by Susan Wiggs
“After you,” said Kayla. “Let’s go. It’s freezing out here.”
It was a blustery day on the jagged edge of winter. Daisy went inside to find the downstairs crammed with kids from school. Every surface was covered with open bags of chips, bottles of wine and beer. A giant lobster pot stood on the counter, filled with Everclear punch. Okay, she thought. Sweet oblivion. She guzzled down a few cups of punch, wincing with every gulp. The sweetness failed to mask the sharp bite of the liquor. But it made her feel good, and she moved happily into a group of kids who were dancing in the dimly lit living room. An aroma of pot wafted through the air, the scent an evocative promise of forgetfulness.
Maybe she would smoke some pot later. Maybe she would bum a cigarette from someone.
No, not that. She’d sworn off cigarettes for good last summer. Last summer, with Julian Gastineaux. She had promised him.
It was funny how just thinking about him took her to a better place. She shut her eyes and swayed to the music, and within a few minutes, she was back to the summer, surrounded by warm breezes and majestic views of Camp Kioga.
If not for the renovation project at the summer camp, she and Julian never would have met. He was from a small industrial town east of L.A., while she came from Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Fate was funny that way.
Daisy and Julian had not had a summer romance. A summer romance only lasted for a season. The bond she felt with Julian, even now that he was three thousand miles away, was deeper and stronger than a single summer, stronger than anything she’d ever felt before.
Yet she and Julian had not done anything together all summer except become friends. They hadn’t made out or fooled around, even though they’d both wanted to. Daisy had been too messed up. She needed a friend, not a boyfriend. She didn’t want to blow it with him by turning things physical too soon. He was too important.
Then again, maybe they would never be more than friends. It was entirely likely they’d never see each other again. Still, she cherished what they had been to each other last summer. She was only sorry she couldn’t be with him all the time. He made her know she was special, and maybe more importantly, he made her want to be a better person. More like him, honest and strong and able to deal with whatever the world hurled at him.
She was having trouble keeping her chin up through her parents’ divorce, though. It was hard to be good when you felt so bad.
She finished her punch and decided to switch to white wine instead. A grown-up drink. The kind of stuff people drank when they were getting a divorce.
“Hey there, Daisy-Bell.” A strong arm slid around her waist.
“Hey, yourself,” she said. “Great party, Logan.”
“It is, now that you’re here.” They grinned at one another.
She had known Logan O’Donnell since they were tiny, when she had accidentally bloodied his nose with a tetherball. It was the first time she could remember making someone bleed. She’d felt as though the world was coming to an end, crying louder and harder than Logan himself. She had vowed that day never to hurt anybody ever again.
Through the years, they had known each other with the comfort and familiar ease of old friends. This fall, Logan had started paying a different kind of attention to her. He was in a rare spot for Logan O’Donnell—between girlfriends. He’d been persistent in trying to get Daisy to go out with him. So far she had resisted. Studying him now, she wasn’t sure why.
The last of the wine tasted overly sweet. “You’re cute, you know that?”
“So people tell me. I bet they tell you that, too.”
“I’m a mess. I’d rather be…interesting. Smart. Talented. Or at least, capable of filling out a college application form without feeling as though I’m lying.”
He tightened his arm around her. “Tell me about it. My folks have been nagging me about college since preschool. They want me to go to Columbia or Harvard or a good Jesuit school like Boston College. See? No pressure.”
“Where do you want to go?”
He hugged her against his side. “Wherever life takes me.” Lifting a longnecked bottle, he polished off the last of his beer. Then he took her hand. “Let’s go to the beach.”
She followed him outside. The night was cold, yet the air was sea-scented, a subtle reminder of warmer times.
The beach at Montauk was vast and timeless, a moonscape of whipped-cream dunes rimmed by the occasional erosion fence and tufted by dry grasses. The beach itself flattened out, disappearing into the late-autumn darkness. Tonight the moon was up, its light glinting in the rushing waves, infusing the foamy water with a bluish glow.
