Summerland: A Novel (38 page)

Cigarette, she thought. Or a cold pint. Anything to make this easier. But she would be glad later, she supposed, that she had had no crutches. Nothing to do with her hands but let them hold her bike steady, nowhere to put her eyes but on her husband.

“I know about Zoe, Jordan,” Ava said. “I’ve known for a while now.”

This was the real ambush; Jordan was caught completely off guard. She watched half a dozen emotions cross his face, and because they had been married for so long, she recognized
every single one: denial, incredulity, contrition, anger, sadness, resignation.

“Jesus, Ava,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It wasn’t okay, I don’t think, for a long time, but it’s okay now.” She thought back to their recent awkward encounter in bed. She had known then that things were over. She had allowed her marriage to rust, like a bicycle-built-for-two left out in the rain. And then, when she finally decided she wanted to climb back on it, she’d been surprised when it didn’t work. When she reached out for Jordan, he was ten thousand miles away. At first Ava had felt angry and rejected, until she realized that the passion she felt that night wasn’t for Jordan, it was for something else: Australia, her mother and brothers and sisters, the nascent idea of a new family.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Jordan said. He screamed at the open sky:
“I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!”

She couldn’t believe it either. She took a deep breath of the bracing Rottnest air. She had come to this island as a child; she could never have foreseen the circumstances that she found herself in now. For years, no matter how wretched she had felt, splitting from Jordan had been unthinkable. But why? Why?

“Go back to Nantucket, Jordan,” Ava said. “That’s where you belong.”

Jordan opened his mouth to speak.

“You can protest,” Ava said. “You can deny it all you want. But I know the truth. You want this over too.”

“And what about our son?” Jordan asked.

“Jake is a sorry mess,” Ava said. “A couple of weeks ago he tried to run away. He met some kids down at South Beach who had a van. He gave them some money because they said they would drive him to Sydney, where he was going to hop on a plane, or a container ship, back to the States. But they drugged him or
something, I guess, and then they robbed him, and so he came back to the house. I caught him coming in the side gate at five-thirty in the morning with his duffel bag.”

“Jesus,” Jordan said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t
he
tell me?”

“And ever since he told me what happened, all I’ve been thinking about is what I would have done if I’d lost him. Really
lost
him, the way we lost Ernie, the way Zoe lost Penny.” Ava blinked. The wind whipped her hair, and she tried to collect it into an elastic at the base of her neck. “What would I have
done?
”

“I don’t have an answer for that,” Jordan said. “I don’t seem to have an answer for anything anymore.”

“I asked Jake what he wanted more than anything in the world. And you know what he said? He wants Nantucket.”

“Ava. We’re not going to decide this today. You can’t dissolve a
twenty-year marriage
in one day.”

“Just think about it, Jordan, please. Take Jake home and keep him safe. Get him into college somewhere. Put him on a plane to see me every once in a while. Run the newspaper, serve the island, do what you were born and raised to do.” She swallowed. “And get Zoe back.”

“Ava.”

“I am serious,” she said. “And I am sincere. Go after what you want.”

Jordan poked his glasses up his nose. This gesture always used to bother her, but now she saw it as his way of expressing bewilderment. “And what about you?” he asked.

“I’ve got what I want right here.” Ava mounted her bike and coasted down the backside of the hill. A quokka bounced across the road in front of her, and she thought, I win the dollar coin!

She was home.

L
ynne Castle’s favorite line was, “I’m too old for this.” Lately, though, she had felt like adding an expletive onto the end of that; now she wanted to say, “I’m too old for this shit.” But Lynne wasn’t one to swear. She was solid, she was responsible, she was the voice of reason, she was a model citizen, she was a loving wife, she was a good mother.

But was she, really?

Welcome to the summer of self-doubt. Lynne and Al had everything a couple could want. Al had the car dealership and local politics. Lynne had a permitting business that kept her as busy as she wanted to be. They had a lovely home, the Castle castle. They had two boys away at college who were poised to take the world by storm. And they had Demeter.

On the outside, their lives looked good. Life had always looked good for the Castles. Al was in charge of everything on this island, and what he wasn’t in charge of, Lynne was in charge of. But lately something deep inside their life seemed to be emitting a foul smell.

