The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

  Gus would pick her up at the monument in the latest junk car Alvaro had provided, and they’d drive to Loop Street. They banged the door behind them every day, rarely making it to the bedroom in the empty house before they were kissing, tearing at each other’s clothes.

  Once, lying on Gus’s bed, she asked him if he thought anyone else had ever experienced what they had.

  “No one in the world,” he said, pulling her closer. “This right here? This belongs only to me and you.”

  Sometimes Hallie wanted to tell him about the October night when Asa Quebrada had flown away for good, about the strange song she had heard in her sleep, or the way she had stood at the edge of the roof and cried for something she didn’t understand. But after the day in the cemetery, Gus never spoke of the past again so she kept her secret to herself.

  Hallie had never liked football before, but that year she attended every game Nauset played. The night games were the best. Everything she loved about Gus was there beneath the lights, the sheen of his black hair, the grace of his movements and the ferocity that reminded her of the way he pulled her toward him in his room.

  Neil dated Melissa Perreira for most of the year, but he always went to the football games with Hallie. “She talks too much during the games,” he explained. “I want to watch.”

  Neil liked to sit apart from their boisterous friends, and sip rum and Coke from a Thermos, waiting for the inevitable moment when Voodoo took control of the field. Sometimes Neil was so tense and focused—almost reverent—during the games that Hallie wished she had stayed below with Daisy and Felicia. But usually she was happy to be at the top of the bleachers, where nothing impeded her view.

  At the beginning of the season, she hoped Gus might look for her between plays, but he never did. Only at the end of the game would he lift his face in her direction and zip her a smile, a triumphant fist in the air. In that moment, it felt like her victory—even when the team had lost. She and Neil would leap to their feet and respond in kind.

  “Do you have any idea how much I would give to do what he did tonight?” Neil said, after a game in which Gus had run for three touchdowns, one in the final minute. “The kid is a god out there.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re the one who’s going to be famous someday.”

  For a moment, though, it seemed as if Neil hadn’t heard her. He was focused on the celebration under the lights. “Don’t you get it? It’s not the game. It’s who he is. I could win six Academy Awards and I’d never have that.”

  Eager to join Gus, Hallie reached for her jacket. “You’re not making any sense, Gallagher. Gus doesn’t even care about awards or stuff like that.”

  But Neil was fired up, the way he was when he was onstage or narrating a story to their friends. “Come on, Hal. You can’t tell me you don’t see it. It’s what made you fall in love with him. What turns people like me into loyal lapdogs for life, willing to do almost anything for him. Whether it’s voodoo or that thing my director calls presence, it’s fucking magic. And you’re right. It means nothing to him.”

  Hallie picked up his Thermos and shook it. “Aha. I was wondering what got into you tonight. You drank this whole thing and didn’t even offer me any? Come on, take my arm before you break your neck.”

  At first, Neil protested, but then he laughed and allowed her to help him down the bleachers. “Maybe I did have a little too much, huh?”

  On Saturday nights, she and Gus drove around with Melissa and Neil in Neil’s Jeep, looking for a party. At some point, they always ended up at the beach. Freshman year, Gus had begun the habit of taking a short swim every day, no matter what the season; and when the temperature rose over sixty, he convinced his friends to join him.

  “You want to freeze your asses off, fine, but swim in the goddamn daylight,” Uncle Manny said angrily one evening when he’d caught them sneaking towels out of the closet. They all knew he was remembering what had happened to Junior.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Barretto,” Neil finally said, slinging his arm over his friend’s shoulder. “We only go in the water when there’s a bright moon, and Gus here is never out of my sight.”

  Manny walked away, mumbling that it would kill Fatima to go through that again. “Do you hear me? It would kill her.”

  Gus didn’t say anything, but he was strangely quiet for the rest of the night.

  Later, on West End Beach, after their swim, Neil tried to dispel the mood. “You know why people like your aunt and uncle get old? It’s fear.” The two couples had dressed quickly after their dip and were sitting on an overturned scull at the water’s edge.

