What I Thought Was True

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  “Yeah. Exactly.” Cass shakes his hair out of his eyes, which seem a slightly more wintery sea blue than usual.

  “Jeez, enough with the pissing contest,” I say. “Let’s get Em home.” Nic takes him out of my arms and looks at me, face impassive. I give his back a little nudge toward shore, almost a shove. He nods, a motion so small it’s almost undetectable, walks off. Vivien trails, wringing out Hideout, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder at us, standing so close we’re each dripping water on each other. She cocks her head at me, then hurries after Nic and Em.

  I touch Cass’s arm quickly. “Thank you.”

  “No big deal.” Then he turns to me with a straight face. “But, hey, was that a stuffed hermit crab?”

  I laugh, and it feels so good, unknotting the tension that’s been snarled in my stomach for days. “I know—it’s like a bunch of toymakers were in a boardroom somewhere, snapping their fingers, and said, ‘I know! A crustacean line! Just what every kid wants.’ But Em loves him. So really . . . thanks.”

  “You did the more important save, Gwen. Keep this up and I might have to forfeit my superhero cape. Or talk to Coach about that Lifeguard of the Year award you earned back in March.”

  The Polar Bear Plunge.

  For a beat, it just lies there, like a glove thrown down. Smack. Then I meet his eyes. I don’t know what mine are saying, but after a moment, he looks away, up to the sky, then down at me, lips parted. I follow his gaze to my chest, where of course my too-tight tank top is completely plastered. White. Practically transparent.

  That’s what this is about?

  I snap my fingers. “My face is up here.”

  Cass reaches for his towel, now an interesting shade of mottled pink, wraps it tightly around his waist. “Um, sorry. Are you cold, by any chance, Gwen?”An infinitesimal smile, just enough to bring out one dimple, pulls at the corner of his mouth.

  I groan. “You have no idea what a pain these are. Since I was twelve I’ve gotten this! Like I’m boobs attached to a faceless girl. Sometimes I just want to take ’em off and hand them to whoever can’t be bothered to see the rest of me and say, ‘Here. I think this is what you’re really after.’”

  Cass flips his hair back. “And we were doing so well there for a second. I didn’t mean to objectify you or disrespect your personhood. You look”—he throws his hand toward me—“like you look. Sue me for noticing.” He meets my eyes. “By the way—just let me give your little brother a few lessons. Otherwise, you’re going to have a heart attack worrying, or an ulcer blaming yourself for not being on guard twenty-four/seven. And let’s make tutoring happen. At this point you’re just making bullshit excuses. I need this, okay? I need to stay on the team.”

  “Why is that so important to you?” I ask. “It’s not like you’re applying to the Coast Guard. You’ll get into whatever college you want.”

  He shakes his head. Looks at me. “You have no idea what I want. None.” His voice has abruptly gotten hard.

  I take a deep breath, shut my eyes, exhale. “You’re right. I don’t. I don’t know what you want. You did a good thing and I’m being a jerk.”

  I’m relieved to see both dimples groove deep. “Whoa. Is that an actual apology? I forgive you. If you forgive me for standing in front of a girl like you and letting my eyes wander. My mom would be pissed with me.”

  I have only the haziest of memories of Cass’s mom from that one summer. Adults you don’t know well all seem blend together when you’re little—someone big who talks about things you don’t understand that don’t sound interesting. No memory at all whether she was tall or short, blond or dark. Or even kind or not. I try to picture her at meets and I can’t. I can just see Cass’s dad cheering.

  “She’s a therapist,” he adds. “Specializes in empowering girls and women. She’s written books about it. How the Patriarchy Silences the Female Voice. That was her best seller. Oh, and Men, Why Do We Bother?”

  “Ouch,” I say. “Really?”

  “Yep. Mom doesn’t like to leave any feeling undelved . . .” He wrinkles his nose, squinting. “Is that a word?”

  “Close enough,” I say. Try harder to remember Cass’s mom. Picture her in hemp clothing with wild hair, fingers tented. Then with hair drawn back into a stern bun, power suit on. Neither seems right.

  “Sometimes family dinners are like therapy sessions. I feel like we should all be lying around on couches while my mom over-explores our psyches. ‘How does having pizza again make you fee-el, Cass? I think we need to examine your broccoli issues, Bill.’”

