Summerland: A Novel (13 page)

He had studied Ava at that moment—her eye-quilt covering the upper half of her face and mussing her hair, her mouth gaping open in delirious sleep—and hated her. And he hated himself. He knew, somehow, that this was all his fault.

He shook Ava’s shoulder gently until she woke and sat up and removed her eye-quilt. She was disoriented and no doubt more than a little scared. Jordan hadn’t set foot in that room in years until earlier that night.

She said, “What is it?”

He said, “Penny’s dead, and Hobby is in a coma. They flew him to Boston.”

Ava’s face remained as still and calm as a mask. Jordan wanted to throttle her. Could she not hear her son wailing?

She pulled off her eye-quilt, then stared at it in her hands. Tears streamed down her face, and a sob escaped her. Jordan knew he should reach out and comfort his wife, but she hadn’t voluntarily accepted a touch from him in a very long time, so instead he handed her a tissue. She blotted it against each eye, as if cleaning a spill off the counter. Her hoarse sobs continued. “Oh God,” she said. “Poor Zoe.” Jordan took an indecent amount of interest in watching Ava cry. Maybe he was in shock. But then he realized he was simply amazed: for the first time in years, Ava was crying for someone other than herself.

Three days later, the deadline for the paper loomed. Jordan sat in his office with the door closed, which was highly unusual. Normally he sat at his desk out on the floor, where he could see and hear everything that was going on. He had given his staff, and especially his assistant, Emily, strict orders not to say anything about the accident beyond confirming that there had been one fatality and the matter was still under investigation.

Hobby was in a coma, his condition unchanged. Lynne Castle called Jordan’s cell phone every day with an update. Every day
Jordan asked, “How’s Zoe?” And Lynne said, “About how you’d expect. She really only talks to Al.” It had, perversely, made Jordan feel better to know that Lynne Castle was in exile from Zoe’s confidences, too.

Lynne addressed the unspoken question by saying, “I’m sure she feels like she hates us right now, because our children are safe.”

“Is that why?” Jordan said.

He had to write a story; he couldn’t just pretend the accident had never happened. He thought about handing off the assignment to Lorna Dobbs, who was his best news writer, and just doing the final edit on it. He wanted to write the article himself, but how could he? Better to give it one degree of separation. He called Lorna into his office.

Lorna Dobbs wasn’t an attractive woman—she had thinning hair and a pale, pinched face—but she was smart and, more important, perceptive. She could have had a second career as a detective or a psychotherapist.

Jordan said, “I want you to write a story about the accident. Call the Chief and get what you can.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“It’s sensitive,” he said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lorna repeated. “Am I only covering the accident, or are we doing a tribute to the life of the girl?”

A tribute to Penny: there would be dozens of people who would want to be quoted, and a list of her accomplishments would have to be compiled, and they would need photos. They had some pictures on file, he knew, including the brand-new one of her singing the National Anthem at graduation. Hours before her death. But could he reasonably print a piece of this nature without Zoe’s input?

“Just the accident,” Jordan said. “Let’s hold off on the tribute until…”

“Until we know about the boy?”

“Yes.”

“Should I call Mass General to ask if they can give me any more details about his status?” Lorna asked.

“Yes,” Jordan said. “But tread lightly, please.”

“Of course,” Lorna said.

Lorna emailed the story to him two hours later. Jordan saw it hit his inbox and immediately got a headache. There had been other grisly news moments in his career—certain Town Meetings, the cocaine bust of ’97, the murder of a girl by her lover—but this was by far the worst.

He clicked on the article.

Car Crash on Cisco Beach Claims Life of Nantucket Student

At approximately 12:50 a.m. on Sunday, June 17, a fatal car accident occurred at the end of Hummock Pond Road. The car, a 2009 four-door Jeep Sahara driven by Nantucket High School junior Penelope Alistair, 17, crashed onto the sand at Cisco Beach after traveling at speeds in excess of 80 m.p.h. The car is registered to Nantucket Standard Editor-in-Chief Jordan Randolph and was primarily used by Mr. Randolph’s son, Jacob Randolph, 17, who was in the passenger seat at the time of the accident but who was unhurt. Also in the car were Miss Alistair’s twin brother, Hobson Alistair, 17, and Demeter Castle, 17. Miss Castle was unhurt, police officials said, but Hobson Alistair was flown in a Medflight helicopter to Mass General for the treatment of multiple broken bones and severe head trauma that has left the Nantucket High School student in a coma.

