The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  Marin and Rachel both shook their heads.

  “I’m, um, a vegetarian,” Rachel said.

  “I used to be, until Amelia turned me to the dark side,” she said with a wink, and then she disappeared back from whence she’d come.

  Marin turned to Rachel.

  “Who is that?”

  “Kelly.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Does she run this place or something?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Amelia said the inn was closed for the season. That’s why she has room for all of us. So I’m not sure if that woman works here or what.”

  And then: footsteps on the staircase. An older woman in a blue batik-print dress made her way down, greeting them with a little wave. She was medium height and slender and had chin-length white hair, a broad nose, and a warm smile.

  “Rachel,” she said, immediately hugging her. “You’re much more lovely than even your photos!” She turned her dark eyes on Marin, and they suddenly welled with tears.

  “You look just like my Nicolau,” she said, grasping her firmly by the hands. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”

  Marin glanced helplessly at Rachel, who shrugged.

  The woman gazed around the room. “Are we missing someone?”

  “Oh—yes. My mother. She’s at the coffee place. Getting coffee,” Marin said awkwardly.

  “We have coffee here,” Amelia said, as if that were absurdly obvious.

  “She’ll be here soon,” Marin said.

  Amelia seemed to contemplate this. “Why wait? Let me show you to your rooms so you can get comfortable. Mom can catch up.”

  Blythe had a direct view of the Beach Rose Inn from her table outside of Joe Coffee. She wondered how long she should wait before going inside.

  It was extraordinary, how things happened in life. That she should be sitting there, on the verge of divorce, despite the decision she’d made all those years ago in order to save her marriage.

  And this glorious day: a cloudless sky, the sun bright but not too hot. The type of weather that made it seem like it would never rain again. A mirror image of that early-summer afternoon when she’d first met Nick Cabral.

  She knew when they said good-bye that she wouldn’t see him again. But she never imagined she would someday meet his mother—the mother who had done something so egregious, Nick never wanted to talk about her and said he didn’t care if he ever saw her again.

  “This is my new start,” he’d said of Philadelphia, where he was earning a degree in studio arts. Where he was spending lazy summer afternoons making love to Blythe, a married woman.

  By that point, she had felt like her life was already a tired story. There would be no new starts for her. She the wife of an ambitious corporate lawyer, living in a big house in the suburbs. Her marriage was lonely. She couldn’t remember the last time Kip had touched her.

  Her infatuation with the dreamy, dark-eyed art student was a distraction, a temporary indulgence. It was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  What did your mother do that was so bad? I mean, she’s still your mother.

  She’s dead to me, he replied.

  Blythe could envision his face exactly as he’d said those words. So much hurt in his eyes, the set of his strong jaw. She’d leaned forward and kissed him.

  She grabbed her coffee and stood up. It was time to meet the woman who was dead to Nick—Nick, who was truly dead to them both now. Nick.

  It hurt so much, more than she would have imagined. But how could she have imagined any of this? And then she remembered one of the last things Nick had said to her, something about the universe having its own plans.

  He had been right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They were mid-tour of the second floor, standing in the doorway of the bedroom Marin would call her own for the next six nights. Sunlight streamed in through the windows and glass-paned door that opened onto a terrace. The queen-size bed had a white bookcase headboard, sea-green sheets covered with a white down comforter topped with a colorful crocheted afghan throw that had to be handmade. The wooden side table had delicate white china knobs painted with cornflowers. A piece of driftwood rested against one wall.

  Marin spotted the place where she could curl up and lick her wounds all week: a plank bench covered in mismatched cushions in front of a window, the ledge decorated with eclectic treasures, including old-fashioned wooden clothespins bleached from the sun, a smattering of round, smooth stones, and a mason jar filled with blue sea glass.

  Downstairs, Molly barked loudly.

  “Your mother must be here,” Amelia said. “Just leave your bag, hon, and you can unpack later.”

  “Actually, I’m going to unpack now. If you don’t mind.”

  “You’re not coming downstairs?” Amelia looked surprised. She probably thought it was strange, maybe even rude, for Marin not to greet her mother.

  Amelia seemed about to say something, but then thought better of it. “Okay, dear. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll get your mother settled.” Marin thanked her, feeling impolite, feeling terrible, but wanting so desperately to be alone.

  Marin turned to look at herself in the seashell-mosaic-framed mirror hanging above the white dresser. For the first time in her life, the puzzle about her looks was complete. The features she had that she had never been able to match to either her mother or her father (her brown eyes, the slope of her nose, her attached earlobes), she identified on Amelia.

  Marin flopped on the bed, on her back, staring up at the ceiling. A fan whirred gently. She watched it churn and thought about her dad. What was she supposed to do about all of this? Living with the secret was unthinkable, but telling him the truth would only hurt him. It was, as he would say, lose-lose. Another thing he would say: When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.

  Watching the fan made her feel dizzy. Her stomach churned. She was overcome with homesickness, not for a place, but for the life she’d had just two weeks ago. Now she was completely unmoored, dislocated—literally and in every figurative way. Even Julian seemed like a dream. He felt so unreal, it scared her.