  I’m still stuck on Men, Why Do We Bother? I don’t want Cass to have some uptight, disapproving family. It doesn’t fit with my image of his dad from that summer, from my memories of feeling comfortable running into their house, never bothering to kick off my shoes outside the door. “And she wound up with three sons,” I say.

  “Yup, I was the one last try for a girl. I would have been Cassandra . . . you know, after the girl no one listened to in the Iliad. Who died.”

  “Instead you got named after the cool guy in an iconic classic movie.”

  “Yeah, well, he got offed in the end too.”

  “Well, my mom named me after the world’s most famously unfaithful woman.”

  Cass flinches, then looks out to sea. “I’d better get home. I’ve got this—family thing tonight—and you’d better go dry off. I’ll put together a program for Emory.”

  He strides down the pier without looking back. I scan the parking lot, half expecting to see Spence’s car idling there like the other day. It’s not. But it might as well be, because Spence was right there between us.

  Again.

  And we were doing so well there for a second.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mom plops heavily down on the couch as Nic and I describe what happened with Em, both of us trying to take a bigger share of the blame as though it’s the last slice of pie.

  “This was all me, Aunt Luce. I was stupid-focused—didn’t even get that he didn’t have a life jacket—”

  “No, Mom, it was my fault. I was”—distracted by Cass in his swim trunks and this weird truce we keep zigzagging in out out of—“not paying attention when I should have—”

  “It shouldn’t always have to be Gwen, Aunt Luce. I dropped the ball completely, ’cause I—” Nic’s face turns red.

  “I was the one who was on the dock with Emory—I was the one who brought him there. With no life jacket.”

  Finally, as we both stutter to a halt, Mom sighs, her eyes taking in Em, already nodding to sleep on the corner of the couch, long eyelashes fluttering, still clutching Hideout. She brushes her hand under her eyes, then ruffles Nic’s hair, cups my chin. “I ask too much of you two, I know. I look at you both, good kids, and I want you to have everything I ever wanted and didn’t get. But we can’t let Emory slip through the cracks. We have to keep him safe. He can’t do that for himself.”

  Grandpa Ben, who is punching tobacco into the pipe he hardly ever smokes, a rare sign of extreme agitation, points the barrel of the pipe at me, then Nic, in turn. “Our coelho needs the swimming lessons. We will get the young yard boy. He talked to me about it the other day.”

  Nic bristles. “I can teach him. Why do we have to bring in Cassidy Somers?”

  “You tried, Nico.” Mom pats his knee. “So did Grandpa. And Gwen. Sometimes these things are better when it’s not family doing the teaching.”

  “Yeah, remember when Dad tried to teach me to drive?” I shudder.

  “It would have been better if it wasn’t Mrs. Partridge’s fence you hit,” Mom says. “She still brings it up every single time I clean her house, the old battle-ax.”

  Grandpa holds the lighter to the bowl of his pipe, takes deep breaths in and out. At last he settles his pipe in the corner of his mouth and says, “We talk to the yard boy. You”—he points to me—“you ask him tonight. He is here on the island, yes?”

  “At the Field House,” Nic says. “I�
��ll tell him.”

  “No, I need you to drive me to Mass,” Grandpa Ben says. “My coelho had a lucky escape today. Thanks must be said. Guinevere can work it out with the yard boy.” His brow crinkles. “Perhaps we can pay him in fish?”

  I wince at the mental image of me slapping a dead mackerel into Cass’s arms at the end of a lesson. “We’ll work something out,” I say. “And, guys, his name is Cassidy. Not Jose. Not the yard boy. Why is that so hard for everyone to remember? Also, he’s not that young. He’s our age. I mean, I think he’s a little older than me but it’s not like he’s ten. I mean, obviously. Look at him. And you should remember him anyway, because he spent the summer here once—that crazy one, with the weather, and . . . and . . . remember? Not to mention the fact that he’s on Nic’s swim team, for God’s sake.”

  Grandpa, Nic, and Mom are all staring as though I’ve sprouted an additional head. Green, with pink polka dots.

  “This the polite one with the abs?” Mom asks.

