SIX
Ann
Ann showed up to babysit that weekend, nervous. She’d fantasized about that scene in the bedroom a hundred times since it had happened, and in her fantasies, Anthony grew more and more handsome, their conversations more and more intimate.
Maureen answered the door with a bright smile. Ann startled when she saw the pink dress on her. “You look nice.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” Maureen said. “I thought about returning this silly dress. I could tell you didn’t like it on me, but my husband insisted I keep it. Positively insisted, which is unusual. He just loves it. Speaking of…” She turned around and called out, “Tony? Come meet Ann.” She smiled. “I can’t believe you two haven’t even met yet.”
Ann did not correct her.
Maureen waited expectantly while Anthony and the boys wrestled on the floor. Maureen walked over to them and began to act more like a parent than Ann was used to seeing. Maureen told them to stop in her faux-stern voice: please, boys, please now, that’s enough. They didn’t listen to her and that was fine with Maureen, who didn’t seem to care. Anthony’s hair was tousled, and he appeared refreshingly lighthearted, laughing when Toby tried to put him in a headlock. “Who do you think you are, huh? André the Giant?” It was the first time Ann noticed an accent in his voice. It wasn’t like Maureen’s more refined Boston drawl; this was more working class and rough. Anthony stood up and twisted Toby around so that he was slung across his broad shoulders like a blanket. Toby weighed almost as much as Ann, but when Anthony picked him up, he could have been as light as a loaf of bread.
Toby laughed so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Anthony,” Maureen said. “Could you take a break? Ann is here.” As if he’d snapped out of a spell, Anthony slid Toby off his shoulders and onto the couch. He was flushed and breathless. The boys looked at Ann, clearly disappointed that their father would leave soon.
“No shoes on the davenport,” Maureen said, pointing disapprovingly at Toby’s sandaled feet. Ann had never heard anyone call a couch a “davenport” before.
“Fine.” Toby tagged Brooks, and the boys ran outside onto the deck.
Anthony wore a pair of pressed khakis and a light blue golf shirt, although, like his suit, the ensemble didn’t seem to fit him right. He seemed out of place in Maureen’s domesticated world, energetic where Maureen tried to impose order, dressed in an outfit he probably wouldn’t have picked for himself.
Ann tried not to smile. “I’m Ann.” She reached her hand to her employer and looked him in the eye. He smiled—a cordial smile that gave nothing away. He shook her hand. His grip was firm and forceful, sweaty. His middle finger reached toward her wrist. She tried to shake her hand loose but he gently tightened his grip and held it a few seconds longer, long enough for her to remember the feeling of his callused fingers on the back of her neck when he tugged her ponytail holder loose, long enough to linger without Maureen, who busied herself straightening up the cushions, taking no notice. “I’ve heard you’re a terrific babysitter,” he said, and smiled.
Maureen walked away and applied another coat of lipstick in the hallway mirror. “Caged animals, that’s what they are. Especially this time of night.”
“You need to let the tiger out of the cage,” Anthony said.
“Our reservation is in ten minutes,” she said. “I just need to get my purse.” She practically skipped down the hallway that led to their bedroom.
“Ah, nice color,” Anthony said, pointing at Ann’s toes. She’d painted them with the closest shade of pink she could find, given the limited selection at the General Store. She looked at him, feeling both bold and embarrassed, and smiled.
Anthony turned his attention to Brooks and Toby, who had run back into the family room. “You’ll behave for Ann tonight, right?”
“Right,” they said in unison.
Anthony walked over to the couch and picked up a needlepoint pillow with the word COTTAGE stitched into it. “This is new,” he said. “I wonder what my father would think of it.”
He tossed it to Ann, who caught it.
“He worked third shift in the Enlow Fork coal mine.”
“Where’s that?”