Lynne wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t an idiot, she knew that the problem was Demeter. Her youngest child, her only daughter. Lynne had been thrilled when she gave birth to a girl after the two boys. It was a dream come true: all that pink, the baby dolls, dance lessons, tea parties. Demeter had been a precocious little girl, cute and tiny, with a high-pitched candy voice.

What had gone wrong? Could Lynne just look back and be honest with herself for once?

By the time Demeter was ten or eleven, she was overweight. Lynne wasn’t quite sure how this had happened. It was true that Lynne and Al were not small people, and there never seemed to be enough time in the day for regular exercise, but neither one of
them was what you’d call
fat,
either. And both the boys were trim and athletic.

Lynne had enrolled Demeter in spring soccer; first she sat on the bench—because she was no good at the sport, because she was too heavy to run more than a few yards downfield without getting winded—and then she quit. Al bought her a mountain bike for her birthday, but by that point Demeter had few friends, and so no one to bike with, no one to go and see on her bike. She was ostracized at school because of her weight, but at home Lynne was afraid to address her size because she didn’t want to make it an
issue,
she didn’t want Demeter to think that her
own mother
believed she was fat. Instead she strove to promote a positive body image by telling her daughter she was beautiful, and of course she could have another piece of cake.

Demeter got bigger. She refused to ski during their weekends in Stowe. She refused to put on a bathing suit when they went to the beach on Sundays.

Fat camp? Lynne wondered. A summer away might help, but the idea seemed cruel. And outdated. Lynne had had a friend in high school who’d gone to fat camp and returned with an eating disorder.

Al was little help. Lynne crawled into bed at night and said, “What are we going to do about her? She’s so lonely. I could cry thinking about it.” And Al said, “I’ll do whatever you want to do, honey.”

This sounded like support, but really it was Al passing the buck. He was too busy with the dealership and his civic duties to do anything about Demeter. Demeter was a girl, Lynne was her mother. Certainly Lynne would know the best course of action. Al had put in his intense parenting time with the boys. Little League coach for eight years, science projects, college visits—he’d done it all. Lynne could hardly fault him for taking a pass here.

But she did fault him. And she faulted herself. What she thought was, I’m too old for this shit.

Adolescence, Lynne had tried to tell Demeter, was like a bad ride on the ferry. You got tossed about in the waves, you crested to the top, you sank into the troughs, and the motion between the highs and the lows made you sick to your stomach. You thought with every passing minute that you were surely going to drown. The good news was, the ride eventually came to an end. You docked in Hyannis Harbor and disembarked from the boat. Demeter would graduate from high school, she would reach adulthood, and things would get better.

Demeter had looked upon her mother with a jaundiced eye. “A bad ride on the ferry”?
That
was what her mother had to offer?

A little before 1:30 a.m. on June 17, Ed Kapenash had called the house and told Al that there had been an accident. Demeter was at the hospital, but she was unhurt.

Al relayed this message to Lynne, who was by that point sitting bolt upright in bed. “There was an accident, Demeter’s at the hospital, but she’s unhurt.”

Lynne said, “She’s not at the hospital. She’s in her bedroom.”

And Al, trusting every word that came out of his wife’s mouth, said to Police Chief Ed Kapenash, “Demeter is in her bedroom.”

To which Ed responded, “I’m looking right at her, Al. Can you come down here, please?”

Even
then,
Lynne didn’t believe it. She threw on the skirt and blouse by her bed, the same outfit she had worn only hours before to four graduation parties, and she marched down the hallway to Demeter’s bedroom. Knocked on the door. There was no answer, but that was hardly unusual. Lynne tried the knob. Locked. Again, not unusual. What teenage girl
didn’t
lock her bedroom door? She knocked again, and Al came up behind her with a metal pin.

“Jesus Christ, Lynne, step aside, please.”

Lynne half turned to him, shocked. He never spoke to her like
that. He popped the lock and reached for the light and then they were both standing in Demeter’s empty bedroom, where the window was hanging wide open. In a daze Lynne walked to the window and looked down.

“She… what?” Lynne said.

“Climbed out the window,” Al said in a snarky tone of voice.

