That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  She promised she would, knowing, of course, that the answer would be yes. And so, after all her years waitressing, Diana found herself the owner of a restaurant.

  Sometimes, over the years, Diana would wake up, her nightgown soaked in sweat, her heart galloping, the cloying taste of peaches in her mouth and, in her ears, the sound of her hair swishing against the sand. Sometimes she’d turn away from Michael when they were in bed together. Sometimes, when they were making love, some sound or gesture would take her outside of herself. She’d find herself floating in the air, looking down, like she was watching a stranger moving on the bed. Sometimes, the sorrow of the road not taken would overwhelm her. Her sisters would visit with their children, or she’d talk with her nieces on the phone—about friends, about music, about picking a college or breaking up with a boyfriend—and Diana would think of the babies that she’d never have, or she’d glimpse a mother and daughter, in the supermarket or on the beach, sometimes squabbling, sometimes just sitting on the sand together, and the sadness would descend like a crushing weight until she could barely breathe.

  When that happened, she would go to Michael, and let him hold her, letting his love, and his body, anchor her and keep her in place as she tried to concentrate on something real: the feeling of the sheets against her bare feet. The smell of the cottage: woodsmoke and salt air. The sound of Pedro, on his dog bed in the corner, licking sand from his paws after a walk on the beach.

  Those instances became less frequent as the years went by, and they didn’t hurt as much. Diana could have spent the rest of her life content, with just those episodes, and those questions, to remind her of what she’d survived and what she’d done. She could have lived like Eve in the garden, ignoring the snake, avoiding the apple tree. And then, one day, the apple tree found her.

  She supposed, looking back, it had been building all spring and summer, the months of #MeToo, as more and more men, increasingly prominent, were accused of crimes against women. A movie producer was said to have forced actresses to perform sexual acts. A newscaster was accused of rape, and another one of exposing himself to young female colleagues, calling them to his house and then greeting them naked. Editors and authors, musicians and politicians, the great and the good, one after another after another as the months went on. Diana watched it all, wondering if the boys who’d harmed her—men now—were watching, if they felt guilt or complicity, if they even recognized that they’d done anything wrong.

  And then came a bright October Saturday. Michael was closing up clients’ houses for the winter, and Diana, dressed in a pair of paint-spattered overalls and a boiled-wool jacket, had tagged along. She wandered through the kitchens and the living rooms and powder rooms of the Springer house and the Killian house, until they arrived at Michael’s last stop, a house where Diana had never been, a modern, boxy, cedar-shingled place on the top of a dune. Michael was in the master bedroom, making sure that all the sliding doors were locked. Diana went across the hall, to a guest room decorated in a nautical theme. The two twin beds were covered in duvets with a sailboat print; a framed woodcut of a blue whale hung on the wall. Beneath it was a bookcase full of John Grisham paperbacks and collections of crossword puzzles. On top of it was a framed photograph, a middle-aged man squinting into the sunshine, with one arm around a woman’s waist and the other slung over a young girl’s shoulders.

  Diana glanced at the picture, turned away, then turned back and felt her heart stop beating. She picked it up and looked more closely, ignoring the girl and the woman, her eyes only on the man. His brown hair was graying, but it was still curly. The shape of his nose and his jaw were all familiar. She recognized his smile, as he grinned into the sun, a man without a care in the world.

  Diana felt like she’d been dropped from a great height. She collapsed backward onto the bed like a pricked balloon, holding the picture facedown in her lap. She was still sitting there when Michael found her.

  “Hey, what’s wrong? Didn’t you hear me?”

  She looked up at him wordlessly and handed him the picture. “This guy,” she said, in a toneless voice that didn’t sound like her own.

  “What? What about him?”

  Diana got to her feet. “That’s Poe,” she said. “That’s the guy from that summer. The guy who raped me.”

  Michael stared at her, face slack and startled, hands hanging by his sides. “That’s him!” Diana screamed. She jumped to her feet, stalking toward her husband. “Whose house is this? Do you know his name? Did you know that he’s been here this whole entire time?”

  She felt Michael’s hands on her shoulders; heard his voice coming from what sounded like very far away. When he tried to pull her against him, Diana shoved him back, hard.

  “What’s his name?” she asked again.

