The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  He reached for her hand and held her wrist at an angle so he could see better. Rachel’s stomach lurched with jealousy.

  “A beach rose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Awesome.”

  Rachel wondered how she’d become the third wheel when she was the one who’d originally been talking to him!

  “I can’t get it wet or in the sun, so probably not the best timing,” Marin said. “But whatever. All right, I’m going back to sleep.”

  With that, she marched into the house, the screen door slamming behind her.

  Luke’s eyes followed her, his tongue practically hanging out. Rachel sat back in the rocking chair and resumed reading. Or, rather, she pretended to resume reading.

  “Your sister’s a character,” he said finally.

  “Half.”

  “She’s half a character?”

  “She’s my half sister.”

  “Yes. I remember.” He ran his hand through his hair, a gesture she found riveting, like everything else about him. “I’m going to get something to eat. Want to come?”

  She looked at him in surprise, and then, with great effort to sound casual, replied, “Sure.”

  Luke led the way down Commercial. They stopped at a souvenir shop, where Rachel was delighted to find a postcard with the Beach Rose Inn on the front. She bought it and decided she would send it to her mother. One block later, Luke stopped in front of a small restaurant with a windowed storefront and a prominent rainbow flag: Café Heaven.

  “When you try the food, you’ll see it’s aptly named.” He smiled.

  Food or no food, she was already in heaven.

  Inside, the blue ceiling was painted with puffy, cartoonish clouds. Every table was full. The host told them it would be just a few minutes and pointed out the specials written on a wall chalkboard.

  “Everything is great here, but my favorite are the homemade English muffins. You’ll never buy one from the store again.”

  She nodded. A table was cleared and they were seated.

  “So is Amelia taking you sightseeing? Whale watching? There’s a lot for you guys to get in while you’re here.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. Even if Amelia had committed them to a jam-packed daily schedule, she would not have admitted it. Was he volunteering to show her around? “What are you doing all summer?”

  “Well, I want to help my dad out. And I’m writing a book.”

  “Like, a novel?” She imagined a sexy spy series—something like James Bond, but American. Or maybe something more literary. The Corrections, set in Cape Cod.

  “Nonfiction. About the decline of American cities. Sort of an update on Jane Jacobs’s classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Did they make you read that in school?”

  “Um, no.” Maybe if she’d finished college, she would have gotten around to that one.

  “Well, we’ll see how productive I can be out here. This is my first summer since high school I’m in Provincetown for two months straight. It’s a little bit of an adjustment for me.”

  “Did you just need some time away from Rhode Island?”

  “No. It was actually difficult and complicated to pack up and move here for two months. But when I visited at Christmas, my dad didn’t seem to be doing very well. I have this weird feeling it might be my last summer with him.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But he must be so happy you’re here. I’m sure it means a lot to him.”

  “Yeah, but I felt bad imposing on Bart. I don’t want to, like, crowd him or take away from his time with my dad. I talked to him about it beforehand, and he agreed I should come. He said it was a good idea.”

  Of course Luke would think of Bart. Luke was considerate. Luke was, as far as she could tell, perfect.

  “I wish I could stay,” Rachel said. “I thought a week would seem like a long time to be in a strange place with people I don’t know. Now it feels like I’ve been here my whole life.”

  “P-Town has that effect on some people. I couldn’t live here year-round, but my dad came here for a three-day writing retreat and literally never left.”

  If Thomas Duncan could just pick up and move to Provincetown, leaving behind a wife and son, surely Rachel could extend her visit.

  “Maybe I’ll stay another week or two,” she said carefully. She didn’t want to scare him off. It’s not like she was staying for him. Three days into her trip, she still had almost no idea what her dad had been like. The photos were a first step. But a small one. She barely felt any closer to answering the question: Who was he?

  More important, she felt she needed to start answering questions about herself. Not the least of which was whether or not she was falling in love for the first time.

  Marin slept straight through the afternoon and through dinner, and now, at nine at night, she was wide awake.

  She stood on the balcony of her bedroom, looking out at the backyard. Hours earlier, Amelia, Kelly, and her mother had had dinner out there together. Their voices had woken her from her last nap of the day. They spotted her up there, gazing out, and they waved her down. They were happy; it was a done deal—everyone was staying until the Fourth of July weekend.

  Marin ignored them, though she would have liked to spend some time with Kelly. Instead, she retreated back to bed.

  Now the backyard was dark and empty, lit only by the moonlight reflected off the bay. Maybe she should go outside, sit by the water for some fresh air. Afterward, she might be able to return to her room and slip easily back into sleep.

  Movement caught her eye. Two shadowy figures close together near the roped-off, outermost edge of the property, just beyond the farthest point of the long table. Her first thought was that people were trespassing, and then she wondered if maybe that’s what people did around there. She wouldn’t be surprised. Everyone’s boundaries seemed a tad fluid, to say the least.

  Laughter floated up to her. That’s when Marin realized it was Rachel and Luke Duncan.

