The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  Kelly set down her glue and placed both hands on the table, her shoulders dipping forward.

  “I had to tell her,” Amelia said. “It’s her brother’s children. She has a right to know.”

  Kelly sighed. “Of course. I get it. I’ve never been happy about this situation, Amelia. You don’t have to be apologetic on my account.”

  “Well, she’s been so hurtful.”

  “She’s your daughter. And like you said, she has a right to know. It has little to do with me at this point.”

  “I asked her to come here.”

  Kelly looked startled. “Did you hear back from her?”

  Amelia shook her head.

  “Okay, well—I just don’t want you to set yourself up to be hurt. That’s all I care about.”

  “The only thing that can hurt me right now is the continued silence.”

  Kelly put her arm around her. “You have two granddaughters coming. Granddaughters! Let’s focus on the positive.”

  “I will. I mean, I am. But I also feel like this is my last chance with Nadine.”

  She could see Kelly wrestling with the idea of Nadine showing up, of seeing her again after three decades. After all of the hurt and anger and terrible things said. Yes, Kelly was concerned for her. But she knew that, selfishly, Kelly didn’t want to revisit the past. But Amelia, twenty years Kelly’s senior, didn’t have the luxury of waiting any longer.

  By a miracle of fate, the past was arriving on her doorstep tomorrow. And she would welcome it with open arms.

  Two hundred and ninety miles from New York City. One hundred and seventeen miles from Boston.

  Provincetown might as well have been on the moon.

  Four hours into the drive, Marin was steeped in regret. With her mother and Rachel chattering happily the entire time, you’d never have guessed that (a) they’d just met the night before, and (b) her mother had just been revealed to be the world’s biggest liar.

  But what did Rachel care? She had what she wanted: an instant new family. Oh, why had Marin agreed to go? She’d been caught up in the moment. Or maybe it would have been a decent idea, if her mother hadn’t hijacked it.

  “Get off here,” her mother chirped from the backseat. The sign in front of them read DOWNTOWN NEWPORT.

  “Okay, Blythe!” Rachel sang happily.

  “Recalibrating,” monotoned the GPS.

  “Wait, why are we getting off here? We decided to do this in a straight shot,” Marin said, sitting up in the passenger seat. She knew she should have stayed behind the wheel.

  “Oh—I thought we agreed to have lunch in Newport. The beach is supposed to be really cute,” Rachel said.

  “I never agreed.”

  “Majority rules, Marin,” said her mother.

  It was something her father used to say to quell dissent on family road trips. In the context of this trip, the comment infuriated her. She turned around to the backseat, glaring. “Mother, you invited yourself along on this trip and, frankly, I still don’t understand why. But the least you can do is stay out of things.”

  “You need to get over your anger.”

  “Get over my anger? You’ve been lying to me my entire life!”

  “That’s why I want to be with you…to help you understand—”

  The GPS interrupted in its mechanical voice, “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Goddamn it,” said Marin.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” repeated the GPS. Rachel turned it off.

  “We really do have to eat,” Rachel said, casting a sideways glance at Marin. With the open windows, the breeze fanning her long hair out like a kite, the gold in her hair glimmering in the sun, she looked like an actress in a happy-road-trip movie directed by Nancy Meyers.

  “Fine,” Marin muttered.

  She had to admit, the harbor was pretty, with red-shingled restaurants like the Barking Crab and stores like Egg and Dart on Bowen’s Wharf, and it made Manhattan seem very far away. She exhaled, thinking that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay. But the moment of optimism, a fragile balloon, was punctured by thoughts of Julian.

  Still not a word from him.

  They circled around until Easton’s Beach appeared on their right. The ocean shimmered, turquoise and calm. Marin had had no idea the Atlantic could look like that. The ocean of her childhood, the Jersey Shore, was dark blue or gray, rolling with steady waves. The squawk of a seagull cemented her sense memory of those days, and she felt like crying for the loss of everything she had believed to be true about her life.

  Rachel parked in a wide-open lot, the noonday sun beating down on them.

