What I Thought Was True

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  But, since we didn’t bring any reading material to the beach, I’m dispatched back to the house to fetch The Sensuous Sins of Lady Sarah.

  When I get there, I am not at all surprised to see Henry’s car parked in the driveway.

  As I push open the screen door, I have a wave of weariness, then near fury. Other people’s stories, I repeat to myself.

  The door slams behind me and I shout, “Hello!” The way I learned to make noise coming home when Nic and Viv might be there alone. Hello. I’m here. A witness. Don’t let me catch you.

  Henry Ellington turns, startled, from the kitchen sink, where he’s standing, drinking a glass of water. He doesn’t look well. His skin’s pale, almost gray, and a sheen of sweat marks his forehead.

  Spread out all over the kitchen table are silver bowls and all those complicated pieces of the tea set and these little cups with handles and engraved initials and silver bears climbing up them. Over the summer, they’ve become more than things to polish and wash. I know their stories. The powdered sugar sifter Mrs. Ellington’s father used, “on Cook’s day off,” to top off the French toast, the only thing he knew how to make for Mrs. E. and her brothers. The ashtrays she and the captain bought at the London Silver Vaults. “They were so lovely. Neither of us smoked, but look at them.” The grape shears. “We got five of these as wedding presents, dear Gwen. I enjoyed thinking that everyone, so proper, who danced at our wedding, imagined us dangling grapes over each other’s mouths, like some debauched Greek gods.”

  So many moments of Mrs. E.’s are laid out on the table, like silver fish resting on ice at Fillerman’s. I wonder if Henry even knows the stories. And if he does . . . how can he possibly sell them?

  “Guinevere? Where’s Mother?” His brow draws together. He straightens, somehow seeming to make himself taller. “I’d assumed she was napping, but there was no sign of either her or you.”

  “At Abenaki with the ladies,” I say flatly. God, I’m suddenly so tired. I could sit at the blue enamel painted chair, rest my head on my arms, just go to sleep. Except that I’d have to move aside the silver first.

  “You left my nearly ninety-year-old mother on the beach. With a bunch of eighty-year-olds to watch over her. This seemed like a responsible choice to you?”

  He’s peering over his reading glasses, literally looking down at me.

  It isn’t until I shove my hand into the pocket of my jean skirt and hear the crackle of paper that I remember what it is. Dad’s had extra loads of laundry lately. This was my one clean skirt. I didn’t think twice when I put it on this morning.

  I pull out the check that Henry Ellington gave me, holding it out of sight.

  I took it, that day Henry offered it. I don’t need to open it again to see the amount, scrawled firmly in blue ballpoint pen. I haven’t deposited it. But I didn’t tear it up either. I never threw it away.

  “Do you have an answer for me, Guinevere?” he asks.

  Last night, I finally asked Mom why she named me Guinevere, after a woman no one admired. We were eating ice cream on the porch, passing the spoon back and forth, nearly over our heads to avoid the hopeful, slightly toothless leaps of Fabio.

  “Really, Gwen, honey? I always liked her. She wasn’t a wimp or a simp like that Elaine. Not helpless, asking someone to rescue her. Knew she loved them both. Mr. Honorable and Mr. Heroic. Arthur and Lancelot. I always thought she was the star of her own story. At least she knew what was really going on.”

  Which, of course I do.

  So yes, I do, in fact, have an answer.

  I smooth the check out on the kitchen table. Next to the fish knives. The silver ashtrays. All the stories. Henry Ellington looks down at it, his face showing nothing at all.

  The day Dad gave me his “she’s loaded and she’s losing it” advice, I never thought it would actually apply to me, and definitely not like this.

  I take a breath.

  “Mr. Ellington,” I say. “You told me you were giving me this because I deserved a little extra. I don’t think you meant that. I don’t think you admire my work ethic. I don’t think you like me or value my service. I think you expect my silence.”

  His face crumples for a moment, the lines of his cheeks, his eyes, all contracting, freezing. Then he holds out a hand, palm outraised, like my words are traffic he’s stopping. “I don’t think you understand my position here, Guinevere. I’m protecting my mother. A helpless old woman.”

  Helpless old woman, my ass.

