Summer People (31 page)

The wedding itself was unremarkable. A judge wearing Bermuda shorts married them in a room without windows. The room was empty except for a conference table and three folding chairs. The judge stood on the far side of the table, looking not so much like a judge as one of Beth’s father’s golf partners. Two male law students who were working in the probate court for the summer were brought in to witness, along with a secretary from the selectmen’s office. Those three strangers sat next to Beth and David in the folding chairs. The law students were just kids not much older than Beth and David, and they looked put upon for being asked to watch for ten minutes in the name of legality. The secretary was older, with kids of her own probably. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue as Beth and David said their vows. Before Beth knew it, it was over. She signed the marriage certificate, the judge in the Bermuda shorts kissed her cheek and said, “Congratulations, Mrs. Ronan.” He left shortly thereafter to meet his wife at the Yacht Club.

David and Beth went for lunch at the Mad Hatter, a place they went when David got a cash bonus for a painting job or when Beth’s father slipped her extra spending money before returning to New Jersey.

Their table, Beth noticed right away, had a centerpiece of purple cosmos, and there was a bottle of Taittinger chilling on ice. For reasons beyond her understanding, these details, arranged by David ahead of time, made her heart sink. He was trying so hard and yet it didn’t seem like enough. That was what Beth thought as she sat down. The two of them, alone for their wedding reception, didn’t seem like enough.

Beth drank nearly the whole bottle of champagne herself. Throughout lunch, David talked nonstop about plans: getting her things moved into the cottage, her finding a job, the fall and winter on Nantucket, a vacation in March—a belated honeymoon—to Hawaii or Palm Beach. Kids. (Kids! At the mention of kids, Beth laughed. She was a kid herself.) Beth ate a plate of fried calamari, then a lobster roll, then a hot fudge sundae since the restaurant didn’t have cake. A glob of hot fudge sauce hit the front of her white dress and she blotted it with a wet napkin, but to no avail. There was a spot; she was sullied. She reached for the champagne bottle, and finding it empty, waved their waiter over and ordered a gin and tonic. She felt David watching her. When she met his eyes, she saw so much love there it frightened her. She urged him to get the bill while she bolted her drink. When it was time to go, she had to grab onto the table in order to stand up. The ring irritated her finger. David led her out to the car, and when they got home they made love. Beth fell asleep before the sun even set.

In the morning, David left for work. It was lying in bed, alone and dreadfully hungover, that Beth confronted the gravity of what she had done. She had eloped with David. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, which was still foggy from David’s shower, and she held her hand up alongside her face. The ring told the truth: she was a married woman. She took three aspirin then went to the kitchen for coffee and found the bouquet of purple cosmos limp and wilting on the counter. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She was too scared to cry—scared because she was going to have to tell her parents.

She got dressed in the same shorts and T-shirt she had left the house in two days earlier and drove home. Never had Horizon seemed so imposing. Beth understood as she walked into the house that her parents might be angry enough to disown her and ban her from both Horizon and their home in New Jersey forever.

Beth found her mother sitting at the kitchen table—the very same table where Beth sat with Garrett and Winnie now—smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee, sick with worry because Beth had spent two nights away from home.

“You’ve been with David, haven’t you?” her mother said.

Beth nodded and then held out her hand to show her mother her wedding ring and her mother dropped her cigarette on the floor and cried out, “You’ve gone and done it! Oh, dear child, I have to call your father!” Beth’s mother flew out the front door in her housecoat, and drove their woody wagon to town where she could use the telephone. Beth picked the cigarette up off the floor—it left a burn mark, which she pointed out now to Garrett and Winnie—then went upstairs and packed her things and left the house, in her mind, for the final time.

A few days later, Beth had a job as a teller at Pacific National Bank, a bank where her parents, pointedly, did not have an account. Her hours were similar to David’s and they resumed the rhythm of their summer. Swimming, sailing, dancing at the Chicken Box. David called her “Mrs. Ronan.” Beth scanned the streets for her parents before she stepped outside. She expected her father to show up on their doorstep any second, but he never came. This made Beth feel even worse. Her father was finished with her. She began to worry that she would never see either of her parents again.