  I could have closed that deal, Marin thought, and then she hated herself for it. That was heartache talking. Oh God. It hurt. She missed Julian so much, she felt in that moment she would do anything to make it stop. Even something stupid, like call him again.

  She closed the balcony doors and sat on the edge of her bed. Heart pounding, she dialed.

  “Hello?”

  His voice brought pain and relief in the same instant.

  “Hey,” she said. “Sorry it’s so late.”

  “It’s not that late,” he said. His voice was warmer than it had been on their last phone call—she could tell that already. Or maybe it was wishful thinking.

  “How was Chicago?” she asked.

  “Well, the job’s a long shot. So it went as well as could be expected.” Silence.

  She was about to say, I’ll be back in New York this weekend, but then remembered they were staying. It was probably for the best. He wanted time and distance, and he was getting it.

  “How’s your vacation going?” he asked.

  “It’s not really a vacation.”

  Julian didn’t ask her to clarify. She felt she would have given anything in that moment to be with him in person, to see his face. To look into his eyes and tell him everything. She remembered their last morning together, the Sunday after her visit to Philadelphia. Telling him how odd it was that her mother practically shoved her out the door. There had been a warmth and wisdom in his eyes that had calmed her then, and she needed it now.

  “Can we FaceTime?” she said. It felt like a juvenile request, like they were teenagers talking surreptitiously under the covers in their respective bedrooms on a school night.

  “Marin…”

  “What? You don’t want to see me even on a screen with two states between us?”

  He sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you. It’s not that I don’t care about you—because I do. But our relationship was a distraction, one that cost us both. I don’t know about you, but I need to r
egroup.”

  She felt a surge of anger. “Regroup? You have no idea what I’m dealing with here. Genie turned my whole life upside down!”

  “Genie? What does that have to do with anything?”

  In that instant, her sorrow turned to fury. She had lost more than he had. She’d lost her identity, the man she’d thought was her father, her relationship with her mother. And, yes, her job. What had he lost? Nothing that couldn’t be replaced.

  “Yeah, so, I’m sorry our relationship was a distraction. I won’t distract you further with more phone calls.”

  She hung up.

  And, remarkably, she felt better than she had in weeks.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The morning was cloudy, not a beach day. Still, Amelia and Marin had already left for Herring Cove. Blythe had her own plans for passing a few hours; she curled up on the porch rocking chair with a copy of Diane Keaton’s memoirs. The last time she’d cracked it open had been the night before she went to New York to check on Marin, completely unaware how dramatically things were about to change. And now, Nick Cabral was back in her life. Or, rather, she was in his life—in the house where he had spent his summers. At the beach that she had seen in his drawings.

  While parts of Nick’s life had come to the surface, others were still deeply hidden. What had happened between him and Amelia? How had he died? She wanted to know but didn’t want to risk upsetting the woman who had been so generous to all of them. Still, how could she leave this place without asking?

  Another question gnawed at her: Should she tell Amelia the truth about her relationship with her son? That he hadn’t been an anonymous sperm donor? That she had, in fact, known him and cared for him—if only for a brief time?

  After that first afternoon of passion at his studio apartment, she had started seeing him once a week. Then it was a few times a week. Oh, how it pained Nick—someone who loved spontaneity and impulse above all else—to have to plan. But these were the days before cellular phones (how different their affair would have been today with all the modern technology seemingly built for subterfuge) and they had to pick meeting places and times, and stick with them. Usually it was his apartment during the workweek. They made frantic love, and if they were lucky and had a few hours, they would lie in bed and talk. They discussed artistic and worldly things—conversations that made Blythe feel sharp and engaged. But when she tried to get more personal, he shut her down. He would not talk about his family, alluding only to a big falling-out with his mother. Once, when looking through his older sketchbooks and remarking on the recurring images of the ocean and beaches with high dunes dotted with flowers, he spoke of his Portuguese grandmother’s house by the sea.

  “We spent every Christmas and summer at her house in Provincetown. In the winter it’s a ghost town, and at my grandmother’s house, it was easy to feel like we were the only people in the world. And then in the summer, it’s a carnival.” He smiled and told her he never felt entirely comfortable far from the sea.

  When she asked questions, thirsty for more, aching to know this man who was bringing her back to life, he diverted the conversation to more impersonal ground. He would distract her, taking her breath away with motorcycle rides on the Schuylkill Expressway. Her arms wrapped around him, the wind knocking against her, she felt she was holding on for dear life. He circled around the river, whipping past the art museum and the boathouses, and she shrieked in futile protest that he was going too fast. And she was reminded of having once read that the brain experienced fear and falling in love in the same way, often confusing the two.

  The only thing predictable about their stolen hours together was that they always took place during the daytime, when Kip was at the office. There was just one exception, and it was the beginning of the end.

  It was late August. Kip was out of town, and Nick invited her to go out clubbing with him and his friends. She was excited to have a whole night with him instead of just a few stolen afternoon hours. She dressed playfully in a black miniskirt with a T-shirt covered in geometric shapes in bright colors. She could remember the shirt exactly. God, she felt beautiful that night.

  She met Nick at his apartment. He and his friends were already drinking shots and getting high. He put his arm around her, introduced her as his girl.

