That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Mom,” said Daisy. “What’s going on? You have to tell me something.” Daisy could hear the anxiety in her daughter’s voice, and knew that Beatrice was right. She had to say something. She just didn’t know what that should be.

  “I need to ask my mother some questions about what happened when Danny was a teenager.”

  “What do you mean? What happened?” Beatrice demanded. She was putting the pieces together, much more quickly than Daisy had hoped she would. “Did this happen at Emlen? Was Dad involved?”

  “It didn’t happen at Emlen. It involved Emlen students.” Careful, Daisy told herself. You need to be careful now. She would have given years of her life to be able to tell her daughter that Hal wasn’t involved. But she couldn’t. “I don’t want to say any more until I know for sure.”

  Beatrice shifted in her seat. “What happened?” she asked. “Did someone die?”

  “No one died,” she said quietly. “And I can’t tell you anything else. I promise, when I know the facts, I’ll tell you. But right now, I can’t.”

  She was picturing Hal as he’d been when she’d first met him, handsome and solid and mature. She could still hear what he had told her, on their very first date: I used to be wild. I drank a lot. I don’t want to be that person anymore. She’d been able to intuit what he wasn’t telling her: that, if they proceeded, it would be her job to prevent him from backsliding. That, in becoming her husband and a father, he would be turning himself into something other than what he had been; a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, with a loyal, loving wife by his side. She would be an integral part of his transformation, even if that meant putting her own dreams to the side. She’d be his guardrails, his early-warning system; she’d keep him from going over the edge. She’d done her part, Daisy thought. And if he’d made good on that promise, if he’d truly become someone other than who he’d been, if he’d been a good husband and father, if he’d done good with his life, how much could she hold him accountable for his actions when he was eighteen? How much punishment was the right amount? What did Hal deserve?

  “Mom.” Beatrice’s voice was tiny. “How bad is this? What’s going to happen? Is Dad in trouble?”

  And again, Daisy gave her daughter as much of the truth as she could. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Just over three hours after they’d left Lower Merion, Daisy pulled into the parking lot of her mother’s apartment building. “Stay here,” she told Beatrice.

  “No! I’m coming with you.”

  Daisy make her voice firm. “Stay in the car. I’ll be back soon.” Daisy climbed out quickly and walked across the parking lot and into the lobby, locking her legs to keep her knees from shaking as she rode the elevator up to the eighteenth floor. She lifted the brass knocker, feeling its cold weight in her hand, and let it fall, once, then again.

  A minute later, there was Arnold, in neatly pressed pants, a button-down shirt, and slippers. “Daisy,” he said, beaming. “What an unexpected surprise!” When she didn’t return his smile, he said, “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Daisy said, through cold lips. “But I need to speak to my mom for a minute.”

  “Of course.” After a worried glance at her face, he said, “I’ll get Judy,” and hurried down the hall in his slippered feet.

  Daisy went to the kitchen. The black marble countertops, white cabinets, and clear glass subway-tile backsplash had all been the height of decorating style in the early 2000s. Now they were starting to look a bit dated. Arnold’s wife had cooked for him, and Judy had never been much of a cook and hadn’t cared enough to redecorate. She and Arnold ate most of their meals out.

  “Daisy?” Judy Rosen wore loose-fitting velour pants, a fine-gauge cashmere sweater, and her usual full face of makeup. “Is everything all right?”

  Daisy stood on the other side of the breakfast bar and set her hands on the counter, leaning forward. “I need to ask you something.”

  “All right,” her mom said, her voice hesitant, her expression suddenly wary.

  “Did Danny ever tell you anything about Hal? About things Hal had done in high school?”

  Judy just stared. Daisy tried again. “Did he ever tell you about a party on the Cape, the summer after they graduated from Emlen?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Judy said, but Daisy saw the way her mother’s eyes flickered briefly to the left, like she couldn’t quite hold Daisy’s gaze.

  “Hal raped a girl.”

  “Oh, Daisy.” Her mother clasped her hands and looked at Daisy with disapproval. “What a terrible thing to say.”