What Beth remembered most about the two weeks that she and David were married was that David was so happy. Seeing him so happy made Beth realize that she wasn’t as happy as he was. In fact, she was miserable. As she took deposits and cashed checks at the bank, she thought longingly of returning to Sarah Lawrence. She’d already registered for courses—courses she knew David would find elitist and useless: Discourses on Gender and Ethnicity, History of the American Musical Theater, The Literature of the Lost Generation, Etruscan Art. Beth wanted to finish college and then move to Manhattan and get a real job in publishing or advertising. She didn’t want to be a bank teller living in a rented cottage on Bear Street, estranged from her parents who had provided her with every possible advantage in life. One evening at dinner, which Beth now felt a wifely responsibility to prepare, she broached the topic of returning to Sarah Lawrence.

“I won’t live apart for another winter,” David said.

She took his hand; his wedding ring was already flecked with paint. “You can come with me,” she said.

“To
New York
?” As if she had suggested Mongolia, or the moon.

“You’ll like it.”

He withdrew his hand. “There’s no way I’m leaving the island. I have a job here. I want to save money for our future.”

“I want to finish college,” Beth said.

“We wouldn’t be able to afford a year of your college,” he said. “Plus a place to live, plus food. Your daddy’s not taking care of you anymore, okay? It’s me.” His voice softened. “I love you, Mrs. Ronan.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What?”

“ ‘Mrs. Ronan.’ It makes it sound like you own me. You don’t own me.” She started to cry.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “I know you want to finish your degree. I’ll help you make some calls. There’s a community college in Harwich. You could take the boat over a couple days a week, maybe.”

Beth pushed her plate away. They had been married thirteen days.

That night, she lay awake watching him sleep. She remembered back to the evening she met him, six years earlier. David had just inherited a dirt bike from an older cousin and he was giving it a whirl up and down West Miacomet Road. Beth was sitting on Horizon’s front stoop, shucking corn with a paper bag between her legs. She watched this boy zip past then back again. He was shirtless and barefoot; his hair glinted gold in the last of the day’s sunlight. Eventually Beth became so entranced that she stood up and watched him unabashedly. He stopped at the end of the driveway.

“Want to go for a ride?”

Up close, the bike looked hardly sturdy enough to support him, much less the two of them. But Beth nodded—she abandoned the pot of corn and the bag of husks and silks and climbed onto the back of this strange boy’s dirt bike. By necessity, she linked her arms around his bare torso and with a sensation like a rocket launching, they took off. Beth was sixteen years old, flying over the bumpy roads at a speed she’d never imagined. The wind tossed her hair. It was the first time she’d tasted freedom.

In the morning, after David left for work, Beth packed her things. She left her wedding ring on top of a white piece of paper on the kitchen table, where he would be sure to see it.

Winnie’s eyes were wide. “Then what happened?”

“I drove home,” Beth said. “My parents were sitting right here at this table eating breakfast with Danny and Scott. Grandpa was eating shredded wheat, Gramma was having a cigarette and coffee, and the boys had scrambled eggs with ketchup.”

“You can remember that?” Garrett asked.

“Like it happened this morning,” Beth said.

The house had grown silent as soon as the front screen door clapped shut behind her. By the time Beth made it to the kitchen, all eyes were on her.

“I’m back,” she said brightly, as though she’d just returned from a semester abroad.

Her mother shooed the boys out of the kitchen. Her father methodically finished his shredded wheat—it was well known that even a fire couldn’t keep Garrett Eyler from his shredded wheat—and then he approached Beth, kissed her on the forehead, and grasping her upper arm said, “You did the right thing.”

At these words, Beth broke down. Her mother took over— leading Beth upstairs to her bed, which was freshly made, lowering the shades and saying, “You stay right here until the worst has passed.” As though they were expecting a storm.

What her mother was referring to, of course, was David, who screeched into the driveway in his painting truck at half past three. He pounded on the front door. Beth sat up in bed, petrified. She heard him yelling, “Let me see her! I love her! Let me talk to her!” And then Beth heard the low, calm tones of her father. “I’ve contacted my lawyer. It will all be taken care of.” The conversation continued—David’s voice growing so hysterical that Beth had to peek out the window. She saw her father and David standing just outside the door. David’s expression was so anguished, his voice so desperate that Beth collapsed and pulled her two feather pillows over her head. She didn’t listen to another word; she didn’t even hear him drive away.