Seized by impulse, Daisy kicked off her sneakers and ran down to the breaking surf. “Come on!” she called.
“Right behind you,” he said.
A moment later, they had their pants’ legs rolled up and were knee-deep in the surf. The water actually felt warm in contrast to the air.
Daisy flung out her arms and offered up a wordless yell. Logan joined his voice to hers, and they ended up laughing until they were weak. She collapsed against his chest. “Hope we didn’t wake the neighbors.”
“Nobody’s home, not at this time of year.”
Indeed, the other houses had only security lights on. The O’Donnell place was ablaze with noise and light. A gut-level thunder of bass pulsed from the stereo. Through the windows, she could see little toy people bobbing around as they danced or talked.
“It’s exactly what I needed,” she said.
“Me, too,” he said, then laughed. “So why are we outside, in the cold, getting soaking wet?”
“Because you’re out of your gourd.”
“And drunk.”
“That, too.” She gave his hand a tug and led him to dry sand, where they had a seat together, facing out at the moonlit sea.
“I wish I had my camera,” she said. “I’d take a special picture of this night.”
“All your pictures are special,” Logan said. “Didn’t you, like, get offered some big prize for photography?”
She nodded. “The Saloutos Photographic Arts Award last September. In the nature category.” She’d entered a shot of Willow Lake at sunrise, one she’d taken last summer. She’d awakened at dawn on a clear day to do a series of sunrise shots. The winning picture had captured a moment when a loon was taking off toward the sky. A chain of water droplets streamed out behind, making the bird appear tethered to the lake by a slender golden thread that shone with a metallic gleam. The thin sweep of amber-tinged clouds created a dramatic backdrop. On hearing that she’d won, she had rushed home to tell her parents, only to find them locked in yet another argument about the same stuff they’d been fighting about forever. It hadn’t seemed fair to tout her success at that moment, and her triumph deflated. She hadn’t said anything, but put the news on her Facebook page.
“Maybe you can come out here again and bring your camera,” Logan suggested.
“Maybe you’ll be my model.” She framed him with her hands. “You’ve got that Ralph Lauren vibe going on.”
“Right. Let me show you a little leg.” He peeled back his damp jeans and flexed his leg, burlesque style.
“What’s that scar?” she asked, lowering her hands. The moonlight glinted off a thick zipperlike scar that curved around his knee.
“Old war wound,” he said with a chuckle.
“Seriously.”
“It’s from when I blew out my knee playing soccer. My dad didn’t realize how bad it was and there was a title at stake, so he told me to keep playing. Which, like an idiot, I did, until my knee was so trashed they had to do this big procedure on me, replacing all kinds of stuff in there. We won the tournament, though, so that’s something.”
“My God,” she said, outraged. “I can’t believe parents sometimes. The stuff they make us do, I swear…if I ever have kids, I am not going to be like that.”
“My old man didn’t mean anything by it.” Logan’s tone was conciliatory. “And hey,
the whole ordeal introduced me to my new friend, Oxy.” He leaned back and dug a prescription pill bottle out of his pocket. “Ever try one of these? Here, give this a shot.”
All the right words popped into her mind: Dangerous. Illegal. Addictive. But the word she spoke was, “Okay.” She popped the pill into her mouth, telling herself adults always overstated the danger of things.
“What am I supposed to feel?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing sounds good to me.”
“It’s, like, a vacation for the mind. You’ll see.”
“Speaking of vacation…” She jumped up and peeled off her sweater, shirt and jeans, flinging them to the sand. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” she yelled, and raced into the surf. The water felt wonderful, a warm liquid embrace.
Logan followed, wearing only his boxers. “You’re crazy,” he said, putting his arms around her. “Crazy Daisy.”
“This is not going to work,” she warned him, even as she leaned in, pressing her hands to his chest. “You and me, I mean. It’s not going to work.”
