That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Hey, Daisy, I want to ask you for a favor.”

  “Sure,” she’d said.

  Jesse sighed, and said, “Your brother really doesn’t like talking about Emlen. The Happy Land, or Happy Place, or whatever they call it in the school song—it wasn’t very happy for him, you know?”

  “I can imagine,” Daisy said.

  “No,” Jesse had said, his voice not unkind, but very firm, “I don’t think you can. Being in the closet back then, knowing your classmates would beat the shit out of you, or worse, if they found out…”

  Daisy had apologized. She’d reassured Jesse, that, of course, she wouldn’t pester Danny for any more Emlen reminiscence, or stories about Hal. Which meant she’d had to take Hal’s word for it when he said that she might not have remembered him from that Thanksgiving visit, but that he remembered her: a round-faced girl in a flannel nightgown who’d stared at him and said, “You’re tall.”

  Diana seemed charmed by that story. At least, she seemed interested. Head tilted, she said, “So he remembered you, for all those years.”

  “Ew, I hope not!” Daisy said, laughing. “No, I don’t think he ever thought of me again until sixteen years later when his mom had died and his widowed father was living on pizza and lo mein. But, once we started dating, we both knew pretty quickly.”

  “So was Hal a close friend of your brother’s?”

  Daisy considered while she washed the cutting board and the knives. “There were only forty-two boys in Danny and Hal’s class at Emlen. I think that all the boys ended up knowing each other to some degree. Danny and Hal were roommates for their last two years, and Hal was the stroke of the boys’ eight—the rower who sits facing the coxswain. Which was Danny. So they definitely spent a lot of time together, but I really couldn’t say how close they were. I don’t think Emlen was a very happy experience for Danny. David loved it, but Danny…” Daisy pressed her lips together, aware of the other woman’s gaze. “I don’t think that prep school in the 1980s was a picnic.”

  “Was he out then?” Diana asked calmly. “Did Hal know?”

  “Oh, Lord no. Danny didn’t tell any of us until after college, after my father died. And even then…” Her voice trailed off. Danny had made his announcement in the mid-1990s, right after David’s wedding. David and Elyse had just gotten into the limousine, which would take them to the hotel, when Judy, a little tipsy and resplendent in her mother-of-the-groom beige gown, had turned to him. “Why didn’t you bring a date?” she asked.

  Arnold Mishkin put his hand on her arm. “Judy, leave it,” he had said, his tone uncharacteristically sharp, but then Danny had spoken up.

  “I am seeing someone,” he said. His voice was calm, but his hands had been clasped in front of him, so tightly that Daisy could see the tendons in his wrists. “His name is Jesse. We’ve been dating for almost a year.”

  Daisy remembered her mother gasping, the sound very loud in the hotel lobby. Then Judy had managed a single, defeated nod, as if this was just one more disappointment in a long, long line of them.

  “Even then, he wasn’t an out-and-proud kind of guy,” Daisy said. “He doesn’t lie about it, but I don’t think he advertises, either. If that makes any sense.”

  “Did he ever date girls?”

  “Just casually,” said Diana. “I’m not sure he ever even kissed a girl. And his husband is wonderful. They’ve been together more than twenty years. They do so much good in the world. I think they want to make sure that the world isn’t as awful for other gay kids as it was for them.”

  “That’s great,” Diana said. Her tone seemed slightly cool. Or maybe she just didn’t want to sound too rah-rah enthusiastic, too hashtag-love-wins, as Beatrice might put it.

  “Did you like high school?” Daisy asked, and Diana pursed her lips.

  “Not the easiest time for me,” she said. “No special reason. Just typical teenage-girl misery.” She gave Daisy an assessing look. “Are you one of those people who thought it was the best time of her life?”

  “Oh, God, no,” Daisy blurted. She gave Diana the outlines of her predicament—new school, reduced circumstances—as she showed her how to heat the stock, then bring it to a simmer; how to zest a lemon and peel and chop garlic and shallots, how to brown the grains of rice in olive oil and cook them slowly with a splash of wine plus the aromatics, the mushrooms, and the chicken stock.

