That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Thank you, Carly.”

  Carly nodded and turned to go. Reese picked up his knife and fork.

  “We have sixteen waiters on staff in high season. That goes down to eight during the winter months. A lot of our people have regular winter jobs someplace else. Carly’s a year-rounder, but Marcia and Lizzie—you’ll meet them—they spend their winters at an inn in Key West.”

  Diana nodded. The heady smell of the food, the garlic and tomatoes, the sweetness of the fish, the richness of the duck, was making her feel dizzy. As she stared, her stomach made an embarrassingly loud noise. She grimaced, but Reese just smiled.

  “That’s an endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.” He deftly portioned out half of the fish and rice as Carly set two smaller plates on the table. He put the fish on one, reaching for Diana’s plate. “May I?” She handed it over, and watched as he repeated the maneuver with the duck.

  “Go on,” he said, setting the plate in front of her. “Let me know what you think.”

  Diana loosened a sliver of halibut with her fork and slipped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes, tasting the sweetness of the fish; the tart, juicy tomatoes; oil and butter and garlic and thyme.

  “Good?” asked Reese. His eyes were dark brown behind his glasses, and there was a deep dimple in his left cheek.

  She chewed and swallowed. “So good.” He was still watching her, clearly expecting more. “I don’t even like fish, usually. But this—it’s so sweet! The tomatoes…”

  “They’re from a farm in Truro. They turn into jam when you reduce them. They’re my favorite,” he said, voice lowered, like he was telling her a secret, or like he didn’t want to hurt the figs’ or the bok choy’s feelings. “We source as many of our ingredients locally as we can. Our milk and eggs, our butter, our honey—everything we can get from around here, we do.” He had a few bites of fish, a sip of water, and patted his whiskers with his napkin.

  “You know what they say about the people on the Cape?”

  She could tell that wasn’t a question she was meant to answer, so she shook her head, ate her duck, and waited.

  “You’ve got your native Cape Codders. People who were born here. People whose families have been here for generations. They’re the only ones allowed to call themselves locals.” He ate another bite of fish. “Then you’ve got your summer people. No explanation needed there. And then, last but not least, you’ve got what they call washashores. The misfits and the weirdos. Some of them are kids who ran away from home. Or got kicked out of their houses.” She thought she caught his eyes move toward Ryan at his podium. “Some”—he gestured at himself—“are grown-ups who walked away from their jobs. The folks who wash up here and decide to stay.” He smiled, flashing his gold fillings again.

  “Are you from New York?” she asked, because she could hear New York in his voice.

  Reese nodded. “I had a big, important job at a big, important bank in New York City. I came here one summer, on a two-week vacation. Brought a briefcase full of work with me, too. But I woke up every morning hearing the wind and the water. All day long, I’d just walk around and watch things. The sunset over the marshes. The wind in the grass. And at the end of the two weeks, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave.” There was regret in his voice, sadness on his face. Diana wondered if he’d had a wife, or a partner, with him on that vacation; if that person had gone back to New York and he’d stayed behind.

  “So here I am. And I feel lucky. This is a special place.” Diana wasn’t sure if he was talking about the restaurant, or Provincetown, or the Outer Cape, or Cape Cod in general, but found herself nodding all the same.

  “Excuse me.” Ryan had come gliding over to the table. As Diana watched, he bent down to murmur something to Reese about an invoice from their olive oil purveyor. Diana picked up her knife and cut a bite of the duck breast, filling her mouth with its melting richness, with the seedy, pulpy sweetness of the figs and the slashing acid of the vinegar, and sighed, letting her eyes slip shut. When she opened them, Reese was looking at her with approval.

  “So?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “The job’s yours, if you want it.”

  “I want it,” said Diana, and found that she was smiling.

  “Good. Be here tomorrow at three,” he said. “Get yourself some black pants and a white shirt.” He winked, and said, “Your bow tie is on me.”

