Summer Rental

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Contraband,” his dad had called it in a conspiratorial whisper. They took their stolen treats and went to the garage apartment. Back then, they still called the apartment Tillie’s house, because it was where his grandmother’s maid, Tillie, and her three children lived every summer when they came down to the beach from his grandmother’s big house in Edenton.

  Ty had only a vague memory of Tillie, a slight, stoop-shouldered black lady who colored her hair bright red, chewed gum nonstop, and wore what looked to him like a white nurse’s uniform. He did remember how Tillie put ice in her coffee in the morning, and how she liked to boss his mother around. But Tillie had quit coming to the beach in the ’80s, because, as his father reported, she wanted to be paid a living wage, “and your grandmother, bless her heart, is tight as a tick.”

  So Tillie’s house had become a place to store unused furniture and an overflow of houseguests. The night of the swill sisters meeting, his father dragged two rickety wooden chairs out to the deck, and they’d sat there and gorged on desserts. They could see his grandmother and his mother and a gaggle of women, arrayed around the gussied-up dining room table. Music was playing, and some of the ladies were playing a card game, and everybody was laughing and having a real party.

  Ty had been mesmerized by the glimpse of his mother and his usually dignified grandmother, acting like the girls in his class at school. “What are they talking about?” he’d asked his father, who was leaning with his back against the deck railing. “What’s so funny?”

  “Who, them?” Ty’s father glanced in the direction of the big house and shrugged. “Son, there ain’t no telling what’s on a woman’s mind. You get a bunch of hens together like that, and all bets are off. They might be talking about shoes or clothes. Or they might be talking about whoever’s not there tonight. Probably they’re talking about how sorry somebody’s husband is. Doesn’t really matter. ’Cause even if you and me were right in there with ’em, we probably wouldn’t understand what’s so funny. Not in a million years.”

  * * *

  “Rummy!” Ellis shouted jubilantly, slapping the cards faceup on the table.

  “Oh no, not again,” Dorie said. She fanned her own cards for the others to see. “You caught me holding a handful of aces and kings. Again.” She ticked her fingertips across the cards. “That gives me, like, minus sixty.”

  “I’m at forty,” Julia reported, laying down her own cards. “Where’s that put us, Ellis?”

  “Hmmm. I’m at 485. Julia, you’re at 410. And Dorie, honey, you’re at 220.”

  “I’m hopeless,” Dorie said, yawning. “And tired. It’s what, nearly midnight? I think I’m gonna take myself off to bed.”

  “Not yet,” Ellis protested. “It’s still early. And you could still have a comeback. Come on, Dorie, don’t go to bed yet. Not when we’re having so much fun. Hey, what about some ice cream? I’ve got Fudgsicles in the freezer.”

  “Chocolate?” Dorie raised an eyebrow. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I may suck at cards, but I’m grrreeatttt at chocolate.”

  “You didn’t always suck at cards,” Julia observed. “You used to whip us all single-handed. I never saw anybody who could memorize cards like you, Dorie.”

  Dorie pushed her hair back from her face. “My mind’s not in it,” she said lightly. “I’m having a blonde spell. A strawberry-blonde spell.”

  “What is on your mind?” Julia asked. Ellis shot her a warning look, but Julia never took her own eyes from Dorie.

  “Oh, you know,” Dorie said. “Money. Work. The usual stuff. Never mind me. I’ll be better once Ellis hands out those Fudgsicles she’s bribing me with.”

  “Dorie?” Julia slid her chair over so that it was beside her friend’s. “Come on, girlfriend. We know something is upsetting you.”

  “Julia!” Ellis said. “You promised.”

  Julia shrugged. “I lied. Now, come on, Dorie. Out with it.”

  Dorie’s face paled. She swept all the cards on the table into a pile, and busied herself rebuilding the deck. “I’m that obvious?” she asked, looking from Julia to Ellis.

  “No poker face at all,” Ellis said, taking a seat on Dorie’s other side. “But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s Stephen, isn’t it?” Julia broke in, ignoring Ellis’s glare.

  “Oh God,” Dorie whispered. “Yes. Stephen…” A single tear slid down her face. She bit her lip. “Stephen and I … God. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t even make myself say it.”