  “Next lesson, I’ll show you how to make your own stock,” Daisy said. “It’s better than what they sell in stores, and less expensive, and I promise, very simple to make.”

  “If you say so,” said Diana, sounding dubious.

  “I promise.” When Daisy pulled it out of the oven, the chicken was beautifully browned. Clear juices ran when she pricked the thigh, and it looked so good that they both sighed when she set it on the cutting board.

  “We did it!” Diana exulted. She pulled out her phone to take pictures, then picked up the bottle of wine, and looked a question at Daisy. “We only needed one cup for the rice, right?” Examining the bottle, she asked, “Is this wine just for cooking, or is it okay to drink?”

  “Oh, that’s actually important,” said Daisy. “Don’t ever buy cooking wine at the supermarket. Never, ever cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink.” She filled two glasses. Diana raised hers in a toast.

  “To new cities and new friends,” she said. They clinked, and drank, and talked about the restaurants Diana had to try, the best places to buy dresses and shoes and books and jewelry, where to go to hear live music. It was fascinating, Daisy thought, to imagine this as the life she could have led, if, back when she was twenty, she’d said, Are you crazy? to Hal instead of I do. Maybe then she could have been the glamorous single lady, on her own in a big city, in a high-rise apartment decorated in gold and peach with a closet full of beautiful clothes. Maybe she’d have gotten not just her bachelor’s degree, but an MBA, too; maybe she’d be running a national chain of cooking studios. Briefly, she let herself picture a life of first dates instead of PTA meetings; dinners alone, with a book and a glass of wine, instead of with her husband and a sullen teenager, and no one to please but herself.

  “You’ll have to come over for dinner. Are you free Friday?”

  “I’d love that,” said Diana.

  “And if you’re here in May, you’ll have to come to this party I throw,” said Daisy. “My mom and Hal both have May birthdays, so I cook their favorites. You’ll be able to meet Danny and Jesse, and see Beatrice and Hal in the flesh.”

  “There’s no way of knowing exactly how long this will take—it’s an art, not a science—but I’ll keep you posted,” Diana said. “And how about after that?” she asked Daisy. “What happens in Philadelphia in the summer?”

  Daisy made a face. “Unfortunately, I think in Center City it’s about a hundred degrees, and it smells like hot garbage.”

  “Oh, but you’re on the Cape, right?” Diana said, and gave Daisy a look she couldn’t read, tilting her head as she smoothed her hair behind her ears. “I almost forgot.”

  15

  Diana

  After Daisy gathered up her knives and cutting boards and departed, Diana locked the door and used the peephole to chart the other woman’s progress down the hall. When she was positive that Daisy was gone, she opened all the windows and lit a few candles guaranteed to eliminate unpleasant odors. She slipped off her silk blouse and pulled on the T-shirt she’d packed in her purse. Then she got to work.

  She’d allocated twenty minutes on regular cleanup, reasoning that if Daisy came back up to retrieve a lost lipstick or spatula, she’d find Diana involved in normal-looking tasks: washing dishes and sweeping the floor, the things she’d be doing if she actually lived in this place. Which, of course, she didn’t.

  She wiped down the counters, getting every last drip off the stovetop and the oven’s interior, and the refrigerator’s handles and shelves. She put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. While it ran, she scrubbed every pot and pan and utensil that
they’d used, drying them by hand and replacing them in their drawers and cupboards.

  With those jobs completed, she felt safe enough to really get to work. She pulled a duffel bag out of the closet, and scooped the clothes out of the dresser and off the hangers, cramming them all inside. She’d brought the handful of designer garments she owned with her, borrowed more from her friends at the Abbey, and used a coupon to join Rent the Runway, which had supplied the rest of the high-end designer gear. Diana reasoned that even if Daisy spotted the Rent the Runway tags sewn into the clothes, she wouldn’t think it was strange. Plenty of high-earning businesswomen used the service, instead of just buying clothes outright. Diana had read a piece in the Wall Street Journal about it when she’d been preparing for this role.