  “Mr. Ellington.” I close my eyes. Another deep breath. Open them. “Does she really want . . . does she really need . . . your”—I raise my fingers to form air quotes—“protection?”

  Henry’s face flushes crimson. “It’s my job,” he says. “My mother is . . . elderly. Not in full possession of her . . .” He darts a look out the window, as though making sure we won’t be overheard, even as his own voice rises. “Damn it, why am I explaining this to you? Mother’s getting older, times have changed, and she just won’t make allowances for reality. When she goes, I’m going to have this entire estate to deal with, all of her promises, her debts of honor that don’t matter anymore. Her special bequests to schools she hasn’t been to for seventy years, to people like Beth McHenry, who cleaned the house—cleaned the house, scrubbed the toilets, and changed the sheets, while I was spending all my time working in a job to support this summer home”—he says “summer home” as though it’s an expletive—“a place I barely get the chance to visit, a lifestyle that’s run its course. Yard boys and night nurses and summer help, cooks and cleaners, you, and that damned expensive end-of-the-summer party she always has. Her finances, all of our finances, have taken a hit in the market. But try telling my mother that! She’s never even had to balance a checkbook!”

  He crosses over to the bar, splashes some amber liquid into a glass, goes to the freezer for ice. Instead of taking the time to smash the pieces with his little hammer thing, he just drops them into the sink, hard, then picks up the shattered bits and dumps them into the glass, tips it back, swallows.

  “All this . . . drama . . . would upset her,” he mutters.

  Don’t upset your mother. Dad’s refrain from that summer with Vovó.

  “I can’t tell her,” he repeats.

  Can’t. Won’t. Are afraid to?

  I know all about all three.

  “Have . . . have you tried?” The words seem to catch in my throat, it’s so hard to say them. Just a job. Not my place. But . . .

  He doesn’t answer. Takes another sip.

  There’s a very long silence.

  He watches me over the rim of his glass. And I stare back down at the check. Set my finger down on it, deliberately, slipping it across the table as though I’m passing him a napkin, just doing my job.

  “Am I fired, Mr. Ellington? Because if I’m not, I’d better get back to the beach.”

  Mrs. E. has survived my neglect. She and the ladies are quite happily ensconced in their beach chairs, watching with a frightening level of appreciation as Cass rakes the sand.

  They’re in a circle, towels swooped around their shoulders, bobbed gray hair, permed white hair, long braids meant to be coiled up into buns, styles that went away generations ago.

  “If I were thirty years younger . . .” Avis King says, nodding approvingly as Cass flicks seaweed into the tall grass.

  Big Mrs. McCloud shoots her a look.

  “Fine. Forty,” she concedes. “Is this your boy, Gwen? He’s adorable.”

  Adorable seems like a fluffy-kitten word, defanged, declawed—not Cass and all these feelings at all. He glances over at me, catches me looking, grins knowingly, then keeps raking.

  “Ad-or-able.” Mrs. Cole sighs. “Good lordy lord lord.”

  “Beach bonfire tonight, I’m hearing,” Avis King says. “Isn’t it nice that those still go on? Remember ours? Oh, that Ben Cruz. With his lovely shoulders. Always so tanned. Those cut-offs.”

  Okay, disturbing. I think she just referenc
ed my grandfather as the hot yard guy.

  “He’d get the lobsters. Who was it who brought the bread from that Portuguese bakery in town? Sweet bread and regular? Ten loaves each. We’d toast them on sticks, dip them in butter.”

  “Glaucia,” Beth McHenry says. “She got her license first of all of us. Remember? She used to whip around town in that old gray truck, bring potatoes and linguica and malassadas from Pedrinho’s out to the island.”

  Mrs. Cole nods. “I was always partial to the meringues.”

  “Remember when the captain brought the volleyball net down from the court and we decorated it with those tiny white Christmas lights?”

  “Labor Day . . .” Mrs. E. says. “The final summer party. We all decided to dress in white because in those days you weren’t supposed to wear it after Labor Day. It was our last hurrah. Our big rebellion.”

  “The boys wore their white jackets. If they had them,” Big Mrs. McCloud reflects. “Arthur had too many, he loaned them out to Ben and Matthias and whoever needed one. He’d lend his tan bucks too. But then a lot of them went barefoot. That seemed so rebellious.”

