The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  Rachel told her about her job in the research department of a television show and how her boss had cut through the red tape of the sperm bank to learn her father’s name.

  Marin swallowed hard. “Did you contact him?”

  “I wanted to contact him. More than anything. But it’s too late.”

  Marin felt her emotional detachment peel away like a shedding skin. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “What do you mean, too late?”

  “He died. A long time ago.”

  Marin, in all of her jumbled and conflicted thoughts on this issue, had not considered that possibility. She nervously ripped at her packet of sugar.

  “I’m…sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah. That’s the bad news. But good news is that his mother, my grandmother, is alive and well and living in Provincetown.”

  “Did you reach out to her? Your grandmother?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t discouraged by your rejection.” She smiled to show Marin she was just teasing. Ugh, why did she have to be cool? It made it harder than Marin had anticipated to blow her off. “And she actually sounded kind of psyched to hear from me. Invited me to stay for as long as I want. She runs a bed-and-breakfast. So that’s where I’m headed.”

  Rachel pulled up a photograph on her phone of a three-story beach house with dusky gray shingles and wraparound terraces.

  “Here’s a view from one of the bedrooms.” A backyard leading to a stretch of sand and a wide expanse of water. Marin could smell the salt air.

  “You should come with me,” Rachel said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “What? Oh—no. I told you, this isn’t even connected to me.”

  Marin didn’t miss the slightly wounded look on Rachel’s face. She wished she’d responded a little less sharply. “I have a lot going on here,” Marin said. “Work—that sort of thing.”

  “Totally. I get it. I don’t know—I thought maybe you’d want to get away.”

  Marin’s phone buzzed. Her mother texting to ask if she wanted red or white wine with dinner. She ignored it, turned off her phone, and shoved it into her bag. “I’m sorry—what were you saying?”

  “Oh, just that I thought maybe you’d want to get away.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Look, I’m not a stalker or anything, but I really didn’t think you’d actually meet with me, and on my way to New York I Googled you again and, um, your…situation came up.”

  Marin pressed her face into the palm of her hand. “The Page Six piece.”

  The overwhelming reality of the mess of her life felt crushing. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out—unloading all this on you. I guess it was selfish of me. I should hit the road.”

  “How are you getting to Provincetown?”

  “I’m renting a car. A six-hour straight shot to Amelia’s.”

  “Amelia?”

  “My grandmother.” She grinned.

  Marin envisioned hours on the road, heading away from the city. Quiet. Anonymity. A cottage by the sea.

  That’s when Marin noticed the packet of sugar in Rachel’s fingers, the way she’d made a row of tiny rips along the base, turning it into fringe. Marin looked at her own yellow wrapper, torn in the exact same pattern. She slid it across the table to Rachel, and their eyes met.

  “Okay,” Marin said, practically a whisper. “I’ll go with you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Blythe juggled the heavy shopping bags from Whole Foods, marveling at the outrageous cost of the produce and kicking herself for not thinking ahead and bringing her own from the garden. She was so scattered lately. But with everything going on, who could blame her?

  When she walked into Marin’s lobby, a doorman scurried out from behind the front desk to help her.

  “Thanks—I’ve got it,” Blythe said. “If you could please just press the elevator button for me.”

  Marin’s building on Eighty-Seventh between Park and Madison was a starkly modern space, opulent in its minimalism. Lots of chrome and white. Blythe would never feel at home walking through the wide revolving door into the cold and impersonal lobby. When Blythe was Marin’s age, she and Kip already had their two-story Colonial that Blythe fell in love with at first sight.

  But there were other aspects of being the young Mrs. Kipton Bishop that she had not embraced with such enthusiasm. For instance, the family country club.

  Blythe had been dating Kip for a month when he first brought her to Philadelphia Racquet and Hunt, where the Bishop family had belonged since the club’s founding in 1897. Kip was unabashed in his reverence for the place; Blythe, walking into the front hall, all dark wood filled with portraits of illustrious past members (all white men), was struck by an inexplicable but immediate sense of alienation. She should have taken to it; like ballet, it was a closed society with its own set of rigid rules and expectations. Except here, it was name and lineage and money that counted, not blood, sweat, and talent.

  She hated golf. And she was young; she had no interest in passing the time playing cards upstairs in the ladies’ lounge. What else was there to do at the club? She wasn’t used to being idle, and how many hours could she lie sunbathing by the Olympic-size swimming pool? And so Kip spent his weekends at the club, and Blythe spent them at home—alone. His long hours at work during the week, she understood. The club, she resented. She felt trapped.

  What a different life her daughter was living. She had her freedom, her independence, but where had that gotten her? In a span of one month she’d lost her fiancé and her job. And from what she was hearing, it didn’t sound like the new man in her life was being very stand-up about the debacle. After all, it was partly his fault.

  Blythe had fought the urge to drive straight up to New York the day Marin called her with the news about her job. Kip had been the one to ultimately talk her out of it, reminding her that Marin was an adult and that whatever was happening was a result of her own choices. But after days of no response to her calls and texts, Blythe couldn’t take it any longer.