  8

  Diana

  It didn’t take long for Diana’s days to find a rhythm. Every morning, for as long as the weather allowed, she would put on a swimsuit and descend the six steep flights of stairs to the beach. She’d leave a towel hanging on the railing, and walk south for half an hour. Then she’d get in the water and swim back. Back on the deck, she would take a shower, trying to enjoy the hot water beating down on her scalp and her shoulders, watching the steam rise into the cool morning air, with a part of her always alert for the sound of an approaching car or footsteps. The neighboring cottages were all empty. She could go for days without seeing another car on her road. Just as Dr. Levy had predicted, the Cape had cleared out for the off-season.

  She’d read, or run errands; straightening up the cottage, doing her laundry, or restocking her pantry and fridge. At three thirty, she’d put on one of three white shirts and a pair of black pants, put her bow tie in her pocket, and make the fifteen-minute drive into Provincetown.

  At four thirty, Reese would gather the staff to go over the day’s specials. “Push the cabernet; we over-ordered,” he’d tell them as they sat around the refectory table in the back room, or “Chef wants to know how it goes with the pumpkin ravioli. If it’s a hit, we’ll keep it on the menu.” Chef was a towering, silent man named Carl. Each night he’d prepare an order of each of the night’s specials, a large enough portion so that each member of the wait staff could have a bite or two and, thus, give informed descriptions to the diners. He’d also make a staff meal, a simple dish, like burgers and sweet-potato fries, sausage grinders served with onions and sweet peppers; chicken schnitzel and potato rosti. At five thirty, Diana would visit the restroom to brush her teeth and touch up her makeup. Her shift began at six o’clock and went until one o’clock in the morning, or until the last check had been dropped, whichever came first.

  Reese gave her four shifts: dinner on Tuesdays through Thursdays, then a split shift on Sunday, where she’d work brunch from ten to two, then have a break before the dinner service began. Fridays and Saturdays were the most lucrative nights of the week, but, as the newest hire, she didn’t get to work them. She didn’t mind. The slow pace suited her, as did the clientele. Most of their off-season customers were locals who’d come to celebrate a special occasion, a birthday or an anniversary or a kid coming home from college. They were almost always friendly; patient with her mistakes, and the tips, while not astronomical, were enough for her to cover her expenses and even start a savings account.

  She got to know the people who made up what Reese called “our happy Abbey family.” There were the waiters and waitresses; the bussers, the chefs and line cooks and dishwashers. For her first few weeks, Reese had her shadowing Carly, a single mother who lived with her daughter in an apartment off Shank Painter Road and attended, each morning, the AA meetings at the Methodist Church. Diana wondered if it was hard for Carly, delivering drinks to tables, watching diners get tipsy and jolly and, sometimes, a few drinks past that, but she was too shy to ask. Carly was brisk and unsmiling and laconic on every topic except her daughter, Melody. “She’s very talented,” Carly would say, her plain, narrow face glowing as she pulled out her wallet to show pictures of her daughter seated at a grand piano, in a velvet dress and a hair bow that was bigger than her head. Every few months Carly would take her daughter to Providence or Boston to compete in a pageant. Carly’s plan, Diana learned, was to move to Vermont when Melody got old enough to compete in the Miss America pageant. “I’m from Texas. She wouldn’t have a prayer back home,” Carly said. “But do you know how many girls in Vermont c
ompeted to win their state last year? Seven girls. Seven girls in the entire state.” She’d laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “My God, back home there’d be a hundred girls in every local competition. Up here, nobody even cares!”

  Diana met Jonathan, Reese’s partner, who managed a local theater that, in the summer, brought in Broadway stars to perform for a few nights apiece while he interviewed them and accompanied them on the piano. Jonathan was an accomplished pianist who could play just about anything from the Great American Songbook, and any Broadway show produced after 1976. On Thursday nights he hosted a singalong at the Crown & Anchor that went until last call, and most of the wait staff would stop by for a drink and a few songs.

