Summer of Love (27 page)

“Lightweight.”

“Huh?” I look at him.

“You asked me to call you that — just following orders.” He stands up, too, seemingly immune to the alcohol consumption, and motions to the front door. “Anyway, Charles Addison is not here, as I stated prior. He is in the area, however — at the big house.”

“He’s in jail?”

“Not that big house — though I wouldn’t put it past him.” Parker walks to the door and I follow. Out the door, down the steps, I wobble while Parker leads me back toward the beach, up a little path, and into thick bushes spotted with blackberries and bramble.

“Ooops.” The thorns cut my thighs and I see thin streaks of blood rise to the surface of my skin, but it doesn’t exactly hurt. Thanks, beer. “Anyway, I’m glad to hear Charlie’s not in jail…the big house.” My voice trails off.

“Nope — not that big house.” He points to the clearing in front of us. “That big house.”

Agog, the sheer size of the structure is tremendous. We keep walking, emerging from the brush onto the top of a sand dune, my back swaying with breeze and beer. “That’s just massive.”

“Yep.” Parker points to me and then to the house and I nod. Without further ado, he nudges me down the dune — alone — which is how I wind up running (what else can you do down a step hill?) and arriving, breathless, bloodied, and a bit drunk at the regal entrance to “the big house” where Charlie is just exiting. Contrary to any of my prior images, he is not in a blue t-shirt (in fact, Parker must have actually borrowed it because I recognized the frayed hem) but dressed in a light blue buttondown shirt, khakis that at least upon first viewing appear to have been pressed, and — the kicker — loafers. Basically, he looks like the anti-Charlie.

“Charles!” I say as I halt from my running pace. I’ve never called him that before, but what else can you say to someone who looks like they’ve been competing in the World Preppy Competition — and placed. Or won.

“Love!” He takes in my disheveled appearance and then looks over his shoulder at the front door where two people — I’m guessing Mr. and Mrs. Preppy — I mean Addison — are staring at us.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Great, now we’re all reduced to one-word sentences,” I mutter.

“What?” Charlie wrinkles his forehead for a second, then clicks into something and looks up to the dune from which I sprinted only moments before. Parker gives an exaggerated wave. “I see you met my brother.”

I nod and wait for the next part of my vision — the mouth to mouth meeting that assures that feelings remained constant while I was away. I wait — swaying just enough to let Charlie know I might have been drinking — but the kiss doesn’t come.

Over refreshments served by the pool, I try to regain some semblance of order while being given the more-than-once over from Charlie’s parents. So far, the drinks are only a tad icier than my reception.

“So, Charles tells us you’re still in high school?” Mrs. Addison asks. Her legs are crossed at the ankle and she’s managed to sip her drink without getting any of her perfectly appropriate lipstick on the glass.

“I do. I am. I’ll be a senior at Hadley this fall.” I figure high school’s a topic that’s safe and I leave off the ‘Hall’ from Hadley’s name on purpose, to show just how familiar I am with life there, with that world. It’s as though somehow the fact that I attend the same school that their son did connotes something. That I’m worthy? Then I despise the fact that they’ve made me feel insecure enough to flaunt my prep school status.

Mrs. Addison nods while Mr. Addison sits back in his chair, looking into the distance as though an interesting game of tennis is being played on the lawn. Both he and his wife are the essence of Vineyard style — she’s decked out in a white linen shirt that miraculously never wrinkles and a pair of black trousers that don’t seem heavy despite the fact that I’m sweating in my shorts and sloppy summer top, while he’s in a white polo shirt that offsets his tanned arms and a pair of khaki shorts. From the outside, they appear placid and genteel. From my point of view this is slightly misleading. But maybe I’m being too sensitive due to my fading buzz and incoming headache.

“Parker excelled at Hadley,” Mr. Addison says. “I trust you’re finding it a challenge?”

It’s this type of comment that I don’t know how to interpret. Is he merely making conversation — as in prep school’s a challenge or is he saying that though his super-smart socially elevated son excelled at Hadley, I — as the dim and disheveled girl who appeared at their door unannounced — must find it a challenge? So I give something equally ambiguous. “I’ve really grown there. We’re a good match.”

