28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “But you won’t stop seeing him. I know you won’t.”

  Mallory doesn’t answer.

  Cooper says, “Do you know why I lied, Mal? Other than because you’re the only family I have left?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think you and Jake are probably really good together. You’re both…easygoing. And smart as hell. And you’re both kind. You’re good people. I can see why you like him, I can see why he likes you. But the two of you are doing something that, at base, just isn’t right. Which proves something I’ve suspected all along.”

  “What’s that?” Mallory whispers.

  “Everyone is human,” Coop says. “Every single one of us.”

  That does it; tears drip down Mallory’s face. She moves her sunglasses to the top of her head and squints at the sparkling surface of the Atlantic until it blurs.

  Blog post. Blog post?

  When Mallory gets home from the beach, she Googles Most popular blogs, women.

  Number one is Leland’s Letter.

  Leland’s Letter is a blog? Mallory had thought it was…well, she wasn’t sure. It was Leland’s project, her platform. Mallory always felt bad that she hadn’t paid closer attention. She had looked at it right when it came out and read articles on self-defense on the subway and the true-life story of a woman in Utah held against her wishes by a polygamist, back when that was a thing everyone was talking about. The website had seemed angry and strident and edgy and urban, just like Leland herself, and Mallory simply wasn’t interested.

  Mallory clicks on Leland’s Letter.

  The lead article, right there on the front page under the masthead, is titled “Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?”

  “Gah!” Mallory shouts. “She didn’t!”

  …late-night conversation with an intimate friend revealed a shocking secret…this friend, let’s call her “Violet,” has been conducting a clandestine relationship over the course of two decades that she calls her “Same Time Next Year.”

  Mallory keeps reading. Leland did it. Right down to the sand dollars and the fortunes.

  Mallory stands up, looks around her cottage as though there’s a crowd assembled, an indignant studio audience waiting to see just how Mallory is going to handle this.

  She goes to the kitchen for iced tea, cuts a wedge of lemon, takes a sip. It’s cold, refreshing, minty because Mallory steeps her tea with fresh mint from the pot of herbs on her porch. She knows she lives a blessed life; she has never denied that. She was given this property when she had nothing else and it’s extraordinary by anyone’s standards. She has a healthy, strong, intelligent son. Fray’s son. Maybe Leland’s…betrayal—there’s no other word for it—has been long planned as revenge because Mallory slept with Frazier Dooley and bore his child. But Leland handled the news of Link’s sire with great equanimity. Was that all an act? Has Leland been patiently waiting all these years to stick a pin through the heart of Mallory’s voodoo doll?

  Maybe Leland is angry that Fifi came to visit Mallory alone so many years earlier. Maybe Fifi told Leland that Mallory knew about their breakup before Leland did. That would have hurt. Leland cares about Fifi more than she ever cared about Fray.

  Right?

  Mallory realizes she has no idea who Leland loves—or has loved—other than herself. And hasn’t that always been the case? Mallory thinks back to childhood, adolescence, high school—although, to be fair, everyone was self-absorbed in high school. In young adulthood, there were those loathsome months they lived together in the city. Leland had snatched up the job that Mallory wanted, and even if Leland was better suited for that job, she had treated Mallory like her inferior. She hadn’t shared the duck or the lamb shank from the French restaurant on the ground floor of their building; she had eaten those meals ostentatiously, dipping pieces of golden baguette into the pan sauces, holding a forkful of potato purée in front of her mouth before she luridly licked it off and then groaned at how sublime it was. All this while Mallory ate her bologna sandwiches, her ramen, her dry scrambled eggs.

  There was Leland’s disastrous first visit to Nantucket when she vanished with her New York friends, abandoning Mallory, abandoning Fray. And then the catastrophic second visit with Fifi. Leland had said such cruel things: Mallory is particularly suggestible…She’s a follower. Mallory understood that Leland had been angry at Fifi and jealous of Mallory, but she had meant those words; if she hadn’t, she would have chosen other derogatory things to say.