  Ryan, the host, had been standoffish at first. If Diana failed to recite the specials exactly as they’d been written, he’d act like she’d forgotten the nuclear codes; if she hadn’t kept the bar supplied with citrus and celery, he’d act like she’d neglected to deliver a heart to a kid awaiting a transplant. His standard form of address to her was “Bitch,” but she couldn’t take it personally, because he called everyone, male and female, the same thing. He also called Diana “Miss Thing” when he was merely irritated, “Missy Miss” when he was really upset, as in “Where do you think you’re going, Missy Miss, you’ve got to help Mario with the napkins.” Sometimes she’d hear him whispering with Frankie the bartender, or Lizzie, one of the waitresses, and she’d be sure he was talking about her. Probably wondering why Reese had hired someone so inept, she thought.

  Then, one night a middle-aged couple had come for dinner. Ryan’s face had been pale as he’d led them to the table, his shoulders stiff and his hip-swinging sashay tamped down to a regular walk. The man had worn a suit and tie; the woman had hairspray-stiffened hair and a gold cross glittering at her throat. They’d sat in virtual silence through their meal, and departed the Abbey wordlessly, looking straight ahead as they walked out the door. Diana was walking to her car at the end of her shift that night when she heard someone crying. She peeked around the Dumpster, and there was Ryan, half-hidden in the building’s shadow, head bent and shoulders shaking. She’d tried to get herself out of sight, to leave him alone in what was clearly a private moment, but then he saw her.

  “Are you okay?” she’d asked.

  “It’s my birthday,” he said, and started to cry harder.

  “What are you, twenty-five? That’s not that old!”

  He’d made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’m not crying because I’m getting older,” he said, his voice dropping. “I’m crying because those people? The ones I seated at table seven? They’re my mom and dad.”

  It was Reese who’d told her the rest of the story: how Mrs. Halliwell had come home from work unexpectedly to find fifteen-year-old Ryan wearing one of her dresses. How she and her husband had given him an ultimatum, to renounce his perversions, attend a special summer camp for boys with his particular problem, or leave their home.

  “So he left?”

  “He did. Couch-surfed and stayed with friends until he finished high school, and then moved out here. His parents still don’t speak to him. I guess he’s been excommunicated from whatever church they attend, and he’s got two older brothers who act like he’s dead. But they come for dinner, every year, on Ryan’s birthday. They won’t speak to him, but they leave five hundred dollars on the table when they go.”

  “God, that’s awful.” Diana couldn’t imagine how it would feel if her own parents had behaved that way toward her.

  “It’s a sad old world,” Reese agreed.

  The next morning, Diana got to Provincetown an hour early. She bought Ryan a birthday card at Adams Pharmacy, which had creaky wooden floors and smelled like camphor and menthol cigarettes, and, after carefully perusing the offerings of several different boutiques, a pair of cashmere socks. “They’re like hugs for your feet,” she told him.

  “Oh, thank you, baby,” he’d said, and hugged her tight. After that, Ryan was her champion. The night she’d dropped a tray of glasses and the whole restaurant had applauded, he’d hurried to her side. “Show’s over,” he announced, with his hands on his hips, and he’d helped her sweep up the mess. He’d slip her grease-spotted paper bags full of day-old malasadas and croissants from the Portuguese Bakery, where his roommate worked, and seat the best tippers in her section.

  As the weeks went by, Diana acquired a few regulars. A drag queen who performed under the name Heavy Flo (real name: Phil Amoroso) would make it a point to sit in her section and greet her with “How is my beautiful girl?” Dora Fitzsimmons, a taciturn woman with frizzy gray hair who ran a sailing camp in the West End, would come in every Tuesday at five o’clock precisely and order a burger, well-done, served with a pile of curly fries. Curly fries weren’t on the Abbey’s menu. “But they served them when this place was still D’Amico’s,” Reese explained. That had been almost twenty years previously, but the chef kept a bag of fries in the freezer, and would throw two handfuls into the deep fryer for Dora. Dora never said anything to Diana, other than “please” and “thank you,” once she’d given her order. She’d greet the bartenders, and give Reese a nod, then read the Provincetown Banner while she ate her dinner. She’d leave without a word of farewell, but there would always be a ten-dollar bill under her water glass.

