28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (37 page)

They used to have shifting crushes on Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Mickey Rourke. They had both been madly in love with Mickey Rourke, but it was a rule that they couldn’t have a crush on the same person, so Leland got Mickey Rourke because she was the one who had the poster of him from
9½ Weeks
on her wall. Mallory remembers harboring bitterness about that because there has never been a more desirable photograph of a man than Mickey Rourke in
9½ Weeks.

Leland had been the alpha, Mallory the beta—there was no way to argue that point. Mallory hadn’t cared. In later years, she came to realize that the only person’s approval she needed was her own. She didn’t need to move the needle on American culture. All she needed to do was be a good teacher and a better mother and the best person she could be.

She has one weak spot, one fault line: Jake. And now the world knows it. Leland has exposed her.

Mallory wants to be the kind of person who lets this go. Cooper reached deep and covered for her. Ursula, hopefully, bought it, and the article that hundreds of thousands of American women will read will be forgotten by next week.

Mallory isn’t that person.

Her second choice is to be the kind of person who quietly erases Leland from her life. She will block Leland from her phone and her e-mail. Her parents’ house has been sold; there’s no longer any reason to return to Baltimore for the holidays. Link can see Sloane, his grandmother, and Steve Gladstone, his grandmother’s boyfriend, on Fray’s watch.

But she isn’t this person either.

She is a person who has been manipulated and pushed around and treated poorly by her best friend for over thirty years, but this is the last time. Mallory is angry. The anger, she knows, will fade, but before that happens, she’s going to make Leland feel the searing burn, the acrid bitterness.

She calls Leland.

“Mal?”

Mallory stares into the bedroom mirror as she talks. “I saw the article. ‘Same Time Next Year.’” Mallory is proud of herself. Her voice is steady and clear. She holds her own gaze.

Silence.

“Ursula called Cooper.”

“Oh God.”

“That’s not what bothers me about this,” Mallory says. “That’s an outcome, which is separate from the betrayal itself.”

“It wasn’t a
betrayal,
Mal—”

“I told you that in confidence. Extremely sensitive top-secret confidence. I was drunk, I own that, and I was sad. It was the night of my parents’ funeral. I shared something with you, my best friend since forever, and you turned right around and laid it out in your
blog
”—Mallory says this like it’s a dirty word—“for all to see. You used my secret as clickbait.”

“I didn’t give your name—”

“You might as well have,” Mallory says. “Ursula called Cooper!” Her face is blotching; she feels her good sense unspooling like the string of a kite snatched by the wind.
There it goes!
Mallory sets the phone down on her dresser. She can hear Leland’s voice, though not her actual words. Her excuses. Her obsequious apologies. Mallory takes a deep breath.
Hang up,
she thinks. Except she’s not finished. She brings the phone back to her ear.

Silence. Then: “Mal? Are you still there?”

“It doesn’t matter if you gave my name. It doesn’t matter about Ursula. What matters is that you broke your promise to me. That was an ugly, disingenuous thing to do, Lee. It was precisely the same thoughtless, self-serving behavior you’ve demonstrated all your life, except exponentially worse. You dealt this friendship a death blow. I will feel sad without you, but my guess is that you’ll feel worse than I do because you have to live with the guilt of knowing that you are such an empty, morally bankrupt person that you would cash in on your best friend’s deepest secret for…what? Some likes? Some follows? Some
advertisers?
The admiration of strangers?” Mallory takes a breath. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Maybe it’s Fifi’s approval, maybe it’s your father’s love—I have no idea. And I don’t care. Goodbye, Lee.”

“Mal—”

Mallory hangs up. Leland calls back four times and leaves three messages, which Mallory deletes without listening to. She blocks Leland’s cell number, she blocks her e-mail, and she blocks the
Leland’s Letter
website, marking it
inappropriate
. When all that is done, it’s time to go back to the beach to pick up Link.

When Link gets into the car, hair wet and sculpted into crazy waves and spiky peaks, smelling of salt and sweat and sunblock, feet and legs covered with sand, he says, “Have you been crying, Mom?”

It must be crystal clear the answer is yes, but Mallory shakes her head.

Link says, “Tomorrow I’ll have the guys over to the house and you can cook for us, okay, Mama?”

She feels the corners of her mouth lift, like they have a mind of their own. “Okay,” she says.

It’s a week before Christmas and Link is taking out the kitchen trash after dinner, a chore he enjoys this time of year because the air is cold and smells of wood smoke, and the ocean mist glitters like tinsel. On the horizon, he can just pick out the lights of a giant wreath that their closest neighbor hangs on the side of his house.

As he’s tying up the bag outside on the back porch, he sees a soft package in a brown UPS bag that has been stuffed halfway down. Further inspection reveals Link’s name on the front.