  It was a wonder Mallory and Leland had remained friends. They had done so only because Mallory had chosen to overlook Leland’s faults. Their friendship had history—not only the moments Mallory readily recalls but also the times she knows she’s forgotten. Driving in Steve Gladstone’s Saab to the Owings Mills Mall, pooling their money to buy Chick-Fil-A, stopping to put two dollars’ worth of gas in the car so they didn’t return it to Steve bone-dry, listening to Songs in the Attic by Billy Joel. “Captain Jack” was their favorite song; Mallory knew the lyrics a little better than Leland did, and she had been proud of that. Going back even further, there were countless summer days at the country club, handstands in the pool, backflips off the diving board, hitting a tennis ball against the concrete practice wall, both of them wearing only their one-piece bathing suits and their Tretorns, before the age of body-consciousness. They rode their bikes all over Roland Park, one time venturing a block farther than they should have when a carful of older boys stopped to ask their names. Leland, thinking fast on her feet, had given the name Laura Templeton, and Mallory, following suit, had said, Jackie Templeton. These were characters from General Hospital. One of the older boys had said, “Are you two sisters? You don’t look alike. Who’s older?” Leland had opened her mouth to answer—she was most certainly going to say that she was older—but at the last minute she had pushed off the sidewalk and started pedaling furiously down the block, and Mallory had followed. They didn’t stop until they safely coasted into Leland’s driveway, and only then did they let themselves acknowledge that they might have been in real danger, like girls in an after-school special.

  They used to have shifting crushes on Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Mickey Rourke. They had both been madly in love with Mickey Rourke, but it was a rule that they couldn’t have a crush on the same person, so Leland got Mickey Rourke because she was the one who had the poster of him from 9½ Weeks on her wall. Mallory remembers harboring bitterness about that because there has never been a more desirable photograph of a man than Mickey Rourke in 9½ Weeks.

  Leland had been the alpha, Mallory the beta—there was no way to argue that point. Mallory hadn’t cared. In later years, she came to realize that the only person’s approval she needed was her own. She didn’t need to move the needle on American culture. All she needed to do was be a good teacher and a better mother and the best person she could be.

  She has one weak spot, one fault line: Jake. And now the world knows it. Leland has exposed her.

  Mallory wants to be the kind of person who lets this go. Cooper reached deep and covered for her. Ursula, hopefully, bought it, and the article that hundreds of thousands of American women will read will be forgotten by next week.

  Mallory isn’t that person.

  Her second choice is to be the kind of person who quietly erases Leland from her life. She will block Leland from her phone and her e-mail. Her parents’ house has been sold; there’s no longer any reason to return to Baltimore for the holidays. Link can see Sloane, his grandmother, and Steve Gladstone, his grandmother’s boyfriend, on Fray’s watch.

  But she isn’t this person either.

  She is a person who has been manipulated and pushed around and treated poorly by her best friend for over thirty years, but this is the last time. Mallory is angry. The anger, she knows, will fade, but before that happens, she’s going to make Leland feel the searing burn, the acrid bitterness.

  She calls Leland.

  “Mal?”

  Mallory stares into
the bedroom mirror as she talks. “I saw the article. ‘Same Time Next Year.’” Mallory is proud of herself. Her voice is steady and clear. She holds her own gaze.

  Silence.

  “Ursula called Cooper.”

  “Oh God.”

  “That’s not what bothers me about this,” Mallory says. “That’s an outcome, which is separate from the betrayal itself.”

  “It wasn’t a betrayal, Mal—”

  “I told you that in confidence. Extremely sensitive top-secret confidence. I was drunk, I own that, and I was sad. It was the night of my parents’ funeral. I shared something with you, my best friend since forever, and you turned right around and laid it out in your blog”—Mallory says this like it’s a dirty word—“for all to see. You used my secret as clickbait.”

  “I didn’t give your name—”

  “You might as well have,” Mallory says. “Ursula called Cooper!” Her face is blotching; she feels her good sense unspooling like the string of a kite snatched by the wind. There it goes! Mallory sets the phone down on her dresser. She can hear Leland’s voice, though not her actual words. Her excuses. Her obsequious apologies. Mallory takes a deep breath. Hang up, she thinks. Except she’s not finished. She brings the phone back to her ear.

