Devon looked out the window again. She was aware that Barnes and Nina were both watching her again. Waiting for her to decide. Or to come up with the answer. Which was the way it had always worked. Devon was the planner, the doer. The one who knew how to talk, where to go. What was cool or boring or fun or terrible. What was right.
But she had never had to deal with anything like this.
“This is impossible,” she said at last. “I can’t think. We should all be walking.” She pointed outside, at Florin and James. “Let’s go to the beach.”
Nina and Barnes considered, and then they both nodded.
Barnes went outside to tell Florin and James what they were doing. The two of them looked at him for a moment, and then they shrugged and agreed to come along. They left the house in a pack, just as Devon’s parents were coming home from the beach for the day. Devon waved and tried to give them a smile, but neither one of them bought it for a second. Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “Everything okay? How was the city?”
Devon thought for a minute before answering. “Austin and the city were both great. There’s some other stuff going on, shitty stuff.” She winced at her own language, then shook her head to show them she wasn’t herself. “Which I’ll talk to you guys about later,” she said. “Or maybe never.” She sighed and turned to her father. “Dad, the Racquet Club is pretty nice from the inside.”
Peter Hall gave his daughter a puzzled look, but she walked off before he could ask her for clarification. She jumped in the back of James’s Navigator, and she waved to them from the window as they pulled out of the driveway.
James was the only one with a car big enough for all of them, so he was still the one driving. Even though he was not doing much talking. They went to the beach lookout at the end of Cooper’s Neck Lane, driving first through the huge public parking lot, then up the little one-lane road that led to the overlook. James steered the huge Navigator up this narrow path, and then he killed the car’s engine and put on the parking break. Normally they would not have been allowed to stay here for more than a few minutes, but it was almost seven o’clock. There were no cars in the parking lot, and no one was waiting behind them. They could take their time.
They sat in silence in the car for a while, looking out at the Atlantic. As always, there was an unspoken assumption that Devon would come up with the solution. To this problem, and any problem. As she had since they were all seven. She would see the way more clearly somehow. More quickly than the rest of them.
Nevertheless, they each tried to find a way out. A way that would lead to Pauline’s permanent departure. To peace between Tracy and Jerry Dunn, and a normal life for James.
At the same time, there were other things for each of them to consider. Particular, private things. Because the beach was a good place for thinking.
After fifteen minutes of sitting, the five of them climbed out of the car. The sun was almost down now, but the beach seemed to hang onto the light for longer than the rest of the world. James locked the car behind them, and they clambered down the slope of the sand toward the water.
No one spoke.
They turned and walked in the direction of the Beach Club. It was more than a mile to the east, and they could barely see the club from here. But they knew it was there. They each walked within a few feet of each other, two boys and three girls spread out along the sand like a hastily-assembled pickup soccer team. They wore frowns of concentration, but they began to let the ocean wind calm them. The waves crashed down onto the sand with a regular, pounding rhythm, and each of them became convinced that there were things they could do. Steps they could take.
Still they did not talk. But they began to make decisions. Big decisions.
They walked on and on, all the way to the Beach Club and then past it. They walked for so long that when they finally turned around, they had trouble finding familiar landmarks. They were like a crew that had sailed too far out into the middle of the ocean. Where was the shore? Where was Cooper’s beach?
They began walking back, each of them going over the decisions that had been made. Were they wise, these decisions? Would they create more problems than they would solve?
Difficult to tell.
But the wind and the smell of salt in the air and the crashing waves seemed to say that they would not, could not simply sit by. They were bound to do something; to try. So when they finally came all the way back to Cooper’s Neck and trudged slowly up the slope to the Navigator, they all felt the change from a few hours earlier.
They had plans.
James unlocked the doors, and they climbed back inside.
“A party on Dune Road,” Devon said, and there was no argument. They knew what she meant.