“And then what?” Lynne said. The screen for the window lay on the shingles of the roof, but from the roof line it was probably eight or nine feet to the lawn below. “She
jumped?
”

“She must have,” Al said. “I’m going to the hospital. Are you coming with me?”

“Of course I’m coming with you,” Lynne said. Her daughter had been in an accident, her daughter was at the hospital, her daughter had climbed out her bedroom window and jumped to the lawn below. Her daughter had fooled them. Lynne was so tired, it was the middle of the night, she had gotten only a couple hours of sleep. She was too old for this.

But once she reached the hospital, she couldn’t have been more awake. Ed Kapenash met them
out in the parking lot,
and Lynne thought, This can hardly be standard protocol. Maybe he had lied about Demeter’s being unhurt so they wouldn’t drive off the road while trying to get here. Why else would Ed be waiting for them outside?

Ed spoke in a low voice. Lynne had never heard him sound so serious. Jake Randolph’s Jeep, Penny driving, Penny D.O.A., Hobby alive but unresponsive. The helicopter was on its way. Demeter unhurt, Jake Randolph unhurt.

Lynne couldn’t quite keep up. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What did you say about Penny?”

Ed pressed his lips together.

Al said, “Honey, she’s dead. She was dead on arrival.”

Lynne felt herself falling. But no, she was upright. But she had dropped something. Keys. Her keys had fallen from her hand onto
the asphalt. She bent down to pick them up. She hiccupped, then started crying.

“I met you out here because I thought you should know,” Ed said. “So you’ll be prepared. Jordan’s on his way. Zoe’s on her way.”

“Do they know?” Lynne asked. “Does Zoe know?”

“Not yet.”

Jesus, this was awful. Lynne’s life wasn’t set up to accommodate this kind of awful.

“I also need to inform you that we found a bottle of Jim Beam in your daughter’s bag,” Ed said. “It had an inch or two of whiskey left in it. She probably wasn’t the only one drinking it, but the paramedics said she was inebriated when she arrived. I’m going in to talk with her now. I just wanted to tell you that myself. Because we’re friends.”

“Thank you, Ed,” Al said.

“Jim
Beam?
” Lynne said. “Where on Earth, really,
where
would Demeter have gotten a bottle of Jim
Beam?
We don’t drink. You know we don’t drink, Ed.”

“I’m just telling you what we found.”

“Someone must have put it in her bag,” Lynne said. “One of the boys.” But not Penny. Penny didn’t drink at all; Lynne knew this from both Demeter and Zoe. Although it
was
graduation, so maybe she’d been drinking tonight. Maybe that was what had caused the accident. Maybe Penny had put the bottle in Demeter’s purse. Demeter would have let her do that—anything to be accepted by those kids. “Was Penny drinking?”

“We know almost nothing else,” Ed said.

Al said, “Honey, let the man do his job. He came out here to warn us as a
courtesy.
”

Was Al expecting her to thank him, then? Say something like “Thank you, Ed, for telling us that our daughter was the one with the near-empty bottle of booze in her purse”? Lynne didn’t like being the mother who insisted on her child’s innocence—those
mothers were nearly always delusional about their own children—but in this case she had no choice. There was
no way
the Jim Beam or whatever it was they’d found in Demeter’s purse actually belonged to her.

Lynne couldn’t believe she was even worrying about this.
Penny Alistair was dead.
And Hobby—what had the Chief said about Hobby, again?

“What did he say about Hobby?” Lynne asked Al, as the Chief’s back receded toward the bright glass doors of the Emergency Room. She was shivering as if it were January instead of June.

“Let’s go inside,” Al said.

Now, two months later, Lynne had a hard time piecing together what had happened after that. Her memory was shattered like a broken mirror. She remembered seeing Zoe walk in; the two of them exchanged a look, and Lynne feared for the expression on her own face. She hated that she knew that Penny was dead while Zoe didn’t; she despised Ed Kapenash for telling them first.

She remembered Zoe’s slapping Jordan. Oh yes, that she remembered. She would remember that for the rest of her life. Zoe nearly knocked the glasses off of Jordan’s face. And why? What had Jordan done wrong? That wasn’t clear.