  Silence. Then: “Mal? Are you still there?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you gave my name. It doesn’t matter about Ursula. What matters is that you broke your promise to me. That was an ugly, disingenuous thing to do, Lee. It was precisely the same thoughtless, self-serving behavior you’ve demonstrated all your life, except exponentially worse. You dealt this friendship a death blow. I will feel sad without you, but my guess is that you’ll feel worse than I do because you have to live with the guilt of knowing that you are such an empty, morally bankrupt person that you would cash in on your best friend’s deepest secret for…what? Some likes? Some follows? Some advertisers? The admiration of strangers?” Mallory takes a breath. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Maybe it’s Fifi’s approval, maybe it’s your father’s love—I have no idea. And I don’t care. Goodbye, Lee.”

  “Mal—”

  Mallory hangs up. Leland calls back four times and leaves three messages, which Mallory deletes without listening to. She blocks Leland’s cell number, she blocks her e-mail, and she blocks the Leland’s Letter website, marking it inappropriate. When all that is done, it’s time to go back to the beach to pick up Link.

  When Link gets into the car, hair wet and sculpted into crazy waves and spiky peaks, smelling of salt and sweat and sunblock, feet and legs covered with sand, he says, “Have you been crying, Mom?”

  It must be crystal clear the answer is yes, but Mallory shakes her head.

  Link says, “Tomorrow I’ll have the guys over to the house and you can cook for us, okay, Mama?”

  She feels the corners of her mouth lift, like they have a mind of their own. “Okay,” she says.

  It’s a week before Christmas and Link is taking out the kitchen trash after dinner, a chore he enjoys this time of year because the air is cold and smells of wood smoke, and the ocean mist glitters like tinsel. On the horizon, he can just pick out the lights of a giant wreath that their closest neighbor hangs on the side of his house.

  As he’s tying up the bag outside on the back porch, he sees a soft package in a brown UPS bag that has been stuffed halfway down. Further inspection reveals Link’s name on the front.

  What?

  Link pulls the bag out from underneath a chicken carcass and potato peelings and junk mail. It’s a package addressed to him from L. Gladstone, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Auntie Leland. What is it doing in the trash?

  He tears open the brown mailer to find a wrapped gift, clothing of some sort, it feels like. He unwraps the present. Why not? It’s his. It’s a Patriots jersey, number 87, GRONKOWSKI. Yes! Link has been dying for one of these and it’s an adult medium, roomy enough for him to wear over a hoodie.

  He inspects the rest of the contents of the trash bag from the outside in case Mallory has accidentally thrown away any other presents. Then he takes the trash to the cans on the side of the house, admires the neighbor’s wreath, and heads back inside with the Gronk jersey. Thank God he saved it!

  “Mom?” he says, holding the jersey up. “This came for me from Auntie Leland and you accidentally threw it away.”

  Mallory is on the sofa in front of the fire, grading essays. She smiles mildly. “Not an accident,” she says. “Leland is dead to me.”

  Summer #24: 2016

  What are we talking about in 2016? Prince; the presidential election; Muhammad Ali; Villanova Wildcats; Harriet Tubman; Antonin Scalia; Brexit; Colin Kaepernick; the North Carolina restroom debate; Pulse nightclub in Orlando; Sidney Crosby; Blue Apron; Pat Summitt; Black Lives Matter; goat yoga; Gene Wilder; the Cubs; Brangelina; Standing Rock; Carrie Fisher; preferred gender pronouns; Piper, Crazy Eyes, Alex, Red, and Healy; “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”

  Burgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes, Cat Stevens’s “Hard Headed Woman,” hydrangea blossoms in the mason jar, the same mason jar from year number one, which Jake finds comforting; the jar sits on top of the black burn scar on the harvest table. The meal, the music, the mason jar, and the narrow harvest table are the same, but so much else has changed.

  Mallory took some of the money she inherited from her parents and completely transformed the inside of the cottage. She…gutted it. Gone is the rustic paneling and the dusty brick fireplace with the slate hearth. Gone is the screen door that slammed with a spine-tingling snap every time someone came in or went out. Gone are the Formica countertops—so outdated they were back in—and the particleboard cabinets and the fudge-brown fridge and the stainless-steel drop-in sink.