They had walked for a long, long time, and now it was late. They were all far too young to drink, but that didn’t matter; they wanted to drink. To forget all these things until tomorrow. None of the restaurants or bars on Main Street in Southampton would have served alcohol to minors, but Devon and her friends already knew this. They knew, too, that on a Saturday night in Southampton there would be at least three different parties already in progress at houses along Dune road. Huge houses. Huge parties. No occasion necessary.
The bartenders at such parties didn’t ask questions.
None of them was dressed carefully that night, but they still looked right. Their casual clothes were still expensive, and in any case they knew all the right people. The first house they came to with white flood lights and a tent was the Paguch estate, an immense beach-side compound where late-night soirees were practically the norm during the summer. Charlie Paguch was in his fifties now, but he still liked putting on parties.
They found a table at the far side of the back lawn and ordered one drink after another from the roving waiters, and in a while they were talking and laughing together as if nothing were wrong. As if none of them had anything to worry about. As they grew more drunk they were also growing more bold. More sure of the things they had decided on the beach.
Three hours later they had all had too much to drink. When James got up to use the bathroom he stumbled over someone at another table. The man turned and shouted at him, and Barnes was up. Up and running, and now flying at the man who had shouted at James, Barnes’s fists coming like stones from a basket that had been tipped over on the man’s head. Devon and Nina and Florin moved as quickly as they could, but they could not keep Barnes from opening a cut under the man’s eye, or from shattering the man’s nose, or from driving one punch after another into the man’s soft stomach. Then there seemed to be hands everywhere, hands grabbing at Barnes’s shirt and James’s hair, and the whole group, all five of them, suddenly found themselves hustled out of the place like a cluster of startled livestock.
Go find food and drink on your own. Go home.
“Fuckers,” Barnes said, brushing himself off. He smoothed out his shirt, which was now ripped in several places. He had blood on one cheek, but it was difficult to tell if it was his or not. His eyes were still on fire.
“No driving yet,” Devon declared.
They agreed silently, and they walked along the side of the road until the sea air began to clear their heads. Until they could walk along the white line with confidence. Then they turned and walked back, and climbed carefully into the car. They were not sober yet, but it was time to go.
Through it all, there had been no discussion of any plans.
None at all.
Nina
1
James drove slowly on the way back. Very slowly. He was often the designated driver, but that night he had ordered just as many drinks as the rest of them. And yes, they had walked for a while, but not far enough. They all knew it. So they had their seat belts on tight, and it took them twice as long as normal to get back to First Neck Lane. By that time, the unnaturally slow pace of the Navigator was making them all feel queasy.
“This is fine,” Devon called out from the back seat. “I’ll walk the last half-mi
le. Clear my head some more.”
James pulled the car over without a word. Devon hopped out onto the grassy shoulder of First Neck Lane, and Nina followed her. “Me, too,” she called over her shoulder, in case they were all too drunk to notice she was jumping out. Devon had a brief vision of Florin and James and Barnes searching the car for Nina in a panic. The idea made her giggle.
Which made her feel queasy again, so she stopped.
“Tomorrow morning,” Barnes said to them from the passenger seat. He was speaking with unnecessary loudness. “Everything’s going to work out,” he added, with a resolute and very drunk-looking nod of his head. Devon saw that his lip was swollen. Apparently the guy at the Paguch party had gotten in a few licks of his own.
Nina closed the back door behind her, and the Navigator pulled away slowly. She and Devon watched it recede into the distance, staring at the red taillights like hypnotized June Bugs. Then it rounded a bend at the far end of the road, and they were left in the First Neck Lane darkness. As they had been so many times before, when they were younger. When they had been pedaling along the road, hoping not to be run over. Or hassled by drunken teenagers.
Yet here they were themselves. Sixteen. Very drunk. And no one to hassle.
They began walking up the lane toward Devon’s house. There were clouds blocking the moon, but the two of them had come this way so often, over so many years, that the dark didn’t matter anymore. They knew which driveways had the gray, sharp-rock gravel and which ones had the yellow, smooth-stone kind. They knew the places on the shoulder where the grass grew longer, more wild, and the places where the roots of the trees were so large that it was safer to walk in the road. They took slow, steady breaths as they walked, kept their heads down, and searched in the blackness for a tree root that might trip them up, or an uneven roll in the earth that could further unsettle their already unsettled stomachs.