  Michael pulled off his baseball cap and raked his hands through his hair. “The man who owns the house is Vernon Shoemaker,” he said. His voice was low, and steady, maddeningly reasonable. He pointed at the picture. “I’ve never met this guy. Never even seen him. My guess is that it’s his son. Mr. Shoemaker has two sons, and they both spend part of the summer here, I think. I really don’t know a lot, though. Mr. Shoemaker is the only one I’ve met. He’s the one I deal with. This guy I don’t know.”

  Diana stared at her husband for a long, silent moment, her chest heaving, her hands clenched into fists. Then she shoved her way past him and went stalking down the hall, looking for more pictures, more evidence, a name. After all these years, finally, a name.

  In the living room she found two more pictures, one of the man on a sailboat, beside someone who had to be his brother, a slightly older, slightly fatter version of him. The second was a wedding picture, where the man she’d known as Poe seemed to be in his mid-thirties, and his wife, a young woman with wide eyes and dark hair, half-swallowed by an enormous pouf of a white dress. She stared at the two faces, first the man, then the woman, running her fingers over the words monogrammed at the bottom of the picture frame: Henry and Daisy Shoemaker, June 9, 2001.

  “Diana?” Michael had come up behind her, moving carefully, the way you’d approach a skittish, feral cat.

  “I’ve seen her,” she said. Her voice was faint. “Jesus, Michael, I’ve seen this woman, in the post office, and Jams, and in the Wellfleet Market…” A memory was surfacing. She’d been at the market, picking up hot dog buns, and this woman, Daisy, had been right beside her. Diana remembered that her brown hair had been drawn into a loose ponytail, and she’d said something, Hi, or Perfect beach weather, isn’t it, or… “Lucky,” said Diana. Her voice was hollow. “She said how lucky we were, to be in a place like this.” Diana’s heart was thumping, her brain spinning. She felt like her windpipe had narrowed, like she couldn’t take in enough oxygen. When she shook her head, there was a ringing in her ears. “This guy, the guy who raped me, he comes here every summer, him and his wife and his d-daughter…” She swallowed the scream that wanted to escape, and when Michael tried to take her hand, she said, “I can’t be in here anymore,” and walked, then trotted, down the hall. Right by the front door was a half-moon-shaped table, with more framed pictures, and a glass jar of seashells. Diana picked it up, hoisted it over her head, and sent it smashing down to shatter on the tiled floor before running out the door.

  * * *

  She tried to forget. She tried to put the knowledge of Henry Shoemaker’s face, of his presence in Truro, into the farthest reaches of her mind, walling off the new knowledge the way she’d walled off Corn Hill Beach, long ago. I’m not going to think about it, she would tell herself, but that promise just turned out to be a guarantee that she was going to think about it, all day long, at work, at home, painting in the shared studio space at the Castle Hill Center for the Arts, where her brushes sat with paint drying on the bristles, and her half-finished canvases were stacked facing the walls. On and on, her brain churned, like a washing machine stuck on “agitate,” with one simple phrase, two words, pounding like a drum: he’s here, he’
s here, he’s here. She resisted, until one day she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she did the thing she’d been keeping herself from doing since that Saturday morning with her husband. She went to the Truro library, sat down at one of the public terminals, and typed “Henry Shoemaker” into Google, because she couldn’t stand even the idea of typing his name into her own laptop at home.

  Two hours later, her eyes were burning, and her neck ached. She’d learned the name of Henry “Hal” Shoemaker’s law firm, and where he’d gone to law school and college, and the year he’d made partner. She knew the name of his daughter, and his home address. She’d learned that his wife’s real name was not Daisy. It was Diana, and, somehow, that unsettled her almost as badly as finding the picture had. It made her think that she was the rough-draft Diana, the one who got crumpled up and tossed in the trash, while his wife was the final version, the one who was beloved, cherished, marriage material.

  Daisy and Hal had one child, a daughter, who was thirteen (if Beatrice Shoemaker was on social media, Diana didn’t want to know. Even while gripped by this insanity, she had limits). The Shoemaker clan lived in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, in a house that she could view on Curbside, and that she knew, thanks to public real-estate records, that Hal had purchased from Vernon Shoemaker in 1998 for one dollar, and that it was now assessed at just over two million dollars. Vernon Shoemaker owned the house in Truro, but his Facebook page informed her that his sons and grandchildren were regular summer guests.

