The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

“Oh, Laura, I’m weak,” he said, turning to her. His eyes conveyed his plea for forgiveness.

  “No you’re not,” she said, still looking up. It was too much to look in his eyes.

  “Am I making a horrible mistake? Tell me. I need to know what you think.”

  “You already know what I think,” she said. “You want to know if I think you’ll regret it.”

  “Stop torturing me,” Tom said.

  Laura smiled. The irony of this statement was almost comical. But he was sincere and his tone had changed. She noticed the movement of tears before the sound. His shoulders shook slightly, and his body contracted as though he had been punched in the stomach.

  “You broke my heart,” she whispered.

  “You are my heart. I love you,” he said. “I really love you.”

  Laura smiled. “I love you too.”

  Tom shook his head, wild with confusion. “But why? I’m a total asshole.”

  Laura laughed, choosing not to dissuade him of this fact. But she answered the question. “You inspire me,” she said.

  Tom stared back, incredulous. “I’m so sorry.” He shook his head. “I ruined everything.”

  Laura paused, unsure how to respond. What could you say after that? How could two people be so close and yet so distant?

  Luckily, a new rain shower conspired to bring them together. At the first timid drop, they instinctively huddled. They spent the next several hours clutching each other, running their hands over each other’s bodies as though it was their last night on earth, a last precious chance to memorize the shape, to know the fleeting warmth, smell, and taste of another human body. For Laura, it felt like a respite from blindness, a glimpse of color after years in the dark. For Tom, it was an emergency rescue, a hand offered through the silver spray before waves took him under.

  Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.

  SIXTEEN

  Chip awoke with a start to the shock of falling rain. God knew how long he had been lying on the beach. He vaguely remembered falling to the ground and mistaking the sand for a desert. The sensation of a hangover—the mind-numbing dehydration, the vertigo, the bludgeoning headache—was familiar enough. But now, in addition to the usual distortions, he was faced with a summer shower. For a moment, he wondered if he had drowned. But memory returned in a series of flashes. He remembered the raft, the race back to shore, and Laura—had he tackled her to the ground?—and began to reconstruct the last few hours.

  Like most addicts, Chip was extremely skilled at reducing the effects of a hangover. He knew how to manipulate his intake—the type of alcohol he drank, the chasers he used, the post-party ritual—to ease what would be a devastating crash to less seasoned partiers. In its stead, he had perfected the slow comedown, a process that lasted several days and required various herbal concoctions. It was best achieved with excessive sleep, constant television watching, the occasional late-afternoon jog, and a complicated assortment of macrobiotic teas, whose salutary purpose was lost on him entirely. Alternatively, the whole process could be circumvented with continued drug use.

  Choosing the latter, Chip made his first attempt to stand. Eight vodka sodas, a bottle of wine, and the buffet of pills he had added to hors d’oeuvres was not an extreme tally for one night, and yet he now wondered if he had finally ingested a toxic amount.

  Dehydration was an urgent problem. His brain felt as though it had withered from his skull like dried earth in a flowerpot. With new desperation, he looked out at the bay and wondered why ocean water had to be off-limits. The problem of dehydration at sea had always struck him as the cruelest torture. Being surrounded by the very substance that could save your life and yet finding it totally useless—it was, to Chip, even more than freak accidents, good cause to doubt God’s existence. Every time Chip heard a tale of shipwreck, he felt certain the solution had been overlooked. Surely, there was some small pocket of the ocean whose water was not contaminated by salt. Perhaps, if he cupped his hands tightly and took only a very small sip, he would happen on one such pocket of purity and save himself.

  He had searched for this very thing—a pocket of purity—for his entire life and yet, even in this seeming paradise, had found only corruption. He amused himself as he stumbled up the lawn by making a list of those people in his life who were guilty on this count. He ordered his list from most to least rotten-to-the-core and so began with his mother.