“We’ll make it work.”
And that was the night they made Charlie. Actually, it could have happened on any of several occasions. They did little else. They were into each other and they were careless, and the sex helped them escape their own lives. Neither thought about the fact that there would be permanent and irrevocable ramifications. Both of them believed—if they thought about it at all—their relationship was only temporary.
Sixteen
“We’re sorry, Ms. Bellamy,” said Mr. Jamieson, the director of the MoMA Emerging Artists program. “We won’t be featuring your work this year. The competition was very, very fierce.” He slid the packet of application materials and the portfolio of originals across the desk to Daisy.
Seated in the bright, cluttered office in midtown Manhattan, she tried to maintain her dignity. She’d known this was coming; the bad news had arrived via email the day before. Still, all the way down to Manhattan on the train, she had entertained a fantasy that the editorial board would change its mind. We’ve made a terrible mistake in judgment, they would say. There’s no way we can conduct this year’s show without your work.
She should have deleted the email and carried on. Instead, she’d decided to come and collect her portfolio in person and spend the day with Sonnet. She’d tried sharing her disappointment with Logan, but he simply didn’t understand. “No big deal,” he’d said. “Move on.”
“Ms. Bellamy?” The director spoke kindly, drawing her back to the present. The sounds of Manhattan—honks, shouts, whistles, sirens—filled the air outside.
“I understand,” she said, taking care to appear cool and professional. “I’m grateful for your consideration.”
“You have many fans here, and you have ever since your original submission a few years back. It was a tough decision. You’re very close.”
Good to know, she mused. Close.
“I hope you’ll submit again for next year’s show. Persistence pays. It’s trite, I know. In your case, it’s true. Many of the artists accepted have gone through the submissions process multiple times.”
“I’ll certainly keep that in mind.” Rejection was part of the process, Daisy told herself. She’d always known that. From her first Kodak Kids prize in the third grade, she’d been keenly aware that when you made art and put it out there, people judged you, and it was completely subjective.
Her entry had been a shot she’d taken of her friend’s tabby cat, perfectly silhouetted on the windowsill, its tail a question mark echoed by the shape of a tree branch outside the window. It had placed second, and one judge had noted that many people were allergic to animals. The best shot in the world of a cat wasn’t going to impress someone who didn’t like cats.
“On a personal note, I want you to know, I’m one of those fans,” said Mr. Jamieson. “I’ve seen quite a lot of growth in your work from the previous submission to this one. This portfolio is more mature, and the point of view is stronger. It’s a good deal darker in tone.”
Losing the love of your life will do that to a girl, she thought.
She met Sonnet by the UN, and they headed downtown on the subway for lunch in Chinatown.
“They’re nuts,” said Sonnet, when Daisy told her the results of this year’s jury. “Completely batty. They ought to be begging you for material.”
“Thanks,” Daisy said. “I’m not going to let myself get depressed.”
“Good for you. Next year’s coming up before you know it.”
Daisy tried not to think about all the hours and hours of work and focus and concentration it was going to take to put together another portfolio. Many people believed taking pictures was a matter of point and shoot. They didn’t consider what it was like to wait in the freezing cold for the light to reach a certain quality, or to spend hours laboring over an image to elevate it into an expression of her art.
“I’ll be okay,” Daisy said. “Tell me something good. How’s work? How’s life?”
“Work is amazing,” Sonnet said, and her face was filled with light. “Work is my life.”
“Try to remember to have both, okay?”
“Easier said than done. My hours are insane and I never know what’s happening next. I’ve made some great friends at work, and we go out when we can.”
“Anybody special?”
“Oh, don’t get me started on guys.”
“I figured you’d be meeting all kinds of cool, exotic foreign guys at the UN.”