Charlie takes a drink when I say this, his eyes flickering over his glass at me. Are we a good match, too? “Love’s doing really well at Hadley. They’re lucky to have her.”

Mrs. Addison smiles without showing her teeth. “Was that the only school you applied to? I remember your interview there, Charles.” She raises her eyebrows and Charlie nods, not offering any other info about this. “And Parker…” she turns to look at Parker who sits at the far end of the pool doing the New York Times crossword and generally ignoring our group presence. “Parker breezed through.”

I sip my lemonade and rest the cold glass on my knee. I’m not wearing sunscreen and I can feel my skin reacting to the hot sun — I’ll achieve perma-blush soon. “I didn’t, um, actually interview.”

Mr. Addison’s face registers a look of being impressed, the corners of his mouth downturned, his eyes wide. “Well, now — she’s got you beat there, Parker!” He raises his voice so Parker can hear, though he shows no sign of caring.

Charlie explains, “Parker interviewed like everyone else does, but his records and personality were such a winning combination that they never made him file an application.”

“And Mike went to Exeter?” I bring up the sibling who isn’t present, Charlie’s sister Mikayla.

“Mikayla…” Mrs. Addison sighs as she refills my glass without asking if I’d care for more.

“Well, she graduated.” Mr. Addison says this so it’s clear we all understand the diploma could very well not have been given.

“Mike’s great,” Charlie says. Then to me he adds, “She’s off-island right now. In New York.”

I think I’m done with the first encounter of meet the parents when Mrs. Addison stands up. Still unwrinkled she gives a mere toss of her chin-length coiffed blond-white hair and Parker appears. Charlie shakes his head then stops once he notices his father looking. “Parker and I are playing doubles today at the club.” The comment enters the air for everyone’s — or no one’s — benefit.

Charlie purses his lips. He’s different, subdued, as though he’s blocked a certain part of himself here. “Have fun.”

“And you, Charles?” Mr. Addison places his glass on the tray where it drips condensation.

Charlie doesn’t look my way and it hits me that I feel like an intruder. They’ve been pleasant, of course — what else does one do in polite company but offer the random girl a lemonade on a hot day — but not welcoming. Not that I expected an embrace or anything, but a little curiosity aside from my school application would be nice. With a shudder I realize I never clarified why I didn’t interview at Hadley — not because my records were so stellar like they now suspect — but because of my dad. Something tells me they’d be even less impressed if they knew I didn’t get in on my own merits. Not that I haven’t been succeeding of my own accord there.

“I have work,” Charlie says. I fight a smile, thinking of him at the docks, where I first met him — how at ease he is by the water. How much fun we have together — enough so that even cleaning his boat is exciting.

I try to act lively, realizing the beer and the nerves have kept me from being my usual warm self. Just because they’re slightly cold doesn’t mean I have to be, right? “Are you going to the docks? What’s the catch of the day?” I put my hand on Charlie’s arm, enjoying the heat from his skin until he makes absolutely no move to touch me back. He doesn’t go so far as to remove my hand from his forearm but he doesn’t register my touch at all.

Charlie stands up and looks at his parents and then to the house. “No. Not the docks.” He looks at me, finally, his eyebrows raised so he looks just like his mother. “I’m done with all that.”

All that? Like the ocean, the job he’s had for a year, the rugged lifestyle he embraced is summed up as
all that
? “Oh.” Here I am back to one-word sentences. Maybe that’s why Parker says so little — there’s not a lot of room for anything else, despite the high square footage count.

Charlie nods. “With classes starting in late August I only have a few weeks to make up for lost time.”

Mr. Addison nods, concurring with his body as well as his words. “Charles is making great headway.” He makes it sound as though Charlie is a yacht conquering the seas. “And you? Have you picked a place?”

For a second I don’t know what he’s talking about — then I realize he means college, as though choosing one and getting accepted is as simple as picking a restaurant for dinner. “I’m not quite sure…” I pause and look at the other people around me. In each pair of eyes I sense that I’m not supposed to offer up my true feelings, but that there’s a correct answer. “I’m thinking about staying in the Northeast…” this comes out of my mouth before I can rein the words back in. Maybe my psyche knows more than I thought.