  Augusta Hayes, in Chip’s humble opinion, was a deluded woman. The same could be said of his father, of course, but William at least evidenced some discomfort with the disparity between his beliefs and reality. Augusta, on the other hand, seemed to thrive on the contradiction. She performed an impression of warmth and yet felt very few emotions; she projected an air of nonchalance and yet was compulsive in all her activities; she claimed to love her children at all costs and yet recoiled from neediness. That she could be blamed for all his problems and unhappiness was a conclusion he’d drawn years ago. Ironically, he’d done so under the guidance of a therapist whom she’d funded.

  Together, Chip and Dr. Shineman had distilled his childhood to a single moment. He was seven years old and had slipped as he emerged from the bathtub, landing first on his bottom, then on his back, and knocking his head in the process. Oddly, it was not the bruise that had traumatized him but rather his mother’s response.

  “You’re okay,” she had said when she found him wailing. She bestowed a ceremonial forehead kiss. Then, she patted his bottom and dispatched him to go. “You’re okay, Chippie,” she had said again. “You’re absolutely fine.”

  And the result was, Chip and Dr. Shineman agreed, to deny Chip the opportunity to experience the pain, a form of emotional censorship that had not only scarred his childhood but stunted the formation of his adult personality.

  More disturbingly, Chip went on to infer, it was an ailment of the entire Wasp culture: The refusal to express and process pain amounted to a cumulative repression so enormous it rivaled the force behind a volcano. It was no surprise therefore that Chip’s adolescence had seen a series of painful and powerful explosions and, more fitting still, that a Jew was the only person in whom he could confide these feelings.

  William was not beyond reproach, but he was somehow less culpable than his wife. Where Augusta was corrupt, he was crippled; where she was pathological, he was passive. His surrenders amounted to a crime that was more disappointing but ultimately lesser. As the weaker parent—and the father, no less—he inspired more pity than rage. When he married Augusta, he resigned himself to a life of idle chatter, and that crime was far greater—and far more tragic—considering he had once had something to say.

  Proceeding from most to least corrupt, Lila fell next on the list. Her failings were almost too obvious to review. Lila, like her mother, was vain, controlling, and emotionally frigid. Yet she feigned a saccharine demeanor. She was doggedly ambitious and yet took issue with evidence of aspiration in others. She was only truly interested in those people who provoked her competition. She had chosen Laura as her best friend because she was her most formidable rival. She had chosen Tom as her husband for the same reason Augusta had chosen William, because their goals dovetailed and his “artistry”—the only thing she lacked—amplified her status.

  Tom was closely tied with Lila. Why more people didn’t see him for what he was—a shameless social climber, a gold digger, really—was truly a mystery. Tom was bound to abandon his artistic goals just as William had. And worse, he had found—and seized—in Lila, the financial means to this end. If this fact were not evident from the lack of chemistry between Lila and Tom, it was immediately
clear from the spark that existed between Tom and Laura. When Tom was in Laura’s vicinity, his entire frequency changed. That they were in love was clear to anyone but a total buffoon. It was, in fact, a testament to Lila that she recognized this fact and yet managed to ignore it. Changing his mind, Chip revised his list: Tom was more corrupt than Lila.

  And then there was Laura, who was not so much corrupt as corrupted. Her jealousy of Lila was petty, certainly, and her covetousness unappealing. But there was something endearing in her conflict, something redeeming about her goals. And when she was in a good mood, albeit rare, she was wild and hilarious. She was a riveting conversationalist. And she was so much more beautiful than the waxy, freckled girls with whom he’d grown up, the Westfields, the Biddles, the Grants. Tragically, Laura would always view him as Lila’s repulsive little sibling. And, of course, she was painfully in love with Tom, a fact that was unlikely to be changed even by his marriage to another woman.

  Chip’s unscrupulous taxonomy was interrupted by the weather. After showering sporadically for the last several hours, the sky finally made good on its threats with a hearty downpour. It began as a drizzle that dusted the lawn but gained speed quickly until its unison rhythm could be heard across all of Dark Harbor. It seemed to start on the roof of the house, then move into the rustling trees, ending its journey on the bay, where it picked up momentum.