  “Cell death might have something to do with it, too,” Hallie said, shaking as she nestled closer to Gus.

  Neil jumped up and climbed on top of another small boat. “And what do you think makes cells die? Honestly, think about it. Ever see those worry lines parents get in their foreheads? That’s the start of it . . . Don’t drive too fast. Watch out for riptides. Ooh . . . I hear there’s sharks off the coast of the Vineyard. How old is that shrimp, anyway? Might get food poisoning . . .” His voice rose with every warning. “Well, I’m not buying it. I think that if you never give in to fear, you just might live forever.”

  “Or at least till the shark off the coast has you for lunch,” Hallie said. But feeling Gus’s arm around her, a salty breeze on her face, she almost believed Neil was right.

  All her life, she’d been afraid of growing up and leaving her father, but as the spring of senior year approached, Hallie rarely thought of Nick at all. She kissed him carelessly on the cheek or on the top of his head as she rushed in and out of the house—always on the way to somewhere else. His love, which frequently took the form of a question, was almost an irritant. Where are you going? When will you be in? Who’s driving? And the most dreaded of all: When are you going to make a decision about college?

  Sometime in March, just after Neil sent his confirmation to NYU’s theater department, Gus and Hallie brought their college acceptance letters to the beach and read them out loud by the light of a bonfire. Then they folded them all back into the envelopes and talked about what they really wanted.

  It was crazy! Plain stupid! was what Felicia and Daisy said when Hallie told them about their plan. Daisy had been accepted to Cornell, and Felicia was going to Salem State if her father could come up with the money. No one throws away college and their future for a guy. Not in 1986! And if Gus’s family cared enough to notice, they wouldn’t allow it, either. Everyone knew he was a lackadaisical student, but he’d been offered several football scholarships. Does he think these opportunities will come again?

  “If I wanted to hear this lecture, I could have stayed home,” Hallie told them. “College is all Nick talks about.”

  On a quiet Tuesday, Neil spotted Hallie reading in the window seat, and stopped in. Though he tried to act nonchalant, they both knew he’d been looking for her.

  “Have you reconsidered?” he asked, picking up the pile of acceptance letters that lay beside her on the cushion. He held on to them as he sat in the window opposite her.

  “Not a chance.” Hallie slammed her book shut.

  Neil flipped through the letters, summing them up with a whistling sound. “Personally, I vote for Columbia. Think about it, Hal. We’d both be in the city, and if you and Gus are still together, he could come down on weekends.”

  “If Gus and I are still together?” Hallie seized the letters and slapped Neil’s hand with them. “Get out of my house, traitor,” she teased.

  “Just testing,” Neil said, putting up his hands in surrender. “Everyone knows you two are going to be married for seventy-seven years and make a bunch of Portagee babies.”

  “Only seventy-seven?”

  Hallie and Gus had decided to give themselves a year in Montana, a place as unlike Provincetown as they could imagine. Just one year, Hallie finally told her father one Friday night over dinner. One year away from everything that had protected and constrained her a
nd Gus from birth, one year far from the wild Atlantic that had defined their families’ fates for generations. Hallie pulled out bank passbooks, maps, and listings for apartments in Missoula to prove that this was no impulsive lark. They had even sent for some local newspapers and circled several possible jobs—one in a medical office for her, a couple of restaurant and deli positions for Gus. “I was also thinking of asking for a deferred acceptance to Columbia.”

  When Nick remained implacable, Hallie quickly reminded him that she was turning eighteen. No one could force her to go to college.

  “I don’t care if you’re a hundred and eighteen. I’m still your father,” Nick said, sounding more like an old world papai than her own famously open-minded father. “Once you get to Montana, you could change your mind. I won’t have you throwing your life away on—”

  “Don’t say it,” Hallie said before she slammed out of the house.

  Nick followed her onto the porch in bare feet. “Or what?”

  “Don’t say it, or I swear, I’ll never forgive you, Nick. Never.” Then, heart hammering, she hopped on her bike and pedaled furiously toward the Point.