  “Where are we going?” Marin asked, following her mother and Rachel, who was consulting Yelp.

  “There’s a snack bar on the beach,” Rachel said.

  “A snack bar?”

  “It has four and a half stars. Famous for its lobster roll,” Rachel said, holding up a photo on her phone.

  “Fine,” Marin said, hating how miserable she sounded but unable to switch gears. The sun, the sand, the beautiful day—none of it could cut through the cloud over her heart.

  The snack bar was a long wooden counter in front of an open kitchen. It had a soda-fountain machine, a display of soft pretzels, and popcorn like at a movie theater. A hamburger was $5.25. Marin couldn’t remember the last time she’d paid less than ten or eleven dollars for a burger. Fish sandwiches, clam cakes, crab cakes, hot dogs…even cotton candy. The entire place screamed Fun! Enjoy!

  They all ordered the same thing: the twin lobster rolls with French fries. Only Rachel ordered dessert—churros.

  When their order was ready, lobster rolls placed in paper plates, sodas balanced alongside salty piles of fries, they carried it on trays to a table on the deck.

  “This is the first day it really feels like summer,” Blythe said, smiling and looking around at the panoramic view of the beach.

  “This food tastes like summer,” Rachel said, biting into her lobster roll.

  Marin slumped back in her seat, reached into her handbag and searched for her phone. She had made a deal with herself that she wouldn’t check her e-mail until they had arrived in Provincetown. But this stop in Rhode Island counted—didn’t it?

  She cupped her hand around the screen, shielding it from the sun beating overhead. Updated just now.

  Nothing.

  “Oh my God, Marin!” her mother shrieked.

  A bird was on her tray—a slender seagull. And then the seagull was flying away with her lobster roll.

  “What the fuck…” Marin said.

  In that instant, a second bird swooped in and snagged Marin’s other one.

  Rachel, mouth full, stifling laughter, simply pointed to something behind Marin’s back. She turned. There, propped up against a Coca-Cola vending machine, was a large handwritten sign: Please be careful with your food. We cannot be responsible for it once it has left the counter. Caution: Seagulls will take your food!

  Marin, inexplicably, felt her eyes fill with tears. “I’m not even hungry,” she said.

  “Oh, hon—here. Take one of mine.”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “I knew we shouldn’t have stopped.”

  “Marin wouldn’t eat lobster until she was in college,” Blythe said to Rachel. “When she was little, we used to go to a fancy seafood restaurant in Center City and she would stand by the lobster tank and sob.”

  “Aww!” said Rachel.

  Marin rolled her eyes.

  By the time her mother and Rachel were finished eating, Marin realized she was, in fact, hungry. But for some reason, she couldn’t admit it.

  They piled back into the car.

  Chapter Eleven

  To Blythe, the enormous white wind turbines in the distance were like churning arms, beckoning her. For the past hour, the surrounding scenery of sailboat-dotted waters, narrow bridges, and tree-lined highways had made her feel she was enveloped in a fantasy world. With the sunroof open, the classic-rock station pla
ying songs she remembered from her teen years in the early 1980s (Rachel and Marin refused to believe Bono had once been godlike to girls everywhere), she felt the type of nearly pure joy she’d thought was behind her forever. And the only thing preventing it from being absolute happiness was the palpable misery of her daughter.

  Yes, of course it was all a shock. Was Blythe in the wrong? Completely. But she had to believe that Marin would forgive her eventually. To believe otherwise was unthinkable. Marin said she didn’t understand why Blythe had invited herself along. One of the reasons was that she didn’t want her simmering in her confusion and anger while on a trip with a bunch of strangers.

  The other reason she had insisted on joining the girls on their trip? Frankly, she was curious. This woman, Amelia, was her daughter’s grandmother. It seemed almost impossible that some stranger had such a close connection to her daughter. Of course, logically, she always knew it was so. But it felt no more real than other facts about the universe that she didn’t think about on a day-to-day basis. Now that this person, this grandmother, had been unearthed—well, Blythe had to meet her. What facets of Marin might be evident in this other woman’s face, in her personality?