Police Chief Edward Kapenash said the cause of the accident was excessive speed. “I don’t have to tell you how this
kind of accident stuns and saddens a community. Here at the NPD, our thoughts and prayers are with the Alistair family.”

The Chief said that no mechanical problems had been found with the Jeep. He said the four youths were driving home from an informal graduation party on Steps Beach and that the exact reason for Miss Alistair’s excessive speed was still under investigation. The Chief said that both front airbags deployed but that Miss Alistair, who was not wearing her seat belt, died of a broken neck. Hobson Alistair was also unbelted, the Chief said.

A spokesperson at Mass General said that Hobson Alistair was in intensive care and that there had been no change in his condition since Sunday morning.

Jordan read the article, reread it, and read it again. It was spare and factual; Lorna had done as he’d asked. The quote from the Chief was good. There was no mention of alcohol; that was a gift from the Chief, Jordan supposed. No mention of a tox report, pending or otherwise.

Okay, he would run it.

It was just as Marnie and Jojo were pulling together the final layout that Jordan received a call from Al Castle.

Al said, “Zoe asked me to give you a message.”

Jordan’s heart leapt. This was all he’d been waiting for: a message from Zoe.

Jordan said, “What?”

“She doesn’t want anything in the paper,” Al said. “Not one word.”

“Excuse me?”

“She doesn’t want a single thing about this in the paper. That’s what she said: ‘Not one word.’ ”

“Not one word.”

“That’s what she said.”

“I can’t not say anything, Al.”

“You own the paper,” Al said. “You don’t have to answer to anyone.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Jordan asked. “You think I should drop the story? Pretend it didn’t happen? Ignore it?”

“That’s what Zoe told me to tell you: ‘Not one word.’ ”

“But the piece I’m planning to run is benign. Just the facts about the accident. It barely says anything.”

“Jordan,” Al Castle said. Here it came: the elder-statesman speech. Al had just six years on Jordan, but he might as well have had sixty. He occasionally used a tone of voice that was meant to remind Jordan that he had been a selectman for twelve years and chairman for the last nine of those, which somehow made him a repository of wisdom. “Zoe is barely hanging on to her sanity. She has only said about two sentences to me in the four days that I’ve been here, and she’s asked for nothing but this. She doesn’t want you to report on the accident at all. Now…” Al paused. “Zoe is your friend too, and so all I can do is ask you to please heed her request. She’s lost her daughter, Jordan.”

“I’m aware of that, Al.” Jordan didn’t like to get shitty with Al, it had only ever happened once or twice that he remembered, but now he began to wonder whether this gag order had actually come from Zoe or if it was coming from Al himself. Al wouldn’t want the accident written up in the paper because his daughter had been in the car. His daughter had been the one with the bottle of Jim Beam. “I can’t not print
anything,
” he said.

“Sure you can,” Al said. “It’s your paper.” And with that he hung up.

Half an hour until deadline, and Marnie and Jojo kept knocking to see if Jordan had made a decision yet about the front page. He’d told them he was on the fence about the layout. He hadn’t said anything about the content, or about killing the piece altogether.

He didn’t know what to do. Believe Al Castle? Al Castle wouldn’t have lied about Zoe’s words or made them up. He could be a pompous ass at times, but he didn’t lie. So Zoe really must have asked him to tell Jordan not to print a word.
Not one word.
She was the mother of the victims. She was his lover. He had to separate the two. If she were any other woman, would he concede?

He was a newspaperman like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Zoe was basically asking him to wage war on his genetic makeup. She was asking him to change the code in his chromosomes.

He deleted the file. He called Lorna in and told her he was killing the story. She nodded calmly. Jordan opened his mouth to explain, but Lorna pivoted and left his office. He didn’t know if she was angry or if she was merely saving him the indignity of trying to explain. He then told Marnie and Jojo he was killing the lead story and replacing it with a general graduation piece. They both stared at him baldly for a moment, and then Marnie excused herself, which meant she was going out back to have a cigarette. Maybe all three of them would quit. Marnie and Jojo didn’t have children, but Lorna had two boys—did it matter either way? Jordan decided not to issue an explanation. He owned the paper, as Al had pointed out; he made the decisions, and this was his decision.