  * * *

  “Can I ask you a question?” Michael had brought home steamed lobsters for dinner, in an attempt to cheer her up. He was cracking a tail enthusiastically. Diana was nibbling, without appetite, at a swimmeret. “You know everything there possibly is to know about this guy except his blood type. What’s the endgame? What are you planning to do?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have an answer. What she did was change the subject, then clear the table, and wash the dishes, and climb up to the sleeping loft, willing herself to fall asleep.

  She woke in the middle of the night and lay awake, waiting until five o’clock in the morning. She thought about the girl she’d been, and all the girls and women, violated by their bosses and their colleagues, by men whom they’d trusted and admired. She thought about her niece, and her sister’s resignation, that this was just the way of the world, that Sunny had no right to expect anything different. She asked herself whether the world could change if she just sat by and did nothing. Just as the sun was rising, she slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her husband or the dog. She propped the note that she’d written the day before against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table, and padded outside, into the predawn dark. Her new car, a Prius, barely made a sound when it started. She turned it on, checking to make sure that the bag she’d packed the day before, while Michael was at work, was on the seat beside her, and went gliding silently through the darkness. She’d be halfway down Route 6 before Michael realized she was gone, on her way to New Hampshire, and the Emlen Academy.

  19

  Daisy

  It had been Hal’s idea to host the Melville Upper School spring cocktail party, an undertaking he’d proposed right after they’d gotten Beatrice enrolled. “How can we get involved?” he’d asked, turning his most charming smile on Lynne Parratt, who ran the school’s development office, and when she’d said that they were still looking for a venue for their spring cocktail party, he said, without even glancing Daisy’s way, “We’d be happy to host.” He’d put his hand on Daisy’s shoulder and said, “My wife is a wonderful cook.”

  As soon as they’d gotten in the car, Daisy said, “You could have asked me first, you know.”

  “It’s important for Beatrice that we get to know the school’s community. And,” he’d said, before Daisy could voice additional objections, “it’ll give you a chance to show off. Maybe drum up some new business.”

  It’ll give me a chance to work for three days straight without getting paid anything, Daisy thought, as her husband planted a kiss on her lips. She’d have to clean the house, from top to bottom, dealing with the clutter that seemed to multiply itself exponentially whenever her back was turned, and see if Mireille, the cheerful, competent Frenchwoman she hired when she needed extra hands, would be available. She’d have to rent barware and cocktail chairs and serving pieces; she’d have to order flowers and deal with entertainment, not to mention managing the logistics of the auction itself. Worst of all, she’d have to find something to wear. If there’d been a single benefit to having a kid out of state in boarding school, it was that she got a hiatus from having to squeeze herself into shapewear and make small talk at a school function. Now here she was, less than nine months later, dragging herself to Saks, where being over a size eight meant the salesladies would make you feel very, very small.

  She gave herself two hours to find a dress and, when her time was up, emerged with a short-sleeved navy-blue jersey dress, knee length, A-line, with cap sleeves. It also had a square neckline, the single feature that would make the new dress distinguishable from the half-dozen other navy-blue and black dresses she already had in her closet, purchased for events just like this one. With the dress draped over the Range Rover’s back seat, she drove to New Jersey for the liquor, then returned home to spend over an hour on the phone with the exceedingly chirpy Lynne, who had very specific instructions for how the items were to be described or displayed, and even what kinds of clipboards and pens the Melville community preferred. “And let’s make sure we’ve got some nut-free and vegetarian appetizers. Preferably vegan,” she’d said. Daisy had ended the call and had stood in her kitchen, feeling somewhere between infuriated and bemused. She remembered something that Hannah had told her once: people treat you the way you let them. Hannah never let herself be treated poorly. She insisted on respect, from her four-year-old students, from waiters, from her husband and daughter, from, once, a jogger who’d spat on the street too close to her feet. “I’m sorry, am I wearing my Cloak of Invisibility?” she’d demanded, and when the guy tried to run past her, Hannah had shouted, “Yo!” so loudly that everyone on the street had turned, and the jogger had been forced to stop and endure Hannah’s tirade. Daisy could picture her friend, with two fingers stuck in the air and her other hand on her hip, standing like the Statue of Liberty until her kids settled down, and in Daisy’s kitchen, bent over a bubbling cauldron of marinara sauce, asking, “Do you think the steam’s good for my pores?” Oh, how Daisy missed her.