They began to feel better. Not sober, but better.
After they had been walking for several minutes, Devon picked her head up. She could barely see Nina, but she could hear her footsteps just to her right, and she could piece together an image as her shadow passed in front of tree trunks, branches, and the unending background of Southampton hedges. Nina may have detected a change in Devon’s breathing, or in the rhythm of her footsteps, because she lifted her head as well.
“So,” Nina said. “What are we going to do?”
“About which thing?”
Nina paused in the darkness, and Devon was briefly embarrassed. There were so many issues doing laps around her own head, so many conflicting thoughts about Austin and her parents and how all of it fit into her own life, that she had almost forgotten that there was really only one problem. At least as far as anyone else was concerned. The Pauline problem. How to get rid of her. How to save James and Ned. How to save the Dunn family.
“About… Pauline,” Nina said finally.
“I don’t know,” Devon said. “I have an idea, but it’s not finished yet. Back on the beach I started to think I had it. At the party, too.”
“We do well together,” Nina said. “We make each other brave.”
Devon nodded, and she adjusted her path so that she was walking a step closer to her friend. Nina was right: as a group, they seemed invincible. Except that Pauline was somehow able to break that invincible shell whenever she appeared. “I’ve been out of the picture a lot lately,” Devon said, as if answering an unspoken accusation.
“Unavoidable,” Nina said. “Injured dad, new gorgeous guy on the scene.” She put an arm around Devon’s shoulders, and now they were walking like two friends in grade school. “Busy couple of weeks.”
They fell silent again and walked close together for several more minutes. They were nearing Devon’s house, and she was again lost in thought. She reminded herself – tried to convince herself – that she really had figured things out on the beach. Now she tried to regain some of that confidence. To remember how she had planned to work it all out. All of her strategies seemed suspect now.
“What’s going to happen with you and Austin?” Nina asked suddenly.
There was a strange look on Nina’s face as she asked this, but of course Devon couldn’t see it in the dark. “I thought I knew,” Devon replied. “I think he might be perfect, but I don’t want to jump ahead. The problem is, it’s too early, and – ”
“Because I could sleep over,” Nina said quickly. Softly.
Her voice was trembling.
She began to say more, much more, but Devon held up a hand.
2
Devon sent her home. As kindly as she could. And with a hug, and a kiss on the forehead. Because Nina was one of her closest, oldest, best friends, and because she loved her.
Devon watched, standing motionless on the shoulder of the road, as Nina walked slowly away. After only thirty seconds she couldn’t see her at all anymore in the dark, but she could still hear her. A few seconds later she heard the footsteps stop and wait. Devon called out to her, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
The steps resumed.
Devon stood and waited for several minutes more. Waited until she was sure Nina was far, far away. Then, when there was nothing more to hear, when the only sound was the past-midnight breeze moving through the hedges, she let herself go.
Just for a minute.
What? What? What?
She crouched down in the grass and whisper-screamed into her hands several times, and then she pressed her hands into the cool earth as though they had absorbed the heat of her distress and confusion, as if they might burst into flames if left out in the open air. She had a momentary urge to start digging through the grass and dirt the way James had on the tennis court, but instead she simply pressed down, harder and harder into the grass, until she could feel the muscles in the back of her upper arms start to shake.
She stood up slowly and began to replay it in her head. In the pure, silent darkness. Had she missed something? Had Nina been giving out signs for years and years, and Devon had simply been blind?
Even more troublesome: had she, Devon, ever given Nina the wrong impression?