  For a moment, Daisy was sure she must have heard incorrectly. “A terrible thing to say?” she repeated. “How about a terrible thing to do?”

  “Let me get you something to drink.” Her mother turned away, and Daisy followed her, staying right on her heels.

  “I don’t want anything to drink. I want to know what Danny told you about that party.”

  Her mother sighed, shaking her head. “What Danny told me,” she repeated. “What Danny told me was that a girl at the party had gotten very drunk, and that he’d heard that something might have happened to her, and that Hal might have been involved. Your brother was concerned for you. But, Daisy, he didn’t have any reason to worry. Whatever happened when Hal was in high school happened almost fifteen years before you two met. He was a different person by then.”

  Daisy shook her head, hearing nothing but mealy-mouthed “mights” and “somethings,” and “that girl.” “My friend Diana. The woman who came to dinner on Saturday. The consultant. She’s the one who says Hal raped her.”

  Judy cocked her head, looking quizzical. “The other Diana?”

  As soon as her mother spoke, Daisy realized that she should have known. The truth was right there, that it had been there all along, if she’d only been willing to see it. “You know that Hal was the one who started calling me Daisy, right? He said he wanted to give me a name that was special. He said…” She took a breath and tried to remember. “… he said he’d known another Diana, once.” Her mouth felt dry, her body numb, as if it had been packed with snow, as she remembered. “And you knew. You knew what he was. Danny told you.”

  Judy Rosen raised her chin. “What Danny told me was that something might have happened when Hal was eighteen. Even if he’d done something terrible, even if it wasn’t just a case of too much alcohol and mixed signals, Daisy, it was so long ago!”

  “What if he’d done it to me?” Daisy asked. “What if some boy did that to Beatrice? Would it matter, how long ago it had happened? Would you be okay if he said, Oh, sorry, we were both drinking and I guess I got mixed signals?”

  For some endless span of time, her mother didn’t speak. “Hal’s a good man,” Judy finally managed. “He loved you very much. And you loved him! I really don’t see the point in stirring up all of this old mess.” Her lips curled in distaste, and Daisy wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

  “You know what I think?” Her voice was strident, her hands were balled into fists. “I think Danny told you exactly what Hal was. I think you didn’t care. And you know what else I think?” She could see Arnold Mishkin in the darkened hallway, his pale face glimmering, ghostlike, as he listened, but Daisy didn’t stop. “I think you were done being a mother. I think that, after Daddy died, you didn’t have anything left for me. I think you were glad for me to be someone else’s responsibility.”

  “Daisy, that’s not true! All I wanted was for you to be happy!” her mother said. “Happy, and safe, and secure, so you’d never have to worry about your whole life falling apart!” Her voice was getting louder. “Hal was a good man, he had a good job, he had a house, he had plenty of money, and he was generous…”

  “He pulled me out of college,” said Daisy, half to herself, remembering what Hal had told her: There’s a lot of great schools in Philadelphia. You can finish your degree. But, right now, I need your help gettin
g the house together.

  “No, Daisy, that’s not true. He wanted you to finish!”

  “Well, he certainly never pushed for me to go back.” She thought of what Diana had said, the first night that they’d met in New York City: You were a child bride. She’d laughed it off, but now she saw herself as a newlywed, wide-eyed and innocent, happy to let Hal guide her, happy to surrender her power, her agency, her voice. Everything. She’d given him everything. Even her name.

  She turned for the door, feeling hollowed out and exhausted. “I’m leaving,” she said, and began walking toward the door. “I’m done.”

  “Daisy!” her mother called.

  Daisy turned around. “What’s wrong with you?” she shouted at her mother. “I wasn’t that much older than Beatrice, and I’d die to keep anything bad from happening to her, and you! You let me marry a criminal,” she hissed.

  Her mother was crying, shaking her head. “People change,” she said. “Hal is a good man. I know he is. And if some silly girl got drunk at a party and showed up, all these years later, to make crazy accusations about Hal raping her, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change what the two of you have.”

  Daisy shook her head and kept walking. Her mother called after her.