  Luckily, Chip was halfway to the house by the time it was really pouring. He knew it was halfway because, as a child, he had attempted to measure the distance from the porch to the water. Placing one foot in front of the other, he had counted the steps to the beach, committing the halfway mark to memory with the aid of a large elm tree. That this tree had witnessed all the same storms as Chip was immeasurably comforting.

  But as he passed the tree, he was stilled by a strange rustling near the trunk. Then, a shocking silhouette appeared: two forms merging into one, as though the earth had opened up in a quake, swallowed two human bodies and then spit them back out. His first instinct was to blame the pills, but somehow he knew to trust his perception. He had stumbled onto his suspicions, proof of his intuition. And, to his shock, he felt an absence of rage—on behalf of himself or his sister. He felt relief for Laura followed by pity. Today’s wedding was as inevitable as the weather.

  SEVENTEEN

  Daylight returned just before six with plucky determination, ending the pesky spell of night and renewing the promises of summer. The clouds of the previous afternoon had replaced themselves with a blue sky, as though to chide anyone who had doubted Augusta’s persuasive powers. Two months after the solstice, the sun had lost its reddish hue, but the light it offered was still warmer than the blue shades of winter, and succeeded in comforting the sleeping friends as they stirred from their huddle on the sofa.

  The windswept lawn lay in stark contrast to Northern Gardens’ manicured sheen. The storm had deepened the color of the grass from mint to emerald green and littered the formerly immaculate lawn with a collage of strewn branches. A pole from the main wedding tent had come unearthed. Luckily, it had not pulled down the tent but had tilted slowly and hit the ground like a wounded soldier,

  disengaging from the tent without ripping the canvas. Lacking the support of the pole, the tent had collapsed slightly.

  For Tom and Laura, the night extended long beyond the darkness. As they slept, the world receded somewhat, as though the sky had discreetly turned its head to grant them a private moment. For four short hours, they remained oblivious to the sounds of the world. Even the rain registered as little more than ambient noise. They remained this way even after the first glints of sunlight. Laura was finally jolted from sleep by an alarmist bird and woke to find sun in her eyes and a matted patch of grass where Tom had been.

  She grasped at her dress instinctively—it was horribly rumpled and damp—and attempted to tell the difference between what had occurred and what she had dreamed. But opening her eyes only made it harder to tell the difference, so she closed them and lay back down, willing her memory to grace her. Gradually, images from the night revealed themselves, but they were strangely remote for the recent past, like words written in the sand.

  Suddenly, she felt exposed, desperate for cover. To be seen in the dress she had worn last night would be horribly incriminating. How would she explain her disarray? She would be less conspicuous running naked across the grass, wearing a scarlet letter. A chorus of birds joined the one that had sounded the alarm. The noise cemented her decision. She needed to get back to the Gettys’. Hopefully, the night’s heavy consumption would prevent her friends from waking up when she made her entrance.

  As she walked, she rubbed her hands against her arms in a pitiful attempt to generate heat. A rabbit scampered behind a tree just ahead, a reminder of the countless creatures with whom she and Tom had shared the lawn. But any delight she might have derived from the sighting was quickly replaced by dread. Did Tom’s latest evacuation mean he had decided to remain hidden, or had he simply gone back to his room, renewed in his resolve to get married? The confusion was maddening. And each alternative demanded a different response. Still, she felt certain of one thing: Tom was in love with her. And this knowledge was immeasurably comforting, perhaps even more so than his presence.

  She picked up her pace and fixed her gaze on the distant house. But within a few steps, she stopped again, detecting an approaching figure. She stood still for a moment, debating a quick escape, but thought better of it. Turning around would betray her guilt; running away would only draw more attention. At first, it appeared as a single body, advancing across the lawn. But as she watched, it revealed discrete forms, six of them, marching on the grass, silhouetted by the water.

