Summer of Love (9 page)

“Hadley called me — of course they called my parents first — but more on that later — and…well…they want me to start a GSA. You know, a gay-straight alliance? Which I’m kind of psyched to do.” I open my mouth to say something but Chris doesn’t allow me. “And no, not just because it’s good for college apps. I also like the idea of leaving a legacy there. Like I came out to relative support — if you subtract the few guys in the dorms who ignore me…”

“What about your parents?” I ask. “I know you told me they called my dad for periodic check-ins.”

“Yeah — not my mom so much but my dad — anyway, they’re sort of past that but still don’t want a giant reminder of “my choices”…” Chris makes air quotes and puts on a funny voice. “And the GSA is an honor, but it’s also a fairly big banner — a gay banner — so that’s something I’ll have to deal with this year.”

Arabella holds her head, trying to massage last night’s alcohol and her current brain freeze away. “But now you’re here.”

“Right,” Chris says and begins to clean up the kitchen. “Assuming it’s okay with you, Love, I’d like to crash here for a little.”

“Of course,” I say, “But what ever happened with Alistair?”

“Oh he’s off at some ashram in Asia now. Very earthy crunchy white slacks and a gauzy shirt. Not for me.” Chris washes the Matchbox cars and grins to himself.

“Wait a minute — I know why you’re here,” I say and poke him in the back. “You have an agenda!”

“Don’t we all?” he asks and holds up his soapy hands.

“What’s going on?” Arabella asks. “Intrigue?”

“Chris is here for a visit — true. But I’ll bet he plans on visiting someone else while he’s on the island…” I wait for Chris to say something, but he goes back to cleaning. “Chris’s crush — Haverford Pomroy.”

“Oh, right, the could be straight, could be gay…”

“And Chili’s bother. And of course they live in Oak Bluffs, a full ten minutes down the road.”

Arabella whacks Chris head with a dishcloth. “And here I was feeling flattered that you chose to visit me…” Then she heads toward her bedroom. “By the way, Love, what’d you do this morning? We were waiting for hours for you to come back from The Black Dog.”

I swallow and turn so she can’t see me blush. For some reason I feel weird about telling her I was with Henry — even though I wasn’t with him, with him. “I was at the beach,” I say and leave it at that.

“Did I miss anything?” Arabella asks. “Anything exciting?”

“No,” I say and throw out my empty mud slide cup and close the bathroom door so I can shower. “Nothing at all.”

My favorite shift at the café so far is the morning — crack of dawn to noon. Then I’ve made some tips (bless the tourists) worked enough to feel slightly virtuous, and still have the rest of the day to explore, swim, or just walk around town which is what I’m about to do with Chris, Chili Pomroy and her brother, Haverford, on whom Chris’s crush has only gotten worse since arriving. I figure going out with friends will get my mind off Charlie. We had a once-sided run in this morning — one sided meaning I saw him and he didn’t see me (am I really that unnoticeable?) down by the public docks. He was tying up a small row boat (a common site in the morning as the yachties get their crew to row in to get them breakfast or the more able-bodied among them do it themselves, feeling very proud and muscular in their khaki cut-offs and faded yacht club tee-shirts). Poor me — I was so tongue-tied and lusting from afar that I went right out and bought a journal at the stationary store. Just one of those speckled green and white class notebooks that always look like a relic from the nineteen-fifties or something. Currently, mine is empty save for one line: I
can’t stop thinking about Charlie
.

My dad called this morning to say hi and asked me if I’d “met anyone” — like this was a normal convo to have with him. I told him I hadn’t because it’s too complicated — I didn’t want him saying something like if Henry doesn’t see what’s in front of him…or if Charlie doesn’t trade Hippie for me…or any parental pontifications. So I kept mute and only told him I made up my mind about visiting schools in August — after my time here is done. I can’t be doing shifts one minute then ferrying and driving to all the schools I want to see. So college will have to wait until the end of the summer.

All morning long I’ve steamed, served, sloshed, restacked lids, rung up sales, and all the while I’ve been pondering my crush status. Why do I long from afar? With Charlie, it’s partially because I got burned before —he left me waiting for him (aka stood me up) before, and he’d probably do it again. That, plus he’s got himself a girlfriend. And something about Hippie Mike tells me she’s not a summer fling, that she’s here for the long haul. She’s way too comfortable here — I’ve seen her with the fishermen at the docks, with the preppies at The Newes Pub, and barefoot on the beach, looking poetic and impossibly pretty in a way I probably never will. Boo hoo for me.

