That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Oh my God!” Daisy said. “Oh, that’s awful.” She reached out, almost blindly, wanting to touch the other woman’s shoulder or her arm. Somehow, she wound up grabbing Diana’s hand. For an instant, there was nothing. She felt a flare of panic, wondering if she’d gone too far, and then Diana squeezed back. “I’m so sorry.”

  Diana nodded, releasing Daisy’s hand, turning away as she shook her hair loose and tied it back again. “It was a long time ago.”

  “But still…” Daisy felt a clenching around her heart; a tightening in her throat. She hated the thought of her friend being hurt even as it thrilled her that Diana trusted her enough to tell her. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you ever get over.”

  “It changes you,” Diana said. “Here, let’s sit.” She led Daisy over to a bench, with a view of the ducks dipping their heads into the water as toddlers tossed handfuls of bread at them. “It took me a long time to trust anyone. A long time,” she repeated. “There were years when I couldn’t. I didn’t let anyone get close. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Not even my mom and dad.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  Nodding, Diana said, “I was very lonely.”

  Daisy could barely breathe. I’ve been lonely, too, she thought. But Diana had survived a sexual assault. What was Daisy’s excuse? Getting married too soon? Missing Hannah?

  With her gaze on the water, Diana said, “I tried not to think about it for a long time, after it happened. Michael figured it out, and eventually I told him the whole story. He was the first one I’d ever said it out loud to, and I thought he’d run screaming, but he didn’t.”

  “I’m glad you’ve got someone,” Daisy said. She had a million questions—when had this happened to Diana? At work? In college? Had she gone to the police? Had the guy been arrested? How could she, Daisy, keep such a thing from happening to her daughter? But Diana’s jaw was set; her gaze looked severe, the lines of her cheekbones and chin etched in the afternoon sunshine. Daisy thought of a painting, from the single art history class she’d taken in college, of Judith slaying Holofernes. Judith had worn the same kind of expression, as she’d held, dangling, the general’s severed head.

  “Michael sounds terrific,” Daisy said, instead of asking additional questions. “I’d love to meet him.”

  Diana gave a brief nod, and seemed to gather herself. “And I’d like to meet Hal, too, of course.”

  “Of course!” said Daisy, a little too quickly, in a voice that was a little too loud. Somehow, for reasons she didn’t want to consider too carefully, Diana meeting Hal was the last thing she wanted. Hal wouldn’t like Diana any more than he’d liked Hannah, or any of the other women Daisy had liked. A great finder of fault and picker of nits was her husband. At first, Daisy had tried to pretend that there wasn’t a problem, but Hannah, of course, was not fooled. (“Oh, come on,” she’d said when Daisy had tried to protest that Hal liked her fine, “every time I walk into a room, he runs out like his hair’s on fire and his ass is catching.”) Hannah had argued that Hal was jealous of Daisy’s time, that he wanted her all to himself. Once, Daisy had found it flattering. Now…

  “Daisy.” Diana was looking right at her, with an intensity to her gaze that Daisy found unsettling. Diana’s hands were on her hips, the light flaring off the reflective strips sewn onto her sleeves. “There’s something else I need to tell you. What happened to me that summer…”

  Before Diana could continue, Daisy’s phone trilled, and she saw the Melville School’s number on the screen.

  “I’m sorry—it’s Bea’s school—hello?” she said, picking up the call.

  “Hi, Daisy? It’s Crystal Johnson, calling from Melville.”

  “Hi, Crystal!” Crystal Johnson was a fellow Melville parent, a stay-at-home mother, and, years ago, another one of Daisy’s almost-friends. Daisy had always liked Crystal, who’d been a lawyer before giving it up for volunteer work and managing her four children, who all seemed to play at least two sports and an instrument.

  “I’m calling to let you know that Beatrice was absent this morning. We’re just checking to see if she’s sick? Or if she had an appointment and you forgot to let the front office know?”

  “No. She left for school this morning. Are you saying she just never showed up?” Daisy was already poking at her screen, texting her daughter WHERE ARE YOU?, realizing that, once she found her, Beatrice was going to mock her for spelling out all the words.