  “What are you going to do?”

  When Daisy didn’t turn around, her mother ran after her, putting her hand on Daisy’s shoulder. “He’s still Beatrice’s father,” she whispered.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Daisy shouted. Crying, her mother retreated to the kitchen. Then Arnold was there, touching her arm gently. Daisy whirled around to glare at him. “Did you know about this?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

  “Not good!” said Daisy, with a harsh, barking laugh. Arnold nodded sadly.

  “Your mother only wanted what was best for you. She wanted you to be happy, and safe, and well taken care of. I’m sure you know how hard it was after your father died.”

  “I could have taken care of myself,” Daisy said. “I could have gotten my degree, and gotten a job.”

  “Of course,” Arnold said. “But Judy didn’t see it that way. It was different for her generation. She didn’t want you to struggle, as she had. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but I know your mother, and all she’s ever wanted for any of her children was that you be safe, and comfortable, and happy.”

  Daisy looked over his shoulder at her mother, a small, slump-shouldered figure, weeping softly.

  “And she’s right,” Arnold continued, his voice gentle. “You have a daughter. You need to think about her.”

  Daisy’s chest felt tight, and the air felt thin. “I need to make a phone call,” she said.

  Arnold led her to his office, where a framed wedding portrait of Daisy and Hal stood on the desk, the same one that Diana must have seen in Vernon’s Cape house. Daisy looked at it: her twenty-year-old self, in a frothy confection of white lace and tulle, a fairy-tale princess dressed for her happily-ever-after.

  She flipped the picture facedown on the desk and sat in Arnold’s creaking leather chair. Steeling herself, she found her phone in her purse and called Diana.

  The phone rang once. Again. Again. Then she heard Diana’s voice.

  “Daisy.”

  Daisy didn’t say a word.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Daisy said.

  “I owe you an apology.” Diana’s voice was quiet. “I lied to you, and I’m sorry. What I told you… it must be a hard thing to hear about someone you love.”

  “You shouldn’t have lied to me,” said Daisy.

  “You’re right. But what would have happened if I’d been honest? Or if I’d tried to confront Hal?”

  “You didn’t have to…” Daisy’s throat was thick, and it was hard to speak. “You didn’t have to involve me,” she finally whispered.

  On the other end of the line, she heard Diana sigh. “You are involved, though,” she said. “You, and Beatrice, too. I wish it was different, but it’s not.”

  Daisy felt an icy hand take hold of her heart, and she didn’t speak, couldn’t speak.

  “Where are you?” asked Diana.

  “At my mom’s.” Daisy knew what she wanted to say, but she wasn’t ready to say it out loud, how maybe a part of her had always suspected the truth about her husband; that, with her family’s complicity and her own willingness, she’d kept her eyes shut for a long, long time.

  She cleared her throat. “Where are you?”

  “I’m home,” Diana said. “In Truro. I live in a cottage at the very end of Knowles Heights Road.”

  “Send me your address.” Even as she spoke, a plan was forming in Daisy’s mind. “I’m driving up tonight, and I want to see you, in person. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”

  “Okay,” said Diana. “And, Daisy? I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you and Beatrice are involved in all of this. I’m sorry for everything.”

  Daisy didn’t answer. She ended the call, set the phone down, walked to the powder room, used the toilet, and washed her hands without meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Back in Arnold’s office, she picked up her phone again. She had one more call to make before she started driving.

  The phone barely rang before Hal’s voice was in her ear. “Daisy? Where are you? Where’s Beatrice? What’s going on?”

  Daisy sat up very straight. She licked her lips. “Hello, Hal. We need to talk,” she said.

  33

  Hal

  They were eighteen years old, and the world was theirs, laid out before them like a banquet before kings.