She felt like a witness at a sexual harassment case. Second-guessing herself. Except that most harassment cases involved idiot men or boys, and with a boy it was different. Boys didn’t wait for signs or invitations. You could tell a boy that he was disgusting and rude and piggish, and he would find a way to spin it in his favor. All he needed was a few minutes alone inside his warped, boy-stupid mind. You turned around, and there he was a moment later, asking you out again. Or winking at you. Or stroking your arm.
They were programmed that way.
But Devon knew it wasn’t supposed to be that way with girls. A girl didn’t want to be pushed away. She wanted to be asked, to be pursued. If a girl thought there was a chance of being rejected, she wouldn’t get near you.
So why had Nina tried it? Something so blatantly risky, and right when they were talking about Austin, too.
Devon was walking now, though she couldn’t remember having started up again. From the little she could see in the dark, she could tell she had walked straight past her house; she was almost all the way to the Meadow Club. She considered turning around, but the feel of the outdoor air in her lungs was soothing. It felt like hours since they had left the club, and now she began to wonder how many drinks they had all actually had.
Too many, clearly.
She decided to keep going until her heart had slowed to a comfortable, non-panic-attack rhythm; then she would head home. Which would be enough time to avoid a hangover. She hoped.
She went over the Nina event once more in her head. Now, on the third time through, she began to wonder if she had misinterpreted Nina’s intensions. If she had somehow made a mistake.
No way. No Mistake.
Not when she tells you she wants to sleep over, and that she loves you. Not when she tells you that she had to ask, even though the timing is so wrong, so terribly wrong, because she’s worr
ied that if she waits any longer you’ll be gone, and then she’ll always wonder.
“That’s pretty conclusive,” Devon said out loud, to the dark. The sound of her own voice was strange and flat in the night air. “I guess it was a brave thing to do,” she added.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” replied a voice just ahead of her. An animated, enthusiastic voice. A voice with amusement tucked into the artificially high register of a man speaking above his natural range. “But no one listens to me. No one except the irresistible Devon Hall, of course. And isn’t that always the way?”
Devon looked up, and she smiled in spite of herself. In spite of everything.
For here was Theo Mahlmann, standing at the entrance to the Meadow Club in a full tuxedo, looking as if he were waiting to direct cars arriving for a club party. Except that it was now 2 AM on a Sunday morning, and the Meadow Club had long ago fallen silent. Even the groundskeepers were asleep.
“Morning Mr. Mahlmann,” Devon said, as if his being here weren’t strange at all. As if her being here weren’t strange, either. Just two people enjoying the Southampton out-of-doors.
“And to you, my dear,” Theo responded brightly. He raised his hand to her, as though toasting with an invisible Champaign flute. “Out for a stroll?”
“Yes.”
“Thinking hard? Solving problems?”
“Trying to. Not with any success.”
Theo Mahlmann nodded soberly, and he lowered his invisible glass. “I’ve recently declared my lifestyle rather openly to the public, as you may have heard.”
“I did hear that, as a matter of fact.” And since we’re on the subject, I know someone who’d probably like to have a conversation with you. A sort of support-group conversation, if you will.
“Yes, well.” Theo rocked back on his heels, and he took a deep breath. “Helen’s been an absolute brick, I assure you, but the children are having a bit of a time. They seem confused, to put it mildly. Not that they ever expected me to teach them how to box or throw horseshoes, you understand, but now they’re being forced to address the issue quite directly. Perhaps more directly than I had intended, to be honest.” He bent his head forward for a moment, then popped it back up again. Took another breath. “Been standing here on the corner in my Sunday Best since about ten this evening, and nothing’s quite come to mind. Solution-wise, I mean. Considered taking it all back, but I don’t think they’d buy that particular parcel. Or maybe I could just go flying off to Australia for a while. To give everyone some time to digest? But that seems needlessly grand, doesn’t it? And people would think I’d rushed off to join my lover, some oiled-up Aussie named Doug with a Chihuahua in tow, when actually I would never cheat on Helen. Never have, never will. Because being a queen – a gifted, genius of a queen, mind you – has nothing to do with fidelity. You understand.”
Southampton Spectacular Page 22