  Julia filled a glass with the last of the pinot grigio and slid it in front of Dorie. “Here. Drink up.”

  “No,” Dorie gently pushed the glass away. “I can do this. I can. I have to. Starting tonight.” She took a deep breath, and suddenly the words came pouring out.

  “I lied to you all. I did. And I’m sorry. The truth is, Stephen finished his thesis weeks ago. He didn’t come to the beach with me … because … we’re getting a divorce. And he moved out two weeks ago. And now I’ve got to sell the house. I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t told anybody. Especially Willa. Oh God, what will Willa say? And my mom? This will absolutely kill her. How am I going to tell her? And the school? I know one of us has to quit Our Lady of Angels. We can’t both work there. Not now. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t think. Not even about the simplest stuff. I can’t even decide what kind of cereal to eat for breakfast, or what to wear in the morning. It’s like my brain is frozen. And I shouldn’t have come to the beach. I should have stayed home and figured everything out, but I wanted to come. I wanted to get in my car and run away. Just keep driving. All I could think about was, ‘I am going to the beach. And I am not going to deal with this. When I’m at the beach, none of this will matter.’ So, I came.”

  The torrent of words stopped as suddenly as it had started. Dorie’s shoulders slumped. She wiped ineffectively at the tears that were now streaming down her face. “Oh, God. What a mess.”

  “Oh, Dorie,” Ellis said, throwing her arms around her friend. “I am so sorry.” She was crying too. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t know what to say.” She felt utterly helpless in the face of Dorie’s pain.

  “I know, right?” Dorie said, her voice shaky. “Mr. and Mrs. Perfect are getting a divorce. How screwed up is this?”

  Julia took a long sip of Dorie’s untouched glass of wine. “I knew it. As soon as I laid eyes on you at the airport, I knew it was something like this. I kept hoping it wasn’t, you know, this. But I just knew in my heart that it was.”

  “You’re a witch,” Dorie said, dabbing at her eyes with a paper napkin. “You always were.”

  “Not really,” Julia said. “You’re just so incredibly easy to read. You haven’t called him, he hasn’t called you. You’ve been weepy and mopey. And you can’t play cards for shit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dorie said, sniffing. “I hate being Debbie Downer.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Ellis asked.

  “No. I mean, yeah, I can talk about it. If you guys don’t mind the popcorn getting all soggy. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Let me guess,” Julia said. “I bet Mr. Perfect has himself a girlfriend. Am I right?”

  “Julia,” Ellis said, through gritted teeth. “Before this night is out, I am going to strangle you. I really am.”

  Dorie’s laugh was shaky. “Let her alone, Ellis. Maybe she’s not as witchy as I thought. You’re only half right, Julia. Stephen does have somebody else. But it’s not a girl. It’s a guy.”

  “What?” Ellis cried.

  “No way!” Julia said. “You’re telling us Stephen is gay?”

  Dorie was crying again, and the words were streaming as fast as the tears. “I’m such an idiot. How could I not have known? I mean, I knew something was wrong, but I never dreamed it was this. Easter break, we were supposed to go to Destin with another couple from school, and a day before we were supposed to leave, Stephen announced that he wasn’t going. He said he di
dn’t care if I went, in fact, he wanted me to go, but he said he’d had a rough semester, and he just wanted to go off hiking, by himself, up in the mountains. I told myself it was because he doesn’t really like my girlfriend’s husband, Brad. I mean, Brad can be hard to take sometimes. He’s a marathoner, and he never shuts up about running and his times and all that. So I let Stephen go off hiking. And when he got back, I thought he’d be in a better mood. But he wasn’t. He got moodier. And that’s not Stephen. Not normally. Normally, he is Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Which is why I fell for him. And we had fights. Not a lot, and not about anything important, but you know, the whole two years we dated, we never, ever fought.”

  Julia guffawed. “Well, that should have been a warning signal right there. Booker and I fight every day of our lives.”

  “But we didn’t,” Dorie said. “My mom and my dad, you know, before they got divorced, they fought like cats and dogs. Willa and Nash and I, we were so glad when they finally split up. You never saw kids so happy about a divorce. And I told myself when I got married, I would never fight like they did. Because if two people are right for each other, and they love each other, they don’t have to fight, you know?”