  Almost everyone was nice. But when the staff gathered at the bar at the end of the night to divvy up the tips, when shots were poured and plans were made to go to the Crown & Anchor for Jonathan’s singalong, or to meet at the Boatslip for drinks, Diana would say good night and return to her cottage, to read for an hour or two, then fall asleep.

  On a sunny Monday morning in October, she drove down to the dog shelter in Dennis. “I’m just looking,” she told the woman behind the desk, who gave a knowing nod. “Take y’ time,” she said. Diana walked along the row of cages, looking into pair after pair of beseeching eyes. There were dogs that jumped, dogs that licked, dogs that whined as they nudged at her hand with their wet noses. At the very end of the corridor, she found a scrawny, shivering dog with a patchy white coat who just huddled in the corner of her pen and looked at Diana, too scared to even approach.

  Diana crouched down with a bit of Pupperoni in her hand, and extended the treat through the bars. She waited, patiently, as the dog regarded her. “It’s okay,” Diana said. “I won’t hurt you.” Finally, she set the treat on the floor and the dog, trembling all over, made her way to the front of the cage. She took the treat in her mouth and held it there, looking up at Diana.

  “Go on,” said Diana. “It’s okay. It’s for you.” Instead of eating it, the dog carried the treat back to her bed, where she carefully nudged it under a wadded-up blanket and curled up on top of it with a sigh. Twenty minutes later, Diana had filled out the forms, paid the fees, purchased a leash and a collar and a ten-pound bag of kibble, and was driving back to Truro with Willa on a blanket on the passenger’s seat.

  Willa’s skin was dark gray beneath her patchy white fur. Her ears were enormous and pointy, and her bushy eyebrows protruded like fans over brown eyes that looked weary and sad. Diana knew that Willa had been found on Skaket Beach at the end of summer. Had some family that had loved her for years taken her on one last vacation, then abandoned her? Had she been startled by the fireworks on the Fourth of July, and run away from some campsite or cabin or hotel room and gotten lost? Or had she run from a home where she was kicked and yelled at, taking off in search of a better life?

  “Poor Willa,” Diana murmured as she led the dog into the cottage. Willa took a tour, carefully sniffing at the baseboards, the legs of the director’s chairs, the bottom of the couch, and the refrigerator. “Are you hungry?” Willa had wagged her stump of a tail, and looked up with her head cocked to the left. In the kitchen, Diana filled a bowl with kibble, and another with fresh water, and watched as Willa nudged at the bowl, looking up after every few sniffs like she was trying to make sure no one would snatch it away. She ate a few careful mout
hfuls, then looked up, this time with her head cocked to the right.

  “Go on,” Diana said. “It’s okay.” She lifted the bag. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  Willa ate more, but she didn’t empty her dish. Diana kept her distance, watching out of the corner of her eye as Willa took a mouthful of kibbles, walked to the corner, let them spill out of her mouth, and nosed them under the couch. Diana retrieved them and, under Willa’s reproachful gaze, put them back into her bowl. “You can eat them or leave them, but you can’t hide them,” she said, and Willa wagged her stump, as if she understood.

  That first night, after she’d made sure the door was locked and turned out the lights, Diana climbed into the loft and got into bed. She could see Willa’s silhouette below her, sitting on her haunches at the foot of the stairs. “Come on, girl, it’s okay,” she said, patting the bed, and Willa had gathered herself, trotting up the stairs and leaping onto the mattress, her tail rotating madly. She licked Diana’s hand, sniffed her way around the perimeter of the bed, then turned herself around three times and curled up on her side, with her back against Diana’s hip. Diana wrapped her arm around the dog’s head, and Willa rested her muzzle on Diana’s forearm. That was how they fell asleep.

  Diana bought a dog bed, and one of the bike shops sold her a used three-speed bike with a roomy wicker basket on its handlebars. She’d take Willa for a walk every morning, and, every few days, for a bike ride to the post office to collect her mail. At two in the morning, with the whole world quiet except for the waves and the wind’s low keening, Diana would come home from work and unlock the cottage door to find the light above the stove still burning and Willa curled up on the couch, tail wagging in welcome.