  She scrolled through her phone until she found a selfie she’d snapped of the two of them in his bed one lazy Sunday morning. Julian had a rare unguarded look, his shiny dark hair mussed, a smile on his face.

  She moaned, her arm bracing her midsection, the pain almost physical. Beyond her window, the ocean stretched. An offering of peace, of happiness.

  Marin dialed his number, prepared for his voice mail yet again. But for the first time since the day after they left the firm, he answered.

  “Hey,” she said nervously. She was completely unprepared for an actual conversation. She was barely prepared to leave a voice mail. “How are you?”

  “Doing okay. How about you?” The question was perfunctory, she could tell. She’d breached his request for space. But how much space and time did he need? She was three states away.

  “I’m okay. I wanted to let you know that I left the city for a few days. I’m spending some time in Provincetown. A cute little place called the Beach Rose Inn, but it’s closed for the season. It’s a long story…” Her babbling was met by Julian’s reproachful silence.

  She wished she’d told him about Rachel before now. It was an impossible conversation to have in their current fragile, disjoined state. It would seem emotionally manipulative.

  “I’m in Chicago,” he said matter-of-factly. Chicago? In all the time she’d known him, she’d never heard him mention it.

  “Visiting?”

  “Job interview,” he said.

  Her stomach dropped.

  “Wow. That’s…exciting,” she managed. If he moved to Chicago, that was the end of whatever hope she had for continuing the relationship. Long hours and long distance were an impossible combination.

  “I’ll see if it works out,” he said. She could imagine the determined set of his jaw.

  More silence. She wished she hadn’t called. This conversation was worse than t
he silence.

  “Okay. Well, keep me posted. I’ll be back in the city on Saturday.”

  “Marin,” he said. There was an unsettling sympathetic tone to the way he said her name. “I just need to focus on work right now.”

  Oh.

  “By ‘right now,’ you mean…”

  “Take care of yourself, Marin.”

  Dinner was called for six o’clock. Rachel was the first one out back, seated at the long table with a view of Cape Cod Bay. It was all so charming—the house, the yard. The way a foghorn sounded in the distance. The seagulls assembled on the wooden dividers, and thick twine roped off the yard from the shrub-filled sand stretching to the water.

  The tabletop was four wide planks of faded wood, scarred from use. Eagerly waiting for everyone, Rachel dug her fingernail into one of the deep grooves.

  “Hey, Rachel,” Kelly said, sliding onto the bench beside her. “You are getting the star treatment. Amelia actually made a vegetarian dish tonight. Never thought I’d see the day.” She winked at her.

  “I heard that,” Amelia said, setting down a bowl of white bean salad and a breadbasket.

  Blythe trailed behind her. She had changed into a pair of linen pants and a sweater. Marin’s mother was so great. She even looked like the perfect mom: still beautiful without seeming to try too hard; elegant. Unlike Fran, with her obsessively ropy yoga body wrapped in clothes that Rachel would deem too young even for herself, her perpetual tan, her tattoos. She shook the thought away.

  “Oh, Amelia, this is just lovely,” Blythe said.

  “Yeah, this table is really cool.”

  “Our friend Paul made it for us. Years ago, we had several small tables out here. But then we thought it would be nice to have more of a communal dining experience for our guests—so people could get to know one another instead of just sitting in separate groups. And it was one of the best decisions we made here because over the years, many guests became friends, have gone to one another’s weddings and such.” She and Kelly shared a smile. “It worked out quite beautifully.”

  “So you cook dinner for your guests?”

  “No, just breakfast.”

  “As I said, star treatment,” Kelly said, grinning.

  “Well, hon, they’re family, not guests.” Amelia looked around the table. “Is your daughter not joining us?” she asked Blythe.

  Blythe looked uneasily at Rachel.

  “Let me go check. I’ll let her know we’re out here,” Rachel said.

  “You can get to the second floor from the kitchen. There’s a back staircase,” Amelia told her.

  Rachel walked quickly into the house, hoping Marin had simply lost track of time and was not pulling a full-on boycott.

  The kitchen was so charming it made her want to cook. It felt both modern and retro, with pale wood floors, bone-colored cabinets, marble countertops, whisks and ladles hanging from copper piping running along one wall. Chunky wooden shelves supported by iron brackets were filled with an eclectic collection of plates and bowls. On the counter, a toaster oven, a wooden bowl holding a mortar and pestle. A pale blue tin that read BREAD on the front. A sugar bowl that looked like handmade pottery. A yellow teapot, a china creamer. On the windowsill, pieces of green sea glass. Rachel reached out to touch one, resisted the urge to slip it into the pocket of her jean shorts, and headed upstairs.

  On the second floor, she hesitated a few seconds outside of Marin’s room, then knocked.

  “Who is it?” Marin called out.

  “It’s me—Rachel. We’re all out back for dinner. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

  “I don’t want dinner.”

  Rachel felt her first flash of annoyance toward her sister. Marin wasn’t the only one dealing with heavy shit. Rachel felt out of sorts too. She didn’t know what she’d expected—that she’d meet Amelia and all the pieces would magically fall into place? That she would have an innate sense of homecoming, that the shadow of loneliness that she’d carried her whole life would disappear? Well, it didn’t feel that way.

