Summerland: A Novel (18 page)

Ava said, “I bet he went home.”

Home? thought Jake. Would his father
do
that? Pretend to be getting ketchup and just leave?

“He’s miserable,” Ava said.

Jake stared down into the golden grease of his dinner basket. He feared he might cry. Everything was wrong; it had been wrong back on Nantucket, and it was still wrong here. But then a handful of ketchup packets hit the table, and Jake looked up to see his father holding an icy mug of beer.

“Sorry, mate,” he said.

On the way home, Ava wanted to stop and see the statue of Bon Scott, the lead singer for AC/DC. At first Jake thought she was joking—but no, there it was, a statue of the musician right there on the promenade. Bon Scott had grown up in Fremantle.

Ava chattered about how she and the other waitresses used to listen to AC/DC on their breaks and how Bon Scott’s death had wracked the city with grief. He was buried in East Fremantle; Ava and her girlfriends had whiled away many an afternoon drinking jug wine on his grave.

“You do know he drank himself to death, right?” Jordan said. “The man was a degenerate. And they’ve put up a
statue
of him, like he’s George Washington.”

Ava smiled dreamily. “I like to remember the music.”

“For God’s sake,” Jordan said, frowning at the statue. “An
actual tribute to the man who brought the world ‘Highway to Hell’?”

“You can try to ruin my evening,” Ava said. “But it won’t work.”

“And ‘Hells Bells,’ ” Jordan added.

“Dad,” Jake said.

Jordan clammed up and kicked an imaginary pebble on the path.

Jake thought, I have to get out of here. But how?

A few days later, on a Friday morning, Jake and his father were sitting together in the kitchen, and his father was trying to figure out how to use the French press. Jake’s father had wanted to buy an electric coffee maker, but Ava had said no, there was no need, the French press would suffice; the coffee would be better, in fact. And so every morning Ava woke up before either Jake or Jordan and made the coffee using the French press, and though Jordan now complained about nearly everything, Jake hadn’t heard him complain about the coffee.

Jordan fumbled with the plunger of the French press and squinted at the small print on the package of coffee beans. He made some frustrated huffing noises.

Jake asked, “How come Mom isn’t up yet?”

Jordan said, “I’ll tell you how come.”

Then Jake remembered that his mother had gone out the night before with some “old friends” to hear jazz in Northbridge. Jake’s father had been unhappy about this, and Ava had said, “You’re more than welcome to come with us, Jordan. It’s not what you think.”

“Here’s what I think,” Jordan had begun, his voice getting the hairy texture that meant he was about to attack. Jake took that opportunity to leave the room and head back out to the shed. Then he heard his father say, “I think you should go alone, is what I think.”

Jake watched his father now. “You have to fill the kettle, Dad,” he said. “And then pour the hot water into the carafe.”

“Yeah, but how much coffee?” Jordan said. “And where does your mother keep the grinder?”

Jordan shrugged.

“Ava!” Jordan shouted.

I have to get out of here, Jordan thought once again. Here the kitchen, and here Australia.

Ava shuffled into the room a few seconds later. Her hair was knotted up in a disheveled bun, her complexion was grayish, and she walked with one hand held in front of her, like a blind person who was afraid of running into something. She squinted in the bright sunlight.

“What’s up?” she said. Her voice had a raspy edge. She put a hand on Jake’s head and said, “Good morning, sweetheart,” and Jake smelled cigarettes. His mother, he realized, had been out
drinking
. And
smoking.
His mother was
hung over.

“I can’t figure out how to work this goddamned thing.”

“Here,” Ava said. “Give it to me, I’ll do it.”

Jordan threw the coffee beans against the counter, and the bag split open, beans scattering everywhere. He said, “Nice of you to finally make an appearance. I could have walked downtown, waited in the ridiculous line at the Dome, and walked back, and I still would have had my coffee sooner.”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said.

Jake found himself drawn into his parents’ argument. He found himself thinking, You don’t have to apologize to him, Mom. He’s being a jerk.

“How was Roger?” Jordan asked.

Ava patiently gathered the spilled beans into a pile and slid them into her cupped hand. She didn’t answer, and Jake found himself saying out loud, “Who’s Roger?”