“Pennsylvania. Coal country. He supported us on twelve bucks an hour. Every day, he went six hundred and fifty feet underground. It was dark. Machines with teeth as big as you are chewed a hole in the ground. At any moment, something could explode or collapse. He came home looking like the earth swallowed him up and spit him back out. When he was my age, his eardrums were ruptured, his kidneys shot. His spine was a zigzag. He died of black lung.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am too.” Anthony’s voice broke. “He was a great guy. The best, and he pissed his life away trying to provide for us. And now here I am, just a coal miner’s son, with a pillow that says ‘cottage.’ If we had a pillow like that in the house I grew up in, it would say ‘shithole.’”
All this time she’d thought of herself as the poor intruder into Maureen’s tidy world. Now she felt, well—not rich, but fortunate.
“My wife,” Anthony said. “She’s a wonderful woman, but she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She doesn’t know hardship.”
Ann saw Maureen standing in the doorway clutching her purse, looking hurt. Suddenly Ann ached for her: it wasn’t her fault that she was born into money. It wasn’t wrong of her to try to make their home nice, and everything she did was for Anthony. She didn’t seem to know what else she was supposed to do with herself. “I’m ready,” Maureen said, looking hopeful and anxious. She walked toward the front door and jiggled the handle. “You said you wanted to let the tiger out of the cage.”
“My date with the zookeeper awaits.” He opened the door for Maureen, but before he ushered her out, he looked at Ann and said, “Don’t you think this is a terrific dress my wife is wearing?”
Ann nodded, afraid her blush was obvious. “It’s great.”
“Tell me, would you ever wear a dress like this, Ann?”
“Yeah,” Ann said. “Sure.”
Maureen seemed genuinely touched and even more grateful for Anthony’s attention. “You’re so dear,” she said, and her words made Ann feel that she was caught up in something complicated and awkward.
Maureen stepped outside and Anthony stalled at the door. He gave Ann a little wave. Just like that, Ann become part of a secret—an adult secret.
SEVEN
Michael
The Shaws were all Ann talked about when she was home, although she was hardly ever home. He couldn’t give a shit that Maureen—Mo now—drank basil-and-lemon-infused water and ate cucumber sandwiches without crusts, or that she’d let Ann drive her Jag, or that she was the kind of person who made sure her napkins matched the colors of the flowers in her bouquets, or that her kids’ allowance was fifty bucks a month for doing absolutely nothing.
And then there was the dad, who sounded like a real number. Ann said his name, Anthony, with a certain lilt in her voice that made Michael squirm inside. It was as if she’d been on a first-name basis with the guy her whole life. She said he was very busy, as if not being around your family was a sign of success. Ann said he ran the family business as if she were a Shaw herself. She didn’t even know what their family business did. She just loved the idea of a family fucking business.
Anthony this, Anthony that. Anthony drove his Jeep on Nauset Beach. Anthony chartered fishing boats. Well, guess what? Ed chartered a fishing boat, too, only Ann didn’t know that, and Michael wasn’t about to tell her. Besides, he was sworn to secrecy. Ed told Connie that they were out conducting “research,” but really, they were fishing, spending money Ed said he really shouldn’t spend.
But then, a few nights ago, Ann suddenly directed the golden beam of her attention back on him. She returned home from babysitting and found Michael in his room in the attic. He was bored because Poppy was gone again, hanging out with her new surfing friends, and Ed and Connie went to bed early. A few m
inutes after they’d shut their bedroom door he heard the bedsprings squeak and the headboard bang rhythmically against the paper-thin wall. He figured he should get lost.
Before he could leave, he heard the kitchen door swing open, followed by the fast tap-tap-tap of Ann’s feet on the steep stairs. He knew it was Ann; he knew the sound of her footsteps, her breathing, her sneezes.
She didn’t bother to knock first. She sat on the end of his bed and smiled. “I have exciting news! Anthony said Jason, his landscaper, needs help this summer, and I told him you could do it. I guess it’s really hard to find workers here. I told him you love to garden. You want a job, right?”
He was having fun without a job, but Michael liked to work, and he liked the idea of making his own money. He couldn’t get used to Ed and Connie paying for his stuff; he saw the way their brows furrowed and their expressions changed whenever they held out their credit card. Michael figured he’d pay them back someday, help them when they were old, something to make them feel like he’d earned his place in the family.