  And from the moment she’d walked into the apartment, Blythe knew she’d waited too long. She could tell Marin had lost weight since she’d last seen her, just a week earlier. She looked tired and pale. And when Blythe hugged her, though Marin had never been much of a hugger, not even as a small child, she felt her daughter fold into her arms.

  Blythe had to admit it felt good to be needed. She hated to see her daughter hurting, but at least she could do something about this. At least here she didn’t feel completely out of control—unlike everything with the divorce.

  Kip had her served with papers. He was so businesslike! Her friends told her that enough was enough—she needed to get her own attorney, no matter how generous Kip claimed he would be. Reluctantly, she’d made an appointment for the following week to meet with Patricia Graf, Esquire. “The best,” she’d been told. A “shark in Chanel.”

  Blythe shook the thought away. She would deal with that crisis next week. For now, Marin was the only thing that mattered. She would help her get some perspective on all this and rally. She would start by cooking her a nice meal.

  “Marin?” she called after she’d let herself into the apartment. She dropped two bags on the floor and closed the door behind her.

  No response. Blythe checked the bedroom. Nothing.

  She must have gone out, finally back to the land of the living. Blythe just hoped she’d gotten her text about the wine and hadn’t run off to buy more.

  Blythe smiled, satisfied. She knew coming here was the right thing to do!

  She unpacked the groceries: boneless chicken breasts, Italian bread, olive oil, eggs, butter, lemons, a bunch of kale, kosher salt, anchovy fillets, Worcestershire sauce, garlic. Everything she’d need for Marin’s favorite chicken piccata and a new recipe she was trying out for a kale Caesar salad. She hoped Marin hadn’t returned the food pro
cessor she’d given her last Christmas; she’d need it for the dressing.

  She heard the apartment door open.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Blythe called, closing yet another near-empty cabinet. “I’m just looking for your food processor.”

  The door slammed shut, and Blythe looked up to find Marin was not alone. She had a friend with her, a beautiful young woman with tawny, sun-burnished skin and long wheat-colored hair. The young woman carried a large duffel bag.

  “Oh! I didn’t know you were having company…”

  Marin didn’t say a word to her, instead telling the new arrival that she could just drop her bag in the living room.

  The woman smiled—apologetically?—at Blythe and gave her a small wave. Marin, uncharacteristically rude, made no move to introduce them. Blythe scurried out from behind the kitchen counter. What was going on?

  “I’m Blythe Bishop, Marin’s mother,” she said, holding out her hand. The girl smiled brightly, seeming genuinely happy to meet her.

  “Rachel Moscowitz,” she said.

  “You two know each other from…”

  “Mother, can I speak to you a minute? In my room,” Marin said.

  “So you’re sure I should cancel the rental car?” Rachel said.

  “Yes. We’ll take mine.”

  Blythe refrained from asking the obvious: Where were they going?

  Marin led her mother into her bedroom, closed the door, and scoured the room with her eyes as if she were mentally packing.

  “Where are you going?” Blythe asked, because how could she not?

  “Cape Cod. Provincetown.”

  Blythe swayed on her feet, a deep, primal alarm sweeping through her.

  “Oh?” she managed.

  “Yes. Rachel is going there to meet her father’s family, and I’m going with her.”

  “Going with her? Why?”

  “Well, Mother, because my life is falling apart and I need to get away and this opportunity to do so just fell in my lap and I’m taking it.”

  “Marin, you’re upset—with good reason. But this isn’t the time to run away from things. You should be with family.”

  “Funny you should say that. Rachel is under the impression that we are family—close family. Half sisters, in fact.”

  Blythe’s heart began to pound. Had she really thought Marin’s question from last week would go away? That she could give Marin a cursory denial and no one would ever speak of it again?

  “Is there anything you want to tell me, Mother?”

  She hated the way she was calling her Mother, as if it were a title like colonel or president. Not a term of endearment, not what you called the closest person in the world to you.

  She swallowed hard. “Where is all of this coming from?”

  “I tried talking to you about this at the house. The DNA-testing company. Rachel found me through them. We were matched up by the closeness of our genes.”

  “And she…never knew her father?”

  “Her father was a sperm donor.”

  “A sperm donor?” Blythe said, confused.

  “Yes. Mom, just tell me the truth—did you have a difficult time getting pregnant? Did you have to use a sperm donor?”

  Blythe didn’t know what to say.

  “Mom, you might as well tell me. I’m going to find out. Is Dad my biological father?”

  There were no words, and so Blythe said nothing. Seconds ticked by. She watched Marin’s face flood with color.

  “Answer me. You owe me the truth. Is he my father?”

  Blythe pressed her hand to her chest as if forcing out the word. “No.”

  Marin sank to the floor and sat at Blythe’s feet like she was a toddler again.

  “But does that matter? Marin, this is all a technicality. You’re more like your father than like me!”

  Marin put her head in her hands. “Does Dad know?”

  “No.”

  “What?” Marin looked up at her. “How could you lie about something like this? What were you thinking?”