So an outing with friends will get my mind off my Charlie thoughts and off my unrealistic expectations for tonight’s fancy dinner party with Henry. Not that I’m going
with
Henry. Just that he’ll be there also.

Chris comes into the café with Arabella and she and I go through the motions of switching stations — that is, she takes over where I left off. She just got up, I’ve been up for hours, and now I’m off for the day and she’s on until late. Every once in a while she closes early, but Doug and Ula are back in town as of this evening, so she’s determined to look mega-professional. I meanwhile, am content to shove off after I clock out.

“Grind well,” I say to her.

“Right back at you,” she says and makes her own coffee before attending to the oversized filters that got delivered a few minutes ago. She places one on her head, “Do I look hot or what?”

“Ever the actress,” I say. “You look good in everything you eat.” She takes this as her cue to hand a croissant from her ear which makes me crack up. Chris tugs on my sleeve. “Okay, okay — we’ll see you in a bit.”

Outside, Chris and I drive the now-familiar route into Oak Bluffs. “I love this song!” he says and turns up the radio. We’ve been listening exclusively to WMVY, the Vineyard radio station.

“Me, too!” I say.

“Yet another thing we have in common,” he says when we’ve slowed to a stop at the intersection.

“Oh yeah? What’s the first?” I ask. Chris nudges me to look to the left, where Charlie’s red pick-up truck is idling. Out the passenger window is a length of Hippie Hair, lolling in the sunlight.

“We both like people we can’t have,” Chris says and before I can get wistful he adds, “Yet.”

“Yet,” I repeat like saying it will make a difference and then I keep driving.

“I’m in the mood for Mexican,” Chili says when we meet her in Oak Bluffs.

“Let’s ride the carousel first,” Chris says and points to Flying Horses, the oldest working merry-go-round in the country.

“I’ll pass,” Haverford says. He doesn’t roll his eyes as if to suggest Chris is even more gay than he announces himself, but it’s clear that Haverford in no way intends to park his ass on one of the painted ponies — even in teenage irony.

“I could go for cotton candy,” I say. The reality is that I’ve been wanting to go on Flying Horses but not in that drunk-slash-silly way when you and your friends are essentially longing for childhood but making fun of it at the same time. I want to go on it as a romantic movie scene thing, like the lights are all twinkling and Date Guy and I are the only ones there — or maybe it just feels like we’re alone because our chemistry is so amazing. Never let it be said that my fantasy life isn’t active. Some people have computer porn, I have movie romance. They’re both kind of addictive.

“You and your sugar jones,” Chris chides and surveys the scene. “Actually, I’m over this place — let’s go somewhere else.” I can tell he isn’t over it exactly, but wants to go along with whatever his crush says — an understandable but wishy-washy thing.

Chili slides a red elastic from her wrist and attempts to wrangle her corkscrew curls into some semblance of order. Her skin is dark and her eyes are light, the same watery teal as the choppy surf nearby. “How about the farmer’s market?”

Haverford nods. “Good deal. Let’s take Jaws.”

“Jaws?” Chris and I overlap with each other and follow Haverford and Chili on foot back to their parent’s cottage. Unlike the misnomered cottages of Henry and his friends, Chili’s cottage is a real one — in the gingerbread style of the town, it’s painted purple, green, and white, with detailed moldings and a small porch where Chili and I wait while Haverford and Chris go inside.

“What exactly is Jaws?” I ask. “Aside from a classic movie.”

“You’ll see — it’s no big deal but Haverford’s into it. Figures.” Chili shakes her head at her absent brother, making me wonder if she knows the scoop behind his orientation. There are many signs that point toward gay and many others that point toward prepster ambiguity slash straight — and it’s still anyone’s game.

Haverford comes out (the door not the closet, sadly for Chris’s sake) and announces, “We’re good to go.” He dangles a set of keys looped with a circle of twine and we follow him to a shed. Tucked behind other tightly crammed colored cottages, the shed has no lock and when opened reveals a bright yellow squat dunebuggy with an open top and no doors.

“Hop in,” Haverford commands and we do with Chili riding shotgun.