  Thinking fast, she devised a credible alibi: She had slept on the chaise on the porch after arguing with Chip. He had finally pushed her to the breaking point, and she had gone looking for new company. Fearful of waking Lila, she had taken a seat on the porch and had remained there, waiting for someone to emerge for what felt like hours. She only just woke up minutes ago, freezing and bug-bitten.

  But just as soon as she’d settled on a narrative, she considered an alternative approach. Other than Tom himself, she was the only one who definitively knew Tom had made it to shore. She could use this knowledge—and her friends’ ignorance—to her advantage. As the distance between them closed, she settled on a strategy: She would not deceive them outright, but she would not enlighten them either. It was not her responsibility to cure her friends of their delusions.

  Predictably, Tripler spoke first. “Have you seen him?” she demanded.

  Laura looked down. Despite her planned tactic, it was still difficult to lie to her face.

  “Us either,” said Weesie.

  “We’re fucked,” Pete declared. It was an attempt, albeit ineloquent, to acknowledge their mutual blame, to indict every member of the group for the crimes they’d committed over the course of the night, over the course of their friendship: complacence, apathy, duplicity, mistrust, and disloyalty, just as a start.

  “We’re telling Lila now,” Tripler said, reasserting her leadership.

  “But wait,” Laura said, forgetting herself, her alibi, her tactic. “Wait for what?” Tripler snapped. “Until we know he’s dead?”

  “God, Tripler,” Laura said. “What,” Tripler snapped.

  Weesie interrupted, resuming her role as mediator. “Better sooner than later. While there’s still time to do something.”

  The others nodded, acknowledging the new shorthand. These abbreviations—the vague pronouns and sweeping generalizations—were somehow more digestible than saying what everyone was thinking.

  “Where were you anyway?” Tripler demanded.

  Laura struggled to meet her gaze. The decision she faced, to lie or tell the truth, was a choice between strength and weakness. But she was suddenly confused again. Which choice amounted to strength: sharing the truth or hoarding it?

  “I was alone,” she said finally.
r />   Tripler’s eyes rounded with indignation. “Oh my God. You know where he is.”

  Laura stared back without flinching. “Go fuck yourself, Tripler.”

  “Come on, guys,” said Weesie.

  “What?” Tripler said. “Everyone knows she’d rather see him dead than watch him marry Lila.”

  This was a test, Laura knew, and there was only one way to pass it.

  “Where did you sleep?” asked Tripler. “Where did you sleep?” Laura replied.

  They stared at each other for several moments, stalemated in mutual hatred.

  Finally, Weesie broke the silence, taking Tripler’s place at the front of the line. “We’re going. Are you coming or not?”

  Tripler stared at Laura for another moment, then she turned and complied, as though she’d finally tired of waiting for an answer.

  Laura watched as her friends set off toward the house. Their togetherness was eerie, militaristic, and she cringed as she thought of how many times she had followed behind, in step. But this time, her conscience compelled her to join them: If Tom had indeed gone back to Lila, it would be better to know sooner than later. If he hadn’t—and intended to miss the wedding—it was important to call off the search before authorities were alerted. To stay behind was cowardly, she decided, a crime of omission, so she sprinted to catch up with her friends, weaving in and out of the sunlight as though she were dodging bullets.

  Lila awoke in a confusion of emotions—elation, terror, relief. It felt something like waking on Christmas morning as a child and wondering, for a split second, if yet another day had been added to the month of December. But now, confusion was followed by a sinking sensation, a feeling of toxic familiarity. Even your fifteenth Christmas yielded unexpected delights; a wedding, for Lila, lacked this element of surprise.

  She did her best to focus on the most promising parts of the day. It would be amusing, at least, to live out the conventions. The promenade down the aisle, the cutting of the cake, the first dance with Tom—each moment would be a satisfying culmination of a childhood fantasy. But a mortifying emergency compounded the problems of the day: After one short night away from Tom, she could not picture his face. She knew his features by heart, of course—brown hair, green eyes, pink lips. But when she strained to conjure him, her mind went suddenly blank. And she feared this was a chilling—and telling—reflection of her feelings.