  She returned in the dark. Still not ready to confront her father, she leaned her bike against the side of the house and walked through the narrow alleyway to the back garden. She planned to climb the fire escape in the back of the house, but when she passed an open window, she heard the low murmur of Nick’s voice coming from the study. Peering through the window into his study, she saw a familiar sight: her father sharing a drink with Stuart.

  “I love the kid myself,” Nick was saying. “Have since he was a small boy.”

  “Your sweetheart,” Stuart said quietly.

  “Christ, is there anyone in this town who doesn’t know what I said that day?”

  “Not one. This is Provincetown.” Stuart refilled their glasses.

  “It’s just that sometimes I look at him and all I see is goddamn Codfish. I know it’s not fair, and you’re probably the only person on earth I’d admit it to, but I do.”

  “You’re right. It’s not fair, and it’s absolutely beneath you. And, unfortunately, most of us entertain similarly despicable thoughts all the time.”

  “Despicable? Did you just call me despicable in my own house?”

  “Apparently, I did. Impertinent little bastard, aren’t I?” Stuart laughed softly and Hallie heard the ice cubes clinking in their glasses as they paused.

  “But seriously, Nick, you’re fighting a battle that you can’t possibly win. When it comes to deciding between a parent and the kind of love Hallie has for Gus, the choice is heartbreakingly easy. If you don’t believe me, go see my father.” He lowered his voice before he delivered his final punch. “Or maybe you could save yourself a trip and call Liz Cooper’s mother.”

  “Her name was Costa. Elizabeth Costa. And it’s not just about Gus, Stuart. Hallie’s been accepted at Columbia and Dartmouth, not to mention my own alma mater. Is it a crime if I want my daughter to get an education?”

  “Your only crime is underestimating her. Hallie’s going to go to school, Nick—if not this year, then next. She even said she’d request a deferred acceptance. Everything you’ve given her in the past eighteen years, not to mention her own inborn drive—it’s all still there. Isn’t Missoula a college town? Perhaps you could compromise and suggest she take a couple of courses in the fall.”

  Nick merely grunted.

  After Stuart said goodnight and walked through the light on the front porch, Hallie crept out of the alley and hugged him.

  “Dear God, girl, you startled me. What are you doing out here?” And then, taking her two hands, he answered his own question. “Eavesdropping on a private conversation? I’m shocked.”

  “Thanks for what you said in there,” Hallie whispered, glancing toward the window where her father was alone in the study. Not reading. Not listening to music. Just sitting.

  She had never seen him look so lonely. “Do you think he listened?”

  “Nick always listens. That’s what makes him a great diagnostician, and an even finer human being.”

  “So you really think he’ll—”

  “Whoa, there. I said he listened. I didn’t say he agreed with me. The man has his own mind as you well know.”

  “He’s so obsessed with this college thing; he’ll never give in.”

  Stuart took her face in his two hands and kissed her on the forehead. “As I told your father in there, have a little faith, dear. This isn’t an easy time for him, either, you know. Wherever you go, he’s losing his little girl.”

  After Stuart had gone inside, Hallie wandered to the back of the house, where she sat on a fractured cement seawall, hugging her knees as she looked out on the bay.

  A few days later, Nick slapped a course catalogue from the University of Montana on the table. “One year,” he said. “And you have to promise to take at least two courses a semester.”

  “I’ve got the same catalogue in my room,” Hallie said. “If you check it out, you’ll see that I’ve circled organic chemistry and freshman English.”

  When Nick released her from the bone-crushing Costa abraço, they both had tears in their eyes. Hallie quickly turned away.

  That night, she told Nick she was sleeping at Felicia’s, but she and Gus took a sleeping bag and braved the wind off the point. The moon was obscured by clouds, and they could see nothing as they started to kiss. Despite the unseasonable chill, Gus impulsively stripped off his sweatshirt and thermal in one deft move. In the dark, he found the buttons of her jacket and undid them expertly.