“Whereabouts?” Mrs. Addison collects all of the glasses and holds the tray, unwavering, in her hands.

I swallow. The truth is that I have no idea. But this isn’t what they’re looking for in their son’s girlfriend. So rather than complicating everything further, I just spit it out. “Harvard, maybe?”

Mr. Addison smiles fully for the first time since I’ve met him. “Good girl!” He’s so thrilled that I feel excited, too, even though it’s not real and he called me good girl which sounds like praise meant for a retriever. I smile back feeling fraudulent and idiotic while he goes on. “Mikayla went the city route but the boys know that the god’s honest truth is that the Crimson still reigns supreme. Not to mention there’s the legacy to consider.”

“My dad went there,” I offer and it sounds like an apology, or like I’m trying to prove something.

“Fantastic choice,” Mr. Addison nods. I nod back. Oh, like all I have to do is say I want to go to Harvard and — boom — I’m in. Thanks — thanks so much — the college process really was a breeze! I’m practically choking on the tightness of the air.

“I’ll see you for dinner,” Charlie says, giving a rather official nod to his parents and to Parker. Charlie and his brother exchange a look that means something but what exactly I don’t know.

I stand up and wonder how I’m going to get back to town. It would be easy to exist in a bubble out here, forget my life at the café, the life that’s waiting for me. At least, it would be easy if the Addisons welcomed me with open arms. But with Mrs. Addison pretending not to notice my unkempt hair, my scratched up and now enflamed skin, my unworthy last name (read: the Bukowski clan did not come over on the Mayflower — we do not have entire buildings named after us), leaving sounds good.

“Well, thanks very much for having me. Especially spur-of-the moment.” I feel like doing a curtsy as though I have an audience with the queen, but I don’t. Instead I try to memorize all of the details I can so I can report back to Chris with accuracy — the cylindrical glasses, Parker’s effortless but domineering presence, Charlie’s…what — his apathy? Not just that. The veil that’s been drawn over him. With a jolt of worry it dawns on me that this person — the guy who sits and says little, the gorgeous but ineffectual one who defended me but in a way that made it clear I had to be defended — might be the normal Charlie. The person he was before he dropped out of Harvard and became an island-bound fisherman in touch with the sea and himself.

“A pleasure to meet you, Love,” Mrs. Addison shakes my hand.

“We’ll see you again soon?” Mr. Addison shakes my hand and looks at Charlie. “The silver and white dinner?” Charlie’s lips go in clench mode again and he nods, so Mr. Addison looks back to me. “Silver and white, then.”

“Lovely,” Mrs. Addison says and without another word, whisks her first-born, Parker, into the cavernous house to change for tennis.

Silver and white? Harvard? What? The whole interaction at the Addison abode feels foreign and filled with confusing ideas and issues, which is what happens, I guess, when so much is left unsaid. This reminds me of how Charlie was all that time in between our first getting together the fall of my sophomore year, and the incommunicado that happened afterwards. He never said what really happened when I thought he’d stood me up; he never cleared up my assumption that he was a local fisherman rather than a Harvard cast-off taking a break from the moneyed set. Only when directly asked by me this summer were all of those mysteries unraveled. Just like Parker, he only speaks when directly confronted. Maybe that’s the Addison way — this casual air of elegance that appears very easy when in fact it’s all a cover.

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Emily Franklin is the author of
Liner Notes
and a story collection,
The Girls’ Almanac
. She is also the author or coauthor of over a dozen young adult books including
The Half-Life of Planets
(nominated for YALSA’s Best Book of the Year) and
Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom
(named to the 2013 Rainbow List). A former chef, she wrote the cookbook-memoir
Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes
to chronicle a year in the life of new foods, family meals, and heartache around the table. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the
Boston Globe
, Monkeybicycle, the
Mississippi Review
,
Post Road Magazine
, Carve Magazine, and Word Riot, as well as on National Public Radio, among others. Her recipes have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, and on many food websites. She lives with her husband, four kids, and one-hundred-sixty-pound dog outside of Boston.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.