  “My parents used to fight now and then,” Julia said thoughtfully. “Not like Booker and me, but yeah, they’d get into it every once in a while. But then Daddy would buy Mama flowers and a piece of jewelry, or she’d make his favorite cannoli, and they’d make up like nothing happened. And they were married for like, forty years.”

  Ellis thought about her own parents. Lawrence Sullivan had been a patient, quiet man who doted on Ellis’s mother. She couldn’t remember him ever disagreeing with her mother, at least not in front of her and Baylor. Fighting would not have been his style.

  “Your daddy and mama were pretty special,” Ellis told Julia. “Like Ward and June Cleaver.”

  “Or Doris Day and Rock Hudson,” Dorie said sadly. “Only Rock Hudson turned out to be gay. Just like Stephen.”

  Dorie looked up and saw Julia watching her. She sighed. “Now you’re gonna ask me how the sex was, right?”

  Julia grinned. “I was scheming a way to get you away from Ellis, ’cuz I knew Ellis would never let me ask.”

  “Who says?” Ellis retorted. “I’m not that big a prude. Am I? I mean, I know it’s totally none of our business, but still. We are your best friends.…”

  “C’mon, pretty please?” Julia pleaded. “You don’t have to give me all the hot and steamy details. Just big picture, you know?”

  Dorie rolled her eyes. “The sex was fine,” she said, exasperated. “It was never even an issue. I got married at thirty-three, for God’s sake! And while a lady doesn’t like to get a reputation, I think you know I wasn’t exactly celibate before I met Stephen. You think I would have married him if we weren’t good together in bed?”

  Julia considered this. “So … there was nothing kinky?”

  “No,” Dorie snapped. “And I didn’t catch him dressing up in my panties, or hanging out at the men’s room at the park, or trolling the squares in downtown Savannah after midnight. I’m telling you, and you can believe me or not, but up until two months ago, I thought I had a marriage that was rock solid.”

  She blinked furiously at the tears welling up in her eyes. “I loved Stephen. And I believed he loved me. And now, it’s all gone to crap.”

  “Don’t cry any more,” Julia begged. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s Ellis’s fault for letting me, right? Let’s all be pissed off at Ellis. And Stephen, too. May he rot in gay hell.”

  15

  Ellis went out to the kitchen and got the box of Fudgsicles and a roll of paper towels, which she solemnly handed around to Dorie and Julia.

  Dorie licked the ice cream bar in silence, while Julia attacked hers, biting off the top and demolishing it in minutes. Ellis licked and chewed and wiped frantically at the ice cream dripping down onto her hands.

  “Better?” she asked Dorie.

  “A little,” Dorie said, sniffling.

  “There’s not enough chocolate in the world to fix this kind of thing,” Julia said. “Dorie, Ellis is going to kill me for asking, but I can’t help it. How … I mean … how did you find out about Stephen?”

  “Jesus, Julia!” Ellis said. “Would you please let her alone?”

  “It’s all right, Ellis,” Dorie said. “It’s like a car wreck. You know it’s terrible, but you just can’t help looking, right? I didn’t catch him with another man, if that’s what you’re wondering. It was just a bunch of little things. I thought he was stressed about getting his master’s, so I didn’t pay much attention. And then, he quit his soccer team. You guys met Stephen, right? He lived and died for soccer, not just coaching the girls at school, but playing. But he just quit the team. And the thing is, he didn’t tell me he’d quit. He’d leave the house, and I just assumed he was going to practice, but it turns out he wasn’t.”

  “He was going to meet his boyfriend?” Julia asked.

  “No,” Dorie said. “He swears he wasn’t. He says now he just sort of drove around. He’d go to the mall and sit in his car, or drive out to Tybee and back.”

  “Why’d he quit soccer?” Ellis asked gently.

  Dorie’s face turned pink. “The guy … his name is Matt? He’s on the team too. He’s always been out. But not in a swishy, flamer kind of way. Stephen said…” She gulped and looked down at her hands. She’d twisted the paper ice cream wrapper into a cylinder, and now she was shredding it. “He said he realized months ago that he was, I guess, attracted to Matt. And it really scared him. And disgusted him.”