What?

Link pulls the bag out from underneath a chicken carcass and potato peelings and junk mail. It’s a package addressed to him from L. Gladstone, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Auntie Leland. What is it doing in the trash?

He tears open the brown mailer to find a wrapped gift, clothing of some sort, it feels like. He unwraps the present. Why not? It’s his. It’s a Patriots jersey, number 87,
GRONKOWSKI
. Yes! Link has been dying for one of these and it’s an adult medium, roomy enough for him to wear over a hoodie.

He inspects the rest of the contents of the trash bag from the outside in case Mallory has accidentally thrown away any other presents. Then he takes the trash to the cans on the side of the house, admires the neighbor’s wreath, and heads back inside with the Gronk jersey. Thank God he saved it!

“Mom?” he says, holding the jersey up. “This came for me from Auntie Leland and you accidentally threw it away.”

Mallory is on the sofa in front of the fire, grading essays. She smiles mildly. “Not an accident,” she says. “Leland is dead to me.”

What are we talking about in 2016? Prince; the presidential election; Muhammad Ali; Villanova Wildcats; Harriet Tubman; Antonin Scalia; Brexit; Colin Kaepernick; the North Carolina restroom debate; Pulse nightclub in Orlando; Sidney Crosby; Blue Apron; Pat Summitt; Black Lives Matter; goat yoga; Gene Wilder; the Cubs; Brangelina; Standing Rock; Carrie Fisher; preferred gender pronouns; Piper, Crazy Eyes, Alex, Red, and Healy; “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”

B
urgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes, Cat Stevens’s “Hard Headed Woman,” hydrangea blossoms in the mason jar, the same mason jar from year number one, which Jake finds comforting; the jar sits on top of the black burn scar on the harvest table. The meal, the music, the mason jar, and the narrow harvest table are the same, but so much else has changed.

Mallory took some of the money she inherited from her parents and completely transformed the inside of the cottage. She…gutted it. Gone is the rustic paneling and the dusty brick fireplace with the slate hearth. Gone is the screen door that slammed with a spine-tingling snap every time someone came in or went out. Gone are the Formica countertops—so outdated they were back in—and the particleboard cabinets and the fudge-brown fridge and the stainless-steel drop-in sink.

By anyone’s standards, Mallory’s cottage is now dazzling, swoon-worthy. The walls are shiplap, painted white; the old, sagging bookshelves are now floor-to-ceiling white built-ins with accent lighting and cool copper rails and a sliding ladder to help access the upper shelves. The floors are pickled oak. There’s a new deep white sofa and two comfy club chairs sheathed in cream linen and underneath is a rug striped in every shade of white from French vanilla to polar icecap. The kitchen cabinets are white with tasteful brass hardware, and the Formica has been replaced with Pegasus marble. Mallory’s bedroom is like a middle-aged woman who took a vacation to the Bahamas and returned with a new attitude and a hibiscus behind her ear. The room now has a cathedral ceiling; the walls are painted the faintest peach, and there is a sumptuous king-size bed complete with gauzy white canopies floating down the sides. She has annexed the bathroom as her own, and it’s now tiled in jungle green; the old tub was finally removed and replaced with a freestanding stone tub that resembles one of the slipper shells they used to find on their beach walks. The guest room has been extravagantly wallpapered—an azure blue background printed with frolicking zebras.

The only room that has been left untouched is Link’s. Entering Link’s room is like stepping back in time: There’s the familiar paneling, the creaky floors covered by assorted braided rugs, the dresser thick with gray paint. If Jake isn’t mistaken, Mallory harvested that dresser from the Take It or Leave It at the Nantucket dump.

Jake runs his hands over the walls of Link’s room. “My old friend the paneling,” he says. Link’s room is the only place that retains the old-fashioned, cottagey smell—salt water and mildew.

“He wouldn’t let me change a thing,” Mallory says. “Except I turned his closet into the world’s smallest bathroom. He says he likes the cottage better the way it was before. Can you imagine?”

“Well…”

“Not you too,” Mallory says. “Do you hate it? Do you think I bleached out the character?”

Jake steps back into the great room. “You kept the desk!” he says. He hadn’t noticed before, but Mallory’s kidney-shaped desk is still in the same place in the far corner of the pond side of the room, nearly hidden by the master bedroom’s new six-panel door. The desk appears out of place in this new version of the cottage, like a dowdy maiden aunt at a party of supermodels, and yet Jake would choose the maiden aunt to talk to every time.

“I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it,” Mallory says. “I remember Aunt Greta writing letters at this desk. I wonder now if she was writing to Ruthie.”

