Be True to Me

by Adele Griffin

  And now I would be the one to break it.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver were sitting with the Burkes at the kitchen nook. Behind them, Gil was leaning with Tiger and Deirdre against the counter. There was a larger, older group seated in the dining room area. Most of the kids were in the living room; a few were sleeping.

  I crept near, slowly, until I stood at the top of the porch steps, taking it all in.

  From the porch I moved to stand in the doorframe.

  Gil saw me first. We stared at each other. He blinked once, long. I could see in his face all the hard hours of the evening, and I could see that all he wanted was to cross into this dark space and hold me.

  But too much had happened between us. Too much was broken.

  Silently, I buried all of the things I wanted to tell him. We had nothing to live for together, and nothing between us mattered anymore.

  The room’s awareness of me caught like a slow flame licking a curl of paper, and they appeared almost as strangers to me, maybe because now I knew what I didn’t know then: that all they’d been was kindly tolerant of me, Julia’s little friend, scooping ice cream or taking lunch orders right next to her. My single moment of Sunken Haven visibility, when I’d won the Junior Cup, had not been what many of them had wanted from me. I hadn’t understood the rules. It all seemed so silly now, though of course, in a way, those rules were deadly.

  Now you see me, I said. Ya little boogas.

  It was hard not to be kind of amused by the whole thing, the way I always felt when I’d completed a dare. It was the whole point of a dare, really, to show your triumph over the moment just after it. They all came at me at once, a flood of voices, everyone speaking in a tidal wave of relief and confusion. And of course I forgave them, all of those tolerant Sunkies—Walts, Trains, Forsythes, Knightleys, Tingleys, Custises, Wembleys, Todds, Hastys, and Burkes—because Sunken Haven had given me the Tullivers, and most especially Julia, and in the end, she was the one I’d come back for.

  Julia, who was at me at once, a bright column of skin and silver. Her face as calm as the sea itself, because she’d always known that I would return to her. Her pale eyes unblinking as I approached, facing me just as she had that very first day, when I’d jumped into her game and never jumped out.

  I’m so sorry, I told her. You know how much I love you. Her eyes closed; a terrified shudder seemed to pass through her body, and it was only when she opened her eyes again that I saw the sting of her bright tears, and I felt the force of the sea inside me. I lay on the cool, damp beach, my lungs swollen with salt water, about to burst; but I also held on to Julia, my most precious thing, the sea finally pouring unstoppered out of me, as I stared up at the clear, beautiful night of black sky and silver stars. I held on to Julia. And then I let go.

  JEAN

  We could not doubt our guilt.

  They found Fritz’s body all the way over in Fair Haven.

  Later, whenever people spoke of that night, there was speculation and rumor with regard to just about everything. Some said she’d done it on purpose, a silly girl’s dramatic impulse. Others whispered that she’d fought long and hard, and if that call to the Coast Guard had been radioed a tiny bit earlier, it would have made all the difference. If only she’d done this. If only he’d done that. There were stories about drinking and fighting and love gone off the rails.

  It was the usual gossip. You couldn’t pay attention to it.

  On Sunken Haven, we had a few more details, but that didn’t stop our own guesswork. Julia was sure that ten minutes could have saved Fritz. That’s what she told everyone, probably mostly to make good on her warning that I’d have to pay for swearing I’d seen Fritz come back, when I hadn’t. But Julia was so broken up, so out of her mind and undone in anguish, that nobody could take her seriously. She even swore that she’d known the exact moment Fritz’s soul had passed on, hours before the Coast Guard had radioed.

  The helicopter took the body to Bay Shore, and from there it was flown back, accompanied by the Tulliver family, to the O’Neill family in Louisiana. Two days later, Gil went out for the funeral. Nobody came back to Sunken Haven—the Tullivers stayed on with the O’ Neills so they could help one another through those first, grieving weeks, while Gil returned to New York City, where he resumed his job at his uncle’s firm.

  I’d thought Gil and I would speak again after that night, but speaking again turned out to be too difficult. I would have had to call or write him, and over the next months, while I often looked for him in restaurants or down city streets, once school resumed, we were completely out of each other’s orbit.

  It was probably for the best. How could Gil not always think of me as the girl who traded a last dance for Fritz’s life?

  And so, it seemed the only thing for me to do about that night was to close it, lock it up, and keep it hidden, pretending as best I could to walk away from it.