  “We played volleyball in our long skirts,” Avis King says. “I beat the pants off Malcolm. He proposed later that night.”

  “Was it easier then?” Mrs. Ellington asks. “I do believe so. Our revolts were so much smaller. Our questions so much easier to answer. There were rules to it all. May I call on you after your European tour? That was how I knew the captain cared for me. I don’t believe that translates into texting.”

  They debate back and forth about it. Whether it should be one of those island rituals that sticks, the Labor Day party. Or whether its time has come and gone.

  “We could do it again,” Mrs. Cole says. “We’re the entertainment committee on the board now. No rules to say we can’t. Well, none like the rules we used to have, anyway.”

  From a distance, from the movies, I know these rules too—white bucks and blazers, don’t wear white after Labor Day, wear this with that, go with that good girl, not this one. Strictly controlled social calendars, when all of that seemed as though it mattered . . .

  We still have those, though. Not so much what we wear, but how we act and what we do.

  Other customs, rituals, rules. New important things unspoken.

  Will Henry say anything to his mother? More importantly . . . will I?

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Beach bonfire tonight.

  As Cass drives us down the hill, I can see sparks crackling upward, flicking and fading into the darkening summer sky. Dom D’Ofrio is always overenthusiastic with the lighter fluid. The tower of flames shoots nearly ten feet high.

  “That looks like something you’d use to sacrifice to the Druids, not toast marshmallows,” Cass says as we near the beach, the sun sliding purple-orange against the deep green sea.

  To my surprise, when Cass picked me up, Spence was slumped in the backseat of the old BMW, scowling.

  “He had a bad day. Thought this might cheer him up. You mind?” Cass whispered.

  “Yo Castle,” Spence says now, a listless version of his usual cocky self. “Sundance stormed you yet?”

  “Don’t be a dick,” Cass returns evenly.

  “S’what I do best,” Spence returns, then sticks his head out the window, taking in the scene.

  This bonfire is a lot more crowded than the first of the summer. The summer people’s kids have discovered it and are milling around, mostly in clumps, but sometimes venturing over to other clots of people, sitting down, feeling out the possibilities. Pam and Shaunee have parked themselves next to Audrey Partridge, Old Mrs. P.’s great-granddaughter. Manny’s flicking his lighter for Sophie Tucker, a pretty blond cousin from the house the Robinsons rented. Somebody’s dragged out a grill, and now Dom is enthusiastically pouring lighter fluid onto those charcoal briquettes too.

  Cass backs the car into a spot with relatively low sand. We all get out.

  Viv is standing near the water, arms hugging her chest, ponytail flipping in the wind, looking out at the distant islands. The sky’s clear enough tonight that it seems as though you could reach out and touch them. Viv doesn’t turn and see me. Manny comes up beside her, bumps her shoulder with his elbow, and hands her one of those generic “get smashed fast” red plastic cups. He walks back up the beach, catches sight of us, cocks his head a bit at the arm Cass has draped over my shoulder. “Nice shirt,” he mutters as he passes me.

  It’s one of Cass’s oxfords, loose and knotted at my waist, a flash of stomach over my rolled-up jeans. Not a look I would have tried before.

  If I remember right, Manny was the one who welcomed Cass to the island because of his yard boy status. Now the causeway can’t go both ways?

  I head over to the cooler, pick up a beer I don’t care about. No sign of Nic or Hoop.

  “Who’s the short fat dude, Sundance?”

  “Manny. Good guy. Relax, Spence.” Cass grabs my hand, an aside to me. “Don’t let him get to you. He’s in douchebag mood today.”

  “You two are sweet together,” Spence offers unexpectedly, sounding oddly sincere. “Nauseating as that is.”

  I mouth, “Is he drunk?”

  Cass shakes his head. “It’s not that.”

  “Feelin’ sorry for myself, Castle. Just do it, Sundance. Cut me loose. Go back to Hodges.”

  “I’m not that guy,” Cass says so firmly—convincing Spence? Or himself? “Forget it for tonight. Let’s just relax.”