  On the appointed Saturday in April, Daisy spent the morning getting her hair blown out and her nails manicured. Mireille arrived at three in the afternoon, the florist came at four, and the musicians, a quartet of students who comprised Melville’s jazz ensemble, arrived at five o’clock.

  At six, Daisy slid the stuffed figs and the pastry-wrapped goat cheese purses into the oven, crammed her feet into a pair of navy-blue high heels, and put a giant straw hat with a navy-blue ribbon on her head. The theme of the party was the Kentucky Derby, even though the Derby itself wasn’t until May. At least it had made the menu easy: mint julep punch and bourbon slushies, fried chicken sliders served on biscuits, with hot honey, tea sandwiches with Benedictine spread, bite-sized hot browns, the signature sandwich of Louisville, and miniature Derby pies for dessert.

  Mireille fed the jazz kids early and got them set up in the corner, close to a powder room where spit valves could be emptied as needed. “Put on your lipstick,” she told Daisy, who was already wearing lipstick. She went upstairs to put on more and to roust Beatrice from her bedroom, just as the first car pulled into the driveway and one of the valets went to park it. Over the weekend, Hal had bought spotlights, which shone on the front of their house, illuminating the half-circle of the driveway and the path to the front door (and, Daisy privately thought, making the place look especially imposing). On Saturday, he’d installed the lights, and he’d spent Sunday pacing around the ground floor, frowning at a spot on the pale-gold and green oriental rug that
Lester had scratched, rearranging the ornamental birch logs in the fireplace, and studying the one wall in the kitchen that Daisy had insisted on painting a moody shade of navy blue, a contrast to the rest of the walls, which were tastefully taupe. She’d wanted to hang colorful plates and pieces of pottery over the doors to the pantry, but Hal told her it was “too busy”; she’d wanted to keep her ceramic canisters of flour and sugar and beans on the counter, but he’d said it made the kitchen look cluttered; she’d wanted… God, the truth was that Daisy could barely remember what she’d wanted. Only that she’d liked color and coziness, like her navy-blue wall or her row of canisters, and Hal had not.

  “Phil! Ellen!” she heard Hal say from the vicinity of the entryway, where there was a delicate pie-crust table (his choice) and, above it, a towering mirror with an ornate gold frame (hers). “Come on in and get comfortable.”

  Thank God for name tags, Daisy thought, as her house filled up. She plotted a course from one end of the living room all the way to the staircase, stopping to introduce herself and welcome her guests to her home.

  “This punch is delicious!” said a woman in a white hat embellished with pink flowers. Her nametag ID’ed her as Eleanor Crane. Her flushed cheeks suggested she was not on her first cup of punch. “What’s in it?”

  “Muddled mint, bourbon, simple syrup…”

  “Delicious!” Eleanor Crane repeated, before Daisy could complete the list of ingredients. Peering at Daisy, she said, “You give cooking lessons, right? You’ll have to teach me how to do it.”

  “You can bid on me, if you’re interested.” Daisy nodded toward the sunroom. She and Hal had moved out all the furniture, massing Daisy’s plants in the corner, and set up tables for the auction items, displaying the prizes that were suitable for viewing, posting pictures of the ones that were not. Melville parents and alums had offered stays at vacation homes in Avalon, Ventnor, Martha’s Vineyard, and Jackson Hole; tickets to various concerts and sporting events, and various bespoke experiences with, or from, local luminaries (dinner for six with the Philadelphia Inquirer food critic; a night behind the scenes with a local TV weatherman; a chance to spend an afternoon with former governor Ed Rendell, or to have your name in a local novelist’s next work). There were restaurant gift certificates and boutique gift certificates, personal-trainer sessions and spa days. Daisy herself had donated a three-hour cooking lesson. The last time she’d checked, only one person had bid on her services, and, to make it worse, she’d recognized Hal’s handwriting.