Sonnet stabbed her fork at a kalamata olive. “I’m meeting them all the time. I don’t know about ‘exotic,’ though. I’m still looking. I went out with a Finn who was gorgeous, but he was all over me after one drink. It did give me a chance to practice my self-defense skills and I’m happy to report that they work quite well.”
“Really? Did you make a scene?”
“No. I have to watch myself, because of the job. My duties require me to ‘demonstrate integrity by modeling the UN values and ethical standards,’” she recited. “Anyway, he was too embarrassed and he walked away. A good outcome. Oh, and then I went out with this guy from Ghana but he had issues.”
“What kind of issues?”
“OCD, I think. He was constantly cleaning his hands with disinfectant gel and knocking his fists on the table. And a guy from the Latvian delegation asked me out, but he looks like a troll and drinks like a fish. Where the hell are all the normal guys?”
“In fairy tales. Disney cartoons.”
Sonnet heaved a sigh. “Exactly. There’s a reason Disney’s Tarzan is my favorite movie. So how about you? How’s the dating going?”
“Surprisingly well.”
Sonnet leaned forward. “Really? That’s great. Anyone special?”
Daisy hesitated. “Actually, yes. I’m seeing Logan.”
“Logan O’Donnell? Get out.”
Sonnet had been in the loop from the start, ever since they were teenagers. She had seen Daisy arrive in Avalon, still dreaming about her summer with Julian. She’d been one of the first to learn Daisy’s crushing news that she was pregnant. And she had witnessed the fallout from the Logan-versus-Julian smack down. Daisy had sworn after that incident that she was through with them, and probably with men in general. So much for keeping that vow. She’d gotten engaged to one guy and now was dating the other.
“We were set up,” she explained. “By Olivia. She sent us on a blind date and it worked out…really well.”
“How well?”
Daisy flushed and glanced away.
“Thank God,” said Sonnet. “You’re finally getting laid.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“That’s a relief. I was worried you’d never get any action. So how’s it going?”
“Well, it’s…nice. Extremely nice.”
The new relationship with Logan had been an awakening for Daisy. Finally she felt herself shedding the hurt and grief of the past, and when she looked to
the future, the days ahead were colored by hope.
“What’s going to happen?” Sonnet asked.
“I don’t know. We’re being really low-key about it because of Charlie. Don’t want to give him weird mixed signals. Something’s happening, though. And it feels good.”
“Well. I hardly know what to say.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“I’ve always respected Logan. I mean, you guys didn’t exactly travel the standard route to starting a family, but he stepped up and took responsibility, and he’s been a really good dad. I have to say, I’m liking this.” Sonnet polished off her salad.
“Me, too.”
They paid their tab and went for a walk in the city, wandering over to historic Orchard Street for the shops. “I love it here so much,” Daisy said, inhaling the New York smells of exhaust, garbage, coffee and food from the street corner carts. The energetic bustle of pedestrians and the buzz of excitement in the air was such a contrast to the placid serenity of Avalon. There was a sense of things happening here, of life moving forward.
“You should visit more often,” Sonnet said.
“I should. I’ll try to do that.”
They shopped the funky sidewalk markets and boutiques in search of something cheap but perfect. For Sonnet, it was a ruby-red fringed shawl that she said would be ideal for long meetings in the chilly glass-and-steel conference rooms of the UN. And for Daisy, a pair of delicate chandelier earrings that were completely impractical but so pretty she had to have them. At a book stall, Sonnet picked out a volume of Persian poetry, saying she had no time to read a novel or memoir. Daisy selected the latest by Robert Dugoni, her favorite thriller writer. Reading was her way to unwind and go to sleep at night. Perversely, the more disturbing the story, the better she slept.
Although, lately she had a new way of unwinding—making love with Logan and then falling asleep in his arms. Yet she still wasn’t ready to commit to him and didn’t want to confuse Charlie, so they had to sneak around as if they were still teenagers, and Logan had to slip out before dawn. Sometimes she wished he could stay, but she still hadn’t decided what to tell Charlie.