  “She wasn’t present for homeroom, and no one’s seen her all day,” Crystal said.

  Daisy felt something cold wrap around her heart. “Let me see if I can find out what’s going on.”

  Daisy ended the call and saw Diana looking down at her, concern on her face.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Beatrice isn’t at school.” Daisy had already punched in Beatrice’s number. The phone rang and rang. No one picked up. She ended the call and said, “I have to go. I should go home, in case she’s there.”

  Wordlessly, they hurried down the trail. As they went, Daisy called home, where no one answered. She spoke with Hal, who hadn’t heard from their daughter, and called Beatrice again. Maybe there was some kind of explanation. Crossed wires… a research project… a teacher who’d marked Beatrice absent when she’d really been there.

  They were almost back at the parking lot when Daisy’s phone rang, and she saw her daughter’s picture, purple hair and all, appear on her screen.

  “Mom?”

  Beatrice’s voice was small, and Daisy thought she sounded frightened.

  “Beatrice? Oh my God. Where are you?”

  “At school.”

  “Funny, because that wasn’t what the school told me.”

  Beatrice gave a sigh. “I’m here now. Can you come get me?”

  “Did something happen? Is something wrong?”

  “Just… can you please come get me? Please?”

  Daisy turned away, shielding the phone with her body. She felt weak with relief that Beatrice was safe, but even in her happiness she was annoyed that of course Beatrice would assume that she was around and available for immediate pickup, that all Daisy did when Beatrice was not at home was cook and clean, or maybe just sit there, frozen, like a powered-down robot, waiting for her family to need something. She lowered her voice. “Maybe this didn’t occur to you, but I’m actually doing something. With a friend.”

  “I’m sorry!” Beatrice actually sounded apologetic. “I know you have a life, Mom. I’m sorry. Can you please just come get me?”

  “It’ll take a little while. I’m on a walk on Forbidden Drive, and my car’s at the house.” Diana tapped her shoulder and mouthed, I’ll drive. “Hang on.” Daisy covered the mouthpiece and said, “Are you sure it’s no trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” Diana said. “And I’d love to see Beatrice again.”

  “I’m not sure you’re going to be seeing her at her best,” Daisy said, but she got back on the phone and told her daughter that she and her friend would be there in twenty minutes to pick her up and bring her home.

  22

  Diana

  When Diana finally made it back to her apartment, she shucked off her fancy jacket, toed off her sneakers, and began pacing the length of her living room, back and forth, faster and faster, her bare heels thumping on the hardwood, realizing, with each turn she made, that things had gotten badly out of control.

  Once, she’d had a clear objective: find the men who’d hurt her. Look them in the eye. Make them see her, acknowledging that she was a real person, to whom they had done real damage. She’d wanted to hate the men, and everyone connected to them, including the women. Especially the women, all of those enablers, the mothers and the wives who coddled and petted and made excuses.

  Diana had never imagined that she would feel anything besides disgust for the Emlen men or anyone in their orbit. She hadn’t considered the possibility of befriending one of their wives. She’d certainly never planned
on confiding in Daisy about her rape, on even hinting at what had happened to her, lest Daisy, sweet, clueless Daisy, put the pieces together and realize how her husband fit in.

  And then there was Beatrice. During the days before her invitation to Daisy’s home she’d done her best to prepare herself for the sight of her rapist’s daughter, knowing that the girl was a teenager, like her nieces, the age of the daughter Diana and Michael might have had.

  It had helped that Beatrice hadn’t looked anything like Hal. Her hair was purple, and Diana thought that she favored her mother. Or maybe it was that she’d had more recent acquaintance with Daisy’s face, and was more able to see the similarities. Beatrice was petite, with the same large, round eyes and full cheeks as her mother, and clothes that looked like they’d been plucked from a punk revival of Little House on the Prairie. That afternoon, Beatrice and Daisy had held a tense-looking, whispered conversation at the base of the school steps while Diana waited behind the wheel. Daisy appeared to be speaking very intensely. Beatrice was shrugging, wearing the universal expression of adolescent disdain. Daisy shrugged and walked up the steps into the school. Beatrice watched her mother before turning, walking to Diana’s car, and climbing into the back seat.