  “Oh, poor Dorie,” Ellis said with a sigh.

  “Stephen swears he never meant for anything to happen,” Dorie went on. “That’s why he quit the team. He thought if he didn’t see Matt, didn’t talk to him, it would be all right.”

  “But it wasn’t, was it?” Julia asked.

  “As soon as school was out in May, Stephen flew out to Omaha to be with his dad. Henry had a stroke while Stephen was there. He’s alive, but he’s on a ventilator, and now, they’ve told the family it’s just a matter of time.”

  “God. On top of everything else,” Julia muttered. “So, what happened?”

  “When he came back home, he wouldn’t talk about his dad,” Dorie said. “He started drinking, you know, not a lot, but more than usual. Scotch, too. He never really drank hard liquor before. Neither of us did. And then, one night, right before the Fourth of July, he just … he just…” She faltered, and started crying again. This time Julia tore off a paper towel from the roll and handed it to Dorie.

  “Blow,” she ordered. Dorie nodded and did as she was told. Ellis took a paper towel and dabbed at her own eyes. “Gotta remember to add Kleenex to the grocery list this week,” she said absent-mindedly.

  Dorie took another deep breath and launched back into her story. “He just went for a drive, and he didn’t come back. Not that night. I was going crazy! He wouldn’t answer his cell phone, and I called everybody we knew asking if they’d seen him. I even called the emergency rooms at Saint Joe’s and Memorial to see if he’d been in an accident.”

  “You must have been terrified,” Ellis said. “I don’t even know what I’d have done if I were you.”

  “I’d have been so pissed,” Julia said.

  “I was terrified, and then when he came home and he was all right, I was really pissed. We had the biggest fight ever. I was standing in the kitchen, in my nightgown, and, you guys, I was screaming. I mean screaming at him. And Stephen, he just broke down crying. And that’s when he told me. That he’d gone to a bar, and Matt was there, and he was drinking, and … he just … went home with Matt. And he didn’t call me because he didn’t want to lie to me.”

  Dorie took another deep breath. Her eyes were red from crying, and her nose was running. Ellis and Julia were crying too.

  “So that’s it?” Ellis asked. “He’s gay, and you’re getting divorced? End of story?”

  “End
of story,” Dorie agreed. “End of Mr. and Mrs. Perfect. End of every-friggin’-thing.”

  “Is that what you want? Have you thought about going to counseling?” Ellis asked.

  “Counseling!” Julia hooted. “She just told you the man is gay. What good is marriage counseling when it comes to something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellis said helplessly. “Maybe, maybe Stephen really isn’t totally gay. It was only one time, right? Maybe this is just … like a phase. Dorie said he’s been under a lot of stress, with finishing his thesis, and his dad being so sick. Maybe if they got counseling, if they could talk things out with a therapist … I just think there has to be another way.”

  “Well, that’s just dumb,” Julia said, shaking her head. “What, you think this is like that column in your mom’s Ladies’ Home Journal—CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?”

  “I hate to say it, but Julia’s right,” Dorie said. “Don’t you see? I’m screwed. Stephen says he loves me, and I believe him, I really do. But he’s not in love with me. There’s somebody else. How do I compete with that? If it were a woman, I’d do something. Cut my hair, dye it, lose weight, get a boob job.…”

  “A boob job?” Julia exclaimed, slapping the tabletop for emphasis. “You’re a friggin’ 32D, Dorie. You’ve worn a D cup since, like, kindergarten.” It was only a slight exaggeration. “You’re so skinny everywhere else, if you got any bigger, you couldn’t stand upright.”

  “I know,” Ellis chimed in. “Remember, Dorie? In seventh grade, when we were just getting our training bras, you were already in an underwire.”

  “Double-D Dunaway,” Julia crowed. “Nope, the only way you compete with this Matt guy, as far as I can see, is if you manage to grow a penis.”

  Dorie started to giggle. Ellis started too. In a moment, the three of them were all laughing so hard, tears were running down their faces. They laughed until they were crying and then laughing again.