The song changes to “At Last.” The music comes from Sonos, a playlist imported from Mallory’s phone. The five-CD changer is long gone.

“I’m sorry you don’t like it,” Mallory says, and she throws back what’s left of her wine. Even the wine is fancier—gone is the twelve-dollar bottle of Cypress chardonnay, replaced by a Sancerre from the Chavignol region. “But I’m the one who has to live here. Link will be leaving for college in a couple of years and you’ll leave on Monday.”

“Hey, hey,” he says, gathering her up in his arms. “It’s gorgeous, Mal. It’s like a magazine spread. It just feels different, and I have to get used to it.”

“I didn’t want to live in a charming, rustic box anymore,” she says. “Fray has a goddamned castle out in Seattle and he and Anna just bought a place in Deer Valley, a
chalet,
Link calls it—”

“You didn’t do all this to keep up with Fray, did you?” Jake asks.

“I wanted it to be nice,” Mallory says. “Nicer.”

“How could anything be nicer than having the Atlantic Ocean as your front yard?”

“I know, but…” Mallory pulls away a few inches and Jake gets his first good look at her. The cottage has had a complete makeover, but Mallory Blessing is exactly the same. There’s some gray in the part of her hair, which he’s glad she hasn’t “bleached out.” Her face is suntanned and when she raises her eyebrows, her forehead becomes an accordion of wrinkles, and Jake loves it. He loves seeing her get a little older, a little more seasoned. She still has the girlish freckles across her nose and tonight, her eyes are bluish, more blue than he’s ever seen them.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Mal?”

She rests her head on his chest and he closes his eyes. Three hundred and sixty-two days he has waited to hold her in his arms.

“I’ve been tired lately,” she says. “Link and I had a tough year. I want him to study and play baseball and be a good kid and he wants to make out with his girlfriend and go to bonfires and get high with his buddies.”

“I feel your pain,” Jake says.

“Is Bess giving you a hard time?”

“Not me.”

“Ursula?”

Jake nods. Bess doesn’t have a boyfriend, go to bonfires, or smoke dope. She stays home with her friend Pageant, and the two of them make incendiary posters for the rallies and marches and protests they attend on the weekends to fight for climate change, reproductive rights, transgender rights, immigration rights, gun control, Amnesty International. It’s hard to keep up, and whereas Jake tries to be supportive—he loves that Bess is using her voice—Ursula’s attitude is one of amusement, which comes across as patronizing.

Off to defend the lesbian cheetahs?
Ursula asked recently.
Or is today Ugandan dwarves?

You’re offensive,
Bess said.
If anyone knew what you were really like, no one would vote for you.

Bess!
Jake said, but she had already slammed out of the condo.

Ursula tossed it off with a laugh.
Let her go,
she said.
I hated my mother at that age too. It’s natural.

“What if we went out tonight after dinner?” Jake says. “What if we went to the Chicken Box for old times’ sake?”

“I’d love to,” Mallory says. “But we can’t. We dodged a bullet, Jake. I thought for sure Ursula would put you on lockdown and I’d be alone this weekend.”

“She seemed unconcerned,” Jake says. Mallory told him about the whole situation with
Leland’s Letter
and Ursula calling Cooper. Mallory found it strange that Ursula hadn’t simply confronted Jake, but that’s because Mallory doesn’t understand the architecture of his marriage. Ursula doesn’t deal with the issue head-on partly because she can’t summon the emotional energy and partly because she’s afraid if she pulls the wrong block, the whole Jenga tower will fall. A failing marriage is a death knell in politics; Ursula will maintain at any cost.

Jake isn’t thrilled that Cooper knows what’s going on, although Cooper covering for them has bought them some freedom. Why not enjoy it? “We’re so old now,” he says. “We won’t know anyone at the Box.”

“We might, though.”

“Let’s do something different, then,” he says. “How about if after dinner we take a bottle of wine down to the docks and drink it onboard the
Greta
? It’ll be nice to be out on the water. We can sit on the bow. No one will see us.”

Mallory purses her lips. “Mmm, I don’t know about changing up our routine. We do things the way we do them because they work.”

“No one is going to see us on the bow of your boat, Mal.”

She huffs. “Fine. But when we’re walking, stay six paces behind me with your hands in your pockets and wear a hat.”

Jake laughs. “Deal.”

They park Mallory’s Jeep downtown and walk—Mallory first, Jake following—past the Gazebo, Straight Wharf, and Cru and onto the docks. It’s fun to be out at night among people enjoying the last weekend of summer. Jake is nervous, which only heightens his pleasure; he’s drunk too much wine, probably, and Mallory has a second bottle in her bag. They may have to sleep on the boat and sneak off at the crack of dawn.