  “I am a disgrace,” she’d announced, and Diana had said, “I’m sure that you’ll survive.”

  Diana had gotten them to Gladwyne as quickly as she could, declining Daisy’s offer to come in for coffee or stay for dinner, saying, “Some other time,” to Beatrice, who’d offered to show her a mouse she was working on. She’d sped back to Center City with her hands clenched on the wheel. And now here she was, walking in circles around this tiny apartment, wanting desperately to just go home.

  She picked up her phone and punched in her husband’s name. He answered on the first ring, sounding gruff when he said her name.

  “Michael?”

  Diana could picture him: his beard, now as much silvery-gray as reddish-brown; the way he’d be in the post-office parking lot, or in a client’s driveway, leaning against his truck with his forehead squinched up and the phone pressed against his cheek. “How are you?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. Fine.” She sat down. “No. No, actually.” When she started laughing, the noise she made was high and wild. She was sure it scared him. She was scaring herself, a little.

  “Hey,” he said. His voice was still gruff, but less irritated, more patient. “Tell me.”

  “I just wish…” Her voice trailed off, then she blurted, “I wish I didn’t like her so much. Her, and her daughter. Beatrice. She’s fourteen.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Michael said. “Or, at least, you don’t have to do anything now. You just come home.”

  “I can’t,” Diana whispered. But if she gave up now, without confronting Hal Shoemaker, it would all have been for nothing. He would continue to live in a world without consequences, a world where men like him hurt girls like her, then shook them off like they were dust underneath their shoes, and, worse, all the young women, her nieces, his daughter, purple-haired, oddball, blameless Beatrice, would have to live in that world, too. And then, what if Daisy recognized her on the Cape, on Longnook Beach in Truro, or walking around Provincetown? What if Daisy realized that Diana wasn’t who she’d pretended to be?

  “I can’t come back yet,” she told Michael. “But soon. Maybe another week. I just…” Just what? Just need to confront Hal, like I’d planned? Just need to make sure that Daisy will be okay when she learns her husband is a rapist? Just need to figure out how to keep Beatrice from being destroyed?

  “Soon,” she repeated. “I’ll be home soon.”

  “Well, I’ll be here,” said Michael. Diana wondered what he was feeling, if he was impatient, if he was angry. But all he said was, “Pedro keeps taking your socks.”

  She choked out a laugh through a throat thick with tears. Whenever she went away unexpectedly, Pedro would dig one of her socks, or bras, or pairs of underwear, out of the laundry basket. He’d carry it around in his mouth all day, and tuck it into a corner of his bed at night. It reminded her of how Willa would hide food, all those years ago.

  “Don’t let him chew holes in anything,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t hear how unsteady her voice had become.

  “I’ll do my best,” said Michael. Then he said, “Come home, Diana,” but she ended the call without answering, telling herself that she still had work to do.

  Part Four

  This Happy Land

  23

  Diana

  The Emlen Academy sat high on a hill above a small town in New Hampshire, which it seemed to look down upon with lordly disdain. Or maybe that was just Diana’s frame of mind. She parked in the visitors’ lot and checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. Lipstick bright against her pale face, a skirt and a blouse and a blazer. In her purse, a letter she’d written herself, on Boston University stationery, which she’d made by cutting and pasting the school’s letterhead and logo onto a plain piece of paper. Diana Carmody is researching the history of single-sex boarding schools in New England. She’d given the English department’s phone number and made up a professor’s name, hoping that no one would ask for credentials and that, if they did, just the letter itself would be enough.