“Your mother’s old boyfriend,” Jordan said. “Who took her out to a club last night until three in the morning.”

Jake found himself thinking, Really? He told himself, Get up this instant and go out to the shed. Everything was inside out and backward. His mother had gone out drinking, she had come home at three in the morning. But he couldn’t move. He wanted to hear if the part about the old boyfriend was true or not.

“Mom?” he said.

She filled the electric kettle from the spigot. “I’m sorry,” she said, without turning around.

But she didn’t sound sorry.

His parents had turned the house into such a passive-aggressive war zone that suddenly the shed wasn’t far enough away from the crossfire. Jake had to get out of the house, and so he ventured down to South Beach. South Beach consisted of three crescents of pure white sand backed by stone walls. Between the walls and the access road was a wide swath of park with a grass lawn and Norfolk pines, picnic tables, barbecue grills, a playground.

Jake grudgingly admitted to himself that he did not hate South Beach. The water was turquoise and clear to the white, sandy bottom. The café served avocado and sprout sandwiches and burgers topped with fried eggs, and short blacks (espresso) and flat whites (cappuccino). The place had an easy, liberal vibe. But what Jake liked best was the transients who lived in their camper vans in the parking lot. These people showered in the public bathhouses, they ate cereal while sitting on their front bumpers. They weren’t much older than Jake; they had dreadlocks and tattoos and piercings and were deeply, unabashedly tanned. The women wore bikini tops and cutoff shorts and silver rings on their toes. Jake’s mother referred to these people as “ferals.” Like stray cats or dogs. For Jake, this only enhanced their appeal. Every afternoon he would
take his assigned vacation reading,
The Grapes of Wrath,
by Steinbeck, and lie under a Norfolk pine or sit at a table at the café, where he would read, drink a short black, and observe the ferals.

What he liked most about them was that they were free.

On one of Jake’s forays into central Fremantle—he was on his way to Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop to pick up the next book on his list,
The Sun Also Rises,
by Hemingway—he spied his father sitting at one of the café tables outside of the Dome. Jordan was by himself, drinking a short black. Jake thought about just walking by, not stopping at all, but that somehow seemed like it would be a great opportunity missed. He took a seat at his father’s table. His father looked up, surprised.

“Hey there,” Jordan said.

“Hey,” Jake said.

His father had the
West
in front of him; he was doing the crossword puzzle.

“I’m having no luck,” Jordan said. “The clues are all unapologetically Antipodean.”

Jake nodded. It felt strange to happen across his father like this. For the first time—maybe because they were out of the house, maybe because they were away from Ava, maybe because Jordan had let his guard down—Jake noticed that his father looked… what? Different. Sad. Lonely, maybe.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked.

Jordan laughed. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Oh,” Jake said. He shook his head, and stupidly, tears came to his eyes. “I’m never going to be okay again.”

He expected his father to refute this, but instead Jordan cast his eyes down and took a sip of coffee. “Can I order you something?”

“Short black,” Jake said.

His father flagged the waiter and ordered a coffee for Jake and another for himself.

“Dad, why are we here?”

“I thought that was obvious.”

“For Mom?”

“For Mom, for you.” He paused. “For me.”

“You’re not happy here,” Jake said. “That much is clear.”

“I’m doing okay,” Jordan said.

“You have a strange way of showing it,” Jake said. “How can you stand being away from the paper? How can you stand not working?”

“Those are tricky questions.”

“Let’s call this what it is. We came here for Mom. Please don’t say we came here for me. We came here for Mom.”

“We came here for Ava,” Jordan said.

“Because she’s the only one who matters.”

“No,” Jordan said. “She’s not the only one who matters. But she’s been wanting to move back to Australia for a long time, and I felt like I owed it to her to give it a try.”

“She makes you feel like you owe her something,” Jake said. “But you don’t owe her anything.”

“You’re saying that because you’re unhappy, and you think our coming here was the wrong decision.”

“
You’re
unhappy,” Jake countered. “You and Mom are unhappy together. I hear you, you know.”

“Hey now,” Jordan said.