  The toiletries in the bathroom went into a zippered case, and the case went into the duffel. The empty wine bottle went down the garbage chute, along with the rest of the trash. The chicken stock went into a tote bag. The cookbook Daisy had given her went into her purse.

  Two hours later, the apartment was as spotless as it had been when she’d taken the keys that afternoon. The superintendent had been squirrely—“if anyone comes by and wants to see the model unit, I’m screwed”—so she’d pressed an extra twenty dollars into his hand and sworn to him that she’d leave the place immaculate, and no one would ever know that she’d even been there, and that if someone did come, she’d make up a story about a magazine photo shoot.

  Before she left, she triple-checked everything—the cupboards, the refrigerator, the bedroom, and the closet, looking to see that she had every single thing she’d brought in. When she was satisfied, she closed the windows, blew out the candles, slipped them in her bag, and slung the duffel over her shoulder, with the cooler dangling from her left hand. She locked the door behind her and dropped the keys off with the super at the front desk. “Same time next week,” she said.

  Her Airbnb was less than a mile away. It, too, technically, was in Rittenhouse Square, but it was far less grand than the penthouse she’d borrowed. The layout reminded her of her cottage, as it had been when she’d first lived there: a single large room, with a half-sized kitchen on one end and windows on the other. As soon as she was inside, she locked the door behind her and sat on her couch, staring at the wall.

  She thought about the kind of harm a person could inflict intentionally—through murder or robbery or rape—and about the kind that happened by accident, to people who weren’t the targets at all, but just happened to be proximate, or in the way. Undeserving, innocent people who suffered for the crimes of others. She thought about women and children whose only crime was wandering into the blast zone, or being the son or daughter of the wrong man. The son, or the daughter, or the wife.

  The lady or the tiger, she thought. Truth or dare. Your money or your life. No matter what she decided, she suspected that the other Diana’s life, and the life of her daughter, would never be the same.

  Part Three

  Little Bird

  16

  Diana

  Michael left flowers in a mason jar on her porch, daisies and lilacs that breathed their fragrance through the room after Diana set them on the kitchen table. She repeated the steps she’d taken the year before, opening the windows, setting down her bags; putting her groceries away in the kitchen, checking for new additions in the rows of water-bloated paperbacks, making sure the starfish was still propped up in the bookcase over her bed.

  Michael had made improvements during her absence. She saw that there was a new flower bed on the south-facing side of the cottage, and the shutters had been painted in her absence. There were new shelves in the kitchen pantry, a new, brightly colored rug on the floor, and a new drying rack next to the sink. The ladder to the sleeping loft had been replaced with a tidy staircase, and a miniature, dog-sized step had been built beside the bed. Diana thought about Michael Carmody, sawing and hammering, making these improvements for her, and felt her heart do a lazy flip.

  When every shirt and pair of pants had been put away, when all the groceries had been set into the cupboards or the refrigerator, when Willa had been walked on the beach and had curled up in her favorite sunny spot on the deck, when there were no more chores to complete and nothing else with which she could procrastinate, Diana sat on the couch and picked up the cordless phone.

  “Carmody Caretaking,” Michael answered.

  “It’s me. Diana. Thank you for the flowers. And—and everything else.”

  “You’re welcome. How was your summer?”

  She smiled at the familiar accent that flattened “summer” into “summah.” “It was fine. Very peaceful.”

  “Well, I’ve got a whole lot of cash for you.”

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered. “The shells?”

  “Yeah. They sold out in three weeks. I know you told me five dollars apiece, but Maudie said she thought they’d sell better if she priced them at ten.”

  Diana was confused. “Wait. They’d sell better if they cost more?”

  “Summer people,” said Michael, as if those two words constituted an entire explanation. “You tell them something’s valuable, and they believe you. I think Maudie made a sign that said they were handmade by a local artist.”