  She got out of the car and began walking up the hill, crossing the snow-covered quad. She knew the names of all the buildings, the location of the library, the history of the school. She’d sent away for application material, and the eight-page glossy brochure had told her everything she could have ever wanted to know about Emlen, from the size of its endowment to its most recent construction projects and capital campaigns to its most prominent alums. Eighteen state governors, United States senators, a Nobel Prize winner, five Supreme Court justices, abolitionists and architects, a smattering of movie stars and NHL players, authors and lyricists, a billionaire tech mogul, and a semi-famous rapper were all Emlen men. George Washington had visited Emlen in 1789, when it was still a seminary and not yet a prep school; John F. Kennedy had given a speech there while campaigning in 1960.

  Diana walked uphill, looking around, trying not to stare or do anything that would mark her as an outsider. Some of the kids looked like they’d snuck into their parents’ closets and were playing dress-up, in ties or jackets or blazers and pumps. Some already carried themselves with an air of entitlement; nothing so obvious as noses in the air; just a subtle way of walking and holding themselves that telegraphed, I’m better than you are. But others were just teenagers, kids like any other kids, with gangly frames or acne-afflicted skin, laughing and horsing around. Diana paused to read a metal plaque on a post outside one of the classroom buildings. On this ground, the Emlen Academy was founded in 1898 for the purposes of instructing America’s most promising young men, teaching them to aspire to knowledge and good works.

  Good works, she thought, and snorted so loudly that a few of the boys turned to look at her, before shrugging and continuing on their way.

  She followed a slate path to the Harwich Library, where the librarian barely gave her a glance, and didn’t ask to see any paperwork. “The yearbooks and the back issues of the alumni quarterly are in the first sub-basement,” he said, and pointed toward a staircase. Twenty minutes later, Diana was ensconced in a wooden carrel, with its own lamp and a pile of alumni magazines, as slick and well-produced as anything on a newsstand. She picked one up, leafing through it. The cover story was a profile of an Emlen graduate who ran a neurobiology lab, illustrated with a shot of the guy in a white lab coat and a confident smile. A “Letter from the Dean” appeared on the front inside page. Letters from alums, short pieces about professors, a long story about the football team, interviews with students for the “On Campus” column. She flipped to the back, where the “Class Notes” section was, and learned that Alfred Cutty of the Class of 1939 had celebrated his ninety-eighth birthday at the Whitechapel Retirement Center, and that Mrs. Elizabeth E. Ferris (wife of the late Stanhope Ferris) was
planning on attending Reunions at This Happy Land, which Diana learned was what alumni called Emlen. The line, she learned, came from the school’s alma mater:

  Dearest Emlen, like no other;

  On your ground your sons shall stand

  With gladdened hearts, to share with brothers

  Mem’ries of this happy land

  That ditty was now referred to as the Old Alma Mater, and a new, gender-neutral one was now officially the school’s song, but the nickname had stuck.

  She put the magazines aside and picked up the book she’d found, a copy of the 1987 Emlen Emblem, the school’s yearbook. She settled her hands on its embossed leather cover and took a few breaths, grounding herself: her feet on the carpet-covered floor, her bottom in the curved wooden chair, her hands on the pages. She started with Henry Shoemaker, the boy she’d known as Poe. Looking at this senior picture felt like taking an arrow through her heart. Poe looked just like she’d remembered, with his clear eyes and his curly hair. She read through the half-gibberish of the inscription beneath his name, a dozen lines of dates and initials and barely veiled references to beer and pot and parties, FENWAY PARK ’84 and IS THERE A PROBLEM, OFFICER and BEER PONG OLYMPIAN and I CLIMBED MOUNT KATRINA. CAPE COD HERE WE COME, one of the lines read, and she’d swallowed hard, briefly dizzy, tasting bile in her throat.

  She started at the first name (Stephen Aaronson) and looked at each picture, all the way to Wesley Yu, reading each line of their inscriptions, taking notes on the references and inside jokes they made. After a few hours’ perusal, she had a headache that felt like an ice pick being jabbed between her eyes, and the names of her three suspects: Hal, the boy she believed had raped her; Brad Burlingham, the laughing, doll-boy redhead who’d held her down, and Daniel Rosen, the shorter, more slightly built boy, who’d been there, watching.

  Diana stepped outside, letting the icy air cool her burning face. She drew it deep in her lungs. Then she went back inside, pulling out her notebook.