  And yes, it would also bring her back to the man who was Marin’s biological father. But she would not think of that now.

  She stared at the back of Marin’s head, her glossy dark hair pulled into a careless knot at the nape of her graceful neck. She was checking her phone. Again.

  “Have you heard from Julian?” Blythe asked, knowing she shouldn’t. But this silence from Marin was new and unbearable to her. Shutting her out of the breakup with Greg, the disaster at her office. And now whatever was going on with this new man.

  “Leave it alone, Mother,” she said.

  “What’s his deal?” asked Rachel. Blythe nodded. Yes, you go, Rachel! Ask away. Marin won’t ignore you. She’s too polite.

  Marin sighed, shifting in her seat.

  “We met at work. The firm had a strict no-dating policy—I was his subordinate—and someone found out and we were both asked to resign.”

  “Yeah, I mean—I gathered some of that from the article online. Totally sucks. Does he mind that you’re skipping town in the middle of it?”

  Marin shook her head. “He doesn’t want to talk to me right now.”

  “He doesn’t?” Rachel and Blythe said in unison.

  Marin shot Blythe a look. “No. He needs time to…process it.”

  “That’s a bit selfish, if you ask me,” said Blythe.

  “No one did.”

  “Do you think he blames you?” asked Rachel.

  “I don’t know,” Marin admitted.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Blythe said. Her vehemence startled even herself. But really, to hear Marin speak like that—it was so defeatist. So unlike her. “Your father said the firm overreacted.”

  “Oh, my father said?” Marin replied sharply. “Tell me more about what my father thinks.”

  The comment hung in the air, and a silence followed for what seemed like an endless stretch of driving.

  At nearly three o’clock, seven hours after they’d left New York City, Rachel turned the car onto Commercial Street in Provincetown.

  She smiled. Could this quaint, narrow street brimming with colorful storefronts, buildings no more than three stories high, be as much a part of her as the brassy beauty of Los Angeles? Yes. Yes, it was. She felt it.

  People were walking everywhere, spilling off the sidewalks, flanking her slowly moving car in couples and groups, a few bikes rolling by, announcing their presence with tinkling bells. Up ahead, a pedicab. Inching along, she drove half a block. To her left, Cabot’s Candy. Her right, a small art gallery. Inch by inch. They passed the large, red-brick post office. The white clapboard library. A café called Heaven.

  “Oh, it’s so lovely!” Blythe said.

  It was—it really was.

  She felt bad that Marin wasn’t enjoying the trip. Yes, her mother had lied to her, and it had to be upsetting. But Blythe seemed like a pretty amazing mom. Rachel couldn’t imagine having grown up with a mother like that. With Fran, everything was “me, me, me.” With Blythe, it was all about Marin. Just the way she looked at her, so adoringly. She cared about what was going on with Marin and her boyfriend. She came along for their trip! Fran was probably off in Ojai or Joshua Tree again, and who knew when Rachel would hear from her.

  She glanced beside her at Marin, who was staring out the window.

  “What do you think?” Rachel said. “Cool, right?”

  “I can’t believe that car in front of us is just stopped in the middle of the road like that.”

  Yes, the car in front of her, a red Jeep, was practically parked while the driver chitchatted with a guy on a bike and his friend, who was leaning into the car’s window. This would be unthinkable in LA, the cause of much honking and yelling. But something told Rachel this was just business as usual in Provincetown.

  When the Jeep resumed moving, Rachel made it another block. There, on the left, loomed the three-story gray-shingled Georgian house with a wraparound veranda, red-brick steps, and terraces framed in white fencing. A hanging distressed-wood sign read BEACH ROSE INN.

  Rachel’s heart began to beat fast.

  Amelia had instructed her via e-mail to just find street parking. But being so close to meeting her grandmother, enveloped in the charm of the strange and wondrous town, such practicalities were too much for her. She could barely think straight, let alone deal with parallel parking.

  “I’ll do it,” Marin said, unbuckling her seat belt after Rachel fumbled the first two spots she tried to squeeze into. She pulled the car across the street from the inn, directly in front of a place called Joe Coffee.