  What I didn’t know then—Gil Burke and I would never again be in touch, though I’d hear about him sporadically over the years. While he returned to Sunken Haven that next summer, I got a job as camp counselor up in Kennebunk, Maine, and later that fall, I moved out to Berkeley, to attend school in a state that suited me surprisingly well, although my original intention had been only to get as far away from home as I could.

  My mother would speak of Gil in passing; that the Burke boy had transferred to Columbia, or that he’d graduated magna cum laude, or that he was in law school, or in Europe or Newport with his family. At NYU, Gil apparently moved with a fast, glamorous set of friends, some of whom were also friends with Daphne. Occasionally she’d mention seeing him in South Hampton or at a disco or a wedding.

  “Oh, that handsome Gil Burke,” my mother might say, if Daphne brought him up. “Remember all that awful business?” As time slowly unstitched Gil’s direct connection to that night, Fritz O’Neill was generally evoked more as an accident he’d been lucky to walk away from.

  But once, I’d known his heart. And I knew that Gil Burke had not escaped that night unscathed. We could not doubt our guilt, either of us, no matter how hard we worked to live apart from it.

  But I had none of this knowledge when, the following weekend, much to my parents’ delight, I beat Pepper Hale to win the Junior Cup. Pepper hadn’t been here for June or July. Her parents had divorced the year before; she’d spent most of the summer up in Vermont with her dad’s family. She’d attended a tennis clinic there, she told me, and she had been practicing hard at her game.

  But I’d been practicing all summer. I had to keep reminding myself that I had earned it. I beat Pepper slowly and charmingly, the Sunkie way. I used a lot of friendly eye contact, happy-go-lucky shrugs, and a gracious smile whenever a set was called.

  It was a magnificent trophy, and I hated to look at it. My parents tucked it up on a high shelf in the pantry, so I wouldn’t have to.

  A couple of nights later, a severe flash thunderstorm left the Coop flooded and without electric power. The flooding was pretty bad, and the Association decided to close the Coop temporarily. That’s when I realized—there was absolutely nothing else for me here on Sunken Haven.

  I waited for the right afternoon, later that same week, when my parents had left for an afternoon of playing bridge with the Burkes. The Burkes had gone into retreat since that night, but were slowly putting out feelers that they were ready to be happy and entertained again, though only by their closest circle.

  And so once my parents were gone, I packed a small bag and wrote them a note that I was going off the island to spend time in the city for a while. I’d never done anything so disobedient before. They’d be surprised and upset. I’d worry about their reaction when the time came.

  Before I took off, I walked through every room of Lazy Days for what, even then, I was sure would be the last time. Out the front door, I wished silent good-byes to the American holly, the two red cedars, the black gum. August was always so beautiful on Sunken Haven. The fruits on the sassafras were turning from gre
en to blue—a feast for robins and jays, calling and chattering at one another.

  It was a blessing to have spent all the summers of my childhood here. It was another blessing to know it was over.

  The minute I came out of the subway station at Eighty-Sixth and Lexington, on the 6 connecting from Grand Central, I was hit with a dozen smells, lingering in drifts of garbage and gasoline. Steamed heat stuck to my skirt, to my neck and knees. Rooftops and water tanks looked like they’d burn my fingers at a touch.

  I’d had an idea that I’d go get a job for August, and that this job would give me a reason—at least a reason that I could legitimately explain to my parents—to stay in town. On the way to the apartment, with vigorous purpose, I filled out applications in places I frequented regularly, like Peterson’s Pharmacy, the local diner, and the dry cleaners. Every application came with a phantom life attached, as I saw myself handing over boxes of crisp, pressed shirts, or locating a particularly off-brand mouthwash, or rattling off the pancake specials. It was exciting to me, this prospect of a new identity, a different Jean Custis, who understood things not taught in country clubs and tennis clinics.

  I am ready to be anybody, just as long as I change.

  The afternoon exhausted me. Inside, the apartment was hot and stale.

  I turned on the air conditioner and stood in front of the living room window. The sun was going down, picking up the floating dust motes in its rich gold light.

  Would I ever see a setting sun and not think about what I should have done differently? Doubtful.

  On the street, Mikhail Baryshnikov, in sunglasses, jeans, and a T-shirt, was walking his small black poodle up the street. My heart leaped; I touched my forehead and fingertips to the glass, watching him—it was such a direct and personal glimpse. There he was, so close that if the window weren’t sealed shut, he’d have heard me call his name.