  “Oh yeah,” said one of the friends. “The married chick.” No one seemed in a hurry to leave the smoke-filled apartment. Eventually, she looked at her watch; it was almost two in the morning.

  “We should go,” she said impatiently. She offered to drive. They all piled into her BMW, and Nick directed her to a desolate neighborhood filled with warehouses. The club had no sign and no name and it opened just as the legal bars were closing. She hadn’t known such places existed.

  She nursed a cup of water. After years of treating her body like an instrument, she couldn’t abuse it even for one night. Nick warned her not to put her cup down out of her sight, even for a few seconds. And then he wandered off, and she was left alone in the cavernous space.

  What the hell? Why had he bothered to invite her? The music was so loud, she felt it in her chest. She wandered around in circles. She needed to pee but the line for the bathroom was so long—for people who weren’t even using it as a bathroom. She wished she were at home, tucked into her bed.

  She finally spotted one of his friends. “Have you seen Nick?” She wanted to leave but was afraid to walk to her parked car alone. The friend pointed in a vague direction.

  “Where?” she asked, squinting in the darkness.

  “By the stairs. See that exit sign?”

  “Okay, thanks.” She threaded her way through the crowd, doubting that she would find him.

  She found him.

  He was inside the stairwell. It was barely lit and it reeked. (Now she knew where people were going to pee, since the bathrooms were otherwise occupied.) A bleached blonde wearing a red miniskirt leaned against the wall, her head thrown back, exposing her long white throat. She was pinching her nose. Nick, standing next to her, was busy snorting coke off of a compact mirror.

  Blythe backed away.

  What was she doing there? The madness of it all was suddenly so clear to her. Sweating, she pushed her way through the club, desperate to get away. Outside, the North Philadelphia streets were dangerously desolate, and she realized how crazy she was being—risking her marriage and now her very safety over some temporary, lust-induced insanity. By the time she reached her car, her hand was shaking so hard she could barely get the key in the door.

  When she was finally home, safe in her bedroom, she took off her clothes and threw the outfit in the garbage. She never wanted to see it again, to be reminded of the wretched night. Of her wretched behavior. Guilt-ridden and confused, she pulled her new journal out of her nightstand drawer and poured out her heart: I’ve been so lonely, I don’t think my husband loves me. I’m in a marriage with no purpose, we will never be a family, and so I did something reckless and stupid and now I’m more angry at myself than I ever was at Kip…

  Kip returned from his business trip the following afternoon; she was resolved to reconnect with him. She pulled his favorite bottle of red from the cellar and cooked sirloin and baked stuffed potatoes. Afterward, she steered him to the bedroom, where she closed her eyes and tried not to imagine her sensual, reckless, maddening lover. She didn’t think she’d be able to climax—not only because she often did not with Kip, but also because of the guilt and the mental burden of trying to resist making comparisons. But surprisingly, it was the most physically gratifying sex of their marriage.

  She wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  “Maybe I should go away more often,” Kip said, kissing the top of her head. That’s when the guilt came in, sweeping through her like a wave of nausea. It’s over with Nick, she reminded herself. It was a temporary detour, but she was back on track now.

  Blythe closed the memoir on her lap. She couldn’t focus. Should she tell Marin the truth? Correct her assumption th
at her biological father was an anonymous sperm donor? Was the truth better or worse?

  A woman walked up to the house smoking a cigarette and wheeling a suitcase. Blythe watched her collapse the handle, pick up the bag, then climb up the stairs briskly, without hesitation.

  “Can I help you?” Blythe asked, standing.

  The woman had thick brown hair threaded heavily with gray and sharp dark eyes above an aquiline nose. Blythe guessed she was around her own age. “I doubt it,” the woman said. “I’m here to see my mother.”

  With that, she brushed past Blythe and strode into the house.

  Amelia considered the morning a success.

  Marin came up short on her quest for sea glass but Amelia was pleased to find several white wentletraps and a handful of shells from Atlantic razor clams. Marin picked up a sea urchin skeleton, which fascinated her, but it was ugly and she ultimately tossed it back into the sea.

  When it was clear the beach had yielded all that it would that day, Amelia ventured to ask Marin, “Are you at all curious about my son? It’s okay to ask, you know.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about him. I mean, no offense, but he was just a sperm donor. My father is my father.”

  Amelia nodded. She did not take offense. It was a difficult situation, and Marin was handling it as well as anyone could be expected to. While she accepted the turn of events on the surface, she clearly rejected it on a deeper level. It was a process, and Amelia knew that one week wasn’t enough for her to work through it all. She just hoped she would keep in touch, and if the day came when Marin wanted to really talk, Amelia would be there for her.

  They got back into the car and Marin busied herself looking at the shells.

  “Isn’t it amazing how the beach gives up her treasures? Every day, a gift,” Amelia said.

  Marin smiled.

  They inched along in the car, the five-minute drive now hitting the ten-minute mark. Commercial Street was jammed with traffic.

  “I just realized something. There’s no traffic light on this street,” Marin said.