  “I actually could use a cup,” Marin said.

  Was she kidding? How could they delay for even a minute? Their grandmother was right there, waiting for them.

  Rachel noticed a chocolate Lab resting on the front porch. She was about to say, No, let’s just go inside. But Marin was so unhappy. If a little caffeine would cheer her up…

  They made their way up the path to the café, passing round tables topped with turquoise umbrellas. The table closest to the door was occupied by a group of half a dozen men, all with trim salt-and-pepper beards, trendy eyewear, and colorful T-shirts. Their raucous laughter gave Rachel the urge to pull up a chair and join the conversation.

  “Do you want anything?” Marin asked her, taking her place in line.

  “I’ve got it, sweetheart. Tell me what you want,” said Blythe.

  “No, I’ve got it, Mom.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Rachel said, biting her lip to keep from saying, Just hurry up!

  Luckily, the barista worked quickly. She had blond dreadlocks and eye shadow fit for a midnight rave. Her pink T-shirt read VAGINA IS FOR LOVERS.

  Marin and Blythe, coffees in hand, followed her back outside. Rachel had to force herself not to walk double-time. Hurry, hurry.

  “Let’s sit at a table for a minute,” Marin said.

  Okay, now she was pushing it.

  “Marin! We just drove seven hours. Not to mention the twenty-two years it’s taken me to get here. I can’t wait another minute!”

  Marin looked stricken, and that’s when Rachel realized she was stalling.

  “Fine. You go on ahead,” Marin said.

  “Oh no—we’re doing this together.”

  “You know what?” Blythe said. “Why don’t you two go on ahead, and I’ll wait here. You should meet your grandmother on your own. I’m going to get a newspaper and have my coffee. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  Marin looked torn. She clearly didn’t want to sit and wait with her mother, but she wasn’t ready for Amelia’s house either. And so Rachel did what any sister would do.

  She took her by the hand.

  Chapter Twelve

  Panic. That was the only word to describe Marin’s feeling as she followed Rachel up the red-brick steps. Ove
rhead, red geraniums dangled from a wicker basket.

  Marin hung back as Rachel approached the front door, and a large chocolate Lab bounded up to her and licked the hand she put out in protest.

  “The door’s open,” Rachel said, reaching for the doorknob.

  “Wait! Shouldn’t you knock or something?”

  “It’s a B and B—I think we can just walk in.”

  Before this could be quietly settled between them, the dog rushed headlong through the open door, announcing them with a bark.

  Inside, the only hint that the place was an inn and not just a picture-perfect private beach cottage was the white wooden wraparound desk to the right of the front door. The space was light and airy, all white and gray and sea green. White walls and woodwork, a white wicker table between two pale gray couches facing each other. Small, weathered-looking wood-topped tables covered in knickknacks—antique copper candlesticks, glass bowls filled with gray and moss-green stones. To her left, a framed antique map of Provincetown above a wooden shelf lined with mismatched green and blue glass bottles.

  One entire wall was covered with mosaics, some tiled in vivid blues and greens, others monochromatic and made from pale stones and shells. The piece that really caught her eye was an enormous stained-glass starfish.

  “Molly, enough barking! What’s all the fuss about?” A redheaded woman emerged from a doorway in the far corner of the room. She wore a V-necked white T-shirt and army-green cargo pants, her hair pulled into two messy low pigtails. She had high cheekbones and creamy skin brushed with freckles. The crow’s-feet around her green eyes and grooves around her delicate mouth were the only indicators of her age. “Oh—hello, girls. You must be the granddaughters!”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Rachel. Marin simply nodded.

  “I’m Kelly.” The woman held up one finger—Just a sec—and pulled a walkie-talkie-type device from her back pocket. “The girls are here,” she said, before turning back to them with a smile. “Amelia will be right down. Excuse this rambunctious beast. She’s our friends’ dog from down the street and for some reason she makes herself just a little too at home here. I’m going for a grocery run. See you at dinner—oh, any food allergies?”