Back in his office with the door closed, he quieted his revolting instincts by saying to himself, This is the one thing I can do for her now.

Fifteen days after the accident, a week after Hobby regained consciousness, Zoe held a funeral service for Penny. Zoe wasn’t a religious person, she didn’t belong to any church, but she had asked Al Castle to arrange for the service to be held at St. Mary’s. She asked Jake to be a pallbearer, along with Patrick Loom, Colin Farrow, Anders Peashway, and some of Hobby’s other teammates.
Eight strapping, handsome, and very young men carried Penny’s coffin out of the hearse and lifted it onto the carriage that rolled down the aisle. Hobby attended the funeral on a hospital gurney that orderlies placed between the front pew and the altar. Hobby was half boy, half mummy, but he had his mind back, and he cried openly in a ruined voice. Jordan had heard a rumor that Hobby had asked to speak but Zoe had said no. She couldn’t handle it. Jake had also asked to speak, as had Annabel Wright and Mrs. Yurick the music teacher, but Zoe had said no to them all. The priest said a few words about Christ and forgiveness and the glory of the hereafter, but Jordan—who was sitting with Ava, halfway back on the left—felt that it was all wrong. It was too stiff, too formal, too religious and scripted. It had nothing to do with Penny. Couldn’t Zoe see that? Zoe was sitting in the front pew alone, wearing a black suit that Jordan had never seen before, a suit befitting a corporate boardroom, and that was wrong too, he felt. It was a disguise; this funeral was a masquerade. Zoe was hiding. Where was she, really? Because that woman up there wasn’t anyone he recognized.

Well, yes, of course, he thought. Losing a child changed a person. Look at what it had done to Ava.

The church was packed. There was an apron of mourners gathered around the outside of the building, spilling across the street and down the block.

Why not let Jake speak? He had spent days writing something. Jordan asked to read it, but Jake wanted him to wait and hear it at the service along with everyone else. Then when Zoe said no, Jake was crushed. Jordan had almost intervened on his son’s behalf and spoken to Zoe directly for the first time since the accident—but then he thought, She’s punishing Jake because he survived. But why not let Hobby speak? Jordan realized that if this service contained too much of Penny, Zoe wouldn’t be able to bear it.

At the end of the service, nine girls gathered before the altar:
the madrigal group from the high school. The girls wore the same black skirts and white blouses that they performed in. They lined up, leaving a gap in the left front, where Penny usually stood. Jordan had never seen anything so powerful. The girls launched into “Ave Maria,” and everyone in the church stood, but Jordan’s eyes never strayed from Zoe. Her hands were clasped to her chest, her eyes were closed, her lips were moving.

Jordan thought, You did it, Zoe. He thought, Bravo.

O
n the day that Jordan Randolph and his wife and son left for Perth, Australia, Zoe stood on her deck, which faced the mighty ocean, and she screamed at every plane that crossed the horizon, though she had no idea which one was theirs.

At some planes she screamed, “Fuck you, Jordan Randolph!”

At other planes she screamed, “I love you, Jordan Randolph!”

H
e never printed a word about the accident. People criticized him for this. A few advertisers pulled ads, but his paper was the only game in town, so in trying to hurt him, they hurt only themselves. He asked his assistant, Emily, what was being said around town. Emily was candid, Emily was no-bullshit, Emily knew everyone on the island. She was the right person to ask.

She said, “They say you’re covering it up because the brakes on
the Jeep were faulty. They say you’re sweeping it under the rug because your son was involved. They say you’re trying to protect Al Castle’s daughter, who had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in her bag and pressured Penny into drinking with her in the dunes. They say Ted Field is withholding the tox report.” Emily swallowed. “They say it was the mother’s fault, for never making those kids buckle their seat belts. They say her car, the orange one, doesn’t even
have
seat belts. They say the girl was mentally unstable. They say it was a suicide. They say it was a two-way suicide pact between Penny and your son, only your son fastened his seat belt at the last minute. They say it was a four-way suicide pact. They say the four kids were on acid, and that’s why Ted Field is withholding the tox report. They say the Castle girl practices witchcraft. They say Penny was smoking Oxycontin that she got from your wife, and
that’s
why Ted Field is withholding the tox report.”