  All summer long, they’d kept tallies in Magic Marker on the cottage walls. Who’d kicked a keg. Who’d booted and rallied. Who’d gotten into the Squealing Pig or the A House or the Dory Bar, who’d gotten a blow job, who’d gotten laid. Writing on the wall probably meant that Crosby’s parents would lose their security deposit, but none of them cared. It was their last summer together, one last, epic summer for the Class of 1987, and Hal Shoemaker, class president, had appointed himself Vice Admiral. “Leave no man behind” was the motto they’d adopted, and, as the last beach bonfire approached, Hal was worried about Daniel Rosen. Diesel Dan, Dan the Man, whose nickname had been lengthened to Manfred, then shortened to Freddie. (Hal had gotten his own nickname after a mixer at Miss Porter’s, when there had been an unfortunate encounter with a girl who’d just started her period. Bryan Tavistock had made a joke about the Masque of the Red Death, and, thus, Hal became Poe.)

  Twenty-three boys out of the fifty-eight members of their graduating class had come to the Cape for August. They spent their days drinking on the bayside beach in front of the cottage named Begonia, where four guys were staying. Hal was at his folks’ place a few miles away, hosting three more classmates there. Other members of the class were roughing it on the KOA campgrounds near the Head of the Meadow Beach.

  Hal considered Dan, lying on his belly on a towel, motionless except for the slow expansion and collapse of his rib cage. He poked at the other boy’s shoulder with the handle of a plastic shovel. Dan sat up, squinting into the sun.

  “Hey,” said Hal. “Any luck last night?”

  Instead of answering, Dan just muttered, “I gotta take a leak,” and hauled himself unsteadily upright. Hal sighed. Dan was short and skinny, the perfect build for a coxswain but less than ideal, Hal guessed, for attracting the ladies. There was also something dainty, something almost girlish in the cast of Dan’s features, the round, long-lashed eyes that turned up at the corners, and his ears, which came to points at their tips. Of course, his looks wouldn’t have held him back, if he’d had any confidence. Bryan Tavistock, for example, whose nickname was Whale and who always smelled faintly of salami, scored almost as much as Hal himself, because Bryan was confident and funny and, perhaps most of all, extremely persistent. He told every girl he met that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he never took no for a
n answer. No, Bryan liked to say, is just the opening in the negotiations.

  “Just piss in the ocean!” Hal urged, but Danny was already halfway to the cottage door. Hal got up and followed him. Once he was inside, he stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, breathing in the smell of sun-warmed garbage and sour spilled beer. The place was getting seriously rank. Oh, well, he thought. They’d be leaving on Sunday, and it would be someone else’s job to clean up once they were gone.

  He waited until he heard the toilet flush, then positioned himself outside the bathroom door. When it opened, he grabbed Danny in a bear hug, lifting him off his feet, and wrestled him onto one of the unmade beds.

  “Dan the Man!” he shouted, lying on top of him as Danny wriggled and kicked, finally working himself free. “So what’s the count?”

  Danny shrugged. Hal didn’t even try to conceal his disappointment.

  “Blow jobs?” he asked, and thumped Dan’s bony shoulder. “Come on. Tell me you’ve gotten at least a few of these townies to gobble your knob.”

  “Three?” Danny said, with a question in his voice. When Hal stared at him, Danny dropped his gaze. “I remember two of them for sure. That night we all went to the Boatslip?”

  Hal nodded. Dan had been talking to a girl at the bar, and they’d slipped out together, and Danny had come back grinning, which they’d all assumed meant that he’d gotten some. That was good, but not enough.

  Hal shoved Dan back on the bed and straddled him, planting one knee on either side of his chest.

  “Have you gotten laid this summer?” he asked. “Don’t even think about lying to me.”

  Danny shoved at him, struggling to buck Hal off, but Hal had at least fifty pounds, plus gravity, on his side.

  “Have you?” Hal demanded, and Danny looked away.

  “The girls here are pigs. I’m not really into any of them.”

  Hal shook his head. “Danny,” he said. “Danny, Dan, Dan.” The girls were not pigs. More to the point, there was one for every taste, petite freckled redheads, dark-eyed, sultry brunettes, or busty blondes, his personal favorites. Some guys said that anything more than a handful was wasted, but Hal thought those guys were full of shit. He loved nothing more than motorboating a girl, putting his mouth on her chest and wrapping her boobs around his ears, like sex earmuffs.