“I don’t know much about gardening out here,” he said.
“Don’t worry about that. He’ll train you. You’d probably do more of the basic stuff anyway. Jason is desperate. I’ve met him. He’s nice. You’d like him.”
Michael resented Ann for assuming that he’d say yes. What was he, Ann’s own private lawn boy on demand?
“We’d practically be coworkers. You’ll be at the Shaws’ all the time. Maureen said Jason is going to help them build a stone patio. Please, Michael?”
Ann’s eyes were gray-green. She had little baby hairs that curled around her forehead where the rest of her hair was pulled back. Her cheeks were red from running up the stairs. Her hand was on his calf. She was on his bed, he could feel her weight, her heat. He wished he could reach out—
“Sure,” he said, closing his notebook.
“Awesome!”
He agreed because he missed Ann, and this was a way to get close to her. Ever since they’d first met, that night under the green light of the Holidome, he knew one thing: he wanted to be wherever she was.
* * *
JASON PULLED UP THE GORDONS’ DRIVE at six o’clock in the morning. Michael guessed he was about Ed’s age, maybe a little younger. His face was leathery from the outdoors. “Climb on in,” Jason said, pointing at his rusty orange Toyota pickup truck with rakes, hoes, and a wheelbarrow in the back. A big black Lab sat waiting in the cab. “That’s Flip. She’s a good girl.”
The cab smelled like dirt and dog breath. Flip stood to lick Michael’s face, then turned to lick Jason, and her tail swatted against Michael like a windshield wiper. Jason slipped his Red Sox cap on his head and took a drink from his thermal mug. “You got your pruning shears on the dash, rain jackets behind the seats, work gloves all over. Do me a favor: try harder than I do to keep them in pairs.” Fay-vah. Pay-as. His accent sounded so thick to Michael that it was almost a speech impediment. “You have problems gettin’ up this early?”
“No,” said Michael.
“You’re in this for beer money?”
“I actually like working with plants.”
“Look, all I care about is you show up when you say you’re going to show up, you work hard, keep it honest. And you need to learn quick because I’m so goddamn behind I don’t know my ass from my elbow. Weather this year is kicking my ass. Shaw is riding my keister about his goddamn yaah-d. He’s the type who wants his grass mowed in a checkerboard pattern. Too rich to do his own yard, too poor to hire a property manager. So here we are.”
“Is he a bad guy?” Finally Michael had someone to ask.
“He’s money, that’s what he is, and money is what I need right now. I’m running my business from my backyard and my neighbors aren’t happy. I’m trying to buy some land in an industrial park in Eastham. Bigger crew, space for my tools. Speaking of money, I pay shit, but you work hard and I’ll see you get your due at the end of the summer. I got you on manure duty today. You’ll go home smelling like you crawled up a cow’s ass.”
* * *
MICHAEL LIKED JASON. He was demanding and rough, but also creative and patient. He loved what he did. He showed Michael how to nurture hearty Cape Cod plants so they’d survive the high wind, salt air, and sandy soil. He taught him how to make planting charts, explained how lavender, bee balm, and citronella deter pests, and showed him how to use stakes and string to trim the hedges. Michael loved how Jason talked about plants and gardening—breaking buds, deadheading, air layering, double-digging, scarification. He treated Michael as an equal, not some kid who’d once been an orphan.
Michael loved gardening, even the grunt work of spreading manure and mulch, moving stones and digging holes. He liked the feeling of having earned his fatigue at the end of the day. It was good to be outside, good to be in control, good to have Jason press a wad of cash in his hand at the end of the week, good to hear the girls make comments about him when he was on pruning duty in town and worked shirtless. Mostly, it was good to be on Cape Cod with Jason, who ended each day at Indian Neck, where he picked the ticks off his legs and went for a swim while Michael sat on the shore. He could swim now, but he only liked the ponds. He was almost too reverent about the ocean. It seemed too mysterious, too deep. It struck him that he felt the same way about Ann.
Jason kept a small cooler in the back of his truck and gave Michael a can of Sam Adams without concern that he was underage. The beer tasted good. They watched Flip chase the gulls.