They come to the gatekeeper. Beyond a certain point, it’s boat owners and guests only. There’s a teenager with strawberry-blond hair curling out from beneath his University of Miami hat like lettuce peeking out of a hamburger bun. Jake nearly turns back. Mallory knows every teenager on this island. She’s
the
English teacher—the best, the most popular. Any one of her students could whip his phone out of his pocket to snap a pic of the dude Miss Blessing is hanging out with and then post it on Snapchat. Someone else would then do face-recognition. First the high school and then the entire island would know that Miss Blessing was seen at the docks at nine o’clock at night with Jake McCloud, husband of Ursula de Gournsey.

Is he being paranoid? Probably.

“I’m on the
Greta,
” Mallory says to the kid. “Slip one oh six.”

“’Kay,” the teenager says.

They walk on. Jake feels so relieved that he reaches for Mallory’s hand, and she swats it away, as she should. He grabs her by the shoulders and she elbows him in the ribs. They’re at slip 100. The
Greta
is three boats ahead on the right. They’re almost in the clear.

A man and a woman step off one of the huge yachts on the left. The man is big and burly. Mallory and Jake have to move aside so the couple can pass.

“Evening,” Jake says.

The man stops. His weight makes the deck boards creak.

“Mallory?” he says.

Mallory turns. “Oh!” she cries as though someone goosed her. “Bayer?” She moves tentatively in the man’s direction but then seems to think better of it and offers half a wave. “Hello there. Good to see you.” She has clearly decided against a big reunion with Bayer—talk about an appropriate name; the guy is huge and hairy—and Jake is relieved.

Onward,
he thinks. But he’s aware that the moment hasn’t quite ended. Bayer is staring at them—at Jake now—while the woman, a slim brunette with an armful of gold bangles, is focused on her phone.

“You,” Bayer says to Jake. “Do I know you?”

Jake isn’t going to risk looking this guy in the eye, so he checks out the boat the two just came off of:
Dee Dee
. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you
sure?
” Bayer’s voice presses.

“He always thinks he knows people,” the brunette says. She slips her phone into her bag. When she reaches for Bayer’s hand, her bracelets jingle. “Let’s go, honey. Reservation at nine thirty.”

Jake says, “Have a good night.”

“Yes,” Bayer says. “You too.”

Mallory shoots forward like a nervous three-year-old filly out of the gates at the Derby. She practically runs down the dock to slip 106 and leaps onto the boat like it’s about to sail away. Jake can’t help himself; he laughs.

Clearly, she’s spooked. She takes a key out of the back pocket of her white capris, unlocks the padlock, and pulls open the door to the cabin. She descends into the dark.

Jake hears her setting the wine bottle down, then rummaging through a drawer. By the time he’s beside her, she has yanked out the cork.

“Who was that?”

“Bayer,” she says. “Bayer Burkhart.” She takes a deep drink straight from the bottle.

Bayer Burkhart;
the name rings a bell. Or is he imagining this? “Who is he?”

“Somebody that I used to know,” Mallory says. “Wow, that was weird. Freaky, even. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”

“Do you know who the woman was?”

“No, but I have a guess.” Mallory goes to the little cabinet for glasses. “When I knew him, he lived in Newport.”

Newport. Something is definitely familiar about the name and Newport, but Jake can’t quite grasp it.

“Were you and Bayer Burkhart involved?” Jake asks. He’s suddenly aflame with jealousy.

“I suppose,” Mallory says. “Briefly. One summer. Though it’s funny—when I was looking at him just now, I couldn’t dredge up one pleasant memory.”

“Good,” Jake says, and Mallory hands him a glass of wine.

It’s Sunday night, post–Chinese food, post-movie, post–fortune cookies, post-lovemaking. These are bittersweet hours—the last eight or ten before he heads back to the airport. It feels worse this year, but why?

Mallory has fallen asleep and Jake resents her for it, though over the years, he knows, he’s usually the one who falls asleep first while she lies awake contemplating the torturous nature of their relationship.

Mallory is breathing into the soft down of her pillow. The new mattress is yielding but firm; it feels like it’s made of fondant icing. Jake runs his hands down Mallory’s back. She has such soft skin that he makes it a point to touch her any chance he gets. This time tomorrow he’ll be back in Washington. Bess and Ursula won’t return to DC for another couple of days so he’ll have some time to decompress, shake the sand out of his shoes, get his head back where it needs to be—family, work, raising money for the CFRF. This all sounds fine and it will be fine. The goring pain he feels right now at the thought of leaving Mallory will subside, bit by bit, until at last it’s bearable—and then, in April or May, the dull melancholy that settles like a blanket of dust over his heart will turn, almost instantly, into anticipation.