  “Gus, we can’t . . . not out here,” she protested. “It’s too cold, and besides, someone might see us.”

  “It’s not, and they won’t. Not tonight. I promise.” He tossed her jacket in the sand, lifted her sweater over her head, and unhooked her bra, letting it fall. When he pulled her against his skin and looked intently into her face, both her shivering and her doubts dissipated. All she felt was his heat. “See? It’s magic. Now do you believe me?” he whispered.

  Hallie unhooked his jeans and then took off her own. “I never believed in anything more.”

  In the absolute darkness, the powerful presence of the surf was magnified. The sand, lifted by a strong gust of wind, stung their skin, but Gus’s promise held: on this night, nothing and no one could reach them. She was astonished by the suppleness of his body as it fitted itself against hers, by its smoothness and strength, by the tenderness that turned ravenous as they wrapped themselves in the sleeping bag and moved against each other.

  “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he said when they were finished. “So . . . incredibly . . . beautiful.”

  “You, too,” Hallie said, nestling into his shoulder. “So . . . incredibly . . . beautiful.”

  Around three, when Gus was in a deep sleep, Hallie slipped out of the sleeping bag and found her clothes. The clouds had lifted and the sky was overcome with stars.

  “Gus, look!” she said, shaking him. “It’s brighter than my church.”

  “I still like your church better,” Gus said, as he roused himself, dressed, and joined her. “That was the first place we kissed.”

  “Wrong. The first place we kissed was on Commercial Street.”

  “I mean really kissed.” Gus grinned at her.

  “The other kiss was real, too.” As if to prove it, Hallie leaned over and grazed her lips with his.

  Gus closed his eyes. “Mmm . . . Honeysuckle.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the street smelled like that day; it was everywhere,” he said. “Did you really think I forgot?”

  Hallie laughed. “Honeysuckle and beach roses. The most amazing fragrance on earth.”

  They’d stayed awake the rest of the night, savoring the surf, the sharp stars, the powerful sense of connection that had begun on the night his mother died. She didn’t understand it then— she still didn’t—but leaning against him, she already knew that nothing in
her life would ever be more real.

  “This just might be the best night of our lives,” she said. Then she remembered that Neil had said something similar the day they were caught in a rainstorm just after he’d told her about Gus’s “crush.”

  “What about the first time we see Glacier National Park?” Gus said, pulling her back to the present as he held her tighter. “Or when our kids are born—little Hallett and the boy we’ll name anything but Gus.”

  They’d tacitly believed all those things would happen, but neither of them had ever spoken about them before. Hallie felt thrilled—and just a little terrified. But before she could respond, Gus turned back into the eighteen-year-old boy he was. “Hell, what about your big prom next week?” he teased. “You really think that a sky full of stars and a sleeping bag are better than that?”

  Hallie kissed him, feeling wistful. “I can’t believe it’s all happening so fast.”

  Chapter 12

  Since Gus could only afford one prom, they had chosen hers in Provincetown. He and Neil had been joking about it for weeks. All that money for what—to march around the gym in a monkey suit?

  “Maybe we should hold the un-prom out on the beach,” Neil had suggested. “The three of us and Reggie.” He and Melissa had broken up three weeks earlier, after he’d vigorously denied cheating on her with Reggie Aluto. When he asked Reggie to the prom, it seemed like a slap at Melissa, and Hallie told him so.

  “We were together for almost a whole year and she takes some stupid rumor over my word? If you ask me, that deserves a slap or two,” Neil blurted out, his color deepening.

  Hallie had been almost physically taken aback by his vindictive tone. She suspected that there was more to it than the breakup. Though he had every reason to be excited about his future, Neil had been increasingly moody as the school year wound down. She was having trouble saying goodbye to friends, too, but it was different for Gus and Neil. Inseparable since they were five, they finished each other’s sentences, played straight man for each other’s jokes, and had rescued and defended each other more times than they could count. Though Gus was the orphan, Neil had always seemed to need him more.