“How about coming back here next summer?” Jason asked.
“I could come back here forever,” Michael said.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“You’ve got sand in your shoes.”
The sun turned the water gold. The sailboats dotting the horizon chased the wind. It was perfect. Michael never wanted to leave.
EIGHT
Poppy
Poppy went back to the ocean again and again to meet up with Kit. She didn’t tell her parents she was surfing because they’d worry. She said she’d made a new friend at Long Pond and she was going to her house, although she had no idea where Kit lived.
Instead, she met up with Kit at her friends’ houses on the ocean side near Cahoon Hollow. Most of them lived on a private road marked with a tree trunk at the entrance covered in bright buoys and wooden planks with the names of the residences painted on them: Witt’s End, Lynch Lodge, Nolan’s Nook, Ma and Pa’s. The long, sandy drive led through the pine forest to the ocean, where their houses were low-slung, sleepy sixties-style shingled ranch homes with big windows overlooking the water. They all had some stylish variation on short leather couches, teak furniture, massive paintings, and rag rugs to catch the sand before it scuffed up the pine floors. Expensive, sporty cars sat in their driveways.
The kids had unconventional names: Skip, Collins, Evie, and Rye. They were golden and loose, comfortable in their skin, as familiar with each other as siblings because their parents had gone to Harvard and Yale together. They’d all grown up in wealthy suburbs of Connecticut and New York, and spent every summer on the Cape. They slept at each other’s houses as though their families were interchangeable. It seemed to Poppy that the parents wanted lots of kids around so the kids could keep each other company, leaving the adults free to have their own fun.
Their sheds were stuffed with surfboards and wet suits. Before, a surfboard seemed out of reach to Poppy. Now, her new friends told her she could borrow one anytime. She’d had a feeling there was a right way and a wrong way to vacation here, and she’d finally tapped into the right way.
Evenings, they went from house to house. Poppy wished Ann could be there with her, because they’d always experienced the Cape together. But Ann was always at the Shaws’, and the more time she spent with them, the more distracted and stuck-up she became. Poppy had visited Ann a few times when she first started, and thought she’d die if she had to spend ten minutes in that house. She felt sorry for those loser ki
ds, too. They seemed miserable, like trained poodles. When Poppy thought of Ann sealed up in the Shaws’ house, she imagined a figure trapped in an air-conditioned snow globe.
The surfer kids were competitive fun seekers. Drinking was no big deal. Their refrigerators were stocked with beer and their cabinets filled with gin, bourbon, and whiskey. Back home, Poppy occasionally had some shots of Jim Beam, Rumple Minze, and Jägermeister. On the Cape, her new friends could mix her a Manhattan or a Rusty Nail. They were experts at picking seeds out of pot and rolling fat joints the size of cigars. If the parents were gone (and the parents were almost always gone), Kit and Poppy and a loose, interchangeable gathering of siblings and friends would sit outside on the wood decks, drink, take hits, and watch the sun set behind the pitch pines, comparing notes about that day’s surf. Everything was surf: whether it sucked or it was awesome. They predicted where and when they could catch the best swells, where and when the storms were coming, how big the tide would be based on the fullness of the moon, whether the wind would be offshore and perfect (the way it almost never was), or whether the waves would crumble. A storm could move the breaks, because there were no piers or moorings to hold the sand in place on this side of the Cape. Unpredictability was what made surfing so intoxicating.
No piers, no moorings, good pot, unpredictability. Poppy felt herself coming loose with every wave, every toke, every shot, every pill.
NINE
Michael
Michael and Ann rode their bikes to the Shaws’ house on Michael’s first full day of working on their lawn. Michael was nervous, because Jason had made such a big deal of the Shaws’ yard (he called the Shaws’ home “the Shaw Mahal”). He had a key to the house. Jason had showed him where he’d hung the keys for all his clients. In summer, he worked on their lawns, and in winter he checked in on their empty houses, leaving tire prints and footmarks in the snow to ward off possible intruders.
The Second Home Page 7