”

  “Because it’s dark and weird?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay,” said Beatrice. “So what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You ignore me for a week, and then you give me a present. I’m confused.”

  Cade made an agonized sound, and practically groaned the words, “I like you!” Then he grabbed his hair in both hands and pulled, as if the confession made his head hurt.

  “I feel,” said Beatrice, “like I’m missing something here.”

  Cade gave another pained noise. Without meeting her eyes, he said, “I need to tell you something, but you can’t be mad.”

  Beatrice raised her eyebrows, up toward her newly purple bangs. “I can be anything I want. Remember?”

  Cade squeezed his eyes shut. “Right,” he muttered. “Okay. So. Um. At first—when I asked you to sit with us at lunch—that was, uh, not entirely sincere.”

  Beatrice waited.

  “They dared me to do it,” Cade said, with his eyes still shut.

  She wasn’t surprised. Still, she felt the icy, electric shock of shame crawl over her skin. “Who did?”

  “Ian and Ezra. They thought it would be funny, because you’re…” He made a formless gesture with his hands, something that Beatrice guessed was meant to communicate weird or strange or even just purple hair.

  “That’s why you asked me to go with you last week.” Beatrice felt like she was watching this happen to someone else, some other girl, the spunky heroine of the kind of movie her mother liked, who’d get her heart broken halfway through and find true love in the end.

  “Yeah,” said Cade. He gave a noisy sigh. “They said they’d pay me a hundred bucks if I spent the day with you. And more, if we…” His voice trailed off. Which was a good thing. Beatrice was wearing her Doc Martens. If she decided to kick him, it would hurt. “But I like you.” Cade’s voice was pained, and when he opened his eyes and looked at her, his expression seemed sincere. He took her hand. “Can I call you?”

  Beatrice gave him a long look. Then she pulled her hand away.

  “How many other girls have you guys done this to?”

  “What?”

  “You and Ezra and Ian. Is this, like, a regular thing? Like, choose some weirdo and bet each other a hundred bucks to take her out, or kiss her?”

  Cade squirmed and finally muttered, “We don’t do it a lot.”

  “Why, though? Why would you do it at all?”

  He wriggled around, tugging at his hair, looking like he was trying to climb out of his skin. Beatrice did not relent.

  “Why would you hurt people who haven’t done anything to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

  Beatrice could feel herself getting angry, a heated flush rising from the pit of her stomach up over her chest and her neck. “Well. Thank you for the gift. Thank you for telling me the truth.” She turned on her heel. Cade grabbed her shoulder.

  “Beatrice…”

  “Just leave me alone, okay?” She found that she was almost crying, and it made her even more angry and ashamed. Angry at him, for what he’d done; ashamed of herself, for being susceptible to his charms.

  “Wait!” Cade pulled her back into the alcove, looking a question into her eyes. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t pull away as he bent down and pressed his lips against hers. For a few seconds, just long enough to think What’s all the fuss about?, she felt nothing. Then he cupped the back of her neck, and her mouth opened, seemingly on its own. His tongue touched hers, then slid into her mouth, a shockingly intimate invasion. Beatrice’s arms found their way around his shoulders, and she found her hips tilting toward him like she’d been magnetized. Oh, she thought. Oh.

  Cade let her go. His pupils looked very dark; his lips looked slightly swollen. “Sorry—I—was that okay?” His voice was hoarse, and when Beatrice thought, I made him sound that way, she felt pleasure wash through her.

  She tried to sound nonchalant as she smoothed her hair. “It wasn’t terrible.”

  He smiled at her, looking grateful.

  “Does this mean you’re my boyfriend?” Beatrice asked sweetly, and she almost laughed out loud when she saw the expressions moving across his face—panic, terror, grim resignation, then something that looked like Cade’s idea of nobility and courage. “Or are we only going to do this when no one can see?”

  His throat jerked as he swallowed. She gave him a few seconds to say something. Anything. When he didn’t, she said, “Come find me when you figure it out,” and walked off toward her first class, not knowing how to feel.

  At lunchtime, she took her food outside and sat on a bench, waiting for him to come find her. She felt like her body had turned into a lighthouse, flashing out his name. She touched her lips, remembering, in spite of herself, the speech her mom had given her, about how powerful sex was, about how it was hard not to give your heart to someone who’d already had access to your body. If this was how a single kiss could make her feel, what would actual intercourse do to her poor heart?

  She waited, thinking that Cade had to be feeling some version of what she was experiencing, that he wanted to see her as much as she wanted to see him. All through lunch, and the rest of the day, Beatrice waited for him to approach her again, to hand her a note, to pull her back into the alcove and kiss her again. But he never came.

  28

  Dai
sy

  Who?” asked the doorman.

  “Diana Starling,” Daisy said, and shifted the container of coq au vin from her left arm to her right, feelings its contents shift and slosh.

  The doorman—a man Daisy hadn’t seen on any of her previous visits—shook his head. “Nobody here by that name.”

  “It’s apartment 1402,” said Daisy. She hadn’t made plans to see Diana, but she’d been in the city to pick up a lamp she’d had rewired, and had impulsively decided to drop off some of the leftover chicken, which was actually better the day after it was cooked.

  “Apartment 1402,” she repeated. The man shook his head. “I’ve been there with her.”

  Speaking slowly and loudly, as if Daisy didn’t understand English, the man said, “1402 is the model apartment. Nobody lives there. We keep it to show renters.”

  Daisy felt herself staring. “She’s a consultant for Quaker Pharmaceuticals. She told me they rent the place. Can you check again? Maybe I’m confused.”

  “Look,” said the doorman. He beckoned Daisy around the desk and pointed to his laptop screen. “This is the directory of every single person who lives at 15 Rittenhouse. There are two companies that keep units for long-term stays, but Quaker isn’t one of them.”

  Daisy scanned the list of names. No Diana Starling. In fact, no Dianas at all.

  “Maybe it’s a different building?” the doorman said. “There’s a lot of apartment buildings around here, and a lot of them have lobbies that look alike.”

  Daisy thanked him. She left the building with her chicken still under her arm, feeling baffled. After two laps around the perimeter of Rittenhouse Square Park, dodging joggers and strollers, she landed on a plan.

  The Center City office for Quaker Pharmaceuticals was on Market Street, two blocks west of Hal’s office. Not that she had any intention of going there. There’s something wrong with that woman, Hal had told her, the night after the party. Daisy had to admit that Diana’s behavior had been a little strange, her remarks abrupt and her expressions hard to read. She’d also left without saying goodbye. “What?” Daisy had asked. “What’s wrong with her? Tell me what!” Hal hadn’t. “Just listen to me,” he’d said, and Daisy hadn’t answered, but she’d thought, I’ve listened to you without thinking for too long, and she’d barely said another word to Hal since then.