  “I’m not an artist!” Diana said, feeling her stomach lurch at the thought that she was misrepresenting herself.

  “Sure you are.” Michael’s voice was easy. “She told ’em it was their chance to bring home a little piece of the Cape made by a local artist, and they couldn’t hand over their money fast enough. Hey. I’m glad you’re back. Tell you what. I’ve still got a few more houses to do, but I could pick up some stuff and swing by at six or so? I’ll make us dinner.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice faint. She’d decided, over the last months and weeks, when she pushed her mop or wiped down mirrors and windows, what she would have to do. If there was any chance of whatever it was between them not dying, withering away before it had a chance to bloom, she needed to tell Michael her story. “I’ll see you soon.”

  At five forty-five, Michael Carmody’s truck came rumbling up the driveway. Willa planted her hind legs on the couch and her front paws on the windowsill and yipped in welcome, tail wagging. When Michael climbed out of his truck she nosed the screen door open and raced outside to meet him. Diana followed along.

  “Hey there, rascal,” he said, flipping Willa a treat. He smiled at Diana, approaching her carefully, seeming to sense that she didn’t want to be hugged or kissed yet; that she needed to get used to being in the same room with him again.

  He’d brought a six-pack of beer, two dozen oysters, four ears of corn, and a lusciously ripe tomato from Longnook Meadows Farm. “Want to slice this?” he asked. Diana had goat cheese in the refrigerator and olive oil and balsamic vinegar in the pantry. At the Abbey, the chef whipped the goat cheese until it was an airy foam, swirled it artfully around the edges of the plate, and fanned the tomato slices on top, drizzling balsamic vinegar and sprinkling roasted hazelnuts as a finishing touch. Diana didn’t have hazelnuts, or the tools to whip the cheese, so she crumbled it on top of the tomatoes, and thought it wasn’t half-bad.

  They ate outside on the picnic table, which, she noticed, no longer creaked when she sat. Michael shucked the oysters and sipped a single beer. Diana polished off two, gulping them down fast, like they were medicine, and picked at her food until Michael put three oysters on her plate, doused in lemon juice, the way she liked them. “Eat,” he said gently. “You’ve got to eat.”

  When the meal was done, and the shells piled up at the corner of the deck, Michael carried their plates inside, and came out of the cottage to sit beside her on the bench, and said, “How are you doing?”

  “Fine!”

  “No, really,” he said, and put his hand between her shoulder blades. “You can tell me. How are you doing, really?”

  Diana stood up and walked to the edge of the deck and looked out o
ver the water, letting the wind blow back her hair. A million-dollar view, Michael had once told her the year before. Even if you don’t have a million-dollar house to go with it.

  She heard the creak of the deck’s boards and felt his warm presence, as he came to stand beside her. Without looking at him, she spoke into the wind coming off the bay. “I love it here,” she said. “I wish I could stay, year-round.”

  “What’s stopping you?” he asked.

  She turned away, shaking her head, and didn’t answer. He put his hands on her shoulders. It was, she realized, as good of an opening as she’d ever have. She breathed in a long, careful breath, and said, “I need to tell you a story.” With her eyes closed she could see it, all of it: the fifteen-year-old girl who thought she’d been in love, racing, barefoot, over the sand in her white sundress, running down the beach, to the bonfire, and the booze, and the boys.

  “I was a mother’s helper. A thousand summers ago. I worked for Dr. Levy. I met some boys, on the beach. At the end of the summer, right before Labor Day, they invited me to a party. A bonfire, on the beach.”

  * * *

  As she approaches the fire, Diana slows her pace to a stroll and tries to catch her breath. She doesn’t want to appear too eager or desperate, but it is hard not to run, to skip, to dance toward him; hard to hold herself back. Her mind is brimming with all kinds of wonderful thoughts: maybe tonight, Poe would kiss her. Maybe he’d ask her to be his girlfriend and visit him at college, and he’d come see her in Boston and meet her parents and her sisters. Maybe—her fondest wish, the best of them all—he would say that he loved her.