  I wished I could ask him things. Real things. Had there been a getaway car when he defected? Had there been bodyguards and passwords? Did he regret what he’d had to give up, or did he love this country the way only a person who feels saved by it can? Did he know real freedom, or was he always looking over his shoulder, waiting for someone to pin him to his history?

  Moving from window to window, I trailed Baryshnikov as we both moved uptown, from the living room to the dining room and through into the study, a corner of the apartment that we rarely used. When he disappeared around the corner, I lost my project and, with it, the surprising lightness of its distraction.

  I dropped into Dad’s leather wing chair and curled up. His bookcase took up the whole wall. A glint caught my eye. I leaned forward. Resting on the second shelf, right where I’d put them, were my earrings.

  The ones I’d been given for Christmas.

  With a lurch in my heart, I remembered. I’d had them on since Christmas morning. And then Christmas night I’d hidden in here to escape my parents’ party and all those guests. I’d taken the earrings off and put them right there, on the bookshelf, and forgotten about it. But these earrings looked so different from the other pair, the pair I’d stolen from Daphne—the pair I’d seen Fritz wearing, that night.

  I took the earrings and held them in my palm for a long time before I put them back where I’d found them. In the sun’s last light, I stood on shaking legs and went to the kitchen, where earlier this summer Daphne had taped the number of her Spanish host family to the fridge.

  I messed up twice and got an operator’s recording, before I’d correctly punched the long sequence of country and city codes into the wall phone. It was almost eight o’clock here, which meant it would be one in the morning in Spain.

  But I didn’t care. I had to hear her.

  A man with a voice like a growl answered, in words that I didn’t quite understand.

  “Daphne!” I called. “Please? I need to speak with Daphne. My sister.”

  I heard the clonk of the receiver being set down. I waited, every second wanting to hang up. Minutes later, when Daphne picked up, her voice sounded faraway and frightened, the call of a girl lost at sea. “Jean? Is that you?”

  Lightheaded, my heart pounding, I slid to the floor. Just to hear her, I felt ruptured, drowning on the inside from all that I hadn’t confessed, like a poison contained and leaking inside me. My hand held the receiver in a death grip.

  “You were right, Daphne,” I whispered across the ocean, into the static, and only now did I let tears slide, unstoppable, down my face. “I made a mistake. I made a really stupid, horrible mistake here, and there’s no way I can take it back. And I am so, so sorry, and I’d do anything to fix it, to make it right again, but I can’t, Daphne. I went too far, and I can’t.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Quite a few wonderful people gave their time, thoughts, and advice during the writing of this book. Many thanks to Jenny Han, who was so intrigued by a novel set in the summer of ’76 that she created a spellbinding Pinterest board even before I’d set down my first word. A big thank-you to Julia DeVillers, who read that messy landslide of an early manuscript and gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going.

  For her scrupulous attention to each step along the journey, many thanks to Emily van Beek. This book is infinitely better because of your ability to deliver fresh insights on every draft—and there were many. Thank you, Siobhan Vivian, for your humor and enthusiasm during what is not always an easy process, and thank you Courtney Sheinmel; I can’t think of one instance when you didn’t say “Yes! Send it!” whenever I asked you for a read.

  To my other, fellow hardworking writer pals whose work and company I love, a shout-out to Melissa Walker, Micol Ostow, Sarah Mlynowski, Morgan Matson, Elizabeth Eulberg, Michael Buckley, Jen E. Smith, Robin Wasserman, Lynne Weingarten, and Bennett Madison. I couldn’t ask for a more creative crew.

  I am profoundly delighted that Be True to Me is an Algonquin book; what a joy to be here. I’m extremely grateful for the insight and wisdom of my editor, Elise Howard, who guided this story with seasoned clarity and confidence. It has been an inspiring process. Be True to Me and I really lucked out.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the MacDowell Colony for the solace of my fall 2015 residency, where I mostly took walks, but where I also stuck my landing. A magic moment; I think about it still.

  CHARLES AYDLETT

  Adele Griffin is the acclaimed author of many books for young readers, most recently The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone. Adele lives with her husband and children in Brooklyn, New York.

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  Published by

  Algonquin Young Readers

  an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2017 by Adele Griffin.

  All rights reserved.

  A Separate Peace, copyright © 1959 by John Knowles, Inc., renewed by John Knowles, Inc. 1987. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

  Dune fence illustration Shutterstock / @ Elizabeth Spencer.

  eISBN 978-1-61620-706-9

 

 

  rchive.