  For a while, relaxing works pretty well. Pam has the music cranking, good mix of old and new. It’s a warm night and the sky is filled with a gold that rims the corners of the clouds, and shafts of pinkish light that slant down to the water. The charcoal heats up, the sweet burnt smell singeing our noses.

  Cass and I are adding ketchup and mustard to our hot dogs when I see Nic, standing on the pathway that runs from the parking lot to the beach, staring at us, hands balled in his pockets. Hoop stands behind him, a small, badly dressed, angry shadow.

  Nic’s white-faced and stormy-looking, all his features frozen, angry, as though he’s watching a nightmare come true.

  “Yo, trouble at high noon,” Spence tells Cass, scrolling mustard over his own hot dog so vigorously that the Gulden’s squirts all over the sand.

  “Don’t make it worse,” Cass says, shoving a napkin at Spence.

  But immediately, it’s worse.

  It starts with Nic doing that slow clap-clap thing, guaranteed to annoy anyone. “Nice job, guys. Snagging both captain and cocaptain. What do they call that? A coup? Nice coup.”

  Cass doesn’t say anything, focused on his hot dog. Spence is quiet too.

  Nic walks over, chin raised. “Nice coup,” he says again.

  “You don’t get it, man,” is all Cass says.

  “No?” Nic asks.

  “No. This is no preferential thing,” Cass starts. Vivie walks up then. Cass glances at her, back at Nic. “These last months . . . this whole last year . . . swim drills were all about you, Nicolas Cruz. Nothing about teamwork. You don’t seem to know what that means. If you deserved to be captain or cocaptain, you’d be lining up behind us. Not acting like this.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Nic says. “We all know there’s a fucking I in team. You’re not swimming to make me look good. We’re all after I. So I’m just gonna say it. I need this, Somers. You don’t. Channing? Forget it.”

  “You want us to feel sorry for you now? I do. Sundance does,” Spence offers. “Because this West Side Story, us-against-them crap and your shitty attitude is what keeps you stuck, Cruz. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “You’re lecturing me?” Nic shouts. “You’re telling me to be fucking satisfied with what I’ve got? That’s rich. You’re the one who has to take everything.”

  Viv has her hand over her mouth. Spence steps forward, shoulders square. Cass grabs his arm.

  Dom, Pam, Shaunee, Manny are moving away from the fire toward us now, attention snagged. Hoop
er assumes roughly the same stance behind Nic as Cass has behind Spence, but without the restraining hand. His is raised, placating. Or just unsure what’s going on.

  “Be honest with yourself. At least. I haven’t taken a thing from you that you deserved to have,” Spence says calmly. Cass yanks him back a little, jerking him to the side.

  “Stop talking, Spence,” he says.

  Instead, Spence takes another step forward, pulling out of Cass’s grip. “You don’t deserve any of it,” he repeats to Nic. “None of it. And for sure, not her.”

  Nic’s fist shoots out so fast it’s a blur and Spence’s head snaps to the left. He staggers back for a second. We watch him stumble—a surreal, slow-mo movie. Nic charges forward, eyes blazing. Ready to hit him again. Cass moves in between them, fending Nic off with a forearm to his chest and grabbing Spence’s arm tightly, yanking it back.

  Vivien brushes past me. I try to clutch at her—don’t want her to get in the way of Nic. He doesn’t seem to be seeing straight. But instead of hurrying to him, she’s wiping at the blood gushing from Spence’s nose with one hand, the other cupped around the back of his head.

  Nic stares at them, blinking as though he’s just woken up, then shakes off Cass’s arm, backing toward the parking lot.

  “I’m good, don’t worry about me,” Spence assures Vivien.

  Spence is assuring Vivien?

  “You’re hurt,” she says, her voice cracking.

  “Flesh wound,” Spence tells her. And he smiles at her in a way I’ve never seen Spence smile at anyone. “Don’t. God, Viv. Don’t cry. Please. You know that kills me.”

  Hooper and I are gaping at them, as is pretty much everyone else.

  “Yeah,” Nic says. “This is just . . . Just . . . well . . . fuck this.” He turns around, scrubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, starts to walk away.

  “Holy shit,” Hoop says.

  “Go after him, Gwen,” calls Vivien, still wiping away blood. She’s crying. For Nic? For Spence? Not knowing which makes me flash white-hot furious.