Under his breath Chris says to me, “The car’s got to be a sign of
huh-ness
.” Chris and I say huh-ness every once in a while when shouting gayness doesn’t seem to be the best move. It’s also code for cool and trendy — like Chris will hold up a pair of pants at Rage, the store in town, and say, “Check it out — these are so
huh
.” Gotta love the jargon.

I’m about to answer when Chili says, “Isn’t Jaws awesome? It’s from that same year the movie came out — my dad worked on it and my mom was an extra or something and they somehow got to keep this car.”

Haverford smiles and turns left, spinning the cartoonish wheel with his knee. “They like it because it can only go thirty miles and hour.”

Chris looks at Haverford in the rearview mirror. “It’s very cool.”

“So what’s out plan, exactly?” I ask. Leave it to me to take wandering as something with an end goal.

“We’re just hanging, Love,” Chili says and puts her feet on the dash.

“In some cultures, the word chill is used to describe this act,” Chris says.

“I get it, okay?” I ask and pull my hair into a bunch so it stops whipping my face as we wind past the ocean and head up island toward the farmer’s market. Of course I don’t mention that part of the reason I’m feeling slightly uptight is my pre-dinner party nerves. I’m nervous per se, more that combo of excited and kind of weirded out by the thought of seeing all the beach boys and bikini girls all fancified. And the fact that it’s not at Henry’s house makes it even more of an event — of course it started out as a small, intimate dinner party but as of the message Henry left on my voice mail yesterday — the dinner is now being held at The Manor Club (AKA “my family comes from money but we never mention it”). I’m not really a Manor Club kind of girl — and yet I want to go. I want to get dressed up and see who’s there and what might happen. So I figure I’m venturing there part as an observer — an onlooker of the high life if not exactly a true participant — and also as a single woman. Despite the eye candy on this island, I’ve yet to do more than drool (figuratively, of course, I’m not that desperate). And Arabella and Chris are convinced that I will come home from the dinner party as part of a couple — if, that is, I come home that night at all. Henry did mention that it’s a Summer Solstice party and therefore apt to last all night.

The Framer’s Market is in the front yard of the old school, with stalls and carts assembled to display the wealth of colorful fruits and vegetables, home baked pies and breads, honeys and cheeses. As soon as we’re there, amidst the throngs of vegetable-buyers, I scan the crowd for Charlie. It’s a habit I’ve noticed only lately — that I look for him not so much because I think anything will happen, but because he makes me feel. Feel what? I don’t know — off-kilter and racy and pensive and…but he’s not here. But when I have spotted him — even from afar — I basically swoon. Old-fashioned, dreamy, swoon. Except that I don’t get him — that prize goes to Hippie Mike.

“Louisa would love this,” I say, thinking of my dad’s girlfriend. “She makes cheese at her place in Vermont.”

“You like her,” Chris says in a half-question half-statement.

“I do. No one’s going to be perfect — I mean, it annoys me that she rearranges the spices in the cabinet and that she got rid of my dad’s ancient sweaters, but what can you do?” I wander over to the pies and ogle the variety; blueberry, apple, strawberry-rhubarb. Mable considered pie to be its own food group and suitable for any meal. “With my aunt gone, and with college…I guess I don’t want my dad to be alone. Do you know what I mean?”

Chris nods and picks up zucchini bread. “I’m buying this. But yeah, I do know. Also, I was kind of thinking about your mother — Gala — and thinking that it’s probably good if your dad has someone now.”

I think about what he’s getting at and nod, “Like if he were single and then I met my mom — it could get all Parent-Trap and that would be so dumb.”

“Exactly. Plus — it’s kind of like seeing someone who broke up with you. You want to be in a position of power.”

Chris is nothing if not psychologically aware — and of course he’s right about all this. When I picture meeting Gala — an event that doesn’t seem really distant anymore — I want to be in a good place, not all needy. And I guess I want the same for my dad — I don’t want him to seem like he’s still crushed, seventeen years later.

“Try this,” Haverford comes over and offers me and Chris a bite of his purchase.

“I’m sure we’d both love to bite your cookie,” I say to Haverford because I know it’ll make Chris crack up, which he does and has to pretend to examine the pints of blueberries to avoid being totally obvious.

After the Farmer’s Market, Chili, Chris, Haverford, and I drive Jaws the dune buggy to The Gay Head Lighthouse (yes, the real name, though Chris and I called it the Huh-Head Lighthouse for the whole ride) without so much as a trace of irony from Haverford. We take our picnic to the lighthouse lawn where the wind is particularly active.