Jake felt immediately ashamed. He had never commented on his parents’ marriage before.

“Just let your mother and me worry about what’s going on between us. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Except that I have to live with you.”

“True,” Jordan said, and his voice was softer now. “That’s true.”

“It’s hard,” Jake said. “Processing this on my own.”

“I’m processing it too,” Jordan said.

“Not like me,” Jake said.

“You’d be surprised,” Jordan replied.

“In my mind, you know, she’s still alive,” Jake confided. This was painfully true. When Jake was alone in the shed, he thought about Penny all the time—her long hair, her sapphire eyes, her lips, the warmth of her next to him, her voice. He had a recording of her singing “Lean on Me” on his iPod that he listened to way too often. Once he’d even masturbated to the song, and after ejaculating, he’d started to cry harder than he ever had before. He missed her, and truthfully, sex was the least of it. The worst part was not having his friend, his love, his champion, the person he’d told everything to.

“Have you been in touch with anyone from home?” Jordan asked.

“No,” Jake said. He had his computer set up; he could email Hobby, he supposed, but what could he say in an email? “Are you?”

“No,” Jordan said.

“Really? Not Al Castle? Not Zoe? Not anyone from the paper?”

“No,” Jordan said. “It’s kind of a deal I made with myself. If I called Al or called the paper, a part of me would still be back on Nantucket. And I want to try being here for a while. That’s what I was hoping for for you, too—that you’d be able to be yourself here, without having to cope with the pressures at home.”

“I thought we’d left because of what people were saying.”

“What were people saying?”

Jake’s short black arrived, steaming. He blew across the top, then braced himself for the first sip. It was as bitter as gasoline. It was the kind of liquid that would take the enamel off his teeth; it would have corroded Penny’s vocal cords on contact. But there was something comforting in how awful the coffee tasted. It went with the Steinbeck and Hemingway, and it suited his burned and broken heart, his charred hopes, his exile. The coffee tasted like adulthood, like manhood.

“That the accident was our fault because it was our car. That
you didn’t print anything about it in the newspaper because you were trying to cover something up. That Penny was drunk or high.”

Jordan nodded slowly. His hair was a lot grayer now, Jake noticed. He looked old now, whereas at home he had just looked harried and busy. “There was nothing wrong with the car,” Jordan said. “The tox report from the hospital showed no alcohol or other substances in Penny’s system. And I didn’t print anything in the paper because Zoe asked me not to, and as she was Penny’s mother, I decided to honor that request. I don’t think anyone blames us for the accident. I think people have come to terms with the fact that Penny was driving too fast.”

“Demeter,” Jake said.

“What?” Jordan said.

“Demeter said something that upset her.”

“You think?”

“Yes. In the dunes. They went to pee in the dunes, right before we left. And when Penny came back, she was freaking out.”

“About what?”

Jake shrugged. He’d been trying not to think about it. Did it matter, ultimately? Demeter had been shitfaced, and she was so clingy and pathetic and greedy for Penny’s attention that she might easily have said something about Jake; she might have exaggerated the truth. There was one potential source of gossip that stuck out in Jake’s mind: the incident at the cast party after the final performance of
Grease
.

The party was at Winnie Potts’s house. Winnie Potts had played Rizzo, and like Rizzo, Winnie was wild. Mr. and Mrs. Potts were “cool” parents who left their kids alone in their tricked-out basement with the pool table and the movie screen and the second fridge filled with beer. Everyone in the cast started out drinking Coke and Fanta and eating the pigs in blankets and Swedish meatballs laid out by Mrs. Potts, who then very loudly and definitively
announced that she was going upstairs to bed and would not be back down. At that point, Winnie discreetly began opening her father’s beers and pouring them into Solo cups and passing them around. When the music got turned up and it became clear that it had become a drinking party, Penny decided to leave. She could be righteous that way; the other kids called her a goody-goody behind her back. Jake had begged her to stay as they stood together at the bottom of the basement stairs. He kissed her, and she complained that he tasted like beer, and then she pointed out that Winnie was now smoking, which meant that she, Penny, had to leave right that instant.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Go home and take care of your vocal cords.”