  Grandpa says, “You know how hard it is for us to get to meets. And all boys look the same with those little caps and those bathing suits muito pequeno.”

  They do not.

  Emory is still sleeping when I leave, so I haul along Fabio as a handy excuse to make my visit brief. Cass is not going to want our aged, flatulent, over-excitable dog hanging out for long. A quick business transaction, that’s all this needs to be.

  But when I knock on the door of the Field House apartment, it’s not Cass who opens it. It’s Spence. He’s looking particularly toothpaste-ad perfect. It helps that he’s in tennis whites.

  “Helloooo,” he drawls, propping the door open with the heel of his foot and doing his full-body survey maneuver. Must be a reflex. From what I’ve heard, Spence never does anything—anyone—twice. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Fabio licks his leg, then nudges against him lovingly, waiting for a pet behind the ears. Spence bends down and scritches him, and Fabio immediately rolls over on his back. Traitor.

  “Just had something to ask Cass. He home?”

  “Making like Sleeping Beauty.” Spence jerks his thumb toward a closed door. “I thought I’d get a game out of him, but he crashed. Said he just needed a power nap, but it’s been an hour now. Come on in.”

  I tell him I’ll come back another time. Spence, not even bothering to argue, just dismissing this, opens the door wider. “I won’t bite. Unless you ask very nicely. C’mon. It sucks that he’s a working stiff this summer. He’s tired all the time and not up for anything decent. Or, more to the point, indecent.”

  “Poor guy,” I say sarcastically. Then Fabio is charging into the room, all eighty-five pounds of him dragging me behind, launching himself onto the couch in one of his ill-timed bursts of youthful energy. I need to get him, and me, out of here, now. Fabio has been known to “mark his territory” on strange couches.

  “Way to make an entrance, Castle. Yeah, it stinks, my boy being all blue-collar.” Spence sounds completely sincere, oblivious to the irony of complaining about the evils of having a summer job to a person who obviously also has one. “I’d never do that. Weeding, mowing. Lousy way to spend three short golden months of no school. I’d tell the old man to shove it. But you know our Cass. He does what he’s told.”

  Yeah, especially by you.

  “He’s not ‘our’ Cass.” I look around the room. Nasty. Avocado-green appliances, heinous bright yellow walls, faux cherry-wood cabinets with the veneer peeling back to reveal the sticky plywood underneath, fake brick linoleum that’s cracking and curling up at all the corners. Seashell has its tennis courts resurfaced annually and spent a fortune to have some former golf pro analyze the course. And then give private lessons. The yard boy’s apartment is apparently not on the punch list.

  “As you wish, princess. Popcorn? I’m starving, and Sundance has nothing else to offer us.” He clangs open the microwave door, shoves the bag in, slams it shut. “This job is sucking the life out of him. Worse than damn school. Personally, I’ve got no intention of doing anything worthwhile this season. I’ve spent the past two at Middlebury language school or Choate tennis camp. This can be a sea change. My summer to get tan and lazy, fat and happy.”

  I toy with the idea of making a cutting remark about his lack of ambition, but, honestly, that all sounds nice if you can swing it. Except the fat part. Which I can probably manage on my own.

  “I’ve rarely been tan,” Spence continues over the whirring cycle of the microwave. “Hardly ever lazy. Never fat.” He pulls the bag out, sucks his fingers, cursing under his breath.

  “You forgot happy.”

  He shrugs, a dark look crossing his face.

  Fabio is still entranced by the couch, which has a big pile of laundry tumbled on it. Many pink items. It occurs to me that this is the first time Spence and me have been alone since that party.

  I need something to do with my hands, so I pick up a T-shirt and fold it, then another, match up a pair of socks, roll them into a ball.

  I hear this exhalation of breath, like a snort, from Spence and look up to find him watching me. “How domestic. What a nice little wife you’ll make.”

  I drop the second pair of socks. What am I doing, morphing into Mom? I flush, but when I check Spence’s face again, he’s just smiling at me, extending the bag of popcorn.

  “Something cool to go with?” he offers. “A six of Heineken was my housewarming gift for Cass. You’re fun when you’re loaded.”

  “The swim team tradition, yeah, I know, Spence,” I say. “Like you’ve said.”