  Yes, Amelia and Kelly were cool. And she was excited to be spending time with them. But she realized now she had been kidding herself that it didn’t matter that her father was gone, that meeting her grandmother would be enough. She felt an urgency to connect to him somehow. She just didn’t know what she could ask or what she could find in that house that would satisfy her.

  “Come on, Marin,” she said. “The food looks great and…I mean, you don’t want to be rude, do you?”

  “Go away, Rachel.”

  The tone of her voice did not leave much room for negotiation. Reluctantly, Rachel retreated down the stairs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Blythe knew as soon as she saw Rachel’s face that Marin would not be joining them. She tried not to feel despair. They were, after all, in Provincetown for a week, and she couldn’t expect things to be perfect the very first night.

  “I feel bad about your daughter,” Amelia said to Blythe. “This was all an unwelcome surprise to her?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Blythe. “She’ll come around.” God, please let her come around!

  The food was delicious—grilled shrimp with garlic and cilantro, rice, stewed green beans. And the small talk over the meal was pleasant enough. It seemed no one wanted to get too serious, to burst the idyllic getting-to-know-you bubble. But when Amelia and Kelly retreated into the kitchen to get the dessert and coffee, Blythe couldn’t help but ask Rachel: “How does your mother feel about all of this? You contacting Amelia, coming out here?”

  “Oh, my mother? She doesn’t care.”

  “Doesn’t care?”

  Rachel shrugged. “She’s always been very casual about the sperm-donor thing. She wanted to have a kid on her own and there was never any secret. I don’t mean to get too personal, but were you ever going to tell Marin the truth? I mean, didn’t you worry she’d find out someday?”

  Blythe gulped her wine and looked away, toward the water. “As I said earlier—it’s complicated.”

  “Are you upset with me for getting in touch with her?”

  Blythe traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip. Was she upset with Rachel for opening this can of worms?

  “No. No, of course not.”

  “And her father? I mean, you know—the father who raised her?”

  “Do you mind if we don’t talk about this?” Blythe glanced back at the house, regretting starting the conversation.

  “I’m sorry! I just…you know, I’m so full of nervous energy.”

  “Have you always lived in Los Angeles?”

  Rachel took a swig of her beer. “We moved from Philly to LA when I was two.”

  “You’re from Philadelphia?”

  “Yeah. My mother grew up on the Main Line. She didn’t like it and beat it out of there as soon as she was eighteen.”

  Rachel’s mother “beat it out of there” at the same age Blythe had been when she’d arrived, never expecting to spend her entire life in Philadelphia.

  “So tell me about yourself, Rachel. Aside from all this family drama. Do you have a boyfriend back in LA?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never, you know, been in love or anything.”

  Blythe nodded. “None of you girls seem to be in a rush these days.”

  She supposed, in that sense, they were a lot smarter than she had been.

  It had started in the summer of 1988. The Tracy Chapman song “Fast Car” was on constant radio rotation. Blythe went to see the movie Cocktail three times. It was terrible, and still she could not stop watching it.

  That was the first time Blythe realized there was something about the summer that simply made her feel unmoored. The warm air, the flowers in bloom, the backyard pools unmasked from their winter tarps, the long days and the glow of fireflies at night. All of it heightened her loneliness, made it that much more unbearable.

  Last summer, the first of her marriage, had been no different;
the humid air, thick with pollen, evoked a painful yearning. It was the strangest thing. By August, she was in such a state of longing she could barely sleep. Night after night, she reached for Kip, hoping to sate herself with his body. He often turned away. He had to be up early; he was stressed. He was uninterested.

  When September rolled around, she was thankful for the first fallen leaves, the silence of the cicadas. The season of early darkness and bare trees would hopefully silence that thing inside of her. And it had. By Christmastime, she was thinking, I can do this.

  But summer returned, and with it, the restlessness.

  She sat on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, watching the cars round the traffic circle heading toward Kelly Drive. The roadway was named after rower John B. Kelly Jr., who happened to be the older brother of Grace Kelly—Philadelphia trivia courtesy of Kip’s mother.

  But she didn’t want to think about the Bishops. She’d had an argument with Kip that morning, and just for a few hours she wanted to try to forget about him. It was a perfect Saturday afternoon, hot but not humid, a breeze off the river. She’d begged him to spend a few hours with her. They didn’t have to do anything crazy (though she would have loved to drive to the shore and walk on the beach and get cheesesteaks, sandy feet stuffed into their untied sneakers)—even just a walk around Suburban Square would have been nice. But he was working, as he was every weekend lately, and when she expressed frustration, he told her to “grow up.”

  She climbed the seventy or so steps to the museum entrance, pausing to look behind her at the handsome vista of her adopted city. It was a great town, she couldn’t complain. But four years after moving there, what did she have to show for it? Her dancing career had fizzled out. She was a lonely housewife.

  Maybe, she’d thought, the answer was a baby.

  “A baby?” Kip had said, as if she’d suggested a trip to the moon. “You have zero body fat.”