  By anyone’s standards, Mallory’s cottage is now dazzling, swoon-worthy. The walls are shiplap, painted white; the old, sagging bookshelves are now floor-to-ceiling white built-ins with accent lighting and cool copper rails and a sliding ladder to help access the upper shelves. The floors are pickled oak. There’s a new deep white sofa and two comfy club chairs sheathed in cream linen and underneath is a rug striped in every shade of white from French vanilla to polar icecap. The kitchen cabinets are white with tasteful brass hardware, and the Formica has been replaced with Pegasus marble. Mallory’s bedroom is like a middle-aged woman who took a vacation to the Bahamas and returned with a new attitude and a hibiscus behind her ear. The room now has a cathedral ceiling; the walls are painted the faintest peach, and there is a sumptuous king-size bed complete with gauzy white canopies floating down the sides. She has annexed the bathroom as her own, and it’s now tiled in jungle green; the old tub was finally removed and replaced with a freestanding stone tub that resembles one of the slipper shells they used to find on their beach walks. The guest room has been extravagantly wallpapered—an azure blue background printed with frolicking zebras.

  The only room that has been left untouched is Link’s. Entering Link’s room is like stepping back in time: There’s the familiar paneling, the creaky floors covered by assorted braided rugs, the dresser thick with gray paint. If Jake isn’t mistaken, Mallory harvested that dresser from the Take It or Leave It at the Nantucket dump.

  Jake runs his hands over the walls of Link’s room. “My old friend the paneling,” he says. Link’s room is the only place that retains the old-fashioned, cottagey smell—salt water and mildew.

  “He wouldn’t let me change a thing,” Mallory says. “Except I turned his closet into the world’s smallest bathroom. He says he likes the cottage better the way it was before. Can you imagine?”

  “Well…”

  “Not you too,” Mallory says. “Do you hate it? Do you think I bleached out the character?”

  Jake steps back into the great room. “You kept the desk!” he says. He hadn’t noticed before, but Mallory’s kidney-shaped desk is still in the same place in the far corner of the pond side of the room, nearly hidden by the master bedroom’s new six-panel door. The
desk appears out of place in this new version of the cottage, like a dowdy maiden aunt at a party of supermodels, and yet Jake would choose the maiden aunt to talk to every time.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it,” Mallory says. “I remember Aunt Greta writing letters at this desk. I wonder now if she was writing to Ruthie.”

  The song changes to “At Last.” The music comes from Sonos, a playlist imported from Mallory’s phone. The five-CD changer is long gone.

  “I’m sorry you don’t like it,” Mallory says, and she throws back what’s left of her wine. Even the wine is fancier—gone is the twelve-dollar bottle of Cypress chardonnay, replaced by a Sancerre from the Chavignol region. “But I’m the one who has to live here. Link will be leaving for college in a couple of years and you’ll leave on Monday.”

  “Hey, hey,” he says, gathering her up in his arms. “It’s gorgeous, Mal. It’s like a magazine spread. It just feels different, and I have to get used to it.”

  “I didn’t want to live in a charming, rustic box anymore,” she says. “Fray has a goddamned castle out in Seattle and he and Anna just bought a place in Deer Valley, a chalet, Link calls it—”

  “You didn’t do all this to keep up with Fray, did you?” Jake asks.

  “I wanted it to be nice,” Mallory says. “Nicer.”

  “How could anything be nicer than having the Atlantic Ocean as your front yard?”

  “I know, but…” Mallory pulls away a few inches and Jake gets his first good look at her. The cottage has had a complete makeover, but Mallory Blessing is exactly the same. There’s some gray in the part of her hair, which he’s glad she hasn’t “bleached out.” Her face is suntanned and when she raises her eyebrows, her forehead becomes an accordion of wrinkles, and Jake loves it. He loves seeing her get a little older, a little more seasoned. She still has the girlish freckles across her nose and tonight, her eyes are bluish, more blue than he’s ever seen them.