  “Please, please just let this go. I don’t want this to disrupt your life.”

  “My life? Or your life?”

  Blythe couldn’t bear the way Marin was looking at her, like she was the enemy.

  “Either of our lives. Or your father’s.”

  Marin nodded slowly, wiping away tears and reaching for her bed to pull herself up again. “Well, maybe you should have thought about that when you went behind his back thirty years ago.”

  With a sob, Marin stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Blythe stood unmoving except for the tremble in her legs. As much as she wanted to hide in there forever, she knew she couldn’t—the sooner she went into the living room to salvage the situation, the better.

  She found Marin and Rachel in the kitchen with shot glasses and a bottle of Tito’s vodka. They turned to look at her with identical brown eyes. How had she not noticed before?

  “Marin, please don’t drink. Let’s finish talking.”

  “Just go, Mother. I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”

  “Don’t run away. I’m sorry—I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. But don’t punish me. Don’t shut me out and deal with this by turning to people you barely know.” She glanced at Rachel, who bit her lower lip in a way that mirrored Marin’s habitual nervous gesture. “Rachel, maybe you can go without Marin? Give us some time to—”

  “No!” Marin said angrily. “Rachel is my…sister. And the woman in Provincetown might be a stranger, but she’s also my grandmother. And she wants to meet us.”

  Blythe felt herself start to sway. “What woman?”

  “I found my father’s mother,” Rachel said. “She runs a bed-and-breakfast. She invited me to stay for the week and I told her I was trying to convince Marin and she said the more the merrier. She sounds very cool. So nice.”

  “So you’re not trying to find your…father?”

  “I tried,” Rachel said. “But he’s dead.”

  Blythe reached for the wall, pressed her palm against it. Breathe, she told herself. How could he be dead? How could she not know? But then, how would she?

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she managed. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m hoping my grandmother can tell me more. Tell me a lot of things.”

  Blythe felt a terror like she’d never known. She would lose Marin over this—she knew it. She couldn’t let it happen. The past had caught up with her, and she couldn’t hide anymore. And she certainly couldn’t leave her daughter to meet it alone.

  “I want to go with you,” Blythe said.

  Marin angrily slammed down her shot glass. “Absolutely not.”

  At the same time, Rachel smiled and said, “Awesome.”

  Chapter Ten

  Provincetown

  Amelia watched Kelly fix the final piece of sea glass along the outermost edge of the heavy panel. It was a large piece, commissioned by a client who wanted something “authentic” and “beachy” to display as a centerpiece of her newly acquired, multimillion-dollar home on the East End.

  Amelia Cabral had been creating mosaics for as long as she could remember, but it was Kelly who had turned it into a business. For Amelia, it was a family tradition that evoked fond memories of her childhood summers on the beaches of Provincetown, when her mother had taken her for long morning walks and they collected shells. Her father would give them discarded bits of wood from whatever furniture piece he was working on, and her mother would sand them and then glue them together to make picture frames. Amelia’s job was to artfully arrange the shells and create unique mosaic patterns for the frames. Her mother sold them to tourists for five dollars apiece.

  Like many families four or five generations deep into life in Provincetown, the Cabrals had had to adapt to the decline in the seaport, and they’d made money however and whenever they could. Her mother spoke of picking and selling blueberries when she was a child and, as a
young woman, cleaning rooms at the island’s one small hotel. It was the influx of artists—many of whom would go on to be the greats of their eras (Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, and Norman Mailer had all, at one point, called Provincetown home)—who showed her there were other ways to earn a living. For survival, there had to be. That’s when her mother, inspired by photos of the elaborate artwork in the walkways of Lisbon, began creating her own mosaics.

  Years later, after Amelia had established—and destroyed—a life for herself in Boston, she would remember the other means by which her mother, widowed at a young age, learned to support herself: she began renting out the rooms of their home to the artists flocking to Provincetown. Oh, there had been nothing official about it. It wasn’t a bed-and-breakfast, as they called them nowadays. Word simply spread among the creative community that if you needed a place to sleep and work you could try Renata at 157 Front Street. That had been back in the days when the sea, and not tourism, had been the backbone of the town. Now the same strip was called Commercial Street, and Renata’s informal lodging house was now the Beach Rose Inn, reestablished in 1989.

  Amelia had thought the old house had seen the last of its stories, the last of its transformations. But now, her granddaughters were on their way. Who would have ever imagined?

  “It’s a beauty,” Amelia said, appraising the mosaic from the doorway of the studio. “I’m tempted to buy it out from under that woman.”

  “You can’t afford it, darling,” Kelly said. “But I’m working on something for you next. A surprise.”

  Amelia smiled. “Give me a hint.”

  Kelly shook her head, a sly smile on her face. Amelia felt a pang of guilt. She had a surprise for Kelly as well. And probably not a pleasant one.

  Amelia hesitated, then pulled a chair out from the worktable. She might as well tell her now. No sense waiting until they had guests in the house.

  “I sent a letter to Nadine,” she said.