  “I apologized for that, Castle. Just being a dick. What I do best. Well, second best.” He waggles his eyebrows at me.

  I resist the urge to stick out my tongue at him, settling for shaking my head.

  “How’s your brother?”

  That he would ask, which seems unlike him and also implies that Cass talked about Emory, throws me.

  “He’s fine,” I say shortly. “That’s why I’m here. I want to take Cass up on his offer to teach him to swim. So you can just . . . pass that on, and I’ll get going and—”

  “Cass nearly drowned when he was six,” Spence says. “Rip tide at the beach. We were there with my dad, who was . . . But whatever, I got the lifeguard and saved him.” He looks at his watch. “Hell, it’s nearly seven now and I’ve got to be at the club at eight. I’m gonna wake him up.”

  He heads toward the closed door. I hurry after him. “No, don’t. I’ll come back.”

  But Spence keeps going and I follow him right into the bedroom. Which is painted the same eyesore green-yellow as the main room, but has walls covered with hand-drawn maps, signed in a clear, careful hand: CRS.

  Cass is lying on his stomach, arms wrapped around his pillow like he’s hugging someone close. His hair’s all rumpled and his mouth a little open. The sheet comes to his waist, his back is bare, and I hope to God he is wearing some pink boxers under there. I start backing to the door, just as Fabio charges into the room and lands on the bed, and Cass’s butt, with the kind of flying leap he hasn’t been able to manage at home for about four years.

  Spence bursts out laughing and Cass jerks his head up, big-eyed. Then he sees me, and Spence, and they widen even more.

  It is also the first time the three of us have been in any close proximity since that party.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Dude, definitely your color.” Spence points to the pillowcase, which is also pink.

  “What’s going on?” Cass repeats, looking back and forth between us. He pulls the sheet more tightly around himself and there are no creases or folds and I don’t think there is anything under there besides Cass. Fabio licks his shoulder, that embarrassingly intent dog-licking thing.

  “Nothing. I was just leaving.” I grab the end of the leash and pull, but Fabio plants his legs more firmly and slobbers on the back of Cass’s neck. Spence laughs, goes over, and gives my treacherous dog a gentle shove onto the floor.

  “No
need to rush outta here,” he says. “Chill, Castle. We could probably all use a beer. I know I’m getting one.”

  He heads out of the room, leaving me alone with a probably naked Cass and Fabio, who chooses this moment to mark his territory.

  On the bottom of the bedpost.

  Like it’s a fire hydrant.

  Or a lamppost. Outdoors. Far away. Where I wish I was.

  I cover my eyes, groan, hear the sheet rustle and Cass say, “What the—oh!”

  “I’ll get a sponge. Take care of that. No problem. He just likes to pee on things he finds, um, interesting. It’s a bad habit—he’s old and he has no manners. Or you know, bladder control. I’m so sorry. Can I die right now?”

  Cass’s laughter drowns out the last few words of my sentence.

  “Don’t,” he says, after a moment. “A corpse on my floor would be way worse than this.”

  My fingers are still shielding my face. “I’m sorry my dog has no . . . self-control,” I repeat.

  “Well, it would be bad form if I did that. But it’s pretty normal for a dog,” Cass says. “You ever gonna put your hands down?”

  “I’ll have to if I’m going to clean that up.” I turn away, pulling at Fabio, who mercifully yields and follows me as I bump into the doorjamb, then pull the door shut behind me.

  “Here,” Spence says, trying to hand me a beer.

  “Last thing I need.” I push the frosted bottle away and look around for paper towels. But there are none, because Cass is seventeen and Nic would never think to buy any either. No dishtowels, of course not. What now? In one of Mom’s (or Mrs. E.’s) novels, the heroine would daintily raise her skirt and tear off a bit of her petticoat. But this would never happen to one of Mom’s heroines because this is the sort of thing that only happens to me.

  Spence scratches his head, takes a pull of beer. “Aren’t you all supposed to be the wild island kids? Doesn’t anybody get hammered around here? Ol’ Nic Cruz is like a Boy Scout or something. And your friend Vivien—I’ve never even seen her at a party.”

  “She and Nic pretty much like their parties private,” I say. “It’s not as if you and Cass are draining the kegs all the time either.”